Friday 27 May 2005

No New Messages

Every day when I come to the office and open MS Outlook (configured with my company email server), I find at least one new email there. Its bold black subject indicating the freshness, stimulating me to take a bite.

But today when I opened my email program, there was nothing there for me. I clicked the "Send/Receive" button a hundred times, in hope that maybe a big fat message might be choking in the communication lines and would slip in easily if I did that. But all in vain.

There was no email and there was no email.

It makes me kind of sad to see an empty mailbox. Whether it is my company email box or my personal email box, the sight of "No New Messages" just makes my heart sink. I guess I am too addicted to the Internet and emails. :-S

Do you think it's bad?

Wednesday 25 May 2005

How Wrong Was I

Is that an hour glass? (the thingy you see at the bottom left of an Internet Explorer page). I always thought that it was an eaten up apple. :-D heheheeee

Anybody out there who thought the same as i did? ;-) LOL



What is this? Posted by Hello

Tuesday 24 May 2005

A Lesson Learnt

I am coming to believe strongly in the fact that the lessons learned the hard way are never forgotten. They do leave a bad taste in the mind at the time of learning though. But I guess it's worth it since once learnt the lesson pays off forever.

I am learning several small such lessons at work.

The one I learnt today is that never overlook even a tiny thing when testing a software. Test every teensy weensy inch of it. And no matter how "Experienced" the developer is, and no matter how confident she/he looks, never take that as a guarantee that her/his code will not be buggy.

I learnt the hard way. Well it was not that "hard". The boss simply pointed out the bug in a launched project and raised a question "who tested this?". The fingers could be pointed to no one else but me.

I felt confused at the question. I could not believe that I could miss such a big error. I tried to recall the events that took place when that feature was introduced in the application. My mind returned a NULL value.

But I won't let that happen again, hopefully. I am going to be meaner and stricter (some might give a tag crazier). After all I have my own back to save. ;-)

Monday 16 May 2005

Clearing Up the Clutter

Today was a very relaxed day at office. The big project being released last week on Wednesday, and its documentation completed on Friday, there was no work for me to do today. (At least nothing I could think of.) So what I did was that I cleared up the clutter.

It was not a physical clutter but a virtual one. I cleaned up my PC and removed all unused, obsolete files that were merely eating up space on my hard disk. I did let some old files stay. But those I marked with a bold label 'Old'. I did that because I did not want my old and new files mixing together to give me the headache of a lifetime.

Now my desktop is tidier too. Mulan along with Mushu are completely visible now. I will keep them this way, before I switch back to putting Sully, Mike and Boo back on my desktop.

I wish things were clutter free in my room at my house too. ;-)

Tuesday 10 May 2005

Elmo Likes to Play

Yes, it's true that Elmo likes to play. And I am a little Elmo myself so I like to play too.

There may be some people for whom the whole life is 'work' and they 'work' 24/7. But for one I am not from that species. All work and no play makes me a dull girl.

It has been so many days since I last 'played'. The work routine is too hectic for me. It's like my whole life is revolving around my 'work'. Sitting late in the office and not getting even the weekends as free.

I am hopeful that things will get better once this 'Bookstore' thing is over. And I hope that this comes true.

Wednesday 4 May 2005

Bad Driving Day

Saturday was a good day for me. I could do my bank related chores that day, could collect my sewn clothes from the tailor and had a get together in the evening.

But...

It was a bad driving-day for me. Maybe I was to blame too. But the other parties involved were no angels either.

First it was when I was happily going to Islamabad, a stupid driver spoilt my mood. I was on the road in front of the airport. I was in the right lane, he was in the left a little ahead of me. Suddenly that man came towards the right. He came so close that I had to apply brakes forcefully. And when I did that, he moved back to the left. I didn’t honk my horn or flash my lights at him. But in his side mirror he was trying to tell me with signs that there was a LOT of space there and I didn't HAVE TO apply brakes. :-P

Then similar thing was done by a bus when I was coming back to Pindi from the reunion. I was in the right most lane and the bus was in the middle one. When I was about to go ahead of it, while staying in my lane, it suddenly came towards right, right on to my car. This time I just pressed the horn and didn't take my hand off till the bus moved to its own lane. (Applied brakes too as I didn’t want to be crushed!) Felt like beating the hell out of the bus driver, but what could I do but to moan and complain inside. :-S

The worst came when I dropped off a pal and was going to go home. I was on the extreme left of the road, and had to turn back. At first a lot of cars were coming that way, so I couldn't break in the line. But then there came a time when I found some space. SO on almost zero speed I started turning the car. That time an overly enthusiastic 'uncle' tried to go past me in a hurry. He was not quick enough and my zero speed was maybe too fast. As a result his green scooter hit the top right edge of the bumper. He instantly stopped and glared at me with anger. (I wonder if I were a boy would he have uttered big fat abuses to me.) The only words that came out of his grunting mouth were 'drive carefully'. I knew it was his fault too, but I said sorry to him, turned my car and started my home ward journey.

The day was great but for driving maybe it was worse.

Reunion: The Class of 1998-2001

On Saturday evening, we the old students of Fatima Jinnah Women University, met in Holiday Inn at high tea. All of us were classmates in the 1998-2001 batch of Masters in Computer Science. We were, by the way, the first batch of the university too.

The planning for the get together was going on for the past month or so. Finally it was decided to meet in Holiday Inn. Out of a class of around 60 only 8 of us could make it.

I don't blame the rest. Some were busy in their married lives. Some had kids that were ill. Many were not in the city. Maybe some were on the family way too. :-)

But we 8 had fun. Two among us 8 were the married ones. One even brought her cute daughter along. Two are about to get married this year. :-D It was good meeting after such a long time. It was fun chatting and exchanging notes about each others lives. Nadia Nazir, the CR of our class at that time, had made the arrangements. Booking the table, getting people together and all. She had done a great job.

The food was great too. I ate a lot. I was particularly interested in trying the 'gool gappay' there, and I did too. But their water (juice? whatever) was not that tasty. But anyways I got to have them. ;-)

I wish we could arrange such get togethers frequently. And I am hopeful that next time, there will be at least 16 girls around the table. :-)