In continuation of our series on the caricatures in btech96 we bring to you the Pseudo-Hacker who (by hook or by crook) also became the Intel BOFH (Bastard Operator From Hell #2 or Senior SysAd in polite words). For the ignorant we talk of Avneesh Sud called Avi, Sud (as in soap sud).
Earliest recollections of Sud are during Fachcha period when his hair was an excellent example of the Fachcha cut. He maintained his Fachcha cut ever since but a recent hair-cut suited him the most (please look at the image at poorvi/~csu96163/YearBook/images/avi_joke.jpg).
Pseud was a ganda fighter from day one (he bunked his chem prac. just before he gave the first minor of his life) and remained so till he had gotten profs to write his recos for him. The fact that he did practically nothing for his BTP last sem is only because he was busy with GRE/AGRE/apping – but still both Vaish and Pseud got A-‘s (wonder what Vaish who slogged most of the sem (as always) would have to say on that!).
It is a pretty common sight to see the Pseud on the prowl just before some tough minor trailing someone (like Khan, KT, Vaish or even Dumir!!). Pseud has the uncanny ability to score marks despite not attending classes or studying most of the semester. This ability may have something to do with the fact that he knows a no. of seniors, always has last years papers, is the quintessential fraudee and knows what and how to cram at the very last moment; besides he is pretty smart. Another thing is the fact that he has no scruples whatsoever and so he always submits his assignments on time and gives a brilliant demo fooling the all too gullible profs and matkas (in ADA Mankee made the assignment and drew a graph that clearly showed that the no. of vertices was going upto 70-80, Pseud in typical style, nonchalantly told Qabutar that there was a factor of 10 – of course Qabutar believed him!!). Avi is very liberal with his own assignments (even when they are not his “own”), one reason for that is trying to understand his assignments is an utter waste of time, the other being that he knows who will be believed in the demo!
Pseud is another one in the same league as the Hogger (refer last char sketch) as far as programming is concerned. Able to throw terms and names he reminds one of a term in the Jargon File – Wannabee (Overuse of technical terms is often an indication of the wannabee nature). Very similar to Haldar he also has the habit of giving a long, winding and incomprehensible lecture which doesn’t answer your question and leaves you more confused than before.
There are a few scripts that the Pseud spent days (if not weeks or months) writing that are often used in Intel. Unfortunately he is as lazy as Haldar and so the scripts are bug-ridden, unreadable and undecipherable to even him after a few days. The latest bug that was found was in his aliases script (something Suban had been trying to avoid as it required too much maintainance work). The bug allowed users to reuse an alias as long as it differed from someone elses in case (for example gagan – Gagan Aggarwal and Gagan – Gagan Garg). Unfortunately sendmail is not case-sensitive and so the result was that the latter alias got all the mails (for example Gagan Garg got about 70 of Gagan Aggarwal’s mails and she got none!). But as Vaish said Avneesh writes really nice scripts and even Suban has said there is no need to debug them as long as they work (sadly they’ll be debugged only when some error occurs – the true Linux
way – no wonder more people prefer Windows rather than trust the scripts of somebody like BOFH#2).
The Pseud is a very sensible creature and knows exactly how to handle people. One fine day when Qabutar needed some help with his machine (Dumir had claimed ignorance and Vaish wasn’t around) the Pseud was asked for help. The poor little Qabutar strutted in and out of the server room repeatedly asking The Pseud for help with his m/c upstairs and then finally waited for him perched in his room. Dumir passed by Qabutar’s room and heard his plea for help to The Pseud. When Dumir passed the message to Pseud the answer was “Bulane de usse, main nahin jaane wala”. The result
was that Qabutar flatly told Suban that Pseud wasn’t going to help him and has been pecking at Vaish ever since. Poor Vaish has borne the brunt of Pseud’s diplomacy – in the last semester Pseud has been careful to never show his face in the server room or classes, leading to Vaish along with Abheek having to handle the whole of Intel and the henpecking faculty.
The Pseud has a couple of “Chamchas” (namely IR1 and C*****d) in the Manufac and Mech deps. These two do anything for the Pseud for which they get (besides his blessings) a few printouts (which anyone would give them if they only asked), the odd programming assignments and their share of cracked v**l pass***ds. M&D tried their very best to get some incidents out of these two but they proved no match for the hold that The Pseud has on them. There was some incident which would have satisfied M&D but those two kept saying things like “woh bahut zaada ho jayega”, “woh bahut pondy hai”, “Avneesh bahut maarega” and so on. The Pseud had such immense confidence in his Chamchas that he was willing to leave them to our mercy in return for his keys (something we know nothing about – there was a bunch hanging on the Intel noticeboard on that day though!).
The Pseud is remarkably good at taking things in his stride – maybe he has had lots of practice (bahut kat.ta hai bechare ka). While coming back from a treat at Mezeban the Pseud happened to play a part in the enactment of some scene from “Kaun” – the Pseud’s attempts at trying to immitate the lady were not appreciated and he got a stamp of her palm on his cheek (Ouch – that hurts, but then the Pseud is not an ordinary pseud and he brushes off the full-force blow by a Kailashite in front of a largish gathering rather easily). A girl Pseud was trying to woo gave him her cellphone no. and told him to call her only on that number – as a result whenever Pseud called she took one look at her number and cancelled the call. We were also informed that Pseud on receiving a call from some Damsel in Distress sneaked out of his home at 3am and sneaked back in like a rat at 5am after “supposedly” having taught the lady some Mathematics
(we can’t get enough sarcasm in words to be able to tell you how much we believe that). This last bit of info was as much as the chamchas would say and Pseud came back to the server room in the knick of time and got them out of there (tailing him like dogs of course).
We could go on and on forever telling you about The Pseud but time and effort prevent us from doing so. The Pseud has an amazing combination of qualities that include (but are not restricted to) brains, determination, an utter lack of ethics, sense of guile and cleverness far beyond his years and of course the ability to piggy back on the right guy for the right thing. The Pseud is as polished as can be and we give him the title of a Pseud which in IITK lingo means someone with a very smooth style for whom nothing succeeds like success and depth and substance have
little or no value (no wonder he fooled D&T and CapOne).
M&D predict that Sud will have a bright and flourishing career in whatever he finally takes up. He seems to be going for a PhD for the time being but if we had any money to put on anyone making a million it would be Pseud (that happens to be something he keeps blurting out every now and again). We hope he will remember him in a kinder tone when he is a millionaire than we have written about him now.
M&D
PS- Please bear with us if the next M&D mail comes from a “hotmail” account as we are fully aware of the risk we undertake in writing about the Bastard (OFH#2).