Preparing for Drivers License Written Test?

If you are preparing for the Drivers License written test here in US, you must consider reading the DL Handbook manual (just skim through the book) available on dmv.org website. After that, make sure you solve atleast 15-20 tests which are free on http://www.driversprep.com, this would largely help you understand and go with a lot of confidence. After a while, most of the questions would repeat and i would say, if you are scoring around 27, you are ready for the written test. The processes here are too strict and ensure that you carry your SSN, passport and all when you go for the written test. If you are going to the DMV office in Irving office texas, ensure that you go on a weekday sometime in the afternoon after 2pm and you would find not many people waiting there otherwise it will eat up a lot of your time just for giving the test. If you have applied for your SSN and you are awaiting the number, you will not be allowed to write the written test. But while you call up the information center at DMV, they may tell you that its allowed. Surprising though. Good luck for your DMV Drivers license written test. BTW, you can apply for a State ID Card for 15$ at the same office. They would deliver your State ID card on your mailing address in 2-4 weeks.

An Evening @ "The Bostons"...

Bostons is a pub next to the Buffalo wings that we visited last week here in irving, TX. Manohar wanted to cheer the team and smitha rejuvinated it by smoking it up more and therez the evening party @ the bostons. We started from office at 5:30pm... We are - manohar, smitha, sashi, me, liza, lizatte, rao, arun muthuswamy.. Some of the orders were - margarita on the rocks, frozen margarita, virgin margarita, beers of various brands with veg and non-veg platters for side dishes. The evening went on with a lot of humor starring manohar and arun muthuswamy, counter spoken by rao garu :) the topics swang from dashavatharam a flop, movies, rajinikanth movies, radio, salam namaste, the neighbour rj of smitha who wished manohar a hai without knowing him! rao garu outspoken.. it was a splending evening and a great time... Well, i dont have my cam to put pics as yet.. i just loved it...

When you need patience...

Sometimes, you need patience. Sometimes you need a lot more of it. The SSN process takes just so long here in US and i am really not sure how much of slowness does it cause me more. Life here cannot move an inch when you dont have a drivers license. Past two days i had spent in reading a lot of questions related to Drivers license written test. And today when i went to the DL office, they say - sorry sir, we need your SSN Number to proceed with the written test. Heck!! I am so shocked for the same lady whom i called up on the phone agreed for a written test with a valid i94 and passport both valid for a minimum of 6 months and nothing moves an inch without the SSN. Credit Card is like a golden Egg for a lot of people here and even that requires an SSN. Luckily they allowed me to open a bank account - bank of america, but oh yeah.. i was waiting for this.. Sir, you cannot do any bank transfers without submitting your SSN and please see us again with your SSN and collect your photo debit card. Requirements are many but u just have to look at them and keep waiting. Life has not been so lazy moving for me but yes, everything needs time and everything runs behind your SSN many times.

Lunch @ Mahendra's Place

It was a boring sunday to begin with. Along with Jasper, we went to an indian store to buy groceries. Oops, its 10:00Am and the store opens at 10:30am... We returned home and i got a call from mahendra, inviting me for lunch. Well, to say i know hardly few people here in my place and the invitation was really pleasing. Mahendra picked me up at 11:30 and i was there at his home. He has lovely two kids shashank and chintoo. I happened to meet his parents (mom and dad) and spoke to them for about an hour or two. Then his wife had a yummy table of lunch set up. Naresh, was mahendra's cousin brother on H1B as well. I happened to meet him there. The two kids are the same as the two kids of my sister who cant keep quiet a minute. After a yummy lunch served with rice, sambar, brinjal masala (egg plant people call here), pickles, curd, noodles, papad hmm... yummy... mahendra got a DVD's pack borrowed from rao garu which contains a whole lot of telugu movies. It then reminded me of my arunmac the collection of about 100+ movies. Rao is accounts manager here in the office an ardent fan of telugu movies. We watched "Amma Nanna Tamilammayi"... for about an hour... followed by the lunch was a yummy fruit custerd... and then at about 2:30pm i am back to my place... I had a good sound sleep and then i got up at 5:30pm...

I really loved the lunch and their parents who spoke very nicely. It was a great day.

Salaam Namaste - 104.9FM in US

Here is the Radio FM Channel. Its called Salaam Namaste, 104.9FM. Its one of the craziest heard of the radio fm channels by many indians. Based at Dallas communication center, Right inside my office building. Thanks to Mr. Rao who took me inside the Radio Studio yesterday. He has a lot of contacts. Many are from India and the organization headed by a person from andhra, vishakapatnam. I really loved going around the studio. They have a lot more planned. Everest Theaters is their next concept. They got a land deal done for about 40m USD and this is a set of theaters, that would screen hindi / other regional language films. They are planning to start a TV channel as well. That would be really awesome. "DESI" is the term used by americans to call a person from Indian Origin, Pakistan Origin etc. Thats a popular term. Smitha works in my office, she got married and moved to US. She was in Bangalore also having experience with our popular Radio One FM in Blore. She is on AIR from 11am to 1pm. You want a song dedicted for you, call me now and i will get it done :) I had the privilege to see the recording room, radio jockeys... it was a real good moment for me.

Do I have a Jet Lag?

No. I really dont have a jet lag. Many do have it, but some how i had planned my trip. Every American flight has a front TV that always shows you the time in India, Time in Chicago and Time at the Current location. Since most of the flights start at mid-night in india, we definitely have to wake up longer on the day you fly. Once you are in the flight and the flight gets to start, it would be 2am. I started to sleep, Sleep a bit more so you wake up at 2pm or 3pm india time and not at 6am india time. Well, If i could manage that i am sure i would have very less jet lag though. At everytime, i used to either look at both times and plan. Once i am down at chicago, on my flight to dallas, i had a deep sleep for an hour which was at around 10am... but thats ok... first day it would take a bit as you are already tired of the journey but i really didnt feel a jet lag. Oh ok, probably because i had a direct flight from delhi to chicago which was 16.5 hours? Lufthansa would have a break journey and you will have to wake up in the middle of the night to catch another connecting flight. Hmm.. may be... I am just normal with the timings here..

Shaky weather

It was extremely sunny for the first three days. When you park your car and go to the store and come back to open your car door to figure out the temperature is extremely high. All this was just for two days. The day i went to SSN office on tuesday, there was a rain (people call it showers here), and a heavy breeze (people call it tornado). The next day its sunny again and today i got up to see its pouring again. The climate changed all of a sudden. Its 10am here and i feel it looks like 6am in India... earlier i told you 9:30pm here looks like 6pm in india. Hope the shaky weather doesnt eat me up.

Yes it differs...

I am talking about the lifestyle i am seeing here. The cars run very fast and stop at every junction point, zeebra cross, stop point (even if there are no pedestrians) and if you were to be the pedestrian you might be caught in shy for stopping three cars in a row waiting for you to cross. The sun set is at 9pm or later... I am writing now at 8pm and i see the sun clear and neat as if its 4pm in India. There are a lot of brands for variety of items starting from butter, cheese, jam till all the high-end goods. Many of these brands are not recognizable for us in Inida as we have our own brands. So take time to learn on what is what. Most of the stores here have packed food which can be just readily cooked without pain. I am really not sure how nutritious it is, but yeah many buy them. Indian stores are few and indians are seen too in the stores and around you... and then i feel i am in Dallas - My home place. Just learnt to use the laundry and heading to cook on the electric stoves with ovens and fans on top. A lot more to foresee and adjust to, i guess i should say - Welcome to America now !!

Making of Adobe Cricket Application - Behind the scenes..

The story began on 15th of March 2008, here at the Adobe Bangalore office.. Ramesh (The Sr. Computer Scientist), a senior member of the evangalism group for platform products (Adobe Flex, AIR) set up the first of its meeting for coming up with a next generation way of watching cricket. His idea was clearly documented (he is really good at it). The thoughts were clear and the idea made sense with nearly whole of India (just about 1 billion?) watching cricket with great craze.

Srini and myself were the developers assigned. Jyoti was assigned the manager role driving the deliverables of the project. Ananth (Director, platform products at adobe bangalore) was spear heading the administration and real-push of the idea with the higher level management. He for sure played a vital role for making it happen.

With-in two days, myself and Srini came up with our prototypes. Srini started with the Scoreboard updates with the initial data scraped from cricinfo.com into the database and then read through a parser and i came up with a Chatting module prototype with just two static rooms present in the chat/gossip cornor, a mechanism to express emotions towards a player and contest center. The mechanism to express emotions will go like this - while in chat room, you can show up a photo of a cricketer and throw a garland to him, flowers, throw a tomato that smaches on him or throw chappal expressing anger... This would be broadcasted to all your chat room users who are in that room. I've initially used the polling mechanism and the messages were being delivered at a really slower rate and after converting it to rtmp it was like a zoom.. it went really faster now.. yes, the protocol matters.

It was taken from there on. The Contest (Which is not part of public beta now) and the chat room, Feedback to the users, send a notification to friend, etc. were made by me. Contest was moved to a really next level with more and more complicacies added to it. A user can create a contest and publish it to its chat room users and count on the poll data, announce a random winner and send notifications all in one place. The backend is written in java using the remoting of lcds 2.6 early beta versions..

It then went on from there to a whole set of new features a new UI (thanks to srini to make it happen, it was not an easy job)... and a lot more... At some point of time we were in synch with yahoo, rediff, cricket nirvana... and its all going on now.. We've had several email exchanges and several processes in place and a whole new team to take care of the issues related to the application. A QE process in place was an added advantage, an early beta with-in adobe and a pre-release version, it all happened. It was a great moment that i missed (when it went live)...

While making of the application, srini and myself had many over-stretched time-lines (srini had the most as he did most of UI) and we were on track working on weekends without any pause :)

Happy to see it flying now.. great going..

My work goes live... Cricket / AIR - for Desktop

It was a very tiring past few weeks for me at adobe, Bangalore. With Srini, i also shared some of the tireless nights writing a piece of code to make "Ramesh's dream come true" - idea of watching cricket on desktop that would provide a web 2.0 experience. Moving away from a web 1.0 way of watching cricket in a browser with a refresh rate of the window that sends/recieves packets, this Adobe Cricket AIR Application is really far ahead of all the old technologies.

The UI and the experience of using the application is far far ahead of the regular web version. It does not auto-refresh for the real-time ball-ball update. It works with a Server-Push model where a server update (ball-by-ball update) is pushed to all the clients subscribing to it (all the cricket apps running). This does not leave the over-head of trying to request for a new score with a auto-refresh on the client reducing the load on the client. This is really an awesome mechanism and a very-light-weight mechanism to update.

Lot of cool features... Ball-by-ball update, score card, statistics, profiles, chatting, expressions, quick bowler/batting view, mini scoreboard, real-time alerts for wicket, six, four etc. player statistics, news/information, video watch, feedback/send a friend option and a lot more...

It provides a real way of family watch experience by watching cricket with your friends/collegues/relatives/loved ones, by chatting with them and sharing some thoughts across about the match. The Video pod (i believe) should be in the next version that would go with the app. Most of the code uses the RTMP (Real time message push) model starting from score board updates to the chatting pod..

I am happy for my work going live... Cheers...



Here is where Swaroop and Srini speak about the app..

And i reached US

I had a tiring flight journey... Hyderabad to Delhi - Kingfisher was almost an hour late and the ferry carrying the international passengers from domestic terminal to international terminal took almost an hour as most of the time went into loading/unloading the luggages. I just managed to get through the baggage scan, initial screening, baggage checkin, immigration, security just about 10 mins before boarding... Then a 16 hour long non-stop flight to chicago and then a break and then to dallas...

Thanks to Mr. Rao who picked me from the airport and got me to the guest house and made me eat a nice yummy indian food (Buffet). Some things do look different as the place is different but i really dont feel there is a whole lot of difference (probably because i studied about it before!)... Looking forward to a great start hopefully...

Moving to US

Though late, its my turn now. I am moving to US for work on H1. My flight is on 13th June 2008. I will be at Irving, Dallas (Texas) initially for a few days and later move to a location that my client would reside. Working for Adobe (earlier Macromedia) has been a really great experience for me.. 2 years and 9 months have passed like 2 mins and 9 seconds... Time flies, yes it does. I loved how i grew in Adobe, i completely loved it. Thanks to the managers who recognize and reward the talent here... its also one of the places to work for... I am not sure when i would return back to India again.. may be 6 years later? 10 years later? not sure... I hope my move towards this, would give me all the enthu and happiness to cherish for the days to come... I would miss everything here... A lot more, but definately this is not my farewell message... I just utter now - I am moving to US for a really long term (for many reasons that cannot start and end at this point)...

I will be leaving Bangalore and Adobe, this friday - 30th May 2008 and stay with parents at hyd for the next 10 days or so. I will be busy arranging a lot of stuff, helping my brother finish up the construction of our lovely five 2 bed-room appartment sorta individual house (Ground + 2 floors) at Uppal, hyderabad... I will write more about the completion of the same once done, with some photos that i captured from day 1 till the D'day of the inagural...

I would write next only after i reach US. I will be busy for next couple of days (weeks) trying to figure out my-way to get going for a whole-new journey of life in some different part of the world where u know hardly some people who care you the most. Good luck to me and hope my days to come turn sweet for the pain i have taken now.

A flight to remember...

On my flight from hyderabad to bangalore, i was on Kingfisher airlines. I noticed Praveen Kumar waiting in the front row for the boarding announcements to be made while i was waiting in the third row of the waiting lounge. Cricket, the game i watch the most of all on tv.. I was surprised to see the entire - "Bangalore Royal Challengers Team" - walking into the same flight as i am... Leave alone the same flight, i was sitting right between the entire cricket team...

Sitting next to me was - Wasim Jaffer and Venkatesh prasad, the bowling coach. On to the next side of the same row was - Jaques Kallis and his wife. Anil Kumble, Rahul Dravid, Praveen kumar, Goswami, Akhil, Dale styn, Virat kohli, everyone of the Royal challengers team. I also saw, Sunil Gavaskar (the commentator) walking into the flight. It really was a moment, a flight journey of 45 mins that delighted me with the cricket legends. I was happy, but then i did not try to over-do anything by trying to talk to them or do something wierd etc. I just treated them as another human beings and nothing really great about. Many were quiet in the flight, some sleeping, some with their ipods on etc.

I completely enjoyed my trip... it was really thrilling experience, though i didnt show it that minute.. i just loved it..

I represented "Adobe" at "Yahoo" Bangalore...

It was a moment of pride for me. Probably for the first time in my professional career. I am not a Business Analyst or an IIM Grad (or who has completed an MBA from a premium institute) involved into business decisions and deals. This was one of very niche and early opportunity for me here in the Adobe Flex/AIR team.

This happened two weeks ago. Ramesh (is a Sr. Computer Scientist in my team) heading the Evangelist activities related to the Platform Products of Adobe (Flex / AIR, primarily). Past few weeks i have been involved in developing a next generation product web 2.0 with Srini. Ramesh Called me and said 'hey arun, are u ready for the demo for Yahoo.. we are going after lunch'.. Umm.. yeah not yet but sure wouldnt take much time too.

Ramesh had his contacts spread and got the right audience. I and Ramesh Visited the Yahoo, Bangalore office in EGL. We were meeting with Aparna (New Businesses and partnerships manager) and Prashant (Yahoo-Cricket product manager).

It was a pride moment for me to "Sell a business by demoing a cool application that can impress most in this domain"... I had an opportunity to speak to sell and get the business partnership done. Of course, ramesh was there to handle the business related discussion in-depth but i was representing the Technical head role for their requirements and it went all well and i am very excited about it for the whole of the day. I would definitely remember it for sure.

WFH with Kids around could be fun :)

Monday i was working from hyderabad and i was at my sisters house. My nephew has been around, hez varun(nani), 4.5 years age.. I had to stay back for some urgent work that wouldnt require more than an hour so i had an option to do a WFH. Past few weeks i have been working on one of the top priority project and i really had a stretched schedule.

I had no other option but to give my camera phone to my newphew so he can play with it and shoot lots of photos everywhere in the house while i can work peacefully atleast for sometime. I got a call from office (jyoti and srini were in the conference and my newphew picks it without his knowledge ofcourse).. He goes on playing with the camera (after lifting the call where managers are having fun listening to his sweet baby voice and deeds)... My mobile has a tiger wallpaper and "Ideas come from every cornor of my newphews mind"!!.. he wants a tiger now. Yes he is still on call with my managers (in conference).. I am still not aware of all this as yet. Nani, comes to me working in the other room and starts pulling me - 'mama, i want a tiger, mama, i want a tiger now .... '

Luckily i was on IM working... i get a ping from the mgr on gtalk, 'where is ur mobile, we are trying to call you'!!... hmm... i then rush to and look at the mobile and thats when i realize that Nani was on call for the last 2 minutes or so :) When i took the mobile from nani, i see everyone on the conference laughing :) and as usual i join them too :)

As the call goes on, my manager starts discussing with me on the deliverables, planning, requirements... what to do next.. bla bla bla... the phrase 'mama, i want a tiger...', is going on the background on and on :) not in a loud voice though... I cannot keep the phone and i have to escape nani for his statements, i kept my phone on mute and start walking to-and-fro from bed room to hall to drawing room to balcony just to escape his voice on the conference (so i can speak when my turn comes)... well, i wish managers know WFH could be hard too :-p

For me, it was a great 30 minutes of WFH on call with my nephew...