New Pet

Sunday, 30th May 2010 - 11:15AM at Anna Salai, Chennai.

Chennai heat was sucking all our energy and water from our bodies. We were in the streets of Chennai on a mid-day inspite of knowing the intensity of summer, all just for one reason.

I was thinking about it for quite a long time, it got intensified after meeting Deepak at Yahoo!. It got more intensified when we decided to go for a photo-trip to Ooty sometime during August. Maybe it is a coincidence, last week Vijesh bought the same camera I was planning to buy and after feeling the cam I couldn't really resist it. Based on my study and few good suggestions from Deepak and Vijesh, I decided to go ahead with these two :$

1. Nikon D90



2. Nikkor 16-85mm f/3.5-5.6 VR II Lens


I had to postpone my purchase till sunday for the sake of 16-85mm lens and in the meantime I found a great read called "Complete Guide to the Nikon D90 - by Thom Hogan" via Deepak again. I spent my whole saturday reading this book and believe me it is a great resource for anyone buying a DSLR. It is not just a D90 guide, it gives you in-depth information on DSLRs, how each and every feature of the camera is designed and engineered. If you are planning to buy a DSLR sometime, do read Thom Hogan before jumping into the store.

Unlike a saree purchase, our purchase was quick and I had my D90 with the lens in my hand. Vijesh after getting approvals from his supervisor :-P, had the permission to buy a 50mm prime lens which is yet another great gadget for a photo-enthu.

With all the stuff loaded in our bags we roamed in Mount road for few hours simply waiting for a NRI to join for lunch. NRI Vijayaragavan enjoyed his weekend in Mahabalipuram and was happily returning in a AC car to meet us who were already like "Half-Grilled Chickens". Before we were fully grilled Vijay reached Spencers and we had a refreshing time there. Our cameras got a little work there and soon we were on our way back to home.

Note: I am still wondering why all US-returns prefer 3/4th pants and hawaii slippers. ;) Explanations appreciated.

Flashback and Updates

2nd May 2010 - "Good evening passengers, this is your flight captain. We will be landing in Chennai shortly, please fasten your seat beats", an announcement was made while I just opened the potato sandwich pack and was wondering about all the happy moments, friends and fun that I left back at Bangalore.

Just after landing I was very reluctant to come out of the aircraft, of course Kingfisher air-hostesses being one reason for it :-), the main reason is simple - I was afraid of jumping into a furnace. With no other choice, I came out as the last passenger out of the flight and minutes later I was out of airport waiting for my guest house cab all wet.

New employee orientation, team intro, project intro, blah-blah-blah.. all started well right from the 1st day at Amazon and things are so good, so far. It is a real geeky place, where ever you go you will find ex-Trilogy, IITians and ex-Yahoos. Technically my transition into Amazon went on smooth and I am getting used to the environment and people around me.

Non-technically, I had quite a lot of tasks to-do. Rent a flat, buy an AC and get it installed, move my things from Bangalore, get internet connection, get cable connection, get a new mobile connection, update bank records with your new address, etc. All these things kept me very busy for the last few weeks. The most adventurous from the above list was to rent a flat, after doing that I felt Bangalore was a easy place to rent for the rupees that you spell.

Being a newbie at Chennai, I had to go through a real-estate broker. Initially I started with a budget of 10K, my first agent Mr. A showed me few 1BHKs in slum areas and I started demanding for better locality, after few more houses Mr. A finally took me to a furnished house for 12,000 which he claimed to be the best house that he had. After getting into that small 1BHK I realized the definition of the word "furnished" that day - "house with a 3 legged broken chair, a 4th or some Nth hand washing machine and a completely rusted stove". I asked the agent a simple question,

"Do you think this house is worth 12000?"

the answer he gave was also very simple,

"Pakathula Actor Sarath Kumar veedu iruku sir." (Actor Sarath kumar's house is nearby).

Why the hell do people increase the rent just because some popular personality is nearby? The only advantage one can have by taking this house is they can directly go and talk to actress Radika about her oscar winning mega serials and get updates of her roles. I am no where near to serials so I had to say good-bye to Mr. A and went in search of Mr. B.

Mr. B was worse than Mr. A, so I had to go for Mr. C, Mr. D, Mr. E and Mr. F. The number of houses I rejected was steadily increasing. While I dealt with Mr. E, he recommended a very active real-estate agent with great houses in-hand and he took me to meet him. I just laughed after seeing him because he is none other than Mr. A again :-) and I just assumed that I exhausted all the real-estate agents. It was true in one sense, people started showing me the houses which I already rejected and I was quite frustrated. Finally, Mr. F came to my rescue and showed me the one I was looking for.

Thats a heads up for people who are planning to rent a house in areas close to IT parks in Chennai. Other things went on pretty smooth and I am getting used to this new place. Chennai is a very big city, traveling to city bus terminus takes more than an hour even without any traffic. The traffic sense here is just awesome, you can easily learn how not to drive in a city road easily here.

I am all alone at home, so I might start blogging frequently from now on.

Farewell

Most of you who read this blog might also know the person I am talking about.

He joined as an intern in a company almost 7 years back and continued working as an employee in the same company till today. I and my friends always wonder how he continues to work with the same enthusiasm and energy as that of a fresher. In spite of working in the same team and company from day 1 of his career he never under performed. He starts to office at 7.30AM every day and comes back home at 10PM, do you think that makes him tired? You are wrong, he attends meetings till 11.30PM atleast 3 times a week. Weekends are also almost similar to working days for him. Working like this for 6 years is not at all easy, I know most of you will agree with me on this.

It is 10.30PM when I am writing this and today is his last day with his company and he is still at his office. Now this is what I call it as 'devoted to work'.

He never speaks a angry word, never complaints when we pull his legs, shave off his mustache ;-) . He is one of the best and humble person I know. He has been my roommate for the last 2.5 years, but I am going to miss him soon. He is moving to Singapore for his new job. At last he has achieved what he wanted to.

Peeps, all the best for your new job, new country and all the future endeavors. Don't forget us. :)

Top 5 Tweets that I hate

Twitter is of course the most simplest and powerful micro-blogging medium I know. But I completely dislike and ignore few kind of tweets, the Top 5 kind of tweets that I hate are listed here

#5 - Fighting/Arguing through Tweets

"@XYZ, using the same infrastructure, why not? I also think you shouldn't hurry. What say?"

Why don't you take your nasty fights offline? It irritates me more when I don't know who @XYZ is. :)

#4 - The number of followers you have

"Yipee.. Will have 250 followers soon!!"

Don't brag.. You may soon end up with 200 followers..

#3 - The conference/event you are at

"In CodingFreaks-2010, totally impressed by @someone who spoke about Cosmic energy coupled with Java Beans!"

Please don't do this, because no one outside the conference bothers about it. I realized this the hard way. :)

#2 - Completely abstract, weird and out of context Tweets

"It worries me.. I will try to be quiet"

Err... What the heck are you taking about??

and at #1 - Test Tweets

"Testing..", "Test tweet after replacing my laptop charger"..

Stop doing QA, someone has already done that for you. Just use it.

I don't know how many of you will agree with me, but this is completely my personal opinion. No hard feelings. :)

A Big Leap

Weekend movies, legendary saturdays & lazy sundays, Mafia, Literature, Paintball game, short trips to near by places, Krishna Cafe, China Pearl, commercial street, brigade road, late night discussions about AR Rahman Vs Illayaraja, Vijay fans Vs Vijay anti-fans and of course all my friends in Bangalore. I am going to miss them all.

1242 days, 25 sprints, 400 bugs fixed, 8 hack days, 1 outside India trip, 3 laptops, 2 desktops, 73 new contacts, countless T-shirts, free Flickr pro account, post-lunch walk, Gym & Aerobics sessions, occasional foosball, too many stupid tea break arguments and many more unlisted things at Yahoo!. It is now time for me to put them all in my memory lane and ponder about it.

Yes, I will be moving out of Bangalore by the end of this month.

A quote by Napoleon that I completely agree with "Ability is of little account without opportunity". A better opportunity and a new life awaits for me in Chennai and I hope things to go well on this move. Being a person brought up in a cold place, Chennai is a quite scary city for me and all the tweets from Chennai folks confirms that fear :) . Everything comes with a price tag, I have to bare this price of Chennai weather for a better opportunity and I am getting ready for this adventure. :)

Let's see what the future has in store for me.

Treasure

I went home to my native last week and unearthed a treasure. It is something taken with a very old film based camera, developed and preserved for more than 20 years. No pictures from a digital camera with the costliest lens in the market can be better than these for me.

It is always nice to look at yourself few decades back and wonder why didn't the time machine freeze. I am wondering it now. :)

Time for me to scan them and preserve it in digital form.

Are you Safe??

Last week I got a call from one of my school friend Kishore, with surprise I picked up his call. He said his mail account has been hacked for almost 3 times in last two months and the hacker has been sending mails to all his contacts stating that he is in a big trouble and in urgent need of £2000. I redirected him to customer care and after getting his problem resolved through customer care, he was curious to know what is happening here and how the hacker is able to get his password in spite of changing it.

Kishore: Tell me what is happening with my account? This is the 3rd time da, I don't want it to happen again.

Me: Did you try to open any spam messages and click the links in that Spam?

Kishore: Nope. I didn't.

Me: Hmm.. Did you download any software which asked for your email id & password?

Kishore: No..

Me: Were do you browse from? Personal laptop or Office computer?

Kishore: I check my mails only from a near by browsing centers. Mail clients are blocked in my office.

Me: Do you know anyone else facing similar issues?

Kishore: Hmm.. ya.. one of my friend had a similar issue, but he was using hotmail.

Me: Even he used the same browsing center?

Kishore: Yes.. Thats the only one with good connection speed and close to our house.

Me: Gotcha! Stop using that browsing center. What happened to you sounds like a Trojan horse attack.

Kishore: Ah.. What kind of horse is that?

Me: It is a type of malware, something like a virus. By mistake, someone might have downloaded a software that is infected with Trojan and installed it. That software will not have show any visual clue for running but they can keep track of what you type. There are some password trojans which steal passwords and account ids of common email providers and banks.

Kishore: Oh!!

Me: The trojan horse will mail these stolen passwords to its owner. These owners will use it to send mails or transfer money. It is a very risky one. Be safe in the future.

Kishore: But how to be safe?

Me: Try to avoid browsing centers, even if you use browsing center choose a one which has up-to-date anti virus up and running.

Kishore: Okie

Me: To be extra safe, check the list of processes in task manager before browsing. If you have some suspicion look for some other machine.

Kishore: I will try that. Any other tips for safe browsing?

Me: Hmm.. There is another common internet attack called "Phishing". It is again all about stealing username & password.

Kishore: Err.. What is that now?

Me: Phishing is a very simple way to steal passwords. You may get a email with a nice message like "Click here to upgrade your email storage limit to 500GB" or like "Click here to see your friends photo in picasa", etc. You will click on the link and it will open a google login page again. You will enter your credentials there but after that nothing will happen. You will be wondering why your email storage is still not 500GB? But your email accounts password will be changed in a day or so and you will not be able to login. Guess where did you go wrong?

Kishore: Hmm.. Not sure.. Everything sounds fine.. Are you sure this can happen?

Me: Yep, it can. When you click the link in that email it opened your login page, right?

Kishore: Yes

Me: That page is not actually the genuine login page, it is a fake login page hosted by some hackers. It will look exactly like your usual login page, you will assume it to be true and enter you password there. When you click on "Sign-in" the password will be sent to the hacker who will use it further.

Kishore: OMG.. How to avoid this now?

Me: Every time you enter any password or pin of any internet application make sure you are safe. Check the URL before entering the password. Any login to a Google account can happen only through a URL like "https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?...." and to a Yahoo account can happen only via "https://login.yahoo.com/....", for Citibank it is "https://citibank.co.in/..." etc. If you see anything else in the URL then don't enter any details there. Some phishing sites don't have any domain and it will be hosted like "https://172.83.64.101/..." etc, don't ever think of entering details there.

Kishore: Tricky.. I have to make this has a habit from now on.

Me: Ya.. Be safe, there are lot of rogues out there.. :)