random ramblings and some software

design an app like Turbo Tax

2010-03-09T23:54:00.000-05:00

TurboTax Design FAIL « Scott Berkun

I was thinking about exactly Turbo Tax example today evening and saw this post. Déjà Vu. We get software requirement for complex order processing applications saying "build me an app which is as easy as Turbo Tax". That application, built as easy as Turbo Tax, to do the processing in sequential steps with hints/questions and directions might work for simplest cases, but when it starts deviating from the normal happy path is when things will start getting complex. Slowly such an easy application will start getting complicated with multiple enhancements to handle more and more complex functions to the point it will start deteriorating. After a while it will go downhill when the original users who used it for the happy path will find it unbearably complex.

The trick is to remember why it was built in the first place and keep that balance through the numerous enhancement cycles. The face should still be recognizable through numerous nose jobs.

We used Turbo Tax this time around, had a tough time transferring tax credits from a previous year into this year, and had to spend hours on a simple tax return. In Turbo Tax's defense, other sites could not even handle that scenario.

reading list

2009-07-05T22:55:00.009-04:00

My bathroom reading has picked up speed these days (or means longer bathroom breaks) and I am finishing more books. Most of the books completed recently were some that I was postponing for maybe years because I thought it was self-help or bit cheesy, but the nice thing is I liked most of them.

1. Good to great : why some companies make the leap, and others don't / Jim Collins

This was topping many of the reading lists and recommendations, but had postponed. But it was interesting read. I could use some of these advice when I start my company.

2. Tuesdays with Morrie : an old man, a young man, and life's greatest lesson / Mitch Albom

Again one of those I keep seeing in top selling racks in supermarkets. But it was a good read. I only wished if I had a mentor whom I could be so close to talk so freely. This lead to whole series of day dreaming about playing mentor roles to young kids, which could be life changing for some not so blessed with educated parents or expensive schools.

3. The alchemist / Paulo Coelho

It is one of those books I was prejudiced against due to no specific reason. But I enjoyed reading this. I wish I knew exactly what I wanted and had the courage to follow that till the end.

4. Getting things done : the art of stress-free productivity / David Allen

I went through the latter parts of the book in minutes, but first part was interesting. I have an inbox with zero mails and trying to follow do / defer / delegate / delete for one week now.

5. Execution : the discipline of getting things done / Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan

More of getting things done - good read, bit more painstaking to finish though. One thing I noted was to never finish a meeting without clarifying the actions, seeing through to the end of something and staying committed.

6. Brave New World / Aldous Huxley

Another one that kept appearing in recommendations. Didn't like it much though, thought it was kind of dated.

7. A Tree Grows In Brooklyn / Betty Smith

This is one I felt could have been edited better. I felt the childhood was covered in authentic detail and was nostalgic, but remaining story seemed a bit hurried or disconnected somehow. I would still recommend it though, especially to those who loved to finish one book a day as a kid and getting lost in some strange world.

8. Watchmen / Alan Moore

My introduction to graphic novels. It is a great book and one I would have finished in one sitting if it was 10 years back when life was much less complicated. Need to find more of graphic novels.

procrastination

2009-06-22T22:15:00.007-04:00

It is 6 months since the "back again" post; I think about writing something very often but usually don't get around doing that. I must have covered the topic multiple times in this blog itself. It is a strange variety of problem though: - if I keep something pending for doing later, I may never do it even if it keeps paining me consistently. It is not that I forget it also; it is on my mind very often. One classic example is my Chemistry lab report during college. I missed submitting it in the first two sessions or so, then didn't feel like doing it next two times, soon it was 2-3 months and I was getting in trouble. Then one day I made up a story that we moved house and lost my lab report in the move - it was somebody else's story. I don't remember whether I convinced my professor, but somehow he allowed me to submit a new one which I painstakingly made with hours of hard labor. Anyway, there are many stories of this sort where it even meant sour relationships where I failed to call for a longest period which was just postponing the call, nothing to do with my not wanting to call or anything else. If only they knew my chronic problem, they would understand when I say I thought about calling often which would be the truth.

What must have pushed me through all these times is that I somehow get things done in the last possible minute; when I really start something, it usually works out well even if it is late and finally god must have also compensated by pairing me with a better half who is my exact opposite in this matter.

Anyway, this post is another promise to myself to return to this more often.

back again..

2009-01-26T23:03:00.000-05:00

It has been more than 2 years since I stopped blogging. My usual update to all the friends is, "everything is just the same", but not this time. Life has completely changed. I am a father now - it feels very strange saying that because in a way I still think I am 20 and still in college. My baby girl is going to be two years old in two months or so and it has been a wonderful two years.

I never imagined it will be this much fun and I will adore her so much. I am one of the youngest in my family and haven't been around babies. So I don't have a clue how to handle them and how to play with them. I think there are two kinds of people - those who are absolutely fantastic with kids (and I envy them, it is a great gift) and those who don't seem to know the right things to say or do around kids (looks aloof, but that is not the case, I know now). My wife is one of them in the first category and I am in the second. But to my surprise, I learned quickly on the job with my girl, I wasn't afraid to hold her when she was too small and playing with her is really the highlight of my day. It is an absolute joy and unimaginable fun - I already said that, but it is true.

Everything revolves around her these days. Every small thing she does is ultimately cute and now the baby log must read like an obscure Guinness world records like the first time she fake coughed to first time she walked to first time she climbed on a chair to the first sentence and first song (it might be a song only for us though, but it is the sweetest) and on and on.

With such major events every day and my usual busy work also which hasn't changed much in years, I don't seem to realize time going by. So one of the new year's resolutions is to revive this blog. I hope to keep this up and not succumb once again to my chronic procrastination.

Customer Service

2007-11-13T23:28:00.000-05:00

Five years back, I would have been okay with standing in long queues, going up to the counter where the store clerk would ignore you, take your money and give you what you wanted as if he is doing me a big favor and would never have expected a smile, sorry or thank you. But I have experienced customer service since then and understood the importance of it in my profession too. Following are some things that I have learned:-

1. Attitude 75%, aptitude 25%

o Attitude towards work and attitude towards customer is almost the same thing – your customer is your work or vice versa. I have seen bit of both types of people – brilliant technically, but customer not happy at the end of the day or very good communication skills and can establish rapport quickly, but shallow when it comes to knowledge and hence not successful in execution. Both attitude and aptitude are natural things, but could improve by practice too.

2. Customer is never wrong

o I have seen people arguing with the customer on why he is wrong or why something is impossible to achieve. Your job should be to tell the customer what is possible within the timeframe and cost and why. Instead of discarding something as impossible, it should be broken up and explained as to why it is not possible, which part maybe possible (the complete thing maybe impossible, but parts of it maybe possible). We need to understand the fundamental objective and find ways to achieve that.

o Also, it depends on how you tell it. Even if customer is wrong, for all involved the best outcome is customer coming to the right solution through your guidance. We tend to lose focus on the simple thing that we win only when customer wins because of our ego.

3. Listen first, be responsive, be attentive, be available

o One example from my experience:- It was comparison between product from a major corporation which is already doing business with us in some other space and another new one which was eager to sell. First proposal from the major player was anchored by just one person who came to the requirements review meeting with printed documents which was sent earlier without even reading it once. He kept saying that everything we asked for is included, but didn’t have enough detail on how those could be accomplished, gave vague answers and for specific questions sent via email there was no follow up. Second group had read every document that was sent, had very specific questions which showed that they had read every sentence and had a clear idea how to accomplish those and the meeting was very productive. It just showed that they cared. They followed up on every question that was sent to them to the very last detail and even anticipated the concerns behind the questions and provided answers for those. I got to know later that their sales process was tuned such a way that they were instructed to listen to the customer first rather than go into a “sell sell sell” mode.

o Moral of the story is this:- it is not enough that you have a good quality product. You need to listen to the customers, need to be responsive, need to prepare well and show empathy to solve customer’s problem.

o Respond to the customer queries as soon as you can, be sure to return their voice mails and be around when they need you. Ever had the experience to be in front of a store clerk who is attending phone calls always and giving answers to someone else rather than attending to those who took the pain to come to the store? Ever had the experience of served by someone who seem to be interested in TV or talking to their friends or just plain looking bored? As it says “They will forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel”.

o Often I have seen people totally ignoring what the customer is “trying” to say and stubbornly trying to answer something which is not completely satisfying the customer. It is either lack of compassion to listen, afraid to give direct answer to a direct question and instead deflect it by a fuzzy answer or plain lack of comprehension.

o According to an article from Harvard Business Review, Level 5 leadership means a “deep personal humility combined with intense professional will”. I think it is applicable for a good customer service too. There should courtesy, combined with a determination to get customer requirement satisfied in the best possible way.

4. Put customer first

o Given any situation, deciding what is best for customer should be a natural decision benefiting customer first.

o Customer takes priority – always. If that thumb rule is set, daily prioritizations will be easy.

o Better yet, evaluate how the activity you are doing is helping customer, that guides you how best to do it.

5. Take care of customer's problem completely. Give complete solutions.

o I have read somewhere that your most loyal customers are not the ones who had a flawless experience, but the ones who had a problem that was resolved. I have experienced this while working in application support. Customers will appreciate if their burning problems, the ones causing them much pain and manual work, are solved quickly, completely and gracefully.

o Solving customer’s problems shouldn’t be by putting customers through more trouble. I have experienced cases where customer service is not reachable by phone or one line email replies for a full page concern or where you had to ask the same question multiple times worded differently each time.

6. Never burn a customer bridge:-

o Need to add this here even if it is another end of spectrum and no doubt it will come up in daily life. There may come a time when you have to be strict to the customer or say no or defend your position or your employees or your product. There may be times when you have to let go of the customer, but as it says "Never burn a customer bridge, unless you have to. If you have to, you are more screwed up than you realize". At times it may be simpler to admit the fault and fix the problem. At any rate, don’t ignore the problem, address it completely and give the solution that will keep the customer satisfied.

7. Deliver consistent quality. Deliver on promises. Trust comes from doing this.

o I have read somewhere that long term relationship takes longest time to build. It takes consistent quality deliveries, consistent delivery on promises to build the trust. You could reach a level where there is complete trust from the customer for your word if you say you will deliver something. One another quote:- “If they like you and they believe you and they trust you and they have confidence in you, then they may buy from you.”.

8. Be credible. Be knowledgeable. Be accurate and correct. Know what you’re talking about. Prepare.

o It is very easy to know when someone is talking about something which he doesn’t know exactly. Homework is the key. Prepare before any meeting with customer, be ready with the data customer might want, if you don’t know the answer find out and get back promptly, ask yourself the questions customer might ask and find out the answer before you go to him. Do not answer if you don’t know, the credibility once lost is not easy to regain.

9. Take the extra step, go from implementer to trusted advisor

o Be helpful to the customer even if there is no immediate profit in it. I would remember the occasion when the sales associate walked me to the aisle, pointed to the product and inquired whether that is what I wanted rather than giving me a vague direction and at the same time want to run away from me.

o Better yet, anticipate customer problems and suggest to solving them. This is what takes the relationship from transactional to strategic. All the above ensure that you have customers business and in all likelihood will come to you tomorrow. But when you anticipate customers problems, that means that you have on your time been thinking about what customers wants without a stated need. That enables customers to trust you when they know that you have their concern at the top of your mind and heart and that trust makes you privy to information that nobody else has, which is what makes the relationship strategic.

o Understand the tactical gain and the strategic gain – Assess if the forsaking tactical gain will lead to significant strategic gain.

10. Understand customers personal goals, help them achieve it –

o Beyond the stated needs, understand what are customer’s goals? What is customer's ambition? And align your objectives and goals to achieving that. There are “Program/Company Goals”, “Your goals”, “Your Company’s goals” and “Customer as an individual’s goal. All strong, multi year relationships have been built when you achieve all.

vision and values

2006-12-17T23:27:00.001-05:00

I came across this quote which i copied down from somewhere: "A good programmer, in everyday work, is one who can communicate well with users, managers, and other developers, who can write clean, maintainable code, and who can choose the best tools, architecture, and techniques in putting together a solution.".

It may be good to have such brief definitions for roles within an organization - often people get confused or lost in the daily rush about competencies required for the role they are supposed to perform. Similar to how companies are supposed to have vision and value statements, I think it may be good to have personal vision and value statements which one can tune over a period of time.

control

2006-10-29T23:26:00.001-05:00

I have been thinking about the level of control one should have on team and project without being a control freak. It is said that with a good manager, people will not feel like they are being managed. One idea that stuck to me from the book Peopleware is, you put a person on a job and if you trust him with it, don’t try to second guess and rob him of the chances to make decisions.

There are couple of types of managers – those who came up the ranks and know how to do the job and those who don’t know the nitty-gritty of their team’s day to day job. If you think you know more about how to do something than your team member, how do you control the urge of doing the job yourself instead of teaching them how to do it without actually doing it? If someone else is taking 10 days to do something that would take 1 day for you, can you grit your teeth and let him or her go through with it and learn?

On the other hand, one downside of having a manager who don’t know or don’t have capability to comprehend the details of job is explaining things to him in layman’s terms all the time and answering umpteen questions on progress and status and such.

It is a balancing act to reduce dependency, delegate authority and at the same time make sure the task is delivered.

Following are some things I would like to practice:-
1. Transfer knowledge upfront as much as possible for people to be able to do the job. Equip people with what they need or rather make sure that they are setup for succeeding.
2. Let them take decisions, you may hint or suggest course of action, but avoid making decisions for them.
3. Check progress, but not every hour of the day. Give meaningful feedback, not once in 6 months.

JUG

2006-10-12T23:25:00.000-04:00

I attended a java user group meeting yesterday. Topic was State of Aspect oriented programming.

20% of audience had used aspect oriented programming in their projects. Compared to the demos given using Ant, JaaS, AspectJ, Sping, Log4j etc, I felt like a barbarian who still use System.out.println(“I am here..”) for debugging and Notepad for coding.

I am convinced that these tools or methodologies increase programmer productivity, code maintainability and durable design. But how many actual customers who pay for IT projects understand or even care about using these? Then again I guess it is not a choice to be made by customers, but by the programmers.

That leads me to next question:- there are so many frameworks, tools and patterns out there. I got involved in one open source project in Sourceforge to get an insight about open source, but had to drop out because of the pace at which people with various strengths (specialists) collaborated. I think the question is beyond which language or which database to use, but whether to use one or other framework should be used for connection pooling, authentication, logging and almost all aspects of programming. It is hard to know what is out there in the first place, so unless you are a specialist how will you choose what to use instead of resorting to old barbarian ways?

On a non-technical note – it is fun to attend such meetings. First objective is to shake out of routine to see what is happening out there in the world. One other interesting thing is to see the community – it was a diverse one in all shapes and sizes. There was one that looked like a cop or a wrestler, another one probably a biker, some students, some grandfathers, many with port bellies (like beer bellies, there is something called programmer bellies), many Chinese and some Indians (I seem to always take a ratio of Chinese/Japanese/Koreans Vs Indians in such gatherings – it is like a performance metric).

2006-06-11T22:29:00.000-04:00

dream teams

I read an article in Fortune magazine about Dream Teams failing to deliver. One of the examples was US all star basketball team failing to beat Canada in Olympics. Basic problem with Dream Team is accommodating the big egos and trying to gel the team. I was thinking about the kind of team that I would like to work with. The people whom I can work with should be easy going and should be able to laugh. Even though the laughter bit sounds like a trivial thing, I have worked with people who are so uptight that I haven’t shared one joke with them throughout the project duration. It is a stifling thing to work with such guys for a long time. Work and Play need not be separate always. A vague memory of a quote I read recently goes something like this – when you cannot distinguish whether you are working or playing, you might be on to something good. Even though money and recognition are important, in my view that comes after fun. The guy working with the only objective of promotion or salary hike may not be most productive one. I may have said this before too, but once again – it is not our eastern philosophy of not expecting anything in return. I think we have to expect something in return, but that thought should enter the mind only after dealing with the task at hand with all we can give. One more comment I read somewhere recently – a question to a talent agent was, what he does do to win future clients, and his answer was - taking care of his existing clients to the best of his ability. That should sum up my thought.

I digressed a bit, but the point I wanted to make is, if the choice is entirely mine, I would work with a people who are easy going, talented (just funny is waste of time) and ethical (I have difficulty working with people who won’t give 100% at least). I sound like a girl saying, “my guy should be funny, trustworthy and rich..”

On a different note, another dream team that failed to impress is Real Madrid. Yet another dream team is going to the world cup as favorites. I feel the Brazil is almost perfect, but need to see if that becomes their nemesis. World Cup has started and I am really excited. I haven’t been able to watch a world cup to my satisfaction so far. I used to play an entire world cup tournament all by myself, in our backyard, through group stages to final when I was in school. Anyway, this is long awaited. I have been following England team for quite some time now and I will be rooting for them – even though I don’t expect them to go all the way. I have couple of favorites there – Rooney and Gerrard – couple of real brave hearts rather than just a fat purse or big ego.

June is going to be busy.

age of software

2006-05-19T23:24:00.000-04:00

I have been thinking about longevity of software, how it ages and eventually dies. Many of the software that was around while I was baby footing in this industry is no longer around or has come up with newer versions that resemble to the original only in name. Is it possible to write a truly magnificent piece of software that can live forever without being a recluse? If we realistically don’t expect our software to live forever, what are we doing about it?

Is it possible to design for the future in advance? Unless hit by a bus tomorrow, I can venture a fair guess about what will happen to me at most 1 year from now, not more than that. Then how can we design a piece of software to work for even 5 years. Do we even think about how many years a piece of software will be used while designing?

There is music, films, paintings and buildings that last for a really long time, but the average life of software maybe 5 years (wild guess). There are too many parameters changing in software usage. Programming languages, operating systems and hardware is still changing along with maturity of software users, competition in the market, new innovative ways to do business and systems to support it, more and more automation. Internet is becoming part of routine life. A system designed 5 years back to automate a manual process is a called a legacy system now. Sophistication of requirements increase with time – process automation was the original requirement. Now same users want analytics, modeling and personalization of systems.

Business empowerment is another theme that is driving system changes. Users won’t want IT involvement in modifying values in a list of values or adding a field to a page or creating a custom report. Combined with Sarbanes-Oxley and Change Management processes, if you force business users to submit a change request and ask them to go through a set of approvals etc to add a field to a data entry page, then it will be frustrating. On the other hand I don’t think it is possible to make a system completely configurable so that it can sustain itself. At least that is not practical if it is for use by one organization, not a full-fledged product.

What I established so far is that too many parameters change over time – business, sophistication of users and technology. It is not cost effective to create a truly flexible system for use by internal organization. It is difficult to predict future. But is there anything that can be done to extend the life of software? Couple of things comes to mind – routine checkups, constant exercise to remain healthy and accommodate changing needs. I remember something that I studied in school economics – with education, need of people change.

If a request for a similar type of change comes in 10 times a year, it is high time to make the think about a way to reduce the IT dependency in doing that. Alleviate the heartache by giving more control to users. At the same time, don’t expect to cut off IT completely – the system may become like an abandoned house and weeds may start to grow up the roof. With this, my intention is not to make a case for livelihood of IT department.

In conclusion, systems are not immortal, it will age and there should be enough nourishment to keep it going strong and keep up with the changing world.

problems and solutions

2006-05-12T23:22:00.000-04:00

A quote on a manager’s door in my office – “Don’t come in with problems. I want solutions”. I think a beginner will go to his boss with problems and would not have thought about solutions at all. Next level is thinking about options to solve and the pros and cons in choosing any of the options before even going to the manager. You cannot expect the manager to solve every problem. Anyway the first thing he will say is “okay, I hear your problem. So what can we do about it?”, so better be prepared for that. Better yet, identify the best solution and implement and then inform the manager. You have to inform your boss anyway – if you find the problem, analyze it and fix it and nobody knows about it, still you will be on losing end since nobody will ever know how good you are. Even the next level will be anticipating problems and fixing it before it can surface.

How to take up maintenance of an existing software application?

2006-05-05T23:20:00.000-04:00

Software development is not always about developing an exciting new application. There are situations where you need to get into application maintenance or enhance an existing application. I never thought I would write a “How to...” or “Art of...” article, but here it is. It is not in any particular order, just things that I may have done in maintenance projects.

1. Suspend judgment: - It is a universal fact that we fear or suspect the unknown. Unless we can see it, touch it and make sure that it is not dangerous, we may withdraw from things without even putting up a fight for it. There are systems developed over many years and it may seem like an uphill task to take up maintenance of such application. I like the phrase “suspend judgment” – be it meeting a new person, watching a movie, reading a book or getting to know a new application. Suspend judgment at least until you can confidently evaluate whether you like it.

2. Persistence: - Another phrase that is sticking with me is “Things Take Time” – it takes time to get to know people, I have loved some music after listening to it for tenth time. As it says, “Long term relationships take the longest time to build.” It is like a tough puzzle – you can take a shot at it, then go watch a movie, forget all about it and then come back to it. We might be pleasantly surprised to find new ways of looking at things. It is an amusing analogy to compare getting to know a person and getting to know an application. I may not be over enthusiastic about an application in the beginning and usually observe the situation carefully until I tune into the same wavelength.

3. Poke at it: - Like a kid trying out a new addition to his world, poke at the application from all possible angles. Get to know a bit from technical architecture and you apply that to understand business behind the application some more and the circle enhances itself. This need not be very structured. If you get a lot of theory on swimming like how to breathe through mouth while flapping the feet, tilt the head and continue to move forward with an effortless action, the task will look more difficult than it actually is.

4. Find ways to find things: - I think this is an important step in being self sufficient with an application. I need to know how to get into application, documents, database and servers. Give me this much information and I can slowly and steadily learn the application. If someone asks, at least I can reply, “I can check and get back to you”.

5. Dig into it: - Once you know your way around, you can go further into the maze of application. Will I have enough inspiration to do this on my own? I am basically a lazy person and I may not take the initiative to read the code just on my own. A question from somebody about the working of specific feature of the software is a good enough motivator for me – then I can go in with the single objective of finding the answer and learn a lot on the way.

6. Document it: - documentation is painful, but I have always found it easy to do it while I am enjoying the feeling of discovery. Documentation will be boring once you know it all. I write things down usually to organize my own thoughts. I used to study in an odd way during college – I used to create notes, hand written (not scribble, but properly with margins and in good handwriting), while reading about something. This was my way to cut through the clutter in textbooks. I may never refer these notes (I might be making these notes just the day before the exam), but it used to make things clear in my mind. So creating a rudimentary document for my own reference may be a way to understand things better and often you get more questions while writing down. When you have everything in your head, maybe the some of the questions get pushed to the fringe and we would just assume that somehow these things will happen, but while writing it down in black and white, you just cannot bypass these nagging questions.

7. Get your feet wet: - Yet another phrase that I carry around “we are afraid to call ourselves experts”. We are afraid to say that when the knowledge is superficial. We think we can do something and it is simple, but have never done it, so can’t say for sure that it can be done. Try to do it, you will find obstacles that you never knew existed and by solving it, you will learn a lot.

8. Talk about it: - Discussing with team members or with sometimes anyone who may listen to you is another way of validating the assumptions. Ever had a feeling that as you speak you connect dots and come up with ideas that you have never thought of before consciously?

9. Code is the ultimate truth: - Find ways to get to the code. Yet another of my catchphrases. As an aside, I think these kinds of phrases become your guiding principles in life. I might have all my assumptions and ideas about what a system does, but if I can read the code, then that is the ultimate truth about what it really does.

10. How to debug: - I see debugging as one of the perks in software development. It presents natural challenges, kind of like puzzles in daily newspaper. But to enjoy it, one should use right set of tools, know where to look and have patience to keep looking for bits that could be helpful. In maintenance mode, knowing how to debug faster is a matter of survival as well.

2006-04-10T22:28:00.000-04:00

dreams

Life is too short, dreams are too big, no courage to change and the result is inertia. I find dreaming more comfortable than doing something about it. Today for example, I read a piece about the coalitions in Kerala politics - it truly enraged me and they say you need passion to do something – I had all the passion at that moment. But then I thought about what I can do - maybe setup a blog, invite like minded people to collaborate, start a movement, try to open the eyes of the most literate bunch of people in India to sit up and realize that we all have something called a spine and a brain. But no, like all other mallus, I am also not going to anything about it. I can just hope that all our leaders will perish and leaders of the next generation will at least be from a different family.

Another one of my recurring dreams is of starting a company, a small one. I have this dream often while coming out of office in the afternoon for lunch. It is spring, getting greener by the minute and sunshine feels good. If I have my own company, maybe I can work in jeans and T Shirt, sitting on a park bench or somewhere, instead of sitting in a claustrophobic cubicle under artificial light all day. I even wrote down product ideas, read a book on startups, tracked small business blogs using RSS feeds, got to know of terms like ISVs, bootstrap etc. Then it remained just that – a recurring dream.

Why don't we have enough courage to take up on the dreams? I find satisfaction in blaming it on the culture of following rather than leading, laziness and multitude of similar things.

2006-02-19T22:26:00.000-05:00

hibernate

Winter is still going strong and I am sort of hibernating all through it. Everything seems to be going in slow motion. I am literally playing the waiting game on many things. It is like those horoscopes predicting that it is not good until some particular time and I seem to have suspended activity until then.

By the way, second anniversary of my blog has passed and the pauses are getting longer. I sometimes feel that even my interest in blogging has changed somewhat. How long is it possible to write something interesting in a blog that is not about anything specific? After some time, like a child growing up, the thoughts become repetitive and established – there is nothing new to offer. If there is no disturbance or change – good or bad, life as well as blog may have nothing different to say. Many of the blogs that I used to read when I started this, have closed down and some of the persistent ones do not have the fresh perspective that attracted me to it in the beginning. I have become used to them and I know what to expect. Even some of the topical blogs that I read gets too thin with time, like trying to extract a little more juice out of a limp lemon. But then how long can there be change enough to make life interesting and not feel that you are aging or slowing down?

One of my colleagues was telling me the other day that everyone in his age group is now married and having kids – so every other weekend for more than one year, he is either attending a baby shower or attending a kid’s birthday party and finally it is dawning to him that he is no longer as young as he thinks he is. I think with age laziness increases, fat creeps into mind and body and we settle in for the long haul of life to take its course. That is scary along with the fact that my thirties is not very far. I am waiting for this winter to get over and hopefully there will be changes to my routines by summer.

Top Coder

2006-01-18T23:19:00.001-05:00

I came across TopCoder, a site for conducting coding competitions. It is a nice idea to get rated against other programmers and improve the skills. Programming on the job is mostly routine and repetitive for most application development scenarios and standard algorithms are almost never used. This will make sure that we don't forget the fundamentals and with time the routine programs will also get better - develop an eye for better processing, efficiency and performance. What I would like to believe is any activity that is even tingling the brain will add some value directly or indirectly to work - something like regular exercise to keep us healthy.

I was curious about any presence of Indians in this. There are thousands of programmers from India and some very good universities, but I didn’t find the country or any university from India featured in the list. This is just confirming my suspicion that we are better in following than leading. Or it could be just that this is not yet known to our brilliant programmers or all the Indian developers are 110% immersed in the work that nobody has time for things like this.

Anyways I am planning to attempt and get a rating sometime to see where I stand.

2005-12-15T22:25:00.000-05:00

bliss of ignorance

In my oscillating cycle of interest, now I am switching back to non-fiction – that too more related to building skills required in my trade. This is leading me into some self help style books which I wouldn’t want to read normally. But the current book I am reading has great tips on promoting oneself, how to build more visibility, build a good brand, network and loads of tips – it is written by somebody who has cracked the secret of getting inside the skip of people without their knowledge. It is probably one secret which could give you ability to sell anything and get you those millions. Being cynical about this maybe a case of sour grapes.

But letting people like me in on those kinds of secrets is like giving me a clue to recognize people who use those tricks. For example, I started blogging to just write about what interests me at the moment – I had known only one use of it then. It can also be used as a tool for the “entrepreneurs” to deliver value and get recognized – so that their prospects recognize them. It is part of a branding exercise. While reading a blog post, I am now reluctant to click on a link which is referring to another post in the same blog – I have started considering it as a cheap trick to increase readership. I somehow feel manipulated or I find the information tainted or planted to trick me. What if you know the little secret, that the people who are volunteering for a charity event are really looking for expanding their network? Always suspect the motive if something is given away for nothing.

I think sometimes it may be better not to know certain secrets – those which change a pretty view into some mask. Like a doctor who has seen how it looks under the skin or a psychologist who can analyze what you really mean when you say something (like being funny is a subconscious trick to hide insecurity or something) – you would wish if you hadn’t known that. Leave some things as it is, don’t look under the rocks or peek behind curtains. If you are in on certain secrets maybe then you will have to rediscover happiness or peace in spite of knowing that, whereas you were happy in the beginning without knowing that. It might be better to steal a view of a beautiful place and just leave with that pretty picture in mind than get into the dirty streets and meet its mean people. Sometimes it is good to keep things simple, but no, we have to explore, cut, split, expand, extend and complicate it so much so that the original beauty is lost forever. It might be better not to get into details sometimes. It might not do us any good to know that what we call pretty is just a play of light or trick of geometry or make-up or something that may not look good in a different light or different time of the day. It makes me happy when the salesman/owner of a local store back at home gives me a genuine smile or recognizes me after a long time – he doesn’t know the persuasion/influence/manipulative-still-ethical/networking skills of a trained and successful sales person in a corporate chain store in a big city. If with more knowledge men can be more successful at making money, but staying ignorant preserves some natural goodness, what should we choose?

today's article: self-healing programs

2005-12-02T23:18:00.001-05:00

Today I read about IBM’s self-healing programs.
I don’t expect it to be as smooth as it is made out to be, but this is adventurous. I was first of all wondering why terms like autonomic computing, artificial intelligence, regenerative systems etc gives a kind of thrill like a fantasy or science fiction. Anyways, it need not be a macro phenomenon, but the principles could be applied in minute way in routine applications as well. Systems doing preventive maintenance sort of checks (like the on-board diagnostics of car and “check engine” warning light) – it should be possible to put in pre-coded periodic self-checks. Systems trying to do some basis error correction before throwing it out to the user (the very first data format error need not be thrown and program aborted – it could try to correct the format and continue). Systems could learn from how it is used and present better ways – frequent navigations, frequent combinations of data made available. Systems doing self auditing on a periodic basis and sending reports. Not only finding problems, but suggesting solutions for it.

2005-11-30T22:25:00.000-05:00

las vegas

It was all about cold weather, TV, lots of lights and travel for the past week. It was a long weekend for Thanksgiving which got appended by one additional holiday and with one additional sick leave, I got almost a week off. Weather is playing tricks here – one day it stings any exposed part and couple of days after I can walk out without a jacket.

First two days went in Harry Potter’s latest episode and lots of TV. Finally I ventured out to West side of US – Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. Las Vegas was as expected – lots of pomp and glitter. You can feel the Presence of Money like God. We stayed in Fremont Street which was like a relative cut off from the family with new money – it must be still doing okay with night lit up like day and all night music. It is a crazy town with all sorts of people doing all sorts of things – crazy ones and those who want to go crazy for some time before retuning to normal world.

Drive to Grand Canyon was probably one of my best so far – really picturesque. There were too many views which could have been made into wallpapers. Some turns reminded me of “RoadRash”. Five hours drive ended in an awesome view - you can just look and wonder what happened here.

After 6 flights, walking the strip twice end-to-end and messed up sleep, inevitably I crashed for one day before getting back to regular routines.

user interface prototyping

2005-11-21T23:17:00.000-05:00

Read an article in Slashdot on tools for UI prototyping. This question used to come up many times during project initiation phases, but due to lack of time, never gets done properly.

I have used Microsoft Excel in the past and found it useful to give an idea to users about how the application will look. It has some advantages:-
• Need not write unnecessary code during prototyping. Sometimes things may wither at prototyping stage itself, so the time spent at this stage may not be that useful.
• Faster prototyping – the interest may wane if we linger on the prototype for too long.
• Easier to change – It should be possible to change the prototype (after all it is only a prototype, so it shouldn’t take a day to make the changes that the user specified). Better yet, it should be possible to change the prototype while sitting with users.
• Hands-on by users – It should be possible for users to comment or even change the prototype by themselves. Cell comment in excel may be useful in this as well as to specify some special logic on certain parts/fields in the UI.
• Change of existing UI: Can copy the existing UI, color the portion which is about to change – good way to communicate the change.
• It also solves the confusion that users might think the prototype is the actual thing. A prototype which is made in HTML might give that impression that now that the prototype is done, it shouldn’t take time to release.

While all this is good, I would still like to try out something which is easier and faster to use, easier to change and doesn’t require me to learn a new programming language altogether.

I am also on the lookout for better stencils or templates or tools to make process flow diagrams. Visio is good enough, but I need to spend time to spruce it up – it is the basic problem, just conveying the meaning in the crudest/easiest way possible is not enough for the interest to stay in the diagram for a moment more – if colors and jazz can work, I am all for it.

2005-11-16T22:23:00.000-05:00

spanglish and sideways

I watched two movies recently – spanglish and sideways. Spanglish for the second time - first time was in a marathon movie session in a flight. This movie has even Adam Sandler acting decently – I mean, the guy made too many bad choices (films like Waterboy, I couldn’t even watch the ads). But he gives a controlled performance, within limits and makes it bearable. I think Tim Robbins and Tom Hanks are of that variety – not overdoing it, but wins it by keeping it simple, the handicap of not being flamboyant is used as strength. Movies which are filled with lot of quirky stuff, strange characters and situations (which makes me think how they came up with it in the first place) are fun to watch. Supporting cast in this movie was very genuine and was given some meaningful lines – they were not invented to push the story forward or fill in time.

Sideways – I thought it was a real ride, stuff for which people should be going to movies for. Paul Giamatti is a real worker. Even in a part time job in Negotiator, he had made an impact. I am no movie critic, so I won’t attempt to do that. But there were couple of thoughts – even though it was kind of obvious that wine was being used as a metaphor for all sorts of things, it made some sense. Miles reminded me of people who are really good at some specific things or passionate and knowledgeable about some topic like sports or technology, but generally numb otherwise. Geeks can be fun if you can find something in common with them.

Also it sort of made me think about the friends we take along with us. Most of the times you know what is wrong and with very few of them you can get it out in the open. You can be friends with a person for really long time, probably life time, even without actually talking about certain issues. There are certain boundaries which are not crossed and still being a genuine friend in the marked enclosure. And there are other kinds who cannot understand you, but still you carry them along without even thinking about making an effort to make them understand your thoughts. They may really be in for a surprise. There are some about whom you don’t really think about consciously any more, they have become a part of the habit called life with all their good and bad. There are some whom you can fight with using tooth and nail and still it can make the relationship sane and not superficial. And then there are some who do not see you when they look at you, but still give you a feeling that you are the center of their universe.

software plumbing

2005-11-11T23:16:00.000-05:00

I used to be impressed by the dexterity of the maintenance men who come around to fix things around house – about how neatly they accomplish things like fixing a leak or checking the wiring etc. Most of them have ability to make the things work with a quick fix, common sense and knowledge of the tools to use to fix something and they don’t make a mess.

This post is not about the house maintenance, but about putting together a software solution to the immediate need, having the knowledge to select the best tools for the job and to reach a quick solution, not building a house from ground up. In “Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, there is a passage about making a replacement part made from a soft drink can for a friend’s expensive motorcycle – when you tell them that it is made from tin can, they may not allow you to put it in. I think it is a natural tendency to buy the packaged/branded/expensive product from a super store and expect that it is the best solution.

This is inspired by something I read today. It talks about “Actual Capabilities over Intended Use”. I loved the idea of using components for what they could do, not what it is documented to be able to do. Find ways to use components where they seem to be perfect and natural fit. I had once made a solution to execute a java component from a code which will be called by Unix script which will be called by java stored procedure which will be called by pl/sql procedure embedded in oracle report file. I had a natural choice path – I couldn’t use certain combinations because of certain system restrictions which leads me to the next natural choice.

Examples over Documentation: for anyone who has gone through endless pages thinking that “all this is good, but how do I do it” might identify with this. Having a Ten Minute Test is a great way to start using something by first seeing how it works – they don’t show you the user manual of a plasma TV in the shop, but they display it out front and give you a remote, may it should be the same with software also – give a chance to test drive. If I am not able to make something work, then I can go into documentation or even the next step – source code. Reading code is the final truth than reading a manual and wondering whether it meant what it said.

2005-10-24T22:22:00.000-04:00

lost in translation

Is it possible to express the same feeling in two different languages and mean exactly the same thing? I was reading a bit of translation last week and was thinking how distorted it gets. Book translates a polite but strong, formal but bit sensitive writing in English to Malayalam – I happened to see the English version also and there is noticeable difference. Also I read something this week that messages conveyed by human beings has the context info or meta message (message about the message) also embedded in it, we are able to understand the metamessages with a lot of experience. Variety of information is required to fully understand the meaning of something that is written – we would need some cultural background, syntax of language and local usage and even some idea about geography. Translation of a Malayalam novel like “Chemmeen” by Thakazhi, a complex story set in coastal kerala, might look very odd in English. Somebody who hasn’t seen fishermen in Kerala coasts or walked those beaches may not be able to construct the mental image necessary to go through the novel.

I think authors give enough descriptions of landscape, stage, characters and features to help the readers form the idea, but I think we can construct images only with what we have seen, heard or felt. For example, I had my own image of the location and people for a book like “To Kill a Mockingbird” while reading it (now I have image from the movie). Given that nobody can learn enough to enjoy a classic in a new language and anyway we internally translate the characters and stage to what we already know, translations are not that bad. But I can’t help but feel that translations are distorted material.

Ajax

2005-10-17T23:15:00.001-04:00

I have been meaning to start checking out Ajax with a little hands-on for quite some time and today I had my “hello world” with it.

AJAX: Getting Started: gives a quick way to start testing. XMLHttpRequest seems to be the key to this. Rest is all about constructing the presentation layer at runtime using javascript than to change the content from server.

Rasmus' 30 second AJAX Tutorial - A wanderer's journal: Pretty much the same as above. I saw this argument at multiple places that Ajax is nothing but hype and people were using DHTML + XML way back etc. I am not yet sure about the extent or power of Ajax, but I liked the idea behind it. It seems to me as something that can be termed as “perception change” – the idea that request-response processing can be done without interrupting the user interaction is great.

Today morning I attended a session on innovation management – it was said that creative ideas which works can be extended, like computers invented for financial calculations now running our whole life or idea of flight getting extended to even space tourism. I think in pre-internet era, a scientist may work on a thesis on his own for his lifetime and may publish some papers in a boring symposium – but with the rate of collaboration these days, it may not take ages to change the world. I think this is sort of revival which is happening right now with open source and new internet – ideas are not restricted to a small group who invent it. Idea should be marketed to get contributors – this may be the “hype” factor. By getting many creative minds taking a swipe at it and finding new ways of using the idea thereby extending it, good durable ideas will find many different uses. If I reject a new idea without much analysis just because I am not feeling comfortable, I may have to consider the possibility that I am getting old.

Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications Now that I have tasted a small bit of Ajax, I decided to read some more. It seems the name Ajax originates from here. This gives a formalized explanation with the help of good diagrams. Terms like Ajax Engine are a little intimidating, but I think technology is not that complicated. One burning question is – how much can be done in asynchronous way? Only that much which won’t take too much time in server processing – in that case users will anyway have to wait.

Dynamic HTML and XML: The XMLHttpRequest Object : Same example as first two links with a listing of object properties of XMLHttpRequest. But for the first time, I understood that “request destination must be same as the one which serves up the page containing the script”. I need to check whether it is still possible to access webservices in third party domain using this.

What’s Ajax? Some more interesting points and links to learn more.

Ajax Mistakes: Compilation of Ajax mistakes. Some of those may have been put here just because somebody looked for faults, but this puts a thought in mind to caution against overuse and to avoid breaking the application with it. I think Ajax may not be used to solve all problems, but definitely something that may become part of the solution.

Very Dynamic Web Interfaces: One practical example here.

Other pages I whizzed through:-

Three forms of AJAX: solid, liquid and gas: some perspective on levels of usage.

XMLHttpRequest Usability Guidelines and Usable XMLHttpRequest in Practice
: warns against pitfalls in overusing the tools

To investigate more:-

XMLHttpRequest & Ajax Working Examples: links, found something about Java and Google API.

Ajaxian: one scan threw these terms at me - Dojo, Flock, ShrinkSafe, suggestion, autosave, autocomplete, IFrame, XHR, Remember the Milk, Google Reader

Top 10 Ajax Applications: useful to see some examples

Weighing the alternatives: comparisons and adding more arguments to support the claim

Ajax in Wikipedia: More links to go through

Ajax Matters: More links.

local search APIs and mashups

2005-10-13T23:14:00.000-04:00

I was working like crazy for last couple of days with Yahoo and Google search APIs. I was trying to qualify/clean sales lead records using the local search for businesses. I naturally expected Google to do better, but their webservice is really Beta, it is not really able to do local searches and give me back the result set with address information – it can only give back the search result snippet. At the same time, Yahoo exceeded my expectations – it gave me a resultset with address, phone number, URL and a details URL which is really cool- it shows the map for business, category of business etc. I am able to specify sort criteria – relevance, distance or rating.

This experiment sort of initiated me to the power of webservices as well – within matter of seconds, I was able to run a list of 1000 businesses through Yahoo local search API and get results back with standardized addresses, phone number, URL etc.

I attempted this because I saw another one which was using Google API to do spelling suggestion in their application.

This word mash-up was coming up in my radar for some time and now I know for first hand what it is. It is fun to do, powerful and as long as the grey areas of security, limit of usage etc are within control, it can add real value to businesses.

Open source initiation – still going on..

2005-10-13T23:12:00.000-04:00

Not dead, but not exactly running yet.

• I had registered in three projects – one of them almost dropped me since it is going at an amazing pace, I can’t even think about catching up now. I will have to be patient, setup tools and familiarize, do something small on my own. Two others are still alive.
• I am using Eclipse a lot these days and in the process of falling in love. I have poked around many of the features and almost familiarized it, but still haven’t formed habits around it.
• Need to learn refactoring techniques and concepts. So far, refactoring hasn’t been in the picture, even if I had written a piece of code which I know is not the best. But now I am more or less interested in writing something and getting it working fast, then if I can find fun in improving the code, it will be great.
• Installed MySQL 3.1. After a long time, I am meeting another database. I had brief encounters with IMS, DB2, SQL Server before making Oracle as the One. Even though I know that a ton of features exist in Oracle which I haven’t explored, there is new energy to find out how things work with new gadget.
• Generated SSH key using PuTTY and posted to sourceforge.

Next Steps
• Learn MySQL some and probably use it for some primitive purpose of my own – that is the only way to learn. It is boring to read documentation.
• Experiment with CVS, check in/out, commit.
• Practice the use of ant, Maven and JUnit.

I was struggling through Gregory Bateson’s “Step to an ecology of Mind” for 2 months. One snippet stuck with me – when we learn something and make a habit of it, it slowly sinks to the unknown and we won’t have to even realize that we know it (second nature or subconscious?). I need to get to that stage with this.

2005-10-04T22:22:00.000-04:00

attention span

I can imagine myself as Spaceman Spiff, the intergalactic explorer. I start my expedition from a corner of the world by opening my mozilla firefox and clicking on bloglines | my feeds in my bookmarks toolbar. There are 800 unread News items, 115 Tech and unrelated, 734 del.ici.ous feeds, 25 Misc, Sports 25 and checking out 2 and some more folders which I have don’t have energy to list. Luckily I am not much interested in photography and flickr. When there are 38 Dilbert and Calvin & Hobbes to be read and I just go and click on it to remove the annoying (38) from reminding me, I feel desperate. How often can you wipe your slate clean, condemn all those wonderful things to oblivion and start fresh again? I am one who attends to every mail in my mailbox as soon as it comes in, even if it is to mark mail from Roberto Somebody about easy mortgage as junk mail or deleting CNET news on sight. I lost track of the newsletters to which I have subscribed – I no longer do that even if there is a glimmer of hope that I can read something interesting. Newsletters are a thing of the past for me – there is now a Newsletters folder in my Personal Folders to which all my unread Newsletters go. Some I delete on sight, some I don’t have the heart to do so, so just avoid for the moment. I also lost track of the sites to which I have registered with my email id, so there is another Subscriptions folder to which all those go – when I am old, I can look back at all those wonderful sites to which I have subscribed with my youthful energy.

I have my personalized Google page with all the cool stuff – a news section for Kerala (Customized section), World, Business, Sci/Tech, Weather, Word of the Day and Quote for the day. I could resist Yahoo 360 degree. I have one page full of tags in my del.ici.ous, with 44 items in various categories many of which are in toread or a variation of it. How many times have I visited my bookmarks? There is a feature in Add Remove Programs and Desktop Cleanup Wizard in Windows – shows last used date. Probably there should be a tag with last used date or even going one step further a personalized rule to trash items older than a month – that would be neat. I won’t have to worry anymore about the backlog – it will empty itself.

Question is how to manage the information overload and the subsequent pressure and anxiety of not catching up with every thing that is happening out there? Some of it I can gladly let go – I am not worried about politics unless there is some immediate threat to daily life, I am not worried about Entertainment at all because it is now like a stabilized business or circus show where you can expect same act even if you visit once in a while, I am not even worried about Indian Cricket now – see, we can let go of things. Of late, one thing I am not able to let go is technical trends and my inability to catch up with it all. I hop on to one link and it points me to another and like the inter-galactic hero, I am worried that I missed the sights back there somewhere. I have to consolidate my trusted sources, form a habit of quick scanning and reading only some of it, without clicking on too many links, not keep the rest as read later and don’t increase the number of sources unless my time allocated to read also increases proportionally. And I know I had reached this resolution earlier too.

Also sometimes I think people should practice self-control in hyper linking – if it is not important for your reader to go someplace else or you do not trust him to come back, then why sprinkle hyperlinks like landmines. Hyperlinks are kind of like temptations, you would like to just click and see. Keeping a tab on attention span is going to be my responsibility.

This is probably one of the reasons why hardcopy will never go out of fashion. You have to hold it with your two hands and give it all your attention. Browser has infinite possibilities and a Google toolbar to take you anywhere you want – so it will be for short rides, but longer journey should be taken though a book itself.

open source initiation - continued

2005-09-30T23:11:00.001-04:00

Continuing with my open source initiation, I am still preparing with setups and tools installation for couple of projects hoping that I will use them and learn – hope it will not end up like a preparing and rehearsing for a marriage only to find out that it is not going happen.

Anyways, just putting down the tasks, notes and my thoughts so that this will serve as my future reference:-

- Installed WinSCP as the file transfer tool and WinCVS for CVS client. I am still working from WinXP machine; hope someday I will be able to repeat such installation for a Linux machine.

- Installed Oracle JDBC drivers, this time a new jar (for 9i). I had
worked with classes111 and classes12, but didn’t know that a new one, ojdbc14, has come out. I am sure even that has been overridden by 10g drivers. Another generation gap thing going on.

- Installed Maven 1.0.2, build tool. I am still overwhelmed with the number of frameworks churned out from Apache project; it will take some time to get my head around these. Often I find that reading through user guides which starts from bottoms up or dwells too much on details is a slow process to learn. Maven had a Ten Minute Test which gave me some idea about what is involved and now I have a peace of mind that I have understood something and can go back and fill in the gaps as I need.

- There seems to be too many jar files around which I know too little about and that worries me.

- Installed Java Advanced Imaging API 1.1.2_01 and Java Image I/O Tools 1.0_01 and read the top two paragraphs from documentation, more study required.

There are some more terms which come up too often which I don’t have much idea about, but may be good to add to my general knowledge – md5 checksums, JTS, Velocity, Subversion and Turbine. I have a general idea about JUnit and Ant, but haven’t used these – again something which I need to read some more about.

2005-09-30T22:20:00.000-04:00

grown up

Today morning, in context of a session, following was presented by a colleague:-

According to a UCLA study, at age five, we engage in creative tasks 98 times a day, laugh 113 times, and ask questions 65 times. By the age of 44, however, the numbers shrink to 2 creative tasks a day, 11 laughs and 6 questions.

Furthermore, the UCLA study found a 91 percent negative response rate among adults exposed to new ideas.

I thought even 11 laughs is bit exaggerated. Anyway this is a symptom to watch out for.

open source

2005-09-28T23:10:00.000-04:00

After a lethargic period, I have started some more activities which kind of elevated me to another excited level:-

- I have registered in couple of open source projects. Work hasn’t started on anything yet, but I am excited to be in between those terms which were so vague to me so far. I have been reading so much about open source development for last couple of years, but never mustered enough courage to wet my feet. Initially I thought it was only for linux hacks which is a whole different world to me, I had started looking towards that path (reached only the stage of buying the brochures, but didn’t even plan the trip). Now I have enrolled in couple of projects which were looking for Java developers. I am sure it will be a good experience, but hope I can find enough time to work, at the moment I don’t think energy should be a problem.

- Installed Eclipse (another one of those candies I wanted to have for some time) and browsed around. I think having a good IDE goes a long way in terms of productivity. Coding using a textpad will be advisable to learn the nuts and bolts initially, but after a stage it will just slow you down. So learn programming with textpad (otherwise IDE will be too confusing, will hide too many things that we may not understand the basics), but move on to a good IDE before long. I think in a project environment it is extremely important to decide on a good IDE to improve the productivity and enforce standards – I came up with only two uses as of now, but there should be more. Also minor hindrances like start/stop servers, upload/download sources from CVS – if these can be integrated well into IDE then it helps developers to focus on the core task. I haven’t done too much with Eclipse yet, but the plugin development is an exciting functionality.

- Installed Java 1.5, CVS and Tomcat plugin for Eclipse.

- I have got a first hand look at open source development, the way team is communicating to develop a design and got some emails which gave me a surrealistic view of another planet in terms of software development. Putting down the thoughts about design at a high level, getting team’s input – the way things evolve rather than planning the activities using a Microsoft Project, assigning tasks with a strict deadline, one person working on a task, another reviewing it and each knowing some aspects of project. I am not outright rejecting the so called “Cathedral” way of development yet because I think both the scenarios differ. Open Source is a community of developers working mainly out of love of work and as far as I see, there is no lack of motivation and no resistance because it is voluntary. But when organizations need a software developed for its purpose, it is given to a set of developers who do not have a control on requirements, but a hard deadline in front of them, there has to be a way to manage the tasks (limit the chaos) and be predictable in delivering good quality – so the processes involved will be different. But I think it will be advantageous to conventional development to adopt the best practices of open source development.

- One impression I get is, doing conventional development, I was falling behind in terms of better and latest tools for development – For eg: I haven’t touched ant, junit etc. In conventional development or as I read somewhere “mass market development”, tools to develop software is determined by customer or project management and standardized for the project. They cannot have developers wasting precious time on tools. Doing open source sort of development, developers are looking for better tools, improving the tools if something doesn’t work and maybe more productive as a result.

- I realize it is a long way before even I write one line of code, hope I stay that long since that is the next milestone or the next lifeline to continue this interest.

2005-09-23T23:09:00.000-04:00

Today I listened to an inspiring and very interesting talk by Adam Bosworth given in Salesforce.com’s annual event – Dreamforce. It is titled Intelligent Reaction. Summary of the talk is that companies should react to customer needs and use the customer data to evolve rather than going with a grand plan. It is in line with couple of things I am following nowadays – Agile development and Using customer/transaction data to make better decisions (I wonder whether there is a term for it).

I caught a lot of phrases maybe clichés but good to keep focus, so spewing it out here – talk to people, listen carefully, Iterate, evolve, intelligent reaction vs intelligent design, start small, lots of releases instead of one grand plan, change with times, follow your customer in real-time, learn and change, nothing is perfect.

This is the changing way of software development, but I wonder how many organizations adapt to this. I think it is probably easy to track the usage, listen to customer and change rapidly to the better ways in an application which is lightweight, but what about applications like CRM or ERP which dealing with business, revenue, people and life in much more real way. Will the sales reps working on deals which directly affect their compensation (who may not understand the working of software) be open to start with an application which is barely good but adaptable to change thereby constantly changing the process? It is a different case when your applications audience is internet savvy and understands software in a hands-on way when it comes to adaptability. But as he said, instead of a grand plan, it is exciting to try it out and learn from mistakes, change, improve and evolve.

Extreme Programming vs. Interaction Design

2005-09-15T23:08:00.000-04:00

I am interested in learning more about extreme programming, but haven’t been able to read in detail or practice any part of it so far – I will get back to that sometime soon. Interaction design – that’s a term which I came across for the first time and at the outset it sounds like a fuzzy concept to me. Following are some of my thoughts (quotes from article are in Italics):-

• I think the deepest tacit assumption is that we have a significant organizational problem, but we can't fix the organization. I believe that in order to create quality software, you have to change the organization.
• It's my experience that neither users nor customers can articulate what it is they want, nor can they evaluate it when they see it. Neither the people who buy software nor the people who use it have the capability of visualizing something as complex as the behavior of software. They also don't have the ability to analyze what appropriate behavior is.
I started my career with software development which is transferring a written piece of requirements into design and code. It will only add to the quality of the software if you know the requirements first hand from the person who is going to use it – it will give a whole different perspective to the development of product. To someone transforming requirements document to code, idea of defining how your customer/user should be doing business and build software for that is paradigm shift. It requires a cultural change to go to a mode where we understand what user actually wants or rather needs and suggest it back to him.

• I believe that defining the behavior of software-based products and services is incredibly difficult. It has to be done from the point of view of understanding and visualizing the behavior of complex systems, not the construction of complex systems.
• The way the industry works right now is the initial cut at a solution is generally made from the point of view of a feature list that comes from the marketing people or the in-house customer, then given to the developers, who then synthesize a solution. It's not a construction problem; it's really a problem of design—not interface design, but behavior design.
• Usually, the architect at the sketch level will know enough not to design something that's an engineering problem.
• I think it's wrong when phases are abused, namely when phases have arbitrary boundaries and when there's no recourse and the people who are participating in the various phases are not working together.
There is an argument that there is logical side to software development which is essentially programmer’s domain and there is a human side where we understand users and business and there has to be a bridge of Interaction Designer who could define the behavior of the system and then translate it to Developers. Compared to this I tend to agree more with XP’s argument that software development shouldn’t be composed of phases and appropriate social structure is not a hierarchical one, but a network structure. I think it is not possible for every developer or designer or architect to be involved in the requirement definition to gain insight into the actual use of the product - but it need not be a segregated job function. It must be coming down to job profiles and competencies. Best programmers or architects may not be best communicators and hence may not have the tact to elicit the requirements from the customers. But there may be people who excel in this area but do not understand or have little interest in workings of software as such. To have the capability to define the requirements/product behavior/organizational complexity and architect the solution and understand the technical feasibility at the same time is the right combination at this stage. Building design is taken as example – I may have flights of fantasy when it comes to building my house, but some may not be possible to do technically or there may be better ways to do it – it is architect’s job to suggest a cost-effective, structurally good design. Interaction design is trying to alleviate this split/phase of design and development by suggesting that interaction designer links up with developer during the development phase. But in my experience that may not be enough. Breaking down the hierarchical structures of management, customer/user, technical architect, developer and having them interact and having open bi-directional channels of communication will definitely help.

From my understanding so far there has to be a better way to manage change in software development and by incremental cycles of development and better involvement of customers/stakeholders in the process of development it is possible to achieve much better quality. I guess the challenge is to do this without introducing more chaos and to institutionalize the practices to have more predictability.

2005-09-12T22:20:00.000-04:00

I have come across couple of situations in last few days where guys boast about their achievements, talents in a manner that evokes a temporary dislike like a bad taste or a sour smell. Maybe sometimes it is essential for a person to establish himself and make it known to others, if need be by telling it himself, that he is capable. Somehow it feels endearing if a person who is talented speaks about through action than by actually thrusting out his chest and bragging about it. How does it feel when a friend in a casual conversation just lets it slip that he is the indispensable to his company because he is oh-so talented? It is slightly awkward if it is in a direct conversation because I don’t know how to respond to that with a straight face and these situations are not rare. It maybe our ultimate need to feel appreciated or the times are such that without marketing no products can sell.

I had come to an agreement with the theory that ego is not a bad thing and it is self which should be satisfied first to be able to spread the joy to others. Those who do not hesitate to spell out their achievements and publicize themselves are either truly talented people confident in their ability or those who are insecure about it and find pleasure in self adoration. I hope it is possible to recognize first category because of honesty and second can be tolerated within limits.

2005-09-09T23:06:00.001-04:00

Today’s greatest idea: Why don’t I maintain my thoughts on the articles I read? I do sample some out of the flood of online articles published everyday and may have some thoughts of my own which I may follow up later on – for all that matters, something might stick with me for a lifetime and add to my ongoing quest to expand the perspective. So starting today I decided to keep some notes here, let me see how long I can keep this up.

Versatilists
I have been toying with the theory of jack of all trades vs master of something for some time now – I haven’t made up my mind yet and may not ever. This one is giving a name to the types – Specialists, Generalists and Versatilists. Being a specialist, knowing something in depth and to be fully confident will be a great feeling and probably we will all do this with the subjects which appeal to our passion. It need not be the field I am working in, it could be anything. I maybe interested in Ford Mustang, I may know its history, its features, latest models and ton of cosmetic information which just appeals to me tremendously. If I can find such a passionate subject in the field I am working in, it will be great. But at the same time, I do not want to get restricted to one flavor alone. But then if you are passionate about something, you will not feel restricted and will voluntarily amass more experience and information and it will not feel like a burden. But knowing other areas will just increase of knowledge level and give you more ideas to work with. Too many Buts.

There is another bit – what good can it do if a person working in software industry reads about totally unrelated area like philosophy or football. My feeling is everything is about systems and relationship, coordination, communication of parts to finally get it working. How can a team of 11 disparate people with different skills coordinate on the fly on the field and perform a miracle connection which results in a goal. It is pure beauty and there can be something to learn from that. So maybe learning about anything that appeals to my sensibilities may add to my world-view and make me wiser. I just read yesterday in some interview about kids reading just about anything – something somewhere will stick.

Versatlists maybe the middle ground between specialists and generalists – authority in certain fields, knows enough of other related areas and adaptable to change. I think being a specialist in one area gives you enough idea about how things work and that experience can be applied easily to learn new things as you go – only the fear of unknown can prevent you from learning new things, but just keep going, we can find ways to apply our past experiences to find footholds and climb faster.

2005-08-30T22:19:00.000-04:00

Autumn is sneaking up on us. Slowly it is announcing the arrival - yellow tinge on leaves, temperature is dropping and sun is setting early now. The good days of summer are almost over and this gives me a kind of desperation. I think this time of the year is always going to bring this feeling - of having lost something too soon or something slipping away. Even when I enjoy the fall colors, it comes with a sense of imminent loss. I am not looking it up, but I am sure they would have categorized and named this feeling under some sort of anxiety.

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Scribbled down some things sitting through a long meeting and other random bits (true rambling):-

Seek, find and chase opportunities. Nowadays it won't bother to knock even once.

Have a hold on yourself like a pet on a leash. It may misbehave, try to take a piss on somebody's yard, bite an innocent bystander - but take a step back and check/force yourself to behave as you think you should and probably would under normal circumstances.

With this much experience in this trade called life, it is now very well possible to recognize people just making dishonest statements. Anybody with this much experience will have acquired that talent, but still forced to do it under pressure. Trick is to keep a straight face, cut through the smoke fast enough and understand the facts and do what is right.

There are two kinds of people; naturals and actors. Naturals cannot lie without showing it, hurt others without feeling bad, can laugh without sounding fake and share without holding back. They will make for a good friend. It will be useful to recognize the others quickly.

There is no right and wrong, there is only fair and unfair. It is unfair to cheat somebody you love because you may be taking advantage of the trust, but it is fair (not wrong) to trick an adversary who is not playing fair in the first place. You feel wrong if you do something which is unfair and feel right if it is fair – maybe that is the litmus.

2005-08-19T22:04:00.000-04:00

I was reading an article in Reader’s Digest on trends that are changing life – one trend they spotted is personalized media in the form of customized news, blogs, personalized TV etc. In my line of work, they call grandfather systems which we are upgrading to newer technologies as legacy system – like that, the legacy media keeps reporting about blogging and internet as a new phenomenon in a funny way. One of their arguments is, if you are filtering news and customizing it based on your preferences, you might run the risk of some sort of tunnel vision. You choose what you like or the system start choosing what it thinks you like (sounds like science fiction). I don’t really have a problem with that – in fact I would like to build that into systems to have capability to monitor my actions and help me out by pulling up suggestions about what I am looking for. It is more human approach – if I go to a shop and ask for product which is not there, a good salesman will try to pitch for other similar product which may satisfy or exceed my expectations – if he is really trying to help me out instead of generally being desperate, it will be fantastic. For example, I use Amazon.com in many different ways than to actually buy something. I can compare products which I am going to buy from a store anyway, read reviews, search for my favorite books/music/movies and look up their lists on “Customers who bought this also bought..” and other lists. Most often I find that the items it shows match my taste. It can build my store based on the things I browse. But you have to break out the habit of restricting yourself to personalized information because you need to change continuously to avoid getting bored with life and its routines.

But with this information explosion in the web, it is very difficult to keep up with even my own interest areas even if I have personalized tools. I started marking so many articles as unread in bloglines that it is impossible now to finish the backlog of the articles I may be interested in. On the top of that I started adding bookmarks to del.icio.us account which I am sure I will never be able to get back to. It is like a kid collecting smooth looking pebbles and stashing away only catch dust in the attic. I need to figure out a way to read what I want in limited time I have every day and let go of mildly interesting stuff instead of archiving for later.

2005-08-08T22:03:00.000-04:00

everyday is a winding road..

Nowadays I drive for almost an hour everyday between home and office. Drive is quite relaxing actually - with three different single lane routes to choose from, each offering different view and feel. First is a very curvy road with many ups and downs, so it is labeled as "ride". It has two schools, one or two colleges, some farms, almost half the way covered completely by tall trees on both sides of the road and few lavish houses. Sometimes deers cross the road, once with its kid walking across the road very casually, mom waiting for the naughty kid to catch up. This road could get nasty if it rains. Another one is almost all the way covered by trees, less curvy, some stretch feels like proper forest. Last one is more or less going straight through two or three hills, going up and down, with one or two golf courses and horse stables in between and a very nice view of the whole region. Except for morning rush hour, I get all three roads to myself most of the times.

So I have this one hour dedicated to music. After discovering free CD rental from a fantastic public library system, I am just trying out all the names which I have heard even once. Tried Aerosmith, Bruce Springsteen, Rollingstones, Elvis Costello, Shania Twain, Sheryl Crowe, Ricky Martin, Patty Smith, U2, Elvis Presley, 3 Doors Down etc so far - two albums clicked well so far - Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay and Singles 1992 - 2003 by No Doubt. I liked almost all songs in these two albums. I had similar experience with Savage Gardens and Metallica while in college – listen to the same cassette endless times continuously so much that you can sing along almost involuntarily.

I think common features are honest and meaningful lyrics (not sounding fake, not about only one subject, some mild philosophy, some smart lyrics, some lines which must have been written with real feeling and fit in even if not rhyming completely), fresh music (not regular, not repetitive, something sounding new, even just a taste of difference) and bit of variation (not screaming or not crooning all the way through the album - there are times when you can listen to continuous screaming and continuous moaning, but this gives something for all moods). I have the theory that if you listen to the same album multiple times patiently, you can befriend some music and even like it a lot - so I bear with some miserable music searching for a hook to hang on, but most of them are disappointments.

I have the definition of my kind of music - not too fast, not too slow, not obnoxious (I am not able to identify with the rap, hip-hop and crap however I try - I can listen to country, urban, soul, blues, soft/hard rock, pop, R&B and I have favorites in all of these. I can try up to metal, maybe not acid, if I have got the correct lingo) and bit of heart (even if tends to be soft, it should be okay). Once in a while there comes along a beautiful one which leaves you wondering how it all clicked together - it must be the moment of pure genius when they came up with those kind of marvels - no wonder they say that it was written in under 10 minutes etc. Most of the geniuses are basically simple (simple lyrics, not complicated music). Interestingly I can probably say these things about people I happen to like also.

Sometimes I feel mixing all favorites and listening to only those over and over again is boring and unfair to those favorites because soon it will become familiar and regular. So let go, explore and find new additions to favorite list, still be loyal to old favorites by coming back to it once in a while (when you come back to old favorites after listening to miserable music for days, there is a unique feeling, some sort of relief or comfort). So the search continues through library and FM stations and an hour of it everyday.

formal learning

2005-08-05T23:05:00.000-04:00

I am considering going for Sun Certified Java Programmer – just trying to come off the inertia. My core competency in programming can be ascribed to Java, but I never studied it completely using a book or a proper training course. I am involved too less in actual software development these days and sometimes that frightens me to think that I would soon loose the authority/hold on whatever knowledge I have and become redundant. It is actually very difficult to start studying for something without expectation of any external reward.

Over time, I had tried to learn certain things on my own, mainly leisure stuff – went for guitar classes for two years while in college, tried to learn chess with text books etc. Programming should be learned by more practice than theory. One of my friends used to say that to learn keyboard (music), first you start hitting on the keys and learn for yourself what makes agreeable noises and then you will proceed to develop a sense of what feels good. It is like a baby tries to crawl, go on all fours, stand up holding something and tries to walk despite falling down. Then you can try to mimic popular songs all by yourself and when you get something right, it will give you tremendous satisfaction. After a certain level, I think it is better to start formal education to fill in the gaps. You would have made some headway into how all the pieces fit together and you can see how it makes more sense. I think what this gives is better perspective or “big picture”. It is like checking the map first and getting an idea about where you are going, which direction, what are the nearby towns instead of going by written directions. I used to like Maths a lot and while in pre-degree, I used to work out graduate Maths. There is more fun in learning this way – hack on your own and then later formalize the learning.

Initial progress will be slow and it will be frustrating, but you will have the sense of adventure and joy of discovering things for yourself. You can refer the documents and all-powerful-google if you get stuck, don’t try to figure out everything by yourself – intention is not to discover the language, but to learn it.

I think some things should not be learned in this manner even if you may learn something in the process of doing it – for example, surgeons won’t hack at bodies first, they must be read enough and watch somebody do it, attempt it on cadavers before even holding that scalpel. I hope this is the case though.

2005-07-12T22:02:00.000-04:00

news

Yet another topic that I do not have a strong opinion or clear perspective: politics. I must say I am mildly interested and sometimes my interest heightens and then for months I don't even read newspapers. When I was in college, I used to devour the local newspaper from first to last page - everything from politics, economics, sports and local affairs. I was in no particular hurry in the morning to get to college, I could park the breakfast on to the paper and go through every inch. But after I moved out of there, I have never managed to read a newspaper or magazine from cover to cover. I can attribute that to a lack of care about what is happening around me (unless something drastic which demands attention), bulky newspapers which are very clearly meant for a serious study rather than daily news, internet newspapers which don't have a definitive path to follow (side bar, top bar, snapshots, summaries and in between a small strip of news strewn with links - I am compelled to click on something else before finishing one story) and news channels. The old way still seems better - I can just catch the 10 o'clock news, which will give me relevant news of the day - instead of a 24-hour news channel, which stretches the bits of news beyond imagination to fill in the time. I am tired of the expert’s analysis of statistics of past occurrences of hurricanes that seem to be going up from category 2 to 3 and back to 2.

I am still in the process of discovering the best way of reading news. Latest on that is rss feed - my initiation is with bloglines. But I would at least like summaries of stories, most sites give me headings and I don't want to click too many links. Since we have reached so far, I would like my customized news page with latest and relevant news from Kerala (not about thunder strike by postal workers and flood in Trivandrum bus station), Indian politics and business, cricket, British football, general tech and world news (no, for me, world doesn't mean just US). I think such a newspaper is not far away from making. I should be able to rate stories and say what I don't want to read about from tomorrow onwards and what I would like to monitor more.

Coming back to where I started, last when I had a little bit of interest in politics was during UK election. It was less entertaining than Indian elections where they will surely make me memorize and eventually gag over the name of the candidates by shouting through loudspeakers from morning to evening and putting posters in every inch of available space. I had to make an effort to learn the candidate's names in UK for local constituency. But then even they are becoming more of presidential election with 2 and 1/2 candidates and an enviably low number of major parties. I think the most interesting thing for me was multiple talk shows with the candidates themselves with opportunity for public to probe. It must be incredibly difficult for the leaders to answer all the questions (about education fees, immigration issues, taxation, international affairs, health, environment etc - I have to give them credit for attempting to answer). If not get a satisfactory response, you can at least make out which of them is genuine, still has a trace of sincerity and bit of intelligence. I don't think except for designated spokespersons, most of the ministers back home can perform well under that microscope.

Again, back to my original thought - why do I want to fill up my unused memory cells with obscure views about world peace? Maybe it is the process of my ageing. I think I really feel and want to know the real stories, but am tired of the very standard and pristine news products coming out of news processing industries - I don't want to read "Suicide bomb explodes in hospital - 20 killed." followed by a standard description about where and when it exploded, the counts and such. I think news is getting very unemotional and too high level to comprehend what is really happening. I no longer know whether anything is really true or just a publicity stunt or fed by the PR agency or staged hysteria. I think the current way is hallucinating, creating a world that exists mostly in paper. Lock us up and give a daily sample of celebrity gossip, terrorist attack etc - we might not even notice the change. But does it really matter whether the news is nothing but truth?

2005-07-11T22:02:00.000-04:00

luck

Yesterday was a hot sunny day - there won't be many days like this, but being incredibly lazy about making most of it, I mourn the passing of each day. In the afternoon, I called an old college friend - main topic of these calls has become gossip about old classmates - who got married, who else is on the line, tracking people around the globe. Nowadays I wait for being in the right mood to call friends. Most of the times I am really not in a mood to talk to anybody at all. I think I can muster enough energy to call someone when there is absolutely nothing else I can do - when there is not even crap on TV and I don't feel like reading. I can even be a bit talkative then.

Anyways, I took the car to go out for shopping, still talking to him on mobile and got out to the single lane road out of the apartment. It was a 35 mph road and I must have hit the customary 40. Suddenly out of nowhere, a van pulled into my path from left. Within a fleeting second, I hit hard on the brakes, avoided the van narrowly, turned hard to the right to the sidewalk, before hitting it, took it back on to the road. I was surprised that I got out of that situation without a scratch. I continued talking to my friend, he wouldn’t have noticed any difference but if he listened closely, I think I babbled a bit for couple of minutes. It was a genuine “thank god” situation. Much afterwards I was happy with myself about my presence of mind and good reflex.

Later I was wondering how that pleasant afternoon would have gone upside down if I couldn't react fast enough or the van was bit faster or I hit a post or something. That feeling is the more dreadful than actually seeing the van looming in front of me. I guess all misfortunes like that hits pretty fast and we will be amazed how fast it will all be over.

Software Deployment

2005-07-06T23:04:00.000-04:00

I read a bit on Environment Tests and Deployment tools and it got me thinking. In my mind if there is a picture of deployment tool, it is InstallShield. If I need to install an application in my PC, I would ideally like to get a package which tells me exactly which exe to double click to start installation (No, I don’t want to do 10 things before starting my installation), essential information I need to know (I don’t want to choose a thousand attributes which can be probably defaulted) and a neat and complete way to uninstall the application (it should remove every bit of itself – I don’t want to pollute my PC with unnecessary stuff). Now, the application I am developing can be deployed like this? Probably no. I assume my job ends when I have a perfectly working application satisfying all user requirements and more. Deployment should be easy and it is left to system administrators.

Deployment or Implementation would seem like an insignificant task for most developers. We burn so much energy into designing an application, build, test, fix and make it ready for the user to test it or to implement it in production – a minor problem in the implementation can create bad vibes for the product at the outset. In my experience, most often the initial implementation problems were minor in nature (as far as I am concerned) – it usually takes less time to fix and more time to explain. It is very frustrating for the developer than anybody else when somebody totally unaware of application starts screaming that it is not working! At least for the peace of mind, it is important to have the steps for installation of the product and the pre-requisite and post implementation tasks documented and as much as possible automated to reduce the risk of manual error.

In the systems which I have worked on, as soon as it goes for production implementation, system administrators take over the implementation tasks. It is like you go through all the pains of developing your baby and as soon as it is the delivered someone who may not even care as much adopts it. When it starts crying, they become angry and frustrated and you know exactly what it needs and you can only explain what to do. Suddenly you have limited access and you are required to guess what is wrong with it. A compilation sequence has gone wrong and a package did not get compiled or after implementation couple of packages became invalid and needs recompilation – just this much could make it unusable. That is probably one more reason for me to consider this step as important.

So far, in my experience, following were tried out-
1. Environment Documents: - Document every single bit (configuration file changes, directory setups) and keeping the focus that a third person is going to configure the system.
2. Installation Documents (Readmes etc):- Pre-requisites:- Make sure that everything which is needed to even start code installation is already setup in the environment; sequence of installation of various types of code. Post installation setups.
3. Automated Installation Scripts: - As much as possible automate. It will simply reduce the chance of manual error and you don’t have to answer any questions.

At this point, I did a bit of research and following are some points, which I may be doing, but not put into a structured thought process.

Other systems should still work after your implementation. We could be so much concentrated on getting our software installed on to the target machine that we may forget it already has something which may get affected by our installation. Make sure such impact is tested earlier.

Generating logs of installation: - Success as well as failure of installation should be logged and log should be verified before starting to use the system.

Pre-cursor steps: - Check whether instance is even ready to take application in. It could be multiple steps ranging from verifying application server setups, presence of database objects to checking whether required directories are present with required permissions.

Installable in multiple host instances: - Often we design the installation scripts knowing the target system specifically. If there is a chance of the scripts being used for multiple stages (probably user testing, acceptance, production type of scenario), keep the scripts and configuration documents generic.

Versioning could play a very important part in a system where continuous software upgrades happen to the system and the code base progresses through multiple stages before reaching production.

There are two distinct dependencies: - Run-time and Install-time. Just because of the files are installed successfully may not mean that application will work. It would require run-time configuration steps to be completed. It is possible to write a script to verify whether all nuts and bolts required for the application to run are already put in place. Another handicap for developers is, once application is live, you cannot run it through a set of test data and make sure that all its functionalities are proper.

Deployment involving change in system configuration could take backup of the existing configuration files and then perform the new steps.

Packaging the builds: - To refer to what version of the build is currently deployed, it is important to wrap the different set of sources into one (usually compressed format to transfer safely and completely) and refer using a naming convention. There could be initial installations, upgrade releases and hot fixes – depending upon the complexity of environment it may be useful to name the packages used in each case appropriately.

If the development and deployment teams are well separated, then complete transition becomes key to successful implementation. It is too easy for something to go wrong if the development team’s assumptions about what they are building is not documented and known to deployment team.

File-conflict detection: - Bit more advanced. This could make sure the existence of a lower version of the file when a new build goes into the system.

De-install scripts: - what will happen if installation breaks down in the middle? System can’t remain down until you fix the installation? If there is a chance of incomplete installation harming the host system and existing applications in any way, plan for it by keeping any de-install script or steps ready.

This whole process should be well integrated with the build process itself. If you wait till the last of the features are tested, close your books and hang up your boots and then remember to make up some installation scripts, first of all, it will be a grunt work and second, you probably don’t have any way or patience to test your deployment scripts.

Deployment plan (level of automation, mode of deployment, usage of tools) should be made well ahead. Typically, the race will be to meet the deadline for the development of the application, but on the designated day if you give hundred files to system administrators, it would probably take another week to get it implemented and effectively there will be project delay.

Deployment process could have following steps:-
Validates prerequisite dependencies
Checks for file conflicts
Executes and pre-installs scripts
Installs the files
Records the installed files in a database
Executes post-install scripts

The level of automation or planning for deployment will depend upon the scope of the project, frequency of upgrades, complexity of environment etc. It could range from simple readme for installation to full-scale deployment tool to be used.

There are variety of deployment tools available which I haven’t had an opportunity to use and have a prejudice that it will probably not meet 100% of my requirements and I may have to then find ways around it which will in turn reduce the effectiveness. But then again, it is just a prejudice.

References:-

1. Software Deployment and Configuration
2. Towards automated software component configuration and deployment
3. The Software Deployment Mystery – Solved
4. Agile Deployment: The View from the Inside

2005-06-24T21:58:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I feel I am the most gullible, impressionable by anything and agreeing to both sides of any debate alternatively without being able to make up my mind about something. Either I can console myself that I am finding good in everything or I can accuse myself for being a weakling who cannot differentiate good from bad. That is what I am searching for - my day of emotional maturity - then without running around mirages of ideas, dreams and goals, I can relax in the comfort that my thinking is right and this is what I want. I have been thinking of one quote for couple of days - it is from "pretty woman". Mr. Gere says that rarely people surprise him and Ms. Roberts replies that "good for you. Most people scare the shit out of me most of the times" or something in the similar line. Yes, I think that sometimes - I haven't made up my mind yet about most things in life. I fancy myself as good at recognizing patterns and making theories - in work and outside. I have my subconscious categories of people and pre-judge most of them into some bucket. With careful observation, I must have built a catalogue and approximate mental pictures of people in different categories. If I just trust my instinct I will be mostly true about some person. Like that I must be furiously collecting data on life and what should be believed in and what must be the true pattern of a good life. But so far I don't have a clue. What should you pursue to be content? In any case it won't make any difference to me because I have caught on to the tail of life and it is going on a wild ride without a care in world about me bumping into boulders on the way. It doesn't seem to care that landscape is not usually scenic and I don't seem to be able do anything about it. Irony is, I can change anything about this life anytime I wish - but I don't know what to change or whether to change. Have been listening to Coldplay for last two days continuously and the line "I’m gonna buy a gun and start a war if you can tell me something worth fighting for” lingers. That is pretty scary. Is finding happiness in whatever you have now is an ambitionless attitude, sweet pill given to the weak? Not that I am practicing that, it is just a thought. Sometimes people make me think that not having a goal in life is the worst thing that can happen to you and then I make my short term and long term goals and short term and long term plans to reach that goal. There will dozens of fancy thought screaming across by wonderful little brain that if you have a general direction sense about where you are going, you can eventually find it, so get that idea and that at least going towards something gives a sense of purpose and avoids the boredom of running in circles. And then the next day I conjure up a new theory that having an aim takes the energy out of life and concentrates it on one purpose while thousands of other opportunities for happiness pass you by. Like this I jump from one boat to another. The ultimate irony is that these are just thoughts - I am just fantasizing. I have always followed life and was generally happy about wherever it took me (oh, that must be the destiny theory) and let me see what is has in store. I will there in my couch, eating potato chips out of family size Lays bag and watching CNN's made up news of the hour. I am pretty content actually…

2005-06-22T21:59:00.000-04:00

I have a very peculiar behavioral problem – if I postpone something repeatedly, I may end up never doing it. I know very well about this but like with an invisible wall, I timidly knock against it, but just don’t seem to break it. Around three months back, a friend had called me during office hours when I was about to get into a meeting, I told him that I will call him back. Every weekend, I make a mental note to call him, but I put it off for later and finally I returned back from UK without calling him at all. I have minor to major activities in terms of seriousness in such hanging status – it is like going through life with a lot of frozen activities which I will probably never get back to. This blog was becoming one of those. So this post is to break the silence and get back.

Quite a lot of things happened in my life since my last post. My assignment in UK came to an end, I traveled back home, stayed there for three days and came back to US of A. It has been hectic for some time and I am not really sure whether I still complete understand what I am doing. Anyways, time in UK was great – I got to visit four countries, added quite a lot to my pile of scrap called experience and lost a lot of weight (I didn’t know that I lost this much until everyone I see here exclaims as soon as they see me). I somehow found time to read enough, travel enough, donate more money to Blockbuster and improve my knowledge about European football.

Only regret in recent times is that I couldn’t get to spend enough time at home. It is feeling more and more great to be back at home than anywhere else in the world. I got to know what the rest of the world looks and feels like which might have changed my way of looking at things back home, but just the content feeling of walking through those streets makes things clear – a sense of belonging, that’s what it is.

Anyways now I have a new home, car and changed set of routines. It always gives me a kind of funny feeling when I move to a new place, go to a new office and meet new people – a mix of apprehension and expectation. The place looks new – I always maintain that the image which registers when I first lay my eyes on some place is unique. After some time I stop noticing many details, the thing called familiarity settles in and then I can sleepwalk through it and it becomes comfortable. So now I am patiently waiting for things to get comfortable.

2005-03-23T21:57:00.000-05:00

Finally I got my hands on Da Vinci Code. Popularity of this book has become some kind of myth in recent times. Undoubtedly it has become a worldwide best seller. After it was recommended to me by a friend, most days I see some mention in newspaper or people reading it in trains. In my circle of acquaintances, only new films, TV shows and music gets discussed and never a book – this may be the rare one. How many times have you discussed a new book release, checked reviews and tried to read it hot-from-the-oven not like after 50 years from the time of publishing? I watched a TV documentary called “Real Da Vinci Code” which visited all the sites mentioned in the book and ended up refuting many of the claims made in the book. I walk by a 175 year old Mary Magdalene church every morning and have visited Rome, Vatican, Paris, Lovre and London in recent times – that must be all the reasons to read this book.

I did contemplate buying it, but somehow decided against it, tried borrowing from friends and borrowing from library. Library had very few copies and they said another ten or so copies have been ordered, so finally placed a reservation and got it.

Against my best judgment, I described the quest for the book in so much detail to start with saying this – it didn’t live up to my expectations. In the same breath, I have to say that it was an interesting read, a very light one at that. I imagined it would be one of the best narratives to catch attention of so many people, but it was rather like a delicious sounding dish gone sour at places.

This one would definitely make you wonder why it has attracted so many people. Story plays the main role, it is something like you got a meaty idea for a story and then you invent some characters – professor to explain the concept, students to get suitably impressed hearing the hackneyed stories about PHI and produce adequate oohs and aahs etc. Narrative will have to compete hard against children’s books and still might find it hard to win. It is just a regular “thriller”.

Some of the ideas seemed preposterous to me. About the V formed by two people indicating sacred feminine, reverse V indicating male and the whole structure saying M and hence indicating Mary Magdalene etc. I think this is the problem of anything which is not scientific – anything can be proposed and there is no way somebody can prove or disprove. It is like somebody trying to find sexual connotations of 90’s America by analysing Friends TV series.

As to the question of faith and whether it catches somebody totally off-guard and makes them think whether all through their life they might have been founding their faith on a lie etc, somehow I am not able find the shock element in that. Probably because marriage, bloodline, goddesses are not new concepts when it comes to my religion. We have all imaginable combinations of mortal lives reflecting on to fables of gods and goddesses. I have read somewhere that Sita/Ram story is based on a real king who was loved by his subjects (not sure whether it is with supporting evidence). It is a very tricky thing to start discussing faith, but I think belief in god need not be tied down to certain symbols abolishing of which crumples everything you ever believed in.

2005-03-08T21:56:00.000-05:00

Somehow I could pluck myself away from the imaginary clutches busy work and went on a trip to Italy and Switzerland. We rummaged through Rome, Pisa, Florence, Venice, Interlaken and Geneva in 6 days. Except for rather tired legs, it was smoothest trip irrespective of so much travel through trains, buses, flights and even boats. It couldn't have been smoother if not for Google and internet - booking hotels, finding places to see, buying even intercity train tickets and planning the whole trip without leaving home even once. We have truly come of age in our use of Internet.

Rome was another version of London and Paris with its share of monuments, art, museums, palaces and cathedrals. We went to Vatican first, stood in 2 km queue for security check, had our fill of Michelangelo and all others - they have painted, sculpted, sewn so much that after Sistine chapel everything starts to look the same. I don't have a very keen eye for art, but basically it looked grand. One thing I realized is I have my own fictional images of places stored away which I haven’t seen but just heard or read about. For example, in my mind's catalogue, I have pictures of Goa stored, whenever I command "Goa", it brings a view of beach with a bamboo hut by the side (probably from dil chahta hai), long clean beach, some coconut trees, laid back, happy people etc. The actual picture might be nothing like it. The trips like this just helps in replacing those fictional catalogues with something real. Now I have the picture of Rome as a place with some history, art, crowded metro/buses, and not so much complicated people.

We went to Colossuem, Pantheon, admired some of the grand piazzas and walked through the streets just enough to get the fill of it city. Somehow it has gotten into my head that just the monuments is not enough to credibly say that I have been to some place – need to get out into the place and see for real what it is at the present age than to get some wrong idea by looking at monuments built in 1500. I have spent 21 years of my life in Trivandrum, I have never been to Kovalam Beach which is a huge tourist attraction or Padmanabhaswamy temple which is grander than many foreign attractions I have seen – universal fact maybe. But I can vividly remember almost every small and large street in Trivandrum inch by inch and that is real.

From Rome, we traveled by train to Pisa. Got a glimpse of vast country sides. Pisa was nice, small, less crowded, regular Italian town. We got a hotel room almost the size of our apartment, bit old, but nice and cozy. Only thing to do was to go to the leaning tower, inspect from all possible angles, tried to push it straight and clicked photos from all sides. It was 20 minutes walk from the hotel through the labyrinth of narrow streets. It was a rainy Sunday and rain clouds were a constant threat, giving us a wet, dim lighted, almost deserted town. I think places looks distinctly different on a crowded Saturday afternoon and a deserted, drowsy Sunday night.

It is surprising how nice people are whom we see for a fleeting moment on the road. In fact some of them went out of their ways to help us with directions, walk us to hotels, making sure that we catch right trains and patiently sparing a moment from their busy lives to click a photo and say sweetly to “Come closer and Smile”. Everyone can be good nice people they are for a moment or two - it is only when confronted with situations with little choice to act in certain ways, they become nasty.

Florence was another variation, buildings with various shades of brown and old, magnificent cathedrals. It snowed a little when we got out of station after breakfast in McDonald’s (omnipresent fallback option). Churches in Florence had some different quality, something which I couldn’t place exactly – something more natural. Quite a lot of Chinese guys were there - in fact they are everywhere. Indian’s penetration in European countries might be just limited to London. In US, every "standard" long weekend spots will be filled with desis. I think I saw less than 10 guys in 6 days which is quite unusual. At the same time, Chinese are everywhere. In the lighter side, I was thinking that it is the most populated country in the world, so it is only natural that they are seen everywhere. I am quite impressed with their photography skills (proof of common sense?) and their interest and proficiency in using gadgets. Something made me realize that I have good amount of prejudice when it comes to Chinese guys - I can't tell between Chinese, Japanese, Korean people so all are Chinese to me. We know all about American dream, rap/pop/jazz/hip-hop, NBA/NFL, Prince Charles/Camilla, inside stories of British monarchy and Premiership Football. It is amazing how much general knowledge we gather about American/British, but very less about oriental other than those martial art films and that everything you buy from Wal-Mart is made in China.

Off to Venice on the fourth day. It had started snowing heavily on the way, but next day was more or less clear. Initially I thought in one day I may not be able to get a feel of Venice and we made a mistake of staying only a day in Venice. But in one day, you can really see enough of a place and may be that way we can leave with that good feeling before starting to find faults. Venice was vastly different from anything I have seen so far - kind of a "waterworld" feeling. Apart from Alappuzha in kerala, I have never heard about boats as the means of public transport. It must be horrible to live in a place without real trees and raw land to freely walk around. Nevertheless, for a day we had most boat rides as we had in our entire lives in a place resembling Hollywood movie sets. it was a wonderful romantic day, we walked through almost all of Venice, got really lost in the maze of streets even with a street map, had margherita for lunch in a sweet little pizzeria, enjoyed the hospitality of one of the friendliest of hotels we have stayed in and walked till we couldn't walk anymore.

Next destination was Switzerland and Interlaken. It was overnight journey by eurostar train. It was comfortable and we had a pleasant italian-swiss lady for company who was trying to speak English. By morning we reached Brig and started the most beautiful real life tour I have ever taken in my life so far. Using only two ingredients - whitest snow and endless mountains, nature seems to have created an amazing display. It is any day better than anything man made. Even the journey from brig to Interlaken was so beautiful that by the time we reached Interlaken our eyes got accustomed to the black and white display. Locked our bag in the luggage locker at the station and started on yet another dream like journey to top of Europe – Junfraujoch. It was a clear day and two hour journey to the top and back was unforgettable. White, untouched, pure snow almost flowing like a vast river between endless mountains – idea about what paradise might look like might have come from there. Last piece of surprise was extremely courteous hosts in Interlaken. Hotel owner had been to Trivandrum!
Back to Geneva which was boring after all this, but still paid a visit to UN and followed one trail into the city. A smooth flight back and when we reached Croydon it was snowing as if to complete the pieces of a riddle.

2005-02-07T21:56:00.000-05:00

beam of light through autumn trees
warm on the cheek, lighting up inside
feeling light on feet, wanting to fly
a song playing in background of my soul, faintly
is there a hint of involuntary smile?

joy without any reason, like for real
would have danced if I was a kid
live this moment, not fear the next
don’t think, just live, maybe that’s an idea
“just feeling happy, don’t know why”

tired of feeling blue, dreaming up all ghosts
conscious of self, meeting expectations
trying to be nice, acting polite
analysing, criticizing, cursing and lying
somebody tell this kid, “that toy is not so great”

2005-01-31T21:55:00.000-05:00

Came across article in Guardian about “What are friends for?” something in the lines of which I also have been thinking about for some time. I was taking inventory of how many friends I think I have and why I don’t have “best friends”. I seem to have a steady supply of friends but then losing touch with them in the course of this long trip called life and finally becoming just a memory relived once a year accidentally. Around every corner, you find new acquaintance, out of desperation to be in touch with humanity you make them friends, and then they fade away into the jungle of life like somebody departing on a train on a long journey.

Long time ago, when I still hadn’t discovered the “reality” of adult life, I used to think that friendship is the ultimate thing in a sentimental kind of way. Life is sweetly happy when you sit around doing nothing trading joking with them. If you take a joke out that context and repeat to yourself after sometime, it looks so silly, but you have laughed so hard earlier – it is amazing. All my friendships have been based on those silly jokes, is that the reason why none lasted for a long time?

I think there is certain frequency at which each individual operates. When you find somebody with same quality and when your liking is reciprocated, there is a chance of a friendship. Some people can never be friends how much ever time they spend together and some never can be anything more than formal.

In high school, you write pacts in blood that you will never break the friendship and on last day when somebody asks whether I will remember him after 10 years, it seemed so impossible. But I am not in touch with even one of my old school friends for over a decade. Only hint of friendship remaining is from engineering college and those four years have sealed some friendships, which you just cannot seem to break fully. Even those are bound to be worn out after couple of “How are you? How is life? How is work?” and then after a long time just a marriage invitation saying “Hi.. Cordially invite you with family to the auspicious occasion.. Regards..”.
Stories of childhood friendships or lifelong best buddies are just too good to be true.

It may be a cliché, but wise thing to do is not make best friends, then you don’t have to break up, worry about them not paying attention, not sharing their secrets or big news with you first and all that sentimental baggage. Or you don’t have to get conned by some “friends” with whom you seem to have a great time and then come crashing down to earth making you realize once again that there is no such thing.

I totally agree with the notion that friendship is kind of that lightweight relationship where you are not demanding anything and not expecting anything, so anything you get is just a bonus – be it some humorous moments or receptacle for venting some frustration. This relationship does not enter into a level where you start talking about big words like commitment, trust, loyalty and such. As long as everybody understands that and operates within the same guidelines, there is less chance of getting hurt.

Especially when the culture is changing into a “competitive work environment” and “performance based appraisals”, it will be difficult to make friends in office. With friends, we may not end up judging/rating/comparing and jotting down his positives and negatives or think how to outperform - when it gets to that, what you have is no longer called friendship in traditional kind of way. Maybe the ideal times you can enjoy friends is when you are not too much into reality of life (money, job, priorities) and once you have played all the games, get back to take the rest of the life easy. In between, it will only be transient friends.

2005-01-17T21:54:00.000-05:00

I am becoming somewhat nostalgic about bright sunshine and blue sky. I can't seem to shake off the thought that precious moments or prime time of my life is getting wasted inside office, under artificial light, facing a wall cabinet or a cubicle separator, like a chicken waiting to hatch an egg. I happen to go out today morning, it was good day, cold but sunny. I felt bit envious of people who were walking in the streets - nobody is in a hurry to reach somewhere by some fixed time. It is absolutely liberated feeling - to travel in an empty train just looking out, without worrying about anything. I am having dreams about going out on a long ride with soft music playing in the background through deserted straight roads, landscapes changing from vast harvested fields, beautiful lawns with a sprinkle of autumn leaves on vibrant green grass or filled with mountains, valleys and occasional lakes - all taken out of movies, but it need not be that perfect. Nowadays my "happy place" is where I lie down without moving a muscle for a long time.

I wrote the above paragraph a week back, now I think I get a rotten smell like something kept out in the open for too long. I have rejected quite a lot like this now and the blog breaks are getting longer, almost at the verge of stopping it altogether. This blog is exactly one year old now, I was planning an anniversary blog some time back, but now just this will do. I haven’t been able to find a clear direction about what I want to write or why, but I think I will just do justice to the apt title which I had chosen. Meanwhile I got a professional feedback that I need to be more succinct. I just don’t like to edit, it is like trying to perfect something by cutting off some parts and adding something that seems more appropriate or beautiful thereby polluting the pure product. If I do that, sometimes the end product will be unnatural. I do like to ramble and maybe I am thinking that my only audience is myself. For a long time, I used to think that I have developed this companion inside me whom I can talk to, argue with, criticize and who can see everything that is tactfully hidden to outer world. Now I think sometimes as I am writing in the blog, going back over the text and correcting some thoughts, clarifying to myself, like keeping a never-ending autobiography. Unorganised thoughts may be my characteristics, I am hoping that one day it will all crystallize dramatically and be clear to myself and then I will attain my dream of that mature, rugged man – content and at peace with the world.

I really need to learn "writing with heart and then going back and rewriting with brain".

2004-12-02T21:53:00.000-05:00

It is getting terribly busy again after a short break. Life is like clockwork, wake up at 6.20, if I am 5 minutes late, I will miss the train and if I am 5 minutes early, I will be relaxed a little bit and still miss the train. I liked that dialogue in "About a Boy" - "life is divided into time units, each unit consisting of 30 minutes. having haircut 1 units, dinner 2 units...” (I must be bad at dialogue writing. Even the reproduction from a recent memory doesn’t sound as suave as in the movie). I have this habit of daydreaming while brushing teeth and taking a shower – those are like quality time when I even get good ideas for the day – I totally agree to this notion that showers can be very inspiring.

It is 12 minutes walk from my home to train station. Now winter is almost here and morning walk is torture. So catch a bus from the end of the street, it takes 4 minutes from home to bus stop. That stretch of the road in the morning is in fact beautiful – bare trees at the end of autumn with its last frail twig visible, like a silhouette against mostly grey and very rarely orange sky, an old chapel and brownish buildings. On the way, an old lady will pass me by. If she pass me before I reach a certain point, I am going to miss the train. Before I reach the end of the road, I will meet a dog trainer. He will have different dogs every couple of days - he must be selling them too fast - he will have them in different sizes and colours. So I will step on to the road to avoid them - you see, I am afraid of dogs, even if they are on a leash. Their breed gave me enough reason to be afraid of them when I was a kid. I have the scars even now, only I can spot them - one on the palm and back of the hand when my hand was caught in his mouth and one strip of stitch on the arm when he clawed me.

I have this Nokia phone, which I mainly use for checking time in these walks. It is set 30 secs ahead of railway time. I will get a bus from that bus stop at 7.47. It will take another 4 minutes (if the driver is not new, if it doesn't stop at the next stop, if it doesn't get the next red signal and nobody tries to cross the road through a zebra line). Then out of desperation to reach station I will start having thoughts that my future is in my own hands and it should not be left to one inexperienced driver or un-timely red signals and that from next day onwards I will wake up early. So I will reach station by 7.51 and I can cross over through the side entrance. Only people coming from the side road uses that entrance, others by default take the front entrance which is heavily crowded. I am amazed why those guys who are running like mad to catch some train never think about this entrance. Anyway, I can coolly walk in, pickup a free newspaper and get to the platform to catch the 7.52 train which takes 10 minutes or so to reach my stop and from there another 10 minutes relaxed walk to reach office. So it is all timed.

In fact, within a minute if I don't get out of here, I will miss the next train to go home.

2004-11-04T21:53:00.000-05:00

October was the busiest month so far and I took the longest blog break this time. If I don’t do something regularly I may end up stop doing it forever, so let me keep this going. I have started some posts during this period, but if I don't finish it off in one hard push, next day I may deem it as silly, pointless, or too negative and abandon it.

Meanwhile I have been discovering some new things to keep myself amused. First is Friends – TV series. I totally love it now. I wouldn’t have believed it if two years ago somebody told me that I will like it. I didn’t like shows where they insert audience laugh every 30 seconds as if they are giving cue for viewers that it is time to laugh. It is now used as a way to de-stress everyday. If you just overlook the fact that most of them are dirty jokes and all everybody does is dating somebody or other, it is very enjoyable. Brilliantly written, each character perfectly fits in and it is just something which totally clicked into a perfect groove. At times enough to make you roll with laugh.

English Premier League: It has everything. Drama, Suspense, Glamour and great actors. These people love the game very much or rather just love to be crazy about it. I used to watch Spanish league on and off because of Real Madrid and their star line-up- Ronaldo, Beckham, Sidane and group. But now, I get a free newspaper and 10 minutes of time in the morning (between stations) to read sports pages and get updated about the scores and game. Also once in a week, in a capsule, Match of the day with magnificent Gary Linekar. I know all the big names now and the fun is just starting. Watching sports gives this special kind of feeling - taking sides subconsciously, feeling the disappointment of loss and joy of a massive win, kinship with fellow fans and something common to discuss with people having nothing in common. When you hear somebody affectionately saying "what a waste of money this boy Rooney is" after he hit his debut hat-trick or at the end of a pointless meeting when somebody says “all that can wait. Now I will just go home, put on my red shirt and watch the game”, it just feels good.

Another of my fixations in recent past is “Serious” reading – it is something which I am not able to shake off after some miserable failures. I have been reading truckloads of Sidney Sheldon, Jeffrey Archer, Robin Cook, Clive Cussler, Michael Crichton, John Grisham and others during college. There used to be a pay per book library in Trivandrum called Elloor. It charges 10% of book’s price as rental; I guess this is a common practice in many metropolitan private libraries renting English books. So paperback books used to come cheaper and that too old ones have reduced prices, so save up from the college expenses for this. Before that it was Trivandrum Public library which had books with red or green hard cover with thoroughly dusted pages which became familiar to me as the colour of a library “book”. All these fictions (crime, mystery, action, world war, spies, law, a bit of fantasy and sci-fi etc) are without doubt interesting to read – so called thrillers or pulp fiction. But then I read some great ones once in a while like “To Kill a Mocking Bird” and those lightweight philosophical ones like Ayn Rand’s, then I think I was wasting time reading spy stories and it is time to grow up. After getting into job around 5 years ago, I had stopped reading altogether. Lately this serious reading thing started, so recently tried my hand at Umberto Eco, “Forrest Gump” etc but couldn’t even finish which is rare for me – not to finish something even if it is utterly boring. Need to decide which is better - “if you read, it should be for pleasure” or “pulp reading is like junk food”.

I think it is not yet time to make my decision to go back to murder mysteries yet. I am on the lookout for some true pleasures like “To Kill a Mocking Bird”, “Catcher in the Rye” or some lightweight philosophical ones. I haven’t got what is meant exactly by contemporary classics, but it sounds like what I want. So now fishing in Croydon central library which seems to have some good ones.

2004-09-17T21:52:00.000-04:00

Just stopped working - like a machine grinding to a halt and refusing to move. It is a funny feeling, to have a mind which refuses to function, something like a small kid who is not capable of agreeing to logical reasoning. At these kind of times, a particular phrase floats up – relax like a cat. At times like this, I think I know what is meant exactly by that phrase. It must be like curled up in a couch, without moving a muscle, content and at peace with everything in the world.

So now while I am waiting till it is time for train and relaxing like a cat in office, let me take one line which caught my attention couple of days back. It is about ‘desi pros’ not having a long term career plan. I thought it may be correct. But then have I seen anybody with a plan? Should we do long term career plan and live according to it? It is fancy to say I don’t live according to any plan and I take one day at a time? But then will I be directionless in life? Forget about career plan, do I know what I want to do with life?

The article is saying that we are worried about near term goals like technology etc. Yes, I have been in the same situation. See the big picture - it is one advice given to every newbie. But then when you say see the big picture; don't be near sighted etc, are you missing out on the fun now. Long term look like a bore which you will be able to bear only if you are subjected to enough exposure and got mature. Visualize yourself as the head of the company - but do you want to head the company? When do people recognize their calling? As you read in novels, is it like a sudden realization that all this time you wanted to do something else and you are stuck somewhere else? In that case I can just wait for that realization. Human life seems pretty funny that way and the movie Matrix seems plausible irrespective of the green glitter. It is all in your head - it can conceal something from right in front of your eyes.

One question I am consistently having is have I seen anybody who knows what they want really?

On the top of my head: I would like to chill out in a calm place with most of the comforts, surrounded nice people and work for fun, not just for money. But then everything has ups and downs. I am coming back to an old line - see the positive side which actually means continue like this and don't think much.

Now I am tending to believe more and more on the quarter-life crisis.

2004-09-03T20:00:00.000-04:00

When couple of guys asked me “How was Scotland trip?” I was a little confused whether to say it was great or it was good or it was okay. So as in my normal style, without giving anything away, without saying it was great or worse, I told them it was good in a nonchalant way. It was great at times, dull and tiring at times, but overall it was a good trip. We went in real desi way of sightseeing overseas ie, caught a bus (the cheapest, hardest and longest way) to Edinburgh first. London Victoria station was swarming with Chinese looking people and desis. Travel was much better than what I expected. The highways were too good (better than US), so we had a smooth sail into Scotland.

The first thing I saw in the dim light of the morning from the bus was mountains; it was the last thing I saw before dozing off in the return journey after three days. That pretty much tells the whole story; it is a place which lies between mountains. We had a guide cum taxi driver who explained that glen means valley, ben means big and nevis means heaven. We visited Glen Nevis (valley between Nevis river and highest peak in UK, Ben Nevis), three to four castles, Edinburgh Fringe (a festival of performance artists – I always thought British are heavy inclined towards stage acting and art), Fort William (castles and mountains and rivers, a bridge which was filmed in Harry Potter which lies in a beautiful valley called Glenfinnan, another valley which was filmed in Braveheart) and Inverness (more castles, rivers and mountains). There were beautiful moments like the glimpse of Glenfinnan which was worth going that far, it was a dream like place – as my wife says combination of mountains and water (and some blue sky) is really beautiful.

I think I had different expectations; that the place will be like those we see in Hindi film music with bluest water and greenest mountains. But I realize now that all that is glitter. Nothing is same as it appears. As they say, nothing is very beautiful, very complex, very frightening or very much perfect. Learn to live with the imperfections. Or may be I am not capable of simply become awed by something anymore.

I liked the feeling of history around the place, the scots with their skirt like Kilt, their castles (they would have gone around these mountains and fought with different invaders for ages) and their accent. People were really nice to us, even the one we fought with for cab fare. On the return journey, I was overhearing the bus drivers talking about their life. One was two years away from retirement and he was discussing the policies of bus company. He was talking about some route in which he used to drive; the best thing about that was he could come home to his wife everyday; they could get up in the morning together, go for a walk and plan things for the day. Here I am whining about the lack of challenges, lack of opportunities to work in exciting technologies and the myriad things which would feel ridiculous to these guys. They are talking about 10 to 14 hours of continuous drive in buses where you can’t sleep and move from your seat. I always wondered what will make you work in a coffee shop or in a ticket counter; not that I am above it or anything. Just thinking how it will feel, now that you have something better. What will your life be like? Anyways, overhearing total strangers conversation is interesting; they were talking about retirement plans, getting settled for the rest of the life, going fishing, guys working like machines in Whiskey Distillery and getting paid for every finished bottle so they work faster and lots and lots of tales from a different world, till I got tired and slept.

2004-08-19T19:59:00.000-04:00

In college, when we discovered drinks, we used to chide each other saying that somebody’s hands tremble to signal that it is time for one. Somewhat like that towards the end of the week I feel like writing something (read complaining). As usual on Mondays I kid myself that there is a plan for the week and psyche myself up to get going. But towards the end of the week, enthusiasm dies down and then thoughts about what could have made my life better kicks in. Start dreaming about what if I went to work in jeans, T-shirt and slippers and worked with a bunch of fantastic guys who are out to do something than make-believe they are doing something. Sometimes I think I know what I need crystal-clear, talking about illusions.

Started reading ‘Fight Club’. I must be very bad in writing reviews, if I ever attempted. But somehow I seem to like every book or it must be that by spending one hour to choose a book from library I am making sure that it is appealing to my taste. I took this because its film version starred Edward Norton. From the time I watched ‘Primal Fear’, I think he overtook my previous hero, Richard Gere by just outperforming him. He must be an example on ‘Attention to Detail’, ‘Preparation’ and ‘Talent’ for novice actors. I haven’t seen the movie ‘Fight Club’ yet, but judging by the book, it will be something like ‘Seven’. One sentence from the last page I read is still lingering: “Sometimes when you wake up, you have to ask where you are.”

I am traveling to Scotland next weekend for three days. We are going to Edinburgh (in time for the festival, I think), Fort William and Inverness. Hope this will be a good break.

2004-08-05T19:58:00.000-04:00

How do people grow into absolute morons? I have completed the discovery of what I like and don’t like in everything including food, drinks, dress, music, films, books, people and life. I have set opinions about everything in this world. I don’t want to move an inch when it comes to explore uncharted territories. “Think out of the box” they say, but I know don’t know that I am in a box. Yesterday somebody was saying, “You think you know, you think you are in control, but you are not”, felt like a definition of ‘The Matrix’. I don’t eat mushrooms, I just don’t like it and I might vomit if I taste them, or that is what I thought. I ate a Mushroom Fajita today, but didn’t finish it. I am a vegetarian, having never wanted to try chicken, without having the pressure of religion forcing me to be. Once a good friend of mine told me to try, insisted he won’t force me if I don’t like it afterwards (he was so convinced that I will like it), I ate a piece and promptly told him that I didn’t like it. I don’t like books which are self-narrated; the ‘I’ books in my own lingo. Given a choice I won’t read books written by women (Jane Austen and Ayn Rand surprised me). I don’t know why I don’t; I might have developed these distastes over time. I don’t know why people like to watch F1, cars just go round and round, what is the fun in that? I never tried to find out. If I walk a way twice and feel comfortable, I won’t dare try another one. Self-Contained, opinionated and dry.

I am bored with grown ups now, none of them can be interesting. Around this time, people start feeling how childhood was this great thing. When I was just out of college and started getting paid, I used to think why these guys are drooling after college life. In college you used to think friendship is the ultimate thing and having a good time with friends is irreplaceable. It was unthinkable that I won’t talk to those guys for four years. I have seen my friends planning out meetings every 5 years and setting dates like 1st Jan 2005, 1st Jan 2010 etc as mandatory reunion days to keep the bond. I don’t know whether they still talk to each other.

Growing up is fun, at least you get to try new clothes every year because you outgrow them. You are trying out new books, you haven’t developed you “tastes” yet. But now that you have eaten a piece of the cake and you are full. Now when you change a routine, it feels good. Walk around a road for million times, you will think you know every detail of it. But long back you would have determined what you want to see and what you don’t. I went into this obscure looking tailor shop in the road which I used to walk everyday, looked out to the road, it somehow seems different, maybe because now I am seeing it from a different angle I never knew existed. I don’t even want to talk about work. NO, I don’t want to talk this sermon thing any longer. It just used to be fun where I came from, now it is just routine. That’s all.

PS: Reading an “I” book now (Frank Skinner – by Frank Skinner. If you get it, don’t read it.) As usual, from every crap, I fantasize that I got something interesting. This guy is saying that it used to be so difficult to get a soccer ball from a terrace that they have to wait till they clean the terrace to get it. When he went back after 20 years, he was surprised at how low that ceiling was. And that he used to be amazed at this giant statue in some museum when he was a kid, but now when he went there, there was a small less frightening one sitting the corner. Something like my theory that the math I used to struggle with in 5th standard is so easy when I went to 7th. Just walk on. It will all blow over.

Another interesting thing: He quotes this story about time machine where a guy stepped on a butterfly and then fast forward to show how that triggered something like world war. It seems how true. What would have happened if I have answered properly for that question “If a two legged bird sits with a leg each perched on two electric wires, what will happen” in CTS interview. Somebody used to say that there are parallel universes and you get into different world when you unknowingly commit an act like that. It leads you to a totally different view of the world. You know, I am the only one who completely believed the story of ‘The Matrix’.

2004-07-29T19:11:00.000-04:00

Missed the train twice today, so one hour at my disposal. Now they are saying that it may get delayed, re-routed or cancelled. So first time a blog post from public. It doesn’t feel like I came here two days back. By end of this week, I think I will feel that it had been ages. Got so much info about getting setup in UK that my friend KH might be bored to his bones answering my questions. I am getting enough exercise everyday, around 40 minute to and fro from hotel, office and railway station. Add last minute dashes to it, I got jogging also. Add 7 pounds laptop along with it, I got weight training too. By end of this year, I should be really fit.

I guess last couple of months has been really good for me. I bought a new car, a new house at Trivandrum, got couple of awards at work, got out of the project in which I already spent more than 1 and ½ years and came to UK now. It also had been some learning experience for me – did performance appraisals for some people and they gave me a good grill. I really took something from that experience on how far to go with people, setting over/under/no expectations and some others. Something made me think whether having personal relationship with people helps or being strictly work oriented gets the work done professionally. I thought maybe having a personal relationship makes you reveal more and restrain you from asking for more. You will have difficulty in being blunt. I haven’t made up my mind on this, but I have a good feeling that you can make some friends and some colleagues along the way, not all friends.

Train is getting delayed further. So some more. I planned to get out from office to catch an earlier train. Here people leave from office at sharp 5 pm. At 5.30 pm, they will be really rushing since they are late. At 6 I think the office gets locked. Today I had bit of difficulty getting out of office, so I missed a train and they have trains every half hour only. One happy thought is that this will surely improve my ‘work-life balance’. I need to get out of office by a fixed time.

I haven’t got a good grasp of things here. But it is definitely different from US. I have heard many a times now that here it is not service oriented. You get indifferent behavior if you go to a shop or bank etc. In US they make you feel important and setup good customer service standards. Sophistication is also one level down here. They have more old buildings (it is an old country after all), casual attitude (like us back in India) even though they insist on formal dressing. But at least in office, folks are much more intelligent than US.

2004-07-08T19:10:00.000-04:00

Life has gone from a tranquil pace to a frantic frenzy within two days. It is like that F1 advertisement (or is it Toyota?) which shows a snail for half a minute and then suddenly shows a race car zooming at break-neck speed. I have to travel to UK next week and there is a mountain to move before that.

Relocating is like uprooting a plant. Back to mangalore after a long time, I almost got into the rhythm of established routines, faces and places. Sometimes I feel we are kind of gypsies, without having a permanent place to stay, moving around with bare minimum furniture to get by comfortably. It must be really getting into the nerves of our parents. They say, “but you came back only 6 months back..”. Within last 3 to 4 years, I have stayed in 6 or 7 houses ranging from 2 months and 1 year at one place.

Not that I regret going to UK. In more than one occasion, we have glanced at Thomas Cook vacation package for London. So now it gives me another occasion to see some part of the world which I have most read about. On the lighter side, now every Hindi movie is made there, so I have already seen most of it.

But this morning, I was having this kind of detached feeling about how everything goes upside down in a flash and you end up in a totally new situation. For some time my world is going to have new look, almost kind of another chapter.

Come to think of it, it was not totally unexpected also. So now it is time to move that mountain, pack up and leave.

2004-06-27T19:09:00.000-04:00

My latest read: “Jack: Straight from the Gut” by Jack Welch. I wanted to read this one for some time. Somehow my previous boss (an MBA) instilled this belief in me that books by great management experts is worth reading and he gave some recommendations – this is one of them. But over time, I have developed some distaste for self-help kind of books which advertises “10 ways to make your wife happy”, “How to become popular” etc and the likes of “Chicken Soup for the soul” (I think they must have got a kick from the success they got for their first editions, so they started giving these soup bowls for Teenage soul, Couple’s soul, Mother’s soul, Daughter’s soul etc – you can find soups for any soul now). This one has a tag line which says “For every man and women who wants to succeed in 21st century” or something like that. Just because of that line, I would have dropped this book, but I saw that line only after borrowing it from a friend.

To tell you the truth, he is really an amazing man – it is not like you take a lottery coupon and next day you are chairman of GE. It takes lot of grit, intelligence, courage, passion and all that good stuff. So maybe there are some things which I can learn.

There is something he professes though out the book – ability to take tough decisions, be it people or business. I got fascinated by this term “Superficial Congeniality”; by being soft with people when you need to be brutally honest, you are doing injustice to yourself as well as the other person.

Once upon a time, I use to think that I can never be a manager type, I am too techie for that. I still harbor that thought some times, but maybe I can bring myself to terms with being in management stream and be good at it. Or maybe all this is “Quarter-life crisis” (a chain mail) which is talking about the confusion of twenty-something.

Funny side of it: I was telling my wife over lunch that this guy is great, but maybe he didn’t do good in his personal life because he divorced his wife after 28 years because they could not adjust with his workaholic nature. That is the downside of becoming a CEO. She promptly said that I can look for something peaceful after making enough money to sustain ourselves for some years.
“So you don’t want me to become a CEO? Any wife would want her husband to succeed.”
.......she was silent for some time and then replied
“Come to think of it, it is okay even if you become the CEO.”

2004-06-18T18:42:00.000-04:00

Question in today’s newspaper: - Do you think we should have something similar to corporate culture in parliament?

This made me think a little bit about corporate culture. Maybe when it comes to parliament, we should talk about culture first instead of getting into something else. When I was a kid, I used to think that how can people ever be able to behave like they do. I thought maybe it is a problem with older generation, newer enlightened/educated/forward thinking youngsters will change all that and world will be a nicer place once again. I thought how one could ever be able to even think about the religion or caste of your friends or neighbors, when I listened to such discussions between my elders. I thought how you could be so mean behind ones back and say such things about them. How could you ever loath your friends and still smile at them and make sweet talk with them? I thought all this is going to change, I used to tell my father so and he used to wisely say that I am yet to get into the real world. I used to vehemently disagree and say that he is getting old and the new generation will change all this. Later I was really surprised when my friends started discussing about marriage (during college, generally) and said that they have to find a nice muslim/christian/hindu/nair/catholic girl and marry her and settle down for life. I asked couple of them and the answer was all the modern talks are fine but when it comes to your life, you won’t say that let your child go and marry a Muslim and say that I have a big heart about it. I used to see people who would declare that they consider their brother/sister among the dead since they married a Christian. I have seen death threats and attempted suicides, just on this marriage issue. Nothing changes with age around here.

So how could you cheat and take something which is not rightfully yours and be thick skinned about it. We have a stereotype about politicians that all of them are corrupt. Maybe that is because they reinforce that belief time and again. So what is corporate culture? Being fair about everything? Being professional and approach everything in professional manner? Be transparent about financial transactions? Work hard, achieve and be proud about what you do? Have a competency based work culture which allows you to progress if you work hard? Have thorough knowledge, improve continuously? You get ahead only if you are competent enough to handle the responsibility? As in normal life, I used to think that it is all that, everything is fair, human factors doesn’t come into all this, no sentimentality/partiality/ego issues, no reason to suspect anybody of foul play. But there also I get rude surprises once in a while. I believe I am wiser than that and can understand that world is anything but fair.

When they say, we are being so generous and that’s why you are getting a salary hike, what they actually mean is, here is a small bone, chew that and don’t jump out of here for sometime. I am not saying that it is all bad, but there are hidden agenda behind polished talk sometimes. But be high and mighty about it, at least you will feel good. People are intelligent nowadays, so politicians should also get that idea and move into much rosy “corporate culture” and keep doing the same thing behind a much more reinforced shield. Sometimes it just simply translates to being sophisticated about it all.

Other day, I read about CPI(M) thinking about training their leaders on how to answer questions in interviews, how to excel in debates (“Big Fights”, “Crossfires” and the like) and how to leverage this emerging force called the Media to their advantage. One good thing about communists is that they will theorize everything and make you think that there is a “philosophy” behind all this – so this time it is, our ultimate aim is to reach maximum people and convey the message, and so what is wrong in doing what others do. I am sure they will also have training where they will be taught not to say something which you don’t want to say, how to package it in a shiny envelope which won’t let you guess what is inside.

PS: excerpt from Chicago, Razzle Dazzle:

Give 'em the old razzle dazzle
Razzle Dazzle 'em
Give 'em an act with lots of flash in it
And the reaction will be passionate
Give 'em the old hocus pocus
Bead and feather 'em
How can they see with sequins in their eyes?

What if your hinges all are rusting?
What if, in fact, you're just disgusting?

Razzle dazzle 'em
And they;ll never catch wise!

How can they hear the truth above the roar?

Throw 'em a fake and a finagle
They'll never know you're just a bagel,

Razzle dazzle 'em
And they'll beg you for more!

Though you are stiffer than a girder
They let you get away with murder
Razzle dazzle 'em
And you've got a romance

Give 'em the old
Razzle Dazzle

Daze and dizzy'em
Show 'em the first rate sorcerer you are

Long as you keep 'em way off balance
How can they spot you got no talents?

Razzle dazzle 'em
And they'll make you a star!

2004-06-09T18:41:00.000-04:00

In Mangalore when it rains it really pours and when it is hot, it is red hot. Now the rainy season has started. Didn’t even notice when we slipped into the routine of carrying an umbrella. It usually starts with the exact same day school opens after summer. I think I have bought the car at the right time because umbrella is just a play thing for this kind of rain. It will beat it and soak you by the time you count ten steps.

Right now I am exploring all the byways, alleys around the office with the car – still not confident of taking it to the main road. It is like those parents say that they are afraid of bringing up their kids in this kind of world. It would pain you when, with just a warning from a horn just behind your ears, they overtake you and you almost fear that they have touched your rear view mirror.

I was in Bangalore for most of last week. I think I am lucky not to bring up my car in Bangalore. It is jungle out there. If you stop at a signal, autorickshaws and two-wheelers will cover you like those flies. It would be almost impossible to get out of those claws without touching anything. I always tend to compare this with those building block puzzles. Within half a minute of stopping at a signal, each car/auto/two-wheeler will do their individual part and fit everything perfectly into the nooks and corners that it will be the most efficient way of packing different kind of vehicles into minimum space.

It is like art of walking in a crowd (I would think of the crowd coming out of a theatre) without touching anybody, but still maneuver by applying breaks, suddenly accelerating, sensing openings and counting on the speed of others when you cross over. It almost becomes a second nature in these parts of the world. Ever tried crossing over a 4-way intersection? It is just like those magic acts. Close your eyes and just glide forward, those who needs to stop will stop and you will reach there without a scratch. But you may get slightly scared if you keep your eyes open. It is not the concern for others which would make you good at driving; it is just the art of survival and protecting your skin at any cost which will see you safe at the end of the day when you reach home.

I know that it will all look very silly and exaggerated to a veteran, but maybe because I drove for around 2 years in US (that is the first time I owned a car), I have too many bad habits (like checking blind spot, waving pedestrians to cross the road – one guy today stared at me for stopping and asking him to cross the road, these concepts called “yield”, “signals”, don’t horn unless the other guy is going to hit you for sure etc). I have to unlearn a lot of things. Hope I will get better at it soon. Then maybe I will start appreciating my friend’s view that driving here is the ultimate enjoyment (why don’t they seek that enjoyment only from video games which allows you to restart the game when you hit something).

2004-06-04T18:40:00.000-04:00

I was in classroom training for three full days this week. Reminded me of old college days. But this was more meaningful and I wanted to listen and understand, maybe because I can make direct use of the knowledge. In college, during some boring lectures, I used to shut myself out and completely get lost in something else. Now I can attend sessions only if I want to and only if it is useful for me. There is a difference in trying to mug up something for getting good grade and studying something to make use of it. I still maintain that we have a rusty education system.

Some random thoughts related to this:-
I attended a long seminar where technical details were getting explained with general statements like “it is good”, “it will make your life easy”, “it is the in-thing now”, “it is accepted by industry and pioneered by major players”, “great people are talking about it”, “statistics shows that it is better”. I wanted to say “cut the crap and get to the point”, but as usual I didn’t even show that I am not interested. At the end, I am not clear what “it is” and how exactly is it great. All this statements doesn’t make it great, accepted or respected. It is like painting a very foggy picture, no outline visible, you can’t make out any shape out of it, but it is made as if it has some meaning. You won’t be able to say for sure that are bluffing or you won’t be able counter argue because they haven’t said anything clearly. They specialize in making general open-ended statements which can interpreted either way. I get a feeling that there is nothing tangible, nothing intelligent, no use listening to this babble.

It is almost like you can spot phonies by just listening to them for some time. Elusive, shadow-fighting are some words coming to my mind. Sometimes I think the one problem with corporate culture is, these non-absolutes grow much faster than anybody else. It is somewhat difficult to deal with such guys. Maybe it is one of those skills needed to survive in this world. But only problem is, you keep painting an unclear picture every time, you may end up disoriented yourself.

One piece of quotable quote (I don’t remember exact words): Don’t accept anybody else’s reality as your own just because they say so. Subject it to your own reason and accept it as your reality only if it is reasonable to you. Don’t fake reality.

2004-05-21T18:39:00.000-04:00

“What’s up?”
“Nothing Much. Going on as usual. Usual work, usual life, no changes.”

Sometimes we want change desperately and sometimes we protect ourselves from changes. If it was like tasting different dishes, we could have determined which dish we want to have after some tries. But no, here if something tastes bitter, it lingers on and spoils the next too. So it is like somebody shouted “Statue” and walked away. You can move but you don’t even think about it. It is total inertia. There is an exciting world out there with thousands of possibilities, but why are people stuck in mundane jobs as if in a trance? It is like that movie, “Pleasantville”. Life is like a clock-work, nothing should disturb it, and it will go on in its set pace and course. When it is idle, a thick cloak will settle on the top and seal it from any intruder. I sometimes think that the problem with our country is also this inertia. Its cities maybe developing, but travel 20 km out of it, you will find same old life with its blank stare. Somebody should shake us once in a while and ask us to sit up and take notice.

- This started with one statement: “Let’s buy a new car. Atleast we will have something exciting in life for sometime”. At least a pebble dropped into pool of still water.

2004-05-16T18:40:00.000-04:00

Which is better? Having no competition at all or having competent antagonists? Hard, unforgiving, ruthless competition raises the level of the game. There is not much pleasure in winning hands down. Winning a hard fought battle gives much better satisfaction than playing a game knowing that whatever mistake you make, you cannot loose. A lion who reigns alone, who doesn’t have anything to fear, will become lazy and which may even lead to his downfall. The hand which works the most becomes stronger compared to the limp one which assists. Everything which is idle will catch rust – be it brain or body.

Raising the level of the game – it truly is a unique feeling. You will be surprised at your own skill – surprised at the fact that all this time, you were able to play this well, but realizes it only on the face of competition. At the end of it, you would be grateful to the opponent for offering such resistance which made you realize your potential. But at the end one should win. I think winner takes all – they are fooling themselves when they say “taking part in the game is the biggest feat, not winning it”. It is just to make sure you participate and give a morale boost when there is nothing to be proud of.

2004-05-06T18:38:00.000-04:00

He is not able to comprehend the nature of their hate. He does not hear the poisonous venom they spit out behind his back. They are afraid to look in his eye, lest he will figure out the lack of intelligence in them. They say he is a heartless, ruthless materialist who knows nothing but how to make money, but not capable of spiritual enjoyment, while he is the one who is most capable of enjoying life. Competence is the only currency with which he deals with men. Spark of intelligence can light him up. He turns his face away when they start with “I think..”, “It seems to me that..”, “According to so and so..” etc.

It is a zombie world with expressionless faces - afraid to look in the eye, bored, unseeing, blank eyes. A man who stands firm on his feet, not scurrying to collect the bread crumbs dropped by somebody else, a man who lives by his own standards, his own moral code, not looking for his reflection in the eyes and words of others, is a rarity.

Reason, clarity, logic, courage – hard to find commodities in today's world. Nobody cares for anything which happens around them. A quote for the day – politics thrives on the fact that majority doesn’t care. Reality is lost in the razzle-dazzle of pretenses. Men who practice the art of deceiving others efficiently can go straight to the top – that is the highest quality. Talk without conveying any meaning, order without assuming responsibility and shift blame to next person you see when anything goes wrong. Successful man can always find somebody to blame for everything that goes wrong.

For years we have been taught that going after anything is futile because nothing lasts forever. We have been injected with antidotes for reason, hope and ambition. We have been told that pleasure experienced by body is sin, being materialistic is trivial and wanting anything is an illusion which we should guard against. We have been taught not to expect returns from any venture. We are trained to be the zombies of today's world.

Among all this, he stands tall, proud of his achievements and ability, with the weight of whole world on his shoulders.

--- An impressionable mind fed with a strong dose of “Atlas Shrugged”.

2004-04-29T23:01:00.001-04:00

One incident made me think about the abstract nature in which we think about the code we develop. We spend so much time on designing, developing and testing some code that we lose the focus on the end users who are going to use it. We know too much gory details about the code that it is going through thousands of lines for doing some function and we are thinking about the minutest details. We don’t see a non-IT, regular person in the counter of a shop using our application. Instead, we see it going in and out of IF loops and FOR loops. I wonder how will be the case with Doctors – they know too much gory details about the body, will they lose the ability to appreciate human body as something beautiful?

There is one usual comment given to freshers – “see the big picture”. It feels corny to say that think about the users of your application while developing. But it is important to see the one thing they will expect out of your application. I had read an article comparing software development with painting. I would also like to think about software development as an art form – at least it gives me a good feeling to think about it that way. There is lot of creative work involved in there.

Once upon a time, it used to give me a feeling of adventure also – to delve into uncharted and dangerous terrains (undocumented massive applications) and try to enhance it, or design something complex, which would tickle my little brain, unique feeling when something works fine. For an artist, it must be immense pleasure when people truly appreciate his painting or music. It would definitely make me happy if a user says, you have made my life easy and thanks for that. Again it is not the often repeated word (there some words which are used so much that it is starting to show the wear and tear), “Customer Delight”. The delight is all mine, to have designed and developed something good. I would like to be satisfied first on anything I deliver.

At the end of the day, it is just another job which pays well and we are nothing but workers creating factory products. But looking at the fancy side of it and giving it an air of art, makes it worthwhile.

2004-04-29T18:37:00.000-04:00

Multi-tasking. This is one skill, which would help me a lot right now. I got into one task for last three hours and I am waiting for last 20 minutes for something to finish so that I can continue. I don’t want to start something else meanwhile. I had made a list of 6 or 7 “things-to-do” in the morning, but I don’t want to get out this one. Sometimes the intention is to finish one by one. It gives a very nice feeling to mark each item as completed. It will give a very good feeling if all items are marked at the end of the day. But it never happens.

It needs something called context switching. If all 6 items are entirely different from each other, there is reluctance from within to start doing next one. It is just like trying to drive, shift the gears gradually and get going in full speed, then apply sudden break, then start all over again.

My previous boss (a lady) once forwarded a clip, saying women are better at multi-tasking than men are:-
“This evolutionary divide can be seen all over the modern world. Almost exclusively airport traffic controllers are male, this appeals to their spatial skills after all and they are intrinsically better at it then women. On the other hand, the majority of secretaries are female, this isn’t because of male oppression but simply that women are better at the multitasking needed to do this job. “

No idea whether this true. It needs ability to leave something unfinished and not even think about it afterwards. It becomes more difficult when all these 6 items will have to continue for a week and little of each has to be done every day. I need to determine a sequence, time to spend on each task and put time slots for each.

Knowing when to stop pursuing something is vital. To increase the efficiency, one should know when to shift the gears. If you are heading for a dead end in any one of them, either change tracks immediately or leave it as it is and come back later to have a fresh look.

So let me abandon what I am doing right now and move on to next in the list.

2004-04-23T18:36:00.000-04:00

I am trying to read “Atlas Shrugged” by Ayn Rand for last 2 months - 2 pages per day, but somehow I am keeping it going. During my furious reading days (school/college), I used to finish a book at one go sometimes without putting it down even once. If a book is taken up on a weekday, then until it finishes, there is a good feeling while returning home that there is something waiting for me. It is like the excitement of a kid waiting for the postman to bring the month’s edition of children’s books.

Reading sometimes gives a feeling of getting detached from this world for some time and wandering in the fantasy worlds built with words. Something like a drunken stupor. Slowly the characters will be given a shape, some nudging from the author by giving hints about their features, then each small piece is added up, then we match it with somebody or something we have seen and registered in the subconscious and starts taking them through the story. Sometimes at the end of the story, I had revelations that the place, which I was imagining while reading, was something I had seen in a movie. It is like a drama going on in mind - characters, place and time constructed from the hints given by the author, played out on the script provided by the book. There is creative activity going in the background. It does not stop with that. It is like taking a shot of strongest liquor. Effect lingers for couple of days. Keep replaying situations going back and forth in the story, changing the course of the story, giving new climaxes, thinking over some new ideas from the book and discussing it with any available person. A story, which can take you away from this world as far as possible or lets you forget everything around you for sufficient period, is the best. If you say at the end of a show that you didn’t notice time flying by, then it must be something good.

I started this post for saying something about the philosophy in Atlas Shrugged, but as usual went off track. I will get back to that some other time.

2004-04-22T22:45:00.003-04:00

I was searching for “design flexibility” in google today and came across this interview with Martin Fowler. I was looking for general best practices in making the design flexible enough to make maintenance and changes easy. Something like flexible molding material which you can change without much effort. I had read about regenerative systems some time back. Some fantasy about self-healing or intelligent error handling programs. If these errors out, then it can start looking for the actual cause of error by itself, fix that and start running again without manual intervention. Sounds fantastic. It is not a sophisticated idea which sounds good on paper but not good for real life application development. Maybe not in an expansive manner, at least the idea can be implemented.

Following are some quotes from this article.
“We seem to have a notion in the software industry that doing a good job slows you down.”
Yes, I have this opinion some times. Not literally, but pulling off a perfect job takes time. I always work within pre-set time limits and one prime objective is to deliver good quality product within set time lines. If you have unlimited time at your disposal, then making something perfect is just a matter of patience. I have also advised others that don’t tinker with something until you get satisfied, but rather finish it off and proceed with next life cycle. It is not for just finishing the task for the sake of it, but to take care against next cycles getting squeezed because of this. The theory is, if making it 90% perfect took 100% of time, then the rest 10% will take much more.

In this model of working (waterfall) in a one-dimensional manner, there is little choice but to start with coding once you think design is more or less correct. Is this where iterative, agile, extreme methodologies makes a difference? Making a perfect design of a part is easier than designing a complex system at one go. When you have to compromise because of time lines, this axiom is true.

“Planned design's weakness is that creating a well-planned design is actually really tough.”
“Why?”
“Martin Fowler: I don't know. Why is composing symphonies tough? I don't know. It's just very few people in the world can do it well. And I think that's the case with upfront design. It is very hard to do well. “

It is true that making a perfect upfront design is tough. You have to visualize the complex system which you are designing completely. You have to be imaginative enough to see all its flow from start to finish. You are expected to fill in all the loopholes and all the tiny cracks.

I just had a brainwave - let me take the example of cooking. If I decide beforehand that I am going to use a certain amount of vegetables, water, salt, pepper etc and start cooking, chances of it being edible is less. I am least experienced in cooking, but from my limited experience, adding ingredients as needed into a basic mix with multiple iterations helps to test the taste regularly and improve. Final product is always tastier compared to first method. But somehow, I was not able to practice the iterative development in a full-fledged manner so far. So I don’t know the other side of the story.

“focusing on superficial problems can lead to the discovery of substantial problems”
This is true not only in design, but in other areas also. Biggest hurdle when I face new situations or new problems is courage to attempt solving it. Fear of unknown is one big deterrent which makes people believe that it is complex. But scratch the surface, series of small discoveries will add to the confidence for exploring more. The problem will get solved by itself.

2004-04-21T18:37:00.000-04:00

Direction, Clarity, Presence of Mind, Care, Composure, Control, Articulate, Integrity, Honor, Honesty, Precision, Perfection, Pleasant, Open, Serious :- some I would like to have.

Timidity, Fear, Unnecessary elation, Patronizing, Envy, Panic, Dramatize, Overreact, Conspire, Boast, Pretend :- some others I would like to avoid.

2004-04-17T18:11:00.000-04:00

Slept really late yesterday. Doing nothing. Nowadays there is no time to spend like that also – doing nothing. Watched highlights of cricket match couple of times, cricket news in every channel, made sure that I got my complete fill of the Indian victory. Today read every article in the sports section of the newspaper also. Now that chapter is closed. I am going to give a rest to cricket for some time. It is taking lot of my free time.

Before this cricket series started, it was football. I was following Real Madrid and once they were out of the competition, that ended. Today I was watching something where Pele was saying that every great team would have one star player. Real had Beckham, Zidane, Ronaldo, Carlos, Figo – but still they could not go all the way. If one could measure talent quantitatively, then a player having largest amount of it, could be matched by a group with average amounts of it. So a team of medium talented players fitting in just like pieces of jigsaw can also be a great one. But only difference is there is no single face to pin all that greatness to. People will forget the greatness of a team of 80’s easily, but won’t forget the great player of 80’s. I don’t have much interest in British football, don’t want to start. Not atleast this season.

I am really afraid whether staying up until 2 or 3 am is becoming a habit. It is really having its toll on my wife. I am afraid I am turning her clock also to sleep late. Slept till 2 pm today. Seeing me waking up at 2 o’clock on a Saturday with a stiff neck, a friend had adviced me to get up early and enjoy the weekend. But weekends are taken for catching up on all the lost sleep. It is like a long journey through the mazes of bizarre dreams. Especially when you oversleep. What the mind conjures up as dreams is amazing - places, people, situations all mixed up.

Striking a perfect balance between work and life is getting difficult. Now even I am guarding myself against making unhealthy habits and give each its own required place and importance. Not doing really anything about it, but I don’t know as yet what can be done.

I was catching up with some of my frequent blogs. One was saying that everybody presents their best face to strangers, so don’t just go by what is written down. There could be more behind these written words. Another was saying that surely he won’t write anything about how he fell in love, because he doesn’t want to share that with strangers. Yet another was saying that he won’t write politics, so as not to muddy the water. Another was saying that send the link of your blog to your mother, sister and girlfriend. That way you won’t write anything unnecessary. I guess there will always be something which you want to keep only to yourself. Most guarded secrets of a person which he won’t acknowledge even to himself. There are shared feelings with our near and dear which one need not flaunt in public and disrespect those feelings. These are common property on which both parties have some right. You don’t have any right to make decision whether to tell others about it. I sometimes feel, we have different faces to show to every one. Adjusting the shapes according to what others want to see. Admit it or not, people always adjust to others expectations. Sometimes even language gets modified when talking to different people. Show one face, have same set of feelings, speak same language to all, guard against transformation – is that the sign of maturity? As for me, there will be a line drawn as to where I should stop. It is not the fear of others seeing my ugly faces, but out of something called self-respect. But I need not have restriction that I won’t say anything about politics, sports, technology or any of the wordly things. Whatever it is which interests me.

I don’t know what I am saying. I think waking up late is having its toll on me. I have a heavy head. I came to office to finish off some work. Now I will get back to that. Two more hectic weeks. As always, I hope, after this, I will get back some control on my life and some “quality time”.

2004-04-16T18:12:00.000-04:00

Fridays are the best days of the week. It is pure peace to think about couple of days ahead. There is a bubbly, jumpy, springy feeling in legs from the morning (probably because of the Adidas shoes worn only on Fridays, which is a respite from unforgiving formals worn on the other days). Feel casual, work casual, have something to look forward to, work is also enjoyable, feels like talking to friends and finish off the day, feels like getting out of office early. I do not have the luxury of enjoying the whole weekend since some work is left to be done, but still it doesn’t feel bad.
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So much about Friday. I was catching up with some of my frequent blogs yesterday. It is interesting to see what they are thinking/doing, how their mood flickers and interests change. It would be a great feeling if these blogs exists for 20-30 years, then I would have known these people and their thoughts for so long. It would be some feeling to grow old and look back at my oldest posts.
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Cricket bonanza is over. I was waiting for the fifth day of last Test, which would have been played out on Saturday. But Pakistan meekly surrendered. I didn’t like the way Inzy gave up. He should have fought atleast by himself. It was like giving the victory to India by force. After dropping six catches, Indian team managed to bowl them out in a day. This is stupendous when you think that Pakistan dropped Dravid twice also. They have failed in every aspect of the game. They came back from the trenches and won the second test, but what hit them in third? Are they bent on winning so much that they stop performing? I am starting to sound like Sidhu. When Sidhu speaks, they should focus the camera on his companions. I would like see them trying to keep a straight face.
I always thought Pakistan is a formidable opponent with good sporting skills, better physique and good pool of talent. But they lacked the resolve. Dravid was superb. He is demanding a place in the greatest list. Watch his interviews, the way he answers the questions tactfully and positively is a lesson to even diplomats. I wonder what he is in real life. B-School graduate? I was also thinking what will be his next role after cricket (that is still a long way, but). Will he take up after Gavaskar, Ravi Shastri and others? He can take up politics, if he wants.
It was great cricket, though. At the end, somebody has to win. Happy that it is India.
I had a great achievement also. I could get my wife interested in the game. Now I got company to watch the game and discuss the details passionately.

2004-04-04T18:10:00.000-04:00

Calendar on my desk for this month reads - “Optimism: The hopeful sees success where others see failure; sunshine where others see shadow & storm”. If only I could see success, happiness and sunshine through the thick fog of confusion and uncertainty, always. I do not want capsules, doctrines, pep talk and other remedies prescribed by modern hippies for mental peace. Find your own way to reach there. But when do I finish my black book of ideals, principles and perspective and live by it? Why do I think I need it? Everyday, I think I am older and more mature than yesterday and I repent some of my yesterday’s actions as childish. When does one finish the process of growing up, see the world through the wise eyes, and be able to explain ones actions completely? Body reaches maturity one day and it stops to grow and only shrivels with age. But when do I see my mental maturity to reach its maximum growth? Sometimes I think I am becoming a cynic in life.

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I need to get some life outside office. I have worked the hardest for last two weeks. Everyday including Saturday and Sunday until 3 am. There was tension, chaos, uncertainty, but everything turned out fine in the end. I didn’t think about it much, but I enjoyed it a lot. I like working myself upto my limits. I used to play table tennis for hours continuously. Partners come and go, but I used to be there at one end of the table. At the end, sweat coming out of every pore, I would like to rest and then take a lazy walk. But I never used to get a partner. I lured many of my friends, taught them the game, made them play, but they eventually lost interest. Some good old times. Back to my work. I have completed one part of it. Second part is building up. I have gruelling weeks to come; if I don’t manage correctly, it could also blow up. About 3 weeks to go. From tomorrow, no moment to waste, with the fullest of energy, with the sharpest of mind.

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I am thrilled with the way cricket is going. Nowadays I read every article in the sports section of the newspaper (within ten minutes snatched away in the morning). There is big fight going on in office bulletin board about cricket. I guess corporates will have a huge loss in productivity due to this series. But cricket is bringing beautiful pieces of writing too. I liked some written by my colleagues. I am a fan of Harsha Bhogle. I loved one of his articles, Sign of the times. I pitched in couple of times to offer my piece of mind too. It is celebration times, but as always, I am skeptic of their continued success.

I don’t feel very strongly. I like to enjoy the game and leave it at that and don’t get too much into history, statistics and such and start arguing. At all times, keep in mind that it is just a game. Just for the fun of it, I replied to one of the posts in bulletin board:

This is a new phenomenon about Sachin bashing. These same elements would not have even wagged there collective tails when Sachin was bashing others with his bat. When he gets single digit scores in two matches, you scream at him to score. When he scores 140, you scream at him to score even more and ensure that the team wins. Then you demand personal commitment towards team’s victory, not teamwork where everybody contributes towards victory. When he scores 140 and still India won’t win, it is Sachin who failed, not this new fantasy “Team India”. Australia is a team where everybody has enough potential to contribute. Here we are afraid when this paper tower is going to collapse. We depended upon personal achievements to forward the team. Now when there are four youngsters who are worth something, it is team India.

There is nothing wrong in aiming something personally and get going to achieve it. If a person doesn’t know what he wants and how to get it, how can he get it done for others? Even the declaration wouldn’t have become a controversy if India declared at 650 instead of 675. If you can wait that far, there is nothing wrong in waiting for two more overs. If this happened due to a miscommunication between captain and player, it is fine, but if you say person does not matter only the team matters, what does it do to a person’s self-respect. Nobody likes to hear that you are dispensible at any point of time and that you as a person is insignificant.

Strong willed individuals who knows what they want can form a good team.

Don’t attach greatness and tell him that he is not great.
Don’t attach divinity then accuse him that he is not god.
Don't hail them as "Sultan of Multan" today and treat them like a pauper tomorrow.
Let them play for what they are worth.

2004-03-29T18:10:00.000-05:00

P&P: Planning and Prioritization

All my carefully planned, well thought of, ingenious ideas are crumbling to tiny pieces. I prepare a weekly plan to get to know week’s objectives well in advance for me and team, prepare daily plans for me, end of day achievements, team’s daily plan and then replan in case of contingencies. I spend ½ hr everyday morning doing this planning. Then lets the team also know what the objectives are. This is on the top of sending them the detailed schedule for things to do. I review the progress regularly; have daily review sessions planned which I conduct in crunch situations. I think about improving me and my team every day. I am logging the random ideas I have, short term and long term action items, to improve on any problem I observe (which is sent to team and feels like it is going in a back hole). I conduct feedback sessions (One-to-One sessions, I call it) every two months or so. I give them feedback on what they did, what do I expect, which ones to improve, which ones to keep doing. I am not a planning freak who does not do anything but plan. I am not a perfectionist.

The biggest down side is, after all this, I spend long nights in office. By god, I am trying hard, really hard.

I don’t fret over things,
I don’t crowd people with my plans,
I give them space.
I am not doing great
At least what I think is great –
Compared to that I am not even mediocre
But I want completeness in everything I do
Have to feel that I have put my best into it
Then I feel comfortable
Nobody forces me,
I force myself,
Not to impress anybody,
But to have the satisfaction
I don’t keep at one thing
Till it is too perfect
I know when to let go
But still I end up working every hour in between meals and sleep.

I just put down this sticky in front of me:
Don’t mince words. State the actual problem. (I think that others may feel bad. But for a pro, the aim is to get it done.)
Do it thoroughly or don’t do it.
Don’t get emotional, take a moment to think.
Don’t waste time!!! (Like this)

Life is continuous improvement, introspection, questioning, and correction. But without results.

2004-03-25T18:08:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I think whether I seriously have a problem with grasping some control. When rope is slipping from my hands, I don’t even mind. Take life as a game you would like to play well. I can be competitive in a game, if I know how to play – I have demonstrated that with couple of them, but it is still mediocre. But here if I lose hope of winning, then I am losing the urge to fight. “If you can’t win, go down fighting”. What is the use? If there is a sinking feeling, then relax your muscles and let it do whatever it wants? Let the wheels roll and take you wherever it goes? Inaction. When it requires maximum work to be done, when it hits hard where it hurts, when it tumbles down with smoke and dust all around you, when you feel the pressure of the mountain you are trying to move is going to crush you, what if your nerves just give up? What if it just ceases to care and let it all take its course? Sleep and hope that when you open your eyes again, everything will be all right?

Challenges should thrill, without challenges there is no fun, harder the battle, more fun in winning it. Challenges without stakes are also not much fun. If winning and losing does not mean different things, there is not much fun.

Forget the aching shoulders, forget the chaos, and see the light at the end of tunnel. Fix your eyes on that, let the periphery blur. Detach the claws one by one. Crouch to leap ahead and with sure steps, march towards that light.

2004-03-24T18:09:00.000-05:00

It is like calm after a torrential rain. Office has grown a little silent after 7pm. Now some decibels are clearer or am I listening for the first time today? There are clicks from space bars around me. Since it is the key that is hit the most, it has lost its bearings and sounds like a hollow tin. It is the sound of this place - the sound of space bar. Every factory will have its own noise, its own smell - something similar. Then somebody hits an enter key with vengeance. This new mouse has that scroll on it - it should be greased, if somebody tries to go to the end of a document using that, it makes screeching sound, sounds like using sand paper to smooth a rough surface, insistent sound in short installments. Why don't they make it noiseless? - I guess whatever I hear, is from old furniture, which will be replaced soon. Old compaq PCs replaced with new Dell and HP flat screens and noise less keyboards - then this music will reduce in tempo. Other musical instruments are those chairs. It is comfortable, all right. But some of them creak. Some of them make sound as if it is breaking. Then there is the melodious low growl of phones. If you detach yourself from these sounds, it sound like water dripping from trees onto puddles of water or tin surfaces after the rain - clicking sounds coming from all around with no sequence. Thinking about rain, it hasn't rained since I came back to Mangalore - long time. One of my favorite pastimes is to read or watch TV while it rains buckets outside with a furious wind swaying the trees. I just have to wait couple more months for that.

Coming back to the music inside the office, I don't notice this at all normally - it is sound of daily life. But after a splitting headache suppressed with pain relief tablet, a throbbing head catches these decibels more clearly.

2004-03-19T18:07:00.000-05:00

“I need closure”. I have read that in some fiction. A person who was wronged or who did something awful cannot live peacefully until he satisfies himself that it is closed in the best way he can and then he can breathe normally. He comes back, repents his actions and then asks for absolution. Then he gets closure to his pain, his discomfort and his state of hanging on a nail. Or he was wronged by somebody whom he did not expect it from, or whom he held closer to his heart, he wanted to ask why was it done to him? I was thinking, what is the big deal. Forget it and move on. But I guess the best thing to do in such circumstances is to turn right back to the faceless, nameless feeling, try to confront and then bring an end to it – be it confession, questioning or whatever action it may take. Close the chapter, if possible with a happy ending.

Just a string of thought remotely related to something that is bothering me.
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I saw this movie “Leon, The Professional”, some time back in which Jean Reno is a hatchet man – a professional one. I liked that guy in some movies (eg: “French Kiss” etc). There are a quite a few movies with professional con men and hit men like Leon. They show tough guys who knows all the tricks of the trade, all the tools (at least they can churn out sentences filled with C6, M5, 0.45, 0.85 etc). They have been in all sorts of situations; know how to pull off any mission. Give the requirement, they will chart out ways, give the list of things they need (“The Heat”, “Ronin”), recruit specialists in explosives, cover etc (I am a bit rusty, I am quite out of date with those KGB, CIA fictions and movies – I used to know quite a lot). Then they execute the job, get out of it without a scratch with the booty and do not feel a bit of emotion or elation.

Being a “pro” means something – thorough knowledge about the trade, knows all the byways and shortcuts, knows how to execute something to perfection and have the satisfaction of “job well done” without emotion, ego issues etc.

My breed is called Software Professionals, but I am yet to find true professionals. It is kind of macho stuff kids believe in, but the core is dedication to what you do and the satisfaction of getting it done well. That is probably where I want to see myself in another 5 years – a true pro?
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Yesterday I was frustrated by a hurtful comment in blog – I know that I shouldn’t take it serious, it doesn’t matter one bit, I am writing for my satisfaction and to make myself clear about my own scattered thinking. I deleted that comment. Why am I writing this down? Nowadays I seem to ask that question quite often (I guess my courting period with blogging is over). If I keep something that I wrote for more than a day, I will not put it up because I will think that it is too silly. So I have now an unused folder where I keep the scrap. So why blog? After venturing into this, just checking back, I think it helps to keep “the feet firmly on ground” as I read somewhere – giving shape to spurts of thought and thereby realize the whereabouts of oneself by writing and thinking about it. I guess I will keep it as it is – update it with whatever, whenever I want. Cut “..and some software” from it and create separate one to keep notes related to that (I am not getting time to do that).

2004-03-11T18:03:00.000-05:00

Weekend Plans

After a long long time, I am going to relax this weekend. I have been working like a dog for last two months. I need to set down my burden for some tim. I hope I won't have to come to office on both the days. I hope I don't even have to take any work home. Saturday there is india-Pak cricket. So have to get up early. Need to warn my wife earlier that I will be busy (idle?) the whole day, need to muster some good arguments - that I haven't seen one match completely for over four years (but I am watching almost all the highlights including matches like Zimbabwe-Bangladesh - hope she won't come up with that point), that it is the "do-or-die" for our "boys" and if I am not there in front of TV and one more prayer added in my name, it may hurt their chances. That "it is mother of all cricket battles" and try to make her interested also so we can watch together – it is one good old technique.

So I am going to relax like a cat. Need to stock up some snacks. It is not everyday an indo-pak cricket comes on a weekend. Need to get a book (to read during breaks). It will be a hot day. It will be calm, there won't be any noise (there won’t be any kids playing cricket outside our apartment and yelling like mad). Curtains will be flapping its wings from a nice breeze – somehow it gives me a feeling of serenity. It will be a perfect day if India fights and wins – there is not much thrill in winning hands down.

I already have some hurdles which might spoil all my day dreams – I was asked to do some cheerleading for our department in some function ( “team-buliding-exercises”), but I could turn it down. Now somebody is saying that only one TV channel is broadcasting the game, which is not available here. Hope it works out.

I have read an article proclaiming that Indian’s craziness for cricket is affecting their economy. That they have been fed with some thing vile which is making them imbeciles. That it is the only game where so much time is wasted. That it is a deliberate move from old colonial masters to get us addicted to this game before they left. I think there could be lots of answers to these, but I have only one explanation - I enjoy watching it thoroughly - that is the only reason we need to have for doing anything, I guess.

2004-03-09T18:05:00.000-05:00

Should I get bored if two or three days turned out exactly similar and dull? Do I need to be more patient to let this tide pass and wait for the sun to come out? I am bothered with too many disturbing thoughts – no, I am not making this up. Do lunar cycles really have an effect on us? I guess if we can explain the mood swings based on some tangible reason like that, it should have been easier to wait for it to subside.

One of my friends (sensitive, sentiments – he hasn’t even heard about these words, but basically good at heart – so we get along) once offered an analysis after reading a bit of Freud - that my basic characteristics is melancholy. Very Strange – this comment came in between a very ordinary conversation in no particular place, when we were waiting for somebody outside a house – but every time I think about this comment, I get a clear picture of the cemented lawn with a coconut tree and its gnarled roots protruding and we two standing by the side of it, his bike somewhere near, sun already set and very dimly lit. Funny how you associate even some not-so-important events in your life with the place and time and with an image – like a catalogued picture card pulled out to read out the note. I suppose there is lots of catalogued cards like that which flash when you think of some things.
Maybe he was right (for once), but anyway I am not exactly the opposite, so it leaves room for very little argument.

It is bit difficult to untangle the messy knot and separate the strings of thought so I can attack one by one – but I can distinguish one of them. It is an old question which keeps coming back during every one of my blackouts – that I don’t have a real goal – personal, work, or anywhere. I started reading “Atlas Shrugged” – going in a crawling pace. It professes one idea continuously – that the most depraved kind of man is one without a purpose in life. I am not sure whether the book is manifesting the disturbance I feel or it augments the thought I already have. Once and for all, I should decide whether I should give some merit to this and do something about it. I happened to talk to some friends – but they seem to be much more immersed in this and disillusioned than me. Is it a problem with the times that we are going through – nobody knows what they want in life? Or nobody ever thinks about it and it is better to get on with life than indulge in such fancy thoughts? Maybe thinking in these lines is a luxury. Do I need a shrink, career guidance or a friend? I should probably think some more and separate facts and fantasies.

2004-03-04T09:52:00.000-05:00

Put a person bodily on a tank full of water and put a heavy stone on the chest, heavy enough to get a sinking feeling without hope. Ever felt like that – pressure on the chest with feeling of doom? There is a deadline looming large and after three days of limited sleep my head feels like big, swollen thing which is pricked by some sharp object at times. Something like a zombie trying to drag his feet and somehow touch the finish line.

But to tell you the truth I think I don’t resent, but enjoy this struggle. I think this has some purpose, some sense of achievement, some satisfaction of something creative being done, some satisfaction of using cells in my brain which were in a coma state for a long time. Thinking about brain dead – I wonder how much am I using that powerful machine of mine? I think since my head is swollen, I can imagine a big unused, well preserved (?) gray matter sleeping for years inside my head. Frankly speaking, today's software development firms doesn’t need people to use any part of brain. It just needs little practice – like typing. But even then India is becoming a super power. So there must be lot more untapped gray cells. Won’t it be great to get a medicine or something which can cultivate these cells a little more?

Even to get an engineering degree (at least with the education system we have) we don’t need to use too much of brain, just a little bit of RAM kind of memory – short term. I exercised that feature very well. I used to study just on the previous day of final exams. For one of them, which was supposed to be very fuzzy and all, I had severe headache on the previous day of final exam (that was the day I had planned to study in my calendar). In the evening, a friend came to get some capsule sort of lesson on one part. The exams used to be three parts or something. I don’t remember exactly now. From each part, you need to answer 2 questions or something. So you can do a gamble if you don’t have time or inclination to study. You can pray to god and skip some portions altogether and still survive. So this friend of mine had studied one part and he wanted to get a shot from me for the second part. I got really depressed because I didn’t even start and there is a big groovy text book full of Greek symbols. Then I started the battle – put on some Vicks on my eyes and nose (to fight off sleep and running nose), had a Crocin (precaution as well as cure) and started reading that book and simultaneously write notes into some paper – it is one efficient way of getting things into RAM. Write on a paper, it will stay on the brain for a little longer. I think that is because while you think about what to write, there will be enough time for something to be written in to RAM. So I studied for 14 hours at a stretch and went to exam without sleeping at all. I wrote it well despite the fact that the paper was tough – (while others search in their hard disk, I could get it fast from RAM?). I had even techniques like, if you manage to get enough material for the exam into the head with around 12 hours of loading, then don’t use the head too much till the exam is over – don’t read newspapers and all – it may flush out something which got in first.

I don’t use even one tiny piece of “knowledge” gained during those four years now. So it is feels really good to think that I didn’t waste much time in studying ICs, resitors/capacitors etc and enjoyed the years in college thoroughly.

So the moral of the story is – Little bit of RAM is enough for getting through even engineering, so if what they say about human brain and those cells is right, I have huge untapped potential in my small brain which is just waiting to be unleashed. That indeed is one refreshing thought.

I really have some hangover of Catcher in the Rye.

2004-03-02T13:32:00.000-05:00

Compulsive blogging – is that what I do? I just read that and felt shy to write more. Am I writing for the sake of it? Huh. Not a good feeling, don’t think too much about it now.

So I was thinking all the time I was walking from home to office. I got a house close to office – just about a kilometer. Also, Mangalore sleeps much early compared to other places I have been. Not that I have a complaint about that – many of my colleagues have. “there is no nightlife here”. I am not sure what will I do with some more nightlife.

It is much different place out there at night, after all the drama of the day is over. I was having visions about this clip I saw somewhere – or I don’t know if it is a clip conjured up by my imagination. if everything in front of you is fast forwarded and you are placed inside that for a moment, then if only you are taken out of that and now you look back into the fast forwarded life in front of you, won’t it feel funny? I think walking alone at night gives these crazy feelings, sort of detached from the world; it is amusing to think about the world which is going to embark on this road in another few hours.

It is bit odd to walk at these hours of night – shutter of last shop closing, coming down with a sharp click gives a feeling of everything closing down finally, gives a reminder that it is time to get home and settle down for the day. Just one two-wheeler passes me, the drone of which you can hear from the long distance and will be there for a long time even after it passes you. Every noise is amplified. All the noises you don’t hear in the ruffle of the day – some sweet chirping and lots of barking.

Barking – it is the worst. The distance from office to home is divided into small countries which are ruled by one dog each. They will drive you out their territory by any means – growl, frighten by sharp barks, follow you close. Some of them will walk you till the boundary of next to make sure. I could identify each one now. I am entering the zone 1; this guy will give a low growl – like a warning. Then enter zone 2 where a silent one will watch you intently – you can feel every inch on your back and legs until you pass that one. Through some zones I walk without giving one small indication that I am scared – as they say, they may be able to smell your fear (I think it was said for velociraptors). I will just check them out through the corner of my eyes – without letting them know that I am watching them. Last zone is governed by an aging warrior – he will let you pass without acknowledging.

I should really stop these walks – it is about time.

2004-02-27T02:26:00.000-05:00

I read How to Write a Better Weblog couple of days back. It made me think about something else altogether. I wanted to study Creative Writing for some time now – I don’t know what that means, I think I have seen some movies (“My Girl” has some scenes) and got some idea into my head.

In my school days, for some months I had this crazy idea of writing a story and submitting it to a newspaper or magazine. I think I wanted to do it because they offered some money for it and I thought I could use some cash. So I used to think about stories and even wrote some horrible ones. The biggest problem is, I wound the story in loops, jumped back and forth in sequences (something like Pulp Fiction and other Quentin Tarantino films – with all sequences broken up, but mine was incomprehensible to anybody other than me) and tangled myself in all kind of loops. I start telling a story, go into something else, come back, say something more, introduce some other character, then go back to other – it was pure mess. I had taken part in some story writing competitions. I think I wrote something like that and got a third prize in school once. It was funny experience, though – you will be given some fixed time, all contestants will be in same room. At the beginning everybody will be looking at ceiling for a long time, searching for stories. Then time will be running out, so we will start writing something, tear some paper, write something else. I don’t how the evaluator made sense out of my stories – it will require some analytical skills to understand those. So I didn’t manage to write any decent ones, didn’t send anything to newspaper (I did some research and found whom to send etc, I even thought that I will send to some famous writers and they will give me comments, just like in movies – you must have got it by now – I do a lot of day dreaming), got disgusted at myself and stopped everything.

So once in a while, I will think about this Creative Writing course which will set me right. Sometime back I started stalking books on Writing – like John Grisham’s “On Writing” etc. Didn’t read any till now, but.

Let me jump on to another incident (Digression – that may be the mark of amateur. But I got a boost when Holden Caulfield said he liked that better in “Catcher in the Rye”). I have this friend who is a little cranky at times (but he is one of those I would like to be friends for life). He called me recently and played “Pehla Nasha” in keyboard. I asked “Good one – which is that cassette?” So he made me choose any song so he can prove that he is playing it. Later I went over to his place and he was passionately demonstrating his keyboard skills. He is really good, to tell you the truth. So he was saying this – that we should not start learning this directly from a teacher, you will never learn enough to play confidently for a long time, a teacher will take you through all standard steps, exercises etc and by the time you get around to real stuff you will lose the interest. So learn by yourself some and then go and get the formal training if you want. I think this is very true in many cases.

I am living example of this – I studied Guitar for two years. I should say I wasted it. Maybe it is because I didn’t have the talent. If I had, I could have picked up something. But just by practice, a decent level of proficiency can be achieved.
In programming also, they used to say the same thing. Don’t go by a book “.. in 21 days”. You will be wasting your time. I learned Java the other way. I didn’t have any training, was put into a project which was about to get completed in 2 months, did design, coding and everything and learned on the fly. If you don’t know how something is done – look in some book or ask somebody. Quality may not be good this way, but you learn a lot. Later do formal training to fill in the gaps – you can appreciate it better.

I just made up a theory from this – if you got a glimpse of the forest at least once, it will be easy for you in the woods. So, I want to improve my writing – just to give me more satisfaction in the output (one sure thing is – writing even crap is a pleasurable experience), but not with a course on writing. Let me experiment for some time and see where it goes.

2004-02-24T11:51:00.000-05:00

Today I think there was a strike or something. Buses were very few and most were state transport. They don’t have collection based compensation, but a fixed monthly salary, so no street racing and no competition to fill the bus and all related tricks. Anyway, I got on one such bus. I was having some papers in my hand, a mobile phone, had a tie on. I already had the change for the conductor in my hand – so with all these papers etc, he had to take it from my hand. He wrote the ticket, didn’t play kite with that piece of paper and carefully put it in my hand. And he gave me a smile. You won’t realize the impact – how often do you get a smile from a bus conductor? I also smiled nicely back. Then he asked me something in Kannada – I don’t know a word – even though I have been living in Mangalore for quite some time. I said I don’t know – but he is smarter, he knew my language a bit. So he asked me “do you work there?” – pointing to my office. I said yes. And then he asked me “how much do you get? 10-15000 per month?”. He didn’t mean any malice, so I did some actions to say so-so. That’s it, I reached my stop. This is a little embarrassing question due to some reasons and it is not the first time somebody asks me the exact same way.

Small incident, I didn’t write it to infer anything. Just that our common public sometimes look at our new breed (wearing this tie and all and everybody having that ID card in some black string around our necks) in a little cautious manner. But don’t even imagine that they don’t know anything about what we do. My sister-in-law’s marriage was in Jan and I met a lot of elders in the family during the function. Couple of them was retired for 10-15 years and they are quite old. They searched for me, got hold of me and talked to me. I was really surprised that they know quite a lot of software industry. They talked to me about outsourcing, whether it is affecting us, whether there is going to be legislature against it, about politics in it and all. Luckily I was reading some articles recently and I could hold my ground. Next day one of them really bowled me out. He asked about Richard Stallman’s address in Kochin University about Open Source, its IPR issues, clash with Microsoft etc. I think many of us don’t even know who Richard Stallman is. Again I was reading furiously about Open Source recently, so I said something. I was wondering why I was surprised – I underestimated them. Another interesting observation is – Really old people are fascinated by this growth of the industry, but middle aged ones who are in other industries are slightly irritated by its growth. I got an impression that they regret their not getting into this bandwagon. I am not even saying that it is great or anything. As I read somewhere, real fast, this industry is also becoming as common as others and there will be nothing out of ordinary if you are a software developer.

2004-02-20T08:45:00.000-05:00

It is so hot out there. It is like walking thru a hot oven or something. And to think that summer has not started its works yet. You can get roasted crisp if you stand still in that heat for one hour. But it is not so bad to walk out there, to tell you the truth. On the way to office, I was walking across this small playground constructed by industrious youth of that locality. They play cricket there. Some weird kind of cricket where they bowl underarm. They seem to enjoy it a lot. They have even tournament for that where they even display a trophy (complete with red ribbon and all) by the side of this small ground. They seem to be very passionate about it. They have flattened the ground, built a small basic room to store their things. One side of the ground is road, so they have put a net on that side so the balls don’t go to road often. They draw lines using this white powder and all. It is almost red earth; dust will rise like clouds at every step. I only wish those do something worthwhile with their lives and if they are so thorough in their life also, it would be good. Not that they are not, I just don't know. They seem to there every evening - not during the day time though - nobody will be there.

By the side of their recreation room, there is one small capsule sized play pen for small kids. Some small kids will be playing underarm cricket there too – dust hanging around them like mist. And there will be this small girl who yells “no ball” and fights like mad with the other boys over runs and leg before.

There is this small grocery store owned by a silent family by the side of this playground. Son, father and sister take shifts managing the store. Son is very calm guy. He will be out in front of the store watching those guys play - he doesn’t normally get involved. But he seems to know everybody who plays there. He stays directly above this store and plays old Hindi music at night (nowadays I am returning home when MTV starts playing “Graveyard Shift”) which seems to include all my favorite songs.

And there are million other small things around this peanut sized place. I used to walk in between these around two and half years back. Then I went out of the country for two years, came back, took an apartment in same complex and am walking through the same playground again with same guys playing underarm cricket. It felt like “Groundhog day” today, like I am taking this walk everyday and the calendar is not moving forward at all. It is like last two years didn’t change even one small thing in this place. Now I feel I haven’t even gone anywhere – just woke up from a deep slumber and happy to find the same old things around me. It is like at the end of a long hard day, you wonder whether something you did in the morning happened on the same day or not. It feels so distant.

I think sometimes we want to get out of this “Groundhog day” and sometimes you want to continue living in it.

I think I can as well write a boring book out of this, but enough of horsing around that one small place for one day.

2004-02-17T11:00:00.000-05:00

One day, I am the soaring spirit, happy as I haven’t been in months. Next day, I am a crawling worm, not able to pull myself up. Yesterday, I was so content that I wanted to capture the moment, freeze and live it over and over again. I didn’t want yesterday to be over. But today, everything seems to go wrong. I have slipped on delivery dates, not able to motivate myself up to do something. Brain is simply refusing to function. Yesterday I was so creative that I planned a week’s activities for myself and the team, drew some charts with sequences and activities, brought a calendar and marked all important dates. I was able to design, analyze, explain, joke, convince, argue, teach – possibly everything. I was hyperactive and at the end of the day, I got to know that I got graded at the top 30% in year end appraisal – so much for my “initiatives” and “visibility factor” – after all just working might also fetch some goods (even though I still don’t know for how long). But today I am wondering how I ever ended up there.

I think that is one of life’s mysteries. Maybe stars have something to do with it.
But I shouldn’t explain it away as something “corny” as “life’s mysteries”. I am taking work personal and I shouldn’t do that much. It is not good for health. But frankly, I don’t seem to detach myself that much. Over time, I have learned somewhat, but still I won’t be happy at the end of the day if things didn’t go well. Even small things will be nagging at the back of the mind, then I have to think and find out what is that discomfort. That is one funny feeling – I will feel uncomfortable, then after sometime I will realize it, check back, what is it, what did I not like, find out and do something about it or console myself that it is not important enough to worry. Like some machine running a health check.

Hey, but I don’t know where this blog is going? I started with some elaborate agenda, but now it is just a barometer of my ups and downs. I ought to remove “software” from its title.

2004-02-15T03:57:00.000-05:00

In office on Sunday, am supposed to finish something to meet a deadline for Tuesday. Irrespective of the deadline, I am feeling happy, eager, peaceful, and content to do it. I have already put around 60 hrs into work this week and still I am not feeling tired now. I had this small theory about taking a small break – getting recharged. I had a welcome break yesterday, didn’t even think about work. It is rather unusual nowadays, not to think about work. We didn’t do anything special, nothing at all, but it was a beautiful valentine’s day. No Hallmark, no Archies, no gifts, no candlelight dinner, no oh-so-good music. But still it was beautiful.

Ate twice at a new Punjabi Dhaba, where we are getting to know the owner cum waiter cum cashier. Honest guy, I like honest, down to the earth guys, with no pretense, their actions speaking for themselves, not even knowing that they are doing good. There are not many I like; it is something I want to explain a little more some other time – about some qualities which I think defines a man. Sometimes you feel to keep some things untouched or uncovered, lest it will lose its charm. It is good from this angle, this light, this distance – just don’t go near. It is not doubt about its charm, but feeling content to leave it at that. You may not even want to look at it later, but may feel the pleasure of seeing it once. It is all not related to that waiter, but my liking made me think a little.

Just finished Ayn Rand’s “Fountain Head”, which left me like land after a small storm. Shaken, not sure how to cope up. It is not necessary that I make sense out of it or have my version of explanations. It is not necessary that I have my own interpretations, whether I accept the ideologies professed. But still I will have its hangover for some days. Can’t stop thinking about some things. It won’t be satisfied until I give it some shape.

Just remembered a small incident – we had been to a temple in TamilNadu (big one – they have lots of them) – me and my father. I was 4-5 years old, I think. We reached there at wee hours of the night; there were no hotels near by. I think the plan was to have darshan early morning and return early. I slept a little, my father woke me up after some time and took me to take bath in the pool behind temple (“pool” looks modern – but I didn’t get a better word). It was pitch dark and the shapes around me were straight out of some gothic place. I think the shadows and trees and big rocks played a lot of tricks with me. At one spot, I think I saw some big animal ready to pounce at me. It had long horns, bulky shape and mean look. Whatever my father did, I wouldn’t move from that spot. Then he gave me this piece of advice. He said it is just a piece of rock – otherwise why would it stand in that same pose for so long. He offered to go over and touch it first to make me confident. He asked me to go over and touch it to make sure. Go on, feel it to take that fear completely out of your mind. It is one incident which remained with me for so long. I think about it whenever I have doubt like this about anything’s shape. Go on, explore it, it will surely feel less threatening and more friendly.

2004-02-12T02:31:00.000-05:00

Open a notepad. Close it. Open it again. Feeling shy, close it again. These are open cubicles. Somebody will see. People come in without knocking and stare right into your monitor. They will see me writing trash in office time. But I am just waiting for lunch time, can’t start doing anything, I can’t finish it. List of things to do is growing, but I am exploring the meeting rooms. One after the other, I have used all the meeting rooms in this floor for hours everyday. So now I can’t work until I get into another.

This is another way of thinking, words flowing right out of mind into the notepad. Will it becomes a habit and I can’t think in any other way other than by writing it down? Will I be perpetually writing something in my mind? Have you ever thought about being crazy literally? I have heard this once, don’t remember where – “everybody is somebody else’s weirdo.” So who might be thinking I am weird? That guy in the lift when I was standing there staring at the corner of the ceiling lights with interest? Or could it be the other one who gave me queer look when I carefully dropped a crumpled bus ticket into the crack in the slabs on the footpath so it gives me the satisfaction of not throwing that to the pile on the road? Or could it be my colleague who looked embarrassed when I gave out a big time fundae about how something should be done ideally with such a conviction? Crazy guys are convinced that what they do or say is perfectly valid and nobody should have any doubts about whether it makes sense or not. It should feel great to be that way. That might be a gift to the crazy ones – to be oblivious of the fact that they are crazy. Then they don’t have to think that others might think that they are acting crazy. Like when I write this down. Are you getting what I mean?

One of my friends advised me to write something positive. But I guess writing negative or complaining all the time or looking at dark side of life, brings out the best words. It is a heady combination if you can enjoy the feeling. Being a cynic is easy also. Read some good quotes or inspirational material to get a dose. I used to do that, like medicine. Search for inspiration for today or something in google and read something about random acts of kindness, courage, great stories and feel inspired. It exactly acts like pain killer. Read enough, you can get a good feeling for two days. I have enough juice running to be more and more cynical and exploit that feeling and revel in it, but it is lunch time and I have a meeting too.

2004-02-10T09:10:00.000-05:00

“remember to take these savings certificates, okay? Where shall I put it?”
“put it on the top of those other papers.”
“you will forget”
“no dear”
“it is 60,000 rupees.”
“okay”
“should I make a list?”
“no dear. It’s fine”
anyway she made a list.
.....
“..should I add that also to the list?”
“please stop. Let’s not start with this in the morning. This is the place where we start our little arguments. I can very well take care of myself.”
I am thinking about adding “I survived so many years before even I saw you.” But luckily didn’t.

Went out of the house. A bunch of papers in hand. Took 10 steps as if sleep walking. Folded the papers. There is no certificate! Is it a dream? Was it always there in my hand?
Retraced the steps. Two more guys came out of the building. They are looking busy, so they must not have found it. One guy is waiting for something on a two wheeler. Is he waiting for me?
On the entrance to the building, a lady bend down and took something in her hand and said “Who..”
I said, “Thank You. It is mine.”
I clutched the papers so hard till I reached office that my wrist started hurting.

So much for ““I survived so many years..”

Kiddish attempt at rhyme

2004-02-09T22:17:00.000-05:00

Feels like a mule, dead tired
But carrying the weight of the world
Steep is the path, occasional lash
But thinks that the weight is gold

At times, heart filled with pride
Surges ahead, yearns to do more
More weight on top, trying hard to please
Panting at times, still trying to smile

Feels like Atlas, once in a while
Eases the pain, makes it worthwhile
Ride that wave, it will carry you a while
Until you wake up and see that darn slope

Dubious thoughts on project management

2004-02-04T03:35:00.000-05:00

Project management is one pie which I don’t know whether I want to take a piece, but everybody is going for it and it is the aim for most.

In my narrow perspective, this is how I see managers (I haven’t yet become one, even though I am well on the course of becoming one some day in future): Some were basking in the glory of past successful projects. They have been part of two or three successful projects. It is like drinking a powerful potion of experience and then running on that fuel. I don’t know how long it will last. In some ways I think I have started practicing that. Symptoms of such managers will be frequent references to the best practices of those projects.

Some have an air of mystery around them. The team will not know specifics of what he has done in the past, but have heard this name. They had some colorful past experience in mysterious things like .NET, COM/DCOM, EJB. Some are lucky not to have faced a situation which tested their mettle.

Some of them come from onsite (client location) and automatically become a wise-man. If you are long time onsite, you are automatically considered as an expert and can be nothing less than a manager.

Some take “initiatives”, “energetic-active-enthusiastic facades” to get there.
Some continue being a manager because of the information they possess which they won’t part with. Information is the real power. That is what experience will give you. Information about different kind of situations. Even without contributing much, if you just be there in all kinds of situations, fairly intelligent person, can handle that situation later.

One essential quality which you need (which I don’t possess enough) is the art of “becoming noticeable”. Be somebody whom everybody knows, at least the name. It doesn’t matter if your peers don’t know you. If all those guys who might decide anything for you at any time (even if you think a person can become important in future and might be useful for you), knows you, then you have a good start. I often get comments like “very good, excellent work..but work on the visibility factor, make your presence felt”. There are lots of techniques to increase your “visibility factor”, I will come to that some other time.

I can go on an on painting a gloomy, immoral, hopeless picture about this. Complaining has become a habit now and I guess it gives some good feeling. The fact is, project management is definitely needed – there is no doubt in my mind. I have problems with the means to get there, antics one should perform to show that he is eligible, incompetent ones who got there, the fact that once you reach there it means the end of your technical career etc. On the last point – my fear is, once you reach there, you enter a state of coma when it comes to technology. “technology doesn’t matter” from there onwards. Successful delivery of a project, resource management, pre-sales, ensuring quality and all related jargon becomes part of life. How long will it be interesting? If I get there at age 27, for the rest of my life, will I be able run on the fuel I fill up now? From there onwards, you need to play more mind games and politics and “show business” to sustain your position and move up the “value chain”.

I think I am in a juncture where I need to decide whether I swim with the tide (Project management stream) or divert and go do some core technical work (which I believe will interest me, I may be capable of that, I have the smarts for that etc). But as usual, I don’t have the courage to get out the pre-set path or change the way things are going. Let it spin whatever it wants. I call it my “let’s see” attitude.

This kind of useless thoughts are spinning in my head. I think I will continue on this line for some more time.

Thinking about blogging all the time..

2004-01-29T21:57:00.000-05:00

It is like a small kid’s fancy toy. I am thinking about writing this and that all the time. I want to write every thought, everything I see, hear or read. So a lot of junk might be coming this way. I am cooking up topics, started giving colorful (exaggerated) descriptions. Just like the kid who dreams up a fancy land and starts living in it.
Maybe it is my courting period with blogging. I am showing all tell tale signs. Think about it all the time, what subjects to talk, what could interest her, whether she will like it or not, eager to see her.
It is 1 am and I started “random ramblings – the hard copy” (got a note book). This will help in filtering some trash.

Specialization or Jack of all trades (Continued..)

2004-01-22T10:14:00.000-05:00

I will probably dig deeper into why I want to specialize or master one thing. I will take Java as example. I really liked coding or doing research for java coding related issues. I had really nice experiences with java so far. But still I don’t know enough in java to confidently say that I am proficient in it. I haven’t used serialized objects, rmi’s, networking, awt, applets, swing etc. Only the other day, I read in a friend’s blog about programming using swing and how it proved to be a test for all techniques. I don’t know much about java design patterns. I have read about all this and can probably say that “it may be simple and I can do it with reading javadoc”.

At this point, maybe I will publish from one of my manager’s article. He has put it very well that I don’t want to try to put my thoughts about it in words.

“I had asked a colleague of mine whether he knows how to implement hierarchical tree in Oracle Forms. He said he had read about it, and going by that he thought it’s fairly simple and so he never tried getting hands on with it. His impression was that it’s very straight forward and he could do it in a jiffy. Well, I asked him if he could work on a demo and show me how it works. I gave the requirement. He faced the reality of difference between reading about something and actually doing it. There were numerous challenges. I agree, a simple and straight forward implementation of it would be easy but add a little bit of complexity, as we normally have in our project requirements, you are doused with lot of challenges irrespective of software, language or platform.

This is what I believe in - there is a big difference between talking about stuff and the ability to actually do it. You will get the edge only when you face the minutest intricacies of any software. You learn a great deal in the process. By doing this repeatedly, working with nitty-gritty of applications, you get required molding and technical acumen to get the "insight". We all are working with systems everyday but we are afraid to call ourselves experts even in whatever we are working with.”

To be able to say that “I know at least this perfectly and whatever maybe the requirement I can do it” is a unique feeling. It may become the one thing in life in which you can be absolutely confident.

Where do I get chances to explore the intricacies? Do I have the energy to see it to the end? Will this be a fancy which will lose its charm once you get into nitty-gritties? Will it be worth it at once you have the edge? Till what minute level should one go? How do I inspire myself to go deep into something?

Specialization or Jack of all trades

2004-01-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

Which is better? Be the master in one domain/technology or knowing bit of everything and not knowing anything completely. Latter is what is happening to me.

I got trained in maninframe technologies (MVS, Cobol, DB2, IDMS), worked in a mainframe project for some time - switched to a web development project (Java, Servlets, HTML, Oracle), coded less than 20 programs, maintained/enhanced some others – by this time moved into module management and slowly started losing touch with technology, but still survived because of the interest and did some more work in JSP, Java etc.

Now, I am back in pure module management and looks like I have already lost my so called “technical acumen”. I used to be rated well on technical knowledge and used to get some respect from colleagues (that is the true accomplishment – to be recognized by peers). But now I started struggling – can’t clearly explain how to use scrollable resultset, adding objects in session etc.

Just overheard this comment about somebody else: “he babbled about we can do it with EJB this way, that way etc, but when asked about specifics, he said search in google”. I might soon end up like this.

I came into this industry purely by chance. This was what is “happening” at that time. I got engineering in Electronics and Communication, but now when somebody talk about IC, Integrator etc, I see very vague pictures. Sometimes I try to console myself thinking that those 4 years of engineering was helpful in developing some overall engineering concepts and structured thinking which I can use in this industry too. It is like trying to get some exchange value for something precious which I don’t know how to use.

One of my seniors, whom I respect, once wrote an article “We are afraid to call ourselves masters”. I kept that article in my desktop for a long time.

So now I am seriously thinking about whether this is how I want to continue. Should I give myself another chance to say that “I just went along with it” after 5 years. My best years are passing by, what do I want to do?

I will continue some more rambling on this subject for couple of more days.

Ramblings

2004-01-20T11:09:00.000-05:00

Searched for random ramblings in google. Hit a lot of blogs in that name. That was good. I was actually thinking about a stylish name to put up (still don’t think this is stylish enough), but couldn’t think of anything. I used to think of something too simple or too gaudy, but then I see such beautifully crafted names given by others like “Odyssey of a Princess”, “Rock my World” etc (some of them doesn’t make any sense to me - smorgasbord , electropanic, fotu etc etc). I remember seeing one blog named “waiting for a stylish name” or something like that.
Then I came up with the current one when I tabbed into the textbox for the name of the blog while creating it.
My writing style, if there is one at all, is going to be exactly that. Jumbled words which might not make some sense, might look too childish and not mature (that’s what I think of some of my thoughts, then I tell myself “mat ban, be a man!” – a line from Dil Chahta Hai previews which I liked).
So some of those search results in google talks about software too. Also words like “nerd”, “manic” etc are coming up. I will visit some of them later.

Hypocrisy in workplace

2004-01-19T11:17:00.000-05:00

just had a fight with the boss. fights with bosses are worse; it may mean getting on the wrong side of somebody who can make workplace difficult for you. but this guy. why don't i have the courage to come out in a stinging way at the right time? i remember something from "you have got mail". in that meg ryan cannot give stinging remarks at the right time at the right place. but when she does that once, she kinds of repents because of the not so good feeling after that. kind of uneasiness. i have that now. but some say that only the "crying baby will get some". many a time i thought that it is very true. but if you are on the right side, maybe it will turn out okay. sometimes it is like those old stone age days. that beast who fights to survive. corporate world is sometimes like that, i guess. not in so distant past, i used to think that everything is rosy and things happen by the book. everybody is honest, kind, sincere. the sweet talk of managers is natural. but now i think they are specially trained to talk like that. everybody is trying to survive. one way or other.
funny thing is, now we get solace in "cribbing" to comrades in similar situation. we bond with each other quite easily when we start talking about these subjects. about hypocrisy. like in politics, like in that hippo who closes eyes thinking that nobody can see him, still those smooth talks continue. most complain in private. i know some others also who did well after going public.
one trick is not to lose temper. apply the same technology back. try to smooth talk. on the other hand, being blunt is also effective. so maybe we need to balance. it is tough life, but maybe this is that "grownup" life which elders used to tell us that we will see after "growing up".
i don't seem to find right time, right place and right words so far. either goes too far and blurt out too much or be silent and repent for it later.
one colleague who later was my boss for some time told me "no boss is your friend, so however cozy you may feel at times, don't reveal more than necessary". dangerous life.

2004-01-18T09:53:00.000-05:00

I was thinking about blogging for a long time now. Sometimes I open a notepad and write something thinking that I will put it up as my first blog. So wrote elaborate articles about why I want to write, what I want to write etc etc. At that rate I will never get around to publish one. Today is a holiday. Came to office since there was nothing else to do. After a long time came to blogs, browsed some. Then here it is, just started clicking on new blog and started one. Let me see how far it goes and how does it progress.

I will start by using one of those elaborate notepads which I thought can be put as first blog. I haven't thought about template, colors, fonts etc. I will keep procrastinating if I think about that now. So I will just start.

“I was thinking about starting a blog for quite some time now. I don't know why I want to do that, what I will gain from it, whether I want to gain anything at all, what I want to write, for whom am I writing. Everytime I will come around to these questions. If none of this is clear, why write? So maybe I will start by thinking about why I want to write.

May be it is one way to clear my thinking by blurting out whatever comes into it. Clean out most of the stuff and start again (I am not saying that all trash will come out here, but this will make me think about those in detail and clear those while writing). That used to be the way I do it during college. Every semester I used to think and plan for better grades etc, but it always used to end in one day study before exams. All semesters spent on books, games and general time spent with friends. Not that I regret it. I used to enjoy it quite a lot. Just the planning part of it. And at the end of the semester it will be obvious that I will not be making my target grade. So again, before the next semester, I would clean my room for hours. Remove all clutter. After one full day of cleaning, I would sit down for planning the next semester. I would calculate the percentages so far. Set a target for the entire course. To reach that target, how much should I score in next semester. If I need to reach that target, how much should I score in intermediate tests etc etc. it used to feel good to do the planning. New vigor. Eager to start. But after two weeks..:(. But I think this planning itself has helped me. I used to retrace and plan in between semester also. Before tests, before semester exams. Follow that plan for some time. So it is like trying to start a stalling car. It would start, go some distance and then stop again. But keep on it, it used to run. Slow and not steady, but. I scraped through my college, ending with not so bad grade. A first class with distinction, which is not so good either.

It gives a cozy feeling to be lost in my own thoughts and write down whatever comes to it. But who may want to read “whatever comes to it”. So partly for my pleasure of writing (doing something creative, for a change), I can write. I can write without thinking back and correcting this and that, get everything out of the system and then go back and remove whatever is pure trash, maybe.
Just looking up, there is so much "I". Am I selfish? They used to say that. Too much "i"s, try use some "we"s.

Maybe this will be my style of writing. I will go over the topic (digress), write about whatever comes to my mind. I may not keep the attention of the reader. But then why should I keep the attention of the reader? Who am I writing for? Btw, I used "but then". One of my phony managers, use that quite often. I dread that nowadays. He will say something bad and then say "but then we do some good, but then you can't always do good, so you understand why I am doing this to you, right?".

So far I am somewhere near the topic. So continuing. I got introduced into blogs by one good friend from college whose friendship I manage to retain so far (4 years in college, 4 years after college). I haven't seen him for 3 years. Writes to each other once in a year. When I finally write, always starts with a complaint "do you remember me? Why should I be the one who start writing again" and always the chain ends after exchanging mails like "life and work is going on.. Nothing much.. Still the same old routines.. etc".

after that, last two years, on and off, I followed some blogs, read salam pax furiously during iraq war. added some to favorites. so I follow them once in a while. recently came across one techie blog, which started the interest once again. I think I always wanted to write what I think. wanted to keep journals ("diary writing") - but never did. can't write in those beautiful styles which I envy. try to do that sometimes, but fails miserably.

I am afraid to read anything which I have written, for that matter. don't want to edit them in any manner. even though I can clarify my thoughts better that way. doesn't matter.

so what do I want to write? I think my wife will think that if only I talked to her this much, it would have been better. but I am not good in talking somehow. it has been that way all my life. I can't convince, console, express love, argue, let out some pain through spoken words. I can do so better in writing. don't know whether that is a weakness. maybe it is. so I will try this for some time.
but what do I write?

I do not want to let out too many day to day activities, like I see in many blogs. "I went there, saw this guy, did that" kind of. I am getting more and more interested in software engineering practices nowadays. open source, linux, extreme programming, future of computing and fancy stuff like that. doesn't matter to me in one bit in my current affairs. but having something interesting on the side will keep the overall interest in this profession intact. then I have some crazy thoughts at times which might look good if written. I will come to that when it hits next time.

so this is it. it begins with a boring friday evening, waiting for 6 o'clock and get out of office. without even thinking where I am going to put it up. we will see how it goes forward.”