no work ........

As i write this i am hearing my favourite english numbers in office..not much work this week..

Tuesday ....the shock i got the previous day after seeing my salary revision has come down and i am to my usual self ....still thinking about my next step though..today most of my colleagues got the papers ...it was a mixed reaction..few people felt happy ..and most of them felt disappointed...went back home and was watching India vs South Africa cricket match ...i am no great expert in analysing cricket ..but can say captaincy is bad ..India needs a more dynamic captain.

Wednesday ....came early to office and jegu called from outside to join him for breakfast..after finishing few mails i went and joined him for breakfast..came back to my desk and i felt like fainting ...i was trying to sleep in my desk itself and i was not..jegu told he has got some work in passport office ..so i went along with him ...thought i will feel better if i go outside ..it was drizzling outside....jegu had left early today ..as he was travelling outstation...so me and subbu went for lunch ..as usual we got food coupons from an trainee sitting next to subbu....today she understood before even we asked her ....all that we told her was we are going to lunch in top floor ..she opened her handbag and gave her coupons..good this junior is a fast learner..

Still i was feeling sick ..so decided to go home early and sleep ..after reaching home i was not able to sleep ..today i felt something wrong ...felt like i was drugged by someone...then evening i had cornflakes ....and then had some serious discussion with my friend over phone...i was told that the problem i had was because that i woke up early ...after dinner i decided to watch a movie ....

Ben-Hur ...this is one of the greatest classicals in 1960's ....the record this movie has set in getting oscars is till now not broken ...though in1990's titanic managed to equal its record .....so i slept late after watcing this movie ..

Thursday ....so i slept till 10 am in the morning ...that felt good. reached office around 11.30 and not much work today also ...subbu asked us wether we can visit one of our colleague in hospital ..she has just given birth to a boy baby ....so subbu,me and jegu went and visited her ..she was very happy ....this is the first time i am visiting a just born baby..we came back to office around 3.30 ...it was drizzling outside and it was getting very dark .....as i write this blog my manager is standing beside me waching my monitor..didn't care for that ..especially after what has happened in my appraisal ....

Part 5- Trips, outings and more ....

i had the previlege of seeing Neeraj grow from a trainee to an well experienced peoplesoft DBA in a short span of time..finally my manager and his boss decided to release him to an client project..so i went to mumbai to get the transition ..except for getting transition about the setup in mumbai we did everything else..neeraj,sachin and me ..went roaming around mumbai for the three days i stayed there. Though neeraj was my junior still he gave me very good advice to the professional challenges i faced in ISG and i had turned up to him for few issues...


By now most of my friends here in my department were expecting them to be released to other departments.... So we decided to spend maximum time between ourselves ..and thangaraj initiated and organised a tour to devakottai ...occasion being Alagappan marriage(he is another stalwart of ISG)


All the plans we made in the trip went topsy turvy ..thanks to organisers..chennai to salem to yercaud to karrur to devakottai to trichy to chennai....i would rather call this trip an amazing race...many people got elminated and out of 12 people who started the trip only 5 finished the race ...there was an excellent writeup of the entire trip by me,jegu,subbu and sachin i would post that in a seprate post..trip was an success and memories of the trip will linger long...


just one week after we were back from a long trip, we decided to go on a trip to kerala ..God's own country, pity this time we didnt have much people on the trip..just four of us(so no elminations), me,jegu,subbu and kevin...let me try to refresh few memories of the trip ...

We were having dinner at central station chennai..when we found that one of our colleague from hexaware, she is from BI team ...poor girl she was standing before a hotel with huge crowd....she was calling jegu to help her but jegu tried his best to escape ..until i made jegu to help her ...hee hee..everybody was very happy after seeing the travel reservation chart stuck in our compartment...i cant disclose the reason in this post....had to switch trains in combatore junction..and we were on our way to ernakullam.

Me and subbu sat in the compartement door steps and were enjoying the scenic beauty of kerala..meanwhile jegu and kevin were fast asleep ...an interesting thing happened in trissur station ...me and subbu were standing in the railway station and watching shops over there ..as usual i was telling some mokkai story about kerala to subbu and he was listening to me ....with our backs to the train.....train started moving without any notice ..no signal ..no horn ..nothing and it was moving with very less sound and high speed ..somehow subbu turned back and noticed it and we caught the train in running ..lesson 1 never turn your back on a train in kerala ..

Allapuzha..awesome is too little a word to explain the experience we had in this place ..we took a double decker house boat ..with two well furnished bedrooms all for four of us ....we had a special energy drink from kerala ...even jegu took this drink(just one sip), that was quite surprising for all of us ...then watched a popular kerala movie by mohanlal ....had a sumptuous amount of fish ....and then slept on the boat ...next day morning we took bath in the backwaters of kerala ..and then went on a cruise ..everybody took titanic pictures standing with outstrecthed arms on the corner of the boat ...hee hee..

Then we went to Kevin's place in kottayam, there again we went for a swim in a river ..somehow i managed to go till the middle of the river with zero swimming knowledge ..without any notice kevin and his cousine ..pulled me to bottom of the river and held me for few seconds..gosh ..lesson 2 dont get inside a river without knowing swimming ...

back to chennai ..there is a person called naresh this guy is from pune and he has just joined our project ....as usual this guy had the experience what every person who comes from other state to chennai will have..got robbed ...he lost his debit card and lost 16k ...somehow we managed to find the culprit ..it was someone from daaba express ..we had went to this hotel last week and naresh had dropped his card there ...so 6 guys from our project went for a fight with hotel manager ..we took with us few heavyweight guys ..just to show our strength ..they were himanshu and shomik ...so there was high confusion in the hotel and finally the case went to police station ....police asked us to come in the evening..

Subbu went on a urgent work that day and jegu was travelling ..so it was left to me to manage naresh's case in tnagar crimebranch police station ...everything happened so fast ...we took a suspect and within one hour of interrogation he accepted that he took money...this day i saw how police interrogorate ...i dont know what degree of interrogation was that ..but i felt really sorry for that person that day ..and i can still remeber the sounds that echoed when they hit him ...and the bad filthy languages these cops use while interrogating....we stuck a deal between police ourselves and the culprit ...the culprit agreed to pay the money and we decided not to lodge a FIR ..i thought if we are going to lodge an FIR it will be a lengthy process and it will take a long time to get back our money and this guy will also go to jail....

Back to office ..would rather call it a planetorium ..mercury,neptune,jupiter,venus,mars and galaxy ...all these are server name and they kept haunting me with some trouble or other ....

back to my flat ...i had setup a mini galaxy in my bedroom with twinkling stars and satellites and was very proud to show it to my friends ....

Part 4. Dedication to the core ....

As i was celebrating new year ..little did i realise the horrors that were to come. First weekend of 2007, me and neeraj were summoned and were asked to look into an issue that HRMS team were facing, i was having cold fever then and we both managed to support the team in their issues.

I was caught in one of the biggest scandal that emerged in internal systems, KB.NET ...that was just a folder in one of the servers i manage ..server name is isg-mercury..that folder went missing suddenly and i was made to feel that as though a mutli million project got lost because of that.... thanks to few developers ...as usual made some cover ups and managed to get out of the scandal....


Next our bosses decided to purchase a new server B and move all application from server A-B, B-C.....rename B as A and A as B....didn't have the courage to argue on their decisions and went ahead and started implementing.. meanwhile there was a new version of few applications getting released..our bosses considering the impact on business decided to do everything on pongal holidays. i could see lot of hardwork,dedication and commitment from Subbu's team during this period...and me and my senior closely worked with them..

Now hexaware management decided to re-organise their department structure...... simple it might sound..but it was another great challenge that internal systems faced as it had a major impact on all the applications...this was the period where me and my senior faced the heat..

All applications were brought to a standstill ....now Neeraj and me did peoplesoft application and Db movement from mumbai to chennai ....so here we were working all day on department restructure and working all night on peoplesoft application move, we finished the move in the early hours of the next day ....both of us felt elated as everything went as per our plan ...our department head appreciated us and wrote that was dedication to the core..later this became a nick name and people started calling dedication to core ...

But there were high causalities which happened during this period.....i got the firing from my manager and department head on all issues that arised because of server movement and department restructure ..the wounds took a long time to heal...i felt i was accountable and responsible....

Nothing much entertaining during this period except for regular weekend forums we had in hotels and rooftops around chennai and few lengthy engrossing sessions in my flat..slowly my flat started becoming a favourite hangout for all my friends ....

Part 3, Friends and Colleagues...

another 2 months passed by, now i have started supporting three more projects PSASM,eRecruit and Innovation.ISA became an instant hit in hexaware and my manager was so happy about it..infact it earned him an Star award...along with it came more and more challenges.

Techsummit ..was happy to see my friends involved in lot of activities(video shoot outs, paper presentation,hex songs (which never materialised)), though the chennai team had numerous meetings and planned immensely, a team of 5 guys in Mumbai earned internl systems a award to cherish...our department head became so happy...cheers mumbai ISG. I had a small role in setting up a high techh game for the show..

At this stage my manager and PD thought, me and Neeraj ..were taking lots of pressure. We were like a pressure cooker that would break anytime(as usual buildups). So they took another senior DBA with high experience, now that made us feel happy and took off lot of pressure..she was from microsoft family...

Meanwhile as usual the developers for any issues that came in their production application started blaming the new Sqlserver 2005 versions and DB migration ...fights happened now and then for access to the server.

It was almost 2 months since i took the job of creating a additional domain controller for the main LDAP server, and implementing a backup ISA server..

Again my manager decided to take a break from his tough schedule ..and he was scared that server would also take a break ..so he gave me a plain deadline finish the job before 3 days...now that i have a microsoft family in my team ...took help from them and finished the task...away went my manger on a happy family trip. Still he managed to call me once when he was on the trip and by coincidence that was my birthday...so i told him it was my happy birthday and he wished me ...heee heee .

Took my friends and colleagues to wangs kitchen for my birthday, one of my dear friend jegs...ordered Duck roast..i was happy that he chose that dish since it was christmas time and christians usually take duck dishes on christmas ..so everybody was eagerly waiting for a big duck roasted and toasted with good toppings...though the dish didnt turned out to be what we expected ..everybody i feel enjoyed the lunch...we did missed one great fan of chicken on that day ..of course it is none other than thangaraj, he was on deputation in mumbai

had developed good friends in ISG now and they were around me to help whenever i was stuck in a problem .....

as new year 2007 dawned ....

Part 2. Work and how not to work

it all started happening in the months of may-june... Internal systems were planning a prestigious landmark in their project by implementing LDAP login and Internet Enabling.

There were lot of meetings, discussions, target dates .. and I was a silent spectator in all the discussions and developments... my manager and the other DBA were literally sweating with ISA ..the mechanism they used for publishin the application in Internet. Anyways i had the previlige of setting up LDAP to work with Peoplesoft.

After this landmark my manager thought he needed a break and went on a long leave...but what a pity ..the main application and db server also decided to take a break ..and it broke..so i was into a crisis managemnt team discussion and everybody was searching for a backup as we had a perfect Business continuity process in place... alas ..to our horror we realised then that the backup was being taken in the same server....

Still we managed to recover applications within the critcal recovery time ..thanks to development team and logshipping(forgive me cant explain about this)....would like to mention few names here .....Subbu,jegu,Srini who made that possible. probably this incident made us know each other more, and we started hanging out .

GALAXY ...... i never realised this name would mean so much in my work in hexaware. So here we were working on a plan to move all sql2000 db to sql 2005. From now i started sacrificing all my weekends to GALAXY (bad habit to boast about your sacrifices).

Meanwhile i was all set to occupy a brand new flat that my father has purchased. Sugesh left hexaware and ... i became the Lone DBA in chennai with one of my dear friend managing things in Mumbai.....Slowly we started feeling the pressure of the Job....

Part 1, Life in Hexa

It all started way back in April 2006, i had just finished 2 rocking years in an small company in chennai, when i got a offer from hexaware to join internal systems ...

After finishing the formalities the HR person took me to another person named Thiyagu..so this person was the department head and as he was on the way to his lunch ..... he took me to the cafeteria, there he introduced me to my colleagues who were in the middle of their lunch, had to shake with my left hand with everyone....

Started fitting into the roles of another DBA called Sugesh... man he was an amazing character to talk about...two months rolled by and suddenly Sugesh comes and tells me i have got an on-site assignment.....2 months into joining an project here i was getting ready to go to onsite.... really thrilled ...

Pollachi ....so this is it...pollachi is the onsite for Internal systems ... so my manager asks someone from development to accompany me as i was new ....but huh none of the developers are interested in going to this onsite.... later this assignment played an important part in getting ACE award ....great news.