tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-55609561855526952652024-02-22T23:28:37.567+05:30Testing the TestableMeeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.comBlogger71125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-526427975269978102022-11-12T19:44:00.004+05:302022-11-12T19:44:45.361+05:30<p> Managing grief(s) of lifetime is not an easy job. The road that you walk on is always alone. No one can empathize or walk the same steps as you. Everyone who is grieving along with you has their own journey's with their own pathways and their own set of roadblocks. Over a period of time you learn to survive with the loss. 'Living' with everything on the same old jest and fervor may not be with the same emotions of happiness. Life just continues to "go on"!</p><p>So that has been a story of last 10 yrs where I have tried my best to resettle with multiple hard waves unsettling my sails. and then I just started riding the tide. The survival tactic was to go on with the flow of the river. I think now that lot of precious time has been spent and its high time to set in new winds in the sail! </p><p>As I have been flowing with the speed of the river, I have been closely and silently sharpening few rough edges of the axe on competency side. Been moving to newer unknown and untested waters. Challenged myself to be over occupied and all of it has been an interesting journey so far. </p><p>Now that I take back to writing, these experiential learning leaves will surely occupy an important place on sharing.</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-14968366393266423302022-11-12T19:26:00.004+05:302022-11-12T19:26:36.315+05:30<p>I have been promising myself for last few years that I will restart and take to more serious writing all over again.</p><p>I plan a charter but then it just gets pushed off again.</p><p>But as a resolution for the new year, getting started was the only option I have set for myself and here I am back again!</p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-54854336040757268902018-02-22T22:30:00.000+05:302018-02-22T22:30:31.561+05:30The Restart :)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So finally I am there to write the first post of this year :)<br />
<br />
In last few years, due to certain personal reasons I had to move away from my regular career track which involved project management, project delivery, sales, client management and other related stuff. This lead me explore something new and interesting at a much larger scale. The new key areas of involvement have been around strategy, planning, operations and people management. The posts from here on will be around multiple new experiential learnings in these spaces.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-4236195897745078082017-11-19T13:54:00.000+05:302017-11-19T13:54:00.167+05:30Renewed synergies <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Been few years that I really penned off something on a blog post.<br />
<br />
Life has taken many twists and turns in these years. There have been forced changed priorities of life and so on.<br />
<br />
Since one of coming new year's resolution is to restart on things that give me more eternal pleasure and blog writing is one of them, what better than penning something down before the new year actually starts :)<br />
<br /></div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-21011920355652562742013-09-22T21:25:00.002+05:302013-09-22T21:25:57.098+05:30Lost Memories ....<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2013 .....yet another year that gave me another huge void in life ....<br />
God only knows till when he'll keep throwing me into such unknown crevices of life....as soon as I think life is back in control and settling in...he sets another storm on my sails :(</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-90244085350216127582013-06-30T19:49:00.003+05:302013-06-30T19:49:53.252+05:30Meeting the old <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Had an interesting time with IIT BHU Alumni meet yesterday (29June2013).<br />
The function was a full packed day starting at 8 am and ending 11 pm. I was little apprehensive as I signed up a confirmation to attend thinking that this is going to be very long day and how will the organizers maintain it.<br />
Kudos to Sumit Dey and team of his supporters who managed to do everything perfectly. The best was the upkeep on the timing control.<br />
<br />
Meeting old friends, making new one's, listening to some interesting thoughts, reminiscing old days, reliving the days at BHU..... well memories galore!</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-82128838788022049432013-01-05T11:41:00.001+05:302013-01-05T11:41:03.865+05:302012 : A year gone by!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2012 was one of the worst year of my life.<br />
It uprooted me in many ways. Shook my belief in lot of things around me.<br />
Left me emotionally broken. It has been difficult to gather one self and face the ultimate truth of life. Face the fact of death of someone very near and dear to you.<br />
<br />
Time is the only healer for such a situation. It gives you strength to re-coop. To gather yourself. Continue on the life with a mega void that has been created.<br />
<br />
I also realized how lonely you get in your time of grief. None other than you can relate to the situation you are in. Everyone feels it is their right to advise and it your duty to adhere to that advise. It is so easier said than done when people tell you to be strong :(<br />
So many perspectives of my viewpoint about life have changed in this last one year!<br />
<br />
I hope that 2013 will bring in better days, a better me and a better vision from me for multiple things around me !!</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-83448519305032275842012-05-31T00:52:00.002+05:302012-05-31T01:25:35.042+05:30Commitment to learning : Sad state<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
One thing that has been worrying me for sometime and which I closely observe as a growing trend is the run-away attitude towards learning. People seek success but there is no commitment shown towards learning.<br />
I come across people from various kind of roles in the society who seem to believe that faster track is to learn less. But somehow I have never been comfortable with the thought.<br />
For Example I am citing a few thoughts I have heard or experienced recently from people across various roles when I talk about learning to them -<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>Students : </b>The frequent questions are - Can I read the least and score the most? Why does it require me to learn if it will not add to my scoring at exams? Why do you wish me to read and re-read time and again? Are my paper degrees not sufficient enough? </li>
<li>Some of them who claim to undertake courses in various things do it just for the sake of formality rather than gaining any true knowledge about the same. </li>
<li>My worst experience on this was meeting some research scholars who are in process of doing PhD and have been registered as full time students for more than a year and who proudly say that they have not visited libraries and only read off net. They also claim innocence regarding knowledge regarding some of the great writers and authors or their works especially on their chosen topic of research. </li>
</ul>
<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li><b>New Joinee at work : </b>Interest predominantly is on how quickly they can be deployed overseas or can have a direct customer / client facing role. They are just not ready to read / learn / practice more to gather more experiential facts and ability to manage any technical challenge or a difficult situation.</li>
<li><b>Employees with experience : </b>When I am fine doing what I am doing and if my manager is happy, why should I learn new things? Why should I put in such time and effort? Being in good books of my manager will help me rather than my skills.</li>
<li><b>People in little more senior roles in organizations : </b>Why should I bother? knowing just the terminology is sufficient enough. I have a team who should know such things with hands-on. They should be able to do work whenever needed. </li>
</ul>
<div>
These are states that really worry me at times about our future which is consistently becoming more and more technologically dependent and complicated.</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-81733404356036947692012-05-03T09:42:00.001+05:302012-05-03T09:42:04.040+05:30Confused with Google's approach - Need solution to the issue<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<div class="h7 " style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); clear: both; padding-bottom: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<div class="Bk" style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; float: none !important; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative; width: 595px;">
<div class="G3 G2" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<div id=":7u">
<div class="adn ads" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 8px;">
<div class="gs" style="margin-left: 44px;">
<div class="ii gt adP adO" id=":7s" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; position: relative; z-index: 2;">
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Have been maintaining this blog from 2006-2007 on-wards. Recently received a mail saying I need to claim my blogs so that they are not frozen. When I tried to do it as per the process explained, kept on getting error message.</span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Posted a query in the forum and received following response.</span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Little funny that Google does not have a solution to reported issue, but want to implement new maintenance rules.</span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Sorry Google, hope you are hearing and understand that this is an extremely bad idea.</span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">Attached below is communication chain.</span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></div>
<div id=":7t">
<span style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------</span></div>
<div id=":7t" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
<br /></div>
<div id=":7t" style="color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;">
I recieved a reminder mail saying I need to claim my blogs. Tried doing so but keep getting an error "user account not found".<br />Though when I directly log on, I can access account and make posts too.<br />Pls check and help.<br /><br />Thanks<br />Meeta<br /><br />-- To view this post online, visit <a href="https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/blogger/-/wXILvT6t464J" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://groups.google.com/a/<wbr></wbr>googleproductforums.com/d/msg/<wbr></wbr>blogger/-/wXILvT6t464J</a>.<div class="yj6qo">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="hi" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: auto;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="ajx" style="clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="gA gt acV" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: initial; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: auto;">
<div class="gB IapOyf" style="border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<div class="ip iq" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="h7 " style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; padding-bottom: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<div class="Bk" style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; float: none !important; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative; width: 595px;">
<div class="G3 G2" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<div id=":7c">
<div class="adn ads" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 20px; padding-left: 8px;">
<div class="aju" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 12px;">
<img aria-label=" " class="ajn" id=":0_2-e" jid="blogger@googleproductforums.com" name=":0" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/profile_mask2.png" style="background-color: #cccccc; height: 32px; width: 32px;" /></div>
<div class="gs" style="margin-left: 44px;">
<div class="gE iv gt" style="cursor: pointer; font-size: 13px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 12px;">
<table cellpadding="0" class="cf gJ" style="border-collapse: collapse; margin-top: 0px; width: auto;"><tbody>
<tr class="acZ" style="height: 16px;"><td class="gF gK" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap; width: 330px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf ix" style="border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed; width: 330px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="iw" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 92%; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; white-space: nowrap;">
<span class="gD" email="blogger@googleproductforums.com" style="color: #222222; display: inline; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Blogger</span> <span class="go" style="color: #555555; vertical-align: top;">blogger@googleproductforums.com</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td><td class="gH" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="gK" style="padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span alt="Thu, May 3, 2012 at 8:28 AM" class="g3" id=":78" style="margin-right: 3px; vertical-align: top;" title="Thu, May 3, 2012 at 8:28 AM">8:28 AM (1 hour ago)</span><div aria-checked="false" aria-label="Starred" class="lHQn1d" role="checkbox" style="display: inline-block; height: 20px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px;" tabindex="-1">
<span class="T-KT" style="display: inline-block; height: 19px; margin-bottom: -4px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -4px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 2px; text-align: center; width: 19px;"><img alt="" class="f T-KT-JX" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="margin-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" /></span></div>
</div>
</td><td class="gH" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"></td><td class="gH acX" rowspan="2" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-Js-IF aaq T-I-ax7 L3" role="button" style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(245, 245, 245), rgb(241, 241, 241)); border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-bottom-left-radius: 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-top-left-radius: 2px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #444444; cursor: default; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; height: 27px; line-height: 27px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -8px; min-width: 32px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0" title="Reply">
<img alt="" class="hB T-I-J3" role="button" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/sprite_black2.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px -63px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; height: 21px; margin-top: -3px; opacity: 0.55; vertical-align: middle; width: 21px;" /></div>
<div class="T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-Js-Gs aap T-I-awG T-I-ax7 L3" id=":6v" role="button" style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(245, 245, 245), rgb(241, 241, 241)); border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 2px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #444444; cursor: default; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; height: 27px; line-height: 27px; margin-left: -1px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -8px; min-width: 21px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0" title="More">
<img alt="" class="hA T-I-J3" role="menu" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/sprite_black2.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -42px -84px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; height: 21px; margin-top: -3px; opacity: 0.55; vertical-align: middle; width: 21px;" /></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="acZ SxTmFb" style="height: 16px;"><td colspan="3" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf adz" style="border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed; white-space: nowrap; width: 488px;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="ady" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;"><div class="iw ajw" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 92%; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">
<span class="hb" style="color: #777777; vertical-align: top;">to <span class="g2" email="blogger@googleproductforums.com" style="vertical-align: top;">blogger</span></span></div>
<div aria-haspopup="true" class="ajy" style="display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; vertical-align: top;">
<img alt="" aria-label="Show details" class="ajz" data-tooltip="Show details" id=":6w" role="button" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=dim&iv=1gsef47chh4uh&it=ic); background-origin: initial; background-position: -60px -100px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; cursor: pointer; height: 12px !important; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 12px !important;" tabindex="0" /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="utdU2e">
</div>
<div class="tx78Ic">
</div>
<div class="QqXVeb">
</div>
<div id=":6x" tabindex="-1">
</div>
<div class="ii gt adP adO" id=":7a" style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; position: relative; z-index: 2;">
<div id=":7b">
I just went through this very thing, several iterations in fact. Blogger maintains that my username is one of my GMail accounts, but trying to log in to the Legacy Migration page with this username returns the same error as above: "user account not found."<br /><br />I assume this is because I started with Blogger long before Google bought them, and there is something in a data table somewhere that's not linked correctly.<br /><br />-- To view this post online, visit <a href="https://groups.google.com/a/googleproductforums.com/d/msg/blogger/-/ymv9TEaA7Q0J" style="color: #1155cc;" target="_blank">https://groups.google.com/a/<wbr></wbr>googleproductforums.com/d/msg/<wbr></wbr>blogger/-/ymv9TEaA7Q0J</a>.<div class="yj6qo">
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="hi" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: #f2f2f2; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: auto;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="ajx" style="clear: both;">
</div>
</div>
<div class="gA gt acV" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-color: initial; border-image: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: none; border-top-width: initial; font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; width: auto;">
<div class="gB IapOyf" style="border-top-color: initial; border-top-style: initial; border-top-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<div class="ip iq" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px;">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
<div class="h7 ie nH oy8Mbf" style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); clear: both; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; padding-bottom: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<div class="Bk" style="border-bottom-color: initial; border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(239, 239, 239); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 0px; float: none !important; margin-bottom: 0px; position: relative; width: 595px;">
<div class="G3 G2 afm" style="background-color: transparent; border-bottom-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: initial; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: initial; border-left-style: initial; border-left-width: 0px; border-right-color: initial; border-right-style: initial; border-right-width: 0px; border-top-color: rgb(216, 216, 216); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;">
<div id=":1fj">
<div class="adn ads" style="border-left-color: transparent; border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px;">
<div class="aju" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 12px; padding-top: 12px;">
<img aria-label=" " class="ajn" id=":0_4-e" jid="meeta.prakash@gmail.com" name=":0" src="https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/profile_mask2.png" style="background-color: #a4c2f4; height: 32px; width: 32px;" /></div>
<div class="gs" style="margin-left: 44px;">
<div class="gE iv gt" style="cursor: auto; font-size: 13px; padding-bottom: 3px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 12px;">
<table cellpadding="0" class="cf gJ" style="border-collapse: collapse; margin-top: 0px; width: auto;"><tbody>
<tr class="acZ" style="height: 16px;"><td class="gF gK" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 0px; text-align: left; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap; width: 309px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf ix" style="border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed; width: 309px;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div class="iw" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 92%; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden; white-space: nowrap;">
<span class="gD" email="meeta.prakash@gmail.com" style="color: #222222; display: inline; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: top;">Meeta Prakash</span></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td><td class="gH" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="gK" style="padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 0px;">
<span alt="Thu, May 3, 2012 at 9:33 AM" class="g3" id=":1ff" style="margin-right: 3px; vertical-align: top;" title="Thu, May 3, 2012 at 9:33 AM">9:33 AM (2 minutes ago)</span><div aria-checked="false" aria-label="Starred" class="lHQn1d" role="checkbox" style="display: inline-block; height: 20px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px;" tabindex="-1">
<span class="T-KT" style="display: inline-block; height: 19px; margin-bottom: -4px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -4px; padding-bottom: 2px; padding-left: 2px; padding-right: 2px; padding-top: 2px; text-align: center; width: 19px;"><img alt="" class="f T-KT-JX" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="margin-top: 0px; vertical-align: top;" /></span></div>
</div>
</td><td class="gH" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"></td><td class="gH acX" rowspan="2" style="color: #222222; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: right; vertical-align: top; white-space: nowrap;"><div class="T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-Js-IF aaq T-I-ax7 L3" role="button" style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(245, 245, 245), rgb(241, 241, 241)); border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-bottom-left-radius: 2px; border-bottom-right-radius: 0px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-top-left-radius: 2px; border-top-right-radius: 0px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #444444; cursor: default; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; height: 27px; line-height: 27px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -8px; min-width: 32px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 8px; padding-right: 8px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0" title="Reply">
<img alt="" class="hB T-I-J3" role="button" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/sprite_black2.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: 0px -63px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; height: 21px; margin-top: -3px; opacity: 0.55; vertical-align: middle; width: 21px;" /></div>
<div class="T-I J-J5-Ji T-I-Js-Gs aap T-I-awG T-I-ax7 L3" id=":1f2" role="button" style="background-color: whitesmoke; background-image: -webkit-linear-gradient(top, rgb(245, 245, 245), rgb(241, 241, 241)); border-bottom-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-bottom-left-radius: 0px; border-bottom-right-radius: 2px; border-bottom-style: solid; border-bottom-width: 1px; border-image: initial; border-left-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-left-style: solid; border-left-width: 1px; border-right-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-right-style: solid; border-right-width: 1px; border-top-color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.0976563); border-top-left-radius: 0px; border-top-right-radius: 2px; border-top-style: solid; border-top-width: 1px; color: #444444; cursor: default; display: inline-block; font-size: 11px; font-weight: bold; height: 27px; line-height: 27px; margin-left: -1px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: -8px; min-width: 21px; outline-color: initial; outline-style: initial; outline-width: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; position: relative; text-align: center; z-index: 1;" tabindex="0" title="More">
<img alt="" class="hA T-I-J3" role="menu" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://ssl.gstatic.com/ui/v1/icons/mail/sprite_black2.png); background-origin: initial; background-position: -42px -84px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; height: 21px; margin-top: -3px; opacity: 0.55; vertical-align: middle; width: 21px;" /></div>
</td></tr>
<tr class="acZ SxTmFb" style="height: 16px;"><td colspan="3" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><table cellpadding="0" class="cf adz" style="border-collapse: collapse; table-layout: fixed; white-space: nowrap; width: 488px;"><tbody>
<tr><td class="ady" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;"><div class="iw ajw" style="display: inline-block; max-width: 92%; overflow-x: hidden; overflow-y: hidden;">
<span class="hb" style="color: #777777; vertical-align: top;">to <span class="g2" email="blogger@googleproductforums.com" style="vertical-align: top;">Blogger</span></span></div>
<div aria-haspopup="true" class="ajy" style="display: inline-block; padding-left: 5px; vertical-align: top;">
<img alt="" aria-label="Show details" class="ajz" data-tooltip="Show details" id=":1f3" role="button" src="https://mail.google.com/mail/images/cleardot.gif" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: initial; background-image: url(https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&view=dim&iv=1gsef47chh4uh&it=ic); background-origin: initial; background-position: -60px -100px; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; cursor: pointer; height: 12px !important; padding-bottom: 1px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px; vertical-align: bottom; width: 12px !important;" tabindex="0" /></div>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="utdU2e">
</div>
<div class="tx78Ic">
</div>
<div class="QqXVeb">
</div>
<div id=":1f4" tabindex="-1">
</div>
<div class="ii gt adP adO" id=":1fh" style="font-size: 13px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 15px; margin-top: 5px; padding-bottom: 5px; position: relative; z-index: 2;">
<div id=":1fi">
But then how do you suggest to handle our blogs with your new rules ?<div>
You definitely cant make mine unaccessible and I cant take my data anywhere. It is not so easily downloadable :(</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Pls suggest a solution.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thanks</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div>
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-65271482791494407112012-04-30T04:26:00.000+05:302012-04-30T04:26:00.452+05:30Testability of Thoughts, Thought Process and Actions : Musings<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<br />
<b><u>Testability of Thoughts, Thought Process and Actions : Musings</u></b><br />
<br />
Was going through my old blog posts and realized that there are so many times I come back to say I am re-starting or starting something new. I do few things for a while on my blog and then I again vanish. I observe that this shows in kind of a pattern in my writing.<br />
<br />
There are a few things that I further realized when I started analysing this self pattern in activity.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<u>Did I ever loose focus ?</u></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
No. But there were things in life that took a greater priority than blogging at that instance of time. But yes, I have never deviated from personal goal sheet of learning.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<u>Did I stop my learning ?</u><br />
No. Actually I spent my time more in learning something that was needed to enhance my skill sets. I was open to take up most difficult and challenging situations and that left me little time for many things which further forced prioritization and re-prioritization of many tasks that I do on personal note.<br />
<br />
<u>Did I stop being consistent ?</u><br />
No. Consistency was persistent in my thought process as well as personal actions. But the focus was self development rather than blogging. Time availability added to the challenge.<br />
<br />
<u>Did I stop my innovative mind to think about new things ?</u><br />
No. The new things thought and learnt were used somewhere else and the results were successful.<br />
<br />
<u>Did I procrastinate publishing my writings ?</u><br />
Yes. There are umpteen writings that exist in my draft folder and just need the final polish to be published.<br />
<br />
<u>Did I procrastinate writing itself ?</u><br />
To an extent, Yes. Writing moved out of my priority goal sheet and was replaced with heavy weightage to learning more in every possible aspect and dimension.<br />
<br />
<u>Am I sharing enough of my learning's ?</u><br />
Not at all. Most of my learning's are learning's with myself. They are being shared verbally only with people who comeback and insistently seek individually.<br />
<br />
So here I am with more determined 2012 and pulling active writing back into my goal sheet :)<br />
And this time it is with focus to bring up the learning's of last 15 years well spent with Testing as my eat, drink and sleep agenda.<br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-45891980795402949772011-12-07T21:13:00.000+05:302011-12-07T21:13:35.412+05:30Just thinking ..... on a different note<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Was reading something on greats like Plato, Aristotle etc. today. It described about their lives, works and other aspects of their existence. There was so much of mention about how each aspect of their life is understood and interpretation of what proof led to this understanding.<br />
<br />
Suddenly a thought came, how will people of this generation be understood few centuries later?<br />
We, in this generation have moved away so much from paper. We love our small machines and prefer to do most things electronically. We also chat in our local languages using English to represent it.<br />
<br />
I actually just do not remember when was it last in recent times since I have started working that I used a proper paper and pen to write something that I really want to represent as my individual thought. Whenever I feel like writing my first choice is type off and so I am sure do many more of us. So are we leaving any footprints for our future generations or just leaving a space for them to re-discover everything all over again.<br />
<br />
Huh! something to worry for future?<br />
<br />
As I type this post, I also get reminded to think about India's glorious past.<br />
for example -<br />
<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>If you read Ramayana, there are instances like the 'vimana' in which Ravan took Sita away and later Ram and Sita returned to Ayodhya in. Was is anything different that modern technology planes or helicopters?</li>
<li>Both Ramayana and Mahabharata have so many 'astra's' and 'yantra's' used in war. How different are these from our modern day missiles?</li>
<li>'Muni-Rishi's' just taking some water in their hands from 'kamandals' and creating blessings or curses.</li>
<li>'Narada Muni' travelling across worlds in seconds. Was this not teleporting?</li>
<li>'Trishanku' hanging between stars of 'saptarishi mandal'. Was this not related to managing gravity?</li>
</ul><div>And are we not re-discovering these all over again now coz the world did not have the technology transcripts?</div><br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-21216241030978365462011-11-26T20:50:00.000+05:302011-11-26T20:50:54.057+05:30Make a difference : Bring an edge to your project delivery ! [My Learning : #1]<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">[My Learning : #1]<br />
<br />
How can you do more efficient project delivery ??<br />
There are many instances when projects go in crisis. Mostly the crisis situations fall into 2 categories<br />
<ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Either the client expectation is not met on time or </li>
<li>There are delivery quality issues - in other words client expectation is not met</li>
</ul>A general observations that I have had around where slippages are mostly hapenning and can be easily corrected with more focus and attention are<br />
<ol style="text-align: left;"><li><u><strong>Requirement Freeze</strong></u> - Ensure that the requirements for test are clearly defined and signed off from all stakeholders.</li>
<li><b><u>Code Freeze</u></b> - Insist on a code freeze from Dev team and deployment to QA environment that is completely stable.</li>
<li><b><u>Dedicated QA Environment</u></b> - Ensure that a dedicated QA environment is available with latest and stable build deployed for testing. During the period of a testing cycle, this code should not be updated. Have all the release notes available handy against each new code update deployed.</li>
<li><u style="font-weight: bold;">Risk Based Testing </u>: The approach is one of the better ones to start testing on. It can be either used as a direct approach or can be used as a parallel approach to exhaustive testing that needs to be undertaken. It also helps to prioritize and build a strong traceability avoiding defect slippages.</li>
<li><b><u>People Dependencies</u></b> : People are the biggest keys for successful project deliveries. Understand the key people in your project. Understand what they are involved with and what are they doing. Help them improve with your experience and do better.</li>
<li><b><u>People Competency</u></b> - Invest in your people and their competencies. Give them space to develop their skills and create scenarios where they can upgrade and learn.</li>
<li><strong><u>Reaction – only after crisis</u> - </strong>Do not react only after crisis has hit you and you get into either multiple blame games or cover-up activities. Pay close attention to track deliverable against expectation matching for cleaner output in sync with desired client expectation.</li>
<li><b><u>Role of a Team Member as a 'TESTER'</u></b> - As a tester, don't be a checker be a tester ! Try unconventional testing. Look for avenues to do the exploratory. Keep a keen eye open for critical defects. Bring in a thought process as end user. This will help you crack the hidden issues and potential defects.</li>
<li><b><u>Role of a Team Lead / Test Manager</u></b> - Be innovative in building your test strategy. Gather your application / product details technically as well as functionally. Show your team members how to be innovative in test approach. Build your test oracles strong. Do not hesitate to ask questions. Neither hesitate to insist on logging an issue and not sweep it under carpet on behest of development team.</li>
<li><b><u>Role of a Manager</u></b> - As a manager don't just sit there and watch. Only metrics numbers will not give you a better and cleaner tested product or app. Don't also just fall into the trap where you feel that few web apps and trackers that you maintain or the jazzy reports that you can stir up with MS office packages will take you and your teams to places with clients. Make your hands dirty along with your teams and lead from front to deliver a better tested deliverable.</li>
</ol></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-42538702142544161232011-11-26T20:22:00.001+05:302011-11-27T01:21:17.582+05:30Lessons of Learning : from leaves of experience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I intend to start writing a series of posts that will be in the tag line "Lessons of Learning - My learning #".<br />
These will mainly be focused around my experience in life as I have evolved through my journey of testing experiences.<br />
These will primarily be short notes to start with and will slowly grow into bigger writing pieces.<br />
Will look forward to comments from you to add on your experience leaves to the same :)</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-74364177429679822712011-05-15T11:33:00.002+05:302011-05-15T11:35:13.537+05:30Experiential Learning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">I picked up a new mobile handset some weeks back but did not have time to configure it up due to free time unavailability ........ started to do it in bits and pieces....managed to set up a few basic accesses.... finally realized that there is an issue when I try to access mails. It just refused to open up any of my mbox ..... tried many approaches, mobile store and googling too but was just NOT getting the appropriate info to set it right..... I was so irritated at the user unfriendliness and was wondering if it was worth spending the bomb of currency notes on it ....<br />
<br />
Then I remembered that AJ had a older version of a similar handset, and this weekend (14 May 2011) when I pinged him, I asked him if he could help me on....... and there started our virtual paired testing :)<br />
<br />
We set onto identifying what he had on his handset over skype chat and I tried to see if I could replicate or find some near about alternative to what he was suggesting ........ he built up scenarios for me based on his user experience and I tried to see if I could replicate it over my new handset with new functionalities and modules..... visa-versa I told him of my user needs and he tried to initiate it on his cell and tell me the scenario which I again tried to replicate.<br />
The first trap I unearthed was that I cannot access coz the software's pre-installed on my handset are old ones and the new apps don't support them any more. AJ suggested that I needed to set up an application that will help me access all that I needed from a single screen. AJ further suggested I use snaptu for it as he found that very comfortable. He sent me a link and I downloaded and installed it up.......it was an older version and after installation, I had to again upgrade it up...... but then started my series of unearthing multiple user unfriendly scenarios and setting each one of them up as per my need......<br />
<br />
The worst of all traps was that my logical thinking and the way the mobile functionalities are mapped had no sync. For example : I assume gmail to be a social networking, but the system accepts it as 'utilities'.... with this experience, I expected hotmail also to be 'utilities'..... but found it is under 'entertainment' .....yahoo mail and You Tube was also found there .....<br />
Also found that Yahoo and Hotmail were listed under 'news' too :(<br />
<br />
Long and short of it ... had to really spend time looking for navigations that were not so logical in approach .... <br />
<br />
And finally after 3 weeks of buying the handset I am operational in mobile over my required net access on the move :)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-24985464819079431142010-10-02T20:01:00.000+05:302010-10-02T20:01:02.649+05:30Does it help being / (posing) as ignorant ?<div>Surprised to see the title ??</div><br />
<div> </div><div>......the truth is "YES" it helps ...at least my experience says "YES" for me.....</div><br />
<div> </div><div></div><strong><span style="color: #333399;">Learning :</span></strong><br />
<br />
<div> </div><div><span style="color: black;">As I started growing up the career ladder, my responsibilities started to take new dimensions professionally..... and a very important lesson I learnt with this progression was to retain my urge to learn and learn more.</span></div><br />
<div> </div><div>The day ego takes a higher place and you think that now you know most of all ....... you start your down fall on learning..... this also impacts on you holistically as a person as you are closed towards imbibing anything new coming your way.</div><br />
<div> </div><div></div>One of the key approaches I take today towards new projects coming on my plate is to reuse my existing knowledge and experiential learning. The second is to improve on my existing knowledge.<br />
<br />
<div><span style="color: #333399;"><strong>Traps :</strong></span></div><br />
<div> </div><div>But much before I took to these approaches as practice, there were some attitudinal traps that I fell into. Some of them were </div><ol><li><strong><span style="background-color: white; color: #351c75;">I know it all :</span></strong></li>
<li><strong><span style="color: #351c75;">What new can I learn beyond this ?</span></strong></li>
<li><strong><span style="color: #351c75;">Everything is similar in this field, what will be the new challenge ?</span></strong></li>
<li><strong><span style="color: #351c75;">If I can do it one way, I can do the other too </span></strong></li>
</ol><strong><span style="color: #351c75;"></span></strong> Relating it practically as -<br />
<ul><li>As soon as I see a work item-I think this is easy job and 'X' # of artifacts and learning's from my last project can be reused here. No considerable thought at start point was given to the rework involved in customization of these reusable artifacts</li>
<li>Oh! this is so easy and similar to what has been handled earlier by me</li>
<li>This is the same old technology what can be the challenge here ?</li>
</ul>Believe me ...... once the project started and we started to get deep into work ...was when I realized that though things are similar; use same old technology but the implementation and the legacy system handling always makes it different. To add to the complexity is the system architecture which will define the complexity in its own way. <br />
Many a times I also realized that reuse was futile and total waste of effort trying to re-engineer. Ultimately it was only my learning that helped me craft and structure things better in the new environment.<br />
<br />
An approach of playing "ignorant" also helped me ask most of the wrong questions at the right places and hence helped me identify my roadblocks much in advance than I actually would have.<br />
<br />
Now ....big or small ...new or old ......each time I get something on my plate.....<br />
My approach is the same ......<br />
Oh!! new work..........Let's EXPLORE !!<br />
<br />
<br />
..............and I am still improving and working on sharpening my skill sets.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-43116370279400406552010-09-30T20:10:00.001+05:302010-10-02T20:06:39.153+05:30The Pear Tree & Testing !!An interesting story I read recently and it relates so much to the testing .........<br />
If you are passionate about testing ....you can relate every word to some activity you do as a tester ....including the lessons learnt !!<br />
<br />
<strong><em><span style="background-color: #c27ba0;">The Pear tree!!</span></em></strong><br />
<br />
<br />
There was a man who had four sons. He wanted his sons to learn not to judge things too quickly. So he sent them each on a quest, in turn, to go and look at a pear tree that was a great distance away.<br />
<br />
The first son went in the winter, the second in the spring, the third in summer, and the youngest son in the fall.<br />
<br />
When they had all gone and come back, he called them together to describe what they had seen. <br />
The first son said that the tree was ugly, bent, and twisted. <br />
The second son said no it was covered with green buds and full of promise.<br />
The third son disagreed; he said it was laden with blossoms that smelled so sweet and looked so beautiful, it was the most graceful thing he had ever seen.<br />
The last son disagreed with all of them; he said it was ripe and drooping with fruit, full of life and fulfillment.<br />
<br />
The man then explained to his sons that they were all right, because they had each seen but only one season in the tree's life.<br />
<br />
He told them that you cannot judge a tree, or a person, by only one season, and that the essence of who they are and the pleasure, joy, and love that come from that life can only be Measured at the end,when all the seasons are up.<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="background-color: yellow;">Lessons learnt :</span></strong><br />
If you give up when it's winter, you will miss the promise of your spring, the beauty of your summer, fulfillment of your fall!!<br />
<br />
Don't let the pain of one season destroy the joy of all the rest!!<br />
<br />
Don't judge life by one difficult season… don’t judge a person by one single incident!!<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-48370940831644455642010-09-30T19:38:00.002+05:302010-09-30T19:38:52.352+05:30Managing Traceability - yes / no ?In my opinion, managing traceability is difficult especially if the product is very complex in architecture.<br />
<br />
<br />
Though it is tough, I do not perceive it as impossible.<br />
<br />
The only place this falls through the cracks is when the product starts to grow and people do not have time to maintain or reuse it efficiently and effectively.<br />
<br />
One of the easiest ways to maintain it for the benefit of all groups in SDLC is to maintain it centrally. Have a few people team working very closely with architects who track each and every impact. <br />
<br />
The methods to track can be either through something as simple as an xls or through various tools available in the market. BPM and BPT(Business Process Modeling and testing) can be one option.<br />
<br />
A small tracker will need to be maintained further as a subset of traceability tracker to know proper coverage of: Positive tests, Negative Tests, Performance/Load/Stress, usability... etc ..etc based on your needs.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-71989570832321228102010-07-06T00:42:00.000+05:302010-07-06T00:42:33.341+05:30Learning's from Interview BoardRead an interesting post from <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">Pari</span> <a href="http://curioustester.blogspot.com/2010_07_01_archive.html">http://<span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">curioustester</span>.<span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">blogspot</span>.com/2010_07_01_archive.html</a><br />
it reminded me of many interview panels that I have been part of ........<br />
It is always so easy to be on the other side of the table ....you can ask anything and pass off with it.......and that is the imagination with which many an interviewee walk in ....... (BTW - I usually interview people with 8+ yrs of experience only)<br />
<br />
Just like <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">Pari</span> resorted to asking a potential employee (I prefer referring them so till I do not reject them officially post an interview :)) if he could test a marker ....... I have used many similar simple examples like a coffee vending machine; swipe in/out machines; <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">login</span> on a home page; etc<br />
<br />
People are usually caught by surprise <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">coz</span> they come prepared for heavy questions with equally weighty answers :)<br />
<br />
Where does it helps me ?<br />
<ul><li>To identify a genuine testers and ensure not a checker is hired</li>
<li>Identify the concepts of the person</li>
<li>Identify the gaps that he brings to table as a heavy weight in his thought process</li>
</ul><br />
Few easy areas (read traps) where people get confused and easily get caught are -<br />
<ul><li>Metrics and Measures - What are they collecting and reason to have them ?</li>
<li>Software Testability and Usability</li>
<li>Test Scenario and Test cases</li>
<li>Test Oracle and Test Heuristic</li>
<li>Why Automation ? - When and where to use it ? What is the thumb rule to decide on automation ?</li>
<li>What are they doing now in their current job profile and why are they doing so ? Why did they not use an 'XYZ' approach ?</li>
<li>Reliability of their test cases </li>
<li> ..........</li>
</ul>[You thought I'll leak my complete questioning skill here ;) ...who knows when I'll interview you next !!]<br />
<br />
Long and short of it .......we seriously lack thinking testers amongst the community .......... there are also people who have achieved a lot but will still struggle when subjected to such questions ....<br />
<br />
The testing community needs a lot of change in thought process and we need to be the change .....<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-32259140748310706322010-07-05T17:02:00.000+05:302010-07-05T17:02:23.681+05:30Negative and Positive Test CasesIt was interesting conversation between James Bach and Michael Bolton last week over twitter where the topic was focused around - Negative and Positive Test Cases.<br />
<br />
One of Michael's comment <span style="color: blue;"><strong>"When you read a newspaper, do you *count* the stories? Count good news stories vs. bad news stories?" </strong></span>....made me think why we as testers get swayed to the thought of classifying our test cases in such a manner .......<br />
<br />
Yes, when I read a news paper ...I do not classify my stories nor count them but then what becomes so different when I write test cases ???<br />
<br />
Putting my test manager's cap, the f<span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">ew</span> immediate things / reasons that came up -<br />
<ol><li>How do you ensure that you have your test scenarios totally covered ?</li>
<li>Can you maintain an exhaustive checklist ? </li>
<li>Or is it easier to classify them as negative and positive for the team to build easier understandability around what is expected from them ?</li>
<li>Does it take me away from micro management ?</li>
</ol>In my opinion the completeness of test cases covering a scenario is bound by both the negative and positive aspects required to test. So based on my experience and assumptions I feel that it is the ease of tracking that has got these terms of negative and positive in the scene and somewhere the thought process got lost and it started to become more of a process meant for tracking and keeping a count rather than measuring the value add in totality.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-64661028682302795482010-06-26T18:28:00.000+05:302010-06-26T18:28:24.536+05:30Gracious Jon BachHow many people will have the courage to own up against their perception and post a blog titled " To India, an apology"............. This blog note from Jon Bach is a gracious post that explores his perception handling on Indian Testers and how he overcame it ...<br />
<br />
Cudos Jon !! I appreciate !!<br />
<br />
Proves only 1 thing ....If you want a solution to any problem, you'll always find one ..........If you want a change, be the change yourself.<br />
<br />
Read the blog post at Jon's page at <a href="http://jonbox.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/to-india-an-apology/#comment-347">http://jonbox.wordpress.com/2009/12/17/to-india-an-apology/#comment-347</a><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><strong>To India, an apology</strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><strong></strong></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">By jbtestpilot </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I’m back.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">At the behest of a colleague named Lanette Creamer (a fantastic blogger worth following), I just went ahead and decided to just get busy, just get over myself, and just post an entry. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">A few things went through my mind as to what to say after such a lapse, but the ideas seemed shallow — pet peeves, annoyances, ramblings, diary stuff. Nothing worthy.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Then I thought of Lanette’s reliable, refreshing honesty and openness in her blog, and the idea came out of nowhere. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">An apology. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">To testers in India.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And here’s why…</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">For years, I put you in a box and closed the lid. I labeled it “Indian Testers” and shelved it, thinking I knew everything I needed to know about you. It was easy to do this. For years when I worked for a local (Seattle) test lab, you were a competitor. I believed what others said about you because it made it easier to believe that the lab could compete with your testing companies despite being lower cost. Even though I left the lab last year for a bigger company with more challenges for me, I found out a few months later that you were replacing me and most of my staff, taking jobs away from my country when we most needed them.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Nevermind that it was not your fault, nor that the few Indian testers I had worked with in my 15 years of testing were pretty good. I dismissed that as an anomaly. Besides, those testers lived and worked in the United States. I considered them “American”, and let that other folklore rule my perceptions about testers who still lived in India. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Folklore said you had no passion or skill or curiosity or personality. Everywhere I went, people agreed. They said you were too compliant. You appeared to do only what you were told, and you always seemed to agree and understand, nodding your head and saying “yes, certainly sir.” You only wanted the software to work (not to fail) and your shallow tests only confirmed that.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So like the others, I tended to see you as commodities and machines. You were only good for running easy conformance tests that required no skill — good for tests that no one else wanted to do. I would see short, strange emails from you that said “Kindly send me a sample test plan for the testing, please.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">This was more evidence for me that Indian testers didn’t think outside the box or have much imagination. They were not critical thinkers. They stuck to the test procedure, even if it was badly written. They wrote bad procedures themselves. They didn’t ask questions. They didn’t take initiative. They said yes to everything and rarely lived up to promises. While very polite, they had the “no problem” syndrome. They did not push back when something was difficult, or impossible.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">In May when I last wrote a blog in this space, the company I worked for announced layoffs and told us that we had to train our replacements for the next few months. In that time, the new Indian staff would have to be as good as we were even though most of my staff had many years of experience with the product. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">As a trainer, manager, and coach, I had fun teaching technical skill and product domain knowledge. But what I CAN’T train is curiosity. I cannot train someone to have a hunger to learn and discover and explore. Either they have it or they don’t. After all, remember that the folklore told me that companies who went to India to outsource their testing were coming back because of the poor quality. The trend even had a name — “backshoring.”</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">When I was told about the layoff and told I had a few months to train my 3 teams before our exit from the company, I knew the transition was not going to go well. The Indian replacements would surely fail, and my career would go down with them, I was sure. It was not a good time to be a test manager. There had to be a way, but I couldn’t think of anything. Maybe by being a son-of-a-bitch boss, I could take these Indian folks and scare them into being good testers. It was against my nature to do that, but I had no choice. I didn’t know how else I could turn people who didn’t want to learn into those that did.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">A month after the layoff announcement, I was right. The transition classes for one of my teams’ projects had started, and the Indian testers were mechanical and uninspired. They asked few if any questions despite the product being complicated. When asked if they had questions, they said no. It was going badly, right on schedule, just as I had predicted, just as the folklore said it would.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Just before the transition classes were about to start for another of my project teams (the biggest and most complicated), I learned about a class available for whoever on the team wanted to go. It was called “Doing Business in India”, taught by an outside firm. I was too depressed and burned out from training the previous day to do any real work, anyway, so I figured I go to the class and have an onsite “vacation day.” The class would surely be full of boring, useless platitudes – a great place to escape for awhile. It was a free day away from the rigors of transition of our work to India, at a time when my great staff would soon be out of a job.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I felt like a problem child in that class. I sat in the back row and defied the guy to teach me anything. This wasn’t like me at all, but on this subject, I thought I knew what I needed to know about Indian testers. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">But he did a strange thing. He did not talk about platitudes. He explained that he had been a cultural anthropologist, having lived and worked in India for 25 years. He talked about why the generalities and perceptions of Indians were so pervasive. He validated my perceptions, talked about their history and why they seemed to be so complicit.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I went up to him at a break and told him more about my perceptions (listed above). I eventually said “Listen, I just want one thing from this class: tell me the key to unlock their souls.” I smiled when I said it, but he seemed to know that I wanted his help to break through the veneer of their politeness and complicity to expose if they had real personalities and talent like the few “American-Indian” testers I had worked with.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I was being glib, but he answered me plainly.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">“Such a key does exist, Jon,” he said with a serious look. Then he looked away. “I’ll mention that when we reconvene.”</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And true to his promise, when class reconvened, he said: “If American-cultured testers are 80% business and 20% personal, flip it when working with Indian testers. Focus a LOT more on the personal than you ever thought you could stand. You’ll get the productivity you want.”</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">He was talking right to me. He almost dared me to try it. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So in defiance, I did.</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">When transition started for that bigger, more complex product – ushering in a new group of Indian testers — I took them team to lunch. It was July 3, the day before Independence Day. I asked them about Indian independence. The talk quickly turned to ideas of freedom and culture and … well, marriage. After all, weren’t all marriages arranged over there? How could that be freedom?</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Even though one of them was from an arranged marriage, another was from what they called a “love” marriage. That surprised me. I asked each of them to tell me more about that. The one in the arranged marriage said “You grow to love them.” Being married for 10 years, I had to admit that I understood that. There are things about my wife that I have grown to love over the years, even though it did not start out that way.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">He later said that his wife was joining him the next day, and what he said next surprised me. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">“From what you said about your Independence Day in the United States, when my wife arrives tomorrow, it will not be Independence Day for me.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I didn’t understand at first, but then he smiled. Ah, a joke! </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">As a married man, I got it. And right there, I had my first success. I saw a personality under the veneer, and I liked him right away.</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The next day I went to my other team, the one I was not having much success with. I decided I would start over. I gave one of them a task. I agreed to learn something I thought he might be interested in – cricket – in return for him learning our product – a database for attorneys and other legal professionals to store and review legal documents. I made him a deal: build me a database (using our product) of documents about cricket. He learns the product, I learn about cricket – same database. He said yes and that it was a fine idea and smiled. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I asked the other tester to do the same. He reacted flatly. Then I caught myself. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Ummm, maybe not ALL Indian testers like cricket…! </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So I asked him. “That is, if you’re interested in cricket.”</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">He said he was not, but that he would do it anyway. As I walked away with the first guy (the one who complied), I said “I guess I blew it there. I should not assume everyone likes cricket.” </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">“Oh no,” he replied. “Anir loves cricket. He was messing with you.”</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I couldn’t believe it. That little event was yet another key turned in a lock, showing me promise of a personality and productivity, and it happened in an instant.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">That little idea started a chain of other small ideas. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I had a room full of Indian testers who had just flew in the day before. It was 8:00 am in a new time zone. It was hard for *me* to get up early, much less think about flying across the world the day before.</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So I put a 3 ft x 3 ft map of India on the wall so they could each tell me where they were from. As the pushpins were going in, a magical thing happened. I realized India was a BIG country. Next to it, I put a map of Washington. Then it dawned on me – most of Washington they would never see. Yakima, Wenatchee, Bellingham, Long Beach, Spokane, Moses Lake, Orcas Island, Mt. St. Helens. Politically, Washington is mostly a “red” state, mostly Republican. The Seattle population, however, skews it so that Washington is almost always considered a “blue” state (Democrat) in national elections. They wouldn’t know that.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Then I thought of Seattle. There are parts of Seattle that are wealthier than others, that have different value systems. Capitol Hill tends to be liberal. Beacon Hill is conservative, and they are a mere 3 miles from each other.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">It stands to reason then, I thought as I looked at the map, that India must be the same way. Maybe a tester from the south is not the same as a tester from the north. Tamil Nadu in the southeast is conservative. Coimbatore is less so. Maybe this collection of people and their personalities would come out in different ways, but maybe the key toward getting them to show that to me was the same – make it personal.</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">The next day in a training class I was hosting for them, I brought up Google Maps and projected it on the wall. I zoomed in on Coimbatore where they were from and asked each to show me on what street they lived. That way, maybe they’d be less homesick, and I’d learn about their city. No testing got done in that two-hour session. No training got done. Nothing business, nothing productive, nothing measurable. But all personal.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">What really got done in that session was me getting over myself. I was building a team, accidentally, on purpose, and I was seeing smiles and jokes, and shyness fading. The next session when we got into learning the product, the jokes carried forth – not always by me. I set the tone that it was ok, and they slowly followed suit. It began to be fun.</span> <br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">At the next session, the walls melted a bit more and we played one of the testing-thinking games me and my brother are famous for.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">A week of this, and none of them were machines. They were people just like me, just like my existing teams that were being replaced. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">I saw them thinking more and more above and beyond my expectations. They were hungry and wanted to learn more. While still polite, the veneer dropped despite the jet lag and the homesickness. They learned on their own, as a team, after business hours. They took pictures of me with them, shared their family pictures with me, shared the pictures they took when they explored Seattle that past weekend. They went places (in MY city) that even I hadn’t gone yet.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">We got down to business, but it was personal. That was the key. They dove into their feature assignments just like my team did. They loved exploring, were not shy, talked over each other, even gaggled like kindergarteners eager to show each other as if it was show-and-tell time. It was amazing, and it was as easy as a key being turned in a lock, just like the instructor said would happen.</span> <br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">And, you know, I suddenly realized that I was the same manager I was with my existing staff. This was me, my style. This is what I had done with my staff well before the Indians came in to be trained. The only difference was my perception that Indian testers were not as capable as my staff. For that, I was just plain wrong.</span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"><br />
</span><br />
<br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">So, India, consider me schooled. I have some keys now that I didn’t have before and my perception is different. Like a good tester, I ran a different set of tests on you that revealed new data well beyond the folklore. </span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #4c1130;">Still, let this be my apology.</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<strong><span style="color: #274e13;">My response to Jon ...........</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Jon</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">A very nice post …I just chanced upon a link today while browsing and it led me here …..though this is an older post by you, I could not help writing a note </span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">I have been working across borders for all my professional life and find every country and their people mesmerizing in multiple perspective.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Just like you had perceptions about Indians and their behavioral attitude ….. People in India have some too …….from the ones that I have found amongst people when I interact with them, I’d like to share some key ones with you…….</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">I could take these learning’s and was able to see it visibly effective in non-US-UK…(non English speaking) countries to be similar in many respects …….</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">When initially people start interacting….. they face a few challenges like :</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">1. They are little unsure on how to maintain the cultural balance during discussion</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">2. The language and pronunciation at times are difficult to immediately pick up (Remember – English is still a foreign language)</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">3. They feel that if they ask questions, they might be considered ignorant and unskilled</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">The above 3 I significantly relate to as a barrier in European countries too where English is a foreign language.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">For India there is a 4th one too</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">4. Cultural upbringing that says do not question your teacher upfront. You can initiate dialogues later. Indians strongly believe the saying ” Guru Govind dou khade, kake lagu paav…Balihari guru aapno Govind diyo milaye” that means…. “if both God and Teacher stand in front of me, whom should I bow first? …. It has to be the teacher coz it was he who taught how to understand and unite with God”.</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">Family – anyways rules as the first law in india !!</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">It is really nice to see that all of us are now trying to break these cross cultural barriers and trying to understand perspectives of others and in return learn something from them as well !!</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;">….</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><br />
<span style="color: #274e13;"><br />
</span><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-28752447500300452072010-06-08T05:28:00.000+05:302010-06-08T05:28:38.003+05:30Amazing DiscussionI had the opportunity to have an amazing discussion with James Bach today which also involved mentoring on positioning oneself.<br />
<br />
My take away's post discussion -<br />
<ul><li>Believe in yourself</li>
<li>Understand your strengths</li>
<li>Position your flairs</li>
<li>Do not hesitate to ask for what is legitimate</li>
</ul><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-8023478989194833972010-06-08T05:24:00.000+05:302010-06-08T05:24:14.908+05:30Women in IT ? ....Why not ' Women and IT' ????Last few days there has been fire on twitter & Blog spaces ....... fiery remarks have been made to individuals and group of people.......is it justified ??<br />
Few links for you to read around the same at Jon Bach's blog http://jonbox.wordpress.com/<br />
<br />
I have but one question .....<br />
Why is the world so worried about gender at work ?????<br />
Why is everyone worried about "Women in IT/Agile/Testing /........." ?????????<br />
Why is the focus on "Women in IT" ???<br />
<br />
Why can't people think and realize ????<br />
<br />
<strong>Why are you not emphasising on "Women and IT " ???</strong><br />
<br />
In my viewpoint, the later will make more sense for all those kids who are looking for pointers towards decision making. <br />
<br />
Role model does not always help to follow blindly. <br />
<br />
But a career guidance with what all you can do substantiated with examples of "Women achievers in IT" may help them better to make right choices towards their careers. <br />
<br />
I also do not understand how to relate "diversity" and "Women in IT"....... for me "diversity" without a context is meaningless. In professional world diversity is linked to multitude of factors.<br />
In this specific case also it is linked to thought process and individuals capabilities.<br />
<br />
I also ask why do you think you should be treated differently ? In the professional environment<br />
<br />
1. You do the same work<br />
<br />
2. You get paid the same<br />
<br />
3. You have similar skills<br />
<br />
4. You spend similar amount of time at work<br />
<br />
5.You get the same career graph<br />
<br />
<strong>Thoughts to ponder :</strong><br />
<ul><li>What stops me to stand up and voice my thoughts and speak my mind in sync with the work I do ?</li>
</ul> -----My internal fear of rejection / inhibition or my inability or something else<br />
<ul><li>Can I not improve my skills as others (men included) ????</li>
</ul> ---------- The opportunities are sitting there, dont I just need a mindset to go and acquire it ?<br />
<div></div><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-60754028036619249992010-05-30T22:31:00.001+05:302010-05-30T22:33:06.063+05:30<div>James Bach has something nice on heuristics posted on his blog <a href="http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/462">http://www.<span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">satisfice</span>.com/blog/archives/462</a> titled <a href="http://www.satisfice.com/blog/archives/462" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link: The Essence of Heuristics">The Essence of Heuristics</a>.</div><br />
<div>Very thought provoking simple read......the questions that he asks at the end are that I directly relate to being a good manager</div><br />
<ol><li>Do they teach you how to tell if it’s working?<br />
Do they teach you how to tell if it’s going wrong?<br />
Do they teach you heuristics for stopping?<br />
Do they teach you heuristics for knowing when to apply it?<br />
Do they compare it to alternative heuristics?<br />
Do they show you why it works?<br />
Do they help you understand when it probably works best?<br />
Do they help you know how to re-design it, if needed?<br />
Do they let you own it?<br />
Do they ask you to practice it?<br />
Do they tell stories about how it has failed?<br />
Do they listen to you when you question or challenge it?<br />
Do they praise you for questioning and challenging it? </li>
</ol>Give these questions a good thought and it will help you answer many confusion and <span class="goog-spellcheck-word" style="background: yellow;">unhide</span> many unknown corners during testing.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-71505249607410506002010-05-30T17:56:00.004+05:302010-05-30T18:02:24.076+05:30few chapters from Jerry's book- 'mistress of molecules'<p><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Mistress_of_Molecules.html">http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Mistress_of_Molecules.html</a></p><p>above path is the source link</p><p><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Home.html">Home </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/eBOOKS.html">eBOOKS </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Books.html">Books </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Leadership.html">Leadership </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Quality.html">Quality </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Thinking.html">Thinking </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Communication.html">Communication </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Software.html">Software </a><br /><a href="http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/About_Jerry.html">About Jerry </a><br /><br /><br /><br />Chock full of clever ideas and wry wit, Gerald Weinberg's Mistress of Molecules<br />explores the forces that bind chemicals, societies--and people. A fun, thoughtful read. - Steven Mohan, Jr., Author<br />What I love most about the best science fiction is that it can be read on (at least) two levels: the surface story, and the underlying manifesto. Mistress of Molecules fulfills that definition of science fiction in spades. Recommended. - Michael Hunter, Blogger<br />MISTRESS OF MOLECULES: sample chapters<br />(You may print these pages for more convenient reading.)<br /><br />Chapter 1.<br />Libra<br />Before the instant I launched my crocus-laden balloon plane, I had never doubted that I was my father's daughter. Now, parked in Clifton Plaza waiting for its return, my body, and my confidence, shook with fear. Nicolas Valois never feared anything. He had been solid as one of the Star Chamber's marble pillars, even as he'd stood before the Pope to receive his death sentence.<br />Although I was not yet born at the moment my father's molecules were disassembled and scattered, I know my father quite well. The vid of his show trial is part of the school curriculum. I have watched it hundreds of times.<br />Father was smarter than anybody in the Church. He must have known the Church would distribute the vid as moral lessons for the unfortunate inhabitants of our poisonous planet. So he used the trial, the vid, to communicate his own moral lessons, not to everyone, but only to me, his unborn daughter.<br />The Ministers caught Father with a kilo of crocus—less than my balloon plane now carried. They kept him out of public view for twenty-one days, no doubt torturing him until they placed him on public trial before our Pope. His Holiness served as judge, jury, and prosecutor. Sitting in full regalia—gold-trimmed purple chasuble over ivory alb and stole, a tall gold mitre decorated with seven purple crosses—he asked Father whether he had stolen the crocus.<br />Father stood tall and proud, though bruised, chained hand and foot, and dressed in baggy, wrinkled, orange prison clothing. "No, sir, I did not steal it."<br />After I had watched the vid a dozen times, I noticed the Pope flinching slightly when Father refused to address him as "Your Holiness," as was required of everyone in the court. I had seen a bailiff begin to move toward Father, probably to chastise him for this breach, but a wave of the Pope's finger motioned him away. <br />"Then you bought it?" asked the Pope.<br />"No, sir, I did not buy it."<br />"Then you smuggled it, perhaps from Earth?" The Pope looked down to check his console. "The record shows that you recently visited Earth."<br />"Yes, sir, I did. I was sent by my employer, the Telenergy Corporation."<br />"And upon returning from that trip, you smuggled the crocus from Earth?"<br />"No, sir, I did not. As far as I know, there is no crocus on Earth. Their air is not poisonous like ours, so Earthers have no need for it."<br />That statement, I knew, was a key part of his message to me.<br />The Pope continued. "So you know where all the crocus is in the galaxy?" He smiled knowingly for the audience, having put this arrogant criminal in his place.<br />"Everyone knows, sir, that crocus exists in only two places: here on Precursor, and on the Zgaarid home world, wherever that may be. I have never been there, nor has any other human, to my knowledge."<br />"And just how do you possess this vast knowledge of galactic affairs?"<br />"By logical deduction, sir. If the Zgaarid did not have a monopoly on crocus, and if the Church and the corporations could not use crocus to control our people, then we would not be held in docile slavery. But since we are no more than miserable slaves, the monopoly must exist. Why else would your church make it a crime to distribute a life-saving substance?"<br />"Hah." You could hear the smirk in the Pope's voice. "There, young man, you display even more ignorance. Even little children know that slavery is forbidden by the Church. That the Holy Church is your father protector, dedicated to your welfare and the welfare of your immortal soul."<br />"You would have to be a little child, sir, to believe that falsehood." Another message to me, I'm sure.<br />The Pope waved his hand dismissively. "Enough of your nonsense. If you did not steal the crocus, and you did not buy it, and you did not smuggle it, … " He rolled his eyes heavenward. " … then how did you obtain it?"<br />Father followed the Pope's gaze toward the ceiling. "God gave it to me, sir."<br />The Pope turned red and angrily banged his gavel on the bench. "That will be enough. Bailiff, gag the prisoner. And Clerk, you will now add blasphemy to the list of charges."<br />Before the bailiff could insert the gag, Father shrugged his shoulders and said, softly, "Fortunately, you can only murder me once."<br />Those were Father's last words before his body was disassembled into its component molecules. I know they were a message to me. They could only kill him once, but others would carry on his work. Others like me.<br />And what was that work? Again, that was clear from his testimony, though everybody else was too blind to see it. If he hadn't bought, stolen, or smuggled the crocus, he must have made it, which is what he meant when he said that God gave it to him. That is, God gave him the power to do chemistry, to make molecules. Molecules like crocus would free our world from both human and Zgaarid slavery.<br />Perhaps in another age, Father's ability to synthesize crocus would have been obvious to everyone. By now, however, humans had become so intimidated by Zgaarid technology that nobody even attempted to create things. Yes, there were people called chemists—my father was one, after all—but they were all simply technicians trained to operate pre-defined Zgaarid processes.<br />All, that is, except Father.<br />And, of course, me. The coward.<br />Chapter 2.<br />Libra<br />I shouldn't have been afraid, waiting for my balloon plane. I knew Minister Jackson of the Clifton ministers would probably show up on his usual beat and question why I was parked here, so there was no logical reason why my stomach clenched when he pulled up alongside my battered old Fargo. Perhaps I was nervous because after a lifetime of preparation, today's plane flight was to be the first step in carrying out Father's vision.<br />I knew Ben Jackson would ask what I was doing sitting there breathing the polluted outside air at six on a bright-morning. I was prepared, so this whole caper should have been much safer than making nitro in my lab, but I couldn't keep my hands from shaking. I hadn't figured on the shakes.<br />Though I was over sixteen and legally entitled to be out through the entire dark-day, I had dressed in a rather childish, pink party dress. I wanted to look like a more vulnerable girl out after a late dark-night date, looking for someone to father a child and earn her first birth-bonus. Minister Jackson had been Father's friend, and he hadn't renounced their friendship even after Father was disassembled. But he never believed Father was making his own chemicals, because nobody had done that for three generations since the Zgaarid showed up with their advanced technologies. Even back on Earth, and that was the only place where human-use chemicals were still manufactured. Everything we synthesized here on Precursor was for export to the Zgaarid, perhaps for sale to other species in their trading network, though some of the products could be used for human purposes, too.<br />Jackson had always been protective of me, maybe more because of snitch's guilt than ministerial duty, so I figured he'd cut me some slack. As he walked over, I did my best to look like a fatherless little girl, not ready to breed, and needing a minister's protection and consolation.<br />"Well," he said, with mock surprise in his voice. "Good morning, Libra. Or is it still good evening?"<br />"Hi, Ben," I sparkled at him, knowing I would have to satisfy his curiosity before he would move on. "It's still 'good evening'—though it wasn't as good as I hoped."<br />"Something wrong?"<br />"I'm okay," I said, trying to sound as if it wasn't quite true. "I was at a party in Center. A guy … " I could make myself blush, but I didn't think I needed to. "… well, you know how guys can be. So I wanted to sit here a while and think a bit before going home to take care of Mom."<br />Ben Jackson knew my mother, too. He had helped her settle in after she arrived here on precursor to find her husband no longer existed. Mentioning Ma was carefully calculated to remind him that it wasn't very nice for a young girl to be saddled with a widowed mother who everyone in Clifton knew to be an alcoholic 'tardy. And everyone said I would be better off if Marianne could only pull herself together, and wasn't it a shame that her brain had been damaged when she quilted over from Earth. And that I was too young to have to work all the time to support her—that I should be out having fun and looking for a man with suitable genes who still had viable sperm.<br />I could see that Minister Ben was likely to be thinking all those thoughts. How serious I was. How it was only natural that I wanted to be alone once in a while. Or have a little fun—but not like some of those other kids he had to deal with, messing around with psychems, getting in all kinds of trouble, then having their parents come down to Church and bail them out. So I gave him a few moments, then said, "It's all right, isn't it Reverend Jackson, to park here? I mean, it's not immoral to use the parking lot, is it? I was just a little afraid to park on the street all alone."<br />I motioned to the two other parked cars. "I mean, the bakers are inside working already, so I thought it would be safe."<br />"Sure, honey. You can just sit here as long as you like. And nobody's going to harm you as long as I'm around, you can count on that."<br />I knew this was true. Nobody in Clifton—not even gang members—would dare to face a Minister's firepower. But right now, I preferred to be alone. My balloon plane had enough fuel to circle for at least two hours. And it would be light even before then.<br />Chapter 3.<br />On Precursor<br />Alone in Boss's car, Manny was glad it was early, and dark—not that much light ever penetrated Precursor's cloud cover even during bright-noon. Dark or light, there was no way he would allow his boys to see how nervous he was as he wheeled his car across Bridge 214. If this slag dump island had a name, he couldn't think of it. Just "Bridge two-one-four," the only way on or off unless you were willing to risk a boat in the sludge Precursor called water.<br />But there was already more than enough risk for Manny. Ordinary missions—heists, intimidation, assassination—never made him feel this way. He wasn't afraid of killing, and never thought of the possibility of being killed. He was untouchable, but this job was different. Full of unknown quantities.<br />Manny was clever enough to imagine some of the possibilities, which was why Boss chose him as point man. He was proud of that, but even Boss hadn't been smart enough to know who had sent the package. That might be the hardest part of his job, finding out who was behind the package, but someone had to do it. Anyone who was cunning enough to lay his hands on that much pure crocus was someone to be reckoned with.<br />The plain package had contained a full kilo of the orange powder, enough to provide hope of long life for ten-thousand sick workers for a month. Wholesale, it was worth $100,000 cache—cache because it could never be sold for traceable money—cash. Retail, it would bring five times that much. Maybe more, because everybody knew crocus, like most human biologics, could not be manufactured on Precursor and had to be smuggled through the Quilt—which was not easy with the Zgaarid controlling the trade.<br />The note in the package had asked for $10,000 cache, a modest price indeed. Of course, Boss knew he could just keep the goods and chalk up a pure profit, but if this "Joe Green" really had a source, it wouldn't pay to settle for a mere kilo. Besides, Green might start dealing with someone else, which could cut into business. And so, Manny thought, as he patted the bundle of tens and twenties on the seat beside him, he had better come out of here knowing everything he could about this mysterious Joe Green. When he did, Boss would think the ten thou cache had been well spent, and Manny would be rewarded.<br />He pulled into the dump and watched the faint shadows for any movement in the dim light ahead of the car. Although he couldn't make out anybody else among the slag mounds, he knew that Jack and Randy had been discreetly parked near the dump entrance for the past twenty-two hours, ever since dark had begun. If anyone had arrived but departed, Jack and Randy would have reported it.<br />Later, as soon as Manny gave the electronic signal that the pickup had been made, his boys would tail the next vehicle that drove out. And, in case the first one was a decoy, Zig and Sammy had parked outside the dump an hour ago, to back them up.<br />Manny was a planner. He had covered all the bases. If Joe Green or his messenger arrived by boat, Cap and the rest of his crew were holding the launch just offshore, but out of sight. The potential here was too big to take chances. If Joe Green really had a wide open source, Boss had to control it.<br />Boss himself, of course, would be arriving at Mass just about this time. Joe Green had done his research, scheduling the drop early in the bright-morning. Boss liked to have at least two ministers and a gaggle of pious women to provide an alibi whenever anything risky was taking place elsewhere. It was a piece of professional courtesy for Joe Green to fit Boss's schedule. It showed respect. In this business, respect was important.<br />It also showed that Green was a pro, and a pro would expect to be tailed. And would make provisions to shake the tail. Manny's job was to follow instructions to the letter—both Green's and Boss's. He only hoped that they wouldn't be contradictory. Manny liked to think of himself as a pro, too, but he despised contradictions.<br />He reached the designated spot—the flattened mound of purplish lumps the size and shape of human ears—without seeing anyone else in the dump. Not that he expected to, at this hour on a bright-morning, but you never knew. Besides, there was an almost infinite number of hiding places among the poisonous slag mounds.<br />Manny scanned the mounds, not really expecting to see anything. He couldn't even make out the true colors of any that were more than ten meters away. It occurred to him, then, that Green might not try to take the money out at all, but just wait in the dump until there was enough traffic to cover his exit. If bright-morning had fully dawned by then, the cloud-penetrating satellite scans should show all the comings and goings. Still, Manny would remain alert on the ground. Any tiny clue might be as useful as following someone right out of the dump. There weren't that many possible Joe Greens to eliminate.<br />The note's instructions had been disturbingly simple.<br />Have the money securely tied up in a ration box—in tens and twenties cache.<br />Come alone.<br />Stop the car by this purple waste mound.<br />Get out of the car.<br />Wait for further instructions, exactly five meters north of the mound.<br />Manny checked his shoulder holster and his ankle backup just in case. If this whole thing was a minister trap and he was caught carrying, he was out of luck. But Boss couldn't imagine the Church sparing a full kilo of crocus for a trap, and Manny trusted Boss. Generally, the ministers kept one eye closed to the illicit crocus trade, as long as there was nothing too obvious or the price became too competitive. Too many people would stop working for the corporations if they could get their life-saving drugs elsewhere.<br />He checked the time on his implant, adjusted his nasal filters against any particularly noxious fumes, then lifted the box and popped open the side of the car. After making one inspection tour around the car, he checked the time again. Five minutes to six. Exactly on plan. He placed the box on the car's collision shield, popped a scrubber in his mouth, and activated it with saliva. He had a feeling that Joe Green would not be late. He wanted his mind perfectly clear.<br />At one minute to six, he sucked the scrubber one last time, then spit it out and circled the car once more. He felt that something had changed, but he couldn't pin down what it was. The sun's greenish light was beginning to crack the horizon, but he could see nothing in any direction. Still, the feeling grew. What had changed?<br />Chapter 4.<br />Libra<br />If everything went well, my plane could have been returning any time. I had to get rid of Ben Jackson. Quickly, but without arousing suspicion. Even fully loaded with $10,000 in small cache, it would be quiet, but maybe not quiet enough. It wouldn't land until I activated the command button hidden in my bra, but I wanted to get it down before the markets in the Plaza opened and too many people were milling around. The plane might be small enough, and perhaps silent enough, so it wouldn't be noticed by eager shoppers, but I didn't want to take any unnecessary chances. I needed to get rid of my self-appointed guardian, and quickly.<br />I decided a little embarrassment should do the trick, aided by my repellant pheromone. I dabbed my left pinkie with a drop of saliva to activate the scent, then waved it under his nose as I leaned out the window and gave him a daughterly kiss on the cheek. "Thank you, Reverend Jackson. Thank you for everything. Sometimes things are pretty difficult for a girl, you know."<br />The kiss and the chemical had the desired effect, as I knew they would. Most Ministers, popular though they might be as breeding studs, were prudes—in public anyway, in uniform. They were afraid of losing their jobs, which sure as heck beat slavishly following Zgaarid chemical procedures in one of the factories.<br />He shuffled backwards, quickly looking around to see if anybody had seen the kiss. It was still too dark to be sure, but I thought he was blushing. "That's all right, honey," he stammered. "I'm just doing my job, so you just stay here as long as you like. I've got some other people to protect and console. I'm sure you'd rather be alone anyway."<br />I decided to toy with him. I know I shouldn't do that, but I never can resist teasing men. They think they're so powerful, so in control, especially the ones with top gene scores, which most of the ministers had, given the protected environments of their churches. But that arrogance makes me so angry at the same time it makes them so easy and tempting to tease. "Oh, no. I'd love to have you stay and console me, as long as you'd like."<br />But he had already retreated to his patrol vehicle and opened the door. "I really have to go now. Say hello to your mother for me."<br />"I will. And say hello to everyone at Church for me." I knew he would certainly tell all his colleagues at Church about me, going over the story once more about how Father had been an irresponsible fool to think he could smuggle chemicals and not be caught. How he'd been one of those troublesome cases who couldn't withstand the reprogramming so had to be disassembled, and now his daughter was suffering for it. How maybe one of them should get busy and give me a baby, so I'd have some income to ease the suffering.<br />Well, it hadn't been all suffering, and I didn't need any birth-bonus. I had a paying job, even though it paid less than I would get for three babies. Better than that, the ministers had left Father's lab intact, not even believing such a place could exist. So, I had a playroom filled with equipment and a fair number of supposedly harmless precursors. It wasn't hard to convince 'tardy Ma not to sell any of it, and to stay out of the lab when she was home, so I had free rein for my own experiments. And the ministers needed no convincing that two mere women were no threat to the corporations.<br />Well, their blind spot was good cover for me, so I couldn't complain, but as I sat there waiting, I couldn't help reflect that maybe somewhere there's a man who didn't think he was master and commander of all women in the universe. No, I decided, not if he was raised on Precursor. There couldn't be a worse planet for women in the entire Zgaarid galaxy.<br />Chapter 5.<br />Andre<br />Though I was named for Brother Andre, the faith healer who encouraged his followers to accept their suffering, I could never accept mine. Much of my early boyhood on Gemariah is an undifferentiated fog, spent as it was in Perfective Solitude. The Lock, however, stands out clearly, for it was my first real teacher. My mind holds many sharp pictures of The Lock, arranged in the chronological order my developing brain constructed them. Earliest, of course, was the burnished gray metal interior faceplate. Only the faceplate was visible to the untrained eye of a three-year-old with nothing more interesting to do than study it. Not to study for purposes of escape. Not yet. Simply because The Lock anchored the doorway to the forbidden world outside my Perfective Solitude cell.<br />By age four, my passion to understand how things worked was already well developed, and I already knew every line and scratch of the faceplate. By five, I understood that though the lines and scratches contained innumerable patterns of interest, none provided the slightest clue to opening the forbidden door. I don't recall exactly when I understood, but by five, certainly, because by then I was already far advanced in my vocal mimicry, a skill that would later become one of my most useful tools.<br />Memorizing the key phrase was easy enough. It was, naturally, taken from the Holy Scriptures, which I had already memorized before I even knew how to read. Before I was even supposed to know there was even such a thing as reading. But I'm getting ahead of myself.<br />Although I was already a good mimic, I failed to realize that my juvenile voice could never hope to capture my father's bass pronunciation. Only on rare occasions did Mother control the lock, so I was perhaps six before I put aside my futile efforts to mimic my father's voice. Mother used a different key phrase—also Scriptural, of course—but her squeaky voice was well within my boyish range. Only a few months of incessant practice were required to put the lock under my control.<br />The first time I succeeded with my new skill, my father was unable to believe that a mere child could conquer the Perfective Solitude Interdictions placed by the Holy Church of Yahweh's Tender Touch. He assumed that Mother had neglected to lock my cell door, earning her Yahweh's tender touch with my father's cane—the worst beating I had yet been allowed to witness. For my own good, of course.<br />My own beating—for taking three tentative but forbidden steps into the hall—was much less severe, though severe enough that I made no further excursions unless my parents were away.<br />Fortunately for my education—as opposed to my schooling—they were often away on church business. Whole days, sometimes weeks, at a time. By age eight, when my own church responsibilities began, I knew every detail of every object in our tiny house. I knew exactly where it was placed, how it was oriented, and even the dust patterns that had to be restored when it was moved for my examination. Not that Mother would ever allow dust to accumulate on anything my father could see. She may not have been as devout as my father, but she was devout enough to avoid unnecessary torture for the sin of slovenly housekeeping.<br />She was also heretic enough to know which hidden nooks were unlikely ever to be examined with my father's white glove. To refurbish the undisturbed pattern for these areas, I collected my hidden cache of dust—always accumulating in my cell. Looking back, I wonder where the dust came from. Gemariah, at least where we lived, would have been a desert without irrigation from the mountain snows, but with no window and an always-locked door, how did the dust get inside?<br />Yet somehow the dust accumulated. No need for white gloves, either. With the only furnishings being a hard cot, a straight chair, and an extractor, any dust I missed was always visible grounds for punishment. So, the Lock taught me to be meticulous in my personal habits—not from the Holy Church's admonitions about cleanliness, but from Mother's sin of slovenliness. I was convinced that this slight taint on Mother's soul was the genetic origin of my own heresy. Certainly, there was no such taint on my father's side of the family. My father, like his father and his father's father, was a Minister.<br />Part of his duties as Minister, over and above enforcing the Law, were to maintain a collection of banned books so he could learn to recognize the various Heresies in their infinite forms. Opening the collection's physical lock was child's play, but since I'd never learned to read, the contents of the books remained locked to me for several years. The pictures, most of them, I grasped immediately, but the words, even the letters, were strings of mysterious, meaningless, patterns to my untrained mind.<br />My first break was the letter O. It reminded me of the glyph on my Console—Ouroboros, the snake eating its tail—meaning "repeat the lesson." Of course, Ouroboros was the embodiment of filth—not just touching its nether parts, but touching them with its mouth—but that was appropriate. Only the poor student—the filthy, unclean, unhealthy student—would lack the concentration and religious dedication to memorize the lesson in a single presentation. So, whenever I happened to touch the O, my Teacher would punish me by chanting, in that blaming tone Teachers do so well, "O-ro-bo-ros. O-ro-bo-ros." Mouthing the word, I could hardly miss the association of shape and sound.<br />Looking at my description, I realize that this learning process sounds too easy. It wasn't. Nothing on Gemariah was easy, even the things you were supposed to be doing.<br />"Labor is pure." Growing up, I heard this admonition a hundred times from Mother. A thousand times from my father. A million times from my Teacher, my virtual friend in the Console in my wall. More important, it was written in gray letters on the translucent white glass of the oculus above the altar in the Church. Eventually—I think it took months, but I had nothing but time—I figured out that the "bor" sound in "la-bor" was the same as the sound in "Orob-bor-us." I had strayed off the strait and narrow way to virtue, treading the crooked path to sin through reading.<br />The pictures and diagrams helped immensely, because I knew the names of things mentioned. "Bed" led me to isolating the "b" sound, which led me to "ball" (not that I had a ball to play with, but I often had to "follow Teacher's bouncing ball.") The difference between "ball" and "bed" provided the idea of vowel sounds, and "ball" and "hall" and "wall" taught me a couple of new consonants.<br />By the age of nine, I could make out the sounds of many new words, though irregularities in some of the old spelling led to embarrassing mispronunciations later in life. But, at the time, my reading was of necessity silent. Hence, I learned the physics of levers, fulcrums, and loads without knowing that "load" was a one-syllable word, with a silent "a."<br />But pronunciation didn't matter. I could actually test what the book said about mechanical advantage without knowing how to pronounce the "ch." And test I did. I could indeed move heavy objects—like my steel bed—by creating a class one lever with a short arm and a long arm separated by a fulcrum. With a class two, I could crack my hard nutritional biscuits without risking my teeth or soaking them in my water ration. Cracking them was essential if I wanted to avoid biting into an occasional burrowing mealworm.<br />The Holy Church of Yahweh's Tender Touch teaches its followers that all strength came from health, and all health came from faith and purity. But physics taught me that some strength came from thought, and faith had nothing to do with it. Physics had cracked my faith, just the way it had cracked my biscuits.<br />It was only a crack, though. Before I was ten years old, some articles of faith were so firmly set that they couldn't be cracked by books. I read about how babies were made, but I simply couldn't believe it. If women didn't have a "thing" down there, how could they use the extractor? Without the extractor, they would fill up with urine until they exploded and died. No, I wasn't to unlock the truth about women until much later, when I served my time in the seminary.<br />Unlock. Oh, yes, I was describing my father's locked collection. One of my greatest discoveries was a book on circuit theory and electronic systems. Studying this tome during long Church weekend retreats allowed me to form my third picture of the interior of The Lock—a circuit diagram. Actually, it was a collection of homeomorphic circuit diagrams—all logically equivalent to the black box observer that I, born in sin, was condemned to be.<br />But I keep getting ahead of myself. I've given a glimpse of my early education, the origin of some of my personal tools, but I haven't really explained why I needed these tools. For that, I will first have to explain about the uniquely human church disease that infected Gemariah, our isolated agricultural planet in our isolated arm of the galaxy.<br />TO BE CONTINUED (ORDER THE FULL STORY BELOW)<br /><a title="mailto:hardpretzel@earthlink.net?subject=Request for Mistress of Molecules" href="mailto:hardpretzel@earthlink.net?subject=Request%20for%20Mistress%20of%20Molecules">If you are a reviewer for a regular publication and would like a review copy of this novel, email me with your request for a reviewer copy.</a><br />To purchase the paperback version:<br />• Directly from the publisher:<br /><a title="https://www.createspace.com/3390916" href="https://www.createspace.com/3390916">https://www.createspace.com/3390916</a><br />• From Amazon.com:<br /><a title="http://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Molecules-Gerald-M-Weinberg/dp/1448638801/" href="http://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Molecules-Gerald-M-Weinberg/dp/1448638801/">http://www.amazon.com/Mistress-Molecules-Gerald-M-Weinberg/dp/1448638801/</a>.<br /> </p><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5560956185552695265.post-49858053666355976542010-05-30T17:55:00.000+05:302010-05-30T17:56:07.537+05:30enjoy the game !<a href="http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html">http://www.members.shaw.ca/gf3/circle-the-cat.html</a><div class="blogger-post-footer">Meeta Prakash</div>Meeta Prakashhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12257157581026070185noreply@blogger.com2