The update....

last week was one eventful one....first event happened on Monday when we left office at 7pm...our cab driver had gone on some personal work to the city and got stuck in traffic on the way back...and it was so irritating waiting there...i just cant explain...but good thing that i completed some work...so we left office at arnd 7pm and the traffic in the Hosur road...shud someone say...was horrible...so to forget the anger of him coming late and the traffic...we (me, a colleague and the PM) got into a conversation...abt politics in office... and that kept us occupied...another added tension was that i was missing my workout that day...its been 1 1/2 months and havent missed a single day and that was the first day...

then tuesday was very normal...

on wednesday it was normal till arnd 3.30pm and then came a mail from one of my frens with just the subject line..."Dr. Rajkumar is no more"...dint take that seriously...and it went arnd as a passing comment...but then things started happening...our PM who had left office on some personal work called up and asked us to leave office at once and go home...and then there was also another announcement in the office asking everyone to leave...i still dint get the seriousness of it and was happy that i wud go home soon...but just as i reached home did i get to know it...some guys had gone crazy...went arnd to get something to eat and saw that all the shops were closed...nothing was open...back home...my roomies started coming and i cud do nothing but sleep...in radio it was all kannada songs of Mr Rajkumar, in TV all the other channels were off air while only kannada channels which had his movies, his songs, some documentaries, etc...
when i got up arnd 8...was so hungry that i cudnt hold myself from venturing out...my frens were not very comfortable to the idea....but then i was too hungry so i went arnd and every shop was closed except for the medical stores...then asked a few for biscuits and they had none...so got a family pack Cadbury Dairy Milk and then had that as dinner...another roomie went arnd and luckily he had a shop which had biscuits and bread and jam...i was very very happy...we had the biscuits...saved the bread for the next day and before i cud get hungry again i went to sleep...

thursday morning...i cudnt keep myself in bed...it was arnd 7am and i was damn hungry...so got up...had a pack of milk...so had it...some slices of bread with some cheese i had already stored up and only after that did i feel a little fine...it was so horrible a feeling of having the thought that u cant get the next meal...there were times when i used to just not eat because i had some work but only on this day did i know how important a meal is...and i had actually planned to leave for home the weekend and my fren had booked tickets for thursday nite...but i thot we wud better leave this place before anything bad could happen and u never know in situations of high tension what will happen when and where...but these two guys who had the tickets and were supposed to come with me were at office...i was very pissed off...but then cud do nothing...so played hand-squash with my roomie and then there was a shop open arnd the corner...got some bananas and Lays (i dont know why...but was feeling like eating a lot of potato chips that day ;)) and had our lunch again of bread, biscuits, bananas and chips...then slept and woke up arnd 6 when dad had called up to tell that if the situation was still a little tensed then not to come home the weekend... but then i was all prepared to go...i suddenly felt like an unwanted immigrant in some country and started feeling a little insecure...so started arnd 7pm from home (my bus was at 10.30pm) and then dint get any rickshaws...one guy told 300bucks to travel to Majestic from Jayanagar 9th block...atrocious...then luckily there was one of those first buses arnd and we got dropped at the 4th block...then another one the conductor told would stop at Mysore bank...and Majestic was pretty walkable from there...but as the reached Mysore bank ppl there told that there was no problem in Majestic and the buses could go...so atlast we had come to the station...i felt very relieved...

then at station i met my frens and a junior who was also going home and had booked his tickets for the day bus at 10.30am...and lo...the bus was cancelled and he sat the station with another guy to his company the whole day...there was nothing arnd...everything closed and no buses...the whole place deserted...i then thot....i had a great escape...had i left in the morning i too would have been stuck in the bus stand...then we had something to eat...and our 10.30pm bus left at 11.45pm and just as we were leaving Bangalore there was a big thud...some guy had thrown a stone at the bus...the driver stopped for a second...shouted at the small crowd that was arnd and then thot it was better to leave...and from there on the went so fast that we reach Mysore probably an hour earlier...and even then somewhere in between Mysore and Bangalore there was a noise...i just was begining to sleep and then this sound of breaking glass...again someone had thrown a stone and had broken the window...luckily nothing happened to the two ladies who were sitting near the window and the driver dint bother to stop...he was on full throttle and only after sometime when he felt it safe did he stop...and then came two more buses with the same broken windows...

atlast when i reached home it was arnd 9.30am...and that was pretty quick but the only thing was i had a very bad butt ache...the road was horrible and we had seats just above the rear wheels and were punished badly...:)

anyways...after coming home...it was good food and good sound sleep...and am now blogging from home...after a long time has broadband connection come here...and i have set everything up so that mom and dad could speak to bro...

6000 zeros...

well i dont think i would ever forget 31st March 2006....y? because that was the day i had put (typed) 6000 zeroes in an excel file :(....dont think any of those tough teachers in school would have put so many in the answer sheets of the students in their lifetime ;)

it was all because of the customer master record and the junk that came up while downloading it to excel...there were records for arnd 6000 customers here and i had to download them...check them...put them in a particular format and then send it to the users to confirm on the details...generally its only the format that would be provided but here i cudnt do it as there were 6 different tables to download the records and the query that i created wouldnt work as some tables dint have records for some customers...so i had to download from each table separately and then join them...

i did that in just one day....some 2 weeks back...but later when i checked i found out that some tables dint have details for some customers and i would have to match them separately....so there it started...i had been postponing it for sometime but then who else would do it...so i took it up on Thursday...and downloaded them

while downloading i had another problem....some places records for 2 customers would be at the same row...that was irritating...now i had to go back to the tables download only for them and then put them in the excel sheet...

and also some customer records were comfortably not taken into the excel file...i dint know why and no one arnd knew too...then i tried downloading it as a html file....now this was perfect...all the customers in the table were there in the file...but the problem was i would have to copy it and paste to an excel so that i cud match with records from other tables...well that was another headache...one table when downloaded as html came to be 45MB.....and cudnt paste it to an excel file...but the others were just fine...only that when copied to an excel file...2 rows got merged for one record....so the total number of rows came to be 12000 and odd...i had to de-merge all the rows and then delete the extra rows...

now y did i put those zeros....i tried deleting selecting a few empty rows...but that was taking a long time...so thot would fill them with something and then use filter to take them out and delete the rows...but then again the filter was not working after a few 100 rows....so had to do a sort and then delete....

so i entered 6000 and odd zeros and then sorted and deleted the rows...it took arnd 1/2 to do that...and the sound of the keys in the keyboard started to have a musical effect on me....i even tried getting a beat into it...just to keep myself from getting bored...

this cud have been done pretty easily using some tools in excel...but then cudnt get any expert in excel to help :(

watever....but yesterday was unforgetable...