Me, ME and ME

A month and 10 days, night around 5+ outs, lots of Paranthas at the Parantha point and a fresh morning later I’m back again.

Since the last most not much has changed. Well, the work is still there and a lot needs to be done. The QEs seem to have gotten minds of their own and then it’s back to square one of going over the code.

Sometimes I wonder if I did the correct thing by changing myself during the transition from College to Corporate. I used to have ready to take anyone on kind of attitude and now it’s down to let me continue my work and I don’t ask for anything kind of attitude. Is it really right? More often than not I find the need to go back to the old me and then I stop my ass from crossing over. When the things don’t feel right I just think I am used to being the old me so much that even though this being better for the world I’m not finding it good for me, I stop. But now I think I’m going back to my old self. Well what the heck, I tried being good, didn’t work out for me. Let’s try me being the same old me for some time now and then let’s see which one fares better in the current world!

Time does fly away...

Well last time I had the time to actually slow down after seeing the PCR van but this time around I really didn’t have any choices. It was night time and as such the visibility was very low, and there they were, waiting with the laser rangefinder having set up a speed trap just around the corner. They were good! They positioned themselves in such a way that they could keep an eye on the people coming from the other side but we could not! But luckily for me I was driving alongside a Safari. Also since it was night they would have a hard time focusing the rangefinder on a bike moving 100+. Bike being a bike has very low signature and thus you need to be trying to find the bike otherwise all you would get is NOISE.

Anyway in the time between the last post and this one I have treated myself to 4 movies Ratatouille, Hey Baby, Transformers and Rush Hour 3. Of the four Rush Hour and Transformers came highly recommended and I indeed liked them. As for Hey Baby I thought I was a good attempt but just an attempt, it didn’t carry far and I ended up sulking the entire time. Worst of all was the movie was a treat from my side. WTF! Ratatouille was a good movie and I’ll recommend it to anyone who likes animated movies.

With all that’s happening in my life (actually nothing); my life is still as boring as it could get; at least that’s what my friends say. I have been hearing a lot of crap from almost everyone about my lack of social life and time for myself. Man even my parents asked if everything was alright at the office and why was a working such late hours! I mean, come on, why does the world care what I do with my time and where do I spend it. Its my wish more than anyone else’s as to how and where I want to spend my time.

Last to last week I was busy as hell (during the daytime only) in lot of activities and the week did fly away. Only this week it’s been free and kind of relaxed.

Sometimes I wonder what happened to the old me I knew. I used to be in a habit to read lot of books! I used to purchase at least a book (non-fiction and mostly scientific) and every month and read, trying to make out things I didn’t know and sharpening what I knew. I did all this because I liked to do it, Read. Now that I don’t have that much time I seem to have given up the habit. I think it’s high time I again started the reading streak of mine and get some books. I’ll be getting my old books anytime next week (well that again depends on my friend who is very much like me in matters of following schedule). So it might even stretch to maybe 2-3 weeks. Let’s wait and watch and see what happens, Do I get my books on time or do I have a friend who is the same as me ;).

I guess that’ll be all for now until I decide I’ve some free time again.

And yes I almost forgot, I saw a Bentley the other day and Man... I don’t have words for it!

HP 7

Let’s face it; I’m back to my old ways again, irregular and un-punctual. But this is not due to the fact that I actually don’t get time but due to the fact that I’m not able to put the time I get to writing these blogs. Anyway these have been hectic times. With my dad and mum coming over I don’t get a single minute to do anything else other than sit with them (that’s when I’m at home).
This has not very good results for me. I don’t do all the things I used to do or watch all the movies I could have had enjoyed in the last week. But all in all this has been a good week. I have finally settled in my new place and things seem to be getting on track. Engineering specifications have been submitted and work is supposed to start soon enough. Let’s see!
It’s been a long time, very long time indeed (given the fact that I can now write all I want to at home also). But me being me can’t really help it.
Almost a month gone and what have I got to show for all the time. Well all I have are some pages I made for the design and some KM I added to my bike’s KM reading gauge. As I write this I know I need to sleep and badly but before that I must warn anyone planning to go to a movie called “Partner” please reconsider and sleep instead. It’s a seriously pathetic attempt at copying “Hitch”.
Till date today was the only day I remember that I was late to office. But I can’t really help it, can I? I took me some 15 minutes to reach Noida from “Green Park” and another 15+ minutes to get to my office. Shit! This is so bad. But I must say that DND flyway is a delight to drive on (except for the toll taxes). Easily went 100+ but had to slow down after seeing a Police PCR van patrolling the area. Apparently there was a mishap and two cars had scraped each other.
Who really cares what happened, all I wanted was to go fast and I did, as soon as I was out of sight of the PCR vans I was doing 90+ again. Alas I ran out of space and was at the toll gates, beyond those gates lies city roads and you can’t possibly do 90 on them, can you?
P.S.
In the mean time I have finished reading HP-7 – Deathly Hallows!

The week has passed and I'm not there

Last week was dedicated to the movies I took home to watch and revise ;).

This weekend was dedicated to Mummy and papa. They have come over and I’m getting a hell lot of lectures on how and why to manage myself and the home. Anyway this has been a nice weekend and I also took papa to Greater Noida (on the bike at around 91 KMPH) some 30 KM away. We had a talk with the developers out there and I sure can tell you that it’s goddamn expensive.

Las week I say about 2 seasons of friends and some 6+ movies (all thanks to some K Arora). He is a good man. He stocks almost all kinds of movies in large quantities and thus presents a brilliant opportunity for anyone who wants to see a movie for the first time of just revise for that matter.

Tomorrow I’ll gain have to go to office and that never seemed a better place. Yahoo! Redemption! Stuck in home for 2 days and that too without the freedom to go anywhere and do anything (come on who in the world likes that).

Hope to have a great week ahead.

The weekend cometh!

Friday

Today was another Friday and that means another weekend over the horizon! Things now are much better given the fact that I am going to vacate the guest house tomorrow, that means kissing goodbye to all the facilities like AC, Room Service and not having to make the bed or clean the room and tidy up the stuff and the likes. But I’ll be shifting to the house that I have rented and it’s not too far from where I stay currently and it is in a sector I am familiar with and it’s nearby to the office.

With the advent of the weekend lot of things change and thus in the process people hardly do any work. It’s a time for making plans and planning to execute them. I for one don’t have any plans worth mentioning for the weekend. All I have planned is the purchase of household items like mattress and stuff so that I am able to live in the newly rented flat. The best thing I have planned is to go to CP tomorrow evening and go to Caventer’s and have the usual. It’s been what, some 6+ years since I went there. From what I have heard the prices have double, but let’s just hope that the quality has not degraded and from what I hear it seems very improbable. Good for me!

Anyway today I saw that my company supports Vista and I have almost made up my mind that I’m going to get Vista installed on the laptop at least. The laptop has a graphic card and One GB of RAM, I am pretty confident that it can run vista smoothly enough. I’ve been waiting a long time to get my hands on Vista and thus try and get myself familiar with some of the new technologies introduced with it, WPF and XAML for example.

I have the VS 2008 Beta 1 (Orcas) downloaded and I don’t think I’ll have any restrictions as far as the learning is concerned. It’s going to be good times ahead. Lot of learning and catching up to do! My last job landed me in soup and I was practically cut off from the rest of the Windows based programming world for the whole time. I bet it’s all going to change. Just a matter of time and patience…

As for the plans of the next week I think that’s when I’ll be getting the assignments I am supposed to get sooner or later and that’s when things a going to get ugly (I mean in a better way). Me getting my hands dirty and diving into a developing product with tight time schedules, WOW this is going to be fun!

One more thing, all the downloading I have done in the past week alone has crossed 15 GB mark, quite an achievement. I have already reduced the amount of free space on my systems drive from 140 GB when I got it to 111 GB. Way to go!

Saturday

Well the day is coming to end and I’m sitting there in the guest contemplating my impending departure to the flat. I got the keys today and went to the flat to have a look around. There were no problems in the flat except for the fact that the top shelves are full with junk. Some are from the previous occupant and majority of the landlord. Well since we don’t really need any apace so it really isn’t a problem for me but I’ve no idea what papa is going to say about that. Well I guess I’ll just have to make do and make him understand.

By the way last night I had gone to the IIT and stayed there only. We didn’t sleep the whole night and stayed up talking and watching “Friends” and sipping coffee. Well the plan of getting to the market and getting all the things need for the house went kaput. But we managed to order ourselves a mattress and pillows. They will be delivered tomorrow and by that time bro will bring all the other necessities.

The only problem with the entire plan is me leaving the comfort of the guest house and going into the flat. I’ll have to setup everything and I never wanted to of have any experience in doing that. It’s a good thing that mummy is coming over next week and I’ll not have that big a problem and I’ll have someone to guide me and help me set up the household.

Next week is going to be a busy time and I’ll have to manage the time more than I have ever done in my entire life.

Anyway today is still Saturday and I have almost 20 hours till I vacate the guest house and I’m going to enjoy every bit of that. No slacking on the enjoyment!

Sunday

It’s almost 2030 hours and I am in my apartment. Well I just moved in and the apartment is a big mess. Theirs is no water as of now and to top it all there is no drinking water too. Got to go and find some vendor for the water bottles and get a connection. Next thing on the list would be to get myself a cooler. The Delhi heat is simply too much to take in and I could really use an AC right now, but for now I’ll make do with a cooler.

The day was not as hectic as we had thought it would be. The only hiccup was that the delivery man for the mattress could not find the house and went as looked at the wrong house and found that locked. So instead of 30 minutes he took almost an hour and fifteen minutes to deliver the mattress to our home. Anyway finally the mattress is here and looks like I can have a good night’s sleep now. The day involved me making a trip to Delhi and back and not having anything substantial to eat. I guess none of them are new to me and I think I can handle them both with ease.

Tomorrow being Monday I’ll have to go to office and I’m planning to claim all the reimbursements also. This would help me tide over this month of one way flow (financially speaking). With the claims processed I’ll have some money and hopefully will be able to enjoy.

Starting tomorrow I’m planning to download at least two to three episodes of “Friends” or some other series to keep me entertained at home. Now that I’m no longer staying at the guest house it’s a big problem (Ah!) as there is no TV in here.

Waiting for tomorrow and hope everything goes according to plan (for once in my life!).

Shell Replacement!

Another day gone and all I have done is… actually I did a lot today. I managed to restart my system almost three to four times, isn’t that great. I restarted the system twice in hope of patching up the “uxtheme.dll” to allow myself to be able to install and use third party themes. I did that successfully but en the eng I ended up installing “Vista Inspirat”.

Inspirat is actually quite cool. It provides me with all the visual effects I could possibly ask for and without the slow performance as “Windows Blinds” and other shell replacement things do and to top it all it’s free and doesn’t cause any problems except for ruining the Alt+Tab window. But it might be because I had “Windows Alt+Tab replacement installed before Inspirat pack and seems like it continued in the Inspirat and is not compatible. Anyway it’s not a big deal to have a slightly crippled Alt+Tab application, I could live with that.

It has made my Taskbar translucent and even has a Mac like “Dock”. But I don’t think I’m going to use the dock anytime soon. Simply put I love the task bar too much to put it away. Task bar to the rescue again, use “Win”+Tab and happy switching…

I had planned on getting myself an extra monitor but unfortunately I forgot to look for the monitor. Anyway that can be done any day.

In the meeting with the boss today we went over the feature enhancements we are supposed to do in the next release and from the look of it, it doesn’t seem like lot of work to me. Some import export business, some configuration changes and some UI elements being redesigned. The problem would be to maintain the interoperability between versions of Office and we will have to look for a way to do it.

Apart from the normal work I usually do (nothing as of now) I also tried on the competitor’s product and I must say that in spite of the other guy offering more variety (basically twice, each type further split into two sub parts and possible one or two more features) it’s a real put off because although it is supposed to be an add-in it doesn’t function like one. It maintains its own files and doesn’t use the container provided and used by the host. If that’s not lame I don’t know what is.

On the home front it’s only two more days to go (including today) till I leave the comfort of the A/C room provided by the company for my own rented apartment. I and Goli are going to stay in the flat. The flat isn’t too far from the office and I don’t really like it. I used to love it in Bangalore when every day I had to drive 8-10 KM to get to office (did I mention that I used to go against the traffic, so I didn’t have to face the jams and traffic problems, both ways!). Here I won’t get the time of place to drive out. But I think on Saturdays and Sundays I’ll venture out and will try not to lose out on the mileage I had accumulated over time in Bangalore (30+ KM per day, given the fact that my office run was barely 18 KM per day).

That’s all for now and I’m going to sleep now. Good night!

The day of upgrades (Software!)

Wow, what a day! Today I got Office 2007 on my systems (Yippee). Anyway as always I wasted no time configuring the whole thing. Today was a brilliant day for my systems. I got Visual Studio 2003, a Source tracker and configuration management client also. The only thing missing was the lack of VS 2005. I can live with that!

By the way I finally got the Vehicle Entry Pass (VEF) and now I won’t need to get a temporary pass issued every day. I also got the Mobile Connection from Airtel activated.

I must say that the visual interface is really smooth and addictive. I seriously don’t feel like going back to the plain old “Menu” based outdated interfaces. Though some people might say that it takes up lot of real state on the screen but at the same time it eliminated the need of this pesky toolbars and the need to constantly hide/unhide them and reconfigure them to get that perfect customized look. This “Ribbon” interface is smooth, sexy and fluid and I really love it. More so it presents you a clear picture of what options are available at a glance instead of going down the list of long menu in order to find the menu item being searched for.

Other than this small thing I discovered the roof today and it seriously is better than the Third floor that I used to go to. It also houses the rooms for employees in case they are staying overnight or to sleep in during the day time.

I also sent out photographs of my desktop and laptop across to my old company and by got Vammu was impressed.

Anyway tomorrow I’m going to search for another monitor to put in my computer and configure it with dual monitors. That’s going to be some sight… let’s just hope I am able to find an unused monitor.

Documentation and Improvements in life.

Sometimes the only thing left to do in the world is read and read and read some more. That’s exactly what happened today. I read through some 4+ documents of SCORM detailing how and why LMS works.

As of now I am kind of through with the concepts and hope I will be able to carry out the tasks to which I get assigned (as if I ever had a doubt). All this reading was just for a small part of the business, rest of it still what I love most. COM add-in most probably, it could also be something else but whatever it is it’s based on windows and Office. I don’t think I’m eve going to have any problems with Windows based programming anytime soon. As of now I might not be well aware of XAML and WPF based programming but once I get hold of Visual Studio’s next version and some tutorials and Vista I’ll be on my way.

Coming back to today I finally got the confirmation of Bank Account’s activation and Airtel’s connection. It would be activated tomorrow and finally I’ll be free from Hutch’s roaming charges. Though I still don’t know what am I going to do with the Hutch connection?

Other than the small improvements in the life’s progress the biggest one was that I got the papers of the agreement about the house and I’m going to get the bills tomorrow for the brokerage charges. Hopefully I’ll get that reimbursed and recover that money. Anyway I have to get the Air-fare and courier charges reimbursed and I think I’m going to do all at the same time.

With life going on as usual and as far as I can see I don’t see any potential problems or hiccups right now. Going to shift in the new home next month and with Goli being my flat-mate thing are looking up. At least I’ll have someone I can talk to at length about anything under the sun, I’ll have a long time friend with me. Life is looking up.

I'm finally going to "C"

Well I thought it was all over for me when there was a probability of me getting pushed into the Cold World of ColdFusion. Today my PM asked me whether I’m ready to take on some work and I said I would want to work in C/C++ and as luck would have it I got into the only project with C/C++ in the whole team. It is an Office add-in and hope I’ll get to work with what I’ve always wanted.

The team on this project is quite small, only 6 members and there’s going to be a lot of slogging to do (yahoo…). What better could have happened?

I’m sure that lot of people would have wanted out of this kind of project and work but not me. I don’t have anything else and all I have ever wanted to do was get to the core and code. I hope this would be great experience and I would get to shape at least one product which people would be use. WOW!

Another important thing, I finally got my Desktop and my ID card. Now I won’t have to worry about asking the guard on duty every time I want to go out or come back from canteen.

Getting around Delhi...

Well the weekend has passed and here I am, sitting in the guest house. During this weekend I’ve been to my local guardian’s house, been to the IIT and been to almost all over Delhi and lot of places in Noida. Last day has been real hectic with me going all over and at the same time trying to find myself a house. I’ve finally succeeded in the quest of the house and hopefully by tomorrow night I’ll have the agreement ready.

The best part of the quest was the landlord we got. They are an elderly couple and ex army man. So it means we won’t have to deal with the normal “blah-blah” of the normal landlords.

Anyways tomorrow I’ll be getting the ID card so I’ll be able to get a post paid mobile connection and finally I’ll be connected to the world. As of now all the connectivity I have is limited to getting and making “missed” calls. How funny is that? Having a post paid connection and not being able to make any calls just because you are in roaming. Ha ha.

With the Monday dawning its again back to work and I still have no idea what am I supposed to be doing.

The weekend started with me calling up my brother and finding out that he got the bike all right and is in IIT. He came over by around 1230. We left him in the mall and went house hunting (by we I mean me and Goli). Anyway after all the hustle and bustle of finding the home I dropped Goli and as we didn’t have another helmet my bro had to go till IIT in a cab. Yesterday was my first time on the DND flyway and I did my first mistake there. Got into the car lane and then had to track back till the bike entry point. But once on the flyway it was no stops. Went till 104 and would have gone a bit further if it was not for the ford in front of me and some other cars. The trip to IIT from there was rather uneventful as I had to find out my way amidst all the newly constructed flyovers.

Today I had my yet another first tryst with the “Dhaula Kuan” circle. It sure has changed and in a brilliant way. Gone are the days of long traffic jams and delays. Not its free flowing traffic. Way to go!

My room mate is still absconding and I have a feeling that he wont be back till tomorrow morning so it’s a good night for me… well I don’t have to go out every time I want to, I can be in the room all the time and be ok with it.

The world suddenly feels so cold!

I was supposed to be introduced and given an overview of the work going on in the team today. The anticipation was long and I resisted the urge even to go for short walk around the building lest my PM comes in with the news to go and meet the people.

The time wasn’t there till almost lunch time. He came by and introduced me to my neighbor. We started about the product as it exists today and the basic overview and how everything fits around and what the product actually is.

Later today I was introduced to another product (rather another component). As luck would have it it’s a web based components (as is the previous one) and currently the person introducing me to the component asked me to get familiar with “ColdFusion”. Now this ColdFusion is a server side scripted and tagged language. It’s got good enough database connectivity. But all in all it still is a scripted language and the syntax as I know it is archaic and unique to it.

Suddenly the world seems cold and fused tighter!!!

Anyways the time after office was good. I downloaded DAP and will download Visual Studio express editions for C# and Web Development and I will continue my .NET quest and will try to learn WPF and other technologies which have come out. My stint in Wipro left me high and dry on these fronts and I will not let any other work come in the way of my development.

I also had my dinner in the office itself and I must say its really good.

Its almost 11:30 PM and I’m still waiting for a call from bro about the delivery of the bike. Hope he gets it. Its really been a long time now.

Another day of mindless surfing and feed reading!

Got up quite early to the knocking from the Guest house's attendant who had brought in the "Bed Tea"! This guest house sure is spoiling me (as if I don't like it)!

The breakfast was consisted of "Aloo Parantha and Aloo ki Sabji" and vegetable sandwich. I dug in and left for the office.

Today also like yesterday I didn’t have any work so spent the whole day surfing, restoring my bookmarks and feeds and most of the time reading them. One good thing in here is you are directly connected to the Internet so there is no need to supply User ID and password to each instance of every application who wishes to connect to the web. This allows the IE to refresh the web feeds and keep them ready as and when they get updated (well 10 minutes to be precise). I don’t have to open up IE and then explicitly go and refresh the contents of the feeds every time I want to read them.

After I reached office I connected to the net and alas, no new mails! This is the worst that could have happened. So I set out for the quest of getting myself some mails. My ex team mates did their job and by lunch time I had a good collection of about 50+ mails that had been exchanged triggered by a mail origination of the “Parser Team’s” newest member’s corrupt file.

Now its lunch time and none of my new team mates are looking like they want to eat! Everyone is busy so I quietly slip away and treat myself to a hearty lunch.

Afternoon is again the same old story of surfing the net, reading the feeds and mailing. Only this time it’s on a much less scale and less intense.

Today my PM told me that I would be getting my team allocated tomorrow. I just hope that I get some work or at least some documents to study along with the code so that I can busy myself. This sedentary lifestyle (brainwork wise) is killing me. Also when I get into some team it would allow me to mix in the team and get acquainted with more people.

As of now it’s almost 9 PM and I’m back in my room and my roommate is still absconding!

Well too much for a single day.

Hey hey hey! guess it wasn't enough... we have wireless network in the Guest house.... brilliant. right now I tried it out in the lobby and it works. I'm going to try it out in the room.. if it works it has made my day.

The Joining Saga (It wasn’t but still, for namesake!)

Late yesterday night I arrived at the guest house where I was booked by my new Company and was provided with a decent room. Although the room as it stands now is on a twin sharing basis, they have promised that I’ll get a single room in two to three days time. I think by that time I would have already found a room for myself. As of now I’m looking for an apartment and a shift from the life I have been living till now. I plan to go for a full fledged room instead of paying guest accommodations. Negotiations are on and hope to find a decent flat by next week.

I have some 12 more days during which I can enjoy the comfort of the guest house (it’s got AC, fridge and room service to boot). But as all good things come to an end I’ll have to move on… let’s hope the transition isn’t painful… ;)

Today was good! I got a full featured laptop and a cubicle which is at least twice my previous one. I’ll be getting the systems tomorrow so today was basically no work. One of the best aspects is nothing on the web is blocked and the speed is simply mind blowing. I downloaded the IE 7 from Microsoft site at over 1 MBPS. Now that’s something, right? Anyway My PM is the same guy who was my first interviewer and the mere sight of him sent me on a roller-coaster ride. He seems to be brilliant and a nice person so I don’t think there’s ever going to be problems.

One of the best things about the joining process was its simplicity. With my last employer we had to fill up a plethora of forms and it took almost whole day. Here it didn’t even take two hours and that too unguided. The only guidance we received was from the bank PR who came to us telling us details about the Account we had opened up and the “Escalation Matrix”. As if someone ever uses that. Anyway I must say that the overall simplicity and the efficiency are sweeping me off my feet and I’m ready to land face first ‘because I know I don't have a granite floor to face.

More so the team members seem quite friendly (though I haven’t had the time to meet all of them but in the introduction round the all seemed very friendly and the team member from the opposite cubicle also says the same thing). I still don’t know what I’m going to be working on but frankly who cares… I know that whatever work comes my way is going to be good and challenging. No second opinions about that!

The first day on the job and I get a laptop! And to top it all the laptop is amazing, with Core 2 Duo and 1 GB of ram and ATI Radeon mobility inside I think it is much more than I could have ever asked for.

To top all of the happenings of today, my room-mate is still missing… he should be here by now but I don’t know… maybe he went to his friend’s home.

Enough of the current place and job, going back to my old team I discovered that there is still no change in the way it works and all I can now hope is for the ways to change and that the “Creator” finally realizes the things that he has been doing wrongly and change himself. Although it sounds highly implausible but still one must never give up hope… wait, what am I saying? I gave up almost all hope that the “Mordor” and its occupant will ever change (for good that is). Let’s see what happens and cross the fingers.

Anyway I’m going to sleep now and hope that I can be more regular in blogs, now that I have a laptop so I’d not be restrained to write whatever I wanted to in office… now I can come home and write all I want to in peace and with lot of time at hand.

This goodbye is not forever…

As the song goes I have said goodbye to the IT capital for an IT job for another. Well the compensation aspect is a big factor but I know for sure that I’ll be put to better use here than I was in my previous job (well if you call that a job at all…)

The flight was good! It had to be, it was Kingfisher after all!

The day was long and no sooner than I landed in Delhi I got a taste of world’s favorite beverage (40% content).

The Best week of my life (till now)!

The week of the interview was bad. I got the rejection and had no place else to go. Only thing that could make it worse was the requirement specs that I needed to write without knowing virtually anything. And what do you know, I got that also.
Sometimes you think what else can go wrong now! So optimistic! I got everything going against me.

But the week that followed was a lot easier to start. I had passed the ball back in the Co-coordinator’s court. Then there was some juggling but it was relatively easy.

Come Thursday and I got a call for HR interview and the day I was supposed to go attend was Friday. What more could one ask for? I went on and came to know that my rejection was because of my “easy-going” attitude. I need to fix that! Anyway the interview went well and I was told that results will be communicated to me by Monday. Well, as is usual for me I got the results on Thursday, the day I resigned and the day when the Parser Team got wiped out. Good for them (myself being one of them).

Since then many of our teammates are considering “Parser Team” to be the way out (in case the need one). I don’t know about the people but I know that it felt good. Knowing that I’d be free from this trap and I’d be working for a change.
Yeah I know how foolish it sounds, but that’s the truth. For the last 11 moths I have been in Wipro all I have done could have easily been done in a month and now I am supposed to do a “Knowledge Transfer”.

The first question that comes to my mind is what am I supposed do in these KT sessions? I groped around and found that I am supposed to tell my successor all I have learnt about the system so that he can continue without problems. Well if I had learned about the system or created anything new I would have told him, but as of now I don’t know shit about the system (actually I don’t think anyone knows)! All I did was to translate one linked list (tree actually) into anther kind and that’s what my successor will be expected to do. There is only one teeny weenie change. I used to dump the statements in file and he would have do make an in memory representation of the data. The later sounds easy.

Anyway I told him all I know, and he seems happy with it and is experimenting. Actually I know very less because all I know is because when I needed the information I dug or it and then use it. As it stands there is a lot of information inside and I don’t know anything abut it just because I never needed to know. But who cares! Those days are past and I can look forward to a better life away from the South and in Noida.

Looking forward to the day my PM relieves me.

Oh No... so long already

Me being what I am (simply lazy) didn’t post a single post for so many days… can’t really help it!

Anyway the time in between was good enough. Not much work and easy going week! Sometimes I wonder what the hell am I getting paid for? I do no useful work.
That doesn’t mean I can’t do anything useful but as of now I don’t have anything to do. Once in a while something comes up and goes away. It’s like sitting at the platform and waiting for the right train to show up; only to realize (much later) what you are waiting for flies from the airport.

It’s the same old routine for me. Get up in the morning and go to office and come back and watch TV and sleep so that I’m able to get up tomorrow. I just hope something better comes up and today might be the day when it happens. Although I’m not sure I got through but it might, I’d give it a 50-50 chance.

As for the week and the week before that nothing much happened except for one false party alarm that took me some 15 KM from my office in 10 minutes only to find that it as a private team party instead of the general open to all. That felt so bad!

Anyway, the plus point of the false alarm was I got out of office and into sprawling lawns and enjoyed the sandwiches I purchased to ease out my sagging morale.

This week unlike rest of the weeks we forgot to go for a dinner and sufficed for that by ordering a hearty meal for ourselves (me and my room mates) and sleeping the whole day.

The day of the power cut was the worst one and I was forced to resort to go for a drive on my bike. We took the road less traveled (by me) and ended up some 20 KM away from home at around 9 in the night. The road was good but so was the traffic and sadly enough I couldn’t push the bike to its limits. I still went above my personal best of somewhere around 70 KMPH (in the night time) to around 95+. It would have been got to go past 100 but alas! Damn those truckers.

The week after

It’s been almost a week now and I’m back to the blog… finally!

The week has been rather uneventful. I spent most of the time chatting and surfing my time away. As for the work there has not been any pressure. Seems like the people top side have some problems coming to terms with the complexity they have induced in the project.

They have been thinking of changing the language the project has been implemented in for almost the whole of last year (hey that’s what I know of… actually it’s been longer than that).
Now that everyone has become so at home with the forgiving nature of python and the benefits that come along with it, switching to ‘C’ will be a very tough proposition. Especially when you think of the amount of work that will be needed to be put in so that even a simple stage of the whole mammoth starts to take shape.

Actually that’s gonna be much harder than anyone has ever thought, especially when the mammoth doesn’t have any layering or any orthogonality and almost every line of code affects almost every other line’s outcome.

Let’s just assume that the whole process starts and begins taking shape… what then. With Python they can rely on the “exception handling” for all the non-initialized variables and changing everything at run time and getting away with almost anything. With ‘C’ however I can only wonder what’s gonna be the case.
Just some points

• No built in support for dictionaries or advanced data structures
• No exception handling support
• Compiled program and no interpretation.

Other than the project…
Well thing have been rather boring this week except for the holiday we got for the 1st of May (remember “Labor’s Day” that’s us). The white collar labor force!

Recap

What do I say… almost 6 months of silence on my part really doesn’t make for great impression?

In the mean time lot of things have gone wrong and write in the lifeless life I have been leading. I haven’t moved from where I was staying, neither have I hopped jobs or projects but one thing I have done is get myself a Bike.

I got the Pulsar in December and since then I have taken it for a spin for almost 3700 KM. That means I have been averaging around 27+ KM per day. To think of it my daily trip to office is around 18 km! Now don’t ask me where did the extra distance come from but I have been here and I have been there.
As far as the bike is concerned I have had no problems with is except for one Front-Fork oil seal leakage (I wouldn’t blame Bajaj for the problem, I jumped a breaker at around 90, lucky me). One of my friends tried reaching 100 and as soon as he got there he got airborne. Bike landed on its ass and rest is history.

In the mean time I haven’t done anything worth mentioning (out of office stuff that is). But wait I did go up to 118. Bike maxed out (sob). Got zealous of the new 200 DTSi that came out… (Seems I purchased my 150 too early). But hey, at least I got all the cosmetic enhancements, the LED illuminated LCD console and the LED Backlight and Wolf Eyed headlamps.

Bajaj could have put more effort on the fuel gauge. The reading are erratic and sometimes even with 10+ liters of gas in there the indicator will show somewhere in the reserve region. But I think it’s a problem with digital fuel gauges, even Karizma has this problem.

Other than the two minor hiccups I have a pretty smooth run with the 150. The engine is responsive. The seating position is sporty, slightly leaning to the front and making you feel the wind in face (unless of course you don’t wear a helmet, which I always wear).

So much for the Out-Of-Office activities, now lets o inside and have a look at what have I been doing in here.

The typical day start at around 0930 hrs with a broken lift (well for most days the lift on the left side usually is down or breaks down during ascent). The coffee starts the day inside the office and sometime the milk isn’t as hot as I would like it to be.
Then its work as usual and we take a breather around 1030 (as if we were working our asses off).

For the last two months I’ve been working for the conversion of EDG’s output to GCC’s. And from what I have learned and actually seen I must comment the EDG fellows for a brilliant piece of work. Unlike the GCC’s spaghetti implementation of data structures to hold the AST (parse tree of the C code) the EDG’s AST seems to be a breeze and that too powerful. It’s simple, elegant and clean whereas with GCC … (don’t even get me started on that, maybe I don’t fully understand and appreciate the beauty of GCC but still).

Before the last two months (late February, March and early April), I had a tough time with the work. Seemed like every goddamn thing was going wrong and I was in a wrong place. Now thing are at least looking up!

The project is being converted into C (though I am not happy with the language of choice, it should have been C++ at the very least) but what can I do. Me a rookie and supposedly inexperienced and immature should not be allowed to speak my mind out.
I don’t despise my ideas being sidetracked when someone can prove that there is something wrong with them. But getting sidetracked just because someone up there doesn’t know the matter or is unable to understand the stuff or simply is uncomfortable with the new technology is ridiculous. I hate that and I hate …
Sometimes I think what I did wrong. I paid the college people to allow me to write some good code so that I could become a good resource and now (It makes me laugh to think of the incompetence of the management) I get paid to write shitty (yes, that the only way to put this down) code. Till last week I was writing code that was churning out garbage just because someone who designed the project was unable to understand or appreciate the benefit of keeping to his boundaries. Just for corollary why in this world would a routine for adding two number need to know the processes involved in reading the numbers (from user or file for that matter), all the routine’s maker should be concerned is getting two numbers and returning the sum.

Once they started to feel the pinch of not having layered system they have finally decided (must thank someone for that) to implement layering. But they are thinking of doing it in C (to think of it they are migrating from Python).
Now the point that concerns me is how the people who have been using Python for doing everything will migrate to C. Python with all the advanced constructs and a runtime environment surely offers the programmer a richer and simpler way of getting work done and now C. its like a journey back to the stone ages (except that you know there are far better tools available). The least they could have done is switch to C++ and probably exploited some benefits and functionalities offered.
This not only would have made the work easier but also intuitive and easily attainable and upgradeable. As for me I would have suggested C#.

Only time will tell what comes to the minds of those sitting high up but lets hope for the best (second best at least, [please]).

I forgot, meanwhile we had gone for an outing (adventure type). Here are some photos from that one.