1) a complex J2EE project at a top investement bank in John Hancock tower@ Boston
2) Java/J2EE programmer at Harvard Business School campus
3) Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science, probably one of the biggest open source projects in Health & Science today., a next generation Cancer Research project funded by Government and National Cancer Research Institute with some very great minds at work with you working from home/office

Finally the opensource project was confirmed!

For a lot of reasons close to my passions and my recent blasphemy on why we are spending millions of $$$ in software without really adding value to human value, life and quality, the quest has just found it’s peripheries. The quintessential urge to do exactly what you want to do without a corporate culture and contributing to the open source with technologies galore is something I couldnt ask for more! This would be a great challenge and shift in perspective as I’m coming from a mid management role currently …

What is this Program/Mission all about? (random bits taken from the website)

caBig

About caBIGâ„¢ – The cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid, or caBIGâ„¢, is a voluntary network or grid connecting individuals and institutions to enable the sharing of data and tools, creating a World Wide Web of cancer research. The goal is to speed the delivery of innovative approaches for the prevention and treatment of cancer. The infrastructure and tools created by caBIGâ„¢ also have broad utility outside the cancer community. caBIGâ„¢ is being developed under the leadership of the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Bioinformatics

NCI awarded the 2006 Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science

The NCI was awarded the 2006 Computerworld Honors 21st Century Achievement Award for Science for their accomplishment under caBIGâ„¢ Program. They were selected from a field of 9 candidates from around the world. Peter Covitz (Chief Operating Officer of the NCICB) accepted the award on behalf of the NCI.

The Computerworld Honors Program is dedicated to a singular and ongoing mission: “A Search for New Heroes.” This search annually identifies and records the accomplishments of the men and women, organizations and institutions that are creating the global best practices in leading the world’s ongoing IT revolution.

Introduction to caBIG roadmap

A multimedia presentation

caBIGâ„¢ Participants – Over 800 people from more than 80 organizations are working collaboratively on over 70 projects in a three-year pilot project. Workspace specific information, materials and online forums can be accessed here.

If you would like to know more about the Architecture

Architecture of caGrid 1.0

caGRID 0.5 Overview

Had to go through a very unconventional round of interviews with 4 top notch techie guys, surprisingly my work at college projects and my PPR course at PESIT came very handy! Sometimes when you’re being interviewed you can make out the difference between a real techie and someone who ‘poses’ off as a techie! A good interviewer always gets the best out of you and a bad one always makes you feel miserable .. I rem many times .. when I was made to feel the same and its so discouraging

Although I wont be working directly with National Cancer Research Institute, I still would be using caGrid infrastructure with one of their partners (a startup by former IITians based in Virginia) for one of the caGrid product suite along with their core SDK development group. I will be going to Virginia by month end, initially and Im pretty hopeful that I get to work from home later on (Boston beckons? You bet!!! I wanna be back to Boston living near MIT/Harvard …)

Ahh the last 3 weeks in Boston … that of a jobless soul in transition …

Btw if you know anyone who is extremely good in Core Java, OOAD and fundamentals of Programming on large scale enterprise applications with J2EE and open source technologies, my team is lookng for suitable candidates, do mail me your resume priyatam@gmail.com

The ride in 4 years has been interesting, depressing, exciting, boring, encouraging, thoughtprovoking, challenging at times. At the end of the day., you always learn that clearing 54 subjects in your computer science undergraduate studies is not what is important but how do you solve problems at hand, how do you begin to learn new things unfolded on the fly, how do adapt to a change and do you communicate your ideas effectively… Sticking to the same company for 4 yrs is going to need a lot of patience for sure …

Fortunately I still keep in touch with 2 other colleagues who joined with me, and ., incidentally both in the US for higher studies…

Nostalgic moments … seated at my first cubicle for the first project …

I wonder how much value these 44 months have been in my technical life … geee.Honestly I think the best days of my programming were still my college days where I discovered design patterns and how OO can change the way you can write code. No matter how many frameworks I learnt, the creativity that has been imbibed sicne then cannot be replaced. As for working for a consultant company has its pros and cons., you can learn a lot about how a business functions from a higher up, if you know how to play the cards. While at the other end you know you’ve been taken for a ride and given 1/100th of the dues what you have contributed overall. But hey. isnt this suppose to ring a bell sooner or later?

I know its all a biscuit at the end of the day from the company’s CEO saying

“Ok dude, you’ve been slogging your arse off so I gave you a 4.8/5 rating, here you go take some change and some titles and keep your mouth shut for the next one year atleast. Afterall dont forget you’re a damn employee in this company and you will always be begging for more to go higher up the ladder. You are not a boss no matter how high up the ladder you are, remember I OWN THE LADDER”

I think I finally decided what’s next No more climbing ladders.

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn’t know and may or may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren’t exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.

You miss the comforts of college, of groups, of socializing with the same people on a constant basis. But then you realize that maybe they weren’t so great after all.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not. You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you or you lay in bed and wonder why you can’t meet anyone decent enough to get to know better. You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person.

One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while wining the race would be great, right now you’d just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.