A different beat ...

Oral exams or vivas have always been a pain in the rear end ...
And this time, all the timings been missed up ...

We had one AI ( Artificial Intelligence ) Viva yesterday and have another one ( Computer Networks ) tomorrow ... on a Sunday !

Apparently, all the external examiners that come to take orals for BE students are people with jobs - working in companies.

The AI orals, was basically not worth the 3 day effort of cramming the utterly useless Rich and Knigt book.
The people who wrote it should be tied to a pole and stoned ( or booked in this case ) with their own book.
And the people who recommend it to hapless students as 'Good Reading Material' should be tied next, and again stoned with the same book - twice over !
No matter how much I tried, could not get stuff into my head from that book.
It was a frikkin discussion, with 18th century english and language so complex, that would put Ayn Rand to shame.

Fed up, last day, picked up the AI local author textbook and went through it from page to page.
Yeah ... the language was really sucky, and in the end, lots of stuff didnt make sense, but then the satisfaction of having read an entire book is nice :)
Gives you that placebo effect.

Anyways, the external examiner ( bless his heart ) was one of the chillest dudes I have come across sitting on the other side of the table, and everything went off perfectly, awesomely well ...
I had friends gushing "He's so cool ya ..." all over the place :)

Now, tomorrow, on a Sunday, have to haul my ass all the way to college for the Computer Networks Orals, which many people are predicting will be doomsday for most of us.
Again, some person from the 'Industry' is going to pay us a visit and probably, take our case.
Make sure his wasted Sunday holiday is well spent ... eheheh :)

In contrast to that very crappy Rich and Knight book, we have an excellently written network book by Tanenbaum.
Now, this fellow can write ... and very well at that.
The book is peppered with all these interesting anecdotes and examples, which make all the boring stuff network stuff - more interesting ...

But lifes not fair, and we dont have much time.
So, even though I'd have loved reading the entire book - no time.

So, have to sit with the text book on one hand, and make sure to read ONLY the boring part.
Sooo ... anyways, me sitting here blogging with less than 18 hours to go for doomsday, I have kinda given up ...

Watch this space for more news from the grave :)