Nerd Storm

To provide an update on my previous post about IRCTC blocking my id, to be fair to them, they did it as per orders by the Indian Railways. An account that has filed a false TDR needs to be deactivated, it seems. My fault was a misunderstanding of one of the categories of filing TDR. I had selected an option that mentioned that the train was late by more than 3 hours. Of course, it was, by the time it reached my destination. In fact, it didn't seem like reaching there. So, I got down at an earlier station and then continued by bus. The misunderstanding here is that the TDR can be filed only if I had not undertaken the journey when the train is late by more than 3 hours from the originating station. And I found out from their customer care (they never answered my email, and I had to call them up) that to cancel tickets booked from a now defunct account, I can simply send a mail from the email id associated with the account. Funnily, I did  have to switch from English to Punjabized Hindi (hainji, haanji) to make sure the lady in Delhi understood me properly.

And now to why the subject is titled this way. Of course, there needs to be more than one reason for Nerd Storm. First, quite simply, I just got into a project, where the client's name sounds very similar to it. Secondly, and more importantly, they have given a clear direction to use all the latest technologies in the .Net world, most of which aren't even 6 months old: Visual Studio 2010, .Net Framework 4, ASP.Net MVC 2 and Telerik Extensions for it, as well as IIS 7.And to top it, I am not really conversant yet with AJAX, jQuery and LINQ. And to think of it, I am supposed to lead the way for the team on how to use these, and what best practices to follow. The best practice that I can recommend for now is to follow the articles, tutorials, samples, videos and demos on the official web sites. I also get sleepy in the afternoon these days, thanks to all the reading, which I am not so used to currently.

On the personal front, I am staying in the new flat all by myself. My wife is at her parents' place, gearing up for an important event. :) I am not permitted to say further on this topic for now. Being all alone and no one to talk to can be quite boring at times. This reminds me of what I read somewhere. Loneliness is different from solitude. Loneliness is when you are with nobody. Solitude is when you are with yourself. Most often, I shuttle between the two these days.