Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Happy New Year - 2010

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 pundits now speculating 2010 will be again a stabilizing year and 2011, 2012 will be growth year.

Even though the reality is little tough, i think 2010 will be a good year for everyone, if not great one. Labor market will improve, i foresee some new way of flowing money will be invent, new technology break through will happen and BRIC countries continue to develop faster than industrial nations. But i'm sure that we are not going to see any miracle happen overnight to change the overall economy condition of U.S.A and rest of the world.

Happy New Year 2010....

Friday, December 25, 2009

How to catch a rat?

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 because i didn't explain it properly, so i decided to cajole again this time with proper explanations.

I started my arguments, as per scientific researches that rats are like human, they use rat for any scientific test before use it on human. Like human each rat was different, we can't use one trick to catch all rats hence we need to profile our invaders first and then come up with different approach. I started looking everybody face, they were not quite convinced. I thought my scientific approach failed, what else i have, my heart bumped and mind started spinning to win the hearts and minds.

I didn't have any more cards, i got an idea on the spot, i started again my argument, this time i used a practical jargon, see, Mama(uncle) used to be scared of elephant but not his wife. Chittapa(uncle) used to be scared of his wife but not of bulls. That's the difference, we have to had a solid plan to catch the rat because like human they also have their own preference. Now everybody agreed and they said that they need some more time to discuss about this plan.

I pleaded with them , time was running out, already we lost enough food because of rats now monsoon season also started. They said don't worry, everything should be analyzed carefully before come to conclusion. By the time, harvest started sooner than usual because of early start of monsoon. All raw rice were stored in front of our house, rat issue became Brobdingnagian.

I was waiting for a decision from all of them. They came back after 1 week, with the decision i most disliked. They apparently went to temple priest to find out any remedy for rat issue religiously. The priest misguided them by offering a ritual which was not in entire Hinduism practice. One said that before applying my unproven scientific approach lets try this cheap one and see the results, he even added that it was proven and priest used this ritual to stop rats at sannathi(a street usually named which starts from in front of temple) street.

I was in dilemma, do i need to stop this nonsense? or let them try this, at end of it, i can use it as my card to persuade them further. I said okay lets try this ritual and made a stress on my point that if this fails, i would use my approach. The priest was very busy with harvest ritual at fields, he gave an appointment ,a week after today, by the time, i sneaked at night and started my surveillance. The main issue with my home was, there are so many holes that rats used to enter, i can't close all of them because some of them are used to drainage rain water but can be closed if it not raining.

The priest came and did his rituals, the smoke was inside home and i loved the smell which is not ordinary fire, the fire was started by ghee and main fuel was sandalwood. I loved the smell but i couldn't see anything for sometime, my eye started burning. I wondered how come the priest sitting in front of fire, he was very close to the fire and he always burn the fire the height above his head, the smoke really start from where the fire ends.

After rituals, 2-3 days there was no rats, all clear, everybody happy. There are some rats but those are manageable by "Tiger" the cat we used to raise to control rats but no dog yet. I was surprised that how come no rats, so the ritual helped?. I was too scare to go in front of all, they might start laughing at me. I was right, one by one came into my room and laughed and started mocking me, see we had controlled everything by a simple ritual, what happened to your science and theory?

I was ashamed and started thinking what went wrong with my thought process? I still smell the ghee mixed sandalwood fire burns. I slept with too many wounds in my heart and felt hurt. In my dreams, i started chasing rat with fire on my hands, some stupid dreams, hell no, wait!! i woke up and i realized that the smell made rats away from my home, once the smell go away the rats would come back. Am i right? I asked myself 1000 times yes, i'm right, before i announce this theory to others, i want to make sure everything was right. I took my bicycle went to library, search for book at chemistry side, fire chemistry, i checked it, fire releases light and energy, ghee and sandalwood accelerate the energy to reach all the places, the home was now trapped with the energy.The smell was still there so rats were away from my home as they don't like the smell. As per my theory, rats would come back after all the energy gone.

I went and told my findings, this time nobody was interested to listen me. They said rats issue was past, all are gone, you can go to your room and continue your studies. I went to my room and thinking yes, they have a point, the smell might live longer for a month or so, by the time harvest would be over, rice would go to mill and be sold, monsoon would become peak and rats won't come out . Even if the energy was completely gone, how much time it will take to re-do the ritual? I was satisfied with everything, and i slept quietly.

Friday, December 18, 2009

New Year Resolutions 2010

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.
  1. Home.
  2. 2000+ Tweets, following 3500+ and 3500+ followers which is unbelievable.
  3. 50 blogs and completed development of web 2.0 tool http://www.tamilscrap.com and uploaded 100+ contents.
  4. Reduced weight to below 195 lbs.
  5. 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 weight.
3. Weekly 1/2 blog and daily 2/3 micro blogs.
4. Continually improve tamilscrap site.
5. Visit to India.
6. Read more articles.
7. Work on reduce accent.
8. Last but not the least, spend quality time with family same as 2009.

Wednesday, December 16, 2009

Copenhagen – Best Vacation Spot

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, climate is not same like before. Skin cancer, hurricane and irregular monsoon are evident for that, it doesn’t require a rocket scientist to figure that out. We are the final stage of, North Pole melting cycle, unless we control as much as possible CO2 emission, the ice melt will accelerate on 2020 and almost 5% of world land goes under water.

Now the blame game in Copenhagen is, as always a circus, between developed and developing nations. Everyone is very careful about what to promise, what to say, what to sign, and very picky about wording such as “Shall” “Should” “Must” etc. Please remember that we are not making a case against anyone, no need of attorney’s mind set here, we need some candid leaders come forward to pledge at least control 40-50% CO2 emission by 2020. Once they do, remaining countries would follow the same. It doesn’t matter whether CO2 emission comes from developed or developing or under developing countries, all are going to spoil our earth atmosphere. Don’t worry about remaining terms or future election, please do it for humanity for once for all.

Monday, December 14, 2009

Tiger Woods

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 all feeling pity for him but not angry with him.

What went wrong with him? I think like many other sportspersons and politicians and celebrities, Tiger’s case also "monomaniac" side effects. He was too much into Golf since young age and he doesn’t diversify his interested to other things, as a result he become addicted to something not agreeable to society. He can do several things to keep engaged on after Golf times which will be helpful for his profession also. For example. Fishing is also helps increase concentration, writing books (I bet his books would fly off from shelves like Harry Potter), spending quality time with family, there are many millions of million things available here for him to engage with his money. There are many monomaniac are in same path like Tigers such as Gambling, Drugs, and Girls, if we see the patterns, most of them are interested in only one thing since childhood.

Saturday, December 12, 2009

A Job - A Career - New IT Social Work

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 TCS can't serve this small business, they are very interested in long term contracting with big companies. IT open source developers are quit their ambition of serving small business because they joined with some companies as full timers or consulting through big companies. The main reason for developers quitting is A) small business won't provide enough documentation B) there process is very tough and ambiguous because of prolong manual process C) they can't give very fancy work place and attractive rate.

The above reasons are just some excuse to avoid those small business, the main reason is one could not think through the process complete and lack of transformation knowledge of actual process to design to code. Here after this world can't silver spoon feed each and everything to developers, they may not get 300 page documents, they may not get a skeleton of code to fill up, they may not get release support etc. If you are a developer with more than 10 years of experience you have to know all "how to's" from processes to design to code to code migration to production server.

There are millions of small business looking for these kind of all-in-one developers to change their process. All we need is some social sense to help others and self-learning thrust. If we do this ,future of IT definitely provide endless chance to every body who are really a veteran developer.

Thursday, December 10, 2009

How to change other's life?

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 cold, we can't do anything to help them. Sometimes communication drags low but we can see the spark the eye. The matter of fact is, eye can tell you whether the receiver just receiving the communication sake of it or they are serious. The important step for game changers is how to deal with eyes.

Start Change from their interest

One of the big mistake the game changers often do is impose their interest to others. Because we believe that the interest we posses are the proven and that changes our life hence superior but that won't work. If one is not interest to learn certain things there would be definitely a different form the same which might interest to the subject hence we can recommend that to them.

Not aware of that habit

Tiger Woods case is classic example of this, after we believe that we know everything about one and start dealing with change but suddenly some surprises happening from them is no good. The rule of thump is, always expect some surprise from them, the game changers should prepare upfront "what if" scenario. The strategy is, when to exit based on surprises, what is our threshold? our patience are the yard stick here.

After exit never look back

This is one of the main mistake we do after exiting on success or failure, either way once we are not engaging with the change game never look back. They should be in "kind of wish ignore list". There are several reasons behind it, one of the far most is that look back will hurt us if we do serious introspection.

From Generative AI to Agentic AI: 2 Weeks of Building MyNewsAI.io

From Generative to Agentic AI: 2 Weeks Building MyNewsAI.io Over the last two weeks, I set out to evolve MyNewsAI...