Srikanth Technologies

Looking back at 2021

Here is summary of events in my life in the year 2021. At the end of each year, I would like to look back and share important events of my life through this blog.

Entering into 2021

2021 turned out to be another challenging year. I thought we would leave Covid behind. But it just came back as second wave and affected a lot of people. It scared a lot more, including our family as Pranav and other family members were infected and eventually recovered.

Unlike regular get-together this time we had an online meeting of our friends and family members and shared how year 2020 has been for each of us. It is always good to know each other.

Thatipudi Trekking

We went for Thatipudi Trekking on 3rd Jan. It was wonderful and more difficult than we expected. Scenery with Thatipudi reservoir in the background was breath-taking.

After the trek was over, we enjoyed playing Volleyball for some time and had great fun.

During Trekking

At Thatipudi Reservoir

Trip to Tirumala

For Pongal, we went to Tirumala. Darshan was never as easy as it was this time. We stayed at my friend's place in Nellore, before going to Tirumala and after coming from Tirumala. We enjoyed playing Volleyball in the early morning.

We went to fields for a get-together and we were given opportunity to plant a tree.

At Tirumala

Planting a Tree

My 50th Birthday

I turned 50 in February. We celebrated this occasion with a small get-together at home with all close friends and relatives. Pranav designed cake for the occasion. Looking back all that I can say is I did the best possible from my side in the circumstances presented to me by God. I look forward to do the same in future.

Cake

With Padmaja and Pranav

Relaxed gathering

Praneeth Graduation

Praneeth completed his Masters in Computer Science (Data Science) from University of Houston in May, 2021.

He got job and moved to Springfield, Illinois, USA to work on .NET project.

His work-life has just begun.

At University of Houston

At University of Houston

At University of Houston

Darapalem Trekking

It was another Trek at Darapalem near Simhachalam, conducted by YHAI (Youth Hostel Association of India) and we enjoyed being part of it. It was a group of 100+ people. We thought it was cake walk, but it proved to be more difficult than that.

During Trekking

During Trekking

Trip to Puri and Konark

Me, Padmaja, Pranav and my mother-in-law went to Puri and Konark in August. Boarded train after a few years and enjoyed every bit of it. Nothing compares to train journey. I am a huge fan of train journey.

Enjoyed being in Puri Sterling Resort and visiting Jagannath Temple.

Visited Konark Temple, which is unfortunately not in a great shape.

At Sterling Resorts, Puri

At Konark Temple

At Konark Temple

Knee Injury

I just had to endure Knee pain for 2 months (due to some injury) and had to switch Offline classes to Online classes as I couldn't climb stairs for some time.

I had to cancel a few classes due to appointments with doctors. It was tough not knowing when the injury will heal. I was advised not to move my leg for a week, so I had to take online classes sitting on bed. It was not tough or anything like that, it was just different.

Thanks to online classes, I could go on in spite of immobility due to injury.

25th Wedding Anniversary

I and Padmaja celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary on 16th October. It was a gathering of around 50 people who are very close to our hearts. They are our friends and family members and most of them have been with us all through our journey of 25 years. Of course, we missed Praneeth, though he joined us virtually from USA.

New Courses - AWS Fundamentals and .NET Core

I have been thinking of a course on Cloud computing. I didn't want it to sound like a complete theory course. I chose to go with AWS as it is the most widely used Cloud Platform. Though I named it as AWS Fundamentals, the course goes beyond fundamentals and covers enough ground for any beginner to understand how to use AWS Services.

I have been offering training on .NET ever since 2002. Microsoft changed .NET a lot by introducing .NET core in the recent past. So I migrated from .NET Framework to .NET Core. It was a lot of learning as good number of things changed in .NET Core and I had to create course material for ASP.NET Core etc. from scratch.

In the later part of the year, I realized there is still demand for .NET Framework (even though .NET Core is considered for all new projects), so I integrated both and now offer .NET Course, a more comprehensive course that covers both .NET Framework and also .NET Core.

I always love Web Development. I have been focusing on Backend development with .NET, Java EE and Django. Come 2022, I will be starting a new course - Front-end Developer, which prepares one to build fancy Front-ends in Web Applications. This course is strongly recommended to anyone who wants to become Front-end Developer or Full-stack Developer.

Other important events

Pranav was infected with Covid in April and recovered quickly.

I completed 30 years of work life on 4th September.

My in-laws celebrated their 50th Wedding Anniversary, which is a remarkable milestone for any couple.

I bought a new Laptop - Dell XPS 15 9500 with i9 and 32 GB RAM, and Logitech Ergonomic Keyboard and Mouse. Yet to get used to Ergonomic keyboard. I guess it takes time.

Dell XPS 15 9500

Logitech Keyboard K860

Logitech MX Vertical Mouse

New on-demand video courses in Udemy.com

The following are new courses I added to my existing courses in Udemy.com.

Building Web Applications Using Java EE

I added on-demand video course - Building Web Applications Using Java EE - to Udemy.com. It is a course aimed at people who know Java and who want to build Web Applications using Java EE.

Angular for Beginners

Angular is a comprehensive framework to build Front-end of Web Applications. This course teaches you how to build Front-end of a Web application using Angular.

There are courses that I didn't offer very regularly in my course schedule. For such courses, I created on-demand video courses so that I could reach every corner of the world. I am happy to have reached many through my courses.

My Courses in Udemy.Com

Blogs

Here are blogs posted by me in this year in all categories.

Videos

The following are the videos I uploaded to YouTube in this year.

Books Read

I have read 23 books (my target was 20 books) this year.

Well, this is the list of books I loved the most:
  • Big Billion Startup - Mihir Dalal
  • No Filters - Sarah Frier
  • A Promised Land - Barack Obama
  • The 5 Love Languages - Gary Chapman
  • The Midnight Library - Matt Haig
  • The Gopichand Factor - Abhijeet Kulkarni