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Introduction (top)
The BbyB Beacon is an
electronic publication to keep the members of Bit by Bit informed
about the current affairs of the company. It contains announcements
of important events like training programmes, Management Review
Meetings, etc.
Contact Information
Any contributions to the newsletter in the form of technical articles, or items
of general interest, are welcome. Please send them to Vatsala@bbyb.com or
padmabaliga@bbyb.com.
We apologise for the delay
in bringing out the newsletter this time.
Editorial
Valentine's Day
Come February, across the
length and breadth of the country, candies, flowers, and gifts
are exchanged between loved ones, all in the name of St. Valentine.
A lot of mystery has been shrouded over how Valentine's Day
originated. It is believed that this day marks the death of
St. Valentine who lived in Rome in the 3rd century.
As Valentine's Day is the
flavour of this month, let us see how Cupid has struck in BbyB
and how our colleagues have planned to celebrate that day.
Aruna and Naveen were working
on Mesals together and love blossomed between the two in the
year 2003 as Aruna felt that she had met her Mr. Right. Eventually
both of them got married on 6th May 2004. Aruna is very happy
that she met Naveen at the right time of her life and he responded
to her feelings suitably.
Chaitanya's is going to be
a typical arranged marriage. Chaitanya, his mother and his
aunt had been to Yogitha's place on 8th September 2005, to
meet her and they were served snacks and tea in traditional
style. He never imagined that he would be given a chance to
speak to her as she came from a conservative family but luckily
he was given an opportunity to speak to her although only for
five minutes. While speaking to her, he observed that she did
not shy away from him or blush. She was her normal self and
neatly dressed. He felt that she too had a sweet tooth like
him and Cupid struck mainly because of the confidence and maturity
in her behavior. Shy Chai candidly admits that she was the
first to call him. Chai will be getting married to Yogitha
on 7th February 2006 at his hometown Amaravathi. He plans to
celebrate Valentine's Day by having a meal together with her
at one of the best restaurants and watching a movie together.
Muthu opines that love before
marriage is always a thrill and will teach you a lot about
life, which is what he has inferred out of experience.
Formerly lovelorn Sreedhar
Rao had a wonderful experience in love and his love story goes
this way. Cupid took several shots at him before he finally
hit bull's eye on 25th November 1995. He first met Malovika
Roy and spoke to her on 25th November 1995 at Shivajinagar
Bus Stand. Surprisingly both of them were heading to the same
college and it was their first semester Engineering. Travelling
by the same bus daily gave them more opportunities to speak
to each other and analyze one another well. One fine day, after
badgering her, a very crafty Sreedhar tricked her into admitting
her love for him and this is how love blossomed between the
two. (This is when Cupid played naughty between the two) After
that, there was no looking back. Almost 9 years later, both
of them got married with their parents' consent. (Way to go
Sree!) This is how Malovika Roy became Malovika Rao. He feels
that the best thing about going around for 9 years and getting
married is that you are always with the same person and you
grow together.
What made him decide on her?
Well, for one, he found her very cheerful and bubbly and both of them shared
the same passions for music and books.
So
this is how Sreedhar goes on to disprove the theory "Opposites attract".
It is believed that Malovika
still finds Sreedhar just the same even now - as adorable as
ever (as Sreedhar calls himself) and appreciates his specialty
of maintaining his cool always.
Sreedhar plans to hit any
new restaurant for a candle light dinner with Malovika this
Valentine's Day.
So this
is how some of our colleagues frankly disclosed how Cupid
entered their lives. So Love is in the air and Happy Valentine's
Day to all at BbyB.
Vatsala
From the Management (top)
The new building
reached a significant landmark yesterday – we cast
the roof slab. There are a few photos along with this newsletter
which show you how the structure looks currently. We still
have no firm date on when we will be moving across but it
now looks more like into June or July instead of May 2006
as we had originally planned.
I do accept that there will be a substantial
commute for most of you but we are trying to work out the transport
options. We are still not too sure whether we will be able
to provide pick up options from home for at least some of you
but we are guaranteeing a pickup and drop option from the current
offices to the new offices. We will work out further details
in the next couple of months and let you know as soon as that
is done.
On the good news
front, it looks like work on the elevated highway connecting
Silk Board flyover to Electronics City has already started.
Once this is complete the trip from here to the new offices
should be extremely comfortable. Let us hope that the current
change in government doesn’t
affect that project in any way.
Raghu
Projects
News
StaffBank (top)
Hi
All,
I would like to wish you all a happy and prosperous 2006. As usual Staffbank
team were having a very tight schedule in the month of January.Arun underwent
a treatment lastmonth and was on leave for a week after Arthroscopy. After he
was back, he was busy with his work in the last two weeks of the month.Some bugs
were reported from Autoemail facility , and he was very successfull in fixing
those errors. As usual it was a busy month for Arun dealing with other issues
in Staffbank Client/Server Version. Raghu Shenoy was in UK in the middle of the
month. After his visit from UK he was busy dealing with Autoemail.At UK he was
busy with the meetings as Oxford Trust decided to join in the StaffBank.Usha
and Raghu were on leave from 23rd january to 26th as they had gone to Hubli to
attend the funeral of Raghu's Uncle.Usha was on leave for 3 days at the beginning
of the month and after that she was busy developing the Invoicing module to include
Credit Notes and Expenses,AP Oracle Interface File for North, pay rules for Mid
Essex Trusts for London and some version releases for NBt and Guys. Chaithanya
was busy with the new release of Staff Roaster. He was also busy in working on
the change controls BHP100,BHP101. JayaShree was testing change controls like
BHP100 and BHP101, NHSP 129, Agency Browser and also worked on testing the fixes
for Guys and Thomas. Saraswathi was working on linguabank.She alsotested ccs
trafic reports,and Change controls like BHP100 and testing the staffbank on Web
version 20801. Sunder started working on StaffBank Web version. Sunder worked
on the testing of BHP97,BHP103 changecontrols in Web version. He was also involved
in testing of Client/Server version of StaffBank. As usual, Sreedhar was very
busy in dealing CCS,traffic light reports and Staffbank on web. He was busy in
dealing with some bug fixes in CCS and in the release of Staffbank on web. Uma
was busy with her work on LinguaBank project. She worked on some bug fixes of
LinguaBank. Prathibha prepared scripts for Professional bodies, LinguaBank reports
etc. She was also involved with the data preparation of Swindon ,Solihull for
Mesals. Sachin, a new member in the StaffBank team started working on the Client/Server
version of staffbank. I was working with Sreedhar and was busy in fixing the
bugs for Staff bank on Web and involved in the changecontrols BHP97 and BHP103.
Sajayan for StaffBank Team.
For Staffbank
Sajayan
MESaLS (top)
MESaLS 4 welcomed
Swindon into its fold in January last week. Till now they
were on MESaLS 3 desktop version. Their feedback on the new
system is eagerly awaited. Solihull went "Re-Live" again
on 30th. They had stopped using the system due to operational
and training reasons. Hopefully, there will be no going back
this time.
VatsalaBbyB: Highlight of the month was obviously
the visit by Chris Reed, Partner of BHP for a Team Meeting.
Main topics discussed during the visit were, Carefirst Interface,
a lighter version MESaLS (with limited functionality, a less
graphics intensive version for visually challenged people),
General Enhancements / New Features / other clarifications.
Although going live of Swindon/Solihull ate into the time spent
with him, we were able to cover all the important issues. If
needed, he may visit us in late February also.
The next User Group is being held in the first
week of March 2006, so there is much to do before that. As
usual the team can expect a very busy next few weeks as the
Financial Year end in UK draws closer.
To find out what happened in February, check out this space next month.
Shashidhar for MESaLS
pFACT (top)
pFACT
had a stream of patch releases for Version 10 this month.
Most of the patches were for report formatting and data which
kept changing left, right and centre. Hopefully this is the
last we are going to hear about it.
The release of Version 1.11 as 2.0 is delayed as the feedback from the beta
testing universities arrived late. There seems to be a difference of opinion
as regards the implementation of some of the enhancements amongst the beta
testing community. Lastly, a hearty welcome to the newest member of the pFACT
club, University of East Anglia. Now Club pFACT is 22 members strong!
Jayaraj for pFACT
Sepia (top)
It has
been a busy January for Sepia team. As the team is currently
working on list of enhancements primarily for Dorset, there
has been no new version releases. The good news for Sepia
team is however, Devaki has returned from her Maternity leave
and is back at the helm of leading the Sepia team. Welcome
Back Devaki!!!.
Though the enhancement list is growing smaller, there is
quite a bit of work that still needs to be done, like data
extract from Torex and Soltex, migration of some of the existing
reports from CPA / bespoke reports etc. We all can expect
a busy month in February.
Shashidhar for Sepia
New
Office (top)
The latest pictures of our
new office are shown below. Good news is that the casting for
the roof slab is over and this is a milestone indeed. Here
are the pictures of the casting taking place.
Other
News (top)
Wedding Anniversary
Raghu and Usha got married
on 29th February 2004 and they will be celebrating their second
wedding anniversary on 1st March this year as 2006 is not a
leap year. Here's wishing the young couple many more years
of marital bliss.
Party
Chris Reed came to Bangalore
on 24th January and a party was thrown for him on the 27th
at the 2nd floor of our office. He was here to discuss the
Change Controls and Interfaces to be worked on Mesals - 4.
Farewell to Ajmal
Ajmal Ziyad, who worked as
a Software Engineer in Mesals team, left BbyB on 31st December
2005. He had joined BbyB on 21st February 2005 as a Domain
member VB, ASP. When we asked him what he liked the most here,
he enthusiastically said it was his colleagues. He enjoyed
working with the entire Mesals team and is content with his
contribution. He advises the youngsters of Mesals to study
the Database structure of Mesals and calls it a Bible. He also
applauds the seniors who designed the database structure of
Mesals.
Ajmal joined Wipro on 2nd January 2006 as a Senior Software Engineer.
His future plan is to lead an entire Project team in another 3 years.
Farewell to Rejeen
Rejeen our Project Leader
of pFACT resigned on 9th December 2005. He had joined our company
on 9th December 2003, as a Domain member VB, ASP. Rejeen had
handled Span-ER, ForeTrans-Web and pFACT. He had played a pivotal
role in bringing pFACT into books.
Rejeen said he was very happy when people recognized his efforts by showing
interest in his work and the best moment was when Cambridge became their client.
He enjoyed working with the entire team pFACT but does not forget to mention
Guru, Sreedhar and Krishna Prasad in particular. He also thanked Raghu Shenoy
for giving him a chance to work here and hone his skills.
When we asked him for his message to the youngsters of pFACT, a very philosophical
Rejeen quoted “ Do not work for the results, do your work sincerely and
the results will follow automatically. Put in your best and you will reap the
fruits of your hard work eventually.”
When we asked him about what he liked the best here, he emphatically said it
is the homely environment. He felt at home and utilized the guestroom often.
He also liked the food here barring the snacks. He loved the stressbusters
and had made it a point not to miss any. His future plans include growing in
his career, getting married and having children (chuckles).
He misses all of us but diplomatically says it is a part of the game. Rejeen
thanks everyone at BbyB specially the pFACT team.
Rejeen joined Satyam Computer Services Ltd. on 16th January 2006 as a senior
Software Engineer.
Meetings
and Events (top)
This month all
of us had a reason to smile wider because the Annual Review
Meeting took place which promised all of us hikes. More hike,
more smiles!!!!!
Holidays (top)
30th
March, Thursday will be a holiday on account
of Chandramana Ugadi.
Colleagues
Cognizant (top)
This month we interviewed BbyB's very own
Chaithanya who is more popular as Chai Bhai and Uma. Incidentally
both of them are from the StaffBank team.
Chaitanya's marriage is round the corner
and he is just standing on his toes to get married to the
lady of his choice. In this chat, he lets us in on his future
plans. Uma speaks about the changes in her life, which make
for interesting reading. It is Chai and Uma for you this
month.
Chaithanya
1. When did you join
BbyB?
Oct 2001
2. Which are the projects you have handled here?
Handled StaffRoster, Worked on StaffBank
3. What do you enjoy the most in BbyB?
Half-yearly trips with all my colleagues
4. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
One answer – my silence
5. You have been here from quite some time, do you suggest
any changes with respect to the work culture?
I don’t think any changes are required to our work
culture. All of us work like a team here sharing responsibilities.
6. Chai bhai ko ghussa kyon aata hain?
Indiscipline and inconsiderate behaviour makes me angry.
7. You get very energetic on the birthdays of your male
colleagues. Please share the secret of your strong feet.
I like to walk a lot which is good exercise too.
8. Your marriage is round the corner. How does coming
out of your bachelorhood feel?
We have hit it off very well together and I am really
looking forward to sharing my life with her. Marriages are made in heaven and
this one is no exception!! Life will really be exciting with her
9. Tell us more about your lady, Yogita.
Unlike me she is an outgoing person. I will tell you
more about her the next time you interview me for colleagues cognizant
10. Have you changed after Yogita came into your life? If so, how?
Only change will be in my Marital Status Unmarried -> Married.
11. Your future plans?
Planning to go on honeymoon (Isn’t
that a future plan?)
12. How do you perceive
life?
Life is too short to waste on trying
to perceive it. Just live and enjoy every moment.
Uma
1. When did you join
BbyB?
2nd June 2003
2. Which are the projects
you have handled here?
Started with Employee Details Internal
Project, shifted to Sepia and Staffbank later, where I got
most of my experience and finally into Linguabank project
now.
3. What are your strengths
and weaknesses?
Coming to Strengths adjustability,
working hard and willingness to learn new things. Lets keep
the weakness to myself and try to overcome that.
4. How do you spend
your free time?
Chatting with my sister Jyothi and
my close friends, listening to songs on FM 91 and cooking.
5. What do you like
the best in Bbyb?
Conducive and friendly environment.
6. Would you like to
suggest any changes here?
I think of few changes but I can’t
expect the same to be there where ever I go.
7. It is 3 years since
you passed out of college; do you see any changes in yourself?
No doubt there are lots of changes
in my dressing and communication.
8. Where do you see
yourself 5 years from now?
Most probably a software professional
with good experience in Microsoft Technologies.
9. What fascinates you
the most?
Good movies always fascinate me
10. How do you perceive
life?
Life is pleasant. To me everyday is
a new day with a New Hope and I want to enjoy each and every
moment of life.
Birthdays (top)
Here are a few snaps
of birthdays celebrated last month.
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