Technical Phone interview

This is going to be quick post. I was asked 3 questions.

1) Find the nth last node in a linked list. Had to write the code and read it.

2) Find the intersection of two sorted arrays. Again had to write code and read it. She also asked me to write test cases and complexity for this one.

3) Design a car rental system. I think I floundered here. I answered with three classes
  a) class CarRental  (will have an array of Car objects)
  b) class Car
  c) class Customer

It was a 45 minute interview and this was my second round. I wrote about my first phone interview here . Within one hour after this interview, I got a mail for scheduling 3rd round of phone interview. Usually with this company 2 phone interviews are norm, but I guess, they could not make a decision to call me on-site. Now waiting for 3rd round.

Mosque at Ground Zero

American Society for Muslim Advancement and the Cordoba Initiative are planning to build a mosque 2 blocks away from the Ground Zero. Their main aim is to promote tolerance among the Christians and Muslims. I don't think these people need to teach Americans about tolerance. It is because of their secular and liberal ideas that people of different faiths, races and color are able to thrive and make this country a prosperous one. As Thomas Friedman has pointed out in his nytimes article, if there is any place these people need to promote harmony among religions, it is not in the USA but in Saudi Arabia or in Pakistan. Can you imagine having a church in Saudi Arabia? Wiki entry on religion in KSA shows :
"Due to the legal framework of the country, which does not provide legal protection for freedom of religion, the public practice of non-Muslim religions is prohibited"

Democracies like USA, India give the right to people follow any religion and also the right to construct religious structures anywhere in the country (ofcourse within legal framework). Muslims in USA have every constitutional right to construct the Mosque at the proposed place in New York. But this is not about constitution or first amendment or legality of the mosque. Its about the sensitivities of the people who suffered in the ghastly 9/11 attacks. The attack was done in the name of Islam and having a mosque at that place would be highly insensitive. Infact having any kind of religious structure at that place would be wrong.

That New Yorkers have voted in favor of the Mosque shows the greatness of this country and the forgiveness of the Yankees. This should be a slap in the face of all those Islamic fanatics who claim that Western civilization is degraded (Iran president claims so. Have a a look at the link). Even though India is also a democracy and religions have the same rights as here in USA, I can say that Indians would have never accepted even a proposal to build a mosque in place of the destroyed Taj Mahal hotel in the Nov '08 terrorist attacks in Mumbai.

So what should be built at Ground Zero? ASMA and Cordoba initiative may try to rebuild the World Trade Center twin towers. There can be a memorial, a museum, an educational institute...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordoba_House

First Round Telephone interview

I had a technical phone interview and this was the first round in it. I am not disclosing the name since, I am still in the middle of the interview process. The interviewer asked me to briefly tell about myself. Before I could say 3 or 4 lines he cut me short and asked what was my role as a student programmer at Ohio Medical Center. Since my resume had C, C++, Java and C# he asked which languages I was most comfortable with and asked me to rate myself on a scale of 1-10.

Then he asked questions on OOPs concepts. He asked quite a lot of them and since I was answering pretty quickly he went on asking them. He asked questions on design patterns and asked about Singleton, Observer, Strategy, Factory, Composite. I did not know what Composite pattern was so could not answer it. Also asked me to elaborate on differences between C++ and Java, parameter passing types, auto-boxing in java. Also asked lot of questions on Collections in Java. Hash table, hashmap, vector, arraylist. I dont remember other questions but we spoke about 15 min on Java/C#.

Then he asked about data structures, stacks, queues. hashing, linked lists. The questions on linked lists were to find the 5th node from the last. This is popular question so I am not answering it here. Other question was to find if there is a loop in the linked list. I answered using Tortoise and Hare problem and we had discussion about why the method works. Again this is popular question, so you can find it on web.

The next question was to find the repeating element in an array where only one element is repeating and all are unique. The question was modified to find the element repeating thrice where are all other elements are unique and one element is repeating twice. I used hashtable approach for both the questions.

Then came the final decider question for which we need to write the code and send. He asked me to design an multi elevator system in a building and send the code in Java by evening. Since I had lot of time, it had to be quite exhaustive. I submitted the code but afterward, I was not happy with the design. May be I should have used a different approach. I used elevatorchallenge.com as reference but I did not copy that.

The interviewer said that I did very well in the interview but I have to see if he would like the elevator system code. Waiting to hear back from them.

A letter to Nirpal Dhaliwal

Nirpal Dhaliwal writes in DailyMail that Britain need not apologize to India for ruling it for 300 years. Only a moron can write this kind of article. At one point he even states "without the British, Indians would not even know what it is to be Indian." The worst part is the writer is a Sikh and I have to take great pains to remind him of JalianWala Bagh massacre. During the Bengal famine, millions of Indians died due to the inaction of the British.

I always opined that British Queen deserves same place in history as of Hitler because she was directly or indirectly responsible for millions of deaths in India. And you may discard my opinion as mere rant by some unknown blogger but Nirpal, I would suggest to read this article by Johann Hari.

He also writes:
"should not obscure the fact that British rule in India was a joint effort, impossible without the widespread co- operation of Indians themselves.
Despite the country's vast population, there were never more than 70,000 British troops in India; the running of the country required an enormous infrastructure of native troops, police and bureaucrats."


Dude seriously, I wonder how with your minimal brains, you manage to write for Guardian. Why don't you just leave the history aside and stick to writing tourist guides. The widespread co-operation of Indians was tactically achieved by adopting the policies of Lord Macaulay. A wiki entry on Lord Macaulay shows:


"The term Macaulay's Children is used to refer to people born of Indian ancestry who adopt Western culture as a lifestyle, or display attitudes influenced by colonisers^[4]. It is used as a pejorative term, and the connotation is one of disloyalty to one's country and one's heritage. This frame of mind or attitude is also referred to as Macaulayism"

Nirpal, doesn't even mention about the partition of India because of which today both Indians and Pakistanis are paying the price and also which took hundreds of thousands of lives. Half the problems the world is facing today is because of the rule of The British. The LTTE problem in Sri Lanka, Israel-Palestine problem, Indo-Pak, Sino-India, and also countless ongoing wars in Africa. The British employed divide and conquer in India  because of which Hindu-Muslim relations are always on the boil. They have employed these strategies in Africa as well with disastrous consequences for Africa.

I can go on and on and show how misguided Nirpal's article is but I would suggest him to read atleast Wikipedia articles on British Raj. Atleast then he might figure out that Britain not only needs to apologize for India but to the rest of the world as well.

Links:
http://johannhari.com/2009/07/31/the-dark-side-of-andrew-roberts

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Babington_Macaulay,_1st_Baron_Macaulay#India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famines,_epidemics,_and_public_health_in_the_British_Raj
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Raj#Economic_impact

ps: This blog has been written in a hurry while I am waiting for the flight. I did not proof read it and if I have given any wrong links or data, will later be corrected.

Rosetta Java developer interview

I had interview for Technology Associate with Rosetta, a Cleveland based interactive brand marketing company. The position was for Java developer and I had three rounds of interviews. The first round was with the Team Manager and it was mostly HR based with few technical questions sprinkled mainly about the projects in my resume.

The second round was technical and all the questions were on Java. He gave me code on synchronization and asked me to find if anything is wrong with the code. There was another coding based question on Java Reflections. I never used reflections and I just before the interview coincidentally I read about reflection. I just glanced through the concept since I had lot of other things to go through. I think I did well on that question. And then he gave me a recursion based problem and asked to code it iteratively.

Finally he asked all the OOPs concepts final, finally, finalize, static, abstract, inheritance, interfaces, garbage collection, collections(hashmap, sets). I concentrated a lot on generics and luckily they are still using JDK 1.4 so I did not get any questions on newly added Java concepts.

Overall the interview was positive experience except for the greyhound bus ride from Columbus to Cleveland. This is the second time it happened to me that my co-passenger was drunk although this guy was much better than the other co-passenger I had from Columbus to Chicago. Why would Greyhound let in the passengers who are drunk onto its buses is beyond my comprehension

.NET interview

Today I had an interview for an internship position at a reputed company in Columbus, OH. They were looking for .NET developers and since I had lots of experience in Microsoft technologies, I got a call from them.

I was pretty confident that I would do well in interview since I am quite comfortable with .NET. I was asked questions like ASP.NET page lifecycle, viewstate, Session variables, LINQ, dynamic web controls and pretty much standard stuff.

I had another interview with another Columbus based company and it was on phone. They sent me few pieces code and I don't think I can post that code here. They told me that code is from their software. So not taking risk. I was asked to go through the code and explain what is happening with the code. They sent an aspx page, a code behind file and another cs file. Questions were on LINQ, javascript, to explain CommandName and CommandArgument...



There are few things I could not answer, like one question on Javascript. He asked me about variable naming conventions in js file and asked why variables are named like that. I did not have any concrete answer apart from saying that its following standard procedures on how to name variables. I don't know what he was expecting though.

My Own Private India

Joel Stein writes in an article for Time about how Edison, NJ has become home to one of the largest Indian communities. My only question to Mr. Joel

"You sure are aware that right now American troops are in Afghanistan, Iraq right? If you are so pissed off having Indians in Edison, NJ just imagine how Iraqis and Afghanis are right now feeling? "

Seriously TIME, don't you even think twice before publishing an article. I mean did you even read the article? Is that the journalistic levels you had to stoop to. I will have to say here that I am not a regular reader of TIME magazine. Occasionally when CNN links to TIME, I do read some articles or if any of my friends forward a link from TIME. From few articles I read in TIME magazine, it seems to suffer from Indophobia. For instance search for this article - An Indian Muslim in Crisis by Aryn Baker. (This article appeared in Time during Mumbai Terror attacks).  And I never heard of Mr. Joel Stein before this. So my views on Joel Stein are strictly related to this article alone. Well after reading this article I don't think I will be reading Joel's articles anymore.

Update: I was reading other blogs like Sepia Mutiny(mostly written like a rant rather than response ) and few other comments. Do read them. 8asians.com asks a very good question : What if in the article, Indians were replaced by Latinos and what if the Joel Stein had written "Now we know why Mexico is so damn poor".

Another interesting thing I found out was "White Flight". Do read about it in wikipedia.

Read the opinion piece in The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article495461.ece?homepage=true

Dear Friend Hitler

There has been surge of reports in news papers, blogs all around the world about India's new found fascination for Hitler. Some unknown director(well atleast I have never heard of him), is planning to make a movie on Hitler's last days in bunker. The title of the movie is taken from Gandhi's letter to Hitler. The movie also deals with Hitler's alleged love interest Eva Braun and their marriage.

Any movie maker who tries glorify Hitler has to be in some mental asylum. I won't jump to conclusion here and say the director would have glorified Hitler since I did not see the script nor the movie has been made. So even before the movie has been made, what I did not understand was why New York Times, Gaurdian, Gawker have reported that there is renewed interest for Hitler in India. It is true that some fringe right wing parties in India have sometimes idolized Hitler but come on every country has sociopaths. Just because there is KKK in US you cannot say that US has renewed interest on white supremacy.

India is one of the countries where Jews were not persecuted and even though India was fighting for the freedom from British, India fought the world war 2 against the Germans. Indian freedom fighters and policy makers realized that German imperialism is much more dangerous than that of the British imperialism.

PS: Anupam Kher, veteran bollywood actor who was supposed to play Hitler in the movie withdrew from the role after the controversy.

PS: I was planning to write this blog long time back, but I was busy preparing for interviews. So I think I am a week late to respond to the controversy.

update: today I read an opinion piece in Wall Street Journal by Sadanand Dhume explaining India's fetish for Hitler. Read it here http://bit.ly/aBE3HC

Maximum Value Contiguous Subsequence

I was asked this question in first round of onsite interview.

geeksforgeeks.org seems to have almost all of the interview questions I faced. they also write the code in C and show all possible ways of doing the problem. If only I had time to go through their collection of 1000+ interview questions collections before my interviews...

Since this question is also present in http://geeksforgeeks.org/?p=576 I would just give the link to their page. Below is the code which I wrote during interview.

int maxSumSubSequence( int a[] )
    {
        int maxSum = a[0];
        int currentSum = 0;
        int alen = sizeof(a)/sizeof(a[0]);
        for( int i = 0; i < alen; i++ )
        {
            currentSum += a[ i ];

            if( currentSum > maxSum )
            {
                maxSum = currentSum ;
            }
            if( currentSum < 0 )
            {
                currentSum = 0;
            }
        }

        return maxSum;
    }

Test cases: All 0's, all positives, all negatives, mixture of positive and negatives. Major case where this will fail is if the array contains all MaxInts.

time complexity : linear

Find the Diameter of a binary tree?

What is the diameter of a binary tree?? I was asked this question in second round of onsite interview. The interviewer first asked me to flip the adjacent nodes of a linked list. He asked if I know the question and since the question seemed easy and doable, I said I know the algorithm and can be done. So he changed the question and asked me to find the diameter of binary tree. I did not know what is the diameter of binary tree. So he helped me to come up with the algorithm and I coded it. Diameter of binary tree is the length of the longest path present in a binary tree.

int max(int a, int b)
{
  return (a >= b)? a: b;
}

int maxDepth(struct bTreeNode *root)
{
    if(root == NULL)
    {
        return 0;
    }
    else
    {
        int ld = maxDepth(root->lNode);
        int rd = maxDepth(root->rNode);
        if( ld > rd)
            return ld+1;
        else
            return rd+1;
    }
}

int diameter(struct bTreeNode *root)
{
    if(root == NULL)
    {
        return 0;
    }
    else
    {
        int ld = diameter(root->lNode);
        int rd = diameter(root->rNode);
        int lh = maxDepth(root->lNode);
        int rh = maxDepth(root->rNode);
        return max(lh + rh + 1, max(ld, rd));
    }
}

Source : http://geeksforgeeks.org/?p=5687

Its also important to come up with test cases, to show that your code is working. For this problem there are three cases that needs to be tested. You need to give inputs such a way that you get all 3 possible answers for the respective input i.e. lh+rh+1 or ld or rd. .

ps: I am posting only rough code and I am in no way responsible if the code is wrong. I am also giving other links which have posted proper code and I felt there is no point in writing the same code here. Please refer to those sites.  

Prepare for interviews along with me. Find if two linked lists are merging.

I will be posting some interesting interview questions I was asked. Hopefully it may be of some help to you all.

1) Find if the two linked lists merge at any point? Find the node where they are intersecting?
Ans) There are many ways to do this problem. GeeksforGeeks.com has listed few solutions. I am giving the most efficient and easiest way here. For other kind of solutions you can do google search.

First we can check if two linked lists merge by checking if the last node of both the linked lists is same.

Second to find the node where they are merging, find the lengths of both linked lists. let it be L1 and L2.
The difference will be L1-L2 (assuming L1>L2. can take absolute value as well).
The node where they are merging is the (L1-L2)th node on smaller linked list.

You need to advance the pointer on longer linked list by (L1-L2) number of nodes. Then traverse on both the linked lists simultaneously. The place where the pointers meet is the merge point.
Time complexity O(m+n) where m and n is the length of two linked lists.

Few sources for code: http://geeksforgeeks.org/?p=2405
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/abhinaba/archive/2007/08/16/interesting-linked-list-problem.aspx
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1826501/best-possible-algorithm-to-check-if-two-linked-lists-are-merging-at-any-point-if
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1594061/linked-list-interview-question

Looking for a job as Software Developer

Dheeraj Pulluri

(408) 832 3289

pulluri.1@osu.edu

 

OBJECTIVE

Seeking a full-time position as a software developer that enables me to utilize my strong programming skills and supports continual learning of new technologies

SUMMARY

• Two years of experience in design and development of enterprise software applications using both .NET and JAVA platforms
• Strong leadership, interpersonal and oral/written communication skills.
• Ability to handle multiple tasks and work independently as well as in a team.

EDUCATION

MS Computer Science    Ohio State University, Columbus, OH (Jun 2010) GPA: 3.4

BE in Computer Science Osmania University, India (Jun 2008) GPA: 3.9 (Top 1%)

SKILLS

Languages              C, C++, Java, C#, JavaScript, SQL, XML

Operating Systems Windows, Solaris, Linux

App/Web Server      Tomcat, JBoss 4.2, IIS

Technologies           ASP.NET, Servlets, JSP, Yahoo UI, Struts, Axis2, JMS, JQuery, AJAX

Tools                          Visual Studio 2008, Eclipse 3.5, Microsoft Visio, Rational Rose

Database                   Oracle, MySQL, MS-Access, SQL Server 2008

Protocols                   TCP/IP, UDP, HTTP

EXPERIENCE

Research Assistant (Oct 2009 – May 2010) - OSU Medical Center Columbus, OH

Ø  Cytogenetics - Worked on a web application to collect and process the cancer patient data which facilitates an investigator's ability to conduct cancer research.

Features/Responsibilities:

·         Designed and developed a new user friendly interface to collect the research data

·         Enhanced the business logic by creating a locking module which automatically locks the user data once it is analyzed

·         Implemented a notification module which sends emails to the admins and also created a logging feature using log4net and event logging

·         Improved performance by doing SQL query tuning and optimization using LINQ

·         https://cyto.osumc.edu

Tools: ASP.NET, C#, LINQ, SQL SERVER 2008, JQuery, JavaScript, AJAX, IIS 7.0, CSS

Programmer Intern (July 2009 – Sept 2009) - Bayser Consulting, Chicago, IL

Ø  Social Media Analysis (Opinion Mining) - Created a web application which lets the pharma companies to monitor what users are writing on blogs and forums

Features/Responsibilities:

·         Implemented a web crawler in C# using Yahoo BOSS, Google and Bing search API

·         Designed and implemented an algorithm in Javascript which would analyze the comments giving them positive, negative or neutral score

·         Designed the user interface using ASP.NET, CSS, JQuery, Yahoo UI library

·         http://www.visuallytics.com/PostingAnalysisTool3/Default.aspx

Tools: ASP.NET, C#, XML, LINQ, Web Services, Google, Yahoo Boss Search API, IIS

 Software Engineer Intern (Jan 2008 – Jul 2008) – ADP Inc.

Ø  Library Reservation Module – Created a web application which enabled the associates to search, reserve and renew an artifact from ADP’s library.

Features/Responsibilities:

·         Implemented the reservation Module using Struts framework. 

·         Designed a very user friendly front end interface for the HR department and associates by implementing tabbed browsing using JavaScript, CSS.

·         Created flexible search functionality to lookup an artifact based on various criteria.

·         Unit testing of functionality with JUnit.

·         Assisted QA with setup of test cases.

·         Prepared design documentation and user support documents.

Tools: JAVA, Struts 1.1, JSP, JUnit, CSS, JQuery, JavaScript, JBoss 4.2, Oracle 10g

PROJECTS @ OSU:

·         Social Bookmarking Service: Developed a social bookmarking service which lets the users to store and share their bookmarks online. It offers much more customizability not present in other popular bookmarking services like delicious and Google.

Tools: ASP.NET, C#, SQL Server 2008, LINQ, Ajax toolkit

·         Toolbar for IE: Developed a toolbar for Internet Explorer which would let users to bookmark websites.    

·         Wireless Sensor Network: Designed and implemented a high level algorithm in C# to reduce the power consumption in Imote2 sensors.

·         Crossbow Driver: Ported Crossbow driver from .NET Micro Framework 2.5 to Micro Framework 4.0

·         Operating Systems:

Ø  Implemented simple linux system calls by modifying kernel source code

Ø  Developed single directory on-disk file system with support for multiple files, hard links, non-contagious storage, ownership, permissions and dates

Ø  Modified priority based linux scheduler to work as Fair share scheduler

·         Application for iPhone:  Developed an application which allows student related information to be pushed and polled to their smart portable device (iPhone).
Tools:  Apache Axis2 and JAVA, JMS, Objective C, Cocoa, MySQL.

·         Computer Graphics: Developed a recursive ray tracer in C++ implementing object modeling, illumination, anti-aliasing and texture mapping.

·         Communication Networks: An investigation on Queuing Theory which involved simulating M/M/1 queues and other aspects of Queuing Theory in C++ programming language.

·         Internetworking: Implemented a TCP-like reliable transport layer protocol using the unreliable service provided by UDP in C++.

·         Lisp Interpreter:  Implemented an interpreter for pure LISP using C++.

ACHIEVEMENTS

·         Won the best poster award for the Social Bookmarking Service at CETI industry day sponsored by Microsoft.

·         Won 4^th place for the Connected Campus project at Apple Conference Academix '09 held at Indiana IUPUI.

·         Recipient of Silver Medal from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India 2008.

COURSES
Communication Networks, Internetworking, High Performance Computing, Algorithms, Operating Systems, Parallel Computing, Web-Services based Distributed Systems, Programming Languages, Network Based Computing seminar, Linux Kernel Programming lab, Wireless Sensor Networks, Computer Graphics, Software Engineering Project.

Jon Stewart and US torture laws

I am great fan of Jon Stewart and I feel that he is the voice of sanity among the TV talk show hosts (sorry Bill O'Reilly). He talks perfect sense and let me state upfront that I am both liberal and conservative. Well you should be getting that from blog name. I think I will need another post explaining the title of my blog.

 Yesterday on Daily Show Jon Stewart interviewed George Bush's speech writer and author of the book "Courting Disaster- How Obama is making America unsafe " Marc Theissen. I have never heard of this guy and as soon as I saw the book title I realized he was some right wing propagandist. Jon Stewart clearly was in a mood to destroy this guy and also set his record straight. On Jan11th, Jon interviewed John Yoo on torture laws of US, what constitutes as torture and where to draw the line. (Video). This was the first time I saw Jon was very incoherent in his arguments and John Yoo literally pwned Stewart. At the end of the video even Jon acknowledges that the interview was "pretty unsatisfying" and he was under-prepared.  Right wing bloggers had field day criticizing Jon, calling him the liberal buffoon and Jon had to apologize to his liberal supporters.

Lets look into the backdrop of the interview. Liz Cheney's (daughter of Dick Cheney) Keep America Safe new ad  demands to make public the details of all the lawyers who represented Guantanamo detainees which was even criticized by the right wing. Marc Theissen has defended this ad  in his Washington Post column. In the column he asks Should a lawyer who advocates setting terrorists(alleged, they may be innocent as well) free, knowing they may go on to kill Americans, have any role in setting U.S. detention policy?  This point seems ridiculous to me. Pakistan for example, it has been alleged that ISI has been arresting individuals from tribal areas and having them extradited to US as Taliban terrorists. This was the focus of battle between Chief Justice Ifthikar and then dictator of Pakistan Parvez Musharaff. The CJ has asked the govt. to provide the list of all missing persons and also to investigate cash for arrests "scheme" of ISI.

Marc Theissen does not seem to be as intelligent as John Yoo or atleast he too thought he can win over Stewart the same way Yoo has done it. Only this time Jon Stewart was well prepared. You have to see the videos

David Frum in his blog writes that Jon Stewart was not graceful in his interview and that he just did not let Marc to speak. I have to say that I tend to agree with David Frum on this. There were instances in the interview when I felt Jon was not letting him speak but overall I think Marc had no right to say that he was not allowed to speak. Marc was not putting forth any valid points and he was making the same arguments that the terrorists are going to kill thousands of Americans and US needs to torture them to get information from them.

Here I will be treading the middle path. I do not think terrorists deserve Miranda rights and they need to be tortured to get the information. I do not have answers on what constitutes as torture. Well if only I had then I would be in law school.

PS: an interesting term I came to know from the interview was waterboarding.  This is way of torture and people subjected this kind of torture cannot survive it for more than 15 seconds. You can watch a video of it over here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LPubUCJv58

USA and Guns (Ohio State campus shoot out)

Today at 3.30am there was a shooting incident in our university. (Ohio State). Withing 3 hours after the incident took place students received 3 mail notifications about the incident. You can look here for the CNN's report about the same http://www.cnn.com/2010/CRIME/03/09/ohio.state.shooting/index.html?hpt=T2

The first one:
At approximately 3:30 a.m. today Ohio State's emergency dispatch received a 911 call indicating that a shooting had occurred at the OSU Maintenance Building, 2000 Tuttle Park Place.
Upon arrival, officers confirmed a shooting involving three University employees, none of which were students. One employee is dead. The other two have been transported to the hospital. The investigation is continuing and no names have been released pending notification of family.
The site location has been secured and there are some traffic restrictions around the building. The suspect is in custody.
The university continues normal operations. Classes will be held and normal work schedules are in effect. 

The second one:
Update on Campus Shooting

The safety and well-being of our students, faculty and staff is our highest priority. University officials remain diligent in maintaining a secure environment for all campus visitors.
Today’s shooting on campus involved an employee in the Facilities, Operations, and Development department in a campus maintenance building. Campus police responded to the 911 call immediately and secured the area. At no time were any students in danger, and no students were involved in the incident.
The suspect and the two victims were all Ohio State employees. Counselors are available for the affected staff. The investigation is continuing and no names have been released pending notification of family.

The third one :  (there were two other mails. One from Gordon Gee expressing his condolences to the families)
University police continue to investigate campus shooting

University Police continue to investigate this morning’s shooting and do not plan any further statements today. Public officials want to restate that the safety and well-being of students, faculty, and staff are their highest priorities, and ask for your continued support. Counselors are available to provide counseling and consultation to currently enrolled undergraduate and graduate students and those related to the incident. Contact 292-5766 or visit: http://www.ccs.ohio-state.edu/

If we put the incident aside for a moment, the above mail had me in splits. Having counselors for the affected employees and their families is perfectly understandable. But why would they have counselors for undergrad and grad students who in no way were affected. It made no sense to me. I am no expert at US laws but here I guess I can sue the university that this particular shooting incident induced fear in me which in turn affected my performance in finals (have finals from 15th Mar) due to which my GPA plummeted and because of which I could not get a job in US. (I know its crazy. Don't come to any conclusion about me reading this).

Back to main topic, I do not understand the gun culture of USA. I like this country, well as a matter of fact I love this country. This country values human life. We can see that everywhere. They don't let buses overcrowd, buildings will have to adhere to strict regulations, police and para medics are very swift in their response. Everything is so good but this country lets every tom dick and harry carry a gun. Today OSU would not have lost two of its employees if only procuring a gun would not have been that easy for the shooter. Last month in a similar incident at U of Alabama, 3 faculty paid the price. There the suspect was denied tenure. (worse she was Harvard graduate). Here the shooter had poor performance evaluation.

There have been string of shooting incidents across US universities over the last two years. Virginia Tech, LSU where couple of Indian students died. Another incident in New York where one south east Asian started firing at people in immigration office, last week one at Pentagon, Fort Hood shootout (atleast here the shooter was in army, so nothing can be done there).

People talk of second amendment and about rights to carry a gun. But who has given them the right to take a life. During the 2008 presidential election, I saw ads by National Rifle Association of America that Obama would be banning the guns once he becomes the President. There was this site called GunBanObama where people can vote against it. I thought atleast there is one reason to vote Obama to presidency. Even after one year of his presidency he hasn't taken any steps or it doesn't look like there would be any bill soon in US congress. Well even with majority in Congress he could not pass the health care reform bill. Now that democrats are no longer in majority I doubt either of the bills getting passed.

Which one is worse?

I do not know which picture is more alarming. What are kids doing with guns and what is this little girl doing holding that placard??

Pictures courtesy The Hindu.


(on left: Kid protesting demanding for Telangana)











On right: Jamaat-Ud-Dawa in Pakistan announces fresh Jihad against India.