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Mt. Kailash and Manasarovar lake
Photo Credits: https://www.flickr.com/people/sunciti_sundaram/
Year (Career) in review
I thought of retrospecting on 2012 and my career. It was really below average year for me. Those who have not seen me out of action for such a long time may be wondering, What happened to this guy? Well, to sum up all the problems I went through, this one phrase is enough.
Death-march project, Misplaced trust.
The more the height (trust) is the greater will be the impact when you fall.
What went well
Even though on the material plane everything went haywire, on the spiritual plane I have started.
What went wrong
I placed my trust in the wrong set of people
Chose a death-march project, (even though I knew it was a death-march) on basis of the misplaced trust.
The learnings
- Workaholism as a way of life is a bad thing.
-
- I sent my wife with my parents when she had to go for a test to confirm pregnancy.
- I was not there with my wife when my daughter was born.
- I hardly spent any time with my daughter when she was growing up.
Indeed if I look back, all this seems stupid. I can never get these moments back in my life.
https://codingarchitect.wordpress.com/tag/workaholism/
From peopleware
Workaholics will put in uncompensated overtime. They’ll work extravagant hours, though perhaps with declining effectiveness. Put them under enough pressure and they will go a long way toward spoiling their personal lives. But only for a while. Sooner or later the message comes through to even the most dedicated workaholic: Once that idea is digested, the worker is lost forever after to the project. The realization that one has sacrificed a more important value (family, love, home, youth) for a less important value (work) is devastating.
- I was a zero in the spiritual plane till now. I learnt the hard way as to where to place trust. The only thing that is trust worthy, permanent is the almighty itself.
- There are no perfect leaders to depend on, be your own leader
Who are responsible
- To those who helped and to those who back stabbed
- Vazhga Valamudan
- I am the only person responsible. No one else.
What next
- To those interested in What I am planning to do next? I want to be away from this industry till financial situation permits. What next? Whatever it might be, please do not ask me to come back to this industry again. It hurts, every time someone asks me this (Even though the intentions may be noble). If you are well wisher, pray that I find a suitable choice and do not have to come back to this rut again.
Directions to Sri Ganapathi Sachidananda Ashrama / Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple in Girinagar, Bangalore
I was searching directions to the Karya Siddhi Hanuman Temple in Sri Ganapathi Sachidananda Ashrama – Girinagar, Bangalore. I thought of providing the links to the google maps directions from Vidyapeeta Circle (which is nearby to where I stay) and from Outer ring road. You basically reach Seeta Circle and take a right or left depending on where you are coming from and get into Girinagar.
Google maps Directions From vidyapeeta circle – Click here
Google maps Directions From outer ring road – Click here
Once you get to Seeta Circle these micro level directions should help
Google maps Directions from Seeta Circle – Click here
Happy 2010
Talking about When is work fun?
Srini has this nice entry going in his blog 😉
Quote
I was reading this article “How to Make Knowledge Work Fun” and liked these phrases and hence bookmarking the same
If you are serving people you don’t like to be with and are not getting paid, that is insanity. If you are serving people you enjoy being with but are not getting paid, that is give-back. If you are serving people you don’t like to be with but are getting paid, that is work. If you are serving people you enjoy being with and are getting paid, that is fun
Happy New Year 2009
RadCombobox & WATIN
Recently we ran into the problem of selecting an item from a RadCombobox using WATIN. I had shared Ayende’s blog post which pointed to the execScript API earlier with my team. For some reason I didn’t pursue it further on the possibilities of using execScript to select an Item in RadCombobox. Today I thought of giving it a try after seeing the response from Telerik support & Elena Tosheva’s blog entry. I do not like the idea of fiddling with the RadCombobox rendering internals. Telerik does provide a client side object model to manipulate a RadCombobox. I decided to use that in combination with execScript to select an Item in the RadCombobox. Here is the code snippet.
public static void SelectItemByValue(IE ie, string dropDownName, string valueToSelect)
{
string javascript = string.Format(@"
var dropDownClientObject = $find('{0}');
if(dropDownClientObject)
{{
var itemToSelect = dropDownClientObject.findItemByValue('{1}');
if(itemToSelect)
{{
itemToSelect.select();
}}
else
{{
alert('Unable to find Item with value {1}');
}}
}}
else
{{
alert('Unable to find DropDown with ID {0}');
}}
", dropDownName, valueToSelect);
ie.HtmlDocument.parentWindow.execScript(javascript, "javascript");
}
I am open to inputs on any other better way of doing this. Hope this helps someone who is in need of this
I was interested in attacking what was being thought rather than learning from it
"I was an outsider who seemed more interested in attacking what was being thought rather than learning from it." – From "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance" by "Robert M. Pirsig". I started liking this book.
Three phases of work / doctrine, Three kinds of men – Quotable quotes
Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.
– Swami Vivekananda
What reminded me of this quote was,
Earlier in the day Prakash showed me another funny one along similar lines from "The Software Project Manager’s Bridge to Agility" , "Chapter 14. How Will I Work with Other Teams Who Aren’t Agile?"
The new one is funny & very relevant today 🙂
"A new doctrine goes through three stages. It is attacked and declared absurd; then it is admitted as true and obvious but insignificant. Finally, its true importance is recognized and its adversaries claim the honor of having discovered it."
—William James
Update: Another funny quote which Prakash had shared earlier.
“There are three kinds of men. The one that learns by reading. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” – Will Rogers
Switching from Slickrun to Launchy
I have started the switch from Slickrun to Launchy.
I have pointed Launchy be my knowledge base folder and it has indexed a bunch of stuff (more than thousand presentations, articles etc…). Now I can get to an item in my kb within a couple of seconds. I thought Launchy is good in discovery mode and bad in control mode (I am control freak yep, I want precise control over what should be my keywords and what should not be). Contrary to that belief of mine, Launchy has a plug-in called Runner (thanks to Prakash S) which is just like Slickrun inside of Launchy.
But one pain point still persists. My problem with Launchy is that I do not like the additional items in Launchy’s auto-complete when I want to fire an application say Firefox. What happens is that Suppose I have an article in my kb with file name as Firefox rocks, Launchy picks that up too. It will be really great if can fire Launchy in two modes 1) Discover Mode 2) Runner/Control mode (It will just list Firefox and not the Firefox rocks.pdf). Till that I will probably use both of Launchy and Slickrun. Launchy for all the search stuff like looking into my kb, music etc. Slickrun for firing an application like visual studio, live writer etc.
That’s why this is ‘I have started the switch from Slickrun to Launchy‘, instead of ‘I have switched from Slickrun to Launchy‘. Special thanks to Sidu for giving an idea, to use Launchy for indexing my kb (I gleaned this idea from yesterday’s session).
Sendhil's Cyber Home 