Notes from a Desi Geek

I don’t know if I have mentioned it on my blog but in my day job, I work as a IT guy helping client burn more dollars on soon-to-be-obsolete business application. Just kidding. On a serious note, I work as a contractor and help client’s IT team in delivering their project(s). The nature of the job involves moving from one client to another from time to time.

All my past clients have used Outlook/Exchange as their mail platform except the current client who uses Lotus Notes.
If you have never worked with Lotus Notes, consider yourself lucky! Lotus Notes is the SUCKER. The people who designed it must have something against humanity. Seriously. Here’s sample of wonderful Lotus Notes behavior:

1. In your Inbox, if a mail is selected and you hit Delete Key, it doesn’t get deleted, Lotus just ‘marks’ it for Deletion! If you hit Delete key again, it will unmark it! To delete the mail, you have to hit Delete key and press F9 to refresh. I guess the designer never heard of the Trash/Recycle Bin concept.

2. Quick, How do you compose a new email in your favorite email client? Ctrl + N, I hear you say. Not so with Lotus Notes. To create a new email, oh wait, Lotus calls it ‘New Memo’, you have to hit Ctrl + M.

3. If you are in Inbox and press F5 (The windows standard for ‘Refresh’), Lotus Notes locks itself (behaves like Locking your workstation using Ctrl + Alt + Delete)! Nice, huh?

Let me say this out loud, LOTUS NOTES SUCKS. There goes, I said it in public, I feel better now.

If you want to get more laughs head over to The official Lotus Notes sucks site.

Event with this state of affairs, you would find proponents of Notes who say that Notes is more than an email application. It’s a database, It’s a RAD Environment, Da Da Da. Yawn. Lotus Notes might do N number of things but it doesn’t do email well. Period. I like Davey Bob’s comment on Lotus Notes.

Let me expand on that a bit. I have this nifty tool. I can hook a plow up to it and plow my field. I can hook a cart up to it and pull stuff around with it. I can get onto it and ride it around, even up a hill. I can teach it tricks, like putting its front part up in the air. I can get a variety of attachments and accessories for it. Everything revolves around this tool…there is nothing I cannot do with it if I am willing to spend the time to understand how to use it. But I must accept any shortcomings in the tool because I can do anything with the tool.

Problem is, the tool is a freaking donkey!! It is temperamental. It is slow. It frequently falls over and refuses to move. The steering mechanism is too coarse-grained to be effective in all situations. And so on.

Can I plow a field with a donkey? Yes. Can I do it better with, say, a tractor? Hell yes! Can I dig a hole and pull the dirt away with a donkey? Yes. Can I do it better with a dump truck? Hell yes! Can I get onto a donkey and ride it around? Yes. Could I even put skis on its feet and ride it down a mountain? Yes. Is it going to work well? NO!

IMHO, Notes is a donkey. The engineers are so impressed with all the things one can do with Notes that they have lost sight of the fact that it doesn’t many of them very well. There is a point where a one-size-fits-all-problems tool is good too have. But invariably, these tools break down in their common denominator approach to problems that are not always common.

[Original comment]

So what’s the moral of this post?
In your next interview, if interviewer asks you ‘Do you have any questions for me?’, ask him if they use Lotus Notes. If they do, start running in opposite direction and save your life.

Here’s an excellent rant from Katie Lucas about role/expectations from developers/managers in IT industry.

———————- Rant Start ——————————-
“Why would you want a great developer to become a manager in the first place?”

Well, this particular developer is becoming a manager for the following reason:

Job requirements for engineers have an alphabet soup attached to them. I’ve been rejected for jobs because the version of Sybase I last used is too old, and this is for a role where SQL isn’t even the core requirement. The SQL standard hasn’t changed, but agents can’t figure that out - they just want people who’ve used the latest version of Sybase.

I get turned down for UNIX dev roles because the version of VB I’ve used isn’t the latest — because they add a VB background to all the dev position requirements, and it’s got the be the latest version of VB.

I’ve just got bored of having my technical skills outdated every six months. If I take my eye off the ball and Microsoft announces a technology and I don’t immediately ram it into my CV or pick the wrong job, a year later I’m near unemployable.

I’m fed up of my career being this bizarre stamp collecting exercise where I get judged on how many of the acronyms I’ve been near lately and not whether I’ve gained any deep experience in anything.

Frankly, I’m getting too old to play this stupid game anymore. No-one wants to hire a software engineer with a decade of experience to start work in C#. They’ll train 2 year experienced people to use C#, but if you’ve got more experience than that, you better show up with experience in C# because any other experience you have is irrelevant.

I’m tired of my entire experience being torn up and thrown away every couple of years because agents and HR departments can’t figure out that a developer who can write C++ can also write C# and Java with very little training — but what can you expect? These are guys who think Visual C++ isn’t the same language as C++.

I looked at being a tech writer. I quite like writing — I’ve got a background in creative writing, it’s something I quite like, and I’ve done tech writing around IT projects before. Unfortunately, although I’ve written stuff and studied writing and so on, I’m not qualified to be a tech writer because the version of PageMaker I last used is too old… I suddenly have these visions of people saying to a re-incarnated Dickens “Look, you’ve only used quills. What the hell kind of writer are you? We’re only considering people with experience with Biros version 4 or above.”

I’ve noticed that things like “Project manager” experience doesn’t get thrown away in the same way. No-one says “Oh, but that was a year ago. We manage projects COMPLETELY differently now. That experience doesn’t count”, whereas they do with, say, SQL. It’s like SQL is a whole new langauge with each version of Oracle.

Apparently, being a successful software engineer currently means that you pick a tech, ram some experience on your CV and then bail after a couple of years before that becomes “old tech”. Every couple of years you need to pick a technology (which probably hasn’t actually shipped at that stage) and bet on it. And you must bet right every time.

You never gain deep experience because that would mean missing an acronym off your CV and who knows when you’d need the acronym.

I’ve been offered two jobs; one will get me a PM background. One will get me a bundle of technologies. The latter is a good role, but how can I tell if those technologies will leave me employable in two years time? They might be completely outdated by then and useless and irrelevant like my experience with SQL on Oracle 8.

It’ll get me a couple of years of Java, for example. But how can I tell if Java will still be an employable skill in 2007? I mean, I’ve got Java at the moment, but no hope of a job using it, because I don’t also have J2EE and anyway the Java I did was 1.1 and everyone’s after people with experience in newer versions…

Apparently I have no worthwhile experience to show for 10 years in the business because everything’s the wrong version or doesn’t have the right condiments or is just a tool no-one uses anymore. Any actual background I’ve got in things like “being an engineer who gets software written” is irrelevant. It’s like assessing a builder on whether they’ve used Black and Decker tools and not on whether their houses are still standing. Or like assessing Dickens’ writing skills by the fact he used quills and not biros.

Soft skills like PM don’t get outdated by FUD from Microsoft. They don’t come with version numbers which can drift out of date.

Really, they’re the only alternative if you’re the sort of person who can’t assume you’ll bet on the “right” technology every two years for the rest of your life.

So this developer is becoming a manager just so that I can start building an experience history to remain employable with, because I’m fed up of fighting hard to keep even a couple of years of “relevant” background on my CV.

[As a complete side note, reading the job pages in the paper I came across an advert for a "housing policy officer". Now, bear in mind 'm used to adverts which say "Reqd Skills; C++, UNIX, Windows, VB, MFC, ASP, STL, ATL, Multithreaded, C#, .net, CVS, ClearCase "

This one said "You should have a higher-second or first degree and a track record of generating effective housing policies."

Wow. Pay was pretty much a match for being a software engineer.]

———————- Rant Over ——————————-
[Note: I could not obtain Katie's permission to reproduce this post as I do not have her contact details. But I am assuming it is okie to reproduce this post on my blog as original post was in public domain and I am giving the credit to her as the author of this excellent post.]

It’s sad, but that’s the state of IT industry right now.
I have had my own share of interaction with recruiter and I get thoroughly pissed off when a recruiter dismisses my skills by saying that I know XHTML but not DHTML! That I don’t have 2.5 years of experience in .NET technologies! [C'mon, .NET was adoption started only around 2 years back] Recruiter, who doesn’t even know difference between DOC format and PDF format, will toss up my resume in trash just because I used ASP.NET with VB.NET instead of C#. I wonder what could be the solution to this problem.

• Did you know that in Florida, you have to buy car insurance if you own Driving license, whether you have your own car or not?
• Did you know that you can buy insurance for your pets?
• Did you know that if you buy $50k insurance from American company, the insurance company is liable for only $10k and rest $40k is reinsured with someone else? The reinsurer gets only small part of the premium which you and I pay and rest goes in to Insurance company’s profit books.

Joel On Software, Off Topic forum uncovers the Insurance Scam. This thread is a must read if you are in US and are tired of paying hundreds and thousands of dollars to Insurance comapnies, only to allow CEO of Insurance companies buy Maybach’s of the world.

I don’t remember the exact date, but few weeks back, MSDN Blogs backend system was upgraded.

Somehow, the new system has quite a few usability problems. Here’s what I have discovered:

1. Comment Form is missing!
   No, not that there is no comment form, but by default, comment form is not shown at the end of the post. You have to click on a link ‘Post a Comment’ to get to the comment form.

   And btw, this comment link is not even at the end of blog entry (blog entry = blog post + comments), so if you have a blog entry like this one from Larry which has 32 comments, you need to scroll back up to the end of post. Find the ‘Post Comment’ link and then create the comment. I wonder why ‘Post Comment’ link is not at the end of the entry.

   And I am not able to grasp why would they even need this ‘Post Comment’ link in the first place. What’s wrong with a comment form at the end of entry? 99% of blogs have comment form right at the bottom of entry and I think that’s perfect. Why would MSDN Blogs need to take a different (and painful) route?

2. Useless ‘Title’ field in Comment Form
   If you see the MSDN Blogs comment form, you would find a field named ‘Title’. It defaults to ‘re: <Title of Post goes here>’.

   I find this field completely useless. No one* uses it and it just adds noise to the updated blog entry.
   Check the below snapshot of comments on Larry’s blog.

   

   Not a single commentator has changed the title while posting his/her comment. What’s worse is that the entry highlights the ‘title’ of comment which is basically same for all comments! I have been participating in various online communities for last 7 years and I know for sure that no one uses ‘Title’ field related to their comment. They would leave it blank, and if you force them to enter title, they would enter some junk.

   *When I say no one, I mean less than 0.00001% of people who posts comments on blogs.

3. Trackbacks are not displayed properly.
   Here’s how a Trackback is displayed on MSDN Blogs:

   

   Trackback shown above, can be found here

   Instead of treating Trackbacks separately, they tream them as comments. Nothing wrong with that but they way they do it is:
   1. They use ‘Anonymous’ as Author’s name.
   2. The link to ‘Anonymous’ text would take it to the actual post which was trackbacking.
   3. The title of the comment displays the title of post which track backed in the first place.

   Clearly, this is not greatest of implementation. Compare this to how WordPress displays Trackback.

   
   Trackback shown above, can be found here.

   This is much, much better. Here’s why:
   1. You can clearly identify it as Trackback by the words ‘Pingback’.
   2. Title of the post (identified by number 1 in snapshot) and Blog Title (identified by number 2 in snapshot) are clearly displayed.
   3. It also shows the relevant piece of text where the particular entry was referred.

I have a GMail account which I mainly use for all my non-essential mails.

Few days back, I joined a Yahoo! Group using the GMail account and all the mails from that group started flooding my Inbox. Even though GMail groups mails as conversations, it started becoming difficult for me to identify non Yahoo! Group Mail from Yahoo! Group Mail.

I thought, separating these Group mails should be simple. I went to Settings->Filter and created my filter which would apply right label to all the *incoming* group mails and move them out from Inbox. The keyword here is incoming. There is no way you can apply a filter to mails which are already present in your Inbox! I checked the help section and could not find a way around it.

Now I don’t know about you, but I create filters/rules/labels after I see bulk of emails matching some kind of pattern. I do not envision that I would be receiving particular kind of mails and I should create filter. And in its current form, GMail filters are not so useful for me. What do you think?

JD

Recently, Google is linking to Answers.com for exploring meaning of search terms.

I kind of like the service, it’s neat; it’s fast and gets the job done.

Yesterday, I took a step ahead and installed their desktop application which allows one to click on any word anywhere on your desktop and get its meaning. They even offer integration with Internet Explorer through right click menu.

Today, I was browsing using Internet Explorer[1] and I kept going to Answers.com for no apparent reason. That’s when I realized that they have installed ‘Answers’ menu item as the first menu item replacing the default ‘Back’.

So whenever I tried to use ‘Back’ menu item using right click, I went to Answers.com! This shows how important consistency is in User Interface Design. I am so used to right clicking and selecting first item as ‘Back’ that if you replace it with something else, I will be toast! It’s a bad design decision by Answers to replace the de-facto place of ‘Back’ menu item. They should install menu item ‘Answers’ above ‘Properties’ just like everyone else. I hope somebody from Answers.com reads this and corrects it.

[1] - Yes, I am no Firefox fanatic, I use IE depending on how I am feeling at given moment.

Couple of days back, Anil blogged about how you can speed up your Acrobat Reader.

One of the problem, which I faced earlier with Acrobat reader, was that I could not disable PDF View inside browser. I prefer to download PDF file and then open them separately in Acrobat Reader.

I am sure you would have come across pages which links to PDFs without giving warning, and if you were not careful to look at Status bar before clicking the link, you would suffer a little penalty of your browser getting hanged till Acrobat Reader loads.

In an ideal world, all the pages whould have some kind of indicator that the link you are going to click is not normal link and it’s for PDF file. Sadly, it’s an imperfect world. Fear no more! Get yourself Target Alert Firefox extension. Once installed, Target Alert goes through all the links in page and marks all the PDF links, mailto: links, zip file links with appropriate icons. so that you would never click on that PDF file by mistake again! [If you have ever clicked on mailto links by mistake, same extension does the trick for you!] Great, isn’t it?

This is how your page, with PDF, ZIP, mailto: links, might look once you have Target Alert installed:

I guess I am bit late to blog about CrimsonBay. It’s like ‘desi’ iTunes, where you can download hindi songs for 69 cents or 99 cents, depending on how you pay for the song. Btw, I found about the site through an article in Business World. The article (which I can not link to) states that this service aims to target huge number of Indians in US, who doesn’t have an easy way to liste/buy hindi music. Rediff Radio service (which I dislike) is not enough, what is really needed, is iTunes like service where I can buy hindi music legally. So, site such CrimsonBay are most welcome. I have few complaints though.

1. What kind of name ‘CrimsonBay’ is? It is not related to music, it’s not related to India, and it’s not even catchy? Don’t these guys know importance of a good business name? If I were the owner, I would have named my service as desiTunes. The logo of service would look like

Yes, I know the logo and site name very much resembles to some thing else, which is very popular, and I think it would have caused controversy. But why not create controversy and get noticed like a Purple Cow rather than go completely unnoticed.

2. Their site isn’t all that special. It doesn’t scream ‘I am cool, check me out!’. This, coupled with the fact that they have limited collection of songs to start with makes a non starter.

3. They have come up with a really nice idea that if you buy songs using their ‘debit’ account, they will offer song at 69 cents. That’s neat! But they are not publicizing it enough! If I were the CEO, I will create the following banner ad and run through rediff/sulekha. [Btw, wait and watch the animation]

CrimsonBay Guys, I grant you all the rights to use above idea for your campaign!
4. In this age, when blogging is the next medium to get word out about your service, they are literally absent in blogosphere. Why o’ Why? They are missing out BIG TIME on free and very effective method of generating buzz.

I guess that’s enough for now! Crimson Bay guys, if you are reading this, get in touch with me. I think I have few ideas to make you guys do better.
JD

If you are following my blog, you know that I have been having a hard time with Rediff Radio. After sending at least 10 mails to neha@rediffradio.com id without getting response, I thought enough was enough. [On a side note: What kind of id neha@rediffradio.com is? Why not more obvious id like support@rediffradio.com?] I wanted to call these guys and get the resolution. I try to find their customer service number. To my surprise, there is no customer service number listed anywhere on Rediff site! But I for one was determined to find the number and I figured out that if customer is not important for Rediff, a shareholder might be. Lo and behold, I was correct! Checking Investor Information page on Rediff, revealed the Head Office Phone Number.

Tip# 1
If you are trying to find contact information for any company and unable to find it, remember to check their Investor Information page. Generally, most of the companies love share holders more than they love their customers.

Tip# 2
Rediff Customer Service Number: 91-22-24449144
US Office Phone Number: 1-212-929-1727

So, I call up the Customer Service Number and tell the receptionist that I have problem with Rediff Radio. Without listening to me properly, she transferred me to Rediff Shopping Customer Service. The nice lady from Rediff Shopping Customer Service told me that she can not help me and she will transfer me back to reception. The receptionist now told me that probably

Earlier I made a post telling you that Rediff Radio Rocks!

Though song selection and content on Rediff Radio is excellent, customer service is NON-EXISTENT.

I have been a regular listener to Rediff Radio and around 3 weeks back, I found that I am no longer able to login to Rediff Radio.

Though I knew my password for sure, I thought let me try to find out password. When I tried there ‘Forgot Password’ page, it told me that user ‘boyzone_2001 AT yahoo DOT com’ doesn’t exist! Now that’s a shocker!

So, I tried to find support page/email id for Rediff Radio. And here comes the surprise, there is no support page/email id for Rediff Radio! Basically if you have any problem, you are on your own! But wait, they have this ‘Feedback’ page for Rediff Radio. Can I use it to report my problem? Not seeing any harm in trying that form, I mailed Rediff Radio guys about my problem. And what I find next day? I find that I have not received any response from Rediff Radio but my account is now working! Wow! That feedback form is surely great!

2 more days passes by and my account stops working again! Being wise from last experience, I immediately wrote comment through that Feedback Form, thinking that tomorrow my account will be active. But the magic didn’t work this time. I was unable to login the next day. The day after that. And a full week went by. My account simply didn’t work. Not knowing how to contact these guys, I thought about mailing the RJ of Rediff Radio, Miss Malishka. Here’s what I wrote:

Hi Malishka,

As much as I love your talk show on Rediff Radio, I hate the Rediff Radio customer service.

I am a paid subscriber to Rediff Radio with quarterly billing. Few days back, I was not able to login to Rediff Radio. So I tried to contact you guys using feed back form. Next day, it started working. Though I did not get any response for my email. [Actually I don