My World A Blog On All The Things That Happen In My Life

Heading back to Austin
on 08/08/2010 - like it?

Well, I’m heading back to Austin for a second stint. Had an amazing time the last time I was there – was there for almost a year. Learnt a lot – technically & otherwise. Unlike last time when I had a flight from Chennai to Mumbai and then a direct Mumbai to New Jersey flight ( with a Mumbai International Airport to boot) – this time, the flight will be from Chennai.

The route would be Chennai – Doha – Washington – Austin. Worst part about this journey is that flight takes off at 04:45, and I would have to reach there by atleast 2AM – which means – Goodbye sleep. Will be reaching Doha by 06:45 for a 2 hour stopover. The connecting flight leaves Doha at 09:00 and would reach Washington at 16:00. The final flight to Austin is set to depart at 18:50. I’m a little worried about this difference – I’m not sure if this difference is enough for me to finish off the formalities – especially the immigration part. Lets see how it goes. Hope it will not be anything like the last trip!

Tags: 3i, Austin, Chennai, flight, journey, Life, travel

Of comatose blogs & vacations
on 19/06/2010 - like it?

Its been a very busy, hectic past few months. Besides my day night job( I work at US timings, PITA), I’ve also started contributing to techie-buzz, though my day night job takes a whole lot of my time, and I’ve not been able to contribute much. My Linux blog and as well as this blog has been lying almost in a coma state. I plan to start posting some articles now and then, got it in shipshape with a new theme, so watch out!  I’m still pretty active on twitter ( again, not as active as I used to be – even with my “low” activity I keep getting requests not to spam the timeline :p. I’ve been fairly active on posterous though.

I started using tumblr as my tumblelog, but switched over to posterous. The primary reason for switching over was at that time, tumblr was incapable of handling multiple attachments – it’d post the first attachment and discard the rest. Started looking for alternatives, and posterous caught my eye. Its unbelievably amazing how simple posterous is. Just send an email to post@posterous.com, and you’re done. That’s it. That floored me over.

I’ve been actively involved in Web communities for quite some time,  and now time constraints mean that current my involvement is at Chip forums where I’m the Super Moderator and at SuperUser( with rep of 7.1k ) – The StackOverflow for Power Users. I also lurk around in Meta – there are some good discussions over there. When I get some time, just drop by Reddit, Hacker News and TED.

Coming back to real life, as mentioned I’ve been pretty deeply involved in work, and come this Wednesday, I’ll be taking a break for about 10 days ( after a span of about 5 months, I believe). Initially, the break was meant just for the weekend – the plan was to head to Thrissur, Kerala and then hop back to Chennai. I decided to extend the plan,  and head over to Mangalore to take a break. Deepti, Ankit & the rest proposed that we meet up at Cochin for the weekend,and so it was settled. So, currently the plan looks like:

Jun 23rd: Chennai to Thrissur

Jun 24/25: Thrissur to Cochin

Jun 25 – Jun 27: Cochin

Jun 27 – Cochin to Mangalore

Jun 28 -  July 4th: Mangalore

Will be good to take a nice break. Hope I don’t calls regarding work, my experience says I will get it :/

Got nothing planned in Mangalore, lets see how it works

Tags: 3i, blogs, break, Chennai, communities, mangalore, vacations

25. My 25th Birthday “Celebration”
on 23/03/2010 - like it?

March 19 1985, 05:28. Date and time a certain SJ (no, not Steve Jobs, me!) came into this world. Fast forward to March 19, 2010. Today. Yesterday. couple of days ago. 25. I’ve “officially” completed 25 years of which 22 years were spent in Mangalore, 9 months in Austin, and the remaining time in Chennai.

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Tags: 3i, 9 feet High, blogger's meet, Chennai, GRT, Indiblogger, Life, meetup, timepass, tweetup, work

The case of the Neverending SMS Series
on 19/10/2009 - like it?

Most of the Ruby gang are very well aware of the “Stupid SMS series”. For the uninitiated, it was Nitin’s way of…. umm… timepass ? by sending SMS to all of the Ruby gang which made absolutely no sense whatsoever ( I hate to admit it, but it’s true, Nitin is a version of “The Amit“).

Anyways back to the post,  couple of days ago, as I was spending time in morning, my iPhone started to buzz away. It wasn’t very surprising, since getting a message in morning isn’t something out of the ordinary. Opened the message only to see it was a blank SMS from an unknown number. Ignored it at first, but then the buzzing went on continuously. In a matter of few minutes my inbox looked like this:

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Tags: 3i, cell phone, Chennai, Hassles, iBlacklist, iPhone, Life, mobile, Ruby, timepass, tips, trace, work

Celebrating 2 years
on 13/07/2009 - like it?

Couple of days ago, I tweeted this little message. July 9, 2007 is a red letter day for me – for that was the day I started my career as a working professional. As I tweeted that, I was greeted over IM by few of my friends and colleagues. It didn’t strike me much as soon as I tweeted, but few hours later I was just amazed as to how fast time has gone by – and how far I’ve come. To think, I applied for this position as an afterthought (“should I really ? Well..”). That got me into nostalgia mode.

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Tags: 3i, Chennai, Hassles, Life, office, Views, work

Yes I’m alive!
on 14/06/2009 - like it?

It’s been  a while hasn’t it, since I last blogged ? *goes to next tab to check last manual blog post* April 19. God! Hadn’t realized its been so long since I last composed. Yes, I’m alive (hey you’re reading this aren’t ya?). I can hear the collective yells of “where the hell have you been”. Well – work. Been drowned, swamped, overloaded – basically been busy with shit loads of work.

Next question – Am I in Austin ?

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Tags: 3i, Austin, Chennai, Life, office, oracle, SQL, thoughts

So what’s been up with me ?
on 19/04/2009 - like it?

Its been a while since I posted eh… oh yea been busy with lots of stuff just work . Lot has happened, so let me get started.

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Tags: 3i, appraisal, Austin, Chennai, Life

3 Months… And More to Come!
on 24/02/2009 - like it?

Its been a while since I’ve posted (crap nearly a month) on my blog – so what have I been upto and what’s happening ?
For starters, work, work, work, more work – did I mention work ? There’s just 2 people here in Austin for the project I’m with and as we hit the project go live date, there’s tons of work to be doing – and the 2 of us are just about struggling. My colleague being the Business Analyst & Implementer -means that he’s got to report to his managers about what’s going on and and analysis of bug reports, calls resolved etc. That leaves him busy – and leaves me with a frikkin’ huge set of things to do – test the test conditions in advance and report any bugs found.

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Tags: 3i, Austin, Life, Views, work

The RubyHall Chronicles
on 08/02/2009 - like it?

This piece of work was written(and is continuing to be written, as of now) by my buddy, fellow rocker and 3i-ian Ankit. Its basically on our journey in 3i, from day 1. Note: This is NOT my article, all due credits to Ankit.

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Tags: 3i, Chennai, Life

My Last few days in India….
on 10/11/2008 - like it?

Yup, this upcoming week will be my last week in India. I’d mentioned earlier about me getting an onsite gig. This week will probably be the last week here in India, before I fly off to Austin, Texas. I still have my Visa interview due this Wednesday, November 12th though. Earlier today I’d come to know that the most probable date for mr flying would be November 16th, but then it was pushed to November 19th to give some buffer time incase my visa gets delayed and all. Don’t know if I’ll be able to head back home, I’ll try to squeeze in a Mangalore trip this weekend, but I’m afraid most likely that ain’t gonna happen and I’d have to fly directly from Chennai. 

Well thats about all I can think of now. Will post on my visa interview experiences once its over on Wednesday. For quick updates you can always follow me on twitter.

Tags: 3i, Austin, office, onsite, Texas, USA, Visa