Ray – Page 24 – ray+ashley+emery

July 5, 2008July 5, 2008

More Room & A New Look

To celebrate our 1 year anniversary on a very geeky level:

I increased the width of the blog by 100 pixels, creating more room for larger pictures and taking advantage of the ubiquitous 1024 resolution. Another great reason for increasing the width of the middle column is now I can post pictures directly from flickr, thereby reducing the need to edit photos and upload them on wordpress.
I also fixed the annoying formatting issue with the “Category” in the post heading area. whoohoo!
And I changed out the call out module to Atlanta, times have changed
I am doing this of course for the throngs of readers out there… Actually there is only one super fan and her name is Ashley. 🙂

Here’s a picture of the new look:

July 4, 2008July 5, 2008

Concerts & Tang

It’s been a nice start to the summer. Ashley and I seem to have gone concert crazy in the past months.

Just recently we went to two concerts, Lifehouse and Colbie Caillat. We played Lifehouse’s You and Me song at our wedding so it was nice seeing them live. We didn’t get there early enough and were stuck at the back so the view was not as good but we bumped into my co-workers from Sapient Suyog and Anu.

Ashley likes Colbie Caillat’s songs a lot and although I thought it was going to be horrible with teeny boppers all over the place it turned out ok. There was teeny boppers all over but we got up close to the stage, I got some really great shots of her and the music was really nice and soothing.

Earlier this summar, we saw Stephen Marley at the Center Stage in Midtown thanks to Kirk who told me about it. Stephen was awesome, sounded just like Bob Marley. Then Arang visited earlier in June and we went to the Masquerade to see a few Punk Rock bands, one called the Bastard Suns. The venue was awesome a old factory. The crowd was definitely rowdy, I got punched in the back as I was right in front of the mosh pit. We had a great time though and it was very nice chilling with Tang.

May 12, 2008June 1, 2008

Boston for Mother’s Day

This past weekend, I went home to Boston to spend some time with Mom. It’s always so nice to go back, my parents treat me like a king and feel like I am in college again. Taking the train from the airport back to Newton reminded me of how different Atlanta is from Boston. The “T’ is a way of life in Boston, where MARTA in Atlanta often gets forgotten. Also I really miss Boston’s ethnic diversity.

A few great things about being home: Hanging with my parents, seeing Bean, eating my mom’s cooking, lounging around a real house, going out with old friends from college and high school. If Boston wasn’t so cold, I might be tempted talk to Ash about seriously moving back!

Here’s some pics of the weekend.

My favorite picture of Mom and Dad.Â This was taken on the porch steps in our back yard.

Mom looks so young in this picture.Â She has so much energy these days.

Steps towards our front door.Â Taken from our driveway.

Our house is so nice now.Â Since Dad did allÂ the work, it’s almost unrecognizable from what it was when we first bought it.Â It’s so comfortable staying home.Â Â Dad did such a great job, I hope I can take some really great set of photos one day to capture his handy work.

Ah, the food.Â This is batter fried carrots and onions.Â It’s awesome, sort of like tempura sweet fries.

My mom’s cooking is so good.Â See how happy Dad is 🙂

This is what I miss living away from the hometown.Â Â We hung out at Our House, Arang (left), Wan (Center), Simon (not in picture) and Marilon (not in picture) drinking and catching up.Â Proud to say I was the Connect Four champion that night.

March 30, 2008June 1, 2008

We’ve got a runner!

About a year and half ago, I tried convincing Ash to run with me.Â She groaned and told me how much she disliked running.Â Â Despite it all, she stuck with it and even after I stopped she continued.Â On March 30th, Ash ran the Atlanta half marathon, 13.1 miles through midtown, downtown and the Georgia Tech campus.Â She ran it in 2 hour and 12 minutes.Â Awesome job huney!!!

March 15, 2008

Spark City India Team

I had a great time work with the Spark City team.Â Everyone is very enthusiastic about the project and working with the technology.Â We have a good mix of both young and veteran team members and it’s really nice to see everyone pitching in to do their share.Â It has been a great learning experience for me as well.Â I was able to accomplish so many things during just two weeks, that the same would have taken me twice to three times as long if I were in the US.

We spent a lot of time going through the logic of each development function.Â We printed out the screen design, wireframesÂ to plan out work activities and wrote test cases.Â We also spent some significant amount of time on overall project context, giving the team an idea of the business reason, the coca-cola culture and our clients.Â We also had a discussions about quality and how we all can improve the user experience.

Here’s a picture of the full team.

Every morning, we have a LLP (low level plan) meeting where each person goes through what they did yesterday and their plan for the day.Â It’s also the opportunity to identify or escalate any issues or risks.Â In typical Sapient style, the LLP is on a huge whiteboard.Â Every team has one and at the end of each LLP meeting there is a team cheer.Â So in the morning with five or six other teams in the same floor, you hear everyone’s team cheer.Â Our’s is Spark City Halla Bol.Â (I forget what it means, and I think I also spelled it wrong -will correct later)