Paid for sitting idle

I am enjoying being paid to sit idle, served company the notice period, published knowledge transfer plan, got it approved from client and asked for early release, however the smart managers insist I serve complete notice period, even though there is nothing to do...An offer hard to refuse, to be paid to sit idle, drink coffee, enjoy AC, come flexible hours.....WOW :-)

Crazy things

Some of the crazy things i have done till now are-

1. Driving to Rohtang from Delhi, not even knowing where the hell it is, just knew the route was from Chandigarh onwards.
2. Driving from Rishikesh to Joshimath simply because it was hot there and as we started moving upwards the weather and beauty kept increasing.
3. Driving from Manali to Manikaran in night in a zen.
4. Planning for Leh in 15 mins sitting in US and chatting with Prashant,
   
5. Driving a car in US for the first time all alone and getting all confused.

And today what makes me remember all this post

I dream to go all across Himalayas just traveling with no specific destination or goal, just enjoying the lovely breeze and nature...shayad kabhi..........................

life moving on

2 major developments in the last few days.

I have resigned from my company after working for then for more than 5 yrs. In a company which now has 1500 + people in Noida itself, i am the 8th oldest employee. The person from HR who came to talk to me about my decision could hardly understand the issues, its sad that you have to leave a company after working for them for so long, but i am convinced that this is the best decision for me and the company. I have outgrown the company's requirements.

I started investing in shares with reliance money. Decided that it is the best way for making long term investments. Given the fact that we are on internet the whole day, it should not be much of a problem. Overall this journey has been fine been able to make some money in the falling markets, in quick buy and sell. However, the cement stocks are in loss now, which i think would give returns later. Indian infra is set to grow rapidly in coming years.

June is nearing and need to get the tests done for my daughter, it would be around an year after her operation, she has been much healthier and i hope that tests confirm that all is well.

November am planning a long drive around the Jhansi, khujraho, gwalior belt, my bro in law getting married at Konch, a small town near Orai(Jhansi).

Rearranged my room majorly to make place for the baby bed, moved DVD player and set top box for TV on wall glass shelves to save space.

My bro is relocating back to Delhi, and that gives strength to our old dream of having a home gym.

Crappy issues !!

About 1-2 months ago the ABN AMRO website was updated, now it does not work on Firefox and on every page/click there is an IE error. Now being a software testing engineer myself i cant tell you how irritated i am when i see such shitty websites. You cant do this for any website that deals with americans.

MY safaris irritating issue with the accelerator pedal is now resolved. Apparently the break sensor had to be adjusted slightly to resolve the problem. The cars now have complicated electronic management systems and everything is apparently a connected. These sensors and management software is made by Lucas an international giant. Still when you connect the latop to your safari it just shows---engine pedal stuck (as if this was not known) and nothing else. There was no hint as to what was the root cause of the problem. Another example of crappy software and engineering.

Safaris bottle which holds windshield wiper water has now started leaking, the bottle has punctured big time on its own, but the workshop guy was hard to convince to replace that under warranty(they also did not have it in the store also). Anyways now the pic has been taken and sent to head office. Another of my battle has started.

Which reminds of another issue with Airtel Delhi, when i asked them to combine my 3 numbers, they also joined in it 4 more numbers from another person in my company. Tried explaining many a times to customer care and emailed several times to all the email id's. Classic example of pathetic treatment that consumers now a days have to go through. Consumer courts are a big pain in INdia and thereore the consumers will be continued to be treated pathetically..

Imint and ICICI

ICICI bank decided to outsource its rewards headache to imint. Imint is one big pile of screwups and pathetic service. So now you cannot claim your points easily. I somehow was already not much satisfied with ICICI, they have grown too big and now its an unmanaged chaos. I decided to go for ICICI lured by free tickets from bookmyshow and good recommendtation from a friend.

I have now tried ABN, HSBC, ICICI, Citibank and SBI. I would suggest Citibank and SBI., they have been most predictable and trustworthy. SBI is also slightly problematic with points redemption, but citibank has always been very forthcoming with it.

Virtual software appliances

Read this article http://www.cio.com/article/170051/Virtual_Software_Appliances_Why_They_Could_End_Deployment_Hell_

and thought wow, this sounds like reality, an idea which can really click in the time to come. Coming to think of it, deploying an app which has 2-3 components, then configuring it on your machine and then doing installation is a long and painful step. So you have a ready made virtual machine which can be up and running in 5 mins. All pain of installation and deployment just goes away. Taking backups of VM is also a breeze and incase anything happens going back to the last point is also very easy.

Some of the points that go against it are-

1. People want a unique mix. For e.g. someone like IIS and others like weblogic.

Anything else?