An engaging March

This march had been very engaging in terms of the responsibilities handled with personal and professional front. For a change in this blog wanted to experience the flow of thoughts when it comes to blogging. So, I'm not editing anything to fit the sequence and just going about what comes to mind in terms of March.

I had got my Nexus 5 at the start of this month and since then I have not had my chance to explore it much. Believe it or not, I have not installed even 10 apps since my receipt of it. I used to liaison between my team and the mobility (Mobile UI) team and because of my rapport and expressed aspiration, I was given an opportunity to contribute for my Android UI when one of their resource was on unplanned leave for 3 weeks. Though I din't handle the critical pieces, it was an experience for me to use my android knowledge (whatsoever earned) during my 2 +Coursera courses. To my realization whatever I had learned was not to the fullest and had to struggle to get things working in a proper way. More learning was when it was reviewed and commented which gave me a better understanding on mobile application development. The hardest part of the whole exercise was the timeline. To meet the timeline, I had to stretch which sometimes had called up for sleepless nights. The quite challenging to explore the basic stuffs. It was  activities have been piling and haven't been completed yet which is dragging the efforts and the learning. Hope to bring back the items in shape.

Except for one weekend every other weekend was with family only. The Ugadi weekend was used to the fullest with trips to Mysore and Bangalore local site seeing with family and brother-in-law. Organizing the trip and keeping them on track with followups was challenging and getting everyone to cope up with us is not easy either. Keeping my mom busy with finding a perfect match for me is a challenging task for her either.

March is a month where we end up having a huge share in terms of Income Tax and opportunities for hike and role/grade changes. To my surprise, I was promoted to "Sr. Technical Specialist". I had mentioned my self analysis about my last year performance in the earlier blog for the New Year. The promotion doesn't match my analysis on me but I feel my analysis was with more introspection and true than external perception on my performance. There had been times when I felt very bad that I'm not able to code proper (without much complexity) but considered them as realizations on how it can be done.

The most challenging thing over the month of March along with tight deadlines at office was my availability for the "Programming Mobile Applications for Android Handheld Systems" course on Android with +Coursera and +Adam Porter. I used to do my assignments during my train travel. The final exams I felt was the easiest but I ended up goofing up with the testing and fixing some of the known bugs due to lack of dedicated time. To my surprise, I could still make it with all assignments and final exams before deadline.

Over this month I had thought of blogging about my experience with Android and +Coursera but dint do it due to my procrastinating behavior I guess. Hope to do it in this month of April. The overall takeaway is that there is still greater scope of improvement with programming and work on it when the opportunity is available.