Selling
Scott Adams has got it right with this hillarious strip on how companies push their non-sales (=not useful?) headcounts to contribute more toward sales :)
Windows 7 Launch kicks off in India
First among the series of Windows 7 Launch events in India kicked off yesterday in Coimbatore. I was there as part of the Microsoft team and we were happy and at the same time take back by the amazing turn out of people for the event and the enthusiasm they showed during the demo sessions.
Looks like Windows 7 is really going to the turn the tide for us.
PS: Been a long time since last post, but Facebook updates just takes away any interesting topic from reaching WordPress :)
Are you worried about losing your job?
Given recent developments in the job market, I felt that it is very important that I be prepared for everything. Especially, given the company that I work for right now and everything that’s happening around it.
Not just me, there are many others who are not sure about their future in the current job and don’t know really what’s going to happen to them tomorrow if they lose their jobs.
Well, not everything about holding on to your current job is totally in our control. Is it? It is certainly a bad thing to happen if you lose your job, especially if you are in India like me where losing your job is considered more like a bad omen. If it happens to you and you are in India, don’t get irritated if every random person shares his/her opinion and advises you on this topic and don’t be surprised if your distant aunt tells your mother to show your horoscope to some ‘famous’ pujari to check if your stars are right.
Uncontrollables aside, here’s a small list of things that you can do to make sure you are better prepared for the worst:
1) Resume
Make sure your resume is updated at least once in a month. Not every time you’ll have an update but each pass will optimize the contents and hopefully make it better. I don’t have to tell you how important this is for you to get back quickly on job hunt if you get laid-off.
2) Data backup
You spend ~10 hours a day on your work laptop/desktop. Apart from work related stuff that belongs to your company, a lot of your own data will also be there in that machine like Internet explorer favourites, study material, PDFs, training videos, study guides, bank statements, credit card details, scanned photos etc. You may not realize the importance of this digital part of yours now, but will certainly miss it when the laptop/desktop is taken away from you. Remember, if you get laid-off you many get as low as 10 minutes to pack your stuff and leave.
This is what you can do :
a) Use Windows Vista/Windows 7 backup feature to create a copy of all your personal data on to a USB hard-drive. I do this once in a month or so.
b) Live MESH (www.mesh.com) to synchronize select data across work and home PCs.
c) Keep the work laptop/desktop free of personal data as much as possible.
3) PF Account
Most of us hold more than 2 PF accounts, one for each company that we worked for till date. Go back and look at your old pay-slips to know your PF account number. Find out the status of each. Fill out necessary forms to withdraw the residual amount in all your old PF accounts. From my experience, do not try to transfer PF in to your new account, it has a high chance of failure. Better to get the money out of every account except your current PF account.
4) Credit Card due/Personal Loan EMIs
Very important to get on top of all this. How many credit cards do you have? What’s the total out-standing? When are the loans due for closure?
5) Company Car/Home Lease etc
Apart from the daily salary you get from your company, do you have any other obligations with your current company? Car-lease? Home-lease? You should know what happens to these contacts if you get laid-off. Especially the financial obligations upon termination.
6) LinkedIN
Spend time here if you want to know current trends.
If you know more things that can be done to make job-loss a less bitter experience then feel free to add your comments below.
Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket is down
Cricinfo Fantasy Cricket is down. Yeah, the damn thing is down for more than 15 hours now.
The service has been unstable from Day one, never looked like it is going to sustain the traffic spikes before the start of each game.
Question is, why indulge is something if you are not capable of doing it? Honestly, I don’t think Cricinfo gives a lot in to ensuring Fantasy runs smoothly.
Cricinfo, Fuck you.
Cricinfo down
My kind of PC, My kind of Cost
Windows PC Ad, that actually makes a lot of sense. Who would want to spend double or probably more on a Mac that has the exact same specs? Mac-tax? Sorry, can’t afford it Mr. Jobs
Google Chrome is not for me
My dad said Google Chrome is fast, really really fast. I downloaded it today and installed in my work laptop.
10 minutes with Chrome browsing Slashdot, Techcrunch and a intranet site.
No, Chrome is not the one for me. My intranet site fails to render properly, its on SharePoint and maybe Google deliberately don’t want to render SharePoint portal pages correctly.
- Zoom functionality sucks compared to IE8.
- UI is little confusing without the change in tone/shade of colors used for the web-page space and the tool-bar space
- Start time is much better than IE8
- Having more tabs open at the same time is confusing
I didn’t have the patience to keep trying longer, good bye chrome. Back to good old IE.
Chennai to Pondy via ECR
East Coast Road (ECR). I am in love with this road now. I’ve driven through this stretch several times before but never got to enjoy it like I did this time when I went to Pondy from Chennai last week.
This road is not for the ones who want to test the speed limits. Not for the adventurous lot. I didn’t do it before but this time I drove slow. I stopped wherever possible and enjoyed the view of the sea. The coastline almost follows you all along the entire stretch from Chennai to Pondy. Amazing sight.
Anyways, the trip was good. I wanted a ‘economical’ trip this time and that’s what I got. Ginger Hotels, budget stay with decent facilities. Certainly worth the money they charged me. Little less than Rs.2k for two nights stay. Certainly recommend this for anyone who’s not looking at unnecessary luxury.
Visited Mother Ashram, Manakula Vinayakar, Auroville Globe and some small time shopping at Nehru street. Not so eventful, but incident free, simple, happy trip this for us.
Anyways, Monday is here and gotto get back to work.
Indian Windows Mobile Ad
Good ad featuring Windows Mobile, Media Center PC and the general “Windows – Life without walls” theme.
Well, not a great ad I know, but hey, remember Sienfeld? We’ve seen worse from Microsoft, haven’t we? :)
Sunday special at Rathna Cafe
This Sunday morning my mom wanted to go visit Parthasarathy temple at Triplicane. We then decided we can also have a special breakfast at Triplicane Ratha Cafe.
Left home early, enjoying the traffic free streets of T. Nagar on the way. We were pleasantly surprised to see the temple was not that crowded either. Darshan at each sannadhi didn’t take more than 10 minutes.
In about 45 minutes we were done at Parathasarathy Temple and my dad suggested T. Nagar Rathna cafe is a better choice as parking won’t be a problem there.
Rathna cafe, heaven for devotees of the south indian style sambar. : )
We ordered, Sambar Vadai and this is how it looked.
Yummy, delicious! And to add to the thrill, the delicious sambar was served in this new look vessel.
Every table has one of these vessel and saves you from the embarrassment of asking the waiter repeatedly for extra sambar.
If I ever leave Chennai, Rathna Cafe Sambar is one thing I’ll really, really miss !:)
I would pay anything for that special sambar taste but it was surprising that Ratha Cafe is probably more expensive than Saravana Bhavan.
Coffee = Rs.17.50
Sambar Vada, single Vada = Rs.25
Dosa = Rs.45
A very good start to a Sunday, isn’t it? :)
Blogging using Windows Live Writer
I never thought I would use a ‘offline’ software to write a note to my online journal (blog).
Windows Live Writer.
Yes, surprisingly supports Blogger and WordPress. Good to see this from Microsoft.
This is my first post using Live Writer in to WordPress. Should say I am impressed with the account setup process which is completely self-run, smooth and uncomplicated.
UI is pretty neat with no extra flak that we usually see in most of MS products.
Now to features, first I’ll try and insert a picture here.
Works. (Yeah, running Windows 7 Beta 7000 Build and loving it)
Next, insert maps.
Let me try inserting a City view of Chennai using this.
Works. And this is cool. Inserting a map snip directly from Live Maps *without* even opening a browser window. wow!
Next, let me try the “Insert Video” option.
Works. Again, inserting a video directly from Youtube without even having to open a browser window. I am really starting to love Live Writer.
Let me see if Live Writer helps me move by lazy bones and start blogging actively again. Hoping! :)
Windows Live Writer, no Microsoft legacy, simple. works.
(Not the usual “Microsoft Windows Live Writer Professional Edition 2009 with SQL Server 2008 Lite Edition CTP” kind of complication in this one certainly) :D
Back
Yes, been a long time but am making a come back to the blogosphere. Going to post more and going to talk to more of my friends from the lovely world of blogosphere.
See you around, often.
10 years
We had a small get-together last weekend. About ten of us from good old Alpha gang came together at a small place in T Nagar. Spent couple of hours sharing as many updates as we could about every damn name that we can remember from good old Alpha days.
Funny that someone suddenly mentioned its been 10 years since we finished school in Alpha.
10 years? 10 god-damn years!
Looking back now, what have I done in these 10 years other than simple personal gains like career etc. Even today, when I meet friends we talk about the pranks and tricks from school days and do not re-collect many from the 10 years post-school.
Wondering how should I measure my time quality of time spent in these 10 years. Good ? Bad? Lazy? Active? Successful?
Microsoft lad wins the Chennai R15 race
Sameer from Microsoft wins the Yamaha R15 race at the Irungattukottai Race Track, Chennai.
Sivlerlight and Deepzoom
There are many cool usage examples of DeepZoom + SilverLight. Here’s one.
Beijing Olympic Fireworks. Fake !
I really liked the Fireworks Display that I saw on television for the Olympic Opening Ceremony on 08/08/08. Well, am sure you liked it too and got fooled like me :)
The fireworks display that we saw on television was nothing more than a Hollywood Movie like animation sequence. Yes, this smart-ass Chinese broadcasting company editing the entire fireworks footage and replaced it with a 55 second animation sequence. What we saw is a 55 second movie and not actual ceremony. sheesh! so much for broadcasting ethics!
Here, reported at MSNBC:
It took planners almost a year to create the 55-second sequence which appeared to be more than two dozen footprints amidst fireworks in the sky, said Gao Xiaolong, head of the visual effects team for the ceremony, in the Daily Telegraph story.
Even those at the city’s new Bird’s Nest National Stadium, where the Olympics are being held, viewed the computer-generated footage from their seats as they watched on the stadium’s giant television screens, said Britain’s Sky News in a story.
“Meticulous efforts were made to ensure the sequence was as unnoticeable as possible,” the newspaper reported Xiaolong as saying. “They sought advice from the Beijing meteorological office as to how to recreate the hazy effects of Beijing’s smog at night, and inserted a slight camera shake effect to simulate the idea that it was filmed from a helicopter.”
VMRC Plus
Got some spare time this week and decided to setup few VHDs and play around with Windows Server 2008 and Forefront Client Security. My stars are not shining in my favour or whatever, I am just not able to get things right with this setup.
One thing that frustrated me the most is trying to get VMRC Plus work. It is supposed to be more user friendly and feature rich client app to manage a Virtual Server environment. I don’t know how good it is to use but I can tell you that it is certainly not easy to get this tiny piece of software to work.
I wasted 2 hours trying to figure out what could be wrong, the first 30 minutes of which was wasted in understand this thing can’t work remotely. (what use is a virtual control app if it can’t work remotely? Lame!)
Anyway, I installed it locally and still it failed with weird authentication errors. One of them looked like this, “Either a required impersonation level was not provided, or the provided impersonation level is invalid.”
I’ve officially given up now. Can’t waste too much time for a fancy UI which is ridiculously difficult to setup. I am going to stick to the good old Virtual Server web administration which will do the job for me now.
Bubye, VMRC Plus. You may be a really good Virtual Machine Control app, but you must learn to “just work” first.
Prizefight : Bill Gates vs. Steve Jobs
This is more on a lighter side of this never ending comparison dating back to 1980s. No stats, no tech talks and no boring stuff here.
My favorite among the 10 rounds, comparing “apples” to “oranges” :)
Am back. Again :)
Its been a while since I posted anything around here :(
But I’ve decided to shed the lazy attitude and spend more time here going forward. Am sure I have enough excuses to say I don’t have time.. like am married, jobs kind of busy since it is year end of Microsoft now… and more..
But now, no more excuses. We’ll meet often here, keep reading.
Karma Calculations - they never fail 