Wow..2009 is over

With 2009 coming to an end, I thought i'd write a little on what went on this year. Perhaps for me to reflect in the coming years....

January marked the 5th Year of me being married. Time does fly. The days munged by to April where my Son turned 4 years old. We got him a bike to start off...



and he got plenty more gifts at his birthday party...His nanamma (grandmother) was here as well which made it all the more fun.

I changed jobs in October and then left for my holiday trip to India.
We had an exciting trip to India this time. We stopped over in Dubai on the way there. We spent 3 days, seeing the sights and sounds of Dubai. The iconic Burj Al Dubai:

The gold souk, the indoor ski place, all exciting stuff. Pranav had a blast as well. The one thing that sucked in Dubai was it's beach near the Hotel Atlantis. The water was all murky and pretty disgusting. It was surprising that a 7 star hotel had such a crappy beach, but I guess thats what you get when you over build. However, the city itself was excellent.

One of the displays at Dubai Gold Souk:


One thing that did catch me offguard was, you had to pay for water at the hotel. Most hotels, when you sit down, bring you a bottle of water, and at the end they put it on your bill as well. There is no concept of "free" water.

I also tasted an unbelievably tasty Chocolate Praline Cake. A small piece was about 25 Dhirams (~$6.5), but was amazing!

Dubai is known for it's malls. But, they're really trying to outdo one another there. The Dubai Mall has one of the best musical fountains in the world:



Not to forget, we also went for Dune bashing, followed by a Dune buggy ride & a belly dance with arabic food (was mostly Indian. The only Arabic dish there was Khoobs (bread) and Hummus)







Then our India trip was fun as well.
My Dad turned 60, and as tradition would have it, we celebrated by calling our near and dear friends & family along with the traditional rituals.

Following that we went to Tirpuati, Vijayanagram (the small town my dad is from, and met many of our relatives and some of his childhood friends) and my dad's aunt who pretty much brought him up. Then we went to Vizag, a beautiful coastal city, with a beautiful sea shore.




Then I spent Diwali with my in-laws, back to Chennai with my grandparents and then it was time for me to get back to work. Ofcourse, I probably gained about 5 lbs with all the eating (more like stuffing :) ) the delicious food back home.



Once I came back from India though work got really busy. We're bringing about 60 servers online for a very critical application and managing it all is as awesome as it's tiring. Yes I am a geek and I enjoy working on Sun / Oracle Hardware / Software :).


Somewhere along the way I did turn 31. My wife threw an awesome surprise Birthday bash for me.

Sixth Sense technology....AMAZING

Ok...I feel really bad that I haven't seen this video from TED for so long.

Pranav Mistry talk at TED

Please check it out. This is amazing.

"Why use a tablet computer, why not just a piece of paper"?
"Why get stuck to only paper, how about moving that to a computer for more work"?

All those and more answered....

Health Care bill

I just want to say a couple of quick things ...

In no particular order...

* Not a perfect bill by any means, but it's the right intention, and it'll turn out to be very good for the country.

* The Pharama industry shouldn't be taken out to a beating because of profits. They make profits because they risk a lot more (all those lawsuits over Vioxx?) Unfortunately it's viewed with the same glasses as Wall Street Bonuses but for Wall Street, its only during recessions. For the Pharama industry it's all the bloddy time. (Not that they dont have their own faults)

* The insurance industry really should be jumping up and down, because they just got about 20 million people paying them, without doing ANYTHING to market to them. Absolutely freaking nothing. This by far should have had a larger republican participation because of the insurance pay off than the Democrats.

And lastly
Republicans you suck. You Suck more than ever. Not a single one of you voted for the most historic thing in the US of A. Perhaps the OPT OUT would have been awesome for you guys, or perhaps they should say every senator or house rep who doesn't vote for it, should have their state automatically excluded. That would get all of you so much more in line.

Microsoft being sneaky (again!)

I never ever go to MSN.com, but read a comment on ZDNet that MSN was using it's home page to shore up Bing's results. I thought I'd check it out to see if it was true, and lo and behold it was!

Go to the MSN.com home page and see for yourself. Even news articles, that should be direct links, are somehow tied to a bing.com search.

So -- thats how they get "more" traffic! hehe!
Oh well.

E-bills & Comcast

When I put the word Comcast in the title, many of you may have already cringed. Anyways, here's my story.

I called Comcast this weekend (the 2nd time nonetheless in 3 days), to figure out why I didn't have an IP. The first time, they resolved it without any stupid questions. Here's how the second call went.

Me: xxx-xxxx is my account number. I can't connect to the internet
Comcast Lady: Can I have your name and address
Me: Sure.
Comcast Lady: For security purposes, can I have the account number.
Me: I don't know. I can't get to it, since I CANT connect to the internet.
Comcast Lady: Can you tell me the last amount you paid.
Me: Again, I dont know, I can't connect to the internet.
Comcast Lady: Can you tell me the date you paid the bill
Me: No I cannot. On second thoughts, I paid it in the month of November.

At this point she "helped" me.

Shows you why, we can't trust only E-bills. I like the comfort of getting everything online, but WTF, if you can't get online, you're screwed. Something to think about.

Redline Metro (Washington DC)

About 2 weeks ago there was an unfortunate accident on the Red line of the Washington DC Metro. A few people died including the train operator.

However, to put it in perspective 1000's of people travel on the redline every day (not to mention every trip during rush hour). Is it too much to ask that the Red line be brought back to normal service even after 2 weeks?

I was reading the examiner this morning when I read this article: Redline delays irk customersThere was a comment by the president of the Metro's largest union Jackie Jater:

But Jackie Jeter, president of Metro's largest union that represents train operators, did not have such kind words for disgruntled commuters.

"I understand that you want to get to work a little sooner," she said, but "everybody should back off that. ... At least you're alive."

That ticked me off. If you've traveled on the metro, and especially the red line, you'll probably already know, it's overcrowded most of the time. If you've traveled by metro anytime at all, you'll have encountered bad drivers, with absolutely no sense of customer service. I've personally witnessed a train driver letting a guy sweat it out after his bag got caught in the door. She saw him (it was the first door after next to her window), and when someone brought it up, she said "I know I know" with an expression " I want to teach him a lesson". I wanted to go up to her and tell her to DO HER JOB, but then, I didn't want to start a fight and have 1000 people on the line hate me!

These drivers, more often than not, are obnoxious (and increasingly the metro staff, because 3 yrs ago, I was pleasantly surprised at their courteousness) and don't care. They think they're doing the world a favor.

There was another article that mentioned that the drivers are scared to drive the trains after the accident (because of the system)! What BULLSHIT! I think, as a passenger, I'm more scared that the driver is driving the train and not an automated system.

I want to find out how much a train operator is paid and what benefits they get as compared to a different city and also compared to a cab driver on the DC streets. I would hazard a guess that they're paid significantly better than a cab driver (and work less hours than a cab driver).

So - Ms. Jackie Jeter, DO YOUR JOB. TELL YOUR PEOPLE TO DO THEIR JOB. The circuit as far as we understand was replaced about 5 days before BY YOUR OWN MEMBERS and it still malfunctioned! So, as passengers we probably should be MORE SCARED, that you guys show SO MUCH INCOMPETENCE after being in existence for over 30 years.

Perhaps its time for a large scale privatization of the metro and some large scale firings. I'm supposed to work hard and do my job well. Why the hell aren't you?

End of rant....

Planning, Enterpreunership

Some of you know, I've been trying to get an idea off the ground. We are a bunch of techie guys who believe in it, and are going forward. However, NONE of us has an actual business degree, so we kept trying to postpone the creation of a business plan. BAD IDEA.

I've come to realize, the Business plan, even though it may not be the most accurate or even come close to reality once things touch the ground, gives us a PLAN, or atleast something to refer to, to think about where we want to go. I believe it's extremely important to have a plan on where you want to go. You can't just start something and expect it to take off without a plan.

I guess it's time for me to dig up my plan which was written LONG LONG time ago, rethink it for the current scenario and move it forward. We've just internally released a pretty decent upgrade, and on a crusade to fix some bugs. Once thats done, and we a add a couple of features I really really want, I think we'll be ready for our much larger alpha! Yaay!

Ofcourse, I also have another idea, but can't seem to get the right people together for it! Damn it!

The other thing I've found is, you need a team of people who are all as enthusiastic about the product as you are. That core team is extremely important. I've found that 2 or 3 people tops for the core team is always good, and complementary skills is a must!

Its unfortunate that here in the US of A, unless you have globs of money to put into your startup, you're not allowed to legally start a company (as an immigrant) :(.

AP, India elections

While the Congress(I) is celebrating in India on winning the elections, it's a loss for the country. Even though they talk about a great democracy, the percentage of people that votes was laughable (about 40% in most places or less).

Andhra Pradesh which was earlier considered a laboratory for economic reforms (during Naidu's rule) became a laboratory for welfare schemes," said Rama Brahmam, a professor of political science at Hyderabad University.

That about sums it up for why the current administration in the state of Andhra Pradesh won.

If you care to read....the article is here

Its probably true in most parts of the state where the damn party won. I used to LOVE this Prime Minister (Dr. Manmohan Singh) and I was more than psyched when he became the PM the first time. But then when it all became giveaways, and corruption, it just felt such a big let down.

Rant: India Votes!

HOW STUPID CAN THE INDIAN PUBLIC GET!?! HOW COULD THEY VOTE BACK A NON PERFORMING CORRUPTION RIDDEN GOVERNMENT? Even in Andhra Pradesh, India's almost silicon valley, the worst party possible - the Congress(I) has gotten the most votes. Why? Probably because all those young adults who could vote, couldn't be bothered to go vote, and all the corrupt government employees whose bribes would be cut significantly went and voted. The TDP during their tenure drastically improved public services, roads, infrastructure etc. Whereas during the Congress rule that past years, all they did was rest on TDPs infrastructure, and ate as much money as they could.

I hope and pray that atleast in the next general elections, India will boot out these asses, but I dont have much hope. Until the young generation goes and votes, India will continue to be in a rut and led by the worst party of the nation - the Congress(I).

Newspaper industry....

People keep talking about the newspaper industry and how it's dieing. I am all against it -- especially because BLOGS aren't news, they're mostly written by people with (almost)NO JOURNALISTIC talent. I'd rather have professional journalists doing the real reporting even if they're skewed one way or another.

To revive it though - I'd say - once you give something free it's hard to take back. So why not some of the newspapers join together in a "online media partnership" and allow people access to content for a certain fee per month or year (plus ofcourse the ad revenue)? That should take care of atleast some of the revenue generation and people won't feel like crap to keep paying for individual papers. Perhaps some "Free" content and the rest can be paid.

I wouldn't go the extreme of what WSJ is doing and keep increasing prices willy nilly (but Murdoch is nuts), but I think some kind of an "all access pass" is long overdue!

Fannie Mae - You SUCK!

So - Mr President Obama has this ambitious plan to help all mortgage holders and encouraging all of us to refinance. However, he's forgetting that Fannie Mae SUCKS. They don't care if your house appraisal comes up about 100k over what they say your house is worth. They will WITHOUT any appraisal of the neighboring houses will set their price and not budge from it! So what can the home owner do? Refinance with a different lender - and put in money again (to make it 5%, 10% or 20%) or what not, and cannot take advantage of the Homeowner Affordability plan.

So in short - Mr President - your plan sucks!

Oracle buying Sun

Wow - now this is a pleasant surprise. I wonder what Larry Ellison is going to do to piss of Microsoft more? This should be good. I hope they are able to integrate absolutely well and make a great product.

As per my previous post - please fire the Sun sales staff. You'll get more value on day 1 than Sun ever did the past 5 years!

Rant: Why inject race into everything?

It's no surprise that the Metro doesn't have enough money to run its system and balance its budget. So they have to do what everyone else is doing - make cuts to service, layoff people etc.

So - today I was reading the Washington Examiner and I saw the following quote:

Furthermore, the proposal would affect only Metrobus, not Metrorail. The bus system already provides less consistent service, with one of every four buses arriving late. Many of the routes already have truncated schedules, running only during rush hours on weekdays. Meanwhile, transit agency statistics show that Metrorail serves a higher proportion of higher-income and white riders.

“We are balancing the budget on the backs of the low income and people of color,” Craig Simpson testified on behalf of the system’s largest union, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 689.

The last statement about balancing budget on the "people of color" totally PISSED ME OFF. Why does race have to factor into this? Then should I inject and say that in the 2 years I've been using the metro system, I've yet to come across a White train operator (I dont know if any of you have) or even at the station booths. Does that mean that Metro is favoring only African Americans at the expense of other MAJORITY folk? WTF.

Get off RACE people. It's only the color of the skin. Everything doesn't have to come down to RACE and people shouldn't use the fact that there was a racial divide about 50 years ago to take advantage of it today and get what they want. If you want to move away from racial difference, perhaps you should stop trying to use it to get what you want in life. Otherwise, you'll always be looked down upon BECAUSE YOU'RE LOOKING DOWN UPON YOURSELF!

Live Search Sucking....

As much as Steve Balmer wants to thump his chest and say they want to "acquire more traffic" and they can provide a great product, their product currently SUCKS. I don't know if it's the lack of traffic, but if Live.com can't find MICROSOFTs OWN PRODUCTS properly - how much is it going to find someone elses product better?

Scenario: I'm working on Operations Manager 2007 (aka System Center Ops Manager, Ops Manager 2007) and they have "Management Packs" which are downloadable from Microsoft.

Search Term: ops manager management packs

Live.com First Result: Windows Virtualization Team Blog

Google.com First Result: System Center Pack Catalog

Why would a sane person use live.com now?

IBM buying Sun......

There are talks that IBM may be buying Sun for $6.5 billion. I'm hoping this deal goes through. You may already know that I'm a huge fan of Sun hardware. However, their sales staff SUCK SUCK SUCK. You could find a still functioning team at Lehman Brothers probably better than Sun sales staff (I've dealt with them now in 2 states and a few times).

Why do I say that? I say it because
1. They never follow up with you.
2. You could call them - tell them I want to buy your hardware - and still not hear back with BASIC information that would allow you to finish pricing your stuff.
3. Even when they know you're going to buy their hardware if they give you information, they take their own sweet time with it.
4. If you start a sales call - they never bother to follow up on what happened or if you need more information or read 2.

(Yeah - all the above are almost the same - but I'm venting a little too )

So - with that said - IBM - I give you my blessing :-) Please fire the Sales staff - keep their techies, but please fire the Sun sales staff. You'd probably INCREASE your sales of Sun hardware after you've fired the sales staff!

Windows 7

Ok - any of you who know me personally - know that I dont care for Microsoft products too much. I've said that they're an OS company and should first get that right and then go into other products which do things you don't want it to do (Office anyone?).

I got a copy of Windows 7 Beta and installed it. First impressions - HOLY COW - It's good! I had barely a couple of interactions with the installer before it presented me with the installed version. I've not played with Mac much - so I wouldn't know, but I hear they've borrowed a number of ideas from the Mac OS (and thank god? :-) )

Apart from that, it was able to recognize all my devices, and get running quickly. I'm definitely impressed so far. Lets see what it has in store soon.....

To Be an Entrepreneur....

You not only should have ideas & passion, but the intensity to power through the problems that come your way. Otherwise - it'll be half done and you'll be wondering what went wrong.

I heard a part of the above sentence on "The Biggest Loser" while flipping channels. It struck a chord with me. I think the number of projects that dont get done or are left half way are because of the lack of passion & intensity behind the project.

I am definitely one among them, not because I don't have the passion or intensity, but if something doesn't get done quickly (and with the same intensity and passion as I have by the rest of the team) and to my liking, I almost put it aside, never to come back to it. I think it's the one thing I really have changed about myself, and have a little more ways to go. I think most people suffer from the lack of interest, but the difference between the people who succeed and don't is the drive to COMPLETE what they started - whether you like it or NOT!

Bad Assets on Bank books (Bad Assets Bank?)

The Bad Banks plan to start unclogging the banks balance sheets is in the talks -- and now there is so much discussion on what to pay for these bad bank assets? The banks want a "fair value" of it (which is ofcourse much higher than what the current market value is and incidentally the least amount of money loss) and the Govt doesn't want to pay a value which will cause the tax payers harm or even too low a value which would hurt the banks!

How do you value something that pretty much can't be valued in todays market? How about take the last known value (or in cases where you can value it - that value) and buy it at that value - with a caveat. If the Government makes over 20% (insert your favorite number here - but I say 20%) of profit on selling that asset, then the Banks can have a share of it. The rest of the profit goes directly into shoring up social security. The principal + 20% should go towards paying off the debt.


What do you guys think?

Books...

The Borders close to my house was closing, so I ended up buying quite a few fiction books. Needless to say - I've been reading them faster than anticipated!!! An ex-colleague of mine writes about the books he reads and I thought I'd take a page out of his blog postings and do the same :-)

The latest book I just completed is The Tenth Justice

It starts off with a newly hired Supreme court clerk leaking a multi-million dollar decision accidentally and goes from there. While the story is a little implausible, it was a good quick read and page turner and I enjoyed it.

I also recently read The Wheel of Darkness which was a very good read. The author takes you all the way from Tibetan monks to a story that ends on a luxurious cruise ship.

The two other John Sandford novels I just finished are The Devils Code & The Hanged Mans Song. The Devils Code is pure torture, and feels like the author published the book before removing all the unnecessary parts. He could have taken out about 30 pages and still made the story well, and probably a little more entertaining.

The Hanged Mans Song on the other hand was a good read and was a little redemption for John Sandford after the Devils code book! Both of them delve start off from some sort of hacked computer / hackers and keep it there, but at a really high level.

WTF - House of Reps voting on the Stimulus Bill

One of the most important bills was supposed to be passed today in the House of Representatives. It was the stimulus bill. The President (Mr Obama) did his duty and did more than his predecessor (mr decider) did in the past 8 yrs in trying to woo the opposition party as well as his own. For all that effort - this is what he got from them.

The 244-188 vote was not what Mr. Obama had hoped for. A week of presidential wooing -- including a visit to the Capitol, a return visit to the White House by moderate House Republicans and a bipartisan cocktail party Wednesday night -- did not yield a single Republican vote. The president also lost 11 Democrats.

That is most disturbing. While they may have differences, the fact that the entire Republican party didn't vote for it, showed how partisan this has become. I for one, hope that this bill is a huge success, and everyone who didn't vote for it, especially in the house gets crucified in the upcoming elections. They dont deserve this kind a president. I hope Mr. Obama decides that enough is enough and really does play politics with these guys. Then they'll come back to earth!

It's unfortunate that Mr. Obama has got this splat right on him at the start of the Presidency, but he's got to take it as it comes!

Aarghhh - Hold on Geithner and Clinton

I dont know what more can be done other than move the US economy to the brink (some would argue it's already past the brink) and 2 wars and everything else to get the Republicans to act with a speck of decency, urgency and f'ing sincerity.

All around, they say - they expect the Treasury secretary pick & Sec of State pick to be confirmed. Why the hell can't they confirm it for the first day of the presidency? Do we really need to go another 2 days without these 2 people taking up their posts? For that answer - look at the damn markets and the damn world!

Seriously - yesterday (1-20-09) the markets were in a tailspin because they were worried that the US would nationalize all major banks and wipe out shareholder value. My question is - why can't someone put out a statement indicating otherwise or indicating what is going to happen? How about the treasury secretary? - Oh wait! We don't have the new one confirmed yet!

Seriously - how about we all work together at a time of national calamity and then you guys can start being your own f'ing selfish, backstabbing self - Please? Pretty Please?

1-20-2009

Today - the end of an error!

Israel vs Palestine

For a country that was formed about 60 years ago, they have a lot of clout, military power and definitely, better life for their citizens. However, their neighboring state (?) is forever in turmoil.

Conflicts are everywhere, and some of them are steeped in history. Whats disturbing right now is the fact that it's so one sided or in fact biased.

If there were about 500 deaths on the Israeli side and more than half of them civilian - what would the US be doing right about now? I don't care for terrorists, however, the US has this history of supporting some terrorists and its come back to bite us. I just hope that the US is not so short sighted that our foreign comes back to bite us in the ass again. Here's to hoping that Obama and Hilary will be different!

Ideas without Marketing = Death?

I recently started a small company. We have a product, launched it in Alpha, got some feedback. We're working towards a Beta. However, our biggest hurdle is the lack of someone to help market it. Let alone market it, someone to help us to understand how to market the product. Some products are very straightforward - you need a telephone, you love the iPhone etc.

Some products, you need to change the mindset - in some small way or the other. There needs to be a reason for people to like your product- whether it makes their life easier - or adds value to their everyday life. Some may argue that if you can't see the value immediately, then it's probably not going to take off. I disagree! I take a simple example of my former employer - Blackboard. 20 years ago, people would say - what - why online courses - today students want it that way. Same with many other products.

Right now, we're in a spot where we definitely need someone to help us market it - or make those contacts!

With this experience - I have learnt one thing though (even though I probably knew this all along but was naive enough not to accept it) - marketing / market validationn is a lot more important than a new cool feature. If you don't have people to use those new cool features - it's probably not going anywhere. You need someone who can think of a way to sell your product or it's probably all for nothing - even with all these startups coming online!

My reader(s) - your comments are most welcome!