Pavan Gayakwad

How it all happened? - The Real Story

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:12:09 PST

Along with my nostalgia, I am trying to present how a software can solve the real-time problem and how problem can be visualized before moving to any solution. In between a situation in my life as an example and gratitude to my real life Heros.

I got my Computer Science Bachelors degree in my home town Davangere and during my study time, (not so long ago, but in the year 2003), my college (UBDT College of Engineering) university was putting huge effort in setting, generating and securing question papers for examinations. The university is responsible for preparing question papers.

Problem

Every 6 months there used to be semester final exams. At a time, students from 4 semesters (of one branch) are mandated to attend it. Like that each semester had like 5 to 7 subjects, and there were minimum of 7 branches in my college, so university of our college had to prepare at-least 140 question papers! (4 sems X 5 subjects X 7 branches = 140) and another 140 in the 12th month (so per year at least 280 papers only for Engineering courses! and our university was handling 57 other courses along the side!).

To my surprise, all this was happening through manual process!!! also the biggest risk university was facing about securing question papers from pre-exposures before exam date. The manual effort was huge and painful. Some more details here.

Solution

I was shocked when my respected Sir.Shreedhar (who guided me in all aspects of learning during my college days) was explaining all this to me. That ultimately inspired to build a software solution (under the guidance Sir.Shreedhar) which can store and manage questions-with-answer bank, allow setting any type of question paper format, generate question papers and secure from before exam exposure.

Because it was teams effort to set and prepare question papers, The software built is a network (LAN) enabled, should run on any version of cool Microsoft Windows desktops.The software had to address automating functional needs and as well reduce software usage training time. It took long time to study User Interface Principle for Windows 98/Me (OS at that time :). For networking I had to gain pragmatic understanding of RDBMS and Windows networking

After so many long readings, code typing and testing of the software, I installed it in the university (year 2003) and they started using to conduct several exams.(in fact, during semester final exams, I had to answer question paper generated from my software, it was tough, damn! later we thought to introduce question complexity levels :) One fine day I got this official thank you letter: http://srushti-soft.com/quickquest/story/certi_Registrar_view.jpg from university and that day, It was one of the happiest moments in my life!

'Quick Quest' emerged!

Going forward, many other institutions in India and abroad found this software very useful http://srushti-soft.com/quickquest/story.htm and using it with no problems.

Not just that, when I was about to finish my 8th semester exams, got job offer from Starmark to work as Associate Software Engineer. The Vice President of Starmark, Arun Tumati used to visit our college to motivate and train students from technical and soft-skills front, and during his visit Shreedhar sir suggested me to give demo of 'Quick Quest'.

Today, after 8 years, the same 'Quick Quest' is helping me to start my own company.

I just can't thank enough to Sir.Shreedhar and Arun Tumati. They are my continuous (on and off the scene) motivators and mentors. My professional existence wouldn't have happened like today if I had not met Sir.Shreedhar and Arun Tumati.

Unlike every man, I have two men behind all my success ;) [women, please excuse me!]

Is your Facebook account secured?

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 07:37:54 PST

In our day-to-day social networking activities, we sometimes hear people saying about their Facebook account was compromised or hijacked.

Along with our common measures (having complex password, not clicking alien links..etc) to protect ourselves, I am sure, there is one more thing, which may be overlooked (at-least I did it :). Let me share that here.

1. Login to your facebook account. (I guess, you are already, if you have got this article link from Facebook :)

2. Go to your 'Account Settings'

3. ..and then go to 'Apps' section situated in lefts-side menu bar,

Ideally, any secured Facebook account "App Settings" page should not list many many application entries. If so, you are royally welcoming the malicious service provider to screw your account :)

So hurry up and remove those apps which you are not using and unknown to you and stay safe! Please keep in mind that some applications (like TweetDeck..etc) you might have allowed them to access intentionally.

Did you see many unknown apps in your Facebook App Settings? Comment and share your thoughts here!

In This World - 17

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:10:06 PST

"The true leadership is not given, it should be earned and consistently demonstrated."

"A true leader creates more leaders and feared ones create blind followers"

Hiring a Super Programmer?

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 06:06:53 PST

When it comes to programming, I noticed most of the super programmers share similar attitude and thought process. I started identifying similarities whenever I took interviews.

After meeting 300+ potential candidates (thanks to all my previous companies choosing me as interviewer), I dared to have a quick points to spot a 'Super Programmer' from the pool of programmers.

When I shared these points with my colleagues, they found it useful during their interviews.

Please note

These points are strictly valid for 'Rock Star Programmers' only. If you apply these observations to a good programmer, you may loose him.
I always don't follow these points very strictly in interviews as there will be many other aspects to consider, However these can just be used as indicative pointers if you feel good.

So here it goes,

They may be little nervous in the beginning. When you ask them about their interesting project, their eyes glow and for a moment they just forget where they are and completely immerse in explaining the problem, how much they were amazed, their explorations and implementations.
They have habit of knowing all latest happenings in their interested technical area. That means they are closely following beta and release candidates as well.
They read lot of blog posts, tech articles and most of the time own a technical blog. They have good bunch of posts on technical articles or pointers in their blog.
Even if they don't know the answer, they logically think and almost get through the problem. Their hands don't shiver when writing code. No matter even if the syntax is wrong.
They always try to generalize the approach and try to make it reusable.
They are fanatic about browsing the project code-base and finding out what is best in it. If something is badly designed or written, it disturbs them and try to revamp/fix it if permitted. They will be proactive in doing it (provided such an opportunity is given).
They have earned good reputation points in technical forums. That is more important than having bunch of certifications.
Their resume contains bunch of memory profiling, performance profiling, code review tools and many popular open source frameworks used (like Caliburn..etc) in their project and few of those is introduced in the project because of them.

Ask which piece of code in their previous projects liked a lot and which was not. It indirectly tells us their level of understanding about technology.
Observe your conversation with them. As you know, the developers conversation context is bit different. Are they catching it quickly? your such conversation should go with them smoothly. For example, I usually ask what version of Dotnet you are using and many reply, its 2010 or 2008! First point, They are best Visual Studio.Net IDE users than Dotnet programmers. Second, they are not understanding the context. I have asked the version of Dotnet framework not the IDE. If you are explaining too many things during the discussion, then there is a problem.
When you give them a paper and pen and ask to write a program, check how much space they waste. 2 things to notice,

If they fill A4 sheet page to write 2 small programs (reverse a string and looping through ArrayList having different type of objects) maintaining bigger inline space, then they can't think more on efficient usage of computing resources also. Even if they think, it may be their simple programming habit but not something coming out from geeky mind. This is more inspired from 'you will work the way you really are'.
With minimum inline spacing, even if they fill A4 sheet writing lot of code (without striking unused ones) then, they are dangerous programmers. They can explain the logic on the same day when its written and anytime in future you need to pray for God to know about the hidden logic.
Why there should be a 3rd point when I said only 2.

Ask them very basic questions (If you have to implement AJAX response/request what objects do you use in Javascript) and see how detailed and thoughtful answer they give. Whats more interesting is how deep they delve and present different aspects of it.
They have either contributed to one of open source projects (on CodePlex, SourceForge,gitHub..etc) or have hosted their own.
They have published some articles on technical article sites (like CodeProject...etc)
Majority of their posts on twitter or facebook speaks about their serious technical explorations than 'I ate this', 'been here..' or sharing funny cat videos.
They have list of achievements in the resume and may not be a certified professional.

No matter even if candidate don't stand true for all above points. Most of the time we believe our senses and take the decision (and that is usually proved right.)

Well, this is my list. Do you have some quick points? Feel free to share here.

Thanks for reading!

Openness with Free Web Fonts

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 05:54:06 PST

If you want to design a webpage with stylish font. There are few important things to consider before using graphical text images.

If you prefer search engines bring traffic to your web page, it has to be Search engine friendly, as of now crawling engine ignore text written in images. (BTW, can search engines improve to extract text from image and index? like Quick Quest does ;)
The font should be rendered and displayed consistent across multiple browsers.
When viewed through mobile browser, it should wrap (as normal text do) to fit the small screen.

Its now old fashion to choose the most common font (either Times New Roman or Arial, that are for sure exist in users computer) and design the page accordingly to stay safe.

Things have changed, so the approaches.

To respect above points, HTML font embedding became essential need to design impressive web page (SrushtiSoft.com home page is using font embedding. Its live now!).

Back in 1997, Microsoft released Web Embedding Fonts Tool (WEFT) which allows to create font objects (.eot) file from our favorite True Type Font (TTF) and refer it in CSS. That's all! Any page viewed in Internet Explorer started rendering our favorite font even if it is not present in user's computer.

That's really cool.

As usual, Microsoft restricted this openness only to IE browsers and that made many web developers to ignore this effort silently. (However, Microsoft is still active on WEFT initiative and anytime may strike back)

So there comes Google with free open source Web Fonts! http://www.google.com/webfonts.

As of now there are 291 free open source fonts for embedding. With each font, Google provide a quick guidelines on how to use in a web page.

Your jaw drops when you see Google giving just 2 lines to integrate web fonts!

SrushtiSoft home page uses one very decent font out of 291 Google web fonts. We tested it over 100+ browsers on Linux, Windows and Android platforms and very few browsers failed to render.

I sense strong future of web fonts as they make web pages to render without mandating users to install required font. For a web developer, there is so much of relaxing factor in it. :)

In This World - 16

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:41:56 PDT

"Relationship shouldn't be complicated, if it so, then its time to look at it from a different perspective and attempt to resolve challenges, if that doesn't work at any cost, put a period and move on."

Well..I have one more view to share which may sound bit contradictory to what I expressed above, but its indeed an unarguable truth!

"Move on - is the simplest one to say and most difficult to go through!" :)

Windows Service or Windows Task Scheduler?

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 20:45:26 PDT

Are you planning to create long running background process (in C#) and thinking to build a Windows service?

Then wait for a moment!

Windows Task scheduler (Start->Programs->Accessories-> System Tools-> Task Scheduler) can also be a decent choice!

"Windows Vista and higher windows (server) operating systems are offering matured Task scheduler with many advancements like Triggers, Actions, Conditions, failure recovery, email notifications, security and much more."

Its obvious that many programmers think Windows Service is easy to maintain and what it can do, task scheduler can’t. But now, it’s time to look at Windows Task Scheduler [also at Microsoft white paper] and see what great features it is offering.

When to go for Windows Service?
Okay, let me try to answer this popular question in one line.

Windows Service is suitable for receiving service request 'anytime' and process 'instantly'.

Just think of anti-virus scanner, network port activity tracker, remote access connection manager, SQL Server database service, chat server..etc. all these need ‘long running process’ because they have to serve the service requests coming in ‘any time’.

Scheduled Processes
If
your process wake up every few minutes, queries intended source (like database, Message Queue..etc), performs some operations and goes to sleep
And
Next time when it wakes up, has no interest in knowing what it did previously.
then
consider leveraging Windows Task Scheduler. Write a console program (hide console window if you want) or WinForms program (with Form + Taskbar visibility false) and set it up with Task scheduler.

Benefits

No need to implement timer logic to keep process alive. Having programatic timer unnecessarily consume more CPU cycles because Windows has to create some more threads to keep timer run properly.
Avoids doing more R&D on finding and troubleshooting memory leak problems. Windows Scheduler gracefully terminate the windows process (on which our program is running) and creates new one for next run.
Don’t have to worry about automatic restart of your process when it crash or to perform multiple retries whenever it encountere problems.

Points to consider...

From support point of view, consider using logging component (like log4net) to log events to windows event viewer. Many monitoring systems mostly listen to event viewer and send notification emails to support team to flag about the problem.
When setting up your process with Task Scheduler, make sure to check option to run it even when user is NOT logged into the system.
Make sure 'Task Scheduler' service (Start->Run->type 'services.msc' and check) is running on server operating system and set to 'Automatic' mode.

That's all for now. However choice between windows service and task scheduler is a design decision and depends on requirements. If something is tickling in your mind and want to express your thoguts as a comment, feel free to share here. Thanks!

Tracking Downloads in Google Analytics

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 22:58:02 PDT

I wanted to track download count of Quick Quest demo version hosted on SrushtiSoft through Google analytics. I faced obstacle during the implementation process and wanted to share here, hoping to save your sometime if you are also trying to do the same for your website or blog.

Google neatly guide you how to do it, http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55529 with a slashing message "This article is for the latest version of the tracking code". But it just doesn't work at one-shot!

I had to spend sometime to find a way to troubleshoot "pageTracker is not defined" javascript error. Finally, the post on StackOverflow puts you on right path: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3503511/google-analytics-pagetracker-is-not-defined

Though google talks about the approach in detail here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncUsageGuide.html chances of it going unnoticed is more.

Getting ready for Paris trip?

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 20:16:06 PDT

I had wonderful experiences in Paris. Its a great place and you must visit at least once in a life time. I hope my below points would help to avoid some surprises during your Paris tour...

- Best way to visit Paris is using Metro. If you are planning to stay for few weeks, its worth to buy book of 10 metro tickets which will save you some euros.

- When you are walking on Champse-Elysee, you can have sandwiches from road side stalls. They are tasty and worth each penny.

- Most of the non-veg dishes are with Beef and Fish.

- Alcohol is cheap.

- At least try to greet people in French and they will try their best to assist you in English.

- Do not purchase Disneyland Paris tickets on its English version website when you are in Paris. Disney charge you as per UK (in GBP) rates, which is unnecessarily expensive, where as same kind of ticket can be found in French version of Disney website for 10 euro lesser the UK cost. Disney continue to make fun of you by expecting you to read and understand terms and conditions written in French. At some point you feel Micky laughing at you!

- At least Paris doesn't have telephones which can accept coin or credit cards!! So if you want to make a local call you must have telephone card purchased (starts with 7.5 Euro) in one of TABACs found in many paris streets.

- Not all public automated toilets are free.

- If you are expecting your hotel reception will speak in English with you, thats your fault.

- Sunday is like a dead day in Paris. All most all the stores/pharmacies will be closed! if you have planned to have food near your home/hotel, you may prefer to die, instead trying really hard to find out 'open' restaurant.

- In most of the shows/planetariums...etc French is the default language, and you can't expect English.

- Louvre museum has multiple entries but no one knows. (including Paris residents :) Everybody stand in the big line near popular glass traingle!

- If you don't like crowd, It may be bad idea to plan visiting popular places in Paris during weekends.You will have to discover the tourist attraction place from the crowd. Specially, First Sunday of every month, most of the (state) museums will have free entry. If you enjoy standing in 2 or 3 hours long line, you can dare to step out of your home/hotel otherwise visit beautiful gardens in Paris.

- As euro international credit card, never ever go for "HDFC Forex Card plus" it doesn't always work on all online shops and HDFC demonstrated its unmatching irresponsiblility in customer support activities when you try to contact them over web/email.

- Better take vaseline with you, otherwise you will end up buying one vaseline tube for 3 euros!

- When you go to any cinema make sure it is V.O.S.T or VO (that means english version). Otherwise next 2 hours you won't know people laughing at you or on a joke in French from the movie.

- You may not feel all museums/tourist places are great! so do enough research before stepping inside by paying 8+ euros of entry fee. Otherwise you will feel museum sculptures looking at you as a dumb piece of stone.

- Your hotel may not have 3 pin plugs, so you can plan to buy 2-to-3 converter from castorama stalls for your mobile/laptop chargers.

- This is very important, if you are married, make sure you take your wife to Paris! :) its a damn romantic place :)

Buck

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:35:08 PDT

"Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" is a neat pack of humor, adventure with be on the mind characters. The fun begins when alone, One-eyed, dino-hunting weasel called 'Buck', who is sophisticated yet not so complicated, agrees to find 'floppy green thing' with his set of rules and killing his life time enemy Rudy (T Rex Dino). After that there are many eye catching events and nice animation work.

In the end Buck kill Rudy and says "He is gone! What am I suppose to do now?". In that very moment, I see him losing excitement in life. Not so fascinatingly, he agrees to come to the world of Ice age. All of a sudden when Rudy roars!! Buck finds reason to go back to his world and fight with Rudy all alone.

Its been many weeks, Buck is still in my thoughts and there is no sign of him stopping his blabbering. His existence has no meaning if there is no Rudy. He only knows living for finding opportunity to defeat Rudy. That's his purpose and he is always on his toes. Buck is talking endlessly, sometimes suddenly he pops at me and asks 'hey! whats' your purpose of life?' and I just find myself speechless.

Opera Unite - Browser with New Possibilities

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 19:01:56 PDT

When Microsoft, Mozilla and Google are competing hard to increase browser share by tweaking their products, opera silently concentrated on innovation and sprung with neat free stuffs.

Opera’s new suite ‘Unite’ lead the way in defining how we can maximize our internet experience through its impressive capabilities.

This amazing software is not just a ‘browser’ loading web pages lightning fast with Turbo technology; it’s a web server in the browser, messenger, media/file/photo sharing host, a fridge (people can leave a message for you) and can be more in future!!!

If you are using FireFox, Chrome or Safari and you have set of strong technical reasons for why you are using it over Internet Explorer, then it’s time for you to checkout Opera Unite 10. From the technology point of view, your satisfaction is guaranteed.

In This World - 15

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:40:43 PDT

"Never trust someone more than yourself, they will sure betray you."

2 'Why's

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 09:38:57 PDT

1. Why Microsoft is still using Flash when its own baby- Silverlight light is out there?

2. As shown above, having popup menu open on IE8, why Windows Start menu does not appear when windows key (on keyboard) is pressed? (Windows Vista with SP2 Operating system)

Grr...

In This World - 14

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:09:59 PST

Any mistake is a big failure if we don't understand why and how it happened.

DotNet: Generic Sorting Class

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 22:30:45 PDT

Recently, I was searching for a generic sorting approach on dotnet List. Many articles (Like one, two..etc) were suggesting standard way of creating IComparer implementer class and using that with generic list (List <T>) in our application. Writing IComparer class for every business object not only take huge time also create challenges in code management when it grow considerably. So, here is simple and effective generic sorting class which can be used with any custom business object and can be sorted on any one of its properties.

All you have to do is, copy paste the complete code in to a new .cs file.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Text;
using System.Reflection;

namespace Srushti.Business
{
public class GenericComparer<T> : IComparer<T>
 {
   string _propName = string.Empty;
   bool _sortDirection = true;
   public GenericComparer(string propertyName, bool SortAscending)
   {
       _propName = propertyName;
       _sortDirection = SortAscending;
   }

   private int CompareAsc(object o1, object o2)
   {
       if (o1 is IComparable)
           return ((IComparable)o1).CompareTo(o2);
       else if (o1.Equals(o2))
           return 0;
       else
           return o1.ToString().CompareTo(o2);
   }
   #region IComparer<T> Members

   public int Compare(T x, T y)
   {
       PropertyInfo pi = x.GetType().GetProperty(_propName);
       object o1 = pi.GetValue(x, null);

       pi = y.GetType().GetProperty(_propName);
       object o2 = pi.GetValue(y, null);

       if (_sortDirection == false)
           return CompareAsc(o1, o2) * -1;
       else
           return CompareAsc(o1, o2);
   }
   #endregion
 }
}

...and start consuming it as shown below. You have to supply, property name (as String) on which you want to sort the list and sorting direction (Boolean, true for ascending and false for descending) to GenericComparer() constructor.

private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
   List empList = new List();
   empList.Add(new Employee() { ID = 1, Name = "Three" });
   empList.Add(new Employee() { ID = 2, Name = "Two" });
   empList.Add(new Employee() { ID = 3, Name = "One" });

   /*** Generic Comparer ***/
   empList.Sort(new GenericComparer("Name", true));

   foreach (Employee em in empList)
       MessageBox.Show(em.ID.ToString());
}

public class Employee
{
   public int ID { get; set; }
   public string Name { get; set; }
}

Please Note: Class properties with complex data types like DateTime, Nullable might require special attention.

Quick Quest - A Step Ahead

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:12:58 PST

With a history of serving Kuvempu University for question paper generation, Quick Quest is now serving Scholar’s private college in Nigeria and receiving good feedback. The teacher using this software sent his experiences and I am very happy to publish his 'as is' words on main page of Quick Quest section.
This is a great encouragement to the development effort of Quick Quest.

Thanks to “The Scholar’s Private Collage, Akure, Nigeria” for choosing Quick Quest.

LINQ Quick Start

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:19:12 PST

If you are a new bee to LINQ (Language Integrated Query), stunned by looking at big books and longer web pages on it, here is the relaxing news. Read “LINQ: The Future of Data Access in C# 3.0” by Joe Hummel. He presented LINQ in a simple and effective manner.

This book with 60 pages quickly give you pragmatic understanding of LINQ and push you to start using it in next hour. This is a good quick starter book in spades.

I personally prefer reading such quick start books to get glimpse of technology and later pick thicker book or detailed tech web links to dig deeper.

Present

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 20:30:24 PDT

The saxophone playing in lavish and lazy mood on my home theater audio system. Half filled crystal clear mocktail glass is standing still on the table. It served me 12 times. Ice cubes in the container melting slowly. Few small pieces of pizza left out in the take-away box. Ceiling fan is blowing cool air. With aesthetic gratification, I am sleeping in my bed. Not fully slipped in dream world. My senses are still enjoying the atmosphere. My right leg big and second toe shaking unnoticeably. Laptop silently downloading recent updates and also scanning for Conficker warm which recently attracted much of attention all over the world. Television is in mute, “DOA: Dead or Alive” action was on. Washing machine is busy cleaning dirty cloths. My salary credit message is sitting unread in my mobile message inbox. The alarm is down counting to wake me up in next 2 minutes…
I felt I needed this lazy day after my busy project work schedule at office. I spent restless week. I am lying in my bed like a reluctant chap. I got to hear this from somewhere my inside, "Is this what I wanted?"
I said- “of course Yes! Not sure about the future though. Whatever I have now is what all I use to dream in my college days. Life gifted me this day. One lazy day with immense satisfaction!"

Why I Am Not Ready for IE8?

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 05:14:30 PDT

Microsoft’s free web browser Internet Explorer 8 is out for public use and it started appearing on windows update programs list as well. This time IE8 is offering a tight competition to its rivalry browsers by putting up noticeable features like accelerators, web slices, common color tab groups, security filters and better performance in comparison with its previous flavors.

It was impressive in the beginning when I started using IE8 with all its new features; on my aggressive usage below points came to notice.

Still few web sites are breaking
Tabs are not responsive if one of the tabs is struggling
Page rendering sometimes takes more processing time and
Browser speed is not always faster

Let me admit, I got addicted to Firefox though it’s a memory hogging browser. But it just doesn’t toddle when I am doing too many things on it. IE8 is an obtrusive update for IE7/IE6 users. Users like me have slim to none chances to migrate to IE8 yet.

MS Works for Windows 7.0

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 19:44:58 PDT

Windows Vista never ‘wow’ed me. Office 2003 installation did, when I was fiddling around MS office 2003 advanced installation options. I got to see 'Works for Windows 7.0'!!!

Did Microsoft have intuition about Windows 7 operating system in the year 2003? Before I think too wild, the description helped me to understand that 7.0 is the version of ‘Microsoft Works’ ;)

One Evening Rain

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 08:51:54 PDT

I was too far from my home by the time I realize that its gonna rain nicely now. Its 7 eve and it’s my routine walk time. Weather turned darker. When I turn around, I saw slight panic in people’s eyes. It started raining. Those who were walking started running, two wheelers stopped near shops or big trees for shelter. People in car were closing windows. Many were kind of worried about getting drenched.

It's getting everything wet including me. I am standing looking up at the sky. The rain drops are falling on my face and I shut my eyes. I am feeling cold. My heart is more lively and warm. I am flying free. Thunder and lightning didn’t change what I'm feeling. I kept my walk as usual and as simple as it can. Many were looking at me strangely, some with a question mark on their face and few with confusion. They all had one common question-“Are you mad? It’s raining!!”
I just laughed at it! I couldn’t stop walking in the rain and so my thinking. We became so much ‘civilized’ that we now worry so much to enjoy natural happenings. We are worried more about what others think. Our etiquettes are not comfy with natural events. We fell sick when weather changes slightly. Our health is more delicate. We became complicated. Our day to day 'modern busy life' is making us to ignore the fact that ‘we are part of nature’.

In This World - 13

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 21:01:19 PST

Some relations created to break. Despite your highest level of honesty to them, they just break.

'The Godfather' - Worth Remembering Quotes

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 09:10:56 PST

Carefully and painstakingly crafted movie -The Godfather. Incredibly strong script, cut throat decisions, lasting moments, nerve breaking sequences, chilling twists and extremely sharp dialogues makes me play its DVD often.

I have captured some of the very thoughtful and deep impacting dialogues from the characters of 'The Godfather'.

"I am going to make him an offer he can't refuse"

"Why did you go to the police? Why didn't you come to me first?"

"Never hate your enemies, it affects your judgment."

"Fredo you are my older brother and I love you so much, but never take side with anyone against the family ever"

"Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer."

"Never let anyone know what you are thinking."

"So, Barzini will move against you first. He'll set up a meeting with someone that you absolutely trust guaranteeing your safety and at that meeting you'll be assassinated."

My father made him an offer he couldn't refuse.
What was that?
Luca Brasi, held a gun to his head, and my father assured him, that either his brain or his signature would be on the contract.

"It's an old habit. I spent my life trying not to be careless. Women and children can be careless but not men"

"Every family has bad memories"

"Friendship and money...oil and water"

"That he got from you, that no"

"My credit good enough to buy you out?"

"The only wealth in this world is children. More than all the money, power on earth."

"Hey, listen, I want somebody good - and I mean very good - to plant that gun. I don't want my brother coming out of that toilet with just his dick in his hands, alright?"

"Where does it say that you can't kill a cop?"

"Do you spend time with your family? Good. Because a man that doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man."

"Times have changed. It's not like the Old Days, when we can do anything we want. A refusal is not the act of a friend."

"What have I ever done to make you treat me so disrespectfully? If you'd come to me in friendship, then this scum that ruined your daughter would be suffering this very day. And if by chance an honest man like yourself should make enemies, then they would become my enemies. And then they would fear you. "

"Mr. Corleone never asks a second favor once he's refused the first, understood?"

"I don't like violence, Tom. I'm a businessman; blood is a big expense."

"Michael, I lost all the venom, all the juice of youth. I lost the lust for women and now my mind is clear. My duty to god is clear."

"I have a problem and I want to find out if it is my problem or your problem."

"I don't need tough guys, I need more lawyers."

"I never wanted this for you. I work my whole life - I don't apologize - to take care of my family, and I refused to be a fool, dancing on the string held by all those bigshots. I don't apologize - that's my life - but I thought that, that when it was your time, that you would be the one to hold the string. Senator Corleone; Governor Corleone. Well, it wasn't enough time, Michael. It wasn't enough time."

"Don't ask me about my business, Kay."

"Don't overestimate the power of forgiveness"

"I have a sentimental weakness for my children and I've spoiled them as you can see. They talk when they should listen."

DotNet Windows Service: One of Good Practices

noreply@blogger.com (Pavan Gayakwad | SrushtiSoft) — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 15:22:45 PST

DotNet Windows service is a long running executable, registered with windows operating system and do its work behind the scene. It gets activated when system boots, acquire its own windows session and start working without giving any clue to the user. Since windows start and manage these services, we have to register windows services in operating system.

I noticed it many times, the windows services which does simple operations, some of us having habit of writing code in the service onStart() event or write a private method in the same file/project and call it in the onStart() event. The problem with this approach is whenever we modify logic or functionality of existing windows service, we have to re-register executable with updated one. Doing this kind of geeky stuff on production server does not seem reliable. The best thing to avoid this situation is, write all code in a separate class library project. Generate a DLL out of it, refer it in windows service and call the DLL public methods. Now, we just have to register the windows service executable once and whenever there is an update, stop the service, replace the DLL and start the service.