Dec 9th 2008

Enter a special day in my life....
yet another stage in Life!
Being a Father!
09-12-2008
time 12:42 pm!

"My son was born"

Welcome Son!!

....Fair Governance

Corporates uses different sometimes unique strategies to ensure that they are successful...besides also having eye washers like vision mission and values.Yes there is no perfect world.

So what should one take?

Take each day as it comes .....Note Rome was not build in day
Stay focused with what one wants to do and do it.
Ensure you spend quality time with family and friends
Try to plan as much as you can.
Understand, be aware of your strengths and Use it.
Work on weakness ...
Discover new opportunities ,Be open to them
Finally there is risk in nearly everything ...
the point here is to mitigate them!

One needs to be aware in corporates white lies are told!.
People are manipulative ...everyone has his/her agenda.

As a part of Governance Corporates should ensure that they minimise white lies
hold people Accountable...Ensure Fair Governance!

GWT

Google Web too kit!!

Product Notes from Gooogle :Writing web apps today is a tedious and error-prone process. Developers can spend 90% of their time working around browser quirks. In addition, building, reusing,
and maintaining large JavaScript code bases and AJAX components can be difficult and fragile. Google Web Toolkit (GWT) eases this burden by allowing developers to quickly build and maintain complex yet highly performant JavaScript front-end applications in the Java programming language.

Here is the link...

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/

It a good start since u don't need to know swings or awt etc!

Don't Worry, Be Happy

Don't Worry, Be Happy
From the Movie "Cocktails"
Performed by Bobby McFerrin

Here is a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry be happy
In every life we have some trouble
When you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy......

Ain't got no place to lay your head
Somebody came and took your bed
Don't worry, be happy
The land lord say your rent is late
He may have to litigate
Don't worry, be happy
Lood at me I am happy
Don't worry, be happy
Here I give you my phone number
When you worry call me
I make you happy
Don't worry, be happy
Ain't got no cash, ain't got no style
Ain't got not girl to make you smile
But don't worry be happy
Cause when you worry
Your face will frown
And that will bring everybody down
So don't worry, be happy (now).....

There is this little song I wrote
I hope you learn it note for note
Like good little children
Don't worry, be happy
Listen to what I say
In your life expect some trouble
But when you worry
You make it double
Don't worry, be happy......
Don't worry don't do it, be happy
Put a smile on your face
Don't bring everybody down like this
Don't worry, it will soon past
Whatever it is
Don't worry, be happy

What a MONDAY!

PWC consulting had changed its name to Monday way back in 2002 for whatever reasons.The name did not survive for long as it was taken over by IBM.Anyway ...Monday's for many may be just another day ,for some moody Mondays!!.There have been Black Monday's where the stock markets have crashed!..Blue Mondays being the depressing day of the year ....But what we have witnessed on 15/09/08 will go down in History as one of the most saddest days in WALL Street.

"Lehman Brothers claims Bankruptcy and Merrill bought over by Bank of America"

Say it with Flowers ......

Say it with Flowers ..
Flowers mean a whole a lot of different things to people
But for Onam its signifies a "WELCOME to King Mahabali".

Another Thought!

"Look at
the flowers
with critical insight.
How could
the flower evolve
unless there were
intelligence there?"
— Paramhansa Yogananda

Thought Today!!

God, grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

The New world for Attendance

Gone are the days where swiping in of id cards were necessary to track Attendance.
In this "Biometric era" most corporates use Biometrics System to Capture Attendance.
Initially most Employees were paranoid with idea of Biometrics with excuses like "going back to aunguta chap days","reduce flexibility like WFH, mutilple offices" etc etc.

With development of technologies Biometric Recording,Storage and Verification has become relatively easy.

Fingerprint Systems constitutes half of the available biometrics System simply because of the cost and uniqueness of the finger print pattern.

Biometric Systems Jargon's... Here are a few..
"Passport,Template,Reader,1:N Matching,FRR(False Rejection Rate),FAR(False Acceptance Rate),papillary pattern, "

But Bottom line is Biometrics is here too stay...Attendance is just one the applications uses of it.

Finally India Achieves a Gold

I never thought I'd live to see this ...

India's Abhinav Bindra has created history becoming the first-ever individual gold medal winner for India at the Olympics. Bindra won the gold medal in men's 10m air rifle event today morning.

Abhinav - Hats of to you !We are Proud of you !

Performance Engineering

How does one engineer "PERFORMANCE" ?

Performance Engineering is one of the niche areas today...with most corporates spending large amounts of money to achieve the required performance. So whats Performance Engineering?

Its the science related to performance in terms of both Software and Hardware.

So both Hardware and Software have performance requirements. In order to meet the performance requirements in a systematic ,quantitative approach which can also be cost effective. What constitutes a Hardware --The machine,Storage,Terminals. Software consists of Operating System,Database,Middle ware, Web/App servers ,S/W Applications etc.

Food for thought there are councils i.e determine the performance benchmarks (a point of reference)of Database,Web/App servers, Also it provides OS performance(provided by the OS vendor generally) with regard to hardware . In terms of Database benchmarks a site good to visit http://www.tpc.org/ ... for OS like Solaris http://www.sun.com/benchmarks/software/solaris.xml

What about custom developed applications??? For this need to first define the Non functional requirements of the application . We also need to have a performance objective. Now a days with use of profiler's ,simulators during construction of the application , we can try to ensure that application being constructed meets the performance objectives that is defined.

Other Links of interests related to performance

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms998537.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_law -- N=λT

N is the number users

λ (Think Time +Response Time)

T-Throughput

http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/performance.jsp -Java SE performance

http://www.perfeng.com/ - Software Performance !!

Be Nice

We all come across different people with various backgrounds in our lives.Some we choose to like some we don't. Anyway its a choice we make! From our childhood days our parents always mention to Be Nice . People tend to forget the good things people do for them once they move away to another place or move up the corporate ladder or in day to day lives. Most of them have their reasons for doing so ...some may just forget!
A thought " Do to others as you want them to do unto you"
.. Be nice to the people when you go up..(wherever that may be )...Since most of the time they will be nice to you when you come down!
Thoughts wonder should I be Good or should I be Nice.. they both are synonymous!
Be Nice to the people around no matter who they are ...remember they to do have a Heart!

Super Sunday!

--It definitely was a Super Sunday !!!
First of all the Indian cricket team was beaten by Mendis and the veteran Sanath Jaysurya!
Though India lost it was good game of cricket and for the lady luck who predicted this win !
Then it was the time for the movies we saw ...JTYJN another feather in Uncle Amir's cap!!!
But finally to see the King of Grass beaten that too in the longest ever Wimbledon final a match that will go down in history as one of the best one's so far.
Nadal beat RF 6-4 6-4 6-7 (5/7) 6-7 (8/10) 9-7
One thing everyone would admit is the respect Nadal has got for RF in spite of this unbelievable win. Hats of Nadal and RF for a wonderful game of tennis and fabulous end to the Super Sunday!

Bidding You Farewell!!!

A farewell that will be remembered Thanks to the ones that made it memorable by their presence and the presents off course!!
A farewell Message
Success after Success
Milestone after Milestone
Celebration after Celebration
Are sure to follow you
wherever you go
As you're leaving ...Wishing you as much success and fame as you wish and truly deserve
May you Fare Well!

Last Day at Office!

This was 20th June 2008... After a number years in service this was day I would move away from my job. Hows was I feeling ? mixed feelings embraced me ...
thoughts ...
->about the past,
->excitement about the new job,new people and new learning
->first day at work to this very day! ,
->projects executed -->teams ->friends -->success -->failures-->learning and contribution

Eventually the present took over .. did all the clearance formalities, sent thank you mails to one and all for their support and kindness, went out for lunch with friends of mine...met a few colleagues and bosses in person to say bye!. We would definitely meet again was the thought as its small world!

Finally it was time to hand in the Id card that I wore for long while to get the relieving letter!

Once this was completed I was escorted to the entrance of the office ..Took pictures of me standing out with smiles ..a picture that I would treasure !

Swimming wow!!

Well the thought of being able to be in water it self is very exciting just imagine to swim! I was told that most animals other than man (If I can say so ...as we are not animals we are human beings) swimming comes naturally . So here I was to register my self to some swimming lessons that too to take swimming lessons early in the mornings on weekdays!
I told myself I will try to do it ...I'm going to push myself hard to learn swimming!
Dad and mum were shocked at the timings I chose and my wife reminded me that 6-8 in the morning are never for me .
I'm looking to Swimming as an exercise and also for the joy of it!

Making decisions

We have all made them many a time in our life's. Some work some don't but we still make them!
Yes they are decisions ! Today I made another important one in my life ! I decided to move on from my current job. First thing that would come onto anybody's mind is WHY is he leaving?
That's a good question one would say ! Some thoughts that came to my mind ...
Does being here have a great Long Term Potential?
Does it align to my personal goals?
Is it the right time to do it ? ....
Remember Never quit a job When there is pain leaving it . Decisions made during great pain are rarely good decisions
Importance is to make them but without guilt!



.

Agile Programming

Though there have been different flavours of Agile prior to 2001 ..Its has been gaining widespread popularity these days. I did work in one of the flavours called XP(eXtreme Programming) in 2003.There are similarities and differences But here are my thoughts on the Agile Manifesto!

"We are uncovering better ways of developing
software by doing it and helping others do it.
Through this work we have come to value:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan


That is, while there is value in the items on
the right, we value the items on the left more"

The above is from http://agilemanifesto.org/

I do appreciate all the thought process/experiences that went about to create the manifesto.

Who creates processes and tools? isn't it Individuals with interactions?
Working software can be documented,User guides/User training etc are the need for the day as its important to know for whom the software is developed.
Customer collaboration is good for business in general but winning and executing a contract is more important than just mere collaboration...Collaboration needs to speak in terms of revenue.
How can the project plan be created in such a way that it would cater to responding to a change?if you fail to plan your planning to fail.

Both RHS and LHS is equally important.You cannot do without the either.Now the question is what is being valued on the LHS vs RHS is more important.

Do consider checking out the Addendum's to the manifesto...and do add your own based on your experience!Also before Agiling consider what is important to you especially if you are the project manager

Matches and Misfits

I wanted to write a How to Series ---
so to start with :
How to identify matches and misfits for a project in an IT organization.

Everbody is winner Its just some are disguised losers ...at that period of time.

In IT to identify misfits looks easy

1)Does not meet the required technical/functional skills ..if thats the case then you will have a lot of misfits..
The questions to be answered is Can the person be trained ,mentored and motivated to achieve the skill/Compentancy?Do you/or your lead have the patience to do so?Also consider the objective/schedule/risks/costs of the project?

Bottom line is you can always help the people achieve the technical skill required provided they want to LEARN!...So there is always a trade off .We need to understand the Cost Benefit .

2)Does not have the ATTITUDE... Attitude is everything...is IT??
Its how you see and measure this Attitude as it can vary from time to time.
Though there are tests like IWAM,PAPI,pschyometric tests,pjm tests, etc..Its very difficult to judge this.The point is getting it right for the job that is being offered.


Simple Characteristics of Matches
Willingness to Learn and do
Abilty to seek solutions given a difficult problem
Looks for details
Logical skills
Technical skills
Communication skills
Team player
Honest
Sincere
Commited
can meet the project requirment
...
...
...

The level and degree of the characteristics may vary from interviewer to interviewer.
Note Those of us that conduct interviews are people too. We have our PERCEPTIONS – good, bad and ugly. The difference is we decide who is a match and whose not!!! in otherwords we decide who gets the Job.All the above simple characteristics can be measured by asking the right questions depending on the requirement.

Creativity

Um mm!! uhhhhh!! I wondered what it is to be Creative?
Simple words...different tones Stories galore.
I'm sure there's got to be lots more.
So thought a little bit more.
To each his known ..yes the Master has the throne.
To inspire, to foresee, to listen ,to plan and to change.

Today is New Day fresh thoughts...News plans.
Sudden crisis oh my god that's not planned.
Be prepared for the better or the worse ...
for they say "if you fail to plan your really planning to fail"


That's just another one liner that got picked and used.
But its not worth just knowing but using.
Oh! that does remind me of one more
"Knowing is not doing, doing is doing and achieving you bet!"


Some say I'm dreamer But I'm not only one!
John was there too...and he did say "the world will live as one"
Creativity is the fragrance of individual freedom like to create out this article as it never existed before.

I could go on and on...But that's not on.
For today I saw a mail that was turn on!
So the question changed and thought drifted
yet positive to join the Creativity program

You still may say I'm a Dreamer That's not all what it is
"b+ve no matter what your blood group is"

I guess they will be reading this whoever they are..
Many may say "this is Creative lets give him the chance"


--The above was written in response to a mail at office(5 October 2003) which was looking for people to be part of Creativity Program.You had to respond as to what you thought about Creativity,Why you should be selected--.

Importance of One Minute...

In one minute you can do wonders...

You can set objectives and goals in one minute
You can Praise people in one minute
You can reprimand people in one minute

-Tell them their responsibilities and Roles
-Catch them doing something RIGHT
-Rework with them if something done wrong!

Don't ill treat or demotivate anyone from the OBJECTIVE!

-Most of the people are Winners some are disguised as Losers!

-You can either hire a person who is winner or a person who can be potential winner...if you don't do the above 2...remember there is only PRAYER

-above is the courtesy of the One minute Manager!

Continue to breathe every minute in mindfulness

it only takes a MINUTE of Your precious time!!

Go On!!

This poem I wrote when I was at NY...its called Go On!!

Sitting in front of the lap top
just blank at the moment
tired body stressed mind
With hands that still type

Music in the background..
roomie fast asleep...
night lamp on..
wondering whats going on...

moving thoughts...
the show must go on!

Winners Vs Losers

I used to stick posters on the wall of the Study room long long while ago.I had posters of tennis stars like Steffi ,the gist of the Gita and lots more ...But the lines below was of one interesting poster which was about Winners vs Losers.

Winners say: I have a plan.
Losers say: I have an excuse.

Winners say: Let me do it for you.
Losers say: It’s not my job.

Winners: See a solution for every problem.
Losers: See a problem for every solution.

Winners: See a green around every sand trap.
Losers: See 2 or 3 sand traps around every green.

Winners: See a difficult situation, but see possibility.
Losers: See a possible situation, but it’s too difficult.


No matter whether you are Winner or Loser or even if someone picks you on these lines ...Just remember you still are not done till your last breath.......
The tragedy of Life is not DEATH...But what we let die inside of us when we live
So just don't give up.....Always Live Life to the Fullest!

Stopping.Calming,Resting,Healing

-These are some important lines/para's from Thich Nhat Hanh writing which I found very thought provoking and Inspiring

The story circles about a man and a horse..The horse is galloping quickly and it appears the man in the horse is going somewhere important.Another man standing along side the road asks loudly 'where are you going?'The man On the horse replies ...'ask the horse'

This is also our story we don't know where we are going,and we can't stop.
The horse is our habit energy pulling us along and we are powerless.We are always running and it is become a habit"

First learn the art of STOPPING ..Stopping our thinking,our habit energies,our forgetfulness's,the strong emotion that rules us.

We need to stop our horse and reclaim our liberty..We need to shine in Mindfulness

Mindfulness is the energy that allows us to recognize our habit energy and prevent it from dominating.

Second CALMING ..when we have a strong emotion we know it can be dangerous to act, we don't have a strength or clarity to refrain..Learn the art of breathing in and out ,stopping our activities and calming our emotions.Learn to become solid and stable.Calming can be summarized in 5 stages

Recognition-if we are angry, we say 'I know that anger is in me'

Acceptance-When we are angry we do not deny it.We accept what is present

Embracing -Our mindfulness embraces are emotion and this can alone calm our anger and ourselves

Looking deeply-when we are calm enough we can look deeply to understand what has brought this anger to be

Insight-With insight we know what to do and what not to do change the situation


Third-RESTING we have to learn the art of resting ,allowing our body and mind to rest.If we have wounds in our body or our mind ,we have to rest so they can heal themselves.

Stopping,Calming and Resting are preconditions for HEALING!

that reminds me of song ..."Heal The World Make It A Better Place For You And For Me And The Entire Human Race"

I'll try ..I may be walking slow [step by step].. But I'll never walk back!

Why Fear

Never Live in Fear whether @work or @life

Its important to Live without Fear!
Subroto Bagchi (co founder of Mindtree )rightly put it in his article(dh-sh-17th Feb)
"The real choice before me is simple. Do I, or do I not, live in fear? The key word here is “live” and not just exist. To me, to live means to be able to speak my mind , to question, to voice my soul, to maintain my own identity wherever I am, and not be ashamed of my past of being a Bengali from Bihar, raised in Orissa and living in Karnataka, Mumbai or wherever — of being Hindu, Jewish, Christian, Muslim or whatever the denominational description of my God might be. I think that right was not granted to me by human beings and not even by the republic. It was granted to me by my Creator when I was born into this world. My right to live is alienated whenever I am in fear of anything and anyone"

For me to Live without Fear holds good even at Work
"Do not live in fear.....Speak up, Innovate,and Question,maintain my own identity!......Let not emotions come in the way of Intelligence to innovate and succeed!Do not get bogged down by groupism ,politics and nepotism.My right to contribute to work,to live and to achieve is alienated whenever I'm in fear of anything or anyone So don't fear!"

Its not only about writing this it is about believing and doing!

I'd wish organizations help its associates to Innovate,Improvise,Implement,and Integrate solutions for its Clients rather than causing fear in its associates

Process ..People ..Technology

CMMi [See & Milk Money I]

No offenses to SEI!!

Just being certified does not mean Practicing or Adopting.(Which even SEI points out)

Organizations(Not generalizing) use these models as a selling point! (They Can)

Its not about being the first one to be certified

Process People and Technology determine cost schedule and QUALITY!!

If it helps Business Lets have IT!

Silence ...Noble Silence

Silence is Golden ,
I wondered why???
Does it mean we just let go
Than say it all in words

Silence does not only mean not saying it...
Silence also means not thinking of it....
Another thought....

Noble silence -Silence of the mind & offcourse the mouth!

-Get Up ...Stand Up....
Stand Up for your RIGHTS
Don't give up the FIGHT!-

Practice,Practice,Practice

Practice,Practice,Practice

Theres no other way!!

Along the way need Patience

and a lot Perseverance

I'm sure you will get there

Truth is 100% and never lesser no matter how many decimal points!

Thoughts come and go...don't get carried away with it...Be in the present

Practice ...Practice and Practice

Overcome emotions and ego =Enlightenment

1/e2=E

1 over your emotions and ego gives Enlightenment!

If it all were in these formulae...

Thoughts ...Moving thoughts either in the past or future..

Importance is being in the present with Mindfullness!