Very busy over next few days

Your truly has just realized a couple of things...
1.) He has to send 3 separate presentations to some very senior people by Monday morning CET as his boss is on vacation; But he has realized it just now after doing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING on Saturday lazing around watching entire series of "Allo Allo" and "Boomtown" with his house mate. Sunday is gone now...
2.) One of the products he runs has a "hotfix" release. Normally support staff will take care of this themselves. But this being a fix affecting a HUGE customer, his business-counterparts and operations staff will be doing testing on Sunday before the customer starts on Monday. So naturally, being the "face of the product" (heh!), yours truly has to front hourly calls from morning CET to probably night CET (his early morning) to provide status reports.

Net result: Sunday and Monday are completely fscked. I won't even have time to go to the gym...

Silver Threads and Golden Needles

Better than the original I daresay.... Perfect voice for the song...

How do you know that finance has taken over the country?

When everybody knows what a basis point is...

God and Larry Ellison

Q: What's the difference between God and Larry Ellison?
A: God doesn't think he is Larry Ellison

Afternoon thought of the day: Genius

"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits"
-- Einstein (?)

Wait for me...

Yours truly has been stuck sick at home for the last 2 days. Used the time to watch 26 episodes of "The World at War" non-stop for 13 hours each day... One of the best historical documentary series on WW2...

The most moving moment occurred in the episode - "The Red Star" - that narrates the war in Russia, where Hitler was broken, but with 20 million Russian dead. Sir Laurence Olivier narrates this poignant poem that was written by a Russian soldier to his wife in the dark winter of 1941, when everything seemed lost and the fall of Moscow seemed imminent...

"Wait for me and I'll return, only wait very hard.
Wait when you are filled with sorrow as you watch the yellow rain.
Wait when the wind sweeps the snowdrifts.
Wait in the sweltering heat.
Wait when others have stopped waiting, forgetting their yesterdays.
Wait even when from afar no letters come for you.
Wait even when others are tired of waiting.

Wait for me and I'll return, but wait patiently.
Wait even when you are told that you should forget.
Wait even when my mother and son think I am no more.
And when friends sit around the fire drinking to my memory
Wait and do not hurry to drink to my memory too.

Wait for me and I'll return, defying every death.
And let those who do not wait say that I was lucky.
They will never understand that in the midst of death
You with your waiting saved me.
Only you and I will know how I survived:
It was because you waited as no one else did."


The poem was written by Konstantin Simonov. It was published in Pravda, the Soviet communist mouthpiece. Almost every soldier had torn out the page with the poem and had it in his breastpocket.

Barbarossa

I have always had a keen interest in history. This is coming from a guy who scored 94% in history/geography in the public school exams, and that was achieved by not mugging up the texts but actually reading up even more on the events. Yes, I am the guy who can pinpoint Smolensk on the map and tell you about the Caucasus and the history behind "And Quiet Flows the Don".

Regarding WW2, most people are under the impression that the D-Day landings on Normandy where the turning point in the war. Natural to think that way since that is the most publicized and celebrated event by the western media.

But Hitler was broken in the east, in the -40 degree cold of the Russian winter and the disorienting never-ending melancholic horizon of the land in the winter of 1941 and 1942. These defeats offered a glimmer of hope for the first time that the German army was not invincible. After those defeats it was a retreat all the way to the last stand at Berlin.

To know the full history, you can watch the following 3 free episodes... The full episodes can be seen after downloading the software from Veoh.com. The below clips are excerpts.

Btw Barbarossa was Hitler's codename for the Russian invasion.

Ramblings for 2008-06-22

Office boy turns programmer, says hello to new set of skills - Corporate News - livemint.com Long or Short Capital » It Trades at Only 6x 2020 Earnings - Paying Dividends Since Q1'06 BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Ugliest dog show Foreign Affairs - China's Olympic Nightmare - Elizabeth C. Economy and Adam Segal Churchill and His Myths - The New York Review of Books Winning: The Israeli Factor In Iraq Leadership: The USAF Absorbs A Wake-Up Call The Food Chain: In Fertile India, Growth Outstrips Agriculture Comic for June 22, 2008 BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | 'Olympic wedding' surge in China BBC NEWS | Americas | 'Gus' crowned world's ugliest dog Travelers Shift to Rail as Cost of Fuel Rises - NYTimes.com Bad guys really do get the most girls - sex - 18 June 2008 - New Scientist Germany is world’s greenest country: BP Beijing announces traffic plan for Olympics - International Herald Tribune RAW in-charge in Beijing recalled after honeytrap probe-India-The Times of India

Ramblings for 2008-06-21

Infosys develops 3D cellphone cameras, projectors Iowa Floodwaters UK students outsource contract cheating to India- ET Cetera-News By Industry-News-The Economic Times Military Photos: Royal Escort Support: Cargo Container Comfort Death of America's Suburbs Is Greatly Exaggerated: Joe Mysak Can the U.S. Bring Jobs Back from China? NOT SO EASY BABY Apple announces ZFS on Snow Leopard | Storage Bits | ZDNet.com Tesla in Orange Firefox 3 virus scanning Subprime hits IIM intern intake too Inflation woes: Dhoni cuts down on milk WHO CARES? WHY IS THIS NEWS

Ramblings for 2008-06-20

You speak the English? Indexed Lego Employees Have Minifigs as Business Cards (and a Great Sense of Humor) [Lego] Past Lessons from Charlie Oppenheimer The Virtual Machine to Browser Analogy. BBC NEWS | Americas | US fears of teen 'pregnancy pact'

Ramblings for 2008-06-18

BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Can a fake tan ever be classy? Can a real tan ever be classy? BBC NEWS | UK | Profile: Simon Mann BBC NEWS | Health | Big breakfast 'aids weight loss' The Trouble With Money Microspeak: Pricing uplift 20 Super Foods You Need to Build Muscle & Lose Fat High-School Prom Lands in England Globalization UB Group develops colourless whisky Hospital dumps body of accident victim in ditch Royal Enfield to launch four new models Fair game? Humans, Algorithms Disagree On Significance Of 'Lesbian' Search The 2004-2006 crisis in the soy sector is over, as prices have... DNA - Mumbai - Madarsas turn out portfolio managers - Daily News & Analysis

Ramblings for 2008-06-17

deal architect : Outsourcers and Level 4 support DB2 turns 25 Last Night - Marriage For All In California 7% in maths can get you through IIT-JEE-India-The Times of India Scoliosis The (bad) state of software testing interviews in India Tuition Teachers Make 20k Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir - NYTimes.com Abroad - For Blacks in France, Obama’s Rise Is Reason to Rejoice, and to Hope - NYTimes.com Demand for Data Puts Engineers in Spotlight - NYTimes.com Yahoo's Hiring Freeze, Confirmed And Explained (YHOO) - Silicon Alley Insider Built for Crime The Big Change in Mangement at the US Air Force ‘Vultures’ expose corruption - Times Online BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate BBC NEWS | South Asia | Indians top US spelling contests

What I Learned Today: Dunning-Kruger effect

Finally a scientific study proving what we have known all along...

The Dunning-Kruger effect proves that people who know very little think they know everything, while people who are very competent are not very confident in their abilities.

See the wikipedia article.

Ramblings for 2008-06-16

Top Gear USA hosts announced! Quotes Entirely Relevant to Investing 06-15-2008 Billion 'heir's Is America's suburban dream collapsing into a nightmare? - CNN.com The Man's best friend. Obama Sharply Assails Absent Black Fathers Comic for June 16, 2008 DNA - World - Keep up with Patels, not Joneses - Daily News & Analysis Flying a simulated Apache helicopter | Geek Gestalt - by Daniel Terdiman - CNET News.com Kerala: Son conducts father's wedding BBC NEWS | Europe | Court warns Italian TV prankster From Intern to Full-Time Branding is Like Dating Another Bloody Water Does Amitabh Bachchan write his own Blog?

Ramblings for 2008-06-15

Only 5 More Years To Wait For Sex With Robots, Robot Romance Still Decades Ayooo Silence is a virtue MAYBE DNA - Opinion - The height of prejudice As a tall guy, I would like to sue Comments Can Be Blog Posts Yes Foreign architects eyeing to cash in on India's realty Mission Admission: Colleges woo budding sports stars Like the US. Hopefully this doesnt happen for medical school. I dont want a wannabe cricketer taking the spot of a person who really wants to be a doctor. DNA - Money - Wipro sets up specialised unit for mega orders - Daily News & Analysis Lightning fans rejoice! A new SVT prepped F-150 is coming this fall Some people never learn Logistics: Why Ships No Longer Go To Sea Fuel costs 'Indian scientists firm believers' Means they are not scientists? Free and Flush, Russians Eager to Roam Abroad - NYTimes.com The Tragedy of America's Disappearing Fathers - WSJ.com This is going to explode in India soon Flickr: The Money Shots Pool Not what you think you pervert Cool Tool: Books That Changed My Life Fountainhead for me.... The never ending war against mediocrity. Actually Fountainhead is also about simplicity when you read about Howard Roarke and his simple yet beautiful architectural designs with clean lines...

What I learned today: Surreal helicopter medevac experiences in Korea

The Korean war saw the first widespread usage of helicopters. They were mainly used for medevac. For the first time ever, it was possible to move wounded soldiers quickly to a hospital for emergency treatment. The Bell 47 was the first helicopter pressed into service for this. It's rotors made a distinctive chop-chop sound - leading to the slang "chopper" for helicopters.

All this of course entered pop culture thru M.A.S.H (Mobile Army Surgical Hospital).

However, there was a problem.

The Bell 47 normally had only space for a pilot in its bubble canopy. The wounded soldier was placed alone in a stretcher in a small confined dark space made at the back, with noone to tend to him until the helicopter landed.

Now imagine this scene. The soldier gets hit. Usually he would pass out right there on the battlefield from the shock before the medevac happened. He would be placed on a sretcher while unconscious, and loaded onto a Bell 47. Sometimes the chap would regain consciousness in the middle of the flight. As he came to his senses, he would realize that he was alone. And it was dark, and cold, and he was flying in the sky somewhere. The poor fellow in most cases thought he had died and was flying to heaven or hell.

DIY UAV's

UAV technology has become so cheap that you can build a proper UAV yourself. A proper UAV with sensors, not just a remote controlled planes. See this video by Wired's Chris Anderson...

Ramblings for 2008-06-14

BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Japan quake BBC NEWS | UK | England | Nottinghamshire | The millimetre men MediaShift . Cell Phone Culture::Spain's National Obsession with Mobiles, Texting | PBS 7 Websites You MUST Check Before You Go On A Vacation 6 Things Money Cannot Help you Achieve Self-esteem How to Chill a Hot Beer or Soda in 3 Minutes Lost in E-Mail, Tech Firms Face Self-Made Beast - NYTimes.com Cold property market has realtors worried Bombay Gmail Client Side Architecture Part 1 | Web Builder Zone DirtGetsWet » Both Busted! I have never understood how people get that bored Quiz: Which city are you? - CNN.com Apparently I am Rio Twelve car cleaning myths - CNN.com What Women Want (Maybe) - NYTimes.com Interesting The World According to 'The Bear' Ananova - Vacuum screamer Vibrator using domestic appliances... LOL BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China's most famous foreigner Speculators Under Scrutiny in Commodities Market Volatility - NYTimes.com

Some more thoughts on unpilotted commerical planes

Right now, UAV's are doing a huge role in Iraq and Afghanistan. From some of the military research I have read, they have been phenomenally successful in bringing down IED casualty rates in Iraq. The US basically run a UAV 24 hours over patrol routes, with pattern recognition software to identify if somebody is planting an IED on the roadside.

What was expected to be possible by 2015 is already possible now due to the enormous research motivated by the necessity of war.

The next step is commercial aviation. Already commercial planes can land using instrument landing techniques. And landing is the toughest part of commercial flying. Taking off is relatively simple. The marginal research needed to have fully automated commercial flights is less than what is required for military aviation.

But I guess this is never going to happen. Because passengers will always want the comfort of having a human in the cockpit as a backstop. There is a joke I read once -

"Some day, instead of two pilots in the cockpit, they say, there will be a pilot and a dog.

The pilot's assignment will be feeding the dog.

And the dog? Well, it's there to bite the pilot if he or she dares to touch the controls."

Afternoon thought of the day

“It's difficult to get a man to understand something if his salary depends on him not understanding it.”

--Upton Sinclair

Applies well to Wall Street and the Housing Crisis...

On jogging endlessly

For those of you who think jogging for an hour a day will trim down the fat and tone up your physique, you are very much mistaken. You will only lose muscle.

To get a good physique you need...
1. Correct nutrition
2. Muscle building workouts
3. High intensity short duration cardio

Will expand on this in a later blog post...

The most brilliant idea ever

Make a Rubic's cube where you are able to cycle the colors of the each cell by pressing on it. You should be able to impress a lot of people after that.

Ramblings for 2008-06-13

BBC NEWS | Business | Probably the best corporate slogan... Read this because you are worth it BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Experts unveil 'cloak of silence' Spy Shots: Audi's important A7 Somebody's been watching too many horror movies Ultimate bling: Saudi man chromes his Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorano Is this the iCar? Nah, couldn't be New LAPD Helicopters to Look Like LAPD Cars You got what for a raise? Indexed Jamaican Curry Lamb from Brixton Anil's camp alleges sabotage by RIL Should Supermodels And Code Monkeys Compete For Work? MAYBE BABY 50 Romeos land in police honey trap-Chennai-Cities-The Times of India LOL. I pity the despo machans who are running after those phat policewomen... Here comes the video conferencing boom Oil prices BBC NEWS | Europe | Spain treats child phone addicts BBC NEWS | UK | Magazine | Quiz of the week's news Attrition: Downsizing DIs Full metal jacket Macquarie Targets Asia's 'Generation A'

Soon, this is how the various banks will have to raise capital

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1RRu1DRtXg

Get what you deserve

My thoughts on the US housing crisis...
"Why are they doing these stupid inflationary things to solve the problem? Who said every clown deserves a house?"

Ramblings for 2008-06-12

Cover Story: When Mom and Dad Share It All Reading Books On Twitter The 16 TB RAM PC: when? Why Indian CIOs Excel at Driving Business Innovation Pune MBA students get lifer for killing classmate-Pune-Cities-The Times of India BBC NEWS | UK | Wales | South West Wales | Rare cream foal 'a special boy' Can Rice Lead to Gold? Marathon Will Offer Test - NYTimes.com Asics are the best To Save Fuel, Airlines Find No Speck Too Small - NYTimes.com Necessity is the mother of frugality? Military Photos: USS Blue Ridge and Mount Fuji How to Make Profound and Lasting Change | ThinkSimpleNow.com Do something profound and lasting Interfluidity :: The arbitrageur of last resort Good idea to test the theory of a bubble in energy 'Baghdad-style' checkpoints in US capital - Telegraph OK! Magazine - First for Celebrity News - Burger King Helped Downey Jr. Quit Drugs How Computers Boot Up : Gustavo Duarte Bought: Rs 2.5 lakh; Sold: Rs 9,576 cr

Ramblings for 2008-06-11

iRobot enters the undersea robot market » VentureBeat Military Videos: Humvee Clearing IED Serial number marketing On the Street.....Vintage Missoni, Los Angeles Jobless girl Oil In The Brain, Pie In The Sky “Shareholding Has Never Been Important To Me” My foot How Bernanke's Banker Rescue Spells Their Demise: Michael Lewis Looking for a big salary? See what this start-up has to say | Tech news blog - CNET News.com Looks like payscale.com India's Most Trusted Brands - 2008 Lalu wants to star with Hema Malini Horny old guy Purity BBC NEWS | UK | Parrot squawks on woman's affair BBC NEWS | Middle East | Marry or lose job, says Iran firm BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Plane abandoned at Hanoi airport What I Learned Today - America's Best Paying Jobs Young Obama -- chicagotribune.com A new flavor of Google Trends Lavish Posthumous Paydays for CEOs

Religion, Royalty, Sex, Mystery

An English university creative writing class was asked to write a concise essay containing the following elements:
1) Religion 2) Royalty 3) Sex 4) Mystery

And……

The prize-winner wrote:
"My God," said the Queen, "I'm pregnant. I wonder who the father is."


Source: An email forward

Can somebody create this application

Here's an interesting new application idea - An application that can take Google Reader shared items and post them to a del.icio.us account.

I save a lot of my shared links using the Google Reader shared items feature. But I would also like to post them as a "daily post" onto my blog, automatically. The blog is the central repository for all my online activity. This auto-posting is possible if the links are in del.icio.us, as there are lots of services (like feedburner) that will summarise my del.icio.us posts for the day into a blog post.

So the missing link here is a service to take my shared items from google reader once a day and post them to a del.icio.us account, along with my comments (if any provided in Google reader).

So,
INPUT ---> Google Reader shared items feed url, del.icio.us username/pwd, Time when this posting should be done
OUTPUT ---> Postings to del.icio.us

I am sure there are lots of people like me wanting this kind of service. So if you build this application, it could be a way to get some publicity for your coding skills (or your own company) among the blogging population.

Ramblings for 2008-06-10

Lips don't lie The pout How I Built a Working Online Poker Bot, Part 3: The Million Dollar Pet Project Awesome project Caption This Pic HcwDB Chinese firm gets Rs 604 cr contract Bombay metro Mr. -T HcwDB BBC NEWS | Middle East | An Iraqi family comes to America BBC NEWS | Special Reports | BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | China quake lake 'now draining' BBC NEWS | South Asia | Malnutrition getting worse in India Inflation BBC NEWS | In Pictures | In pictures: Chinese town engulfed Does Apple's Steve Jobs Have Cancer Again? Using Their Illusion Long or short capital Hot Chicks with Douchebags: Lionel Itchy HcwDB Red Eye "These markets are hard enough as it is. But when the world's third largest holder of FX reserves is actively trying to screw you over, Macro Man has to believe that he's not the only macro man suffering from a bit of red eye this morning" Quote of the Day: Vikram Pandit "Every institution has the right to lose all the money they want, but no-one has the right to impose their disfunctionality on others in the system." Bangalore is World's Number 2 Techspot - Do you agree? |Technology and Business Startups in India NO WorkFast TV interviews Mark Bernstein of PARC | FastCompany.TV LOL.Scoble in a suit FHA Loses $4.6 Billion - Denies Insolvency

The free electric band

Wed and Thurs are the worst days in the week for me. On Wed, I create 4-5 status reports and send them out. On Thu I am engaged in conf calls all day, taking clients thru the reports.

Today, this is what I am listening to currently to get me thru the status reports.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lep0Fzq6omM

"My father is a doctor, he's a familiy man
My mother works for charity whenever she can
They're both good clean Americans who abide by the law
They both stick up for liberty and they both support the war.
My happiness was paid for when they laid their money down
For summers in a summercamp and winters in the town
My future in the system was talked about and planned
But I gave it up for music and the Free Electric Band.

I went to school in handwashed shirts with neatly oiled hair
And the school was big and newly built and filled with light and air
And the teacher taught us values that we had to learn to keep
And they clipped the ear of many idle kid who went to sleep.
Till my father organised for me a college in the east
But I went to California for the sunshine and the beach
My parents and my lecturers could never understand
Why I gave it up for music and the Free electric band.

Well they used to sit and speculated upon their son's career
A lawyer or a docter or a civil engineer
Just give me bread and water, put a guitar in my hand
'Cos all I need is music and the Free Electric Band.

My father sent me money and I spent it pretty fast
On a girl I met in Berkley in a social science class
Yes and we learned about her body but her mind we did not know
Until deep routed attitudes and morals began to show
She wanted to get married even though she never said
And I knew her well enough by now to see inside her head
She'd settle for suburbia and a little patch of land
So I gave her up for music and the Free Electric Band"

Screw up so that you can shout and get more visibility and a promotion

This looks like some of the applications at work

The best corporate slogan ever?

Has to be "The network is the computer" for Sun Micro.

I first read this in PCQuest or one of the other computer magazines in India around '96. I didn't get it at that time. Growing up in a world of GWBasic and MS-DOS 6.0, I always used to wonder what was special about the hardware that SUN provided. Why do they have to charge Rs. 10 lakhs (1 million) for a server (in those days)? What did these servers do anyway that a PC could not do? What is different about a SUN workstation?

But oh man... this slogan encapsulates EVERYTHING about the information age. Everything about the internet. It is heartbreaking to see a company that can see the future, but cannot do anything to make money off it.

O Sarajevo...

“The Balkans produce more history than they can consume.”
-- Winston Churchill

“Sarajevans will not be counting the dead. They will be counting the living.”
-- Radovan Karadzic, Bosnian Serb leader



Sarajevo has been rebuilt in the last 3 years. See this great travelogue by Michael Totten who specialises in going to former warzones...

"Sarajevo can be startling for first-time visitors. Shattered buildings, walls riddled with bullet holes, and mass graveyards are shocking things to see in a European capital in the 21st Century. The war in Bosnia-Herzegovina was more violent than the others in the former Yugoslavia, and it shows. If I believed in ghosts I'd say Sarajevo must be one haunted place. At the same time, the reconstruction and cleanup work is impressive. The destruction gave me a jolt, but at the same time I was slightly surprised I didn't see more of it.

Bosnia is a troubled country with a dark recent past, but it is no longer the war-torn disaster it was. Sarajevo was under siege for almost four years by Bosnian Serb forces on the surrounding hilltops who fired mortar and artillery shells and sniper rounds at civilians, but it’s over and it has been over for more than a decade. Most damaged buildings have been repaired, and many neighborhoods look almost as though nothing bad ever happened to them.
........................
......................."

Give and Take

"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."
-- Winston Churchill

International symbol of marriage approved

The UN Human Rights Commission has approved the new international symbol of marriage... Also note the subtle signs of the fall in prestige of the US dollar. The smart wife demands Euros now...

Rambllings for 2008-06-08

Interesting thought by Steve Jobs Stay hungry... Stay foolish... LOVE IT Data Centre Complexity In my place it costs 3k euros/month to have a box sitting in our in-house data center. Fuckin hilarious... Really just another day at the office for a Tiger? I got rejected by Accenture when I applied for my Singapore internship in 2001. Now a relative who flunked twice in school in in Accenture in India... The fall of standards... Is it a real race for talent? This guy really gets thru the hype The Indian Tiger Again The Globalization Confusion Herman Miller's Clinical Trials Leadership: The USAF Is Lost And Found Now you know... Slashdot | Rubik's Cube Algorithm Cut Again, Down to 23 Moves Column inches - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog This would be like paying developers for fixing bugs... Computerworld - GE's Appliance Park still an IT innovator One of the first computers in the US Re-introducing the Air-ship" Nice fantasy. Won't work. What will you do in an airship for 4 days. At least on a cruiseship you can get seasick and have a story to tell A $1.4 Billion Lesson in Standard Work Sorry buddy, this is not about standardisation of work. If you did that nothing would ever get done, because all you would be doing is standardising. Instead, make it easier for people to communicate what they find, and the standards will follow Samaritan Indian hits jackpot in Dubai The customer doesn't care whose fault it is - (37signals) Obama's Drucker-Style Win Its so easy to twist your special interest as the reason for Obama's win. This chap is an MBA wonk who spins it as a Drucker thing... Here's the thing. If Obama looked like an ape like 50 cent, he would have lost. HUGE. Tata, Mahindra to Buy GM's Hummer? If this happens, this will be the height of hubris... just like the Japanese lost buying American brands in the 80s

Grassroots Leadership

FastCompany is typically known for hyping fad management techniques, methodologies and processes. Typically my BS filter is very high when reading anything from them.

But this article in FastCompany about "Grassroots Leadership" is hand-down one of the best I have ever read on management. When I read this for the first time 3 years back, it changed the way I ran my projects at work.

Grassroots leadership, as the name would suggest, is about real empowerment. Empowering ground-level people to make decisions in what they do everyday, and allowing them to innovate. People on the ground are in the best position to know what is the right thing to do. From a leadership point-of-view, the difference here that a leader needs to have is to understand that everybody is talented. If you make people feel that they can make decisions and carry them out on their own, as well as listen to their feedback, they will do wonders for you. Ultimately, hand out responsibility, not orders or directions.

The other things highlighted -
-- Allow people to enjoy their work. If people don't enjoy their work, find a way to remove the boredom. People who enjoy their work make fewer mistakes.
-- Understand the intent of a process rather than the various steps in the process. This understanding will lead to better decisions. Usually processes are there because something went wrong when doing this particular thing in the past. If you understand the purpose of the process, you can bypass standard operating procedure and stand out.

But personally the real message I took away from reading this was about authenticity. Quoting from the article -
"All I ever wanted to do in the navy was to command a ship. I don't care if I ever get promoted again. And that attitude has enabled me to do the right things for my people instead of doing the right things for my career. In the process, I ended up with the best ship in the navy -- and I got the best evaluation of my career"

I'm lucky to be working in something that I am really passionate about. So it was easy for me to get to the next level, and focus only on the quality of my work, and weeding out the distractions and the politics. I stopped worrying about promotions, and what all I needed to do to get to the next level in the org chart. And this has got me very quickly to where I am today. Nowadays, if there is some innovative project that needs to be done, I get the call first to see whether I want to take it up.

Ramblings for 2008-06-07

BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Prince turns 50: Highs and lows BBC NEWS | Americas | Colorado catches 'thong bandits' Dumb, criminal and perverts Bangalore: Techies held for abduction These guys wouldn't have been good developers Love-struck man climbs 15 floors, falls and dies Leadership: The American Disease Wartime speeds up innovation Military Photos: SUV Taken Out by F-16 in Utah Lucky to survive The Greatest Invention in Computer Science The ECB's Vicious Circle The Red Pill: 10 Films Guaranteed To Blow Your Mind Agree with only Fight Club and Brazil. Donnie Darko IS THE WORST MOVIE EVAR BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | High-tech planes target Taleban UAV's rule BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Hints of 'time before Big Bang' I give up Jersey Shore Lassos New Yorkers Hobbled by Price of Gasoline "It's going to be a great year for the Jersey Shore, as long as it doesn't rain on the weekends,'' LOL Californian billionaire Henry T. Nicholas III faces drugs, sex and fraud charges - Times Online Tennis Girl - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Lunch Atop a Skyscraper, c.1932 Print by Charles Ebbets at Art.com The days of not having to take 100 precautions for everything Mankind’s Most Important Moments (In Lego) : Wacky Archives Who's the tennis girl?... Shuld blog about the actual events Mailbox [PIC] LOL BBC NEWS | South Asia | Swimsuits and stilettos in Delhi winter Virgin goes recruiting One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish These people are becoming proper corporate. BAD The Crowd Takes On Naming Consultants With NameThis Good idea... I am really bad with codewords for projects...

The opposite of every instinct you ever had

This is one of my fav Seinfeld episodes ever. George tries the opposite of every instinct he gets, and changes his whole life...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bslpmwFlJoA

Ramblings for 2008-06-06

Russia's Raiders Tell when this doesnt happen. That would be news in Russia Sheriff Takes Law Into His Own Hands Feeling lucky punk? Synchronized Driving: The Next Olympic Sport? WTF On the Street.....Friends, Nolita She has too much or too little money Friday Haiku Street Scenes: Paul on Warren Street Douche Oil Traders: - OMG! They killed Kenny! Southern Trails Offer Hikers Waterfalls, Woodlands and Wildflowers - NYTimes.com A walk in the woods Porsche developing its own Golf-based entry model? Brand dilution Lamborghini prices Gallardo LP560-4 for UK, releases new pics Fugly This Is Your Heart on Intervals Bloomberg.com: Invest: Banks Say Auction-Rate Investors Can't Have Their Money Back Online Extra: The Cost-Killer in Manila Do you know enough to be dangerous? Indexed Intelligence: Eyes In the Sky For Everyone Wartime accelerates technology Cameron Diaz is happy being single I'm so happy for her Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker | InfoWorld | Hard to make a living in tools | June 2, 2008 07:20 PM | Zack Urlocker Official Gmail Blog: Introducing Gmail Labs Apple - Education - iTunes U - Overview ‘When We Left Earth’ Shows When Man Stretched to Reach the Moon - NYTimes.com

Idea for a fun new application - George's answering machine

I am a huge fan of Seinfeld. Best TV series ever!

Had this idea when watching some episodes a few days back. There is this episode where George Costanza has a really super answering machine/voicemail message. Check out this youtube clip.

I can't get it out of my head now. It permeates every sense of my being. I keep humming it to myself in the train, in the office, at home, in the gym...

I am sure there are lots of people who would like to set this song as their answering machine/voicemail message. So the application I am thinking about is one where I can go to a website, type in a name in a textbox, click on submit, and an mp3 is generated with my name in the message instead of George's. Then I can use this mp3 with my phone company's voicemail.

Yeah, this does not sound easy. But with somebody experienced in audio programming, it should be pretty simple to write a program to splice together a pre-recorded track and a name pronunciation track. I guess a library of naming pronunciations is needed which would be the tough part.

Ramblings for 2008-06-05

UBS drops muni business At Google, a search guru's dream comes true | Tech news blog - CNET News.com Good interview with Google's head of Search Quality Les Bouchons Restaurant, Ann Siang Road The Conjuring of Alternate Realities Telstar Logistics: An Airbase in England, 1944? BBC NEWS | Business | The great carbon bazaar Every movement becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket Gates-Ballmer Clash Shaped Microsoft's Coming Handover - WSJ.com Books I’ve Read and Recommend You to Read Too Will the Polish plumber save the euro? - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog India: Soaked by Oil Subsidies As long as India and China do not remove subsidies, oil prices won't come down much BBC NEWS | Magazine Monitor: Caption this pic DO NOT REVERSE ENGINEER AND SELL TO THE CHINESE LIKE YOU HAVE DONE WITH OUR F-16s 8 Things We Hate About IT YOU HAVEN'T WORKED WITH ME SWEETHEART Dimon May Go Shopping Hope shines eternal On the Street.....American Beauty, Greenwich Village CONFIDENT AND SERENE Who can take care of everything? Stanchart launches Manhattan Platinum card I always used to wonder what kind of self-esteem would a person have to hanker after a "Manhattan" card... Same kind of idiot who hankers after the DBS "Black" Card i guess DNA - Wide Angle - The changing menus of small towns - Daily News & Analysis The change in lifestyle... I think I might be able to peddle my beef steaks in India in the near future DNA - Money - Fakes dominate IPL merchandise mart - Daily News & Analysis If these chaps expected honesty, they are going to be sorely disappointed DNA - Money - How to avoid getting CTC-ed - Daily News & Analysis Multiple orgasms in parliament - National - smh.com.au Quoting from the article "He did not correct his mistake, instead moving on rather hurriedly to the climax of his speech.". THE NEWSHACK MUST HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR SUCH AN IDIOT TO COME ALONG TO MAKE HIS CAREER

Steadfast Principles, Integrity, Independence

“Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank.”
-- Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission, 1992

For42 years the German Central bank defended the German currency from irresponsible fiscal policies of short-term oriented politicians, making it a bedrock next to the US$. Now you can see the same inherited gene pool running in the ECB.

To paraphrase Trichet, fuck growth.