Year.introspect(2008)

Well, another year is just rolling by and am here again introspecting the happenings during the last 12 months. This year had been an quite eventful on both work and personal fronts.

On the personal front - Got married on March 09 and it took a while to get adjusted to the family life, given that I was away from home most of the time for my education and career. Should say that I ramped up quite fast here. My wife Madhuri is very understanding and did her best to make our lives happy. We got the pending tasks done at the new house and finally moved into the new house during November. Personal tasks, unsually, took lot of effort, but managed it quite well.

On the work front - an year filled with lot of learning and fun with technology. Made a formal entry to the world of services, yeah, the SOA stuff. Played and had fun with webservices, ALSB. Worked with some of the best brains and learnt a lot. This year, in addition to the role of an architect, I was also in the role of an Delivery Lead (DL). It was a thrilling experience to learn and disseminate the technical stuff, define the contracts, keep the team motivated and making the day-to-day tasks more enjoyable. Understanding the group dynamics and building the team was really cool. I realized that the best way to motivate the team is to kindle the technical passion and fuel it continuously by challenging the developers. Facilitate the team and encourage them to do it themselves.

Coming to the reading part, I read only three books this year. SOA - concepts, technology and design and SOA - prinicples of service design, both by Thomsa Erl. The first book is well over 600 pages and took a while for completion. These came to me as gifts from Madhuri on my birthday. I highly recommend reading these books. I also read How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie, it was very good read.

Overall, it was very good year. I wish everyone a very happy and prosperous new year.

Ref Cards for developers

Here is a nice link that contains downloadable copies of ref cards for various technologies.

Internet Connection saga

After moving to the new house in Sainikpuri, we enquired for almost 3 weeks calling different ISPs to set up a broadband connection and it was all in vain. The customer service is pathetic and annoying. One ISP collected all the required documentation and a cheque for the installation and first month charges but after a couple of days informed us that the connection cannot be made and that the money would be returned within 15 business days (It has been more than that now, we still did not get the money back!). We almost gave up and decided to settle with the USB enabled connection.

Now, am publishing this post connected to a 400Kbps line from home. Here is the sequence of events that happened during the last 10 days -

Dec 02, 2008: Received a call from Vedica Technologies. Not sure how they got my number, the agent inquired if am interested in a Wimax connection from Reliance. Said Yes and was informed that the sales executive would call and meet me in two business days.

Dec 04, 2008: Sales Executive met me at home around 9 PM and gave the details of the plan, collected the documents. I mentioned sternly that I'd give the cheque only after technical feasibility is done and was told that it was not the process. I was unrelenting on that matter and the director (Mr. Srinivas Reddy) called me up and I mentioned the experience with one of the ISPs. Though, it was not per process, the director agreed to do the technical feasibility as I had a bitter experience earlier.

Dec 06, 2008: Technical Feasibility completed and was assured a strong signal as the tower is within 1KM distance. The tech Agent allowed me to test from my laptop. Gave the cheque and asked for the installation to be done on Dec 09 as it was a holliday for me.

Dec 09, 2008: Got a call around 9 AM from the tech agent that installation cannot be done as the work order is not processed yet. Verification of the details was done by reliance communications via phone and in person by 3 PM.

Dec 11, 2008: Installation started around 8 AM and completed by 10:30. There was minor disruption in setting up the account. By 11:30 the account is activated and am connected to the world! Working from home today.

I'm quite pleased with the service offered by Vedica Technologies and would thank Srinivas Reddy, the director and Hemanth, the tech agent for their committment.