Why you should have good language skills...

There was this guy in my team (thankfully, he's left for another team). Together, we were supposed to finish two use cases. Our team was running on an artificially induced crunch mode.

One day, I felt that we had typed some code without the corresponding Javadoc. Since I was stuck with some work, and since he was free, I asked him to type the Javadoc before any other work came by. He refused, saying he was not very good in English and spelling errors would occur. I told him that he could not go on throughout life giving this as an excuse, and that if he knew he was poor in English, he had better improve. As a first step, I suggested he type the documentation in MS Word, which would point out his mistakes. He could use that as a learning experience.

He agreed, and some half-hour later, told me he was done.

I went over to his workstation, and as expected, his text was riddled with red squiggly underlines. I asked him to correct those first.

He said, "Ya I know I have to correct them, but how do I do so?"

I thought this guy probably does not have much experience with Word, and told him to place the mouse pointer over the word and right-click. He did so, and the menu popped-up.

He said, "Hey! I know how to open this menu... but how do I know which item to select in the menu?"

I was shocked, to say the least...

Hmm...

I have been doing a lot of late nights recently. This has taken a toll on me so much so that when I exited the lift today, I heard it say, "The time is now 12pm. Have a night stay." It was a while before I realized that it actually said, "Have a nice day."

Great wedding ideas...

Krish Ashok has a lot of funny, downright hilarious ideas on how a Tamil Brahmin wedding could be conducted. Take a look.

Note: You need to be a little familiar with the way Tamil Brahmin weddings take place.

Chennai photo quiz

PlaneMad (that seems to be the name he goes by online) is running a quiz on Chennai out on his blog. Its interesting, getting to know various places of Chennai through his lens. I was able to answer two questions successfully, but more than that, its the photos, the responses to his quiz and a certain 'liveliness' in the site that warms your heart that makes me check his site repeatedly.

Do check it out here.

Does onsite travel mean only the US?

I am a software developer working in India. (OK, you got that from my blog's heading, but I just thought I'd repeat it). I am now working for my second company. While in the first company, I went on an on-site visit to Delhi, where our client was. I stayed there for a month, helping the client out as he faced problems with our product. It was a kind-of great experience for me, as I got to know for the first time the thought processes people had and problems they faced as they used our product.

Well, a year and a half later, I was job-hunting, and went to various interviews. Now, on-site experience is considered very valuable in the Indian software industry, and I was pretty sure that people would respect me for the experience I gained. In one particular interview, I mentioned that I had gone on-site. The interviewer asked, "Where?" and I said, "Delhi".

He said, "That's not on-site." I said, "Yeah, but that's where our client is..."

The interviewer nodded, but I could see he didn't believe it. He didn't believe in the experience I had gained there. He didn't consider Delhi as on-site.

I joined the very same company whose interviewer asked me that question. With other work, this incident was pushed to the back of my mind. Some days back, it re-surfaced. After lunch, I and a few of my friends working in the same company were walking towards our building, when for some reason, I mentioned the incident. One of my friends immediately hotly defended the interviewer; surely Delhi could never be considered on-site!!

I got angry; I took it kind-of personally - well, he was after all, saying that my on-site experience at Delhi was not to be considered. I got puffed up and ready to argue, but my friend said he had to pick up cash at the ATM and walked away.

Later, when I was at home and in a calm mood, I thought this over, finally. I realized
that for some reason, my company (I am not sure about other companies in India, but I think they are also the same) seems to consider only US travel as on-site. I feel this is ridiculous.

Why should I feel so? Let me put forth my reasons. Let's start by answering this question:

Why is on-site experience valued?

Let me provide the answer too: On-site experience is valued because for the first time, you are face-to-face with the customer. While at offshore, you can easily say that this-bug-cannot-be-fixed/I-cannot-come-on-Saturday-to-fix-that-bug and such stuff. But you cannot say that in front of the customer, because if you do, the customer then stares at you in anger. And I tell you - that stare pierces your heart, that stare gives you guilt feelings, that stare gives you cold sweats - your company, rather YOU have just lost a customer. The customer has just taken one step down the road to never recommending you and your company to others.

Lost. That very word makes you sweat. That very word, that very stare, ensures that even after you go home, you keep thinking about it. The customer's face, after you finished speaking, is what comes into your head, and you cannot shake it away, for some reason, which you don't know.

That, in my opinion, is why on-site experience is so valued. You face the customer. Not everybody can do that. And when you return, after having successfully moved your application to production, and after having been given a personal send-off by your all-smiling customer, you return to two things - 1) the knowledge and the satisfaction that you have just retained a customer, and 2) the applause of all your colleagues. Soon, you find that everybody in your company listens to you all the more. Its not that they weren't listening before; its just that they listen to you all the more.

It is for this lesson that on-site experience is so valued. Now the question is, where can you get this experience? Only in the US? I say, no!! Customers are spread throughout the world, and wherever your customer is, you can gain this experience. He may be in Delhi or in San Francisco, but whatever it is, on-site is valued for customer relationships, not for US travel.

And that's why I expect people to respect me and my experience when I say I travelled on-site and solved my customer's problems!! It might be Delhi, but when my application didn’t work the way the customer wanted it, he raised his voice, and said, “What application is this, yaar?” And that’s it – it sends me into a flurry. I immediately note it down, and when I return, include the feature into the application.

On-site is valued for customer relationships, not for US travel.

What are your views on this? Am I wrong here? Is there something I don't seem to understand? I would love to hear any opposing views, so feel free to comment on this post or mail me regarding this.

Finally...

Got to know how to type தமிழ் (Tamil) words on my computer using an English keyboard... After all these years typing in English, typing in the vernacular is an exhilarating feeling!!! Ah.. .the thrill you get when you learn something new!!

Nice post

Saw this blog entry recently. Its a simple way of explaining who is more important: your existing customers or your new customers.

Strange....

I upgraded IE from 6. 0 to 7.0 somewhere last weekend. (Was it really last weekend - wasn't it even before? Well, not sure, but anyway that's not the point.)

I tried to connect to the Internet after that. On my machine, you have to connect to a local URL that is made available by the ISP (Airtel Broadband) and then click the Connect button there to connect to the Internet. I tried accessing that URL, but IE gave the usual "Page cannot be displayed" message. I tried several times, with no luck. Finally, in frustration, I called up the ISP's call center. The service provider after a few unsuccessful trials, called up his senior technical officer, or some such thing. He returned saying that his senior technical officer, or some such thing, had said that the modem was not compatible with IE7. I thought that was strange, but accepted it at that point of time.

Today, I connected to the Net using Firefox browser. Just to check if the problem was still occurring in IE 7.0, I opened it. It immediately connected to the Yahoo News page (oh... that's because I downloaded the IE 7 installer that comes bundled with the Yahoo toolbar). "Strange", I thought, "but ya that's because it is the ISP URL that is not compatible." But a doubt nagged at me, and I still connected to the URL. And it worked!!!!

Dunno what happened... may be someone in my family did some magic.. I haven't asked whether they tinkered around.. I didn't attempt anything at rectify it though...

Mark H. McCormack on sales

My bro has this book, "What they don't teach you at Harvard Business School". Read a passage in chapter 5, "The Problem of Selling" which somehow struck a chord. It says that most people are born sellers - in young age, they pitch themselves so that their dad gives them more pocket money, their teacher gives them more marks, how to stay out till late night and so on. So by the time we walk into the outside world, we know how to position ourselves and get things done the way we want them to happen.

"Then something happens - we forget how to sell. We question our own sales aptitude. Suddenly, the techniques we have used all our lives become foreign and mysterious, as though we now have to go out and learn them the first time."

Ever felt this way? Well, he gives the answer too.

He says that for the first time in our lives, when we enter the real world, our sales capabilities are judged. This results in us thinking that we have a very bad sales aptitude - we can't sell; we don't know how to sell; we won't sell.

Japanese toilets

Read this link long ago. Talks about the usage of technology in Japanese toilets. Do take a look.

SQLException on ResultSet.absolute()

This one came up at a time when I least expected it. I had an SP which I had to execute to get the results. I was using SQL Server 2K. I wrote the code to execute the SP, iterated through the ResultSet and get the data.

Execution: java.sql.SQLException: Result set type is TYPE_FORWARD_ONLY

Got confused. Tried tinkering around for a while. Nothing. Then thought probably the server has gone bonkers. Changed my code to

Statement stmt = con.createStatement(ResultSet.TYPE_SCROLL_INSENSITIVE,
ResultSet.CONCUR_UPDATABLE);

Still nothing. Posted on Sun Java forums. Someone suggested it could be an issue with the driver. Realized that the only way to test would be changing the driver. Changed it to JTDS from SourceForge. Same error. Hey!!!

Did a Google with the error message. It cropped up this link. It turned out that any SP in SQL Server with more than one SELECT or a SELECT with SET/PRINT degrades the resultset type. Modified my SP and it works now.

Just my two cents...

On the Indian Railways site, you can search for trains between certain important stations here. Once you specify the locations between which you want to travel and click the Get It button, you are presented with a search results page. You can select a train and get its seat availability, fare and schedule for the selected dates between the two stations.

When I tried it, I found something. Everytime you click on the Get Availability button, you are presented a message box that says,

Please note:
"PNR status" and "Accommodation availability" queries are very network
resource intensive queries. You are therefore requested to please wait for
sometime and not to re-submit the same.
Thanks for your co-operation.

Also notice that the three buttons on the top and bottom of the search results have their captions changed to Wait For Availability!

OK, guys, I get it. You want to prevent people from clicking the button repeatedly out of impatience. But for that, you can better disable the button, right?

The remaining two buttons (Get Fare/Get Schedule) also have this scenario - captions changing to inform the user to sit quiet. Disabling the button would be a better solution.

Some nice YouTube videos

A post after a long time!!! What made me post now? Two great, heart-warming videos I saw yesterday on YouTube:

The famous 'Mile Sur Mera Tumhara' video. Anyone who spent his childhood in India and watched Doordarshan during that time will remember this. I almost felt a rush of childhood memories in me while watching this video. More info can be found on Wikipedia.

A nice video on true love. Am not sure about the country of origin, but the title of the video is 'Kiss'. It was fresh, heart-warming, the actors were great, the music was good. Overall, the video is downright superb!!

Gmail's Loading...

When you login to Gmail, you must have seen 'Loading...' appear against a red background on the top right of your browser window. Nothing special about it, I thought, until I scrolled down. I was surprised. Instead of moving up like the other elements, the 'Loading..' thing stayed there.

I was stumped. From then on, I have been searching around on the Net to determine how to do that. It turns out that this effect is due to a CSS property which we often use - position. We have used this attribute to position elements on our page by giving it the value, absolute. Ok, to get the effect of Gmail's 'Loading..', use fixed instead of absolute, and hey presto!! it stays there, even if you scroll.

But there's a catch here. It works only in standards-compliant browsers, which means FF/Mozilla/Opera render it as expected, but not IE. That's a problem to which I haven't found a workaround, although you can use the onscroll event and move the element by the amount scrolled. I tried it out, but it doesn't give the effect required. There is a time delay in moving the element to the position you want, which means for that time period, you won't see the element there. After this time period, the element arrives at the position you want.

But what puzzles me is how Gmail achieved the effect in IE. If anyone knows how Gmail achieved this, leave a comment.

War of Currents

While in college, doing my B.Sc. Physics course, we were taught alternating and direct currents. The books prescribed to us weren't really great; they were designed to make us pass the exam. So I was always confused between these two types of currents.

Why the hell were we taught these? Was it just because there were two types of currents in this world, and hence they have to be taught? Or was it because one had an advantage over the other? I never knew.

Today, I was browsing through Wikipedia when I decided to end this discrepancy in my knowledge for ever. I began with AC and very soon stumbled upon War of Currents.

The article details a time in history when the supporters of AC and DC argued over which was better. It superbly explains the history behind the two forms of current, and why we use AC for most applications today.

Viewing Current HTML Source in AJAX

Now this is a solution I have been waiting for a long time. In AJAX based applications, everyone knows that it is possible to change the HTML without even refreshing the page. Here's the catch: Suppose you have done so, and now face an error. You want to debug the HTML, but now find that when you do a View Source, you get the HTML that was originally sent by the browser, not the current HTML. This can get increasingly frustrating, and sometimes even gets on your nerves. Why can't there be an option to view the current HTML? Many of the developers in my office resigned to this fact.

But fear not, frustrate not. You do have an option, a way out. In fact, two ways, if you are using Firefox/Mozilla apart from IE. If you are using Firefox/Mozilla, simply install the WebDeveloper extension. This is very useful for web developers like you and me. Apart from the various options it provides, click on the View Source -> View Generated Source menu option and hey presto!!, you get what you want.

OK, that one was for Firefox/Mozilla. What about IE? For that, you must visit this blog entry by Rumen Stankov.

Update (10th Jan 2008): Looks like the link to the Rumen Stankov article doesn't work. Well, I'll post the info here. In IE, to get the latest HTML source, just type

javascript:“<xmp>” + document.body.innerHTML + “</xmp>”

in the address bar and press Enter.

A nice week

Its been a pretty nice week for me. The entire week was spent in support calls, and as a consequence, I learnt a lot about the software we support.
Of course, a lot of my work is pending. I was not able to do any of my development work because support calls took up most of my time. But in the end, I did learn something about the software I support. And I believe some of these should hold me in good stead.

Helmets need wipers

The rain was intense. Not as intense as the rain last November, though. But it still made its presence felt. I felt old feelings rushing back in me. One of those was that helmets needed wipers. Yep, like the ones you have in cars. Driving requires concentration; driving through rain requires much more concentration;worser still, driving through rain at night requires the highest levels of concentration. Matters are made worse if the view through your helmet is clouded with rain drops. Hence it would be nice if helmets came attached with wipers

Ya, I know, the idea sounds ridiculous, still...

Btw, anyone has any idea on what to do in such situations?

Update (9th July 2008): Google Analytics says I am not the only one searching for such a helmet. Hence, if anyone does come across such a helmet, please do leave a comment as to where you bought it.

School Van

Today morning, I was driving my scooter towards the office. Arriving at the Sardar Patel Road - Velachery Road junction, I encountered the usual peak hour traffic that occurs here. I moved towards the signal as much as I could, squeezing between the gaps, until there was no more place to go. I was now stationary behind a guy on his scooter. To his right stood a school van.

I slowly came to realize that the guy was playing and having fun with the kid sitting in the last seat of the van. The guy would put his hand into the van and poke the kid. The kid immediately tried to catch his hand, but would fail. The guy would take his hand out and laugh.
This continued for sometime until the car in front of the guy moved forward a little. The guy and me followed suit. Now I was alongside the kid.

The kid was quiet for sometime. Then an adult in the van(presumably his teacher) asked him something. The kid immediately pointed to me and began to complain. I, just to build up the fun, immediately brought a "Oops-I-have-been-caught-red-handed" expression on my face. The teacher laughed!!

The signal turned green. We continued our ways, until we came to the Anna University signal. By then, most of the kids at the back had climbed their seats and were viewing the traffic that followed the van. Most of them were making faces - grinning and showing their baby teeth and making naughty faces. Everyone behind the van were laughing - irrespective of who they were.

I found a gap between the vehicles, and moved forward. It was then that I realized that those behind the van could have moved too - but they didn't. They wanted to stay behind the van and watch these kids' antics.


What a way to start the day, I thought.

The 500 mile email problem

I am a frequent visitor of the Joel Reddit. This reddit contains some interesting articles on just about anything related to computers. One such article which I found a few days back is pretty interesting.

The author is a person running the campus email system. He gets a call one day from a person in the statistics department who cribs that their emails are not delivered to locations farther than 500 miles. Stumped? Take a look at how he solves it.