Office mantras

Now I have settled into the "professional" mode and have started doing "something meaningful".

The work is amazing and you can learn a lot from it. The problems you face make you scratch your head and sometimes frustrate you (I started thinking, "what have I done in my 4 years of engineering :( ", for one of the problems). Then you find solution for problems and you feel on top of the world, the felling that you have done something "meaningful". You write a piece of code, send it to review, wait for the review comments, discuss and change your code, and after few such cycles, the manager finally approves the code. It is a great feeling when your code get approved for the first time.

But what next? You have completed your work, that too before you are suppose to, and then you start thinking what am I going to do next?

Here are some tips of how you are suppose to cope with this extremely rare situation...

1) Run your code again and again to find bugs.. (you actually pray that there are no bugs, and after every successful test you give a hypothetical pat on your back.)
2) Read your code and try to beautify it. Try to do something fundoo even if no one would care. And after all possible experiments revert the code back to the approved version..
3) Take long lunch breaks, even go on walks.
4) Take a novel and read.
5) Constantly check something dynamic as stock market or cricket scores and keep every one else updated.
6) Come late, leave early.
7) Start a blog, if you have one, post something on it.

Statutory Warning: Following these tips are subjected to workplace risks, please read the company culture for more info.

Pichle 31 din....

Finally, after 31 days I made it a point to write something on my blog. It is not that I had nothing to write in last whole month, actually the last 31 days can be said to be something really special in my life, it just happens that I was too lethargic to write the whole thing. Here's how the "Pichle 31 din" went...

Tai goes to UK:

My sister went on-site for her company to UK on 2oth July. I spent the previous week shopping with my sister and practically being everywhere she needed me. I along with my parent went to Mumbai to see her off at the airport. While saying "Good Bye", I realized that now I wont be seeing her for the next two months and how much I am going to miss her. After waving her good bye, I came back to Pune to start the second innings of my life ie the Professional Career.


My First job:

I joined VMware Software India Pvt. Ltd., Pune office on 21st of July 2008. This is my first job and I was very excite to start my professional career. I admired VMware as a software company from the day I used its Workstation, which I had used somewhere in 2005 for getting acquainted with Linux without actually making any change to my Windows desktop. When I used Workstation for the first time my reaction was "WOW". At that time I never dream t about working with the same company.

In December 2007, there was a small notice put up on the T&P notice board that VMware will be coming for campus hiring. After reading the notice I decided to sit for a Pre-Placement Talk after almost 4 months. In the PPT, Dilip(my current Manager) gave a technical overview of what the company does. In one of the slides there was a cool animation of virtual servers moving across physical machines. After seeing it my reaction was "Wow is it possible", and this was the time when I started desiring for the job more than anything. Well to cut the long story short, after some very interesting interviews I got the job. VMware offered job to me and my good friend Sumedh that day and we were the happiest people on the planet that day.

On 21st July, I went to my office to join as a Member of Technical Staff R&D. The whole day went in paper work and photocopying and scanning documents. It was the day when I wrote my address 50 times, name a 100 times and signed 1000 times. The day went by meeting senior colleagues and getting to know their experiences at VMware.

The next two weeks went in setting the machines, knowing the product and understanding the work. Then came the third week when I was suppose to go to Bangalore office for an Engineering Boot camp along with other new joinees.

Bangalore Trip:

I went to Bangalore for the Engineering Boot camp, in which all the new joinees get introduced to the technologies in the company and also its culture. Everything in this trip was a something new and exciting being my first "business trip".

First of all, I was really impressed with the arrangement that the company had made for our stay in Bangalore. It was a reputed business hotel, Pai Viceroy, in Bangalore with all the necessary amenities. The rest of the days, I would come from the office relax in the room, watch the TV and surf the net.

The next day, after lot of wandering and changing couple of auto rickshaws, I reached my office. The office was simply beautiful. I was happy to meet Sumedh after a long time. Also I was excited that I will be getting a company laptop. The day was marked with introduction to the company products and a look into VMware culture. This was the time when I got a grasp of how big VMware truly was, and that I am extremely lucky to have it as my first job. At the end of the day I had my laptop with me and went to hotel to relax.

For the following week, I use to go to office, attend the boot camp, meet other people and relax at hotel. Finally on Saturday, I came back to Pune. The trip to Bangalore was a great experience and something important in my professional career.

Independence day at VMware:

We had an ethnic day at VMware to celebrate the 61st Independence day. We had a pizza lunch, prizes for the most ethnically dressed employee and also an intra office carom competition. The pics of the event are uploaded on http://picasaweb.google.com/sudeepster/15thAugustVMware

This is all what happened in "Pichle 31 din"... :) :) :)

Har-Ki-Dun Trek - The Experience

Recently I have been to Himalayas for some trekking just to break from the mundane of a boring vacation. I went to a place called Har-Ki-Dun (Valley of Lord Shiva) in the Gharwal region of Uttarakhand. The pics from the trek are uploaded in picasa web album ( http://picasaweb.google.com/sudeepster/HarKiDunTrek26thJune8thJuly2008 ).







































By taking a look at the pics you must have noticed that the trek was a beauty and all of us would have enjoyed it a lot (expect for the sun burn part).

But I would like to share the things I have learned for the trek. Here are the ten things which you must know.

1. Borrow as much as you can. Most of the things you buy are useless later as well as in most part of the trek.
2. Never introduce a new game to the trek group, you never get a chance to play it.
3. Be prepared to meet all kinds of people, and never try to change anyone, you will fail.
4. Walk at your own pace, remember its not a race and there is no medal.
5. Carry a water bottle.
6. Apply Sun's Cream even if it is a rainy day.
   
7. Try to complete the whole trek with only one pair of clothes.
8. Carry Electral powder, lots of it, you as well as others always need it (Kambya knows better).
9. Never run behind vultures to get their snap. Same is true for cow unless it is dead.
10. Do not give biscuits to a dog chasing your bus.

Comment with your experiences and I would update the blog with them.

Blog 0

I have been planning to start a blog for some time now, but was not getting a good enough reason to start one. Few days back my good friend Jayanth started his blog (http://asciijayanth.blogspot.com/) which set the stage for starting this blog. I have specifically put the link to Jayanth's blog because I promised him to do so which in turn would raise the page rank of his blog, enabling the whole world find it on Google search.

Now, let me tell you what to expect from my blog. This blog will be filled with articles encompassing everything from movie reviews, music reviews, sports, business, politics and all the Bakwas I can think of. This blog will keep you updated with me and my friends. This gives you a good enough reason to visit it regularly.

I think this is enough for my "Blog 0". Keep reading and keep posting comments.

Happy blogging :-) .