Yearly Archives: 2006

7 days and 30 Days. 3D Reports (I love myself)

Marketing and Sales are the most ideate guys that you come across in your professional life. Jinx broken with some doubts. Peter had given some reports to be complete ASAP about the user trends. I could say that the main report was very tough. There are total 4 reports. Size keep on decreasing but the difficulty level remains the same. The biggest report was almost completed by Raj. Really very good work. I was given that report in my down time but my approach was incorrect due to set of attributes picking date from different table and it was must to be taken from different tables s that’s how the WH was evolved. Well. I was trying to explain to Ritesh about the second report. They wanted approval % and $ of various card payment methods. Flat report was already present. Btu they wanted the average of same to be compared with last 7 days and last 30 days. After having understood this problem, I explained it to him rotating my finger less in case of 7 days and longer in case of 30 days, as if we were seeing reports. He found it very funny and wanted me to do it again… :)) Well Sriram came to help me out and told me that I can achieve it by “Apply Simple”ing the whole metric. Total bouncer. So He sat with me. Got the SQL. Edited it. And told me to the fine level what to be made “apply simple” [FYI, Apply Simple is the way to use database supported function directly in MicroStrategy. Highly highly NOT recommended by MicroStrategy Inc] Yup. By 4:30 I achieved it. I felt so great. By 5:30 it was tested and found to be correct. Now comes the pick on the day.

I started looking into 3rd report. This has very cryptic column name. I asked Sriram if he knew anything about it. He told me about the entire column he could explain, but he insisted to ask requester of report to verify. Well I pinged Peter on yahoo chat for it. When I told him I could not get 2nd column, rest column were depended upon it directly or indirectly, he just asked my ext. Voila, here is Peter calling you on phone. This thing that I could not get was Monthly Projection and they had written monthly estimates. He explained to me how is that calculated. I could not get it and I could not listen to him well due to my neighbor chatting too much. He is a complete chatter bug. He I just asked him to explain again. Well, He explained it to me all over again. I covered my other ear to hear him properly. (I don’t know but this strange thing of not able to talk well happens whenever there is an overseas call, inbound or outbound). Contrary to the feedback I had got about him, I would him excellent.

Sriram and Peter were hero of day for me. Sp. Sriram for making things Simple.

Zero of the Day. Sify Braodband. This blog was supposed to come yesterday but hey someone stole his wire and I was connectionless. Such thing happens in India. My broadband operator in Mumbai had accepted doing such thing.

It is (was) a beautiful day

“Up by 8:00 sharp. Disconnect the Internet. Go back to sleep” funda of a holiday :-). Hey today is Eid so it is off from office. So finally I managed to raise my butt from mattress. Straight to computer. Logged on to net. Checked my shares.. and looked for someone to chat. I and Akhilesh had a good voice chat on yahoo and skype [You can skype me on “a s h i s h 9 2” remove the space] He is just gone to US on H1-B so kinda new to city, just as I’m new to Hyderabad. He told me his plans, good and bad things about US. Not it is time to log off. We chatted till 3:00 AM his time. I let him go when his wife came. So finally had food by 4:30 PM. Again browsing and updating my To-do list of Google Docs [http://docs.google.com]. Use it heavily. I can easily keep my thought/task/docs and access them from anywhere. So now comes the most sucking experience of the day. Domino’s. My roommate and I had gone to Pizza Hut. This time I thought to go to Domino’s. It was a real bad experience. Hey….
1. You don’t wipe clean the table when customer has gone. Most of the table had left over lying just there. Very very disappointing.
2. We took a table, which was clean. Not to forget, it had the food lying there. I had to request the counter for the same.
3. Ordered Farmhouse medium, 2 Coke, 2 Chili Bread (similar names) within 350 bucks. I had to request the guy fro glasses three time. and by the time it reached out table we had finished the food. :((
4. There is no fork and knife provided to cut the pizza. Though it hardly matters but that would help a bit.
5. WTF pizza come packed when I’m dining in?????????????? It is a big puzzle for me.

Anyways, I found a garage that provides service of bike wash. My babe had not taken a bath for so many days. Too bad.

“Add to Percentage” metric added in brain

So here come the ghost of Cashier Dashboard report. Armed with not matching different table heterogeneous for date, 24 metrics.. This gave me cold shiver when I started it. Now having to complete the percentage, it was a tricky part. I added so many derived metrics. Made the report OLAP. Shouldn’t be doing that. Keep it Standard Stupid. I played with “Add to ….” is added in my brain.

HR guys .. teri mahima apar hai

I have got so much fed up of job call (Bhagwal kare aise din hamesha rahe), that I made my resume on Jobsahead and Monster confidential. I used to take calls and welcome any mail to forward it across to friends for jobs. But stopped it. But the guys (gals) at Ness, to whom I had replied, ages back realized that I had sent CV????? This opening happened to be at Hyderabad. As usual .. Never said No to anyone in life, spoke to her and she told me that my resume on Jobsahead is search-able. Now I know why I was getting mails (read spam) and sooooooooooooooo many questions were asked by Geeta, the lady who called. My O my…… One thing I can tell you she was so used to searching people for MicroStrategy that she virtually took my mini technical interview. Hey..Ankit she was asking about you man. Tune aisa kya kar diya yaar…. And just 10 minutes past the end of 30 minute interview, another guy from Ness called and asked for the same, in-spite of telling that I had been through this. BTW, No response from Sify about the issues raised… This is what they call ISO certification… :

Sify really really sucks

Sify Broadband definitely sucks. It sucks big time. They’re such a cheat. Now they have deducted one more day for having crossed 150 MB a day download limit. Now I was forced to see how come the limit is getting crossed so often in spite of taking utmost care. So I checked the log again. Viola! I download 1435.45 MB between 00:09 to 08:10. So much!!!!!! A speed of 178 MB an hour can be achieved in day dreams. No doubt I get speed of what they promise, but over billing of downloads is too much. They can do a mistake by may be 20% margin. But 300% to 400% error is not accidental. It is intentional. And logged another complaint with them. Their customer care is good for thing. happened to meet a guy who had very little understanding of English. For something which took me 3 minutes last time, it took me 20 minutes to tell him. The customer care executive was someone named Prabhu.