Winter begins!

And so the snowfall starts in Chicago. The next 4 months will be pure torture!

Picture taken from my 19th floor apartment in Chicago. The bottom of the picture shows the snow accumulation on my window sill.

Ridiculous!

I read this article today and was pretty shocked to say the least! I have been fairly indifferent to the presidential race so far, but find it atrocious to hear a fore runner speak this way of a leading candidate, not to mention former first lady (He referred to Ms Clinton with the B* word). I wonder how many votes McCain is going to lose because of that. May be not much considering he didn't have a lot of supporters to begin with.

Website registration images

I know the text in image form which you have to enter while registering into sites is a security feature which is meant to protect the user and the site from unwanted spam and tons of random automatic subscriptions. But I have been noting that recently the text in these images is so crypted, I can barely read it. I was trying to register to a site today and after the 4th time of entering the wrong text I'd had enough. To make matters worse, I had to re-enter my email address and password every time I entered the wrong text. Attached below is a sample image. May be somebody can look at it and guess what the text is, because honest to god, I had a hard time figuring it out.

Finally at the 5th attempt I managed to get in!

The post about my other post!

If ever there gets published a book on Blog etiquette, then writing a post on a blog, publicizing a post that you wrote on your other blog would not be in that list. Yet I am going to do exactly that. The dilemma I face is, I just listened to a podcast which I felt compelled to blog about. Since the subject is about Business and Management (B&M), I wrote about it in my B&M blog (duh!). However, since this was a post I was excited about and felt that there was true value in the post, I wanted as many people as possible to read it and since more people read this blog than the other blog, I felt compelled to write about the other post here. One wouldn't have to do this if there are a 1000 people reading your every post. But considering the fact that I can count the number of people reading my more "popular" blog with one hand, a little extra publicity, I figured will not kill me.

Basically all I am saying is, go read this post.

AG's Memoirs

This past weekend, I picked up a copy of the Alan Greenspan's memoir, "The Age of Turbulence" after I had read a lot of good things about it. I expected this to be a dry tale of an economist's experiences as the Fed Chairman, who led the country through a series of booms and recessions and ofcourse 9/11. Surprisingly though the book has so far been great fun to read and although I am through only 100 of the 500 pages, I am already looking forward to completing the book.

The book is split in to two major parts, one has to deal with AG's life and experiences and the second part is his take on the way things are proceeding in the global economy and what he predicts will happen.

Even The Economist had good things to say about the book...

“The Age of Turbulence” is a dull title, tending to confirm one's fears, and that risible subtitle, “Adventures in a New World”, is fooling nobody. Yet, despite everything, the book turns out to be first-rate. It engages on different levels: it is intelligent in a way that few popular books on economics manage or even try to be; and, wonder of wonders, it is a good read. No doubt, Mr Greenspan had help with the writing: he acknowledges Peter Petre, a talented co-writer, as a collaborator. For this one can only be grateful. Who would have guessed that 500 pages in Mr Greenspan's company could slip by so easily?"

Being a long time The Economist reader, I can assure you they don't say such good things about books, especially economics books very often. Check it out. Btw, the book is on sale, 30% off at Borders.

A little Apple for everyone!!

Check out the new goodies from Apple...their new range of Ipods. I love Steve Jobs and his keynote addresses. They are awesome and seriously cool. Period.

I already have an Ipod, but am seriously tempted to buy the new Ipod touch.

signing off from my MacBook...(you get an idea about how much I like Apple products!

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1st Anniversary

Exactly 1 year ago, this day, I drove my BMW out of Erhard BMW Farmington Hills dealer. As cliched as it sounds, its amazing how fast time passes. Anyway the good thing is my beamer feels just as good to drive today as it did the first time I test drove it. The car and its fabulous engineering still amaze me and I look forward to driving this vehicle for many more years to come. The saying goes, "Once a BMW driver, always a BMW driver" and unless something really bad happens (I hope not), that's saying is going to be true in my case.

The bad thing is, I got my first ticket yesterday :( Attached below are a couple of pictures...again taken from my cellphone, so excuse the poor quality.

It pisses me off everytime I read something like this. When will this freaking genocide in the name of war against terror end? What a ridiculous waste of human lives, resources and money!!

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Good Stuff

I thought I was too old to be drooling at bikini clad women in magazines. I just thought I had grown over it, yet every now and then a magazine comes up with a set of pictures which manage to capture both my attention and my imagination.

Jessica Biel's pictures in the July 2007 GQ is one of those rare few pictures. I find them sensual and artistic and definitely worth checking out.

Btw, I got a 18 speed mountain bike couple of weeks back. It kinda reminds me of my school days when I used to bike 6 Km one way to school everyday. Also it works out great helping me avoid the Chicago traffic and parking hassles. Attached is a picture below. It was taken with my cellphone, so bear the poor quality.

Virginia Tech Shootings

I am totally appalled and stunned by the Virginia Tech shootings. I have been thinking about what the motive of the guy who opened fire was. What beats me is how could somebody just go and shoot 32 innocent students? I mean seriously...I have been very very pissed before...and some people have irritated me so much that I have wanted to shoot them down, but again I fail to see what the logic is behind shooting 3 dozen could be.



Having graduated from college recently, I am just totally shocked. In the 3 years I was in UK, not once, even in the wildest of dreams did I imagine something like this could happen. My heart felt condolence to the victims and students of Vtech. Also I am scared this is going to become the "Universities 9/11"  and that universities are going to incorporate  a whole bunch of new security measures which in the name of protecting the students, makes life hell for people. Kind of like what 9/11 did to frequent flyers.

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New Blog!

In the last 8 months, I have been more and more interested in Business and Management. Ofcourse reading a whole bunch of different blogs and business and economics related magazines has helped in giving me a better understanding of the concepts which has furthered my interest on these topics. Along those lines, I just recently started writing a new blog called Amateur thoughts on Business and Management. (http://thescienceofmanagement.blogspot.com) So head on over there and share your thoughts and comments with me on my writings and viewpoints.

I still plan on continuing to write this blog. This is going to be more for my rants and other things not related to Business or Management. On the other blog, I will be discussing interesting articles I read, my thoughts and views on current happenings. (currently I am thinking about writing a post about the Blackstone IPO)

In essence what I am saying is that, Amateur thoughts on Business and Management is going to be the official website of the brand "me".

Food for Thought

I read this in a bookstore couple of days back. Fast Company has published a book containing the best articles it has published in the last 10 years. This article was featured in that book and it caught my attention.



I found the article interesting. If nothing it it will give you some thing to think about this weekend.

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Photos..

Sometime thinking about Photography, I feel digital cameras and cheap SD cards are the worst things that could have happened to my photography skills. I often find myself to be a clicker...anytime I am at any place which is half decent and I have a camera in my hand, I go click! click! click! I think well...what do I have to lose? I have a 1 gig card, which can hold like a million photos (actually close to 400) and I always travel with my laptop, so at the end of the day I can transfer my pictures and start all over again. So essentially at the end of the trip, I have over 500 pictures (almost always) and yet I am not satisfied with most of them.

Recently though, I have been concentrating quite a bit on taking good pictures in the night with manual settings in my camera. They take longer to take, you need more patience and they look beautiful if they come out well. I figured this is a good way to slow myself down. Also typically I need to rest my camera somewhere (I don't travel with a tripod as I find it too painful to carry) to take pictures without blurring them, so again on the whole I tend to spend more time analyzing the shot, trying different angles etc., I was in London this past weekend and here are a couple of pictures I took that I was rather proud of. I recommend you see it full size to be able to fully appreciate the colors and the light.

Parliament from the east bank of Thames

The London eye from the west bank of Thames, right outside Westminster underground station.

Digital Camera Tips

Thinking about buying a new digital camera? The flickr camera finder is a great way to find good digital cameras. It has a listing of the most popular cameras used to take pictures uploaded in flickr along with other data such as number of photos uploaded, camera details, photos uploaded yesterday etc., If you have a particular camera in mind you can look up data for that particular camera along with its price range. The best part is at the bottom you get images that were taken using a particular camera that appeared in Explore. What a great way to see the kind of pictures that the camera you are planning to buy is capable of capturing. It is so much better than seeing the standard flower image that appears in most camera manufacturer's websites.

I was surprised to see that my Canon SD450 is the 7th most popular Canon camera and the most popular point and shoot digital camera (6th is Canon SD400 which is a point and shoot as well, but basically just the previous version of the SD450). Flickr rocks...there is no arguing that!!

(Attached below is a snapshot of my camera details from flickr)

New Year Resolutions

• Despite being in a world of increased ease in communication, I feel I am distancing myself more and more from my friends. Especially in the last few months I often find myself not feeling like talking to anybody and being contended just sitting home with a book or a DVD. Clearly I know this has to change. My friends define who I am and I wouldn't have an identity without them. Starting 2007, I am going to make a increased effort to keep in touch with my friends. Close friends more often through email and phone and maybe even more personal visits (when possible), the next level through emails and the rest through Orkut scraps.
• I am going to pursue Happiness. I want to fully realize the joy of giving. I want to share more than I am willing to. I want to help develop, motivate the people I work with and share the knowledge I have with them (in a non bragging way!) This doesn't mean letting everybody else go before me, it means I want to grow, but want to make sure the people I work with grow with me. I might not be qualified to do this, but I am going to do the little bit I can. If there is something I can do to help somebody, I know I should, I will. Of course most of this is just plain good Karma, something I believe in more than in religion.
  
• In the spirit of continuous improvement (of ourselves), I think we have to be more critical of ourselves and forgiving of others. Sadly most of us (I am probably first on that list) are currently more critical of others and forgiving of ourselves. The funny thing is I realized this while driving in India on this trip. People swear and curse others for aggressive, rash driving yet they drive the same way and think its alright. I guess its human tendency..if something happens to us we think its misfortune, if the same thing happens to somebody else we think they deserve it.
• Environment - I don't think the world is coming to an end, but however that shouldn't be a reason for inaction on our part to try and preserve our environment for the coming generations. Last year I switched all the bulbs in my house to energy saving lights and started re-cycling PET and Glass bottles. I know its nothing radical, but still is a small thing I can do. I hope to continue along those lines this year.
• Read more....finish a book every 2 weeks. Knowledge is power and there is no better way to gain knowledge than to read books.
  

Some of this might sound silly, some way too cheesy, but everyone of these are things that I have put a lot of thought into and believe in throughly.

As 2007 starts, I welcome the new year with passion, exuberance, smile and more importantly an open mind and hope that whatever happens, good or bad, I learn valuable lessons from them and improvise.

Have a stupendous and sensational new year!!

Gill Adarsh Days...

Today I felt like I was taken back in Time as I visited my old apartment and school. I happened to be in the neighbourhood of the apartments where I lived from 1989 through 1995, from my 3rd through 8th grade. And since my apartment was at a stone's throw from the school I studied in, I also visited my school (Gill Adarsh M.H.S.S., Roypettah, Chennai)

Its amazing how fast time passes. Looking at the balcony of my old apartment from the street, it felt like only yesterday I was running around in the balcony as a little kid, trying to fly the kites I made or throwing stones at my neighbors whom I used to hate. The school was even more memorable. I was delighted to see that the tree under which I used to play cricket after school till my mother picked me up was still there. I even managed to sneak into the school (much to the annoyance of the security person who strictly warned me against going in) and see my 6th, 7th and 8th standard classrooms. Since the school was closed, I was able to go into the classrooms and think about those days when I studied there. I was reminded of the time I was asked to kneel down because my classteacher caught me singing and dancing in the class. And also the time the whole class burst out laughing at me because I entered the class after using the restroom with my fly wide open.

Those days will never come back again, yet those memories will last a lifetime. Partly because I secretly wish (well...not a secret anymore!!) I could be a kid again. Those days were delightfully simple. There was no pressure to perform, no board exams..nothing. Life was all about going to school, coming back and playing and yeah..may be doing some homework. I was soo blisfully ingnorantly happy. Not that I am not Happy now, but back then I was Happy in a way that I didn't know what sorrow was...and there is something tremendrously light about that feeling. I know I can never be like that again. My only other regret is since I wasn't planning on the trip, I didn't have a camera handy to snap a few pictures. :-(

btw, Gill Adarsh is the best school ever...I loved every bit of it!!

Information Vs Noise

Everywhere I see, I keep hearing about Information overload and Information explosion powered mainly by what has now come to be called web 2.0. But truth be told, I really question this claim.

I think this is a case where noise has been confused with information. Most of what I find easily available in the internet is noise. Useless pieces of information or one's opinions and thoughts that typically does not come out of data or research. What is worse is that writers typically tend to be polarized and write strongly for or against a cause. Readers typically tend to either strongly agree or disagree with the writer, in any case causing rampant publicity for the writer. It's what I call the "Rush Limbaugh" effect. His listeners either absolutely love him (because they are conservative?) or just can't stand him, yet listen to him just to get enraged (or laugh) by the ridiculous things he has to say. Good solid information is sadly difficult to come by or you have to pay for it.

My claims aren't totally unsubstantiated either. I read (or subscribe) to about 80 blogs in my google reader, in areas ranging from Lean Manufacturing, productivity improvement, management etc., Yet most of the posts have minimal valuable information. Lean Manufacturing blogs are typically a consultant's sales pitch about how successful he/she have been in implementing lean with their clients. Their star lean companies being their clients. There is another lean blog which is apparently famous, but essentially talks about nothing but how bad outsourcing is. Granted outsourcing is not a very lean practice, yet in some cases it makes economic sense and is worth doing. To say all outsourcing is wrong is naive. Then there are some productivity improvement blogs that are really pretty silly. I am not saying all blogs are useless. Certainly there are some blogs that I read without fail.

As far as news goes, new websites like Digg etc., are great start ups but have a long way to go before they mature. Currently its a little community of geeks. Submit a story to Digg with amazing and firefox in the heading and there is a 75% probability that it will appear in the front page. (But then again, may be they are not meant to be what I want them to be...so could be my bad!!)

I have eventually realized that good old published magazines and journals are the best sources of valuable information that can be trusted. They will safely guarantee you know what you need to know without excess information overload. Three months into starting the economist subscription, I have realized why it is the most read magazine on world news and economics by business and political leaders world over. Business Week and Harvard Business Review give you all the happenings in the business world and long term business trends and Management fundamentals you need to know about. Fast Company gives you interesting snippets of information on creativity, design and emerging trends. Men's Health gives you everything you need to know about what, and what not to eat, health info and fashion. Besides there is something about reading from a printed piece of paper that reading of a LCD screen just cannot suffice.

India Trip

Quite a few of my friends often ask me, why I go back to India every year? Many of them visit may be once every 2 or 3 years. Truth be told, going back to India every year has been a major financial drain on me. After all, with as expensive as flight tickets are these days, especially during the peak season and the gifts you buy, you start seeing a significant hole in your savings. What more? considering you want to maximize the time you spend back home, you use your entire vacation on the trip. Atleast for me, my routine goes something like this...January 2 to December 15, work! work! work!...don't take a single day of vacation. December 15 - January 1, go back to India and blow up your entire year's savings and vacation in one trip. (If wasn't for this trip to India, in my home in the place of my old sony boob tube would be a new 50 inch plasma and a few hundred dollars more in my savings)

So again why go every year? I think the answer to that lies in they way you think and the way you have been brought up. To me, no matter how many countries I visit, my number one choice for a vacation destination will be Chennai, India. I grew up in that town and for the most part know the "In's and Out's" of it. Especially in late december (Marghazi Masam) Chennai offers a multitude of things which charms me to no end. The early morning Bhakti music concert played in each street with cheap LOUD speakers, the beautiful sunshine with 80 degrees temperature which is such a great escape from the rain and 45 degrees it is in Detroit right now, the classical music season with various artists performing and the canteens outside the music sabhas serving fresh dosas and coffee and so on. Most importantly the joy of meeting and spending time with my family and old friends, to play home cricket with my 3 year old nephew, to take my mom out to ice creams, to go to my old saloon and get a head massage (Rs 50 for a long 1/2 hour massage - cheap isn't it?), to walk, sit, relax in Marina/Besant nagar beach, to enjoy the Rs 10 Masala Kadalai at the beach. I love to go to Satyam and see young college kids bunk class to watch a matinee, reminds me of time I used to do it and the 4 golden years I spent in college.

Having spent pretty much all of my life in India in Chennai, I think a part of who I am is because of the things I learnt, in and from the city. So nothing relaxes, invigorates and recharges me like my trips back home. And I can't think of a better way to start a new year than to have a cup of filter coffee (Hungover from New year's party??..may be!) and some hot mom cooked breakfast, watching "puthanda sigapu Nizahichi" in Sun/Moon/Mars TV. And all this more than justifies the trip (to me atleast)....

General Thoughts!

Yesterday, my colleague, a fellow Indian and a six sigma master black belt came closest to defining Hinduism in a way that engineers, esp. six sigma trained ones can understand and appreciate. Here is his philosophy, which I totally agree with.

He said "All people are created with a Cp equivalent to two (Indicates Six Sigma capability). Our Ppk (Indication of actual performace level) is much lower though. So essentially Hinduism says if you can raise your Ppk to Cp levels, then you become god". Beautiful eh?
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As an engineer, one of the things that immensely fascinates me are commercial jets. Especially Boeing 747's with the 2 engines on either wing. Seriously, one of the reasons I never get really tired of long layovers is because I could just sit in a coffee shop with a view of the runway and just watch flights take off and land all day.

All this week I was in Chicago. Our facility there is about 10 minutes drive from O'Hare Airport, which is one of the busiest in the world. During general commute I had to drive a bunch of times south on I294, on the part just adjacent to O'Hare. The freeway runs perpendicular to the 2 main runways in O'Hare, about 0.5 miles away from where the runway starts. As a result when you drive south, you can see huge (and small) planes, dip down really low, with its nose tipped up, wheels down and at a very low straight line speed getting ready to land. Its just such a beautiful sight. Infact today, much to the annoyance of my colleague, I almost ran into the car in front of me, gaping at a American Airlines, Boeing 747 touch ground.

To many, planes are annoying noisy necessities of modern life. To me they are generations of ingenuity, engineering excellence and man's (and woman's) persistence to attempt and do what normally seems impossible!
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I can't remember how long it has been since I saw a Hindi or a Tamil movie and came out of the cinema thinking Wow!!, that was a super cool movie. Its kinda sad that the supposedly second biggest movie industry in the world seems to be running out of ideas and creativity to keep its audience captivated. Especially ones like me with very low standards...seriously, I pretty much watch almost every movie unless my friends hit me with a hammer and ask me not to watch that movie.

So despite the warning of my friends (wish I was better at learning from other's mistakes or atleast my own mistakes), I spent $10 today and watched Dhoom II in a theatre. What can I say about the movie?...besides sometime after the interval, I got tired of watching Bipasha Basu and Aishwarya Rai's scantily dressed, tanned breas cleavage bodies. Okay I didn't get tired of watching them, but would have preferred if there was a storyline or something interesting in the movie. On the whole it was a pitiful waste of 10 bucks and 3 hours of my valuable Sunday evening time.

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Creativity - where we get our ass kicked!

Since I haven't been traveling a lot the last 3 months, its given me a chance to do some creative stuff, like cooking, decorating my apartment etc. Now first and foremost, I am by no means any good in either of these, but I'd like to be good and am working towards that. I have gotten a lot better than I was 3 months ago, thanks to watching hours of HGTV and food channel.



In general, I would like to think of myself as being creative. Creative not in the sense that I can cook amazing dishes or paint. But creative in the sense that I often times can think of things to do which are in general different from what others would think of doing. However, after carefully thinking on the topic of creativity, I am convinced that what separates very creative people from the rest is attention to detail. I have to admit, I suck at it. Here is why I think so. If you were to watch any creative program (redoing you home or a cooking show, architectural show..anything) often times its the minute details, things I wouldn't even think about which would make the big difference. In my mind its analogous to the difference in the print quality of a 8X10 picture printed out of a 640X480 image and a 8X10 picture printed out of a 5000X4000 image. They both probably tell the same story and show the same thing, yet the latter does it much better than the former.



I hate gender based generalizations, which say men are like this and women are like that etc., for the same reason I hate it when people say "Men can never understand women". I truly believe every person is different and has a different story to tell. Which is why generalizations typically don't work. Men will never understand women. But I believe if they listen well enough, they can understand "a woman". And when they meet another woman, its a totally different story and they have to start from scratch again. I have not, in my whole life met 2 women who are very similar. But before I digress too much, where I was going with this was that, One safe gender based generalization I think I can make is that, women are much better at paying attention to detail than men are. You put randomly selected, 100 men and 100 women in a room, and I could bet my next paycheck that the cumulative creative genius of the women will be more than that of the men. Sure many would argue that there are more men in creative positions like architecture and cooking etc., than women. However that ignores the fact that only a fraction of women compared to men work, hence I would say that is an invalid argument. Also I am talking about average people here, not professionally educated people.



Another thing that proves my point is that women are much better at remembering anniversaries, birthdays etc., and all finer details men typically tend to forget.



Bottomline...



In a nutshell, I am saying



1) Overall quality of creative genius greatly depends on a person's ability to sense finer details in any form of art. This ability enables the person to adjust and improve the finer details thus creating an overall better experience for people enjoying the art.



2) Women (IMO) tend to be much better at scanning and figuring out the finer details than men.



3) Therefore all other things being equal, women tend to be better at creating, capturing and refining art.



No, I am not sexist. No I am not trying to get Brownie points from women for this post. These are merely my observations based on the experience of working with and having friends, among men and women. Truth be told, I only know a handful of women well and they all exhibit the characteristics I mentioned above. If you disagree with me, let me know.

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