Writing what you want to...

I thought that this writing business was too easy.

First of all I am generally too full of myself and I genuinely believe that if I set my mind to anything, I will be able to accomplish it sooner or later. No make that I will be able to excel in it. A couple of reasons for this belief.

One, nobody is born with any knowledge and everything that we know, our abilities, our mannerisms are picked up over time from the surroundings that we dwell in. Your parents, peers, teachers, cinema, media all contribute to your experiences and these translate into abilities. So if you wanted to really excel in something, you just need to start focusing on that and soon with some effort, you will succeed.

Two, I have always done it that way. I got myself trained in Basic computer skills and picked up all the rest of the languages as and when I needed to make any project on it. So basically that's proof of concept even if I say so myself.

I always wanted to write a technology related book someday and this blog is a step towards that. I am of the view that the book should be a piece of cake. I mean that the knowledge required to write one such book is already with me so its gonna be a piece of cake.

But then, the number of times I have already struck the writers block in this blog itself has put doubts in my mind and I desperately need some inspiration and also some critic.

First to be able to write you need to have some thing to write about. And if I start writing about the fantastic query I wrote the other day, which reduced the processing time of an ASP page from a good 8-10 minutes to 16 seconds flat, I guess I will chase away half of my readers. At the time of writing this, Mintoo and Preety have bothered to visit this blog and Preety isn’t very technology oriented.

So what do I write about? What do I want to write?

A beautiful Smile

The day begins on a sleepy note. One shouldn’t be sleepy at 11 in the morning !! The sun shines through the windows and I refuse to acknowledge it. Still want to sleep. I had woken up at 9 if you'd like to know but didn’t want to get up. Last nights lack of sleep has to meet with or else the entire day will be ruined.

Finally after trying to delay awakening for a couple of hours or so, I get up and decide to get ready for office. I am ready and now the cab is late. Apparently the cab assigned earlier has met with an accident and so a new one must be sent to pick me up.

Nevertheless I reach office at 2. I was supposed to be doing a shift of 5pm to 2 am but that’s another story.

As usual a truck load of mails and mostly unnecessary ones though my good friend Polina sends quite a few nice ones.

So after replying to most I do some work and before I realize it its 9 and I am hungry. So a quick dinner and walk out for a small walk. In the parking, there is a car. Somebody must have stopped over for some thing and his family might have been waiting for him. Hanging on to the side window glass is a small child and she is playing with her mother. And laughing and smiling. I stand there at a distance for a few minutes smiling with her. Her Dad comes and they are gone.

I wish I had a camera phone.

How dumb have you felt recently?

Funny :

Full Thread


Earlier today I got a call from my workplace telling me there was an urgent problem with the website I created for them and clients were not able to view the information we have promised them access to.

My supervisor and resident database expert took a look at the MySQL databases on our webserver and came to the conclusion that my php code was playing up. Enter the past few hours...

11:30pm: Check work emails for problem rundown and client login information
11:35pm: Start installing xampp and downloading website from webserver using Dreamweaver
11:45pm: Realised that I used the wrong user/pwd combination and downloaded the development site instead of the live site so deleted and downloaded the live site
11:55pm: Couldn't get hold of .htaccess file through Dreamweaver because it was hidden so started to try other methods
12:20am: After failing loads of other routes I decided to use FileZilla
12:25am: Setup the users required in the databases for the website to function
12:35am: Finally get .htaccess working but can't get the site to work without an "Error 500" message
12:50am: Remembered that apache isn't setup with mod_rewrite which the .htaccess file uses
12:55am: Start logging in and out of different user accounts to figure out what's gone wrong
01:05am: php code looks great and no obvious errors... no un-obvious errors either
01:10am: Check database... data is missing... important data for clients to gain access to their information is missing...
01:20am: Check live copy of database... information is identical to the local copy (because the local copy was a dump of the live database)
01:25am: Write and send email to supervisor about the seemingly fine databases he examined earlier.

I could have saved myself almost 2 hours of time if I had checked the database myself!

I think I'll take solace from the fact that it is not entirely my fault, nope, it is 99.9% my fault for not double checking my supervisor's work but it is still not completely my fault!

Sunday Mayhem

The day began on a sleepy note...

Needed to go to church but didnt... slept through the whole thing. Got up late. Around 1 pm. These days this is my schedule. In the news paper there was an article about how people with irregular sleep die early...

So my good friend Amit Goyal and I decided to watch a movie and do some catching up alongside. We saw the movie "Main, Meri Biwi Aur woh". Based on the insecurities of a short man married to a beautiful lady taller than him, the movie highlights the fact that our own insecurities are the cause of so many things that we thing are wrong in our life. For some people it is height, for some it is waist size, for others it is bank balance and for some it is the color of their skin.
Too many of us are loosing sleep over vanities and no one seems to be able to find any solution.

Cellphone mania

My brother has been bugging me for a phone for so many months...

Looks like I will finally have to buy one... I will give him mine and use the new one ;) Or we will exchange and use alternativly...

So what should I buy ?
So many options, and so little money... I mean the scrooge that I am..

Decided to do some research before i buy,

Came accross these sites:
http://www.mobiledia.com
http://www.dailygadget.com/2005/06/luxury-executive-cellphone-made-of.html
http://acomputergeek.blogspot.com/2005/10/geominder.html

Some of the top models right now :
Sony T610i (within my range)
Nokia 7610 (mega pixel camera)
Sony T700 (mega pixel camera)
Nokia 6102 (foldable, camera and fm radio)

Lets see

Does the IT industry need a trade union?

I read this article today...

http://in.rediff.com/money/2005/oct/06bspec.htm

"A union for IT workers is the urgent need of the hour. I would call the IT professionals 'the labourers of the information age.' They toil long hours; they work at night; and some of them still get meager salaries. So a labour union for them would help fight for their rights,"

CITU president M K Pandhe told rediff.com.

Well I agree with the comment... I do work lond hours and I do work nights but what is salaries ?

Anyways enough is enough.... I am going to start a union in my office. SO when ever a british or an american client comes to our office for an office visit or some other work (this is a regular happening these days) I an my union member will stand up from our desks and shout

Angrezoon bharat chodo !!!

Change and Resistance

Any new software or technology development team always faces challenges in terms of resistance from the people who should be the ones who should be benefiting from it the most. I have recently had the *privilege* of facing these issues first hand.

In my previous organization, we had an interface between the end client and us and probably a lot of these issues were solved before it reached us. Now having moved up that value chain, I need to face all these issues first hand. The management doesn’t seem to be strong enough to be able to drive through these changes which everybody admits that they will be beneficial to them at least on surface. I guess their problem is that they are responsible for managing low attrition rates also.

Even though I have the verbal buy in from key people, they really cant do much because the people who are resisting the change have too much vintage in the system.

My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was less competition there.

Indira Gandhi

Those who take credits and know how to grow on the basis of that credit definitely are more successful from the other kind because they have mastered the art of survival and this survival is not an the basis of their skills or competencies.

But there is a difference between the earlier teams who have tried this and failed. The difference is me. Amit George. Because I like to believe that I am in the first group.

Best way to show a girl you're serious

Results of a post by my good friend : tangledweb

3% 5 Votes: Dress up like a Chippendale and show off that beer gut. I'm too sexy for my shirt...
3% 5 Votes: Send references. No, wait...scratch that, bad idea.
3% 5 Votes: FTD.com, for that personal touch.
4% 6 Votes: Tell her of that dream where she was naked and twisted like a pretzel.
4% 6 Votes: E-mail her that picture of you naked and drunk that one time in the woods...
12% 18 Votes: Stand outside her door and play sappy 80s love songs a la Air Supply
14% 22 Votes: Give her a puppy. When your roommate asks what happened to his dog, claim ignorance.
14% 22 Votes: Write bad poetry. I mean, your poetry is pretty lousy anyway.
14% 21 Votes: Have her meet your insane mother. Because at that point, you KNOW you've lost it.
28% 42 Votes: Actually take time to leave the toilet seat down.

Blog 0.1

Ok ... Finally on insistance of my good friend Amit Goyal I decided to start my own blog ...

Apparantly this is a very good and the in thing these days ...


A little bit about me...

Name: Amit George
Age: 25
Gender: Male
Location: India
Interests: Guitar, photoshop, movies, anything that catches my attention
Favourite movie: Keeps Changing. (Currently Swades)
Favourite band or musician: Oasis
Favourite genre of music: Good Music
Operating System: Windows 2003 Server
MP3 player of choice: Windows Media Player
Wallpaper of choice: Blue skies
Skin of choice: My own... Can't stand anybody else's stink...
Favourite game: Kanche
Personal Quote: Any similarity between me and a human being is completely unintentional !!
Tools of the Trade: Notepad++, Photoshop, ASP, SQL Server, PHP, MySQL, Visual Foxpro and more...



So whats up with this name ? TechRodent ?

Well life is such a complicated journey .... and

Actually, rats learn by trial-and-error, have a superb memory and will outperform most other creatures (including people) on the 2nd attempt through a maze.

Cheers Then

DO grace my blog with your generous comments..