[{"content":"It is not straightforward to have your favorite programs that are not installed via package manager appear on Ubuntu (14.04) launcher. Couple of ways to do that:\nSometimes, when the program is up, you can just right click and say “add to launcher”. It would work for most programs. However, this will fail for editors such as PyCharm that maintain project state and the launcher added this way will point to the specific project. The right way to do is this: Create a .desktop entry For instance, for pycharm, do : $ sudo nano /usr/share/applications/pycharm.desktop [Desktop Entry] Name=PyCharm Type=Application Exec=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.sh Terminal=false Icon=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.png Comment=PyCharm community edition 4.0.5 NoDisplay=false Categories=Development;IDE Name[en]=pycharm.desktop * You can then search for the entry in main “Search” in the launcher, and simply drag and drop the pycharm.desktop entry that you would find on to the launcher. That is it.\n","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2015-04-02-adding-custom-launcher-in-ubuntu/","section":"Posts","summary":"It is not straightforward to have your favorite programs that are not installed via package manager appear on Ubuntu (14.04) launcher. Couple of ways to do that:\nSometimes, when the program is up, you can just right click and say “add to launcher”. It would work for most programs. However, this will fail for editors such as PyCharm that maintain project state and the launcher added this way will point to the specific project. The right way to do is this: Create a .desktop entry For instance, for pycharm, do : $ sudo nano /usr/share/applications/pycharm.desktop [Desktop Entry] Name=PyCharm Type=Application Exec=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.sh Terminal=false Icon=/home/hvishwanath/Downloads/pycharm-community-4.0.5/bin/pycharm.png Comment=PyCharm community edition 4.0.5 NoDisplay=false Categories=Development;IDE Name[en]=pycharm.desktop * You can then search for the entry in main “Search” in the launcher, and simply drag and drop the pycharm.desktop entry that you would find on to the launcher. That is it.\n","title":"Adding a custom launcher in Ubuntu","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/","section":"Home","summary":"","title":"Home","type":"page"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/launcher/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Launcher","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/linux/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Linux","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/","section":"Posts","summary":"","title":"Posts","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/pycharm/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Pycharm","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tags","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"2 April 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/ubuntu/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ubuntu","type":"tags"},{"content":" 1. Background # 1.1 OASIS - The organization behind CAMP # OASIS is a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. The consortium has representation from private/public sector technology leaders and influencers and has over 5K participants from over 600 organizations! They are behind various standards such as MQTT, Web services security etc., A full list is here.\n1.2 CAMP (Cloud application management for platforms) # CAMP is an open specification defining artifacts and APIs that need to be offered by complying PaaS providers. It’s purpose is to enable interoperability among self-service interfaces to PaaS clouds so that applications can be (relatively) easily ported across different complying PaaS clouds. Why would people accept this?\nPaaS consumers\nCan achieve portability between clouds Can benefit from quality implementations when accepted by a wide variety of people Cloud Providers\nThe management API offered by a PaaS platform will most likely not be seen as a differentiator amongst competitors. Supporting an open specification will turn out be an advantage because customers would prefer compliant platforms over locked-in ones. This will help providers address “portability between clouds” and thereby increase the market for PaaS consumption. The spec draws from insights and experience of well known players and people in the field. The specification actually makes a good proposal of building robust and flexible PaaS offerings, at the same time giving enough hooks to the provider to customize where needed.\n2. The CAMP Spec # 2.1 TL;DR Version # Here is a mindmap capturing essentials of the spec. Download\n2.2 TL version # The full specification can be found here I will be examining the spec from the following angles:\nPaaS Provider: How does CAMP propose I design my resources? What does it take to create a simple CAMP compliant paas platform? Will the spec help me take care of specific issues/offerings unique to my PaaS? App Developer: How do I write my applications so that it becomes CAMP compliant? Will the spec help me in articulating very specific requirements that I have for a given PaaS? This post will touch upon CAMP spec in general. I will also do further posts looking into specific PaaS usecases (heroku, openshift, cloudfoundry etc.,) and how to model my app’s requirements using CAMP specification. Please note that, for the sake of brevity, I will not delve into greater detail into the aspects of platform extensions, metadata, type/parameter definitions etc., of the specification.\n2.3 Diving in # 2.3.1 Scope # The interfaces exposed by the components and services in a PaaS system can be broadly split into two categories; functional interfaces and management interfaces. Functional interfaces are those that involve the specific utility provided by that component. For example, the interface used to submit a message to a message queuing service is as a functional interface. Management interfaces are those that deal with the administration of components. For example, the interface used to deploy and start an application on the platform is a management interface. The specification of functional interfaces is out of scope for this document. In its core, CAMP v1.1 defines:\nResources : A set of resources that can be used to model a PaaS offering. The representation and operations on these resources are made available over secure RESTful APIs. PDP: (Platform deployment package) format: Description of how an application needs to be packaged so that it can be hosted on a complying PaaS platform. 2.4 Resources # Most of the PaaS offerings provide self service management API for the platform so that developers and administrator can manage applications and its use of the platform. Below is a typical view of manageability provided by most PaaS platforms: Courtesy: CAMP specification document The CAMP API is made up of resources in a REST protocol. The resources represent elements of the underlying system. The protocol enables interaction with the resources. The following are the main resources in the API: Refer to the TL;DR version for an overview of resources\n2.4.1 Resource Definitions # 2.4.1.1. CAMP Resource # This is the base resource from which all other resources are implemented. Has the following attributes:\nuri: URI name: String description: String tags: StringArray type: String representation_skew: String 2.4.1.2. Platform # Identifies the CAMP provider platform and gives a primary view of what is running on the paas platform.\nsupported_formats_uri: URI extensions_uri: URI type_definitions_uri : URI platform_endpoints_uri: URI specification_version: String implementation_version: String assemblies_uri: URI services_uri: URI plans_uri: URI parameterDefinitions_uri: URI 2.4.1.3. Assembly # Identifies an application on the platform. Is made up of components and services. Operations on this resource will effect its constituent components.\ncomponents: LinkArray plan_uri: URI operations_uri: URI sensors_uri: URI 2.4.1.4. Assemblies # A collection of assembly resources.\nassembly_links: LinkArray parameter_definitions_uri: URI 2.4.1.5. Service # Blueprint for creating component resources that utilize or embody a platform provided service.\nparameter_definitions_uri: URI characteristics: CharacteristicsSpecArray[] 2.4.1.6. Services # A collection of service resources\nservice_links: LinkArray 2.4.1.7. Component # Rrepresents a discrete/dynamic element of an app. Ex. a deployed ruby gem, a war file, set of entries in LDAP directory etc.,\nassemblies: LinkArray artifact:uri service:uri status: String external_management_resource: URI related_components: linkArray operations_uri: URI sensors_uri: URI 2.4.1.8. Plan # Plan is the meta-data that provides a description of the artifacts and services that make up an application.\ncamp_version : String origin : String artifacts : StringArray services : StringArray 2.4.1.9. Plans # Collection of plan resources\nplan_links: LinkArray parameter_definitions_uri: URI 2.4.2 Resource Actions # Other than the standard operations allowed over HTTP (GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, PATCH etc.,), if there are other operations and values that need to be done over the defined resources, CAMP makes way for it by defining sensors and operations on any camp resource.\nSensors # A sensor resource exposes dynamic data about resources such as state, metrics, consumption etc., For instance, the start/stop/restart operations on an app can be defined as a Sensor whose type can be “STATE” and possible values can be “STARTED, STOPPED etc.,”. It is also possible to define operations on writeable sensors (ex. state, metrics collection frequency etc.,) Sensor\ntarget_resource:uri sensor_type: String value: String timestamp : Timestamp operations_uri: URI Sensors\ntarget_resource: camp_resource sensor_links: LinkArray Operations # An operation resource represents actions that can be taken on a camp resource or it’s sensors. It affects the properties of a resource. Operation\ntarget_resource:uri Operations\noperations target_resource: uri operation_links: LinkArray Multiple operation resources and sensor resources can be exposed both on assembly resources and component resources. Operations are also known as effectors. The combination of Operations and Sensors enables ongoing management. This can include automation techniques such as using policies, event-condition-action paradigms, or autonomic control. A Consumer can use the REST API to perform such management. A Provider can also use them. For example, a component resource could be offered that allows for “autoscaling” capacity based on the volume of work an application performs.\n2.4.3 Attribute types # The spec defines a top level CampCommonType. Further the following types are defined:\nboolean string timestamp uri resource_state link linkarray characterstic_spec characterstic_spec_array string_array It is possible to extend the data types by using platform extensions and customizations.\n2.4.4 Extensions and Customizations # The specification allows easy extendability by allowing extensions and capability to support multiple platform endpoints Capability to define additional parameters on any camp_resource. The defined parameters above are normative and must be supported. Capability to support multiple endpoints and versions. The spec also makes it easy for a consumer to discover the offering. The spec also talks about resource relationships, possible extensions, customizations etc., in detail. I will not get into those details for the purpose of this document.\n2.4.5 Representation skew # There can be situations in which the information in the resources provided by the CAMP API is not a complete or accurate representation of the state of the underlying implementation. For example, while generating a new instance of an application, a CAMP server might be asked to provide a representation of a Component that corresponds to a dataset that is in the process of being loaded onto a database. While the CAMP server might not be able to provide all of the information about this Component, it would be inaccurate to say that the Component does not exist; it exists but in an intermediate state. I Such exceptions can be represented using the representation_skew attribute of most camp resources.\n2.5 Platform Deployment Package (PDP) # The other important aspect of the camp specification is the laying out of an application. PDP ensures portability across platforms.\n2.5.1 PDP Package structure # Can be a .tar, .tgz or a .zip\nShould contain camp.yaml (plan file) at the root of the package\nSupport for Integrity checks\nA manifest file (camp.mf) containing sha256 digests of files in package An X.509 certificate (camp.cert) at the root that contains signed sha256 digest for camp.mf with x.509 certificate. Format of manifest is same as in OVF spec 2.5.2 Plan file # The Plan provides a description of the artifacts that make up an application, the services that are required to execute or utilize those artifacts, and the relationship of the artifacts to those services. As discussed previously, Plans can be represented in two ways, either as YAML files or as CAMP resources. The examples in this section show Plans as YAML files. A plan file is named as camp.yaml and should adhere to the YAML specification. If present, it should be in the root of the PDP.\n2.5.2.1 Type Nodes # Each node in the camp.yaml file is identified by its type node. ‘Type’ nodes are strings that describe entities that are managed by CAMP, but whose value and semantics are defined outside the specification. For example, a group of PaaS providers could agree to use the artifact type “org.rpm:RPM” to identify RPM packages.\n2.5.2.2 Artifacts # Units that make up the application Identified by artifact_type which is a type node content attribute refers to the location of the artifact Each artifact can specify requirements indicating what to do with the artifact 2.5.2.3 Requirements # identified by requirement_type (type node) can specify specific flags relevant to the type of the requriement Example:\n00 camp_version: CAMP 1.1 01 artifacts: 02 - 03 artifact_type: org.rpm:RPM 04 content: { my-app.rpm } 05 requirements: 06 - 07 requirement_type: org.rpm:Install 08 org.rpm.installopts.excludedocs: true In the above yaml file, it is specified that the artifact’s requirement is that it needs to be installed. Further more, parameters specific to the requirement can also be specified - such as: org.rpm.installopts.excludedocs: true\n2.5.2.4 Fulfillment criteria # Each requirement can further specify how exactly that requirement has to be fulfilled. Each fulfillment criteria is made of characteristics that is identified by a characterstic_type and can contain additional types based on its type. Ex.\n00 camp_version: CAMP 1.1 01 artifacts: 02 - 03 artifact_type: org.rpm:RPM 04 content: { my-app.rpm } 05 requirements: 06 - 07 requirement_type: org.rpm:Install 08 org.rpm.installopts.excludedocs: true 09 fulfillment: 10 characteristics: 11 - 12 characteristic_type: com.example:Linux 13 com.example.linux.kernelVersion: [3.9.6] 14 org.iaas.bitsize: 64 In the above example, the developer is able to clearly articulate that the rpm he wants to install should be done so on a 64 bit linux machine with a kernel version of 3.9.6! Though this provides lot of flexibility, this comes at a cost of portability. Furthermore, most of the PaaS players will not let app developer / administrator get to such fine grained infrastructure level details for this falls into the IaaS realm!\n2.5.2.5 Services # Applications artifacts may need to share services (ex. db). Such requirements can be declared in a separate section called services and will be identified by its id attribute. Each artifact’s requirement criteria can now refer to the service spec via its uniqe id. Example:\n00 camp_version: CAMP 1.1 01 artifacts: 02 - 03 artifact_type: com.java:WAR 04 content: { href: vitaminder.war } 05 requirements: 06 - 07 requirement_type: com.java:HostOn 08 com.java.servlet.contextName: \u0026#34;/vitaM\u0026#34; 09 fulfillment: 10 … 11 - 12 requirement_type: com.java.jdbc:ConnectTo 13 fulfillment: id:db 14 - 15 artifact_type: org.sql:SqlScript 16 content: { href: vitaminder.sql } 17 requirements: 18 - 19 requirement_type: org.sql:ExecuteAt 20 fulfillment: id:db 21 services: 22 - 23 id: db 24 characteristics: 25 - 26 characteristic_type: org.storage.db:RDBM 27 … 28 - 29 characteristic_type: org.storage.db:Replication 30 … 31 - 32 characteristic_type: org.iso.sql:SQL In the above example, both the warfile artifact and the sql_script artifact refer to the same database requirement using id:db.\n","date":"18 February 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2015-02-18-dissecting-oasis-camp-specification/","section":"Posts","summary":"1. Background # 1.1 OASIS - The organization behind CAMP # OASIS is a non-profit consortium that drives the development, convergence and adoption of open standards for the global information society. The consortium has representation from private/public sector technology leaders and influencers and has over 5K participants from over 600 organizations! They are behind various standards such as MQTT, Web services security etc., A full list is here.\n","title":"Dissecting the OASIS CAMP Specification","type":"posts"},{"content":"Yes. I have decided to respect my computer more, starting 1 Jan 2015. It does deserve more respect considering how I handled it before - looking down, looking up, on the lap, on the tummy etc., Starting this year, I shall stand before it, with renewed respect. In other words, I switched to a fully jugaad standing desk at work. I have read before about people that switched to a standing desk, and thought it could be fun to try it. It all started when I discovered (accidentally) that the desks at work are height adjustable. Though not to the extent of being able to stand and work, it opened up doors for jugaad and experimentation. So, here it is in its current configuration! The desk is worldclass, is height adjustable. However, when its design was conceived, the designer wouldn’t have imagined IT folks will be longing to stand at work. Two hollow wooden boxes adding about 10 inches height for both the legs. Do you see the black lever towards left of the desk? That is the one to adjust height, depending on how high I stand on a particular day (Read: The height of your shoes matters too!) The 300 INR plastic stool to prop up the display. The vertical mouse. To balance out the curved surface of the ergo keyboard so that when I switch between keyboard and mouse, my hand remains almost at the same height. A cut up gravolite yoga mat (you can see it rolled up and kept in the hollow wooden box). When I want to work barefoot, I use it as padding under my feet. And of course, the more or less unused chair. So, How am I feeling!? # gReAT : If you can imagine that small letters indicate a so-so experience, and caps to indicate a good experience, this is precisely what I felt, gReAT - in that temporal order. First couple of days: so-so. Your feet hurts, ankles hurt, thigh hurts and in general the body hurts. It has to, since it is being rudely forced out of what it knows best to do for the past 10 years (sit on a chair and forget about the lower limb). But in a few days, you get used to it. Then it feels good: It starts feeling good as the week progresses. I felt a general body ache, the good kind, like the initial days of your gym workout. It feels great. Then the weekend comes. And the next working day - not so good. I had to struggle to keep my focus on work in the initial few days. After about 7-8 days, you stop noticing the fact that you are standing at work. And most likely, the muscles have adapted too. ERGONOMICS MATTER Switching to a standing desk has made me realize the importance of ergonomics. Even a slight deviation from the neutral position of your head, wrists, back causes noticeable muscle tension and pain. The top of your display should be at the same height (or may be an inch taller) as your head when you are standing The keyboard and mouse should be at the height of your elbows, so that your hands can operate them bending 90 degrees at the elbow joing Stand straight. So that your spine is in its neutral position (it’s natural S shape) Though all the above are true when you sit at the desk, I never felt the need to make required arrangements. My head was probably looking down at the display. My hands were raised above the elbow height. I never sat in the straight position! GAINS Stronger legs and back. Awareness of your lower limb Most likely a correct posture while working You will see the approaching somebody much earlier, so that you can make required adjustments You certainly are burning more calories compared to sitting. You will most likely develop liking towards meetings - perhaps your only chance to sit during the day. You can have more people in your cube for a brainstorming or debugging session. Since everybody is standing, there is no unnecessary space required for chairs. QUIRKS Be careful with what you eat. You can no longer muffle those farts like you would while you are on a chair! :) Yes, your display will be visible to the entire floor. So, don’t do stupid things. I became extremely sensitive to non-neutral positions. Like, when I just want to sit on a couch with laptop for some light work, I start noticing that my hands/head/back is stressed. Had to change my work setup at home too! A word of caution though! Apparently too much standing is not good either. It can cause clots in your veins (people cite examples of barbers who will stand throughout the day). But hey, how good is sitting throughout the day anyway!?\nWritten with StackEdit.\n","date":"29 January 2015","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2015-01-29-oh-mighty-computer-i-stand-before-thee/","section":"Posts","summary":"Yes. I have decided to respect my computer more, starting 1 Jan 2015. It does deserve more respect considering how I handled it before - looking down, looking up, on the lap, on the tummy etc., Starting this year, I shall stand before it, with renewed respect. In other words, I switched to a fully jugaad standing desk at work. I have read before about people that switched to a standing desk, and thought it could be fun to try it. It all started when I discovered (accidentally) that the desks at work are height adjustable. Though not to the extent of being able to stand and work, it opened up doors for jugaad and experimentation. So, here it is in its current configuration! ","title":"Oh mighty computer, I stand before thee!","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"9 October 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/qemu/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Qemu","type":"tags"},{"content":"Qemu is a very useful utility to play around with your code/application environment before you are ready to package it as a virtual appliance. Though there are various wikis available to help you setup networking between qemu guest and your host machine, I found that the steps required to setup TUN/TAP networking so that the guest is accessible from your extended network was either not accurate, or was not put in simple terms. So, here goes. Assuming that you are using Debian/Ubuntu as your host OS and you have qemu and necessary qemu-managers installed.\nAdd an additional interface (eth1) to your ubuntu host, assuming the ubuntu host is itself a virtual machine. Create a bridge interface [ A bridge is used to connect two different network segements. In this case, your qemu guest OS with the rest of the network ]. To create a bridge, modify /etc/network/interfaces on Ubuntu host to create bridge and get dhcp address . This will also make eth0 come up without IP. # Replace old eth0 config with br0 auto br0 # Use old eth0 config for br0, plus bridge stuff iface br0 inet dhcp bridge_ports eth0 bridge_stp off bridge_maxwait 0 bridge_fd 0 Install uml-utilities to get a package called tunctl which helps in managing tunnel interfaces. sudo apt-get install uml-utilities Modify /etc/qemu-ifup : set -x switch=br0 if [ -n \u0026#34;$1\u0026#34; ];then /usr/bin/sudo /usr/sbin/tunctl -u `whoami` -t $1 /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/ip link set $1 up sleep 0.5s /usr/bin/sudo /sbin/brctl addif $switch $1 exit 0 else echo \u0026#34;Error: no interface specified\u0026#34; exit 1 fi You can test this by running this script as :\ncd /etc/ ./qemu-ifup tap0 This will create a tap0 interface, and add br0 as a bridge to this.\nModify /etc/qemu-ifdown : /usr/sbin/tunctl -d $1 This will delete the tap0 interface.\nStart the image using the following command : qemu-system-x86_64 -hda \u0026#39;/path/to/your/image/myimg.img\u0026#39; -m 256 -net nic,model=e1000, -net tap,ifname=tap0,script=/etc/qemu-ifup,downscript=/etc/qemu-ifdown Couple of observations here :\n-net nic,model=e1000, -net tap,ifname=tap0 Set the n/w interface model as e1000. For some reason, though my underlying nic card was getting detected , the corresponding drivers were not available for qemu to load. Setting it to generic e1000 solved the problem. Furthermore, the above command is setting networking to tap, with tap0 as the interface and providing script and downscript.\n","date":"9 October 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2013-10-09-setting-up-tuntap-networking-for-qemu/","section":"Posts","summary":"Qemu is a very useful utility to play around with your code/application environment before you are ready to package it as a virtual appliance. Though there are various wikis available to help you setup networking between qemu guest and your host machine, I found that the steps required to setup TUN/TAP networking so that the guest is accessible from your extended network was either not accurate, or was not put in simple terms. So, here goes. Assuming that you are using Debian/Ubuntu as your host OS and you have qemu and necessary qemu-managers installed.\n","title":"Setting up Tun/Tap networking for a Qemu Image","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"9 October 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/tech/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Tech","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"13 August 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/housemaid/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Housemaid","type":"tags"},{"content":" The (un)official guide to being a profitable house maid # So, you are a house maid. And that too in Bangalore. And you must be glad because the market has picked up considerably with all the new apartments being built, and all the fat parents and their arrogant children. And you are right to be very glad for if you play your cards right, you can end up being very profitable. Here is how :\nInception period # This period is characterized by either a new household starting up in the vicinity, or your colleague/friendenemy abandoning her current household. Ensure that you maintain good network among your other colleagues and apartment guards. You have very high chance of bumping into other housemaids during \u0026ldquo;waste disposal time\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;common corridor cleaning time\u0026rdquo; etc., Strike a good conversation by providing juicy gossips about your current household; something along the lines of how fat your house owner is all the way upto relationship problems between the husband and wife. Also ensure that you maintain good relationship with the apartment guards. They are your living job portals if you will. Giving away that tasty snack that you got from your house owner sometimes to the guard will NOT go unrewarded. If you do all the above, chances are that you will be shown to a door which will be opened by a very hopeful face desperately waiting for you to say yes. Now, when that happens to you, play cool. Look like you don\u0026rsquo;t need the job. Negotiate higher wages. Give examples of other colleagues getting paid more in other floors of the same apartment. Suit up for the occasion - nobody likes a shabby housemaid in their already shabby house. You have more than 95% chance of getting the offer. By ensuring that you negotiate for a higher price, you will contribute to the general increase in wages to other house maids too. Consider it as your professional contribution. First days of employment # Be punctual for atleast a few days into your new job. Delight your household. Some households will have nagging grandparents. They always crib about how expensive you are, how you are not doing justice to your new job, how it used to be in their days and how things have gone to dogs these days etc., Do not worry - play nice. Ensure that you squat down well while mopping. While sweeping, ensure that you go beyond the call of your duty and reach for those tricky places under the cot, or behind the refrigerator etc., Do this when they are looking. But don\u0026rsquo;t make it seem so. Basically, delight them. If you are only getting regular coffee/breakfast - you are not doing enough. If you got unused clothes, household furniture etc., then you did great. Continue this only so long that they have nothing more new to give. Be careful, if you continue to delight them for extended periods of time, you run the risk of setting high expectations - which is not cool. You may expect honesty tests in this phase. It is normally of the form where something valuable is purposefully left lying around without monitoring. If you find it and return it, you would think it will improve your image, but sometimes it would work the other way too. You could be considered a kiss-ass - so, the best bet is to simply ignore it. By doing so, you are demonstrating that you know how prudent your owner is by wanting this item to be precisely where it is currently, and you are not judging their prudence. If you are ever asked to wash the dishes more thoroughly and pointed to a speck of dust that you thought was not important to be cleaned, you can conclude that the first phase of your employment is complete and it is now safe to stop delighting them. Time it well so that you get a pay raise just before this phase ends. Studies have shown that this phase could be anywhere between 2-4 months. Sustaining phase # This is when you have a love you, hate you kind of a thing going on with your household. Believe in yourself - In this phase, you have the power to keep going as long as you want. You can drastically reduce the total time you spend on your job in that house - sometimes as much as by 60%-70%. Invest this time in professional network development, keeping yourself abreast of new opportunities etc., Make it a 6 day week. Take extended leaves. Ask for advance money. Everything works - as long as you know how to strike a balance between being confident and being downright obnoxious. If you are the sort of person who couldn\u0026rsquo;t care less about morale, values etc., you can use this time to steal stuff. The trick is to ensure that you steal the right things, which will give value to you, but it is NOT too valuable for your household. Clothes, Sandals, Non touch screen phones, money upto 500 INR per month etc., are mostly considered safe. It is very easy to get carried away and steal stuff of higher value. Don\u0026rsquo;t do this - not good in the long run. However, if you find yourself in a tight spot for stealing a valuable item, here are some time tested tips: Try to convince your owners how dire a need you had which prompted you to do it. Apologize profusely and return it back. Some tears wouldn\u0026rsquo;t hurt. If that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work and if they talk about law, police etc., claim that you will commit suicide. Most owners will have their heart in their mouths when they hear this. If that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work either - go offensive. Claim that you will complain to the police about harassment etc., If that doesn\u0026rsquo;t work - god help you. Disappear. Termination phase # Unlike other jobs, your job doesn\u0026rsquo;t have a termination policy/procedure etc., If you have done well in the previous phase, most owners will ask you to leave. Make sure you get paid for every day before you quit (including leaves). Hey, you made the best of the opportunity - good job! If you are tired of your job or have found a more rosier opportunity, it gets a little tricky. You wouldn\u0026rsquo;t want to convey this directly to your house hold. It could get a little awkward and you would be closing their doors for you. The accepted and tested approach here is: Ensure that you are paid for the previous month and only few days into the new month. Don\u0026rsquo;t go into work and tell them you are sick. You household will attempt to make contact with you either by mobile phone, or by contacting your husband. In both cases, an acceptable answer would be \u0026ldquo;will come from tomorrow\u0026rdquo;. Don\u0026rsquo;t go into work at all for as long as it takes. Normally for about 2 weeks. By this time, your household is desperate for another house maid and they will find one. You should hear about this sooner or later. Once that happens, give it a few more days. Then show up to collect the payment for additional days. If you choose to, you can be nice and inquire about the kids or the granny etc., Tell them how sick you (or your close relative) were and how sorry you are for loosing this opportunity. Remember, their is no correct answer for how long you should engage in a single job. You will need to tailor the length of each phase depending on market conditions.\nWritten with StackEdit.\n","date":"13 August 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2013-08-13-how-to-be-profitable-housemaid-4960/","section":"Posts","summary":"The (un)official guide to being a profitable house maid # So, you are a house maid. And that too in Bangalore. And you must be glad because the market has picked up considerably with all the new apartments being built, and all the fat parents and their arrogant children. And you are right to be very glad for if you play your cards right, you can end up being very profitable. Here is how :\n","title":"How to be a profitable housemaid","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"13 August 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/humour/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Humour","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"13 August 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/rant/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rant","type":"tags"},{"content":"Context : At work , I routinely have to deal with multiple workspaces and a ton of consoles. Here\u0026rsquo;s my normal work setup (which I wish will magically conjure up, the moment I dock my laptop)\nWorkspace 1: Code editor, Internet browser, File browser Workspace 2: Atleast 7 consoles arranged specifically in the available screen real estate. 3 of them show log feeds continuously, 2 of them are used to run commands, 1 runs a simulator and the other 1 is a root console (just to kill misbehaving processes mercilessly). Workspace 3: SSH terminals. Workspace 4: Unison File sync tool to sync up changes with my build box. All this is running in a Ubuntu VM on a Win 7 box. Now the sucky part : My biggest pain and the reason why I procastinate before getting to work is, everytime I dock/undock the laptop, I will have to redo the entire setup all over again! The VM will minimize the moment it sees that there is now a new display, and when you get to the full screen mode, all the consoles are mostly on the same workspace! What a nightmare it is to get them back to where they belong! I was obsessing over this trying to figure out how to make this simpler, so that I can start working as soon as I get to office.\nI was looking for a \u0026ldquo;Macro\u0026rdquo; which can arrange stuff for me - did not find any suitable solutions. gnome-terminal has some cool features. While playing with them, discovered that if you save your config file when you have arranged all your windows the way you want it to look, it will remember the window positions, rows x columns etc., gnome-terminal --save-config=/home/racoon/work_consoles And then you can:\ngnome-terminal --load-config=/home/racoon/work_consoles But the issue with this is, when you run this command from another console, that console will hide behind the other\u0026rsquo;s that would come up, and it is visibly slow to get everything arranged the way you want it to. Also if you dock/undock the arrangement is all messed up and you got to do this all over again! And then I saw the perfect solution : Terminator - Console Manager It docks multiple gnome-terminals and lets you lay them out the way you want it to. And then save the layout and get it back whenever you want! Even if your VM acts up because of change it the displays, now you have to just deal with one single terminator window and move it to any workspace you want. The rest of the terminals are safely carried by the mother spaceship! ","date":"26 July 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2013-07-26-lord-of-consoles/","section":"Posts","summary":"Context : At work , I routinely have to deal with multiple workspaces and a ton of consoles. Here’s my normal work setup (which I wish will magically conjure up, the moment I dock my laptop)\n","title":"Lord of the consoles","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"26 July 2013","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/terminator-linux-programming/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Terminator Linux Programming","type":"tags"},{"content":"I keep discovering lot of stuff at work but never document it. I have decided to document them on the blog so that it stays, and will probably be useful for somebody who is after the same thing.\nSYS V IPC limits are governed by the following kernel parameters.\nUse sysctl to view and update these parameters.\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# sysctl -a | grep kernel.msg error: permission denied on key \u0026#39;vm.compact_memory\u0026#39; kernel.msgmax = 8192 kernel.msgmni = 1655 kernel.msgmnb = 1024000 Same is also mounted on /proc\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# ll /proc/sys/kernel/msgm* -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 19 12:50 /proc/sys/kernel/msgmax -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 19 12:51 /proc/sys/kernel/msgmnb -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 19 12:46 /proc/sys/kernel/msgmni This are the default values on my system (Ubuntu 12.04).\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# ipcs -l ------ Shared Memory Limits -------- max number of segments = 4096 max seg size (kbytes) = 32768 max total shared memory (kbytes) = 8388608 min seg size (bytes) = 1 ------ Semaphore Limits -------- max number of arrays = 128 max semaphores per array = 250 max semaphores system wide = 32000 max ops per semop call = 32 semaphore max value = 32767 ------ Messages Limits -------- max queues system wide = 1655 max size of message (bytes) = 8192 default max size of queue (bytes) = 102400 I am using SYSV Message queue as a Message Broker, mainly because it provides APIs to read/write messages using a \u0026ldquo;Message ID\u0026rdquo;. If you assign a unique message to every process that you have in your software, the Message Queue can be leveraged as a message broker. More on that in a different post.\nNow, to cut the long story short, the default 16K size of the message queue was disheartening for me. To increase the size, and make it more useful for my application, I just had to add the following lines in /etc/sysctl.conf.\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# nano /etc/sysctl.conf kernel.msgmax=8192 kernel.msgmni=1655 #Increase the msgq size to 5MB from 16K kernel.msgmnb=5242880 Update the system using the conf file.\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf kernel.msgmax = 8192 kernel.msgmni = 1655 kernel.msgmnb = 5242880 You can verify it using ipcs.\nroot@ubuntu:/home/hvishwanath# ipcs -l ------ Shared Memory Limits -------- max number of segments = 4096 max seg size (kbytes) = 32768 max total shared memory (kbytes) = 8388608 min seg size (bytes) = 1 ------ Semaphore Limits -------- max number of arrays = 128 max semaphores per array = 250 max semaphores system wide = 32000 max ops per semop call = 32 semaphore max value = 32767 ------ Messages Limits -------- max queues system wide = 1655 max size of message (bytes) = 8192 default max size of queue (bytes) = 5242880 Since we have modified in sysctl.conf, this will preserved across reboots.\n","date":"19 July 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2012-07-19-changing-sys-v-msgq-limits-in-linux/","section":"Posts","summary":"I keep discovering lot of stuff at work but never document it. I have decided to document them on the blog so that it stays, and will probably be useful for somebody who is after the same thing.\n","title":"Changing SYS V MSGQ Limits in Linux / Ubuntu","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"19 July 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/ubuntu-linux-msgq-tech/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ubuntu Linux Msgq Tech","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"19 February 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/gjs/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"GJS","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"19 February 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/personal/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Personal","type":"tags"},{"content":"I knew a man - a man who probably has got everything to do with whatever I am today. To that man I am deeply indebted. He is my uncle, my father\u0026rsquo;s elder brother. I do not claim to know him inside out, but I have deep respects for him. In whatever little interactions we had, I saw the generous, knowledgeable and charismatic side of him.\nNot so long ago, my family wasn\u0026rsquo;t doing so well. We were going through a really rough time - we had to think twice to buy a 50 paise chocolate. I had just completed my Xth standard and had dreamt of going to a prestigious school in Mysore for college studies. But we were so deep in trouble, that I was considering to start working. Had it not been for my uncle, I probably wouldn\u0026rsquo;t have had means to type these words today. We went to him for help. And he gave us 10,000/- INR of his hard earned money, with only one wish - that I study well. It was just enough for us to pay my first installment of fees and join the college and we had no idea how to finance the rest of my study. I dont know what it is, but I am guessing his pure and unselfish wish that I do well in life, saw us through. I have been through many difficult times after that, but it was all possible because of that one divine and unselfish gesture of his.\nHe was going through pretty rough time these last copule of years. I tried to help in whatever I can, but he always said he would take it only when he wanted it. And today he is no more. He moved on, as a generous man who only knew how to give, and never to expect.\nGrief is a funny thing. It fills you with so much gloom that it makes you forget to stop mourning and instead celebrate the person. I think, if atleast one person remembers you for who you are, after you are dead, and are happy to have known you - probably you have done well in your time with life. And I am sure, my uncle has plenty of such people whose fond memories are the proof of the exemplary life he led.\nToday, I fondly remember him and his invaluable help and bid a respectful farewell. May he rest in peace.\n","date":"19 February 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2012-02-19-thanks-for-everything/","section":"Posts","summary":"I knew a man - a man who probably has got everything to do with whatever I am today. To that man I am deeply indebted. He is my uncle, my father’s elder brother. I do not claim to know him inside out, but I have deep respects for him. In whatever little interactions we had, I saw the generous, knowledgeable and charismatic side of him.\n","title":"Thanks - for everything!","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"19 February 2012","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/uncle/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Uncle","type":"tags"},{"content":" This one had to go up on the blog! Which position is your favorite?\n","date":"12 July 2011","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2011-07-12-kamasutra-lapt/","section":"Posts","summary":" This one had to go up on the blog! Which position is your favorite?\n","title":"Kamasutra Lap","type":"posts"},{"content":"Are you interested in Physics? Especially experimental physics? Then I invite you to for a ride to our office in our office “cab”. Let me impress upon you, the exciting and memorable things this ride has to offer.\n“Cab” is not the right word. It is now a brand new(?) Eicher , ‘x’ seater bus where 18\nYou may ask – I can learn all the physics I want by reading and doing experiments in the safety of a lab. But, I ask you, would you remember those experiments? You may know the concepts, but do you “realize” it? Our cab does these physics experiments in the most natural way, and most of the times you are the subject of experimentation. Now, when you are a part of the experiment, you “realize” what you know. This, I think is the super real attraction.\nThe first thing you will notice the moment you hop on the cab is that, Newton is right there teaching you the basic laws of motion.\nYou will learn the principle of inertia in the most natural settings. The cab has stopped for you to hop in. You hop in, and then take a step towards the aisle looking for free seats. Which most of the time, is at the back of the cab. Now, within a few milliseconds, you will experience a random swaying of your body. While a part of you brain desperately tries to recalculate your body’s position in space time continuum, the other part desperately tries and fails to send appropriate commands to your limbs to catch hold of any solid and stable object within your grasp. While all this is happening, the other part of the brain – a little digression here – I know we only talked about 2 parts of the brain. But, there is another one apparently different from the other two, and you will realize it. And if you are realizing the 3rd part of the brain, it means that there is another part of the brain to realize it. So, apparently there are 4 or more parts of the brain that you will realize. This is a bonus anatomical lesson the cab ride offers. Now, coming back. The other (3rd part) of the brain – wait, I forgot what it did.\nAnyway, you will eventually realize that all the above experimental results will proclaim one thing very clearly. The principle of inertia. Newton is happy. If you are lucky enough, you may fall or your laptop bag may fall or your lunch box may fall. If that happens, you will also realize that the falling apple is not the only thing that teaches the principle of gravitational force. If you are unlucky, well – one day you will get lucky. So, not to worry.\nYou will eventually manage to find an empty seat and rest your butt – thanks to millions of years of evolution of the human brain, it can slowly but certainly calculate the body’s spatial orientation through sensory inputs and help you walk. You appreciate the lesson you learnt and give a cursory glance at the window. Now, you will notice that the rest of the world is painfully lagging behind. Even those crazy BMTC bus drivers on your side of traffic seem to be driving in reverse gear. But the other crazy BMTC bus drivers on the opposite side of traffic seem to be just rushing past you, may be at a 100 kmph. This is when you “realize” the concept your teacher so horribly failed drive home. The principle of relative motion. Quickly, you calculate that the apparent rushing past of the BMTC buses (driven by crazy drivers) in the opposite direction at 100 kmph, is actually the speed of your cab (at 80 kmph) and relative speed of the bus (at 20 kmph) adding up to be a wholesome number of 100 kmph. Considering that this is a fully packed street with hundreds of other vehicles, animals and walking humans, suddenly you will realize that BMTC bus drivers are actually sane to be going at 20 kmph. You will find a previously non existent respect towards them. You may even realize that we are all equal. Couple of lessons in humanity and spirituality, as added bonus.\nThis is when the reality strikes - Earth is NOT FLAT! It is NOT a huge sphere which will appear flat because we humans are so tiny. But it is filled with bumps, pot holes, small mountains and valleys, the real traffic bumps and small meteor sized rocks carelessly thrown here and there. But the cab treats them all with prodigious equanimity and dexterity. This is when you realize speed could as well be considered a vector instead of a scalar. Because, you see that the cab neither changes direction, nor reduces acceleration but continues at the previous 80 kmph on any unforgiving terrain. Yes, the teachers taught us wrong. Probably they should hop in the cab once.\nAnd, you will realize the power of vibrations. Not the ones that the rishis and yogis talk about – universal vibrations, thought vibrations and all that. The real, painful, jolting, son-of-a-*****, #$@#@#*\u0026amp;#$ kind of vibrations. I am sorry, but there are no physics lesson in this one. But you may realize that God designed our body the way it is, but he never meant us to travel by cabs. And you may appreciate the fatty tissues that was carefully accumulated by your body all around you in no time after you started working. Those skinny nut heads may laugh at you at other times. But you turn around and look at their skinny faces, displaying pure horror in their eyes, and their skinny legs and hands swaying wildly in the never ending vibrational ether – and you are filled with self satisfaction. You will know that all that time you spent on hogging on chips, fries, greasy/oily/cheesy/spicy stuff is worthwhile. Who is laughing now, huh!?\nNow that you realize what vibrations really are, they somehow manage to be less annoying.\nOn to a different kind of vibration – for your ears. You will hear sounds from 20 Hz to 20 KHz, but what you will not know is that you are hearing those frequencies at various wavelengths. Some magically emanated by your own cab, and others – courtesy of other general vehicles. You will notice that most of those sounds will be overlapping and continuous, but you will appreciate the fact that your brain can distinguish most of them from the others based on auditory inputs. You will notice the honk of the approaching vehicle going from a frail, faraway sound to harsh, loud wails and back to frail sound again – in no time! The driver of that vehicle has no idea of the musical pleasure he is creating for your ears. A work of art, left unsung! If you carefully analyze, you will realize that all this auditory pleasure is because of two reasons. One – the impatient, brave, wont-give-a-damn-about-my life, wont-give-a-damn-about-your-life-either artists called cab drivers. Two – the doppler effect. Even if you don’t understand what that is, you have experienced it. You were a part of the experiment.\nYou are now filled with unspeakable satisfaction and gratitude for the privilege that god bestowed upon you this morning. You will even think this whole Bangalore traffic is a big symphony of honks, police whistles, ultra sweet voices of quarrelling people – all magically weaved together by the very kind symphony conductor – your cab driver. Before you start being more thankful and emotional, alas! the journey comes to an end. You will be at our office.\nGrabbing your belongings you will start walking down the aisle to get off the cab. That is when you will glance at the driver’s seat. Guess what, that is no chewing gum chewing cab driver, that is the veritable face of Christian Doppler himself!\nYou get all too emotional, and start blabbering words, and even attempt to write hymns about this privilege of yours. And that is when you will hear it. A small voice in your head saying \u0026ndash; “Save your emotions. You will have the return journey in the evening!”. -- There is one thing you should never do – to tell a cab driver that he is reckless. Because if you do, he will still be reckless, but you have another person looking to run you over the next time you cross the street.\n","date":"8 July 2011","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2011-07-08-doppler-in-drivers-seat/","section":"Posts","summary":"Are you interested in Physics? Especially experimental physics? Then I invite you to for a ride to our office in our office “cab”. Let me impress upon you, the exciting and memorable things this ride has to offer.\n","title":"Doppler in the driver’s seat.","type":"posts"},{"content":"The mild and yet addictive tunes from the movie “Life is Beautiful” theme is playing continuously. And all I can think about is, how beautiful life indeed is!\nWatched the movie yesterday night and I cannot recollect any other movie that has been done so beautifully well. The passion for life portrayed by Roberto Benigni, his compelling humor and the delicate mix of fragility of life’s situations confronted with strong yet playful outlook is very refreshing!\nMany sequences in the movie resonated with what I believe in. The “Buongiorno Principessa”****(Good Morning Princess!) is one such line. Women should be treated like Princess. For everything that they have to endure in life – the pain and pleasure of creating, nurturing and protecting life itself, innumerable sacrifices they make to hold families together, they are in fact the epitome of everything that “Life” signifies. The women in all our lives are special. There is no need for a man to assert his dominance in a family. In fact, women are the bosses and it is better left that way. Such families will have happier days.\nAny game will have a winning and loosing side. Both are equally important – there is no game otherwise. Nobody can win or loose always. In fact, it is never about winning or loosing, but actually playing and having fun. And apply that to the game of life – it becomes so simple. The second half of the movie portrays this beautifully.\nI especially love the last scene. Even though Guido knows that he is about to die, his last act is to make his son laugh and march comically to his death. It is about calmly accepting Life as is, and being cheerful always. It is about laughing and making others laugh.\nAnd conveying all these, the magical and marvelous sound tracks by Nicola Piovani is a festival to ears. The theme track of the movie is just brilliant. It is not something that can run in the background, and you can continue to concentrate on your work. If you listen a little deeper, you will be able to correlate every single note of the song to different emotions experienced in the movie. But on the downside, it wont let you concentrate fully on your work. I think this incoherent blog is a definite proof of what I am trying to tell. But then again, any great music is supposed to absorb you totally into it. So – stopping this rant right here. -- This is a simple story\u0026hellip; but not an easy one to tell.\n","date":"30 June 2011","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2011-06-30-life-is-beautiful/","section":"Posts","summary":"The mild and yet addictive tunes from the movie “Life is Beautiful” theme is playing continuously. And all I can think about is, how beautiful life indeed is!\n","title":"Life Is Beautiful!","type":"posts"},{"content":"My wife\u0026rsquo;s grandmother passed away - on 30th March 2009. I always called her grand mother, though I am technically incorrect. She had always been so - for me.\nOur acquaintance began when I and my wife started to do combined studies at her place during our college days. I admired her compassion and devotion to her beliefs. She was very energetic for a lady of her age, and she knew exactly how much portion of rice I ate in my lunch. I am blessed to have been fed by incredible women like her.\nI have seen her going strong just with water alone for a week or so. She had visited Varanasi, and she couldn\u0026rsquo;t get home cooked food. She wouldn\u0026rsquo;t eat in a hotel outside - she went hungry! All she wanted was to get darshan of the holy god, and she trusted him to take care of the rest. I sometimes wonder what it takes to be so strong in one\u0026rsquo;s convictions. She took a month to recover from this toil after returning back, but - she never compromised on her convictions.\nIt will be 2 years of our marriage very shortly, and she has lived with us for most of the time. They say prayers and chanting of mantras creates a holy atmosphere. I have felt it. Her body has been nothing but bones for almost an year now, but she woke up early in the morning everyday. And after her bath, she worshiped and repeated verses from many holy books without fail. She would read Mahabharatha and Bhagavadgeeta everyday.\nShe used to await my return every evening. Thanks to our office cab, and only occassional jams on the mysore road - I came home almost everyday at the same time. The watch clocked 6:35 p.m, but for her I always returned back within few minutes of starting \u0026ldquo;Baduku\u0026rdquo; - Kannada TV Soap Series. She would ask everybody if I didn\u0026rsquo;t come back in time. She would say proudly to our relatives, that I am the \u0026ldquo;Son\u0026rdquo; of the house and not the son-in-law.\nI used to bring her the banana for her day, every night , without fail (from the kitchen :P ). Recently, she had taken to drinking small cup of warm water with honey in the nights to aid her in sleeping better. I was gladly helping her with it. Unlike most of the old people I have seen, she never grumbled. She never complained, and never spoke much. She would share stories from her village and the good of old ages with me. She liked the old times, but took the new in her stride all the same.\nHer strength had declined over the past month or two. I left for the US a few weeks back, and that was the last I saw her. She fell on her way back from the bath room a couple of days after that and that made her very very weak. One has to be blessed to die without suffering or illness. Its very humbling and revealing to see how a natural death occurs. The flesh in the body will vanish - on its own. Your body will become smaller and smaller - like a child - just the way you started.\nThere was something very peaceful about her, both in her life and death. She died in her bed, about 12:30-12:45 on the night of Monday , 31 March. My parents and inlaws were there near her when she left. They saw how life raises above and beyond the clutches of human body and vanishes into the unknown along with the last breath. Unfortunately, I was not there when she died. My mom said, that there was no suffering, shock, unhappiness or worries in the room. There was peace, and a silent admiration for her.\nHer eyes were donated shortly after her death.\nShe lived a ripe age - a life of simplicity, piousness and a life of values and examples. She served her purpose here and left in peace. My heart is filled with admiration, calm and peace while writing this. For those who have read the \u0026ldquo;Jonathan Livingston Seagull\u0026rdquo; - she left for another level of understanding.\nDear Grandma, goodbye and have a good trip!\n","date":"2 April 2009","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2009-04-02-dear-grandmother-have-good-trip/","section":"Posts","summary":"My wife’s grandmother passed away - on 30th March 2009. I always called her grand mother, though I am technically incorrect. She had always been so - for me.\nOur acquaintance began when I and my wife started to do combined studies at her place during our college days. I admired her compassion and devotion to her beliefs. She was very energetic for a lady of her age, and she knew exactly how much portion of rice I ate in my lunch. I am blessed to have been fed by incredible women like her.\n","title":"Dear Grandmother, have a good trip!","type":"posts"},{"content":"From past few months, I have been trying to put something together at work and am using SqlAlchemy extensively. I am just impressed by the dedication and sincerity exuded by this open source project. Its very hard to be not inspired by Mr. Michael Bayer, who is one of the authors.\nJust check out the groups and you will see that every single question gets an answer., most of the times as a bonus with related links to documentation and other resources. Checkout their timeline ; I dont think most commercial projects carried out by teams of people who get paid for their work will be able to deliver so consistently. Every issue you report to the groups are analyzed and if they are true bugs, are ticketed, fixed and released in the next change set. You will also be notified about the ticket number and release version where it has been fixed.\nMost open source projects begin being very helpful and active, but eventually they will loose traction and skid off to the \u0026ldquo;Junk Software Universe\u0026rdquo; far out into the outer space. But SqlAlchemy is been around for a considerably long time and still hasn\u0026rsquo;t lost the spark. They have kept going and have helped so many people to get something working which otherwise couldn\u0026rsquo;t have been possible.\nThis blog post is a tribute to Michael Bayer, SqlAlchemy and the community. Not that I am Leo Babuta and I get 50000 diggs per day on my blog, but I wanted to highlight what I have witnessed.\nCheers SqlAlchemy, Cheers Michael Bayer.\n--\n“No effort is ever lost” # Karmayoga, Bhagavadgita\n","date":"26 August 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2008-08-26-sql-alchemy-and-michael-bayer/","section":"Posts","summary":"From past few months, I have been trying to put something together at work and am using SqlAlchemy extensively. I am just impressed by the dedication and sincerity exuded by this open source project. Its very hard to be not inspired by Mr. Michael Bayer, who is one of the authors.\n","title":"SQL Alchemy and Michael Bayer","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"1 June 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/hack-python/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hack Python","type":"tags"},{"content":"I have this amazing friend who has more data than a corporate data center can manage. If you give him a $ for every byte of data he owns, then he will figure in the 10 most richest Indians. Anyway, I got the privilege of copying a subset of his data onto my 500GB harddrive (Obviously, it ran out of space). But I now have over 100GB worth movies and I have a difficult time figuring out what to watch.\nI had to do a IMDB search for every title I see and pretty soon I realized its a pain in the ass. I did a small hack to ease my burden and it is here. (http://www.esnips.com/doc/5150768b-1e27-4847-962d-da5b55e8e625/IMDBLookup) I had to put it on esnips because my so called personal website dream has managed to remain one. (here and here).\nThe zip file has a registry hack, just double clicking will put required info in your registry. It manages to bring up a nice little \u0026ldquo;IMDB Lookup\u0026rdquo; menu when you right click on a file. Copy the imdb.py Python script to your c:\\windows\\system32 folder, so that its there in your system path. Now you are good to go, whenever you see a movie file on your computer, just right click on it and select IMDB Lookup. If the movie title is neat and clear, your favourite browser pops up with IMDB description of the movie. Thats all it is. IMDB is unfortunately blocked at office, but you can see that URL is valid and perfect. Most probably it will work for you.\nPS : You need Python 2.4 and above( freely available) for this hack. A C exe could have done the job, but.. why bother.\n-- If everything else fail, try Python.\n","date":"1 June 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2008-06-01-imdb-lookup/","section":"Posts","summary":"I have this amazing friend who has more data than a corporate data center can manage. If you give him a $ for every byte of data he owns, then he will figure in the 10 most richest Indians. Anyway, I got the privilege of copying a subset of his data onto my 500GB harddrive (Obviously, it ran out of space). But I now have over 100GB worth movies and I have a difficult time figuring out what to watch.\n","title":"IMDB Lookup","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"9 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/hospital/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Hospital","type":"tags"},{"content":" Its business for the hospital, its personal for you. No matter how healthy you were the day before, you shall be deemed a patient by various means. Ex. Hospital Uniform, medicines. You shall witness a sudden spurt of love and emotions among your not-so-distant relatives. Every tom, dick and harry shall visit you and make sure that you have noted their presence. The motivation could be concern, love or\u0026hellip;. ah lets not name it. If you haven\u0026rsquo;t ever believed in God, you shall. If you believe in God, you shall feel him. You will be proved highly ignorant of your body and its functioning and you shall wish you had paid a little more attention in the boring biology class so that you could have taken up medicine instead. You will feel the taste of humanity when ward boys, nurses do their service with sincerity and honesty. The ward boys and nurses shall grow more closer to you than your blood relatives. You shall realize - afterall, there is still good in this world. And it is true. You will pledge to live a more satisfactory life, to do more service, to be a little more nicer to people, to smile a little more. And lets hope we cherish that spirit. All of a sudden you will realize how PRECIOUS your health is. I mean we all know and talk about it, but you shall REALIZE. All of a sudden you will realize how delicate and yet how marvelous your body is. All of a (not-so) sudden you will start to see how in body, mind and soul the other person is so similar to you. You will learn to be thankful for everything. To the workers who constructed the hospital in the first place, to BSNL for their mobile network, to the ground floor cafeteria for supplying with much needed food and beverages, to the surgeon\u0026rsquo;s teachers for teaching him so that he could save your life today\u0026hellip; I mean you will be thankful for everything. And if you are lucky enough to realize exactly how valuable is your presence on this earth - you shall remain THANKFUL for the rest of your life.\nPS : All the above revelations and possibly more could happen faster and shall be much more gratifying if you have a Mediclaim Policy/Insurance.\nPPS : This is not an advertisement for any health insurance provider.\nI wish that all these revelations shall come to you all without every having to visit a hospital.\n","date":"9 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2008-03-09-hospital-trivia/","section":"Posts","summary":" Its business for the hospital, its personal for you. No matter how healthy you were the day before, you shall be deemed a patient by various means. Ex. Hospital Uniform, medicines. You shall witness a sudden spurt of love and emotions among your not-so-distant relatives. Every tom, dick and harry shall visit you and make sure that you have noted their presence. The motivation could be concern, love or…. ah lets not name it. If you haven’t ever believed in God, you shall. If you believe in God, you shall feel him. You will be proved highly ignorant of your body and its functioning and you shall wish you had paid a little more attention in the boring biology class so that you could have taken up medicine instead. You will feel the taste of humanity when ward boys, nurses do their service with sincerity and honesty. The ward boys and nurses shall grow more closer to you than your blood relatives. You shall realize - afterall, there is still good in this world. And it is true. You will pledge to live a more satisfactory life, to do more service, to be a little more nicer to people, to smile a little more. And lets hope we cherish that spirit. All of a sudden you will realize how PRECIOUS your health is. I mean we all know and talk about it, but you shall REALIZE. All of a sudden you will realize how delicate and yet how marvelous your body is. All of a (not-so) sudden you will start to see how in body, mind and soul the other person is so similar to you. You will learn to be thankful for everything. To the workers who constructed the hospital in the first place, to BSNL for their mobile network, to the ground floor cafeteria for supplying with much needed food and beverages, to the surgeon’s teachers for teaching him so that he could save your life today… I mean you will be thankful for everything. And if you are lucky enough to realize exactly how valuable is your presence on this earth - you shall remain THANKFUL for the rest of your life.\n","title":"Hospital Trivia.","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"9 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/life/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Life","type":"tags"},{"content":"I had never woken up on time before. But this day I was up well before the alarm time @ 3:20 a.m and surprisingly my wife was too. We all got ready in silence; the ride to the place was painfully long though my father-in-law drove as fast as he could, in fact the fastest as far as I can remember. He usually never misses noticing a hump on the road, but that day the car galloped over it and he blamed it on dim light. Nobody replied though.\nWe reached the place “Trinity Heart Foundation” around 4:45 a.m. I thought I was calm and composed, for my external conscience I was. But I could feel my heart pound in my chest and could do nothing about it. No amount of “deep breath”ing, no amount of “Hey, I am perfectly calm” affirmations could stop it, I eventually gave up.\nWe rushed to the ward number 312. There he was, sitting naked except for a small strip of cloth tied around his waist. His whole body was yellowish and wet with a solution they just had smeared. He had numerous miniature cuts on his chest and upper back, blood oozing out in small droplets. The red blood combined with the yellowish solution had created its own peculiar shade. I remembered my childhood; I would mix red and yellow to paint skies creating effect of sunrise or sunset – by far my easiest paintings.\nWell, this was no painting – I wish it was, but it wasn’t. It was agonizing for me to watch him like that; I couldn’t avoid scolding that bastard who shaved off hair on his chest and back. The doctor hates even the smallest hair bud, eh? He said, his skin was burning but otherwise his face was calm, his hair was neatly combed, he had a kind of glow in his face and above all – he was smiling. It was my father, 55 and about to go under the knife, with all grace and calm I could only dream about! I am now impressed that I was still holding up.\nThey say you should live everyday as though you would be dead on the next. This kept running through my mind in an infinite loop and I don’t know why. My mom, who broke out crying 3 days before for the mere thought of my dad undergoing an angiogram was now calm and composed. In fact she had developed confident acceptance, optimism and courage in those 3 days. My brother seemed tensed but was holding up. My wife was dealing it with ‘Elegance’, with a subtle reassurance – god I love her.\nIt was 5:45 a.m, the stretcher arrived. I hugged my dad; I felt his steadiness of mind flow through me. This was not a case when the patient who is supposed to undergo ‘Bypass Surgery’ would cry, howl and crave for reassurance. I remembered the day he underwent angiogram. Everybody had told me that it would take 20 minutes approx., after which a doctor would come and call you in, show you the imaging on a computer, you give a green signal for angioplasty, they go back in and come back out in the next 45 minutes, you pay a bill of around 1.5 Lakh and take him home. Everybody is happy; that’s it, it was that simple and that is what I had hoped for. But as usual in my case, it can’t be that simple. I had a surprise waiting for me, it was more than an hour and nobody came out. Later a doctor walked out for lunch - perfectly normal, and all he told was the chief doc was busy and would call us once he is free. I was pissed off, I barged in and found that my dad was moved back to the CCU. Oh wait; they haven’t even done the angiogram? So much for my optimism, they had done it, doctor was back in his cabin and they had moved the patient back. I had to wait a good 30 minutes before I was called in.\nIt is in times like these, I really really really hate having a so called ‘know-all’ elder at my side. My dad’s elder brother had fallen to my side and wanted to accompany me to the doctor. I have great respect for him, and I know he likes my dad very much. But hey, I don’t want him to do my decisions. We sat in the doc’s cabin, and he said “All 3 blocked, its better to go for a CABG (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft)”. Whamo! Though I had seen a real life video of CABG procedure, I had hundred questions in my mind – My dad is a diabetic, hypertensive; will he be able to recover? Is there no other alternative? How many stents would it require for an angioplasty?\u0026hellip;. And there goes my uncle.. “Doctor, please go ahead with CABG. If you remember, my wife had an angioplasty here 10 months back. I am planning to bring her for another checkup…”. For god’s sake, this isn’t about his wife. If I think back now, I am sure I was a bit rude on him to ask him to keep quiet for a moment and let me clarify my doubts. But I guess, it was required for that moment.\nWell, that’s how he was scheduled for CABG. Everybody said not to break this news out to my Dad but I couldn’t help laughing. My Dad is one of the bravest and the most courageous men I have come across. I went back into the CCU and he asked me “When will they do the Bypass?” He knew it, had accepted it and moreover he knew he will be fine after the surgery. This will power is required to make his way back from the OT to normal life.\nNow, back to the stretcher – We all wished him good luck and prayed for his health and long life. He assured us; he will be back and will see us in the evening. Then it was all hurried, we went to the elevator, reached second floor, saw him into the Operation Theater and the door was locked.\nMy heart was still pounding and I could feel it ram into my chest walls. I was scared that the lady at the Blood Bank will refuse to take my blood because of high blood pressure. We still had to give them 3 units of fresh blood and we all went to the blood bank around 6:30 a.m. My brother and my cousin had no problems. But as expected, though I was externally calm and composed my BP was 135/92. I guess the lady understood my plight, asked me lay down for a while, checked my BP again and told me it was back to normal. But I was sure she lied to me (it must have been still on the higher side), anyway I donated 350 ml of blood and it just came gushing down in 2-3 minutes. Thanks to high BP!\nWe came back to the hospital, gave them the fresh blood units and waited. I was doing pray-walk to the OT-walk back to the balcony-pray in a loop for the next 4.5 hours. I was so busy doing this; I didn’t even notice the main surgeon walking out around 10:10 a.m, his briefcase swinging by his side. After a minute long realization, I ran down three floors to catch him but he was nowhere to be seen. Everybody was angry on me as though it was my mistake the surgeon was so busy he didn’t even tell us how it went.\nThe OT doors opened around 11:00, they told us the operation was successful. I couldn’t talk to anybody, walked back to the balcony, stood staring at the polluted skies thanking god for everything. We caught a glimpse of him as he was being shifted to the CCU – his head was turned to his right, mask on his mouth, pipes running in and out of his body like snakes and big glass jars containing different colored liquids in a trolley.\nWhat I still can’t make sense of is that, how a hospital can change the entire outlook of a patient. A few hours ago, he was a perfectly normal man, he had thoughts, he spoke, he felt, he knew about his relationships. Now here he goes, completely oblivious to everything – his machinery has been repaired and his brain is put to artificial sleep. We are all but a pile of flesh, blood and bones. It is that 3 pound mass between our shoulders that causes all this illusion. Hats off to the creator!\nI have hazy recollections of the next two days. It pretty much consisted of bribing the guard at the ICU door, being afraid of causing an infection, trying to take a glimpse of my dad lying on the bed, supplying food and water and staying awake all night. He was shifted back to the ward on the third day. The post surgical phase of Bypass grafting is the most crucial period, utmost care and precaution needs to be taken. He was struggling to breathe normally, he couldn’t get up on his own and his lower lungs had collapsed. Slowly and painfully he grew stronger by the days and a week after the surgery we brought him home.\nHere he is, courageously fighting pain and discomfort, recovering slowly from the surgery. Hey Dad, you are one of the bravest and courageous men I have ever come across. Hats off to your strength, persistence, optimism and steadiness of mind, Dad! I wish you good health and many more happy years ahead! Cheers to you and cheers to life!\nAnd by the way, my BP had come back to normal a few days after the surgery.\n","date":"3 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2008-03-03-55-and-under-knife/","section":"Posts","summary":"I had never woken up on time before. But this day I was up well before the alarm time @ 3:20 a.m and surprisingly my wife was too. We all got ready in silence; the ride to the place was painfully long though my father-in-law drove as fast as he could, in fact the fastest as far as I can remember. He usually never misses noticing a hump on the road, but that day the car galloped over it and he blamed it on dim light. Nobody replied though.\n","title":"55 and under the knife.","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"3 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/cabg/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Cabg","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"3 March 2008","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/dad/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Dad","type":"tags"},{"content":" You are The Sun # Happiness, Content, Joy.\nThe meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.\nYoung, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.\nThe Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon\u0026rsquo;s Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.\nWhat Tarot Card are You? Take the Test to Find Out.\n","date":"25 August 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-08-25-blank/","section":"Posts","summary":" You are The Sun # Happiness, Content, Joy.\nThe meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.\n","title":"Blank","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"25 August 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/meme/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Meme","type":"tags"},{"content":"For all the fun I had and for all the misery I endured , my organization awarded me Employee of the Year out of 7500+ employees.\nAs many of my managers have observed, this is the first time so many things have happened different from the tradition; they have welcomed technical contributions as apposed to normal $ increase contributions, any employee is eligible to EOY programme only if he was a EOQ (Employee of the quarter - no where written, but thats what happened), and people get nominated usually after 4-5 years of service. I was neither a EOQ and I joined as a fresher in 2005 and I did crap for first 10 months. Considering all this , I consider myself lucky to be recongized. Though for the most part it is my effort, I also realize that it is the broad mindedness of my supervisors/managers. It takes a lot to whole heartedly appreciate people!\nApart from self satisfaction, a nice little trophy to show off, the only thing good about being an EOY is I got a personal \u0026lsquo;Congratulations Harish!\u0026rsquo; from my Once_upon_a_time_crush in HR!\n-- In life, it\u0026rsquo;s not who you know that\u0026rsquo;s important, it\u0026rsquo;s how your wife found out. _ Joey Adams_\n","date":"30 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-06-30-employee-of-year-2006-07/","section":"Posts","summary":"For all the fun I had and for all the misery I endured , my organization awarded me Employee of the Year out of 7500+ employees.\nAs many of my managers have observed, this is the first time so many things have happened different from the tradition; they have welcomed technical contributions as apposed to normal $ increase contributions, any employee is eligible to EOY programme only if he was a EOQ (Employee of the quarter - no where written, but thats what happened), and people get nominated usually after 4-5 years of service. I was neither a EOQ and I joined as a fresher in 2005 and I did crap for first 10 months. Considering all this , I consider myself lucky to be recongized. Though for the most part it is my effort, I also realize that it is the broad mindedness of my supervisors/managers. It takes a lot to whole heartedly appreciate people!\n","title":"Employee of the Year 2006-07","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"30 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/eoy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Eoy","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"22 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/fun/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Fun","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"22 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/problem/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Problem","type":"tags"},{"content":"The best problem solving algorithm I have ever seen. ROTFLOL!!\n-\u0026ndash; Arthur : \u0026ldquo;You know at times like this I wish I had listened to my mother\u0026rdquo; Ford : \u0026ldquo;Oh, what did your mother say?\u0026rdquo; Arthur : \u0026ldquo;I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I didn\u0026rsquo;t listen\u0026rdquo;\n","date":"22 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-06-22-best-problem-solving-algorithm-i-have/","section":"Posts","summary":"The best problem solving algorithm I have ever seen. ROTFLOL!!\n-– Arthur : “You know at times like this I wish I had listened to my mother” Ford : “Oh, what did your mother say?” Arthur : “I don’t know, I didn’t listen”\n","title":"The best problem solving algorithm I have ever se...","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"18 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/intuition/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Intuition","type":"tags"},{"content":"Its been raining here since I woke up in the morning. Its so beautiful, even the concrete giant apartments have managed to look little sexier. I spontaneously had an idea, and without much thinking I did it :\nMe:\nDear xxx:\nI am planning to resign. I would like to discuss this with you, please let me know your convenient time.\nThanks, Harish\nHim:\nHarish, This was least expected at this juncture from you, lets discuss. Regards,\nxxx\nTrust things will be beautiful as always :)\n-- There are three things which people will never get tired of having : Money, more money and little more than more money.\n","date":"18 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-06-18-raining-is-beautiful/","section":"Posts","summary":"Its been raining here since I woke up in the morning. Its so beautiful, even the concrete giant apartments have managed to look little sexier. I spontaneously had an idea, and without much thinking I did it :\n","title":"Raining is Beautiful","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"18 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/work/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Work","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"12 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/delhi/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Delhi","type":"tags"},{"content":"God has fixed the bug! I waited for two days to see if the bug reoccurs, but I cant wait to sign off on that :)\n-- Nice Clients will always sign off on the fixes much earlier than others.\n","date":"12 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-06-12-denial-update/","section":"Posts","summary":"God has fixed the bug! I waited for two days to see if the bug reoccurs, but I cant wait to sign off on that :)\n-- Nice Clients will always sign off on the fixes much earlier than others.\n","title":"Denial : Update","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"12 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/summer/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Summer","type":"tags"},{"content":"Flashback:\nSomething must be wrong!\nI woke up in the morning (?) to find myself sweating, my bed was wet, the pillow was wet. Damn, was it my roommates playing pranks on me? Did they spill water all over my cot and forgot about it? Neither did I remember having a fever the previous day, in which case this sweat could be taken as a good omen of fever having a nice little send off in the night. Something must be wrong!\nI looked outside, the Sun God was already up, I thought he had had a good night\u0026rsquo;s sleep, judging by how bright and active he was. Ah! I was supposed to reach office little early today, and it was already looking like noon outside. My watch showed just 6:30! Another prank? Or my watch just gave up trying to keep track of time? It doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter; I had already missed the meeting. Guys won\u0026rsquo;t be happy at all!\nI thought, I can give some bullshit about having a jetlag from my previous day\u0026rsquo;s flight from Bangalore to Delhi! Anyway, I went to the bathroom, just was getting ready to brush my teeth – I was sweating again! I turned on the tap to wash my face, it felt hot. The door felt hot, the floor felt hot, anything I touched felt hot. I knew I had a fever; I should take a leave after all. I lathered up with soap, and before I picked up a mug of water, the lather was gone! It got washed away by itself?\nEverybody was still sleeping! God, what\u0026rsquo;s wrong with these guys? Something was really wrong, I could sense that! I reached office. I was preoccupied with finding a reason to justify myself for being late. On the contrary, the office looked deserted; my watch was showing 8:00. I knew everybody must have gone for lunch. I had screwed up! Can\u0026rsquo;t somebody gift me Hermione\u0026rsquo;s time turner?\nWell, somebody had gifted me in fact! People started coming in one by one, nobody looked like they came from lunch because I know how people look when they come from lunch – Most of them look like they were mildly poisoned, on Wednesdays non vegetarians look so miserable because the guy who served them made sure that they got the leg piece of the smallest chicken that sacrificed itself for the sake of humanity. My fat manager also came; the US guys were still online waiting for the conf call. It was going fine; I was on time!\nI shared this experience with one of the veterans in the office; he gave me that small, paternal merciful smile and said \u0026lsquo;Welcome to Delhi\u0026rsquo;s summer son!\u0026rsquo;. After all I was alright, my watch was alright; But nothing else was, everything seemed to have a bad typhoid running high temperatures. Hmm.. I still can\u0026rsquo;t give up thinking that something is wrong, and it can be fixed. There is a small bug in the software God is using to run Delhi and its suburban areas. May be I can help him fix that. Or else I have resolved to write all my bogs in eclipse, till God hires somebody or fixes this by himself.\nPresent: It\u0026rsquo;s been a week now, and I don\u0026rsquo;t think God is making any progress. In the meantime, I continue to live in denial, and I still think something….. just a small thing has gone wrong, and he can fix it.\n","date":"10 June 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-06-10-denial/","section":"Posts","summary":"Flashback:\nSomething must be wrong!\nI woke up in the morning (?) to find myself sweating, my bed was wet, the pillow was wet. Damn, was it my roommates playing pranks on me? Did they spill water all over my cot and forgot about it? Neither did I remember having a fever the previous day, in which case this sweat could be taken as a good omen of fever having a nice little send off in the night. Something must be wrong!\n","title":"Denial","type":"posts"},{"content":"This will be a a long one\u0026hellip;\nAfter an year of hard work, our whole team were anxious and waiting when the customer finally decided to buy the new product. It wasn\u0026rsquo;t easy for anybody, neither for us nor for the client - New product means a lot of change, and a lot of questions about performance and reliability and business usually doesn\u0026rsquo;t like \u0026rsquo;new\u0026rsquo; changes.\nHowever, I landed in Tokyo on Mar 4, 2007; to represent my team and help the client transition over to the new world. I had a room in Keio Plaza hotel in the heart of Shinjuku area. If japanese gave me such hospitality, I knew they would be expecting something unnatural from me. My US managers chose me out of everyone (I thought its because they trust me so much which might be true, but now I have another perspective of looking at it).\nWell the D-day had begun on 5 march, with a public relations manager from the client office waiting to escort me precisely at 7:00 a.m. It was a beautiful day, people walking briskly to their destinations with formal suits and overcoats, carrying little briefcases - uncommonly professional. I had worn my first suit too which I had bought a day before for 10,000 bucks. I just arrived at the office and went straight to work, the only social moment being performing the Japanese ritual of handing over the visiting card and bowing.\nEverything was set, I had a private DSL line, company laptop, VPN Id, everything. The users were already on the new system, and for first 2-3 hours everything was going fine. The system was very friendly, highly responsive and people were happy. But I was anxious and so was the team. Everybody were up, though it was in the middle of the night in US. We had a quick conference call, all the AVPs, the COO on the client side and US managers. It was a path they had decided to take which has no return ticket. Once they are on the new system, once the processing completed for that single day - that was it, they have to live with change, the new system.\nThe anticiaption was killing me. Though I am very much impressed with what we had accomplished and proud about where we have reached considering how it was in the begining, I still knew places which required attention and according to me were still less than perfect. But, that was a day 2 concern and the client didn\u0026rsquo;t care about it anyway.\nI had got atleast 100 calls in 2 hours, requesting security changes, account unlocks and stuff like that, but all that was expected. No major issues still.\nAnd damn, then it started. One of the users couldn\u0026rsquo;t see any fields (Japanese) displayed on one of the transaction screens and the AVP started running around, trying to describe the problem in his English which is usually difficult to understand. I thought it was a major issue, but within few minutes could find out that it was a language setting problem on the user\u0026rsquo;s PC.\nNothing much happened, but I still had the AVPs and CIO standing behind me and watching everything I do on the system. It was criminally freaky.\nPhew, another such problem. A user was getting a creep error message, which didn\u0026rsquo;t give me anything useful whatsoever. Then it started happening with all the users, then all the real time transactions gave the same creep error message. And I knew, we had it coming down on us.\nI started surfing through the amazingly huge logs, comparing time stamps of when the error occured.. it was like a thriller movie. Just after a minute, I had all the above mentioned people standing behind me, breathing down on my neck and asking me every 30 seconds whether I fixed it or not. Its a beauty of the computer technology that, it doesn\u0026rsquo;t give a rats ass even though the management is stark ravingly mad at you and yelling. To make the situation more interesting, they told me to solve whatever it is in 35 minutes. Of course, I accept they had every right in the world to tell me so; it was their business which was going to dogs.\nI wanted to call my US manager, and these guys never let me speak in private; The AVP himself dialled and kept quiet during the whole time trying to smell if theres anything fishy, till I specifially mentioned that he too is in the call. Ok., now its up to managers, let them bark at each other and wonder why pluto is no more considered a planet or something; I was back to work. But its really funny and a great personal dilemma on what information to disclose to the client and what to be kept secret. One wrong word, and the deal goes to hell. Though everybody there asked me everything, all I said was it needs to be discussed with my manager and team; I was being loyal and was ready to pay the price for it.\nI came back to my system, and all logs were looking great to me. Nobody could determine what the damn issue was and I had only 20 minutes left in my pocket. I wanted to recycle the server (Of course its a windows machine, and there\u0026rsquo;s no fix better than restarting the application). But anyway, they had decided to backout to the old system in 10 minutes. In the interest of the client everybody agreed to cut back, and in 5 minutes they were back to business. I restarted the application and tried to recreate whatever happend and good lord, things were perfectly fine!!!\nAnyway, we had already blown it and the root cause for the issue still refused to reveal itself till we get few sherlock holmes to the scene. But the issue never reoccured once we went back, and everybody told me it was really unfortunate that such a thing had happened. I was amazed on how calm I was, and nothing stuck me the whole day. I was wondering what was there to take personally offending when one of my managers gave me some soothing words of not to take anything personal.\nIt hit me quite late, not until the next day I went to office. I didn\u0026rsquo;t have anything to do there, my mission there had no more relevance and meaning. Of course, we had managed to find the problem and I could explain to them clearly what had happened, but thats all I had to do. And all the people there were so good and friendly which made me feel very guilty to waste time and do no good to them. They had spent so much on me and I couldn\u0026rsquo;t ignore that fact. Its at such times that one will realize that Business is what that drives technology. Our brainchild didn\u0026rsquo;t see the world and it was really painful to have that sink in slowly.\nI wanted to come back and had already requested to reschedule my tickets. But it was much more painful to hear the AVP coming and telling me that he doesn\u0026rsquo;t like to waste my time here and indirectly indicating to get the hell out of here. It does make perfectly logical sense but its painful.\nOf course I did learn some interesting lessons and made some observations, may be I\u0026rsquo;ll post it in another blog.\nWell enough is enough, I am now eating a bowl of cornflakes, staring at the skyscrappers from my 27th floor room and wondering how the japanese language evolved and whether it had anything to do with the system not working.\n-- There\u0026rsquo;s no free lunch.\n","date":"7 March 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-03-07-365-days-and-35-minutes/","section":"Posts","summary":"This will be a a long one…\nAfter an year of hard work, our whole team were anxious and waiting when the customer finally decided to buy the new product. It wasn’t easy for anybody, neither for us nor for the client - New product means a lot of change, and a lot of questions about performance and reliability and business usually doesn’t like ’new’ changes.\n","title":"365 days and 35 minutes","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"16 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/rants/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Rants","type":"tags"},{"content":"The more I think, the more I get confused. What is that thing which is great/big/noble in this world? Everybody dreams to do something big., but what is big?\nTodays materialistic world has made us associate greatness with materialistic acquisitions. I was recently reading an article on \u0026lsquo;Guru\u0026rsquo;, he is a Hero because he rose from rags to riches, he pursued and chased the ends no matter the means. People who watch that movie go back with a renewed spirit, wanting to achieve something more.\nAll of us are subjected to this peer pressure, of course with few exceptions. We want to do it because somebody whom we know did it, and (s)he is looked upon in the society. Our parents want us to do it because our friend did it, whose parents unfortunately happen to be friends with our parents! Damn!\nPeople say that if we don\u0026rsquo;t aim at something big, there\u0026rsquo;s no progress. Progress is a word whose meaning I simply can\u0026rsquo;t comprehend and digest. Long ago, they didn\u0026rsquo;t have mobile phones, they didn\u0026rsquo;t know \u0026lsquo;cool\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;funky\u0026rsquo; english words, they never had to fly to US to earn and save money, but they were close to their family, they still were in touch with their friends, they still earned enough to bring us up. Today, with the advent of so called progress, we have funky gadgets but we still find it difficult to remember our friends birthday, we earn a lot but we buy a lot, there is progress (is there?) but ** WE** never made progress. Cavemen hunted animals, sometimes ate them raw. They had to work for an hour a day depending on how nature felt that particular day and the rest of the time he could rest. We have the most sophisticated technology today, all you have to do is just feed a pile of potatoes to a machine and Phew! you get crispy, tasty french fries!! But still people work round the clock, around the clock, diagonal the clock, square the clock - there is no satisfaction, no time to rest. The average time women take to cook now has not reduced when compared to what it took then.\nSorry for the digression - coming back to big! It is a quantity which exists on the planet earth and is usually a result of comparing oneself (humanoid) with other humanoids irrespective of sex. Lets say we achieved what (s)he achieved, what next? There will be a new (s)he who has achieved something else and we unfortunately become aware of this and mercilessly change our definitions of big and start again. It might be progress, but \u0026lsquo;YOU \u0026rsquo; are not progressing.\nWhether it was big or it was Progress, people then lived, people now live too - no matter what. And thats what matters!\n-- What is Big anyway? I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I don\u0026rsquo;t care - its somebody else\u0026rsquo;s problem.\n","date":"16 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-01-16-what-is-big-anyway/","section":"Posts","summary":"The more I think, the more I get confused. What is that thing which is great/big/noble in this world? Everybody dreams to do something big., but what is big?\nTodays materialistic world has made us associate greatness with materialistic acquisitions. I was recently reading an article on ‘Guru’, he is a Hero because he rose from rags to riches, he pursued and chased the ends no matter the means. People who watch that movie go back with a renewed spirit, wanting to achieve something more.\n","title":"What is Big anyway?","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"11 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/my-musings/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"My Musings","type":"tags"},{"content":"Theorem : A dead clock is still useful - It shows correct time twice in a day.\nCorollary : A dead digital clock in 24 Hr format is less useful - its correct only once.\nInference : Sometimes old, simple things are much better.\n-- Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.\n","date":"11 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-01-11-simplicity/","section":"Posts","summary":"Theorem : A dead clock is still useful - It shows correct time twice in a day.\nCorollary : A dead digital clock in 24 Hr format is less useful - its correct only once.\n","title":"Simplicity","type":"posts"},{"content":"Medical : 20000\nPersonal Developement : 20000\nTelephone : 20000\nThis is the total reimbursement available. How can they expect us to save and live if they want us to SPEND somuch lawfully?\n-- My manager earns an awful lot more. But I get to be more honest.\n","date":"11 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-01-11-reimbursement/","section":"Posts","summary":"Medical : 20000\nPersonal Developement : 20000\nTelephone : 20000\nThis is the total reimbursement available. How can they expect us to save and live if they want us to SPEND somuch lawfully?\n","title":"Reimbursement","type":"posts"},{"content":"A result of occasional endless boredom in the normal,virtual pressurized environment of a software company. Moreover, the merciless firewall has a softcorner for blogger, it hates LJ.\nI feel guilty sometimes, for not contributing as much as I could. Or, was it ever required? Oh yes, sometimes and I know it. But the definition of a team wont hold good for a speciment project, you cant afford crappy, slow movers. I see the result of it, that guy is working 18 hours a day - I know not what the reasons are\u0026hellip; but I feel guilty.\nI came in at 6:30 a.m lured by its prospect of early return to home, jogging in the cool chilly evening breeze. But I didn\u0026rsquo;t do anything useful, and the project is in a bad state. I feel guilty, but I am going home.\n-- Dont stand, Run.\n","date":"11 January 2007","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2007-01-11-guilt/","section":"Posts","summary":"A result of occasional endless boredom in the normal,virtual pressurized environment of a software company. Moreover, the merciless firewall has a softcorner for blogger, it hates LJ.\nI feel guilty sometimes, for not contributing as much as I could. Or, was it ever required? Oh yes, sometimes and I know it. But the definition of a team wont hold good for a speciment project, you cant afford crappy, slow movers. I see the result of it, that guy is working 18 hours a day - I know not what the reasons are… but I feel guilty.\n","title":"Guilt","type":"posts"},{"content":"A result of occasional endless boredom in the normal,virtual pressurized environment of a software company. Moreover, the merciless firewall has a softcorner for blogger, it hates LJ.\nI feel guilty sometimes, for not contributing as much as I could. Or, was it ever required? Oh yes, sometimes and I know it. But the definition of a team wont hold good for a speciment project, you cant afford crappy, slow movers. I see the result of it, that guy is working 18 hours a day - I know not what the reasons are\u0026hellip; but I feel guilty.\nI came in at 6:30 a.m lured by its prospect of early return to home, jogging in the cool chilly evening breeze. But I didn\u0026rsquo;t do anything useful, and the project is in a bad state. I feel guilty, but I am going home.\n-- Dont stand, Run.\n","date":"12 December 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-12-12-first-post/","section":"Posts","summary":"A result of occasional endless boredom in the normal,virtual pressurized environment of a software company. Moreover, the merciless firewall has a softcorner for blogger, it hates LJ.\nI feel guilty sometimes, for not contributing as much as I could. Or, was it ever required? Oh yes, sometimes and I know it. But the definition of a team wont hold good for a speciment project, you cant afford crappy, slow movers. I see the result of it, that guy is working 18 hours a day - I know not what the reasons are… but I feel guilty.\n","title":"F(irst) Post","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"8 July 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/srks-home/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Srks Home","type":"tags"},{"content":"I know I haven\u0026rsquo;t bothered to write a word in my journal though I have my own laptop now and 24 Hrs internet. I dont even know why I am writing this blog. Memories started swirling in my head, am not sure why. Probably its one of those euphoric experiences which makes you feel happy because now you are able to connect the dots..now you know how much meaning those days added to your life.\nI had a pressing financial situation when I first set out to do my BE. I wanted to join some good college but later I compromised to join JSSATE in bangalore because thats where Sri Ramakrishna Student\u0026rsquo;s Home is. For those of you who are wondering what this is, in short its HOME. Its a place meant for students who are not able to support themselves financially but still want to pursue their studies. Long ago in 1919 this hostel was established with the very same ideal of supporting poor and meritorious students. They did not know what to call it, HOSTEL - its not even close describing what it is, they called it HOME, and I can bet my whole life that it is Home, for students like me.\nI did everything there, right from cleaning toilets, washing corridors, scrubbing greasy kitchen vessels, maintaining long list of accounts, walking miles to different houses and collecting money from those donors because thats how our hostel got funds. There were children on the streets who called us Postman, Delivery boys, and people who didn\u0026rsquo;t even bother to open their doors but gave us money through small holes in their windows. I knew what it means to have a cycle when I had to walk/spend money for buses. There were times, when I walked from Rajajinagar to basavanagudi not wishing to buy a bus ticket. We organized functions, cooked food for 100 people who took all the advantage of our hostel just because they donated the money. In short we did everything. I sometimes felt whether doing all this will ever help in my life. I was hurt because I could never live a carefree life even to this day\u0026hellip; I always had responsibilities, I always had pressure, I always had uncertainities.\nBut I knew whatever it was, that place was there for me. It was there for me to make me a better person, a stronger individual, to make me realize what reality is, to make me love others, to make me help wherever I can, to shatter my Ego, to be what I am now. I loved that place, i can tell you because I can feel the resonance, i can feel the harmony with the atmosphere inside, i can feel the pulse in every brick of that building. I never cried for anything from the days I remember properly. But the last day in my hostel, I could not control my emotions, I knew I owe my life to that place. My eyes were blurred with small drops of tears when my secretary was speaking to me the last day. I liked him, respected him, in fact I can never remember anybody whom I respected so much.\nI donated to Home from my first salary and I was so happy when I received a handwritten letter of my secretary as reply. Things have moved so fast, its barely an year I graduated, 11 months since I left SRKS Home. Now here I am sitting so far away and wondering why I am writing this blog. I know I will feel stupid when I read it again, but I love that place!! I am glad that I was a part of the Home and Home will be a part of me throughout my life!!\n","date":"8 July 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-07-08-srks-home/","section":"Posts","summary":"I know I haven’t bothered to write a word in my journal though I have my own laptop now and 24 Hrs internet. I dont even know why I am writing this blog. Memories started swirling in my head, am not sure why. Probably its one of those euphoric experiences which makes you feel happy because now you are able to connect the dots..now you know how much meaning those days added to your life.\n","title":"SRKS Home","type":"posts"},{"content":"U know wat, My parents wished me for Valentines Day!!\n","date":"14 February 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-02-14-valentines-day/","section":"Posts","summary":"U know wat, My parents wished me for Valentines Day!!\n","title":"Valentines Day","type":"posts"},{"content":"An Owl has rented out a small portion in our apartment (a 1.5x2x2 ft. small cave like structure on top of one of the windows). We usually get to meet him on Saturdays/Sundays where both the parties will be present in day time. Its actually kind of scary to stare at that Owl, its pretty big for an owl and has no fear in staring back. It sometimes tries to imitate us, for example if we dance our head then it will do the same.\nLiving with it, is like living with a Call centre guy\u0026hellip; u go out in the morning, he would be sleeping; U come back in the night, he would be gone. Thank god, we need not have to hand over the apartment keys to the owl, for a call center guy it would have been an issue\u0026hellip;\n","date":"14 February 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-02-14-living-with-owl/","section":"Posts","summary":"An Owl has rented out a small portion in our apartment (a 1.5x2x2 ft. small cave like structure on top of one of the windows). We usually get to meet him on Saturdays/Sundays where both the parties will be present in day time. Its actually kind of scary to stare at that Owl, its pretty big for an owl and has no fear in staring back. It sometimes tries to imitate us, for example if we dance our head then it will do the same.\n","title":"Living with an OWL","type":"posts"},{"content":"He who knows and knows that he knows, he is a master; follow him.\nHe who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep; wake him.\nHe who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is a student; teach him.\nHe who knows not and knows not that he knows not, he is a fool; shun him.\n","date":"14 February 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-02-14-copied/","section":"Posts","summary":"He who knows and knows that he knows, he is a master; follow him.\nHe who knows and knows not that he knows, he is asleep; wake him.\nHe who knows not and knows that he knows not, he is a student; teach him.\n","title":"Copied...","type":"posts"},{"content":"She is always like this, unpredictable but finally does what you predicted, strong but emotional, has a never ending stock of tears but tough, cries for what you feel is not important, shows no reactions for what you feel is very emotional\u0026hellip; well now I am back to square one - she is unpredictable. But\u0026hellip; that\u0026rsquo;s my girl.\nShe told me yesterday on the phone (spoke for 1 hr, who cares it was her call) that I am not romantic. She wanted me to sing a song for her on the phone. What an unearthly wish was that! How can she expect a guy who has so far never sung, can\u0026rsquo;t even remember a single line of the song to sing for her? But it was her definition of being romantic. I always kiss her on the phone, and yesterday too I did, which somehow echoed in the earpiece of her (Simens M65) phone (I hate siemens phones). That\u0026rsquo;s it, that was the most severe mistake I committed which according to her, shows that I don\u0026rsquo;t care if she is hurt, I wont listen to her but still expect her to do whatever I tell\u0026hellip;.. (the list goes on\u0026hellip;). OK, I knew one thing, she wanted to cry. So, I let her cry. But I don\u0026rsquo;t know, I feel bad when she does that. Its not that I get totally hurt, bcoz I know its her way of doing things. Now, when I start feeling bad, she consoles me again (add 20 more minutes to the call), asks me \u0026lsquo;sorry\u0026rsquo; for hurting me. I knew she would do this, so I am very much right in what I told in my first few lines.\nThey say, you always feel like hurting the person whom you love most. Well not always, but atleast sometimes. Its very much true! So, after 58 mins of the call, she came back to that song stuff (I just cant sing, its impossible). So, finally I told her I would write a poem for her and send it (which she doesn\u0026rsquo;t want in her office id and she would delete any mail from me to her office id. But I know she wont and she would probably take a print out :-) , well thats expecting too much from her)\nSo, here goes the poem.\nThere I am, awake till I get a call\nWith her name on the screen\nThat marks my end of day (EOD)\nNothing more important, thats it, thats all\nHow I have nothing to say\nbut still manage to talk away\nall for those kisses we exchange\nand then say \u0026lsquo;Good night honey!\u0026rsquo;\n-But I always manage to say \u0026lsquo;Call me in the morning\u0026rsquo;\nbecause I can\u0026rsquo;t wait to speak again, anyway\nBut she never kisses easily (on the phone)\nShe says not today, she doesn\u0026rsquo;t feel like\nI beg, plead, tell her its already 10 mins\nSometimes she will agree - (as good as salary hike)\nSometimes she wont, and god sometimes she hangs up\nBut I still wait, because I know, she\u0026rsquo;ll call again\nI know its a waste of money,\nBut that\u0026rsquo;s my girl, I love her again\nShe cries for small little things,\nbut gives me strength like no one will\nI wanted to wish her first on her b\u0026rsquo;day, but hell\nShe had already slept, but still\nThat\u0026rsquo;s my girl, I love her again\nShe forgets to do what I tell,\nand when something happens she calls me\nand how timidly accepts it, well\nI can\u0026rsquo;t help but smile, and proclaim\nThat\u0026rsquo;s my girl, I love her again\nI have written so many poems for her,\nwith all my emotions struggling in my limited words\nWith so much expectations I give her the poem\nExpecting her to be emotional, expecting her to hug me\nBut she reads the poem and gives it back to me\nAs though nothing has happened, as though it doesn\u0026rsquo;t mean anything\nI love her so much, she too loves me\nBut she tells she equally hates me\nBut I know, I am a lucky man, I have got a pearl\nI know, She loves me more than I love her\nWith all her charm, her elegance, there she is, as always unpredictable -\nThat\u0026rsquo;s my girl!\nOK, I have somehow managed to complete it. I have written some x to the power of n poems on her (where x and n are positive integers). She also has one of my books which has few poems. But still she wants me to write one more, she might/might not like this poem, I cant predict at this point of time, but I am damn sure of one thing; God has given up trying to understand women - its impossible!!\n","date":"13 January 2006","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2006-01-13-that-my-girl/","section":"Posts","summary":"She is always like this, unpredictable but finally does what you predicted, strong but emotional, has a never ending stock of tears but tough, cries for what you feel is not important, shows no reactions for what you feel is very emotional… well now I am back to square one - she is unpredictable. But… that’s my girl.\n","title":"That\u0026#39;s my girl!!","type":"posts"},{"content":"3 Little words and tons of weight it carries\u0026hellip;\n3 Little words and it conveys meanings deeper than an ocean\u0026hellip;\n3 Little words and it has the power, the only power that can rule fear, though people think fear is the only power.\n3 Little words from the person whom you are in love with and you feel you are on top of the world, your eyes are welled up with tears, ur eyes will smile rather than your lips.\n3 Little words that build such strong relationships that we are ready to do anything for it.\n3 Little words and its enough to tell the other person that they mean a lot to us in our lives, more than anything else, more than ourselves.\n3 Little words that are responsible for the blood in millions of hearts,responsible for binding them, raising them, nourishing them, standing by them.\n3 Little words that are responsible for everything in this world, including ourselves.\n3 Little words that might not show you a flowery path, but will give you the strength to walk the thorns, the courage to endure and the power to reach\u0026hellip;\n3 Little words I share, I believe, I propogate and I respect.\n3 Little words and so much left to unravel, to explore, to understand\u0026hellip;.\n","date":"15 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-15-i-love-you/","section":"Posts","summary":"3 Little words and tons of weight it carries…\n3 Little words and it conveys meanings deeper than an ocean…\n3 Little words and it has the power, the only power that can rule fear, though people think fear is the only power.\n","title":"I Love You!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Yesterday I had a discussion with my friend. The argument was whether we are in control of what we do, or are we kind of puppets. As per his view of this world, all of us are like software programs, defined clearly before we came on this earth. Our future is already written and there is nothing we can do about it. In essence, we are like puppets, our destinys already written and decided.\nBut I just cant believe this. I believe that we have the power to choose what we want to do, we have the power to fight. It is very much true that we are the product of our beliefs, our thoughts. Things exist because we think they exist. But our thoughts tend to be influenced by these external factors, be it astrology, palmistry or other sciences, which claim that our behaviour is influenced by planets. There may be truth in them, but I feel they do more harm than good. They tend to create a negative force in the mind which cripples the mind of its powers. So, I dont want to believe them. I dont want my mind to be obstructed by all these restrictions, these fences which we ourselves create. I feel that we are living in a Matrix, created by us, binding us, holding us, scaring us, drowning us and dissolving us\u0026hellip;.\nConsidering the case of vastu shastra, many people manage to lead their life peacefully till they are ignorant that their house is not according to vastu. What about people who are from a different part of geography and where there is no notion of vastu? It is however true that, following this science will result in a very good house with proper ventilation, acoustics and other aspects of architecture. In a typical orthodox family, a child will be taught to do pooja everyday, lets say 1 hour. But he will not be told, why should he do that. He will not have the power to reason, to question, to find out, and then to accept. In such cases, if on some day, due to some reasons if he cannot perform his daily ritual, somewhere in the corner of his mind there is this negative force, which keeps on telling him that things might not be very good today because he had not followed the practice.\nI feel that, when we have the power to practice, we should also have the power to understand them. Our mind should not be bound to meaningless practices. It should be flexible and strong.\nWhen I tell all this, I also realise we are at the mercy of nature. If I think along these lines, it follows that we are not totally in control. I want to know what is our limits. I want to know whether we are puppets, our futures decided by horoscopes written by astrologers? I want my mind to be powerful and free and not entangled in any of these obstructions. I want to come out of the Matrix.\nI want to know \u0026lsquo;Are we in charge?\u0026rsquo;\nIn search of Neo in me\u0026hellip;\n","date":"11 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-11-are-we-in-charge/","section":"Posts","summary":"Yesterday I had a discussion with my friend. The argument was whether we are in control of what we do, or are we kind of puppets. As per his view of this world, all of us are like software programs, defined clearly before we came on this earth. Our future is already written and there is nothing we can do about it. In essence, we are like puppets, our destinys already written and decided.\n","title":"Are we in charge?","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"11 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/philosphy/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Philosphy","type":"tags"},{"content":"I got a poster with my Reebok shoes. It had Yuvraj Singh\u0026rsquo;s Photo and these words\u0026hellip;\n\u0026ldquo;See Ball. Hit Ball. Six. See Ball. Hit Ball. Out. See Ball. WILL HIT.\u0026rdquo; I AM WHAT I AM!\n","date":"10 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-10-attitude/","section":"Posts","summary":"I got a poster with my Reebok shoes. It had Yuvraj Singh’s Photo and these words…\n“See Ball. Hit Ball. Six. See Ball. Hit Ball. Out. See Ball. WILL HIT.” I AM WHAT I AM!\n","title":"Attitude","type":"posts"},{"content":"This Is My Life, Rated \u0026mdash; Life: | 9.2 Mind: | 8.8 Body: | 8.6 Spirit: | 9.2 Friends/Family: | 5.3 Love: | 7.7 Finance: | 8.6 Take the Rate My Life Quiz\nIts amazing what you can do when you are bored\u0026hellip;\n","date":"8 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-08-my-life-rating/","section":"Posts","summary":"This Is My Life, Rated — Life: | 9.2 Mind: | 8.8 Body: | 8.6 Spirit: | 9.2 Friends/Family: | 5.3 Love: | 7.7 Finance: | 8.6 Take the Rate My Life Quiz\n","title":"My Life Rating","type":"posts"},{"content":"Presenting you, my brand new Honda Unicorn (Kick Start). Well, I purchased Candy Blazing Red model on 07th Nov, 2005 (yesterday) and its just great.\nI intended to buy this from the begining, but people gave me varied opinions on Uni Vs Pulsar twins. But after much research, I was back to square one, I bought what I intended to buy. For detailed technical specs and features you can visit Uni\nIf you are also fighting a battle on what to buy, then I can give a personal consultation. Feel free to IM on adrenalinechill@yahoo.com or mail on harish.shastry@gmail.com.\nI have my own bike now, its great!\n","date":"7 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-07-wing-rider/","section":"Posts","summary":"Presenting you, my brand new Honda Unicorn (Kick Start). Well, I purchased Candy Blazing Red model on 07th Nov, 2005 (yesterday) and its just great.\nI intended to buy this from the begining, but people gave me varied opinions on Uni Vs Pulsar twins. But after much research, I was back to square one, I bought what I intended to buy. For detailed technical specs and features you can visit Uni\n","title":"A wing rider....","type":"posts"},{"content":"Probably these Diwali holidays were the best in my Life. I had four continuous holidays Sat, Sun, Mon and Tue. On saturday I received a phone call from one of our old boarders who studied in the same hostel as I did. He is Wing Commander Murari Bhat, who is currently working as a Wing Commander in Indian Airforce.\nGuess what he had called me for? He asked me to comeover and spend my holidays there. I was awestruck. How can people be so good and extend their reach of love to all others who conceivably share no relationship. Our only thread of relationship is that, I studied in the same hostel (Sri Ramakrishna Students Home) as he did with a gap of 20 years in between!! Thats it.\nHe has opted to remain a bachelor. I had seen him many times when he was in Bangalore and visited my hostel. But then he got transferred to Delhi in March 2005 and I was not aware of that. When I came to noida, he had called me up and asked me to meet him once. And our friendship grew. Anyways, I went over shamelessly packing my luggage enough for one day and left to his house.\nHe stays in Akash Airforce Officers mess located in Jhakir Hussain\u0026rsquo;s Marg( Damn it! all the roads in delhi have managed to find a mughal king for their name). I will write in all that we saw (though I wasted 3 precious days of his, I presume he also had a good time).\nShankar Math:-\nSunday evening we went to Shankara Math. Believe me there are as many south Indians in Delhi as north indians in Bangalore. It was good to see them speaking in Kannada, Tamil and worshipping in southern style. There was south indian prasadam too. I was shocked to see our Murari bhat singing in competition to some ladies. He sung the last song and won the competition any way!\nI dont understand what is it with these people; As they grow old, it seems that their memory refuses to store anything other than hymns, mantras and songs. They chanted some mantra continuously and the pooja continued for 3 hours. It was called pradosha pooja (For lord eswara, pradosha stands for evening. Evening prayers are offered on the day of trayodashi and is believed to be very powerful tool to please him).\nFive Point Someone and Lodhi Gardens:-\nIt was very sad that he had a working day, so I was all alone. I started \u0026ldquo;Five Point Someone\u0026rdquo; by Chetan Bhagat at around 9:00. Its around 270 pages, but believe me I finished it in 2 hours. Its a great book and you cannot stop it. The style of narration is so informal that you will feel at home reading that novel. It made great reading that day. Our Murari Bhat called in the morning, enquiring about my breakfast, called again in the noon to ask about lunch\u0026hellip;. God! The man is great. I feel so proud to be around such people and hats off to my Hostel (Sri Ramakrishna Students\u0026rsquo; Home). It creates such strong bondings.\nEvening I was expecting to go for a jog because he had told me that he jogs regularly. But suddenly he had an invitation from his Air Chief Marshal S.P Thyagi for a party he was throwing to all officers - around 1500-2000 people. Obviously he can afford to do it (The guy lives in a majestic bunglow with estimated face value of 150 Crores and has a huge lush green garden, and probably the central government would have funded the damn party). Anyways, I was quite disappointed. Probably, he might have sensed this so we decided to leave at 6:00 and be back by 6:55.\nGod, That man is a machine. Though I finished half marathon (21 Kms) relatively comfortably, I could not keep up with his pace. The pace, the energy \u0026hellip;. I was panting like a dog. Imagine a man of 41 years (He calls himself sweetly as 1964 model of apes), running like that. We did some 12-13 Kms without stop and were 5 minutes late to get the \u0026lsquo;Jai Hind\u0026rsquo; of the guard at the gate. (Jai Hind, is the way the guys there salute, with rifle hung on left arm, they lift their right arm upto their chest level and touch their chest with their hands).\nRP Bhavan and Metro:-\nThe next day (tuesday), we went for a long walk (6-8 kms). We saw the India Gate, walked on the Raj Path, saw all the power blocks of the country sitting majestically in the capital, conveying a sense of Elegance, majesty and patriotism. It was a wonderful feeling to be there, and feeling proud to be an Indian. That small flag ruffling away on the Rashtrapathi Bhavan will convey so much, and on the personal front I have made a point to hoist a flag on my company when I start one. Dil hain hindustani!\nOn the other end of the Raj Path, we find the new, classy, hitech, one-of-its kind Delhi Metro Railway Station. Its really well done, the trains can pick up their speed to 70-80 kmph within 3 seconds and come to halt in almost a second. The doors are fully automated and there are display boards and voice briefings inside the train. A fact to be appreciated is, the designers have made a point to synchronize voice and visual display, the display boards automatically display what is been announced on the voice system. Inside the train, its like a long corridor, very clean with opposite rows of seats towards each wall. The ticket system is cool and cheap too.\nGood India, Way to Go!\n","date":"7 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-07-3-days-in-delhi/","section":"Posts","summary":"Probably these Diwali holidays were the best in my Life. I had four continuous holidays Sat, Sun, Mon and Tue. On saturday I received a phone call from one of our old boarders who studied in the same hostel as I did. He is Wing Commander Murari Bhat, who is currently working as a Wing Commander in Indian Airforce.\n","title":"3 days in Delhi!","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"7 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/india/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"India","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"7 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/ipod/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Ipod","type":"tags"},{"content":"\u0026ldquo;Time to mix things up. Meet iPod shuffle, the unpredictable new iPod. What will it play next? Can it read your mind? Can it read your moods? Load it up. Put it on. See where it takes you. 240 Songs\u0026hellip;. Million Different ways\u0026hellip;.\u0026rdquo;\nIsn\u0026rsquo;t that well written! Those are the words printed on the Pack of Apple iPod 1GB Shuffle. I purchased my iPod on October 12th, 2005 and from then on I am trying to discover whether it is really intelligent and read moods. Though modesty forbids me to tell you I have to acknowledge that there is some mechanism which keeps track of the songs you play full and those that you tend to skip in 5 or 10 secs.\nWhatever it is, I am having fun with it. It has become a vital part of my life. I went to the shop to buy an Mp3 player in the range of 2500-3000 rs. I had a look at those tiny gadgets, heard their sound quality. I knew that something called as iPod exists and I had done considerable research on it before. But I thought its not for me. But then the bloody shop owner made the mistake of showing me this iPod shuffle. I heard it, and it struck the right chord in my brain. I was taken away by this tiny gadget. Though logically it was not needed since both the players did the same job of playing and storing 1GB data, but then, when have I given value to Logic more than intution? The answer is always the same - Never ;\nSo, I purchased it anyway. I thought its OK to spend 8K and I can manage somehow. But you know nothing comes to me very easily in life. I will have all possible opportunities to explore the other face of it. I have to do some struggle, learn its value, understand what is the bargain and then I will get it.\nSimilarly with my iPod too. I was all happy and excited to get it. I even made sure that he connected to his machine and put some old english songs in it. It was playing good music, absolutely no problems at all. So, I came back (by the way, I purchased it in Nehru place, Delhi and I live in NOIDA), all excited about it and in some corner of my mind I had this pride and the initial high value we tend to give to any new stuff that comes in our life. The next day I went to CSC and tried in my computer. It did not work, fine\u0026hellip; I tried in my friends comp, it did not even recognize Hell! I tried in all the computers in the damn training room and it did not WORK!! OMG, I was shocked. I somehow got out of the training room, went to another trng room which had all WinXP\u0026rsquo;s, tried in all of them, God it did not work. I had done everything possible to my iPod, my efforts comparable to an apple service engineer\u0026hellip;. Now it developed another problem. The status light never went off. It was always on and no blinking too!\nI was worried, more than that I wanted to solve that problem first. Or else I knew that I cannot do anything else. So I borrowed my friends bike, went to Delhi again, gave it back and asked for a replacement. But that bastard told me this was the last piece which he had, so no replacement. All he could do was send it to Apple Customer Care centres or he would give me the addresses and I were to roam in the Unknown delhi with my iPod. I gave it to him, he gave me a time frame of 1 week at max. Till then it was all fine!\nWhen I came out, my friend started opening his mouth! God these people are so unpredictable. He told me \u0026ldquo;There were scratches on that piece and I noticed it yesterday itself. Probably you shud not have purchased it!!\u0026rdquo;, Thats when I was unhappy. It posed a question on my decision, on my convictions and beliefs. Thats what hurts a person most, more than a physical damage. But I was releived now and trusted the shop guy to get my iPod back. However, I got it the next day.\nFrom then on, I developed considerable expertise in handling and troubleshooting it. It is now, as I told you has become a part of life. Its there when I jog, when I sleep, when I dream, when I think\u0026hellip;. when I dance\u0026hellip; practically all the time. But you know, now that I know the other side of it, I know its right value and the bargain it comes for. So, Neither am I too attached and obsessed with it, nor am I very careless about it.\nIt gives me a feeling of pure exhilaration and joy that I dance like a drunkard, like a kid unaware of my surroundings, which otherwise is impossible. Music is definitely magic!\niBlog\u0026hellip;\n","date":"7 November 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-11-07-ipodijogisleepidreamithinkidanceiblog/","section":"Posts","summary":"“Time to mix things up. Meet iPod shuffle, the unpredictable new iPod. What will it play next? Can it read your mind? Can it read your moods? Load it up. Put it on. See where it takes you. 240 Songs…. Million Different ways….”\n","title":"iPod,iJog,iSleep,iDream,iThink....iDance.....iBlog....","type":"posts"},{"content":"Below is a poem written Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wrote it in his house on the banks of the river cambridge after he lost his wife. He was depressed, lost confidence and started believing that he can no more write poems. But on that day, he experienced this emotional upsurge as to what life is, how to go about it\u0026hellip;. He wrote this poem, but never dared to publish it. It was in his books until his friend found out about it and published it to the world.. And today\u0026hellip; It is the worlds First Most Read Poem.\nIts my sincere opinion that we need not have to refer to anything in this world for moral support. Just keep this poem in mind. The words are so appropriate even today and I am sure every one of you shall find the importance and necessity of such words in our life. Here it goes\u0026hellip;\nA Psalm of Life.\nTell me not in mournful numbers,\n\u0026ldquo;Life is but an empty dream!\u0026rdquo;\nFor the soul is dead that slumbers,\nAnd things are not what they seem.\nLife is real! Life is earnest!\nAnd the grave is not its goal;\n\u0026ldquo;Dust thou art, to dust returnest,\u0026rdquo;\nWas not spoken of the soul.\nNot enjoyment, and not sorrow,\nIs our destined end or way;\nBut to act, that each to-morrow\nFind us further than to-day.\nArt is long, and Time is fleeting,\nAnd our hearts, though stout and brave,\nStill, like muffled drums, are beating\nFuneral marches to the grave.\nIn the world\u0026rsquo;s broad field of battle,\nIn the bivouac of Life,\nBe not like dumb, driven cattle!\nBe a hero in the strife!\nTrust no Future, howe\u0026rsquo;er pleasant!\nLet the dead Past bury its dead!\nAct \u0026ndash; act in the living Present!\nHeart within, and God o\u0026rsquo;erhead!\nLives of great men all remind us\nWe can make our lives sublime,\nAnd, departing, leave behind us\nFootprints on the sands of time;\nFootprints, that perhaps another,\nSailing o\u0026rsquo;er life\u0026rsquo;s solemn main,\nA forlorn and shipwrecked brother,\nSeeing, shall take heart again.\nLet us, then, be up and doing,\nWith a heart for any fate;\nStill achieving, still pursuing,\nLearn to labour and to wait.\nBy Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882).\n","date":"3 September 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-09-03-psalm-of-life/","section":"Posts","summary":"Below is a poem written Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He wrote it in his house on the banks of the river cambridge after he lost his wife. He was depressed, lost confidence and started believing that he can no more write poems. But on that day, he experienced this emotional upsurge as to what life is, how to go about it…. He wrote this poem, but never dared to publish it. It was in his books until his friend found out about it and published it to the world.. And today… It is the worlds First Most Read Poem.\n","title":"A Psalm of Life","type":"posts"},{"content":"Let us introspect. How many times have we killed a smile? How many times have we broken a relationship? How many friends have we stopped speaking to? How many times have we been jealous of our friend who is doing well?\nWe stop so many things, which we would fancy doing fearing what others might think about us. We never go back to a friend after a quarrel, but wait for him to come back. And he does the same thing. And as the days go by we learn to live without him. We will learn to live with the pain. We are ready for all that but not to let down our Ego once and go approach him.\nWe stop playing in rain because we think we are not children anymore. We avoid laughing out loud for a joke because it would look uncivilized. We fear approaching the girl we like and tell her our feelings, our love and how much we think of her every waking moment of our lives. Rather, we would keep quiet afraid of our parents, of the risks involved, of the society - until the feeling dies, until the love dies. Then we would complain for the rest of our life for all that has happened with us, never realizing it was we who were responsible!!\nLife is too short for all this. Its time we stop living for our fears, for others! Lets live for our dreams, our passion, and our love. This is a line from a poem called \u0026lsquo;Leisure\u0026rsquo;. I do not recall the poets name now.\n\u0026rsquo; No time to wait till her lips can, Enrich the smiles that her eyes began!!\u0026rsquo;\nThe poet says, he saw the smile in her eyes. But he could not wait till that smile appeared on her lips. If we dont realize the importance of life, we will loose the opportunity to see the smile and realize the beauty of life.\nWhat are we waiting for?? Lets do what we wanted to do. Lets listen to our heart. One Life\u0026hellip;.. Let\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;LIVE\u0026rsquo; it!!\n","date":"25 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-25-what-are-we-waiting-for/","section":"Posts","summary":"Let us introspect. How many times have we killed a smile? How many times have we broken a relationship? How many friends have we stopped speaking to? How many times have we been jealous of our friend who is doing well?\n","title":"What are we waiting for??","type":"posts"},{"content":"Most of us usually forget the importance of speech and the usage of right words at right time. Came accross this stuff while browsing some book.\nTwo smokers entered the church and started praying.\nIn the Middle, one of them asked, “Father, Can I Smoke when I pray”?\nThe Father said, “No Son. It is not allowed”\nThey leave the church after their prayer.\nThe next day they went to the church again.\nThis time the other friend asks the father, “Father, Can I pray when I smoke? “\nThe Father replied cheerfully, “Yes Son, You can”.\nKnow how to ask!!!\n","date":"25 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-25-word-power/","section":"Posts","summary":"Most of us usually forget the importance of speech and the usage of right words at right time. Came accross this stuff while browsing some book.\nTwo smokers entered the church and started praying.\n","title":"Word Power.....","type":"posts"},{"content":"Nothing in Life is constant except change. You have to change or else you will be forced to. This concept is beautifully narrated in a book called \u0026lsquo;Who Moved my Cheese?\u0026rsquo;.\nThere are lots of ideas, principles and fresh thoughts that we see around. But we are never in a position to appreciate anything. Why is that so? This will act as a wonderful remainder to all of us.\nImagine there is a cup full of Tea in front of us. What will happen if we pour tea into it? Yes, It will spill out. The mind is also similar. It is full of our tea, our own half cooked thoughts, prejudices, fears, apprehensions and beliefs. It is so full of our own thoughts that 65% of our time is spent in rethinking our old thoughts and hence is of not much use. In order to appreciate this world, first we need to empty our cup. Look at everything afresh, like a child. Perhaps, we should remove the biased glasses we wear in front of our eyes before looking at things.\n","date":"23 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-23-cup-of-tea/","section":"Posts","summary":"Nothing in Life is constant except change. You have to change or else you will be forced to. This concept is beautifully narrated in a book called ‘Who Moved my Cheese?’.\n","title":"The cup of Tea","type":"posts"},{"content":"We have very hi-fi toilets here. You dont have to bother about pushing something to flush it out with water. All you need to do is just stand at a specific distance not exceeding some limit, and Lo! there are infrared sensors. A green light comes up and after you move out, it automatically flushes.\nThough it is creepy to see some machine staring at you, its a comfort. But you can also fool these machines. You stand a little far and they fail to detect you. So no flushing ;-). You put some other object in front of it. It will still sense the heat and flush. In fact more the time you keep it in front of them, more the water that is wasted. There should also be some mechanism by which they periodically flush also, because there are people like me who do every possible thing to fool those machines and be undetected.\nIn our process of modernization, we dont even remember to keep manual alternatives. Hence, there was a war from 2 days here. Some power problem and the machines stopped functioning. The sanitation guys had a tough time to keep them clean!\nVery small war, but a big lesson to learn.\n","date":"23 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-23-war-of-machines/","section":"Posts","summary":"We have very hi-fi toilets here. You dont have to bother about pushing something to flush it out with water. All you need to do is just stand at a specific distance not exceeding some limit, and Lo! there are infrared sensors. A green light comes up and after you move out, it automatically flushes.\n","title":"The war of Machines","type":"posts"},{"content":"When it comes to god, that we all have complex beliefs, different ideas and some inherent fear and apprehension. Well, I started questioning about god in my 7th standard, I was an atheist by choice. My usual arguments were, god does not exist because we cant see him. But then there was this ‘You cant see air, Don’t the air exist?’. So, I used to argue out of my childishness. Later on, when I reflected back it was because I enjoyed that recognition.\nWhy God?\nOne thing is very obvious. There is something extraordinary about nature. The pattern, the structure, the interdependencies, the balance… everything. Its so well planned and I bet you cant come out with any damn idea as to how the creation could have better been than what it is now. You will be astonished by the complexity involved and also by the simplicity with which it all exists. All you can do is wonder – who has got such brains?\nTo make it more solid, lets ask very simple questions to ourselves. Why are our eyes where it is now? Which other position could have been better? OMG its not an easy task. There has to be some force which is driving all this – right? Well, this is what is GOD.\nGod and our lives.\nNow it’s a different matter altogether. I respect the concept of god and relegion. Why is this perception necessary for everybody?\nWhen we dig a little deeper we realize that everything we are and we can be is a result of our thoughts. The 14 pound mass between our shoulders is the most wonderful thing in this world. There are different ways in which we can control our thoughts and actions and see that it does not go out of the boundaries and affect our fellow living creatures. One such force is ‘FEAR’. There are other forces too, which many of us don’t realize.\nIn this process, we develop perceptions of GOD which make us suffer. We fear GOD, we pray to god, we blame god, we praise god….. but what is that we are actually doing? We are doing all this to our own minds without realizing that we have to take the responsibility instead of going to GOD for all this.\nThere are lots of instances where we can see certain apprehensions, fears that come associated with our belief in God/Religion. In our worship of God we form certain habits. For example, we will be having a particular sequence of saying mantras, a particular set of rituals to perform, a particular number of times we do namaskara etc.. All this is good, only when we know that these procedures are done by us, and no God will ask you to do it. In the process, we form obstacles to our otherwise free and unprejudiced mind. Everyone of us would have felt the uneasiness of breaking one such sequence. Once due to some reason, we have not done the right number of namaskaras and Lo! We have that gnawing feeling in the corner of our mind, and anything that goes wrong that day will be rightly associated with our mistake.\nThese habits might be under a limit in majority of us. But when it is embraced without proper thinking it leads to more complex beliefs and obstacles. I have seen a guy in bangalore who goes in the same road to the college every day because there are quite a few temples on the way and in front of every temple he would stop, remove his footwear and do ‘2’ namaskaras. He was the guy who did 1 hr pooja everyday morning without fail. When he does so much and still he has constricted himself in the stupid ritual what is the use of worshipping God?\nIts time we question what we have been doing just because we have been doing it and we really don\u0026rsquo;t know the reason. It might be of no use today.\nMy Perception\nI see god as my friend. I talk to him, say good morning and good night to him. I always belive that anything that happens with a person is good and there is nothing bad in this world as such. Everything thing has its own value, its own beauty in its own place. I am always filled with wonder and nothing else when I look at nature. I want to savour every moment, enjoy every second of my life.\nBefore going to sleep every day I say to God \u0026lsquo;Life\u0026rsquo;s Beautiful. Good night baby\u0026rsquo;. I know this sounds crazy but ultimately its all your mind and I want to be curious and enthusiastic as a child inside. So there I am, foolish and hungry\u0026hellip;(OMG, its 9:00 in the night and I am still in the company!)\n","date":"23 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-23-me-and-god/","section":"Posts","summary":"When it comes to god, that we all have complex beliefs, different ideas and some inherent fear and apprehension. Well, I started questioning about god in my 7th standard, I was an atheist by choice. My usual arguments were, god does not exist because we cant see him. But then there was this ‘You cant see air, Don’t the air exist?’. So, I used to argue out of my childishness. Later on, when I reflected back it was because I enjoyed that recognition.\n","title":"Me and God","type":"posts"},{"content":"Hi ,\nLong long ago, I had a habit of writing a diary. I called it ‘AISH’, whom I perceive as an angel and I don’t give a damn for what people say about her and what newspapers write about her. I see the god of beauty in her and that’s the reason I look at her as an angel! Sorry if I am being crazy, but I am!\nI personally have strong reasons why a person should write his or her diary. This exercise is helpful only when we are honest in the activity and hence we should never consider the possibility that some day this diary might fall into the hands of somebody else. It is then that we learn to be honest to ourselves. We can monitor our thought process, our relationships, the shortcomings in our behavior, the way we mature in our thoughts. It will be a map of our personal growth, showing how we formed our convictions, our philosophies which would finally shape our outlook.\nHence, I would put all my thoughts into it. I would address my diary as my friend, I would apologize for not writing continuously –I treated my diary as a person or rather as a beautiful lady in whom I can confide, to whom I can tell my philosophies of life (any other live person would go crazy if they hear me talking philosophies!).\nBut as the days progressed, I had lot of thoughts, lot of lessons learnt, lots of convictions…everything in lots. I had a problem in remembering them at the end of the day to put it in my diary or even if I did, it used to be tedious task to write so much – afterall, I am a person good at keyboard and not at pen! There were times when I wished I had a pensive (harry’s pensive, idea from Harry Potter).\nIts now that I have considered to write again. I have a friend by name S Deepthi, to whom I used to tell lots of philosophies during our YM chat. A few days later I could imagine how she would have suffered because of all the crap I used to tell her. She also gave me the idea of blogging. So I have started, triggered by her idea. I also believe it is comfortable because people can choose to read it or ignore it. Its their choice.\nThis is the story of my transition from aish to e-Aish. I treat these blogs as my original aish, pouring out all that I think, I belive and conflicts that go on in my mind sometimes irrespective of whether people read it or not. Although I personally wish atleast deepthi would go through this once in a while, for the mistake she has made by giving me this idea.\nMy blogs will usually be long. So have patience to read it. I will be back soon….\n","date":"17 August 2005","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2005-08-17-aish-to-e-aish/","section":"Posts","summary":"Hi ,\nLong long ago, I had a habit of writing a diary. I called it ‘AISH’, whom I perceive as an angel and I don’t give a damn for what people say about her and what newspapers write about her. I see the god of beauty in her and that’s the reason I look at her as an angel! Sorry if I am being crazy, but I am!\n","title":"AISH to e-AISH","type":"posts"},{"content":"Hello Guys, Check this out. I have developed a Tic Tac Toe Game for 2 players. Also a user vs computer game, where the computer always either wins or makes a draw with the users. I will appreciate any of your algorithms to make this possible. I will be posting this game, its in java. Tell me if i could place the file for download in LJ, bcoz this is the first time i am using it.\nMore to come. Urs, Harry.\n","date":"17 September 2004","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2004-09-17-tic-tac-toe-versus-computer/","section":"Posts","summary":"Hello Guys, Check this out. I have developed a Tic Tac Toe Game for 2 players. Also a user vs computer game, where the computer always either wins or makes a draw with the users. I will appreciate any of your algorithms to make this possible. I will be posting this game, its in java. Tell me if i could place the file for download in LJ, bcoz this is the first time i am using it.\n","title":"Tic Tac Toe versus Computer","type":"posts"},{"content":"I can smile!\nWhen the fate began ticking my clock,\nThe skies of my heart became starless and dar.\nAll deserted hearts, no love to be seen.\nAll who cared were now so mean.\nThose smiles that welcomed me,\nNow betrayed me to the core.\nAnd those who wanted to see me more,\nWere all gone and no one left to adore.\nWhen a calf missed her mother,\nAtleast cried and starved for her.\nBut I was a mishap\u0026hellip;.\nNeither could I live nor die.\nBut nothing did raven my strength,\nFor those starts taught me to how to twinkle,\nAnd those birds taught me how to fly,\nIn the airs hostile and in the worlds of lie.\nI thank mother nature for her stile\nBecause -\nThrough lips of difficulties - I can still smile!\n03 APR 2000\n","date":"3 April 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-04-03-i-can-smile/","section":"Posts","summary":"I can smile!\nWhen the fate began ticking my clock,\nThe skies of my heart became starless and dar.\nAll deserted hearts, no love to be seen.\nAll who cared were now so mean.\n","title":"I can smile!","type":"posts"},{"content":"","date":"3 April 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/old/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Old","type":"tags"},{"content":"","date":"3 April 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/tags/poetry/","section":"Tags","summary":"","title":"Poetry","type":"tags"},{"content":"Hiding Pain!\nWhy do you complain that\nYour job is difficult;\nHere\u0026rsquo;s my challenge,\nCome on, hide your pain!\nYour face should be as pleasant\nas the springs of the year;\nWithout a mark of pain on it\nLike a steady rock you should sit!\nIt is so difficult to control your anger,\nWhen each of your nerve is shedding tear\nThe cry that screams out of your dumb flesh;\nCan tear the superficiality of your face\u0026rsquo;s mesh.\nEach second sending currents in your body,\nThe volcano of pain takes it\u0026rsquo;s birth,\nNot a single caring soul you can find\nOn this earth which seem to be blind;\nYou can never do it - I understand,\nBut challenging reality - I stand!\n14 MAR 2000\n","date":"14 March 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-03-14-hiding-pain/","section":"Posts","summary":"Hiding Pain!\nWhy do you complain that\nYour job is difficult;\nHere’s my challenge,\nCome on, hide your pain!\nYour face should be as pleasant\nas the springs of the year;\nWithout a mark of pain on it\nLike a steady rock you should sit!\n","title":"Hiding Pain!","type":"posts"},{"content":"For Me!\nThe world has something for you -\nSomething that is beautiful and good.\nA handful of comrades to accompany,\nA group of cynics to criticize your blood.\nA cluster of skills and some caring skulls,\nThe palindrome of life has the same to say,\nSome joys and some sorrows - natural,\nQualities like honesty, humbleness - whatever they call!\nThe rainbow in every drop of water of a fountain,\nThat stimulates a poetic heart - to pen!\nThe world has something for our life - For me,\nA poetic heart and courage to strife.\n01 MAR 2000\n","date":"1 March 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-03-01-for-me/","section":"Posts","summary":"For Me!\nThe world has something for you -\nSomething that is beautiful and good.\nA handful of comrades to accompany,\nA group of cynics to criticize your blood.\nA cluster of skills and some caring skulls,\nThe palindrome of life has the same to say,\nSome joys and some sorrows - natural,\nQualities like honesty, humbleness - whatever they call!\n","title":"For Me!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Selfish thoughts!\nEverything is my own -\nThose seeds which are newly sown,\nThe rays of sun that blooms the lotus;\nThat beautiful smile from a beauty\u0026rsquo;s lips;\nAll the heavens and the joy you would get;\nAnd the apparent victory in every bet;\nAll the boons that God would shower,\nThose colourful birds who in the sky hover\nThose eyes who shed their loving tears,\nAnd those backs which carry the burden.\nThe serrate ribs and in it a languid heart,\nAnd that gentle face of a baby in slee;\nThe flowers that sway and the bee\u0026rsquo;s gay,\nThe drops of dew which hide in the grass,\nThe pearls on the neck of a pretty lass,\nThe crown of the kind and the queen\u0026rsquo;s earring,\nThe smile of the moon and blink of the stars.\nAll are mine -\nWhich teach me magics - the magic of life,\nThat if I can smile for a while\nIn this mean-mean world -\nI can win a treasure - The treasure of love!\n02 FEB 2000\n","date":"2 February 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-02-02-selfish-thoughts/","section":"Posts","summary":"Selfish thoughts!\nEverything is my own -\nThose seeds which are newly sown,\nThe rays of sun that blooms the lotus;\nThat beautiful smile from a beauty’s lips;\nAll the heavens and the joy you would get;\nAnd the apparent victory in every bet;\nAll the boons that God would shower,\nThose colourful birds who in the sky hover\nThose eyes who shed their loving tears,\nAnd those backs which carry the burden.\nThe serrate ribs and in it a languid heart,\nAnd that gentle face of a baby in slee;\nThe flowers that sway and the bee’s gay,\nThe drops of dew which hide in the grass,\nThe pearls on the neck of a pretty lass,\nThe crown of the kind and the queen’s earring,\nThe smile of the moon and blink of the stars.\nAll are mine -\nWhich teach me magics - the magic of life,\nThat if I can smile for a while\nIn this mean-mean world -\nI can win a treasure - The treasure of love!\n","title":"Selfish thoughts!","type":"posts"},{"content":"The story of my pen!\nThat night of shivering fight,\nPierced the sky an icing light,\nBehidn the hill of idiotic plight,\nThe flame of knowledge, he came to ignite;\nAmidst the swirling scenario of gloom,\nThundering, glittering he came.\nThe arena blighted out of light,\nMoon and the stars disappeared in shame.\nMy spirit wrecked my sleep;\nThrough the window I had to peep,\nRadiating with blooming sun;\nTowards the mountain I had to run.\nHe had come, he had come on the mountain,\nResembling the lightining, he gave me this pen;\nBetter friend than thousand men!\n23 JAN 2000\n","date":"23 January 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-01-23-the-story-of-my-pen/","section":"Posts","summary":"The story of my pen!\nThat night of shivering fight,\nPierced the sky an icing light,\nBehidn the hill of idiotic plight,\nThe flame of knowledge, he came to ignite;\n","title":"The story of my pen!","type":"posts"},{"content":"On a drop of dew!\nThere I was on a drop of dew,\nLuck permits only a few.\nThrough it I could see the green hue,\nFloating on it under the sky blue.\nI heard the leaf shivering with cold,\nI saw a bright aurora shimmering bold,\nI hugged the dew glittering in a ray,\nI felt the heaven in my arm\u0026rsquo;s sway!\nBut suddenly the gusts of wind shook my head,\nThe next moment I was floating\u0026hellip;\nThe morning was on with a wide gape;\nI scud on a bud of cupid\u0026rsquo;s shower.\nThe firing rays of sun pierced my caste,\nMy curio banished the scenario of pleasure;\nGood bye, I fad - fade with a sighing shoon,\nHoping for the cool caring moon!\n12 JAN 2000\n","date":"12 January 2000","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/2000-01-12-on-drop-of-dew/","section":"Posts","summary":"On a drop of dew!\nThere I was on a drop of dew,\nLuck permits only a few.\nThrough it I could see the green hue,\nFloating on it under the sky blue.\n","title":"On a drop of dew!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Barking Dogs!\nThose are barking dogs - never worry.\nWho bark at your back and blink when you twink.\nThose schoffs of their words and wacks of their blunder\nwill all surrender, if you dare!\nShadows can only follow you - so are these dogs,\nIf you are clear enough, you see your reflection.\nLost the lethargic legacy lingers in the lineage,\nAnd the hostile hospitality locks you in a cage!\nThose valiant souls have overcome the trouble,\nThe wisps of beautiy is like a glance in the bubble,\nGrab those moments bit if you lose heart,\nThose dogs can double your trouble.\nAs you think so is your future,\nThe gods will surrender with hearts slender,\nThose barking dogs are afraid of heights - Rise and Rise!\nBecause barking dogs seldom bite!\n24 DEC 1999\n","date":"24 December 1999","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/1999-12-24-barking-dogs-those-are-barking-dogs/","section":"Posts","summary":"Barking Dogs!\nThose are barking dogs - never worry.\nWho bark at your back and blink when you twink.\nThose schoffs of their words and wacks of their blunder\nwill all surrender, if you dare!\n","title":"Barking Dogs!","type":"posts"},{"content":"Feather\u0026rsquo;s Touch\nIn the clear sky, there flew a dove,\nOpposing the gusts of wind that blew;\nPer chance her feather fell in the light,\nI stood bewitched, and in my hand a kite.\nThe feather flew and danced in the air,\nLike the dancing flower for the rythm of bees,\nOr the gliding fish for slight vibration,\nLike tumbling but balanced God\u0026rsquo;s creation!\nFor the moment the nature seemed -\nTo have shattered the transcends of my dreamk\nFor the wind took the feather by hand;\nAnd had approached me, like beauty with a garland.\nThe feather touched the skins of my cheek,\nI heard, it whispered in the depths of my ears,\nthe message of love and beauty, and I stood\nFrozed, and my heart calm and clear.\nI felt, it had recalled my past,\n\u0026hellip;in my childhood\u0026hellip;in my mother\u0026rsquo;s lap,\nWhen my mom pinched my tender cheeks,\nWhich touched my heart with warm greets.\nOr like that beauty who passed before,\nThat moment when her hair grazed,\nOr like those drops which splashed my face,\nWith all its beauty secretly phrased.\nHad I dreamt? No I was awake.\nBut I had dreamt, which was revealed,\nBu the absence of my kite without a shove\nWhich shattered my dreams and flew past the dove!\n10 DEC 1999\n","date":"10 December 1999","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/1999-12-10-feathers-touch/","section":"Posts","summary":"Feather’s Touch\nIn the clear sky, there flew a dove,\nOpposing the gusts of wind that blew;\nPer chance her feather fell in the light,\nI stood bewitched, and in my hand a kite.\n","title":"Feather's Touch!","type":"posts"},{"content":"The Sound\nI heard -\nA sound which elates the world,\nOf conteporary tremendous exploitation;\nA sound mightier than thunder,\nWhich reminds the world of it\u0026rsquo;s majestic blunder!\nThe sound which revealed the secrets of nature,\nWhich man can never even dream or doom.\nThe sound that prompts the world with truth,\nThe sound that echoes amidst the gloom.\nThe sound that is better than the doctrines;\nThe sound that is deeper than any heart\u0026rsquo;s mine;\nThe sound that banishes the dilemma in us,\nThe sound that governs joy and fuss.\nThe sound that is the ultimate sun,\nThe sound that is life\u0026rsquo;s true jig.\nThe world looks down in shame - if I say -\nFrom the depths unprejudiced - it was a child\u0026rsquo;s cry!\n26 NOV 1999\n","date":"26 November 1999","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/1999-11-26-childs-cry/","section":"Posts","summary":"The Sound\nI heard -\nA sound which elates the world,\nOf conteporary tremendous exploitation;\nA sound mightier than thunder,\nWhich reminds the world of it’s majestic blunder!\nThe sound which revealed the secrets of nature,\nWhich man can never even dream or doom.\nThe sound that prompts the world with truth,\nThe sound that echoes amidst the gloom.\n","title":"Child's Cry","type":"posts"},{"content":"Her Eyes!\nA beautiful sculpture in front of my eyes,\nIt seemed to me - a river milk white,\nWith thousands of suns sparkling bright,\nThe sight could banish fright.\nThe light can make you sprite,\nThe light can take you to the depths of ocean,\nClear, blue and pure in it\u0026rsquo;s core.\nPrejudice can never adore.\nThe clarity can take you to the stars,\nThe cool care of concern and smile,\nThe pearl shines if your heart -\nthanks eternity for this gift.\nI always wish to see it for ever,\nFor my life is dark without the light,\nThing of beauty is a joy for ever -\nThe scenario of life is beautiful and nice -\nExtant, exquisite - it was her eyes.\n25 NOV 1999\n","date":"25 November 1999","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/1999-11-25-her-eyes/","section":"Posts","summary":"Her Eyes!\nA beautiful sculpture in front of my eyes,\nIt seemed to me - a river milk white,\nWith thousands of suns sparkling bright,\nThe sight could banish fright.\n","title":"Her Eyes!","type":"posts"},{"content":"An ant\u0026rsquo;s message\u0026hellip;\nA never ending wide surface it is,\nWith lot of strange objects around me,\nSome shine bright, some cause fright,\nSome sweep me away, some bang my head.\nI get wild sometimes -\nA chaotic world around me.\nHuge shadows, high objects,\nWhich seem to fall - makes me run.\nI get perplexed, I move fast,\nSome smash me away,\nSome take me under their sway.\nI persist if my luck is gay.\nI dont know what happens in the next second,\nLife is full of uncertainities - atleast make this certain,\nThat you achieve in the second you spend,\nBe brave, and take care.\n27 JAN 1999\n","date":"27 January 1999","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/posts/1999-01-27-an-ants-message/","section":"Posts","summary":"An ant’s message…\nA never ending wide surface it is,\nWith lot of strange objects around me,\nSome shine bright, some cause fright,\nSome sweep me away, some bang my head.\n","title":"An Ant's Message","type":"posts"},{"content":"I\u0026rsquo;m Harish Vishwanath — an engineering leader with a deep-seated passion for both people and technology. I\u0026rsquo;ve spent two decades building systems, leading engineering organizations, and learning something new every single day.\nThis site is my corner of the internet — a place for writing, projects, photographs, and the occasional philosophical musing.\nWho are you? # Dreamer. Explorer. Builder. Infinite Learner. Student of Life.\nI am but a force, a ball of energy — here, by chance. My spirit is free, and each moment that passes, I work towards being free. I am a product of this earth and everything in the universe, and back there I go when my time comes.\nWhat is your philosophy? # I believe in love, life, courage, and myself.\nFor me, life is a ticket to watch the greatest show on earth — and I enjoy the show (mostly). Most of the time, life is black and white to me, unlike the different shades of gray that it appears to be. Pleasure or pain, success or failure — it doesn\u0026rsquo;t matter, because I see them neither as good nor bad. They all merge into what is called the present, and anything in the present is, well — just in the present.\nFor me, no matter what — \u0026ldquo;Life is Beautiful!\u0026rdquo; — always, as it is intended to be, as it is, and as it will be. I have my dark moments at times, but eventually I succeed in being me.\nWhat is your thing? # Learning, discovering, and exploring new things gives me the greatest pleasure. I love to take a problem and solve it in my own way.\nI am interested in almost everything, but there are a few things I keep coming back to — building distributed systems, leading engineering teams, and understanding how things work at the deepest level. I can scale up and scale down, excel operating at the big picture level, and relish getting down to the finer details.\nWhat is not your thing? # I am a perfectionist (not to the extent of a maniac) and hate to see mediocrity.\nAnd oh, I hate shopping in the conventional sense of the word.\nWhat do you do? # I lead engineering teams that build and scale distributed systems and cloud infrastructure. My journey has taken me across diverse technical landscapes — from mainframes and embedded systems to cloud computing and security at scale. I thrive on empowering engineers, fostering technical excellence, and collaboratively tackling complex challenges to deliver innovative solutions.\nBeyond the day job, I love computers and am useful with most things related to them. I solve (and sometimes create) problems by writing software — for business, for pleasure, and for no reason at all.\nIf not a programmer, what would you have liked to do? # I would have become a librarian. Imagine being with books all the time, soaking in all the knowledge of the world, in an enlightening silence! Awesomeness.\nWhat is your one final wish? # I want to watch Earth from space. That\u0026rsquo;s a trip I wouldn\u0026rsquo;t mind not returning from.\nFind me online:\nLinkedIn GitHub ","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/about/","section":"About","summary":"I’m Harish Vishwanath — an engineering leader with a deep-seated passion for both people and technology. I’ve spent two decades building systems, leading engineering organizations, and learning something new every single day.\n","title":"About","type":"about"},{"content":"Coming soon — a gallery of moments from travels and everyday life.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/photography/","section":"Photography","summary":"Coming soon — a gallery of moments from travels and everyday life.\n","title":"Photography","type":"photography"},{"content":"A collection of projects, experiments, and tools — from production systems to weekend hacks.\nComing soon. In the meantime, find my code on GitHub.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/projects/","section":"Projects","summary":"A collection of projects, experiments, and tools — from production systems to weekend hacks.\nComing soon. In the meantime, find my code on GitHub.\n","title":"Projects","type":"projects"},{"content":"Coming soon.\nIn the meantime, connect with me on LinkedIn.\n","externalUrl":null,"permalink":"/resume/","section":"Resume","summary":"Coming soon.\nIn the meantime, connect with me on LinkedIn.\n","title":"Resume","type":"resume"}]