A Grand Exodus?

I was feeding the old adage, "Oh! its just a stone's throw away" for the past 26 years of my life (that is right from the day I was born) whether I had to shuttle between home and school, my hostel room and college or from my current apartment to office. Many have nursed a grudge against my vantage position of having both my place of abode and place of work in earshot distance and some have even shown explicit pangs of jealousy (more so because of their plight of not enjoying what I've been enjoying for all these years). But then, any good thing has to come to an end. Isn't that the name of the game? I am happy my good times lasted for 26 years and though it does give me the creeps of commuting long distance in the days and months to come, I am only hoping it gives me a new set of experience that I start nourishing and not become a victim of excessive traveling (now whatz that phobia called?).

The reason for all this very post is the fact that today is the last day I am enjoying the fact of staying close to office. Itz a new ball game when I come back on Monday (wow..long hols are always fun:)).

Staying close for ALL these years and now moving away, does deserve a Grand Exodus!

Until later,
On the move....

Message to the future

I happened to stumble upon this site called "F u t u r e M e. o r g" where one can actually leave any kinda message in their website and decide when the message needs to be delivered back to the mail id. I thought this was quite kewl and I actually went and left a message there to be delivered to me 10 years down the line! (hopefully I retain my yahoo id till or vice-versa). Ain't it fun to read about something that I had written 10 years back?

Collage

I felt that this would be the best way to put some of the most prominent thoughts running in my mind over the past three weeks. Read on...

One of my close friends got married and I had a chance to visit Guntur and Vijayawada having some amazing fun out there.

Made a very adventurous journey from Coimbatore to Bangalore traveling in one of the most inhuman conditions that reminded me of my early shuttles between Delhi and Pilani (some 7 years back!).

Been thinking for a while about the havoc caused by the abundance of rain (or lack of infrastructure) in Bangalore.

Enjoy listening to music from the latest gadget that I own (which sports an in-build mp3 player, flash drive, FM radio, FM recording and a digital voice recorder). I hope to start an audio blog soon (fingers crossed!).

Catching up with the "voracious readers" of Bangalore by joining EasyLib (thanks to Xavier)

And last but definitely not the least, I am looking forward to September 5th (with loads of mixed feelings)!

They are in no particular order (no I don't want to use the word "random" here!), and maybe that is why I felt calling it a "collage".

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and..

Bangalore suddenly seemed hot and humid
Friday didn't bring in the chorus cheers of TGIF (I vaguely remember someone calling it OGIF - Oh! God, itz Friday)
The couch potato in me was whining about the programs or lack of in the numerous channels.
The mouse potato in me was frowning at the very look of the computer
Friends looked liked strangers and strangers looked like aliens (I didn't want to think how aliens would've looked like!)
The traffic looked like leeches and earthworms climbing on each other

I could've gone further, but the mind had to be controlled lest it would wander astray with more preposterous thoughts.

Waking up on the wrong side of the bed is definitely not a good idea, but doesn't one have to sleep first to wake up?

SNAFU

I was scouting the various newspapers at office after having lunch. My eyes caught this word "SNAFU" mentioned in one of the articles. The word looked a bit familiar to me and I remembered coming across this word somewhere and it wasn't a normal word. As the adage goes, curiosity kills the cat, I came back to my cubicle and googled for the word. The moment I saw its expansion, I knew where I heard it, but what surprised me was the etymology of the word. The below two links give interesting and hilarious information about the word.

http://www.snafu.com/Snafu/SnafuStory.html
http://www.pahrahdiseonline.com/SNAFU.htm

Wonder how many would feel SNAFU everyday in their life?

Google Earth and Moon

If you thought all those GPS technology that was extensively used in "Enemy of the State" was all smoke and mirror, its time you change that opinion. Check out the latest of the releases from Google's Beta programs, the Google Earth and Google Moon. Seeing is believing. So see'em all!

On a positive note

The mind is already racing and in its peak while the body is just stirring up to face another day. Commands and controls are fired all over. The list is made and re-made and re-sorted. Priorities are assigned and re-assigned. It all ends up in one big conundrum, but clarity in chaos is still sought. The plan is walked through a million times, before the show begins. But as the show starts, more chaos sets in. Mr. Murphy lurking around the corner, waiting for the perfect opportunity, sees it coming all the time, always his way. Things go haphazard and desperate attempts are made to set things right. The dust appears to settle down, while the sun already starts to set in. The day has just gone by and those precious hours of the day spill well over into the night.

What went wrong? The task was no Herculean one. It was all there, the sequence and the steps. It would've been a walk in the park to blindly follow the steps. Appeared to be a no-brainer, till it actually ate the very brain.

Poor Maawli looked lost. He had it all ready and it was well executed in his mind, but things got out of his hand when the show started. It wasn't like Maawli was just fooling away. He has his reasons; there were unexpected and unprecedented stymies that had to be crossed to accomplish the task. For no fault of his, apart from the fact that he was responsible for the task, he bore the brunt of one and all.

But the brighter side of the gloomy turn of events is always bound to ensue. Maawli did pull off a decent show inspite of the hurdles. And it is this end result that casts a shadow of satisfaction and hope removing the darkness of errors. Today could've been a day that did not go well, but the lessons learnt will save another such day, lest it should go astray.

As Maawli lets his mind slip into the silence of the night, the back of his mind already preps up for the sprint starting again at the dawn of the next day. The mind is convinced that the next day would be a positive day (just like today).

While I am waiting...

..I game on yahoo

..I "Stumble Upon" on interesting websites (and sometimes blog about them too)

..I clean my Inbox and organize my mails (sometimes the Thrash too!)

..I stare at the monitor and wonder, "How did calligraphy became more popular? Was it because of really writing rolls of scripts or was it the fonts I see on my monitor? Maybe, Steve Jobs would be able to tell better!

..I start dreaming about watching a cool movie in the night (thankz to my excellent ability to day dream!)

..I blog (Gosh that shld've been on top of the list)

and if I don't do any of these things, I end up..

WAITING.....

Hooked (again)

I am back again, but this time will keep my emotions a bit low and surely save the trouble of keying another Oscar speech, with the only hope that I don't come back after a month and say "I am back again..."

The joy of being connected from all my co-ordinates had to be short lived when I saw the computer from my Bangalore apartment gone. I felt handicapped, deprived of an essential element that made many a things easier in my life (both professionally and personally). My morning routine had to skip the task of checking my mails the first thing, sometimes before brushing and sometimes after. I had to keep my fingers crossed to see if there were any surprises, pleasant or otherwise waiting in my inbox, until I got to the office. AOE, Midtown Madness and Quake had to go into a state of dormancy and I had a strong feeling that the Macedonians were really getting impatient because of not taking them on a death troll. Reading documents had to be done during office hours and my blogging rate took a big hit because I couldn't do it like the old times.

I felt a void in my environment when I did not hear the constant low humming of the CPU fan in my apartment. The humming that I was so used to hearing at office, at Chennai (my aunt's place) and my home was missing in the apartment where I stay. I tried to delay the option of equipping myself with a new computer and simultaneously dilly dallying between getting a laptop versus a desktop. My resistance to temptation hit an all time low and I did not want to keep fighting with it. I made up my mind to buy a system and buy it real soon. Laptops were turning out to be quite expensive and the idea of waiting for someone to buy one from U.S did not sound appealing. The waiting period really turned me off. I did it eventually on a Tuesday evening buying a cool assembled PC, the eye-catcher being the 15'inch BenQ TFT monitor.

These days, when I get back home, I happily sit in front of the computer and spend a useful hour or two before I call it a day and joyfully brought back the routine of checking my mails the first thing I get up in the morning.

Now, I am fully connected and completely hooked on to the world wide web, once again...

Green (a) Mile

A common phenomena that all of us notice on our day to day lives is the unbelievable traffic on the roads. And to make matters worse, all the n-wheelers, and the "tour a pied" groups always seem to be on a mad rush, all the time. I keep wondering that maybe I am the only one who is not able to spot the Mackenna's Gold that everyone seems to be after.

When it comes to the signals, especially the "red light (and not the area), it is always meant for the "other" person on the road, not the "one" who sees it. And this is how the rest of the commuting clan thinks so. The fact has been drilled so deeply in their minds, that all they see is the green linoleum in front of their eyes. Once this attitude is set, moving around is a smooth sail from then on. Nothing stops them; not the signals, not the cops, not the simputers and not the yet to come traffic cameras. After all, those few seconds are so precious that wasting them would mean missing out the formula for the instant cure of AIDS or completing the batch process on the mainframe which would otherwise take a mere 14 hours.

Not to mention the change of mind (and gears) during the last few seconds of a 180 second long wait between signals at the junctions. Some folks are quite fuel conscious and stop their vehicles, but the last few seconds would mean different things. Why bother to waste the 10 seconds meant for pedestrians to cross? They can always wiggle themselves between the bikes and cars and sometimes let those bikes or the buses smooch them to death if not kiss them to a few scars. I am not being prejudiced towards the pedestrians. They are no less daring when it comes to crossing the roads (spare the chickens). The world's fastest runner could clock 6.3 seconds to cover 100 meters (now, spare the stats), but that is a hop skip and jump for those who cross the roads on a daily basis. Whether it is a speeding car or the mammoth buses, it only takes some guts and a few strides to land up on the other side. Well, if you don't make it, you still land up, maybe outside this earth or inside a hospital (if you are lucky).

There are a handful who genuinely try to respect and adhere to the rules and wait till the green says "GO". Such law abiding citizens are simply honked to death by those sticking right behind them. For a second, one is not sure what the signals actually mean. Whatever they are, the idea is to keep moving if you can.

Or maybe, this is the right way to interpret it..

RED and say this to your self... "Go if you are fast and don't get caught

ORANGE and say this to yourself.. "Dude, thatz as good as a go. So keep movin.

GREEN and the phrase to say out loud is.. "Move, Move Move! Move your busted ass outta this place!

It is all in the game!

Compulsive circumnavigation of the black hole called ****

I'm back! Oh!, I am back! My voice is quivering, my knees are shaking, no, not out of fear or hard pressed by pressure, but because of abundant joy of filling up this white space as I type here (once again). Do I feel like re-born? Not yet! I still have life trickling in me and by the time I finish this post, the graphic equalizers of my varying energy levels will find its peak.

Lot of things have transpired during my dormancy. Plenty in my life, more outside. There could've been much more, but thanks to the centrifugal force throwing me out of reach of the black hole. My entire recounter would take two(more)sleepless nights. But I ain't gonna rattle them all here. A round of scrubbing definitely precedes it. What do I scrub? All the references of my association with the madding crowd. After all, my blog is all about being far from the madding crowd while my life off late has been one BIG madding crowd in itself!

Until I come back in a more aggressive fashion, I would like to make a note in my blog about two things that I have started to believe more strongly than ever..

1) ..in God
2) ..in seeing the light at the end of every dark tunnel

Of bugs, music and ping pong

It had been almost 6 months since I spent a whole Saturday in the office. I am surely not fretting and fuming about it, just musing on it. One of my friends pinged me and said, "Oh! looks like your honeymoon period in the new company is over and now you have started working on a weekend". Well, it is over for a sure fact and if I don't get my acts together and start delivering, I can surely see my a** on the line of fire soon.

The scary thoughts of bearing the brunt of work pressure still did not impact my schedule for the day(in a big way). Before, I left home in the morning this was my plan:

Complete the bug fixing by 11.00 am
Work on some other enhancements till 1.00 pm
Have lunch
Read docs and familiarize myself with the products - a solid 2 hours in the afternoon.
Write my first draft on a functional spec - finish by 5.00 pm
Go home at 6.00 pm and enjoy the evening.

And this is what I did:

Reached office at 11.00 am and start working on the bug.
Went for lunch at 12 noon
On the bug.. 1.00 pm
Played TT (played after almost an year and it was so much fun) - 1.20 pm
Came back to work on the bug...1.45 pm
Played TT - till 4.00 pm
Relaxed with some music and light reading
Played TT
Finally fixed bug by 8.00 pm
Played TT
Blog at 9.15 pm

Pretty much matched with my initial schedule.:) Glad atleast I was able to fix the bug! So much for a work filled Saturday, I am looking towards having a fun filled Sunday.
Happy rest of the weekend ! :)

Brain (less) fallacy

It has been a while since I stumbled upon something interesting. So I decided to put my "Stumble Upon" tool to use. Since I had around 20 minutes to wait for my build to get over (successfully), I thought it will be good to surf the net.

I found just the "interesting" site on my third hit. The page runs into a decent length expatiating on the myth or lack of it about the percentage of brain usage on an average human being. It is quite interesting to read about the facts and to realize that I wasn't even aware of the fact that such a myth(or fact) exists about the average percentage of brain usage (my ignorance is probably attributed to the fact that I was using my brain even less than 10%-sigh!).

I am still not sure if I have to believe what the site claims, but nevertheless it is real cool to read it. Get a brain dump of it here. While reading about brains, take a sip of Google Gulp. If anyone needs a Gulp cap, lemme know ;)

On the water front

If some one would ask me about the idea of taking off on a Thursday and Friday to spend two days in a resort that over looks the lovely Cauvery, I would answer definitely in affirmative unless I was already in such a place and spending two lovely weekdays. Thankfully, I did not have to yearn for such a break because my company decided it was time for everyone to have this break and spend some real quality time outside work.

The place called Jaladhama on the Mysore road (about 120 kms from Bangalore) was where around 70 of us from the company spend a royal two days. The resort is located in a secluded place surrounded by water on its three sides and secretly connected to land on one side. (You will know why the land connection is a secret only when you see the place).

We reached the place on Thursday afternoon and from then on till Friday afternoon, the time we had was simply amazing. Right from, taking a so called water therapy to beating the heat in the swimming pool, every single activity was simply spelled only in one way-"FUN". In the night we had a bonfire (though this might make many twitch their eyes-bonfire on a hot summer night?). There was amazing music and a great dance floor. Many danced to the tunes of the favorite numbers and drinks was being served liberally. I just let myself loose and treated myself to all the goodies. The party went well into the night and it was a wonderful night to spend. I broke a few of my own records, the details of course will remain outside the pages of this blog ;).

It was not only a wonderful break for me, but I had this golden opportunity to know a lot of folks in the company. Some of the folks have already become good friends and today this is really helping me create my comfort zone in my new work place.

As I muse over the past week, my head turns to the left to watch the status of the build on the laptop and I see this message

"[javamake] Compiling 6181 source files...."

As high as the 13th

On sunday night, I met with a bunch of my school friends on the 13th floor restuarant -Ebony. The last time we met at a place called "Shiok" which was also the first time, we went berserk, thanks to all the flammers and slammers that went down our food pipe. This time, we decided to play a softer tune but at the same time keep the enthusiasm high and running (PJ: thatz why we choose the 13th floor!:) ). The pleasant surpise for me was meeting two of my school mates literally after 8 years. Kept me wondering about how time moves real fast. It is only during such occasions that we really come to know how much time has passed by in our lives. Reminds me of Pink Floy's ultra famous song "Time". Just a small snippet of the lyrics for the readers to muse about...

"...You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today

And then one day you find that ten years have got behind you

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun...."

We talked and talked about things we did and did not, in school, about the school teachers, the stupid ones, the ugly ones and rarely about the good ones (coz, they were rarities in themselves). Spent a good 3 hours with all the folks and chatted on a wide variety of subjects. We decided to do more of this in the coming days and also try and pull in as many folks as possible. As the phrase goes, its always "More, the merrier". Until next time, it is the snap that will be the daffodils of good time!

Religious retreat -II

My dad had decided that it was time again to do a round of circumabulations in a bunch of temples. The last time we did something similar was almost 8 months back. This time it was decided that we will visit a bunch of temples in and around Trichy. My folks left from Coimbatore on Friday and reached Trichy that evening. I left for Trichy on Friday night from Bangalore and reached there on the wee hours of Saturday morning (4.40 am). My uncle and dad were waiting at the railway station to pick me up and we headed to my uncle's place. From there we took a Quallis and started from Trichy at 5.45 am.

Our first destination was a place called Tirunageshwaram. The place is a 2 hours and 30 minutes drive from Trichy going via Thanjavur and Kumbakkonam. This place is predominantly for the Rahu (planet) God. After doing a set of "religious procedures" to please the God (I am going to eschew the nitty gritty details here), we left the place at 10.30 am. Our next temple was called the "Uppaliyappan" temple. This is a 5 kms ride and it was a really nice temple to visit. The residing deity is one of the many incarnations of Lord Vishnu. From there, we got back to Kumbakonam where we visited two more temples. The first one was called "Naachiyar Kovil" with the residing deity of Goddess Lakshmi (referred to as Komala valli thaayaar). From there, we headed to the next temple, "Ramaswamy Temple". We headed back from there to Trichy and reached the place at 3 pm. We took rest for the rest of the afternoon and then around 6 pm, headed to Srirangam. The temple diety Lord Ranganatha, in his majestic "Annantha Sayanam(sleeping posture)" is always a sight of awe. We headed back to Trichy at 7.45 pm. I had to catch my train back to Bangalore that night. Reached Bangalore on Sunday morning while my family went back to Coimbatore on Sunday afternoon.

The interesting part about this trip was that I learnt some very interesting facts and legends about each of these temples and also got some wonderful insight about the greatness of Hinduism. It was quite a refreshing experience and what could be more enriching than spending time with family on such trips. Hope I do this more often than not!

It is 4/13 again

This might sound funny. 4/13 occurs every year. It is more of an ecumenical fact. So what is the big deal about it? Well, it is for sure a big deal for me as it marks a milestone in my blogging era . And the milestone is that, it was exactly last year on the 13th of April, I did my first posting in this area. All I had in my mind that time, was that the concept of blogging was catching up a lot and I had to somehow be in this bandwagon. I went ahead and created a nice space for myself here (more of an impulsive act and some coaxing from a few friends!). I wasn't regular at all after my first few posts and almost till the end of 2004, blogging used to be quite a rarity. It was only in the recent past that I had started taking some "real" interest to blogging and I am glad to have stood the sands of time. I now do it quite enthusiastically, the "enthu" fuelling my interest towards this wonderful activity of reflecting a lot of musings to myself as well as to a larger community.

And to the day, blogspot has been the quintessential launch pad for not only me, but for millions of bloggers all around the globe (no offence meant to the other blog sites!). Blogging, blog sites and the millions of bloggers deserve huge appreciations for starting and continuing this really wonderful revolution. And as for me, I deserve a special round of appreciation for walking this revolutionary path for a year now!;)

A to-do list that is never empty

No, I am not in a complaining mode here, but just thinking aloud as to how life has changed over these years. I never used to maintain a "to-do" list during the early days of my professional life and always used to think that folks who maintain it were either trying to be smart or funny. Over time,I've got myself into the habit of maintaining my to-do list. Initially, it used to be another additional (and painful) task to update the to-do list in itself, but then I forced myself to do it and now it has become a daily wont. The interesting aspect to this is that, somehow my list never seems to get empty. I've made some decent attempts to clean it up (not by deleting them) and have a blank list stare at me so that I smile back at it with satiation, but my list always has had the whip hand till date. I wrap up my existing tasks, but the end of the day sees new ones being added making it more like a vicious cycle (if I may call it one).

Yeah and I was saying I wasn't complaining! True, there is nothing to fret and fume here. Imaging life where there is nothing to do and no tasks on your to-do list. The initial pleasure could be immense but surely ephemeral. So it is after all good to have a to-do list that is never empty! :)

Saturday Movie Marathon

One of those rare weekends I ended up staying in Bangalore. I had decided to do some "office" work on Saturday and read a lot of documents. But all my plans for the work was washed out, thanks to the intermittent rain over the afternoon and of course my laziness. I ended up in my friend's place for lunch and what ensued after that was watching a string of movies (the India-Pak match wasn't worth watching anyways).

So the first movie I watched was "Shawshank Redemption". This happened at my friend's place. An amazing story, excellent cast of characters and quite a thrilling movie. I know this one is quite old and had hit the charts big time, but somehow I never got to watch it till yesterday.

I went home in the evening and after dinner, went to my channel surfing and in one of the local cables, Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones was being shown. Lucky for me, the movie was just starting and I ended up watching it fully.

It was close to 1 am when the movie got over, but I wasn't feeling anywhere close to sleepy. So I took out the VCD I had rented from "Cheers Club" and that was my third movie. It was a Tom Hanks movie called "That Thing You Do". I liked this movie a lot because it was lot about music and stuff and the best part is the band called "Wonders" whose claim to fame was the song "That Thing You Do"(the one that comes as a title song in "F.R.I.E.N.D.S" episode). The movie got over at 3 am. After that, I decided sleeping was a good idea after all and hit the bed.

It was quite a marathon watching movies like this. Never done this before, and it was real cool and I hope to do this more often than not.

A Snapshot of my Bulk Mail folder

Getting a score of bulk mail everyday has become more of a regular phenomena for years now and I really don't bother looking at them. Click on the "Empty" link and they are all thrashed. If an important mail gets there and I delete it, I will surely get another one. People who are important to me, will surely write again.

But in the past two weeks, I've noticed my mails in the bulk folder running into hundreds of mails. In fact on Friday evening, I saw around 200 mails, when I had actually cleaned up my Bulk mail on Thursday evening. A little annoyed, I just checked my spam filters and then checked my folder to see if mail box was under attack.

I couldn't figure out if it was under attack, but made some interesting and funny observations. I realized that my spammers apparently are good Samaritan in this world always trying to help me out in many ways, be it giving me free credit cards, high interests on mortgages, loans, help me find singles in MY area and best of all, they are the doctors who know my libido inside out.

I took a snapshot of my spam mails and did a small analysis on how well my spammers know me. And this is what I found...

I am living in abject poverty and therefore "eDealsDaily" have send me a mail that says "Finally, Health Care You Can Afford".

I am a game freak and can't live life without games. "Special Promotions" are offering me a Free XBox.

I am lonely SINGLE soul lost in the battle of finding my better half and that is when "Find Love" comes to my rescue. They can help me find my soul mate in 7 days!

The "CYC Diet Patch" has no clue about how emaciated I am. They have programs to accelerate the results of my weight loss. And part of the offer, they give you FREE endoscopy to make sure acids don't eat my health!

There are folks who can enlarge the minute one's, give the energy of an horse and teach you the five fist heart pounding technique so that all the "HOT" women can be at one's feet.

And finally not to forget, some one always buys new webcams and yearns the world to look at them.

Sometimes, these mails can be contradicting too. Like, I got this mail which says that my desperate financial situation can be resurfaced my mortgaging my home in a bank in Wisconsin (while I live in Bangalore!). The other one says that I can add another $100,000,000 dollars to my existing account, if I fill up a form that says "FREE Smilie T-shirt" and send it to at least five people.

This is surely not exhaustive, but I'll stop here coz I am really tired of these bulk mails. The only way I can stop this, is to camouflage my mail address. Off late, I see lot of folks writing " at yahoo dot com". Now, this is surely going to escape the eyes of the bots. Any better ideas?

A few hundreds to a few ones

Jim Carrey as Bruce Almighty played God for a while and one among the many Godly activities was to check e-mails and read and reply to all the prayers he receives. It is quite mind boggling to see the amount of e-mails he gets and once he replies to all his mails and heaves a sigh of relief, he finds another hundred million new ones in his inbox. Well, I will be unreasonably exagerrating if I say, I used to get mails of that order. But scaling down myself to a mundane human and relatively scaling down the number of mails I used to get, I still used to be bogged down by the number.

Every morning seeing close to 150 odd emails in the inbox used to make me feel quite important,initially but after a while charm was all lost. I really used to hate seeing so many mails in the inbox. Of course, only 50-60% of them used to be mails that required my reply but the other ones were still important ones in one way or the other-be it technical alias mails, lounge emails and importantly mails mentioning ticket availability for weekend travels. The numbers of emails on ticket availability is off late increasing and I will write about it in one of my future posts.

Coming back to the point, I now have very few emails to read and almost none to reply. It is so good to come in the morning and find out that I have just three or four emails in the inbox. I know it is is just a passing phase before I start getting more mails, this passing phase sure is a pleasure phase for me.

The Fish Philosophy

I was traveling back to Bangalore on Sunday afternoon. Day time traveling could get quite boring if you did not have a book or a personal stereo and lucky for me, I had both! My brother, who is probably one of the most voracious reader I have ever come across, gave me these two books called "Fish!" and "Fish! Sticks" and told me that they are really worth reading. I wasn't very impressed with the first look of the books, but nevertheless took it along. I started reading the first one called "Fish!" and it immediately had me stick to it like a leech and I went ahead and completed it quite quickly (given that it just runs into 100 odd pages). The book was so impressive, that I did a back-to-back reading of the second book too -"Fish! Sticks".

Coming to the point, these books are about how one should have a positive attitude towards work, towards changing environment and more than anything a real positive attitude towards LIFE. Both the books have imaginary stories wonderfully inter twining the essence of having a "great attitude" towards life.

Now, what has all this to do with Fish at the first place? Well, for all the curious minds, I would very much encourage to go ahead and read the books and it will be quite a pleasant surprise when you find it out. The best part is, I got to read this book at the exact right time; a time when I have recently taken an altogether different route in my professional life. Moving out of Sun Microsystems and joining Informatica was a decision I took a week back. Such a drastic change, mandates me to have really high energy in a fresh environment and lot of positive attitude and confidence to standing upto new expectations. And I hope to do this by believing in the Fish Philosophy

Far from the Madding Crowd

I had long wanted to do this lonely trip, just for a day, where I transport myself to an almost alien place and spend a day far away from the concrete jungle and free from the clutches of technological encumbrances. I was successfully able to execute my plan on the Friday the 25th and it sure was one very enjoyable and pleasant day I spent.

I boarded the KSRTC Volvo bus on Thursday night at 10.30 pm. Well, actually I boarded the bus at 10.35 pm thanks to my indifference towards being on time and of course to Murphy for the traffic jam at the 11th hour. If not for Gansal, I wld've definitely missed the bus and I know one person
who will be insanely happy about it. Anyways, having successfully boarded the bus, my journey did start. I was supposed to reach Mangalore at 6 am in the morning, but
some freak accident on NH 48 caused an unprecedented delay of three hours (maybe Murphy was just following me silently!). As soon as I got out of the bus at 9 am, I caught a local bus that was heading towards Udupi. I wanted to go to Udupi and pay a visit to the Krishna Temple and the Mutt out there. It was a 90 minute drive on NH 17 and I enjoyed every bit of the drive gazing through the green pastures and the blue backwaters of coastal Mangalore.

I reached Udupi at 10.30 am and checked into Udupi Residency-a place I would very much recommend for folks planning a trip to this place. Having completed my morning ablutions, I headed straight for the temple. Lucky for me, the temple was sparsely crowded and I was able to have a good "kidiki" darshan of the residing deity. I spent 15 minutes in the temple, letting the serene environment of the place absorb me.
It was quite a tranquil experience and a much needed one for me. After that, I headed back to the room, packed and hit the bus stand.

I got into an "Express" bus that was heading to Mangalore and reached there around 1.30 pm. I got the local bus number to go to Ullal-a small hamlet 12 kms from Mangalore. This place has a cool resort called Summer Sands. The resort has a private beach and I had planned to spend the rest of the afternoon there. I reached the place around 2.15 pm and immediately checked into the room I had booked. I had a refreshing bath once again to beat the summer heat and immediately ordered some food (as I did not have anything to eat since morning). It was delicious lunch served right in my room and all I knew after eating was that I had dozed off. I woke up to the sound of my ringing mobile (wasn't I supposed to switch it off?) and the time was close to 6 pm. I answered the call, while getting ready to hit the beach. I went to the beach just in time to catch the lovely sunset. The confluence of the sea, the sky
and the sun is a sight that can anytime potray the most beautiful surrealistic backdrop. Having captured it my mind and my camera, I took a nice walk along the coastline which seemed quite endless. I would've walked for about 15 minutes after which I sat down on the sand and once again let nature embrace my mind and soul in its captivating surroundings. It was total bliss and I can't describe the moment of satiation I felt in mere words. As the dusk turned to dark, I headed back to the resort. It was close to 7.45 pm. I ordered a light dinner and then called the cab to drop me at the railway station.

The West Coast express left Mangalore at 9.15 pm and reached Coimbatore on Saturday morning 6.30 am. As I was leaving Mangalore that night, I knew my day was made. I felt good, rejuvenated and replenished with energy. I did something different that day, something totally out of my daily wonts. It was good to meet a very different set of people, it was good to be alone and finally it was best to be far away from the madding crowd.

Blog-o-mania

The blogging fever caught me last April and since then I had been on and off blogging around and reading way too many blogs written by my friends, acquaintances and sometimes total strangers across the globe. The point I am trying to make here is that, my initial enthusiasm to blog has actually spawned from one blog to four blogs today!

The one you are reading right now of course is my primary blog (I like to call this my primary blog for the simple reason that I started this one first-no strings attached!).

I got carried away with my so called photography skills and started off a photo blog with the idea that some day mine will be in the "Photos of the Year". Around that time, the Bitsian Blog idea was floated across and I immediately jumped into action to be a vivid contributor. These days, I am more of a vivid reader when it comes to this blog.

And finally, a few days back, I started of a technical blog with the intention to write about the various technologies that I come across in my professional life (which from the past few months have been quite a lot!)

Given all this, one may well ask, where on earth will I find time to do work, if I spend time updating my many blogs? A very valid question, but I prefer to remain taciturn on answering this question (some attitude-huh?)

Mast bhari Maayavi

An impromptu decision led me and my roomates to watch this movie called "Maayavi". Surya and Jyothika were the lead role, leading all the other casts in their spins of nonsensical yarns. The very start of the movie indicated that it was nothing short of a pure masala movie with a bunch of belly dancing, display of raw muscle power and lots of so called timely jokes. It was only during half of the movie that it dawned on me that I have seen a similar movie before. It was a partial deja-vu, but was quite strong. I was thinking to myself, "I've seen this before. It was in Hindi..what was the movie? Aaaah got it! Mast, was the movie.

There was this ordinary teenager leading a mundane life, but is head over heels about Urmila. He learns about the cold malice of her aunt and decides to rescue her. He does that, goes through a series of adventurous stuff and Urmila kinda falls in love with him but at the end throw some practical shit and they decide to move along in life, separately.

Maayavi was different from Mast only in the sense that it had to be more suitable for a Tamil crowd. Surya, a local guide and a small time "daada" in Mahabalipuram accidently tries to rob in Jyothika's house only to get caught. He goes through some nasty trouble inspite of not having robbed anything and because of these squabbles, he decides to take revenge. He kindnaps Jyothika (apparently from a movie shooting scene where Jyothika is a herione). Initially she is all pissed off, but later on those few touching moments in the movie melts her heart and the rest is the climax.

If you are utterly bored to death in life, this movie will rekindle your spirits. On the whole, it is an average movie to watch (but just once). Watch out for Jyothika talking her own dialogues.

Free e-Books

I was mentioning in my previous post on how techies would love to get their hands on anything that is FREE. Today, I happened to stumble upon (jeez, I've been using this word a lot!) a site which has lots of technical books available for free reading/downloading. If you think, you need to sharpen the saw, this is one really good site. Go ahead and increase your technical acumen by picking all the books you want, because these are Technical Books for Free

Doodle left but MyShoutBox arrived

I like the idea of having a chat window attached to my blog. Though only a few folks have left messages out there, the idea of having one always sounded cool to me.

In the recent past, I noticed that my Doodle Board did not show up on my blog. It just had an empty space. I initially thought that it was some refresh problem or probably the site was down. It was only after visiting their home page, I came to know that the service is no longer FREE! Tools or applications that are available as Freeware always entice the developer community. I will talk about this some other day. Coming back to the point, I had no choice but to hunt for another FREE tool and that is when I hit up MyShoutBox. Its pretty much the same as my previous one, but allows some decent amount of customization. I am yet to explore it fully, but that is my future AI. If some one wants to give it a shot, leave your message in it.

Thirusanku Swargam

I am not aware if there is a translitration for the title, but if I were to offer a translation for it, I would say, "hanging in mid air". For the curious mind, you can find a nice explanation and description of the title here.

I ain't say more that this!

Thalai Poola Vaaruma

No, I did not say this. This is a forwarded message and I am just passing on the notes.

***********************
Rajnikanth has proved once again that he is the biggest brand in Tamil films with the successful audio launch of Chandramukhi.

His detractors who had been shouting from the roof-top that the superstar charishma and pull has diminished were shocked by the kind of adultation the actor received at the Chandramukhi audio launch. At Chenna's Ritchie Street the wholesale market for electronic goods, shops that deal in audio cassettes opened at 6 am on Saturday (March 5) as agents took delivery of the audio.

Says Sanjay Wadhwa of AnAK Audios who are marketing the Chandramukhi audio: “At a time when audio market is at an all time low, the kind of reception that we got is overwhelming. We had manufactures only 1,50,000 cassettes and 30,000 CD’s, but by Sunday evening all the dealers wanted more stock by Monday!"
It is obvious that the audio is selling like hot cakes on the brand equity of Rajnikanth. At Chennai’s Music World 437 cassettes and 227 CD’s were sold on the first day! Compare this with the number one audio on the chart that has sold only 572 cassettes and 147 CD’s in 32 days after its music launch!

Rajnikanth is truly a phenomenon. He has not lost an iota of his mass fan base and is still the number one by a mile.

Thalai pola varuma!
**********************************

Meme

"Meme" was a word coined in the late 70's. The term refers to a unit of information that replicates from brains and inanimate stores of information (books, computers, etc) to other brains or stores of information.

Meme, surely did not unleash its full power when the word was coined then, but today, in the e-world, it has become an almost common scenario. The way information spreads across the world esp through internet is sometimes mind boggling. Collaborative efforts have started to pay off, open sourcing has started a revolution within the developer community (calling all 'eh design architects), e-news has already grabbed us in a big way (think of all the "E-mail this article" every time you read cool things and decide to forward it to your friends). Blogging is another area where "meme" can be very aptly described and defined. Making cross posts, alluding to some one's cool, interesting or informative posts has become a thing of common today.
I am sure all the bloggers would agree to this. The list is surely not exhaustive at this point (but I'll stop here to keep my post small!)

Finally, to think of all this and of course, thanks to Meme, I got to know about this word through Xavier. After all, this is about information dissemination.

Confused with words while playing Cupid ?

Not anymore. My friend Xavier had made a post last week about a site that will test you on the commonly used but quite confusing words. It is an online test with 40 questions to answer (which I know is a bit lengthy). If you are game for testing your skills, this is a good place to do so. Go ahead and tap on the Bernard Shaw in you by taking the test here.

yahOOOOOOOOOO

Yahoo has turned 10 and today they have pervaded the cyber world like "ether". To mark this occasion, they have put up a nice netrospective page that is worth a visit.
Check it out at "Yahoo's netrospective"

And to think of it, I created my first yahoo account 6 years back (not bad)!

Beat the summer heat tenderly

The mercury has been on a steady rise over the past few weeks in Bangalore (where I work), Coimbatore (my hometown) and Chennai (which I visit quite frequently). Well, Chennai being an exception in the sense that the mercury rarely dips! That has seen an increase in intake of more liquid food to keep me cool or should I say, keep my cool? :).

Yesterday, I had been to my locality Food World to buy some stuff. As I was walking out, I noticed a pile of tender coconuts placed in a nice heap, opposite to the super market. The stock looked quite fresh and I was immediately tempted to go and taste the sweet water. I asked the vendor to pick one that has only water and no kernel. God knows how these guys are able to spot one, but most of the time, they do. As I sipped and slurped the water, I could instantly feel the coolness. It was as if, my body was being immersed in ice. My taste buds were jumping in ecstasy to grab the tiny droplets of the water. The one minute was simply rejuvenating. I paid him and then decided to have one tender coconut every day. The good news is, there is no cess, VAT or fringe service tax attached to the price you pay. Thanks to PC for sparing the coconuts.

Finally, what is the point if you don't understand the benefits of tender coconut?
For those, who want to be aware, read the benefits of tender coconut to know more.

Lightning crashes-Where? When? Are you Sure?

It was close to 4 am in the morning. I opened my eyes to check on my current co-ordinates, but an unusual fog seemed to have covered the whole area like a blanket. The incessant humming of the engines became loud once again, but that did not seem to bother me much. Knowing well, that there were two more hours before hitting my destination, I sulked back into the semi-sleeper seat trying to get more sleep.

I wasn't quite sure, but there was an uneasy feeling in me and I could smell some sort of tension in the air. I started realizing that the bus was going at a slower pace than usual. I didn't want things to spoil my sleep, but as much as I tried to eschew it, the feeling kept coming back to me. I rolled myself to the non-window side and wide opened my droopy eyes to see what was going on. I could hear whispers and mumblings from the back of the bus. My co-passenger sitting in the aisle was wide awake and was trying to look outside. There was lot of intense in his ogle. A lady in the diagonally opposite seat was trying to make a call. I was thinking, why would she want to call someone at such wee hours in the morning? I started to become more conscious to my immediate surroundings and was wondering if I was missing something that everyone seemed to be already aware off.

I tried to peek outside my window to see what was happening, but the visibility wasn't very good. I managed to figure out that vehicles on the opposite lane too, were going slowly. As I was opening my window to find out more, I heard a distant rumbling in the sky that seemed to come my way (or rather our way). It was followed with a second rumbling but this time, of a higher magnitude. It doesn't take any more investigation to arrive at the conclusion that nature was unleashing it fury and probably it has already unleashed a bout of it a few miles ahead-the result of the slow moving vehicles seemed to be an indication of it. The wind was strong making the trees sway wildy. I felt the chill wind hit hard on my face.

Just at that very moment, a sudden burst of energy from the skies above, triggered the panic button in many a heart. A straight streak of lighting stuck the a nearby open field (or atleast that is what I thought it to be) with such force, that it looked like a New Year's welcome where a dimly lit dance floor was suddenly flooded with dazzling lights. Within seconds, there was an ear splitting thunderous clap. For a moment I could feel the bus reverberating in the impact of such an outburst. Some of the inmates in the bus left out shrieks that sounded like tiny aftermath of the big badaboom lightning. I didn't know how to react. I was too stunned. The sight of "nature unplugged" was still sinking in me. I was telling myself to remain calm. There wasn't much to be done in such a situation but maintain one's composure. I offered a silent prayer for the well being of everyone and patiently waited to reach to my place. A few more lightnings, followed with heavy thunder echoed across the skies. A few more mumblings were heard and a few more panicked. The situation was clearly becoming worse and I started becoming squeamish and fervently hoping for the dust to settle down. As the bus moved on slowly, I peeped out of the window once again. The admonishing clouds hovering above the bus was no pleasant sight to witness. I shut the window, closed the blinds and sat back. Not having much to do, I shut my eyes too, hoping to get some sleep. Not sure when I slept or how I slept, but I did happen to sleep.

Suddenly, I heard a voice "Madiwala check post". I probably heard it twice or something and woke up with a jolt. I saw a few people wriggling their way out of the bus and getting down. There was a rush of autos and auto drivers flocking the entrance to the bus, hoping to get their day's "bhoni" (if you are not sure about the word, ask anyone from Chennai and they'll tell you). I moved the drape to see the weather outside and I was startled and stunned. The azure sky and a dry and clear outfield threw a surrealistic backdrop. I had to rub my eyes properly to believe what I was seeing. A couple of hours, the sky was painted in a completely different color that would have indicated a wild rage. But now, there was saintly silence outside.

Wait! Now, was it a figment of my imagination or a real vagary of the weather? I didn't have a convincing answer. I very badly wanted to ask my aisle neighbor as to what happened to the menacing storm, but I decided to shy away, fearing that he could give me a totally confused look, laugh at me and ask me to stop dreaming. But hell no, I wasn't dreaming. I was pretty sure, I saw the lightning, I heard the thunder, I felt the wind. How could all this be a dream? I wasn't convinced but I couldn't get a second opinion to convince myself. I had to get an answer, an explanation, but whom should I ask?

The same voice came again, "Jhonson Market". Damn! I had to get down. I quickly took my bag, moved out of my seat and walked towards the door. My destination had come and the bus stopped. I got down, but quickly wanted to turn back and ask the driver,"So, how did you weather the storm?". But as soon as I was out of the door's way, it shut and the driver stepped on the accelerator. The bus moved on and soon was out of my sight.

I stood there for a minute, and then moved. I went home and just sat for a while, thinking about the whole episode. As much as I raked and ransacked my brain, I couldn't really figure out whether it was true or it was just my imagination that ran amok. I still don't have an answer for this and really doesn't make sense to look for one anymore. What my mind saw as a reality, my eyes refuted it as a fake. I believe it, I don't believe it. I am confused (as always!)

Anti-litter law in Bangalore

It was a fantastic piece of news to read first thing in the morning. At last, it has dawned on the authorities that taking initiatives in the right direction can go a long way in making this place worth living. The toughest challenge, lies not in coming up with a law but putting the same to action.

I am talking about imposing fines on folks who simply turn a Nelson's eye when it comes to spitting on the road or throwing garbage all over. Now, they will have to be more aware or else part with a nice sum as fine. Hope the authorities are able to aggressively use this law to its complete sense and I pray that it does not go up in smoke like the anti smoking laws!

Read more from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1029101.cms

Life of Pi

While I was visually sweeping the exhibition hall of the Strand Book stall, I happen to give a cursory glance on the book titled "Life of Pi". For a quick moment, I thought this could be some book that explains the history of the Mathematical symbol-"Pi" and as I was thinking, my hand reached out for the book. It turned out to be a 2002 Booker Prize winning novel by Yann Martel. The mere looks of the novel impressed me and I immediately purchased it. That was two months back.

I had been reading the novel in bits and pieces since then and finally I had completed it last week. My first Booker Prize novel and I should say it was quite an interesting piece of work. The story unveils in Pondicherry (an erstwhile French colony) in India and moves on to the Pacific Ocean and ends up in Canada. The main character of the story is about the little boy -the lone survivor of a wrecked ship who is thrown into a lifeboat by the crew in the last minute. The boy later learns that he has a co-passenger, a 200 pound Bengal Tiger along with him. The rest of the story is how he survives the ordeal at sea only to be shored after more than 200 days.

I liked everything about the novel, the author's style of writing/description, the characters, the storyline except for its ending. I felt that the ending came all of a sudden and kind of cut short. Maybe, the author suddenly became bored or probably was too tired to write further! Of course, it is also possible that I couldn't read between the lines and appreciate the short and crisp ending ;). Whatever it is, a novel worth reading and if you have the will to read, you will (if you have already read the book, this will ring a bell).

BTW, if you are still wondering about "Pi", that is the name of our hero, Piscine Molitar Patel, otherwise known as, Pi.

Word Power

Visit the Reader's Digest word power site and learn 5 new words every day!

http://www.readersdigest.ca/wordpower.html

I have been visiting this site for almost 2+ years now and I should mention that it has been a very enriching experience in terms of increasing my vocabulary. For all those who are enticed by the charm of the English language, you would surely not to want to miss out on this.

If you would like to have a new word delivered to your inbox every day, then subscribe to Merriam Webster's "Word of the Day". This is another useful way to learn.

ATM Trauma

I've been wanting to write on this subject for some time, but just did not get some free time. My weekends are usually at home (in Coimbatore) which means I travel most of the weekends. There are a few weekends I end up in Bangalore and that is primarily because of work load at office. This weekend was one such weekend, but there were other things that I had to do and ended up doing less of office work (thanks to a build break too!).

So much for beating around the bush, let me come to the point. I was in and around Majestic, M.G road and Koramangala over the two days catching up with personal stuff. I noticed (have noticed it before too), that most of the time, people make a beeline in front of the ATM's to withdraw cash. The situation is really bad in the weekends, when I have seen meandering lines running into rows and rows. Inspite of the fact that ATM's have mushroomed all over the city, the average waiting time in an ATM is more or less close to five minutes. I am sure the phenomenon occurs in other big cities like Mumbai and Delhi too.

Many a times I have been victimized by these long winding queues. To make matters worse, it so happens that a few folks standing in front of me do everything but keep their card ready in hand. When they are in front of the ATM, they start fumbling for it taking up more time. Sometimes it is a mobile that stalls their procedural process or it is just my hard luck that they grope for the menu and try to make sense out of it (as if all the instructions were given in ancient Arabic). I have even seen a nincompooh who was standing in front of the machine, doing his arithmetic to figure out whether he should be withdrawing Rs 200/- or Rs 300/-. As much as I try to keep my shirt on, there are those "specimens", out there, testing my patience, with their monkey like activities before the crisp notes pop out of the tray and they take that and walk away. They never seem to understand that there are other folks in the line waiting for their turn, and end up taking their own sweet time. Honestly, in my humble opinion, it doesn't take more than a minute to withdraw cash (however huge the sum is), but again the average time spent in front of these machines is nothing less than two minutes (this is excluding the parallel activities that I had mentioned above).

So when I finally get my chance and withdraw the cash, I end up walking with an air of superiority, satiated by my accomplishment. I have even let the devil in me, give a sly look at the other folks patiently and impatiently waiting for their turn to come and I start thinking, "Won't it be cool if the cash runs out just after I take my money"? "What if the system crashes as I walk out of this place?". The other folks would go wild and throw tantrums and I can enjoy watching them. As much as I silently enjoy the thoughts of my cheap thrills, I know that is the last thing I or anyone would want to happen. Having said so much, what is the solution to escape the painful process of withdrawing cash?

I've got a few suggestions that can come handy.

1) If you are a prudent person, take a bulk of money once in two weeks and save the trouble of frequent ATM visits.
2) If you are used to burning the midnight oil, take a stroll at 2 in the morning and get the cash out as your community sleeps over. Of course, the precondition is to have an ATM within a permissible distance.
3) Request for an ATM within your office premises/campus and that way you can hop in anytime or atleast when there is a lean crowd.
4) Use your credit card as much and pay the charges over the net.
5) And finally, if you are the HULK, all my ramblings don't mean a thing to you. All ATM's are yours any time, anywhere!

Last page of the Internet?

I like to keep this short and sweet. So check out the below link for yourself and you'll know the reason for the title in question.

http://www.1112.net/lastpage.html

A fully paid ticketless travel

Yesterday evening, after checking up on my friend's transferred goods at the K.R Market (Bangalore), we were heading back to our apartment. Not having much luck with the auto rickshaws at rush hour, we walked quite a bit till we reached a major junction (the probability of finding an auto was much higher at this place; or atleast I thought so). As we were trying to lure an auto wala, I saw a bus approaching towards us and it seemed to be going through our place. Half hesitatingly, I enquired, if the bus goes via Shanti Nagar and the bus driver nodded in affirmative and ushered us to board the bus. Me and my friend quickly got into it, inspite of the fact that these local bus commutes never sounded appealing to me. I searched for the conductor in the crowded bus and gave him a 5 rupee coin and said "Eradu Shanti Nagar" (that is Kannada for those who don't know-the only Kannada word being "Eradu which means "two"!). The conductor gave me 2 rupees back and then gave a very sweet smile. I though that the man was really making his tiresome job a pleasurable one by smiling at people and easing out his tension. After all, how many strangers give you a nice smile in such public places? I duly acknowledged his smile. He then turned his head slightly to one side still carrying his grand smile as if his action when translated would mean, "Ah! Thanks, that is really nice of you". He brushed past me happily and went on issuing tickets to the other passengers.

Wait! "Where are my tickets? Why didn't he give me the tickets after taking the money and being very nice in his manners? " I was thinking to myself, confused as to why he did not give me the ticket. It then dawned on me suddenly, that all his nice gestures and warm smile were only to convince me that a ticket was not necessary though I had paid him the moolah. He was in the process of earning his day's share and I was probably the last of his victims for the day. I was tricked and I was the scape goat. I was embarrassed for a moment then angered and immediately calm. I tried to reconcile from my rapidly changing moods. I just exchanged surprised looks with my friend and both of us were hoping that Murphy's laws doesn't come true in the form of checking inspectors while we unboard the bus.

Now, you may ask, "Why didn't I demand for the ticket?", "Why didn't I be more assertive and aggressive when the conductor cloyingly evaded me the tickets?". I must admit, that I simply did fall prey to his mind tricks. That fake genuine smile and the pretense of a cordial gesture, caught me unaware and before I could react, he had closed the unspoken conversation. He was triumphantly moving ahead and maybe scouting for another knee-jerk passenger. Lucky for us, we did get down unscathed and I did heave a sigh of relief, thinking to myself, now that was quite an adventure for a paid ticketless travel.

I know, I have been playing innocent to the whole incident, but somehow I could not see myself going upto him and asking for the tickets. If there is a next time and such a thing repeats, I will know how to react and not be tricked. On the contrary, maybe it is because of such things that I prefer to stick to the 3 wheelers, inspite of manipulated meters, unjustified fares or simple apathy towards picking up a "savaari". And the best of all, there are no tickets to be issued in the rickshaws!

Front pages

Found this interesting site today which lists a bunch of front pages from different countries of the world (claims to be from 34 countries). The nice part of course is, that the Indian newspaper, India Times is featured in the list. Check it out for yourself.

http://www.newseum.org/todaysfrontpages/default.asp?page=5

Stumble Upon

In couple of my earlier posts, I had mentioned about stumbling upon interesting details or web sites. Well, today, I actually stumbled upon what is called "Stumble Upon"! This is a search engine that lets you stumble upon interesting or useful sites based on your preferences. This engine has been around for a quite a while and I remember using it a couple of years back (when it was in its nascent stages). Today, the site has grown really well and has refined its search algorithms to a great extent. The best part is, it can be added as a toolbar in your favorite
browser (I just added it to Firefox). You can set preferences on the categories of your choice and once set, all you have to do, is click on the "Stumble" button and wait for the engine to take you to a whole lot of interesting sites. You can even rank these sites and based on the rankings, the engine will learn (A.I) about the various sites it fetches and if some of them are bad, they will be silently sidelined. It is always fun to stumble upon information and a good time pass if you are bored to death and badly want a break. Check out all this and much more at
http://www.stumbleupon.com/

Most of the software designs happens in the corridor.

The above title is an anonymous quote (I have no clue who said this :) ) made in the software industry. The sentence just stirred a few thoughts in my mind and the result is this blog post. I really don't know the veracity of this statement, but digging into the details, I am inclined to believe, it is not far away from the truth.

I have been part of various design level meetings myself. The setup is usually a wooden paneled 6x8 room (but sometimes bigger too) with a table surrounded with ergonomic chairs and the centre of the table holding the proud invention of Graham Bell-the multi conference VoIP enabled telephone, dare I say, far advanced than what Bell conceived? There are all kinds of focus lights to throw the spot on those trying to steal an afternoon fiesta. And finally, the PRD's and FSD's lying all over the table, the fuel material that provides the needed succor to formulate the best possible design.

Now, if you are thinking this is THE place for the best solutions to take form, then I am afraid I will not be able to jibe in with this assumption. Usually, the discussion starts off in the right direction, seem to be going fine, when suddenly some random thoughts completely steer the talks from its course and before we realize, the discussion will head in all tangential directions. We go back and forth trying to stay on track, but things do tend to go awry. By the time, we think we are seeing some light, our allotted time gets over and some other team knocks on the door, so that they can find their comfort zone in the room. Slightly vexed, we move out of the room and to release the tension, grab a cuppa coffee and slouch into the couches. A sip of coffee rejuvenates our brain cells and we try and jabber for a while. Suddenly, some one shouts, "Hey, I've got an idea! "Why don't we try and do it this way"? And then the other guy says, "Yeah, this sounds good, maybe we can slightly modify this to make it scalable". And before the heat goes down, the third one says, "Awesome!, with this approach, I can fit in my module without much of an hassle". Things suddenly seem to take shape and a rapid discussion shows a limn of the design. With half cup of the coffee still remaining, we run to our cubes to jot down the freshly brewed idea, lest the brainwave gets washed away. What ensues after this, is purely refining the idea further till it looks like a real good design. Now, this
can continue to happen in the couch or get back to the meeting rooms.

Now, I am not saying that all the designs always happens this way. I have myself sat in meeting rooms and attended really long teleconferences and formulated design level solutions. At the same time, informal discussions in some one's cube, corridor or the cafeteria have proved to be equally conducive surroundings for taking design level decisions. It is hard to conclude which has the whip hand, but off late, the software environment itself being quite informal, such a surrounding helps us think better rather than confine ourselves into the four walls of a meeting room and try to
incubate on the requirements.

"There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult." - C. A. R. Hoare

I tried hard to create a relevance point to include this quote, but did not have much luck this time around. So just adding it for the heck of it, coz I found this quote kewl. Now, this is what is probably another incident of going astray from the centre point of this post;)

A professional's milestones

I recently heard from one of the managers at my company about the various stages of a computer engineer and how it can affect one's career growth. Coming to think of it little more, I realize that the stages are indeed quite pertinent in shaping our professional career. Though I am going to look at this from a software engineer's eye (as I am one myself), it sure does apply to any professional field if viewed in the right perspective. So let me go ahead and elucidate them.

How technically strong am I?

After my graduation, I entered the software world by making my first job. As I made my first development plan, I sure wasn't thinking that my short term goal and long term goal would be towards becoming a manager. The question I asked myself at that point was, "How technically strong am I?". I was only thinking of various ways of honing my technical skills, bury myself in writing thousands of lines of code and be contended with solving simple to complex problems and providing efficient solutions. An error free compilation or a bug free code was all that satiated me. I wasn't bothered if my manager looked at my code and appreciated me on it. I had a job to do, and I was just getting it done. I was in my own world. My code, books and hundreds of pages of tutorial were my technical comrades.


How many people do I know?

As a couple of years passed, I slowly realized the need to come out of my shell. Yes, I had written reams and reams of code, fixed whole bunch of bugs and taken care of many nitty, gritty technical issues. But, I probably failed to realize that,there were a lot of people who could have written better code than me, provide more effective and efficient solutions, helped me fix my bugs in a better fashion. The question I asked myself at that point was, "How many people do I know? I realized, it was important for me, to know more "egg heads" within my organization. Limiting acquaintance to my techlead, manager, architect or director was surely not sufficient. There was a clear need to know people outside my team, outside my department and maybe outside my organization too. Knowing people from various areas can be very beneficial at the need of the hour. If I had not bridged the "stranger gap" with a lot of people, many Easter eggs would have remained in the oblivion. My eagerness to fix a small hardware issue with my machine paid off, because I knew Mr.X, a hardware expert. We ran into each other sometime back in an office party. My pet project had a good design review because I contacted Mr. Y who has some prior experience working on a similar project. This only emphasizes the fact that it does become important to know many people in the immediate surroundings if one has to grow further in his/her career.


How many people know me?

Finally, if I am going to be in the same organization for more than 5 years, then it becomes absolutely important for me to have a good answer for the question, "How many people know me?" I was technically sound, have done impressive work, knew a lot of people over the years through various
meetings, interactions and have earned good remarks from a handful of superiors. This is when it becomes important to do some self evaluation and find out how many people in the organization actually know me. Have my efforts helped me gain enough visibility within the organization? Yes, visibility is extremely important if you have to survive and survive successfully in an organization. If I were to go up in the corporate ladder, then lot of higher ups should know me. They need to be aware of my work, my potential, and if I will be an asset to the organization in the longer run. In my opinion, winning the confidence of folks in this stage is probably the toughest. A lot of stymies to cross, lot of tough but smart decisions to be taken and
more than anything, a plastic smile towards everyone is of paramount importance!

I don't mean to say that life after this is simply a walk in the park, but at this stage one would have laid the foundation strong enough to take the career higher and higher. New things remain to be learnt, some mistakes remain to be unlearnt and that is the walk of life everyone needs to understand.


Things don't end here. There are lot more milestones to cross, but I strongly feel that once the above three stages are the most important ones.

Grammer Humor

While googling around yesterday, I stumbled upon this interesting site which has lot of funny statements on incorrect usage of of grammar. I have cut n paste a few ones here.

Proofread carefully to see if you any words out.

Don't use no double negatives. Don't never use no triple negatives.

Don't obfuscate your theses with extraneous verbiage.

Read the remaining from this site http://garnet.acns.fsu.edu/~phensel/Teaching/grammar.html

India Mapped

One of my friends sent this link to me some time back which surprised me quite a bit. I have seen Yahoo Maps and Map Quest doing an awesome job when it comes to having digital maps, but this site, is second to none when it comes to digitizing maps. The best part being that this is a site exclusively dedicated for the Indian sub continent. I know, Yahoo tried putting Bangalore on its maps, but I don't think they were very successful (correct me if I am wrong). I was able to successfully locate my office and apartment in Bangalore and also my home in Coimbatore (though I had to admit it did not have the exact information). But the bottom line is, this is cool. It is great to see this site and the information displayed with a difference. Enough of my marketing now! Get on to it and see the features for yourself. It is called "Map My India"!

FUD Factor

FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainity, Doubt. FUD is achieved by attempting to instill a sense of fear, uncertainty or doubt in the minds of consumers regarding a competitor's product. The word or the acronym gained official status, thanks to IBM who's claim to fame was to play a key role in coining this word (Read more to find out how - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FUD).

Another interesting incident happened in the internet world, when HP's VP tried to create FUD about the newly launched Solaris 10 from Sun. The interesting part is not the FUD from the VP, but a fitting response from a passionate developer from the open source community. I innocently unleash the power of blog by providing the link to the reply. Read on... http://www.cuddletech.com/sun/fink.shtml.


Elaborate information about FUD, its elements and how to recognize and stay away from it, is very well portrayed in this article - http://www.attrition.org/~jericho/works/security/fud.html.


Finally, I got to know about FUD when my manager recently mentioned it during a meeting. Interesting information and a cool acronym.

Kaadal (Love)

Watched this movie called Kaadal-the latest Tamil movie, nth in the list of launching the cupid arrow. The movie is like any other typical failure love stories, but there are bunch of points that has made quite a difference and in my opinion will also make a huge impact in the most covetous "Box Office". I will elucidate them here.

1) Except for Bharat (the boy from Boyz and 4 the People - u will know this if you have listened to this "Lajjavathiye" song), all other characters are totally fresh and probably the first time ever facing the camera.

2) The movie was based out of Madurai and shot in the same place. No song sequences leapt to Tahiti islands or the Honululu. It has no fights and no jazzy settings.

3) I heard that the movie was shot in natural lights as much as possible, the director not using much of artificial lights.

4) One of the important points being, that the movie is an inspiration from a real life incident.

5) And last but not the least, the screen play and the direction was really outstanding.


Over all, the directory vividly portrays the negative aspects of letting one's infatuation grow into love. The initial flame of joy in the tunnel of love is extinguished by family and societal circumstances that leaves staggering wounds in the minds of the lovers. Most of them fail to see the light at the end of the tunnel and the veil of such failures leave them disoriented.

To love is not a sin and to be loved is not a curse, but the essence of true love lies is realizing the big dream of oneness by the two. It is upto the involved folks to overcome all stymies and taste the sweetness of love. If they fail, life can take nasty turns ruining people's life -sth well sculpted out in this movie. Watch it!

Weekend call to action

It was after a long time, I was staying in Bangy for the weekend. Did not have any specific plans but was planning to play it by the ear.

TGIF:

If one thing all S/W engineers want to shout in unison, then it is "Thank God, it's a Friday"! I love Friday evenings and get as enthused about it as I was during my heydays. Came home around 8 pm. Gansal and myself were the only guys around. We did not feel like cooking nor going out. So settled down for our all time favourite - Pizzas! Garlic bread with EXXXTRA cheese and a veggie personal pan did the magic for the evening. We stayed late watching T.V, munching our pizzas and talking worldly matters (no we still do not have plastic teeth!).


Saturday Post:

Went to office on Saturday and spent the whole day out there. Was reading some documents coding and listening to a whole bunch of my favorite songs. Had lunch
at a new restaurant called Thaali that is quite close to my apartment. Was back to office after lunch and did more of what I was doing in the morning. Around 6pm, I stacked up my work and got on to some surfing and orkuting (Is this an official word by now?). I called it a day at 8pm and went home.
Had some good and sumptuous dinner @ home, thanks to my married friends around! :). My immediate consequence of having a good dinner was to crash into the bed and that is exactly what I did. Saturday was drawing to a close over my sleep.

Sunday Times:

Gansal and myself decided to check the status of our apartments we purchased a year and a half ago. It was almost 5 months since we had been there and so wanted to take a sneak preview. Commuting the 12.5 kms to Brigade Gardenia is almost a road trip in Bangalore and hence we decided to complete our visit right in the morning. Anjani tagged along with us and we visited the placed. Quite surprised to see the progress these guys had made. Though we were officially warned about entering the construction
area, we sneaked in to check out our apartments in the 3rd floor. It was a good feeling to see the houses morph into a nice home and our minds were suddenly racing about what needs to be done once the houses are handed over to us. Do we move in? Do we stay in the existing apartment and rent this one out? Did Gansal mention about getting married? Boy, sounded quite scary and we quickly realized that there is no point brainstorming about it right now. We will postpone such decisions to the 11th hour and just keep galloping further. Came back to our apartment by lunch time. Gansal and myself went to Nandini for lunch and after that he took off to office, while I hit home. Spent the afternoon at home watching T.V and playing Age of Empires. In the evening, we did a mini shopping, buying a pair of sandals for Gansal and buying two trousers for my brother. Had dinner and headed straight home.

Sunday was soon over and so was the weekend. I had to prepare a fresh call to action for the week. Was already feeling the Monday morning blues (sigh!)

Coimbatore gaining visibility

In the last couple of days, my friends have been sending me links about Coimbatore and how it is becoming more of a popular and hot spot. Hailing from Coimbatore it makes me real proud to see the city take the limelight and also turn many a curious eye to this otherwise taciturn city. Here is what New York Times and other websites have to say about my place.

The IT industry will hopefully start having footprints here and that is when I will make a jump back to Cbe and say "Now it feels like home!:)". After all, who does not want to be in the eye of the storm.

My friends, Sai and Xavier too have some good things to say about Cbe.

Ice Breaker

Public speaking is fun for people who really love it and for me it is becoming a passion. The obvious consequence was to channel this passion in the right direction and that is what I did, by joining the much-awaited Toast Master's club @ Sun. Yesterday, I gave my first speech called the "Ice Breaker" speech. I had to talk about myself for 5 minutes. I had prepared for it a day earlier and gave my speech decently well and of course passed the first level too! I have nine more speeches to complete before I earn my CTM (Competent Toast Master), but I know that is a long way to go.

And the word of the year 2004 is...

Before I mention the word, it makes sense to write a few lines about it. The activity caught on like wild fire and spread across engulfing everyone-from a school kid all the way upto CEO's. People love to write, like to read and and crave for
viewers and comments. There are people who stick to writing only technical stuff, while other's like to write about anything under the face of the sun. CEO's love bitching about other companies and avow to themselves and the larger community that their organization is like an unstoppable rebel force heading straight towards the pinnacle of success and glory. Photographers wanted their share too and I've come across some of the best photos in the recent months. This is what is called an e-revolution. Mobile technology is already making waves across and it caught upon the word to to start the m-revolution, if I may say that. After all, the attempt
here is sincere and it only proves to bring the world into a close and well-knit community. The effect of the activity has gone to such extremes that there are professionals available to help you in the efforts if you want the publicity but
don't have the time and patience to sit down and punch in your thoughts, surely makes one agape in wonder!

Having said all this, it is time to introduce the word. For those who have already got it, congratulations, you are part of the revolution. And for the others, the word is "Blog". Yes, this is the official word of the year 2004. I see so many people caught on to blogging. Each blog site seems to outdo the other in terms of creative presentation and excellent style of writing. So, if you are not into blogging yet, it is time to get into. It is fun to blog, atleast to me.

The New Year woke up as I slept through

I did not want to loose my mobile phone on a New Year's day and a host of my other possessions over the year. I was convinced and determined about that. No amount of tempation was going to see me yield. My destination was home and that is where I will be as the New Year dawns. I told this to myself a week before the New Year. Everything was planned. Tickets booked for the 30th night. There was no stopping.

I was home on 31st morning. Did some shopping over the day and played Dungeon Siege for the remaining part. At 9 pm, got into the cozy bed in the living room (with the TV in the front) and started watching 007 movie "Die Another Day". I was half asleep by 10.30 pm and before I could realize, I was sleeping to glory. The clock had stuck 12 and 2005 woke up while I was in deep slumber. Woke up at 7 am, fresh in mind and body. Ate all the good food my mom prepared, watched TV and had occasional chit-chat sessions with my grandpa, brother and parents. So much for the new year day, quiet and as unassuming as any other day and I really loved it!

Sunday came by quickly and I packed my bag and headed for Bangalore in the afternoon train (as there were no tickets in the night). Reached Bangalore safe and uneventful. This blog post is the last event for the day (okay after me and Das watched Legally Blonde 2-a pathetic and highly disappointing movie!).