A Book Grant

Even with gazillions of e-text surrounding your existence, a new book, still generates an excitement that's hardly comparable. And when you get a book grant of Rs. 2500... that's quite a reason to be happy. Don't smirk at the amount, it comes from my company, who unfortunately seems to believe young employees shouldn't be spoiled with handsome figures when money is involved.

The book grant came as a first prize for the Project Readiness Program, which is just another name for training in Wipro Technologies. It consists of three phases - the fundamental readiness programme - a quick recap of C and Data Structures, followed by a month long training on SQL, PL/SQL, Core Java, J2EE. Next you have to make a small project with whatever you have learnt. Anyway, the tests were pretty easy and my total score came to 89.9%.

Next we were trained on Object Oriented Analysis and Design, XML, and from tomorrow, there would be a week long training on EJB. So its been over three months of training, and its nothing close to what you would expect when you are being trained for the industry! It's similar to college days, where many a things are left out which helps you get a deeper understanding of the technology. For example in Formal Language and Automata Theory classes we had in college nobody bothered to talk about XML/DTD when EBNF was discussed ... likewise, here it seems to be just the other side of the same coin.

And I had no idea that configuring Tomcat Oracle 9i, setting proper enviornment variables could generate such humor! Oracle 9i installs XDB, an HTTP listener on port 8080, which is the default port on which Tomcat listens - and things dont work out of the box. The system guys at the external training centers kept formatting the hard drives to troubleshoot these problems - but unlike college there was nobody around to share the fun! Anyway, the admin became good friend after a few similar incidents.

I'm postponing the shoping spree till I have finished the books I have in currently reading queue - Anne Frank - The Diary of a young girl, Only the Paranoid Survives by Andrew Grove, Lateral Thinking by Ed de Bono. In the meantime all suggestions are welcome.