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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

Imperialism or Free market economy. You decide!

Is it fair when a company pays less than 1% of a product's retail price to a toiling worker located other side of the earth; yes everyone know there is raw material and other overheads; but what kind of future are we headed, if these company's only motive is shareholder profit and they don't mind exploiting resources (men AND material!). <todo> I'll scribble my useless thoughts here on capitalism, outsourcing, off-shoring, ... from a humane point of view. Till then here is a documentary. </todo>

Trailer:


Part I


Part II


Here is part1 and part2 in hi-def format for those who are on high-speed. Rest assured there is not a single quote from Karl Marx :) But here is one that i read recently "the capitalists will sell the very noose that will hang them.". I read some criticize the film that is doesn't provide a solution or alternative.

குறை சொல்ற நாய்ங்க, பொற கூட வாங்கி தராதுங்க (எங்கிருந்தோ சுட்டது)

Decade after college

Whooph! its going to be a decade from completion of my bachelor. Gone are those days, one-and-half hour commute, missing morning classes promptly, never caring to listen to lecturer in the class, making sure to just clear attendance level needed, after announcement of exam schedule; running around to xerox class notes and previous question papers, so called group study(!), cramming thro' the exams, luckily (may be with little intelligence) cleared exams without arrears (never worried about occasional stamps).

I can happily recollect the morning of last exam of the course (i think automobile engg), didn't study major part of a chapter and told to a classmate "if i can clear so many papers in past, i should be able to clear this w/o studying this chapter", don't know if that was foolish optimism or damn crap. Other unforgettable paper is mechanics of machines, for some crap reasons didn't attend most part of the class and hence forced to learn from book all by myself. End of the college, did pass out with a decent above average score. Life after that was not so easy, had to toil a bit to get into masters degree and had to take that one little bit serious.

Innovation: Buzz (?)

This should be most abused word, everyone is talking, from presidential candidate's to blue chip's and to your boss. By sheer happenstance i tuned to a presidential debate when american addiction to foreign oil was being discussed, two words i heard from many, one is innovation and other was hybrid. Personally i don't believe there is not going to be a ground breaking innovation (or invention?) in next decade and half, its going to be efficient engines, alternative fuels (not that ethanol crap) till a invention (fuel cell?) is mature for wide use. I did find a sore point in current hybrids "No cord to plug-in" is marketed as a feature; IMHO if its a electric it has to be plug-in.

Some of the big corporates expect innovation a big thing, which i totally agree, but they shouldn't expect few big innovations with million dollar savings but appreciate 1000+ small innovations. This reminds me Toyota production system and lean manufacturing, which aims at reducing waste's in the process using various concepts and continuous improvement. Concepts like Poka-Yoke, SPF, SMED and Kaizen wouldn't have come straight from drawing board, its all very simple innovations, improving efficiency and eliminating waste in the total value stream. பல துளி(யே) பெரு வெள்ளம்.

I strongly believe everyone has innovative ideas but most neglect it. I can fondly recollect old days, when i joined my first project it was 3 member team supporting an ERP application from offshore and client will log issues in a web based system and team used to hit IE refresh button every 5 mins to check if there is any issues logged. Innovations are born for need (and greed?), my unwillingness to do that mundane job, i used autorefresh meta tag and made the page self refreshing every 60 seconds. And there was a satirical comment, why do i even look at the screen; those were days i was just learning VB. Exactly 5 days later i was running a small VB program that will notify updates thro' mail, which was later coded to send SMS notification to support cellphone (though it was not implemented due to costs). Few days back i was able to share the same idea to team here and send SMS notification of prod issues and avoid staring at mailbox. Here is list of email-to-sms mail addresses for US carriers.

உலகத்துல உன்னை விட பெரியவன் யாரும் இல்லை அதனால யாருக்கும் பயப்படாதே அதே மாதிரி உன்னை விட சின்னவன் யாரும் இல்லை அதனால நீ யாரையும் தாழ்வா நினைக்காதே!!!
-அய்யம்பேட்டை அறிவுடை நம்பி கலியபெருமாள் சந்திரன்
(Ctrl-C/V from vettipayal)

Top 3 LIA luxuries!

Today, one of my friend was telling me a list of things he loves in american life. It sparked my thoughts and i was wondering what would be things that i get here which i'll miss back home. Here is that short count down

3. Water
A sound proof what a person who lived 27+ yrs in Chennai dreams of. Back @ home, can i imagine a day taking 30 mins shower; hmmm after r2i, i should put it in a box and bury it 100 miles deep. I hope i can atleast get a couple of buckets of non-saline and some what clear water to take bath.

2. Interstate
As a guy who commuted entire part of his life in public transportation, this is something beyond luxury. Recollecting days in 18J and 47D, no question on India's population. But i see there is some hope on getting better road.

1. Long evenings & Nature
I don't know if this two should be split, but may be these two are some what related and hence shares number one position. I can easily count the number of times i reached home in day light; from there to a place with daylight till 9 PM, there is no words to express. Either it be a national park or city park next door, there is very little i happen to visit in chennai, probably there are places out there but either not easily accessible or known, but i highly doubt i'd have got a chance to walk in knee deep snow or drive on a frozen lake, hike a nature trail in deep woods, 1000 color fall season or tour an underground cave.

How much i'm going to miss these? quite a bit, but i lived in Chennai for most part of my life and i can go back taking these pleasant memories. There will be days where we have a kaakaa kuliyal and rush(!) to office in 1+ hr, get back home after sunset and switch on "Good nite" mat and wake up with 10 kosu kadi's; did i mention we also try to live a life in between.

"Veni, Vidi, Vici" -Julius Caesar

Fall colors @ Great Smoky Mountains

2007 smoky mountains fall season ...

David Blaine Street Magic ;-)

If you have seen Blaine's street magic earlier, here is a funny parody... PG13



here is the sequel ...

Chennai real-estate: Boom or Bubble ?

I don't have any property as of now and i might be speculating on few things here. I keep hearing this "bubble" theory for quite a few years (little more than 4 yrs in my case) in potlucks, parties, media, ... i really like to know where this goes in chennai.

I was under assumption for a long time that this market is more end user driven with very little investor forces playing. But now a days i see lot of people esp NRI, IT folks looking it as a investment option. Is the surge mainly fueled by NRI, IT and investors or is there a genuine rise in demand for housing? I can't believe something getting appreciated by 300+% in matter of 4 or 5 years while there is no change in facilities; and one thing i hear in many instances is properties are shifting hands and nothing is built upon them, no idea how much of it is true.

If i R2I in couple of years, one thing that worries us is whether w'll be able to secure a piece of land close to my work, other will be the dollar dip (i'm sure you heard the scary story of 35 rupees exchange rate), which i leave it to Nilekani and Premji to worry for now.