My Tryst with Computers

Its a puzzle.

I get easy with ppl who are gud at sth which i am terrible at ! More specifically I rarely match frequency with ppl from a similar academic interest ( which might partly be due to my own absymal acadmic abilities :-( . i got more computer science friends in my batch here and else where. and then i know for a fact of life i cannot discuss one comp funda with them. why shd i expose my foolishness and ignorance.

It happens with language. It happens with computers. Though i want to talk abt computers, i am doing it against a backdrop of language as well. just to show forcefully that sth is not alright in a usual sense.

I have literally been a west indian last three years ( yeah.... i still retain my hair and am not that black either and never tried a kingfisher till date....) and yet my hindi is hardly digestible. the beauty is still i manage to mix with northies without too many inhibitions. and atleast at my engg college and at my workplace, i have really strong friends with whom i still keep in touch. opposite poles attract. they say. i am not sure. nor can i claim that it applies to me. and finally i dont care what makes me tick with northies....probably that wd make a separate post by itself, that is if at all i manage to figure out!

well this is for the start. now for the main-course. my bete-noire. computers.

I cant find words to express my feelings for this humble machine. its pretty mixed. at the same time i love to write abt sth which i am sure i will fail miserably . and hence this attempt.

First a basic dose of psychology. we avoid sth mostly becoz we r afraid of it. and we are afraid of sth becoz we dont understand it. this is the case for most things in life.

and so it happened. the first computer of my life came in class VI. that is way back in 1992. a single machine in our school lab. that too i used for playing prince. under the able guidance of my computer teacher. i knew i cud not handle it. i can handle these video game joy sticks much better than these arrow+shift+ctrl+tab+ num lock keys.

then on i have miserably failed attempting fifa, road rash, nfs2, dave and so on.....dont even dare to think abt AoE or Counter strike....on the contrary i guess i completed mario atleast once. BLC was okay. but with these cheat codes i never stood a chance. mine sweeper ws my only accomplishment. beginner level completed in 5 sec. that too purely by chance.

I cant recount the number of times i was left languishing in these languages like fortran, c, c++. the closest i came to understandin a computer language was BASIC. too sidey a language though. i mugged this oops concept just for the sake of placements in engg. and i din have a job even when i passed out from college. actually i just din attend CTS interveiw at college just becoz i was happily enjoying at home and never knew abt it. wat a correlation with computers to start a career....

i dont understand these computer networks, proxies, gateways etc although i have breathing internet and Y!M through these very things. It took a long time to figure out what configuration and pricing wd suit my requirements for a pc. but i guess so far if i had done anything remotely successful, that was getting a decent deal for a pc with a comparable configuration. i still have not attempted all the tools and functions in a MS office package. hope to learn sth before the course finishes. becoz as an MBA, all i am supposed to be is a master of these packages. when ppl talk abt comp stuff, i silently slip away. i cant handle this for sure!

in the first term, we had to learn SAS which is a statistical analysis package. till date, i cannot understand it one bit. watever lil i used of sas was by searching for codes in the internet using google. and that is not the tharikhaa for learning. with the imminent possibility of using SPSS for mktg project, i am completely bowled. the last lecture on spss left me baffling for words. i have decided to ditch tomm's spss class without much fuss.

i have encountered strange problems with blogger.com and orkut. the exp with these codes in blogger for adding features to my page has been a disaster. i am not able to put a hit counter again. and i dont understand these template codes. i wd rather do without these extra features.

learning MIS was a catastrophe in the first term. excessive mugging did not yield dividends ( nor the capital appreciation). i still cant understand the seven layers of communication or diff configs of networks. MIT was better. without any idea of IT, AA in MIT was my lone achievement here as far as acads are concerned. that too GOD'S GRACE.

Having said all that, a life without computers is unimaginable. this morning we din have power. even s i woke up, i tried to start the comp unmindful of all the sweat due to heat in a power cut room. only while putting all the cash flow spreadsheets did i understand the beauty of microsoft excel. mail, yahoo messenger and blogging ( okay orkut also to some extent) has become my staple food. nowadays i get bored at home when i visit madras with no comp to give company ( but anyday i wd prefer curd rice for comp;)

the computing ability of this microprocessor and connecting ability of this internet have been the most impacting phenomenons in the last 100 years. forget thinking abt doing a project without google! not possible. i dont use calculators for calculations, only excel. and winamp? when my comp is on......music is on indefinitely. without computers such seamless connectivity to music wd have been impossible or tedious.

although i amk not tech savvy, the benefits i have reaped from them is beyond debate. I hate computer subjects. I hate IT ( yeah even IT for Income Tax)

so my exp with computers has been mixed. but i guess i have to get even with my cousins. atleast try to become a stud in one computer game. thts a far fetched dream. but that is definitely the project for this summer shd i be in madras for my summers.