Dream Destination for 'Belly' Lovers

My curiosity for aviation reached a higher level when on my recent first trip to US, I was luckily on board a British Airways Boeing 747-400 Jumbo Jet.

Photo Courtesy -  www.airplane-pictures.net/

At first glance from the gate where I was about to board, I thought it was just another aircraft and seemed bigger just because I was so close. Once inside, looking at the stairs to the upper deck, I realized what seemed big was actually THE ROYALLY MIGHTY one. Having seated, I had to turn my neck a whole 120 degrees to get a complete view of the humongous wing span.

The Jumbo Jet is one of the fastest commercial carrier and is known for its long haul and large passenger carrying capacity.

Ok, now coming to the actual topic of this post... well, a video is worth 100 thousand words, and I will let this St. Maarten Caribbean Airport's video tell you where I want to head sometime in my life to have a dekko of the 'bellies'.

It could be either the bellies in the air, or the ones on the shore that could make the trip a real exciting one!
:-)

There are issues to fix...

How can I sleep when there are issues to fix,
User mistakes and code issues, they come in a mix.

Not sure if these issues should ever end,
Coz it's never perfect till all of them are mend.

For now it looks like done,
As I am left with just one.

Tomorrow might not be as busy,
But then life should not be too easy.

What I have done, seems to be the best thing,
The proof of which will be only in the pudding!

How can I sleep when there are issues to fix...

There is so much to slog...

There is so much to slog,
No time to even update this blog.

Time seems to be flying each day,
And I keep moving ahead, come what may.

Friends and colleagues advice me to rest,
And probably spend some quality time in my nest.

They do care for my well being,
But I know this slog is just for the time being.

With almost 16 hours a day spent at work last week,
This slog is not for the meek.

This slog should result in a release soon,
Else I run the risk of being termed a prune! :)

There is so much to slog...

Spouse code-review :)

Heard of code reviews in the form of peer review, manager review, architect review, but I recently leveraged and probably innovated a better form of it.

I was at home, trying to resolve a critical issue at midnight. It did need some algorithmic changes and, with my tired mind, I knew I would blow up at least a couple of scenarios.
So, faced with this situation, I just looped in my ever cooperative wifey (she does follow this blog, so you know I have to use nice words :P).

Sitting down with her, she understood the scenario in a jiffy. And then we went through the loops covering almost all possible scenarios and voila, I had indeed missed a more than a couple of scenarios.
With no existing unit-tests sadly in place for this code, the review certainly helped. We spent about 40 minutes on this, and we had put together an flawless piece of code.

Thanks wifey, you were the technical savior that night!

Must I say now, code review begins at home?

To groom or not to?

I was at this interview drive on Saturday for almost 5 odd hours. Candidates kept coming in, and it was kinda fun (or may be I just tried to enjoy myself!) talking to and having discussions with seemingly potential candidates.

By the end of the day, rather by mid-day I actually started feeling sad for the IT population that I have been grilling for the last few years. In fact, one of the candidates from one of the most popular IT state of southern India, had come in with a 3+ years of experience to show on paper, but was one really ungroomed chap. With an unshaven face, donning a pair of sandals, and nothing much (in fact nothing at all!) to show off technically, he seemed like a person straight out of exile :-)

I felt kinda sad for such population, coming from a small hamlet, and getting a sneak into the IT industry they probably never underwent any grooming sessions or even cared for such a thing.
At least a couple of times, I thought about sharing my email address with him so as to help him groom a little, of course only if he showed any willingness to, and even help him with some technical skills. This could have helped him cracked future interviews, and I'd have gained myself some karmic points too :-)

Not sure if my professional obligations allow me to share contact details with a rejected candidate, if it does, I would love to get into this path to voluntarily help groom people.
Am sure it'd give immense satisfaction to help groom people from where they are, to a point where they could stride on their own...

Geeky ergonomics

Got this via email from a chum.

He believes, that this would be apt for me to buy and use. I guess if this is manufactured, it would appear in one of those late night tele-shopping programs. And probably, I'd offer to endorse it too :)

Upgraded my Nokia...

... after a long stint of time, and lot of criticisms from wifey on my old Nokia classic phone, I finally 'upgraded' a few weeks back. The reason for upgrade was not criticisms from wifey or close friends, but because the Nokia was conked to such an extent that every time I tried opening a message in the inbox, it used to re-boot.
It was a nice phone, and worked for me quite well especially with the Opera Mini I'd installed on it for browsing FB and occasionally checking GMail at work.

The 'upgrade' is a much better one with a few features more than on the Nokia. It is the best that could come at that price and can beat some big players hands down in the segment.

Here is what I have now! :)

Travelogue - Bhuleshwar near Pune

It was quite some time, we had been on an outing over a weekend. Most of the time, weekends are kept aside, just like almost every working couple does, to run errands, stock up groceries, browsing and occasionally  watching an odd movie from the pile of downloaded movies.














Browsing for places to visit around pune for the 139th time, I had very less hope that I would get an unexplored place to visit, till I came across a place 'Bhuleshwar' - It's an old temple on top of a hill about 8Kms off Yavat on Pune-Solapur highway.



















The place also has a mention on this page of Wikipedia. It is about 60 Kms from Pune and a decent place to capture some nice pictures of mother nature, be in a serene surroundings, away from the noise and rush of the city. More importantly, not being too far, it can be done in half a day leaving time for the activities I mentioned earlier.


Post the trip, someone told me it's even nicer during the monsoon when a wide variety of birds can be seen... Probably, we would visit the place yet again.






Hope you like the pictures :)

New wine in old bottle

Pun intended on that of course...

And that is what I call, when you get a new lease of life at an old place. I cannot be more specific here for professional reasons, but it has something to do with my recent post.

Wishing myself lot of luck as I turn onto some new wine in an older bottle...

'Healthily Unwealthy'

Had some good sizzlers yesterday for dinner along with some good friends and poor jokes as 'side-dishes'.
Though the Sizzlers that we ordered were good for health, rather relatively better than other options while eating out, the check that came by wasn't correspondingly good for wealth.

Just made me wonder if there is a term like 'Healthily Unwealthy' or may be 'Unwealthily healthy' which means something is good for your health, but not so good for your wealth.

If something bad for your health is unhealthy, why can't something bad for your wealth be coined as 'unwealthy'? :-)