Ashish's thoughts

Ashish Srivastava's Weblog

All | General | Java | Light moments | Music

Main | Next page »
20050824 Wednesday August 24, 2005

 This friday is the day to move

I didn't want to use the word "last" in the title. This friday is going to be my day to move. My six years Visa with Sun is expiring. I appreciate the effort of everyone who wanted and tried hard to keep me in Sun and in US. But I guess legal and HR issues are too istringent and complex to by pass. I had applied for developer positions in the product engineering groups in Bangalore and came this close (twice) to getting hired. It didn't work out when I told them I wanted to come back to US after a year. No body could give me that commitment. My house is another reason why I could not leave for India. It has been in the market for few months and no offers yet and I just can't leave it here or sell for loss. So I have decided to take a course and lets hope for the best. One thing which will not change though is my love for this company. My dream of becoming the president of this company I guess will now have to wait ;-). I have worked on external portals for past few years and would really like to have a portal for ex-Sun employees. Sun for me is not just a company which paid me salary. It is a religion. What will happen to me if I am not on a Sun workstation? or not on Solaris? or not on SunONE stack? At my home I have two Sun WS, one Sunfire v100, and one laptop with Suse linux on it and the only Windows I have are on the walls. Becoming a Java consultant I guess I will have to be flexible. I have never worked on Windows and this is something which makes me a little nervous. But new things to learn and push to adopt Sun technology will be my future actions. I hope my blog is not deactivated. And before I start crying let me click the "Post" button. Quick!

(2005-08-30 06:28:46.0/2005-08-24 11:01:49.0) Permalink Comments [3]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/this_friday_is_the_day

20050811 Thursday August 11, 2005

 Good Ubuntu good

I am no geek. I didn't even do good in the geek test sent to me by one of my ex-colleagues. But I do have a bad habit of inserting strange CDs in the drive to install strange apps. One such CD I found was of Ubuntu - A new linux flavor in town. I had heard about it before when one my friends cousins' praised it. Not bad I tell you. Booted my Toshiba Tecra with a live CD and its good. 
1. It recognized all my hardware devices, my video driver and also the network. I had some issues with 
the network configuration with my Suse which I run on my laptop, but no problems with Ubuntu. Full marks!

2. Even with a CD the speed is not too bad. 

3. I tried to listen some music from the shoutcast.com which failed to start in its' rhythmbox. Installed 
Realplayer but it just hangs with no UI. Zero marks! 

4. Attached my digital camera and boom it recognized it and imported all the pictures. Good stuff!

5. Java is not preinstalled - bad. Got jdk1.5.0 installed with no problems.

6. Installed the tomcat 5.x and I am live on the web.

7. And did I mention it is the best named linux flavor?
Overall I do give it a pretty decent marks.

(2005-08-11 10:28:05.0/2005-08-11 01:35:01.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/good_ubuntu_good

20050729 Friday July 29, 2005

 Why am I leaving Sun?

So my work Visa with Sun is expiring which cannot be renewed anymore. I have started looking for jobs outside and one question which is always thrown at me is : Why am I leaving Sun for working so long? Everytime it forces me to think why? If I had my greencard (US Permanent residency) and if my managers have to be believed I'd still be working for Sun. Performance, I guess is not a reason either. Above all I myself do not want to leave Sun in 100 years. This is my company. Sometimes I feel as if I am as responsible as my CEO or President is - foolish but true. I have been left alone and have to prove myself again to a series of unknown people, who will judge me based of if I knew say, EJBs or not. Hurting but it is the reality. I am so $#@!* at these insane rules. Scrap the United Nations if they could not provide global citizenship to its' people. I wish we build civilizations on other planets sooner, atleast the Earth is considered one nation then.

(2005-07-29 15:51:11.0/2005-07-29 12:00:52.0) Permalink Comments [5]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/why_am_i_leaving_sun

20050719 Tuesday July 19, 2005

 Hmm! Is that day near?

Mani's blog reminded me of my soon to be departure to India. My tenure in Sun IT and then the two and a half years with sun.com - the team responsible for most of the Sun's sites (including Sun, blogs and my baby devservices). These departments have tought me so many wonderful things. Great culture and simply great people to work with. Everyday, I go through the feeling as if I am separating from someone so close to my heart. Same feeling as when I first went to the hostel for my college. The process of selling my cute car, my house and my pool table. How easily the life swithced the gears. But hey! I am going back to India, near my family. In past six years, things for sure have changed for the better in India and I am looking forward to it. And I hope to keep writing insane stories though. World around me may change but not me.

(2005-08-30 22:54:54.0/2005-07-19 00:35:37.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/hmm_is_that_day_near

20050713 Wednesday July 13, 2005

 Three philosophies of success

I think I have already blogged about it a while ago, or may be not. But there are three philosophies of success for any software design : Simplicity, Simplicity and Simplicity. I know "Simple" is a very relative term. E = mc2 was simple for Einstein, not for everybody else. Vis-a-vis software designs, how two systems interact should be simple. Like, forts can be very complex inside but how it interacts with the world remains simple - Just by few gates. Yes! Gates have a protocol, some standards to follow but atleast it is simple. Why do we think as human beings we have been so successful for over 8000 years, among all other living beings? Because, our basic datastructure of communication is Strings. One reason why XML changed the world? It is simple and can be moved around as Strings. I hate applications when they end up getting proprietory objects after remote calls. Why Why Why? The same object heirarchy can also be converted to an XML representation and then passed around. And lest not forget one reason of the success of Java... Its all Strings at the core!

(2005-07-14 10:37:51.0/2005-07-13 18:39:06.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/three_philosophies_of_success

20050707 Thursday July 07, 2005

 Madness of extreme proportion

I don't understand what does some people gain to see innocent people cry? My heart is with people of London and the rest of the civilized world, the victims of the madness of terrorism. One thing which historically have always defeated the terror and that is the unity. We just need to hold our hands and hold it stronger than ever!

(2005-07-07 13:16:27.0/2005-07-07 13:12:06.0) Permalink Comments [4]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/madness_of_extreme_proportion

20050702 Saturday July 02, 2005

 Good start to Ashes

What an end to the Natwest cricket tournament. A tie of English and Australians and that too at a low score. You can't get a better display of pace bowling. Hats off to Flintoff, Harmison, Brett Lee and the evergreen McGrath. If there was any heat left in the Ashes anymore, this final has re-ignited it.

(2005-07-02 22:56:19.0/2005-07-02 22:51:53.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/good_start_to_ashes

20050628 Tuesday June 28, 2005

 Why would Gosling need a process?

By using the word "Gosling" I meant a genius who produces innovation with quality. Over a cup of coffee today, I gathered a couple of my manager friends and started chatting about having the need of a process? The essence of those half hour was that we need a process to minimize the risk of having a bad product. Any process doesn't guarantee a high quality product, it just minimizes the risks of having one. So, does James Gosling need a process, I said? The software industry is moving fast! Innovation needs the fast responses. What if Mr Gosling comes up with an idea and we need to get a product out of door fast? Would a well known process which delivers a high quality product in 6 months be of any help? Sure it will help if a team of an average capacity is producing it. Does process hinders innovation then? Or is the process only for average people? Was the innovation responsible for the dot-com explosion? Or, the lack of process for its' demise? Is process only for sustaining products and innovation for launching it? And why do I get confused at this hour of the day?

(2005-06-28 22:17:14.0/2005-06-28 21:42:53.0) Permalink Comments [1]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/why_would_gosling_need_a

20050626 Sunday June 26, 2005

 Customer is your best friend

It has been written so many times and in so many ways the importance of an open communication with your customer. This blog is nothing new but emanating from the realization of the truthness of this fact. On all the successful projects I have worked on, one common thing was the openness of my customers to be challanged, share views, exploring new ideas, corrections and suggestions. No wonder of all the "I am not happy" projects the common factor was that the customer doors were shut on us. My own practical experience have been that most of the times who the applications we build for were not sure how exactly the app should have been. It takes a lot of patience and a lot of expertise to listen and to come up with an agreed upon deliverable. And aboveall did I miss the word trust here? You don't buy trust off the shelf.. you build it and you earn it.

(2005-06-27 00:14:20.0/2005-06-25 23:58:55.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/customer_is_your_best_friend

20050624 Friday June 24, 2005

 Fast fourier transformation and me

I get tons of funny dreams but this one crossed the extra mile. A day before, I saw that my professor asked me what is the FFT and how to implement it? No wonder everyone in the class knew it but me. It shook me really, and it shook me bad! Being a night hawker, waking up by this dream early and that too at 5:45AM was no fun. After so long I was at work at 8:46AM that day. BTW, I still didn't get a chance to look into how to implement it :-(

(2005-06-24 13:26:02.0/2005-06-24 12:34:04.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/fast_fourier_transformation_and_me

20050615 Wednesday June 15, 2005

 Burned my fingers with gcc's attitude

I always loved gcc and still do. The problem is - Its newer releases compiles pretty much anything and then behaves in an awkward way. The following code : 

int fi = ...;
int li = ...;

int length = fi - li + 1;

char abc [length];
got compiled with gcc with no errors and even ran it but failed during stress loading. The error was also missed by the watchmalloc and I wasted almost a week tracking down the problem. Sun's C-compiler asks for a constant literal and would not even have compiled it. Thanks to Cyrille Moureaux for keeping a quick eye, I got the code fixed. Is relief the right word?

(2005-06-15 01:23:57.0/2005-06-15 01:15:50.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/burned_my_fingers_with_gcc

20050612 Sunday June 12, 2005

 Wrong advise for referral money

I admit, am gullible and have bad habit of believing people what they say. Recently got sucked into an idea (or help as he might say so) which sounded so perfect. From its start I was somehow not comfortable though. Now have an inkling that there was some referral money involved and the "that person" succeeded in convincing me. No damages done but its not good! Did I say I am looking for a mentor?

(2005-06-12 23:54:24.0/2005-06-12 20:19:58.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/wrong_advise_for_referral_money

20050607 Tuesday June 07, 2005

 Lets not eat today

"Lets not eat today because we are cooking rice pudding next month". This is the ever present dilemma we face designing a system. Shall we create a system today which supports the current requirements of the business or hold any development till we end up creating a generic system supporting all the possible requirements. Scalability is a different issue guys! The average time of any stable system to get a major overhaul or replacement is 30 months. Lest forget the systems running since '70s in NSA (may be), or some old cobolathon on mainframes. The scalability is achieved by the pattern followed and not by the generality and most of the time vague requirements. Luckily there is always a wide grey area between the two extremes and developers get a wide range of options for the trade-offs.

(2005-06-07 13:23:00.0/2005-06-07 13:06:07.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/lets_not_eat_today

20050531 Tuesday May 31, 2005

 The maze of options

We all at some point have been preached about setting our goals right. To not deviate from our goals and etc etc etc. I gave a different thought on that. Sometimes its not the goal which deceives you but the maze of options you are presented with. Have you ever taken those arcade maze games? The goal is always fixed.. that never changes. Its the path at each juncture you are given, is a problem. That ever present question... which path does it lead to the goal? In the game sometimes you can backtrack your path. The real life may not be that friendly at times. BTW, I don't like these kinda games implementing the self learning algorithms, coz they don't represent the reality. There cannot be a single learning process and one single path to success.

(2005-06-01 09:52:34.0/2005-05-31 17:25:49.0) Permalink Comments [0]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/the_maze_of_options

20050527 Friday May 27, 2005

 What does it take say NO?

I still remember when Scott came to broomfield a few years back and said, its better to tell the customers the bad news than not telling it at all. Things have changed since.. Sun survived the bubble burst and survived it well. And he left a lasting memory (He does that all the time!) stressing the importance of an honest communication. Even if it is a flat "No" it is very important to communicate it. What does it take to say No after all? Silence makes me uncomfortable. Its better to face a roaring lion than a snake biting under the feet. 
Mr. Customer I am working on it and would only be able to deliver it in 6 weeks time. Or,
Oh yeah Mr. Customer! I will do it in two weeks! and then not delivering it for months?
Which one do you prefer?

(2005-05-27 23:51:42.0/2005-05-27 08:24:54.0) Permalink Comments [2]
Trackback: http://blogs.sun.com/ashish/entry/what_does_it_take_say


« December 2009
SunMonTueWedThuFriSat
  
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
  
       
Today


XML



blogs.sun.com
Weblog
Login




Its me!
Technorati Profile

Today's Page Hits: 34