Understand the Connections

Girl
Mirror Oh my dear Mirror
am looking to become even more fairer
The more the brighter I look
could get into everyone`s good book.

Mirror
In search of looking good
You wander city and even the wood
don`t you know that beauty lies in the eyes of beholder
Just look deep inside little closer.

Girl
If beholders eyes could spell truth
every girls life would then run smooth
there is a myth that beauty is only fair skin
these arguements you just cant win.

Mirror
Life is not about winning or losing
do good deeds and be careful in your choosing
in gods eyes all women are really equal
just realize that even "Black is Beautiful"

Germany here I come.....

I am in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a business trip for a week.

Was in Dhaka,Bangladesh for 4 days for a product presentation cum workshop. Its always interesting to know that people listen and ask lots of questions which are intelligent and practical.

Dhaka is very similar to calcutta I was told by the local citizen though I dont remember the calcutta I know or seen long back. Thought Dhaka was little familiar with old Delhi with the rickshwas and crowd etc.

On my way back one of the friend advised me to head to airport early enough as things might get delayed and how true was he. Good for me that I listened to his words. The airport immigration in Dhaka take lot of time in clearing the queue. BTW was observing a local politician who was behind me in the queue and its
a pity to  have such bangladeshi politicians. He was rude with everyone and trying to show off and demanding he has to be sent before and has links etc. When the security were doing their role in the manual security check he got offended that the security guard mistreated him and called him "bloody fool" and demanded to talk to his superior immediately.

The security guard was so innocent that he called his supervisor and told him "sir one political leader sir here he tells me I did some fault and want to complain sir can you come sir".

Nobody respected that political leader and he was still not realizing it. Even his wife and son who accompained him were staying away from him throughout showing a body language that they dont agree with his actions. Overall it was a good trip and productive.

WoW its been more than 5 years since I penned this poem and had this in my view when browsing some old mails. Its cool and I really like this one ;)

Let me know what you think of this poem..





One day I was sitting with all my friends
and just looked around,
I see all of them being happy and holding
their partners hand with great bound.

I look up and ask god,
Why me, why me, only so alone,
I dont hear a word back, loneliness
is really very gruesome.

I feel very sad and alone
but cannot stop there. Believe
that one day an angel comes
calling, so I have to carry on.

The waiting is killing,
it makes me go mad,
again I asked the almighty
Why me ? why me ? only so alone.

The new year is nearing, will I have
someone special who loves and shares,
and with all her tender touches makes
me feel that she really cares.

I know my angel would come to me oneday
but was not sure when that would be.
Wanted that to happen soon, so that
I can feel her close inside me.

Just Before the beginning of new year,
I met you my love,
I cannot even ask myself
as I already gave me to you.

I wanted to know and ask the god
Why me ? Why me ? what have I done ?
this time he whispered back
"you two are my favorite one(s),
where this match, I made, specially in heaven"

Was in Muscat, Oman from 4th May till 8th for an important Customer meeting. One of our operator was not very satisfied with the outcome of our product and had to meet them to discuss on the issue and get it resolved with our Design Unit. Its always interesting to have discussions with big guns of big companies. They show lot of maturity and character in discussions, its a win-win for us and for them as I could close the meeting to their satisfaction. Hmm when dealing with millions of dollars at stake and also having to save the companies face and brand name is tough and I had to show lot of leadership skills. At the end it was something to be proud about and satisfied to have performed the job well done. :)

Was super excited with the hackathon event in the office on Apr 26th & 27. The participation levels were
very high and had more than 80% participation. Was part of the core organizing team aswell and it was
not that easy to arrange and keep the buzz. We had many programs and activities all technical arranged
from Apr 2nd itself to motivate people.

Developing an internal web application using HTML5+CSS+PHP and so far going good...
The intro line for our hackathon was "when was the last time you tried something new" and its very
apt its really exciting trying something new..... though I consider myself an open person who tries
to "sharpen the saw" regularly this was indeed exciting.

The news is very sad and makes me think of all those wonderful devices apple has introduced. I would have personally watched steve jobs talking and presenting atleast thousand times, to get an inspiration on how to do things right.

I think Steve Jobs can be called as the "Mahatma Gandhi of the Tech World". Both have many similarities like

a) They had lot of self belief
b) Bold in their decisions
c) Their thought & speech are always really inspirational
d) Men of few words (but very effective)
e) Had a great following
f) Leaders in their own domain
g) Made people who ridiculed them look silly later

RIP

SPM role is something which really interested me always. Having worked with R&D for quite long I feel getting into a role like SPM where you get to work coperatively wtih Sales, Marketing, Business Units and Development would be really great and challenging. The business side of that role is good and building relations with customer is somethign which I believe would be able to carry out well.

WHen I took lot of time to read about this SPM in our intranet office site go this http://www.strategicproductmanager.com/ page through google. Yet to go through it completely.

We have this monthly newsletter/magazine in our office and its really interesting and entertaining to read. Recently it completed 1 year of inception and wrote some words of appreciation to the editorial team. Check below

From baby steps to turning one year
its all exciting and enriching to read I swear,
a budding editorial team which is above par,
'Melange' is truely EIL`s golden media star.

Good beginning with the 'From the chair'
on real thoughts from hedwig which are fair,
the team talks through the "Editorial Scribbles'
show their pen`s might with easy dribbles.

The R&D teams actions caught with the 'Node waves'
no more updates are hidden under teams cubicle caves,
Catch the catchy photos in the 'ERI Gallery'
wonder the skillsket of employees camera mastery.

'A La Carte', 'Pod Cast' and 'Yours Truly'
exposes employees other side very purely,
'The Lifestlye', 'Ask Melange' and with 'Money Minter',
more entertaining than what comes from real media`s printer.

oh Melange - What a year it has been,
and for the hard work thats gone 'Behind the scene',
great job editorial team and keep on your pursue,
we will eagerly look forward for the next issue.

Some times we come across very powerful words or sentences which makes you really really thinking. Its been almost a year since these words keeps ringing in my head again and again.

What has he lived
To call it a life
Was it believed
To keep him alive

These words were from a poem that was written by my wife. She is best in whatever she does and I like these words very much. It makes me humble.

hmm, penned a few words on Agile :)

Agile Poem
------------

Starting the day with daily Standup,
update each other on really whatz up,
what I did , what I will do and what puzzles me,
improvement and impediments on board for everyone to see.

With the poker card on planning game
its never that two user stories are the same.
Its about being roughly right than precisely wrong
then commit to our PO for sprint thats two week long.

Split the stories into easy task
pick them as you wish and dont bother to ask.
get knowledge and help each other with pair programm
Continous integration & TDD will bring us peace and calm.

The acceptance criteria and def. of done is our scope
we even pick something from the sprints corner of hope
preparing everything for the sprint demo
the communication calender is our easy promo.

Do retro to share learnings and improve to our best
use the stickies, categorize and continue our quest
will never again go back to the method of waterfall
for we know and beleive that agile is "best of all".

Scene 2) September 30th 2009 - Near the new under-construction flyover at Kotturpuram, waiting to take left from Boat club road to Kotturpuram - Time 9 AM

Traffic Police Stops the car: Why is your number plate not visible ?
(The recent car cleaning service had made the number plate`s first letter disappear slightly and my car number plate is UP registred for which I had got proper NOC from UP travel authorities and got the vehicle to run in Chennai roads. )
Me: The recent car cleaning service has resulted in this, I will fix this immediately.

TP: Do you have the papaers ? license , NOC etc
I give him the RC, old license copy and the NOC
TP: This is not the NOC (ofcourse I gave him the correct NOC only but he refused to beleive )
TP: Ok park the car in the side.
Parked the Car. He checks the papers again and tells me that the insurance has not been renewed.

I always provide the expired car insurance paper first to the traffic police so that he forgets everything else and argues on the expired insurance and after sometime I show him the renewed latest insurance papers and he goes mad as he doesn't have a case against me now. This works always.

TP: You need to pay 500 for number plate and 1000 rs for NOC expiration, totally pay 1500 rs.
ME: Okay sir I will pay the fine.
I get down from the vehicle.

TP: (Shocked) Okay it will take an hour to get the formalities done.
ME: that should be fine sir
TP: (looking at the watch) at what time is your office
ME: 9 o clock
TP: So its already 9 am
ME: Yes its getting late for me
TP: Ok forget the fine, just pay me 200rs and you can push off
ME: No sir I wont do that.
TP: What if I insist on paying the fine
ME: Thats okay sir, I am ready to pay the fine.

Here the TP introduces me to another TP and explains the story but he twists it a little and claims that I expect him to give a warning.

All these times I give a very serious and stubborn look. However I was really keen on paying the fine and not ready to pay the bribe.

TP: (after waiting for around 5 mintues) Ok fix the number plate soon
ME: Yes I will do.

Traffic police is confused on why this person is ready to pay the fine of 1500rs but not to pay the bribe 200rs and he is little scared as he had openly asked for the bribe to let me go free.

I just walk away without paying any money and planning in mind that I should fix the number plate very soon.

Within span of three weeks in this month I stood firm and refused to give bribe to traffic police who caught me, the outcome is really very interesting.

It seems you cannot take a `U` turn at the first signal when you take kathibara junction flyover in the road which leads to Ekaduthangal and instead take a right inside to Guindy Industrial Estate via Alacatel-Lucent office and get out via the Guindy Bus stop and connect to Guindy - Saidapet road.

However I have been taking `U` turn in that signal for the past one month without realising that I should not.

Scene 1) September 10th 2009 - Kathibara junction flyover - Time around 7pm

Traffice Police: Stop Stop Stop
Me stopping the car and parked it in the road side and asked him whats the problem

TP: Don`t you see that you cannot take `U` turn and its only right turn which is allowed in this signal
Me: Oops Sorry Sir, I did not know this and I have been using this for almost a month now

At this point the discussion continues and the TP wants me to show the papers. He takes me to the Traffic Sargent.

TS: You have to pay a fine of 150 for taking U Turn and your NOC is expired, totally pay 600 rs. (My no objection certificate has indeed expired and I did not know what to do to renew that.)
Me: Ok Sir, I will not take this U again here and tell me what needs to be done to get the NOC renewed.

TS: No first you pay the fine of 600 rs
ME: Ok, I will pay the fine.
Here I get ready to pay 600 rs and ask for a receipt

TS: (Shocked) Come on sir, ofcourse you can pay 600rs and earn that money again however that is not the point we are insisting things only for your safety. Think what would happen if you take a U turn and get into an accident, it is not good. So kindly avoid and do what you can (ie pay him bribe).
ME: (Refusing to pay any amount without receipt) Ok Sir, Its my mistake and I wont do that again, fine me for this offense or consider giving me a warning without taking any money.

The TP & TS realised I am very stubborn and not keen to jump on or take shortcut to not pay the fine. They finally said to be careful in future and let me go without any fine or money after 20 minutes of ordeal.

Having used lot of Make and Clearmake was definitely impressed with reading the FAQ on SCons. Looks like this software construction tool is a superior alternative to the classic "Make" build tool. I would definitely like to explore more on this as I really feel software engineering needs a better alternative for Make.

BTW, the another tool that I used recently and was very much impressed is Hudson, really very cool and its impressive to know that is a one man`s (Kohsuke Kawaguchi) effort. Its really a great job and Hudson is very simple and easy to setup and implement.

Had a colleague in office coming to me for fixing a bugzilla issue, they were not able to change bug status in the buzilla 3.2.2. I had to help him as he had taken inputs from me for installing and setting it up and considers me a very good expert on the technical side (really ?)

I consider myself very good in debuggin issues and I have trouble shooted successfully in the past, with that reputation at stake I had to solve his problem.

I noticed that whenever the user changes bug status from NEW to ASSIGNED, it automatically gets into CLOSED state and also tries to move the database to another. Though I could understand why this action should happen but was not sure why the bug status and database movement are interconnected.

After looking at the gui for couple hours and not proceeding anywhere, went inside the bugzilla install and checked the code. I was able to find why it was doing the reported unexpected behaviour and could fix it easily, definitely had lot of satisfaction going back home after this. :)

One of the places I like the most in any country is the Airport. You see different types of people all very busy and looking forward to their journey. Travelers are interesting to observe. Happened to visit Sweden again for official work and this time I felt really bored with the long Chennai -> Frankfurt, Germany -> Copenhagen, Denmark - Sweden,Karlskrona journey. Anywaz I am here finally and enjoying the temporary cold weather when compared to the Hot Chennai. I remember somebody once said that the weather is only in your mind and not outside. Very true to think while I was in School/College never bothered about on raining/shining or cold, however it matters a lot when you are grown up.

In my work environment I have a Linux workstation and a windows Laptop, I regularly keep in touch with people using Instant messengers of Yahoo, GTalk and MSN. However after upgrading my windows laptop to Vista I could no longer login to Yahoo IM as our network is firewall protected so for sometime I was not using any IM till I found PIDGIN.

Pidgin was definitely the Ultimate IM i was searching for, it ultimately allowed me to login to GTalk, Yahoo, MSN and Sametime in one single IM tool. But things did not work the first instance as I struggled to get through the issues like

"SSL Handshake failed"

"Connection timed out"

The above errors were mainly for connecting GTalk through Pigdin, I googled and tried all permutation & combination for the pidgin settings but with no success.

Finally after lot of reading and searching realised that it needs correct settings as my work environment is behind firewall and all ports were blocked except 80. So finally I got Pigdin Gtalk to work with the below setup


However I shutdown my laptop went home and came back the next day to work and could not login to pidgin-Gtalk as it was facing "SSL Handshake failed" error. After spending sometime realised that https looks for the default port 443 and the below settings worked perfectly fine.


For the past one week I am happily chatting with pidgin and really like it. BTW the version is 2.5.5 on windows vista.

December 19th morning 6.25 am, me and my wife welcomed our new born boy baby. It was really a very happy moment and I was in the hospital labour room with my wife to give her some moral support when it happened. I am really in an exhausted state even after 8 days and my friends and relatives tell me the sleepless nights to continue till the baby is atleast 1 year old. Its more so difficult for the mom as the baby needs to be fed every 2 hours. Goodbye sleep and welcoming parenthood. :)

Had my office laptop upgraded to Windows Vista as our enterprise environment is on Vista now. I am pretty much impressed with Windows Vista and its definitely a winner, though it took me sometime to get used to the look and feel, its very good to be honest.




Things I like about this Windows Vista

1) It loads really fast
2) The look and feel is very good
3) Automatically saves personal outlook pst files
4) Adobe Acrobat Reader is really great on Vista
5) Movies and Music rocks

Though I have never had my Windows crashing before ( I am scared here to say this as it might lead to one...) heard and read that Vista does not crash at all.

I am back to India after working in Europe for a very short assignment, got to see Sweden and Denmark a lot. Had wonderful sight-seeing time for both these places and I really like the slow life in Europe. Having your wife along is the best and definitely had fun time together, she has more energy than me and pulled me for lot than I would normally do.

However sometime during june 3rd week got to hear through my friend that one of my friend in Delhi died of heart attack, 33/34 is not a age for that. He worked with me in one of my previous company and a very nice and gentle guy. Sometimes these types of news brings your motion into halt and make you think about life and its ups and downs. Probably this might be the time to count our blessings.

I wish and pray that my friends soul rest in peace.

Its been very very long since I really wrote anything on my blog. Life had been busy to actually write and also realised I get into the writers block very frequently. Anyways, I am currently in Karlskrona, Sweden for a business trip.

Karlskrona is a beautiful city in Sweden, I am quite enjoying my trip here. Will post whenever possible.

Well I was in Netherlands for an official work and had just come back 3 days before. Everything and anything in Netherlands is almost Dutch, many times I tried to login to my blogger account to post something I could not actually get what the blogger.nl in dutch actually refers to. Thought would wait to go back to India to write, and here I am.

The trip was supposed to be 3 weeks, but had to be extended to 4 weeks due to work requirements, I could not complain about that as I had an good apartments all for ourselves and also had my lovely wife with me, it was so fun in netherlands, no wonder why you other colleagues of jealous of being lucky.

One thing worth mentioning about the Dutch is their food habits, they eat mostly bread and soup and finish their dinner very early in the evening like 5-6pm, this is common among all dutch people, they start to work early at 7am in the morning and go home at 4pm, good system indeed.

Netherlands is a good place but you tend to get bored after your 2nd week, sure it has many places to visit like in any new foreign country but still you get bored, or should I say that I got bored.....

Its been almost one month since I actually thought of writing anything, and these days I am not really concentrating much on Technology, I realise that information on everything and anything, whether its technology or world news is reaching each individual much faster. Thanks to the increasing speed and density of broadbands at every homes.

But still I am quite eager and looking forward to the introduction of iPhone and the reviews on it, by June 30th it should be available to the market. Lets see what it brings......

Back to India and very busy with my wedding. YES, I am married now and have a lovely wife. Life looks more beautiful now. Though I would actually not post personal updates, thought my regular readers should know about my new status.

We had come to Netherlands in the best period, in terms of the weather conditions. The climate is really very pleasant and gives us more opportunities to roam around and have a good feel of the city during the weekends when we dont work.

I had covered, so far
1) Herman Renz Circus
2) SiteSeeing Trip to Belgium Brussels
3) Biking in the Netherlands country side
4) Kaukenhof the flower show
5) Watching "Mr.Bean`s Holiday" in the local cinema

The place we are living now is called Breda and we had to travel 8 minutes in the local train to get to our workplace. The most common thing which strikes in Netherlands is Biking (cycling), irrespective of age, young or old, almost many people travel using bi-cycles, this seem to be the most preferred way of travelling. The roads here has separate lanes for the bi-cycles aswell.

Another beautiful thing about Netherland is the flowers, in the place of Kaukenhof we get to see lots and lots of beautiful flowers and very different and striking flowers with all mix and matching of colors. The trip on the way itself surprises you with flower plants which is strikingly beautiful with large colorful fields of different colors on both sides of the roads.

I am in Netherlands from April 8th for some official work. Its a beautiful country and well connected to other European countries like England, France, Belgium. More updates and photos to follow.

"President of Napster Brad Duea says the future of music is not iPods and other mp3 players, but music-enabled mobile phones. "

Sure thats how its going to be, remember the 1980`s and 1990`s and even the 2000`s where everyone had multiple devices like Photo Camera, Disk Man, Mobile Phone, Walk Man`s. And we need to carry all or most of this during our outing/picnic`s, now everything is compacted and available into one single device, thats the new generation Mobile phones.

They take better pictures, play your music, call/talk with others and directly send the pictures taken to the printers through bluetooth. Web/Internet browsing had also become features available in these smart mobile phones and the good thing is, with all these features and capabilities the size of the phones are not bigger, they are compact,sleek and very beautiful.

The second half of 2007 is going to be very interesting in this mobile market space, as thats the time iPhone from Apple will get introduced and that is going to set the bar very high for the other mobile phone makers and we are really going to see lots of interesting and innovative mobile devices for sure.

Boy Oh! Boy what a year this has been. 2006 had been really very very exciting for me in many ways, lots and lots of things happened in this year for me, and the beauty of everything is I never ever really thought these things would unfold this way. I changed job, relocated to new place, visited Croatia, lot of interesting challenges I accomplished in my old job which was greatly appreciated and lot more that I achieved in the new work within months of joining.

But the one thing I would cherish and remember always is that I met someone very special in the last day of this year. I am really on cloud nine now and this year had finished in a great way for me. Looking forward for a wonderful 2007 and wishing everyone to have a rocking new year.

The Picture says is all. Btw, its more apt for Men than women. :)