White Peacock

Traditionally, if anyone saw white peacock,

your fortune just turned better!!

FireFox Plugins

If you needed any more reason to switch to FireFox, let me point you to an excellent article by Quinn Norton. In “The Firefox Hacks You Must Have”, he refers to some excellent plugins which can prove to be quite useful.

Here is the link:
http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,69781,00.html

Some excerpts I found nice:

“allows you to download little snippets of code that act as the software equivalent of small consumer electronics devices, only they are free”.

Yes I like free stuff.

“DownThemAll is a bulk downloader that allows you to copy everything you want from a website at once. Whether you need to grab handfuls of thumbnails from a picture album or a page full of interesting MP3s, this tiny app gets them all with a single click.”

Lovely !!!

“With this baby installed, you just right-click over virtually any popular website's login form, and the plug-in will tap BugMeNot, find a usable name and password donated by an existing user, and log you in.”

The BugMeNot extension.

Over all there are quite a few plugins available and you can just go on downloading till either the Brower or the Harddisk crashes.

Apart from these I found some other extensions which will be usefull to specefic groups of users

SearchStatus
http://www.quirk.co.za/searchstatus/
A toolbar extension designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers. It lets you view a site’s Google PageRank, Google Category, Alexa popularity ranking, Alexa incoming links, Alexa related links and backward links from Google, Yahoo! and MSN - all in one place.

View Rendered Source Chart

http://jennifermadden.com/scripts/ViewRenderedSource.html

• Creates a Colorful Chart of a Webpage's Rendered Source Code
• Charts Dynamically Generated HTML and Static HTML in Concert
• Great Visual Aid tool for Learning Environments

Generally a great plugin for us developers.

I will add more as I come across..

Inferiority complex

Every techy person has a little bit of inferiority complex... So do I.

I am constantly in doubt of my capabilities and am constantly searching for a little appreciation from every one. Now that person may or may not be capable himself (as per my inference) but I will anyways look for approval from them… I have noticed this for quite some time but don’t know how I can get rid of this. Or if I should get rid of this… this characteristic of mine.

I guess I have always had so many detractors that invariable I am almost always proving myself to someone or the other… Now either my knowledge lacks something or the knowledge of my critics has some excessive deficiency… I feel that there are more chances of the former as I have almost always been able to prove myself right to them. I feel that there are more chances of the former as I have almost always been able to prove myself right to them.

But today something happened which has given a huge boost to my ego and the general state of my happiness. Ask my colleagues, I have been talking about the event for the whole day and I guess they are just about to shout with frustration… So I deduce that this is the idle blog content for the day for me.

To cut a long story short, today, a piece of my code was opened by a few *important* *knowledgeable* people… (2 of them from Microsoft, which I guess is the Utopia for a programmer) and they were… simply… stumped.

Some of the comments before seeing my code were:

• This cannot be done
• This can be done in this way but the logic will create a humungous amount of data (in tune of terra bites) and the resultant application will be way too slow...

Some of the comments after seeing my code were:

• Pause!!!
• Silence!!!
• Have *you* written this code?

Cant tell more about this... Cause anyways that will be too technical for you guys…

But Today was a good day!!!

Tomorrow is a new day

Tomorrow Is a New Day
Sometimes we do not feel like we want to feel
Sometimes we do not achieve what we want to achieve
Sometimes things that happen do not make sense
Sometimes life leads us in directions that are beyond our control

It is at these times, most of all that we need someone
who will quietly understand us and be there to support us
I want you to know that I am here for you in every way
and remember that though things may be difficult now
tomorrow is a new day

- Poem by Susan Polis Schutz




Tomorrow's A New Day



As we travel the road ahead
Choices will have to be made.
Sometimes they seem so difficult,
And answers just seem to fade.


Sometimes the best that we can do
Is try to let go and move on.
Look for courage, search for strength
And let go of what's already gone.


If our lives weren't complicated
And answers were easy to find,
Then we could look for tomorrow
And leave our troubles behind.


I know there's sun beyond the cloud,
Look closer is what I must do,
Think positive and keep my faith
And God will see me through.


I'll put one foot in front of the other
And take life day by day,
I'll not look back to sorrowed times,
Tomorrow's a brand new day.

Early morning

Tomorrow is gonna be tough. I am going to have to get up at atleast 6:30 in the morning. Some of you might think its not such a big deal, but for me it is. Especially since I get up at 9-9:30 usually. I mean its still midnight at 6:30. arrrggghhh !!

I have to take my grandmother to the hospital to get her eyes checked up. She will have her cataract removed and get a brand new lens in her right eye in jan and this is a preliminary check up.

My aunt is a nurse in a hospital and her hospital is somewhere after ITO… some kadkaddooma place… sounds like a lightening strike ;)

Will be driving there and trying to give the morning traffic a miss...

And oh !! The place preet vihar is just next to this kadkaddooma lightening strike place… and preethi lives there… maybe we will bump into each other… and she is a bit round so I will have to be careful during the bump or I might just get kadkaddoomaed ;)

Poetic Resignation

Employee Resignation

The name is good, the brand is big
But the work I do is that of a pig
The work or the brand; what is my way?
I don't know if I should stay.

To work, they have set their own way
Nobody will care to hear what I say
My will be NULL, they wont change their way
I don't know if I should stay.

The project is in a critical stage
But to do good work, this is the age
This dilemma is killing me day by day
I don't know if I should stay.

The money is good, the place is great
But the development is at a very small rate
Should I go for the work, or wait for pay
I don't know if I should stay!

The managers don't know what they talk
The team doesn't know where they walk
That's a bad situation, what say?
I don't know if I should stay.

I can go to any other place
But what if I get the same disgrace
I can't keep switching day by day
I don't know if I should stay.

The -ves are more, the +ves are less
Then why have this unnecessary mess
No more will I walk their way,
It's all done, I won't stay.

Thanks & Regards
Employee



Manager Response

Reply: What I want to say? (Manager)


The decision is good or decision is bad
Only God knows still I am glad
Keep moving in life that is what I can say

If you feel right go in the same way
May god give you the work, the challenge you want
Anyway there is always a second chance
Chances are there, grab them snatch them
That is what I can say

Keep on jumping companies to get more and more and more....
That will keep you always a fore (Even to me)
From my experience I can tell you
Being in software development is like taking hell out of you
You are frustrated since you have no quality work
And you were frustrated because you had quantity work

It's always like that previous job was better than the current one
And expects the new job will be much better than this one
But what you get is a frustration level up to sun
Than you will again send the resignation like this one
This is all what I want to say

Have you completed all the formalities?
Filled the form and got it signed from department humanities (HR)
Once done you can take all your cash
But don't refer others as they will follow you're a*s.
At last I appreciate your contribution to the company
Even though there was not any....

You will keep a copy of this with you for FYI
Don't feel shy
As I also got it some time back from my old manger say Hi....
That is all what I want to say.


Thanks & Regards
Manager

Fidgety

I guess every company has gone through this phase... and maybe for some this is the norm rather than the exception... but for me... its making me fidgety.

I guess the industry I am in suffers from this a lot more than others...

There has been a prolonged series of resignations from my firm... From my team even (40 in the beginning) as many as 15 people have resigned in the past 3-4 months. And this is the same with other departments… And to make matters worse, these departments are considered to be management. And many of these people were in the organization since the inception and some were as new as 3 days.

All this has shaken me up somewhat…

There have been some nagging issues in the organization with deadlines being missed on a daily basis, with wrong information being circulated, with notional losses being made, with clients raising issues which caused lots of problems…

Many projects were launched to try and rectify the problems but as soon as the project was completed and the members facilitated, nothing was heard from then on…

The people who wanted to do something good, were shunned off and …

Interestingly in one of the workshops which a very very senior manager gave, he mentioned that when you have a pitcher full of different types of pebbles, and there is no more scope left to add any, you need to shake the pitcher. After a good shaking, the lighter ones will come up on top. Then you just take them and throw them away to make the space for the newer brighter marbles.

I guess this is what they are doing right now… and the lighter marbles have been the first ones to leave.

But if you think about it, you shake a can of milk, the cream comes up on top… have we thrown away the cream?

I guess change is always painful and change is inevitable.

Love is...

Love is a game
just meant to be played.
Love is a phrase
just overly clichéd.

It's dominated by cheaters,
players, and rule-breakers.
Where three words often said
are lies spoken by fakers.

Love is an emotion
and hormones are the cause.
Love is perfection
that brings out your flaws.

Young ones are swayed
into believing that it's real.
Soon concious of mistakes,
next fear is what you feel.

Love is a wish
desired by so many loners.
Love is a sight
shown off by its owners.

It's a sad pathetic world
when love is only wanted,
for the sake of having it,
and for it to be flaunted.

Love is a drug,
addictive and strong.
Love is a toy.
and you're strung along.

The endings are painful,
yet again you will start,
to end with more lies and tears,
and another cruelly broken heart.

Love is a reason
to be treated like dirt.
Love is an excuse,
an excuse to get hurt.

Complete Piece....

Winter cold - It has begun

it’s December 3rd and a nice Saturday morning... but oooh so cold out there...

I personally prefer the not so blistering cold from the ever so scorching heat of Delhi... If you haven’t experienced, either, you are missing something.

When you get up in the morning, there is nothing you can do to get me out of the bed, because it’s warm inside and then the hot cup of tea is simply the best thing in the world... Your own private igloo in the comforts of your home.


And then the fact that I wear glasses. Now I don’t know if I should be pleased or pissed off about this, But it sure creates some interesting situations... The Delhi winter brings along with it a huge amount of fog and at times the visibility is reduced to even 1 or 2 meters. Now if you have to go anywhere like your office, even a 30 minute distance might take hours and that even if there is no traffic.

I remember a couple of years ago, we (my family) decided to celebrate new years at connaught place... This is a prominent landmark in Delhi with lots of shopping, eateries, cinema, parks and fun. Sort of old age version of a modern day mall. Except that it is spread over a huge area (you can spend days in there) and sometimes you get great deals.


There was a popular band playing live there in connaught place and we had decided to have some Ice Cream in the gardens (Ice cream in winters?)... So we thought that 8 pm should be a good starting time... It’s about an hours drive and if we get into bad traffic we will get there latest by ... what ... 10? We will be right on time for some dinner and enjoy the band?

We reached the out skirts of connaught place after midnight and couldn’t go any further cause it was jam packed upto there and you couldn’t go up any further... so we had our party right there on the road.

Then we just turn back and reached home around 3 in the morning...

On the road we tried following the tail lights of the vehicles ahead and had a couple of close calls as well.

Now this winter, the Met office has warned of ground frost in many parts of Punjab and Mariana during the next two nights. In Delhi also, fog and mist has been predicted in the days ahead even as the entire region was in the grip of a severe cold wave. The temperature is 4 degrees below normal...

But the say its gonna warm up after 2-3 days...

Happy winters

The month gone by

A full month has gone by since I last wrote. And believe me when I say this, either I didn’t have the time, or when I did, I didn’t have a topic to write about. Preethi advised me to take a sabbatical whenever I have a block and just read what others are writing. I guess I took her a bit too seriously.

The whole month has been pretty hectic, with both work and home front being demanding. Had to migrate a server and that happened smoothly. But there was a sudden drop in the system's speed. Now this was strange as the new server was ..... NEW and with faster processors. So we discovered that the server just had 1 GB RAM and so requested the IT to upgrade the RAM. The stupid guy deleted some data. So I had to go dig up the backups.

On home front, 2 of my uncles and their aunties are coming over for Christmas and new years this year. One of them has their 25th anniversary this time so this will be a gala family event.

Then today was the birthday party of one of the colleagues. We smeared the poor guy with all of the cake. He was happy as a peach.

Okes. Cheerios

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..