Luckily I chose Virtual Box, for I saw lot of posts in the web describing issues installing Windows 8 in VMWare or Virtual PC. But unfortunately Virtual Box also caused couple of issues which really tested my patience a lot. After some perseverance and little bit of Googling I was able to find the solutions for the issues.

So the CHECK POINTS -

1. While creating a new Virtual Disk in Virtual Box you have to choose the type of OS to be Windows 7 x64 and not Windows 7. Otherwise the guest system will crash and spit in your face.

2. After you create the disk make sure you remove the SATA controller from the storage settings of the disk and add the .vdi file to IDE Controller. If you are not done with this setting you’ll get the below BSOD error. But we can’t call it a death screen as it is looking prettier.

You can search for the error online: DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL (storachi.sys)

Recommended Settings -

Minimum 1 GB Memory & 20 GB HDD

Once you are done with them the installation should be a cake walk. I’ve provided some screen shots below. Check them.

I came across this post explaining how to install Chromium OS in your mac/PC. But the download link mentioned in the post was no longer working as GDGT have mentioned they no longer host the Chromium builds and the reason they stated was -

We hosted Chrome OS for almost a year, but with its official launch coming up soon (and the fact that the fine folks at Hexxeh have done a much better job with their Chrome OS images) it seemed like the right time to take it offline.

So why do you wait? I went to Hexxeh (pronounced as heck-see) to check for the chromium build and I was welcomed by the page displaying “Flow”, as they say, for the Chromim OS build they have created. It was actually a 17 year old guy who ‘pretends’ to be a web developer/programmer. More about him and the Chromium OS here in the FAQ section.

Since I lost my USB long ago I selected the VMWare Image torrent from the downloads link section. This is because I’ve the VMWare already setup in my machine as I’ve been using it for hosting some virtual machines. You can actually create a live USB for Windows. The download is a tar.gz file which can be extracted by our mighty WinRar. The archive has two files, one .vmx file and one .vmdk file. The vmx files carries the VMWare virtual machine settings for the Chromium OS image and the vmdk file is the original image that hosts the Chromium OS. You can download the VMWare Server, which is of course a free application, to host your virtual machines from here. You need to register in the website to get a free key for installing VMWare Server in your machine. Installing the VMWare server will create the web access icon for the VMWare Server Management Console in your desktop. Opening that link will take you to a login page. Here you need to enter a valid username/password of a windows account which has admin rights. Note that the password is must and cannot be empty. But most of the home users would never like to keep a password for their default account. So do I. So I created a new windows account with administrative privileges just for logging into VMWare.

Now you have to add the .vmx file that has been extracted to the VMWare Server. For that you have to copy both the .vmx and vmdk files to the datacenter of VMWare Server. This is most commonly the ‘Virtual Machines’ folder that has been created by the VMWare in the root of your installation disk. For example, if you have installed VMWare in your F: drive in the path ‘F:\Softwares\VMWare’ the Virtual Machines folder is created in the root of F drive; i.e in the path F:\Virtual Machines.

After you have copied the files choose Virtual Machine -> Add Virtual Machine to the Inventory.

Select the .vmx file and add it.

Now select the Chromium OS in the inventory on the left.

Choose ‘Generate Virtual Machine Shortcut’ from the commands section.

Click ‘Install Desktop Shortcut to ChromeOS’

Now the direct link to remoting into your Chrome OS is created in your desktop.

Double click it. And there you go, the most talked about Operating System running on your machine.

The default username is facepunch and the password is facepunch. Just log in and restart the virtual machine once. You should be able to log in with your Google account.

So what is it at the end of all this? This is just Google Chrome with a different colored logo . Okay, seriously, I don’t see the value of the OS yet as it’s hardware support is very poor right now. But it still supports WIFI for now to connect a network. And the speed? It is lightning fast as it doesn’t need to load the bios, OS Kernel services, Hardware drivers etc. But still way to go. You can also check the Keyboard commands page for the Chromium. But as we know, Google make wonders (Except Google Wave. Never know why Google Wave was an epic fail. It was an exciting idea!). Let’s wait for their official launch and check out what they have for us.

Tada.

Just can’t stop hearing to this!

Note: Please vote for him..

Will soon find time to post again. Shut the lights.

When an old man died in the geriatric ward of a nursing home in North Platte , Nebraska , it was believed that he had nothing left of any value.

Later, when the nurses were going through his meager possessions, they found this poem. Its quality and content so impressed the staff that copies were made and distributed to every nurse in the hospital.
One nurse took her copy to Missouri ..

The old man’s sole bequest to posterity has since appeared in the Christmas edition of the News Magazine of the St. Louis Association for Mental Health. A slide presentation has also been made based
on his simple, but eloquent, poem.

And this little old man, with nothing left to give to the world, is now the author of this ‘anonymous’ poem winging across the Internet.

Crabby Old Man

What do you see nurses? . . .. .. . What do you see?
What are you thinking . . . . . when you’re looking at me?
A crabby old man . . . . . not very wise,
Uncertain of habit . . . . . with faraway eyes?

Who dribbles his food . . . . . and makes no reply.
When you say in a loud voice . . . . . ‘I do wish you’d try!’
Who seems not to notice . . . . . the things that you do.
And forever is losing . . . . . A sock or shoe?

Who, resisting or not . . . . . lets you do as you will,
With bathing and feeding . . . . . The long day to fill?
Is that what you’re thinking? . . . . . Is that what you see?
Then open your eyes, nurse . . . . . you’re not looking at me.

I’ll tell you who I am. . . . . . As I sit here so still,
As I do at your bidding, . . . . . as I eat at your will.
I’m a small child of Ten . . . . . with a father and mother,
Brothers and sisters . . . . . who love one another.

A young boy of Sixteen . . . . with wings on his feet.
Dreaming that soon now . . . . . a lover he’ll meet.
A groom soon at Twenty . . . . . my heart gives a leap.
Remembering, the vows . . . . . that I promised to keep.

At Twenty-Five, now . . . . . I have young of my own.
Who need me to guide . . . . . And a secure happy home.
A man of Thirty . . . . . My young now grown fast,
Bound to each other . . . . . With ties that should last.

At Forty, my young sons . . .. . . have grown and are gone,
But my woman’s beside me . . . . . to see I don’t mourn.
At Fifty, once more, babies play ’round my knee,
Again, we know children . . . . . My loved one and me.

Dark days are upon me . . . . . my wife is now dead.
I look at the future . . . . . shudder with dread.
For my young are all rearing . . . . . young of their own.
And I think of the years . . . . . and the love that I’ve known.

I’m now an old man . . . . . and nature is cruel.
Tis jest to make old age . . . . . look like a fool.
The body, it crumbles . . . . . grace and vigor, depart.
There is now a stone . . . . where I once had a heart.

But inside this old carcass . . . . . a young guy still dwells,
And now and again . . . . . my battered heart swells.
I remember the joys . . . . . I remember the pain.
And I’m loving and living . . . . . life over again.

I think of the years, all too few . . . . . gone too fast.
And accept the stark fact . . . . that nothing can last.
So open your eyes, people . . . . . open and see.
Not a crabby old man .. . . Look closer . . . see ME!!

Watched 2012 with my friends in Mayajaal (for the first time) and i’m not at all impressed either by the movie or the theatre. Guys mayajaal sucks to the core. I just hate the theatre. ‘Saidai’ Raj is way better . You know, Raj has the facility to book tickets online. Lot of improvisations. I also went to Swarna Sakthi Abirami, which is claimed as India’s first ever five star theatre (wouldn’t IMAX be better than this?!). Watched Peraanmai with friends. The seats were real fun. Before the start of the movie and at the interval one can see all the people dallying with the buttons to recline and incline the seats, including me. Fun!

Meanwhile i’m going to loose an other of my closest friends in college who is going to Infy. Weekends will be blank after that happens. I always plan to read some books to pass some time and also got a few from my friend. I asked him to give a nice book to start with as i’m not used to this and he gave me Tom Sawyer which was bearing a name of a 7th standard girl in its first page. Ho ho! I’ve read its contents and introductory page a dozen times and i’m yet to go past that. Its hard to break the life time practice of closing the eyes while opening a book. My mind fails to discriminate a pleasant novel book from a brutal and baffling engineering book. I want to make myself a promise to finish that in a month.

For now, i’m drowned in System.IO and Microsoft.SharePoint!

But what daemons shifted to the other end? Nothing. I shifted myself to a round the clock bread-winning job. So what? Isn’t that a good thing that I have flung myself into a useful process of pressing the keys in the keyboards rather the ones in the TV remote? Yes, it is. But here enters the dirty word (at least for me) fatigue. I have always (for the past four months) enjoyed my job to the  core, but still you always tend to look for an outlet.  At one juncture, you get bored to keep declaring variables and to write recursive functions eternally. You look for some other excitements to hold you up and the weekends serve you to bring them. Having Saturdays as a working day, i’m used to see a lot of faces bearing that very excitement in their faces (and the loads of commodities bought by their loves in their hands) when i walk through the shopping malls and restaurants.

These Sundays really save me from my boss who as any other bosses in the world always expect the impossible out of me and drive me crazy. Eventually, i fall into the same group of professionals who wouldn’t risk saying a NO to their boss.

After we started the walk he asked how long it would take to reach there and i told him that it would take around 15 to 20 mins to reach. We were walking below the bridge and it was uneasy and confusing for me as where to hold him to lead him through the obstacles in the road. He understood that quickly and told me that it would be comfortable for him if i can hold his hand to guide him. I did as he told and we found ourselves comfortable in few secs to walk along. After a couple of mins we were passing along my regular soup shop .I use to have soups there atleast twice in a week as i would feel very hungry walking to the bus stop. The soup-man gestured at me to have a soup as usual and i gestured back that i’ll have another day. After a few strides, i thought we both could have a soup and invited him to have a soup. He kindly accepted and we both went back to the shop and ordered two tomato soups. He asked me about the price of the soup and i requested him that i would pay for him. After a few mins of silence he accepted. He was struggling to have the soup holding the spoon in the wrong way. I turned the spoon in his hand to the right direction and he finished off the cup quickly from then without changing the grip even a little.

He started the chat asking whether we have reached the “aaru maadi saravana” (six stores saravana) and i told him that we have to walk little more to reach there. The road was full of pits with water as it had rained a few hours before. We walked slowly in the road which was heavily crowded as it was a weekend. Lot of buses and vans were passing by and each and every time they passed us he asked me whether a bus is coming in our way. Saravana stores was completely adorned with serial lights and decorative bulbs all over the building as the festive season sales have begun to rise. I told him that we have reached the stores and the building was decorated with flashing lights. After a pause, he opined to me that the whole set up is a total rubbish wasting lot of electrical energy. At that juncture he told me about a survey that took place in France revealing the fact that group of people riding cycles together considerably reduces the percentage of the Carbon-di-oxide in air. He told me that no one would like to ride a cycle here as the people out here consider riding a cycle as a low profile act and would prefer even going in a bus to ride a cycle. I smiled and said that he was absolutely right. He then mentioned about lot of discourtesies people doing to the environment which was very much interesting. I kept hearing to them acknowledging him with ‘ya’s. I was totally surprised to hear the things he said as i had never heard even a thing about them before.

In the meantime we almost came near the shop and we were walking above doraiswamy subway. All through the way he kept asking whether we reached this and we reached that to make sure “his” check points are reached. After reaching the shop i told him that the shop is in the basement and we need to get down few steps. He told that he knows the shop very well and climbed down the steps quickly. The shop man acknowledged him at once and inquired him about his health taking him inside.

Before bidding adieu to him i asked whether he is a musician as he had come to a music shop. He humbly replied – “Yes Sir, i’m a music teacher and i teach violin, keyboard, piano, flute, veena and tabla”!!!

Go India!!