Job Vs Studies - Case I

Reading "The Amulet Of Samarkand" and enjoying the extremely rib-tickling confrontation between Bartimayeaus and the minor imp of Lovelace a thought struck me. Unlike being helpless ( like the I time felt like bloggin on the train) or resourcless ( everytime or the other when I want to, net is always with someone else...) or don't-feel-like-blogging mood, I am extremely fresh and excited having the thoughts pour out. Let's see how I will be able to let my readers construe.(A GRE word...well of late I observed Adarsh consciously or unconsiously trying to butt in some gre words...hmm..that's good, how else would I improve my sophistication anyway, but to me it just seems ..damn..can't recollect that word :D )

It's been more than a year and a half out of the "studies" but for the first time ever I felt the necessity of comparing with college days and the job at hand.

The Task at Hand:

I have a task at hand now that needs to completed by this coming friday. I have no clue as of now of how I am going to accomplish and if it will be a happy-ending-go-home-party ending like the "The Case of Missing e-ISBN" (will blog that shortly...and which perhaps has changed many things from then..) happend the last time with me. Ideally this weekend I should have gone there and given it a try. But I just didn't feel like going. I feel tempted to let it go down the wire where I can revel in the glory of pain,tension,helplessness and important of all "underperformance". Man, I tell you the engineering habits are hard to take them off. Had it been in .Net may be I would have perused through numerous sites and posted on several forums and work my ass off to get the results and try to do more than asked. Ouch...painful memories, that's what happens when you don't know the difference between ASP and ASP.net.

The thing is for me to ask for help would require me to explain the whole project which I can't and I very much doubt I would find the person with a time to spare and skill in hand (ASP in this case :) ) to help me. Well coming back to the topic of the blog, the present scenario is quite similar to the days before the External exams. I should have been really tensed, reducing my t.v. hours, download hours, talking on the phone (well that is minor of course...) but I am none of that now..

The main difference as I see is the approach now. In THIS case at least I don't have to read, or memorize or practise or tick the units on the Syllabus book or phone George, Vijay or Venkat to get some concepts right. Right now though I am happily lazing off my time reading the novel, taking a break, blogging about my nebulous(hurrah!!!...another one...not bad...) thoughts while simultaneously checking on Azerues on the torrent status of the PoTC - 3. Phew!!! Nothing beats that out. What I am getting at is I have nothing to prepare or read or memorize and stuff. Sligly adjusting the words of Gandalf the Grey..All I need to do decide is what to do with the time that is given to me...Tomorrow I will go there ( a little early though..at least I am not that bad and stupid to gleefully accept the incompetency) open the editor, think of few appoaches and try them out. Ok..ok..I understand your arguments of protest and self-defence: No way dude, there are so many thing I would do at home to be prepared in that sort of siutation than your stupid blogging , reading. But as I said, THIS case, Had it been .Net :D I would have deleted this blog.No wait on second thought I wouldn't mind having one though :D...Apart from this the other minor difference would be I would be reading for marks (...and I mean literally for marks , nothing else...) in the former case and here it is for the Client handshake.

Truly I am beginning to see what an amazing field this IT is. Man, Software Develpment truly rocks!!!!

(Well I guess this would be a ideal reason of defense to Vishali who so sweetly and politely asked me to bring some articles for Christmas..and I feel really bad now to let her down...but can't help it anyway...)

Configuring Laptop

(Tickets are booked. Date is confirmed. Understood so far??? Read these first...)

(a.k.a) Quinn's Quest For Laptop - III

This actually can be read a stand alone but would be better if you want to get into the groove of things if you read the series.Looks like 7th is when I would have the chance to put my hands on my most awaited priceless possession ( beating HP7) and my delay would only jeopardize the series. Actually this idea of writing what I am going to do once I have system is because of a blog on "What will I do after I format my desktop? " by some guy. It was an fascinating read and quite a fun too because I can actually feel myself telling : " Man...That's exactly what I do...".Well this ain't a desktop I know but still I guess one can relate to it. Okay..here goes my: Operation Laptop...

Operation Laptop


Phase I : Security

1. Run MCPR.exe - a uninstaller tool by McAfee to clean uninstall the mcafee product. (As I am getting one with a trial period of 30 days and no way in hell am I going to renew it...).
2. Install AVG Anti-virus latest version.
3. Use Norton Partition Magic 8.05 to partition my disk. (Desktopers can skip this step).
4. Install Commodo Firewall Pro - the best one there is in my honest opinion.
5. Spybot Search & Destroy - a must have to remove the spyware...

Phase II : Tools & Utitlities

1. Microsoft Office 2003
2. TuneUp Utilities 2007
3. Nero 7.1 Professional
4. WinRar 3.71 Final
5. Adobe Acrobat Reader 8.0
6. Mozilla Firefox 2.0
7. Opera 9.1
8. Picasa Web
9. Typing Master...Always wanted this to learn numbers...let's see if I can...
10. TweakUIPowerToy for Windows XP Only...
11. LimeWirePro 4.31
12. Azureus - Far far better compared to BitTorrent, UTorrent, eDonkey

Phase III: Audio & Video

1. Real Player 10.0 - darn thing needed for once in a blue moon rm files...nevertheless have to have it.
2. VLC MediaPlayer
3. DivX 7.0 Bundle

Phase IV : .Net

1. Visual Studio 2005 Professional
2. SQL Server 2005 Enterprise Edition- Evaluation for developers
3. SilverLight Extension

Of the list I have missed out WindowBlinds , a stardock product which will be phased out shortly depending upon the impact on the laptop. Chitti, were he to see this list, would almost cut half the softwares and he feels they are just waste of OS space and RAM space but I guess I have to convince him to see the beauty of these apps. After all this what would be left is the actual files I need to keep.

The following movies have to be on my HDD:

• My Neighbour Totoro
• Grave of the Fireflies
• Princess Mononoke
• Spirited Away
• Laputa - Castle in the Sky (basically all Miyazaki's collection)
• Akira
• Requiem For a Dream
• Fight Club
• Dil Chahta Hai
• Sarfarosh
• Athadu

And some more along with all the photos and all the books and all the video tutorials...ooph..one heck of a job left to be done....And what I am eagerly awaiting is to see the performance of my laptop after doing all this....

Well that ends it....

(Stay tuned to see the actual THING ...)

Quinn's Quest For Laptop - II

Now that I got back to my senses the first thing I did was go to the Dell US site as I see that third world countries are uniformly snubbed out of "chat live" feature, an exceptional feature. I mean of course the toll free helpline numbers exist but any given time I would love to chat than talk.

One of my frustrations with Dell was XP option was completely wiped out with many models and I desperately wanted one. For this the dell fella proved to be hellava help. Not only that he also informed me about becoming "dell care customer", a one step sign in process, with which one can avail further 3% discount. Most importantly I learnt I can partition the disk with no issues at all. Prior to this talking Joy had told me some laptops especially dell ones can't be partitioned at all and with all my 6 year download-install-format experience I knew how important partitions are. Without any exception I make it a point to store all my files anywhere except C:.

There was something else running on my mind. Few months before when Hrithik was configuring his laptop Ranjit had strongly suggested him to go for 9 cell and a matter of 2 grand is worth every rupee. I called up Joy again and had a series of talks with him starting with the time of delivery, the warranty period, and also about the batteries. Somehow I feel he has the air of authenticity in what he talks and he talks no crap I tell you. I must have called him up like 5 to 6 times to talk about the same topic again and again i.e. the batteries, will it be worth it? Can I not wait? Will it not be heavy? Can I compromise? . Thanks buddy, I really admire patient people and you are the best. The twist of the story is : I had to compromise on 6-Cell (money problem :( )

Ok..here goes my final config list and I am freaking happy about it and the cost could have been much much lesser if not for Core 2 Duo instead of Dual Core...

• Midnight Blue
• Processor – Intel Core 2 Duo T5250
• Operating System- Genuine Windows XP Professional
• Memory – 2GB
• Hard Drive – 160 GB
• Internal Optical Drive- CD/DVD Writer

What follows next in the series is highly technical, stuff about what softwares I am going to install..Watch out!!!!!!!

Quinn's Quest For Laptop - I

(Note: Please Read this for continuity)

Now that I knew I needed to have one, the next question was which one to take with so many competetors- Dell, Lenovo, Compaq, Acer,VAIO. Programming is what I need and top of that after reading SO MANY bad reviews about Vista , it's hardware bankruptancy I decided on XP.

A Deadly Danger Averted:
....begin...
It was Sunday and was my first working "weekend" after I have come to the new project. Only the day before Teja had told me about his friend who would be coming to India and also that there are some real good discounts of 250$. From a week prior to this my search for the right configuration had begun with DELL being the ultimate winner. The reason being with the kind of configuration I need DELL turns out to be the lowest and in some cases I couldn't configure to what I want with others. The only glitch was this would take at least 3 weeks to come from the time it is ordered. Finally I had everything charted out and my initial configuration looked quite attractive and I still wasn't in i-hate-everything-about-vista mould.

• Windows Vista Home Premium
• 2 GB RAM
• Integrated Web Cam
• 250 GB HDD
• Intel Core 2 Duo
• Blue cover with Wireless Logitech Mouse.

and everything else that comes by default totalling aroudn $1380 with discount of $350. That morning his friend was online and hurried me on to confirm my details as the supposed "discount" period was going to expire. We both were hooked with gtalk and the talks went on. Time was ticking by and the cab fella wasn't the usual either. I went over the list thrice with him and gave my assent assuring that within few days the money would be transferred and left for the office.

!!!!!Could have almost ruined my life..that's Teja for you !!!!!

It was not until the cab reached Infy building did it strike me WHAT the hell am I going to tell my dad? Oh, god he would make a minced meat of me with his plus/minus point comparisions. Though I had mailed my friends, cousins and all I know in US for any "prospects" I haven't received any response. I mean I just struck out my first deal. That as far as dad is concerned i am dead. On top of that anti-Vista feelings have started to sink in. So I called up Chitti for his thoughts and I found out that everything was not that bad as the supposed discounts I might get around Christmas would be give or take 30$. I calmed a little.

Trrrrrrrrrrrrr... goes my phone and I was glad it was Mr.Ranganayakulu on the phone. Before I could really pour my heart out and ask him to hold the deal back I learnt that discount was pfff and that the next time it would come he would let me know. This my friends is what they call blessing in disguise or better still "Luck favors the brave " ( very very inappropriate .. i know..).

...ends here...

Holy Crap!!! What the hell was I thinking? Vista??? I mean....Vista?? Was I nuts or what after seeing how bad the perfomance is with Hari bearing the witness and a 20 GB of disk wastage for that chunky , non-impressive software?? Damn, how close I was in committing yet another grave mistake and man I don't know how much further I could have tolerated...

To be continued...

Prelude to Quinn's Quest For Laptop

Remember remember the month of September ??

Ok it was March, but it won't rhyme you see.. The Day Bofore the Big C series? . It's the turn of my laptop now and this time because I don't exactly know when it's gonna come but it IS gonna come in December. First of all I want to thank sincerely from bottom of my hear to my roommate, ex-classmate, friend and well wisher Hari Krishan a.k.a. harikris . The time he changed the password and refused to share it with me I knew I needed to do something about it and vowed myself I would not touch his laptop again and had sticked to it till yesterday ( when I had to use...) .

!!!!!HariKris...the Laptop Dude....!!!!!

In his place I would have felt the same. I mean wouldn't it be too uncomfortable for you to see someone else installing softwares that you would never use, reading and practising on your machine instead of giving it rest, watching movies at will whenever time permits? If your answers to the above questions is yes, well he has taken the next logical step. This wouldn't normally happen at homes but at room when you are forced to share systems these things matter. I saw no point in exlaining that all those things that he sees in Add/Remove components are bundled softwares and that I can't really chose what I won't use and what I would use. The softwares in question: SQL Server 2005 Express Edition, Visual Studio Web Express 2005.( Geeks your comments please?...Can I?). That's about him. And again ain't no finger pointing here. No sir, no..

!!!!!Eswar...obviously...the Desktop Dude....!!!!!

Now the other alternative: the desktop. I have a stiff competetion with what Eswar also practising real hard I had to have it. I am very much thankful to Eswar too for his dedication to work and working for hours in pursuit of glory!!! Frankly without these two guys displaying and doing what they did the thought of Laptop would have never materialized. And well like any software developer out there I wanted one.

What follows next is how I went about chosing for one....

A La Maudling in the making eh??

What's wrong with me these days? Why am I expecting abundant sympathy,words of comfort,pat on the back etc. from everyone?

Of course I knew she left because she had some work and for that what do I do? Write a long mail around 4'o clock in the night with overdose of sadness, masala and unnecessary details. It's good she gave a fitting reply. And with that I guess the situation has taken a slight different turn. It's too early to say but for days I saw the signs anyway.

Keeping that apart at the drop of the hat I am ready to cry like a baby babbling out everything and how things are going so bad for me. Mistake after Mistake. It's a bit reminiscent of how Ranjit felt initially in the project and me still managing two projects. But seriously what can I do? With the two options out of the way I might be stuck up in this bloody thing for the next one year to come? ONE DAMN YEAR!!!!!

I gues I have to accept it as is and keep looking for a way out and stick on with it. Here on this day and on this very blogspot I take a vow not to crib again to anyone about anything and "Chillax and get on with my work". Damn..I must have looked like a stalker ready to cry and embrace words of hope with the way I am going about cautiously asking for apology then thanking then again crying, ...phew..let me end this never ending saga now.

In the words of Kurt Cobain " I'd Rather be hated for who I am than be loved for who I am not, Wanting to be someone else is a waste of who you are . " - Bloody hell, I am back.

Ahem...Taking back my words from earlier post today I have successfully fixed a horrendous CR that has been literally plaguing me for so many days in fact 3 weeks to be precise and had well threatened my plans for Diwali..

!!!Happy days are ahead!!!

First Project, First..er..Second Impression

Haven't blogged for a month? Pathetic. That's what my state is now : Pathetic. It is not as if this is something new as I have done this quite regularly in the past. But this time it is out of emotional depravity and internal turmoil that has kept me away from blogging.

Came early today to get the e-ISBN done but it just refuses to make itself understood. My incapacity to tackle the problem and get it completed before the D-Day makes me feel terrible and it further bogs me down. It is so frustrating to find yourself helpless to get results not because you haven't tried different ways of tackling the issue but beacause you can't understand it. Added to this is the fact that feelings of Inferiority Complex have accumulated as a bonus. It looks like of all the people from the erstwhile team I am left to lick my own bloody wounds with everyone else in a better position.

Not a day passes without me thinking and recollecting that Terrible day of interview and the events that followed: Huge mail to Julie, 2 Euphoric blogs on this subject,"ippude gantuleyaku inka kotha project etlundo teledu kada" ani adarsh annappudu "edaina gani Usha kanna goramyinidi edi vundadu kada ra " ani nenandam, Talks with Potharaju and his subsequent molifcation, failure to see the simple difference between ASP and ASP.Net, not talking with Shrikanth when Ranjit had approached him. Asalu how did I commit such mistake? I feel as if I have done the biggest mistake of my life.

I have tried to crrect them but it was too late. After hearing so many people telling me so many things and opinions on how to keep cool and go on with life Julie's words stand out " Enjoy your work...Most important".

Well the funny part is my emotions keep on going from one extreme to other in the sense some days it remains light and some other times I just go into real bad depression. Coming to the project, heck I don't think I will ever write anything about this goddamn project and let me keep my blog clean at least..

Bad Timing for Snap Taking!!!

Is it just a coincidence or it was supposed to be that way? Months and days pass by as we work as a team. We will be so busy with doing something or the other and don't really think about capturing the events as they happen. Here are two set's of people with whom I had most inopportune time of taking these photos. See for yourself

!!!!!! Oh-so-blogger Team !!!!!!

(Left to Right)

• Ms.Talkative (Sindhu) - Have been long since I had a real talk session :D . Doing great nonetheless keeping up the name of erstwhile Kanbay.
• SwamiNaidu (Venkat) - Busy,Busy, Busy...IIM hai no to itna sa sacrifice karna padega.
• Srujana (Laddoo) - Of all the things I could have asked why did ever ask her : Eppudu tindi gole na?? with a smiley of course and top of that a follow up requesting her avatar. Ever so sweet, completely harmless, sympathy abundant lady that she is must be giving shockers to US of A with the kind of study she is putting in.
• Karthik (Me) - Continued the blogging...

The occasion was Laddoo's & Co. farewell trip party to us at Seventh Heaven. We (the ones in the pic) and others met up and had a gala time. Excepting Laddoo the other two weren't interested in the snap but I persisted. These were the ones who joined me later to blog together and did contribute posts. I wanted this as a team blog and needed the world to see the mighty brains behind it with the snap as the static item in the blog header. It were not to be so. Well Laddoo and Ms.Talkative did write though long after the snap was taken making up for the time I wasted in putting the photo up, there hasn't been much of interest in the blog thereafter and so I had to give up on the idea.

!!!!!! Dashboard - Team !!!!!!

(Left to Right)

• Mrs.Ponnan (Sarita) - The lone survivor awaiting for a release and hopefully would work for THE project under Ramakanth. I wish something would come real fast to take her away from this wretched, never-ending dashboard.
• Bhav (Bhavya) - Ab bani BHR Ka Sultani, finally got the rightful job and the contended one too.
• Ranjit (-) - Managing two projects one with pre-historic VB 6.0 and the other with ASP.Net 2.0 and Ajax, this guy is surely having the best time of our batch.
• Me- Looking to rectify the mistake and on hunt for Another Snap .

"100$ Pix , Sari you must be joking this is absolutely worthless" (pun unintended...) :) . Right from EA to M&E our journey has been quite memorable. With Bhav in BHR and Sari married and with release of Ranjit and me to get back the team would mean a journey back to SDC for Bhav just for the pic. Thank goodness, the other three are at the same spot.

Occasion : The cricket match between "Maaro ya maro" vs "I-don't-know". To add to the haste was Sari's departure to Koramangala (RM ain't there ...you see...) and what better place left to take : right in the ground. I mean we worked as a team for more than 4 and a half months right from Julie(ex) days to Sudha(present) days (our RM's) we had so many fabulous moments and not once did it strike us that we would fizzle out so fast. A simple photo that could have been much much better than the one you folks are seeing could have easily replaced the one above.


So you see: Team blogging didn't take off & What a shame we couldn't have a better snap.
Edit: Ms. Ponnan has been successfully recruited to none other than THE project under Ramakanth i.e Bagjas 2008. Long live the Queen!!!

An OpenLetter to UNIQUES...

baap re...blogging to chachi potunna...blog cheddam annapudu rayadaniki mood radu, raddam annapudu blog cheyya budi kadu. so dani pakkana petti oka chinna letter raddam le ani modalu petta ade ma batch andariki adi maree peddagai poyindi...so blog ga convert chestunna ...


Hello Everyone....

What better way to start another year than seeing the Indians trounce Paki's off the cricketing trough marking the arrival of young generation of cricketers and this might as well signal the end of 10 K players (Sachi,Drav,Gangu). Phew!!!Nothing better....

No matter what path one has taken ultimately we have all landed up in SDC (excepting two) and everyone is in some or other project. Of all the things that we have gone through Mr.Hirani's episode stands out the best. "The world is like a mirror.." so he began and we knew right then there was an extremist at our end speaking for the voiceless, fighting for justice, defying authority, giving a damn about the consequences or in simpler terms a nut crack who couldn't hold his mouth little longer only to see himself kicked outside :D . A great entertainer nonetheless. I admit initially I thought the first phase of training is just waste of time. I mean what the heck have I done knowing SE, C,Data Structures - binary sort , heap sort, dung sort,this sort that sort...Computer Organization etc. Note: I don't mean to offend those who loved these and topped them.

I feel the same even now but I guess in some ways having such training bridged the gap between transition from the college days to corporate crap. The ppts gave us a chance to engage the class even more.It just has all the right ingredients. Begging to let the teacher stop and give lot of breaks, playing pinball, listening to music, sweating for the exam, copying , worrying about the LOC's (aint mattered at all) and thinking about exit panel, celebrating birthdays, forming our own coterie, dumb charades, antakshari , on and on it went. To top it all came the group activities and sadly of all the three times I was part of the groups we were beaten by much better teams. Man, what an experience that was.

It just brought out the hidden talents in some of us , I mean Ranjit can as well walk into studio for the next film shoot, Doc Goveas can take seating next to Harsha Bogle, Hrithik (Roshan) leading the laughter challenge III /IV ( I don't know...), Joy's singing capability.

What followed next was a cruel joke on us about a mystery project and the urgent requirement to see us getting into Royal Bench getting something close to a training under Raghvendra. After a month and half or so of orkutting, surfing net, watching movies, group by group started branching out leaving some of us happy and some of us tensed.

Feelings of anger, frustration, neglect, inferiority complex, something similar to how we felt seeing our fellow college mates getting recruited and you waiting for your turn to happen swept over us. I surely did. But remember:

Everything that has a beginning has an end
- Matrix

Happy or not that is left to you :D. Finally during time of campus placements at our college I was mightily impressed when one of the recruiters from Cognizant said "Here at Cognizant we don't need an event to celebrate anything will do". Well we ain't far behind, so here is the list of things that given time and place we can celebrate:

3 from Hrithik( 2 birthdays, 1 Laptop) 3 from Joy ('S' Rating, IDMF, Laptop)
2 from Deepti, Bhavya,Amit,Gnana ('S' Rating, Project)
1 from Ms.Ponnan ( 4 month into the marriage and still going... ain't no easy task at times of infidelity and divorces...)
2 from Ganesh (MCAD Certificatoin, Project)
2 from Suhas (his trip, Project) (GROUP Parties...)
1 each from IDMF Team
1 each from DRM Team 1 each from Pre-sales department 1 from the rest whosoever is left over...

Well that's all folks, let's not fight now about who wants to give first. Everybody will get their chance and let's discuss this in civilized manner :D . We will have some moderators who can decide the time,venue and place. On a lighter note, it is been a great joy being part of batch of 588 and getting to know such diversified people and mindset. I feel no other field would offer a wide variety of candidates from different parts of the country, so every time someone goes off to his place we get to eat their local varieties and experience different palette altogether.

Wish you all a great success going forward ... Projects come projects go but what remains are the beautiful memories and this batch has provided a lot.

Regards,
Karthik
Signing off ,
Bangalore,
Uniques

Treading a precarious Path

Any discussion with my RM Sudha leaves me frustrated and exhausted as if I have just come back from years of travelling in desert. In discussion with Sachi yesterday while Sarita complained about her admant behavior, her thick-skinned nature and utter lack of sympathy I was thinking something else.

There is something about Sudha that I can't pin point. Everything about her is perfect and she demands responsibility and more than that pro-activeness which I mentioned earlier. And unlike Usha she comes straight to the point and wants no excuses at all which is good again.Look at the present situation.

Last week before she went on long leave that is from Tuesday, I prepeared a excel sheet for my week's activity according to which I had to have completed my installation of Visual Team Suite, THE only work that is left over for me to do and sadly which is a difficult one. The difficulty is in two stages: one with Installation (it has already taken three weeks) and the next one with regard to migration and actual working with Visual Team Suite studio. From my part I sent a mail to Sushma Nayak, N&S Level II. On Thursday I came to know from Sushma that there were no more challenges and that the installation will proceed now with SriLatha as Vinod(the original person to whom installation was handed) was on leave. On Friday I tried SriLatha for the progress and she wasn't picking up any calls, tried Sushma no response. Didn't do anything much.

But in those days the other work assigned that is the footer totals of main summary was taking lot of time. I put up the question at Forum, was waiting for response. I tried to get that on my own, was not working. So it was not as if I was lazing around happily. When I am not busy with main summary, I was doing other things for dashboard like role management or looking up for the reports.

Here is my mistake: Yesterday was only when I escalated the matter to Renji Jacob. I should have done that on Monday or Tuesday when I admit there was not much of work for me. So yesterday when called to the meeting I knew she was going to blast me and that's what had happened. It is also funny the way her voice modulates from being friendly to stern then brutal then friendly then something else. Well first she enquired about my new project, then she castigated me saying I take up no responsibility at all and that only because she has come I escalated the matter to Renji Jacob( which partly : 70% is true...). On the first word of defense about what has actually happened she cuts me off. I didn't have a chance to put my trump card that is the footer totals, that's totally obscure , I mean for her it's like getting it done in matter of an hour or so.

At the end came the bombshell she said she would take stern action and some drastic steps if by this Friday things remain same with no progress. As I was about to leave in a concerned tone she says try to get this fast and work full time at my new project. You see she is perfectly suited to dramas. Anyways getting this done by Friday looks highly improbable. With new project being in an outdated technology I would be happy being recalled. Happy but not satisfied and with a hangover feeling of incompetency and inability to finish off a job.

So coming back to the point of what is wrong with her...nothing she is the perfect RM anyone could ever have. She is someone like your old school teacher whom you would love to hate for no reason at all. These two days are going to be real tough..

Wait and watch for what happens next....

To Hell With Opera - Any version

Download.com being the favorite site I had a routine set up. Check the free latest ones out there, work on it, like them: put them , don't: discard. Out of such heap came products like Opera, Avant, Free Download Manager, Spybot Search & Destroy and many others. I got instant likeness to Opera seeing the speed with which the pages were being displayed and the ease with which the cookies and spam can be deleted and controlled. Before this I was working with Firefox.

Everything is fine up till now i.e. with evolution of web 2.0 technology. Here are the prime reasons why Opera is not for me

No 'StumbleUpon' bar. I don't know when they will get this extension.
Can't open Yahoo! Mail beta as it loses it's aesthetic sense.
Firefox allows you to have a IMDB Search engine just by clicking on the extensions available. Here you would have to download some exe, open it then do some code and stuff.
Some problem occurs when I try to blog as somehow the lines go beyond the vertical bar that appears to the right and invariably I would have to save it as draft and continue working on IE.
Even if these were my personal problems coming to my professional reasons I use MSDN Forums a lot. They appear so much out of sync. I mean this website is not yet compatible with Opera I believe.

Some of the reasons I preferred opera were its paste-and-go facility, background tab functionality and it's Speed Dial which I used less frequently anyway. All these functionalities and many more exciting add-ons are available at Firefox shop. Well it was after having a real bad experience trying to post a forum using Opera I decided enough is enough...and I repeat : To Hell with Opera , no where near FireFox and lacks themes, add-ons and evertyhing that makes Firefox the top of the lot out there...

Beautiful Song...

In the last one year after 'Manasa' from Munna I am completely blown over by 'Jil Jil Jiga....' from Happy Days. I mean after hearing the song I felt at last here is someone who looks like has been in college and has done a fantastic job capturing the essence of college life in 270 seconds or 4 and a half minutes. I became nostalgic listening to the songs and going back to the college time. Jash's words came back to me : "This certificate, the degree, the marks sheet, ...these are all piece of papers...the real life was in the journey not the destination...the years of engineering...the life we had..."

Man I could feel my heart clench and the pulse beating hearing those words. How much more plain can it be? Coming back to the song, it is different. "different" a word that lost meaning in Telugu film industry each claiming it is different that others. And this was one of the other things that put my fellow buddies at unease and they just want me to shut-up when I start off because they know what is coming next. But for the sake of readers I will just brief it up in one line : " The most unrealistic feature of the telugu film industry today is it's representation of students in the college, the professors in it ..this bugs me to no end..." well that's all..I don't want to go on...

Coming back SECOND time to the song...

Podduna legaliiiiii, Snanam cheyyaliiiiiiiii
bussu ekkali, college kellalli

oooooooooooooooooh...oh.oh.oh.......oooooooooohoohohoho...
oooooooooooooooooh...oh.oh.oh.......oooooooooohoohohoho...

bathroom lo patalu, breakfast lo matalu
amma mundu wonderlu, nanna mundu blunderlu
pocket money ki tenderluuuuuuu.. uhuhuhu..

ika bassulakai waitingu,footboard lo fightingu
canteen lo meetinguuuuuuuuu....uhuhuhuuuuu ...(2)

oooooooooooooooooh. jil jil jiga ...jil jil jiga...oh.oh.oh.......oooooooooohoohohoho ...(4)

teachers to classulu, classulo massulu,
sms lo matalu, mms to patalu ...(2)

last bench seatingu, cell phones to gamingu,
interval ku waitinguuuuuuuu....uhuhuhuuuuu

last bench seatingu, magazines readingu,
interval ku waitinguuuuuuuu....uhuhuhuuuuu ya ya ya...

...jil jil jiga....jil jil jiga....eh....jil jil jiga...eh...

(for the urban and chic popule....)

Podduna legaliiiiii, Snanam cheyyaliiiiiiiii

IMAX lo cinemalu, morninglu matnilu,
alley lo bowlingu, food court lo datingu

ye pilla, What maaaan? , ne style ente ila...ne confirmation ila...
ye pilla ye pilla..nuvvu ila ila...ye pilla ye pilla..hey ,hey,

oooooooooooooooooh. jil jil jiga ...jil jil jiga...oh.oh.oh.......oooooooooohoohohoho ...(4)

ika bassulakai waitingu,bus stop lo chattingu,
waiting waitinguuuuuuuu....uhuhuhuuuuu ...(2)

podduna legali...e.e.e.e.....

This is an absolutely superb song to get back to those good old days. Eppudu period aipodda ani, canteen ku epudu veldam, asalu ivi koni rojulu levu. Last bench lo nenaithe na novels chedive vadini, inkondaru celll phone games, ikkada missaindi ante lunch box lu aipovadam. Hats off to who ever wrote the song and composed..You guys have reinforced the belief in me that not all the things that come out are thrash....

mere kuda chadivi vini anandichandi....

Another Seldon Crisis?

Am I seeing another Seldong crisis in my life? Where did I land up? How did this happen? Why does it happen to us? (People of Non-Galactic empire enlighten yourself...click here ).

Only few blogs before, none could have been the happiest people but us after finally finding the fruits of labour. Life again has played dirty tricks on us. Just when we were moving out for good from the ever-so-troubling and everlasting, non-ending-teleserial like Dashboard, we are greeted hard pataaaaaaaaaak on our face. How dare we even think of being happy?

Okay, now for the details, it's been two days into the NEW project i.e. SMART project and only yesterday I saw the nuke falling on my head. Day before yesterday I came to know I would be working for SQL end whereas Ranjit was left to understand ASP using VB 6 IDE. He started making scene, the look on his face, the dejection in his voice I thought the only thing that was left was crying. He was desperately looking for release. He wanted none of it.

I tried to reason with him, sat with him understood some part of his project, told him that not everything is outdated and it is similar to .Net and just that some more effort has to be put up. All the while I was thinking what would I have done in his place, thanking myself it is good I won't have to learn outdated ones.

Fast Forwarding a bit more... I didn't have to think because my fate is the same. Well cut_copy_paste Ranjit's feelings - my feelings. My words of comfort were still fresh in my mind. But one thing I couldn't convince him or myself is the fact that there would be no value in the future for the kind of technology we are asked to work on . I mean with VB 6 in my resume how much value would it be? It is as if our careers are ruined and that too early in the life.

I thought my first blog after entering NEW project (how ironic) would be about my team , the new cubicle, my adjustement to shift etc. but never did I think I would be crying like a school kid on being given less marks. Days to come will I truly know how I will come out this crisis...

Costly Dump

For my future reference so as not to make these mistakes again I list out my three "costly" mistakes that I have made...

1. Fateful Triangle By Naom Chomsky



Naom Chomsky is one of the most celebrated and most-hated American for his outright views on the American unjust and ruthless policies. I have read some of his articles and was mighily impressed by his ideas. The entire middle east episode has been such a blur to me, even now I can't understand who started what and how it all began. This is a mammoth book that traces it origins way back to B.C's and starts to explain how all things have started spiralling out of control. But it was only when I bought the book and read the chapters I realized the abundance of material facts in it that are too hard to grasp. For instance, after reading some thirty pages of a particular chapter everything appears to be new again when I take it up for further reading.

The Stats:
Touched the book : 15 times
Read: 4 times
Flipped : 15 times
Read the backcover: - 15 times

Cost: Rs.600/-

Result: Ain't no regrets. Reason: Mummy paid for it :D

2. Bound Together: How Traders, Preachers, Adventurers, and Warriors Shaped Globalization


Written by Indian in a language that is so plebian I grabbed it by the spine and shelled the money across the counter. THE Beginning chapter was the end of my enthu that began right from the time I read the preface and initial few pages.

The Stats:
Touched the book : 5 - 10 times
Read: 1-3 times
Flipped : 3-10 times
Read the backcover: 10 times

Result: Lost 590 bucks. Making not-to-executed-notes on mind to read the book.

3. SONY ...drohi....


Walking back to my home from Jash's place I felt the urgent need to buy the ear phones as fast as possible. After knowing the staggering price of Rs.1600/- for the basic ear phone shipped along with IPod I thought I would settle for SONY. Once inside the Sony World, I browsed through the price tags and I saw the other kind i.e. in-hear headphones with price Rs.1600/- while the Apple's would have costed Rs.2600/-. And the basic ones with a nice hook style ear phones look was Rs.1300/-. With advantage of cheapness, and style in comparison to Apple I settled on 1300 one.

Result:
It doesn't fit properly in the ear. Quality of sound is nowhere , i mean NOWHERE near IPod headphones. Day by day...by day...by day... as I keep listening with those ear phones my tendancy to throw them in the bin as grows. It will be only a matter of time before I buy the 2600/- one.
Now I know why Apple products are worth the cost. It's simple : They ROCK and nothing comes closer.

Well that's all I will be upgrading the pics shortly. From the first two I have come to understand not to dabble in something that wouldn't last for long and which is not of my taste. I just can't read books about management stuff... period. With the last one, take friends along dammit, take someone else with you for purchasing electronic goods. God...you will repent it for long time later with the repurcussions.

Ahem!!!!!!!!!!That ends it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gotcha....Gotcha ..Gotcha...

Balraj broke the news unofficially to us through communicator. He overheard the conversation and between Sudha and Srikanth. Pinged through communicator and said
"Dont' come here... "

...A pause...Wierd...Well I thought he was trying to say not to disturb him.

"I have something important to say...just look at the sceen in front of you...you both are selected...".

I immediately let out a cry of joy before Sari shhhhhed me down.. More typing...But my impatience grew , I wanted to know more...

"Which screen mate?? How do you know...thanks..." all simultaneously.
"Arey...yaar the news is unofficial and Sudha ko malum pada tho mere sir katega...."
"So come over here then.."

So that's why the whole secrecy drama.The timing was perfect. Sudha was out. Balraj and Swati had come over to our cubicles and he gave the finer details. He said we both are selected. He also mentioned that for 6 weeks we would be unbilled (my foot, who cares...get me outa here...) From the discussion he overheard he pointed out that migration might have small hiccup in terms of we being held back little for the completion of project. I guess I should have told him ANY other detail he was relaying was just going off the head as one thing occupied our thought, we were selected to a project, we were free...

Srinu ( my fellow roommate...) was surprised why I was making such gung-ho about getting into a project, so must be some of you readers, and made a point saying that's what we are recruited for in the first place. To compltet projects which obviously clients provide. Well my answer to that is simple ...can you imagine what would a drop of water mean to a man dying of thirst??? Put us in his place....we desperately were waiting for a break and when something like this comes from highly unexpected events the joy is tremendous....

We thought may be Sudha would delay the news to us til she finalizes the finer details with Srikanth and let us know how to proceed on Monday. She didn't, she called us only 5 minutes later and told us about the news. A good show was put up by us to act as unknown and I also added authenticity to it by asking as she was going on explaining " Sudha, who is selected ? " ever so innocenlty.

We went back to Sari who was also quite excited about the prospect and congratulated us yet again. Ranjit was quick to message everyone about the news but I , if you know me well by now, preferred to relay the message by mail..Well for one we wanted to wrap the project by completing the left overs that is the reports and some module checking. But somehow couldn't really sit before our machines and start doing it. We were still digesting the news.

We had a long talk again. " I would miss you both a lot..." said sari and we went on pulling each other about who is the imitator and who would be imitated. This was completely surreal, first they wanted only one, now both. I was thinking if I (if selected) would be a bit lonely for a while in the new team, getting to understand the basics and adjusting in the new environment. But with Ranjit as company I would have hell of a time....

Well..only time will tell how this new venture is going to turn us out... Then again it is better to take one at a time.. savoring the journey rather than the destination itself....

What for Fasting for ???

It's been more than a month since I have begun fasting on Thursdays. Ganesh, Sneha, and few of others were doing it for ages , so I thought why not??. Kishore uncle once told long back our stomach is also like one of those countless machines on this planet that works 24 * 7 non-stop and one needs to give it a break occasionally. Added to this was also the fact that we i.e. Srinu and me have long since abandoned any attempt to resume jogging which for..hold your breath...20 continuous weekdays. We ain't doing nothing now to stem the growth of abnormal fat.

At least I play T.T twice a week for 2 hours at stretch to get my relaxation. Well that's the primary reason I started fasting and at 5 in the evening it ends. This week it wreaked havoc in me. Around 4 I was terribly hungry and was dying to eat whatever is available. I wasn't able to control myself. After coming to know from Ganesh that he fasts till 8 that makes me feel even more bad.

It doesn't make any sense. Yesterday after 5 I had 1 plate vada, then around 8 1 Chilli cheese sandwich. Last week I just gobbled up 1 rumali roti with chicken curry at 7. The whole point of regulating the body is wasted? What then I am fasting for?? Let's see if the weeks to come if I can improve. If I can't it's better I give up fasting than having a false pretense...

Elsevier to the rescue...Sad departures...2 of 2

Read 1 of 2 before you regret knowing the climax of the story...

These were the best conditions would be a understatement. It is absolutely incredulous offer. A offer one can't refurse. But I had my own doubts and clarifications. So I asked them if I could get back to them later. "For what??" came the resounding response. Did I make a mistake? I just wanted someone's opinion on how the job is going to be and now that there is a chance of saying 'no' I didn't want myself in something like the kind of job Terence, Kranthi is in where they require no technical skills at all. Their job involved understanding a system and to monitor it. It is something similar to learning how to work with MS Word and help anyone with problems working with it. Man, after working real hard in gaining expertise in .Net with whatever I gained, I didn't want my learning curve to stagnate and put my technical experience on hold. No, I wanted to make sure it was not Excel or ticket monitoring type.

Well they were surprised on me asking them anyway and have agreed to it. That's that I got back to the room and realized that fight would be between only two as Sari on hearing "second shift" had dropped out. Marriage has it's own problems...so sad and glad at least for our (ranjit and me) sake. It stands out 50-50 chance. We filed out of ODC and went to Amit's birthday celebrations.

From the time we came out I knew things weren't going to be the same. No matter who does get into it, there will be a void, some uknown gap. Bhav's departure did alter the things but I guess the thread was cut long back as she drifted in and out to a Motorola training and stuff. With her out most of the times and doing some job for our ME Dashboard her absence really didn't find us wanting. It was always us mostly moving here and there, getting into discussions, petty arguments, and doubts. With 3 left and 1 moving out it is going to hurt...


We were so badly bored and tired with the present dashboad that no day passes by thinking about who is going to save us from this misery. With this there is going to be some change and faster action. I guess there is no point in looking for a resource and I am not sure who would be coming for replacement. I mean say days from even the leftover 2 will disapear we would DEFINITELY need one guy with good technical knowledge both in .Net and SQL for maintainence and further enhancement of the website.


Whatever the case I am glad I was part of this team. Going through so many ups and downs, RM after RM, dashboard after dashboard ( first it was EA, now M&E ...) doing samething over and over again, jaise Swati ne kaha ..."you are used to it na...", making fun of RM, eating at odd timings, staying back to play T.T, sharing the sweet joy of achievement in having completed a tough task, pulling each other ,teasing each other and also there were heated discussions. So many things. M&E dashboard days will have a new twist in the tale.

Somehow I was 100% sure that we weren't going to be seperated , that we were all together going to be put in someother project. A sad twist in the end. It is like losing some part of your body... I know there is no place for emotions but can't help feeling sad about the departure.

Finally we Rocked and I am sure wherever we are and wherever we are going to be the spirit would be the same!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Watch out here for the fabulous three .....

Elsevier to the rescue...Sad departures...I of 2

Chal chale... apne ghar...
Hai mere ham safar...
band darwaja kar...

If you sing along with the song something good is going to happen in whatever you are going to pursue. At least that's what has happened with us in any case. (Oy..by the way it's Sari's belief mind you...) Only day before yesterday we were humming the song when Sari warned we will be outta here just like the way Roop and Ranjan fled after having sung the song. It took two days for the jinx to break and come true..

The happy times, happy days are flooding in. We, the team, received a mail from Srikanth asking us to meet him at ITC-3 for .Net requirement for a project in Elsevier. We reached the place around 3 and we were in for a surprise. We were under the impression it was going to be a small talk about the need of single resource and tell us when the dates of interview are. But it happens it was a spot-evaluation kind of a thing. We all got seated in a discussion room and one by one was called for the 'interview'. Ranjit was the first to go. Sari and me in the meantime started discussing about what could be the possible questions. First thing that any guy would ask would be the life cycle of the page which sadly we were highly unprepared for. The whole thing was much too exciting for the fact that we were completely unaware of there being interview as we thought 3 might be needed and we will be readily picked and placed in the slot.

My mind raced back to engineering days where I used to get all the questions from the person who has just gone in, have a book ready preparing all I can , knowing what all were possible questions that could be asked in regard to my experiment. In the end I always used to fumble up at viva. Only those times when my fellow viva-mates weren't prepared to answer then I used to grab the limelight. I mean somehow I just fidget. I knew I might be producing a encore performance here. But sadly nature came calling by!!!!

By the time I came back Sari's turn was over and I was the one left absolutely clueless and a tad dissappointed with Nature's TIMING. Two guys were seated there, calm, casual. After the pleasentries came the million-dollar-unwanted-question:

Tell me about yourself??

For a while I thought I landed up in a interview cell about to get interviewed for my first job. Tell me about yourself?? I mean I understand there are two kinds of questions one at HR level and one at Tech. But common...they ain't recruiting people from college. Can't they be specific? I told them about almost one year stint at Satyam highlighting the latest working part. Finally they woke up!!!! Circus was out. Then things moved on to about my college, engineering backgroudn etc. There were some basic questions about .Net and SQL which I managed to answer excepting how the page life cycle works. After all this they told me the kind of job I would be in:

• Afternoon shift : 2 to 9
• Cab pickup and drop.
• Night allowance.
• Minimum commitment of a year.

So what happened next?? Read on 2 of 2 find out...

Scars that hurt....

Our project badly needs a deadline. Ranjit's remark that Internal projects have no deadline scared the hell out of me. Man, I can't see myself doing the same piece of crap again and again. I am tired of this project. There are three more main stumbling blocks that are left of which "Gantt Chart" is something that is beyond my scope. I have no hopes at all about how I am going to get it done. The other two, with little more effort maybe , just MAY BE , we may wrap up by the week's end.



Kevin English is supposedly going to have a demo of our website if he has time that is. That has managed to put a little spark in us. I had a real bad episode today. After re-installation of SQL Server 2005 at the server we weren't able to get it working with our website. The whole thing looked perfect. We tried modifying it by using local authentication and it worked perfectly but we weren't able to get it out of the server, on the net that is. SQL Server authentication was just not working and we were managing with Windows authentication. As usual we could see Sudha grumbling about it in a manner that suggests we are one useless bunch of people who can't do anything correctly and in time. She asked us to get it working by next day.


Her Majesty had entered the scene and as is her wont went on excitedly about using Visual Studio Team Suite. It seems a license was ready and installation was left. That forced me to

Call 1: What is the status on the installation ?
Call 2: What are the server details?
Call 3: When is he expected back and the license details?

All the calls routed to one guy : Azeet who was really really busy at every call. It was at the third call he broke loose. He just blasted me over the phone " When I told you guys to uninstall VS, Uninstall SQL you won't do and all of a sudden you are after me to get VSTS installed? Don't disturb me from now onwards. " What did follow , to my surprise and disappointment, was he came on the messenger, raised a ticket for installation and then bid me farewell? Wil this be end of Azeet, the one guy we thought we could rely on as a Tech lead??

I mean anyone in his shoes would have reacted the same way. I was in a real tight situation and as my pappa always says "Life is full of surprises, when you want something forget all the other feelings". I did that. Sudha put me in a real tight spot. The irony of it all was we somehow managed to get back the authentication with SQL in other half an hour after this episode and the neeed of Team Suite just evoperated as it had come leaving me with a bad scar.

Well..started this blog for something else and landed up writing something else altogether...anyways added one more to the otherwise static blog :D

What the hell is wrong with Ramu??

What has happened to RGV? I mean what the heck has happened to RGV?

Can someone please show him his classic movies 'Satya','Company','Sarkar','Naach' again lest he forgets what he truly does best? I mean it looks like he has given up thinking and has run out of ideas. Look at what he is trying to achieve by giving statements like "I am going to do more 'darna' series" after fully knowing the first two are HUGE duds at the box office.

Somehow with his mindless ventures the aura and the respect he commands starts slipping by and if he doesn't realize it sooner it is going to be a disaster. Disaster struck the moment Nisha Kothari entered the scene from the critically brandished "AAG". The sense of realism , a trademark of RGV, was missing. The first half of the movie goes in a frenzy pace capturing almost 3/4th of the original. Second half is so-and-so. Hell...I guess I can't say anymore about the movie. For the proof, try to get me the poster of the movie other than what you see in this post, I spent 15 minutes doing that. That speaks volumes for itself. And if you really care about some clue of how the movie is then go to indiafm.com.

As Ziya Us Salam summarised it perfectly, the director didn't have a clue as to who the target audience are - the "Sholay" loyalists, or the gen-next crowd. He just went nuts trying to compromise both and we landed up having a damp squib. Let this not movie signal the beginning of the end of the illustrious RGV career...

Lesson to be learnt: Some things are never meant to be touced....

Devilish Temptation...Aftermath of Appraisals...

Remember how adam was tempted by the serpent...
Remember how entire 'omkara' started by that casual remark from Saif's fellow teetoller...
Remember how the rift between Madhavan and Shalini started aggrevating because of small misunderstanding from Shalini (Sakhi/Saathiyan..)...
Remember how "Company" started collapsing because of small misunderstanding by Manisha Koirala...


In all these if you notice the consequences were terrible and we had one great story to look forward to. It's a small bug in our brain that HE himself has implanted in us. It happens that sometimes when we are absolutely 100% sure with something and satisfied to say the least, someone comes along and implants a small "thought" which negates our feeling. At first it just passes over our head. Then it starts prick you lightly, gently almost unnoticed. Unkowingly you start putting some more "thought" into it. A few more hours if you seem to be there by the person who originally put it, it starts growing on you and then finally before you know it your feelings are all bungled up. To sum it all up...

First there are rules.

Then there is an exception.

Then the exception becomes the rule.

-Radio , "City of God"

After seeing our ratings I wasn't p****d off that I ain't got a "S" rating. I was happy I wasn't given anything below "A". In fact there wasn't any complaint from the "team" (Missus Ponnan, Ranjit..) as such. But by the end of the day and the day that followed we were alll told again and again it was completely unfair for us being rated "M" and that we deserved an "S". Mind you till then no-one actually suggested we complain about it. It is just that everyone felt we deserved more. I knew this was the usual bantering that happens , hence didn't take much notice on it.

It was the arrival of Bhav that triggered the wrong signals. She was completely ecstasic and also absolutely stunned after coming to know how highly Manu thought of her when his feedback was sought for her appraisal. I mean after going through such rough patch and making quite a "scene" (there was a "scene" by the way...) getting such feedback just spirals you out of the world. The feelings can't be put in words. That's how she was. She was furious to know we got "M" and very strongly suggested that we speak to Sudha and get them reverted. Had she suggested once MAY be it would have been ignored.

But the discussion went on and on for at least another hour about how Prachi got reverted, how the Adarsh got his appraisal up, how hard we slogged on weekends, how we stayed back long aftert nights to accomplish the tasks, how "we" were better than her and surely there must have been a grave mistake in our appraisals , how all the people at Java batch have gotten "S",how ...on and on ..it went...

The damage done...the resolution taken up... not with full conviction though but nontheless after arguing to and fro about how it's not the question of money at hand but the future to look forward to where our appraisal history matters a lot, how we have the right to ask. I gave my nod though but still I am in that "second stage" of the thought tinkering process.

That night I missed the bus at the usual stop and got down at the other end of the NGV complex only to add to the misery. I had full 20 minutes to cover with nothing to distract my mind. IPod wasn't help either as my ears had become sore by then listening to it all day long. So the "thought" started gaining on me. It become much more than a "thought" with my talk to mom and dad. Finally when I told my roommates about it I knew I had to speak with "Sudha" and make her know that she was wrong,,,absolutely wrong,,,how could she,,,damn her.

Tomorrow is going to be very very intersting day..a day where I will know how good I am in sticking on to my own beliefs.,,"I don't care about ratings...as long as I know I have job at hand and my work gives me satisfaction..." only time will tell.....

What did Happen:
Writing this a day later, Haven't spoken with yer yet, haven't given that one last try yet, don't think will matter now...

The Extra Mile...

Proactiveness, delivering that extra bit than required...

That sums up my first ever appraisal history. We have done everything we could to deliver what was required. I always believed and still believe that without that extra mile there can be no progress, no real victory, no real achievement. It just doesn't make sense if that extra step is not taken.

Well it is now I see how difficult that is. In our course of events we are stuck with some problems which plague us for so long that we feel utterly butterly satisfactory and go on to get the job to completion. Our project is in desperate need of AJAX built into it but it has been postponed to no end. Similarily the reporting services threatens to replace all our 2 months odd work that we put in with its ludicrulously simply and extensive services that would give GridView a run for money with it's abilities.

These are just few of things that I remember. Every time Azeet asks " Are you doing anything new? Are you learning anything?" we are left with no answers because we have done nothing and it is always a stark reminder of the fact that what Paresh has left as a base we took off from there. This was my impression till Jash came by and earnestly asked me to tell him explain whatever there is to stored procedures.

I have learnt hell of a lot things before I pursued this from scratch and still there is that nagging feeling that I could have done more, could have done it better. May be that's why it is fully justified when she says what we all three lack is "PROACTIVENESS' and rated us accordingly. For a while I felt let down and cheated that "S" was not accorded and tried to make up mental defenses like we worked for a month continuosly without a break, cancelled my train ticket for a genuine reason, did everything we could on time, never once complained, never once said it can't be done , never once buckled and so on and so forth...

In spite of all that there is the question of "Proactiveness"..THAT IS the defining character...How we do? is left to us. Finally I would like to thank my RM Sudha for showing me what I lacked....

Quotes to quote

Unforgettable, Utterly unbelievable,

How would you feel if a climax of a highly suspensful film has a comic ending?


Incredulous, anger and more importantly incredibly stupid. After working for three weeks, 6 resources and with a cancelled ticket train, finding out that port number is what has caused the whole problem, I felt like dousing myself with kerosene...


It all started with Manu asking for reports using Reporting Services. He was very adamant that he get it only with Reporting services and he also made a very interesting remark. He said he was planning to make sure all the Program Managers start using it. Whoa...this coming from none other than Asst. Vice President my mind was dizzying to great heights and immediately set the focus upon mastering Reporting Services (if only I knew what was in store for me).

Only the day before I was going through those video tutorials about the reporting services and I knew that the only thing left was to drag and drop the ReportViewer control and give the path of the reportserver where the reports are hosted. phataphat I prepared two reports, deployed to the server, opened http://localhost/reports and then came the deadliest error ever

The selected report is not ready for viewing. The report is still being rendered or a report snapshot is not available. (.rsReportNotReady)

I looked first into the Reporting Services Configuration manager and to my utter shock nothing was configured. Tension was mounting (and it was going to haunt me for another three weeks...) and I called up Azeet. He came in the evening (His Majesty has called him up..hear ...hear...) and we found that the entire reporting services components were deleted. By day end somehow he managed to uninstall and re-install Reporting Services components.

That should have done the trick but sadly it didn't. There are so many events that followed and to cut the REALLY REALLY Long story short, I would summarize it now

1. Reconfiguring the whole Reporting Services Configuration.
2. Disabling the snapshot isolation ( really the whole forums of MSDN couldn't show any other better results except 4 pages and there is a bug in GOOGLE that we found....if you want check out by googling rsReportNotReady and try clicking on the 6 th or 7th or any page after 5th ....)
3. Setting up new databases for the whole damn thing.
4. Various permission levels. This I have gone to the extent of setting up the permissions at DOM object level.
5. Most importantly clicking on the same pages again and again and again for something like 20 times.

On top of this we had following actors coming along : Anil (SSA,8 + exp), Azeet.. the man himself (SSA, 10+), Ramakanth (something more than the other two, 10), Krishna (2+, supposed to have aquainted with REporting Services), and two other guys. For each guy I had to tell them the problem we are facing. Invariably they would ask me to create a fresh report, deploy a fresh report, do all the things that I have done from google search ( what the heck...i just can't tell them I tried ALLL that ....). I also realized something new that this tool was entirely new to them. All to no avail and there was one real good outcome though:

the permission accorded to sa was not being accepted by reporting services.

the only outcome. There was one deadly option that we hadn't tried and that was re-installation of the entire SQL Server. This just was not acceptable to us. This whole episode lasted more than two and a half wretchful weeks. The icing on the cake was the last time we touched the task.

It was August 14th, tuesday and my train was at 7 p.m. Leave was applied and everything was fine. I was following hte same pattern of explaining every guy who had come to debug on how to deploy,delete and what I had done. Around 2 came the bombshell. She wanted me to cancel the ticket and make sure that the job is done and then only I could leave.

For a second I though she would bite back the words and let someone else take over the job left. But man, I was left with something I can never forget in my life, she plainly said cancel your leave, get the job done and then only you can go. Holy crap, it seemed so ridiculous and there was binding fury building within me for the simple fact that me staying a little while longer was in no way going to help us debug the problem as the guy who is supposedly goign to help me was out for lunch and he wasn't due by 4.

With traffic like Bangalore that wsa THE last chance of me catching hte train directly. Time passed by. Looking back that was a blessing in disguise. Earlieer it was decided I had to come back by Friday. But now she gave me the permission to take Friday leave because of the "sacrifice" I made. ( he..he..he.... if only she knew that that night only I packed and set to Hyderabad that same day....boy o boy...that's something...)

Anyways that was the final torment we had. After I came back on monday Ranjit and me had gone back to roots to diagnose the problem and yes my friends that was alll...Ain't no need debugging the rsReportNotReady crap...it was jsut that small mistake of port number and the sudden realisation that it was not http://localhost/reports that was needed for the report viewer control and reportserver was sufficient for enabling the reports as part of website.

As I said at the beginning I would love to have doused myself in a huge tank of kerosene and immolate myself....chee...so freaking stupid......Anyways that was not entirely the solution. But it did set us into thinking in other way of garnering the reports i.e. the hard way...the real hard way of doing them ourselves..

Anyways this is one such issue that plagued me so much that I am not to going to forget it for ages to come. Added to that is that our highly stubborn resolve and i-can't-defend-her-accusations kind of RM. A deadliest match...

Sardar strikes again...

The time I started this blog I made a mental note in my mind not to succumb to forwards or silly
cut-copy-paste thing but the recent sardar jokes are tooo tempting to break the rule this one time.....

So here is our Sardar....

Prince Charles & Sardarji were having dinner.
Prince said, "Pass the wine you divine".
Sardar thinks "how poetic"
Sardar says, "pass the custard you bastard".
***********************************************

Sardar at bar in New York.
Man on his right says "Johny Walker single"
Man on his left says "Peter Scotch single"
Sardar says - "Baljith Singh Married"
***********************************************

Boss : am giving u job as a driver. STARTING salary Rs.2000/-, is it o.k
Sardar : U R great sir! Starting salary is o.k.......but??
how much is DRIVING salary...?
***********************************************

Sardar's theory : Moon is more impt than Sun, coz it gives light at
night when light is needed & Sun gives light during the day when light
is not needed!!!
***********************************************

2 sardars are driving a Car, one puts on the indicator and asks the
other to check whether its working, he puts his head out and says
YES...NO...YES...NO...YES...NO...
***********************************************
Sardar shouting 2 his girl friend " u said v will do register marriage
and cheated me, I was waiting 4 u yesterday whole day in the post
office....
***********************************************

Sardar is in a dissection class of cockroach. He cuts its 1 leg, and
says, "chal", it walks.
He cuts 2nd and 3rd legs and said, "chal" , it walks.
He cuts all the legs and said, "chal...." Finally he wrote the conclusion......
...... "after all the legs of a cockroach are cut - it becomes deaf......"
***********************************************

A Tamilian call up sardar and asks " tamil therima??"
Sardar got mad, angrily replied.... "Hindi tera baap!!!"
***********************************************

2 sardarjis looking at Egyptian mummy.
Sar 1 : Look so many bandages, pakka lorry accident case.
Sar 2 : Aaho, lorry number is also written...BC 1760!!!....
***********************************************

A sardar on an interview 4 da post detective.
Interviewer : who killed Gandhi?
Sardar : Thank u sir 4 giving me d job, I will start investigating.......
***********************************************

Time of Appraisals and Appreshensions..

The time of appraisals has come. We are asked to rate ourselves in three departments i.e.  Organization, Project and Self on a scale
of 1 to 5 and the justification for the rating. (1 as highest...)

Here are some of the most senseless justifications for getting 5 rated

• I  made a point to fill my timesheets regularly and sincerely. (what a big favor mate...)
  
• Took Satyam Way certification exam and cleared it with 90 percent. (It's mandatory for
  
• Christ's Sake...)
  
• Attended training sessions for QMS (Quality blah-blah..) - so???
  
• Have always done my module on time...(i see..you get 5 rated because you have done
  
• something on time????)
  
• I am preparing for SQL as I am planning to do the SQL certification.
  

There are some valid ones though and some are plain stupid. For the past few days I hear some
one or the other talking about appresials and I must have heard "Are.. amit ko S rating aya re.."
at leat 5 times by now. And there are worried people wondering what would they get. Hrithik
(a.k.a Sultan) is very definite that he is going to get nothing but 'A' rating because Mitesh ain't
gonna give him anything more. Ranjit was wondering whether there is any remote chance that
we might cross the 'A' level mark.

Jash is somewhat tensed and forthright in thinking his appresials are going to be screwed
because of his dealings with his RM. He is one of those people who refuse to be put down by the
administrative bull-shit. He takes initiatives on his own and goes to lengths to solve other people
problems . One can easily mistake him for a nut-crack who gives a damn about rules with his stubborness, unwillingness to obey the rules and label him as a show-off, attention-mongerer etc. Partly you may be right but he is a person of immense fighting spirit and there is so much
rationale in his thinking and all the doubts he asks.

It is just that it is very difficult to calm him down because the persons who he seeks the answers
from are just uncomfortable to admit they don't know and accept his way of thinking. So they take the classic bossy attitude and brush him off...well it was at one of those 
confrontations he was warned "Be careful...your appresials are coming soon.." to which
our hero gallantly replied

" Give me a 'T' if you want to. Also if you are not satisified with my work, please release me...".

Damn mate.. I have to give it to you. It is "this" incident that is bothering him now and he doesn't even mince any words saying " Damn man.... I am not budha and idealist kind of shit..
I want "S" rating... if I don't I am going to screw them all.."

Well as per me I really don't care what I am rated at this point ( but nothing less than "A"...). I am sane and not a saint either as I see no point in working and slogging our ass off for the last six months in a project whose requirments kept changing and changing and are still...changing.....

Maybe tomorrow I will get done with my appresial thingy...

• 
  

Are we seeing an End of Piracy???

Before you even think of blowing my brains out by spilling 'LimeWire', e-donkey, u-Torrents and putting some gyaan in my innoncent mind I am talking about 'Tollywood' baby..yeah..tollywood..

Just as I was walking past Sangeet Music, Koti realising it is better to download than buy the songs there stood out 50*30 poster with Genelia and Vishnu in a cliched romantic pose facing each other and a huge circular stamp highlighting the rate 'Rs.25 CD/- , Rs.35 DVD/-'. Holy Cow!!!!! Hearing that it was a movie that was worth seeing from the beginning of the year with strings of flops I was bit disappointed to have missed seeing it. Now with 25 bucks as the tag price I just barged into the shop took the cd, made sure it was sealed (it seeemed not one of them had a seal anyway...)paid the bill and got out. Then again I got a glimpse of the the other movies like 'Bommarillu', 'Nuvvu Vastanante Nenoddantana','Munna','Pokiri' all within the price range of 30-70 (VCD's that is...).

It was after I came home I realized this might just mean the end of piracy in telugu. I mean who in rightful mind would want to rent a movie (2o), buy two cd's (20) and get a copy (40 in total) when the m.r.p is some 20 above. You must be crazy to do that sort of thing. The pirce surely plays a lot in this danda. I am sure vcd business in telugu must have multiplied by at least 2 times since 1 year.

I remember the time when I decided I would never buy a VCD after seeing price tags like 220, 250. Things have changed , so have I.

Long Live Tollywoood!!!

"The Hindu" commits unpardonable Blasphemy...

For once in my life I am very disappointed and shocked with "The Hindu", more than that I am also angered for what it has done. If an editor of paper like "New York Times" couldn't hold his mouth shut and control himself spoiling the fun of millions of fans around the world with his review, revealing all the major plotholes, I don't see why any idiotic reason for esteeemed paper like "The Hindu" to reproduce it a day before official release filling the whole back page. What the hell was the so-called Reader's Omnibus doing? What was going on in his mind when it went for his editing?? Has he gone nuts?? Was it not enough to understand that such reviews spoil the fun of the reader before he even has a chance to explore on it's own. These thing could have waited.

I only wished it would have been any other paper other than "The Hindu". To top it all the another disgraceful thing being revealilng the major plothole and the suspense. Will he or won't he survive? One of THE reasons for the hype sorrounding the book and the excitement that runs with in is out. Just like that. This time though, I can't understand on the front page??

What is wrong with "The Hindu" and has there not been any accusation letters? Is it trying to supress them by not printing? I am sure I am not the only one feeling the pain and the betrayal of one of the most prestigious papers in country. One good thing though like some of the foreign sickos it hasn't reproduced the leaked version editing out the details and getting the kick out it. Well I am grateful to it on that front...

Shame on "The Hindu"....

Was it worth the Wait???

"Am I really stupid? Is it really that necessary to go so early and get?" was my first thought as the alarm rang from the phone. Even after that gung-ho I made with my previous post the true reason for me to get the book and complete was becuase I didn't want Anyone telling me the spoiler. Else who the hell cares about being part of the crowd???

Brushing my teeth I set out to FORUM. The guard at the entrance guided me to the parking lot from where I was sent to second floor from stairs. I was in for a shock. There was such a huge queue I thought for a while I was imagining. From the look of it I didn't expect so much crowd to turn out. Starting from the entrance the lining went around the 'Firangi Pani' to the 'Sweet House' and all the way back till 'Pizza Hut'. More was in store. What really piqued me was the "children" section was not the most rather there were more of teenagers and tweenagers. Not to mention old people too. Standing there I saw more and more people coming, some alone, a boy or a girl accompanied by a parent. I desperately wanted a Cam with me to take in that moment. I saw many of them taking pictures .Words of SwamiNaidu rang back "You never know when they (moments) come, when they do you shouldn't be at loss and cursing yourself". A phone with a cam is worth...(if you can rhyme it ...do it on the comments... :) )

Sunaina of Radio Indigo was there to start the proceedings and everything there was on air. The crowd cheered along as the curtains closed down with a countdown. The crowd started milling in slowly and it was excruciating wait. Finally I rested my hands on the book and went straight to Jash's room and began reading. On the way I picked up a big packet of Lays that was over in an hour of my reading...

Without wasting much of your time further...it is worth it...I mean the book is worth the wait and is one heck of a book There are more than enough deaths in this one and not all at one time. The action starts right from the word go. Harry, Ron and Hermoine fill the book entirely so much so that Hogwarts, their professors are all cut off from the narrative. So if you are expecting to see detentions, quidditch, some bantering just forget it. This should have been obvious given the way the last book has ended they have much more important tasks at hand that is to find and destroy the Horcuxes.

We get to see a more mature Harry who is faced with so many responsiblites and difficulties. Without Dumbledore and his advices I was hoping against hope he would resurface in a dramatic fashion akin to Gandalf the White in Lord of the Rings. With that in mind my impatient was brewing with every chapter. Before I set on reading , I wondered may be there would be someone else who might have taken up Dumbledore's place and continue to guide him. But it turns out all he has is himself and his best friends. Through series of violent (as I said there is much too action in this book...)and miraculous escapades the task of destroying the Horcuxes goes on.

This saga is a very very well thought out one and it shows a lot. All must have been familiar by now the intricacies and the links that Rowling patches up between the previous ones. This too has some that takes you back as far as the first one. You see Ollivander, Gringotts guard surfacing and they play a part in this.

There is utter chaos on the streets. Ministry of Magic is overthrown. Both muggles and non-muggles are under dangere. Death eaters are let loose, and so is the HeadMaster. You will get to know the REAL Dumbledore and Snape's tales in this that changes everything you know so far. Like all the climatic showdowns of sagas the battle of good and evil takes place with Hogwarts as the battleground. Who wins? Who Survies? (If you haven't read the leaked ones and also the blasphemous New York Times Review) I suggest feel the heat yourself. Don't let anyone spoil the fun for you.

The only glitch in the book is the Epilogue: whcih it could have been done without. All in all an enjoyable saga. Years to come one truly will miss Harry and his adventures. I for one would be reading all the seven in near future. Let me see how my thoughts are then..

Enjoy Reading!!!!!!!!!!!