How else can I plan?

3:15AM	I got a new BMW after taking down G - Mac and his gang. Still no signs of getting tired or plans to sleep after driving for many hours. I look at wonder why my nails have started to grow in different directions. Also did a quality check on my wrist and keyboard to see if everything was intact.
3:20AM	Even in that darkness, a 200 watt bulb suddenly glows up my head. OMG, I got to book thatkal ticket that Morning at 8 AM. Literally 5 more hours. Since its a long weekend, it would be a huge task to get one thatkal ticket.
	[It will be an impossible task to sleep now and get up with all sense up and running at 8 AM. (S/w Engg slang)]
3:33AM	Text message to Friend 1 and Friend 2. Please please wake me up by 7:45, if you see this msg before that. I got to book tickets.
	[Main plan: Alarm at 7:45 AM]
	[Backup plan 1: Reminder at 7:50 AM, since alarm will snooze again at 7:55]
	[Backup plan 2: Reminder at 7:59 AM, with note "Idiot get up at least now!!"
7:51AM	My mobile blares and I feel like yelling #WTH. I attend and find Friend 2 on the line, waking me up. Thanks a ton, Friend 2.
	[PS, I was thinking I should file a complain to Nokia, that the alarms and reminders are not ringing. My roomie later confirmed that it was I was sleeping like corpse not noticing it. :) I spare Nokia]
7:55AM	IE, FF and Chrome is open and irctc.com is loaded. Even filled the quick book form with name, age, sex etc etc and even took care of timing flaw.
7:59:45	Finally even counted seconds for the irctc server to tick 0800.
8:00:12	Refresh the page to submit my booking.
	[The site is unavailable]
8:00:40	Frantically check the other browsers and to see if any one of them to connect to server. But all reply the same.
	[Suddenly I feel there is an unusual silence around me. Almost ignored in the panic of retrying.]
	[Noticed that it was the power cut (sharp like a samurai sword) at 8:00. Ah! Even BESCOM is synced with railway timings. :-(. The modem / router is switched off. Sigh]

How else can I plan?

Dear Mr. Lalu Prasad Yadav

March24, 2009

Bangalore.

Sir as I'm suffering from fever, I would like to... No its not my leave letter, Hello Lalu ji.. How are you doing? hope things are good out there. Well, have you got a chance to visit this place called Coimbatore, down south in Tamilnadu. You know its a beautiful place and you should pay a visit sooner or later. It has one the best climates I have ever absorbed through out the year. Make sure you drop by to taste my mom's pulli kolambu. :-)

I love Indian Railways. Well, right now I live in Bangalore I have a concern. Something that is under your administration. You know there is very good amount of people commuting from Bangalore to Coimbatore. So many Software Engineers, business men, families in bunch commute between Bangalore and Coimbatore. But the trains between Bangalore and Coimbatore is very less.


When I said less this is why..
1) Coimbatore Express: This train commutes from Mumbai to Coimbatore. So the train is almost full when it reaches Bangalore. Also the number of seats that we get through Bangalore station quota is less.
2) Kanyakumari Express: This train commutes from Bangalore to Kanyakumari via Trivandrum. Yes all the way through Kerala. This train now is loaded with all sorts of people other than who want to go to Coimbatore. Esp when the train goes thro three states, just think of the rush it would have.
3) Eranakulam and Trivandram express: Completely ruled out because of the not so ideal time they leave Bangalore. My boss will not be happy if I start at 4 from office every friday, to catch the train.
4) Only two train at ideal timings.

Ok, some how I booked the tickets from Bangalore to Coimbatore. Now I need to plan my return journey. This is what I have to plan my return journey. Half the apple for everyone.

1) Only one ideal train from Coimbatore to Bangalore that starts at night. So the people who travelled in two trains now have to squeeze them in one train.
2) Bangalore Express (6265) starts from Kanyakumari. So it will be loaded with people during holiday season. I have seen the TTR getting fed up with the crowd and not checking the tickets even.

Just look at Chennai. They have 3 trains starting at night. In that 2 dedicated trains that run all day! I find my Chennai friends get a ticket any time they would need. Here is the availability status to Coimbatore of some coming weekends. (You got available status on May 1st because its a long weekend and Friday is a holiday)

1 27-Mar-2009, Friday WL 102/WL 51 WL 15/WL 15
2 03-Apr-2009, Friday WL 22/WL 16 WL 135/WL 116
3 10-Apr-2009, Friday WL 77/WL 67 WL 19/WL 19
4 17-Apr-2009, Friday WL 57/WL 41 WL 12/WL 12
5 24-Apr-2009, Friday WL 31/WL 22 WL 5/WL 5
6 01-May-2009, Friday AVAILABLE- 0093 WL 9/WL 9

If you can do something useful after this general election would be to have one (just one, Lalu) dedicated train from Bangalore to Coimbatore. It would be great!

Thank You.

Yours sincerely,

IRCTC again

In the republic day quiz at office they asked, what does IRCTC stands for? Indian Railways Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited. This year many of the holidays fall either on a Monday or Friday. So effectively for souls like me I would get change to be at home for 3 continous days. (but for that first you should plan to go..) You need to book ticket for these weekends as soon as ticket booking opens 90 days in advance in train. 

But be carefull when you book at real crunch times. Take this scenario.

7:45: Out of bed, ticket booking opens at 08:00 hrs.

7:50: Logged into IRCTC site. Waiting...

7:59: Ok, I remember the details and I will type everything fast and say book. 

8:00:30: Ok started typing and clicked book. 

MessageBox("Tickets can be booked only after 08:00 hours.");

8:05: Try again

 MessageBox("Tickets can be booked only after 08:00 hours.");

8:07: Logoff

8:09: Login again. :)

8:10: Show availability of tickets.. It said WL 120. 

Thanks to Srihari to debug and find this design issue. Problem was... Once you Login, the client browser pulls the system time and stores it. So Login into IRCTC at 7:50 is same even after 10 minutes. The clock does not ticket. So it fails on the client side validation on the browser. Ideally, it should be tied up with Sys Clock after getting the initial time from server. Fix it boss. Work around for now is to refresh the browser.

Thanks to Indian Railways

Today Morning I was booking a train ticket read something that got me into big simle. Thanks to Indian Railways for being intelligent and considering this.

One of the passenger booked on an E-ticket is required to present any of the five identity cards noted below in original during the train journey and same will be accepted as a proof of identity failing which all the passengers will be treated as travelling without ticket and shall be dealt as per extant Railway Rules. Valid Ids:- Voter Identity Card / Passport / PAN Card / Driving License / Photo ID card issued by Central / State Govt. for their employees.

This is awesome. At least that we would not have paid all those fines. :) But still I envy those Chennai guys that they have soo so many trains from Bangalore. Just that they get tickets for any weekend at ease.

Easter Egg - 90 days advance booking IRCTC

Today (July 24th) I was deep asleep after watching few episodes of prison break and around 9am (apparently close to midnight) I got a call from my friend.

Friend: Vijesh, Did you book the tickets?
Me: What.... What ticket?
Friend: Ticket for Diwali (in train) opened today.
(...gives me a mild shock and sit up)
Me: No, I guess its not today. I'm keeping track, few more days to go.
Friend: No, it opened today and sleeper is already in waiting list (WL) so we booked in AC. Hope its fine with you.
Me: Yeah ok.

Dragging myself to a system near by to check my Google calender reminder and IRCTC online reservation for Oct 24th. Well something was wrong. It was not really 90 days for tickets to open for booking. Since I lost my love towards Coimbatore Express after the night stay at the train station. I always ignored that train and tried with Kanyakumari express (6526). Still it says given date is out of range for booking. Then gave it a try in Coimbatore Express(1013). This query seems to work fine and says tickets are in WL, Ah! that's strange. With some trails I inferred that Coimbatore Express starts 2 days earlier from Lokmanya Thilak. So apparently the booking software allowed to book for all stations that the train traveled on that date itself. So Bangalore that comes on the third day opens two days before they actually do.

How many would know this? Still, have mailed Customer Care! Let me see how they respond. Ideally only those stations that are exactly 90 days before the train reaches should show up for booking. Guess the engineer was lazy to have this boundary condition in place. I would call it an pseudo Easter Egg.