Next step

Days just pass by, no work gets done. In office I surf and at home I entertain myself. In blogs I write things and never seem to get things done... Until yesterday :-) I found my touch. I was back among the books. (I hope the Indian batsmen get back among the runs too). In other words "phod diya". (college lingo). Downed a whole O' reily book on Perl in just 2 nights. Well now that it is done, I can concentrate on other stuff... And hopefully I can get my work done double quick in office, and focus on the real issue.
AVOIDING BUGS...


SMART-TESTER

lets say we want to simulate ospf neighborship between 2 routers.

starting this practise of writing down my ideas as soon as I get them...
1) Ospf protocol simulation using routers as objects with attributes like interfaces etc.
2) simulation "knows" what should happen and live routers will have to conform
3) this simulation will be superior and relatively bug free because :-
(i) It does not have millions of other features to support
(ii) It is not constrained by complex hardware issues etc.
(iii) It is a light weight application compared to the actual protocol
(iv) It will have model based testing brains ;-)
(v) In future we need to add "machine learning"



Thanks Pradeep Sindhu et al, Juniper routers can speak in xml
boy.. I like that so much.. after the dead text processing in Cisco...


hohahahaha
I feel so good since I stared writing down my thoughts.. It is conservation of my thought energy.. I am not allowing my it to dissipate. I have been guilty of that so often. Simply procrastinating does not get you anywhere. One has to move his ass. And I swear damn it, that is exactly what I am going to do.

Objective : To proofcheck a network. Not just test it.. but to prove that it will work the way it should. (million dollar SLA's are signed for this.. and maa company would be happy to spare a few thousands for me) This product has a lot of value.

Can we have a simulation of a network? with ALL the complexities built in it? no.. KISS: keep it simple, stupid. I would be better of designing seperate simulations for seperate features. Built on a basic simulation of routers and interfaces... OOP anyone? A classic and intelligent implementation of OOP is required. Rajaram, (my baap working in Amazon.. and by now I bet he is the baap of OOP too) help me! It is important to define what functionality is "basic". That is what will be built into the primitive network simulation. This will be the parent of all other simulations.

Okays, lets say we have a simulation of OSPF neighborship. Now what? We need to define states in the simulation which are possible real time scenario's. We need to build a model, a deterministic finite state machine.

Something has to be done dude.. we cant have millions of perl scripts running on billions of routers and zillions of software engineers supporting them!!! some sort of intelligence has to be built into the simulations.... but what and how..

I am coming

Hmm another bug to reproduce! Another customer bug, and no steps to repeat. I have no idea how DHCP works. Until the recent past I used to be very excited about new stuff coming my way. I would take it up as a challenge. I would want to learn, know more! Where has that fire gone? Damn, now I am looking for steps to repeat. I am like, who cares what this router does and does not do? (I forget that it is my little knowledge in this field which puts the food in my plate everyday.) But I want to be true to myself after maybe a long long time. I wish life was simple. As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted. But then this world taught me to compromise! And now I have compromised so much, that I have lost myself in this world. Whatever I do is for this world. I have been reduced from a human to just another tool/cog/piece/flowing stream/wind or a mindless element of nature. Which is so not what I should be! :-(

So what do I do now? hmmm.. if I think what I do is not worthwhile, the next question to be asked would be, then what is? He he he.. it is all a bit more clear to me now. :-) Nothing is worthwhile. Even if you are the richest/learned/knowledgeable/intelligent person in the world you have to die one day - oopsie daisy, is that another thing this world has taught me? maybe one can survive and be young forever. That said, being learned/knowledgeable is an achievement in itself, and something worth living for! Some meat in a life which would otherwise be so dull. I tried doing absolutely nothing for half a day. And boy, I was like super bored. I wanted to jump off the office building just for sheer excitement. So I need to do something with this life. But what If I am to do something it better be very good. I once told someone that if you keep looking at the bigger picture, you ignore the small corner that you own. So I guess taking that further, I will strive to make my small corner a masterpiece :-).

Anyway, someone said the process is more important than the end. (I guess it was MK Gandhi). I disagree. I think both are equally important. But again, what is it that really gets me going? What is it that will make my corner a masterpiece? Will knowing networking and programming make me passionate enough? Are these my reasons for living? Does it make me happy? Do I need to be a family man to be happy? Do I need to live a superb lifestyle and maintain cleanliness and orderliness to produce a masterpiece? These can get me a beautiful picture. But for something beyond beauty, I need passion! What am I passionate about? That's the question!

Is it money? Hmm no... I think I have enough, and will keep getting more than enough, to have a decent quality of life. Anyway, earning money, I have found out is like an endless race between 2 donkeys - money and satisfaction. They keep running laps on a circuit with no hope for the checkered flag. Is it amassing knowledge? hmm.. that seems to be a pretty good option to me :-). Let’s see now. Hmmm... Yes I think this appears to be the best option. Some time back I decided to increase the options in my life. I took up sports like tennis. Took interest in classical music - both eastern and western, that was a big bore, it is boring. Reading stories and novels and history has always been interesting (though only for leisure). I used to love mathematics, not so long ago. And now, I have lost touch with math too :-(. I think I will try to revive this option. Muahahahahah. I think I know. It is knowledge which calls me. I am coming dude. I am coming... muahahahahahahahah

Back to that customer bug I go. I have an idea. I think I can revive this math option through my work. Dude I just got a patent idea.. (Actually it was always there, I think I have just motivated myself to take it up with passion). Guess what the idea might be? It is something which will help me to make code bug free. So here's what I got to do now. Get this knowledge of the network done, get it over with first. It is just a tidbit in my scheme of things now. Let’s say by end of this week? Monday is going to be a new day for me... I am coming dude... I am coming.

Welcome Sid

Hmm... I just told my younger brother that whatever you do should have a purpose! And I told him that similarly every blog should have a purpose. But is that true? Hmm... my apologies to lovers of logic and reason, but while we rant endlessly about reason, can anyone tell me for what REASON are we on this earth in the middle of nowhere in this meaningless Universe anyway... Be that as it may, let me asume that there might be some purpose which we all are unaware of. That reminds of that famous anecdote about Bertrand Russel and the taxi driver, who asked Russel this very question.. "Why are we here?" Russel failed to answer it in the 20 minutes that these 2 were together. Do we call the taxi driver foolish for asking such a difficult question and expecting an answer in 20 minutes? or do we just call philosophy a futile exercise, having no purpose but to just think vaguely! I mean isn't philosophy all about love for wisdom? What use is wisdom if it can't answer such a basic question? Somebody help me.. I am going in recursions and might get fits because of overload! But this is a dreaded question and all of us somehow have learnt to ignore it.

Was reading an article about Indian youth being the happiest. Survey conducted by MTV. Some guys said that success is important to us, some said spirituality is, while some said relationships, and the majority said money. No wonder they are happy, the youth is making easy money these days (BPO). No.. I won't screw the BPO's like everyone loves to. But success is so relative. I mean, for some success is about scoring with a chic or something!

I have found that it is the success-achievement-accomplishment trio which has lead to happiness for myself. I have repeatedly found that for me, success is achieving a goal. Hmmm.. but is it a goal I have set myself or which others have set for me? I thought of doing a CCIE (cisco certified Internetworking expert) just because "it is there".. as some friend of mine said.. Its true! more than wanting to be an expert at networking! I wanted to do CCIE because it is there.. and very few people manage to do it and it is very tough. So am I a typical 2nd hander from Ayn Rand's Atlas shrugged? Maybe..

I am a CCIP (Internetworking Profesional) now, and have decided to put on hold this whole CCIE thing until I find out the real purpose behind the whole thing!! Here we go again- "purpose". Anyway thats that.. Now that I am in Juniper, the biggest competitor of Cisco, I have changed my views a bit.. more about that in a different blog though. Now I am looking at exactly what I want to do.. will write again when I figure that out.