Ajitabh Pandey's Soul & Syntax

Exploring systems, souls, and stories – one post at a time

Category: Personal

  • A laptop for me

    Yesterday I received my IBM Thinkpad R50e. R50e is a solid IBM machine and cost me around £750. The specs are

    Pentium M 735 1.7 GHz

    RAM 512 MB

    HD 60 GB

    DVD-Writer

    Mdm – LAN EN, Fast EN 802.11b, 802.11g – Centrino

    15″ TFT XGA (1024 x 768)

    It came preloaded with WinXP Pro. I made a recovery disc set of 7 discs and replaced WinXP Pro with Ubuntu Linux. Almost everything has worked out of box and it is nice to see that Ubuntu recognized the Wireless chip as well.

    As I am writing this, another window on this box is running debootstrap to build  a pure Debian Sarge system. Further plans are to install a Linux from Scratch system on this laptop.

    I am still playing with it.

  • I am looking forward to joining BBC

    Yesterday I got a call from BBC HR that my Work Permit has come through. Today I finally resigned from NIIT. Nothing much to say here, its just another milestone passed in life.

  • Finally my references are done

    Finally I got the reference letter from NIIT yesterday and immediately despatched all the relevent documents to BBC for the processing of my Work Permit. A big sigh of relief. Things are changing very fast here at BA. Lots of politics involved with my position. Since the day I have told them that I will be leaving once my work permit is sorted out, I can see some kind of unrest everywhere. Or is it because I know I am leaving? Don’t know really. Will find that out anyway, but it looks from discussions with my team leader that NIIT may or may not be asked to replace me. Surprising, but don’t know what the contract they have with BA. Let’s wait and see.

  • The Party’s over

    Annanya' Birthday
    Annanya' Birthday

    Ok the birthday party is all over. Yesterday, we had a nice birthday celebration for my daughter, Annanya. She was very happy and exited since the morning, asking time and again, “when is my birthday party….?”. All credit for this nice arrangement (all done at home) goes to my wife Payal. She started working tirelessly from Friday itself and allowed me time with my computer. It was her whole-sole effort and I fully appreciate it. I have uploaded the photographs from the B’day party and you can now see them. A very low number of photographs this time may be attributed to my Cannon camcorder as it controled the show most of the time. Although personally I like pictures more rather than videos.

    Today all of us just relaxed a lot and just went out for a short walk in the evening. There was no cooking as well because lots of food was leftover after the party (even after some of the close friends took some of the food). Ofcourse the food was very nice, it was a lot extra and also some of the guests had last minute appologies.

  • Two long a wait…

    Regarding my employment opprtunity with BBC, I requested a reference letter from my company and they promised to give one. I would have got it then and there by the local Delivery Manager but it was required on a headed paper which are only kept at the company office and not at the client site. HR promised me to send one. I have been waiting…. and it hasn’t arrived yet. I requested a follow up on this with the Delivery Manager and let’s see what happens.

    Finally I called up the Group Manager (HR) at my company and directly asked him about my reference letter. He said he istoo busy today to sent it, but promised to despatch it by 1st class mail on Monday (8th).