Cricket

Not that I like trumpeting, but, this time it is hard to resist the temptation. Look at the following excerpt from an email that was flashed to "All India" employees.

Continuing its engagement in the Blossom’s Inter-IT Cricket Champions Trophy, Ensim’s Cricket team made a strong statement …. and in what style and élan, which left the opposition stunned of the victory.
…
...the willow-men of Ensim team strode onto the pitch. Parag (Kaundanya), Manoj (Capt. again), Garry and Bimalesh (our own Gilchrist)made mincemeat of the bowling getting 88 runs in 12 overs.

I have returned to cricket after a break of over seven years and still managed to beat my own expectation with a scorecard that reads like 25 of 28, 57 of 40 and 11* of 6 balls (for Cricketing imbeciles, * means Not out) . Last one happened this Sunday against Symphony. Well, these figures do not extol the facts like, I have secured a place in the list of top ten batsmen of the tourney and stood behind the stumps like a wall without letting bowlers’ confidence droop. All these definitely deserve kudos!

I have donned whites at various levels before- right through school, district, and university to the famed Times Shield at Bombay. However, due to metamorphosed priorities, I could never again wield the willow after my last outing in January of 1998 at IPCL Cricket ground in Baroda. I was 25 then, now I am sedate 32. The right age they say, to wear out, Ganguli-fy and hang up boots...Ah! doesn’t that make this occasion apt to brag more about it?

Hope, we continue to beat expectations as a Team too!

No More Annual Fees

End of another year. Revenant fee appeared again. Peeved. Carrying this plastic for over eight years now! This time resolute and firm- will not pay. Do not mind ceding it. There are many compelling (=free) offers in the market. One email and the bank has realized for good. What a nincompoop! You allowed them to fleece you all these years :-(

<snip>
Your Query

Refer following transaction on the card: 14/12/2005 Renewal Fee from Jan-06 to Dec-06 750.00. By charging annual fee, do you want to force me to close this card?

Our Message

Dear Mr. Jha, This is with reference to your query dated December 15, 2005. We have reversed the Fee of Rs. 750.00 billed to your card ending ****. The corresponding Service Tax will be reversed automatically. This credit will reflect in the statement for December 2005. Your card has been maintained complimentary (no Renewal Fee will be charged in future). Thank you for accessing C???bank online.
...
</snip>

Down the memory lane...

Stumbled while browsing archive today. This was taken almost a decade back in 1996(?). Pawar, Gaurav, Rajneesh, Bam, Self, Prashant...celebrating a friend's birthday. I forget what was the venue called?

Since, I don't have these

• Bullet Electra 5S
  
• Alloy shoes on my WagonR
  
• Wharfedale SW-250
  
• Onkyo TX-SR702
  
• Honda CRV
  
• 42" Plasma (just have a 29" Pixel Plus; Yuks!)
  

I feel needy..., despise and pity myself :-(

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away!

This line by Beatles is a perfect way to describe my state yesterday. God was suddenly benevolent towards me. He cleared three events from his backlog and made my day.

• Got income tax refund. Was waiting for eons...need separate space to brood over it
  
• Pleased with work, my employer offered me timely confirmation
  
• Finally, long wait was over. Maiden issue of Better Photography arrived after two months since, they debited my credit card

Oh, I believe in yesterday...and today is Friday :-)
Cheers!

An evening by the sea!

Murud-Dapoli beach, on western coast of Maharashtra, India

 

Google Desktop

Agree, it is a nifty tool which does a remarkable job of finding lost information and comes for free. But, like any other software crafted by humans, it also suffers from imperfections.

I had problems getting it to work for me. A while ago, I had tried its beta avatar but, it did not install on my box. Reason: it refused to cohabit with an antivirus that was running on my box and got into DLL conflicts with it. After this, I had shelved the idea and nearly forgotten about it.

Yesterday, at the behest of a colleague, again I decided to look at this tool. Downloaded latest Google Desktop 2 (GD2) from Google's website and double-clicked on its setup exe. To my surprise, the 'wizard' did not seek any installation directory after showing up wonted license and copyright dialogs. It is my box and I would like to have a say over where I put what. Wizard presumably thought I am a dork and automatically decided a 'path' for me. This was not the only thing. Midway, wizard balked and threw up a message like "Could not create/open database" with some arbitrary error code in it. Checked out GD2 Help Center and did exactly what it said. Uninstalled and reinstalled several times ...no different results.

GD2 recommends 4GB of free space to park its indexes and I had atleast 6GB of real estate on all partitions. Clearly there was something wrong or untested and undocumented. I nearly broke my head...:-) and then realised that I do lots of avi/mpeg stuffs on my PC. What, if the discs are hugely fragmented? Ran the defragmenter on all partitions and returned to the installation... lo, it went through without any fuss this time. I had a sense of both, jubilation and anger. Angry, because I expected to see this documented but was happy that I 'discovered' it myslef!

GD2 is going on 'happliy ever after'.

Post lunch chat

BJ: howdy
BH: good, u?
BJ: good
BJ: I have a wonderful weekend planned for you...wanna hear? ;;)
BH: ??
BJ: why don't u accompany us coming weeknd to G'pule? Shirin would love to see the ocean and the matter that occupies more than 3/4 of the globe...and u get a chance to drive to the country and a much needed vacation...sounds good? :D
BH: u guyes are going in bus
BH: i will be bored to drive alone
BJ: no...i am driving and planning my own acco/food etc...MTDC resort...probably i mite just join the fun there...:)
BJ: they are returning next day...i plan to spend the nite on saturday there itself and return on sunday :)
BH: ok.
BH: sounds great
BH: so u need a company car or company passenger?
BJ: nah..:-/
BJ: I'm driving my wgnR
BH: ok
BJ: u can drive ur matiz
BH: i then have to buy a car seat
BJ: hmm...good idea...u can actually buy 1 u need it for 2-3 yrs least to think
BH: ok, i will ask jaya and then confirm
BH: when are u doing the booking
BJ: don't 'ask' X-(
BJ: u have to 'sell' the idea :P
BJ: wednesday...Poushali can do the MTDC booking
BH: ok, i will sell, but it requires approval.. otherwise she would not let it happen
BJ: ok...the plan is :
BH: what is the journey plan?
BJ: 1. Book Konkani House at MTDC 700-800/- per day per family for twa nites (Friday and Sat)
BJ: 2. Leave on Friday morning arnd 6AM...reach there arnd lunch
BJ: 3. spend friday nite and saturday nite on the beach
BJ: 4. return on Sunday morning ...start after BF
BH: ok
BJ: On friday night and saturday morning...in between I will join the EIPL gang for Boyish fun :P
BJ: ok...check and update
BH: ok.. i will update tonite or tom morning
BH: is home loan @ 7.75% fixed rate from SBI sounds good
BH: is it good enough to swith from HDFC to SBI, (I already have hdfc approval and paid them 5k as processing fee)
BJ: may be...
BJ: i don't know how difficult it would be to deal with SBI...I have a S/B account with them at NCL branch and its a nightmare dealing with them...i just use it as a conduit for trfring money to my father :)
BH: this is some corporate deal with TIPL
BJ: i wud go for HDFC than SBI...if the diff in money is not by 50k at the end of loan tenure
BH: and they say that they would surve me in office
BJ: think of your years when u r not at TIPL :)
BH: :)
BJ: ur housing loan will follow u for 15yrs...?
BH: i may soon be out of TIPL
BJ: got a place to go? ;)
BH: a virtual resignation is already been sent
BH: :)
BJ: Ahh...now whats this VR?
BJ: and whats ur backup plan?
BH: its a threat, unless they do something about harassment in parking, i will resign
BH: i followd up with a reminder
BH: they said they will take it once my boss return from vacation (today)
BH: backup plan is to find a job in 1 month
BJ: hey negotiate a damage claim of 10k...and replace wheels :)
BJ: in US...technically u cud have got a claim under similar circumstances :)
BH: lets see what my boss has to says
BH: they ignored my first mail ( no reply)
BJ: u shud see at "what ur boss has to Offer" :D
BH: i sent a reminder saying that if this mail is ignored, i assume my service is no longer needed
BJ: ah great :-h
BJ: i meant =D>
BH: i can get a job in 1 month, i believe a better pay too.. 7 years exp in c++ does have some demand in market
BJ: oh sure...u do have a chance...let me know if u wanna try VSIL?
BJ: or EIPL :P
BH: it depends on my meeting with boss
BH: it will happen sometime this week
BH: he has not show up till now..suppose to join office today
BJ: in EIPL...they will hire u for c++ and most probably make u work on .NET :(
BJ: ok
BH: :))
BJ: b.t.w. i gladly continuing...since they are funding my .NET learning :)
BH: here too they hired me for c++, i have additional work in perl, unix shell script and core java
BH: c+= is only 10% of the job
BJ: yeah...thats the world...pick squares and fill them in circles :(
BJ: and that 10% may be just abt grep *** and replace with && :D
BH: :)    

Leaving Java, Taking on .NET

Like a bolt from the blue, my employer announced their plan to shelve Java and migrate to .NET. I am a true blue Java aficionado who believed that, he was hired as an expert to help create and foster a Java team. Now, this sudden shift in plan, left a Hobson's choice before me. Either I 'deign' and retrain myself to do .NET or I move on and take up another opportunity around Java. Looking at following reasons, I picked up former option.

• It was an unnerving thought to step out again and hunt for a competitive employment within such a short span of time. I was barely about two months old into this new job!


• What the heck! I told myself, ".NET is not much different than J2EE in spirit and application". I do not look at it condescendingly, simply because it was pioneered and, being propelled by M$ in a bid to counter growing popularity of Java and pull in some mindshare towards windows as a service oriented platform for next generation Enterprise Applications.
  I saw an opportunity to learn and know more about this new technology. This would certainly complement my knowledge of Enterprise Applications. After all, I want to be a part of a team, that would define and create next generation of Enterprise Architectures some day. Knowledge of all such competing technologies would only take this pursuit several steps closer to that ultimate goal.


• Through all these years in IT I have realized that, as you grow up in the career, programming languages and platforms do not matter much, really. The fundamental problems of computer science like memory management, scheduling, process execution, I/O and so on remain same. Only ways to abstract, encapsulate and solve them through algorithms and data structures change. Any IT professional worth his salt, should spot and value these patterns, irrespective of Java or .NET.
  


• I could not overlook the fact, that, my employer is going to fund for my .NET knowledge acquisition :-)
  

So, here I am! Learning .NET and looking at C# from a Java Developer's Perspective and reading C# for Java developers.

From the first look, C# naming conventions appeared little weird. EverythingStartsWithCapital, be it a TypeName or a MethodName(), confusing you to think whether you are looking at a Class or an Operation. However, I am training my eyes to look at many more of them, with ease.

Cheers,

Diwali celebrations in the office

Our floor all decked for Diwali.

Chasing a Rainbow

Vacillating clouds leaving behind streaks of soaked rays. As seen from my terrace!

Sun and Google to co-promote Google Toolbar

http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/92/1/news/15246

Interesting development...lets see how M$ reacts!

View from Terrace

Sun hiding behind monsoon clouds

Pampered myself

Yesterday was auspicious for following two reasons.

1. Arrival of Lord Ganesha
2. Gifted myself a Canon EOS 350D (a.k.a. Digital Rebel XT). Bipul and me dashed off to JJM and brought this home at an investment of 49.5k along with a 18-55mm kit lens and a 512 MB Silicon CF card.
   

More later.

Ganpati bappa morya,

-BJ

Salary and govt. freebies for a Member of Parliament in India

Saw on a newsgroup...

(All figures are in INR)

Monthly Salary : 12,000
Expense for Constitution per month : 10,000
Office expenditure per month : 14,000
Traveling concession (Rs. 8 per km) : 48,000 (for a return visit to Delhi: 6000 km)
Daily bhatta during parliament meets : 500
Travel in I class A/C train: free (for any number of times all over India )
Travel in Business Class in flights : free for 40 trips / year (with wife or P.A.)
Rent for MP hostel at Delhi : free
Electricity costs at home : free up to 50,000 units
Local phone call charge : free up to 1,70,000 calls.

Total expense for an MP per year: 32,00,000
Total expense for 5 years: 1,60,00,000

For 534 MPs, the expense for 5 years : 8,54,40,00,000 (nearly 855 cores)

...and they are elected by the people of India through a largest democratic process in the world :-(

To Flash or Not ?

Being a traditional web technologist, iconoclastic opinions of my co-workers provoked me to take part in a debate to reason out if a Flash based web console is apt for building a GUI interface to manage enterprise systems and can they beat the necessity of providing alternative HTML views?
As usual, this debate too was not different. Hours spent over brouhaha with each camp fiercely contesting and defending arguments without letting go respective views. Flash addicts boasted about its RIA gears and support for animation, vector rendering, blah, blah, in all glory to humble the frugality of HTML. Some of the arguments put up by Flash camp are like:

1. Flash enables rich Visual, Interactive and Dynamic web console
2. Real time/synchronous update of enterprise events
3. Easy to generate animated views
4. Drag-n-drop, personalization of views
5. Plug-ins for major browser like IE, FireFox, Netscape etc
6. Unlike Java Applets, it is not bulky and doesn’t take forever to download on to client systems

While, I am not antipathetic to Flash and Vector Graphics based rich and dynamic web pages which probably do bring a ‘rich’ interactivity, yet, I am fan of frugality and ubiquity of HTML when it comes to building web consoles to manage Enterprise Systems and would gladly sacrifice the ‘show off’ for ‘simple’ delivery of content. I feel Flash is an extravagant technology for building web based enterprise consoles. A Flash enhanced 360° view of Sony’s latest high definition video camera probably looks great and grabs attention of prospective customers on their homepage but same captivating view for an SNMP event in enterprise console would not be a ‘great’ value to add.

I hold the view that Text/Html screens are required and we should (also) provide option for users to be able to switch to text only HTML screens too, to substitute Flash enhanced or Flash only pages, in enterprise management consoles. Here are my reasons and motivations for this:

1) In a security sensitive environment particularly, IE on Windows, domain administrators can (and most probably will) constrain the default browsers and disable automatic download and installation of Plug-ins (ActiveX) even, if they are signed (e.g. Macromedia Flash Viewer for IE is a signed ActiveX) causing browser to throw up annoying security challenges for 'accepting' and 'running' this alien components. In order to experience such an environment do (some of) this in IE:

• Open Security Settings ->Activex Control and Plug-ins -> Download Signed Activex Controls -> check the Prompt/Disable radio.
• Open Security Settings ->Activex Control and Plug-ins -> Run Activex Control and Plug-ins -> check the Prompt/Disable radio.
• Open Security Settings ->Activex Control and Plug-ins -> Script Activex Control Marked Safe for Scripting -> check the Prompt/Disable radio.

Know what is ActiveX and how vulnerable is it?

2) Classically (and may be politically) system administrators and similar knowledge workers (major target users of enterprise consoles) are known to favor 'functionality' over 'presentation'. For such ‘less discerning’ tribe a flash enhanced UI may look extravagant and off-putting. They will legitimately expect to have plain html/text screens as preferred substitute for flash views.

3) Tested and certified Flash plug-ins may not be available for all the browsers on all OS platforms that an Enterprise has. Most Browser plugins are loaded as shared libraries (DLL/SO) and runs in its own thread and they may not cleanup the garbage properly and thus end up hogging the precious runtime memory and other resources. Though, we may wash hands off this issue by certifying support only for few popular engines like IE, NN or Firefox, but, this would alienate sections of users who are loyal to Opera or similar lesser-known and plug-in starved browsers. They would not be willing to trade their comforts and preferences for 'eye catching' flash views. Thus doing Flash-only limits the count of supported browsers, this in a way defeats the goal of web applications i.e. 'deploy once and access anywhere'.

4) Doing Flash we are tempted to build a 'stateful' interaction between console and backend server agents (may be using either Flash MX Remoting or XML data). Such a stateful interaction interferes with the basic REST (Representational State Transfer) paradigm of web applications. In future if we need to integrate pervasive clients or 3rd party applications to enterprise consoles then moving away from REST would make the architecture brittle and different layers (UI and middleware) would tress pass into each other. However, if such stateful interactivity is desired it should be built using traditional client-server topology using thick clients like Swing/SWT/MFC Consoles rather than choosing a web based architecture.

5) Accessibility issues with Flash- this needs to be studied and addressed?

6) How to automate stress and functional testing of Flash pages?

7) Now, with Adobe taking over Macromedia, what is the future of Flash MX? History suggests that a dominant player eclipses other brands/products in such a merger e.g. WebSphere Vs Domino, DB2 Vs Informix, HP-UX Vs Tru64...who knows few years down the line you have Acro Reader retrofitted with a SWF viewer and Flash MX Player is history!

8)Flash is not the only tool for a dynamic and interactive web console. A combination of CSS, JavaScript and XML is transforming the HTML we know. Look at Gmail, Google Maps and so on…anyone with me for AJAX here?

More info on AJAX and Flash

With above reasoning, I do feel that, Graphically enhanced UIs would be particularly useful and favored by IT analysts and business consultants who do a lot of business process and workflow modeling, OLAP, BI etc or certain users who gape whole day at some monitoring consoles and raise alarm when they notice any anomalies between Green, Orange and Red spots on them :-). Flash also looks appealing for building disconnected offline lightweight graphical data analyzer and reporting tools. Other than these, web consoles for managing enterprise software should have simple text/html based views.

Rains from fledgling Monsoon have just begun to pour over the city. This is a shot of 'Pashan Lake' and rejuvenated Sahyadris in the backdrop taken on a lazy Sunday afternoon, from my 10th floor terrace. 

Windows Shortcuts

Few quick shortcuts I find very useful on windows. I have tested these on W2K, but it should work on other versions also.

1. CTRL+SHIFT+Esc Open Task Manager
2. CTRL+A Select all (highlight all content in a window)
3. CTRL+C Copy (copy all highlighted content)
4. CTRL+X Cut (remove all highlighted content)
5. CTRL+V Paste (paste content that was cut or copied)
6. CTRL+Z Undo
7. CTRL+Y Redo
   
8. CTRL+RIGHT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word.
9. CTRL+LEFT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word.
10. CTRL+DOWN ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph.
11. CTRL+UP ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph.
12. CTRL+SHIFT+ARROW Highlight a block of text, starting at the cursor insertion point.
13. ALT+TAB Switch between open items (e.g, switch back and forth between two open Word files).
14. CTRL+F4 Close the active window but leave the program running.
15. ALT+F4 Close the active window and/or quit the program.
    

enjoy :-)

What is Training?

Here is an excellent quote from Mark Twain:

"Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but a cabbage with a college education."

MS Exchange sans Outlook...

Recently my employer's decision to move to MS Exchange for providing a collaborative platform in the enterprise sparked off exchange of opinions between my peers who had been using UNIX and similar systems, and Windows aficionados . One such topic that was hotly debated was how to circumvent the MS Outlook and still be able to use the MS Exchange Server (MSE).

Many a times, whatever be the reasons classical, traditional or political, UNIX 'bigots' resist to 'condescend' and use Outlook or similar integrated GUI clients (e.g. Web Client on IE) for MSE and instead devise ingenious ways to acheive connectivitity by using traditional UNIX scripts like Pine, Mutt, Elm, Fetchmail and so on. While, most of these work to provide simple SMTP, POP/IMAP access + Filter capabilities, they miss out to exploit MSE's rich collaborative features.

Though, personally I am not a big fan of M$, yet, I don't snub at anything and everything good in life, simply because it is from M$ or they are also used by dorks :-). MSE is not an email server only that most of us think (and believe) it is. Win2k, Kerberos, Active Directory, Exchange and Outlook forms a potent collaborative platform for an enterprise. Just look at its suite of offerings: Calendar, Tasks, Follow-up reminders, Delegation, Public Folders, Rich Text support, Enterprise Directory and so on (some of them may have ideated from products like Novell GroupWise or Lotus Domino). One good reason to stay close to Outlook/WebMail via IE is that, we get to use all these feature which, I think, any combination of Pine/Fetchmail/Elm et al can't do? However, MSE has earned a bad reputation for proliferation of viruses and worms that choke networks. But, most of the times, it is proliferated due to gullible outlook users and ignorant System Administrators, a fact, cleverly exploited by mischief mongers- also called hackers. With proper security planning, user awareness and hardening of Windows Systems, I feel, such a menace can be reduced to a great extent.

We the Developers, have our own preferences towards tools, platforms, configurations and almost everything, held and cultivated over the years, either by choice or by compulsion (lack of alternatives, too good to detach etc.). We make our own 'indirections' for every problem we face in our daily setup and cling on to them religiously...all these ideas work for individual and I am sure some of these would be hard to promote or override lest it leads to acrimonious exchange and thrusting of ideas. Nevertheless, for a large setup like enterprise, deciding and using a collaborative tool is a part of wider corporate 'strategy' and most often taken with a democratic or populistic view and as far as I know, usability of a Outlook + Exchange combination will defeat any *IX based collaborative tools available in the market today. At least, think from the perspective that such tools are used by people right from marketing directors to front office executives and they need to fix an appointment sometimes, with developers too! Also, think from the perspective how easily and cheaply you will find trained staffs to sustain such a platform- it all affect a TCO.

Further refs:
What Is Exchange Server? http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/evaluation/whatis.mspx

Microsoft Exchange Server resource site http://www.msexchange.org/

MS Exchange Blog http://hellomate.typepad.com/exchange/