$150 by July 4th ?

Last month Morgan Stanley projected oil will hit $150 by July 4th. Are we nudging close to peak or already on the summit of the peak.

Crude Awakening: The Oil Crash (Trailer)



full documentary


DVDRip here.

It may be end of oil, but one shouldn't under estimate man-kind's ultimate weapon, "innovation". What if we crack the cold fusion, there may not be high hopes now, but practically feasible solution like combination of alternate energy and energy efficiency, may give us the breather for next break-through.

Scraps for this week

- The .NET Framework 3.5 Common Namespaces and Types Poster

- iTextSharp. Good/Free/Open-source pdf library. Collection of samples here. Original Java library's ebook.

- Today development site was pointing to prod db and client support team told me this even happens in reverse and they told me biz component uses db config from dll's app.config and hence they recompile the dll with different environment config. First reaction to what is happening stumped me, I was under assumption when web app used this component, component should be erroring out as these config entries are not available in web.config or in worst case retrieved empty string as values. Looks like .net embeds, compile time config entries as default values in the assembly. Some more light to what is happening under the hood here.

- Strange skies

Google Street View Maps

Google Street View Maps for Knoxville. Looks like they have covered Knoxville left and right.

r2i quote

Someone sent it to me way back, quote that describes all, happen to read it again today

Passion without action = LIA (x+1)
Action without passion = R2A
Passion with action = R2I

Nand Nandan ♪♫♪♫

Been searching for this quite some time. Gg wanted this after listening (a bit of this) in Sindhu Bhairavi. Nand Nandan from album "Chala Vahi Des & Meera Bhajans by Lata Mangeshkar". If not any other song in the album, this one is sure to make anyone simmer down.



Listen to full album here. Download mp3 here.

Web 2.x ?

Some useless thoughts of what could be next incremental feature addition in web 2.0 with current available technology.

Speech recognizing websites. How about getting into website and give a voice commands like pay bill, print statement. Web based voice chat apps show the capability to send voice data over the wire and automated telephonic response using speech recognition seems to be much more improved. Can these technologies mash?

Seamless web drives. Platform neutral i/o protocol that will enable users to add personal web space/folder like any connected external drive. People should be able to open and edit a document over web just like one in local drive; underlying protocol should manage connectivity/encryption/transmission with data store in the cloud. With high speed connectivity becoming ubiquitous, it will be a nice feature addition to OS.

Break 2 India :)

After 4 yrs i'm finally taking a break from work for a month to India. I'd be happy to order "Veg Fried Rice" instead of Veg Fried Rice with No meat, No chicken broth, No sea food, ...

youtube to mp3

A simple and zero installation way to convert youtube video to mp3.

Offshore night-out

When i was in offshore, this was the slang word to work late and very late . One of my friend used to question shouldn't this be called "night-in"! Anyway, guy told me today, if someone is in offshore, they are expected to work after office hours most of the time. If you are one of those, i strongly suggest to stop reading further. I usually start my conversation when someone calling me late night from offshore, "why are you in office now?". I'm not going to say that offshore will never have to stay late, but certainly don't have to do it 4 out of 5 days. There were days we stayed back and worked late or come to office on Saturday; sometimes for issues, delivery deadline, help others and even to compensate for good time spent in office stairs vetti talk; but i don't think it was not lot of times.Ok based on my experience and lot of mistakes, following will help one to reduce late hours if not eliminate.

Estimate: Mostly a bad estimate will be the underlying issue. Whatever way you do it either scientific or absolute crap like scribbling in palm (yes i have done that) make sure it is something achievable. A feedback loop with actual will help refine future estimates, even with all tools and things there is always some personal judgment, so learning from mistake is a key.

Plan: Based on my limited experience at onsite "plan is god", everyone will agree to a plan and priorities. Plans can fail, but still there is some plan. In Lucas-TVS, there is 15 mins morning meeting before they start work, agenda is to review plan for the day. It is a stand up meeting and called sunrise meeting, those are days, where i had to start my commute during almost sunrise and glimpse early morning empty chennai.

Onsite call: Can't do much, but interacting through mails will eliminate lengthy calls. May be we can read thro' reqt document with some assumptions and clarify assumptions thro' mail. We can try looking into upcoming things and get clarified thro' mails instead of waiting for that day.

May be it is true that offshore has to work late many times, but what kind of life we are looking at, if we are still in office after office hours. I'd like to look at it from a humane point of view, every one in onsite moved from offshore only and didn't fall from heavens, though some would like to think that way. Drop me a note, if you have something to share.

outer join and group by clause

Nowadays don't get a lot of chance to be hands-on. The following did not fetch the outer join rows

select ordr, grp, count(ser_id) as [Sev4 Created]
from #myHPSDGrps left outer join dbo.ServiceCallView
on AssignedToWorkgroup = grp
where
[Open Date&Time] >= @begin and
[Open Date&Time] < @end and
Severity = 'Severity 4'
group by ordr, grp
order by ordr

but one below does, moved all the where clause to outer join condition

select ordr, grp, count(ser_id) as [Sev4 Created]
from #myHPSDGrps left outer join dbo.ServiceCallView
on AssignedToWorkgroup = grp and
[Open Date&Time] >= @begin and
[Open Date&Time] < @end and
Severity = 'Severity 4'
group by ordr, grp
order by ordr

Didn't have much time to analyze :0