Moved To New House & Tuhin Bhai's Quick Visit

We moved to a new rental house near BART end of last month. We have stayed in LakeView Apartments for three and half years before moving here. I was too busy with my office works the last month and hence Shusmita did most of the packings. We got the new house key 1 week earlier than our move in date of first November. So we actually moved 24th October Saturday and took rest of the one week to slowly finish the moves. We rented DesiMovers who moved all out packed cartoon (30+) and many unpacked staffs. They disassembled the bed and assembled back again. Although a bit costly, they were quick and did a good job of transferring all the staffs and assembling those back again. All our friends in Fremont liked the house as we did. I wish I would not be a tenant but the owner of the house! However, buying house is very expensive in California and I can't simply afford it maintaining my current lifestyle, I let myself forget about it.

Tuhin Bhai (Ripa's hubby) gave a surprise visit to my new house last weekend. He called me a few days earlier that his ship is unloading in Los Angeles and he will again start for San Francisco within a few hours. His ship (Ginga Leopard) eventually reached Richmond last Friday morning. He is the chief engineer of the ship. I took a day off from office that day and picked him, Bahar Bhai (captain) and Nure Alam Bhai (third engineer). By the time I drove and picked them from the IMTT and acme back home it was late in the afternoon. They had a quick lunch at my house and then we went for shopping. I took them to Best Buy in Fremont where they bought 2 40" Sony Bravia HDTVs, 5 Sony VOI laptops, 4 cameras, 1 handy cam etc. Then we went to grocery shopping in Namaste Plaza for their ship crews. Nitol accompanied me in this whole run around since the evening. We had a nice dinner at Shalimar after 10 PM. Before dropping them to the ship again at 1:30 PM, we went to Walmart for some cosmetics and clothes.

Victory Over Half Dome of Yosemite

Hereby I declare victory over the Half Dome! Finally we did it. I, Shahriar and Nitol succeeded in our mission to hike Half Dome of Yosemite in the first weekend of October and we finished the hike in less than 13 hours despite facing a long wait time in the cable to ascend on top of half dome.

We have taken a lot of preparation before going to this hike. We are relatively new hikers (specially I was the last person on planet earth to get involved in any kind of physical activities or sports) and hence those preparations made good sense. Before I tell more about myself, I should tell a little about my 2 co-hikers in this trip - Shahriar and Nitol.

Quazi Shahriar Rahman (Sujan) is an Electrical Engineer in Cadence Design in Sillicon Valley, the first Bangladeshi batch mate whom I came to know in California by chance more than 3 years ago. He is a guy with sheer interest on physical activities and sports. He is a good soccer player, runner, table tennis player, tennis player, enjoys bowling, 29 (cards) and more. He constantly looks for new and interesting things to do and hence when he knew of the opportunity to hike every weekend, he took it unmistakably. His advantage is strength, stamina and "can do" attitude. 


Shabbir Asiqur Rahman (Nitol) finished his Electrical Engineering from BUET and moved to the IT sector where I met him first as a colleague. He is now working as a Software Developer in Life Technologies in Foster City. He is one of the modest guys in the crowd and interested in various sports and activities, specially when accompanied by friends. We started our career as a Software Engineer almost 8 years back and since been very good friends all throughout. He will get married end of this year and hence I was not sure whether he will be able to take apart a good chunk of time to prepare and finish this hike with us apart from his busy schedule at this time. His advantage is a cool head and a strong pair of arms (we used to call him Shoaib Akhter for his bowling speed). 


I, Ashik Uzzaman (Fahim), is working in Salesforce.com as a Software Developer head quartered in San Francisco. It's difficult to say my below-par weight and eating or drinking in small quantity are advantages or weaknesses. I have been always interested in games that involve less physical strength or stamina. That's why I picked Chess as my favorite hobby at an early age and consider myself an enthusiast in that area. I play table tennis in office during lunch break, occasionally 29 (cards) and bowling with friends in weekends. I am also an avid book reader and a blogger as you can see.


Few things common to all 3 of us are - we are of the same age, finished high school at the same year, live within 2 blocks in Fremont, California and are regular hikers every Sunday. We formed a hikers group where around 15 members come on and off to hike bay area trails - Mission Peak, Mount Diablo, Sunol Wilderness, Rancho San Antonio etc. If you want to join us, find Bay Area Bangladeshi Hikers Group in Facebook and look for our event calendar. A remote possibility of 2 of our friends Mostazir Rahman from Fremont and Noel from Los Angeles got canceled at the last week. I guess if the half dome cable would remain open 1 more month and we could reschedule our date, we would get a few more hikers in this trip with us. But as Winter is coming, there was no way we could delay our hiking date further.


Here you will find some of the pictures and a few videos taken during our hike.

• http://picasaweb.google.com/rahman77/HalfDomeHikingYosemiteCA
• http://picasaweb.google.com/ashikuzzaman/HikingHalfDomeOfYomsemite2009
• http://picasaweb.google.com/nitol.shabbir/HikingHalfDomeYosemiteNationalParkCA

I took time off from office October 2nd the Friday although Shahriar and Nitol didn't take leave. We started from Fremont at afternoon around 3 PM and reached Curry Village of Yosemite Valley by 8 PM with one break on the way. I was driving Nitol's Civic with GPS until we were very close to Yosemite when the road started curving wildly. Shahriar already booked a nice cabin with restroom and we had a sound sleep there at night. There was full moon when we entered into Yosemite and I was surprised to see how beautiful the hills looked under moonlights! It's my sixth time in Yosemite still only the second time at night. We saw people with gears preparing to climb rocks that night. I have a great respect for rock climbers as I am aware of the level difficulty involved in it. 

Aside from taking pictures of the cabin, we ate plenty of Khichuri and egg fry as dinner that Shusmita gave with us. The cake from Ramirez market was also a hit amongst 3 of us. We were lucky that we got cabin within a mile of the happy isle, the starting point of the half dome trail.

Major POIs and Timelines for Hiking via Mist Trail and Returning via John Muir Trail

POI#	Point of Interest (POI)	Expected Time To Pass	Actual Time	Altitude (Feet)	Cumulative Mileage
0	Start from Curry Village	0:00	6:45 am	4003	0
1	Mileage Marker Sign	0:30	7:14 am	4093	0.8
2	Vernal Fall Bridge	1:00	7:39 am	4464	1.8
3	Top of Vernal Fall	1:30	8:18 am	5062	2.4
4	Silver Apron Bridge	1:40	8:30 am	5204	2.6
5	Little Yosemite Valley	2:50		6095	5.6
6	Half Dome/John Muir Trail Split	3:40		7000	5.9
7	The Little Spring	4:05		7228	6.7
8	View of Half Dome & Sub Dome	4:30	11:45 am	7708	7.3
9	Base of the Cables	5:30	12:38 pm	8402	7.9
10	Apex of Half Dome	6:15	2:08 pm	8842	8.0
Take Rest and Pictures (Until 2:36 pm)
11	Coming Down to Base	7:15	3:36 pm
11	The Little Spring – again	8:00		7228	9.3
12	Little Yosemite Valley – again	9:00	4:37 pm	6095	11.5
13	Junction of Mist & John Muir Trails	9:40	5:35 pm	5950	12.5
14	Nevada Fall Bridge	9:50	5:50 pm	5977	12.7
15	Vernal Fall Bridge – again	11:30	6:50 pm	4464	15.3
16	Mileage Marker Sign – again	12:10	7:28 pm	4093	16.3
0	Curry Village Parking Lot	12:40		4003	17.1

Although we got up around 5 AM the next morning, it took us some time to start our hike. By the time we returned the room key to the front desk and walked the road to happy isles, it was 6:45 AM. We reached the mileage marker sign at 7:14 AM which we initially planned to reach an hour earlier. Nitol forgot his hiking sticks in the car that he got from his colleague and regretted that. We were going in smooth pace crossing Vernal Fall, taking the Mist Trail and then reaching Nevada Fall taking pictures every now and then. While in the steep stairs of Mist trail I was talking to Shusmita and my 3 years old son Ahyan. He thought I went to bring Banana for him as I do often while coming back with a coffee from Starbucks.

As we are hiking half dome for the first time (I hope it's not the only time too), we were taking photos frequently of the beautiful sceneries and trail around us. This accounted for the higher total time we needed to go up till the base of the half dome. The steps in Mist Trail were steep and quite long. This was when I first acknowledged that we were not over-prepared. The whole half dome trail was all throughout steep except once we went further into the little Yosemite Valley where we got couple of miles easy-on-legs trail. At the start of the journey Shahriar and I had an idea that we could have finished the Half Dome hike even without rigorous preparation. But well, it’s one thing to run around Mission Peak in Fremont which is only 2500 feet at it’s peak and 6.4 miles round trip, and it’s completely a different story when you are tested your endurance over 17/18 miles for an elevation gain of almost 4800 feet. I found it very satisfactory that Nitol was keeping the pace with us all through out. In this process he had to push himself to his limits several times. As a result we got more rest than him and hence probably less tired too. Nitol was clear to himself about his target – he knew he wanted to go on top of half dome but he didn’t have any specific timeline to reach there. He was more like going on his own pace unless we were close enough within his reach. For me, I felt that I want to keep up with the suggested pace that I calculated in the table above. So at times I walked a little faster to accommodate the extra time to write down the time logs as well as analyze how good or bad we were doing in terms of pace. I found we were going faster than what I expected as per my back home calculations but slower than what the author of the book One Best Hike: Half Dome of Yosemite Rick suggested. I wrote some comments on the time logs which is helping me now as a source of information for this blog entry. For Shahriar, it was more like meeting a standard timeline so that we were not too slow. Unfortunately, on this long beautiful trail we met no beer or mountain lion, but just one big deer. Bangladesh flag was always with me in this full trail that I got from Shahriar as he had an extra one.

Then came the first view of the beautiful half dome! While I was taking a picture of Shahriar keeping half dome in the back, I found I didn't want to move my sitting position to take his pictures from different angles - a sign of tiredness. Shahriar was commenting like we can't get too tired here as we were eying towards Mount Whitney/Mount Hood  and other very tough trails in future. The first time I really felt tired was in the giant steps of sub dome which you have to cross to go to the base of the cable. The approximate 800 steps of subdome has not been emphasized much in the articles or books except in Rick's book.  In some places it looked like a sharp vertical wall and only after careful observation you find there were rocks for stepping to go around those walls. I reached earlier in the base of the cables than Shahriar and Nitol where we found a very big crowd for the cable to go on top of half dome. When I saw it so closely, the first thing came to my mind was - holy crap!!! If I would not see other people climbing that cable, I would never think it’s feasible.  Nitol told that he would think a few times before going up through that cable if he would not have the chain with him to hang himself with the cable. Shahriar was calculating himself in his mind to conclude that it's not a matter of joke. We left our bags in the base as many people do so.

We knew the climbing will be easier while going up than while coming down. But even that was tough enough. I think the park authority should have a permit system for physical and mental fitness before allowing anyone to this cable. As per Shahriar, it’s not only risky but also dangerous. But Nitol was very comfortable with the climb. One hiker helped Nitol to hook his chain with this body properly. Then we saw him walking outside the cable to cross some people although it was too much to cross so many people. Despite all his tries, it was 1 hour and 30 minutes before I first went on top of half dome. Shahriar and Nitol came a few minutes later than me. In the cable you will find a wood every 10 feet to keep your body weight on. But the way to go from one wood to another wood, you have to walk over the slippery rock and bring your body up putting all the weight on your 2 hands. While stopped and hanging, you need to make sure your leg is on one of those woods. And yes, don't make mistake of not wearing a full pant and a jacket. On the way up, I was regretting not wearing a full pant, due to the cold wind. 

While ascending the cable, we found one person had to be held from 2 sides to bring back down to the base from the middle of the cable. It's height phobia. There is no escape if you miss your step and fall. The first hit you will get is almost 200 to 500 feet down followed by thousands feet down I guess. Nitol was comfortable keeping his chain around the cable allowing himself even walking outside the cable often. It took us 1 hour 30 minutes to go on top due to the heavy human traffic on the cable that late hours. Well, yes - we made it to the top at last! By that time, we were so tired and feeling cold that the first thing I was looking for is when to go down. We were on top only 26 minutee. Shahriar finished his prayer and we took a few photos there.


On the way down, it took Shahriar and me 1 hour while Nitol probably finished it by half an hour. A few things happened when we were one-third down in the cable. I was wearing the synthetic pant which is slippery. Due to the traffic, I was taking rest by sitting in the rock sometimes. Once while seated I started slipping to the right side of the rock. First I had only one hand in the cable and I quickly caught the ropes with the other hand. However, I was still virtually hanging and didn't know how long I can hang like that, may be less than a minute. I asked Shahriar to hold one of my hand who was just above me coming down. While he forwarded his hand to me, the person in front of me gave his leg that I used to come back to the middle of the cable and escaped falling down. It was very risky. The line between life and death is very thin, if you are not careful enough in that cable. I didn't sit after that in the cable for the rest of the time. 

Shahriar got a muscle pull at the same time or a little earlier. But he didn't tell me so that I don't get into panic. Your hands and legs are your life in the cable and at that point a muscle pull means a very likelihood of falling down from the cable. And I hope I don't need to say what does it mean by falling down from the half dome cable, you can see the pictures or read Wikipedia of what happened in near or long past. Shahriar just told me not go too fast and stay together. That's what I did the whole way coming down. Our strategy was I would go down one wood distance (10 feet) slipping and then put my leg up. Shahriar would then slip until he touches my leg and shifts his weight to my wood. Then I would again advance for the next wood. Due to his muscle pull, he could not put pressure on his legs and held his whole body weight over his 2 hands. He slipped many times, 2/3 of whom looked very serious to me. He didn't tell about the risk he had undergone through while coming down, until we got down from the giant sub dome steps as well. What a relief! His muscle pull was no more issue as soon as he came to a relatively flat land.


One the way down we walked very fast and took the John Muir trail instead of Mist Trail. Although this trail is a bit longer than the Mist Trail it's less steeper than that as well. People take it on the way back to get rid of the extra pressure on knee. Last one hour or more we walked over the headlight as it became dark.

By the time we reached the car parking, only Shahriar had the energy left to drive back home. However, we didn't have much gas in the car and Nitol was thinking of even staying at Curry Village that night. But we were eager to go back home and have a sound sleep and rest. So Shahriar started driving. Soon we found that the gas is so less that we may not be able to reach the nearest gas station with that. We still kept going. And then the road started curving up which takes uses more gas than regular drive. So to our horror, we found the gas bar going down very rapidly. Nitol tried to call 911 and roadside assistance and there was no mobile network inside the forest of Yosemite National Park. We started looking for a turn around when the gas started using the reserve oil. However, at that time we found we are at 6192 feet elevation and there is no visible turn around. As if it were not good enough, we started seeing bear sign on that place which means if the car stops here now, we have to stay the whole night here amongst the mighty bears. Shahriar asked if the car break will work we run out of gas when  driving uphill here. None of us knew and had the only option to pray for a gas sign to see. As Almighty's blessings to us, when we thought the car is going to stop any moment now, we found a gas station sign. Aaah!!! While taking gas, we saw signs of bear everywhere in that gas station.


Once we filled up the gas, we were smoothly on our way back to Fremont. We stopped at Denny's for dinner on the middle of the way. Shahriar held the dinner in celebration to our victory over half dome. A great feeling of accomplishment for 3 of us!


Well now what! Despite all the risks we had undergone through, the next mission will be Mount Whitney in summer of 2010 - the highest peak in the lower 48 states of USA (14,505 feet).

See you there.

Going to Hike Half Dome of Yosemite This Weekend

Our preparation can now be declared as complete for hiking Half Dome of Yosemite this Weekend. Below is the image of Half Dome that kept me day dreaming about this time for last 2 months.




It has been a relatively long wait before the day is so close now. My first hiking experience tells how I came into this whole thing 2 months back. During this time, except a short break last month in Ramadan, I have been hiking every weekend in different trails of bay area, mainly in Mission Peak. It turned out that hiking is not as tough as I used to think initially. However, make no mistake, it's tough enough to test all your endurance. I have lost 4 pounds of weight during these preparation which is even a lot considering I am under-weight and there was no fat at all to loose. Interestingly, my 2 other partners lost a huge amount at the same time. Nitol lost almost 12 pounds while Shahriar lost around 30 pounds (well, even after loosing that much he is slightly over 200 pounds now!).

We started our final preparation just last Friday. Tomorrow we will drive for Yosemite where we have booked a cabin in Curry Village. Last Saturday I and Shahriar went to Stanford Trail of Mission Peak in Fremont while Sunday, I and Nitol went to a new trail of Mission Peak before crossing back to the same Stanford trail. But the one that I liked most was last Tuesday when we all 3 woke up very early and took the Standford trail when it was still dark in the early morning. We used headlights, flash lights, hiking watch and all the hiking instruments that we have bought last few days. We took some very steep shortcuts with fully loaded weights and could hike without being tired. All these sessions worked very well for us after the long gap of hiking during the month of Ramadan. I and Nitol even went to City Beach of Fremont to test ourselves in the indoor rock climbing there. I believe it was almost 30 feet high straight 90 degrees. Well, I must agree that rock climbing is lot tougher than hiking! As part of preparation I even participated in JP Morgan Race in Crissy Field, San Francisco on behalf of Salesforce this September 16th with some of my colleagues. I went running and walking to the race place (approx 4 miles) . During the walk/jogging in that race, I took 52 minutes to finish 3.6 miles. There were 250+ participants from Salesforce and 5500+ in total coming from different bay area companies.

Just morning today before coming office, I went for a quick run in Lake Elizabeth Central Park. I ran slowly without stopping 1 full circle. My hiking watch says it was 3 miles and I took 25 minutes to make 4100 steps to complete it. However, I knew from Ezaz that it's around 2 miles so my watch might be counting the distance wrong.

The day after tomorrow we plan to start hiking very early in the morning. We should be checking out by 5:30 AM and be on the happy isles / trail by 6 AM. I have prepared a table taking help from the nice book on Half Dome Hiking - One Best Hike: Half Dome of Yosemite.

Here are the major point of interests and my calculations of how much time it should us to reach those points and come back.

Major POIs & Timelines for Hiking Going via Mist Trail and Returning via John Muir Trail

POI#	Point of Interest (POI)	Elapsed Time	Altitude (Feet)	Cumulative Milage
0	Start from Curry Village	0:00	4003	0
1	Milage Marker Sign	0:30	4093	0.8
2	Vernal Fall Bridge	1:00	4464	1.8
3	Top of Vernal Fall	1:30	5062	2.4
4	Silver Apron Bridge	1:40	5204	2.6
5	Little Yosemite Valley	2:50	6095	5.6
6	Half Dome/John Muir Trail Split	3:40	7000	5.9
7	The Little Spring	4:05	7228	6.7
8	View of Half Dome & Sub Dome	4:30	7708	7.3
9	Base of the Cables	5:30	8402	7.9
10	Apex of Half Dome	6:15	8842	8.0
Take Rest and Pictures for 1 Hour (7:15)
11	The Little Spring – again	8:00	7228	9.3
12	Little Yosemite Valley – again	9:00	6095	11.5
13	Junction of Mist & John Muir Trails	9:40	5950	12.5
14	Nevada Fall Bridge	9:50	5977	12.7
15	Vernal Fall Bridge – again	11:30	4464	15.3
16	Milage Marker Sign – again	12:10	4093	16.3
0	Curry Village Parking Lot	12:40	4003	17.1

If you want to follow us, checkout the whole Saturday (October 3rd) from early morning till late evening my status updates at Twitter or Facebook -

www.twitter.com/ashikuzzaman

www.facebook.com/ashikuzzaman

I will also be in Google Latitude from iPhone.

We signed a 1 year lease for a town home near BART yesterday. It's a 3 storied townhouse and we are pretty excited about moving there at 1st November.

Good bye for now and I will update you guys from the Half Dome trail.

My Thoughts On SCJP Java 6

Recently I have been thinking about the industry standard technology certifications, particularly around Java/JEE technologies. I am not exactly sure how valuable the technology certifications are when you are already an experienced veteran in the industry. But I can guess that it will give an impression to your upper management to accommodate you for the next level (higher level than where you are) or while switching jobs will justify you to apply for a higher title than you are in now.

Once I am successfully done with my hiking in Half Dome of Yosemite a few weeks later, I will be focusing on the Sun Certified Java Programmer (SCJP) exam on Java 6 platform. Although in my current project we use Java 5, we will be moving to Java 6 sooner or later as some other teams as well as the core platform team in Salesforce uses Java 6. Also it makes sense to get certified on the latest version of Java so that it can around your neck for a longer period of time in your career. I already talked to my manager and he was convinced that it's relevant to my work and career development plan.

While looking for the best resources, I always refer to my favorite site JavaRanch. Even without looking much into all the books it was evidently clear that there are 2 outstanding study guides for this exam - Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates SCJP 6 Study Guide and Khalid Mughal and Rolf Rusmussen's A Programmer's Guide to Java Certification. Kathy&Bert book is targeted very much at making you pass the certification. But the strong points of Khalid&Rolf books is that it's more thorough, details and explained subjects outside of the exam objectives if that should be useful to a programmer. So Khalid's book should be better at teaching you Java. But I would recommend the K&B if you are already an experienced java programmer and just want to squeeze through the exam. I am thinking of reading the K&B first and then, time permitting, go through Khalid Mughal.

Ex-Bangladesh finance minister and BNP leader Saifur Rahman died in car crash few days earlier in B Baria. I don't know if it was a conspiracy or as the car driver survived. Saifur had a very strong impact on economic development strategies of Bangladesh.

Last 2 weeks were one of my most extensive work hours spent in office. I was going early in the morning and coming back at midnight. Good that Shusmita was understanding enough towards my deadline in office and didn't complain much. For this I had to skip hiking last week so that I can help her in preparation for the iftari and dinner invitations at our house.

One good news, Pearl Law Group applied for my PERM process on behalf of Salesforce.com in EB-2 Category, the day before yesterday. I hope all the paper processing happens very smoothly and fast for me.

I finished The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov the day before yesterday in my Kindle (free PDF). I particularly liked the brief mention of psycho-history in some places.

My new car has crossed two thousand miles. It looked like we just bought the car that day and all on a sudden it's already a good time passed.

Salesforce.com IT Picnic Held in Tilden Regional Park

Sorry for few weeks gap before I am coming back with my updates now.

This is the month of Ramadan and we are having iftar parties frequently in our friends' houses. Last weekend it was in Ezaz's house and the week before it was in Shahriar's house while next week will be in our and Sumit Bhai's houses. Quite busy schedule! I was fasting the before yesterday.

Last Saturday, Prakash and Liju joined me in the Ohlone track of Mission Peak. I had my chiro doctor appointment in the morning and hence we started very late at 9 AM from home and by the time we were in the trail it was 9:30 AM. It was burning at 98 degree Fahrenheit! After crossing almost two-third of the trail, Prakash was feeling his skin burnt and hence we decided to turn back. On the way back, 2 old ladies were asking us to be silent as we were enjoying loud gossips within us. We didn't understand initially why they were asking us not to make much noise. Later when we were down back to the trail start point, Liju came to know from a biker that there was a baby mountain lion roaming around that place and so all the people were told to keep silent!

The earlier Saturday I hiked alone Mission Peak with Stanford trail setting a few personal records. As per Ezaz, it would be a very good performance to go up to the peak by 1 hour 30 minutes and I finished it by 1 hour 22 minutes. After 8 minutes rest, I came back in another hour. While going to the peak, I didn't dring even a sip nor did I stop for a second anywhere. This makes me confident that when necessary i will be able to hike like this for an extended period of time.. All these preparations are for my next month's Half Dome Hike in Yosemite. Hope things go well then.

We saw 2 movies in theaters in last 2 weeks and in both cases we were disappointed. Kaminey in Naz8 was still ok to some extent but Ponyo in Century Theater Union City was the most boring time I have ever passed in a movie theater.

I enjoyed the Salesforce.com picnic in Tilden Regional Park South Bay at August 16th. I was in charge of arranging the Volleyball and Chess games. The volley ball was a big hit in the picnic. Shusmita was ill and Ahyan just recovered from the seasonal flue so they had to skip. I had to even skip the invitation in Tanjeem's house the earlier night and my hiking in the following day. This was my first skip of hiking in any weekend after I started recently.



We had a nice party in Madhu's younger daughter Hasini's birthday at August 22nd Saturday. Manyt of my Salesforce.com colleagues were there and I defeated Simi's husband in a chess game. You will see how much Ahyan enjoyed with Elmo here.

Recently I got a title revision in Salesforce.com as a Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS) although without any salary hike. When I joined Salesforce at November 5, 2007 I was assigned the title of Software Engineer. My grade was already high within the Software Engineer title holders at that time falling a little short of the next title Senior Software Engineer. In IT we had the hierarchy like - Associate Software Engineer > Software Engineer > Senior Software Engineer > Lead Software Engineer > Principal Engineer. But in R&D which is a bigger team in Salesforce, the similar titles were Associate Member of Technical Staff (AMTS), Member of Technical Staff (MTS), Senior Member of Technical Staff (SMTS), Lead Member of Technical Staff (LMTS) and Principle Member of Technical Staff (PMTS). So in a recent alignment initiative between R&D and IT team, management decided to follow the conventions of R&D team for both of these groups. This resulted in converting out Software Engineers to MTS. Only for my case in AppStore I was levelled as SMTS although my earlier title was Software Engineer. This means I am still eligible for my next level promotion to Lead Member of Technical Staff as per our Merit Increase Process.

I activated my unused dead Ubuntu PC at home and now Ahyan is surfing internet and watching YouTube with it!

And yes, let's celebrate Bangladesh's 4-1 victory over Zimbabwe with a very outstanding fourth ODI game.

Hiking PG&E Trail in Rancho San Antonio

Last Sunday I went for my third consecutive weekly Hike (and third in total in my life as you know) in Rancho San Antonio with my friends. While we initially scheduled for 7:20 AM, I and Shahriar were late enough to make it a start time of 7:45 AM. When we went to Equestrian park parking lot, I was surprised to see Sayeem's car as I didn't know he was coming although he told earlier that he will join our group's (Bay Area Bangladeshi Hikers Group) fourth hike.

Date: Sunday August 9th, 2009 at 7:45am
Start Time: 7:45 AM
End Time: 11: 00 AM
Place: Rancho San Antonio PG&E Hike trail
Cristo Rey Dr, Los Altos, CA 94022
Santa Clara County
Length: ~7.2 miles
Participants: Mostazir Bhai, Shahariar, Tanjeem, Ashik, Sayeem, Tipu Bhai, Lisa Bhabi, Karim Bhai

I got introduced to Tipu Bhai and his sister-in-law Lisa Bhabi. Both of them are expert hikers and were always ahead of the rest of the team. They have some other Bangladeshi hiker friends of different ages and are also interested to hike Yosemite's Half Dome. Mostazir Bhai and Karim Bhai were behind us from the beginning in trail and hence we lost them once we advanced a bit. Tanjeem was as usual comfortable with the hike and Sayeem looked like a regular hiker although this is his first one of this kind. I was quite comfortable and so looked Shahriar during the trail.

http://picasaweb.google.com/ashikuzzaman/Hiking3RanchoSanAntonio#

The trail is so beautiful that I am now sure there are not many trails that can be expressed as not-so-beautiful in bay area. The mission peak trail was not as per but both today's and last week's trails were full of scenic sights. Early in the trail, we found a deer right in the middle in our path and looking back to us. It stayed as a statue for a while and before we brought out our camera, it jumped up to the side of the trail. We finished the 7.2 miles trail around 11 AM . After that I took Shahriar and Sayeem to Starbucks for a long due treat of my Kindle. At noon, as part of initiative from Ezaz and Wali Bhai we all had a all-on-a-sudden picnic in Query Lake of Union City. Wali Bhai made BBQ chicken for us and Ezaz arranged kites that we all enjoyed flying. In the evening we even played tennis and I was too tired at the end of the game.

Nitol, Ezaz and Hasinur took the Mission Peak Stanford Trail instead. As per our initial plan we thought we will take the 9.5 miles steep trail in black mountain and hence we might be as late as 2/3 PM and that's why Ezaz and Hasinur skipped this trail and went to Mission Peak. Nitol was simply late to wake up and hence went to Mission Peak later to join them.

Just the day before I, Shahriar, Nitol, Shusmita, Sachi along with Ahyan & Safwan watched the Bercelona vs Chivas game in South San Francisco. We enjoyed the game, specially Messi's play in the first half although the match ended in a 1 - 1 draw. Looks like Argentina got a good trump card on their hand to counter Brazil in next year's world cup football tournament in South Africa. FC Barcelona is the current European Champion and they played very aggressively throughout the whole game although just after half time, they conceded a sudden goal. My understanding is that the result should have been 3 - 1 in favor of Bercelona considering most of the time the ball was on the opposition's D-Box.

Last week, I had a get together with my ex-colleagues of Philips at Fresh Choice in Mountain View. It was delighting to see Brian, Dan, Jade, You-Roe, David and Bob again. Imtiyaz could not join us although he was planning to come. Two weeks earlier Jade, David, Dan, Brian and another QA were offered to relocate to Boston as they will close the Milpitas location for Lifeline Systems. Dan and Brian are still thinking but others will quit the job. When I was there in Philips 1 year 8 months ago, I knew it's coming after our tour of Boston but I am surprised to see it took so long to make the final offer.

I bought the One Best Hike: Yosemite's Half Dome from Border's Sunday night. I already finished half of the book and finding it extremely useful and interesting. I called Noel last night and looks like he is interested to join the Half Dome project for which Shahriar and I have already determined thte date to be 3rd October. We did a booking of a cabin in Curry Village of Yosemite Valley at 2nd October night and Nitol, Sayeem and Mostazir Bhai are other potentially interested people to join us.

We also watched love aazkaal of saif ali khan and deepika padukone at a 11 o'clock show of weeknight in naz8. After a long time I enjoyed a hindi movie and ladies a long with Ezaz, Wali Bhai, Hasinur and Nitol also liked it.

Hiking Sunol Wilderness - Vista Grande Overlook

Last Sunday, 2nd August, we 9 people hiked Sunol Wilderness. This was my second hiking and a beautiful and scenic one. From Bay Area Bangladeshi Hikers Group it was the third hike. As per Hasinur's information the details are given below.

Hiking Trail: Sunol Wilderness - Vista Grande
Distance: 6.1 miles, Loop
Hiking Time: 3 to 4 hours
Elevation Gain/Loss: +/- 1600 feet
Difficulty Level: Difficult





In a weekday before this hike, we guys went to Union City Sports Authority and bought half pant, t-short, cap and shoe. I liked my Columbia hiking shoe very much and Shahriar also picked the same brand.

We reached the Sunol Regional Park at 7:15 AM and started the trail at 7:45 after waiting for Nitol, Gajendra and Nitol's Indian colleague. They came in a separate car and parked we missed each other as mobile network doesn't work in that area. So they took a different trail in the same area and finished before us.











To see the picture of the hike, please have a look here - http://picasaweb.google.com/ashikuzzaman/Hiking2SunolWilderness#

I was a little tired during the first one-third as it was steeper considering the mission peak trail. However, after that I got geared up and by the time we finished the trail, I thought the trail was too small. It was a more than 6 miles trail that we cover in a little more than 3 hours. Mostazir Bhai was saying, "we are in the middle of nowhere". Hasinur was like, "I wan't to eat Kachchi Biriyani here" and also "this is so beautiful, i want to sit down here for couple of hours, you guys go ahead". It was really beautiful and a real hiking place. Before we reached the Grande Vista Overlook (kind of top of this place), a group of aged people with two scary dogs met us. They were pro hikers and we talked to them a bit about hiking in Half Dome. The dogs looked as string as mountain lions and were barking & circling around us. One of those actually touched its teeth in my hand and my water bottle. As a result, after coming back home, I first had a shower before going for my routine Tandoori House lunch taking Shusmita and Ahyan with me.

Our next hike will be at Rancho San Antonio Hike the day after tomorrow. Tonight is the holy night of Shab-e-barat.

Last few days, I finished Isaac Asimov's The Naked Sun the second in the robot series on Detective Elijah Balley. I also read Humayun Ahmed er prem er golpo which I liked very much and Chokhkhe Amar Trishna which I didn't like at all. This makes me feel that Humayun Ahmed writes short stories even better than his regular stories barring Misir Ali novels which are unparallal and is as dear to me as Satyajit Roy's Feluda stories, Asimov's Science Fictions. However, I finished a book with great satisfaction morning today suggested by Ashafaq. This is Shahaduzzaman' short stories and I would suggest anyone reading his books. One of the short story was transleter in English in the Daily Star and you can read it online here although you won't understand his writing strength from the translation. However, I still think he doesn't possess the magical touch yet to make the reader full of emotions like the way Humayun Ahmed does. But different and interesting writings for sure. I am now looking forward to manage his poshchimer meghe shonar shingho, another book of short stories as suggested by Ashfaq again. Shusmita thinks Kushol and Atonu are the think tank behind collecting this kind of books for reading.

Ashfaq had his second son born safely and we went to see the new baby in Palo Alto hospital as well as his house.