Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

This is the second stampede at Chennai in less than 2 months, in the same situation, probably triggered by same kind of mischief. I wonder how people value their health, body or life - for Rs 2000, they lose their sleep, rush in a crowd to hurt themselves and run on the throats of others who fell down. Amazing! This isn't a crowd that jostle up to have dharshan of their favorite Gods or heroes. This isn't a crowd that got trapped in a narrow lane when Gen. Dyer ordered firing or even the ones that have the catch the last bus to their village. They aren't as hungry as they were a few weeks ago, when rain water entered their houses and made life miserable as hell. The mindless act for Rs 2000 caused so much grief to so many families. Will the ones who trampled on the people below be feeling guilty? The Government seems reasonably cautious after the first one struck at Vysarpadi - some 20 km from Chennai last month. There were announcements and some policemen were post...

Managing 5 products, 10 responsibilities, always short on resources - from people to time. That is my current state. The mind works overtime and feels tired that nothing could be done to satisfaction. I turned to the Gita for some solution. The following is the conversation that restores my humility and peace of mind. Me: How can I finish all the pending work? What if the products fail even after I put in the efforts? Krishna: Put your heart and soul on the tasks and not the outcome. Your role stops there and you have no control over what happens finally. Me: But, what if the product fails? Krishna: What is the problem? The world doesn't end there. Investors continue to look for newer products, people who may lose jobs will just move to new jobs. You will continue to work. There is nothing wrong in failure. Me: If failure is just as certain as success what is the point in my efforts? Krishna: I said - there is nothing wrong in failure, I didn't say there is...

I began evaluating the new VS.NET 2005 Express for C#. I ran into the first road block when I try to connect to an existing SQL 2000 server. Apparantly the express edition doesn't allow for connecting to other databases through the UI. If I want to connect by coding, thankfully it allows it. Then I bumped into the following problem when I tried adding a Table to a dataset. Even after 5 years of .NET, looks like the IDispatch interface still survives.

Another day at work with running around for maintaining status quo. My boss dropped in and said in polite terms that if I continue to do it, I'll be as ineffective as my predecessor. Points noted. He also suggested that I do some PR job to get software developers. Our HR needs more training. It is ironic that I need to train the recruiters on recruitment. I chose to postpone the training and decided to try my hand at PR for recruitment. I managed to call this developer who works for a CMM / ISO company and gets a good salary. I have to encourage her to forget the bland office with a promise that life here is better. I am convinced that life here is better with unlimited internet, all these youngsters bubbling with enthusiasm. My experience with CMM / ISO companies had been at best forgettable. I was on bench for 6 months when I decided to quit. I'm digressing. Back to this software tech lead, she said she doesn't have time to hear me or talk about her. It sounds like a seri...

I am becoming a cribber on traffic and roads. Probably it is not just me. If you happen to endure 10 minutes of Auto in Srirangam area, you would be one too. The roads aren't paved for over a year. The reason I hear was the civic authorities were not sure if the drainage system they had built up will work or not. If it doesn't - which seems to be a high probability - they will have to dig up again; why bother with paving the roads now. They are right too - don't we complain that every thing a road is paved, someone digs it up within a week. But with Trichy, this has taken far too long. The city is making big progress towards becoming a huge garbage dump than anything else. Periyar Nagar, Ganapathy Nagar area which used to have a lot of high profile people of Trichy is unliveable now. The gutters are overflowing, roads do not exist and garbage is all over the place. No one seems to care or complain. Total decay of people and systems is very visible in this particular area.

Many in Chennai seem to have a premonition about the Oct 26-27 rains. A few months ago, writer Sujatha wrote about Mumbai rains and guessed that it might be the same with NE monsoon for Chennai this year. The local government seems to be slightly more prepared than their usual mode. So, heavy rains were expected and it did rain. Thank you Nature! On the preparedness of Chennai Corp, it seems they have improved. Some three years ago, on a nearly similar situation, people were stranded for hours together at Anna Salai. It took me 2.5 hours by bus to reach Adyar from Vadapalani. I was lucky that day. This time, police and Corp officials were seen on many roads. Water clogged roads were promptly closed and diverted. South Chennai has been fairly well managed. On North Chennai... it is altogether a different story. I had been to that part of the city for just 3-4 times, didn't stay long enough on those occasions to like the place. That's for another blog. Coming back to the rains, t...

http://www.microsoft.com/technet/community/chats/trans/sql/sq0529pm.mspx What a dumb message! If my query contains an ignored word, why the hell SQL Server can't ignore it. Thankfully, Yukon fixes the problem. A work around is given in http://staff.interesource.com/james/

Get set for the mother of all strikes We had seen relatively few strikes when NDA was the ruling coalition. When UPA came to power, the communists and socialists came out too - like the cockroches that come out when the place is dark. And they are naturally followed by strikes. During NDA government, the Supreme Court banned strikes; Tamil Nadu government crushed striking state government employees. The employees managed to get no sympathy from the common man. The strike fizzled out. I'm sure the state government employees will not think of strike for another 10 years. By that time, a new generation of lazy sloths would be there and will not remember the lack of sympathy and will probably announce a strike. Or there may be better set of responsible people who will be serious about their work - some wishful thinking. Strikes by polical parties are also low in number - you will have to give some concesssion to communists - can't call a bunch of lunatics as a political part...

How Microsoft can 'kill' Google | The Register Enough had been said in Slash Dot on why this won't work. I strongly feel that Microsoft is beginning to lose. In spite of the power and ability to crush competition, Microsoft hasn't been able to defeat Quicken in accounting Software domain. Way back in 2000, a Microsoft Money team member admitted that they would never beat Quicken. What each team in Microsoft has is paronia. That has kept them beating rivals like Netscape. With just a sense of paranoia and no innovation, it is hard to stay ahead. And innovation with out paranoia doesn't help either as we saw with Netscape.

Om Malik’s Broadband Blog » Google Made Opera Browser Free Just proves that good products don't have to have a sales team sweat it out for bringing in revenue.

Posted over 2 years ago on rediff blogs. "CMM, ISO and all such process stuff Indian companies claim about are a big illusion. The way I see it is - all these 'so called' standards are thrust upon the naive Indian businessmen by the white man to continue to control the third world. But the big picture isn't all that bad. Looks like it is pay-back time now. Big American companies pay a fortune to have the 'process' they introduced in the projects executed by Indian companies. The general assumption is process == quality. In some dumb organizations within these companies documentation == process. So, what does it really mean to have a CMM level x or an ISO certification? Customer satisfaction? May be. More business? Very likely. Real quality? Doubtful. Quality is not something that process alone can bring in. Before this becomes a commentary on Zen and the Art of .... and before my PM comes and asks for estimates I'll stop now." I think CMM has lived i...

Gov. Jeb Bush's son arrested in Texas Some 30 years from now, he is sure to run for Presidency. I hope, he won't be a danger to himself then, but not sure he won't be a danger to others - that's a trait that runs in the family.

I happen to visit Anna University to meet with the HOD of CS Department to discuss a research project that can be of some use to me. The appointment was at 10:30 and I was there at 10:15. I didn't expect her to be ready to meet me earlier. I didn't expect her to be ready to meet me at 10:30 too. So, I was there, the lady at the front desk said that the HOD is out for a viva and won't be back till 11. The options I had were - wait till the HOD returns, leave a note that I was there or just leave the place sulking. I began writing a note and was careful that I did not accuse or pass an unpleasant remark at the sense of punctuality or the indifference of the staff out there. You got to be careful with academician and make sure you don't hurt their ego. Though she can't fail me in my exams, I had nothing to gain in accusing others. So, I was as polite as I possibly can be. Before handing off the note, I wanted to try other options. I tried to contact my wife who happens...

Some folks of my team at my earlier job have good messages as their IM status message. I will omit the mushy ones and like to quote a few good ones. "I will give my right hand to be ambidextrous" - Benjamin (not exactly my team member, but the tech dude at the client side) "Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape." - Anand - poor guy was trying to adjust to a 11 AM -10 PM work schedule. "Behind every successful man stands a surprised woman." - Naveen - many will be surprised at his success. ;)

(You'll Never) Tie Me Up, (You'll Never) Tie Me Down by Ram Nagarajan on Sulekha In my second job of a contract worker at Bank of America office at Chennai, I had to wear a tie. I wrote to my uncle "ஆபீஸில் டை கட்டிக்கொள்கிறேன், கை கட்டி வேலையும் செய்கிறேன் (I was a drifter until then.) கால் கட்டுதான் பாக்கி." He promptly replied in green ink (he was the Head Master of a school) "கை கட்டு கால் கட்டு என்று என்ன சொல்கிறாய் என்று புரிகிறது. ஆனால் இப்போதைக்கு வாயைக் கட்டு; வயிற்றைக் கட்டு."

Enough statements and jokes are made on Bangalore traffic. On a recent trip, when talking to coworkers at our Bangalore office I came to know that an ex-CM has objected to the subway system that was about to begin construction. It is obvious that the politician has no clue on whether subways are better than monorails or any other rail option. Like a dog on a haystack, he will not use it nor will he allow others to have it. But who gets benefited with this block? Not the Bangalore companies - the lost productivity on traffic jams hurt them. One obvious group that will be benefited is the automobile industry - including the two wheeler manufacturers. They would use the affluence of people to sell more cars / motor bikes than have the wealthy middle class use a mass transit system. Broadly speaking, the automobile industry can bribe a politician to make more profits and outsource work to Indian companies to reduce cost on software and services. They make money - period. Politician makes m...

On my recent trip to Bangalore, I happen to see Mr. Jayakantan at Chennai Airport. I had nothing to talk to him and didn't want to invade his privacy just because he is a celebrity. Some 23 years ago, writer Sujatha had visited a friend's mom's friend's club to preside over a function. We were eager to know what would happen to Muthukumaran when he was shot by the British soldiers in the story ரத்தம் ஒரே நிறம். I chose not to meet him as I didn't feel like. My friends did and their thrill died down in a few days. May be smart people like Sujatha or Jayakantan are more interesting when you are a friend than a fan. Fans are friends of the characters and not the writers who created them.

Babies Caught Up in 'No-Fly' Confusion - Yahoo! News

I wanted to get familiar with NHibernate - a fine tool for object RDB mapping. After about two hours of work, all I have is a simple mapping of one table to a class. Most of the time, I keep searching for a nifty tool to map the DB columns to a class and auto generate the mapping XML. I haven't began understanding the representation of relationships. At this stage in career - The mind began slowing down, can't multiply 13 and 17 without a calculator. Attention span is reduced to a micro second. Eyes look for key words to click on a web page. If you don't know what PHBs are you are likely to be one.

I almost finished reading Mr. Sampath - The Printer of Malgudi by R.K.Narayan. I do want to write about it, but this is no review. Mr. Sampath is a great novel. R.K. Narayan was one the best story tellers of recent times who wasn't recognized enough in India. Literacy is around 50% in India and less than 10% know English and of that 10, 9 won't have the habit of reading books. So, statistics prove that English authors have less chance of recognition as compared to Hindi. For that matter, a great literary person in any Indian language other than Hindi doesn't get the due recognition. I'm digressing. Coming back to Sampath, it has everything to be made into a good movie. If someone dares to make a movie from this story, that will be ironical. But I have heard of this movie Mr. Sampath with Cho in the lead - but not sure if it is based on the novel. I'm sure they would have made a mess of it as they did with தனிக்குடித்தனம். A novel on paper gives so much freedom to th...

Visiting the US consulate in Chennai is an experience that most of us don’t forget in lifetime. The experiences aren’t often pleasant like the waits outside the consulate on a humid day in April or a grilling from a consulate official. I had gone through them. But there was one that is slightly different where I was a neutral observer to events. I entered the waiting hall for Consular Services in the US Consulate, Chennai at about 3 PM . I wasn't there for getting a US visa this time. I had just settled in Chennai after five years in the US . To close my bank account in the US , I had to get a notary seal from the consulate office at Chennai. So, there I was, waiting in a sleepy afternoon. The waiting hall was rectangular with the entrance on a broader side and a counter opposite to it. There were chairs on the perimeter. The entrance was not in the middle of the room, so there were fewer seats to the left than to the right. Two guys were sitting on...

Like any other upper middle class 8-year old, my son is becoming a TV, Computer addict. I’m having a tough time making him pick up reading habits and I’m getting nowhere. He wanted a Harry Potter video game and not the more popular book. I checked the price and was about to buy it for him, but thought of setting him some goals in reading before he gets his hands on the CD. The conversation went as follows. Me: I’ll order the CD after you finish reading the comic book. Son : (No answer) Me: You got to read more that will help in your imagination. Son: (No answer) [I badly wanted him to accept a goal, any goal for reading.] Me: I don’t get time to read books now. You got plenty of time, don’t waste it in TV and computer games. This is the time to read books and learn more. Me: I tell you bed-time stories. From where do you think I got them all? I read books. Son: (No response) Me: Don’t you want to tell stories to your kid when you gro...

Recently I changed jobs. My 4 minute walk to office changed to at least half hour drive to office. In the 4 minute walk all I could see were, maniac students speeding on narrow streets in their CBZs and Pulsars. There were just a couple of non-fatal crashes, in all the 4 intersections in the last two years. The statistics isn't bad even for bullock carts infested village roads. Everything changed with my new commute. I got to see a new dimension of maniac driving in the rush hour traffic in Anna Salai. I can't believe so many people are so desparately suicidal in Chennai. I don't know how fast these people go as I watch them from a relatively slow moving auto-rickshaw that has a speedometer that I can't see and that stopped working long ago. I have to think up new idioms and parallals to describe how scared I'm to be in a small vehicle in Anna Salai. Have you seen scared dogs during Diwali? I'm close. Everyone seems to be happy driving in such unsafe condition j...

Mamallapuram - My best shot ever! 

Mamallapuram - The standard View 

Blogs have undoubtedly improved the communication skills of so-called geeks. It feels good to note a number of techie writers like Chris Sells, Joel Spolsky write interesting articles not just on technology. But for blogs, I guess their sense of humour would have been restricted to official emails.

I installed the Tamil Language Interface pack for Windows XP available as a download from Microsoft. One word describes the product - terrible. I would assume the intention of developing such an interface is to enable non-English speaking people to use the computer more easily. The effort seems to be aimed at something else that I can't comprehend. But for the text that appears in standard Windows interface in Tamil, there is nothing to call it as Tamil interface. The language (use of words), structure of sentences, icons and stupid literal translation make it absolutely painful to use it. There is total lack of imagination in translation. Looks like we need a book on user interface designs in Tamil and make the architects of this tool read it. It seem Malan was responsible for the effort. This is one tool that neither Microsoft nor Malan can be proud of. I uninstalled the application exactly 1 minute after I installed it.

NOVA | Magnetic Storm | Impact on Animals | PBS "There's no scientific evidence that humans have this "sixth sense," though curiously, our brains do contain magnetite, the mineral thought to aid other animals' brains in detecting the field." It is surprising to note that little interest is shown on impact of changes in magnetic fields on human mind. May be people find it amusing to watch confused birds and animals than confused human beings. Like ghosts in the movie Sixth Sense, people see only what they want to see. They obviously do not want to see their 'so-called' negative side.

'Sachin's injury not career-threatening' Yeah Sure, His game is.

Man has been foolish enough to assume that his frame of reference is absolute. With this assumption, he can go about questioning the existence of God, creation, life etc., A realization that these questions come from an individual's frame of mind will be a humbling experience. At that time, these questions will sound too stupid. Far from being absolute, our minds are too narrow and shallow that they can't comprehend another's person's equally shallow and narrow mind. How else can we explain the strained relationships between couples, parents and children, friends and neighbours? Isn't it absurd that a genius like Stephen Hawking had a divorce?

Look at the way human minds have evolved. I view the mind as a very large database of facts... well more or less facts. It builds the database based on the inputs from sensory organs. This is too simple a statement, but the way mind builds facts are a little more complex and have been described in Vedas and philosophies of east and west. So, we kind of know that the mind is built up of facts - to use a better term - information. It is good for us, right? Not always. So, what's wrong? As the mind got strong with more information, we stop experiencing. All inputs from the sensory organs are directed to the big program called mind for more processing and for more information. So, when we see a flower, we don't just see it. The mind takes over - and goes through its database for its color, family, the people you can associate with the flower, the ones who gave the flower, the ones who crushed a flower and so on and so forth. This is a simple example that all of us can understand. H...

There are pages and pages of notes on interviews at Microsoft. Here is mine. I interviewed for SDE for the core group way back in 2001. My friends had warned me that the group is too picky and I stand a better chance if it were not the core group. I was foolishly optimistic. The first interview went off well with a recursive algorithm for finding the number of paths from one corner of a chess board to the diagonally opposite corner. The second one wasn't bad either though I missed to use a clue in optimizing a binary search. The third one was with lunch. The interviewer was friendly. I came to realize that a lunch time interview at MS is more of an interview than a lunch. I was already hungry but couldn't do well with the lunch and the interview. I guess the fourth one wasn't bad. By the time I was there for the fifth interview, I was brain dead. My mind went totally blank for questions that are simple when I'm not hungry or thirsty. I do regret not getting i...

On the last day of college at Department Computer Science, University of Pune, our Professor Dr. Shankar gave a talk on our courses. The Government of India had asked him and another famous CS Professor (known for his language books) to formulate a PG curriculum for computer Science. Dr. Shankar created a course to create computer scientists, that was the curriculum we had. (Though not many from our Department went on to become Computer Scientists, even the students at the bottom of the class were good programmers even by the standards 15 years ago.) The other professor created the curriculum which is now popularly called 'MCA'. In Dr.Shankar's opinion - that curriculum would create sophisticated clerks. What a prediction! Of the current crop of MCAs coming out of every college hardly 1% is capable of writing decent programs; In addition to the street corner colleges, we have universities offering distance education (affectionately called as karas - for correspondence) and ...

It seems traffic in Bangalore is a pet crib for most Bangaloreans. Chennai isn't far behind on the traffic chaos. With its less efficient traffic management and more corrupt traffic cops, Chennai must be worse. But thankfully, Chennai has a reasonable rail system and a road network that lessens the traffic woes. I'm surprised at Bangaloreans, they keep getting bigger and bigger vehicles, with road space reducing everyday. Do they think of the traffic, losing patience and rising blood pressure when they go out to buy a gas guzzling SUV? Hope not. I wish someone organizes some kind of race in testing conditions like Bangalore traffic. The formula 1 and dirt tracks are no match for a ride in Bangalore traffic. The existing types of race do not have the conditions one would face in Bangalore road. Bikes cutting 2-3 lanes in front of speeding cars, auto rickshaws crowding in front to get ahead in a signal, cows, horse drawn carts, cycles and the buses that have to fight for road spa...

தமிழில் வலைக்குறிப்பு எழுதமுடியும் என்று ஆரம்பித்தேன். Blogspotன் எடிட்டருக்கும் என் கணினியில் உள்ள IMEக்கும் ஒத்துப்போகவில்லை. அதனால், Notepadல் ஆரம்பித்து பின் Blogspotன் எடிட்டரில் Copy செய்கிறேன். தமிழில் மிகச்சில மென்பொருள் கலைச்சொற்கள் பழகிவிட்டன. பல OpenOfficeஇலும், Office XPயிலும் நம்மை படாத பாடு படுத்துகின்றன. Copyக்கு நமக்குத்தெரிந்த தமிழில் என்ன சொல்?

This is a new concept in programming, I'm still trying to comprehend the use of it. One good reference is Sam Ruby's Continuations for Curmudgeons . One obvious use of it is in iterators. C# 2.0 offers to 'yield' a result and maintain the state of an iterator. My doubts on this are- What is the scope of the continuation? Does a function that offers continuation keep track of caller's context like thread from which it is called or the object context of the caller? An obvious use of continuations is in paging of database query results. This is kind of like an iterator, and can be a lot more useful. Again, the question is - if databases can support a continuation like this, don't they need to keep track of the caller application and other context information? I will post more when I understand more.

The title is a bit inaccurate. The folks we see normally are programmers, who can write code to get a problem solved. That's it. Not many go to the next level of doing it right by optimizing or ensure usage of right programming constructs. Some 10 years ago, the quality wasn't this bad. The reason may be, VB wasn't there or wasn't popular then. With the advent of VB and Power-Builder, people who can drag a mouse to draw a button can be a software developer. My project guide discouraged me from using debugger. That was a good 14 years ago. Then, the intention was to write clean code on paper before we sit in front of the terminal. There are still Java and VB developers who do not use debugger (for they do not know how to debug a program loaded by an app server like JBoss or COM+ package), but debug using print statements or MsgBox respectively. Getting them to use Log4J or trace statements is a big task. And there are developers who would log every line of code and make...

We interviewed over 20 people for software developers this week and chose just 2 or 3. They are slightly better than the usual average. The bright gets hired by the big consulting companies and put on bench and smaller companies are left to sift through the millions of mediocre for a bright developer. Two or three questions are enough to filter out the junk. These questions must involve coding. Expecting them to write a clean iteration is the first step. We can introduce some more complexity by asking questions that involve two loops. Most VB junkies bail out at this stage. The ones that cross this level can be asked to optimize the code. If someone can write a clean iteration to detect palindrome and can communicate to a decent level, he or she gets hired. So, is the state of tech. jobs in India. But how come the hundreds of good for nothing MCAs find jobs and manage to get some salary?