ACM Report

The ACM recently released a comprehensive report on "the issues surrounding the migration of jobs within the computing and information technology field and industry". The great thing about it is it's non-US-centric nature. It's long and I'm in the process of reading it. I think it's worth your time and must be read in its entirety. But if you want a quickie review you can find NY Times review here and an individual persepective here.

Banned commercial

Observation

Have you noticed when Google releases a product it usually labels it "beta" although it is pretty much the finished product.

With Microsoft it's the other way around!

Lalu To Bush

Here is something to get your week started!

Fed-Ex the best

For those tennis lovers:
These are some amazing comparison statistics
for 2 players who are all substance and no ( or little ) style. My gut says
Fed-Ex is gonna be the best ever something a la Tendu in cricket.

http://ia.rediff.com/sports/2006/feb/25roger.htm?q=cp&file=.htm

PS: Is Sanya Mirza just a flash in the pan? Or can she live up to the
expecations?? I haven't seen her play at all. So, can't comment.

Job outlook

Fast Company surveys the job outlook for the next 5 years. The data for the survey comes from Bureau of Labor Statistics and the work of Dr. Kevin Stolarick, a lecturer at Carnegie Mellon University. The professions are weighed in the following 4 categories:

• Job growth
• Education level
  
• Salary growth
  
• Room for innovation

Higher the number, the better the profession in that category. The indices are relative meaning it does not account for the baseline. For example, the salary growth for a chiropractor is better than a software engineer but does that mean they get paid better? I don't think so because that's the growth. It does not account for the starting salary. Although it's likely that the former would take over the latter if the growth can be sustained for sufficiently long period of time.

Here is a couple of interesting questions:

• What are your primary considerations when you think about your job? Money? Security? Type of work? Room for professional growth?
• If your child were to ask you for your opinion on the career to choose? What would be your advice?

Over to you guys.

Winter Olympics

I thought I was the only one who wasn't interested.
Mostly Thoughtless: The ski is the limit!

Cricket starved?

Check out the highlights of recent India/Pak series at youtube or google video. Search for "India Cricket".

Open Supari

http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/feb/23mf.htm?q=np&file=.htm

In and out

In my last visit to LA, I tried a fast food place "In & Out Burgers". Much better compared to McDs or BKs. Given the recent happenings in the Indian cricket, specially the selections of players, I was wondering if they would like to rename the chain to "Sourav Ganguly Burgers" :-)

The whiners

You think the traffic is bad in Bangalore? Ever been to LA?

BTW, after my last visit to Bangalore, I have made an unspoken (till now) rule: Anybody who owns a real state in Bangalore and complains about the traffic will be given a kick on his backside by the complaintee (sic).

Firefox going VoIP

Any takers for the weekend chat session using the fox?

BTW, what other firefox extensions do you guys use? I can't seem to live without:

• del.icio.us
• Nuke Anything Enhanced
• foXpose
• SessionSaver
• Answers
• Wizz RSS News Reader

You can get 'em here.

How to make your marriage work

Some unsolicited advice: Plus Ultra: Raj Singh

More Blogs

Winners of Indian Weblog Awards for regional languages

• Hindi
• Kannada
• Malayalam
• Telugu

Killer-Programmer Quiz

A little programming humor...

http://www.malevole.com/mv/misc/killerquiz/

ROFLMAO

Another hilarious post. I can't recall when was the last time I laughed so hard. My office mates were worried I had an attack or something :-)

Drum rolls please!

Got my taxes done last weekend!!

BA-DA-BING!! BA-DA-BOOM!! Clap!! Clap!!

Thank you! Thank you!! Thank you very much!!!

There have been times when I have left it to the eleventh hour. Once, I even had to file for an extension. And that when I was having it done professionally (actually I’ve been doing it that way for about 5 years now). If you are a procrastinator (like me) you know what I’m talking about.

Not this time pal! Especially since I was expecting a refund. So this Monday (what better way to spend the President’s day holiday, eh?) I collected all my tax papers and logged on to TurboTax.com. Three hours later I was looking at a cool $7000 refund. The cost: $35. This sounded too good to be true. I thought I probably made a mistake. I double-checked it. Same result! I still didn’t want to take any chances so I headed off to HR Block. And boy, do they suck or what? They made me wait for an hour and a half! And that, after I had taken an appointment by phone beforehand. The history was repeating itself. While sitting there and twiddling my thumbs, I decided to take my business elsewhere starting next year. If you ever go to HR Block, fix an appointment and make sure you know who you’re meeting. An appointment without the name of the preparer is a walk-in for them. After the wait was over, an old lady took me to her office and did pretty much the same thing that I had done at my home computer (i.e. feed the data to the software) and gave me the same result. The cost: $250. Um…I don’t think so!

I checked the status of my filing this morning at TurboTax and guess what? Federal return has been already been accepted and VA state return is in progress. The money should be in the bank in 10 days.

The great indian cricketers

Hilarious.

The Zahir - My Review

The basic premise of the book is pretty simple: the wife has left without any explanation and the husband is trying to figure out why.

The quest for the reasons forces him to reflect on their marriage and his past, which in turn leads him to ask questions such as what is “love” or true meaning of “happiness”. At some point in their long marriage, the husband and the wife became “conveniences” for each other without realizing what they got married for at the first place has slowly faded away. People chase their “dreams” all through their lives. For some it is better career and beautiful girlfriends/wife, for some other it is better home and children or money. But what do you do when you have everything you ever wanted? Is that all there is to a life?

Some may be inclined to discard it as a mid-life crisis or psychological or philosophical blabber and that’s perfectly okay but then did they really appreciate the questions? You have to wonder!

The high points for me, were flashbacks of discussions between husband and his female counterparts (yes, that’s plural), husband’s lecture on his own book at Geneva and the passage when a beggar asks him if he really knew what “poverty” is? The parts on cult and clairvoyant were bit weird but seem quite plausible. I guess they gel with the flow of the book.

All in all reading it was a time well spent. A John Grisham novel may thrill your senses but stimulating your intellect is an entirely different matter. This book may do it to you. Think the buzz of a strong black coffee if you know what I mean. Except at a deeper level.

I have to confess the author has intrigued me enough and I will have to read more of his work some time in the future. Can't take too much "black coffee" at once :-)

Thanks Darshan!

Something for the long weekend

I recently read an interesting article on how the ongoing change in the demographics of the world is going to affect us, especially the western world. The author seems to have a pretty good sense of humor. Not really an unbiased opinion but it does make you wonder.

BTW, it is quite long so if you decide to read it you would need it at least 1/2 hour. Click here when you're ready.

The cricket world cup

I have been thinking of going to the West Indies to watch some games in which Indian team features. Let me know if you'd like to meet up there. I can keep you guys posted about the arrangements that need to be made (travel, hotel, tickets etc.) . The event is about a year away but the plans should be made now for obvious reasons.

Talk about making a mountain out of a molehill

Are you guys following the cartoon controversy?

This is all a Danish news paper said:

The modern, secular society is rejected by some Muslims. They demand a special position, insisting on special consideration of their own religious feelings. It is incompatible with contemporary democracy and freedom of speech, where you must be ready to put up with insults, mockery and ridicule. It is certainly not always attractive and nice to look at, and it does not mean that religious feelings should be made fun of at any price, but that is of minor importance in the present context. [...] we are on our way to a slippery slope where no-one can tell how the self-censorship will end. That is why Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten has invited members of the Danish editorial cartoonists union to draw Muhammad as they see him.

The result:

A group of Danish Imams lobbied decision-makers in the Middle East. A large consumer boycott was organised in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and other Middle East countries. Rumours spread via SMS and word-of-mouth. The foreign ministers of seventeen Islamic countries renewed calls for the Danish government to punish those responsible for the cartoons, and to ensure that such cartoons are not published again. The Organization of the Islamic Conference and the Arab League have demanded that the United Nations impose international sanctions upon Denmark and that the EU introduce blasphemy laws. Numerous protests against the cartoons have taken place, some of them violent. On February 4, 2006, the buildings containing the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Syria were set ablaze, although no one was hurt. In Beirut the Danish General Consulate was set on fire, resulting in the death of one protester inside the complex. Deaths have also been reported in riots in Afghanistan. As of February 13, 2006, at least 13 people have been killed in the protests.

Read on here to see those cartoons and their meaning.

Pretty cool

My favorite from CodeCon 2006. Let me know if you guys would like to try it out. I'm going to try it from home soon. My id is hdaharwal.

Late night comedians having a field day

Here

My Passport Experience

Went to NYC to get my passport renewed. Had to get up earlier than usual and took off to the railway station. Secured the tickets after waiting in line and reached penn station NYC. Had to walk a couple blocks to take local subway that took me to the indian embassy uptown. Then walk some more blocks to join the serpentine queue waiting at the embassy! Walking in that bitter cold, I couldnot believe these were the very lanes we used to enjoy strolling down when we first came to US!! Some relief when my portion of the queue reached indoors! While waiting for 5 hrs in that jampacked room , I had to hear the woes of so many disgrunteld co-applicants. Some of them stood in the passport line for more than an hour when they actually came for a visa. Added to this , standing there for so many hours ( you guessed it - insufficient seating) made the weather outside look pretty ok.
Finally when she accepted my application, the lady at the counter tells me to come on monday evening to pick my passport..WTF...It was so crazy...my head just went for spin..just with the thought of repeating the whole travel and wait ....

While walking back I remembered my stay at bangalore 10yrs back where I first applied for my passport. It was a simple application. A few rupees of appreciation to the local cop and the postman and you had your passport!!

Anyways, I was happy I got my passport on monday with NO errors!

Interesting stats

Interesting stats on unemployment rate.

Valentine's day

Never underestimate the power of flowers and a greeting card. For those who are poetically challenged here is some help :-) It may also be a good idea to decide where you're going to buy those red-roses from. Last year I bought them at the eleventh hour and it cost me 30 bucks. Ouch!

If history of the day intrigues you, you may want to check this out.

Rap of a different kind

You’ve probably heard some rap and hip-hop music. One particular form of it known as gangsta rap centers around violence, hatred and all sorts of nasty things you can think of. Not to mention fierce rivalry between groups and rappers. If you have seen the movie 8 mile featuring Eminem, you know what I’m talking about. There is another form of rap that is becoming quite popular these days. It is called geeksta rap and it created by grad school, Ph. D. students in computer science labs.

I'm encrypting shit like every single day
Sending it across a network in a safe way
Protecting messages to make my pay
If you hack me you're guilty under DMCA

That’s from the album Algorithms By MC Plus+. Some other songs in this album are titled: “Have To Code” and “End Of File”.

A fierce rival of MC Plus+ is Monzy who, in a song called “So much drama in PhD” responds with:

My flow is so intense that I will overflow your buffer,
Corrupt your stack pointer makin' all your data suffer.
I've got saturated edges but your flow is sparser,
Real gangstas sip on Yacc; instead you generate a parser.
While you're busy poppin' stacks I'll pop a cap in your skull,
While you smoke your crack pipe I'm gonna pipe you to /dev/null.
I may not have a label but I rap like a star;
I'm an unsigned long int and you're an 8-bit char.

Here is a link to a more detailed story in Wired magazine.

ROFLMAO

Introducing

I have invited Sridhar Kotti to join our team. I'm sure most of us know him. For those who don't , he is an old friend who used to share an apt. with Surya et. al. in Bangalore. He has been working for Oracle in the bay area for as long as I can remember. He is married and has a kid.

Welcome Kotti! We look forward to your joining the group and bringing some interesting stories from the west coast.

Peek-a-boo comments

You can now click on 'comments' link at the end of the post to show/hide them. Let me know if you prefer the older format.

Customer service

Recently a colleague of mine switched to Verizon phone and DSL. The company was quick to switch the phone but informed him that DSL would take a month. Considering how internet access has become more of a necessity than luxury these day, he didn’t want to wait that long. But there is nothing much he could do. You know how the phone companies are desperate to sign up new customers. But once they have the customer they hardly bother about them. I remember being put on hold for hours by Sprint. So this guy is desperately looking for ways to solve the problem because apparently his kids need the web for completing the homework (which in my mind I interpreted as “playing xbox-live”). So while surfing the net in the office, he managed to get the email address of Verizon’s local public relations officer. Without really getting his hopes high, he casually sent him an email. To his surprise the officer actually replied, talked to him about the problem and thanked him for bringing the matter to his notice. Apparently that is something they like to hear from their customers because it’s difficult for them to know everything that is going on at every level of customer service in such a large company. The officer then went back, pulled some strings and came back to tell him the reason it is taking so long to provide the service is that they don’t have the equipments. Hello? Why do you sign up new customers then? Anyways, they agreed to pay for his dial up until they can provide the service in addition to promising him some other discounts and goodies.

In another recent development, another colleague of mine was driving down to his son’s school meeting when he heard “big clunk, big rattles, more clunking” etc. His car had broken down. He took it to the garage and they told him what could be described as a total engine failure. Something that would cost more than $6000 to fix. He figured ’99 Accord with 77k miles on it wasn’t really worth it. Since the warranty had long expired he didn’t want to pay that kind of money from his own pocket. So he took couple of day off from work to search for a new car and bought a brand new Acura. He also filed a complaint with Honda America about this catastrophic engine failure in such a “young” car. Guess what? The company actually called him back and said that they would take full responsibility for it and pay for all the repairs. So he is pleasantly “shocked” and in a dilemma about what to do with two cars?

What is the morale of the stories? I think it is “never ever shy away from asking for what you think is your right”.


     

Vonage going public

More here.

The iPod phenom...

You think iPod phenomenon is slowing down? Think again! Here is a link to a recent post by leading VoIP blogger Om Malik of Business 2.0.

Using Word for blogging

Although not as feature rich as the blogger editor, you can download and install a plugin that will allow you to create and edit your posts from MS Word.

I don't like it much because it doesn't allow photo blogging and formatted text looks different after posting it online.

You can get it from here.

Are we in the wrong profession?

First timer

Trying my first blog, guys.

Don't see Biondie anywhere with 'hot stocks' section.

Online job hunting becoming difficult

I think getting the right people will become even harder. According to this article:

New federal guidelines meant to standardize how employers track data on the diversity of their job-applicant pool are taking effect starting today for jobs at federal contractors -- and similar rules will kick in later this year at U.S. companies with more than 50 employees. And resumes and search approaches that worked perfectly well before may no longer do the trick.

RSS feed

You can subscribe to RSS feed for this blog. It is like a live bookmark that updates itself whenever there is a new post. So you don't have to go to the blog website to check if there is new post. The attached photo shows how it looks like on firefox browser.

FireFox older ver
Go to the blog website. Click on the orange square at the bottom right of the browser and click on 'Subscribe'.

FireFox version 1.5
The orange square appears next to the website address at the top.

BTW, RSS stands for Real Simple Syndicate.

Welcome!

Welcome to our team blog. I've named it "Friend Circle". The link to the website is http://jaboof.blogspot.com. Where jaboof stands for Just A Bunch Of Old Friends. Here we can read the blog and leave comments.

I will send out email invitations to all you guys to join it. You would need to create a login and password. For posting you'd need to go to http://www.blogger.com and login to your account. As you'd see it is pretty easy. For help go to the bottom of the page and click on 'Help' or click here and search for what you're looking for e.g. 'posting and editing'.

If there is something you don't like (e.g. name of the blog or background etc.), just let me know your suggestions, comments. Currently I have the admin role. There can be multiple admins. If you'd like to be one, let me know. Admins have some privileges that you can read about in the help section cited above.

You can post photos, music, anything you like.

Here is to JABOOF!