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...

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