Revelations

I have decided to attend this years Yahoo Open Hack Day - 2009.

More details about the event [http://www.hackday.org/]

• where ... : taj residency, bangalore
• when .... : 14 - 15 february 2009

I am looking for a hacker buddy - so if someone is interested in forming a team, let me know.

Posted by George Chiramattel on February 8, 2009 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Some server maintenance done by my domain hosting provider had caused my blog engine to crash. The error log clearly stated that DBD::mysql was missing. Though I had raised multiple service requests, the problem remain unresolved. I got frustrated to the point where I was thinking of switching to a new hosting provider.

I kept pushing this because of all the work involved in the migration - lazy me :-). I thought of stretching my luck by reopening the support request for one last time - Fortunately, this time, some one *did* take a look at this and the problem was resolved.

So, here I am - back online.

Posted by George Chiramattel on February 3, 2009 5:53 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

I would like to announce some open positions that we have at Intuit Bangalore.

Position: Principal Engineer

• 7-12 years of software industry experience
• 5+ years of hands-on experience with C++/VC++/java/C# object oriented language
• Proven Desktop and Online development experience
• System integration & web app development and deployment experience

Position: Senior Software Engineer - QA

• 5+ years experience in software testing/development with at least 3 years in QA
• Proven experience with test automation
• Significant experience with tools such as Silk, WinRunner, LoadRunner, Test Director and Quality Center.
• Scripting experience is needed for automation.

Position: Senior SCM Engineer

• 7+ years hands-on experience
• Experience handling SCM responsibilities for multiple projects
• Experience in Windows/C and C++/Perforce OR Clearcase OR CVS
• Thorough knowledge of SDLC

If you are looking for a career change and if you find one of the above positions suitable, let me know (by dropping a comment). I will be happy to refer you at Intuit. You can also reach me at 'mailto (dot) george (@) gmail (dot) com.

p.s. The views expressed herein are my personal views and are not intended to reflect the views of my employer.

Posted by George Chiramattel on June 6, 2008 1:32 AM | Permalink 1

I recently got myself an Internet broadband connection through Airtel. So far, I am quite satisfied with their service. I opted for their 8 Mbps plan (something that is unimaginable a few years back) for 1299/- per month. Ten years back, I got my first taste of Internet through a phone modem with a speed of 9 Kbps - and yes, I was using a text based browser. 8Mbps is a far cry from that!

To give you an idea of how much bandwidth I am 'really' getting, I have captured a screen shot of 'Aritel speed test utility' running on my browser over my home WiFi.

As you can see, I am not really getting 8 Mbps :) Following is their tariff:

Hope this helps in making your decision on choosing a broadband provider in Bangalore.

Posted by George Chiramattel on June 6, 2008 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I just completed my first month at Intuit and I should say that I am thoroughly enjoying it here. There is lot of focus on innovation, both customer driven (something that Intuit has pioneered) and technology driven innovation. All of us have 10% unstructured time, where we can work on anything that is passionate to us. We also have 'IdeaJam', where we spend one full day hacking something that is really useful and cool! I have great colleagues who are passionate about what they do and are really fun to work with. I also get to learn a lot of new stuff - all in all a great place to be in!

p.s. The views expressed herein are my personal views and are not intended to reflect the views of my employer.

Posted by George Chiramattel on June 6, 2008 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

Yesterday was my last day working in Philips. I throughly enjoyed the last 7 years that I spent here where I learned a lot of stuff, from my mistakes as well as from the new technology/areas that I explored. Also, I made a lot of good friends, who had a very good influence on me, and I will always cherish the moments that I spent with them. And now, the time has come to start anew and to face new challenges.

I am joining Intuit Bangalore as a Software Architect. I am quite excited about this opportunity. From all the interactions that I had so far, Intuit look like a very promising place to work.

Posted by George Chiramattel on May 1, 2008 11:21 PM | Permalink 1

When I logged into MT after a long time, I was surprised to find that all the previous comments were missing!! After some googling found that the problem was caused by a corrupt mt_comment table. I tried to do a repair by issuing the following command.

REPAIR TABLE mt_comment

I then used MySQL Administrator (GUI tools) and selected repair on the table with the following settings.



This fixed the problem.

Posted by George Chiramattel on May 1, 2008 9:16 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

Yes... I finally got my XBox 360 Elite. My brother helped me get this from Europe. So, it is PAL version, and the DVD region is 2. The region setting of XBox cannot be changed even once. This would mean that I will not be able to play any regional DVD movies on it :(

XBox 360 Elite is available in India exclusively through Indiatimes shopping and the price is Rs. 34,990. So my decision to buy this from Europe was well worth it.

While I was a student I used to playing Quake 3 Arena. Though I am not much of a gamer, I bought Halo 3 and I am thoroughly enjoying it. I have also taken a one month free subscription of XBox live. My profile on XBox live is here.

Posted by George Chiramattel on November 13, 2007 1:20 AM | Permalink | Comments ()

I have been using a trial version of ReSharper for my DotSVN project and I should say that I just got hooked to it. I would not have made this much progress without it and that leaves me wondering what I would do once the trial expires!!

A tool with this ease of use is needed to improve the design and code without any hesitation to refactor.
ReSharper's code navigation capabilities are also extra ordinary. You can read more about it here.

I have also used dotTrace to fix a nasty performance issue.

Overall I am very satisfied with the product.

Posted by George Chiramattel on September 21, 2007 12:28 PM | Permalink | Comments ()

private static readonly CultureInfo en_us_Culture = new CultureInfo("en-US");

// Parse in the format [2007-09-06T10:20:26.689093Z]
private static readonly string dateTimeFormat = "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.FFFFFFFZ";

public static DateTime parseDate(String dateString)
{
	DateTime parsedDate;

	bool parseResult = DateTime.TryParseExact(dateString, dateTimeFormat, 
							en_us_Culture, 
							DateTimeStyles.AdjustToUniversal, out parsedDate);
	if(!parseResult)
	{
		SVNErrorMessage err = SVNErrorMessage.create(SVNErrorCode.BAD_DATE);
		SVNErrorManager.error(err);    
	}
	return parsedDate;
}

Posted by George Chiramattel on September 19, 2007 12:40 PM | Permalink 1 | TrackBacks (1)