SOA?

[The title is meant to be read like Nithin's phlegmatic "so?". This is a brief description of the technology that I work on.]

Once upon a time, there was a company called ABIC - Akhila Bharatha Insurance Company. When they started off, say 900 years ago, there was no IT, no management, no.. (Throws a BufferOverflowException). Everything was done on paper and mind you, we aren't even talking about recycled paper here.

800 years into the business, many big changes started to happen. For one thing, there were computers, using which the work could be done a lot faster and most of the staff could now be laid off. People had to start inventing words like "downsizing" and "rightsizing" to make the laid off employees feel better. But bad news, there were also a lot of competitors who threatened to steal away their business if they didn't adapt.

So, Akhila Bharatha started to buy lots of new software so they could now keep up with the rapidly changing, competitive market. ABIC also started to acquire smaller companies with complementary products and services, and kept growing their business. All this rapid change created new problems for the IT department.

"It isn't enough to just buy the new technology, it must also work in concert with what we already have in place," complained the IT department.

Management replied: "That's cool. Why don't we just integrate the old stuff with the new stuff, and we'll all live happily ever after?"

"Integration will take 18 months, and that's assuming that our programmers never go to the bathroom and that no new technologies emerge by then. WE want a system that's built with change in mind."

So the management and IT together looked for a solution and came across this concept called SOA: service oriented architecture. Which suggests, simply, "Let's turn all of our existing software assets and turn them into 'services'. Each service does one thing and one thing only, and becomes a black box to the business process and to other services. We couple all of these together 'loosely' - a concept that was in some 7th sem textbook that we're all supposed to know. That way, the management and business people can 'black box' the whole of IT. Hmm. "

SOA is the logical next step (after OOP) in computer technology, given that we studied object oriented programming till 8th sem and now we're reading about SOA.

ABIC was very happy with the idea of SOA, but soon the question came up: "How exactly do we turn our software into these services". To which the answer was: "Sorry, I've only read the SOA book till Chapter 5."

The folks at ABIC will (perhaps) read the remaining chapters and implement SOA. And live happily ever after.

I like happy endings.

Just in case

This is to inform you that all eight of us actually have jobs. Jobs, in the sense of being "employed" in a "big company" and being paid a regular "salary". "Jobless Programmer's Hangout Place" was just a random name, that got stuck on.

RE: On the dance floor

First of all, applauds to Nithin for that very mature comment.

About dancing, I wasn't there for the event that Pavan mentions (never danced with anyone in this group). I did dance a little in Triangular Park, Kolkata, and the beauty of it is that it takes out all your mental stress and it puts you "in the moment". Even if you danced like a maniac, making Tarzan-like moves. People said "You have so much energy". They (really) did not say anything bad. The whole batch just stepped in and danced, and we were all bad.. there was no risk of embarrassment.

Dancing is something you've got to just DO, once in a while. Best way to eliminate stress. Even if you're the worst dancer in the universe.

On the dance floor

I don't know if guys are good at dancing. But I do know that none of us can be even in the same vicinity of coming close to being good dancers. 4 years as college junkies and 8 months as software professionals and what I have learnt about our group is that we "dance like we have 2 left legs".

In the first year in college, there was an ethnic festival which had a dandiya event, where people dance with a small stick(danda) in either hands and generally bust some really elegant moves. But we ain't people. We did have the small sticks with us. The elegant part, however, was lost on us. O, how we sucked. We moved our hands and legs in a completely random order(Sudhi picthed in here). We "accidentally" sent high speed blows to not-so-friendly people at strategic places. So, you can imagine, we had a blast shaking uncontrollably, or as they call it, dancing.

Even as I write this, I have the satisfaction of knowing that there is nothing in this world that can bring out the "Micheal Jackson" in us(A lot of one liners which I would generally write here are not written because of the Rule 4 of "Delivering Written Humor". Unfortunately.) and that we were, are and will always be the worst dancers ever.

So, How's work?

Many people ask this question when they see me. My usual reply is "Work? Null Pointer Exception."   That isn't an original idea, not completely. My company's ERP system has an application called "My Utilization", which tells you how well you are being utilized by the company. Have a look at what it produces for me:   error while fetching datajava.lang.NullPointerException

		My Individual Utilization (YTD) = 0 %
		My Overall Projected Utilization = 0 %

--
Swaroop Murthy
http://360.yahoo.com/swaroopmurthy

Abhi goes to Blood Diamond - 2

After about 146 minutes since the movie started or 1 minute after the movie ended:

Abhi: So, did you get the suspense in the movie?
Me: What suspense?
Abhi: Oiye. Ketan, you don't remember? Nithin had said if you understand the movie well, you can guess the suspense by halftime(exact Nithin's words, apparently).
Ketan: What are you talking about man?
(Abhi, Ketan and I burst into hysterics)
Abhi: Seriously, what was the suspense? You also dint get it?
Ketan: Which movie are you talking about da?
Abhi: It was about a month back, don't you remember?
(Ketan and I laugh out loud, him barely muttering, "Month back??!")
Abhi: Or was it for this movie?
Ketan: That was for "The Prestige" man.
Abhi: (not so convinced that he did not miss any suspense) OK.

Kickstart

[Sudhi's imaginary second attempt at creating a novel..]

Two guys are in a cricket stadium. One of them was very big, in my estimation: he was some 200 kgs. Suddenly he started to laugh very loudly, which was in very bad taste. Also, he owed the other guy Rs. 103.75.99.3885 paisa. So the other guy asks him, "what exactly are you laughing about?"

Abhi goes to Blood Diamond..

(Pavan, Abhishek and me are watching Blood Diamond at PVR)

(111 minutes have passed since the movie started..)

Abhi: eh..i have a doubt.. Who is this actress ?
Ketan: Jennifer Connelly
Abhi: Isn't that the name of the movie?
Ketan: No dude!!!, we are watching Blood Diamond
Abhi: (is shocked and starts laughing loudly..) ok
(then Abhi asks Pavan to confirm)

Munnabhai Part 3 trailor

Ketan sent a mail about Munnabhai part 3. I will paste Ketan's mail here, so I can go home and watch the trailor. Its URL is blocked in my company, just like a million other URLs (including Google Images) A very secure workplace, indeed.

ULTIMATE ONE!!! A MUST WATCH
It’s going to b the part 3 of Munnabhai series, check out this hilarious promo

http://clarion.cec.wustl.edu/~ss26/Munnabhai_chale_Amerika.zip

Download the file.. open the player provided in the zip and drag the trailor

What is this?

This is the group blog of the following people:

Abhishek
Pavan K S
Swaroop Murthy
Sudhindra M S
Ketan Kowshik
Nithin PB
Chintu Henly
Chethan V

That list is in decreasing order of size. You can subscribe to this feed using the following URL:

http://togetherwedrown.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default