GOT A BIKE... BICYCLE !

Yesterday at 2:00 in the afternoon, I bought a bicycle (bike) at Walmart. Sooooooo, I'll have a ride to nearby places and around my univ during early mornings or late evenings everyday. Doubtlessly, its good to feel the fresh air and exercise in the open space early in the morning. Let me try my best...

PLAN AHEAD ! MAKE A VISION 2010...

While I was browsing through Abdul Kalam's 'India 2020- A Vision for the New Millennium', an idea flashed onto my mind. Why don't I give a thought about a vision for my own future. Hey, let me rephrase it... How do you see yourself in next 5 or 10 or 15 or 20 years. This question sounds very familiar... isn't it? YES ! Its an infamous repeatedly-asked interview question. I know what to answer and ofcourse, I have my ambitions and future plans intact... But, I never sketched out a blue-print about my ambitions and did not put any effort to timeline my goals. It would be a good way to prepare for the future. Needless to say that it should change with the changing times & international economic scenarios. But, the overall picture regarding my goals cannot change... I shall start thinking and documenting it right away ~

DONE WELL KATTY... KEEP IT UP !

I got an interview call last week... from 'Viewlocity Analysis Inc' for an internship position in Quality Assurance. Today, the day has arrived... I had my interview at its office located in Richardson. The interview went on cooool, and I felt a friendly ambience around me. After a while, I was asked to get into a conference room, where the interview took place. Several questions were asked... some related to my previous projects & how did I go about doing them, some related to the quality assurance part of my projects, some regarding the development techniques, and finally some questions abt how I participate in a team & work along with my collegues.

The interview was conducted by 2 people (Quality Assurance Project Manager, and the leader) and it lasted for nearly 1 hour. At the interview, I was frank (truthful), confident and energetic while answering their questions. All the questions were neat and straightforward. Just before leaving, I was asked to take up a written assignment to check how I approach a given problem... and guessss, I had done a good job. When I was done with the interview, I was happy with my performance and had my way to the nearest bus-stop to catch a bus that was running towards UTD.

20 STATES IN MY POCKET... 13 MORE TO GO !

Today, I got a Quarter (25 cents coin) that has the 'State of TEXAS' represented on its face. Thanks to Sushil (my roomate) for the coin. It is infact a rare one to get... since it has been released only in the year 2003. Now, I have 20 State represented US quarters. There are 13 more state quarters to be collected. Hmmm!

SPELL YOUR NAME PLZ...?

Its always fun (but needs patience) speaking to call center people at US. They could hardly spell my name correctly... So, I had to spell it in a way they can understand... I mean, I had to find acronymns to each letter on my name. This is how it goes ~

SESHU - S as in 'Sandy' ; E as in 'Edwin' ; S as in 'Sandy' ; H as in 'Henry' ; U as in 'Utah'... This does not stop here !
K (my middle initial) - K as in 'Kerry (or Katty)'
TANVEER - T as in 'Tom' ; A as in 'Andrew' ; N as in 'Nancy' ; V as in 'Victoria' ; E as in 'Edwin' ; E as in 'Edwin' ; R as in 'Roger'.

Huh ! Atlas, its done (finish telling my name)... after a minute or two.

VERY CHOOSY IN MY BOOKS

I firmly believe that anything can be accomplished with the aid of a good book. All I need is a book that will guide me and tell me the path to accomplish my objective. I did exceedingly well in the SCJP exam to become a Sun Certified Java Programmer. All the credit goes to the authors (Kathy Sierra, Bert Bates) of the book titled "Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java2 Study Guide". This was my study guide for the exam... and it is indeed a great book.

Now, I purchased a book published by 'Apress' to prepare for SCJD exam based on excellent reviews. The book reviews at Amazon.com give the most informative feedback about any book under any subject. Infact, this helped me to pick and choose the best book that meet my needs. At the same time, reading a bad book could let me down completely. Recently, I read a book on JDBC by Oreilly publication without paying attention to the book reviews. It is such a bad book, that I lost complete interest on JDBC. I at once stopped reading that and switched over to a better book based on the reviews. Now, I realized the importance of reviews (be it film reviews or book reviews or electronic product reviews)...

A NOVEL WRITER...

My BOSS had recruited people to work as 'Unix Consultants' at UTD-labs in summers. Aaron is one of them... While I was speaking to him at JO-Lab, he said that he is writing a fiction/fantacy novel and currently, it is at its anti-climax stage. Well... This is the first time in life that I met a novel writer. Now, it stikes me! I am also a novel writer... if I can convert this entire blog into multitude chapters (stuffing all blogs written in a month into a single chapter... resulting in 12 chapters). The outcome would be a boring legend of a tame boy in US. Haaa haa ha ;-) I swear~ I will not do that !

MY TOUR PHOTOS

Hey... My photos that were shot during the 'South-Texas Tour' have been uploaded in my PHOTO BLOG. You can find them under the heading 'PHOTO ALBUMS' in the side column of its page. Have a glance at them if time permits !

TOUR TO SOUTH TEXAS

I along with my friends(Naveen, Vinodh, Satya, Siddharth) had a road trip to South Texas for the weekend. We started off on July 2nd at 4:30pm in Mitsubishi Lancer. Our plan was to visit College Station and go around Texas A&M univ on Friday... Houston & Galveston on Saturday... and San Antonio on Sunday. We were able to execute our plans as we intended to.

On friday (July 2nd), we rented a Mitsubishi Lancer for the same price of a Toyoto Echo at Enterprise Cars. Wow! Its a great DEAL~ We soon started off for a 3.5 hours drive to College Station. Our cameras were put to use at the highway and we had fun taking pics of the flyovers, road-side ranch and the highway traffic at the circuitous roads. I had my laptop with me for some entertainment in the car - play good music, watch video songs and browse the articles that I have in my laptop.

We reached TAMU (Texas A&M univ) at 8:00 pm with ease. We then had a short gossip with Ajit and his room-mates, had our dinner at Cici's and finally, we went around Texas A&M univ along with Ajit. The univ is almost 10 times the size of UTD. Oh my god ! No wonder, it is the biggest univ in Texas. Infact, we could only go around and explore half the university in a duration of 2 hours. Ajit accompanied us during our entire stay in College Station. May be at around 2:00 in the midnight, we had a good nap at his residence.

We got ready for our trip to Houston on Saturday morn at 9:00am and reached NASA at 12:00 noon on July 3rd. We spent nearly 5 hours inside NASA. We had guided tram-tours to International Space Station (ISS) where Astronauts are trained, and to the Machine-Control-Room. These 2 guided tours snatched away most of our time. We also watched a few documentary films and played with simulation stuff. Several facts were told about what it needs to be an astronaut, purpose and performance of Mars Rover, short history & achievements of NASA, and ongoing projects. I then realized the heights in technology that a man could reach with determination. Here, they have a custom to plant an Oak tree for every astronaut who gives away his life for the mission. During the guided tours, we paused at those oak trees for a moment to maintain silence and remember those brave souls.

Galveston was the place of our immediate destiny from Nasa as it was just a 45 minute drive away from there. We had a Domino's pizza at the Galveston Beach for our late-lunch and then, we got into the sea and played with water... though the water is turbid in nature. We played with sand, watched the sea-gulls, had a running race in seawater, and clicked at a few good pics. At 9:30pm, we had our way to San-Antonio.

We started looking out for a good motel when we reached San Antonio at 2:00am. Our search efforts were in vain when we failed to get accomodation in any of them. So, we stopped our car at H.E.B's parking lot and slept in the car that night. At 6:00am on July 4th, we got up from sleep, refreshed ourselves, and had our way to visit the "Tower of Americas". This tower is 750ft high and it has a revolving restaurant at its apex. We could get a view of the entire city from the tower. There were water-fountains, flowers and greenery all around the tower and its a good hang-out spot for the youth. We then had a stroll along the river-walk and enjoyed our way by window-shopping at the shops and admiring the greenery. We had our lunch (sorry... its brunch) at "What-a-Burger" and entered into 'Seaworld'.

At Seaworld in San Antonio, our first show was "The Shamu Adventure". This show gave us the opportunity to witness the beauty of the park's biggest star "Shamu, the killer whale". We got the front few seats hoping to get completely drench in the splash. But, Shamu splashed water at people in several other places around the pool than what we had thought of. So... we came out not getting drenched. However... at the show, the camera man had captured us onto the big screen that was on display for the viewers. The whale performed few good stunts such as flying out of the water, carrying men on its back, and posing infront of the audience. Then, we went to few more shows: Rockin ski party that demonstrates various ski stunts, 'Viva'- White whale and dolphin show, 'Fools with tools'- seals and sealions show, and Riptide- athletic and fast paced show. All the shows were very exclusive, unique and admirable.

We also experienced various water rides such as Texas Splashdown and Water lagoon. At 9:30pm, we watched at some spectacular fireworks to celebrate the Independence Day of America and finally, we watched a special 4D film at the seaworld theatre. Hmmm! Guessing what could be a 4D film. Its too good ~ Its all about experiencing the effects of a 3D film with a water splasher, a blower and a vibrator attached to every seat in the theatre. For some special effects such as a water splash in the movie, water will really be directed onto your face by a water sprinkler attached to your seat. Likewise, air will be blown or vibration will be given at appropriate times while watching the movie. Well! Its something new and fascinating.

At 11:00pm, we had our dinner on our way back to Dallas and we reached home on July 5th, at 5:30am in the morning. Its a great trip... and infact, its my first road trip in US.