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Friends and Acquaintances

Friends and Acquaintances

There is a difference between being an acquaintance and being a friend. An acquaintance is someone whose name you know, who you see every now and then, who you probably have something in common with and who you feel comfortable around.

It’s a person that you can invite to your home and share things with. But they are people who you don’t share your life with, whose actions sometimes you don’t understand because you don’t know enough about them.

On the other hand, a friend is someone you love. Not that you are ‘in love’ with them, but you care about them and you think about them when they are not there. The people you are reminded of when you see something they might like, and you know this because you know them so well. They are the people whose pictures you have and whose faces are in your mind and heart regardless.

Friends are the people you feel safe around because you know they care about you. They call just to see how you are doing, because a friend doesn’t need an excuse. They tell you the truth, the first time, and you do the same. You know that if you have a problem, they are there to listen. Friends are the people who won’t laugh at you or hurt you, and if they do hurt you they try hard to make it up to you. They are the people you love, regardless of whether you realize it.

Friends are the people you cried with when you got rejected from something you really wanted in life and during the last song at a farewell or funeral. They are the people that when you hug them, you don’t think about how long to hug and who’s going to be the first one to let go. Maybe they are the people that hold the rings at your wedding, or maybe they are the people who give you away at your wedding, or maybe they are the people you marry. Maybe they are the people who cry at your wedding because they are happy or because they are proud.

They are the people who stop you from making mistakes and help you when you do. They are the people whose hand you can hold, or you can hug or give them a kiss and not have it be awkward because they understand the things you do and they love you for them. They stick with you and stand by you. They watch you live and you watch them live and you learn from them.

Your life is not the same without them.

–

Courtesy: Thanks to my friend Viji Rajesh for sharing this through an email and I just could not stop myself from sharing the same here!

I believe you agree with me not just in the way you enjoyed reading through and also you find out how many friends Vs acquaintances you have got! Aint I?

Keyboards are dirtier than toilet seats

Courtesy: Thanks to my friend Meera for sharing this through an email.

LONDON: Did you know that computer keyboards often harbour more dirt than an average toilet seat? Shocking but true!

The findings of a research carried out by a microbiologist published today in Which? Computing magazine shows that keyboards house millions of bacteria which can cause diarrhoea and vomiting.

James Francis examined samples from 33 keyboards and found bugs including E coli and S aureus which can cause skin infections and make people ill.

For comparison the scientist swabbed a toilet seat and door handle in a typical London office and found that in the case of one keyboard it was five times dirtier than the lavatory seat. “I haven’t seen a reading like that in a very long time — it was off the scale. It was increasing the risk of its user becoming ill,” said Francis. The keyboard had to be removed from the office because it was home to 150 times the acceptable limit of bacteria.

Two other keyboards had “warning levels” of bacteria, while a further two showed high levels of coliform bacteria which are associated with fecal matter.

“These results are generally typical of offices up and down the country,” said Francis.

The chief culprit for contamination was people eating at their desks and dropping crumbs that lodge between keys and encourage the growth of millions of bacteria.

Other causes include people not washing their hands after using the toilet. Dust, which traps moisture, also provides ideal conditions for the growth of bacteria.

“Most people don’t give much thought to the grime that builds up on their PC, but if you don’t clean your computer, you might as well eat your lunch off the toilet,” said Sarah Kidner, the editor of Which? Computing. The magazine suggests giving the computer a regular cleaning.

 The survey showed that 22 per cent cleaned their keyboard and 27 per cent their monitor on a monthly basis. Just over one in 10 said they never cleaned their keyboard, which 20 per cent said they never cleaned their mouse.

 It recommended that computers be shut down and unplugged before being gently dusted with a soft, lint-free cloth and wiped with an approved computer cleaning fluid.

 The magazine also warned that headphones could ferry germs between people and transfer headlice.

–

Friends,

 Atleast from now on shall we be careful and responsible to keep our environment clean and virus free?

  I somehow tend to clean my home PC on a regular basis which includes keyboard.  :) Anyways, it is again justified with the news.

   So lets continue the good work.. 

A request to fellow bloggers

I think this very well deserves to be a post!!

I have been intimated in the comments either for having been given an award or tagged. Some samples are below.

Shalini’s Award -> http://blogsofraghs.wordpress.com/2008/01/14/yet-another-book-in-lucky-draw/#comments

Pria’s Tag -> http://blogsofraghs.wordpress.com/2008/01/25/excellent-joke-on-hr-manager/#comments

I am sure neither me nor the individuals can easily track the post and its url now. Not just to divert the responsbility but a sincere request. As i could not immediately take it up by then, now i feel something is lacking!

I would definitely thank you for having considered me  , but it would indeed be of much help if the individuals just take a little effort to just paste the corresponding URL as well .

Hope you agree with me. If you are game, kindly follow the same henceforth!

Drive for Excellence

A gentleman was once visiting a temple under construction.
In the temple premises, he saw a sculptor making an idol of God.
Suddenly he saw, just a few meters away, another identical idol was lying.
Surprised he asked the sculptor, do you need two statutes of the same idol. No said the sculptor.
We need only one, but the first one got damaged at the last stage.
The gentleman examined the statue.
No apparent damage was visible.
Where the damage is asked the gentleman.
There is a scratch on the nose of the idol.
Where are you going to keep the idol after it is done?
The sculptor replied that it will be installed on a pillar 20 feet high.
When the idol will be 20 feet away from the eyes of the beholder, who is going to know that there is scratch on the nose? The gentleman asked.

The sculptor looked at the gentleman, smiled and said, “The God knows it and I know it “.
The desire to excel should be exclusive of the fact whether someone appreciates it or not.
Excellence is a drive from Inside not Outside.

—

I believe you must have well agreed with it. Is nt it?

I would like to thank my friend Varadharajan R for sharing this through an email.

utilities to recover the shift deleted files

All of a sudden you encounter a situation wherein you either knowingly or unknowingly but unfortunately happened to lose some of your files in the OS permanently. I could have better named it as ‘permanently deleted files’ rather than ’shift deleted files’. But just to match with the naive user’s search query, i have termed it as such! That’s how generally people may search for it.

Day before yesterday one of my buddies faced a scenario and was feeling bad that he had lost his 6 hours of work because of an accidental shift+delete by his colleague.Not to blame anyone but the situation, he had not have the back up of the files as well. Suddenly i remembered that a couple of years back one of my ex-colleagues had sent a mail about such software utility but it was mainly to recover the mails from Microsoft Outlook exchange doing something with Registry.

With the thought, i had mailed my buddies and asked for a solution if they had also faced this situation. A couple of good responses i have got. Just Listing them here. Hope it would be of some use to the people in need! It is mainly for Windows OS as my requirement was for that.

Prior to this mailing attempt, got suggested by my colleage about one utility called ‘GetDataBack’. What a beautiful name? You would never forget it! But as it was a shareware(!), i was able to just see the list of files got deleted but could not proceed further in retrieving the files as it was saying “copying of files is only allowed in premium edition” . 

NOTE: Please make use at your own risk. Kindly go through the notes/documentation given in the software/crack.

Here you go….

(i) Please try this link http://www.winundelete.com/?rid=google&kid=wu0801 for getting the deleted files.

(ii) http://www.safe-install.com/programs/fat-deleted-data-recovery.html
http://shift-del-deleted-recovery.safe-install.com/ [FAT system]

(iii) http://pcwin.com/Utilities/Windows_Partition_Data_Recovery_Software/index.htm

(iv) try the software ‘undelete’..definitely it helps..i have recovered many files using it myself..espicially .jpg and .txt files..my java code resides on repository..i hope he lost it before commit:)

well, windows xp with FAT? first he should change to NTFS..
btw, how did he delete it? using a tool like eclipse? or from explorer?

(v) http://www.sharewareconnection.com/titles/shift-del-deleted-recovery.htm
http://shift-del-deleted-recovery.qarchive.org/

(vi) I think i have used recovermyfiles.exe… i think its available in the net.. u can download and try..

(vii) http://www.quetek.com/prod02.htm?source=google15 [I got it through Google webclip when i was replying to this mail thread!]

(vii) Get data back , Data recovery [names of the software]

(viii) As i do not have a portable media, I am giving you the link from where it can be downloaded. Before installation disable Internet connection and Anti virus Programs because we use a Key gen to activate the software.

http://rapidshare.com/files/19990258/O_O_Dis.rar

This gives a success rate of 65% for all the files. This is not file recovery software. It recovers Entire partition. So make sure u select the appropriate file types you want to recover in order to speed up the process. It works well for all the types of windows file systems.

Please do share this with all the folks you know.

Password : BuZZ-BoKS.com

*Updated*
(ix) Caution:HI.. anna.. One needs to be very careful in trying such tools… for recovring the deleted files…..
Most of the time it leads to HD Crash… i have lost 2 @ home… while recovering my dads account files….
Beware… n take care too!

All the very best!

I thank all my  buddies who have responded in time!

Cheers…..

Are we perfect?

A man and his girlfriend were married.  It was a large celebration. All of their friends and family came to see the lovely ceremony and to partake of the festivities and celebrations.  A wonderful time was had by all. The bride was gorgeous in her white wedding gown and the groom was very dashing in his black tuxedo.
 
Everyone could tell that the love they had for each other was true.  

A few months later, the wife comes to the husband with a proposal: “I read in a magazine, a while ago, about how we can strengthen our marriage.” she offered. 

“Each of us will write a list of the things that we find a bit annoying with the other person. Then, we can talk about how we can fix them together and make our lives happier together.” 

The husband agreed.  So each of them went to a separate room in the house  and thought of the things that annoyed them about the other.  They thought  about this question for the rest of the day and wrote down what they came up with. The next morning, at the breakfast table, they decided that they would go over their lists..  

“I’ll start,” offered the wife.  She took out her list.  It had many items on it.  Enough to fill 3 pages, in fact. As she started reading the list of the little annoyances, she noticed that tears were starting to appear in her husband’s eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked.
 
“Nothing” the husband replied, “keep reading your list..” 

The wife continued to read until she had read all three pages to her husband.  She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over top of it.  “Now, you read your list and then we’ll talk about the things on both of our lists.”  She said happily.  

Quietly the husband stated, “I don’t have anything on my list. I think that you are perfect the way that you are. I don’t want you to change anything for me. You are lovely and wonderful and I wouldn’t want to try and change anything about you.”  

The wife, touched by his honesty and the depth of his love for her and his acceptance of her, turned her head and wept.   

IN LIFE, there are enough times when we are disappointed, depressed and annoyed. We don’t really have to go looking for them. We have a wonderful world that is full of beauty, light and promise. Why waste time in this world looking for the bad, disappointing or annoying when we can look around us, and see the wondrous things before us..?   

I believe that WE ARE HAPPIEST WHEN we see and praise the good and try our best to forget the bad. Nobody’s perfect but we can find perfectness in them to change the way we see them.   

- We are not trying to condone what is bad. Correction does much, but encouragement does more.

“The blue of heaven is larger than the clouds . . .” 

Courtesy: Thanks to my friend Archana Muralidharan for sharing this through an e-mail.

Need i say anything more? I am sure you would have definitely enjoyed reading it. Though to all of  us, it looks so nice while imagining the husband’s role with us, it definitely comes through PRACTICE! Not just by thinking and accepting. Aint I? So, lets start….

Interactions with American Clients – Useful tips

 1. Do not write “the same” in an email – it makes little sense to them.        Example – I will try to organize the project artifacts and inform you of the same when it is done     This is somewhat an Indian construct. It is better written simply as:
    I will try to organize the project artifacts and inform you when that is done

2. Do not write or say, “I have some doubts on this issue”
    The term “Doubt” is used in the sense of doubting someone – we use this term because in Indian languages (such as Tamil), the                  word for a “doubt”         and a “question” is the same.
    The correct usage (for clients) is:
    I have a few questions on this issue

3.The term “regard” is not used much in American English. They usually do not say “regarding this issue” or “with regard to this”.
    Simply use, “about this issue”.

4.Do not say “Pardon” when you want someone to repeat what they said. The word “Pardon” is unusual for them and is somewhat formal.

5. Americans do not understand most of the Indian accent immediately – They only understand 75% of what we speak and then interpret the rest.         Therefore try not to use shortcut terms such as “Can’t” or “Don’t”. Use the expanded “Cannot” or “Do not”.

6. Do not use the term “screwed up” liberally. If a situation is not good, it is better to say, “The situation is messed up”. Do not use words such as “shucks”, or “pissed off”.

7. As a general matter of form, Indians interrupt each other constantly in meetings – DO NOT interrupt a client when they are speaking. Over the phone, there could be delays – but wait for a short time before responding.

8. When explaining some complex issue, stop occasionally and ask “Does that make sense?“. This is preferrable than “Do you understand me?”

9. In email communications, use proper punctuation. To explain something, without breaking your flow, use semicolons, hyphens or paranthesis.
    As an example:
    You have entered a new bug (the popup not showing up) in the defect tracking system; we could not reproduce it – although,
    a screenshot would help.

    Notice that a reference to the actual bug is added in paranthesis so that the sentence flow is not broken. Break a long sentence
    using such punctuation.

10. In American English, a mail is a posted letter. An email is electronic mail. When you say
    “I mailed the information to you”
    , it means you sent an actual letter or package through the postal system.
    The correct usage is:
    “I emailed the information to you”

11. To “prepone” an appointment is an Indian usage. There is no actual word called prepone. You can “advance” an appointment.

12. In the term “N-tier Architecture” or “3-tier Architecture”, the word “tier” is NOT pronounced as “Tire”. I have seen many people pronounce it this way. The correct pronunciation is “tea-yar”. The “ti” is pronounced as “tea”.

13. The usages “September End”, “Month End”, “Day End” are not understood well by Americans. They use these as “End of September”, “End of Month” or “End of Day”.

14. Americans have weird conventions for time – when they say the time is “Quarter Of One”, they mean the time is 1:15. Better to ask them the exact time.

15. Indians commonly use the terms “Today Evening”, “Today Night”. These are not correct; “Today” means “This Day” where the Day stands for Daytime. Therefore “Today Night” is confusing. The correct usages are: “This Evening”, “Tonight”.
That applies for “Yesterday Night” and “Yesterday Evening”. The correct usages are: “Last Night” and “Last Evening”.

16. When Americans want to know the time, it is usual for them to say, “Do you have the time?“. Which makes no sense to an indian.

17. There is no word called “Updation”. You update somebody. You wait for updates to happen to the database. Avoid saying “Updation”.

18. When you talk with someone for the first time, refer to them as they refer to you – in America, the first conversation usually starts by using the first name. Therefore you can use the first name of a client. Do not say “Sir”. Do not call women “Madam”.

19. It is usual convention in initial emails (particularly technical) to expand abbreviations, this way:
We are planning to use the Java API For Registry (JAXR).

After mentioning the expanded form once, subsequently you can use the abbreviation.

20. Make sure you always have a subject in your emails and that the subject is relevant. Do not use a subject line such as HI  .

21.Avoid using “Back” instead of “Back” Use “ago”.Back is the worst word for American.(for Days use “Ago”,For hours use “before”)

22.Avoid using “but” instead of “But” Use “However”.  

23.Avoid using “Yesterday” hereafter use “Last day”.

24.Avoid using “Tomorrow” hereafter use “Next day”

Courtesy: Thanks to my friends Archana Muralidharan and Viji Ramakrishnan for sharing this through an electronic email.

Hope it would be useful to buddies in IT and especially whoever deals with American Clients.

How to get the deployed JNDI Namespaces in WAS

The people in enterprise applications would have definitely got their hands dirty in dealing with a buzzword called ‘components’. As a component, it has to be searched first and upon successful return of its whereabouts, a reference to it has to be returned to the caller which becomes the first step of success to the programmer who is in need of it.

So, how can you search for a component? Obviously, with some of its properties that helps to identify the components uniquely in the arena where its deployed. Its up to the programmer to be aware of the correct JNDI name (Java Naming and Directory Interface) which helps to achieve the binding of the component with its unique name.

In case of Application Servers they may have some components deployed by themselves and they let the users make use of it with the enhancement support if required.  Is there a way to find out all the components deployed and their JNDI names as well?

Well, i am not going to give the way for ‘n’ number of application servers available in the market except ‘WAS’ (IBM’s WebSphere Application Server). Probably, a later time i may be able to consolidate if i get a chance to try with other application servers.

 Here you go for WAS….

(i) Start your WebSphere Application Server (this you can achieve it by going to the ‘bin’ directory of ‘ApplicationServerRootInstallationDirectory’ and then double click on the batch file (in case of Windows, it would be “.bat” and in case of Unix like OS, it would be “.sh” [meaning a shell script]) named ’startServer’.

Other way is you can directly go to the particular bin directly in the command prompt or shell (based on the OS) and then execute the batch file. This saves you in retaining the window. In the previous scenario where you just double click on the batch / script file the window may get vanished once the server is started. This holds for other Web Servers like Tomcat as well.

(ii) Wait for sometime till the application server is started and ready to listen. Usually it will take a couple of minutes to get started (without errors, obviously )

(iii) Once the App. Server is started, issue the following command in the command prompt [if you have just double clicked on the executable batch/script file, you have to go to command prompt and navigate to the 'bin' directory].

“dumpNameSpace.bat -port <port_number>”

     Usually the port number would be “2809” until and unless it is overridden. The command fetches you the list of components and their JNDI names. You can make use of it by redirecting it to a file in the command prompt like

    “C:\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>dumpNameSpace.bat -port 2809 > namespace.txt“

     The redirection symbol (the ‘greater than’ arrow mark in Windows OS) tells the OS to redirect the output of the previous command (dumpNameSpace.bat) to the next resource which is nothing but the file in our case and its name is “namespace.txt“. It will be saved in the current directory where this dumpNameSpace command is executed.

referring the css files for webpages inside Netbeans IDE

If you are dealing with CSS (Cascading Style Sheet) files for the web pages inside Netbeans IDE, you need to know one thing.

It does not pick up the .css files as referred in the files which has the link to it. Generally, all other IDEs and Application Servers should work that way. But when i had been doing a J2EE based web application, i found that aspect missing. When i tested, the pages were displayed as if the css files were not present at all.

Though i tried by placing the css file in a different location  by thinking that whethere the relative path given by me would have got some mistakes, there was no luck still. Then i got a doubt and referred the Help section of the IDE itself. You got to do a different work around for your css files to have effect.

Actually, the Netbeans IDE places (keeps its own references to) the css files in a separate location which is totally far away from your application’s root folder. You have to get that location and put it in the files whichever need the css links (in case of .html, .jsp files).

Steps to do that:

1. Select the particular .css file and Right click on it.

2. Click on either the ‘Copy XML Style’ or ‘Copy HTML Style’ based on the file types where you gonna link this .css file.It will copy the location of this .css file from the Netbean’s perspective into the Clipboard.

3. Now paste the copied text (actual reference to the .css file) in the appropriate place of the files needing this .css file.

In case of .html file, it would be in the ‘href’ attribute of ‘<link>’ element placed inside the ‘<head>’ element. In case of .xml files, place the reference after the XML prologue or header.

Really don’t know whether its purely based on the Netbeans IDE or the internally built-in Tomcat has some contribution towards this! Is this a bug in Netbeans? Yet to find out that

But somehow found this to get the css effects on pages with an overhead towards portability! If at all, i need to take the .war file and place it normal Tomcat itself, i may need to change the reference to the .css files referred everywhere right. Just to avoid that , i have made one common .jsp file where i have put this .css reference in <link> element and included this .jsp file in all the other .jsp files through include directive!