"Patience, that paid off" that is how I can sum up this year. The year went by accomplishing these major goals:-
1. after that third attempt for visitor visa, my parents could finally make it to US.
2. Huge paper work showed slight movement in never ending GC process.
3.The last minute filling for brother’s H1b visa and his arrival to US
4. and last one, seems almost impossible trip to India for sister-in-laws wedding, we could finally make it.
It's pretty quiet here and I mean really quiet almost a pin drop silence -kind of quiet. Being the only person working in office from our team, It feels like weekend on Monday. In add on to that, Due to the limited service in cafeteria, I’ve been forced to eat that tasteless veggie burger from last one week, sometime you really don’t have a choice.
Two weeks, 12 movies ! thats the most nos of movies, I’ve ever watched within short period of time. Courtesy of forced bachelorhood, winter and plenty of year end holidays. The list goes like this:
Mumbai Salsa
Johnny Gaddaar
Aaja Nachle
Chain Kuli Ki Main Kuli
Dhana Dhan Goal
Banaras
Dus Kahaniya
Main, Meri Patni Aur Who
Pak Pak Pakaak (Marathi)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
Taare Zameen Par
Still looking forward for:
Life in Metro
Ek Chalis ki Local Train
Omkara
Black Friday
After watching this movie, It took almost 2 days for me to realize that, indeed 'Taare Zameen Par' is a master piece. A simple, sincere and moving film. Specially, started loving those 3 melodious songs supported by guitar tunes.
Unexpectedly, It was the quickest & hassle-free visit to NYC, to showoff main business spots to my brother. A quick in-out drive on FDR Drive was a pleasant one, most importantly traffic free. So far, this side of city was undiscovered area for me. It seems that its not bad option to drive in New York city on weekends, specially if you are in group of 2/3 people and If you know the city very well. Just keep aside $40/$50 dollars for car parking and tolls.
It was another farewell lunch for my very own manager at newly opened "Kona Grill" restaurant .
A sudden surprising layoff of my manager was shocking thing for our entire team. So lesson to learn is, when mass lay off are announced they don’t differentiate anybody.
Seems like its gonna be long, dark, cold and never-ending winter this year.
It just early December and It’s already snowing few days a week and average temperature is in 30’s. Everyday it’s take extra 10 mins to get ready to wear all those winter jackets and gloves. Cleaning the snow and ice off car windshield is another painful task.
Back from vacation, had a perfect flight timing -departure from Mumbai at 01:10 am and arrival at JFK at morning 07:30 am, just to attend Monday’s full day office. The total 15 hrs non-stop flight was all empty, making room for us to sleep and this time the flight entrainment system was indeed working.
Immigration, Custom and Airport shuttle was quick one, only complain is about this long chilly December.
As expected from the talented director Imtiaz Ali, this one meets the expectation.
It was a real joy to see this movie on big 70 mm screen with those beautiful location from Northern India.
This was a true colorful fresh movie, specially after watching bluish and greenish Saawariya on previous day.
Saawariya - a wasted efforts. Due to the other sold out box office movies, we were forced into this movie, just to come out disappointed by wasting our money on expensive ticket as well as on those much needed pop-corns to pass the time.
This was the worst experience I had, while booking the Air India tick
et thru careless, stupid travel agent. First this fellow didn’t have any clue about the ticket after charging my credit card, which he didn’t bother to inform me for 2 weeks. When I followed up, he gave some ridiculous excuses, which just wasted my days. After speaking to agency owner he transferred the matter to another lady, who cancelled the previous ticket and recharged credit card for new e-tickets. All this was happening with in the last week of travel date, making you more anxious.
Due to the double charging of tickets, credit card was almost reached to credit limit. Finally when they’re unable to issue e-tickets, they issued old paper tickets, which were collected by friend on my behalf.
The big surprise was waiting for me on monday morning, when I saw only two paper tickets. After waiting for an hour for the opening of their shop, they said they issued one e-ticket for me and paper tickets for my family.
It was rather a simple task, booking a ticket ! but took plenty of phone calls then follow up calls and the painful one, i.e. checking your mailbox everyday for the delivery of tickets. It just adds up unnecessary stress during those vacation days.
Its just reminds me of the MakeMyTrip.com’s commercial ad.
On a same note, soon the paper ticket will become a collector's item. The global airlines body IATA has placed its last order for paper tickets, clearing the way for air travel to be based entirely on electronic ticketing from 1st June 2008.
Our old TV suddenly stopped working, Not that we are much into TV, But having a not working TV in home makes you miserable . You never imagine that, you would miss it so much.
Most of September month went waiting for those few important letters, which were critical for out India vacation trip planning. Finally, when they arrived they arrived all together and patience paid off.
Every now and then you get requirement to produce ad-hoc report or data extract for given sets of excel data. User might provide you names, IDs for which he is expecting the results, but the problem is putting all that input data into your SQL queries in a way that it will fulfill the Syntax.
For ex.
SELECT company_id, address, city, state, country
FROM company
WHERE company_name in (('IBM','Oracle','Apple','Google','MicroSoft')
--List of names given by user (without quotes and comma separated):-
IBM
Oracle
Apple
Google
MicroSoft
It is doable when the list is small containing 10/20 items, But it becomes tedious & impractical to do it manually when list has 1000’s of items.
So while extracting such data yesterday, I found an easy and effortless way of achieve this thing using Microsoft Excel.
Here are Pictorial step-by-step instructions:
First Select the required columns (Cell)
Then using right click select the ‘Format Cell’ Option
Then use ‘Custom’ and Type as ‘@’, and click OK.
I hope after this win, We don't have to wait for next 24 yrs for the another world cup. Certainly, This win is precious for the India and will be treasured for the years to come. For me, I am just making a note here.
Thanks to the corporate free tickets, It was economical to visit this Bronx Zoo with the family of four people.
We specially enjoyed the first ever Camel Ride and the Tiger mountain experience.
Thou due to late arrival, we couldn't cover the entire Zoo, but were able to visit the main attractions.
This was a tiring family visit to New York city on the occasion of parents visit, by this time I've become a professional guide who can cover most of the NYC attractions in half a day starting with Grand Central, Park Ave, United Nation, Statue of Liberty, Wall Street, NYSE, Ground Zero (WTC), Time Square and Empire State and in the end serving the dinner in Indian Restaurant.
A classic movie to treasure for, which are very rare to find in Bollywood.
And I thought only Capital Beltway was confusing, wait until you enter the Downtown area of Washington, D.C and it will be like a maze for the tourist traveler. Even thou I’ve been visiting this area for 5th time, I had hard time locating our hotel on Rhode Island ave at Dupont Circle.
Normally, Most cities have Streets mapped in X and Y axis but here in DC the diagonal avenues make the road network more complex. Just to get an idea, have a look at this Dupont Circle which is the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Connecticut Avenue, New Hampshire Avenue, P Street and 19th Street.
To make matter worst, while driving you have to also consider the “One way” or “Do not enter” signs. One time, I was almost entered into “One way” road before I realized the mistake.
Next day also, while getting out of the city, those Google map couldn't be helpful. Thanks to all those cabbies for much understandable direction.
Bottom line is, Washington D.C. can be awfully confusing and frustrating to get around if you're not familiar with the area. Here is a link, which advices you to get a good map, If you are heading to DC and also plan in advance to save travel time.
This was one of the most fulfilling weekend trip, that I could remember of my all weekend endeavors.
The day started by visiting a truly unique attraction..."the Choo Choo Barn- Traintown U.S.A". As they claim "the Choo Choo Barn is like nothing you've ever seen !", true to the statement It was a really refreshing experience to see those detailed towns created with tiny animations.
The afternoon was spent riding the Strasburg Rail road in their Open Air cars, as the train tour was moving thru lush green scenic surroundings of the countryside and neighboring Amish farms.
After having a late lunch at the picnic area, we reached the Longwood Gardens for our last destination of the day. Being one of the premier botanical gardens in the US, It consists of 20 outdoor gardens and 20 indoor gardens within 4 acres. We had fun at the Italian Water Garden and Indoor Conservatory watching those amazing lotus, bonsai trees and exquisite flowers.
This is called Weekend Gateways !
This will be the 3rd one and hoping the last one. a quick weekend trip started at Saturday 06:30 early in the morning, reaching the Niagara Falls at 1:30 pm. At the destination, Most of the time was spent waiting in the long queue, thou everything was forgotton after completing the attraction. The food at Punjabi Desi Dhaba tasted more delicious due to the all tiredness.
On the return journey, we stopped by "Corning Museum of Glass". So now we know what exactly the Glass Museum is, when people talk about Glass Museum near Niagara Falls.
Last but not least, Most importantly this trip will be remembered for the first Speeding Ticket on I-390 for driving at 83/65 mph. It was a quite learning experience.
After some time, I made another visit to JFK, but this time it was personally emotional one, due to the parents first visit to USA. This time too it was same bumper to bumper traffic, (a JFK airport trade mark) but didn't bothered much.
Sometime circumstances force you into undesired actions.
That’s what happened when my mobile handset stopped working as it was put into water glass by our little one. Hence due to the necessity of new mobile handset, I was trapped into the 2 yrs service contract by the provider. You don’t know how much I loved getting out of previous contract. But because of above situation, the freedom didn’t last much longer.
So this will be my 4th mobile handset in last 8 years starting with Sprint-Motorola, Voice Stream-Samsung, T-mobile-Sony Ericson and now T-mobile-Moto. Thou I am not impressed with handset; I hope it will solve the purpose.
This time it was different type of documents preparation. If things work out accordingly, it will be worth spending all these efforts and money otherwise just a waste.
Spent most of the time doing xerox copies of passport, then the boring photographs and the painful medical examination. The remaining time was spent on doing fed ex.
I don't when was the last (old) 7 wonders were declared, but I know now when the New 7 wonders were announced. Glad to hear that The Taj Mahal is one of them and it tops the list.
Just to make a note for myself these are the other six monuments that made it to the list:
The Great Wall of China,
Petra in Jordan,
The Statue of Christ Redeemer in Brazil,
Machu Picchu in Peru,
The Pyramid of Chichen Itza in Mexico
The Colosseum in Rome
Having a holiday in the middle of week isn't really much helpful, The time you start enjoying it, Its gone. We've spent 30 minutes watching the firework and 90 minutes getting out of the traffic.
I always prefer watching local suburb's fireworks from near distance then the Macy's 4th of July Fireworks from far distance.
At last, this weekend will be remembered for paying $55 Parking Violation ticket for a casual visit to the park. I always put coins in parking meter without taking any chance, but this one time I took a chance and I was fined huge amount.
This visit to premium Outlet has turns out to be very fruitful; shopped for various clothings brands on bargain prices. What I liked about the Clinton Crossing Premium Outlet is, shops are organized in the straight rows making it easy to cover everything rather than just tiring your whole body.
You can cover whole outlet area in 3/4 hours on the evening time, rather than spending entire whole day at this vast Woodbury Outlet Mall, which I've been visiting last few years.
Did you know that "R2I" keyword stands for "Return to India" ?
May be you don’t until now; unless you are really planning to return to India from living abroad.
In Last few months, I’ve given serious thinking on this topic of returning to India due to many factors and hence stumbled upon this keyword "R2I" after searching on web.
One of the very useful forum that encountered is "r2iclubforums"; where you can find detailed information about various topics from 'sharing a container' to 'school education' for your kids.
Its been sometime now I’ve been reading these posts randomly, whenever I get a chance. Also, Few experienced R2i’er have started blogging about their experiences, which are very interesting to read about and thus the introduction of this new tab on my iGoogle page.
The 16th Jun had some special significance in our calendar due to the above event.
Indeed the Concert was true to the expectations; a concert to remember for lifetime. We had special interest due to the Rang De Basanti songs from Pathshala to Roobaroo. All together, It was an awesome experience to enjoy songs from Dil Se, Bombay to Tamil Shivaji and the unique 'Vande Mataram' to conclude with.
As we say in Hindi, "Paisa Vasool ", a Totally Rocking one !
It was long due to visit Coromandel Cuisine for Indian food. After many failed attempt of finding this place, it was the occasion of team lunch which brought me to this restaurant.
Due to the lunch time, we tried our hands on lunch buffet which had 4 veggie-variety and 2 non-veg ones supplemented with Kabob & vegetable bhajia. Personally, I enjoyed their dessert (Rice Pudding) the most, a nice way to end your meal with the sweet and cold feeling in your mouth.
Overall the food was delicious with reasonable price tag. The atmosphere is warm and casual. Thou I couldn’t understand the logic of giving 15% Tips on lunch buffet.
Finally It has paid off ! All the efforts & stress of going thru Visitor visa process.
Thou it took almost 2 yrs, 3 attempts, 30,000 /-Rs, plenty of paper work and lots of emotions. In the end, the feeling of getting Visitor visa is comforting & uplifting.
So my advise for others who have faced rejections; keep a hope alive at least in Visitor visa case.
A casual visit to Quassy Amusement park turns out to be a family fun for the whole day. This affordable amusement park is Worth a visit, if you've kid under 3 yrs or so.
Most of the rides are quick ones with no waiting and for the grown-ups, they've Water park & Beach . Specially, I had awesome fun on this Tunnel Twister water slides.
A great way to spend your Saturday afternoon with the family !
Being a second floor tenant and having a 20 months old toddler isn’t the best combination you can ask for. Specially, If you are living in American Apartments, where everything is made up of wood.
Kids love running & jumping on hardwood floor and more when you ask them not to. This has been really disturbing ground floor neighbors.
Facing this dilemma, I was running out of options. Carpeting or changing the apartment wasn’t feasible option. Hence, the other day I found this alternative option to cover most of hardwood floor by these Play mats. These mats are made of soft foam, which might be used as shock absorbing material. It is easier to assemble and most importantly economical.
For now, I’m hoping that these mats will solve the purpose. So if you are in same situation, this might be the solution you can think of.
This long weekend will go down as major Prod release implementation.
Its Major one, Due to the 200 GB table's data migration from one schema to another schema using SQL Insert statement by partition wise. Then comparing the record counts verifications and Building Indexes and Last migrating application Synonym from old table to new table.
The whole release took almost 20hr spanning over Friday night to early morning and upto Evening. Surely, the next week will also be the busy one. Its feels different when whole world relaxing and you are working hard.
FedEx truck never bothered me before. Now every time I see a FedEx truck or plan it reminds me that they charged me hopping $48 for International Priority delivery to India.
I’ve been using USPS’s Global Priority Mail to send the documents to India, for which they charge me reasonable $10. But this time due to the non-delivery of documents I had to use FedEx. They claim to be "World On Time" and thats important in Shipping Industry and as they say "Time is Money".
Somehow this year hasn't been lucky enough to produce a single big Hit of the year. So even after reading the disappointing reviews, We thought to give a shot for this movie, Keeping in the mind the director's previous hit movie "Salaam Namasate". Thou we weren't quite happy with the outcome, We were humming few song like "Hey Shona" and "Chika Chika...Chika Chika ...Girl...!" when we came out of the theater.
The problem is this movie has too much of Racing, and every time we had wait for 100 Laps to finish.
After eating various salads in lunches at work it was time to try out one at home.
So the other day we picked the essential ingredients for the “Green salad” from the grocery store. Most importantly we needed fresh-cut Asian salad, Honey Mustard dressing, Zesty Italian Dressing, fresh Mozzarella cheese and Garlic Croutons as toppings.
It is obvious that you will have few of these items handy when you plan for salad.
Those are tomatoes, sliced cucumber, carrot, kidney beans, chick pea, green peas, white onions, green & bell peppers, Walnuts or almonds.
As for salad recipe, all you got to do is throw these veggies and toppings in big bowl, add the dressings accordingly, mix-up the entire stuff by tossing the bowl and there you have it, A fresh, tasty healthy green salad.
And thus it adds another dish, which I can make on my own.
Sometime just taking a different route might lead you to a new place. That’s what happened this weekend when we stumbled upon this great new specialty dairy store called “Stew Leonard’s”. They claim to be the World’s Largest Dairy Store.
The unique thing about this place is everything is fresh here, even the bakery products are served out of the ovens.
As New York Times says "Disneyland of Dairy Stores" because of its own milk processing plant, costumed characters, scheduled entertainment, petting zoo and animatronics throughout the stores.
Indeed, We had good time shopping here.
Pad Thai – that has become “The usual” for me at any Thai restaurant.
I love those sauteed rice noodles with the combination of veggies, garnished with crushed peanuts and coriander, served with a piece of lime.
The Occasion was another farewell team lunch at Thai restaurant.
It was raining most the weekends moreover the average temperature was below normal making it not so pleasant April.
Spent most of the week days preparing another set of Visitor Visa documents & scheduling online interview.
On positive side, Our little one has started uttering few words; few of them are papa, kaka, baba.
Finally news that has changed the perspective of living current life, it gave us much needed reality check, a reminder to plan for future.
and how can I forget Much talked, Much Hyped wedding of the year ie Ash-Abhi wedding.
What I learned today is, getting the haircut of your 18 months old is the toughest job in the world. This was the first haircut of our little one, after he started understanding the things, which makes job more difficult. Thou this was home made haircut, I'm just preparing myself for all the action in barber shop for next haircut. Thanks to my wife, she did a decent job, in cutting his hairs.
Here is one Great News !
"Taking a leap over Bangalore and Hyderabad, Pune will become the first Indian city to have a high-speed wireless Internet network. The PMC and Chennai-based Microsense, the service provider, have ensured that Pune is the first city in the country to have wireless connectivity. The project is also jointly implemented by Intel technology private ltd."
The technology used will be Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, commonly known as WiMAX, and wireless fidelity or Wi-Fi.
The first phase of 25 sq km radius encompassing PMC headquarters, Deccan Gymkhana, Model Colony, Sambhaji Park, Baner and Aundh will be made wireless by July. In the next 16 months, the entire city is expected to go wireless.
I am just hoping that in my next visit, I will be able to experience the Wi-Fi effect.
Here we go again, Home loan rates set to rise further.
In the last two years or so, banks have increased home loan rates from 6.5% to 11%, resulting in equated monthly installments (EMI) rising by 43%.
As These measures are likely to hit economic growth, For RBI the growth had now become a secondary concern; Controlling inflation is the central bank’s top priority.
Just few years ago, I would have never cared about the Interest Rate, but things are different now specially with the sinking of Dollar value against Rupees.
It feels good to be back in 70's.
Thou this time It wasn't long winter, but any winter feels like never ending one until it gets over.
I was directed to this site by my brother while he was recommending "Diwas Ase Ki" Marathi album. After spending sometime on this site, I found that its very user friendly with clean, crystal clear sound having all those new web 2.0 features like SmartList, Tagging, Instant searching (DhinganaAssist) developed by bunch of engineers.
As name suggest, This site is mainly Marathi oriented with huge inventory of Hindi songs. Certainly, I will use this site when I feel like listening original "Dhagala Lagli kal" or "Mi Dolkar" or to keep updated with latest Marathi trends.
Its(winter) not over until its over. Every winter has its own toll of snow shoveling, catching up with the fever. If you escape entire winter, then it all comes down in the last week.
It took 13 yrs for me to finally see this Kundan Shah classic. Its was long due; somehow I never got chance to see this movie and this time also I missed first 30 mins. As per songs of this movie’s are concern, I grew up on these melodies, from the favorite ‘Deewana Dil Deewana’, to romantic classic 'Ae Kash Ke Hum' to soulful emotional one 'Woh To Hai Albela'.
What I liked about the movie is the group band concept at abandon factory; those Shah Rukh's oversized blue & yellow T-shirts and this Cap, riding on his bike and who can forget that Goa locales.
According to Shah Rukh Khan, 'Kabhi Haan Kabhi Naa' remains one of his most cherished works, and he rates it as his all-time favorite film and I do agree with him.
This is one of the best thing happened with Google Personalized Homepage i.e. having Google Talk Gadget embedded in it. Now you don't have to download and install software to use it. No matter where you go, all you have to do is login to your Google account, and there it is. The beauty of this new Google Talk is every conversation starts in new tab,without having a need to manage all those IM windows.
Another new feature is, If you paste a URL from YouTube or Picasa Web Albums into your chat, the Google Talk will let you preview the videos and photos right in your conversation. So you know which picture the person is talking about when you share the album.
I suppose, Its 'Google way' of doing things.
This is a new entry in our little ones toys collection; ‘Thomas Big Loader’ a first toy from 'Thomas and Friends' brand. There is something about trains that fascinates everyone and 'Thomas and Friends' have upper hand in the train toys.
This particular set is a nice piece of engineering; coordinated with sequence of events taking place by one engine. Being a software guy, I can imagine lot of logical thinking has been put in this toy while designing it. One wrong placement or mismatch can spoil the entire game, by unit colliding with each other.
Thou I wouldn’t recommend for little ones; an interesting one for big ones.
This is just to remind that, The ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 has started today. Another four years have passed on.
Even thou, I do not follow much these days, the website browsing and TV news does update you with the latests.
Its been sometime now, I have been driving on GSP(Garden State Parkway) but this is the first that I drove all the way from beginning to end for almost 170 miles on a visit to Atlantic City.
Speaking of Atlantic city, somehow due to some circumstances I am not able to avoid visiting this place. It just calls me after 1/2 years.
There were years when hardly few could make in the list of Forbes Billionaire Club from India. This has been changed drastically in the last 2/3 years. Now, India has the largest number of billionaires among the top 20 after the United States. Also, India became home to the most billionaires in Asia, pushing Japan back to the No. 2 spot.
What a contrast having most billionaires and poorer in the same country !
A colleague of mine pointed out this very helpful Stock Simulator from Investopedia. Basically it simulates the experience of trading in the stock market by connecting to a real-life data feed and allowing you to invest $100,000 of virtual cash in your choice of stocks.
This is how sample portfolio looks like:
I found it is very useful for everybody from beginners who have never placed a trade to sophisticated investors who are looking to test out advanced investing strategies.
Certainly, It can educate a person in more detail about market terminology like Limit/Stop orders,Day Order, Good Till Canceled. It also provides hands-on experience for beginners & students without getting their hands burned in stock market.
One of my office colleague got these very unique chocolates called “Anthon Berg” which are originally imported from Denmark.
The specialty of these chocolates is they are filled with real Liquors from inside. The Liquors variety range from Stoli Orange, Borghetti, Jack Daniel's Whiskey to Malibu Rum.
I guess, Thats the best combination one could imagine with chocolate.
“T.M.X. Tickle Me Elmo” was the most desired toy of 2006’s Christmas. During that time it was overly priced above $100 due to all media hype. Also this happened due to limited supply and huge demand.
No Way, I could have paid that much money for this toy. But when I saw it today on Toys "R" Us, It was listed for $36.99. So finally after thinking many many times, I bought this toy for my kid and I still think I paid too much.
Its been almost 6 months, we hadn’t seen any movie in the theater. So when “Eklavya: The Royal Guard” was released on 16th February; we decided to head for the theater. The decision was supported by good reviews and foreseeing no good release in near future.
The movie starts on silent note, before you settle down it goes into Intermission and soon it ends. Few times, the silence was disturbed by the baby talk done by our kid.
On positive side, Movie has great camera work and visuals, Specially the Rajasthan locations. I loved that majestic fort situated in those green mountains.
Mohegan Sun, that was the only option I could think of, when we wanted to spend some quality time on cold evening with our toddlers. Thou I am not big fan of casino, while I was in New Jersey I always stayed away from Atlantic City as much as I could.
The good thing about Mohegan Sun is, It provides free parking, so even if you don’t win you don’t pay for parking unlike Atlantic City. You can take your kids inside; thou not in casino area and they can always enjoy in Kids area. Everything is under one roof so you don’t waste you energy walking. Also In winter you can keep yourself warm.
Most importantly this time, I did see the person who in fact won in the gambling and that was my friend who got lucky in 25 cents slot machine to win $400.
Now you can add this Blog to your Google Personalize Homepage, by clicking on "Add to Google" button. This way, you can read the blog entries from your Homepage rather than visiting this blog everyday.
Here is a link , If you need such kind of button for your blog.
There are some songs that bring back the old memories of my guitar playing experience, which I tried to learn during those days. One of a song among them is “Isthara Ashiqi Ka” from Imtihaan, which was playing on television today and suddenly I was lost in those Guitar notes for a moment. Felt like grabbing that Guitar and playing it, But it wasn’t there.
Speaking of 'Imtihaan' movie; It has some of the most romantic songs of 90's for ex the lovely "Do Baatein Ho Sakti Hai".
Its been sometime that I've started using Google's Personalized Home in a real proper way.
There are many useful Gadgets to customize it, But for me 'ICICI Exchange Rate' Gadget turns out to be very handy one to find out Exchange Rate between USD to INR. In fact it shows the actual ICICI exchange rate not the market one.
From last few days I've been noticing lot of India related artical on BBC News Front Page; It turns out that BBC World Service dedicating a week of special programmes from Saturday 3 February to Sunday 11 February 2007 looking at how India is changing.
This Special Report includes many interesting articals on Rising India.
Finally, it’s here. Windows Vista has been released worldwide to the general public; It will start appearing in retail stores from today onwards.
For me, I am just counting the days when I will get a chance to really work on it. Unfortunately, my current Laptop won’t be supporting Windows Vista and I’ve no plan to buy new one for quite sometime. So Just wait and watch for now.
Thou, I am really impressed with GUI after seeing the screen shots of borderless windows and love that Segoe UI font.
Sometime having a Real Cash is all that matters.
Today, I had cup of soup from the office cafeteria which was priced at $1.50 but as I was running out of cash and due to no credit card below $20 policy; I had to use another banks ATM to withdraw the real cash which charged me $1.95 as ATM fee. Now that’s what I call overpaying for something.
Thou being a smart guy I do keep some reserved cash in my wallet for such kind of emergency, but that too get spent after certain period; forcing you in a such situation where are just helpless.
It would be interesting to see how this graphs turns out in next 5 yrs or so. Will it look like a Skyscraper as it looks now or it will be different picture all together ?
This is graph of top 3 Indian IT companies recently know as Bangalore Tigers. I believe after certain point, It makes sense to split the company due to No of employees and area of expertise.
I got this real fact #243 on the cap of Snapple bottle which says:
"If you put all the streets in New York City in straight line, they would stretch to Japan"
If that’s true, then I might have completed half of the distance during my all years walking in NYC.
Most of the time, I do follow the "Best Practices" while coding and designing in the Oracle Database. But sometime you need to work on someone else’s design that’s when you find it very difficult to change.
Here is a situation, Someone has created table in the past without proper Constraint names and due to this Oracle has created constraints with system names for ex. SYS_XXXX.
Now the requirement is to modify the Constraint to include another column as part of Primary Key. The Problem is, As constraint name is different in all database environments i.e. DEV, INT, UAT and PROD. You can not execute same release Sql script in all environments.
For. Ex.
ALTER TABLE EMP DROP CONSTRAINT SYS_CXXXXXXXX;
This command can’t not be executed in all environments as every environment might have different constraint name. As matter of fact, accidentally It might delete another useful constraint.
Thankfully, This time I found alternate solution as It was Primary Key, So I could use following command Instead of using constraint name.
ALTER TABLE EMP DROP PRIMARY KEY;
That’s why The "Best Practices" are so Important in real life.
It feels different seating on the other side of table, while taking an Interview.
I’ve quite handful experience in attending ones. But this is the first time; I got an opportunity to interview few candidates for the openings in our project.
Speaking of truth, You need same kind of preparation while taking interview otherwise you soon run out of questions. To understand the candidate’s depth of knowledge you need to ask various questions followed by sub-questions.
Average/below average candidate can answer the question easily but good candidate is the one who can also answer sub-questions confidently. This certainly explains the difference between theoretical and practical experience.
Confident is also another important factor which Interviewer looks when he expects answer. Never say “I think or I guess” while answering, which questions your ability to perform.
Overall, 'Taking an Interview' experience has definitely helped me in preparing myself for the future Interviews.
Another year, Another season of "24" on the FOX. This will be the sixth season of “24” and claims to be the most compelling one. What I like watching about "24" is when one screen gets divided into 4 parts showing different events all together covering all the happening in parallel. Just to make you excited about Next episode.
Its been over 3 yrs now that I bought my first iPod for $299; These days I rarely use it. Being an early adopter of iPod, I had invested more $$$ for less features in those early days.
Today comes the iPhone from apple, which has been marketed for $499. It combines Mobile phone, a widescreen iPod and so called Internet communications device with web browser.
This time I want to resist myself from spending the fortune for the iPhone before it gets cheaper.
