Monday, August 17, 2009

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.

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