Enlightened ... There are no special effects.

I began reading Joel's article on great design . The question is, who can do a good design for a software. There is this argument that techies are the worst UI designers. I feel non-techies are no different. To prove the point, here is a frustrating argument I had with a business head on usability and relevance of messages. He wanted a descriptive message on every error user makes in data entry. In a user registration page, if the user entered an email address without an @ sign, we were giving a message as 'The email address isn't valid.'. The same message would be shown if the validation fails for the standard pattern matching for email address. His argument was, if the program knows what is incorrect in the value, why the hell can't we give a more helpful message - like 'You missed the @ sign in your email address.' He wanted a message that is similar to the following one. 'The email address you entered is invalid. The reasons could be one of more of...

It is a common problem that Google tries to solve . The solution is probably not a high-tech one, but no doubt it is useful. Sometime last year, there was a hard-disk crash on my computer. I began restoring the OS and other basic software; then I realized how much of a problem it is to keep your computer up-to-date. Without the latest service packs, firewalls and anti-virus software, it took lessthan five minutes for a trojan to get to my machine. I ended up spending a few nights on cleaning up my machine, download require software and their service packs. I pride myself as someone fairly informed on the problems and solutions on a Windows system. I used to think that it must be a terrible experience for a non-computer savvy person to keep a computer up-to-date in this age of trojans and viruses. I hope Google Pack would help such technology challanged people.

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.