The Eternal Truth...

There are only 3 ways to write a blog... The Right Way, The Wrong Way and MY Way :-)

Programming Myself....

If you want something you never had, you must do something you never have done!!! - That's meee!!! can't be better:-)

Jagtap's 0

Jagtap's 7 is now called Jagtap's 0



I know there were lot of things that went into this failure.But one thing is for certain, the post mortem is going to be hurting.Like they say, in Mahabharata epic war - many people good and bad died, but a few good men needed to die to weed out the bad ones.So i am expecting something like this to happen. Right now if you ask me what i am feeling - confused. Thats the word i would use, becaz of strong politically motivated currents.Meanwhile i am looking at the availability of my ticket back to india. Personally , no matter who try to convince me that i did my best, i feel we gave up on a winning battle

Taming the shrew!!!

Taming the client is an art. But this is something which no college or books will teach. I think this is because there is a very very vital ingredient for this and as such this ingredient is not always available:-) Take a guess???



Yes, its called Time :-) the one with capital "T". Even though we were pulling Jagtap's 7, it requires time as this idiot comes accompanied with various dependent parameters. i have upped the steam for my team and they are raring to go and even though i was extra cautious on my final plan, I think credit to be given to my boss who actually convinced the client that - this was the do-able plan and even though all resources are over loaded, we are still committed to this and blah blah :-) i think we just hit two birds in one stone with this move. Bird 1: Customer was kind off sympathetic towards my resources and asked me not to push my team too hard( the mpp plan showed heavy usage and leveling threw the project out of time bounds). Bird 2: We are currently 1 day ahead of schedule:-) I know the customer is happy, but i dare not to speak anything, coz all through this project i have realized one thing - one day you are the dog , the other day you are the pole. So i am keeping the cards close to my heart:-)

Dune Bashing

Thanks to Bala's friend!!! We almost that we had no life other than work here. Slogging our butt off in this hot place. No retreat, no reward no nothing. The only solace was you get Indian food and you should not complain because that will keep you alive


I was to take KT from another resource and had arranged for the same knowing that well my weekend is stashed, if not in office , but in hotel apartment.But there are only a few things here in doha that work with you while all others are always against you. At the last moment it turned out the KT guy packed to office, leaving me in apartment.So we braced reality and we were planning what to do next, when Bala's friend called. He has been in Doha for more than two years now and we figured if thats the case he would have a car( mind you , not having a car in doha is like a disability). So after some calls , he pulled over. With him we had the first dose ob>f fun in doha


Villagio: Though we had heard a lot about this mall, it's designed only for tourists. The whole mall is designed like a Italian village/street with all the lights and sound ambience. If you listen intently you can also hear birds chirping. There is a canal and some boats to ferry you across. All these days i had seen such images in movie studios but seeing in real is a treat. Apart from the ambience and AC :-) there is nothing much of value here. The food courts are expensive and suck.


Dune Bashing:We took a trip to sealine along the desert to get a real feel of what desert is.Qatar boasts of some impressive sand dunes, reaching heights of nearly 50 metres.So we set off and boy what fun it was, you can spend a thrilling afternoon racing up sand dunes and navigating your way down the other side.. Though our car was not a quad, we were so tempted to get that going.. but it was real fun...

Weird Science! NYU Student Invents Virtual Girlfriend -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine

Weird Science! NYU Student Invents Virtual Girlfriend -- Daily Intel -- New York News Blog -- New York Magazine

No kidding.... This would solve all our guys problems.. esp if you are a desi and always dreamt of that brunette, red head or a blonde.....

But i'll tell you what, just get this piece of code or chip and give it to our boys at shivajinagar or national market and they will make this 2-D girl 3rd. hahahah , joke apart... i guess they will give you a practical solution.. pick any girl of your choice and you can sleep with her :-) Ask Anil :-) he has a DB of where and what kind of 3D to find....

Jinxed project

Just when we think that we saved a capsizing boat, the anchor has been shaken...After lot of pep talks and motivating the team, detailing the plan , analysing risks, our client thinks other wise...

I am not too sure who will be held responsible for this failure. But i know for sure that there will be detailed post postmortem analysis and that analysis will hurt many:-( But our take is do what it takes to complete what we can and atleast get some grace while exiting.Things have gone wrong in this project starting day1. Also i second the customer when he says this project is jinxed :-(

Blogger Bar :: Firefox Add-ons

Blogger Bar :: Firefox Add-ons

I found this tiny little addon to Firefox... I am yet to figure out how this thing is gonna perform. Earlie i had an addin for MS Word, but unfortunately with the new blogger , the word addin failed. Here is my first attempt using this addin

Jagtap's 7

As of yesterday, i had two plans - Plan A - Accept the fact that we had resourcing issues and incompetent people and would like to make an exit from project and check how i can make that exit graceful or Plan B - Fight, add more resources( competent ones) , give another deadlines, make sweat and blood one and deliver...

Though i had few other plans like offshore modeling, body shopping to client, buying out customer tech consultant time - i was not very convinced. I spent a night thinking what i would present to my customer. I had few talks with the team and everyone suggested Plan - A. 'coz we had already burnt our finger and no one was interested to burn the entire hand. We have crossed the budget and running in negative balance, lost customer trust and some internal issues pounding us.It was almost certain that i would go for Plan A as best interest of team and others. But the other me always kept telling me - "you have done this in the past, why can;t you do it now?" . But the answer to me was - "I was hands on then & i could control stuff". So all night i had these clashes in my head and my alter ego convinced me that Plan A was the best.So i prepared a report to present the customer with Plan A. On the day of presentation i gave a small good relaxed thought. Heck!!! if i can get this going, then there will be nothing like it. Rounded up my boys and gave them a 30 mins pep talk( ala Chak de!!!) and presto i had the team's confidence back. So after all this, i walked into the presentation and presented PLAN B :-) Beaming with confidence and convincing the customer to give us another 15 days to turn this around and also suggesting making it customer centric and transparent so that they themselves can check the progress on a daily basis :-) So the saving grace done the trick and we are on work with all boys geared and ready to fight. Deliver or diminish. I work hard and want the team to work harder :-) If we can pull this out...i would call this Jagtap's 7 :-)

Project pressure

What's a project without pressures???. Hell i can;t even imagine such a project exist.A project ain;t a project if there is no resourcing issues, no timelines , no deadlines, no deliverables, no scope ......

If any project exist then its called "vacation". Well we are no vacation here, but in doha the heat coupled with project heat and pressures is slightly greater than the heat required to boil the entire water body existing on earth. Oh well!!! i am exaggerating... but trust me, its getting serious...But who the heck cares... lets see what;s in store and move with the flow... you never know when nature will get kind on you... And while i am here, lemme cool my heels by having a coke zero... it tastes good and is just 1 riyal :-)..so long doha!!!

Real Hillarious


Never knew such kinda geeks exist

Never mind the geeks...i am sure any married dude would relate:-). Life is so uncertain but can get hillarious

Life in Doha Series

Well, amidst all the project pressures of delivering the software as of yesterday today:-) we embarked on what we thought was our vacation of funtime to Doha for er the deployment of software. My team consits of - Guru,Balaji, Praga and myself........

Just a quick background of these ppl will make you see these people as i see them :-).
Guru - A drummer by passion. A musician for love. You can find him humming and more merrily hammering the laptop keyboard as a drum. A gregarious person , who can make you ROFL :-) but @ the same time equally sentimental. Currently he is low on confidence :-(
Balaji - Would have been a politician if not for a MOSS specialist. A great designer. Small attitude problem ;-). A voracious eater , given his built. With him it is WYSINWYG :-) read the NOT in between.
Praga - A smoker who does not take any tension. Comming from a public section background and is pretty much laid back in his work.Has the brain, but chosses to use it while he is asleep. Caution: this guy talks, laughs, cries and walks all in sleep.

Thats the pick!!!. While i share the room with Praga, Balaji & Guru chill in the other room.
Watch out ...i 'll blog more

Sunday Sucks

First time in my professional career , i am working on a Sunday;-( i don;t know why on earth they have this. It's so awkward..My body , my soul & my mind think its a holiday and refuse to work, while i physically drag myself first day to Microsoft for a meeting.

Oh God!!! i know you created all equal.. could you not have made atleast Sunday as the common holiday...something like an universal law???Even the dogs in india don;t bark on Sunday, so how could we work. I mean Sunday is the day when u bask out with your passion and not get tied down to some crude meetings , setting expectations and crap like that. Not a good healthy way to start the week, its already demoralizing me ...And today it seemed like the longest Sunday of my life. dragging it through though.....I am starting to get desperate to get outa this zone ;-( And talk about water!!!!, water is costly than petrol... how i wish i cud gulp the petrol and tank it in india. I could be rich.. See this is where i still feel god has overlooked - he created 70 % of the earth to be made of water , 70 % of our body is made of water and yet here water is scarce.. The look on people's face is annoying when u ask for water:-(.. Finally the bottom line of the pic sums up the Sunday experience :-)

Entry to doha

Reached Doha intl' airport, but unfortunately my baggage decided to stay back @ bahrain and see the artificial islands

With all the joy of seeing some arabic chicks we got down @ Doha international airport and went to the baggage area. We waited there while all the baggages were out. But unfortunately praga's and my bag were missing, whilst the other two got thier baggages. Man it was a terrible feel. Imagine you come to a new country and you don't have your baggage??? So with a heavy heart went and logged a case with the airport authority. They informed us that they will let us know when the baggage will be found. So we left the airport and reached our apartment. Man i was dead tired - and was pondering over the series of unfortunate incidents that happened during my travel -
1. did not get direct flight from bangalore to doha & had to come to chennai. For this i came in brundavan express train which leave bangalore @ 2.30 pm and reaches chennai @ 8.30 pm. But then near Avadi, the train engine developed problems & would not proceed. So the engine driver had to summon a another engine to come all the way from chennai;-( , so it was late by 2 hrs...
2. reached office, no dinner.. had to rush to the last closing shop for a quick bite. I had no choice but to eat what he had
3. came back to office to get my visa and travel itenary printed, but the network would not put me in domain;-( by the time i figured out with all IP's i realized i still had to configure the printer... Damn... it took a while for me to do that . After which i gave a print command only to find out that the paper tray of the printer was empty :-( . I had to look around like a thief for some paper and eventually found it under a chair :-( .So by the time i had my documents intact it was 1.00 am.
4. The only thing that happened on time was my alarm which was set @ 2.30 am :-) , btb there was no sleep in that 1.5 hrs- just imagine - chennai & no AC. I know u'd figure out this.
5. Taxi came by @ 3.00 am and i left for the airport enroute to pick up Guru. While i waited for him, i saw a guy @ 3.15 am in the morning all decked up in formals ;-) and that was Guru.
6. On reaching airport we had to wait for a long time for another college- Praga.. In the baggage check area , i just hit the limit - 20.8 kg while the limit was 20 Kg. So kinda just got through.
7. Horrible looking hostess on the flight. I even did not get the requested airplugs. Luckily i had some cotton buds with me and that helped
8. Mid air i realized that we are going to Middle east where water was costlier than petrol :-). I had to beg plead the hostess for a glass of water.
9. The plane took off late and so landed late.. nothing to complain. We had less than 1 hr for transit, so did not get to see much of bahrain...
10. After this ..... the story of bagage