Startup Bootstrappers: The story of a stolen bike

Taken from: http://www.localsmartdeals.com/blog/

The story of ChipAnu

When it comes to selling one’s own product, one can go crazy! Especially in case of startups where manpower is short and a team spends countless sleepless nights to come up with something that looks a bit like what they had dreamt of when they started. Then they have to get involved in selling it themselves! (Their line of thinking: it is my baby and who better than me to sell it to the world!). Anyways, who can afford a salesman in the beginning! Finally, the team is over worked, under pressure and loses control.

We had an incident in the team where Anu became so desperate to sell our coupons that he almost lost Chip’s brand new bike in the process. The craziest thing and something I love Anu for is – after finding out that the bike is lost, he calls Chip and says “Heloooo Cheeeep, I was at Brigade road and it seems your bike is stolen. I am going to other customers to sell more coupons, please go to a police station and file a complaint if you wish.” And then our guy disconnects and doesn’t pick up the phone! This is called the spirit of a salesman! Love you Anu, keep it up! I love it when Chip goes mad!

And mad he went! He made frantic calls to me and poured his heart out in the form of choicest of ugly adjectives directed towards Anu. He was almost on the verge of crying while I tried to tell him that his bike didn’t look good anyway! Finally, Chip went to the police station near Brigade Road and they told him that his bike has been towed, as it was not parked properly. He got his life back and Anu only had to listen to abuses for the second half of the day. From that day Chip has decided not to give his bike to anyone. He doesn’t even let us touch it and throws all the tantrums of a jealous boyfriend. Wait till I ride it like crazy in front of your two eyes!

AOE on Game Ranger: 19th Sept

Hi,
If you are participating in 19th September AOE event, you will need to take the following steps to make it to the game room:

Steps 1 to 6 have to be followed before the hub is created on 19th September.
1. Install AOE II conquerors. No additional patch, one without patch.
2. Download and Install Game Ranger from http://www.gameranger.com/.
3. You will be asked to create and account, with an email address while installing. Complete that process too. (You may be prompted with some connection problem in this process, just ignore it and click continue. Do the same if it again appears in steps that follow)
4. In the game ranger client, click on community -> Find user.
5. In the email address field, type asati.rahul@gmail.com and click search.
6. Right click on potter and click 'add to friends'.

If you have followed the above steps correctly and your game ranger client is running on 19th September when Asati starts the game, you will get a notification saying 'potter has hosted a game'. Follow these steps after that.
7. In the game Ranger client page, on the list of hosts, click on hosts column, so that it sorts by host.
8. In the list, search for host with the name potter, and double click on it.
9. At this step, depending on how you have installed AOE in step 1, you may be asked the location to the directory where you have installed AOE. If that is the case, point it to age2_x1.exe (Eg: C:\Age Of Empire-II The Conquerors\age2_x1.exe)
10. You will be prompted for a password, type 'potter'.
11. On joining the room, you will be able to see other players who have joined the room, and you will have to wait till all the expected players have joined.
12. After all the expected players have joined, Asati will start the game and you will see the AOE Game settings window, where you can type 14, 14, 14 :)

The Longest two hours of my life

awesome (adjective: comparative more awesome, superlative most awesome)

Causing awe, terror and inspiring wonder or excitement.

1. The waterfall in the middle of the rainforest was an awesome sight.

   The tsunami was awesome in its destructive power.

Having spent 8 amazing days in Ladakh, having been on drive for most of those days, and being grieved in altitude sickness for a few of them, we were looking forward to a yet another amazing drive from Ladakh to Srinagar Airport, to eventually fly out to delhi and then to Hyd/Bangy. We did expect this drive to be exciting and wonderful, but we dint expect, that in the true sense of the word "awesome", it would also be inspire terror and awe.

The 14 hour drive from Leh began at 4pm, Saturday and we reached Sonamarg at 6 in the morning only to learn that our connecting cab to srinagar(I know, there is no such thing as a connecting cab, but everything has to be excused when you are in J&K) was not there and was stuck in a curfew in Srinagar, which was a result of 7 ppl dying a day before we reached Srinagar.

Ideas started pouring in:
Vijay: Dekho yaar, situation bohot dheeli hai. wapis Leh jaane ka matlab 14 hours ki driveback.
Chuchu: Haan sala, aur fir wahaan se doosri flight leke delhi, which will cost about 16k and then another flight from delhi to Hyd/Bangy which will cost another 6k. Or else, 2 days of beautiful but tiring drive from Leh to Manali, wahaan se one day drive to Delhi and then flight to Hyd.
Yashwa: Yaar, kasam se. Main to 2 mahine pehle hi Leh se aane ki tum logo se keh raha tha jab ticket 7k ki thi. Ab per head 25k ka loss, 8 logo pe 2 lakh ka loss.
Poki: Yaar, wapis hi chalte hain, bekar mein curfew mein jaane ka kya matlab. Log curfew zone se bahar nikalne ki fight marte hain... hum kyu ander jayein.
Me: Yaar, yahaan taxi union walo ka stand hai, wahaan se we can get another cab. It is risky, but yahaan se bahar to nikalna hi hai.
We went to talk to the Taxi union office.
Taxi union Guy: (Scary face, very loud voice) Jaan hai to jahaan hai. Aap log Upar se (Leh se) aa rahe hain. Aapko Srinagar ki situation ka andaaza nahi hai. Aaj yahi rukiye, raat ko 3 baje curfew 3 hrs k liye khulega, tab aap 2 hrs mein airport pahuch sakte hain.


Our old cab driver: Sir, mujhe to wapis jana hai jaldi. Yahaan wait karne se kya fayda. Bohot danger hai idhar.
Me: (to my friends) Aisi jegeh pe to ek din wait karna kya kam dengerous hai? Apne army wale bhaiya ko phone lagau? I think there is a chance we might be able to get a chopper ride to srinagar airport in something less than 1 lakh.
Vijay: Yaar, ek Sumo wala ready hai chalne k liye, wo bol raha hai wo saari galiyan janta hai srinagar ki.
Sumo Driver: (Big eyes, Harsh tone) Aap log bina time waste kare meri car mein baitho, main bas teen hazaar lunga, but aapko jaldi chalna padega.
Chuchu: Saala 2 lakh ka loss avert karne k liye jaan ka risk, kal jin roads pe 8 log mare, un roads pe drive karke jana padega.
Me: Yaar, we are more likely to die in a road accident, than in riots. Risk kahaan nahi hai yaar. Lets not waste time, abhi morning ka 7 hai. Din badhega to roads pe bheed bhi badhegi, aur dangerous ho jayega nikalna.

A veto was called on. Rules were laid. If atleast one person was willing to go back via Leh, everyone will go back via Leh. Incidentally, nobody objected and we agreed to move ahead.

Vijay: Hum hatte katte log windows k paas baithenge. Asati ko ander karo. Mujhe ek backpack de do. Poki tu bhi ek le le. Jahaan bheed dikhe, window pe laga lena, taaki koi stone sir pe nahi lage.

Thus began, the 2 hour drive from Sonamarg to Srinagar at 8 in the morning. The most beautiful, and simultaneously the most scary place I have ever seen, hence, awesome, in the true sense of the word.




There were no civilians on the roads at even at 8 in the morning. A long army convoy passed us, protecting tourist vans traveling with them. First time in my life, I saw trucks mounted with heavy machine guns. Military trenches at every 1-2 kilometer, Military truck at every 400 m, millitary jeep, and atleast 10-12 soldiers at every 100 metres, almost throughout this drive.
We were stopped by protestors at one spot which was not guarded well, who seemed to be wanting to torch down all the vehicles passing by, but thankfully, they let us go, realising that we were tourists.
We were stopped by police too, about 6-8 times, who allowed us to proceed, after verifying that we had flight tickets out of srinagar for the same day.

Another 10 minutes passed by as we drove through the villages on the way to srinagar, where if one looks out at the Indus river, the paddy fields, one would forget that he is in so much trouble, also if he sees the army movements, he would forget that he is in such a beautiful place.
Fati padi thi. I wished I had the guts to hold my nerve and take out my camera, just as when, incidentally, the following conversation happened.
Cab driver: Sir, Aankh lag gayi thi maeri to abhi abhi, ye neend bohot danger cheez hai.
Vijay: Bhaiya aap baat karte rahiye, aap so gaye to yahaan 9 log jayenge.

Being the one sitting next to the driver, I was asked to constantly talk to him.
Now, chatting with a cab driver is not a big deal. But with the scary situation we were in, with the army getting denser every mile we were getting close to srinagar, and the danger increasing compoundly, this became a very difficult task.
Being scared of curfew and protestors, and still trying to act strong enough to ask the cab driver if he has seen the shooting of film mission kashmir, or what is the best season to visit srinagar, I think I did a good job because the cab driver did not fall asleep again.
On the way to airport, we saw two different incidents where policemen were beaten down by angry protestors.

We drove through the beautiful Dal Lake, could spot a few shikaras, Shankaracharya on the other side of the lake.
The drive ended at 10 in the morning. We were delighted to see a direction sign that read, "Srinagar Airport - 2 kms". I let my head fall on Vijay's shoulder as I saw the airport gate. We got out of the cab and huddled together, to capture the moment, joyous to reach the destination safely, but still my nerves were not strong enough to take out the camera.

The rest of the journey was very smooth, though our feet were slowed down by the thoughts of an awesome tour coming to an end. The thoughts of next day being monday, pulled me back.
Shots of Leh, the mountains, the Indus River, the Zanskar rafting, the high passes, the pangong lake, the Manali-Leh drive all passed by, when I was waiting to collect my baggage at Hyderabad airport.

For my pictures of Ladakh visit visit this link: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=243756&id=683013798&l=78359c132e

The Elephant, the Tiger, the Cellphone and the Visionary

Amidst a lot of media hype, firing by the opposition, and public outrage Shashi Tharoor handed his resignation to the Prime Minister on Sunday night, ending the short stint of 11 months. The startling headline on Times of India next day read "OUT: Tharoor exits MEA, Sunanda Kochi". I see three aspects here.

The media
Media reports said PM had enough from the tweeting minister. Dr Tharoor has repeatedly been in media reports, mostly because of the controversial nature of his tweets, which allegedly, didn't comply very well with sentiments of the Indian people.
Media also burst on him, during the initial days of his career, focusing on his stay in the luxurious hotels, where all the news channels showed us the videos of the costly hotel exteriors and in 72 size font, displayed the rent of his room. Dr Tharoor while making his way to his vehicle, mobbed by media, answered that he is paying the hotel out of his OWN POCKET and was staying there because of delay in construction work at his ministerial residence.
Media has reported several times about his previous failed marriages and a lot of his remarks, the most popular one being the answer to "cattle class" question asked by one of his followers on twitter.
So many accusations have been thrust on him that the list of them probably deserves a separate spot.

Counter Media
A free press is one of the pillars of democracy. An irresponsible press, on the other hand, is a doom. I ask these questions to all the "so called" responsible and aware citizens of country and narrow-minded audience of the TV Media.
1. While introducing Tharoor to people, why do the TV media never talk about the relief work he has done in Palestine, in Saudi Arabia and for Red Cross in Geneva.
2. Shashi Tharoor is the author of many books which focus on lives of Indian People, what makes them unique and what are their strong points. While creating all the hype around cattle class remarks (which was intending as a joke) why did the media not talk about his work and his description of the pride he took in being an Indian, returning to India as a politician after his glorious career in the UNO. Why did the media never address the possibility that, as alleged, If Indian Commoners were cattle to him, why would he have ever returned to the country?
3. While reporting his stay in luxurious hotels, the flashing calculation of rent of the hotel multiplied by the duration of his stay occupied about 20% of the time. Why did the media not acknowledge and address the fact that he was paying it by his own pocket?
4. Media was apt to criticize him when he remarked about Gandhi Jayanti, that people should be working rather than staying at home taking a holiday, thereby paying real homage to Mahatma Gandhi. Why did the media, not take it in right spirit by looking at the other side of the coin. A responsible media is expected to be neutral in its way of reporting, rather than taking about public interest.
5. After being inaccurately accused of criticizing Gandhi and Nehru, when Tharoor posted his explanation on his official website, why was there not a single report covering his response?(Compare that to the outrage on Cattle class comment, which was a few words of response to a question asked by his follower, and above all was intended as a joke).
6. When Tharoor criticized the new visa guidelines adopted by the Indian Government in the wake of the gaps exposed by the arrest of 26/11 terror suspects, David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, why was it that his calling the shots attracted more attention than the content of the shots themselves. Why did the media not focus on “the shortcomings” that he wanted to really talk about?
7. For each and every accusation related to Kochi franchise that he was accused of, he had an explanation for them, on his official website. (Please take your time to read his defense so that it is easy for you to understand me) While repeating the story of his links with Sunanda Pushkar millions of times, why did the Media, not for once, not even a single channel, tried to brief out his explanation to the audience?
If one writes a hoax and tag it with following words:
1. Indian Minister
2. His love interest
3. Cricket
4. Money
5. IPL
It is guaranteed to be a best seller. And will draw Ill criticism from every section of the democracy- Government, Public and Opposition, nobody cares what you spice up, as long as you spice it well. Heck, Katarina was dragged into controversy for being in a relationship with Siddharth Mallya based only on the fact that she used to cheer RCB with him in Pavillion.
Such is the shameful face of Indian media. And such, is unfortunately, the fate of a country corrupted to its core, that people have no sense of judgment for their leaders.
While defending himself against the Nehru/Gandhi controversy, Tharoor said, "Irresponsible reporting may briefly gratify a few sensation-seekers in the media, but they do no credit to the need for informed discussion of foreign policy issues in our democracy. India deserves better. So, frankly, do I."

Shashi Tharoor
I have read all the books by Shashi Tharoor except,” The Great Indian Novel”, which I have bought today, and plan to finish in a few weeks. I also wrote a blog post on his book 'The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone'.
All I keep thinking while reading him is -the guy has stayed outside this country for a large part of his life, but still he knows more about its problems, in an exhaustive way, and has a vision to solve them, that I can never dream about in my lifetime. Lesser people keep talking about corruption, population, brain drain and stuff, but this former UN diplomat is the guy who thinks ahead of his time and writes about addressing these problems.
This Anachronism occurs in every society. Galileo was hanged to death for claiming that earth revolves around the sun and not the other way. Dr Tharoor, in his fight for upbringing of the country, has fallen prey to the very corruption in the system that he was fighting against. It is a sad day for Indian Politics, marking a sad exit of an excellent leadership, leaving the ill fated Indian Politics in its own comfort zone, where only suck up leaders or the Nehru/Gandhi family can survive. As I write this post, Lalit Modi is being labeled as the next Media Villain in all this hype and drama.
I will not point out to my villain explicitly, use your head.

Prince of Persia - The two thrones

क्षमा और शक्ति

Ramdhari Singh Dinkar:

This is a hindi poem from from my class 8th syllabus, I happened to find it while surfing.

क्षमा, दया, तप, त्याग, मनोबल
सबका लिया सहारा
पर नर व्याघ सुयोधन तुमसे
कहो कहाँ कब हारा?

Mercy, resolve, tact, tolerance
You’ve tried everything and some
But o my king of men
When did Suyodhan succumb?

क्षमाशील हो ॠपु-सक्षम
तुम हुये विनीत जितना ही
दुष्ट कौरवों ने तुमको
कायर समझा उतना ही

The more forgiving you were
In your humane compassion
The more these rouge Kauravas
Pegged you as cowardly ashen

अत्याचार सहन करने का
कुफल यही होता है
पौरुष का आतंक मनुज
कोमल होकर खोता है

This is the consequence
Of tolerating atrocities
The awe of machismo is lost
When one’s gentle n kindly

Here comes my favourite part:

क्षमा शोभती उस भुजंग को
जिसके पास गरल है
उसका क्या जो दंतहीन
विषरहित विनीत सरल है

Forgiveness is becoming of
The serpent that’s got venom
None cares for the toothless,
Poisonless, kind, gentle one

तीन दिवस तक पंथ मांगते
रघुपति सिंधु किनारे
बैठे पढते रहे छन्द
अनुनय के प्यारे प्यारे

For three days Lord Raam kept
Asking the ocean for a passage
Sitting there he petitioned
Using the sweetest words to engage

उत्तर में जब एक नाद भी
उठा नही सागर से
उठी अधीर धधक पौरुष की
आग राम के शर से

When in response there was
Not a whisper from the sea
A raging fire of endeavor
Rose from Raam’s body

सिंधु देह धर त्राहि-त्राहि
करता आ गिरा शरण में
चरण पूज दासता गृहण की
बंधा मूढ़ बन्धन में

The ocean took human-form
‘N supplicated to Raam
Touched his feet, was subservient
A slave he had become

सच पूछो तो शर में ही
बसती है दीप्ति विनय की
संधिवचन सम्पूज्य उसीका
जिसमे शक्ति विजय की

Truth be told, it’s in the quiver
That lies the gleam of modesty
Only his peace-talk is reputable
Who is capable of victory

सहनशीलता, क्षमा, दया को
तभी पूजता जग है
बल का दर्प चमकता उसके
पीछे जब जगमग है

Tolerance, forgiveness and clemency
Are respected by the world
Only when the glow of strength
From behind it is unfurled

The portal story

I get an adrenaline rush every time i work on a new technology. Partner Portal is a project that I am presently working on and it was a nerve sweller for me, because it involved working with Spring MVC and Spring Slices, a technology different from all the other ones used in my organization. While it is the technology that makes this product unique for me, this post is an account, of what this project means to people in our company, the way I see it.
Being a new product, partner portal has different implications for different people because of the changes it brings for them. There are four sections of staff who are primarily impacted by partner portal in the process of its development, other than the developers:
1. BPO
2. Product
3. Creatives
4. QA
1. Changes for BPO: Till now BPO has been using Oracle reports, which allow for insert update and delete on Oracle databases and is very efficient. Somebody, at sometime, at some place felt that improved look-n-feel is more important than performance, even for backoffice tools. This thought led to conception of partner portal. An application which relies on Ajax, Jquery, Spring AOP, Spring Security, Spring MVC to furnish the same functionality that can be delivered by oracle reports, in perhaps half the time, but can be programmed to have a classy look and feel, with very rich features, and an amazing user experience.

In other words: Our backoffice tool is expected to be far more rich-featured than our core product, i.e. poker and casino.

2. Changes for Product: Product team attracts a lot of respect in a business oriented organization(ours, for example) when compared to a technology oriented organization (yahoo, for example), reason being, our product's look and feel directly affects the user experience and hence the business. Product team comes in as an interface between technology and business, and a project like this involves product input more than anything else. We have a small joke circling around in partner portal technology,
"We are being asked to decorate our drawing rooms while there is a lot of firefighting to do on the rest of the burning house". Decorating our drawing rooms here means working on cosmetic issues, like text alignments.
I swear to god this is a true incident - we were asked to consider a request(from product of course) where, every time an agent sees a table he is allowed to adjust the number of columns he wants to see,adjust the width of columns he sees and if that was not enough, the application is supposed to remember the width of columns of each of about 100 tables that every agent changes, and shows that column with the same width that he configured in previous session. That for 100s of tables.
Can someone believe that? Has somebody seen that even on social networking sites. Social networking is a neck to neck business. And UI matters most to those apps. And orkut is developed by google, they hire best in the world for that job. But even they don't come up with such crazy ideas. Max they allow is changing the background theme. Perhaps the layout of home page.
Additionally, In a special case like partner portal, product finds it very convenient to not mention their list of demands beforehand, because that is the only way, that they can request for anything that comes in their dreams, and they ask it at anytime of the day.
3. Changes for Creatives: Creatives are perhaps the most underestimated, over loaded and mistreated fellows in the industry, it is true that they have there own set of guidelines, but what I did not know was that it was agreed upon after consultation with product.
4. Changes for QA: A sound technology demands a sound QA. A sound QA is expected to verify all the existing functionality, with every possible side-effect. But how worthy are their efforts? Let me give an example, when a player is marked fraud in his cashier category, his other categories are directly impacted. He becomes fraud by login category, his funds are ceased, he is not allowed to use his pcard (like a parypoker credit card), if he has any besides a lot of stuff. But our highly qualified and trusted QA checks that after a succesful update of cashier category, the message "Updated successfully" should appear in green, with a check symbol infront of it or else they will file a bug. Nobody looks at the other dependencies. If QA hits an idea (about some cool new feature that could have been added, which product could not think about), they take the credit of that idea, while the developer is expected to develop it, and also to be loaded by a bug.

I am at the centre of all such requests, The developer and the creatives take the cane in almost all the cases, and it is the QA and product who take credit of new ideas and features in the product. I don't mind that. At the end of the day, I get to work on Spring MVC, which makes me learn more everyday, than what I would otherwise learn in maybe a month and that knowledge and excitement and joy of working on this new technology is something that I love and thats what keeps me going.

Updates

I wanted to keep up with posting one posts every calendar month, so apparently I skipped one turn. Here are few updates on what has happened:
1. I am checking this new color theme, that I personalised for myself. Will remove switch back in some time
2. I have bought a laptop and now I will be blogging from home, unlike past 20 months that I blogged from office. So it would mean I can spend more time on blog spot and perhaps the frequency of blogging would increase.
3. I have bought a new bike, Yamaha FZ-16 but that was before I wrote my last post. So this is kind of an old update.
4. I am working on spring MVC, Spring AOP and the project that I am working on has very strict timelines and I have to work long hours everyday, even weekends. Let me also add here that Spring Slices is an amazing improvement over struts based applications. The maintenance downtime for servers is almost negligible, and access control can be made as convenient as using windows media player. After using this, I think, BPO would find it very difficult to go back to working the the green reports again.
5. Manjeet has got a job in amazon and he is moving to chennai. I am going to see him off at the airport tomorrow.

Say hello to my new laptop and goodbye to Manjeet