It has been a very long time since my last post and lot has happened since then. So here is my quick update journal entry. The updates are in not in any particular chronological order.
1# After working hard for almost 2 months one of my projects went live. It is shopping cart web application implemented in ASP.Net using C#. This was a significant milestone for me and my group because this project was also a pilot project to demonstrate the benefits of project management principles.
2# I got my Masters Degree certificate. So now I officially have a master’s degree.
3# Tentative plan for my homeland trip has been finalized. But lots of work remains on different logistics issues. Tickets are one of them!
4# My sister finished her MBA in human resource and is heading for Bangalore.
5# Kelly got her first ‘real’ high paying job at CDW and has shifted her residence to Northern suburbs of Chicago.
6# This month we had two weeks of unbearable heat. The temperatures were hovering at 105 F or 40 C approx. High temperatures coupled with high levels of humidity made life very miserable. Then we had a huge thunder storm which brought in lots of rain and cooled the weather.
7# While I was thanking God for the heavy rains, I could not stop wondering about the irony of rains in Mumbai. At first I thought it was quite funny to see the flood pictures because it brought back old memories of mini floods during the monsoons when we used to play football and other ‘water’ games. But things soon became serious and sad when I started reading reports of the death toll due to floods. I called up home and got a first hand report on flood and its effects. We stay in the ground floor and we had a foot of water everywhere in the house – hall, bedroom, kitchen etc etc. 
Though we did not sustain any damage in the house except for the massive cleaning that had to be done after the water receded, our car is not working any more. Hopefully the car will get fixed. Dad was telling me how small cars like Zen were completely submerged in the flood water. I can only imagine the mayhem!
I think I must have missed some more updates. I will be more regular from now on to prevent such ‘missed updates’
Posted by fiery_fiona | December 31, 1969, 5:00 pmI hate it when so many developers waste their time reinventing the wheel. There must be several hundred shopping cart applications around.
Posted by bluesmoon | July 31, 2005, 11:51 amIts not what you do, its about how you do it. At the end of the day, if the team has gained some knowledge/practices by implementing the application, then its definitely not a waste of time.
I understand your point that the idea of a web based shopping cart application has been around for a long time and people should come out with innovative ones. But I guess, as
Posted by aneeta_04 | August 1, 2005, 12:55 amGood that you are back from the hibernation mode
))
Am happy for your sis and Kelly ! Congratulations to both of them.
And hope things are back to normal at your home in Mumbai !
Posted by aneeta_04 | August 1, 2005, 12:57 amThe suggestion that the project went live implies that it was a project that will be used professionally on some website. In that case, it was a waste of investor money to pay developers to develop what has already been developed.
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 1:07 amI am not sure if they developed the application from scratch or just did customization.
May be the investor was not aware that he could get it from here
Posted by aneeta_04 | August 1, 2005, 1:19 am..it might have been a waste of resources..
but then i think IT industry in the present scenario is either mundane and futile or it is encroaching our lives.. google !
m worried about the power google has and is building everyday!
Posted by fiery_fiona | August 1, 2005, 1:36 amok, i’m lost.
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 1:39 amhmmm…lil off-track..!
frm shopping cart to google!!
my point, great work cannot be expected….! just code and earn and learn from how u earn!
Posted by fiery_fiona | August 1, 2005, 2:17 amand my point is that, if you’re not going to innovate, then you can eliminate the code part too. why work when you’ll get paid anyway. your job is to deliver a solution. how you do it is up to you.
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 3:20 amhey… the stuff is very subjective…
i am myself one of those who is bugged by the saturation in IT work…..nd no scope to create anything fresh and eye-raising!(can read one of my blogs!) nd m dead irritated by what i am doing!:(
but guess what i and you dont enjaay..someone else might be finding interesting..!
guess what he/she takes up and lingers on with, is solely upto that person!
Posted by fiery_fiona | August 1, 2005, 3:53 amI wouldn’t hire someone who reinvented the wheel unless he could show that he could come up with a solution that is way better than what already exists. I know that I never do what has already been done. If I need to build some tool, I spend the first week of the project scouring the net and the internal network looking for stuff that’s already been done and then reuse that if it has a licence that permits it.
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 3:57 amRE-INVENTED?????
why are we mixing idea of the birth of a concept and something which is fun to make or build???
(–this is frm the point of the developer! the investor is still at loss as i agreed b4)
if i made the first wheel…somebody might make another but wouldnt be inventing it and would still enjoy while making it…!
his purpose is to see something build, which amazed him!
and you might not make it and ask me to make one for you!
ur purpose is to make an advancement with your terms…
*subjectivity* is the high point!
i donno..but guess this discussion is moving a lil haywire; u seeing it thru the investor’s perspective and me through the developer’s..
phew!
Posted by fiery_fiona | August 1, 2005, 5:07 am>> his purpose is to see something build, which amazed him!
>> ur purpose is to make an advancement with your terms…
touche.
Give a child a pen for the first time, he would make things which may not excite/entertain you. Learning usually happens from the scratch. And if you enjoy what you do while learning, innovations are not far away.
Posted by aneeta_04 | August 1, 2005, 5:28 amI’m seeing it from the point of view of this post. Was the shopping cart application a college project or a professional project?
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 6:21 amOkay looks like a lot of discussion and may be I could help a bit.
#1 I did not re-invent the wheel. I only tweaked it. I could have used a ‘out-of-the-box’ solution and this was the first step in project. But we had to drop that idea because of couple of reasons. -
1) Either our office or the client’s office wanted to spend moeny to buy a comercial grade shopping cart application. An application where one can expect support.
2) Many of the free ones are good for ‘see and learn’ purposes but would involve a lot of rework to customize for our client’s needs. Though I did not use these application I did get ‘inspired’ from these applications and I incorporated the best practices and ideas into our project.
3) At the university there is a lot of opportunity for such application and our office decided to invest the time and effort to built a flexible framework for the shopping cart application. And which we did. And so this application is just an example of that frame work and we are now ready to use this frame work for future applications.
4) The idea of create the frame work was good because we could take in consideration the univsersity’s policies for authentication, privacy and accessibility compliance. The system is open enough to incorporate university’s payment gateway and interfacing with the main frame.
All in all I see your point in not wasting time and resource in re-inventing the wheel. But there is plenty of opportunities for tweaking the wheel!
Posted by iamneo | August 1, 2005, 9:20 amtweaking the wheel is what I like to see.
Posted by bluesmoon | August 1, 2005, 10:35 pmCongrats for all the nice stuff going on. I’m just getting into this rut
.. Lets hope that I get out of it as safely as you did 
…
Posted by weltanschauungs | August 2, 2005, 7:48 pm