Boom ..another crash....

..long time since i wrote in this blog, its friendship day today and was happy receving and sending messages to my dear friends, i have been staying away from my parents since my college days and i have always enjoyed hanging out and sharing my feelings(or rather mokkai) with friends.. over the years my friends circle has become shorter and shorter..courtesy professional life . Still i would cherish todays memories for every friendship day to come ....myself,jegu,subbu,thangs had a great bash...ealrier we had went to recieve thangs from US and he came directly to my flat.....we had everything aranged ..food, soft drinks,movies...and we took lot of snaps in my house and chatted for a long time in bed ...and slept late night ....as i slept i had a disappointment that one of my dear friend fought with me and never cared to wish me this day .....

work has been hectic this week...another server crash, i have got involved in four major server crashes now ...made a quick stop gap arrangement for all the applications and went to datacentre, this server had already crahsed six months back and me and a sys admin guy had managed to recover ..but today we found that there is very little chances of recovery ...so i called my manager and reported the situation.....he was very upset and he tried to give me a dress down for the incident but i told him we had still lot of options left to manage the setup ....and he felt relaxed...and we did manage to run the setup without much impact.

next day morning ...again i was summoned to my manager desk, he asked about the crashed server backup ..it is very critical for my position to take regular backups. but i never did it and i had to listen to his dressing down now.There was kind of chaos in office ..hrms and few other apps was not working ..even as i was troubleshooting that issue ...they asked me to go immediately to work on the crashed server....we tried whole afternoon whithout any luck to recover the server....i came back to my desk late evening and fixed the hrms issue and another issue in authentication ...somehow i learnt from reliable sources that my manager was not very happy with the way i handled the whole situation and i felt very high pressure within myself ....the whole night i thought about this a lot and finally decided that i am not going to handle this issue anymore ...


So my senior was in charge now as i told i am not going to work on the server anymore...she went to datacenter and jegu was kind of scolding me for sending her to datacenter for this work, ...but things looked better after she took charge, things started falling in place and there was a new server up and running in the evening...but along the process she had to take all the shoutings from my manager ....she made sure there was no major issues or pending work for me to handle the next day as she had planned to take leave ..that was really nice of her...isnt it .

Friday ..and Weekend

Friday ...came early to office today, we had to decommission a peoplesoft server, this particular server was used by the 2 outsourced teams, i was taking backup of the database, and this took a long time as the size of the db was enormous and the server was also very slow..there were usual routine mails for providing access to VSS, database server, my senior was doing most of these works...my department head called me for a discussion around 12 noon ...nothing useful came from that discussion


afternoon me,subbu and jegu went to a hotel near sweetland and somehow managed to bring the bill to 200 ..you get a free chicken wings served when your bill reaches that amount..all dishes were very ordinary...



..it is getting damn boring for me now..i went around few desks asking people if they can give me some work (didn't ask this to my senior and manager ..hee hee)..subbu was doing some research on calling webservice from sql server and i was helping him...but i couldn't understand anything in that..then i saw one of my colleague and dear friend doing Db design ..so i sat with her and forced her to teach me what is DB design all about.. she taught me in a way.. in which i can understand very little...evening a developer came for creating a new interface job between two application, pity he didn't come with release checklist or installation plan ...so we told him to come with that..went home a bit early today and was watching cricket match...

Sachin was hitting all over the ground ..whenever SA bowlers bowled him short balls he pulled them ferociously ....it was a great sight to watch ...after few hiccups india won the match...i made myself noodles tonight and slept a bit early ....very strange for a Friday night ...definitely this Friday night was not our regular boys night ..


Saturday ....had cornflakes a mix of choclate and regular corn for breakfast ..then spent my time watching TV and checking office document...afternoon, didnt feel like going out for lunch and i prepared noodles. As i was getting into a deep sleep in the afternoon ..i got a call from my friend and grrr...didn't sleep after that ...evening subbu and jegu came to my home ..subbu was to do a project for one of his Friend from my home ...after few discussions as requirements was not very clear ..he didn't do the project and he slept in my house....today nobody had any mood to go out or party and everybody left early by 7pm ...... i was feeling a sour throat...dinner.. had hot and sour chicken soup and briyani in a decent hotel near my place ..watched a movie called Platoon and then slept late ....

Sunday ...went to church service..today i went to the altar and gave thanksgiving for the promotion i got ....my parents had asked me to do this and i personally have a strong belief that it was God's blessing that i had performed well in my current job..had breakfast in a roadside shop. i had a lot of cleaning to do in my house this weekend ..gosh ..house looked great after all the cleaning ..of course my servant maid did it ..i am very conscious to keep my house clean.

i have got strict order from my mother to cook my own rice today ....so i cooked rice, egg, vadagam and had lunch ...Voila ...my first attempt in cooking rice came well ... afternoon i was into deep sleep .. ..evening boring... boring...boring ...so i decided to do go shopping ...went to office as i had my gift coupon left at my desk ...reached office around 7.30 ...then i remembered today was sachin's birthday ..had a nice chat with him over phone and i was doing some work related to decommissioning of the server

...i called jegu as he had called me earlier for an issue ..and we both were looking into that issue....now he is in a kind of crisis situation..he just discovered that one of his implementation in recent days got escalated right to top level..just to a level below our CEO ....so there was lot of phone calls between him his TL and our department head ....at last issue was resolved and i helped him send a mail ..that mail was again marked to top level people ...even i had never sent mails till that level ....but our boss asked us to send it so no issues ...

already late for shopping so we had dinner near our office and went home .....back to home by 9.30 pm, watched cricket match ..and slept late around 1.00 am ...

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 ....