The Peril of being in a IT Services Company:

Just now I am realizing the peril of being in a IT services company. 3 months ago I quit my previous company, which is a product based one. Though the product I was working is innovative, it wasn't competitive with the giants in the field. But my job was really cool, with an opportunity to see the product from the design phase to the release phase. I think many would not have the opportunity to see the complete life cycle of a complex telecom product from a close proximity. Due to various reasons I had to quit. That was actually one of the toughest decision that I took in my life.

I had a number of offers at that time and I chose a small, start up company to join. I know that I am taking risk there, but I thought it would be quite interesting to see a startup company from inside. I knew from my other friends that in a service based company an employees interest would never be in the radar of the manager who is assigning the task. The only aim there is complete "whatever" task/module given by the client. But I still wanted to try it as the work environment would be pretty relaxed.

At the time of joining I was dreaming to work in something like, Linux Kernel, device driver, some complex application, etc. I did some interesting stuff too after joining, which I could be proud of. But I was dump struck when I was given the latest module. It was a module that a test engineer would do happily. The task was not a simple one, but it did not have the excitement that I, as a developer need to motivate me to work. When the task was being explained to me, I felt like banging my head on the computer. Only then I realised the peril of working in a service based company. I have risen my voice some times in my previous company when I was asked to do something that is not development like leading a testing team and other things, which had landed me in trouble. But here I held myself back . After all my manager is the holding the whip and I had no choice except to dance.

Also, I guess in India 75-80% of the software engineers are working in the services industry, which in turn depends on the american software industry. What will happen to these company's if the american economy falls? The next day these company's will not have any project, which in turn will affect the 80% of the software engineers. It is such a sad feeling when so much talent is actually work trying to improve the technology for US. Yes, it improves the indian economy, but it has created a strong dependency with the american economy.

I could simply quit this difficult existence, what the hell is stopping me to live the life the way I want to live? Fear of being jobless, surviving, answering questions??? It is a pity after a 3 years of being in the field has done nothing to those fear. As of now, I have nothing but a prayer for the american economy to be good for us to survive. What a terrible existence :(

A Refereshing Book on 'C':

I never thought that any of the authors of book on C would have a bit of sense of Humor and a book I was reading now changed that. I thought that geeks usually have shed their humor when they were banging their heads on the computers during their university days intead of partying and going out with their girl friends. This theory of mine has been true in almost all the geeks that I respect. But I got a pleasent surprise yesterday, that too accidently.

I forgot to pay my internet bill for the last month and i remembered that only when I could not logon. When I was trying to figure out what to do, a book got my attention( this book was in the last of the heap and got in to top when I shifted to a new residence at T.Nagar). The name of the book was "Expert C Programming, Deep C Secrets, by Peter Van Der Linden", which was presented to me by a pal last year. I was really sceptical whether I would go beyond few pages like many of the technical books I bought. But this one was refreshing and funny from the page one. The author is a C Guru, who has written C compiler, and the book is full of funny ancedotes.

Some of the best I liked,
* A $20 Million order was held to a bug which was traced to something like this, x == 2(this ought to be x = 2).
* Bugs section in tunefs of SVr4 Unix.
* How Steve Bourne converted the C in Algol equivalent with the preprocessors, and the response he gave, that he thought that nobody other than him would see the code.

The book was very interesting with lot of niche details about C coding, which was quite exciting to know. I was forced to stop reading as I had to hit the bed early as I do not want to
miss my run tomorrow. Hopefully i will complete this book soon.



Recommedation: This book is surely for those who wants to know the nuances of C and master it.

The Pain of a Loss:

One of the saddest day in my life. I've lost a very close person to me,Kalyanasundaram this
afternoon in an accident. Kalayanasundaram joined my fathers company some 15 years ago. My father by his very nature always treat the members of his company as his family members, but I think he treated Kalyanam a bit above that, he really trusted him. He had been my friend from my younger days.Flashes of our adventure in the cycle, the childish pranks I played on him, the badam geer he would get me after my school, all goes in my mind.

The worst part is he died not realising many of his dreams. He wanted to go abroad to do earn
some big money, he wanted to visit lot of countries and he wanted a businees of his own. These
are somethings he shared with me with the little time that I spent with him. He always flashes
a great smile and does a salute in his own way whenever I go the office. He always advices about the need to maintain a healthy body and the need to exercise. He was very influential in my recent invlovement with jogging. Last time when I visited him, I was telling him about the marathon that I going to attend this december.

I could not believe my ears when my father told me that Kalyanam is no more and our manager is at the hospital with multiple fractures. Kalyanam had always been a very careful driver. He is the who thought me how to drive a two wheeler against my fathers words not do that. But even he could not do much when the tire of the car that is coming in front of him burst and the car rams him killing him instantly.I wish this day had never come.

What could I ever do about this tragedy? I knew thousands of people die each day around the world, thousands of people affected by the death and I could do nothing about it. But the pain of the loss can be understood only by those associated. It is a scar that will never vanish. His thoughts will always be a hauting memory as he lived with my father, his office, our house. Last two times when I took the car out to drive to my uncles house in the next village, he was accombniying me as an escort there. Life will never be the same for those who know Kalyanam. Incidents like these reminds me how short the life is. Sometimes life really sucks

A Radical Climate Change:

Would you belive If I say it is raining in chennai in July? Even I could not believe that the climate is cool here. For the past 3 weeks it was raining atleast twice a week, infact it has somewhat irritating when it rains in the morning during my jogging.

Some of the photos I took this morning.

Though it is somewhat irritating when it is raining in the morning while starting to the office, it is really pleasant feeling. I wonder why this radical change now, Global warming's effect????