Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Recommend me a vacuum cleaner

I am in a vacuum cleaner market again. Would appreciate your honest suggestions. This is what I am looking for:

  • Easy to use
  • Must work on carpets, hardwood, vinyl and stone floorings
  • After vacuuming I should feel 100% safer for my infant to crawl on
  • Easier to maintain and long lasting
I have had varying experience with different cleaners I have owned so far.
  1. Hoover canister - The plastic broke and lost suction otherwise loved it. Was too loud.
  2. Brissell Upright with bag - Use to lose suction and frequent bag replacements.
  3. Shark bag less - Absolutely loved it. But the one I had was relatively small.
  4. iRobot Discovery - Loved it at first but then started giving problems till it almost broke.
  5. Dirt Devil - Was tired of expensive vacuums so bought this one. It was okay at first but now loses suction and does not pick up hair or even small crumbs.
So? I am looking for one again and this time am more resilient and looking for one that I could own for the next 15 years without having to replace one. Suggest!

BTW: I bought a Shark Navigator from BBB (A real great store) and it just blew my expectations. Carpet feels like I just had it installed.

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Scooters India Limited - A potential on sale

This is a part of an email conversation that I had with Scooters India Limited (now on sale) in the beginning of year 2001. Even then I was fascinated with electric vehicles and being from Lucknow I wanted SIL to take a head start at least in India as they had successfully launched an electric three wheeler then. I hear the company is on sale and Lohia auto who makes electric mopeds are interested in its stake. Even before Tata Nano I had envisioned a Vikram EV sized car run on electric to be launched and target a market segment that existed even then. That conversation ended in informal exchanges and "why would a company react on some enthusiast's email" thing. But now I wish if they had acted or if I had enough Money to buy them now. I still see a grand Indian market up for grabs.

Tuesday, May 24, 2011

How to be a successful Software company?

1. Build a rock solid product to keep fewer issues.

2. Hire a few star QA developers and keep them close to product engineers
3. Provide a easy to use web interface to report problems.
4. Respond to email as it is received.
5. Personalize the response.
6. Keep the customer in confidence by updates and describing challenges, if any.
7. Build a repo and build further on top of this relationship.

Barely it matters what your product is but it is going to be successful.

Monday, May 23, 2011

Chrome unable to find Google

Now this what I really find hilarious:




Tuesday, May 17, 2011

My view on DDD

In any DDD practice there are two concerns : core-domain and core-challenges. Core challenges like performance, throughput, scalability, latency etc drives the selection of the most efficient model that projects the core-domain.

Friday, May 13, 2011

A letter from Barack to me! yay!

And I am so enthralled! So as you have befriended me please solve all my problems now!
















Yeah I know, but still!

Monday, May 09, 2011

Why Pakistan is not incompetent but they are lying

While I do meet people from Pakistan who do not hate India but may have a mixed feeling of dislike, distrust, betrayal or jealousy - true or not, I risk using the word Pakistan here as a generic noun. My use of the word mostly means its government, intelligence, Army and Jihadist/Terrorists. Keeping the general masses out, these four elements itself create a web of entangled policies that the country has followed since its inception.
Even though an ally of many decades, Pakistan does not love America. Their hate and distrust for India is way more profound than their love for America. They need America only to keep things at home in place when it comes to economy and defense. Its like a Bank - We use it to get loans but leave no opportunity to curse its higher interest rates. After the debacle of 1971 war with India, Pakistan realized and was convinced that it needed a new instrument. That instrument was gifted to it by Indian politicians in the form of Kashmir and for a short while Punjab. While their early experiments in Punjab appeared to succeed they knew basing it entirely on a political unrest is not sustainable. They needed religion. Kashmir turned out an ideal platform. While similar experiments were done by US in Afghanistan, Pakistan was quietly repeating it inside India. India's political proximity to USSR gave a good platform for US-Pak friendship, two political partners with different domestic values.
Then came Kargil - a huge miscalculation by Pakistani Army. They banked on their strategic assets and a political neutrality from America. Their Army felt betrayed by American response which was hugely pro-Indian. American pressure on Pakistani Government averted a full scale war between the two nuclear nations but left a seed of distrust in Pakistani intelligentsia. They now found themselves dependent on US but someone they cannot hedge against India. Even though at a high capital cost, Kargil turned out to start a new political chapter between India and US. Then came 9/11 and an arrow in their quiver went rogue someone they so effectively used against the Russian occupation in Afghanistan. By then Osama already had become a symbol of global Jihad the term Pakistani ISI were already knee deep in using in Kashmir. Pakistan found itself in a precarious triangle made up of Army, ISI and Jihadists, where losing the effectiveness of one meant losing another. They could not lose this triangle. These three elements do not just work for the country, they own it and neither of the three need the country's political establishment. Alas, this is the only branch that is kept so less informed.
Osama is killed. He is killed inside Pakistan. He is killed in a well designed safe house unlike some hole where Saddam hid himself inside. He is killed in a relatively westernized city. And, he is killed in a place surrounded by Military installations. If nothing else the sanity itself tells that he could not have done this without anybody's knowledge. This anybody just can not be his own personal network, It has to be from this triangle. If the countries President and Prime Minister are saying they did not know about it then possibly they are speaking the truth. After all they did not know about the Kargil either. If ISI or Army says it, then its an out right lie. They seem to not only have known it but seem to have been instrumental in moving him from the mountains of Afghanistan to the heart of a Military city. What US does after this episode is just anybody's guess but they may find themselves in the same place and similar scenario when they had to bail out corrupt banks because the risk of their failure was too high.