I’m reading novels

Books/Movies

Most of you know that I’m a voracious reader. I have tons of books on topics that interest me – theology, philosophy, psychology and so on. Yet I was never into reading novels.

That was until now.

With the recent attention towards ‘Da Vinci’ code, my sister bought all the four novels of Dan Brown and few other novels too. Now that I spend most of the weekends at my sister’s house, I started reading them. I didn’t read ‘Da Vinci’ code. ‘Digital Fortress’ is a bore. Around the middle of the book, it slows down and becomes a never ending bore. ‘Angels & Demons’ is better. Brown captures the attention. But with the final twist the characters loose their intensity. (At least that is what I felt). The best one was ‘Deception Point’. I loved it until the end.

I also read ‘Master of the game’ by Sidney Sheldon. That was an awesome piece of work.

Stuck on templating

Programming

In the earlier version of FOW, I used xml/xsl for HTML templating. As much as fun it was to learn XSL, I find it hard to create new templates. Also, since I am using Python (I didn’t say this before, right? ), I thought of using some python template engine rather than xml/xsl. But there are so much of these engines, it is difficult to choose. I like a clean templating engine; with an ability of simple programming. I am swinging between different templates. Hope I make a choice quickly and come up to speed.

FOW is near to be open-sourced

Programming

I’ve always wanted to make FOW, an open source. I was bit shy of making my crapy coding style open to be seen for the world.

I’m porting FOW to wxPython from wxC++. There are two reasons, it is quicker to code in Python than in C++ and also I wanted to learn Python. At my age, it makes sense to code in Python than in C++ (actually in India, at my age not many IT folks code! ).

I’ve coded the UI part. I’ve also selected the templating engine (I decided not to use XML/XSL). Coding of logic. Since I get to code only during the weekend, it takes its own sweet time. Hopefully in few more weeks, I make all of it ready. I’ve arleady created an account in sourceforge. I’m excited to jump into open-source area.

Busy is the word of the day

Nothing official about it

Life is an irony.

I used to be relatively free during April/May. Then, the CRM team had only 3 members and the next phase of enhancements were cancelled due to budget reasons. So I pestered my boss for more work.

I was given the responsibility of stabilizing a project management tool which is given much importance from the top management. It is developed with a view of one-point audit tool for all certifications – CMM, SOX and so on. And it is based on an in-house J2EE framework. Man! I didn’t know what I was getting into. The in-house framework is a mess and the tool is developed in a spaghetti fashion. Even to get to the login page it takes 2 min. Even if one would get into the application, it is completely unstable and unreliable. That is not all; the existing team members (some have been in the project for more than 2 years), want to leave the internal project and move to delivery projects. They are completely de-motivated since they feel they are not properly compensated and recognized. I had spent considerable time with each one of them and working out a plan to release them without affecting the on-going project schedule. But wait a min. If I have to release them, I need new folks. And that is where the irritatingly slow recruitment dept pisses me off. For such aggressively growing company, recruitment dept is pathetically slow. It takes almost 3 weeks to nail down a candidate!

As if this work load is not enough, the new CSO of the firm wants to revamp the existing CRM system. If we need to implement these enhancements, it would be at least a 35 man month project. With a mess that PSFT has created, my boss is also giving serious thought of replacing PSFT CRM with something else. So I’m into requirement gathering for the new development and looking out for a new product.

Now 12 hr working day has become a norm. Now that I have a RSA token and can access most of the project related contents through VPN, I’m working even at home.

I’m a workaholic. But I start to wonder if this is stretching me too much.

Sister got a car

Life is like that

After months of persuasion, she agreed to buy a car. Going in a bike, tightly holding your sweetheart has a particular charm; but when one gets back pain regularly, it is time to consider romance on the move.

Even then, it is only a second-hand car since my BIL has to learn driving. He has strict orders to get the license quickly. Does he care? Oh! Well, I don’t think so. Now that my sister is in Delhi, he is full of football fever. He is sleeping only for 3-4 hrs daily (he says, he catches up with rest of sleep in the office! ). Once she is back (tomorrow), he might consider her words seriously.

Financially, a rough time

Life is like that

I wrote already that due to market crash, I lost a good deal of money. Soon came price hike in gas. Obviously this increased prices of most of the commodities.

Already we were paying 12% service tax (in addition to whole lot of income tax, property tax, wealth tax and good heavens know what else) and 2% tax on taxes which is called something like ‘bloody’ educational cess. Now the political morons who wants to cash in on the exponential growth wants to add health and reservation cess on the taxes. That would make up 6% tax on taxes. As if this is not enough to piss off, they want to increase the taxes to 16%!

Few months back the banks increased the interest on home loans.

All of this is applicable only if you are stupid (like most of the educated and salaried folks) to deal with white money.

Finally it is done

Life is like that

As of yesterday, I got a tenant for my flats! It is a good feeling, to have finally achieved it. The electrical items were fixed yesterday. This is only a temporary tenant, he has a flat in the same complex but it will be ready only after a month or so. So he wanted a place to stay until then.

Now that I got this done, I can concentrate on the next one – haven’t decided though what it would be: it could be immigration or it could be setting up my own firm.

She does it again

General

I am not going to hide my love for Belgian gals, more so of Justine. She may not be as cute as her counterpart Kim Clijsters in looks, but her persistence never stop inspiring me.

And she has won in Roland Garros, again. Wow! she is one of two to retain her French title, the other being Steffi Graf, my other favorite.