Happy Days - A Nostalgic Retreat

Watched Happy Days (Telugu) movie in Irving Hollywood theaters this week. What a way to remember the happiest days of my life, viz college days. As the emotions of students joining the engineering college overflow mellifluously on the screen, one cannot help but bring these characters to real life experiences, with expressions like Shankar in the movie was like this guy in the college and so on. 4 years of Engineering - from fear of ragging to ragging of juniors in 2nd year, from a novice of life to a career planner of life, from few friends before engineering to numerous friends, from nobody to an 'Engineer' - thats the life you have experienced that unfolds on the celluloid leaving you with a tinge of smile on the lips and a nostalgic feeling in heart..


The story is simple. 4 guys and 2 girls come to CBIT as engineering students. The life that they encounter with love, friendship, career choices and emotions is the movie. The entire credit goes to an adept handling by Sekhar Kammula, who gives us back our precious college memories. I don't remember the last time that I had taken a moment to remember all my Engineering classmates and about my experiences with them. But after seeing the movie, I went back to my nostalgic memories. Yes, I went through ragging and yes I did rag a few juniors in college within limits, and I was one of the many students who used to scold our college and I did love the samosas in the fifth gate of our college with a mini Pepsi :) But in the last two years, I probably never spent a moment in remembering them to bring a smile on my lips, but seeing the movie, all I could think of the next whole day was my engineering college days.

The music by Mickey J Meyers is simply superb and the lyrics of the song Oh My Friend are just awesome. I would have listened to this song like 100 times so far. And the characters are simply lovable. The best is Tyson with a caring heart and sincere love for a senior. The next is Rajesh who cares a lot about his friends, my favorite among the girls is Tamanna and also Sonia who played the senior. And the theater in which the movie was showed was really good. Kudos to the exhibitors who maintained great standards. Once in a while, a movie comes that reminds you of memories that you cherish, and lets you associate yourself with the characters and feel their characters instead of seeing the actors in those characters. Happy Days is one such brilliant movie. A really good watch worth every penny spent :)

Impressing the executives in business meeting with corporate BS catch phrases

Ever seen this sales guy or a highly successful manager uttering highly effective buzz words which catch your attention not because they make sense in that particular context but because these words leave you thinking about the meaning that they are trying to convey. I am sure everyone of us have been there. I ran into this forwarded website which provides you with a list of these high tech buzz words.

Want to generate a quick corporate catch phrase. Click on the button below and get it in the text box below. Click the button as many times as you need phrases..



Your Corporate BS Buzz Phrase:



(Powered by Atrixnet)

To get a list of all the words used for this or to create a buzz word manually by yourself, visit the main site

http://www.atrixnet.com/bs-generator.html?bullshit=precise

Greg the Architect and his world of SOA

Found this video on the TIBCO blog. Pretty interesting and funny. Need a sneak peak into the life of an SOA architect, here you go..

Fundamental mistake in Digg web page coding or fooling Diggers??

Everyone knows how famous Digg is today, on the web. So much that Time magazine rated 'You' as the person of the year because of the user power created by Digg. And Digg has opened gates for Developers by providing Digg APIs and contests for the best mashup. All these made me think great of Digg and the way the website is coded, but this fundamental flaw in coding the Digg page leaves me stunned. Is it an oversight or an attmept to fool the users??

Here is what I mean. Find the news dugg by any user on Digg by clicking on their link. I am showing the example with the news dugg by me.



As you can see at the bottom, where I circled, there are links to more than 10 pages with the Next button after 10 ... But if I click on 9th page for example, here is what I see..



Forget about 9th page, if I click on 4th page, here is what it shows..



So, basically, I had dugg 3 pages worth of news, but even in the second page, it shows me links till 10 pages and more as if I had dugg news worth more than 10 pages. Any programmer who has done basic programming would know how easy it is, to control the number of links for pagination. Calculate the number of diggs a user has, divide it by the number of links you show on each page to figure how many links to show for pagination.

I agree that it may not be a show stopper and it might merely be a small bug, but with the Digg team implementing new comments system and opening up APIs, I would surely expect higher standards of coding. Not impressed much Digg team.. So as I said above, is this just an oversight or an attempt to show off a lot of posts to the Digg users. I would side with the former but still expect them to fix this..

The last 2 feet - Kindling the spirit of Entrepreneurship

Every other guy I meet these days wants to be an entrepreneur, at least initially. And most of them tried a little towards what they want but after some initial hiccups they just gave up, due to family responsibilities or something else or just because it's not their cup of tea. For those and for every one else who wants to be an entrepreneur or make it big in life, here is a small story.

Long ago, when gold diggers were hunting for gold all over, there was a town somewhere in Africa, in which a person named Abasi concluded with his amateur calculations that there was a huge gold mine in the middle of the town. He brought all the equipment necessary to dig and offered to share it with anyone who helped him in the process. Every one laughed at him and said he was crazy, for there would be no gold in there, since no gold was ever found in the neighboring districts ever. None came forward to help him but Abasi was not disheartened. He believed in what he calculated and set out to dig alone. Days passed, when he would toil in sun, rain and snow to reach the depth he thought at which the gold was present. The passers by, usually stopped near him, mocked him and ridiculed him saying they have never seen such a fool. He spent a good amount of time, money and energy when he hit a rock in the middle of his digging. He went on and on, struggled against all odds and continued but he found no signs of any gold anywhere closer. He kept telling himself that one day he would find the gold and all these people who ridiculed him will praise him for his tenacity. But after going down to a significant depth Abasi started losing hope, for, he was hitting one rock after another and there was no sign of gold being present. He couldn't even see the traces of a gold wire in the mud he was digging, though he used to process the mud at nights to check for even a slightest presence of gold, somewhere in there. But to his utter disappointment, he couldn't find anything. He started losing interest but he still went on and on. But one fine day when he hit a 16th rock he gave up. He thought his amateur calculations were indeed what they were, amateur. He decided that people who told him that there was no gold beneath were no fools and so he gave up, took his equipment and walked away. He was in so much grief, but he thought there was no point in wasting any more time and he quit.

Years passed by, but the pit that Abasi had dug, laid there, in the middle of the town as a mark of Abasi's failure. It stood as a sign of a person's foolishness who wouldn't heed to what the society told him and finally figured out himself after much toil. One day, a person named Khamisi from a neighboring town happened to see the pit and asked the people around what it was. They narrated him the story of Abasi who thought there was gold under and who was such a fool to not hear to other people and ended up wasting his time leaving it as a sign of his failure. Khamisi got interested in the tale and wanted to try out himself. Everyone ridiculed him, this time even more than they ridiculed Abasi, because it was proved that there was no gold there. None came forward to help Khamisi either but he started digging alone. He believed blindly that he will get the gold and after just digging 2 feet, he found the big box of gold and in front of the whole town which stayed agape, he walked off with a huge pile of gold..

This story is not about Khamisi becoming rich by taking off where Abasi left and going all the way to the gold. This story is about Abasi who lost the gold because he didn't have the dedication in him to carry on until he found the gold. He struggled against all odds, he went on though many people ridiculed and mocked him, he went on though no one came to support him, but somewhere down the lane he lost faith in himself and his belief. He quit giving in to what other people told him instead of following his own belief and that too when he was just 2 feet away from the gold. After spending so much time and effort, he could have carried on for the next 2 feet, but he chose to quit, the one mistake that every one of us quite often make...

Most of the young aspiring entrepreneurs give up and quit in the middle, because they are not aware that its just 2 feet that is the distance between them and their gold. Feuds between partners, lack of income potential in the business model and a bunch of other mistakes presented everywhere on the web to account for a huge percent of failure of startups are all just secondary. A startup fails because the founders have decided to quit before they took their dream to success. Though these entrepreneurs had initially decided to go against all odds and succeed, they give in to what the 'other people' like the investors or some stupid web review blog says and they give up and quit. Quitting is the single most mistake in my opinion that kills a startup, because everything else is just secondary. All you young entrepreneurs out there, if you come up with a great idea and believe 100% in it, then take it through to its success, and whenever you decide to quit, remember that you might just be 2 feet away from the success...

Here is a poster that always inspired me, though the author is not known, these verses have a great moral boosting spirit in them..

My score is 94980 in first attempt.. What is yours

This post on Digg got me interested in the Ramps game and since it said Physics, being a Physics fan that I am, I started trying the game. Took me about 30 minutes to finish all the levels and end up with a score of 94980. So again, my score is 94,980. What is yours ...



Link for the game is

http://www.myfreegamespot.com/game/22548/Play-Ramps.html

Update: Image has been updated to hide the passwords :)

Update 2 Here is my second attempt at the game. I crossed 100k but couldn't still beat some of the scores posted in the comments.. :)

Redemption of a man's lost dignity - Chak De India

One man, Kabir Khan captains the Indian team and takes it through to the World Cup finals, where they meet long time nemesis Pakistan in finals. He thinks its just a matter of 70 minutes and all there was is to go out there and give his best shot. Little does he know that his pride, dignity are at stake just because of his religion. Hell breaks lose on him not because he misses a penalty stroke in the penultimate moments of the game just like a zillion people before him have, but because he is a Muslim in Indian team and because he happens to have the sporting spirit to congratulate the winning team. Accusations of his being sold out to the country where he belongs to, take an uproar in the media and with the aam junta and he is forced out of the team and his ancestral home with a label as Gaddar (The traitor).

Spending seven years in anonymity Khan returns for a redemption of his lost glory. His aim, to convert the silver medal that he had, to a gold in the world cup.. As he mentions later on to the committee in an intense way, he spends these seven years in preparing for the interview with the Association. The path to the World cup is not easy for the Khan, because of the politics in the Association and more than that, the diversity in the team which has lost the identity of a 'team' by itself. Its the dignity of the person at stake and yes he delivers big time..

Thats the story of Chakk De India in short, but the way it unfolds itself on the celluloid in the direction of Shimmit Amin is excellent. CDI works big time not just because of the powerhouse performances of the cast, but because of the intensity of emotions portrayed during the duration of the movie. A girl is willing to desert her family for the love of her game while another is willing to do 'anything' for the position of the captain. Another girl is out there to teach a lesson to her boy friend according to whom the National game of India is just a stick and ball game. And yet another is out to prove her parents that she can make a mark in the world of Hockey. And above all of them who will do anything to get his dignity restored..

CDI may not reap harvest of profits for the Yash Raj films but it will surely stand out as one of the best attempts by the production house ever. Though I personally dislike Sharukh Khan for his over the top performance I cannot help but appreciate his performance in the movie. He is restrained, a wide gamut of emotions overflowing in him during the movie, from a coach who pits his girls against the men's hockey team for a chance to go to the World cup to the person who inspires the same team against the six times champion Aussies with a powerhouse speech. Seventy minutes is all you have in your life that could make a big difference in your lives, he tells the players, and you could easily associate that to yourself in all the crucial moments in life. For example, 3 hours is all you have in IIT JEE to enter the premier institutes of India or to spend the next four years in colleges which do not justify their existence as the Engineering colleges of India.

The girls perform equally well, Bindia as the senior player who has a wonderful game, but would refuse to play as the coach says just because she is a senior player in the team and wants the things her way. Watch out for her intense portrayal when she offers herself to Khan for the captaincy of the team. Though Vidya as the captain doesnt have great scenes in the movie, she does leave her impact when you leave the theater. Balbir, who transforms from a person who doesn't have a restraint on her anger to the person who uses it properly against the Argentinians in the Quarters. Komal, the bubbly young girl who wants to teach the Memsahib Prreti a lesson by making the maximum number of goals but passes the ball to her at the last moments of the finals for the sake of the nation. And above all my favorite among the lot, Preeti Sabarwal who almost loses her breath for a place in the team and is out to prove her boy friend Abhimanyu Singh that she has a career of her own as an independent woman and doesn't heed to the whims of the star cricketer. She is my favorite among the lot not because she is a gora memsahib as mentioned by Komal, but because of the enigmatic look that she carries with herself throughout the film. A look that portrays dis interest in the pettiness of Komal, a look that shows her determination for proving her might to her boy friend, a look of respect for the coach while at the same time disliking his ways, a look that leaves you haunting even after the movie is over as to what was really going on in her head while enacting the role and what emotion she was actually trying to emote more than others..

CDI might not fit in the regular Bollywood dance and routine but it is definitely worth a watch. I am sure the film would bring the same kind of inspiration about hockey as was brought by Rang De Basanthi in the youth about the country as a whole, but guess what, just as days pass by, CDI will not be able to retain the inspiration just like RDB couldn't. I still remember seeing a lot of Yahoo groups formed by youth of India who got inspired by RDB, but that was all it could go to, before it became just any other thing. Sure, CDI will generate excitement about our national game Hockey, and might retain it for a year or two, but in the wave of cricket that sweeps the nation by its feet, the national game will keep trying hard to justify its identity in the nation, until the Association and the government decide to do something to retain the lost glory...

Getting things done - Using memory where it is actually needed

This post of my previous roommate got me interested in GTD (Getting Things Done). Being the lazy guy that I am, I didn't get to read entirely of the concept and how to use it, but during a quick glance at wiki there was one statement that caught my attention. "If you could do something in less than 2 minutes, you must do it immediately. Procrastination is not going to help you. Another thing of interest is the fact that you should spend your time and brain in what matters the most, in doing things, not in remembering them or in thinking about what needs to be done.

This got me thinking and I realized that I spend more time in recollecting similar things again and again and many times end up not doing it. For example, whenever I do my laundry, most of the times, I forget to put my towels for laundry along with my clothes, and I usually end up going for a second round that is actually not necessary ending up paying $2 more. Not only that, every time I visit Walmart, I spend more time thinking about what I need to buy, than the time spent in finding the item or in getting it at the counter. Inspite of that, I end up missing something or the other making another trip all over again. Then I thought about how my Mom used to do it when I was young. She kept a book and before going to the grocery store, she would think about all the necessary items, make a list of it and take it to the store thereby saving the time to think of things at the store. I wanted to follow this approach, but there is still a problem with this approach. Every time, you will make a list, and during the making you spend your memory thinking of all the items that might be necessary. A small but significant amount of memory is being wasted in this process. Also there is a chance of losing that note book or if it was maintained in a excel sheet, maintaining a lot of them and tracking them is an issue. I thought about this for a little while, and I zeroed down on an approach and this has been working pretty good for me.

Here it is..

List down all the items you would ever buy from a Walmart or a Target in an Excel sheet or even better in a Google Spreadsheet. Look at your past couple of months receipts if you think you are forgetting some. Spend some time in preparing this list, since its only a one time task. Once you feel that your list is as complete as it can get, keep it handy. Every time you visit a Walmart or Target, check against the list and note the items that you are currently out of.. What does this save you. It saves you the cognitive process of recollecting what items you are out of, since you have all the items that you need in the list and you are checking against it.. This does save considerable amount of memory that you could probably use for some other tasks :) This was my approach. If you think of a better approach or you have a better approach that you follow, please don't hesitate to drop a line in the comments..

This is not applicable to just the Grocery list. This is applicable to anything and everything. For example, you can make a list of all things that you would ever need to take to a laundromat, and when you get ready to go there, check against your list, and you know what you missed... If you are a consultant and keep shifting frequently, then make a list of all the places that you need to change address in. The next time you shift, all you have to do is to check against this list. Google Docs is the best place to save this information because, your computer might crash or you might change your system but you will still have all your lists safe. If you are thinking, what if Google goes down, then all I could say is, (though I don't believe this would happen in the near future) Bad time, you need to prepare your list one more time...

Also you can apply this to your goals in life. Make a list of all the things that you want to do. If you could do something in less than 5 minutes, don't list it, just go finish that task and come back. Once you have set up your tasks and goals, arrange them in short term, medium term and long term and also based on their priority. When you have some time to do things, you should use that time to do one of these rather than in 'thinking' what to do at that point of time. This does matter because time saved is time spent effectively.. After all, it makes no sense in spending time in thinking of the same things redundantly like preparing a list from the scratch everytime.... You might come up with a rapidly different approach to your issues, but at the end of the day, the idea is focusing on the tasks than in thinking about the tasks to be done over and over. Good luck...

Dil Hai Hindustani

What Indians think when asked what is one thing that is unique about India. A variety of things have been spoken in the video. Unity in Diversity indeed..

So what is one thing that you think is unique about India???

Favorite Food Restaurants in Dallas

I haven't done any personal posts in this blog so far. But one of my best friends' anneK tagged me for the favorite food spots here and so here we go. If this post bores you to hell, then you know whom to blame now. For starters, I currently stay in the Dallas / Fortworth area, TX, but I will be moving out in a couple of weeks, so I wanted to mention my favorite food places here before I leave. That I am an Indian and like Indian food is no big secret since you can easily figure that from my name and my posts. So please bear with me if you find bias towards more Indian kind of food.

1. Madras Pavilion: I lost count of how many times I would have visited this place, and one thing that pulls me towards it is the fact that it is completely vegetarian. Their buffet boasts some of the best South Indian varieties and their menu is huge too. Their take at the North Indian dishes is not so good, but as far as the South Indian food is concerned, they are more or less authentic. The weekend buffets offer a wide variety of dishes and God, do I curse myself after every buffet for adding more carbs to my flab.. If you are strongly looking for a Gobi Manchurian or smooth Aloo parathas, then the place to go is Udipi Cafe, a little distance away from Madras Pavilion

2. Zaks Thai Restaurant: Formerly known as Thai Frisco, their Thai menu is pretty good. Though their Pad Thai leaves you asking for a more tastier version, the other varieties like Red, Green or Yellow curries are pretty good. With a Spring Roll and a Side Salad offered with most of the dishes, the meal fills you up to a decent extent. Don't go for their yellow Big Noodles though. I am still regretting my afternoon's decision of choosing it for lunch.

3. Olive garden: I guess there is not much debate about this place around here to be one of the best authentic Italian cuisine chain around. Being a veggie, I have very little options here, and honestly I have never tasted anything other than a Egg Plant Parmigiana but that alone is enough for enticing me towards the restaurant at least once a month. I don't know how much of an apetite The Minnestrone soup with the smooth French bread creates as an apetizer, but I sure am not complaining. Oh, and how can I forget the yummy Tira Misu there. It's delicious. If you haven't tried it yet, then you do not know what you are missing.

4. Taj Restaurant: I don't remember their full name since I only visited it twice, but this is more or less like an Indian fast food shop. Tastewise, I would give it number 1 rating, because everything there is excellent and pretty inexpensive. But the vicnity and the maintenance leave me asking for more. If you want to get a very good Dosa or Upma Pesaratt, then this is the place to go.

5. Banana Leaf Thai cuisine: This is a slightly expensive Thai restaurant but the taste and the ambiance is very good. Watch out for their Pineapple fried rice which has so many fried cashews that would leave you wondering, how many calories you would have to burn that night to make up for it. If they would serve me any faster than they actually do, I would go there once a month definitely..

Now that you have my choices here and know where to look for me the next time my post offends you, let me sign off not tagging any more people to write about their favorite restaurants, because if they want to blog about their favorite food places, they don't need a tag from me to do so :)