I'm thankful

Few things I am thankful for:

1. Worries at the start of the day, that means I am alive :P
2. Clothes that don't fit me anymore, that means I am getting good food (thanks to my mom and wife) :D :D
3. The mess to clean after a party, that means I still have friends around me :)
4. My house roof needs fixing, that means I have a house
5. I pay taxes, that means I am not penniless
6. Often hear from quarreling relatives, that means I have a family

Rat race - it hurts

Ever wondered why are you one of those people who are caught in the race? You must be an engineer who did his/her graduation in Computer Science/ Electrical/ Mechanical / Civil from one of the many good colleges in the country. You completed your graduation by copying the answers from your friends, googling projects or even strong guesses. You always dreamt of big things during graduation but yet appeared for campus interviews. Probably you were the lucky one to get selected early or you were the one who scraped through. You then joined an IT major and became one of 25000 candidates selected that year from different colleges/ universities to do an outsourced job... and then?

You became a rat.. you joined a rat race. The rat race of appraisals, on-site opportunities, promotions, buying a new car, flat etc. etc. Didn't you?

Question: Does it hurt to be in the rat race?

Busy running a rat race, many people forget the real reason they are chasing a dream. Some people get into the habit of running a rat race because they are trying to compete with people or make people in their lives, such as their parents, happy with the decisions they make.

I am a Software Engineer. I've developed desktop and mobile applications, product development using SAP. I also did an executive MBA during my job tenure. But none of my job profiles offered me to "manage" and "grow" something until lately I took the reigns in my hand. Wondering what I did during my last 6 years, was it something I real wanted to do? Sadly, the answer is NO. I always wanted to run my own business.

Life beyond the Rat Race


The life beyond the rat race only begins when we take a small but meaningful journey within us. It is important for us to know what we really want to do, what you are passionate about. For example, if you think that you are trapped in a lousy career, its a good idea to look back and see why you are in a career you hate.

Second good way would be to stop trying to compete with other people. Whether you are competing with someone with better possessions or better job, you will be stuck running a rat race because you probably won't be able to catch up with them. You are only in competition with yourself. 


Every one imagines a life beyond a rat race. But hardly any one dares to try and live it. All we need to do it first know what we want and then take steps to do it. Money is secondary. If Edison invented electric bulb because he wanted to earn, he’d have never invented an electric bulb. Do it if your heart says. Do some thing new, some thing better and do it if it is fun. If you are good at it, the money will follow.

DSLR - You don't stop with that, do you?

As I browse through my Facebook feed through various tinted photographs of poor people and crows making out on a high tension power line, it only compounds my irritation.

Apparently anyone can now own a DSLR without knowing what it expands to. The moment you get one, you update your Facebook status with technical specifications of your camera that serves as a harbinger to us. Then you have two passive Facebook users (Their role in online social life ends with the like button) to like it. I think they are like assassins. You can hire them and get them to like stuff on a temporary basis. An innocent girl falls for the bait and comments “Wow”. A hound of wolves go and like her comment, which tallies to a higher rational number than the likes for your original post, thereby embarrassing you. I mean, why this hoopla?

When you get your DSLR, do you start looking at everything as a prospective photograph. Poor people are now the target of your black and white pics. Suddenly old senile men clad in loin cloth are of value to you. A wrecked car becomes an object of art. I mean, how suddenly?

You categorize stuff into different senseless albums. Stray dogs come under the category of wildlife. Why man, why?Do they live in the forest? Are they endangered? I really don’t think so. They chase me all around the housing colony, as I drive my car with my windows up out of fear, when I return home after 11 pm. Your cycle bell is shot in high resolution and uploaded into “random pics”.

Doors, windows, bullet enfields and light switches go under the category of classic pictures. Who certified it as classic dear? The Academy awards jury?Sigh, self-proclamation. And yes, find new names. “What I see”, “Brilliant shots from my eye” and “Shots through my lens” are exhausted names for an album.

”Random pics”, the worst ever name, not just for an album. If you hate your child, you should name him “Random pics”.

You know what I dread the most? When you walk alone and call it a photowalk. Apparently it is exactly like your normal walk, except for the fact that you annoy other people with your camera during your walk, thereby intruding their privacy. You shoot pictures of mango sellers, beach, shops, lakes, carvings, pillars and everything you find. Then you post process it and make it look pretentious. And then you put your logo along with a copyright image. Yeah, because Sanjay Leela Bhansali is looking to sneak away your photos and plagiarize it in his next movie. Some of the folks even put “Rights reserved” at the footer of the image. I wonder what rights you have reserved for yourself. I will plagiarize it and see how you effectively sue me in high court. 

It is tiring to see “Ram photography” , “Shyam photography” or “Soorpanaka photography” as image footers.

You don’t stop with that, do you? You have to bestow your photography tips on us. When we common men click photos with our “point and shoot” cameras, you go all over our pictures and say “This should have been shot in Macro mode” , “That should have been shot at this exposure”. Ok, I know you understand the nuances of photography. However all I want is just to click a button and get a picture. From now on, your shooting tips will be met with shooting, from a gun.

End of rant.

P.S: Don't take it to heart you DSLR owners, please keep clicking my pictures in any mode you want :)

Mending Wall

Another school era classic....makes so much sense now :) I esp love the lines that are in bold...


Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall, 
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors." 


~ Robert Frost

Relationship

4 stages of a relationship between boy and gal:

1. Hand in hand
2. That in hand
3. Hand in that
4. That in that

Must watch movies

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0914798/

Set during World War II, a story seen through the innocent eyes of Bruno, the eight-year-old son of the commandant at a concentration camp, whose forbidden friendship with a Jewish boy on the other side of the camp fence has startling and unexpected consequences

The Boat that rocked - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1131729/

A period comedy about an illegal radio station in the North Sea in the 1960s.

LIFE

Parts of our life have become so 'LESS'

Our phones: wire LESS

Our cooking: fire LESS

Our food: fat LESS

Our tea: sugar LESS

Our dress: sleev LESS

Our youth: fresh LESS, job LESS

Our leaders: shame LESS

Our Govt.: hope LESS

Our job: thank LESS

Our police: clue LESS

Our policies: aim LESS

Our labour: effort LESS

Our conduct: worth LESS

Our relations: meaning LESS

Our attitude: care LESS

Our feelings: heart LESS

Our education: value LESS

Our arguements: base LESS

Our future: direction LESS

But....

But....

But....

Our expectations: end LESS

Who packed your Parachute?

Charles Plumb was a US Navy jet pilot in Vietnam. After 75 combat missions, his plane was destroyed by a surface-to-air missile. Plumb ejected and parachuted into enemy hands. He was captured and spent 6 years in a communist Vietnamese prison. He survived the ordeal and now lectures on lessons learned from that experience!


One day, when Plumb and his wife were sitting in a restaurant, a man at another table came up and said, "You're Plumb! You flew jet fighters in Vietnam from the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk. You were shot down!"
"How in the world did you know that?" asked Plumb.
"I packed your parachute," the man replied. Plumb gasped in surprise and gratitude. The man pumped his hand and said, "I guess it worked!" Plumb assured him, "It sure did. If your parachute hadn't worked, I wouldn't be here today."


Plumb couldn't sleep that night, thinking about that man. Plumb says, "I kept wondering what he had looked like in a Navy uniform: a white hat; a bib in the back; and bell-bottom trousers. I wonder how many times I might have seen him and not even said 'Good morning, how are you?' or anything because, you see, I was a fighter pilot and he was just a sailor." 


Plumb thought of the many hours the sailor had spent at a long  wooden table in the bowels of the ship, carefully weaving the shrouds and folding the silks of each chute, holding in his hands each time the fate of someone he didn't know.


Now, Plumb asks his audience, "Who's packing your parachute?" 


Everyone has someone who provides what they need to make it through the day. He also points out that he needed many kinds of parachutes when his plane was shot down over enemy territory - he needed his physical parachute, his mental parachute, his emotional parachute, and his spiritual parachute. He called on all these supports before reaching safety.

Sometimes in the daily challenges that life gives us, we miss what is really important. We may fail to say hello, please, or thank you, congratulate someone on something wonderful that has happened to them, give a compliment, or just do something nice for no reason. 

As you go through this week, this month, this year, recognize people who pack your parachutes.

A - Z of Cloud Computing

Application Programming Interface (API): An API is a set of programming instructions that are released to developers for creation and deployment of applications on cloud services offered by cloud computing providers

Cloud Backup: It is a concept of sending the copies of your data to off-site server for backup storage. Examples: Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service), Asigra, EMC's Mozy

Cloud Security Alliance (CSA): It is an organization created to promote security best practices for cloud computing providers.

Elasticity: This refers to the ability of a provider or an application to grow and shrink the IT Infrastructure as needed to meet the demand. It is considered as a key feature because it reduces the need of an organization to carry overhead or spare capacity

Hybrid Cloud: It is a cloud model that combines the advantages of both private and public cloud. Hybrid Cloud is getting popular amongst enterprises who look to maintain the reliability of in house data security still benefiting from the scalability of public cloud

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS): It is a pay-per-use service where the cloud computing provider offers storage space, software and network equipment as resources. Examples are Amazon EC2, Windows Azure

Multi-tenancy: It is an ability of the platform or piece of IT infrastructure to hold more than one application, virtual machine or process at a time, for multiple users

Platform as a Service (PaaS): It is a cloud computing model where the platform is offered to users via Web that can be used for development, deployment and hosting of applications. Examples are Windows Azure, Google App Engine

Private Cloud: It is a cloud model which hosts services to a limited number of people within an organization's firewall.

Public Cloud: It is a cloud model where a 3rd party offers storage and computing power over the Internet in a scalable, pay-per-usage fashion

Scalability: It refers to the ability of a provider or an application to instantly or automatically provision capacity to meet the spikes in demand

Software as a Service (SaaS): It is a cloud model that provides applications to the customers via Web. Examples are Salesforce.com, Adobe

Bid Adieu

Found the composition of the Bid Adieu email that I sent in SAP LABS on 4th Jan 2010 :)

Winds of change have touched my soul,

A sense of delight, encouraging above all

 

It is time for a big leap, doing something on my own,

Peregrinating towards the light the tunnel has shown

 

Embarking upon a new life, some new goals to set,

I walk out of SAP LABS, leaving my prodigious aide

 

Contemplating the activities that I have wrought for ,

All my senses together express the heartfelt grace for

 

Team outbound stated: it is less of me and more of we,

All the parties and pictures mimic the glee

 

I  thank my dear friends, with whom I have had the best stint,

I value their unique misfortune of dealing with me without giving any hint

 

Little I knew, but now I feel the pain,

These golden days @ SAP LABS, I wish to spend again

 

I wish the best in person and profession for you in every bit,

And look forward for our continued concord beyond ambit

 

Here is wishing you warmth and happy dreams,

May this year be one where hope always gleams

 

May you find unending and fulfilling love,

May you travel places you have never been before

 

May tremendous luck be bestowed from above,

May you find time for all things you adore.

 

My heart stops me here, whispers things a few,

There is a whole new life waiting to be lived, before I bid adieu

Example of great love

Ek chota baccha apne papa k sath jaa raha thi.
1 pul par pani bahut tezi se beh raha tha.

Papa- Beta!! Daro mat,mera hath pakad lo.
Baccha- Nahi papa, Aap mera hath pakad lo.
Papa(muskura kar bole)- dono me kya antar hai?
Baccha- Agar main apka hath pakdu, or achank kuch ho jaye, to shayad, main apka hath chhod du, lekin agar aap mera hath pakdenge,to mein janta hu ke chahe kuch bhi ho jaye, aap mera haath kabhi nahi chhodoge.

Moral:
"Aaj bhi Bacche hath chhod dete hai... Maa-baap nahi"

Sidhuisms pinch me hard

I am sure I am not the only one who is profusely annoyed with Sidhuisms and his cricket commentary on TV - specially the "Extra Innings T20" in the on-going DLF IPL T20.

He does appear in non-cricket TV shows too. Whenever he guffaws his way to silliness in the many reality TV comedy shows that he appears in as judge — and he does — I do not reach a heightened state of paroxysm. I just switch to another channel. I do. I have a choice. But I do not have luxury when I am watching Cricket :(

My cricket viewing commences with the pre-match analysis, the pitch report, expert’s views on team composition, the toss, the respective team captains’ reading of the pitch and their comments on team composition. My viewing experience then moves through the game and into the mid-point review of the game situation and ends with the end-game analysis. There are many like me in India that suffer the need to be continually engaged with the game (You must read the colloquiums in Bakargang during ICC World Cup 2011 - damn impressive!!!). It is also quite likely that not every cricket fan is like me and that I am in a substantial minority.

The match commentary is as important as the match itself. You cannot mute the TV, sit back and assume what must be going on. You need the crowd noise; you need to open your eyes to explore which is not obvious- via anecdotes and personal experiences of the commentators. I need additional insights that can be derived from listening to perspectives from experts who have either played the game or who understand the game differently, if not better, than me. I do not wish to explore and expose Navjot Sidhu’s limitations — and I can fill many pages writing just about his limitations. He has many! To ridicule these limitations in a medium like this would be inappropriate. 

Having said that, I wish someone would tell him that it is not necessary to start every sentence of his with “Goodness Gracious Me” or “Good Lord”! Further, I wish his producers will request him to stop using phrases like “my friend” or “you knowwwweee” in every sentence. I either know or I do not know. If he is not stating the obvious, it is likely that I might not “know”! The alternative, of course, is that I already “know”. In which case, he states nothing more than the obvious!

I do not have a choice of another channel that shows me my cricket in the way I wish to see it! 

Enter the broadcaster.....

My issue is with the broadcaster who lures me with the scholastics of Harsha Bhogle and Ian Chappell, only to leave me at the mercy of a lunatic screaming around

Hence I plead with the broadcaster: Please have two parallel programs. After all, you have several channels on which you can pipe parallel pre-show programs. Please have one for people like me and one more for the more interesting people of this world who need their testosterone levels (re)charged by a man who thumps tables and shouts!

References:

http://www.dnaindia.com/sport/column_the-good-the-bad-and-the-sidhu_1521692

Private Cloud - Needed or not!!!!

With this post I am going to stay technology agnostic. I’m also going to stay clear of marketing terms.

Let’s get something clear. A private cloud does not equal server virtualisation. A private cloud is an extension of server virtualisation. It provides a complex self-service mechanism where non infrastructure administrators can deploy services. In this context and using the ITIL view of things, a service is a business application comprised of things like IIS/Apache, SQL/MySQL, virtual machines with operating systems, application components (Perl/.NET, database schemas, and web content), and additional fabric configurations like load balancers and storage. In other words, a person from the department that manages business applications can deploy the virtual infrastructure that they need to meet a business need without any effort/time required from the IT department that manages the infrastructure.

This accomplishes a bunch of things that the business will care about. But the key piece here is that non infrastructure people are doing the deployment.

Server virtualisation is a subset of the private cloud. You can do server virtualisation without deploying a private cloud.  But you cannot do private cloud without server virtualisation.

Taking all into account (up to now, and this might change) I have one rule to answer the central question of this blog post.

Question: Do I need a private cloud
Answer: Who deploys and manages your applications?

I know, I know. I’ve answered a question with a question. Go read how I briefly described a private cloud. The think you noticed was that the infrastructure administrators were delegating deployment tasks to people who manage applications. That’s the crux. Do those people exist in your organisation?

In a small and some medium organisations, there are a few IT infrastructure administrators who do everything. They manage the firewalls, the run the domain, they do server virtualisation, they run the CRM application (I’m picking on CRM today!), they manage the SQL databases, and so on. There is no one to delegate service deployment tasks to. So what is the point in deploying all the additional infrastructure of a private cloud? There is no valid business reason that I can envision (at the moment). All that small team really needs is their virtualisation management tools, preferably joined by a set of systems management tools (no brands – I said I’d be agnostic).

On the other hand some medium and large organisations do have various different departments that manage various aspects of the business application portfolio. There will also be branch offices where servers have been centralised in a virtual farm. Here there absolutely is a reason to deploy a private cloud. The central IT infrastructure department could employ people to deploy VMs and install things like IIS/Apache or SQL/MySQL all day long. And that still wouldn’t meet the deadlines of their internal customers. Deploying a private cloud would allow those internal customers, who are IT savvy, to deploy their own services in a timely and controlled manner, using policies and quotas that are defined centrally by the business.

The rule of thumb here (at the moment) is that:
If the IT infrastructure team is doing all application deployment/management then thereshould not be a private cloud.
If there are other departments or teams that are doing application deployment/management then there should be a private cloud.

That’s my view on the “Should I deploy a private cloud?” question. I’ll be interested in other opinions. This is early days for this stuff and I figure many of the questions and answers for the private cloud will evolve over the coming years.

Are clouds on your horizon?

Cloud computing has been a hot topic in the IT industry for several years and every time you read a newsletter or industry publication, “cloud” is big in the headlines.Major industry players are now offering mature cloud computing services and products to help enterprise customers implement cloud strategies that can move IT services forward.


Those cloud strategies can vary widely. For example, many enterprises are on a declared trajectory toward an internal (or private) cloud, and many more already use external (public) clouds in some way — from software as a service (SaaS) from providers such as Google or Salesforce.com to infrastructure and platform as a service (IaaS, PaaS) from providers such as Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft, or Strato. Whatever the approach, an enterprise cloud strategy should be as flexible as the cloud itself. It should leverage public clouds when it makes sense to do so, such as for email, office productivity tools, or CRM tools, and could move sensitive applications and data to private or hybrid clouds when these options are more cost effective.

Public Cloud Benefits

Public clouds — off-premises infrastructures that deliver IT services using Internet standards — are attractive to many organizations for a variety of reasons.
• Rapid time to value: With public clouds, businesses can quickly realize the flexibility and savings of cloud
computing because the infrastructure is already up and running.
• Risk transfer: Businesses that use public clouds transfer the risk and expense of managing the infrastructure to the cloud service provider. Service level agreements become the provider’s responsibility rather than the IT department’s, freeing IT professionals to focus on value-add initiatives.
• Capital savings: Public clouds allow organizations to achieve the benefits of cloud computing without
the capital costs associated with building a private cloud.


Private Cloud Benefits
Many businesses look to private clouds to remedy the real or perceived shortcomings of public clouds.
Benefits of private clouds include the following:
• Greater control: Because the hardware and software that make up a private cloud are on premises,
organizations can more fully control and customize the environment.
• Greater peace of mind: A private cloud often may provide greater peace of mind regarding sensitive
applications and data in part because the hardware is on premises.
• New returns on existing investments: Many organizations look to private clouds as a way to further
utilize current server assets.

Hybrid Cloud Benefits

Organizations can take advantage of the benefits of both public and private clouds when they use a hybrid cloud. With this approach, enterprises keep some data, applications, and services in house while outsourcing others to public clouds — all of which are managed through a common framework in the best implementations.

Start your Cloud journey today!!!!

Cranky Naming conventions at Microsoft

If Microsoft had invented the iPod, it would have been called the Microsoft I-Pod Pro 2005 Human Ear Professional Edition :D The proof for this is the hit video created by Microsoft themselves. It might have been a joke from the company but surely it evoked my interest in revisiting some unconventional and lamentable names that Microsoft has given to its products - the world's largest software company isn't very good in naming stuff.

1. Microsoft Word - Looking at the history of Microsoft Word,  Word for Windows 1.0 was followed by Word 2.0 in 1991 and Word 6.0 in 1993 - why did they skip Word 3.0 and so on and leaped to Word 6.0? The official explanation for this hop was that it brought the Windows edition's version number in line with older DOS incarnation of Word.

Whatever be the rationale, the move rendered the practical purpose of version numbers meaningless and set a bad example for companies like Netscape, which later went from Netscape Navigator v4.0 to v6.0

2. Handheld Devices - At first, they were called Handheld PCs and ran on Windows CE, then they called it Palm PC which enraged 3Com to file a lawsuit for infringing their trademark. Microsoft settled this matter by renaming it to Palm-size PCs. Soon, Microsoft wanted us to call them Pocket PCs which ran on Windows Mobile OS. This name stuck around when the OS migrated from PDAs to phones, although it bifurcated into two editions: Windows Mobile Pocket PC and Windows Mobile Smartphone. Then Microsoft declared that there were three Windows Mobile variants--Windows Mobile Classic, Windows Mobile Professional, and Windows Mobile Standard.. phew!!!!
Eventually, Microsoft felt that they should just scratch off the word "Mobile" and just call them Windows Phones :)

However, they could have named it Arihant as long as it doesn't keep changing :) ;)

3. .NET - In the mid-1990s, critics accused Microsoft was accused by many of being slow to jump on the Internet bandwagon. By the dawn of the new millennium, however, it was firmly on board--and in June 2000, it unveiled a vision for online services it called .NET. As originally articulated, .NET addressed consumers, businesses, and developers, and it involved everything from programming languages to an online version of Microsoft Office to calendaring and communications services to a small-business portal to stuff for PDAs, cell phones, and gaming consoles. It was so wildly ambitious, so all-encompassing, and so buzzword-laden that it pretty much defied comprehension. Which the company seemed to realize--it quickly stopped pushing the concept to consumers, instead restricting it to programming tools.

Some Microsoft names sound clunky; some are confusing; some are undignified or overambitious. More than any other company in technology, this company loves to change product names--often replacing one lackluster label with an equally uninspired one. Microsoft has also been known to mess up some names that are actually perfectly good, such as Windows and Word, by needlessly tampering with them.

P.S. I am reading about Microsoft Bob, Microsoft Office and Messenger products now