VW Jetta - My final Choice

Finally, I decided to buy a V0lkswagen Jetta 2.5L (Reflex silver). This is more expensive and has more feature-set than the value-edition trim that I once intended to buy. Hmmm! I'm feeling excited abt it. If everything goes fine as expected... I will buy this car today.

Cars test driven

Test driven 3 cars today... They include Honda Civic, Accord and VW Jetta... all 2006 models. Huh... I am crazily driven towards buying a car, but am having difficulty in deciding between Jetta and Accord. The only drawback with each of them is that... Jetta has reliability issues, and Accord is too common a car to be proud of. Well ~ It seems like I prefer being a proud owner of a Jetta and tolerate small annoyances that might arise (or might not if lucky) due to build quality.

Short & crisp list of qualities

I found this here while browsing blogs... Its short and crisp.

THE 21 INDESPENSIBLE QUALITIES OF A LEADER -By John C Maxwell

1. Character: Be a Piece of the Rock
2. Charisma: The First Impression Can Seal The Deal
3. Commitment: It Separates Doers From Dreamers
4. Communication: Without it You Travel Alone
5. Competence: If You Build It, They Will Come
6. Courage: One Person With Courage Is A Majority
7. Discernment: Put An End To Unsolved Mysteries
8. Focus: The Sharper It Is, The Sharper You Are
9. Generosity: Your Candle Loses Nothing When It Lights Another
10. Initiative: You Won’t Leave Home Without It
11. Listening: To Connect With Their Hearts, Use Your Ears
12. Passion: Take This Life And Love It
13. Positive Attitude: If You Believe You Can, You Can
14. Problem Solving: You Can’t Let Your Problems Be A Problem
15. Relationships: If You Get Along, They’ll Go Along
16. Responsibility: If You Won't Carry the Ball, You Can’t Lead The Team
17. Security: Competence Never Compensates for Insecurity
18. Self-Discipline: The First Person You Lead Is You
19. Servanthood: To Get Ahead, Put Others First
20. Teachability: To Keep Leading, Keep Learning
21. Vision: You Can Seize Only What You Can See

Big Moment For Me

Guess what? ? ? I completed my coursework... and had my graduation ceremony today. It was exciting to walk across the stage in a black-graduation-gown, and receive the certificate from the Dean. However, its a sad feeling to say good bye to student life... Lot of photos were taken, and u can check them out here.

The whole graduation ceremony was webcasted on UTD website. So, this allowed my parents, sis and all my relatives to witness me receiving the graduation certificate on stage. They were indeed very happy and celebrated this occasion.

Company Dinner

The R&D dept at Intervoice sponsored a dinner tonight for announcing the quarterly results and developments made this academic year. The head of the dept also announced the list of promotions in this year 2005. There were a total of 19 promotions... and the quarterly results looked fairly good.

What excited me is that my name was mentioned while listing all the promotions. I was promoted from Co-op position to Engineer-1 position starting Dec 10. Anyways... I am very happy and excited abt it. I had dinner with many of my collegues including Gopal Kesavan.

After the dinner, we had a casino-night organized. Here, we play with fake money and there are 4 prizes for the top 4 winners. We played for nearly an hour and a half... and surprisingly, I am the 4th prize winner. I got a $100 gift card that can be redeemed at Best-Buy stores. It was a wonderful night...

Thanksgiving'05

Well... Its about my Day-After-Thanksgiving purchase. I bought not many compared to my last year's purchase. Just a few damn good DVD movies that were on sale (Catch me if you can, Apollo 13, Minority Report, and few Friends seasons). Then, I bought a paper shredder from Target, and ordered a DVD burner at amazon. Thats pretty much it !

Happy B'Day to ME ...

Well... I am now 24 ! May GOD bless me...

Free-bees to download

I found some good software at downloads.com. Just thought I could share it with u guys...

• Data Crow 1.9 - Organize and sort all the media content you have / bought
• yLend 1.0.2 - Keep a track of all items that you lend to somebody
• yWriter - Useful for writers of books or novels
• Miniminder - alert you of specific dates at system start-up

Last Exam Of My Life

Today, I had the last exam of my academic life... Its Telecom Software Design term exam. I've technically reached the end of M.S program. Hmmm... I'm feeling good, while also feeling bad for having reached the end of my student life. Now onwards, it will be a different way of life all together... Its JOB life. I will have to wait 10 more days to get my Masters degree in hand. December 10, 2005 is my convocation day, and everyone is invited :-)

Stuff from india

When Rajesh anna went to India on his official visit, my parents met him and gave some stuff to be given to me. I got them all today... sweets, photoCD, and a few T-shirts. Hmmm... sweets were delicious, and the T-shirts were chosen right. I enjoyed watching every photo in the CD. They brought to life every moment that I missed by being far away from my homeland. I spoke to my parents & sis, and they were describing behind-the-scene stories about most of the photos. Its fun ~

Kindled the FIRE

A deep thought kindled the fire in me at end of the 3-day symposium. At first I was admiring at those speakers for the amount of knowledge and the number of accomplishments they have had. I asked myself... Where am I heading towards? What am I doing for my career?[Nothing] Will my student life end after getting my MS degree?[Dont know]

After contemplating on it for a few days, I came up with answers. I should march towards a great career, and not a mere job. Till date, I've been gaining knowledge beyond my MS course-work, and have a couple of SUN certifications (SCJP, SCBCD) to my credit. But, I did not put effort to find where I would stand after 5-10 years down the lane.

I aspired to have atleast 1 book to my credit. Why don't I start researching on just 1 specialized topic of my interest (say Web-Services) including its past, all the present technologies associated with it, and its scope for future. In a period of time (close to 3 yrs), I will gain expertise and be a master of it. Then, it would be a right time for me to write a book on it.

Well... it all sounds too ambitious initially, but I believe that I can do it with proper planning and diligence. Lets wait and see...

No Fluff Just Stuff

Last weekend (Nov 4-6), I attended a Java symposium named "No Fluff Just Stuff" along with many of my collegues in Intervoice. The talks were delivered by writers of popular books. They are great speakers both in terms of knowledge and communication skills. I am fortunate for having got this opportunity to interact with them.

I never realized that there are so many latest technologies related to Java that I have not even heard of. For instance, I learnt about aspect oriented programming, Java Metadata, Spring, Hybernate, JAAS, Java memory management, Java 5 concepts such as generics... The talk by Venkat subramanium is one of the best of the lot. I attended his session on Aspect programming, and managed to learn it before that session ended.

Dilema of buying a used car

I was tempted to buy a used car (against my principles not to buy used stuff)... I know it makes perfect sense to buy used stuff if the product is in good condition and is a good deal. But, I just have this principle not to buy any used stuff embedded in my mind... Dont know why ! So, I quickly acknowledged my innervoice and trashed my plan to buy a used car.

A sensible B'day gift

I gave my sister a birthday present that would make her really laugh-out-loud every day (atleast for the next few months). Its a DVD set of "Everybody Loves Raymond - First & Second seasons". Believe me... It was a spontaneous idea that flashed in my mind while I was browsing amazon.com trying to kill time. Anyways, it turned out to be a great gift to my sis. She liked it very much, as she has not seen most of the episodes of this show (though she loved to watch it).

I mailed this one to India, and asked my mom to keep it hidden from my sis until her bday. Then, she gave this gift on behalf of me to my sis on her bday while I was on video chat with her...

Free Flight Tickets

I reserved my flight tickets to California (Irvine) for this christmas. Its 8 days of fun that I plan to have along with my 3 high-school friends (Charan, Pradeep and Rajesh). By the way, Charan now resides at Irvine. Detailed plans are yet to be made... still lot of time left though.

Hey... I got these tickets free of cost by using my miles in Lufthansa. It needs 25000 points to fly free-of-cost inside United States. The process of redeeming points to get a flight-ticket is extremely simple... which I never expected. Thanks to Lufthansa ~

New Age CEOs

How can an experienced chap be any lesser than the young new-to-industry kid? What is the motive behind the companies hiring fresh out-of-gradschool guys, when it can opt for experienced candidates. Apart from serving the society, what exactly will the company gain? ? ?

The article "New Age CEOs" partly answers my question that has been hiding in my mind so long. After giving the question a thought, I could figure out the answer myself... Its the following qualities that puts the new-to-industry guys on advantage.

• Enthusiasm - Eagerness to learn a lot quickly becoz there is so much yet to lear
  
• Devotion to work - Need to impress and go up the career ladder soon
  
• Cutting edge technology - Having just got out of grad school
• A lesser pay would suffice
  
• Creativity and out-of-box thinking
  
• Quick-to-react attitude
• Not a hint of laziness

Did I miss anything ? ? ?

Eclipse platform

The Eclipse IDE for Java is a revolutionized approach of gaining great long-term success for IBM. I was wondering why would IBM spend millions of dollars into development of an open-source free product without a gain. I knew they would definitely gain... but wondered how?

I attended a seminar at my school (UTD) lectured by one of the staff from IBM. This seminar clarified my doubts, and also provided insight into the architecture of Eclipse. The Eclipse also formed a platform on which several of the IBM products were built. Hence, any eclipse user would be comfortable working with most of the IBM products.

I appreciate the component oriented approach in the making of Eclipse IDE. It follows a perfect layered architecture, and hence can be used as a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. I am a great fan of Java and Eclipse, and I would like to thank IBM a million times for the promotion of those two.

I also came to know the reason why IBM came up with "Eclipse" as the name for the IDE. Do you know why??? Shall let you know later.

Category: [Just Blogging]

Full-time employment offered ...

I am glad to inform you that I've been timely blessed upon with a full-time employment (Software Systems Engineer-1 position) at Intervoice Inc. in Dallas. Its the same company in which I am currently working as an intern. I guess... its now time for me to take up more responsibility at work, and miss out on that little extra fun.

Ganesh Chathurthi

Thinking of the lord...

Breathing can enlighten you...!

I've recently joined the "Art of Living" course by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, after having been recommended by my parents and sis. This course lets you experience something you never imagined in your wildest dreams... letting you feel a peace of mind, and removes all negative emotions in us. It teaches us a lot about awareness and breathing techniques. I am having a wonderful experience that is hard to put in words...

I am totally amazed of how clear and lucid my mind became... just after 3 sessions of the total 6-session course. I firmly recommend this to every person who is interested in living a perfect life.

Stumble Upon !

Stumble Upon Toolbar... A very userful addon tool for Mozilla Firefox. In terms of usefulness of the tool, it comes only next to Google search. I was greatly excited when I started using it and discovered a whole new internet. Many good sites of my interest that I would not have laid my eyes upon if not for this little toolbar were uncovered. In brief, the purpose of this tool is to randomly display websites of your interest. I firmly recommend every Mozilla Firefox users to download this tool and benefit from the vastness of internet. You can download this from the Mozilla Firefox Extensions webpage.

Website Add-ons

I just listed out some website/blog-site addons...

Display a list of things that you are currently working upon - AllConsuming
A message box for vistors - ShoutBox
Maintain a list of links - Blog Rolling
Get a copyright for your creative work - Creative Commons
Display a clock with your local time on it - Clocklink

http://www.seshukarthick.com

Hey... I got my website a new domain name... It is http://www.seshukarthick.com . I got this for a low price (less than $10) from "godaddy.com". Its definetely worth the money. Hmmm! I'm feeling excited on having a website address with my name ~

Moved to a new house...

After 2 years of stay at on-campus Waterview Appartments, I moved to a near-by off-campus 2-bedroom appartment on Aug 6. The new one is more luxurious and comfortable than my old one. Here, I live with 2 of my friends. It was indeed a pain to shift my belongings to the new place... it took nearly 4 days. We rented a U-Haul (kind of a large truck) last weekend for moving all my furniture. Huh! Atlast, its all over.

Surround speaker system

Today, I purchased Altec Lancing Surround Speaker System from Buy.com. I got an incredible deal that offered nearly 50% discount. The model number is GT5051, and I find it very impressive. Hmm! Awaiting for its arrival...

An Essay by Einstein

Hey... after having read this article (The World as I see it - An Essay by Einstein), I've become a fan of Einstein.

Essays written by Swami Vivekananda & Einstein are my all-time favorites. The above essay is a must read for everyone... With an excellent selection of words, Einstein expresses his thoughts about life in a succinct manner. I've read several of his essays, and in each one of them, I could find a touch of philosophy and reference to morals of life. He is truely a genius & philosopher combo. Read the article atleast twice to get a better hold of it.

Here, I am quoting some of the most eye catching lines from his essay~

How strange is the lot of us mortals! Each of us is here for a brief sojourn; for what purpose he knows not, though he sometimes thinks he senses it. But without deeper reflection one knows from daily life that one exists for other people ...

The ideals that have lighted my way, and time after time have given me new courage to face life cheerfully, have been Kindness, Beauty, and Truth ...

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed ...

Check out the entire article...

GOOGLE IS POWER

Hey... It was just 2 days ago that I learned to make the most out of Google search. It has numerous capabilities than a mere search... and also has several search options. May be there are similar options in yahoo search as well. But, I am a true Google fan. Just to mention a few functionalities offered by google search:

# As a calculator - Perform arithmetic operations and hit the search button to get the outcome.
# As a dictionary - append the text to the string "define:" and search
# As a converter - Convert any unit to any other unit (Currency, units of measurement, etc.)
# Question & Answer - Type a query such as "population of USA", and it gives the answer.

There is lot more... Read them from the net.

FEAR FACTOR

Be a hero... Always say "I have no fear". Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear.

This is the message from Swami Vivekananda. Doubtlessly, it sounds highly motivating and brings out the enthusiasm in us to be brave in our lives. Earlier, I used to tell this quote to myself whenever I have a target to meet, or a big task assigned. This helped me a lot. With no fear, we can win the freedom of the world, overcome the barrier of communication, reach new frontiers, and achieve lot more success.

The last time I really feared was before riding the water-scooter (jet-ski) for the first time. It was at HotSprings in Arkansas when all my friends and I decided to have a ride on it. Finally, I am happy that I managed to overcome my fear and had a ride on it. It was easy... and I could get the nack of handling it in a couple of minutes. Now on thinking about the past, I feel silly of me for having feared to have the ride.

A WEEKEND FULL OF ADVENTURE

Well... This summer is turning out to be a great one. Last weekend (June 11 & 12), my friends and I had an adventure trip to Arkansas. Hey! This state is famous for its outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, trekking, boating, etc. We had every kind of fun here...

On Friday night at 10:00 pm, we started our drive to the best known and largest cave in Arkansas (Blanchard spring caverns). It takes nearly nearly 8 hours of non-stop road drive from Dallas. Then, we visited Hotsprings on our way back to Dallas.

The highways of Arkansas are fenced by huge and dense trees. I found greenery everywhere... The Nature beautic scenes gave a feast for my eyes. A lot of hiking and trekking were done in this trip. We were six of us, and the fun we had was infinite.

It was a great experience in exploring the interiors of the forests, driving on the clean & green highways, climbing up the steep rocks, and getting closer to the waterfalls. We had a grand finale to the trip... Guess what? We had a ride on the ski jet (water scooter). It was a thrilling first-time experience involving a small portion of fear-factor too.

We came back home at 10:00 pm on Sunday. We had an awesome and a memorable trip that weekend.

FIRST DAY AT INTERVOICE INC.

It was a good first day experience... All the new interns(including me) had an orientation for nearly 4 hours. Then, we met our respective managers and discussed about the product overview. The work ambience is very friendly and co-operative. I was given a cabin (small room), a phone and a system... thats all I need to start off with. I was also educated about the product on which I will be working on, and I feel very comfortable with it. My work is very interesting, challenging, and has a lot to learn. Hmmm! Greatly looking forward to start off with some coding stuff as soon as possible~

MY LAST DAY AT VIEWLOCITY

It's been a memorable experience for me to work as a developer intern for the last 4 months at Viewlocity. Today is my official last day here, as I've been offered to work as a co-op engineer in the R&D department of Intervoice starting from June 1, 2005.

I Posted a farewell message to all the employees of Viewlocity, and had taken photos with all my colleagues. I thanked every one of them for making me a good developer and a better team player. My team lead (Murali) took me for lunch as a token of appreciation of my work. Just before leaving the office, I met all of them in person to say good-bye. Its sad to depart from the company that offered me the first job in the industry... but I told myself that I need to keep moving to achieve my career goals.

GETTING INTO INTERVOICE INC.

Great to get the offer-letter from Intervoice Inc. for a software developer co-op position. I feel lucky and happy about it. Thanks to Intervoice ~

MY SUMMER TOUR - VEGAS AND GRAND CANYON

One Evening, Naveen and I were having our usual useless talk... and there was a mention about a tour to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. But at that moment, not much thought was given to it. However the next day, both of us started getting ambitious to make this plan work out. We spoke to our room-mate Satyajit, and he at once agreed to join us. Now, we are three of us ready for the trip... but it was very hard for us to find a fourth guy. No one was ready to spend some bucks on a jolly trip to Vegas. After lot of pains, Naveen atlast got hold of Pulkit, convinced him, and we all started off for the yatra on May 7th, 2005. This day is very special to Naveen, as he had his Graduation Ceremony on this day. Naveen is no more a student from now onwards :-)

We rented out a mid-sized car (Dodge Stratus) for 6 days. The car is very spacious for 4 guys, with enough leg-room for the back-seaters. Though the road-trip to Vegas takes nearly 19 hours from Dallas, we were feeling comfortable in the car at any given point of time. We crossed Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and reached Las Vegas located in Nevada. The drive across New Mexico and Arizona was uninteresting due to their barren lands and deserted roads, and not much of living force exists.

May 8, 2005

We reached Vegas at around 10:00 am local time, and had a drive through "Las Vegas Blvd". I was peeping out of the window, gazing at the architecture of the buildings and replication of various monuments. We then drove straight to the hotel where we had our room reserved, moved in our luggage, and got refreshed. At around 3:00 pm, we left the hotel, and started exploring every casino located at "Las Vegas Blvd". At the end of the day, we had covered half of them in Vegas. Some of the casinos visited on this day include... Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, Wynn, Tropicana, Paris, etc.

May 9, 2005

Rrrrrnnnngggg... The cell phone alarm rang early in the morning. We got ready to visit the Hover Dam, which is just 1/2 hr drive from Vegas. It is one of the most beautiful dams in United States. The Dam is built between the walls of the Canyon in 1932. It was built within the budget constraints during the years of depression, and was completed well before its due date. This dam is well know for its architecture and the technologies that were used to build it.

Here are some statistics...
726.4 feet high (221m)
1,244 feet wide (379 m)
660 feet (203 m) thick at the base
45 feet (13 m) thick at the top
$165 million dollars to build
4.5 years to build
4.4 million yards of concrete used for construction
March 1931 building began
Lake Mead serves as its Reservoir
September 30, 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the completed dam

In the afternoon, we went ahead exploring the remaining Casinos in Vegas. They include... Excaliber, MGM Grand, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Stratosphere, New York, Luxor, Aladdin, and many others.

May 10, 2005

We had our breakfast in the morning, and vacated the city at 10:00 am. A four-hour drive took us to Williams (a small village located near Grand Canyon). We had our room reserved in one of the hotels here. In the evening, we visited Grand Canyon to see the sunset. At my first sight, I was surprised by the vastness and depth of the canyon, and the splendid colors reflected by the layered walls. This canyon was formed by the erosion created by the Colorado river for millions years.

We had a 3-mile walk in the chill weather, admiring at the canyon. After gazing at the canyon for more than 1/2 hr, I was reminded of the fact that nothing is permanent on earth. Its all pure materialism that we go after... instead we should also go insearch of Divinity. The materialistic pleasures should go hand in hand with our search for the TRUTH.

We waited patiently in the cold weather to view the sunset over the canyon. Lot of pics were taken in my digi-cam ofcourse. At around 7:30 pm, we had a chance to see the IMAX film on Grand Canyon that was on our way back to the hotel.

May 11, 2005

We explored the country side stuff at Williams... tasted freshly made sandwiches, spoke to hand-full of people who were living there, watched the "Wild West Show" and the Steam Engine, and visited the museum. For the first time, I've been to the country-side life at US. One thing that surprised me is the tidyness of the village. The roads are very clean and people care very much for their place. The people here are very friendly, and are willing to spend time talking to strangers. This is unlikely the case in urban cities of USA. Anyways, we left the village at 12:00 noon local time. We fortunately visited a Meteor Crator on our way to Dallas.

We reached home at 6:40 am on May 12, 2005. It is indeed a very memorable trip !

GREAT SALE ON BOOKS

Hey... my collegue told me about the store that had 75% sale on books located at US 75 in Dallas. That weekend, I went along with Vijay and his room-mates to the store. I found a message being displayed at the store that said "There is no book that costs more than $5". There were many books piled-up and classified. We spent nearly 45 min in browsing the books, and finding the good ones of the lot. Its a nice deal as each of us purchased nearly 5-7 books~

STARTED OUR WAY BACK TO DALLAS

We started leaving South Padre in the late-morn, stopping by Subway for brunch. As South Padre is located at the border of Mexico and US, the security personnels checked our passports on our way back to Dallas. Driving is always a pleasure on the higways... and it was a nice weekend road trip we had !

ROAD TRIP TO SOUTH-PADRE

Started on an instantly planned week-end road-trip to South Padre, which is located at the border of US-Mexico. I was accompanied by Vijay and Sushil, and 2 friends of Sushil. We rented a Honda Civic (almost a new one with just 3000 miles driven so far). We all left home in the midnight at around 1:15 am.

WHAT MORE CAN ROBOTS DO ?

I got hold of an interesting article on the web "Body of steel, heart of gold" that gives a short note on the works of Kim Jong-Hwan, director of ITRC (Intelligent Robot Research Centre). This gentleman is working on developing artificial chromosomes to create the feeling of lust in robots. I was wondering ... what exactly do we want robots to do? Whatz the purpose of giving them the ability to feel, reason and desire. Where in the society do they fit into?

Its good to imagine robots doing all the cleaning work at home and taking care of children. But imagine the situation like the one in "I-ROBOT" movie. Well... anything is possible, but not in other 25 years. Lets wait to see the robots being our slaves. Hope not the vice-versa.

ATLAST GOT IT ... JUST WHEN I THOUGHT ITS GONE ~

I purchased "Clipart & More 2.5 Million" CD pack that was on a sale for FREE on the Thanksgiving' 2003. However, the full mail-in rebate of $25 got into my hands only after a very long wait of nearly 1 year. It was just a month back that I concluded it to be a wrong buy. But now... I am happy for having got my rebate which I thought its gone ~

NEW GUEST AT HOME...

A new guest has come home & will stay with me for the next many months. He will accompany me everywhere I go... stay with me when I am alone... and will also get me out of boredom. The guest is none other than my new mobile phone (Motorola A630). I got the parcel from Amazon y'day, when I was at work in Viewlocity. The first thing I did soon after I reached home was to unpack the parcel and take this tiny fellow out of the box. Its packed with several features such as BlueTooth, Internet, digi-cam, PDA utitilities, etc... I just loved it on the very first sight. I still feel excited about this new fellow...

FIRST DAY OF INTERN

Hey... Today - my first day at Viewlocity was cool~ Not much of coding or designing to be done; Ofcourse, NOBODY does it on the very first day at job. I am among the 3 newly recruited intern workers for the company. We three of us were asked to work in a big common cabin for the time being. The cabin had 1 PC for each of us to work with.

There was a meeting at the start of the day (8:30 am) followed by some paper work and setting up each PC at our cabin. Then, we were asked to go through the coding conventions of the company. There were also 3 seminars delivered by 3 different people about various aspects of the company and the projects. I and my collegues will be assigned work tommorow ... I guess~

GREAT... GOT AN INTERNSHIP

God blessed me... Atlast, I got an internship at Viewlocity Inc. at Richardson after a long wait. The interview was cool... Thanks to the interviewer! I am greatly excited about this internship position.

MEMORABLE TRIP TO INDIA

I had a splendid trip to India in 7th Dec 2004 to 17 Jan 2005. My 40 days of stay in my homeland seemed to have vanished like a period of 40 minutes. I had many memorable moments with my family during my stay. I visited several temples, had a trip to Tirupathi and Nellore, bought new clothes, etc... I had such emotional attachments with my parents, sis and relatives that I never felt like returning back to USA. However... I had to realize my goals !