My best friends wedding. No it's not a typo

I can see what's happening

(What?)

And they don't have a clue

(Who?)

They'll fall in love and here's the bottom line

Our trio's down to two.

(Oh.)

The sweet caress of twilight

There's magic everywhere

And with all this romantic atmosphere

Disaster's in the air

Yup I can totally related to Timon and Pumba now with this song. Well if you like it you can catch the whole song here.It's been 4 years since I've know these two guys, Vasu and Anurag. We worked for the same project for a whole two years then again on our next project for another two more years. Lot's of stuff happened in between. Now these college sweet-hearts are getting married. OK, so what's there to worry.

It all began with these guys looking for a place to settle down for their happily ever after. By the way just to give you guys a context. We stay pretty close by, walking distance from my place. Now these guys go and find a place, in some far away galaxy. I'm not denying the fact that it's a pretty wicked place, with the kitchen facing a mangrove and all, like Vasu liked. But hellooooo!!!!! It's friggin miles away from where I stay.

As the Godfather would say 

"Just when I keep finding a place close to these guys. They keep moving to a place far away from me"

Now for the ones who still don't find this scary, here's a little bit about the trio. We totally make a great team, they like me, I love them allot. We go for movies together, we go on road trips together. We are a team, now after these guys get married, that is it for me. They upgrade themselves to husband and wife and it's all gonna change from then on. They move to the new place. They get new friends, new neighbours in their fancy apartment. They go out with their new friends. I'm scared that, they'd never need me again.

Oh Bijou! grow up, it's not gonna happen. Well I certainly do hope so, not that I'm sad that they are getting married n all. I'm like totally happy for them. I'm the most happiest in the whole wide world to see them finally get to their happily ever after. I just can't digest the fact that, I'm only gonna have guest appearances in their happily ever after. Maybe it's the whole distance thing you know, with them moving really far away.

Come on... in FRIENDS,  when Chandler got engaged he moved in next door with Monica. He didn't ditch Joey and move some place far far away. See that's what friends do, I know, they are mean and un-friendly now. OK mean and un-friendly was a bit too much.

A lot's gonna change I guess, post their marriage, but no matter what I know that, if ever they need me. I'll always be there for them. And sure they will need me, well I don't know how they'll need me but I foresee baby-sitting as a major need. Yeah, I'm good with kids, kids dig me. Do they know about that, maybe I should tell them.

Still I so hope they didn't move so far from my place. Not to mention that would mean, no more free yummy food at Vasu's place.I'm just over reacting, at least that's what I say to myself. Well they will need me, and I'll sure get some guest appearances, but I'll sure make it some real good memorable guest appearances. So, as far as the trio is concerned, to be or not to be. Definitely a to be (damn where's that mail van when you wanna see one).

By the way the wedding's in Jodhpur on 24th of November.

 

ScribeFire- blogging addon for firefox

Well I'm one of the few million IT professionals banned from blogging on Blog sites like Blogger and Wordpress. Just when you thought all hope is lost here come ScribeFire for Firefox. It's got this cool GUI that gets integrated with Firefox and enables you to write a blog and post to the Blogger and all major blogging sites using their APIs. Integrated spell check, and other formating options built into the GUI lets you draft your post like you would be drafting in you favorite blogging platform. So this is my first ever post using ScribeFire for Firefox

Now preview in Google Reader

Ok, Google is on definitely on steroids, not only are they chugging out ways to deploy your web application on the Google infrastructure, they are releasing cool stuff for their existing applications. I'm talking about Google Reader and the new 'Preview' Feature which lets you preview your feeds now within your favourite feed aggregator.



Now you don't have to worry about managing multiple tabs, closing multiple windows. I think it's gonna be a cool feature. Would like check it out if it the preview feature bypasses the website blocks in offices, like for example Technorati sites are totally blocked at my workplace. So i'll check it out tomorrow and update the post. I'm kinda worried if those Firefox add ons for del.icio.us works fine to bookmark my favourite feeds with this new preview feature.

You can still save your feeds by adding a star to your feeds in Google reader. But the starred items feature stll doesn't let you tag your feeds. I guess that's something that Google can work on next.

Preview feature to be or not to be... well... let you know after i check this feature in office :)

Update: Well it turns out that the above new feature has nothing to do with Google. It's my biggest online goof up. The preview feature comes with installing the 'Better GReader Firefox extension' by LifeHacker. I think I shouldn't elaborate anymore, I will leave you guys in peace to laugh over this. I'll try not to make a habit out of this.

SFDC hacked into my brain and stole my idea!!!

SFDC... SFDC who?

It's true, I would suggest all you guys to stay alert and load the latest firewall in your brain, else the SFDC will get to you. Well if you don't want to load a firewall don't get into SDFC. You plug yourself into SFDC that's it for you, you'll be lost in what these guys have come up with. For guys who don't know what SFDC is, well SFDC is an on-demand, multitenant, application for managing your Customers, to be very precise it's an on-demand CRM Application

Currently I'm working in CRM, I'm an Oracle PeopleSoft CRM Consultant. For the last three years I've been working on PeopleSoft CRM, it was by far the best CRM application that I’ve ever seen. It's a very huge application with loads of functionality, integrations built into it. The other part that made PeopleSoft so customer friendly is it's PIA Framework. I would even like to say this would be one of the first Enterprise Applications which has a application framework built on the Active Record Pattern (Now popularized by the Ruby on Rails Project), to build and customize the application. This whole trait of active record pattern gives PeopleSoft Applications the flexibility to expose APIs for other applications to integrate with PeopleSoft. The first of the Enterprise applications to have a worked on a application built and based on Meta data for Displaying Data and Storing data. Now thanks to Oracle we won't be having these frameworks for long. More on this later.

Now the how...

Because they can... not only do they have they this awesome CRM application with features and dashboards that would put the even huge and complex on premise applications to shame. The Application is so simple, the data that is stored is also very simple, which is very evident from their number of fields they have to store an address. The simplicity is amplified with a very simple concept of basing an Object/transaction on one record. The objects/transactions that are cross related and displayed under related lists. The Salesforce application is based out of a platform that they call the Force.com Platform- which basically transforms to a meta-data repository. Now Force.com platform is powered by this framework to customize existing Applications (a logical grouping of Objects- eg Sales, Marketing) and Build new Apps, these apps that you customize and build can all be exposed as Force.com APIs for integrating. I think i'm going a bit off-track, well not really, now you know how much this SFDC has hacked into my brain.

Now for the what?.... what did they steal and what was the idea? Well for the new user it's just on-Demand CRM with the various applications like Sales, marketing and all. That’s when I was thinking of building a whole Customer Self Service Portal actually a Customer's Customer Self Service Portal, on top of the Salesforce App. It was all fine; I started to profile a few Customer Portals. But all of this being fine ended with me stumbling upon a link about 'Pentaho' a Commercial Open Source BI Suite, if you check out their customer portal, check what opens up.... Salesforce Self Service. I'm totally devastated well it wouldn't have so much if wasn't so user friendly. So that lead me to investigating this new found feature (horror for me) in Sales Force.

Like Self Service wasn't scary enough

Setup with a proper wizard and a jump start option


WYSIWYG Editor


Don't mind the pix, that's Vasu's work


Merge with your own Data


Pimp up your portal with customizable themes

Handful of delivered themes


User Management

Enable and Edit your users

We ain't finished yet,
add sections to your existing 'Log a case' page in your Portal

Here's your Login URL for your very own Customer Portal
Now the worst part... It Works!!!! Login Page

It is so user friendly, it lets you setup your Portal, and totally let you customize it within the browser WYSIWYG tools to design the Portal, insert pictures. Change colors, lets you place and format custom messages. As of now the only thing missing is, we don't have this feature to add more pages to Portal, other than the ones delivered, which I'm sure would be delivered in future releases. And I know that they won't stop with just this, they'll better it. Damn you SFDC!!!!

So now what next... Well i'm not aware about other guys who are causalities of Idea hacks. After all these atrocities this app has done to me, I've painfully decided to forgive it. SFDC is like that evil villainess in all Bond Movies, you know that she's trying to get to your brain, but there is definite attraction, so I'll be working on my attraction with SFDC. As for you my readers, if you are new to SFDC, unfortunately nobody can be told what SDFC is; you’ll have to see it for yourself. So what's it going to be the red pill or the blue pill?

SFDC: to be or not to be? Oh yes definitely to be

Jump start!!!!!!

It's been two long years since I last posted anything worthwhile on this blog. Jump starting my blog is one of the main resolutions I made for 2008. So here I am, back again to jump start my blog. My reason for this long break... well I wish I could say that 'I found the remains of my home planet in space, and i just flew for 2 years to bring it back to earth and bury it'. I was lazy, I'm so lazy that I skip breakfast cos I have to heat up a cup of milk. So I guess that gives you a real good idea on how lazy I am. I was lazy so I didn't post anything on the blog.

So now what's changed during this two long years that I was lazy. Nothing much, I stopped playing badminton early in the morning, bought a Laptop, got this nut-case idea that I'd look smoking hot if I had a 'shaolin' pony tail, nothing much changed. Didn't grow a shirt size nor did I put on any weight. So that's it for the two years that you guys missed.

It's a new year and it's a new start, the past year had it share of happy and sad experiences.

2007 taught me that:

'It's very selfish on our part to expect the people we love and care about to be around. The only place that they will be with us for life is in our hearts. And the ones that really reflect the love that you have for them are the ones who call up and stay in touch'

'If you want to screw up a IT Project, just screw up at your requirement gathering phase, that will take care of the rest'

'Even Roger Federer feels like an ordinary man in Roland Garros. Gods do make mistakes'

2007 left behind these to remember:

• The trip to Sikkim and Nasik.
• Kimi winning the F1 Championship.
• Fedex Winning the Wimbledon.
• First day with my IPod.
• Laukik's Wedding.
• A Day in GIM and a Trip to Vasu's Jungle.

What am I looking forward to in 2008:

• Fedex to win the French Open, and that to beat Nadal at the Final.
• Kick-start a career in SFDC.
• To take the annual crusade International.
• Visit a whole lot of places in India.
• Peace and Good will on earth

So you guys can look forward to more posts from me, hopefully weekly. Wish you guys all a very happy new year. God Bless.