Memorial weekend with a SRK fan

For those of you who might wonder what does SRK means, I am talking about a big star who once stood near Marine Drive and said "I came to Bombay to own this city, now the city owns me". Kumar is a die-hard Shah Rukh Khan fan and a firm follower of all his movies.


Mr. Raj Aryan posing for Ashwariya in Mohabbatein 2


So, long weekend was here and I made plans to visit him in Arlington, VA. Took sort of half day from work and left early to catch a 5:30 Amtrak to Union Station. Luckily, I found an interesting company during the travel where we discussed about techical gadgets, mobile agents and grid computing. Sheila was a sales-rep for Capital Printing in NYC and was also tech savvy. Times flew so fast that I never realized 5 hours have passed by and I was already in DC.

Met Kumar outside and we went home. There I was Friday night sitting in IHop charting out plans for the long weekend. We started off visiting monuments Saturday morning.


Outside Lincoln Memorial - Akaash and Sameer

There was a huge motorcycle rally and you could only see Rockstars and Harley around.


Bike Rally for Memorial weekend

We later went to Ebbott Grill in downtown which is supposedly pricy and sat for 2 hours chatting over Hummus and drinks.

Then came Sunday. We decided to rent a car in the morning and check out beaches around. Ofcourse, I had to make the plan about the location and bookings (kidding Kumar). Both of us woke up close to 1pm and had to rush out to get the car at 2. Kumar took the driving seat and we missed the exit for 395. Finally moving around the area and after getting burgers and drinks, we reached Lake Anna State Park at 5pm. Drive was scenic and there were a lot of farms around. Virginia was beautiful and the place was much more exquisite. There was a quite a crowd with families sitting by the beach and enjoying the space. We hung out for a couple of hours.

..at Lake Anna State Park 


Enjoying the breeze 


And what am I supposed to pose like? 


Ki Ki Kiran - tum kidhar ho 



Kumar then promised me to take me to Adam's Morgan which is supposed to be a happening place in Arlington, yes, I mean full of clubs and bars. Missing the directions and taking a long time to find a place to park, we got there at closing time. Not much exciting though since I couldn't drink. Lekin Kaun kambakht bardaasht karne ke liye peeta hai...Its okay Kumar, Bade Bade Deshon Mein Aisi Choti Choti Baatein Hoti Rehti Hai.

Then came Monday and I knew I had to leave that day. I took that day easy and moved around the area and finally left for my town, New Haven. Vacation was well-spent and I was very happy to meet Kumar after more than 3 years. My return travel was disgusting and got home early morning of Tuesday for a yet-another short week. Yeah....

Ceremony 2

Some more pictures posted by Hiren at
http://mscs2005.blogspot.com/

I just booked my tickets to visit an old friend of mine,Kumar at Arlington, VA. Excited..

Pictures at our new work place coming up...

From a slacker to programmer

After completing my 12th, I said to myself for the last time "Am I fit to pursue Engineering?" and my conscious spoke to me in binary - I landed up in a rural town called Kopargaon. All geared up to learn bits of programming, life was more pitches in making good friends and simply chill. After all, it was a hostel life.

My 4 years doing Bachelors was a joke - I never took an advantage of my unusual qualities or shall I say talent to sit and learn to code? Even after finishing my BS degree, I still lacked good coding skills. Life went a down hill. Economy struck in year 2001 and I was out on the streets finding a job in a universe full of unemployed programmers. I remembered the time when my father was keen on me to engage myself with a shippe life. I took a step forward and started looking for suitable jobs not necessarily related to my field. Somewhere in Hiranandani Complex, Mumbai; Hiren and myself just got out of an interview from a call centre when we met this aweful or shall I say awe-inspiring person trying to win us over to join a consulting firm focusing on call centres. Initially, it sounded like a good idea and so we spoke about $alary. Package of 25,000 Indian rupees with abso-freaking-lutely zilch is what we should be expecting 5-10 years down the line. We smiled and walked away to grab something to eat. Unable to control laughter on what the lady suggested to two pitiful job seekers, I thought of further education. Narrowing down my options, a Masters degree from US was the best and easiest pick.

Programming still nowhere in my radar, I came to Binghamton, NY for a Masters degree. Life became more challenging that what I had expected. I slogged for 2 years coding and seeing myself turn as one of the regular geeks you must have seen in "Pirates of the Silicon Valley". My advisor got the hell out of me and I started taking pleasures in writing programs.

I completed my Masters last year and was recently up in Binghamton for my graduation ceremony which most of you must have seen in my previous blog. I must admit that I have learned a lot and see myself being evolved as a real software programmer with above average calibre. While still happy with coding, I might be losing my tolerance and patience for mindless rules, regulations and internal politics. I will stop coding when I don't need the money. How about opening a subway?

Time for celebration

Friday the 13th was when the Rubber met the Road. Yes, we (I and Aias) took a day off and left early morning for Binghamton. I took him via Rt 17 which was an additional 30 minutes journey and worth the scenic drive. After touching Binghamton around 4ish, we headed straight to the University Bookstore where I bought the graduation gown plus the hood. After meetings friends oncampus, we went to Nirchi's outside the campus for a quick grab. Ok - time for action. One of my senior was keen on frisbee, so we did some sports oncampus with this lots-of-running and I fagged out. Being tired, we all agreed that its now time to check-in to the hotel. Well, guess what - 7 guys in 1 room with 2 twin beds. Everyone adjusted and stayed comfortable. Who cared about it? Dinner was at Olive Garden. Started with a toast of Tequila shots followed by Sicilian Senegrea. They called it Berry Wine. Wish I had some pictures here.

That evening, we went to the Downtown - did some dancing plus lots of drinks and had a blast. Chris had also joined from Virginia with his 91 model pony (Red convertible Mustang) which I rode the following day. Jeez - that car flies. He taught me this nice trick to drive the car until it reaches 3000rpm on second gear and then you floor the gas pedal. Wooooosh - you are 80+ within no time. Thats what I call a car - it was a machine. Good that traction was in place else I would have just taken off. It was fun driving oncampus with all the girls looking at you while you make that engine noise. I felt great.

Imbibed in fun, I slept around 4 and was up in no time ready to go oncampus at 8:30 for the graduation ceremony. Thats what I am talking about- the day I waited so long. Every international student here in US must be eager to wait for this day. Morning was the Watson School ceremony where I was dressed sharp in my business casual as a mobile agent.

The Concluding Dimension of the Masters Ceremony


Mike & Agent


First to be congratulated by the billboard


Then came the cultural American tradition later at 5pm where I wore the black gown and the hood and walked through the right of passage. It was a mark of my student life to professional life.

After receiving the final ultimatum


It was a pleasure meeting Denise and Patel family that day too. Sunday morning was a bit relaxing. I completed my usual 8 hour sleep and got ready to play some sports. We went to Huned's place first where he made some Indian tea and then headed for Cole's park off Exit 3 on 81S.



Old Friends at Cole's Park

Did volleyball on the beach for few hours. We had strong players on both the teams.


Himanshu with his professional serve

We started off with around 10 players and few more joined us later.


Sourabh, Sahana and Amol join us later

It was 3:30pm and time to depart for everyone. Some had to drive as close to Pughkeepsie while some had to go all the way up to Boston.
A final picture to mark the end of the weekend had to be taken.


The Entire group at Cole's park. Something is missing here...?

I had promised Aias to show him around Binghamton and take him to where Williams (Friendship Family) lived which we did next. The clock ticked so fast that it was time to leave. We got home around 9pm to New Haven and now its time for a yet-another looooong week at work. Oh, damn!

Cricket or JMS

Weather today was cloudy and windy, and Desh (a friend of my colleague at work) called me to confirm plans of cricket. That was at 4:45pm and it sounded like a fantastic idea since I had nothing to do that evening. All my plans on making the weekend worthwhile never occured but isnt playing cricket by itself a work of great merit?

I drove to Naugatuck which is around 30 miles north and saw some new faces today. There were around a dozen of guys who were waiting for me to get started. Wow - what an esteem? I felt great. The honor didnt lastlonger after I realize that they were waiting for a couple of more guys (and I was just one to come earlier). Nevermind - we started the match. Game went on until 8 after which I drove back home. Dinner was already ready and served on the table; it was a Greek cuisine waiting for me. Nice.

Himanshu made reservations today at a hotel in Binghamton for the next weekend. Looking forward on meeting everyone (Hiren, Priya, Sushant, Gujju, Umesh, Sabbu, others..) then. Hope we all have a nice time then. Right now, time to sleep.

SSL undertaking

Life has been great to me at work but my expectations never perished. Last week, I kicked off a project on porting our entire application (CMP) over SSL 3.0 as a requirement from some clients, one of them being Comcast. Company already supporting Weblogic 7 and 8, I thought that holding SSL on 8 first might be a smarter idea since BEA itself could give everyone a farewell party soon after launching version 10. After all, why should they endorse something which is more than 2 versions old?

Now here when it gets more interesting. Weblogic 6 supported flat files to support private keys/public certificate whereas WL 8 supported the concept of keystores only as flat files became deprecated. Always dependent on Google, I found an interesting viewlet which lists steps on how to configure Weblogic 8 over SSL. Tons of issues barricaded my progress due to which I had to open a support case with BEA customer service. At the end of the day, I found out that a trial SSL certificate supports a common keystore only and that this applies to a one-way server authentication simply. Cool - doc was so much up-to-date! Even before I fell into this, I was able to solve most of the Java exceptions thru forums. But what struck me into the head was that the support closed the case with a resolution which was totally absurd. They never accepted their mistake on thier documentation, one of the reasons being who has the time to update their site.

Finally, after having CMP ported to SSL - my next challenge was what if Comcast sticks to Weblogic 7? Now - you dont want to shoot your feet, would you? IT industry is already on version 9 and we start something new for them which is 2 versions old. Then I decided that there is no point me taking that decision and I must do my part. I followed the same steps using keystores on 7 which supports keystores as well as flat files and it blew up on me - Yuk. Page cannot be displayed: what do you mean?

Investigation continues...

Friday

There hasnt been any weekends after I bought a Toyota where I didn't have any plans. Tomorrow is one. Weather plays its trick too so guys from IBM will not be playing cricket. Neither can I go anywhere outside because of rain.

Hmmm - how about if I resume my preparation for Java Certification? Or start a new project which goes offhand from company's work? That seems a nice idea - lets see whether this actually gets kicked off. By the way, I just saw Boondock Saints - a must watch.

Finally...

Got my H1 approval today. :-)
What else can I ask for? What comes next - a girl...thats what a friend of mine said today.

Updates

Back to the blog.
Graduated in December, I currently hold a Masters degree.
Have been working for this wonderful company in New Haven, CT.
Excited to attend a graduation ceremony next week in Binghamton, upstate NY.