A Family - this December

29th December, my blog becomes an year old baby, And even before that I started playing "A Family" - A drama everyone has to play. As with every new thing, this occupies most of my premium time. Never was there a time before when I checked clock to see if was 6 in the evening. Now I desperately do that every half an hour to check if an hour passed by and every hour to check if it is evening yet. As write these words down, my darling wife pops her head in through the study room door and asks if I am busy :). Huh! Married life, you are never the same again. Another 10 minutes and the date would change - my first birthday as a married man. Sounds exciting but this day is no different as I wait to see the day dawn as I did 24 times earlier. Only thing I would regret this December is I was not able to give December Evenings the time it deserved. On the contrary I had this December for myself, perhaps the loveliest 30 days of my life, perhaps the best December of my life. Only thing I missed this December was I have not been to sea shore even once though I supplemented it by spending my time at lakeside in Udaipur. That is a story for another day of course. Now, it is time to sign off with a few seconds to midnight of January 3. Yeah it is Jan 3 now my computer claims it to be - at least.

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Sree weds Neelima

Our Wedding Invitation.



Time : 11:42 pm
Date : December 10th, 2010
Venue: Sri Veera Venkata Satyanarayana Swamy Sannidhi, Annavaram.
East Godavari(dst), Andhra Pradesh.

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Housewarming

It was almost evening before I realized that this was the first December evening of the year. Last I thought about December was yesterday, on December's eve. All through the day I was forgetful of this fact and went about like a machine cracking those humorless jokes in office. Of course what else can one do to make a dull day interesting. You can not obviously scuba dive off the office floor. As it were not enough I realized that I misplaced my favorite headphones and also the laptop bag. I was thoroughly annoyed when I could not find ID card early in the evening only to be returned, later, by my colleague. I cursed the day. It was not the usual spirited start of my favorite month.
In the evening I realized that I was supposed to house-warm my new flat at 9:00 pm. This realization brought the proceedings into a better light. I drove from Koramangala to Marathalli in usual weekday Bangalore traffic which needless to say was horrible and the fact that it was raining did not help the cause. En route, doing some school-going-kid bicycle stunt on my bike I damaged the mudguard. I tried to pull the half torn mudguard off with my hands but it would not come off so easily. I tugged at it again and again till I soiled my hands in the mud of mudguard. I cursed and cussed at it for being muddy. Poor thing it did not know how to keep itself clean in rain. In the end I had to throw some nasty kicks at it to get rid off the mudguard. I have to thank my girl friend here for giving me the strength to do the needful. If you ever thought she encouraged me standing right beside, you committed a gross error. She did not answer my repeated calls as she was busy. This made me mad enough to break off the half broken mudguard.
Horrible things ended with mud on the mudguard. After this adventure on wheels I went window shopping and as usual window shopping was windowless this time as well. I closed the windows and opened my pockets to payout for a sweater. I do not regret the sweater nor the money I spent, but I regret my temptation towards clothing.
Okay, I will not crib. At 9:00 in the evening we warmed our house by instilling some photos of God Ganesha and Balaji and lighted a couple of diyas before the photos.We could not do this in a traditional way as the gas connection and other essentials were not ready.
After a long time, today I have jotted the proceedings of a day, only to fill my blog on the first day of December

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Appendix. CLANDESTINE( 1n 2)

Not to leave my readers in a maze, I have come up with an appendix for my CLANDESTINE series posts:
Vanilla Victimization. Clandestine Begins - Part 1
Information Parasitism. Clandestine GoLive - Part 2

APPENDIX
CLANDESTINE(pet project): It is my love story.
Team Members: My girl friend and I (Grammar rule: Put the donkey last. So its 'I' who ought to be at the last.)
Stakeholders: Our parents and other family members.
Vanilla Model: Arranged Marriages.
Vanilla Victims(VV): People who had their marriages arranged.
Vanilla Maniacs(VM): People who want all the marriages in the world to be arranged.
Integration Model: Love Marriage.
Cross-Platform Integration Model: Now you get what it is, isn't it?
UAT: Struggle for parents' Acceptance.
SIT: Our preparation up to UAT.
Indian Clientele: People of India.
Carriers: Middlemen who carry information given by the IPs to the destined people.
Information Parasites(IP): It is important that you identify them. For the benefit of the reader I describe them as below
1. They cannot keep their mouth shut.
2. They do not mind their business.
3. These people are well-informed about state-of-affairs of the country and are clueless about happenings in their own household.
Though it is apt and called for, I refrain from using expletives and swear words in describing IPs because they are not worth it for spoiling my beloved blog.

CLANDESTINE is no more clandestine, first in spirit and now in letter. Mission Accomplished.

Hip! Hip!! Hurray!!!

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Information Parasitism. Clandestine GoLive - Part 2

...Continued

Unfazed by the fact that first round of UAT(Acceptance Testing) in Vishakapatnam was a fiasco, the project entered SIT phase in Bhubhaneswar. SIT was a tense period as the early UAT phase with limited number of stakeholders bombed at the box office. There was no convincing them that the application would work, so used they were to the Vanilla apps. The system was tested against the test cases that were never part of the design plan. Proven unit test cases were struck down with a comment of irrelevance attached to them.Every functionality was viewed as an issue and bugs were raised at an alarming rate. In fact the number of bugs raised were more than the sum total of unit test cases and functionalities which was ridiculous.If this was a case with few users in UAT then a full blown UAT blowing up the app was as guaranteed as a 3% return on post office deposit.
Tweaking the functionality and presenting the app again was never a solution as the users were never keen on functionality. They were against the application design itself. What at the maximum could be done was to present the application in a different light and highlight the advantages like low overhead and maintenance costs. But the stakeholders, who had seen the app already, never gave a second look at it. As deliberations among team members were on to do this at least with the second set of stakeholders, something unexpected happened.
Here entered an INFORMATION PARASITE. These are the people who thrive on information and religiously bundle it up just like dung beetle rolls up excrement. The comparison ends there. Dung beetles are a benefit to the society as they clean up mess whereas these Information Parasites(IPs) pick up mess and make it messier till it rots and stinks the whole locality. This depraved social condition is called INFORMATION PARASITISM. Information Parasite gathers information that is irrelevant to him/her from anywhere and everywhere. Once they have pieces of information they roll it up as messy balls and attach it to a carrier. Carriers unaware of the parasite's intentions carry this concocted information to the destination and victimize the destined person with it.I pity the carriers as much as I pity the Vanilla Maniacs for their innocence in the whole affair. But I detest the Information Parasites who do not have a business of their own to mind and a spine of their own to stand upright and speak up. Since the reader has a clear vision of Information Parasitism, I would track back into the story from this necessary diversion.
One such information parasite sitting hundreds of miles away, covertly, victimized the second set of stakeholders through an innocent carrier.Once again the project was in UAT before it was in UAT. We were intelligent enough this time to avoid a sudden dash into UAT. Denials of the project's existence calmed down the users for a few months. The inevitable was delayed and SIT was completed with bought time in Bhubhaneswar. As we thought it was the end of SIT, the project ran into Human Resource issues with one of the team members sent to Chennai and the other to Kolkota. This problem was short lived as I got a transfer to Chennai from Kolkota. This was the most satisfying thing apart from the project going live because this location issue was perceived to be a bigger trouble than the project itself. The project entered UAT in Chennai during early 2009. The second set of stakeholders put this project through rigorous testing as they were keen on the functionality rather than the design. The testing revealed some cascading effects on th future apps but we pursued it relentlessly with resolute silence and an occasional argument that a built application cannot be done away with because of imprecations on the future apps. After two years of UAT the second set of stakeholders gave a conditional sign off and this condition was dependent on the first set of stakeholders who were against the integration model all through these years. With this, the fate of the application was back to square one. It was then that I decided to push the application over into production without any sign off and host the Datacenter in Bangalore. This city offered better financing than Chennai and I moved over well in advance to set up the facility. Though this was the case I missed Chennai and visited my girl friend every weekend.
As we were inching close to a sign-off-less go-live something dramatic happened. The second set of stakeholders waved a green in place of the previous yellow. This came as a big relief to the project. Nevertheless the sign-off, these users wanted at least a yellow from the users who tested the application right in college and they wanted me to get this. I was skeptical about my attempt to get a sign-off because all my earlier attempts were incrementally disastrous. Nth attempt failure was worse than the N-1th attempt.
It was Sept 18th, a D-day that could break or make many things irrespective of the fact that the app go-live was sure to happen. I did not have any decks or slides to present because I exhausted all the material in my earlier attempts.This one was going to be an extempore and impromptu. I just had one last thing to do, that was to take my girl friend home. I did that risking the fact that we would be thrown out. My heart beat went abnormally high as I took her into my house. I did not know what I said to my parents after that. I believe I must have said something pleasant because we got a thumbs-up for our marriage. And, only one whom I could credit here is, God who turned around the seemingly impossible. After that day, things changed for better and my girl friend moved to Bangalore. Our parents fixed the date and are more anxious than ourselves for it to happen. We are getting married in December late in the Evening,i.e at 11:40 P.M on December 10th, 2010. And for me this is pleasantest of reasons to love "December Evenings" even more. The CLANDESTINE project is no longer clandestine. It would be deployed as "Lived Happily Ever After" which was its real and only use case. Now, wait is mine for DECEMBER and I long and yearn for you my DECEMBER EVENING.

PS: Vanilla Models are not all that bad and it differs on a case to case basis. However, what I can say is one solution does not fit all, and imitations could cause chaos.
Have a look at the APPENDIX if there is a word that you do not understand.

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Vanilla Victimization. Clandestine Begins - Part 1

Whatever happened to me, I became an infrequent visitor to my own blog. Before today, September 19th was the only time I attempted to key in something here though in vain. I failed that day, rather miserably, to articulate my emotions and thoughts and as a consequence this space ran barren for a two month period. So what was it that challenged my expression. Was it a Shakespeare's drama or Wordsworth's verse that denied my blog what was due to it. I would say neither, but it is inferior compared to either.
My pet project, CLANDESTINE, that started during my graduation got sign-off from all the stakeholders and it is all set to 'Go Live' in December. This was a small, zero budget, two member team project to begin with. Project was small but stakes involved were huge right from the very first day. Though the dimensions of the project like budget( mostly self-financing at later stages), deadlines and sizing changed over time what remained constant throughout was its core team members and the stakes. None of the stakeholders were informed about the project inception. If they had known, the project would have been forcefully scrapped in the requirement phase due to lots of negative vibes. The decision to keep the stakeholders unaware till the system was stable and ready for UAT( User Acceptance Testing or simply Acceptance Testing) stemmed from the fact that stakeholders always wanted the project to be done in a risk free Vanilla J2EE fashion.
The problem with the Vanilla applications is they are dull, boring, uninteresting and utterly dysfunctional from inside but screamingly good from outside.I call this VANILLA VICTIMIZATION.Sometimes the condition of Vanilla victims degenerates into an acute and chronic state where in a victim becomes a maniac and this condition is called VANILLA SYNDROME. These Vanilla maniacs have a singular, fatalistic goal of victimizing the world with Vanilla affect. And in this state the maniacs are as much a disservice to themselves as to people around which they never realize.Well-informed of this age old, dreadful phenomenon- VANILLA VICTIMIZATION and its after affects - our team wanted to implement an advanced cross-platform integration solution. Cross-platform solutions never fit the bill, smoothly, for most of the Indian clientele, and in particular our clients spend sleepless nights at the very thought of a simple integration solution.God save CLANDESTINE and its team. To the readers: If a term called m-a-r-k-e-t-i-n-g tries to show up even remotely in your head, let me tell you these clients of mine buy no gold if they perceive it as crap. Since you got the context right let us move ahead.
As the SIT(System Integration Testing) dates neared, we were excited,restless and tensed. More often than not, the thought of few more months to UAT and then the glow sign board "lived happily ever after", made us ecstatic. Every project has its share of people who wish its failure and ours being a college project had a bunch of them. I would call them the Vanilla Maniacs or the VM team. I pity them. Their only problem was they were VVs and they wanted the world to be full of VVs.I troubled these VVs enough on all possible occasions and never gave them a chance to retort except for this. They pounced to clutch this opportunity in two hands and needless to say the Vanilla maniacs blew the whistle as hard as a PT teacher who runs after a troublesome student to peal his skin off. The whistle sound set my parents ears agog and the project CLANDESTINE remained no longer clandestine. Everything was wide in open. The project stakeholders themselves being advocates of Vanilla Victimization gave in readily to the VMs word and tug-of war began. With Stakeholders trying to convince the team members to drop the project and in turn team members pleading the stakeholders to accept the already half completed CLANDESTINE, the project entered UAT even before it entered SIT.
Continued in ..
Information Parasitism. Clandestine GoLive - Part2
Have a look at the APPENDIX if there is a word that you do not understand.

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Post from my nokia x6.

It is been quite sometime since my last post. This time it was not the usual dearth of material that kept me off my blog. It was lack of time in fact. When I was travelling to Chennai last week I found the 21:31 hrs bus drivers punctuality worthy of a post. Earlier, the same day I saw a girl who could very well have been content of my post. But hectic schedule drained me and occupied my time till today. I would say better late than never and write about the girl - punctual bus drivers though rare they are can wait for a place in my blog because I cannot wait to write about the earlier event on the same day.
The lady lightly stepped down the half foot high median that separates the kormangala-domlur roadway. She tightly clung on to her umbrella against breeze and drizzle, and was waiting for the last of the vehicles to pass by to cross the road. I don't know when it was last since I read so much in a single glance. Bangalore has so many fashionable, good looking girls that beauty becomes banal and a thing next door. So you really don't pay attention to who is who in here. But She resembled somebody.At least for a fleeting moment she reminded me of somebody - that is the whole point of the post. This girl was wearing a blue pair of jeans and a black top. In one hand she held an umbrella, probably in her right hand, and in her left she gingerly held a microphone. At that very moment, in my hurry to get back home, I walked past her even before the vehicles stopped at the signal and so I did not see her long enough to notice features of her face and the setting sun did not help me either. When I saw her talking so expressly over phone while crossing the road in rain, I almost instantly knew it was her boy friend holding the other end of the line. Now don't ask me why and how I jumped to such a conclusion. Every beautiful girl has a boyfriend to affirm the fact. I do not, of course, say that only beautiful girls have boy friends. And also do not ask me how in the world I go on to conclude that the lady under discussion is beautiful. If I did not feel or assume so, I would not have wasted time in putting down this post all with my thumbs from mobile phone's qwerty keyboard. Okay, back to the topic. As soon as I concluded it was her boyfriend she was talking to, I started wondering what on the earth he was doing, leaving such a girl to drench in rain and dust on roads. The after thought was some one, some where is all alone by herself, crossing roads all by herself, clutching to an umbrella in her right and a microphone ... No, no microphone in her hands because it is long time since I spoke for 10 continuous minutes with her. Thanks to my new job, I do not have time to talk to her these days. At least it keeps her away from the trouble of carrying a microphone along with an umbrella. Am I trying to find bright side even after knowing there are none? What do you call this? Optimism, nah. Helplessly foolish, hmm that sounds perfect english and a chosen adverb-adjective combination for my situation. Shrugging my shoulders thus, I hasten home to catch a bus and join my beloved under the raining roof of chennai sky.

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Test of character

Tomorrow it is test of a 20 year veteran's character. India need 205 to win and 7 wickets lose, against Sri Lanka, with God of cricket batting and battling on their side. God he might be but mortal he is, let us see how he fares tomorrow. It is either a 1-1 or 2-0 for India.
I remember Chepauk when India lost its way after Tendulkar got out on personal score of 136, 15 runs short of victory. This is definitely a better cricketing side than that of those days when our wicket keeper could not bat and our specialist batsmen got out because of extraneous reasons.However, we will have to wait till tomorrow when the little master walks out into the middle with a wand in hand. All depends on him who,when he is in mood, can send a reckless upper cut for six. That him,when he thinks otherwise can cut off a heavily scoring shot from his entire innings and still score a double hundred.
I hope he tames the turning track and romps India home triumphant. If you still wonder whom I am talking about without taking his name it is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.

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My Scribble Pad

Brazen, untamed and uncut edges of a howling hound.
A sentence and send away.
When leaves whither and fall elsewhere my eyes see only green everywhere.
Every life has a purpose and every moment its meaning.

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Exuberance of youth!!!

I picked this title, though cliched and overused, when one of my room mate used it in some context. I hate plagiarism but English is every ones so is this cliche, isn't it? I use this header with all credit debited at the reemergence point of the title, that is in the account of my colleague and room mate. While I muse over the appropriate content for this title, the UNDER CONSTRUCTION tag would do its duty. Now do your duty while I am on my own in mind's space.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

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On the Occasion of friendship day !

Love is a very important part of me. As I say these words I recollect the opening lines of Bertrand Russell's autobiography.More or less he says the same, of course with a slight variation. If not why would he be "himself" and why would I be "myself". That's the end of similarities, I am not delving into details any further.
Right from the days when I knew a little about myself I sought love, dearly. From the advent of my teens I was either having a crush or was having a feeling that somebody likes me. I am putting in some honest thoughts of mine here because 20 years from now when I am not what I am today I still will have a way to know what exactly I was in my teens and early twenties. I no longer have the razor sharp edges which as a teenager I had but I still carry the memories. Some events are afresh in mind as they happened yesterday and some have vaporized as if they never occurred in the first place. Let me account them here.
I remember the days when on a friendship day I bought a rose and a greeting card with few tens of rupees. I remember the act being repeated the next year. I did not know what it was then. After all these years when I must be dismissing them away as ramblings of a teenager, at least after being in a serious relation that is going to materialize in nuptial knots soon, I still value and relish those appetite dropping experiences with an impish grin . I see that most teenagers go through this phase but many are not brazen enough to pursue the madness earnestly. I did chase the the butterflies quite early, though I never had the intentions or guts to catch one, pun intended.Adventures seem extravagant in print and ink, but the amount of trouble I would have got into if something had gone wrong was unimaginably huge and it is evident only now as I type these lines. Once I nearly toppled over the cliff and just hung on in time. Thanks to the good times. Ones who know me might ask what favor I did to myself by clinging on and delaying the inevitable.I can tell you, it would have been too early and a whole lot different. Okay, I will not allude any longer, I will put it plain.
Since the time I have come of age I always craved for company and I scouted for a special companion. A companion who can dare to maintain, with me, the highest degree of transparency possible between two humans; who leaves me alone to rest in the lap of solitude when I please; who never forces her thoughts on me; who loves me as if I were a kite soaring high in the skies.This was possible either with an alter ego or with a person from opposite gender.And, I was never in mood to find an alter ego. That is how even before I knew myself, I realised how my better half should be.It was a writing on the wall that a person like me would fall head over heels in love sooner than later.I say this because my cravings for company conceived from the fact that I spend my time in solitude. In my childhood and early teens isolation was imposed upon me so that I could do good in my academics - this wasn't the only intention though, sometimes I was condemned to isolation. To an extent this had a positive effect on my academics but it had a serious side effect. I started liking solitude and turned an introvert( which still I am). People who know me, a majority at least, would differ with me on this and claim that I socialize well.On the contrary a select few know that I take refuge in solitude and have intense introspective intervals when I burn out. The periods of introspection are so intense that every such time strip gives birth to a fledgling in me.In these ebbs I need somebody who really understands me, right by my side. After much effort I have found one, a remarkable one indeed.
What I am trying to say is, several years earlier right on this day called the Friendship Day I began as an apprentice only to be a veteran now. I started chasing butterflies out of intrigue.I learnt my fundamentals, fundamentals of the complex thing called a girl's mind and what best suited me, at school - very early isn't it ? It was a prelude rather, I would say. And, this early start did pay me off in tonnes.I found what I sought after the most - my love.
This is a honest tribute to her splendid self on the eve of this decade's first friendship day.I do this even after knowing that she doesn't care reading what I write here.

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How to kill time?

In the afternoon today, I was thinking about putting up a post to express my indignation and desperation of how horrible weekends in Bangalore are.
Some how as the hours passed by I found a means of killing time. A stab of a movie killed it for 2:30 hours. At the end of it time was up again, this time in arms, to take its revenge on me - that is to bore to death. Here I express my gratitude to water problem that accompanies me, where ever I might go whether it is Bangalore or Chennai. I sought refuge in it to negotiate time. Yes, I meant the water problem by "it". To tidy myself I badly needed a bucket of water and in whole of my house I didn't have a drop of it. I spent nearly an hour to get a bucket of water and another half an hour waiting for the water to get warm. I am not conventional enough to put the water on the gas stove nor am I modern enough to use a geyser for the purpose.However, I am clumsy enough to use a 1KWH immersion rod to heat the water up. I have to own it up now that I entirely miscalculated the time duration. Bad equation: 15 minutes for half a bucket of water so 30 minutes for a full to heat up.Immersion rods are really quick than I anticipated and as I realised later, half an hour is too long for a bucket full of water to get warm.The water was boiling hot before this enlightenment dawned on me and I did not have another drop to cool it down. So, waiting was mine. Clock ticked away 15 minutes, I let another 900 seconds pass by and telephone call helped me with another half an hour.A Bangalore's hour was good enough for a bucket full to cool down. If this were Chennai the water would be cool enough to bath only the next day. This is one upside of the downside. Downside because, first of all, I should never have had the need to warm up water in Chennai.
That's how it was, run out of water, spend an hour to get bucket full as it were a desert, heat it up carelessly past the admissible Celsius then wait for the water to cool down. Perhaps, Louis Pasteur arrived at the procedure of pasteurization - the process of boiling milk and then rapidly cooling it down to kill bacteria- in a similar fashion. Whoever said Genius is a product of naivety should add a clause to the definition - Genius is a clumsy consequence of lethargy and carelessness. Wasn't penicillin an accident? Wasn't rubber being flung into sulphur another? How would you describe Newton lazing under a tree when an apple blew his wits out? And what do you have to say about devising a way of killing time with a bucket full of water?

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Moron and Oxymoron

"An enterprise often contains a variety of applications that operate independently but must work together in a unified manner".This is the oxymoron under discussion.
"Applications that operate independently" but " must work together in a unified manner". Doesn't it sound like searching for shadows on a moonless night? Doesn't it seem like chasing mirages in an endless desert? Then what am I trying to prove here? Trying to prove nothing - that's another oxymoron.Huh! One is enough to spoil a life time. I can not accommodate a second.
The opening sentence is what EAI means. For the benefit of my blessed readers - blessed, if you do not know about EAI - I take the infinite pain of expanding the acronym EAI- ENTERPRISE APPLICATION INTEGRATION. That is in brief about my job. As a fresher, who knew nothing about IT industry I took the oath of integrating applications for a lifetime - possibly - you never know.

In short, according to me, here are the seven simple and defining principles of the oxymoron, EAI.
1. Build your enterprise anyway you like, in as many applications as you wish.
2. Your enterprise becomes huge and untenable. If it does not, make sure you make it.
3. Find innocent "somebody" outside your organization.
4. Repeat step 3 till you find "somebody" because you do not find intelligent goats easily.
5. Once you find that somebody, sit on his head and force him to wire the applications together.
6. Scream TTM(Time To Maket) and ROI( Return on Investment).
7. Repeat step 6 for ever, at regular intervals.

In the meantime major IT players, in the name of solving integration problems, form consortiums and arrive at industry standards. In the name of no-vendor-lock-in products, these companies release proprietary tools. The business houses to meet the ever rising bar of customer satisfaction ( that is our satisfaction, don't we ask why is this bank's website so slow or why is loan approval a week long manual process?)buy different off-the-shelf products from various vendors to reduce Time To Market. The disparate products from various, obviously and not surprisingly, do not agree with each other. And, the integration problems go to next level where the then( future dated ) big players, again, sit together to arrive at latest agreeable standards and go on to build different products on it. Thats how IT evolves.

Evolution IT has gone through in the past 40 years:
1. First, data and operations were put together. (procedure oriented languages - C)
2. Then data was separated from operations for the sake of data security . ( OOPS- JAVA, C++)
3. Next adapters were built for operations to access the data residing elsewhere. (EAI - whole lot of middlewares)
4. Then operations were combined to form services so that similar data operations could be done at a time( SOA).
5. Next the services(combination of operations) and data are colocated so that only way of accessing the data is through those services. ( Master Data Management - Websphere WCC/MDM )

Don't you see a full circle in this evolution, from operations and data together to services and data together? I do. I say all this irrespective of the fact there are huge monies involved in such projects, and I am very much an IT consultant who makes a living out of solving integration problems. Money wasn't the topic under discussion, at least it was not today.
Okay, do you find a moron(meaning: idiot,mental retard - otherwise no vulgarity intended) in the entire story? I promise there is more than one. I found out the Oxymoron you find out a Moron, at least one.

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I hate luv storys - something I never said before

If I successfully draft and save this post it would be third this week. I am on a roll :) :) :).
Yeah, I am talking about the Karan Johar flick "I hate luv storys". Loving somebody and breaking off to latch on to somebody else is in vogue these days. At least it is in the bollywood. I do not understand the logic of loving somebody and then finding love in somebody else. You might argue it happened with "the" Romeo( I used the definite article because there are so many these days), one who killed himself for the sake of love, then why not with others. However, I beg to differ change becomes a habit and life ends before you stop changing people.
Why all this pep talk about love when I am talking about a movie? Then read the next lines carefully and figure out how meaningful it is. " A girl loves a guy, breaks off from him to love a guy who does not believe in love". The story is as meaningful as the above sentence. However, the lackluster story line does not dissuade one from enjoying the comedy that evolves from the backdrop the movie is set against.
Veer Kapoor( Karan Johar look alike) is famous for his romantic blockbusters with a superstar( Aamir Ali - a SRK look alike).J( played by Imran) works on the sets of Veer's latest venture. He struggles to get along as he does not believe in love which is, of course, the mainstay of Veer's film. Simran(played by Sonam) joins Veer's crew as an art director and the movie takes off.
The whole movie is an enjoyable satire on bland romantic movies and Karan Johar's style of movie making. Karan Johar must be appreciated for allowing his director do a satire on him through Veer's character. Other than this brave satire by the director Punit Malhotra, another entertaining element is Kavin Dave( guy from sprite ad).He plays a good supporting role as J's colleague and companion.In fact Bollywood could have just discovered a good sidekick in him.
The chemistry between Imran and Sonam, though not very romantic - of course the movie did not need it, is quite good. Punit succeeded in making a movie that is light, humorous, and devoid of loud comedy and drama. The good thing about the movie is you do not have a single punch being thrown or a heart wrenching sequence in whole of it. The movie, for sure, will not bore you unless you are expecting car crashes, bleeding noses and/or wet cheeks on the screen. All in all a simple, light movie to watch it after five days of whipping and slogging at office.

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FIFA. Fever - Over

That was a horrible doggerel to begin with, alright, but that was the simplest thing I could say.My language might not be the most flamboyant - okay I will tone down a bit- my language might not be flamboyant enough- hmmm, I understand, you don't deserve any of this, now I will come to terms with the ground realities - my language is not good enough to describe and summarize a fabulous, marvellous, magnificent and meticulously organized mega event called FIFA.However, I would say the attempt is mine and the result is yours( that is the reader's).
Neither did I follow every match of this world cup nor am I a big fan of foot ball to do a effective sum up. I am a big fan of cricket. But now I am looking for a replacement, as cricket is no longer what it was. I feel so, do you? Well, of course keep Sachin Tendulkar out of this, he is what he is even if the game should lose its sheen.In fact this football world cup is the first major tournament I followed and it was only from the middle of the tournament that I picked up. The dramatic exit of defending champions Italy triggered interest in me and the disgraceful exit of France did me into FIFA 2010 completely.
Critics and spectators voiced their indignation about the lack of grace in Brazil's game, which was far from bad, but it appears everybody turned a blind eye on how Spaniards played throughout the tournament.This FIFA world cup witnessed the exit of two of the best teams, Brazil and Germany, because of the sloppy but effective strategy devised and executed by Netherlands and Spain.
I feel Germany should have been the rightful finalists for the way they played and not Spain. Though I supported and cheered Spain throughout - even against Germany( I support a team which I know for sure is going to win. Bad Habit) - I say this. And, according to me the final was the fight for the 3rd position which was entertaining and enthralling unlike the actual final between Spain and the Dutch. Netherlands replied Spain in their own language only to come second in the 113 minute of the play.Then what the deuce were they doing themselves through the first 90 minutes?On an average every fifth minute of the final, the referee was forced to use his whistle and yellow-card one or the other. It was no better than a school football match with players faking and falling like nine pins.It was like two students of same school of thought pitted against one another but a day can only bear a single winner and Spain took home the cup this time. The only capturing element in the whole of final was anybody could be the winner because both the teams employed the same strategy and each was waiting for the other to flounder. If you watched the final,definitely you would have been bored enough to empathize with me.
To wrap it up, I feel sorry for each of Brazil and Germany. Brazil vs Germany would have been a match worth of World Cup final. If it were the final, then the opening and closing ceremonies would have remained just ceremonies instead of overshadowing the whole World Cup as they did now.However, one thing that would get catalogued in my memory, forever, is "the hip twister" Shakira's "WAKA WAKA" which became a chant to many and I, the other would be Paul the octopus which proved a German nemesis. Now it is time to return home from Africa!!!

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The topic is "My Blog"

I spent many sleepless nights to bring My Blog to current shape it is in. Why in all days did I chose to write about My Blog in My Blog today? Today definitely is not an anniversary of My Blog.December is no where around and it is too early to even long for it.However, Everything falls under the "cause" and "consequence" umbrella and so does this.
During the initial days of starting My Blog I tried to make it popular among my friends and acquaintances. Every time I published a piece here I went around and updated a select few who evinced interest on hearing that I started a blog. Few of the initial readers still remain on My Blog and many others do not. Those were the days when I knew nothing other than 9 hours of work at office and 4 or 5 hours of time on My Blog. I tried many templates and browsed the net for some good sunset pictures before settling with the current template and self-shot picture. The interesting fact is, "December Evenings" sits on a Sunday Morning snap. I shot that at 5:30 a.m in the morning having spent a sleepless night( sleepless here means staying awake forcefully and not struggling to catch sleep). Needless, to say I took a lot of pain in My Blog, which I no longer do and derived pride and pleasure from it, which I still do.
As the days passed by I stopped troubling people. I put up updates on orkut and left it for the interested readers. This was till the last days in TCS. Back then I did not have a laptop of my own.Whenever I got hold of my friends laptop first thing I did was to fair and post the content which was either a quick scribble on a piece of paper or was a carefully typed, edited and mailed thought from my office desk.
The day I joined SAG, I got a laptop and my first thought then was "Unlimited blogging". Alas! little did I know about the side effects of a uncontended laptop. Along with laptop comes unlimited Internet and along with Internet come other avocations. Otherwise very useful, these avocations have proven counterproductive to my blogging - the number of posts plummeted, yeah I meant the word because if you were to draw a line graph you would see Mt. Everest and Eiffel tower juxtaposed.
Every evening of the past one month, after returning from work I have been thinking about My Blog and sometimes sign on to post something( They are so many things which could be interesting pieces), but I am either busy - with research( not rocket science), defeated - at work ,enervated - after a long discussion or elated- that I am going to Chennai. Ha! Chennai comes again into My Blog which has been the case in my recent posts. When I travel across Chennai many things come to my mind which are worth posting, but the moment I enter Bangalore they vaporize.Okay! enough is enough-please stay tuned - I swear I will not mention Chennai again in this post.
I come back to the topic of this post that is My Blog. Two weeks ago I met one of my college friends by accident in a shopping mall near to my workplace. After we went about the usual how-are-yous and what-are-you-uptos he made a mention of My Blog. This took to me by surprise and I was ecstatic when he said he read my posts. I felt very happy about that and I thanked him for his readership. I got some readers, in fact voluntary readers. I do not mind even if they are my critics, it is good to have someone listening to you rather than crying all by yourself to a wall. This put additional onus on me to keep wrting and keep writing good. However I tried I could not pen down a single post owing to the work schedule. Even as I type the previous sentence I look at my system clock to check how many hours of undisturbed sleep I could catch before the alarm shatters my dreams at 8:30 a.m tomorrow morning. That was a necessary short break from the monotonous topic of My Blog. Again today one of my school friends and said that he reads My Blog. This was the trigger to write this topic My Blog.
Did you count how many "My Blog" I put in this post? Count them an let me know for the topic is My Blog. Ain't this a different kind of blogging? Opinions and comments are highly solicited. Signing off from my blog. Happy counting if ever you count.

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I write after 3 weeks.

After working 12 hours a day starting 31st of May, I was dog tired at the end of 3 weeks. Eight hours of a day for deliverables , four hours for training and another two or three hours, after coming home, for the tit-bits pushed me to the verge of burn out. Needless to say these 3 weeks were never interspersed by visits to Chennai. I wasted my already curtailed weekends in shopping malls, windowing and never shopping - an unforgivable form of atrophy - taking to the fact that I went to my workplace on weekend mornings to finish off the spill overs from the weekdays.
I could have done a little better by watching a movie or two but they charge a bomb for a movie in Bangalore and after watching "Kites", I have pledged I will not watch a movie again in Bangalore- why to buy headache when it is damn expensive? Only work and no entertainment for 3 weeks. You wouldn't believe me I did not find time or a right topic to blog on, all these days. That is how it was.
To sum it up all, I had an endless list of complaints to make and a million more reasons to visit Chennai.
Finally, I come to the point - I boarded a bus to chennai on 25th Friday at 9:45 in the night. My colleague gave me company enroute, though with a purpose of his own to address. I do not like bus journey and my dislike for buses doubles when I have to travel long distances on them and it turns into loathe if I have to spend a night travelling in them. Whether it be a deluxe bus or a Volvo, the class does not matter, I detest them all. One of the primary reasons I hate bus journey is I cannot catch sleep in bus and its immediate successor is legroom - I never get enough of it and I end up butting and struggling with the seat before me.
After struggling to fall asleep for the entire 6 hours of my journey to Chennai, I wake up to the call of my colleague. He woke me up and asked if the bus had entered Chennai - he supposedly wanted to get down somewhere on the Poonamlee bypass road. It was 5:30 a.m and the first thing I saw that morning, to my right, was a silent streak of orange light across the sky. This orange, at places, spread into the azure blues that sorrounded it. It was such a pleasure to sight this. That very moment I longed to be at the beach, to see the sun rise and breath all I can - the fresh air. But I was a good 60 minutes away from the beach and before I can get a feel of cool sea breeze, I knew all would be over for that morning. So what did I do? I let the thoughts pass and boarded a bus to Velachery. Velachery, as far as I am concerned, the next best place to beach in Chennai and when "all is well" even better than the shore itself...
Each time I go to Chennai I bring back material that would last for four or five posts. So, that is it in this post or it would be strenuously long read.

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For my friends

I will remember those sunsets,
I will preserve them, the moments,
I will retain you all, oh! my friends,
and, I will take you along and long.
I have you all under my eye lids.
At a wink of an eye I glance at you.
In sleep and dream I see that it is you.
And, when these lids of mine fall forever,
I still, will have you before my eyes.

This verse is tribute to you all my favourites: pink sunsets, chilly evenings, memorable days, travelled places - for the immense pleasure I derived from you. It is also for my friends and loved ones - bestowers of unconditional love upon me - where ever you are. What survives of us is love and you all, whether animate or inanimate, have given me loads of it. I dearly love you all.

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My affair with IDs and ID cards - Catharsis and Tears

21st April 2010 : After 2 1\2 years of last time I had tears in my eyes, I wept like a child again. It was my last day at TCS. All through the day, I was a little emotional to leave my friends at TCS and my girl friend, who recently moved into my project. That could be explained, after all "Yeh Dil Hein Yaar Pathar Tho Nahin". But that's not entirely the reason.

After getting all the necessary clearances from library and finance teams, I was asked to submit my ID card to the admin. That is the last step in separation process and after that one had to leave the campus immediately. I went to the admin to do this. When I went to his desk, I saw a pile of empty card holders. I knew my card that stuck to me would meet the same fate. I did not want that to happen. While I was bringing myself together to do this I got a call from my team. They wanted me to join a farewell treat they have planned. I sighed in relief as the ID would be there for some more time with me. I asked the Admin how long he would be available, he said he would be there till 6 PM. The time was 5:15 PM and unless until for an elaborate celebration 45 minutes are good enough. I did not enjoy the treat as adrenaline rushed at the thought of surrendering ID card. I spent the good 45 minutes in the pantry and another 30 minutes meeting my friends for the last time in office. I extended those 45 minutes to 75 minutes only to avoid surrendering the ID card that day and to do it the next even it meant that I had to drive 22 avoidable kilometres to office again. At the end of it, confident that admin person must have left office by then, I went in to confirm if I was right( you know I did not want to take the blame of not finishing things on the same day). I was wrong, he sat there like Lord Yama( for the benefit those who do not know who he is - he is the bestower of death on mortals) ready to take my ID card from me. Left with no choice I gave away my ID card to him and he said " it will be taken care". I felt empty, my mind went blank and a soar lump popped in my throat. On my way down, the security at the lift asked me where my ID card was, I felt my throat choking and words hard to come by, I meekly muttered "I resigned". And, tears swirled in my eyes. I got down from the lift and called my girl friend to come out of the module as I no longer reserve the right to enter it. I found it hard to stop myself and tears rolled down. I remember what she exactly said, " what is this, like a small child".If you know telugu even better then you can translate it as she said this in our mother tongue. In chennai sunsets really late in summer as late as 6:45 PM and it is often bright for a while after that. It was 6:45 PM and you get to see some of the best sunsets from the verandas of Siruseri tech park. I relished them dearly for I love evenings and the orange-pinkish sunsets. Sun was setting over the horizon for the day and Sun was also setting on my days at TCS. That was my last sunset at the IT park and I had every right and reason to be upset. It also entitled me with the pejorative to cry if I liked.

I went to the basement to pick my bike and on my way, to my utter discomfort, was asked about my ID card, again. I fetched my bike, kissed TCS and TCS Siruseri a good bye and started to my home. Once I lost sight of the tech park I worked at, till-then-tears became silent sobs, which I could only smother, though only for a while, and not stop them entirely. I cried for 10 kilometers on my way back home. Initially I tried to fight my tears but realised it was of no use and let myself in to the temptation of catharsis - cleansing, a cleansing that is necessary for any separation that is painful.

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My affair with IDs and ID cards - Begins

I came to Chennai crying, I left Chennai crying - what a crying shame !!!

IDs and ID cards - These are,perhaps, the most trivial things in an employee's life. However, every silly thing becomes significant in my life and every serious thing becomes a thing of levity.
September 12th 2007: I began my life as an employee at TCS, Bhubaneswar. This affair dates back to that particular day. I was given a temporary ID card to get into the campus. A month passed by and I was given an employee number and the story begins. Unfortunately, two of us got the same employee number. When it said Welcome Sree Panchajanyam I felt proud. The next time I logged into the portal it welcomed me with a different name and this annoyed me. When I went to the HR and complained about this she reset the back end with my name. When the other guy raised the same concern the next day, the HR replaced my name with the guy's name. It went on and on and finally the other guy won this "battle of resets" and had retained the employee ID. What is to become of me? It took another 15 days for my Emp ID to be activated. This day delay wreaked havoc in my life for close to a month, perhaps worst ever.
So, what happened? On the D-day when we had to key in our choices to select the location of work from the list below
1. Mumbai 2. Kolkota 3. Chennai 4. Delhi 5. Ahmedabad 6. Bangalore,
I realised that this functionality was not enabled for my ID. My girlfriend and I desperately wanted Chennai. She was able to submit her location preferences and I was not able to that day. I was able to do that only after a week. This made all the difference. She was posted to Chennai and I was posted to Kolkota, because by the time I could give my preferences, the limited openings in Chennai were filled in.
Nov 14th,2007: last day of my ILP, and 30 hours of distance started creeping slowly in between us. That was the day I cried my heart out, because of the trouble and pain my Employee ID put me through. I do not feel ashamed to say that I wept like a child, helpless, on that children's day and the celebrations lasted a week starting that day. I lost 4 kilograms in a week( last 4 days at Bhubaneswar and 3 days in Kolkota). At the end of the 3 days I managed to get a transfer to Chennai. I will tell you how, but that is not the topic today. This is one of the reason Chennai is my heaven and bliss.

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