Working on a Saturday

When waking up on a Saturday seems to be such a big burden, waking up and going to work would be the worst thing ever to happen. I have work today, not because I want to, but just because I have to. We have to compensate for a holiday we got for the local election in Hyderabad. So we work on this Saturday. Last time when we had the holiday for State and Lok Sabha elections we were asked to compensate for the same by working a Saturday. Later on that was cancelled quoting some court rule or something.

Maybe today's work is going to be unconstitutional. If this is true then can we get a day off on Monday. I hate Mondays, no matter how good or bad the weekend was, waking up and getting back to work on a Monday is a big drag. Weekends are happy and 'Weekbegins' are sad.

I say let's make Monday optional working days, it is a working day, but it's...(pause)... 'o-p-t-i-o-n-a-l'. Monday is the day when you mentally and physically prepare to get back to work after the weekend. Now why can't you do the same on Sunday? Well that is so not workforce friendly. You could get stoned to death in Kerala and WB for asking that question. So where were we, yup 'optional' working day. It's not compulsory but it's (pause) 'optional', you are not forced to come to office, if you feel like coming to office you come do your time and go home.

Yup that's it, the solution for a Happy Weekend and a Happy 'Weekbegin'

We'll never run out of 'tomorrows'

Coldplay - The Scientist
by itami

Live blogging a 'Go-Live'

18. New Go Live date 'tomorrow'

17. The trail transactions failed, the reason not so small. The whole implementation never considered 'migrated data'. Result: Configuration data mismatch left right center across applications.

16. Meanwhile in the Actual Outsourced IT Vendor's place. A meeting for discussing results of 'trail run' on the Production system, very solemn meeting with the subtle tone of the Project Manager's snore in the back ground.

15. While all this was happening, tomorrow went by. 'Tomorrow' went by THRICE.

New Go Live date 'tomorrow'.

14. Call Center agent setups are being done, user creation happening in the application. Call Center Agent screens not working.

13. Big hustle and bustle at the new call center, machines all booted up, but still not within the network.

12. Outsourced IT Vendor finds a loop hole- You get the a Call Center up and a arrange for a ribbon cutting ceremony for the new Call Center means you have 'Gone Live!'.

11. Focus now changes on getting the Call Center ready.

10. Outsourced IT Vendor is in a jinx with the date. They can't go live 'tomorrow', there is a 200 seater call center to be setup (by tomorrow).

9. Outsourced IT Vendor gets a date from it's Actual Outsourced IT vendor- it's tomorrow. WTF!

8. Post lunch there is the rumour of a 'Go-Live!' and there is a date- It's 'tomorrow'.

New Go live Date: tomorrow

7. Somewhere down south from all that's happening, there is this team working on issues and bugs, setting up and instance for a 'Parallel Run' simultaneously juggling the work to get their machines setup in the new office.

6. Outsourced IT vendor goes and ask the 'Go-Live!' date to the IT vendor to whom they have outsourced the work.

5. Implementation Vendor caught unaware, calls up the outsourced IT vendor and asks for a 'Go-Live!' date.

4. Meeting agenda changes. 'Parallel Run' changes to 'Go-Live!'. Who needs a parallel run, Who needs a proper user training. Parallel Runs and trainings are for sissies. When can you 'Go-Live!

3. IT department having a day long meeting with the New Software Implementation vendor about the 'Parallel Run' gets to know that the $h!T's hit the fan. Need to find some cover.

2. The Business users point the finger at the IT department.

1. Client's mission critical CRM and Billing application goes down for a particular LOB.

New Go Live Date: tomorrow

Arbeit macht frei

We shifted... finally. Our new work place is DLF Cybercity or something. Boy is it huge or what, it's a building still under construction. With just few of the zones which are functional, I'm at the 4th Zone 5th Floor and it's got like 2 levels of parking beneath what is already built and what's being built. Huge, I'm not sure on how the other floors are modeled, but my floor is modeled in the typical Nazi format, there are these huge floors which are divided into bays, huge bays. I mean it's bigger than Cyberspace or Gateway, the workstations are modeled similar to the 'Chicken Coop' in Gateway but with a different color scheme.

It's a bit crowed, but only when you compare it with the workplace in foreign countries, I've been to Germany for a month and the place I used to walk to everyday was a proper room. A very huge room. With just 4 seats, 4 telephones, and 4 workstations. You never get a feeling that there is a guy next to you, that you can hear him breathing. Here at DLF you get a feeling that it's like a IT Concentration camp when you find your way to the Cafeteria. It's a very sad sight, very few tables not enough to seat even the strength of one floor. Not sure whether it was was planned in a bit of a hurry or was it not planned at all. The other thing that I miss about my old workplaces is that if you felt the food in office was no great then, there were options once you cross the road outside office. We do miss that here in DLF there's no alternate source of food. The ones that are there are real far from office.

Maybe once the whole building is complete, there would be a common food court or something that would be planned. But that's going to take some time, and by that time we might shift to another building. Coming to think of it, with the number of times my team have shifted our office, I think this is the senior management way of bringing 'change' to the work experience in our project.

Mechanical

I'm doing great today morning, I slept off a bad headache yesterday night. Now i'm doing fine. I hate going to office, not because office sucks- it's just that the work sucks these days. It's just the same everyday, bitching on calls, playing the blame games. My project is nearing a big milestone, it's Going Live in a few days, but it's not going live because it's proper and ready, it's going live because there's nowhere else to go other than the deadpool.

The whole project is a case study on 'How not to do projects'. We messed up everything from 'requirement gathering' to 'development' to 'setting up the client expectations right. We made compromises, we compromised alot. We did a sham job in collaborating properly with various teams within the consortium. We had new project plans with fancy targets titled "Parallel Run', 'Cut over', 'Semi-Go Live'. We made a big joke with giving dates, it turned out to be the biggest farce in the whole project. The thing wrong about our project here is, what we are delivering is not what the client would want, what is developed is what each and every team in the consortium have developed within what they are comfortable with. Designs among applications was never aimed at 'What's best for the solution'.

In a few more hours I'll be sitting somewhere in a cubicle getting back on my daily mechanical routine of checking mails, attending calls, reading feeds etc. The only different thing today is, it's a new building. And for once, in the 4 year lifetime of this project, all the teams are placed on the same floor. That would only mean, we'd have less bitching on calls. I need a break from this. Need to get busy with something new.

I feel so mechanical when I reach office, I have to get something going, got to learn something. Got to settle down fast and get working on the 'Writer's Guild' that Vasu and me are planning for the next Dreamforce. Got to spent sometime on the shorts for Youtube thing that I been planning (got to loop in Laukik for this). Get myself to know Android.

OK, now it just struck me... I'm not just Mechanical... I'm Mechanical lazy!!!

[Music Review] Battle Studies

We still won't be moving to the new Building today. A sense of urgency is what we lack. The whole installation process is under some big 'red tape' in need for some approvals or something. It's a whole exodus of an entire project team from one location to another come on get the setups ready and then work on gathering the approvals and licences.

Battle Studies, John Mayers latest new album. I'm a big fan, I like that raspy sound of his, the way he arranges his music and his guitar. GwaaaD!!! he's good with his guitar, he's not like those metal band guitarist guys. he's more of your Clapton kinda guitarist. There's hoards of similarities in their styles and the music they offer. I've heard all three of his previous offerings. 'CONTINUUM' being my favorite.

Now about Battle Studies, well it's not that bad, but when you compare it with 'CONTINUUM' it's not that great. It's no-where near great. Most of the tracks are titled with battle terms and stuff, like 'Assasins', 'War of my life' and 'Heartbreak warfare'. It's like those very typical tracks of his. Love is the prominent theme in most of the tracks. When you hear it for the first time you even feel like it sounds just the same like his tracks from 'Room for squares'. All of them slow numbers, with not much of a variation in music or the vocals. There also is this cover of 'Crossroads' by 'Cream' in this album, a good cover might I add. So you could just tag all these songs as 'easy listening' and just loop it once of twice. Not one of the 'must have' John Mayer albums I must say. You could just stream this on the net and leave it. I guess John has lost it this time, maybe it's because he's a bit distracted from what he does best. Seems to be focusing more on chasing girls these days.

Verdict:

Favourite tracks: 'Who Says', 'Crossroads' (cover from Cream) and 'Half of my heart'

Buy or Stream: Stream

OK.... Maybe it's not the last time I swipe out off Cyberspace.

Well we won't be moving into our new building today. The installations and all are still going on, not everybody in the team have their workstations configured and ready to work. So it's back to Cyberspace, today. Boy I hate Mondays!!!

My Generation

I was talking to Laukik of LSD, while listening to this CD of Marathi Little Champs. He was telling me about each song that the tiny tots were singing. I was like totally surprised about the varied genre for the selected songs being sung by these kids. Folk songs, devotional songs, patriotic songs and the best part was, not all were from movies. From the Lil Champs show in Kerala and even the Senior Champs in Kerala, most of the songs in Malayalam is just movie songs. I mean it's what everybody listens too, it's the main stream thing in Malayalam. Movie songs, that is the it thing in Kerala I mean that's what everybody hears, that's what everybody sings in these contest. If it's not in a movie, it's not sung on TV.

Now he as always a true Marathi, and now with Shveta, the LSD as they would be known, are like twice Marathi, talk about the theater scene in Marathi, the music scene, about how they still know a lot of the folk songs, how it gets passed on from their parents. And how there are all these music being passed to the next generation in various ways. 2009 or 2010 there is this Marathi culture that's been passed on from generation to generation. Maybe there is a generation of non Marathi speaking Marathi growing up, even we have a mallu generation finding pride in not know to read write and speak Malayalam. The point I'm making is, 'MNS' or 'no MNS' there is a part of the culture that's been passed on from generation to generation. I like that. And I miss that in my being a Mallu.

After every discussion about this I end saying $h!T man why don't my Malayalam have this. Where is all this in malayalam, when I want to tell my next generation about what being mallu is, I still don't have an answer. Would I just end up saying being mallu means Harathaal, Mamooty. Mohanlal, Yesudas, AKG, EMS and Sreeshant. Where's my Shivaji equivalent? what about stories of some Mallu king who fought fearlessly and ruled his country just and wise? When will I be able to name a Malayalam theater actor and say that, this guys acting is rocking? When asked about the various Genres in Malayalam music, what will I say- Mimicry, Movie and Devotional.

Will my next generation ever learn a Malayalam folk song or is it going to be a generation that just knows their rhymes and Backstreet Boys. Do we have a generation who know the diffrence between 'theater' and theater 'theater'. The Tele-serials and reruns of 'F.R.I.E.N.D.S' is not the only thing other than Movies. Is there a generation that knows how to 'make' butter and ghee. Where did we go wrong? Did too much 'oil money' make us more modern? Are we moving to a Pizza and Cornflake generation away from the idiyappama and puttu generation. Is our syllabus so not true to my culture, are we too much into breeding Engineers and MBAs that we compromise dropping Malayalam in 10th just to make space for another extra class for Maths and Science

Is there a Mallu generation there that is still in touch with it's true culture. Have we lost it... do we still have a chance to save what's left of it?

Dispatches

Yesterday I downloaded a documentary about the 26/11 Mumbai blasts. It's not like those normal documentary where some guy re-enacts the scene or anything, where there's lots of officials and cops being interviewed. The story from the cops angle. This was totally different. It's told from the POV of the terrorist and the survivors for this attack, backed by CCTV footages and radio dispatches. It's titled 'Dispaches-Terror in Mumbai'

How do you program people to kill? It takes a lot of courage and a very twisted state of mind to kill a person. And when it's people you have no reason to kill, it takes a lot of brain washing to do that. Would you kill for a promise of heaven after death? Would you kill for a whole lot of money? The terrorist looked numb, devoid of any emotion.

And who are these guys on the other end of the radio. Sounded like the joker from the 'Dark Knight'- an agent of chaos. People who simply trick naive minds and get them to do very mean things. As Alfred Pennyworth from the movie 'The Dark Knight' rightly puts it:

Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.

Is there a solution for this, if people can be programmed to hate, can we program people to love/tolerate or do we really have to burn the forest down.