This is a fairly quick post, and I know it doesn’t do enough justice since I am writing after a long time. But this post is just trying to confirm that I got engaged on 22nd Oct 2008. It was a rush thing, when I met Priyanka on a Sat morning and ended up getting engaged to her on a Wed evening. But now that its done, its taking some time to sink in.
Anyway, the marriage is expected in end Jan 2009.
More later…
Hmmm….its been 6 months since I last updated this blog. So I thought it was time to make some amends. Let me update most of you with the changes to my professional life first.
Since my last post, a lot has changed. I no longer work on Oracle and DB2. In fact, I no longer work on any RDBMS. I am, however, still with IBM. I have managed to take charge of an opportunity and gone higher in what I call the “application chain”. I have become a true Business Intelligence Consultant. I now work on version 7.0 of the Business Intelligence module from SAP.
But first a little bit about the past 6 months and all the happenings. A quick reminder which will allow me to reminisce how it all happened at some time in the future:
July 2006: IBM refused to accept my qualifications; thereby affecting my appraisals.
November 2006: I decided to move on rather than wait for a whole year
January 2007: Found a new job at Bangalore
February 2007: Decided to let go the new offer based on promises made by IBM Canada
March 2007: Enrolled in IBM conducted SAP BW 3.5 training, got certified by IBM
March 2007: Started supporting a top notch US Telecom client on SAP BW 3.5
May 2007: Manager enrolled me into a SAP BI 7.0 training from SAP Academy
June 2007: Completed training and attained SAP Certification for the same module
July 2007: Confirmation and Initiation of Canada landed assignment from IBM Canada
July 2007: KTs to colleagues for all the three clients I was supporting
September 2007: Landed in Canada and started working for a new transport services client, supporting their SAP BI environment.
Its been a little rough, but I think I have managed to make the most of it. SAP BI is a high-demand and a low supply skill. But it involves not just technical knowledge. No. It requires a lot more people skills. And thats something I still need to work on.
Over a period of time, I want to expand my role from that of a technical person working on specified requirements to someone who interacts with clients and helps create value for them by understanding their needs and providing timely information for making those crucial business decisions. I hope I make it sooner that I think. 
Canada is a beautiful place to be in. Calgary, especially, is a very green city. Its a happening place, full of bars, restaurants (from all over the world), dance tutors, shopping malls, commercial buildings. You name it. Its also got a few Indian stores which I still have to visit. And a slowly increasing Indian population.
A bird’s eye view of Calgary:
This is a downtown view of Calgary at night time:
Calgary has got people from all over the world. Asians, Muslims, Europeans, South Americans, Americans, Indians, Canadians. Everyone is down here. And that only makes life a lot more interesting. A simple example, a meeting I was attending, just 5-6 people, but each one a different race and ethnicity. Me, an Indian, a BI colleague, from Hong Kong, a Basis senior, a Muslim guy based in Calgary, a lady Project Manager from Canada, another BI colleague with a French origin based in Canada, and finally, another Canadian from Infrastructure. And this was only IBM. If we had clients joining in, it would be a complete mela.
I am just getting used to the diversity of this place. But people who have been here know that these differences dont make a damn difference. All that makes a difference is how you work and how professionally you handle issues.
So thats just a primer about Calgary. I still need to update my homepage. Will try to do that a little later when I get some more free time. Till then, its Namaste!
I know its been a while since I last updated this blog, but this was something I could not resist writing about. There have been several important changes in my professional life, but that can wait.
This is about Yahoo! Mail. Two very important news items (blog posts) have come to my attention. Both related to Yahoo Mail. For one, Yahoo is going UNLIMITED!!! Yes, you heard it correct. This blog post from the VP himself clearly states the same. Unlimited storage space will become a reality at Yahoo pretty soon. Now you can store CDs and DVDs on mail and much more. Of course they will be fragmented, but who cares??
The second, and significantly more important announcement on the Yahoo Mail Updates Blog concerns the Yahoo Mail Web Service. Its official. Yahoo will be providing web service features to all users (limited features to the free users). But what this means is that you dont need to rely on POP3 and SMTP any more to send and receive messages any more. This just might revolutionize email as you know it. I expect a lot of developers adopting Yahoo’s web service APIs in their applications, and the Yahoo Mail Application Gallery providing some crazy apps never seen before.
Has Yahoo left Google far behind now? Has it managed to nail Google at its own game? Wait and watch while Google responds. And hail the KING (read the customer)!!!
My Mac Mini is here…and its here to stay. I ordered it a while back, and it finally arrived just at New Years time. Its a beautiful machine, tiny by PC standards, and a much better bang for lesser hardware, unlike the PC.
Wondering why the Mac? Well just because Windows ceases to impress me any more. I need more simulation. Not just for the eyes, but for the mind too.
What does it look like? Check this out….
Whats it got inside? Well, here’s the config that I ordered:
Intel Dual Core Duo 1.66Ghz
1GB 667Mhz DDRRAM
80GB SATA HDD
Bluetooth
Wifi Enabled
4 USB 2.0 Ports
Mac OS X Tiger
Within 48 hours of getting it up and running, I have managed to connect my laptop to the Wifi adaptor on the Mac in a Computer-to-Computer Adhoc network, share the Internet connection on it, and burn 6 CDs. Everything is so easy to do, it just runs out of the box!!!
Below are some screen shots I caught recently while working on it. And trust me, they have come out better than I thought they would. Just click on the images to view full sized (1024×768) screen shots.
So you want to enjoy the experience as well? Come over….
Btw…this blog post was composed on the Mac. Enjoy!!!
A very small and interesting article on how to build and maintain
professional relationships which I thought would be worth sharing.
I was recently at a temple in Mumbai. Its called the Siddhi Vinayaka temple and its located somewhere in the middle of Prabhadevi. Its a very famous temple across the globe, and at times, people queue up 2-3 km just to get the darshan. This is the official website of the temple where you can do live darshan online, without having to stand in queues. Now isnt that technology to the forefront?
But it wasnt technology I was after when I went there. No. It was the night time aarti. And believe me it was one of the most amazing aarti’s I ever attended. I have been to many temples across the country (not so many as some of my friends have, but still quite a few), but this one was different in a unique way.
Most temples in India would have an aarti with lots of drums, bells, loud singing, commotion and chaos reigning supreme et al. Infact, whats an aarti without the commotion? This was the first time I saw an aarti without instruments of any kind. No bells, no trinkets, no drums. Just people humming. Not singing…humming. Everyone in chorus. Just one diya in panditji’s hands, and that was it. And this in the heart of Mumbai, the commercial capital of the world.
Some of you might say that what kind of an aarti is that? In fact at the start of the aarti, I felt quite strange. I was wondering when the aarti is going to start? But as I realized what was going on, I felt a calmness inside me which I never felt before. Call it a spiritual experience, but I felt happier and lighter.
Maybe this is the way night time aartis are conducted in other temples as well. I wouldnt know since this was probably my first night time aarti. But the point that I am trying to make is that devotion and bhakti and shradhda are all things inside you, not outside. So the lesser you show them, or bring them out, the more you retain inside.
To tell you more about Siddhi Vinayaka, this is from what I read at the temple. Across the world, Ganeshji’s soond(trunk) is tilted to HIS left. Only when he becomes a part of the Siddhi Vinayaka (yes, he is only a part of it, there are 2 more deities in there as well) his soond is bent to HIS right. Those are the major differences between Ganesh ji and Siddhi Vinayaka ji. Of course there are more stories you get to hear and read at the temple once you go there. So next time you are in Mumbai, make sure you visit this temple at 9:30PM. Its a sight and sound which compares to no other. And remember to take a coconut, some pedas and flowers with you.
So its been a while since I have been looking for a way to do this. On the DOS command prompt, I need the date formatted as say dd-mm-yyyy or yyyy-mm-dd. How do you accomplish that? Its been a mystery for me for quite a while, till I read this excellent article and said “Thank You” out loud thrice over.
So here’s the logic behind this:
%date:~-2,2%\%date:~0,2%\%date:~3,2%
DOS already stores the %DATE% system variable. So if you do a echo %date% DOS should give you the current date.
Depending upon the format of this output, you can customize the format of the date by using substrings. Lets take a closer look at the command string above. If you notice %date is appended by a colon(:) and a tilde(~). This is the syntax to extract a substring from the specified parameter (in this case the %date% output).
So when we do a echo %date:~3,2%, DOS returns us the substring from the output of %DATE% from character 4(3+1, remember DOS string indexes start from 0), extending for 2 characters, including the 4th character. You can use the negative symbol(-) to start from the end of the output of the date string, as %date:~-2,2 shows. It extracts 2 characters from the end of the output of %DATE%.
You can obviously try this technique out on different command texts like %TIME%, %DIR% and %SYSDIR% etc. to do a lot more than you could ever do.
In case you are wondering how could this possibly be helpful to anyone, ask System Administrators, Database Administrators and Data Warehousing Specialists, who frequently need to rename files based on the current date and time.
Note: I have tested this on 2 machines running Win XP Pro and 1 machine on Win 2000. It works fine on both. Other platforms still require testing
