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Showing posts from 2008

My niece bhumika's naming ceremony

Bhumika

Patent application approved for filing!

Thought will share this info with all of you . ...  One of the patent applications I posted in our site got approved for next level and is in the process of filing with US Patents.  Hopefully, this will be the first of many to be done!

Road humps... without signs and white markings?

  [DRAFT] Are you a "safe" driver like me !  - checking all the traffic signals around and making sure you follow most (the rare cases of starting off even though the light just turned from Red to Yellow fearing the constant honking behind, or not stopping when lights turn from green to yellow fearing others behind you ramming into your vehicle)? If so, you would definitely dread this one too. . u see a road hump and slow down. Invariably the vehicles behind you don't notice that...  drive damn close to you OR just screech halt next to your vehicle and bad mouth you OR just hit your vehicle... . Problem seems to be that most of these humps are  bizarrely put up by some person not approved to put that up - just to make their apartment entrance safe! or just to make people look at their shops while they slow down... Also most of this humps have no kind of notice to drivers ... they are without any white paint markings over the hump or any sign board near to signal the

Bad Interviewer?

Feel bad that I wasn't able to do a good job in this case but then aren't such experience required to learn and become better? Not that I have changed much of my style after this particular interview :-) ! http://vijup.blogspot.com/2008/02/intuit-applied-as-fresher.html

Haage Summane - movie review

  Nope.. .not posting the story here.. . don't know how come some websites can list the entire movie. .the turning points of the movie and even the climax... gosh.. that makes it so thrilling... :(... So you want to read the story with spoilers, then check below site,  else just google it out. http://www.thaindian.com/newsportal/uncategorized/haage-summane-a-feel-good-love-story-kannada-film-review_100135595.html My view of the movie: didn't go with too much expectation... so it turned out to be a good one. Good to know the major technicians from Mungaaru male were doing jobs for this  movie too.. music and cinematography were really good. The picturesque location were really breathtaking! Feel really good seeing Karnataka's coastal areas highlighted so well in this movie. The lead actors Kiran and Suhasi, though both debuting in this movie, have done excellent. Look cute and apt for the role. Story goes smooth and good time paced though dragging in few small parts.

Temples in Bangalore!

  25th Dec (Christmas day), I had been to temple near bettadasana pura . It's in a small village connecting the Bannergatta road with Electronic city (the road is named wipro road, I think). The temple atop a small hill has both Venkateshwara (Vishnu) and shiva temple. It's covered all around with a Fort wall though broken at many places. It was so different not only in architecture but just the fact that it was such an old one (more older than kempegouda defining the Bangalore boundary). The priests were different from the normal showoff temple priests in most part of Bangalore. They were eager to hear about each people visiting the temple. Talk to them, provide a brief info about the temple, and do archana free of charge and that too patient to hear about all the names in the family :-) So different from all the artificial temple 5-star pieces like ISKCON (5 Star complex/Multiplex?), Shiva temple in airport road, dodda ganesha temple in Bull temple road(temple is great, o

My niece! ... "Pinky" as per aditi ..

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  Name: <To Decide> BHUMIKA ( named on 14th Dec 2008 ) Date of Birth: 29/11/2008 3:32 PM Place of Birth: Wockhardt Hospital, Bangalore Nickname: Pinky (as per her sister: Aditi - reason, her cheeks are so pink :))

Sweetest person: Kavi

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My Wedding Snaps!

Mauritius Trip Snaps!

September 16th to September 23rd 2008. Blog about the trip below! Pictures from: http://picasaweb.google.com/bschandramohan/MauritiusTrip

Trip to Srirangapatna

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Went to Ghatti Subramanya temple on Saturday and was just discussing on what to do on my birthday. Pallavi suggested I take leave and plan for an outing and my first choice was Srirangapatna as we could cover the place driving in my bike. Sunday, we planned to leave at 6:00, but got up only at 7:15 and managed to leave house at 8:26. We had to take the DIO as my bike had some problems. We stopped for breakfast at Kamat Lokaruchi and after an heavy breakfast and some shopping there, started on a non-stop cruise to Srirangapatna. Pallavi was excited to drive the vehicle from Maddur and did a 50km drive herself. I just closed my eyes and was in praying mode :-). We headed to the picturesque Sriranganatha Swamy temple and after the darshan headed to the Obelisk. This is the place where the war between Tipu's army and the Britishers fought and a memorial dedicating all the killed/injured soldiers. We had a great view of the Cauvery river bank from there. After viewing the dunge

Mauritius

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Lovely place with Lovely people and a lovely atmosphere! Was planning to book a trip for Mauritius since my engagement days but with Pallavi not having a passport, it got delayed. Finally booked a 7 day package from MakeMyTrip. Since the trip date was very close, it worked out little expensive than expected. It included 3 days of sightseeing by seaside holidays , hotel accommodations and the airport transfers. Anyway, we flew from Bangalore at 3:30 AM on Tuesday, landed up in Chennai at 4:30 and after an hour of walking around the airport, started again... reached Mauritius airport at around 10:30 AM local time (12:00 PM IST). The flights were spacious and had a TV Screen for each seat like in Singapore airlines. Food was Okay. A guide there showed us to the Van which would take us to the hotel. It was an hour's drive and mostly went through the interiors of Mauritius. FlicEnFlac where our resort was located was very scenic and worth all the praise it gets :).. The true whi

My Marriage

Finally, it happened.. For those of who still don't know, I got married to Pallavi on 11th Sep. The marriage function started a week before the actual date. Friday was "Lagnam Kattuvudu", Monday "Devatha kaaryam", Wednesday "Vara Pooja" followed by the Reception, Thursday - Actual marriage, Friday..Sunday. .I don't even remember the names of those functions :)... After endless number of never-ending functions and poojas, finally last week was time for rest. ; :-) It was good to see lots and lots of relatives, friends, colleagues, ex-teachers all come over from far places to grace the occasion. Ofcourse missed some of them who were not able to make it.  Details about the event posted at: http://pallavimohan.events.live.com/default.aspx Devatha kaaryam Snaps:

Google Trends - new popularity analysis tool?

  Happened to come across couple of posts that talked about Google Trends and how they can be utilized to check the popularity of few things: On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying Bollywood Actresses: Who's Google Hot and Who's Google Not? Interesting to see how the popularity of actresses on the web really indicates the career graph... movie hits.. some big gossips about them.... some changes in their personal life has really kicked a new interest in finding about their profile :) I did the same with Intuit and surprisingly found Canada providing more web traffic to intuit searches than US. Popularity seems to have decreased but time to get back to the old ways :).. Also happy to find India being a great traffic provider :-) http://www.google.com/trends?q=Intuit Quicken , QuickBooks , TurboTax are interesting to check too... Check all together in this link !

Google Trends - new popularity analysis tool?

  Happened to come across couple of posts that talked about Google Trends and how they can be utilized to check the popularity of few things: On the Web, If You're Not Growing, You're Dying Bollywood Actresses: Who's Google Hot and Who's Google Not? Interesting to see how the popularity of actresses on the web really indicates the career graph... movie hits.. some big gossips about them.... some changes in their personal life has really kicked a new interest in finding about their profile :) I did the same with Intuit and surprisingly found Canada providing more web traffic to intuit searches than US. Popularity seems to have decreased but time to get back to the old ways :).. Also happy to find India being a great traffic provider :-) http://www.google.com/trends?q=Intuit Quicken , QuickBooks , TurboTax are interesting to check too... Check all together in this link !

Getting Old - New companions?

  School friends...  College friends... engineering classmates are always fun to be with... all are of your age and you invariably think on the same lines.. .grow up together.. learn from each other proactively and more importantly enjoy life as it is... Days go on and once u r out all alone in the big bad world! (copied 'line' from many movies), things do change.. . I was lucky in an aspect that in both Oracle and MindTree, I started off with a bunch of "Freshers" and created a great bond. Microsoft and Intuit has been different in many aspects that most of my colleagues were either atleast 2 yrs behind my experience or +4 yrs of mine. Microsoft was fun in that most friends were junior and were just trying to get a foothold into the software industry.. working hard to learn something but at the same time they were with all the "collegian" attitude... hanging out.. commenting on girls. .. playing games.. etc.. Intuit is the other way round.. Most being

Free/Readily Available Food ?

[DRAFT] Being a junkie (junk food eater/filler)... I always liked to (and still do) eat lots of junk foods... Evening snacks (bajji's... samosas.. chats like masala puri) are still a must everyday. Chips.. Cool drinks in Oracle. ... Good Day biscuits in MT.. Cool drinks & evening snacks in Microsoft were all great to start off with.. . infact we had our own algo (timings) to make sure we would get Good Day biscuits in the evening in MT... Days pass on and definitely the craze dies now... Everytime I see the biscuits dumped in a box in my new office & no one caring to take one or two pieces, I wonder about those days. Snacks which I used to adore once are now in coffee day but hv almost stopped eating them.. Is it that I hv become old and enjoy healthy home food? Not sure.. but have observed it in many colleagues too...  So I do still wonder why is it that food which is free and readily available looses out it's charms quite fast....

Mauritius

My sis and B-I-L had gone to Mauritius.. The place does look amazing.. Isn't it? waiting to see the "paradise" myself ;-)

Engagement Day !

  Well.. The day went on really well ! Tensed .. Maybe a little :).. But put up a brave face in front-of 350 odd people. It all started with the hari-bari leaving bangalore thanks to the ONTIME arrival of Microsoft friends :)... Did reach the hall on time though and the function went on great ! Ofcourse I had little to do in the first part and was just seated in my chair as Pallavi had to do all the Pujas.. Apart from the Ring exchange and Cake cutting, the other major work was to Stand and smile at one and all :-D :-)

Engagement Invitation !!

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Windows Live Spaces   The location maps and the invitation card can all be viewed in the Slideshow above. For the benefit of Non-Kannada readers, the details are: Dattatreya Marriage Hall, AralluMallige Circle, Dodballapur, Bangalore District. (Not Bangalore City :-)). It's about 40-45 kms from Bangalore. Date: 02-May-2008 Timings: 12:25 PM onwards. Hoping to meet you all there.

Time to congratulate me !!!

Well guys... You should have guessed what this blog is about by now (after reading the subject line) .. . if not. .. spend few seconds and u shud hv guessed correct :-) ...     So, her name is Pallavi.. She is from Dodaballapur (Bangalore rural)... finished her B.Sc Microbiology.. Major hobby - watching tv and also early morning walks & yoga. BTW, It's proper arranged marriage :-) ... Just getting to know her better with 2-3 hours calls everyday :-). Engagement should be on May 2nd. Will post details later.

Hampi

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Wow !!! Just amazing :-) I had last been to Hampi around 17 years back as part of a trip with my granny. Just remembered the broken monuments and small dusty roads. So, when fellow Intuitian called for a trip, I said sure.  This was my first trip with Intuit friends and I hardly knew 2 out of the total 14 people. 8 were from Intuit and the rest friends of Intuitians. Fri-Night/ Saturday:  Left Bangalore at 10:30 via Hampi Express: Reached Hospet at around 6:45. Took an auto (100rs) to reach Hampi - TungaBhadra river bed at around 7:30. Took a boat to cross the river and walked a km to reach Shanthi Guest House . The boat boy was an instant hit with his "6 O' Clock boat close" style statement (said in a real stylish way). Guest house was very well furnished. The cottage looked excellent and was cheap too (600rs for double bedroom). Only issue was the frequent power cuts and No Vodafone/Airtel signals :-(. Had nice breakfast (Bread Sandwiches + Aloo Parotas) and hea

Rohit's engagement

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  One guy who was saying he will not get married soon/in 2008 (compared to the rest 5 of us)..  One guy who said he will be the last among us... One guy who said he hasn't even thought about his expectations/constraints/conditions....  did break the queue {the only one to do so :-(} and got engaged on 02-Mar this year.   Though u broke the statement you made, we are all happy for you :-)... Way to go Rohita.. Enjoy and All the best !!!  

Lepakshi

  [DRAFT] Wonderful place which I visited for the first time this month on 01-Mar-2008 5:30 AM – Start from Vishnu’s house 6:00 AM - Pick up Chandra 6:30 AM – Pick up Richard Links found on the web: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lepakshi http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-xEs_Jbs8eq7KDSwP5iZujroyOfs-?cq=1&p=1125 – photographs of lepakshi Visited it again with my family on 9th Mar 2008

Getting a marriage alliance in India !!!

  [DRAFT] Read an article in TOI today where they stated that Online marriage portals are one of the fastest growing sector in India. They are doing roaring business.. Apart from BharatMatrimony.com, shaadi.com and jeevansaati.com, there are lots of specialized sites coming up based on professions, disabilities, age etc.. Though online websites are flourishing, the traditional ways are still preferred in many sections. I wanted to talk more about how the marriage alliances are setup... Typically starts with a scan in the family circle to check for suitable marriage age girls and boys. This probably is decided way during the child's stage. If that doesn't work out, the temples or religion/caste associations would have marriage registers where we could register. Put in your photo, horoscope (this is a must most of the places) and a "BioData"... yep a biodata containing all the details that might help the other side decide if you are a suitable alliance. Then the

Timed Shutdown...

  Do you listen to music before dozing off in ur bed? Do u leave Laptops On and realize u failed to switch it off before dozing off? Here is a simple dos command to set off the shutdown/log/restart of your PCs. Run Cmd. To shutdown after an hour (60 * 60 = 3600 secs), use Shutdown -s -t 3600. To abort/change a shutdown at any time, do a shutdown -a

Intuit - The most admired software company in US again :)

  http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mostadmired/2008/industries/23.html. Proud to be part of it :-)

Tips to go about debugging huge products

So it's been around 3 yrs since I worked on a maintenance product trying to understand the existing codebase, layers, architecture etc. It's always easy to start on V1 products I had worked for in MT or the "Prototype" projects in MS. And now to work on a product with millions of lines of code with as little documentation available as possible & to complete it in next 3 months, it's going to be a tough task Here are some tips to go about it - Understand the usage of the product. Typical way is to behave as a customer and use the product without caring about the testcases. Learn the technology (Guys.. can u point me to a good & quick COM tutorial :-)) If you can figure out the high level modules, try to understand the gist of the modules. If you can debug the product source code, put in breakpoints, view the stacktrace (big thanks to the guy who thought about adding that to debuggers).. and walkthrough the layers. Rational Rose and

Office Travel - How should I go about it?

  With my usual 2+ hours of traveling to and fro from Home to Office, I am just lost of ideas to do in the cab. (BTW: Yesterday, had a very colorful day - It took 2 hours just for one way.. . Had a glimpse of whole of the west Bangalore I think) Checked with friends and could only come up with the routine ideas: Reading newspapers Reading Novels Chatting with co-occupants Chatting on mobile Internet browsing on mobile Sleeping Travel early to Office and back early / Travel late to office and back late night. I like the last one the best but it depends on the fellow cabmate. So far, I was reading the Inside Intuit book and it was a good read. Reading newspaper or Internet browsing is not exactly comfortable in the cab (that will also take away my most spent activity in office... :-)) Ideas most welcome & will be suitably rewarded !!!

Kavi's Engagement

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  All the best Kavi n Prashant. Engagement of my sis did get on well... Though it was intended to be a close family occasion, lots of relatives did turn up (More than expected :) and frantically had to arrange for last minute additions to thambula etc.) Marriage is planned on Jun 8th and 9th. Awaiting the day to run around again :-) Date: 10th Feb 2008 Location: Roti Ghar, Gandhi bazaar, Bangalore...

Cutest Dancer on Earth!!!

Location: Ammi's Marriage - Country Club, ORR, Bellandur, Bangalore Date: 11-Feb-08 Cutest Dancer on Earth!

BITS Pilani Campus recruitment drive

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  So I had been to BITS Pilani again (I never thought I would go there again after my MS project viva).... Reason: Campus recruitment from my current company.  We set off from Bangalore on Saturday morning with Question Papers.. Answer sheet (to make sure we don't goof up correcting the answer sheets given by the students). Reached Delhi at around 12:00 and then headed to Radisson Hotel to pick up the HR. We then went to a mall in Gurgaon to have our Lunch. Gurgaon I believe is in Haryana district and not Delhi (surprising.. hv to check it up again!!! ) but it looks like more "metro"ish than Delhi. 1000s of huge buildings - offices.. 100s of malls.. . well maintained wide roads. After having rajasthani lunch we set off to Pilani in 2 Innovas. 3 Techies (Anil, Jeetu, Sumeet) in one car, my PM (Balajee), hr poornima, Pranay & me in one. Reached Pilani at around 8 PM and went to Connaught place for dinner. This place is like MG Road of most cities - the only bu

My First Property...

[DRAFT] Yes... Bought an house yesterday (10th Jan 2008). After 2+ months of *praying* to the ING Vysya bank, the registration did take place yesterday. Location Details: #380, Shirdi Sai South Avenue, Gottigere, Bangalore. It's supposed to be part of JPNagar 9th phase and is about a km deviation of bannergatta road (about 3 kms from Meenakshi temple). Once the nice road gets completed, should be a quick 15 min drive from/to Electronic City. So, the dream of owning an house atlast is fulfilled. Just as an investment opportunity and hopefully will get a tenant soon. The house is right behind the 60*40 site where my sister is constructing an house for us, so it should be easy to manage.

Ex-MT minds Meet

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  Nice to meet many Ex & current MindTree Minds.. some of them after years. Santosh and Sunil were back from US and good to spend some time with them. Others who joined in were Archana, Vanita, Kiru, Srividya, Loney, Vikas and Ashwin. Snaps shared by Srividhyaa - http://share.shutterfly.com/action/welcome?sid=8BcsWrlo2csMa

"Inside Intuit" - A great READ !!!

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[DRAFT] Initially I thought it was another of those marketing strategy books... And thought of skimming through the chapters on the cab drive back home. But after reading few chapters... I believe this is totally different. This turns out to be a great read not only for the interesting things happening in each chapter but for some amazing thoughtful pointers. It's great to know the mental thoughts going through the founders as they take each and every step. Definitely creates an entrepreneur thought in you. It's quite different from the "Google Story" where you loose interest after few great interesting chapters... . U can read some excerpts from the book at Google Books and review comments at Amazon . .

Wish you all a very Happy New Year 2008 !!!

Let this year bring on the determination, capability, courage & luck to fulfill all your long standing wishes ! ... Wish you all the best again !