Applying for a job online, better be careful about how you specify your experience. Yesterday when I applied through a popular job portal for a job where the experience required was 2-4 years, I got the following message even though I fit in the range. Sharing it with you all as another evidence of how silly some errors can be and why testing should include more test cases so that such errors are caught. The good aspect though was that it did let me apply.

June 17 2008 was the day the Mozilla team decided to release Version 3 of the Firefox browser. And to add to all the new features that come along with it, they took upon the challenge to create a record for most downloads in a day for a software.

I took part in this initiative and here is the certificate provided by the Mozilla team to recognise by download.

You can download the latest version 3 of the really fast and one of the most extensible browsers at the browser website.

My College life officially came to an end last week with the PG degree being handed over to me during the 26^th annual convocation of the Mangalore University.

The day (16/Feb) was a happy day for me as the unexpected 1st rank in MCA course meant a Gold Medal came hopping along with the degree certificate!!! Though it personally means nothing much to me, but it means a lot to my family and relatives and I am happy that I was able to bag the medal. After all, these are the things which you carve for…something which assures your parents them that the lakhs of rupees they had spent on the course was not a complete waste!

Moving on…..just miss those college days…..got to know a lot of things…..made many friends…..did lots of experimentation on the PC….and participated in lots of inter-collegiate fests [and won many prize as well!! ]….

One of the few things I learnt by participating in the various inter-collegiate fest was “Enjoy and have fun in any work you do…..and you will triumph by far exceeding what you though you would have done otherwise…”. Though even today when I do something I may look serious, but I really enjoy whatever I do….which is really making life fun.

There are many many things I wanted to write about and that would unnecessarily increase the post size…hence I will cut it short ……and move on to one thing that I was unable to do when in college and am sad about, which was contribute code to the Open Source world! Well nothing much is lost….I can still contribute….I just need to switch gears and move from ‘try to contribute’ to ‘contribute’.

Life moves on…..and now that I have moved out of college……all the past achievements mean very little now………..more responsibilities have come in…….and for the past one year or so the focus has shifted to work side….let me wait and see how it turns out at work…..Overall I am happy that I finished college on a good note…

Recently I got the USB cable for my mobile phone (Nokia 6030) and was looking out for some cool open source and linux related wallpapers for the same. I found some desktop wallpapers and resized them to the phone display size of 128×128. Here are a few of the good one, if you know of any free site which offer similar wallpapers please do let me know through comments.

Also note that these are not designed by me, and the following may be copyrighted, if so the author can let me know and I will remove it from here immediately.

When was the last time you bought some electronic item and had to go back to the shop the next day to get it replaced because it was not working properly. I am sure it was not long back. So whats up with the companies, with the high tech machines they should have been producing products with world class quality, but it is getting worse. Are customers made the scrap goat, so that the companies can eliminate the quality control process, since they believe replacing a defective product is much cheaper than testing for quality.

Take my own example, about three months back I bought a computer mouse manufactured by a reputed peripheral maker. But when I open the box and connect the mouse to the PC, the left button was not working at all. So the next day I had to go back to the shop and get it replaced.

Another example would be of my friend, who had a Reliance mobile connection and bought a new Classic phone about two months backs. And ever since then he has been regretting his decision of buying that phone. The initial problems were that of phone switching off automatically, phone heating up etc.

He went to the one and only authorized service center in Bangalore which was about 10 Kms from his house to get it repaired. The service center just updated the software and it almost seemed to work, but alas within a week he started getting the same problems again.

He again went to the service center, but this time instead of repairing they issued him a DOA (Dead On Arrival) certificate stating that the mobile would not be repaired and he would get it replaced at any Reliance outlet. This is where more problems got added, when he went to one of the Reliance web worlds he was told they did not have the phone in stock, but when he casually asked the sales section the cost and the availability of the phone in stock, he was told it was available.

So took it up with the manager of the store, the manager became aggressive; and harshly cum in an angry voice asked the sales woman whether she had asked him before replying, then told her who knows about it you or I.These words were more than enough to get the answer ‘No’.

So my friend proceeded to another web world, few more Kms away, there after much waiting he was told the serial number mentioned on the DOA certificate was not valid and more over the DOA certificate was not as per the format specified. My friend argued that it was issued by the one and only authorised service center, but to no avail and was sent back.

The following Saturday, he again approached the service center. They told that the format is correct and the web world manager is wrong and must be mentioning about the format for LG/Motorola phones which is different. But for Classic phones this was the format, when queried about the wrong serial number, he told that only a digit was different and that was as per what was followed while entering the digits and he would not do anything about it and assured that the web world will accept it, if not he could be called and he would tell them about it.

So again he went to the web world and after waiting for a long time, the manager told that he was OK with the DOA certificate format and he was ready to change the phone if the serial number mentioned was changed to the correct one. After much discussion and debating with the service center over the phone, he had to return back with the problematic phone.

After a couple of more tries he finally managed to get it changed. It worked fine for about two-three weeks before it also got began malfunctioning, this time the display would not come on at all. After his past experiences and wasting more than five of his Saturdays on this, he decided to go easy and is using it only to receive calls. He also told me this is the only thing he can do. And he will soon be shifting to some other phone or may be some other service provider altogether.

These are just a couple of instances when products have been giving problems and we the consumers have had to take the extra trouble of getting them rectified. The problem is not in getting the replacement, but the time that is wasted, the trouble you have to take to explain the shopkeeper about the defect and various other things. There are lots of such instances, have you had any such problems do let me know by scribbling in the comments.