Why do I want to send my child to school?

School - A word with an obvious meaning ? OR a significant step / invention in human civilization?

I see it as a later ... :-)

If we go back in history we see that schools have started long back - they were there as I know in the days of Sadhus and Rishi - Munis. I remember reading somewhere that in those days once a child reach a specific age was sent to Ashram for his schooling for few years. Today we see a modern format for schools but based up on the same foundation. So in summary schools or schooling is an integral part of human life since long time.

Why I want to send my child to a school? I think I have 3 main purposes when I reason this …

a. Formal Education

As a special species humans have ability to think, reason and learn. We also want to transition the knowledge gained so far to next generation. This will keep the knowledge alive as well as enable it for further enhancements. We generally do this by formal education that involves schools, books and all other infrastructure. This way the knowledge gets shared, understood and thought, reasoned and experimented so as to get enhanced. Schools provide a home for this whole process.

On more pragmatic side this help a child to develop and exhibit his skills to earn for living.

b. Discovering and Learning

There are lot many things other than formal knowledge which a child want to learn or in fact will enjoy learning. Things like sports, art, culture, social and environment etc are all the things which children like. A school help children to discover the aspect they like and teach them how to learn by studying these aspects. It's like being more self aware and then perform self learning. Hence a school is a place which will enable this learning by providing necessary avenues and create wisdom not only in formal education but also in other areas.

Schools like Millennium enable this type of discovery in children and promote learning.

Again on pragmatic side in today's modern world it's not only important to discover and acknowledge these domains but also build upon them as they are equally important in completeness of life and become a responsible citizen.

c. Relationship

School bring couple of new relationship in the life of child namely - Teacher and Friend.

I think Teacher is a very important entity which gets introduced in the life of child after parents and play a very important role. The concept of Teacher does not stop after formal schooling but remains for lifetime. A child is going to meet various people as teachers as he grow in life which are going shape his life.

The other relationship is Friend - In school a child will meet many other children of similar age and will make friends. This is a start of socialization as we call it. It will teach him many aspects of life be it sharing, understanding, respecting, leading, teaming and many more. Just like Teacher as a concept Friend is going to remain for life shaping it as child grow.

On pragmatic side, these relationships and understanding of building these help children become more socially independent and take steps to face life accordingly.

   

Lastly I think this whole text has become more philosophical :-) But the idea of answering question “Why do I want to send my child to school?” which seems very obvious made me think and reflect on my life and the role School has played in it. I just tried to scribble / sum it quickly. :-)

Spring Framework Presentation : A case study of one of my projects

In my current organization Aftek Limited I have used Spring Framework in one of my projects (lets call it as SomeProject since I can't disclose the name of the project!). To smoothen the learning curve I have been asked to present a case study of Spring.

The following PPT is the slightly modified version of the presentation. As usual comments are welcome! :-)

Spring Framework

View more presentations from Preetam Palwe.

JBoss application server tuning and slimming

In one of my projects I have got some time to play with JBoss to “tune” it. I will rather say to “slim” it!
The project was basically a JEE application involving EJB 3.0 and Flex with BlazeDS. Here are some of the things which I noticed / performed …

• Use latest version of JBoss (jboss-5.1.0.GA-jdk6 if using Java 6. You would face problems related to web services java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException: setProperty
  must be overridden by all subclasses of SOAPMessage something of this sort if you try to use JBoss 5 with Java 5. Refer: http://www.jboss.org/index.html?module=bb&op=viewtopic&p=4194526 … Thanks Ashwin Shah for figuring out this!)
• Set following JVM arguments in run.conf.bat
• set "JAVA_OPTS=-Xms512M -Xmx512M -XX:MaxPermSize=256M -XX:PermSize=256M -XX:ReservedCodeCacheSize=128M"
• The meaning of above parameters can be found at http://java.sun.com/javase/technologies/hotspot/vmoptions.jsp
• Above settings are for me and you may have your own values for JVM parameters.
• To know overall Java memory management or garbage collection search google!
• Configure log4j as …
• Use minimum required pattern as
param name="ConversionPattern" value="%d{yyyy MM dd HH:mm:ss:SSS}, [%-5p], [%t:%x], %c, %m%n"
• Use INFO threshold by setting property in run.conf.bat as
set "JAVA_OPTS=-Djboss.server.log.threshold=INFO"
• Disable console logs as
just XML comment: appender-ref ref="CONSOLE"
• Slim web container as
• If AJP connector is not getting used then disable its "connector" entry from server.xml
• If only HTTPS is used and not HTTP then disable HTTP "connector" entry from server.xml
• Remove unused services by removing following files from JBoss default configuration
• cache-invalidation-service.xml (needed in case of clustered deployment)
• hdscanner-jboss-beans.xml (hot deployment related)
• http-invoker.sar (invoking rmi over http)
• monitoring-service.xml (monitoring alerts)
• profileservice-jboss-beans.xml (profile service)
• profileservice-secured.jar (profile service)
• properties-service.xml (setting jmx properties)
• quartz-ra.rar (scheduler)
• schedule-manager-service.xml (scheduler)
• scheduler-service.xml (scheduler)
• uuid-key-generator.sar (uuid generator)
• Remove Jboss timer services (ejb2-timer-service.xml and ejb3-timerservice-jboss-beans.xml) if not using MDB. If the bug https://jira.jboss.org/jira/browse/EJBTHREE-1880 gets fixed then you can remove timer services even if you are using MDB
• Well there are many more things which can be found at
• http://www.mastertheboss.com/en/jboss-application-server/113-jboss-performance-tuning-1.html
• http://www.mastertheboss.com/en/jboss-application-server/130-jboss-performance-tuning-part-2.html
• http://www.jboss.org/community/wiki/JBossASTuningSlimming
• That’s it! (More things coming later … when? Don’t know ;-))

Some explanation on "JVM not able to create native threads":
There is a nice article which talks about this issue: http://www.egilh.com/blog/archive/2006/06/09/2811.aspx

The article summary is as follows

• Let’s say we have a 32 bit Windows machine with 4 GB of RAM. In 32 bit windows every process has a max limit of 2 GB virtual memory. So the JVM has a max limit of 2 GB.
• If we have allocated 1.5 GB memory to JVM heap then only 500 MB memory is still available to JVM. Out of this say JVM use 100 MB for other purposes like linking etc then JVM has 400 MB left.
• In java when we create a thread, java creates a thread object in JVM memory and also creates operating system thread. Now from java 1.5 onward each thread has its own stack of 1 MB.
  
• So according to above statistics, JVM is only able to create maximum 400 threads using 400 MB memory left. And if thread count is increased JVM would give an error “unable to create native threads”!.
  
• Hence we have to decrease the JVM heap memory size to increase the thread count.
  

Hope this helps!

Good article on: Scaling the Java EE applications ...

Just came across couple of real good articles on TSS on above subject. Here are the links ...

http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=ScalingYourJavaEEApplications
and
http://www.theserverside.com/tt/articles/article.tss?l=ScalingYourJavaEEApplicationsPart2

Enjoy!

Mentoring FAQs

Hello all this is a summary of the discussion I had with DR regarding “mentoring” scheme. I have compiled the discussion as FAQ.

Note: To know more about Mentoring please check out: this url

• What should be the approach towards the technical problem solving of freshers?

• Typically mentor should not be the problem solver for a freshers because freshers can anyways achieve this using google J. In some ways, mentor is to help fresher find better solution quickly. Moving the fresher aside and writing the code yourself on his desktop is not a very effective way of teaching. Neither is it sustainable. Mentor should tell the freshers the proper approach towards the problems solving so that freshers should be able to solve the similar problems next time.

• Mentor should guide the freshers to use proper documentation while solving the problems. Trial-and-error approach is discouraged when it delays things and brings about sub-optimal solution. E.g. Use of Java Docs, Specs, Man pages are preferred over google contents and forums.

• In general, it is a good idea to let the fresher commit mistakes. But this has to be time boxed. We cannot let freshers make mistakes which will affect business. But some mistakes need to be allowed and budgeted for as these are necessary parts for anyone to gain confidence.

• How to tackle freshers who make same mistakes very often even told 100 times?

• Very first thing that mentor needs to do is to find out the root cause: why the person is making mistakes. There could be two reasons for two altogether different types of freshers.

• One who make same mistakes because of their laziness but they have the capability of understanding / recognizing the problem and their solution.

• To make the first type of freshers mature mentor will have to talk with them in person about their laziness and nature of “taking things granted”. But mentor should make sure that he/she conveys the message in proper way to freshers because keeping voice loud / becoming frustrated / showing anger never helps.

• E.g. Mentor can tell the fresher that making same - same mistakes again and again just because of his negligence will create trouble for him. Rather being careful will only him to save his time; help him in his grades and hence eventually in his performance appraisals; he will face few bugs in his implementation and will get a change to be shifted to new project/module and will get exciting work and opportunities. In short, always make sure that you are vocal about “what is in it for the fresher” to deliver better solution. If he sees value in it, he will do it.

• Other who make same mistakes because of their inability to do “pattern-match” for the problem and its solution. This is basically skills and capability issue. People have different capabilities and some freshers just may not have the necessary analytical power, knowledge, or skills to tackle the issues resulting in repeated mistakes.

• In this case as the fresher is not able to perform well will eventually get simpler work and will be shifted to non-critical tasks.

• Only thing that we need to ensure is that every one works to the best of her potential. People’s potential will differ. So some will work better at the backend while others will be better off handling front-end etc. Mentor needs to be sensitive to this and should guide the fresher accordingly.

• How to spend effective and fruitful time with freshers?

• If the mentor is directly working with that fresher (e.g. same module/project) then his/her interaction with him will be good. But in cases where mentor is in different project/module then mentor needs to setup meetings (typically 3 times in a week (alternate day) of duration 60 mins) with freshers.

• First few meetings will run for 60 or more mins but quickly – typically after first 2 or 3 weeks, the meetings can be of reduced duration and frequency. This is to ensure that fresher gets lot of attention when she starts – when the anxiety level is high. And later he gets more freedom – as she become more confident and experienced.

• As the mentor is not working in same module / project mentor will not have the idea about what the freshers are doing. In such cases mentor should ask freshers about the work they did in last 2/3 days; the work they are going to do in next 2/3 days; how they implemented some feature; how they fixed some issue etc etc. Thus mentor can discuss the technical stuff in detail and can figure out whether the person is doing it properly or whether he needs some correction.

• If mentor is mentoring freshers who are working with different project manager / lead then it might happen that for a given problem mentor will have a different (or better) solution than that of the existing project manager / lead. How to handle such situation because in such cases it’s possible that the fresher will get sandwiched?

• In such a cases mentor should provide the proper solution no doubt. But should ask the fresher to talk about this approach with the existing project manager / lead and convince him for the solution. After all the delivery responsibility is with the current PM and mentor should not adversely affect that part!

• It might happen that due to the communication gap or fresher’s limited understanding or some other reason the solution provided by mentor could be unsuitable. In such cases mentor should talk with the existing project manager / lead to reveal such communication gap. But ultimately fresher should implement what his PM tells him to though he must also learn correct things. Such communication gap should be communicated with mentor also otherwise mentor will lose insight for those particular projects / features.

• Is the mentor supposed to assign work / task to freshers?

• No. This is the project managers / leads responsibility. Mentor is there to guide the freshers on their technical / analytical growth and to communicate their issues / aspirations to proper person on proper time.

• How to deal with issues and aspirations of freshers?

• Mentor should immediately communicate issues of freshers to project manager which he thinks he can handle. E.g. I stay far away so it’s not possible for me to stay late in office. I can come early in office and can finish my work. In some critical cases if I have to wait late in office please make sure that someone will drop me to home etc etc. There is a possibility that due to direct line of command, fresher may hesitate to share such information with her PM. Mentor should facilitate such communication and make fresher more comfortable.

• Same is applicable with aspirations. E.g. I want to work on better module where I can contribute more. Why don’t we use xyz technology / tool / library rather than this? etc etc.

• In your project if you are using some old technology (E.g. postgres instead of oracle) which can be easily and sensibly replaced by something new. And if there is no reason that why you are using that particular old technology then you are free to migrate to newer one. However, the decision must be taken by the PM. Mentor has a responsibility to facilitate the fresher’s feelings and to ensure that she gets an answer from the PM.

• In your project if you are using some third party libraries which can be easily developed in house; you can write a small (one page) requirement specification for the same and sent that to project manager stating its criticality and importance. Such in-house library / component development will create “new and exciting work” for freshers as well as for mentorsJ. Such development should be executed just as another project in organization by the manager otherwise it will loose its criticality.

• There are mentors of various levels of experience ranging from 1 year to 5 years. Any comments?

• True. There are various advantages of this approach.

• Young mentors will get sense of responsibility and will now start improving on their communication / leading / technical skills because now they not only have to face their bosses but also to the freshers ;-)

• Senior people will also not lose the common touch ;-)

• Also we have an advantage here that we have given freedom to freshers to choose their mentor. So this adds one more responsibility over mentor’s shoulders.

• The whole point is to expose freshers to various different points of views. We want to stress the fact that it is “okay” to have different opinion and different approach. What is more important is to be able to respect different opinions and develop skills to decide which (approach / style) works best for which circumstances.

• Can mentor think independently?

• Why mentor? Everyone should think independently! The more diverse people the fresher will deal with the more he/she will learn.

• Whether mentor is supposed to evaluate the freshers?

• No. This is project managers / leads responsibility.

• Mentor should understand the strengths and weakness of freshers and should guide him/her accordingly.

• Last question! How to manage your boss while doing all this?

• Simple! By communicating with your boss’s boss – when things go wrong! :-) Everyone has to learn. Your boss and boss’s boss as well. Best way to make it happen is to talk, talk, talk! When you talk with your boss’s boss, either you would get some more insight in to why your boss is working in a particular manner. Or your boss will get some feedback about how she should work. Either ways, both you and your boss will form more trusting and comfortable relationship. Your boss’s boss will be facilitator in such a case!

About DR:

DR is our SVP Engineering. Apart from usual technical and managerial work in IT industry, DR is also involved in many social activities. He is a trustee of an NGO named Sanvedana. To know more about Sanvedana and participate in its great charity works please visit http://www.sanvedana.org/.

So looking forward to meet you guys at Sanvedana to take its mission ahead by one small step.

Continuous Integration: Improving Software Quality and Reducing Risk

In November 2007 I attended a conference on Java Technology in Hinjewadi, Pune.
To know more about the conference visit:

• Conference
  
• Day 1
• Day 2

Well, there I had attended the presentation on Continuous Integration from Paulo Caroli who is from ThoughtWorks. I was very impressed by the methodology he discussed with us. Then I decided to give it a try in my current project at Aftek. I will write later on my practical experiance about CI. But let me tell you in order to make my team aware of what CI exactly is I had given a small presentation. I though I would be a great idea to share that here on this space.

So here I go ... (and of course yes your suggestions / comments / critics are always welcome)

| View | Upload your own

Wah kya 'family' hai !

One of our regular activity: starting mail trail ... on any topic! ... yes literary on any topic ;-)
I thought posting one of the mail trails here ... just for leisure reading !
Worth mentioning: Read Mithun's reply ... a cool one :-)
(BTW start reading from the bottom...)

Arra baap.. Kidhare.. Full bho..apan tar.. Nai nai.. Khara ki kaay..

Regards,

Suyash

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Rahul.Magar@ubs.com [mailto:Rahul.Magar@ubs.com]

Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:25 PM

To: preetamp@aftek.com; rayagondab@fdsinfotech.com; Suyash_Sonawane@infosys.com

Subject: RE: Wah kya 'family' hai !

Bekkar Bhai!

Heartly Congratulations!!!

APACHE mein party banati hain.

What say Suya and Mithun.

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Preetam Palwe [mailto:preetamp@aftek.com]

Sent: Wednesday, April 16, 2008 12:21 PM

To: 'Rayagonda B. Birajdar'; 'Suyash Pradeep Sonawane'; Magar, Rahul

Subject: RE: Wah kya 'family' hai !

The time has come to say that ....

Yes there is a Hema ... Smita is her name ... Lets welcome her to 'Satte Pe Satta' family!

She is an EnTC Engg from VIT (2006), born and brought up in Pune, currently she is working as instructor in CMS institute Shivajinagar.

On 30th, we are getting engaged and in July getting married. ;-)

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Rayagonda B. Birajdar [mailto:rayagondab@fdsinfotech.com]

Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:38 PM

To: Preetam Palwe; Suyash Pradeep Sonawane; Rahul.Magar@ubs.com

Subject: RE: Wah kya 'family' hai !

Yeah sure !

But don't forget to mention a credit to me for this.

A certain 'Preetam' (music composer. Not you!) is making headlines for plagiarism.

(I hope) you wouldn't want to be another of the kind, would you?

; )

Thanks,

Regards,

Rayagonda B. Birajdar..

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Preetam Palwe [mailto:preetamp@aftek.com]

Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 12:26 PM

To: Rayagonda B. Birajdar; 'Suyash Pradeep Sonawane'; Rahul.Magar@ubs.com

Subject: RE: Wah kya 'family' hai !

What a write up ... Worth adding on my blog ... :-)

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Rayagonda B. Birajdar [mailto:rayagondab@fdsinfotech.com]

Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 11:23 AM

To: Suyash Pradeep Sonawane; preetam palwe; Rahul.Magar@ubs.com

Subject: Wah kya 'family' hai !

Why not?

Imagine this - IDEA guy enters our flat on a weekend. To his amusement he sees - everything in the flat is messed up. Food lying uncovered, cockroaches making a feast of the leftovers, Tea, milk is spilt everwhere.

Dabbas (tiffins) in every room.

And if he (IDEA guy) visits our place in the morning, he stands a very good chance of witnessing a swim suit model posing for an invisible camera.

(no

points for guessing who this is !). and everybody in the 'family' is just busy in trivia, caring a little for the cleanliness and tidiness in the house.

We look so obviously like a 'family' - Bhai, Suya, me, Palya, Monty, Tiger and Waghya. (seven different shades of 'nange pana')

If he still finds it hard to believe, we'll ask him to watch 'Satte Pe Satta' and come back.

But wait, something is missing.

You guessed it right. Hema Malini is missing.

Preetam Bhai, Hema ka kya scene hai ?

Hema ki setting ho jaye to fir aane do IDEA waale ko, Airtel wale ko, Vodafone waale ko, 'Satte Pe Satta' family is very much ready.

Thanks,

Regards,

Rayagonda B. Birajdar..

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Suyash Pradeep Sonawane [mailto:Suyash_Sonawane@infosys.com]

Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:37 AM

To: Preetam Palwe; Rayagonda B. Birajdar; Rahul Sopan Magar; Mahantesh Khairate; Prafulla Kumar Chandrakant Palwe

Subject: RE: IDEA postpaid

We are a family. All are brothers though it doesn't look like. We'll also say we don't live on cot basis as cots are either kept on terrace or used for keeping luggage. And our kulkarni is so overwhelmed that his own family members are staying in his flat and paying good rent too.

Regards,

Suyash

_______________________________________________________________________

-----Original Message-----

From: Preetam Palwe [mailto:preetamp@aftek.com]

Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 10:19 AM

To: Suyash Pradeep Sonawane; Rayagonda B. Birajdar; Rahul Sopan Magar; Mahantesh Khairate; Prafulla Kumar Chandrakant Palwe

Subject: IDEA postpaid

If someone from idea comes for enquiry at our apartment please tell him/her that we are a FAMILY and though the apartment is rented the apartment belongs to our UNCLE.

Please say: We don't live on COT-BASIS!

Thanks

Zop (marathi) means Sleep !

झोप ! means sleep !
Worth mentioning before I go ahead with the post: Just to write "zop" in marathi ... it took almost 10 mins ! Why? on this blogger I cant write in marathi though I can in hindi ... so to find marathi "za" ... I went to PL Deshopandes site ... and after a bit of smart work I made it ;-)
well ... why this subject? and how come I am finding "time" to write ... and that to 2 posts in a day!

Simple ... the answer to both these questions is: Life ;-)
What to write on झोप ? This thought slightly reminded me that its 10:45 pm Sunday night, and tomorrow I need to go to driving class and then to office .. Its monday man!
well ... झोप is very funny thing; because of her झोप only; I am writing on झोप ;-)
झोप is very biased: when there are exams झोप comes and when there are football matches झोप never comes ;-)
(For this post: please forgive my english as I know I am stretching a lot!)

For some people झोप unavoidable; when झोप comes; irrespective of where they are and what they are doing ... they just go to sleep with झोप on their face!
some people (like me) can avoid झोप depending up on the circumstances. I typically avoid झोप if i have to do some NON-IMPORTANT thing otherwise I surrender! But generally we hostelite people are निशाचर means nocturnal animals like ज़ुरल (this is the problem u face if you try to write "z"!) means cockroach!
From cockroach I just reminded that, We need to do paste control in out flat: D-9, Vrundawan !

okay coming back to cockroach .... no no ... coming back to ज़ुरल ... come on ...
coming back to झोप ... there i am ! (yes मला झोप येत आहे!)
झोप timings vary depending up the seasons. In monsoon and winter generally people go to झोप early and also they wake up late. Whereas in summer people go to bed late and wake up early!
For some software professionals like me above rule anyways does not apply! I feel very bad when I say this :-(

One more thing: A hostelite who used to wake up early at home before he go to some other place for studying will start waking up late.... Now when this guy/gal join a s/w company and after that go to his / her native place ... his / her mom/dad will never ask him/her to wake up early. reason : अरे हमारा बेटा / बेटी बहोत कष्ट कराती हैं ;-)
बर आता लई बोर जाले आहे ... so stopping ...
in another words ... लई झोप आली आहे ;-)

bye and good night :-)

Life is calling .... Life has called up ... Talking with Life ... ! ;-)

Those who know me well can anyways figure out what the blog title is all about ! ;-)
So what should Iwrite here? I was thinking (as usual .... I just keep on thinking but hardly do anything :-( !) of writing a real cool stuff here ... but insted of waiting .... Istarted off this time ... thanks to Life ... she kept me waiting till she come online ;-)

I am still thinking ... what shall I write here? Insted of think and write ... this time I am just writing .... At this time I am in Sify net cafe .... Ashish is also online ... as usual we are talking about Life and All ;-)
लम्बी खामोशी ..... अब क्या लिखु ? ... अरे कीधर हैं वो ?

:)
and she is online .... so bye all ! ! ! :-))

Mentoring

I remember when I was had just started my professional career with after completing my graduation from PICT; we all batch mates used to meet (a get-together) and used to discuss the interesting industry stuff. Those days many people used to discuss: hey my mentor is xyz and he is really cool, my mentor advised me to read this and don’t read that, my mentor is very fundu and even sometimes I was chatting on yahoo and suddenly my mentor came. Bla bla …

My obvious reaction was what is mentor rather who is mentor and what is mentoring? Unfortunately I have not assigned any mentor till I became mentor ;-)

And then one fine day I got a mentor: DR our SVP Engineering! And then I started knowing about mentoring philosophy. :-)

What I am planning here is to share some of my mentoring experiences. The mentoring that I do to my mentees and the mentoring I receive from my mentor.

Well, let me tell you what mentoring means. To write on this topic I will again take help from the discussion that I had with DR on this topic and his mails on this topic.

Mentoring typically starts with a fresher as he/she joins the organization. A mentor is associated with such fresher since his first day in organization. This association lasts for typical 2/3 quarters. During this tenure following goals are typically achieved

• To track the output of fresher from the perspective of quality, productivity and efficiency. Such output is observed and improved by fresher by spending time with mentor. E.g. code quality can be improved by getting code reviewed from mentor.

• To mould the thinking process of fresher in regards to what is the difference between college and corporate. What are changed priorities. Why take initiative and responsibility is important. In short mentor is to educate the fresher about the Dos and Don’ts

• To keep the track of aspirations of fresher and to see whether these are being addressed or not. E.g. Aspirations could be as small as to participate in design meeting or starting a hobby project or even to write a research paper! In short mentor is the first stop for fresher for all such expectations a fresher may have.

• Essentially mentor has to make the freshers productive as quickly as he can.

• On the other hand this relationship has to be mutually beneficial. Freshers will get quick and sensible guidance. Mentors will get first hand experience on how to handle teams, aspirations, how to delegate, how to get best work done from people etc etc. In short for mentors it’s a great managerial education.

Though mentoring talks more about the relationship between fresher and his senior (2/3 batches senior); mentoring can actually happen at any level. I mean in my case it’s a 6 years experienced person is a mentee of a 20 years experienced mentor! ;-)

One last thing as the mentoring progresses please don’t forget to get the bi-weekly feedback from your mentees. So Happy Mentoring … ;-)

One more important thing I would like to share with you about my mentor is: Apart from usual technical and managerial work in IT industry, DR is also involved in many social activities. He is a trustee of an NGO named Sanvedana. To know more about Sanvedana and participate in its great charity works please visit http://www.sanvedana.org/.

So looking forward to meet you guys at Sanvedana to take its mission ahead by one small step.

Model Driven Architecture (MDA)

MDA: A very close word to me! During 2003 / 2004 I remember I had used this word million times for several reasons: one of the main reason was to impress others ;-)

I came across this topic when I was working with Component Plus Pvt Ltd in Pune. (Sorry I cant put Component Plus url here as this organization had stopped its working and all other activities)
There I got a chance to give a closer look to MDA. The product named AppWeaver really impressed this fresher!

Later I started working with Aftek Ltd and during some technology presentations I decided to present on MDA. One reason to chose MDA was to read and understand the philosophy again after 4 years from a senior developers perspective :-)

The same presentation I have attached here just for educational purpose! Feel free to comment on the same :-)

BTW MDA stands for Model Driven Architecture and is a software architecture philosophy currently managed by OMG people.

Here is the ppt ...

| View | Upload your own

RTSJ: Real Time Specification for Java (JSR-1)

Finally I am uploading my presentation on above topic!
Well almost an year and half ago , when DR (my mentor and our SVP Engineering) asked me to read and talk on JSR-1: Real Time Specification for Java (RTSJ), I prepared this presentation. I remember Sunil Desai our SVP Technology Solutions was very keen on embedded Java . That's the reason he suggested DR to explorer more on this topic. And then came me.

Well enough with the history, let me tell you one more thing: Though this presentation is year old why today I am uploading it here / posting it here?
I was basically surprised to know that Googles Blogger (this blogging site / tool) does not allow me to upload presentations / ppts. Because of this reason only I was delaying the posting of my various ppts here! ;-)
Then today I came across a cool website: SlideShare! And my work done!

Notes:
1. My presentation on RTSJ is purely theoretical and I does not have any professional experience in this area. ;-) Though your comments / suggestions / critics are always welcome.

2. I have mentioned DR my mentor and our SVP Engineering. His name is Mr. Dhananjay Kulkarni but he is commonly known as DR. Other than usual technical and management work in IT industry he is also involved in many social activities. He is a Trustee of an NGO named Sanvedana. If you are interested in Sanvedana please visit website http://www.sanvedana.org/ DR can be reached at dhananjayk@sanvedana.org

Here is the the presentation ...

| View | Upload your own

Mission Gondas: (Old wine in new bottle?)

After a year (and half!) I opened “Mission Gondas” the orkut community with the same enthusiasm and expectations! Reason: I will not disclose this now (I mean do I really need to do this?). Well drama / suspense apart; let me come straight to the point. (Hussha! ha?)

I thought why not to copy and paste the contents written under community “Mission Gondas” to my blog? Simple reason ha? So here I go …

Note: Readers don’t ask me any questions on this till my next post on the same topic ;-)

Mission Gondas : Update-1

Hi All,

Today we (AFTAK) had moved by a single step towards Mission Gondas. Here is how!
--------------------------------------------------------------------

[ 2 Sep, 2006 1530 hrs IST AFTAK NEWS NETWORK ]

Guru-Ganesh Nagar, Pune
The First and Solid step by Gondas Inc. towards the acquisition of Planet 'M' Pvt. Ltd. has rocked the city last weekend!
As per our Reuters, Gondas Inc. has purchased (Full Cash Payment) BAJAJ PULSAR DTSI 180cc on last Saturday. The Bike popularly known as 'Definitely Male' will definitely going to be helpful for Gondas Inc.s next quarters performance and horizontal growth, said market analysts.
Below are the pictures of the event. And lets hope soon Gondas Inc. will share this sweet time with all its shareholders :)

Today's Poll:
What you think, how much time it will take to Gondas Inc. to fully and legally acquire Planet 'M' Pvt. Ltd. ?
1. Less than 6 months.
2. Its impossible: Other parties are already in talk with Planet 'M' Pvt. Ltd.
3. Can't say.
Reply this mail, with your answer and the supplementary reason. AFTAK News will throw a Jumbo Party to best answer.
So hurry up poll closes by end of the day!

[
Please visit preetamp\public\news to see the event photos !
we apologies for this inconvenience as our IT infrastructure is still in its way of maturity, please bear us for some more time ... we are growing !
]

Thanks&Regards
~Preetam

AFTAK News Limited
http://www.aftaknews.com
Phone No: +91-20-25411110 (Ext: 2023)

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mission Gondas : Update-2

Greetings to all the enthusiastic and prestigious viewers of leading news channel AFTAK !
First of all, we would like to thank everyone of you, who have participated in this opinion poll, given us a small time from your busy schedule. Thanks a lot!

I know we said that we will be declaring the results at 6:30 PM today, and you people might be wondering, its 8:00 PM now ! to be very true, we were judging your patience :)
Well the time has arrived to declare the results.

This result we will describe in a single like "Satyameva Jayate"
Yes you people are on right track.

Total votes received : 14
Total votes without supporting reason : 2
Option 1 got : 8 call it as pool 1
Option 2 got : 5 call it as pool 2
Option 3 got : 1 call it as pool 3

So the it’s a time to declare the lucky and smart winner from pool 1 as pool 1 has the majority!
And the winner is Amit Nahar ! ! !
This person is also a shareholder and acts as an Executive director for Gondas Inc. has shown a great faith in this organization. His quotes has shown that, he has a clear vision for the organization and his strategic planning is going to give the investors good returns.

Here is what he had said while inclining towards Option 1.
"To completely acquire Planet 'M' Private Ltd. legally, Gondas Inc. will first have to first completely dis-own the currently acquired Planet 'M' Public Ltd (read it as planet moon look that he is sporting these dayz). and make sure that it is replaced by a considerable amount of agricultural growth in that section :-)

Also, at the same time, Gondas Inc. (though definitely male now) is pretty low on confidence and un-willing for the much desired acquisition of Planet 'M' Private Ltd. The current stakeholders of Gondas Inc have to share this responsibility to give assistance and show confidence in the firm. The stakeholders rather than backing up, and voting for option '2' of the poll, need to have a common understanding that this is one stock which guarantees growth for sure, though slowly.

Hence, I would request all stake holders to show trust in Gondas Inc and work towards making the acquisition successful."

Congratulations Mr. Amit Nahar !

And thanks again to all the viewers of AFTAK, it’s your faith and love that had always encouraged us for our innovative ideas. Hoping for the same and more trust from you in future.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Mission Gondas : Update-3

Well one more good news !
The board of AFTAK has decided to give a consolation prize too. This prize will be given to a person from pool 2.
Guessing who is that lucky person ... ?
yeah she is Meenal K ! ! !
Congratulations Meenal K. ! ! !

Meenal is one of the members of Non-Executive Board of AFTAK, remains always ahead to figure out the Strengths and Weaknesses of the organizations. Her realistic vision has always helped the organization to target and convert the so seen impossible dreams into reality!

About the Gondas Inc.s Shopping Spree, her vision is very straightforward and realistic ...
"There is tough, hefty (I mean it ;)) competition"

Thanks All
AFTAK News Limited.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

RTI : Disclosing the votes!

Hi All,
One small step towards supporting RTI, the AFTAK board has decided to disclose the votes received in yesterdays poll.

*TABLE HERE*

Thanks&Regards
~Preetam

AFTAK News Limited
http://www.aftaknews.com
Phone No: +91-20-25411110 (Ext: 2023)

IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology: Day 2

Day 2 was much simpler. Nahar got added to the crew and we had Afteks car ready to commute. We reached on time (though Amit was with us! hehe ... just kidding!)

First session was on Web 2.0 stuff from Ramesh Loganathan who is from Pramati. His talk on bridging the gap between desktop applications and internet application was impressive. He shared some of his good experiences with web 2.0 development. I liked that idea of “Send to Friend who is on gtalk/yahoo/msn” instead of “Send email to friend”. Rather than technology he talked on a new approach towards the product development, new perspective to user interaction (lets call it user interaction instead of user interface as we are in web 2.0! Hmm?)

Next session was from Debu again. He was going to talk on SOA chaos. He was very impressive yesterday so I was expecting the same this time. Though I don’t have any experience of SOA, I had heard about this buzzword many times when I was in CPI. Debu tried his best to keep things simple, but I guess because there was no internet available, he was unable to show any demo. Because of this I guess I was unable to get the real feeling of SOA. Debu was very patient in answering my questions here again. I liked this. I talked about my year old problem of CachedRowset with him. He assured me that he will look into this. I met Madhav Sathe who is working with Debu at Oracle. To be very frank I was very surprised when he talked with me in Marathi! He also said that he will try to help me out in Cached row set issue. Thanks people!

Chris came next to talk on offline Ajax applications. He had given demo of Google Gears. Again because of unavailability of internet he was not able to deliver more. Hopefully Harshad will consider this infrastructural issue next time!

In lunch time, I could not resist myself to go with some non-veg items. Yesterday I was successful in avoiding non-veg but this time sorry! ;-)

After lunch we were expecting some J2ME stuff. But again there is a change in schedule. J2ME session got dropped out and even Advanced Spring session was also not there. Harshad, this was very disappointing ;-)

But then I met Paulo Caroli from ThoughtWorks. He was also impressive in talking on Agile techniques. His sessions on Continuous Integration Technique and Refactoring (to patterns) were very good. Yesterday I missed his session on Unit testing with Dependency Injection and Mock Objects as this session was running parallel to Spring :( I was feeling bad about this. Anyways He said that next time when he will be in pune he will talk on this.

Agile techniques are truly impressive but I guess these will work only if we change our mindset. As per Paulo, they are actually using these techniques in their day to day life which sound encouraging to me. Worth mentioning here is I liked one of his statements “Peer pressure ensures that policies get followed” Very true right? And if we want to go by Agile way automation will be the key to success. So try to automate everything like unit testing, build, integration, use tools to refactor, find bugs etc etc. I have already started towards working out this in Aftek … let’s see how it goes :)

Last session was again dynamic taken by Chris. He talked on GWT. He had shown some demos which were good. About GWT I will just say that: if it works in all the cases then it’s good. Otherwise I will not like that its there to do only simple / small scale java projects. After hearing so much from Chris a question came to my mind: If there are UI technologies like silverlight, flex etc comming up why google is still going with javascript? Any answer (from google?)

This ended up the conference and its now time for quiz winners. Yes Chris was the person who was picking up the lucky chits. Amit was lucky to win 2^nd price for 2^nd day. Good that Aftek is lucky! And we started our journey back to BM office. Overall it was a good experience hearing from industry experts. Time will tell how we implement this.

IndicThreads.com Conference On Java Technology: Day 1

Oh no! I have to wake up very early tomorrow … When? … Before 6 am. Yes it’s very early if you compare with my existing schedule. But can’t help as tomorrow I have to attend a Java conference at Hinjewadi…. Thoughts like these were there in my mind one day before the conference. And sad thing was that it was a Kojagiri night. (You can read more about funny item we gave that night here).

Yes! I made it. I was there in BM office at around 7:30 AM. Thanks to Smita! She performed better than Nokia clock-Alarm :) And we left towards Hinjewadi on our bikes.

Symbiosis campus is just amazing! Needless to say that I recalled my PICT days and of course InC days to mention explicitly. After registration we had a breakfast which was good. And now let’s go to the sessions!

Okay okay … before going into each and every sessions details let me tell you that there was a Java Quiz also. And I am proud to say that we attempted correct answers on day1 and day 2 as well. I will write about the prizes in my next write up.

Our first session was from Prayank Swaroop who was from Adobe. He talked on Rich Internet Applications and Flex. He was amazing in his presentation. He had shown us the demo of FlexBook which was truly jaw dropping! As a result of this once the session got over we started discussing can we use Flex in dhg-web? :)

As there was a change in schedule for some sessions we attended Spring tutorial by Peter Thomas from Satyam. I found Thomas a true lover of Spring. After every 10 mins he was asking to use Spring. Couple of his dialogs were too interesting: “Don’t create custom frameworks anymore use Spring”, “Don’t use singleton anymore, don’t use new() in your code … use Spring”, “Spring has ended up killing EJBs”, “Hibernate people say don’t use Spring” etc etc. Long back I heard about Spring from Chirag V. I did not know Spring but Peters session has given me good overview of Spring. Now I am planning of going through it.

Lunch Time! Worth mentioning … of course if Preetam will not talk about food then who will talk? ;-) Had (a little because have to attend next sessions also!) good food. Have I mentioned that I met some of my old Dhankawadi friends there? Oh yes, very surprisingly I met Nilesh Birajdar and Bharat. Nilesh was in BVP, one batch junior to me and we were living very nearby @ IIT-D (it’s not IIT Delhi but its IIT Dhankawadi … needles to say we call the campus of BVP+PICT as IIT-D. hahaha!). Bharat was junior to me in PICT. Also I met Ashish who was used to say in my next Apartment @ Nagar. Surprisingly all these people are from Reflexis. Good to see you guys there!

After lunch we were under impression that now we will be witnessing the traditional “M$ Vs Java” war! But the speaker (I forgot the name of the speaker who was from Microsoft) didn’t touch that aspect at all and talked about the interoperability! Very good. Instead of fighting if we join the hands then we can deliver more; hmm? He talked on Office Open XML format and told us, how Microsoft office technologies can be integrated in Java platform. He also had given a small demo on Web services which was very basic: a “Hello World” web service. Further he had shown some good demos of Silverlight. At the end (no need to say) we impressed by Silverlight!

Next session was amazing! A well-known personality from EJB3 world : Debu Panda talked on “Spring and EJB3”. Wow! This is the stuff for which I was waiting for! Debu had given a precise comparison of these two technologies and very satisfactory answers to some of my questions. One question I would like to mention here: “Debu, what you say what will be there after 5 years EJB / Spring / Something else” Controversial question. And Debu answered it safely: “EJB will be there as an average project has a lifetime of at least 5 years. So EJB will be there.” He didn’t talk about Spring but said technologies will keep coming. Anyways safe answer! But I guess DR will have some better some philosophical answer to this! Debu is not only a HiTek personality but does good marketing also. I end up purchasing his book “EJB3 in Action”. Debu signed on it for me. Debu what about starting a “Debu Panda Signature Book” series? (Just like Martin!) :)

Meanwhile Preeti and Smita attended session on Wicket. They said it’s a component based server side framework for UI. That’s it. Even I don’t know about it. Will find out more about this afterwards :)
Ha forgot to tell one sad thing. After lunch Meenal was not feeling well so we asked her to go home. Next day Amit attended instead of her.
Tea Break: Though it’s not possible to get 4minar style tea here but anyways I had it ;-)

Chris Schalk from Google talked next on JSF and Ajax. He was good. Shown us many demos of open source JSF and Ajax frameworks. But after this session I was thinking should I wait for JSF 2.0? I don’t know. Maybe I need some study :)

The 1st day ended here. But there was one more drama to go. What to do with Meenals Scooty? Smita comfortably said that she will drive to BM office though I was unsure about this. To add some more "tadaka" to the situation Ashwins bike got punctured. And now Meenals scooty refused to start! Now what? As usual do not panic ... we are at Hinjewadi and not in African Jungle :) Finally the scooty started and we also found out a garage. This drama ended successfully when Smita reached home safely. Her longest ride in her life: Hinjewadi to Gadital, Hadapsar !