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My New Holiday Manager

Hello all ,
I would like to introduce you to my new holiday and leave manager, meet Mayank Bidawatka, Head-Marketing, redBus.in.. Read the email below…..
from:         MAYANK BIDAWATKA <******@redbus.in>
reply-to:  ******@redbus.in
to:              ******@gmail.com
date:         Mon, Jan 18, 2010 at 11:28 PM
subject:   Apply for leave on Jan 25
Dear Mr. Krishna Shasankar,
Upcoming holidays
Jan 26 (Tuesday) – Republic Day – Book bus tickets now
Feb 12 (Friday) – Mahashivratri – Book bus tickets now
We hope you’re planning to apply for leave for Jan 25, Monday. That will give you a 4-day long week-end starting Jan 22 till Jan 26. You can also start reservations for Feb 12 right away.
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Here’s wishing you great journeys ahead.
Best regards,
Mayank Bidawatka
Head-Marketing
redBus.in
Call us: Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Pune on 394-12345.
I got this email this morning on my gmail, and I found it quite funny….
“…. What the hell.. Why should you hope that I plan to apply for my leave at office, and why the hell do you think my boss will grant me leave if he gets to read a email like this. If I was the boss and if I happened to read this mail, I would have never granted any one leave on Jan 25th …. Please stop making public abuse of individual employee plans… and btw, did you send this email to your team at redbus.in, what will you do if all of them apply for a leave on 25th.. ???? (If all of them were granted leave … our holiday might go for a toss…. ha ha)”

I personally have nothing against Mayank or whomever. .. I certainly agree that people at marketing always find innovative ways to attract customers, this email was certainly attractive and eye catching, but telling me what I should do..  is a little bit too much..

And my dear peer software engineers & developers, never advice your Boss or TL to book tickets using the above mentioned site, it might affect your long term plans… he he :)

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The correct SDLC

This was a funny extract that i found in some forwarded email :-)
Software Development Life Cycle
  1. Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.
  2. Product is tested. 20 bugs are found.
  3. Programmer fixes 10 of the bugs and explains to the testing department that the other 10 aren’t really bugs.
  4. Testing department finds that five of the fixes didn’t work and discovers 15 new bugs.
  5. Repeat three times steps 3 and 4.
  6. Due to marketing pressure and an extremely premature product announcement based on overly-optimistic programming schedule, the product is released.
  7. Users find 137 new bugs.
  8. Original programmer, having cashed his royalty check, is nowhere to be found.
  9. Newly-assembled programming team fixes almost all of the 137 bugs, but introduce 456 new ones.
  10. Original programmer sends underpaid testing department a postcard from Fiji.
    Entire testing department quits. !!
  11. Company is bought in a hostile takeover by competitor using profits from their latest release, which had 783 bugs.
  12. New CEO is brought in by board of directors. He hires a programmer to redo program from scratch.
  13. New Programmer produces code he believes is bug-free.

AND THERE IT COMES TO AN END… 2009

In a couple of hours from now, 2009 will be over. Again a new year will begin, but this year would have given me some of the most unforgettable moments of my life. If I had to summarize 2009 in a few words, I would say, it was a dream run for me. It helped me look at reality; it looks like it has possibly shown me a path of where I should be heading. I became fully qualified in this year, ZCE, did try my luck at java as well, and then I was able to get enrolled for my MS. It was all very good. Much of it should be credited to the support of my friends (most of them are ex-colleagues now), so 2009 will be remembered happily for all that.

I tried learning guitar, it was quite happy to see myself playing it well, but due to unexpected (But somehow all my friends guessed it beforehand) distractions, I couldn’t continue with it for too long. My travelling hit an unexpected all time low this year with just 3 or 4 noticeable trips for the whole year; this was a huge drop when compared to previous years. So If I wasn’t travelling a lot, I wasn’t obviously using my camera lot. I also had some fun at stock market and made some marginal profits out of my money; it did help me learn a lot on financial matters.

I did do a lot of stupid things in 2009, but just like every year, I would not regret for them (he he:) ), it’s a part of the package, which has some pluses and minuses; you don’t really have a choice but to bear with it. Nobody is perfect. I don’t want to be nobody…

So what are my plans for 2010?

  • Study … Study… Study… If some of my engineering classmates looked at this… they will roll on the floor and laugh… but I have to do it, not too many choices here
  • I should plan some trips and execute them!, travelling is one thing I missed a lot in 2009
  • I technically don’t need any more gadgets/electronic devices… So I shouldn’t buy anything else this year, but save money (I was thinking about a Mac Book, an Android Phone, a Nikon D5000 SLR… and one more 23” Wide screen so that I get a dual screen setup at home, at the time of writing this…)
  • Find someplace where they conduct Guitar classes during weekends near my residence (have already invested some money on the musical instrument, should try to get at least some ROI)
  • I should blog more frequently, and start contributing lot more tech articles to Clickoffline.com, traffic influx has increased in the recent months.
  • Anh! Well… Stock Market… yes


Why did I write this post? — Because of this inspirational article by my friend

Wish you a happy 2010 for all of you !

Stop Press update for geeks: I have just integrated the Picasa Web Albums into WordPress using GData API which is provided as a part of the Zend Framework (Sounds cool right). Checkout the Photography Link on the header, it uses ZF’s GData API to render the images by fetching them from Picasa Web Albums Site. I will blog about this in Clickoffline.com and will try to do some server side optimizations to improve the blog’s performance.

New Things

Lot of changes happening around here during the last one month, so I couldn’t find enough time to scribble here. Firstly, I have quit Corporater. It was a hard decision to make, but had to call it, I have now moved into a new Chennai based Web Application Services firm. So I am busy with that part during my business hours. The second thing that has kept me busy is the application and documentation part for my masters, I had atlast secured the admission for the Work Integrated MS Programme at BITS, Pilani.

This one is quite an interesting offering from BITS, this as far as I know this is the only available option for anyone who wants to do a working masters in engineering, tech, etc. Since technically these programmes cannot be offered via distance education, BITS has come up with a web-based delivery model which is also integrated to work. Good thing is that you will be able to choose most of the courses that you may wish to take in the degree, this allowed me to plan my degree to match my web development career. And I have to study all these books..

  • Unix Network Programming, Volume 1: The Sockets Networking API
  • Unix Network Programming, Volume 2: Interprocess Communications
  • Advanced Concepts in Operating Systems
  • Fundamentals of Database Systems
  • Applying UML and Patterns: An Introduction to Object- Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development

BITS – WILP Link – http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/dlp-home/

MS (Software Systems) Programme – http://www.bits-pilani.ac.in/dlp-home/degrees/collab/collab.html

Crazy life… always studying..:)

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