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!!!