Thursday, April 21, 2005

Sad Day

Past few days were like every other past few days, normal, hectic and nothing unusual. Little I knew that there was a storm on its way somewhere out there. Wednesday night we were supposed to run some campaign, all went well and we left for home. Thursday morning upon arriving at work, I was informed some disaster has occurred and we went on investigating it. Since Database is always a critical part so most of the times root cause of errors originates from there. Anyways we investigated and it was discovered that a small calculation mistake caused a huge number of emails to be generated. Although I wasn’t the one who made it but I implemented it and I could have easily noticed the extra ordinary number of records being getting effected. Infact I noticed it but for some odd reason let it go and that caused it all. Heavy penalty(which could have been worst) has been imposed on me and a flawless period came to a crushing end.

It really hurts when you are working that hard and you make such a silly mistake whose impact can never be estimated and which causes a good loss to the company. It really shatters your own confidence and others stop trusting you. It will take some effort to restore it, but damage has already been done and am sure I will be keep listening about it from time to time from different people and there will always be this feeling inside me somewhere that I messed up real bad, its like dropping a very important catch in a cricket match which can make your team lose the cup, or missing a penalty stroke in a world cup final(oh that reminds me of Baggio, he missed one but bounced back but then again he could not make his country win and is still remembered by most with regard to that incident). It was my second mistake in 6 months, last time I escaped because we got it all reverted but not this time. Am not sure what will happen in future but one thing is quite certain I wont be comfortable working again there and there is a strong voice inside me urging me to move.

Monday, April 11, 2005

Reunion with EX-Colleagues

Had dinner at Boat Basin with some current and couple of ex colleagues. Medussa was there too :). It was fun and was good to see them again, had a great time with good amount of laughter. A funny incident occurred, a friend of ours for some odd reason had no idea where we were supposed to meet. We were all supposed to gather around 8:30, first he calls around 9 and informs us he will be there in 10 minutes. We were at a DVD shop(Laraib at that time) then.
After waiting for 20 minutes we decided to move to Boat Basin. Another 15 minutes went by and no sign of him so we decided to call him up and he tells us that he is at village on Sea View. And how the hell he managed to get there we don’t know. He was given directions and finally after 30 minutes and more directions, he managed to get there on time just before dinner was served. This wasn’t the first time that he had reached a wrong destination. In of our company’s gathering he arrived at Pearl Continental when the venue was Avari Towers :).

And yea I got PinkFloyd’s Pulse DVD, The Who, concert DVD, a DVD on Great Imran Khan and yes the famous Bangalore third test DVD. So the list of unwatched DVDs grows even longer.

Thursday, April 07, 2005

Recipes

Been trying to upload a pic since yesterday using hello but for some odd reason it wasn’t uploading it. I guess I will need picasa (by Google). Anyways I shall just upload those two recipes taken from kraftfoods.com . Life is same, same sucky schedule, same tension and frustration at work and same progress. Oh yea there is a new development, I have developed still non significant but noticeable backache(Medussa any tips?). Hopefully if I get more peace of mind and time I shall write about something which has recently become pain in the ass for me. Until then Enjoy these.

Strawberry’s season might be over but I am sure you can use any sort of fruit with this easy to make desert.

Floating Fruit Parfaits

Prep Time: 15 min
Total Time: 1 hr 35 min
Makes: 6 servings, 1/2 cup each

1/2 cup sliced strawberries
3/4 cup boiling water
1 pkg. (4-serving size) JELL-O Brand Strawberry Flavor Sugar Free Low Calorie Gelatin (I used Rafhan's Strawberry Jelly powder)
1/2 cup cold water
3/4 cup ice cubes
1 cup plus 6 Tbsp. thawed COOL WHIP LITE Whipped Topping(any whipped cream would do)

DIVIDE strawberries evenly among 6 dessert glasses. Stir boiling water into dry gelatin mix in medium bowl at least 2 min. until completely dissolved. Add cold water and ice cubes; stir until ice is completely melted. Remove 3/4 cup of the gelatin; pour evenly over strawberries. Refrigerate 20 min. or until gelatin is set but not firm.

ADD 1 cup of the whipped topping to remaining gelatin; stir with wire whisk until well blended. Spoon evenly over gelatin in dessert glasses.

REFRIGERATE 1 hour or until firm.

(Optional)
Top each parfait with 1 Tbsp. of the remaining whipped topping just before serving. Store leftover parfaits in refrigerator.


Easy TOBLERONE® Chocolate Mousse
(I shall call it jugaroo :P recipe)

Prep Time: 5 min
Total Time: 11 min
Makes: 2 servings

8 triangles (about 2-1/2 oz.) TOBLERONE Swiss Milk Chocolate with Honey and Almond Nougat
1-1/2 cups thawed COOL WHIP Whipped Topping

MICROWAVE chocolate in medium microwavable bowl on HIGH 1 minute or until melted. Cool 1 minute.

ADD whipped topping; stir with wire whisk until well blended.

REFRIGERATE at least 5 minutes.

Have fun eating it ;)

Thanks again to www.kraftfoods.com .
Both of these tasted yums , I hope you guys have fun too

Saturday, April 02, 2005

of Bangalore, U2 and another take on Desserts

And I shall start from the astonishing series leveling victory we had in Bangalore. Didn’t write about it before, because I missed the highlights and read the entire proceedings on cricinfo.com . Everyone in our room was tensed and anxiously waiting for a wicket to fall, and when one would fall they all used to erupt. I was finally able to watch it on Thursday so here is the review. Sure it was one of the most amazing day of cricket in Pak cricket history and am damn proud of it. Team should lots of commitment and determination which is something not attributed to us. Omar Kureishi would have been a proud man, its real sad he isn’t among us anymore. From today the One day series shall start and am sure it will be as thrilling as this Test series was.

U2’s Vertigo tour has kicked off in style, here is the link to some of the pics from San Diago Concert. The Set list was

City of Blinding Lights
Vertigo
Cry - The Electric Co.
An Cat Dubh / Into the Heart
Beautiful Day
New Year's Day
Miracle Drug
Sometimes You Can't Make It On Your Own
Love and Peace or Else
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Bullet the Blue Sky / Hands That Built America
Running to Stand Still
Zoo Station
The Fly
Elevation
Pride
Where the Streets Have No Name
One
All Because Of You
Yahweh
40

Neat, pretty neat. But it doesn’t have Bad(*disappointed), but may be may be they might play it in European leg in place of “Hand that built America”. By the way did I ever tell you guys that one of my dream is to attend a U2 concert, but looks highly unlikely that it will ever come true :(. Abid download the San Diago concert :P.

On Thursday night I tried Strawberry Parfait :P, came out quite nice only thing lacking was bit of sugar but hey they didn’t mention that in recipe :P. And on Friday night tried Chocolate Moose using Toblerone. Although it didn’t get hard enough but yum yum yum :D. I shall post both the recipes soon, do try ;).