What not to solve?

Every now and then I keep mentioning the people who I really enjoyed working with. One name which I kept omitting was my past manager of three years - Trey Marshall. This MBA from Carnegie Millan - a critique of overkilled solutions is one who leaves his impression. The two things which I learned working with him are : what not to solve? and what a running system means? Two not so simple questions as they seem to be. Sometimes as developers, as analysts and as business owners we don't understand the problem statement clearly and usually get carried away on what the system should do? And knowing what not to solve is as difficult of a question as of knowing what should be solved. The second is the value of a running system. A running and a scalable system is better than a utopic one on papers and discussions. The system which runs is the one which sustains. Being practical is one more reason of my admirations for him.

What does the Sun-google announcement mean?

Nothing and a lot depending on where they go from here. Google no question can be a huge delivery platform. The service as well as software application downloads. I was expecting a lot more from the announcement though. May be a huge hardware sale? or, Openoffice functionality on web? Due to a shear increase in the bandwidth the time has come when the applications can be made available on web on broadbands. May be a user session mobility through a web platform? i.e, mix-n-match of sunrays and web. But, nothing of that sort happened. A let down for now but very promising for the future. These are the two technology driven companies and who knows if some sort of consortium is in the making. Is yahoo listening?

The qualified genius

I have been watching the interviews on PBS conducted by Robert Cringely with the legally qualified nerds of the computer industry. Andy Hertzfeld, Max Levchin, Bill Joy, Brewster Kahle and a long list to come. One of their common traits is that they all are the alumini of some great colleges (drop outs or graduated). And I do accept the genius in them. Being part of the colleges like Stanford and MIT itself is a qualification, atleast for me. It doesn't excite me though. Yes you are born genius, you have shown your abilities not once but time and again and then you come up with some great ideas. Yeah! what else can us the lower beings expect from you :-)? Greats produce great things. What does excite me though is when not so genius people produce some great piece of art. People in some remote village with no infrastructure and money produces a simple hinge to stop the bucket for falling in the well. Or, for an inability to purchase one if someone converts his motorcycle to use as a tractor. So I guess there are three categories of people - One who solves the very complex problem with the help of all the resources he can get his hands of. The second who solve small problems with all kind of constraints you can have. The third are those who get awestruck from these geniuses and write about them.

Why I like mexican?

Ofcourse I love the food. The burritos, enchaladas, taquitos, sopapillas and what not. And above all, the mexican restaurants are the only places where I do not feel uncomfortable with my Indian accent.

Ain't preface useless?

I do reserve the right to challenge what I don't use. Book's preface is one thing to start with. I never read it. If the title of the book is self explanatory, why would you need a preface, specially while reading a technology book? I prefer to surf through the chapters instead, than to read its' preface. It contributes no useful purpose to the content of the book. Something similar to an unnecessary chain of management command in any organization. I recently watched Andy Hertzfeld's interview on PBS. The guy is a programming legend. "The best size team comprises of just one person" was his comment on the discussion around an ideal size of any team. He did quote Albert Einstein stressing the need of removing the communication overheads. We continue to use them for the sake of tradional heirarchy and are afraid to challenge its presence. Something similar to a preface in the book.

Two links and two feelings

I was happy to see a comment from one of my ex-colleagues on one of my blogs. I was not expecting her to ever reading my blogs, and here she goes and agrees with my sentiments. On the otherhand, I saw a link to my blogging site was removed from my ex-PM's site. May be she had a legal (?) reasons to do so. Otherwise why would anybody delete a link just coz we don't work together anymore?

One more addition to my favs

I am very selective in the movies I like. From The Godfather, Back to the future, Office space, Hotshot series and any Clint Eastwood's to Shakti, Umrao Jaan, Shool, and The Training Day. I am little inclined to the realistic action movies and have special interest in the cop movies. One more addition to it : "Sehar". Remarkable! Very good performances by everyone. Kudos to Arshad Warsi and the all time great Pankaj Kapoor. A cop movie which ends well. After getting frustated by Mangal Pandey and Bose which I had very high hopes from, I thought to stop watching any Bollywood movie. And then came Sehar - Good stuff!