random musings...

Happy New Year to everyone, we are end of a decade and start of new year, a new decade. 2000-2009 was the one of the worst decade as per my opinion. 2 recessions, 2 wars and more and more terrorist attacks. However, our life goes on and on, we had a great quality as human being, which is forget the past, and move on. The celebration's are the main source to motivate people, forget all and move on. As oppose to everyone expectations, 2009 year was not a growth year rather it was stabilizing year. The stronger end of year holiday shopping lift some hope for 2010, but as per latest news holiday shopping in U.S.A mainly boosted by international travelers, many from euro zone, pacific rim, and Canada spent lot of money here. The trend is also now jeopardy since the strict international travel measure, thanks to the sole terrorist attack against U.S.A bound flight. U.S.A consumers are still in stingy mood, the money flow tighter than before and deteriorating labor market. The market pu

On Christmas day, Here is one fun short story. I'm working on it for days.. . Back home in India, we always had rat issue when i was kid. We used to have lengthy discussions, brainstorm and strategy session to go through how to catch rats. The issue was, the rats came only at night to spoil our food and other eatables. It was suggested that, to have cat at home to scare rats and have a dog also to scare cat, so cat would eat more rats. But one brilliant mind suggested that what if after all the rats gone, what to do with the cat and dog. Everybody agreed that point and scraped the whole cat/dog idea, we all went back to whiteboard. I suggested one idea that i would wake up daily night for a week to analyze all rats and its behavior and then make an appropriate plan to catch all rats. Nobody seems to agree, because i was too young to wake up all night and my plan was a bit vague to them . First i was angry with all of them, but then realized that it was my bad to blame others becaus

2009 was great year for me and i have achieved most of my self-assigned goals, very important milestone i achieved on 2009 is, bought the home at Naperville. It was great to set up some goals for next year and to work for it. Blogging, micro blogging are the great asset for this self-learning and self-improvement. 2009 was a mixed year for me and my family we together worked as team to fulfill most of the goals. Here are some notable achievements. Home. 2000+ Tweets, following 3500+ and 3500+ followers which is unbelievable. 50 blogs and completed development of web 2.0 tool http://www.tamilscrap.com and uploaded 100+ contents. Reduced weight to below 195 lbs. Had a blast at summer, visited Pittsburgh,Niagara and spent great quality time with kids and family. But as usual there are some left out and will be finished it this new year. 2010, will be again a same as 2009 for me and my family. Here are my resolutions and goals. 1. Learn a new speaking language. 2. Maintain same weig

Last 1-2 weeks my blood started boil and my pressure shoots high, I was very disappointed with our politicians. They are not at all serious enough to handle the climate control summit at Copenhagen rather they are enjoying at Copenhagen like vacation. The main issue is, no body has ball to announce something positively and go back home to face their internal opposition politics. It is a final chance for all prime ministers, presidents, and kings to make pledge on future of humanity, if they miss this once in a life time chance, the whole human race will be evicted from earth Period. I think the whole Climate control should be handled by intelligent think tanks, they know better than politicians. The “unpolitics” mind just think about real statistics and carefully draft the long term goals. Politicians can validate the recommendations and vote on the final terms and conditions, in other words gamble on entire humanity’s future. The threat is real and sea level raising day by day, clima

Thanks to Tiger Woods, he indefinitely changed the definition of Golf, next summer if I say I’m going to play golf to my wife, she might reply sarcastically "really". [Pun Intended]. The point is Tiger Woods’s image is free falling, this media dominated society day by day adding salt to wound. As of now the total count of Tiger Woods’s mistress is staggering 16 and counting. There is no difference between 1 and 100 in terms of mistress, so media can leave this man alone to repair his marriage life to allow him to come back to Golf as soon as possible, rather than counting mistress like an election result or base ball score. What is the real issue with Tiger Woods? He was a champion of Golf which was denied to minorities until 1960s. It was amazing that he become a master of a game which was never learned by his ancestors, further more he had stuttering problem. He is a great fighter and he will definitely come back and most of his followers and fans still believe him. We are

When I ride bus and train to work, i have to travel almost 60 miles, i have to pass several business during my ride, most of them are small business. I wonder how are they managing their income/expense and tax and many things, as any one assumed everything manual. They are not IT or progressive haters, they are brilliant, risk taking and growth oriented hard working people. I can spot 50 business with in 60 miles of ride means how many small business are here at U.S.A. There would be millions, most of them are not IT enabled. I envisioned a global community, bunch of developers, working as team to solve these kind of small business using completely open source at nominal rate. It started 2-3 years ago but it didn't scale up because of several reasons, the main one would be greediness of some people and lack of project management and competition from big IT service companies. Here we are now, global level IT market saturated at salary level, big companies like IBM, Accenture and

It is very difficult to change our life but it is even difficult to change others. First of all why one want to do that? Are they Gandhi or Buddha or Jesus? Here is nature play important role, if you take 100 person randomly, the one would be the game changer, not his/her own but others also. There are several motivational speaker, millions of books, private counseling available in market just to deal with this subject. But unfortunately all are primarily to mend money and business. Those things won't work, even though one read several books and attend n number of training may not yield the result. Listen through Eyes When ever we speak with others, the eye is the main communicator not his/her mouth and words. The eye speaks differently than the real communication. The game changers or the 1/100 who created by natural to deal with changing other's life should listen the eyes to understand the real issue of others. Sometimes the communication sparks like fire but eyes shows

Our life based on 3 main elements, one is our own health and second is our family and third one is career. These three are tightly integrated and the change of one definitely affect the other. I attended a farewell party in one of my ex workplace, he was in late 50s and decided to retire from work, at the party his 18 years old son also attended. He started speaking about his achievements, how he built the company etc and finally looked at his son and he started literally crying because he didn't know anything about his son, he missed all of his graduations, he didn't know what he like to eat, he didn't know his favorite game, he was very much into work and couldn't spent time for his family. There are something's we can't get back and one of the main one is family especially our kids growth is ineluctable . So all okay, if we spend more time with family, we can't advance our career, there are many people waiting in line to finish or take care of our job

I was 15 years old when Berlin wall dismantled and I was not very keen to follow the events. Those protests eventually ended “socialist” era to make a new way to start free market, capitalist era. But out of curiosity I asked to my dad and other elders that, so the communists going to out of our area also, no more strikes, so my friend’s dad can go back to factories which was closed for years etc…etc. None were provided a clear cut answer and unfortunately communists able to survive in our area, I would say it become stronger in 2 states. After end of iron curtain, communists started thinking about a new perspective of their philosophy, they become capitalist orientated may be lessons learned from modern China which is good for all of us. 20 years later after end of iron curtain, fall of Soviet Union, and free markets, are we well off with this system? Is this world become a better place to live? What are the advantages? Obviously this world become a flat, trade and investment flowing

Here are the steps to become liquidate in layman terms. For Starters Save Money in to saving account -> After it grow 5K -> Move to a money market account -> After MM account Grow 10K -> Move 5K to Mutual funds(step by step) -> After Mutual fund grows 25K -> Move to Stock market (Remember diversify) -> After stocks grows at least 100K -> Invest in real estate For Pros Sell second home for gain -> Move 50% to again Mutual funds -> Buy an other home at upcoming places(like Idaho, Montana) full or partial down payment(or internationally) -> When Mutual fund grows some move into stocks -> Sell stocks at 50% gain -> Buy 3rd home some where at North Carolina or Texas - For Retirees Sell all home -> buy a home at Big Island -> move all 401K to money market account -> NO MORE LIQUIDATION. It was easy for me to draw the above map but it is really very hard to progress. The main issue is, we are all prone to unexpected expense. But I believe a soli

I’m still researching on my second series of liquidation, in the mean time here is a new blog about polished, diplomatic communication and straightforward communication patterns. A friend of mine discussed with me a long time ago that why Americans are so successful at marketing and selling more cars than Germans, but Germans are very good at mechanics and engineering [This discussion happened several years ago, at that time Ford and GM outperforms Benz and BMW at almost all markets in sales]. The friend visited 16 countries and he has more international experience than me, he concluded that Americans always smile and Germans keep stiff face and they are not good at talking and marketing, more than that they are straightforward (plain) talking what they are thinking in the mind. But I was not convinced at all because he was making a generalization statement. One of the great examples of plain communication is Joe Biden, USA’s current vice president who lost all previous bids of USA”s p

As I said before, nowadays making money is very easy, if you aren’t then government gives you some [Just Kidding]. The point is, comparatively with earlier generations, because of global economy and free trade and so many things make money available to everybody now. As long as, we have a decent education with IQ over 100 can get a decent salaried job for most of the people in this world [An idealist statement though]. Now we have money and how to manage it and how to spend it wisely and what to buy and what to avoid and where to invest and how to liquidate and rebuild the wealth is big questions. A common average human doesn’t know that hence we need a intelligent MBA grads to manage our wealth. The last decade’s extraordinary demand for a top notch business school MBA grades also because of we don’t know how to manage our own money. The downturn and economical instability also because of us, each individual doesn’t know how to manage it properly. All money going to one direction for

A longtime ago i read from some book that the new young generation of USA school kids wants to make money by fame in other words they want to become a super athletics or movie star or music career. Some of them, very few want to do hard work to become a doctor or engineer, which was very low percent to compare with earlier generation. This is not a USA’s problem, now this culture spreading across globe. I was sitting on the fountain at Aurora Fox valley mall, a kid like 3 years old throw a coin towards fountain, before that he wished that he want to earn 1 million dollar. Every where and every one want to make money but prefer some short cuts. I think we elders are responsible for this attitude of young generation. We want to achieve financial freedom by using our kids are the main reason or we are pushing our kids towards something fancy career like athletics, entrainment industry. There is nothing wrong to dream something bigger and working towards it but going sidetracked and prefer

Brilliant book and must read one for Software engineers and Java developers. Why i emphasis this book? This book would help us to communicate efficiently. When i start reading Gang of 4 book and Head First Design Patterns, i start wondered that "hey, we did that 2 years ago and it should be called "Factory Pattern" etc etc. Giving an industry standard name for an activity is really important and it is the progression of IT industry. Once we are all familiar with naming and concept then our job is very easy to perform and make quality software. Here after i no need to explain moving method from a class to other class because of blah blah reason, just refer Martin Fowler refactoring pattern "Move Method(142)". Through out the book, i was excited to see Martin Fowler captured everything in detail related to refactoring which we facing in our day by day activity. Nowadays IT industry code development become static, thanks to current economic downturn and baby boo

A soft spoken, intellectual liberal's thought process is, our country is world's super power, rich country but 50 million people are without a basic insurance, 18,000 people dying without a proper insurance per year, hmm..what is the solution? As always, liberals want to address this by providing a government sponsored, a well funded, a perfect public health care to all citizen. In long run, they want to integrate all into one universal insurance, 100% funded by government. A well mannered, easily spark towards any new reforms conservatives, opposing this plan on every town hall meeting. They are getting a sizable support from senior citizens and business people. They are pointing out the source of funding, already U.S government spent trillions of trillion for economy and deficit is higher than any other time, GM and some banks are under government watch. The situation is not good for any reform for now and 180 million citizens are happy with current plan so do senior citiz

Almost all of my Indian friends and relatives and parents are always shows me a kind of frustration about India, when ever we are in talk about our country. The lists are 1. Inadequate infrastructure. 2. Unbearable Bureaucracy. 3. Corrupted politicians. 4. Reservation 5. Arranged marriage 6. Arrogant government employees and able to form teams to protest against government for their own salary hike. 7. Social economy structure. 8. Caste system. 9. Unmovable justice system. and the list goes on and on. But everybody moving their status from poor to middle class and middle class to rich and so on. I agree with most of it, that is, yes we have poor infrastructure, mainly because of people like us, we used our "democracy" process to stop government's planning on infrastructure developments. We overload our justice system, we misused social system as a result we get into prolong reservation system. If we start deeply thinking, we people created all the mess and expect

Weight loss is kind of epidemic in around world. A friend of mine hardly 100 lbs, worried much and trying to reduce non-existence fat [Pun Intended]. A regular exercise with controlled diet is really important for healthy life style but too much diet and harsh weight loss are not good for one’s health. Here my post, I’m concentrate on weight gain after quit smoking and how to reduce it. After quit smoking, we tend eat more which is unavoidable. As per my opinion, don’t stop it, eat as much as we can and gaining 10-20 lbs doesn’t matter, what matter is 1000+ chemicals from smoking. When I quit smoking I was ranging between 180 lbs to 190 lbs, but after quit smoking it raised to 220 lbs. After a month and half, regular exercise and diet now my weight is 199 lbs. I’m not writing this for my self pride, there are some out there still smoking thinking about weight gain after quit smoking. 1. Addict to one type of food, meaning if you like Pizza means eat more and more pizza as replacem

Thanks to Sukumar for Mindset book recommendation, it is indeed a great book to read. I haven’t completed it yet but it created some stimulus to write this blog. Actually I chose my friendship with some very early and keep in contact as long as I can, meaning I still have friends from 1st grade and 5th grade and 6th grade etc. I keep on watching/contacting 2 of my old friends. One is positive thinker (A), other one is negative thinker (B). This blog is about the real time analysis of these 2 distinct mindsets. The topic of our discussion was Sachin Tendulkar, a great Indian Cricketer of all time. Positive Thinker always thinks Sachin is going to score 50 runs in any match, Negative Thinker always thinks Sachin is going to duck out. But the reality would be something different. I always stay in between, I used to analysis some factors like who was opponent, who was going to start bowling for Sachin, what was the pitch condition, what was the weather, my recall abilities about Sachin’s

When I was young, i used to listen old stories from grandmother and a cousin of my grandfather. Most of the stories are from their flashbacks and their culture and some bad things happened in their generation. Many stories are how they suffered on the 1889 great Indian drought and followed by killer malaria, diarrhea. These two events created shock waves to their minds and the generation changed how they were before, they were lack of confidence about their next day’s food. They have to be very selfish to survive on those tough times. As per Indian culture, all the religious books and religious thoughts encouraged sharing and selfish less. But later on those sad events are main reason for selfishness. The main reason for India’s population growth is also selfishness, those olden times there were no advanced medicine available, so most of the kids dies less than their 1 year or with in hours of birth or before their teen age. Due to this that time Indians try to give more than 5-10 birt

It was a bitter cold winter night, the time was almost 3:00AM and we were setting up initial customers in our system but there was an issue with customer data. We had 2 choices A) Go to home sleep and come back morning and discuss with Sales/Marketing team and explain to boss about the delay, manage the outcomes B) Immediately call Marketing Analyst to fix the issue. The war room was filed with highly IQ, techie people, they decided to go with option B, and we called him early morning 3.00 AM to fix an issue. The good news is we fixed the issue and money started flowing but bad news is we about to going to lose a veteran marketing analyst because he was frustrated with late night calls and lost many future millions. The reason why we choose the option B is, we were lacking Emotional Intelligence. Several researches suggested that “Einstein's superior intellectual ability may have been related to the region of his brain that supports psychological functions. In other words, accordin

Are we heading to a jobless recovery? From Krugman to Joe Biden everybody thinks the same. Actually the last job report was a scary and it overturned all the predictions and met all threshold. But a point to remember is, job market is a trailing economic indicator, it would take some time to stabilize the condition. Based on previous recessions 1981-82, 1991-92 and 2001-2002, when economy turning around it would start sending mixed signals. The recovery may not be uniform as we like, because the medications prescribed for economy would start show it signs at different times from different places. For example, investors always positive thinkers since they buy in all from Fed reserve and treasury's assessments and start buying stocks hence sock markets going north but employers are causally optimistic about future business hence we are seeing a lousy unemployment report. It is pool of people thinking differently and some sees half empty and some sees half full. But the truth is, we a

In almost all white-collar professions, we have to deal with Ego, Ego is a trait mainly driven by superiority and some inflated feeling of self. Ego is a main driver of one’s growth and without ego there is no improvement. But ego is very complex subject, I’m here try to present my thoughts and how to work with Egoistic environments. Ego is great tool for improvements hence can be used as weapon whenever required. Too much Ego is not okay because that’s main team work killer. As a rule of thumb, too much egoistic person should be an individual contributor like sales, decision making and use the egoistic to beat outside market competition. Here are some more points about egoistic. Polite or Bully : It is very hard to understand whether a person really bullies or showing bully behavior out of ego. A same person act very polite with “inferior” than one and act very aggressively or bullying with “superior” than one. But the reality is all are equal and everything is illusion that one is ab

Actually a long ago, one of my friend used to do some unusual stuffs like avoid salt for 3 months, sometimes avoid sugar for 3 months, no talking with parents, friends for a week etc. I thought that he was kind of paranoid person. But I didn’t know that he was tried to become a saint. Each try of some thing unusual gives him some will power and feel the pain of others who really suffer from the disease. The main purpose of Ramzan and Good Friday is to experience the hunger of poor people, hence people start share something to others to eliminate hunger. Buddha was a rich prince and he become saint only after he sees and feels the pain of others. The same with Gandhi also, he also a rich and earning lot of money as lawyer in South Africa, but he become a father of nation because of his experience and feeling pain of others. So becoming saint required emotional trauma or high integrity or something unusual things that my friend did, or 30 days no food, or go out to forest to see some thi

Our life is full of surprises and twists and turns, no one in this world meticulously plan for future, day by day activities etc. All we need is a brave heart to face unexpected. Stress management is really important in our life. We should not get stress easily and burn out ourselves. When i started software development, industry suffered a major setback is managing stress. But now due to the maturity of industry stress is not a big issue. What causing stress, actually stress is unpredicted one. For example, one is very easy go on many things but get stress whenever Christmas season is around the corner, major reason is how can i handle shopping for massive relatives, friends, kids? but s/he may be handles $10 million fund in wall street. Stress can cause major damage to health, mind. One more important thing is, stress won't show up until it grows bigger and bigger in our own mind. Back in India , i wondered that my dad, uncles other relatives who ever working with public sector

A long ago, a friend of mine argued with me that Software development is like painting and developers are painters. As per his view, software development should be done by artists. I straight away disagreed and his argument was immature and naive. Painting and artist are gifted one, not everybody gets those and Software development is a professional job, so it doesn't always required some gifted person to develop it. Lets take a example of construction field, it is heavy physical intensive work, it required some 250 lbs and 6 feet to perform the job but that is ideal. If a construction company wants to hire only 6 feet and 250 lbs, they can't hire enough employers to build a house and can't make profit. They want to hire any body physically fit for work and then divide work that heavy object lifting job goes to 250 lbs and some arranging, nailing job goes to other below 250 lbs. This is the system, this is how our society work, no body feels discrimination if 150 lbs not ge

Today is an emotional day in all over Tamil Nadu, Sri Lanka and many Tamil families all over the world. 30 Years of indefinitely fighting against majority Sinhala, finally comes to an end with nothing. There are 100,000 people killed during this civil war, mainly Tamil ethnic. Finally Vellupillai Prabhakaran the leader of Liberation Tiger of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) got killed with his shatter separate country dream. During the beginning years, LTTE was considered as Civil Right Movement for minority Tamil people. Prabhakaran was considered as the leader for Tamils, but later on the organization was transform itself as a “Cult” like a movement. They want to kill anybody who are not supporting separate country demand and who are not willing to join LTTE organization. The relationship with mainland Tamil Nadu was fractured when LTTE killed India’s one last of hope for reforms Rajiv Gandhi for some lame reasons. LTTE killed Rajiv so do India’s ambitious dream of reforms, because of Rajiv’s murd

After i would say 2 decades, this is the clear sweep by a single coalition and Congress led Untied Progress Alliance (UPA) going to form government with no support from anti-globalization parties mainly Indian communists. This election was main and crucial to Indian economy, because we need a continuous, stable, globalization/progressive minded government to solidify the modern economical foundation. Now Indian people spoke the same language from Kashmir to Kanyakumari to give a clear and solid mandate to current ruling coalition UPA to continue their job mainly to improve infrastructure, abolish poverty for next 5 years. The exit polls suggested that UPA or NDA wouldn't get simple majority and they need support from leftist parties, who are very narrow minded and anti-globalization. But real results went other way. We need a clear exit poll strategy, it is failing consistently for all over the world's election outcome. All over India vote counting started and results were an

In my opinion, after Apple's iPhone, iPod and Amazon's Kindle, Twitter is greatest innovation of this decade. The simple but powerful innovation allows us to share our thoughts, news, and opinion to 100K plus or even 1 million users within a single click. Amazing doesn't it? How will you share your opinion transparently within 140 chars? The twitter users also has amazing power, people sharing from all over globe by using a single entity is something powerful medium. I was drawn into Twitter world like a year ago, so far my experience with Twitter is excellent. But every things has it is own drawback, in twitter world there are some a-holes try to deceive us by following us and make us to follow them and then silently unfollow us. I want to develop a small piece of code to find this mischief. But i found an excellent site www.refollow.com to do the same thing efficiently, i recommend all to use the refollow.com to find this rogues. But anyways i did this code to unders

Time to time I deeply dive into this “positive thoughts” and what make them disappear for some for some point of time or prolong period of time. I mean, when we watch great leader’s talks, most of time they speak on high positive note but for some time they speak on otherwise. Actually we should not always be positive on all the time, sometimes we need to think about other angle. Overly positive thoughts leads to self-illusion and overly faith based leads to always negative. So what is balanced approach? Actually when we born, we are all positive thinkers, kids always want to explore new things and they never say I don’t want to go to some place or I don’t want to do some things. But after some time they express some kind of fear, 98% kids learn how to ride bicycle but 2% of afraid of learning the same. When age grows the positive Vs negative ratio heightened. The point is sometime environmental causing this flip side. What is it? And how not to fell into the trap? How to be positive?

Let’s mark this day as important day in our calendar and learn how to contribute something to stop polluting earth. The issue is, we can’t continue doing what we are doing now, we shouldn’t be greedy to take all earth’s resources and leave some waste and unlivable condition to our future generation. Even simple things can make big difference and don’t be intimated by i'm not not doing more to save the earth or obsessed with go green. The world we are living is beautiful one and saving money/wealth only not enough for our kids and grandchildren, we have to give them a better living condition. When ever I thought of going green, I always thinks to hit 100% like sell my car to buy an electric one or convert my home appliance into energy star compatible, but practicality wise those are unattainable. But slowly and steady we can achieve more things to become eco friendly. There are so many “low hanging fruits” to stop polluting our earth, Don’t print papers unless necessary. Use black a

It was the boom IT time in Silicon Valley most of IT companies required to fill up both Software Engineering position to top level executive jobs. For top level executive position they went to East, Midwest , and South U.S.A based blue chip companies. Once the top executives settled with new, young Silicon Valley companies, they hired their subordinates from the same place where they came from, because understandably they want to work with trusted and friendly, cohesive team, rather than with unknown geeky Silicon Valley brought ups. It is very common all the places, for example, President Obama hired most of his friends and well known to him for his top level jobs. But the problem with Silicon Valley was, they spent millions of million dollars for those executive’s relocation charges, as .com burst these issues came up and most of them fired. The point is, as an experienced executive leaders why they couldn’t trust and friendly with some unknowns and builds a cohesive team quick