New Blogger Interface

Been a while since I've been on blogger and am pleasantly surprised with new clean interface. Got to check out how this works from my Arc. 

Netscape - End of Days

Its the end of days for my favourite browser once, Netscape! Check out the article...

http://blog.netscape.com/2007/12/28/end-of-support-for-netscape-web-browsers/

Silverlight v/s Flash

Flash guys eat your hearts out! :-))

http://shoutat.blogspot.com/2007/08/microsoft-silverlight-vs.html

How much are you really working for?

We all live in an era of CTCs, fast moving salaries, benefits, etc, etc...

We live in an era of late nights, night outs, unpaid overtime...


Which then brings upon a question of how much are you really earning for the work you do?

Before embarking upon deciphering this, let us define a criterium upon which we shall measure what we are getting. I like to call this criterium Rupees per Hour and for those less fortunate to not be living in India we shall call it Money per Hour. But for the rest of this post you'll see it as rupees per hour, so please do all the conversions to whatever feels good for you, implicitly. :-)

Ok, so now lets take a look at a scenario. There were 2 guys with the same background and work experience who were working in different companies. One guy was earning Rs.35K per month and the other guy was earning Rs.50K per month.

The minute you look at this scenario you're thinking, ok cool, one guy is earning 50K. Sounds cool! Well lets go a little deeper into this.

Mr 35K was working just 40hrs a week while Mr 50K was working 60hrs a week. Some quick calculating will reveal that in a month, Mr 35K was earning Rs.218 per hr while Mr 50K was earning Rs.208 per hr. Surprise, surprise, a guy earning more per month is actually earning less per hour? Maybe you're not that surprised and you're probably thinking that hey its just Rs.10 an hour. But is it really that?

There is only a Rs.10 difference on an hourly basis but every week Mr 35K is gaining 20 hours per week over Mr 50K. Let us suppose that Mr 35K is an average player on the stock market and is capable of spending his 20 extra hours each week to make Rs.5K per week. That means that Mr 35K is now earning another 20K per month. Add that to his salary and he's earning Rs.55K. But wait that's more than Mr 50K! Now how did that happen?!

Obviously making Rs.5K per week on the stock exchange is maybe being a little ambitious... On the other hand someone may say that they'd make much more than that! The point is that Mr 35K has generated something that can potentially be worth a lot more than the extra 15K in terms of salary. He's earned 20 hours of extra time which invested could potentially earn you a lot monetarily.

I'm not going to go into sermons about how free time can lead to better balance in life and things, because I'm basically trying to convince guys who are ready to work long hours to earn more money. My advice is then, spend your time more fruitfully. :) There's a lot you can do to earn more money than slog it out.

I'm reminded of a story here about a person who works in a particular company. He was a workaholic to say the least and was on one of those "critical", "its gotta be delivered" kinda projects and he was under a lot of pressure to complete within in the month. In order to meet the deadlines he was working late nights and weekends much to the distaste of his family who would sometimes accompany him to work on a Sunday. Well the project got over but his family was really pissed off and made him take them on a vacation to a hill station which cost the guy around Rs.21K. He came back after a 2 week vacation and was joking that this project had cost him Rs.21K.

Well the question here is, did it really cost him just Rs.21K? Lets assume that him being a senior engineer in his team was earning Rs.100K per month and was supposed to work 40hrs a week. Now with his schedule he was working 80hrs a week. That's double of what he was being paid to work. Which basically meant that he was getting only half his salary if you talk of rupees per hour. So in the end he ended up gifting the company Rs.50K. So now what did the project cost him? It cost him Rs. 71K!

In our quest to do better, to earn more money, we're often found trying to meet unrealistic commitments either made by us or made by others. What is important to realise is whether its really worth it. That's not to say that working long hours will not get you anywhere. I mean sure at the end of the day, putting in long hours does make you more available which is going to lead to career growth in one form or another. But, if you're talking about money, I think you seriously need to re-evaluate your rupees per hour and ask yourself,

"How much am I really earning?"

Amazing 3D sounds

Just check this virtual barbar's shop out:

http://david-heron.me.uk/blog/2007/04/08/virtual-barbershop

Tips

Often we're left wondering what can we do better to achieve more at work. This is a nice article that has 10 tips to help you succeed at the workplace. So take a look at this "Free Gyaan":

http://paddyliveshere.wordpress.com/2007/04/30/10-tips-to-succeeding-at-the-workplace/

Back!

Ok, so after roaming around a bit going to Vox and wordpress and what not, I guess I've finally found that I got to come back to blogger. :-) Oh well.. guess that happens!

Found a different place

Hey just incase you still view this area of my post, I've since shifted it now to http://venkkats.wordpress.com

So, please update your blog readers :-)

Windows Live Writer!

Well this is a realy cool blogging applicaton I've got my hands on now. Its called Windows Live Writer and it lets you compose your blogs in the comforts of MS's visually appealing UIs. :-) I actually like it cause it gives you things in a WYSIWYG form so you can edit the pictures and other things with ease. Man that's something you just can't get right when you're on blogger!

Check this app out if you get the chance. Am too lazy to put up the link so just go do a live search for windows live writer! ;-) Enjoy!

50% pass, the icing on the cake!

So I shifted to Bangalore last week and by Tuesday felt like a fish out of water wondering if I'd done the right thing... Sniff sniff... its always a bit nostalgic leaving... Somehow I thought I wouldn't feel it considering the amount of travelling I've been doing but then 12 years in one place was a lot longer than my other best of 4. Still things seem to be fitting in now...

Well, the first week at work here was anything but lite... And trust me sitting in a conf room for a large part of the day is not exactly 'fun'. :-) Still I somehow got through the week and was kinda relieved that the weekend had come and that I'd actually be home to do something instead of just coming home to sleep! It was really a learning week, especially the travelling. 1.5hrs each way and well all I can say is that I'm glad I had those 50 songs on my trusty V3i to listen to while on the bus.

Cut to the weekend. Man I had a large set of items set to go like getting a new cell number, picking up a bag and setting up the wireless LAN in the house. Phew seemed like a lots tasks and in the end I was amazed that I got all of it done on Saturday itself!

The cell connection was ready in like half and hour. Man I never knew that a government agency like BSNL could operate that fast. I still remember having to wait 10 days for Hutch in Mumbai to activate my number! Hmpf! Go Gov! Got the bag as well pretty easily, but then the wireless LAN had me in tangles. Finally got a piece of info that I should connect my broadband into a normal LAN port instead of the internet port. Thing works like a dream now. I also managed to add access control and WEP security (whatever that is...). The security stuff had me in twists at the beginning but then it worked out well in the end.

So that explains what the cake was but then what's the icing I'm sure you're wondering. Well... I checked out the results for the CNET quiz and woooooo hoooooo I got the marks I needed to pass! :-) Exactly 50% marks that were required. Man I can still remember the days of trying to get 90% and all and now its down to just passing! Oh well... guess the times have changed. LOL!

So that's the 50% icing on my cake this week. Just can't wait to see how the coming week turns out.

Something to keep this going...

Just writing something to keep this place going... There's nothing really to comment on other than Israel and well that's really not something that has lack of coverage for me to spend space on it :-) Went to see Golmaal and it is a cool flick. Definitely worth seeing!

"When in doubt always blame the other guy!"

If only I'd left half an hour later...

There are times when you feel, why did I do that? I guess this is one of those days looking at the amount of rain that fell!

Here's some of the snaps I managed to capture on my adventure out there:

Never seen S V road this empty!

The water is rising in SEEPZ

SEEPZ getting its fair share of water!

S V Road is really never this empty!

England go HOME!!!

There's only one way to describe what England did in the penalty shootout and that's 'pitiful'. After being gifted a 1 up lead they just couldn't hammer home the advantage. Its kinda strange how Gerrad missed but then if you can't hit those then you better be hitting home! Looks like they could learn a bit from the Germans on how to hit penalities!

Microsoft to buy eBay????

Perhaps I'm late on this but then is Microsoft going to buy out eBay???

http://news.com.com/2061-11199_3-6077695.html

This seems to have interesting implications in the dymaics of the on going Google - MS wars. :-)

Do read the comments section of the article. Makes more interesting reading than the actual article itself.

Reservations? Lets talk about economical upliftment!

Been a long time sicne I've got around to blogging but when you read someting like:

http://reservation-and-present.blogspot.com/

then it really makes you wanna get up and say something.

There's probably been enough said on how reservation is bad blah blah and what all these articles seem to portray is that they want reservation for the low income backward castes.

My question (as I have posted a comment on that above blog) is how does this help the backward upper castes? When you look at places in India today, its starting to become a fact that OBC = Other Brahmin Communities! Upper caste people facing poor socio-economic situations and on top of that now have to put up with more reservation, less chances of getting to do something to uplift themselves. Some justice eh?

What we need is not social discriminaiton, but some sort of system to help those that don't have enough money to live properly to gain some sort of livelihood. Lets try and look at providing a truely equal sense of upliftment for people.

Innovative monitoring

Interesting article about using a PSP for plant monitoring. Read on:

http://www.automationworld.com/cds_search.html?rec_id=2002

Holi

This post has nothing to do with Holi other than the fact that its being put up on 'Holi' day. The good thing though about today is that we get a holiday for it! Bonus!

There was something intereseting that crossed me yesterday though... I came across this blog which was saying goodbye to everyone. Something to the extent of, "I had a good time blogging and reading all your comments but now its time to say goodbye." Seemed kinda weird, cause you can blog no matter where you are unless of course someone has unplugged your net connection.

What it did though was re-iterate this thing I had come across of how people are now communicating with eachother using blogs. Its like, stuff email and IM, I'll just blog about myself and people can come and comment on it and end up knowing what's going on with me and what I think by reading my blog. Reminded me of message queues in programming. Asynchronous communication if you want.

Subscribe to a service. The service keeps posting information. Whenever you feel like seeing it, you go and view it using your service reader. Pretty neat. Something I guess that .NET also is trying to push with WCF et al. I could be wrong of course, so correct me here if I am but it does look like message driven architectures are coming up.

Anyway, while this type of asynchrous stuff seems good as far as programming goes, but is just a bit too weird to think of talking to people that way. Maybe that will also evolve. :-)))

Nothing to say... Just putting up another blog entry.

Programming tips...

Came across this nice article for newbie programmers on some good tips for programming... Somehow the tips seems like something we could all do with when we find ourselves spending a lot of time writing code.

http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/academics/courses/is255/f01/assignments/assignment4.html

"Its sometimes easiest to just keep going rather than stopping and starting later"

Sify Tales... part 7

Ok guys, so just when you thought that the clog of Sify tales was over, its time for the grand finale! :-)) It so happned that after a lot of emailing and wasting of time, the gurus of swindling thought that they'd give me a free pack. A free pack! Wooo HOOOO! Am I lucky or what! LOL! But then you can hardly call 7 days of free surfing worthy compensation for a 20 day loss. Oh well. I guess I need to learn how to bargain, an art I unfortunately just don't possess.

Well... I used the 7 days to the best that I could. 7 days got over. And well the connection was still working. So I thought since I had read about the connection being enabled late, I had been given some extra days. I used it on that day as well. And then next day when I logged in, it showed my expiry date as NULL. Interesting piece of software they got there. I wonder how many people can understand what NULL means on your expiray date. Well to me it meant, this connection is yours forever! LOL.

Somehow, good things don't last that long and anyway I was getting sick and tired of the pathetically slow speeds they offer in comparison to Triband!!! I logged in and it showed that the account would expire on the 21st of November. Okay... so now something was fishy. It appears that SIFY likes to just disconnect and renew your account without asking you ever if you want to do that. Well I guess like the idiot I am I decided that I won't use cause these guys may come around asking for their dues. Actually I should have vasooled the opportunity but then, you know.. I think I'd get my work done quicker @256 kbps on Triband rather than @64kbps on SIFY...

Ok, cut to a couple of days ago. Local cable wala shows up asking for money. I must say that he was most uncerimonioulsy sent away. Cut to yesterday when I got a call from SIFY. Asked them, "How do you expect a customer to continue with a company that chooses when it shall disconnect and reconnect their connections. Was a pathetic experience."

I wouldn't say that I got fair compensation in the end. I mean you can hardly call 7 days free in lieu of 20 days perfect especially after having taken another internet connection. I should have really gotten one month's money back from them. But anyway, I guess its just a question of what's better:

"Something's better than nothing."

OR

"If you're doing something then do it properly!"