Talking to some folks at Infosys about joining up their embedded group. Supposed to work in C/Unix so /me is optimisitc.

Talked via a friend who joined there recently (names omitted to protect the innocent). Sent my resume. Let's see if they come back for an interview...

Hmmm. Mebbe I should put my resume online at my site too. This resume I had to do in MicroSoft Word, a fine peice of software, but one which I don't like. LaTeX for me anyday! So will spend some time on a good looking LaTeX resume and put it up! Yay!

Today I got this mail from my manager after a particularly bad session (the underlining is mine):

This is just to recollect our first performance review meeting during the last week of March 2003. At such a meeting we reviewed your progress and had mutually agreed to the fact that you had a lot of quick catchups to be done to be in tune with our expectation from an average performer working with us for 6 months or more.
You may also recollect my opinion to you that after being with us for 6 months, fixing one or two average bugs a month, which you were acheiving at that time, is much below our expectation, which you too have agreed with. With our subsequent meetings on April 7th and today, we have observed that you were still in the same level as you were a month ago, as you were in agreement with me today, and have not seen any significant performance improvement from your side from such time.
While I am concerned on this situation, I am also keen on working with you closely to identify any scopes of improvement from your side and help you to get on to the track to meet the expectation. Please let me know if you face any difficulty in understanding any specific areas/process, which I will work to get you some help with.

"
Well, this is where they lay the ground work to throw me out if things do not go well. Better get my act together...and start polishing up that resume!

Got up groggy. Dunno why. So came in at around 12. And then was thinking and working hard on a customer bug I have. Working really hard. When my manager called me up for some discussion.

Things rapidly went downhill from this point onward. We had a "discussion" (read: i'm about to get it good and proper) about the my bug closures for this week. Which, infact, are zero. As I was tackling a bug which had three bugs submerged into it. Two of them could have been fixed by yesterday but for a problem with the third. So since someone decided to tackle three bugs through one (for valid reasons actually), I got shafted.

All this after I had been working very hard for the last 2-3 weeks. This time I wasn't pissed off, I was furious. Beet red and all that. Really angry. As if just bug closure rate is the end all rather than actual work accomplished. Typical corporate dilbert attitude. No, typical fscking dilbert attitude. Something tells me it is time to start updating my resume. And just when I was starting to get into the groove of this whole thing and come up with some new ideas. Sigh, such is life...

hey all!

Slept late and came in at almost 11:30 am, making up for the last two days. Felt good. And fresh.

Last night, after leaving I went over to V's house for a chat. ended up borrowing her laptop :-). A Dell with Debian Woody on it (I'm (irr)responsible for that). So there I was, 2'o clock in the night, writing small perl scripts and having fun. Then some playing with Emacs. Felt enough gumption to do that after a long long time. Fondly remember the intense coding sessions in college...sigh

Want to head to Galloping Gooseberries (GGs), a good place for mexican food in hyderabad. You have to ask them to make it spicy though, else the authentic stuff is too bland for my mirch-masala addicted indian palate. Just next to GGs is Southern Spice, another place for good stuff. Haven't been there all that much, but liked it.

This article's got more details on gourmet food in hyderabad.

G'night then. Gotta leave RSN (real soon now) ;-)

The notion of me coming in early and leaving early is a myth. It is never going to happen. No matter at what time I show up in the office I shall not leave before 9 pm (minimum, 10pm+ is more likely).
So if you hear me talking about leaving early, come over and hit me. Or abuse me. Abuse me, I deserve it. I'm so lame to believe these kind of notions.
Case in point: I came in today at 9am, and thought would leave by 5pm, or at the most 6pm. Well, it is almost 9:30pm and I'm running these SQL scripts. My bad.
That is all.

Sorry for posting after a long time but things got a bit tight 'round here. You see I got a new manager (did I talk about that before?).
And the things with the new guy are not all hunky-dory. Interesting fellow. One who wants to see a bug closure count of 5 every week (ie one per day). I tried to (gently) point out that this is insane. 'Nonsense', he retorted. Apparently we all are very 'talented', full of 'potential' and on our way to become great 'professionals'. As they say, the road to hell is lined with good intentions... He has these notions like 'higher management are the guiding people, developer are just executors'. Interesting notion, that. Especially since developers actually write the code. Straight out of Dilbert. Sigh.
Still, I'm here on a sunday, trying to make sense out of a SQL query and why it is doing what it is doing. Not one of the more agreeable ways to spend a sunday (as opposed to, say, being totally drunk) but then I need to have 3 bugs done by monday. Ahem, I feel I must also mention I did kinda goof off on friday, playing with perl scripts. But that was from the exhiliration (and exhaustion) of closing 2 bugs on Thursday! Not a very arguable argument, so I'm here...
These days I'm off slashdot, instead occasionally reading up memepool. Other sites I frequent are

• User Friendly(this daily cartoon strip is good!)
• kuro5hin (good tech oriented news)
• Gnome art (eye candy for gnome desktop)
• Debian Planet (News about Debian, the OS I use)

Infact it is high time I update my website. Almost been 2 years since I last updated it. I'm not sure though if I want to link to my blog from my website. Heck, management might get to see it, and that wouldn't be a good idea. Indeed.
I have started to get along with him a bit, I guess because I'm working extra hard now and closing bugs faster than before. The moment the bug rate drops, it'd be different. Still let's see...