My Movie - The Motorcycle Diaries

First, the movie is a straight forward one. No heroism, no guns, no SFX, no thread fights, no sex. It is a bland yet brilliantly honest presentation of life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara during his early 20s. The film itself is an adaptation of the book with the same name. Che goes on an motorbike tour with his friend, Alberto. The locales are original, the San Pablo leper colony scene is also wonderful. The farewell speech at the leper colony is a bit political. It is an interesting movie. I recommend it as it is more humanist than communist movie. Well I dont know what Che's soul might be feeling, if it knows that his photo is doing millions of dollars business....err evil capitalist businesses ;-)

Thanks APTECH

When I look back in my career, there are certain decisions which I felt were bad after I took in short outlook, but they proved to be great in long run.

This story goes back to 1994, when I did not get a seat in Engineering (BE/BTech). Well if you know the charged atmosphere in 1994, it seemed to be a bad bad thing. Then one of my good friends Sameer told me that he is writing an aptitude test at APTECH, Nellore and that they will waive the fees based on what we score. We both promptly wrote the exam and got 50% discount in fees. After 50% discount also the fee is quite high - around 15,000 Rs. But we both were charmed by tie clad instructors, OHP class rooms, clean AC Lab (of course running MS-DOS 5). There used to be 3 hours per week classroom instruction and unlimited lab. We used lab extensively, often playing computer games. Then I got a chance to meet Vijay, one brilliant chap who introduced me to C Language. We both bought "Let Us C" by Yashwant Kanetkar. We did overnight reading of the entire book and within next week, we purchased "Pointers in C". Then Vijay infected me with another series of books including TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident)programs. That made me a mini hacker in Aptech, and was almost kicked out of the institute when I put a TSR in the autoexec.bat and it never allowed to boot. For all the pranks I played, I had terrible guilt. I was not thinking of any career.

After that I got a bit serious and joined JNTU College of Engineering, Anantapur for MCA(Master of Computer Applications) degree. It is big college with huge buildings and very scarce manpower. We are again forced to do our first practical lab exam on paper. Imagine the plight. But there again APTECH helped me. I continued the left out course from APTECH Nellore at APTECH Anantapur. There I could use lab until we got our Windows NT lab at our college (by Sem 4). Aptech Anantapur was less glamorous and instructors are just passed out engineering grads, waiting to enter IT industry. Almost everyone who can spell software used to get H1B for Y2K those days.

With that background when I joined IT industry in 1999, I found every single thing I studied helpful. Be it my MCA project at Syntel or the architecture I had to create. I dont claim it to be cutting edge design, but the fundamentals I learned about computers in 1994 were helping me do things fast. It was like a smooth ride to open any technology be it J2EE/ EJB or Threading or working as fill-in DBA in Informix, there seemed to be nothing that I found difficult.

Thanks Aptech and thanks Daddy and Mummy for paying such exuberant fees for the financial difficulties you had. It is never a waste of money.

I am not sure how Aptech or other institutes are doing these days.

My dad joined blogosphere

It needed a little pursuance and around 15 minutes of explaining terms and creating the Blogger account, my Daddy finally decided to blog. For an avid reader of different books and a classic movie freak, I am eager to follow his blogs.

And thanks to Sukumar's appa for the motivation.

Check this out http://nellorian.blogspot.com/

Big UAT coming up

We created a new and pretty portal for one of our clients. What is unique about this is it is all about social networking. Employees of my client can use this site to blog, subscribe to RSS feeds, add friends to their network, personalize their home page etc. After gruel system testing, we will launch it into UAT mode next week. Pre UAT tasks include SSO enabling, Search integration with Endeca and bunch of configuration changes to the JVM settings. Performance testing is pending and that scares me a lot. But our team is confident that they will benchmark before release. I already increased heap size and also made GC parallel to use the two CPU cores.

Next release include enabling wikis, streaming server integration etc. Third step (in 2009) is retiring the old system and migrating the whole data from old system to new system.

Quite thrilled.

Truth and Love, once an year

Executive Compensation

I think if the executive compensation (variable component like bonuses and stock option exercising is spread over long term (around 4 years rather than annual), there may be incentive for these people to think strategically and not gamble with investments. But well..I dont know if free market economy champions agree to such things.

Money is somewhere

Who benefited from Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis? Whatever way I think, it seemed the biggest beneficiaries are realtors, mortgage brokers, builders and building industry? They must have got their cut long back? (and might have lost if they had pumped all their income into the market again).

Home owners - Lost their fortune. Their equity sometimes became negative.
Primary lenders - sold off their loans to secondary lenders. (but may have enough sub-prime mortgages in hand that needs to be disposed off)
Secondary lenders - Sitting on those loans which are getting foreclosed. Nobody will be ready to buy white elephants.
Innovative banking firms - who convert everything from baby puke to old mans worn out shirt into securities and traded them enthusiastically.
AIG like firms - invested in such securities
Shareholders- having positions in such firms
Bond holders - based on the company bonds of such companies
Retirement Investments like 401(k) - who invested in instruments having exposure to such companies and worse mortgage based securities themselves.

So, what is lost is a dream I think. Somewhere money is safe. Our optimism about the growth of money is shattered. Well isn't that not recession?

Black Monday

It happened as expected. After a querter of uncertainty, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. What it means is that their assets are less valued than their liabilities and that they will not get fresh infusion of funding from its creditors(other Wall Street Banks). Now the next steps will be Court appointing an examiner, credit board, filing of all assets and liabilities and plan for reorganization etc. None of the really bring back a historical Wall Street firm. Too bad..

The other news is Meryl Lynch being bought over by BoA. Two major investment banks out of the Wall Street landscape over 1 week end. That is preceeded by Freddie and Fannie merger, and a quarter back Bear Sterns buyout. This is definitely a very crucial time for American (and also global) financial markets.

There will be important lessons that can be learnt from any event. If I predict correct, for this sub-prime mortogage crisis, it could be "Never be too greedy".

On the side note, one friend of mine told last monday that he bought Fannie Mae stock for 2K $ the Friday before the merger weekend. Another friend of friend bought 2.5 K $ worth of LB stock on last Friday. This is nothing but financial stupidity. During such hard year when market is unpredictable, when even pros are scared to trade, what made these amateurs go and buy such stock is greed. Dont fall for it. It is not worth it.

Format Wars

Very interesting read about current wars DC versus AC. I wonder how people will feel about Betamax versus VHS or HDDVD vesus Blueray format wars 100 years from now.

My iphone 3g story

I went to window shopping iPhone and ended up buying one. First I used it for 10 minutes. I felt it very userfriendly compared to my T-Mobile Dash. It's internet browsing experience on wi-fi is second to none. 3-g speed on AT&T is OK. YouTube videos are great. I also found App Store with 100s of free apps very cool. When I called T-Mobile to check if my wife's contract is over, they told that even I am outside contract. Amusing..Then I found that that day is the last day of the current billing cycle. I would call it divine intervention (LOL). I went into store again and encountered a smart orange tshirt clad, what Apple calls 'genius'. He seemed to know all about Apple products and very less about ATT plans which Apple mandates to sell. I bought the iphone and the whole process of credit checking, number porting, and credit card swipe is all done in less than 10 minutes. It was thoroughly professional. No waste of time anywhere. The Geniuses in apple store carry a handy POS terminal  connected over wi-fi with them and come to the customers. Not like in other stores.  Then the genius asked me if I am interested in Apple Care Protection plan (70$) and other accessories like phone case, protection skin(30$ and above) etc which I denied. Then he brought the iphone from inside. The funny thing is the way he held the iphone. I wish I handled my new born son so carefully. With the light in the eyes he gave it to me and encouraged me to ---guess - access internet. Yes, not to make a call. That is where the core strength of iphone lies it seems. I made a call and I found there is a strange echo. I did not like it much. Went to ATT store in the same mall and added my wife to my iphone family plan. This process is also seamless. I played it since last 3 weeks, also used it at NYC, JFK, Subway station, Penn Station etc...I found that the reception is excellent compared to my T-mobile. Though I pay 20$ per month more than what I pay T-mobile, I think it is worth every $.

Coming to features, I will cover push email, web browsing, internet access, ipod, iTunes, you Tube and App Store

Onething I liked in Windows Mobile 6 which I miss in iphone is Exchange GAL.  Usually I do need to get some of my colleagues contact details while I am on the road. Windows Mobile Exchange access used to fetch me addresses from Company Address book. With iphone I get at most my Exchange contacts. It is certainly limiting. Calendar sync is also not as elegant as in WM6.

Web browsing is a treat. I get 3G almost every place I go in Tampa and New York and browsing is fast.  If I check in any hotel, I see wifi. So I am connected. It is a wonderful device in that aspect.

Only thing I miss is tethering iphone to use its 3G with my laptop. ATT seems to be blocking this which is a shame. We already pay for the internet..what if we use that in emergency to check email?

ipod is decent. Not a replacement for your 30GB gadget. But a wonderful alternative. if you organize your music into playlists and shuffle them often with latest ones, I think you can always carry fresh music as well as your favoirites.  It is much better than WM 6's handicapped Windows Media Player Mobile. If only Apple gives a way to insert a MicroSD card, no need to buy an ipod. But Apple knows that and hence they prevent that. Also they may be thinking in cloud terms and keep content away rather than in the device.

iTunes is good. I think I like this version than the big monolith in the laptop for its ease of use and singular nature.

You Tube is a killer app. Wonderful clarity and excellent streaming speed on both 3G and Wifi. 

App Store is another killer app. What a brilliant design? UI is clean, buying an app is a cake walk. Download of app and visual progress bar on the app being downloaded and installed is a testimony of Apple's UI poweress.

I downloaded Twitterrific, CheckPlease, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress, Googlr, Wikipanion, Currency, Units, IMPlus and Pandora. All the applications are well designed. 

My complaint - 2 weeks of usage..and none major. Perhaps security because when the users type password, each letter briefly highlights in magnified mode. I always felt that someone is watching my iphone and can read my entire password within few feet away in the line of sight. Creepy...

Otherwise...it is a good gadget...I am a happy iphone user.

What is the hype around Google Chrome

Yes it is an important milestone for Google. For a company that makes almost all it's revenue out of Web naturally wants to build a web browser. I liked the reason why they started this project. Being a Google fan, I liked the clean L&F as well as making the tab, a first class entity.

But what is it for the Internet as a whole? Did this release really revolutionalize the Web? It is making an already existing product even better. Firefox did that already before bogged down by the heaviness of the plugins and memory leaks. Firefox 3 is better. IE is improving. Safari is cool. And Opera etc are having their own share however little it might be. But the whole blogosphere is gaga over this release which seems odd. Now it seems to justify all the mileage iphone got. Well I will also blog about my new iphone..that is a separate post.

Wildlife and Conservation Photographic Expedition

One of the things I always wanted to do is a photography workshop. First I thought of trying Ken Rockwell's Rt 66 Tour. I almost booked for 2008 tour but my wife's situation did not allow that.

I came across Kalyan Varma's, a wildlife photographer's site through Indira's blog. He also conducts this workshop. Though bio-diversity is better in USA in large national parks, I might participate in India rather than at USA since in India forests disappear faster than in USA . Apart from that I love Western Ghats. So, my next India trip should include this Wildlife and Conservation Photographic Expedition.

Smile at the problems

I just came across this wonderful story of Naresh Karutura, who has an amazing attitude and smile that is inspiring. Despite the poverty and losing his legs in an accident (due to lack of proper treatment), he went to study B.Tech (CS) at IITM and joined Google Labs.

Naresh may be physically handicapped, but in his heart and mind, he has two strong legs that will take him wherever he wants to go in his life.

All the best Naresh.

Dr. Manmohan Singh won No-Confidence Vote

Who says that he is not a politician??? He is as good (or as bad) as anyone out there. Next election, he should pick a good constituency in Punjab and become a LS Member

JFK Airtrain

Just a tribute to this cool service. I wish all indian airports are as connected to their respective cities as JFK is. I usually fly into JFK even though La Guardia is closer to midtown.
From the gate to air train - 8 minutes walk
Wait for Airtrain - 5 minutes average
Airtrain ride to Jamaica Station - 12 minutes
Jamaica Station to Subway station - 6 minutes
Subway Train E to 50th Street 8th Ave - 40 minutes

A little over 1 hr 15 mins and 7$ total fare, I can be in my client office. I love it..

Homem do Ano, O (2003)

I watched this movie on Sundance Channel today. It is an interesting crime movie with a macbethian style. The casting is brilliant so is the music and editing. I did not like the underage sex. If you enjoyed Cidade De Deus (City Of God) and Godfather series or Tarenteno movies then this may appeal to your taste.

Discount Baby Products

2 weeks back my wife delivered a baby boy. So far so good. After the initial euphoria is over, I just did some number crunching... Boy.. babies are expensive.
Diapers - they like to wet them. Sometimes, as frequently as 3 in an hour.
Formula - a fine dining restaurant equivalent
Furniture - cribs, swings, bouncers, sheets, socks....everything costs more than you think they should cost
Doctor visits - they need it more than I thought. And did I mention anything about cord blood cryo storage. Let us not even go there
Toys - my son looks at nature and doesnt pay attention even to the most expensive one. But since we want to give the best, we spent quite some. Once he grows a bit big, then I see this bucket one of the biggest.
Education - If your state has no good public schools, then you are talking of 15 Grand or more..per year
Travel gear - car seat, stroller, booster seat...

What amazes me is almost every item under the sun has discounts these days. But even on Amazon, I dont see any discount price for any baby product. Even if it is there it is less than 1% average. Is it a syndicate/ racket?

But my son's smile at me in a playful mood...it is priceless

Why I like Rhapsody?

Few days back I saw a teaser deal from Rhapsody music service by Real Networks. A $9.99 value of downloads free for first 100K new registrants on their eShop. I promptly did that and started learning about their service. It is a cool site which doesn't slap DRM on the users. We can move our songs in the ubiquitous MP3 format, to any number of devices.  In the iTunes Store, we can preview any song for just 30 seconds. But on Rhapsody, we can listen to full song which is really good. The best part of the composition on any song could be after first 30 seconds for many songs. Check other features here

Aamir - the movie, FARC - the fools

Last evening I watched the movie Aamir. While the story seemed familiar, I liked Rajeev Khanelwal's performance. He emoted very well in a controlled manner. I thought the climax was a bit draggy. The big villain seemed to be prompting the hero to become a noble person. If that fellow has so much network to cause havoc, I dont understand why he cant get someone to plan the bomb. He doesnt need an NRI doctor for that IMO. The movie has good technical values and honest story telling. A must watch if you like movies like Bhopal Express, Satya etc

Last week mainstream media is full of praise for Columbian Armed forces for ending the 5 year hostage drama in a bloodless fashion. First I thought that this would make a good Bollywood movie. But wait, isn't the movie Drohikaal (or the Telugu/ Tamil movie Drohi the same story!!)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/03/hostage.drama/index.html

Interesting....

Millinials - The Whiz Kids of Indian IT Industry

I accidentally came across a bit older Gartner podcast interviewing Van Baker, VP (Research) Media Advisory Services about Millinials, the Generation Y population group. Some interesting details about them is in this wikipedia link.

I am very impressed because I got an opportunity to come across such groups in my job on day to day basis. Being in an IT services company with Global Delivery Model, our offshore team consists of three primary Persona - Old Age Managers, Mid-level Tech Leads and Gen Y developers.

My observation (highly generalized. There are many exceptions IMO)

Old Age Managers - This group is primarily TCS products (being a leading consulting services company since 1980s it can boast of producing many IT leaders in Indian IT Industry). They are well disciplined, may have strong hands-on experience (often 4/5 years) on IBM, DEC/ HP platforms. They are very process oriented and people skills are high and personal integrity unmatched.

Mid-level Tech leads - Most of them are web 1.0 folks. Strong ambition with average execution speed. Speed is the key here. Often uses institutional contacts to grow. Good PR skills and team players. Most of them still struggle to use iPods. Cannot understand dual boot OS means. Started accessing Internet during late 90s just for 1 hour on a small computer set aside. They think browsing is waste of time.

Gen Y developers - This I feel are closest to Millinials demographic. By the time they are in 10th grade/ 11th Grade, IT industry started booming. They would have decided that they will enter IT as engineers during that stage itself. Would use Orkut, Blog often, SMS a lot, would have got the internet connectivity from their 1st year BE itself. Very aggressive group. Usually confident.

The success of any company is channeling this energy into the right direction and setting the goals clear for this group. They will do wonders.