The hand that rocked the cradle...

... Now rocks the droid on Nexus 7.
Yes, my dear mother whom I got the Nexus 7 tab from my maiden US trip last year now rocks with her gadget.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how she can search and download games and spiritual stuff from the Google play store. And she does it without any help. It was just a few days back that I showed her how to use the Android marketplace, and now she's completely hooked on :) I see her play angry birds and racing games with ease.

Take a bow dear mother for being so smart even at this age, and of course cradling us into being smart fellas too!

And of course, thank you Google... This is a testimony to your simplistic yet powerful user experience!

It's uphill now....

... The same day 'she' hit the jackpot, 'her' master too hit a milestone.
Hitting 9 years of professional life, it has been one cherishing journey so far.

However, it's now that the actual uphill will start.... the expectations will now rise from both sides - the employer as well as the employee. It is gonna be fun as well as challenging going ahead...

Looking forward to more milestones in multiples of 9!

'She' hit jackpot today...

... No, am not talking about my wife. She has already hit a jackpot with me - at least that is what I believe :)

This is the Maruti Suzuki WagonR that I drive. The 6.5 years old baby clocked 77777 kms today.

Along the way it has done innumerable Pune-Mumbai-Pune trips, a few trips to Goa, Mahableshwar, Diveagar, Shirdi and a trip to Aurangabad. 

What remains on 'her' and my wishlist is an interstate trip to coastal Karnataka and another one to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. 

Being so highly reliable all the way without any major breakdown enroutes, she has been as dependable as ever.
She does show signs of aging with rattles on bad roads but it still has a punch in the belly when revved in the 'sweet' zone...

2 interesting events in its history, can be recollected now, which I have already blogged here and here.

Looking forward to 100K kms after which probably it would be thought of as a spare car. That milestone would be one childhood dream come true for me :)

Running pride

Been over a month now since I got back to my early morning jog.
It was tough to revive because of the chilly winter mornings here in Pune. But am on the track now for almost 4 days in a week easily. And I am already eating the fruits of the efforts.
Here are some motivations I have to get out of the laziness shell each morning....
1. Gives me an immense sense of pride because am the only one I see running around in the early morning chill. Do you need a better reason than pride ever?

2. When I started, it was hard to jog even 200m before running out of steam. And now I can jog almost 1.2 kms before I run out of steam for a while, and again jog a little. And certainly I don't want to 'reset to factory settings' ... If you get what I mean!

3. I have started making some new acquaintances around ... From an overweight sardar in his 40s walking with a music player in his hand to a humble security guard from a nearby apartment with whom I share pleasantries. It feels nice to connect to strangers... Probably goes well with the loquacious me :)

4. The last couple of weeks at work have been awesome... Having a big share of the problem solving pie, with some simple yet thoughtful ideas has definitely showed me that I can think better and come up with fresh ideas with the early morning pumping up of the blood vessels :)

And lastly I have gotten 'My tracks' on my droid which records and gives me some stats of my run. So it tells and pushes me to do better each day.

Anyone wanting some free counselling on getting hooked on to this wonderful, smart, effective and yet free fitness routine, feel free to drop a note. I will be happy to help.

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 :)