Vanguard introduced a index mutual fund tracking the entire world's stock market. I do not know if any other company had introduced such a fund a before.

Having been a very satisfied customer / investor of Vanguard, it came as a great news for me. Great opportunity to invest in one fund and ride (or fall) the entire world market. As usual, expense ratio is very nominal. Helps to keep most of your money in your own pocket. No fancy fund managers nibbling away at your hard earned money.

Looking at recent stock market performance, it is easy and natural to feel like taking away all money from market and think of doing something else. Of course, that is a good strategy if and only if you have a better investment opportunity. Otherwise, pulling out money when market is not doing well is the worst thing one can do. This is even more true if you are invested in a highly diversified portfolio. Highly diversified portfolios with long investment horizon (say 10 years or more) have done well regardless of intermittent market downturns. Unless history proves us all wrong, this time should be no different. Sit tight and very soon you will be sitting on a pot ( that is pot of gold).

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:23 AM EDT

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The man who views the world at 50 the same as he did at 20 has wasted 30 years of his life. - Muhammad Ali

If someone says, he or she has 10 years of experience, you may want to think about it. Is it 1 year of experience repeated 10 times or 10 years of varied experience? What do you want if you have to hire someone?

Going back to the quote - I am not even sure if anyone can be that frozen-in-time enough to see life the same way year over year. But, it does seem to be possible, if one does not open himself or herself to new experiences. Or if new experiences do not come their way at all.

I think many of us do not experience richness of life because we do not welcome new experiences in our lives. In the era of crazy paranoia, when parents are drilling in to the heads of their kids that every stranger is a potential assaulter, do you expect those kids to open up and experience varied things in life? They expect life to be a straight line. One miss, that's it. They are lost and parents have to come back to set the line straight again. Things were much better earlier. May be situations permitted as well. Kids back then were much less protected. Of course, parents did take care of kids but this height of caution or madness was not there. You skinned your knee while playing. That's fine. Wash it with dettol, put some bandage if you like and forget it. Only if it got infected, parents took note. In a way, it was good. Made us learn that 'if an experience does not kill you, it only makes you stronger.' If it kills you, no worries. You are not going to be there to regret it anyway. Not to say that one should go after looking for experiences which may kill him or her. But, the point is not deny an opportunity by always obsessing what may happen. How many have been able to prevent what had to happen? If it has to, it will. 'Your will and not my will shall be done'. Who said that? Jesus?

Experiences are free in life. Game is free. Players wanted? Are you game?

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:39 AM EDT

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Engineering is the professional art of applying science to the optimum conversion of natural resources to the benefit of man. - Ralph J. Smith

"Scientists build to learn. Engineers learn to build."

Applies to software engineers as well? Not sure. May be to some. But, certainly not to the majority of people who would like to call themselves as 'software engineers'. Software engineers creating resumeware (i.e. software written using latest fads just so that your resume looks good) 'learn to learn'. That's about it. XP has a term called 'technical debt'. Resumeware is probably the worst form of technical debt. Resumeware is over engineered solution. It's like using sledge hammer when a small wooden or rubber hammer would do the work.

Steve McConnell, popular author, writes passionately about the profession of software engineering and why it has not matured like other engineering disciplines. If you get a chance, read his book 'gold rush'. Fantastic read. He has touched upon this subject in other books as well. Software engineering has been aptly described like this - ' if we were to build buildings as we build software, first woodpecker that made rounds would have resulted in the building collapsing to the ground.' Not always. There is always good software written but a lot is fragile enough for one wood pecker of a change to push it down to ground.

Steve McConnell makes a compelling case in his books that people are taught computer science in schools and then pushed to become software engineers. Go back and see what scientists and engineers do differently. Computer science programs are extremely light on rigor and discipline that it takes to develop commercial software. Some people learn engineering aspect of software engineering in good companies under the mentoring of some veterans and some may go entire career without having that opportunity. Universities should have computer science programs but also should have a separate software engineering program where after learning basics of computer science, students are trained in software engineering so that when they join industry, they can start writing some commercial strength software. People who want to be computer scientists can take theoretical courses and can go to graduate school and get advance degrees to become computer scientists. Software engineers, good ones, are a different breed altogether.

It is good that a lot of schools (at least in the US) have started offering graduate degrees in software engineering. Of course, many times, courses offered are still tilted heavily towards science than engineering but it is a good start

Of course, if you are smart, you can learn anything, anywhere, anytime. Question is at what expense and at whose expense.

More on Steve McConnell's books later.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:12 AM EDT

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He who says, "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me," has not been hit by a dictionary. - Leo Pennworks

I like quotations. I like them even more when someone takes a nice quotation and mangles it in such a way as to sound funny. Oh, yeah! being hit by a dictionary can be fatal. Especially, by those old ones with hard covers. So, keep only paper back dictionaries :)

"People living in glass houses should change clothes in the basement." - mangled version of "People living in the glass houses should not throw stones."

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:04 AM EDT

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Solitude & Loneliness - many times we tend use these words interchangeably. However, there is a huge difference between two states of the same matter - that is being alone.

Best thing I heard was - solitude is the joy of being alone. Loneliness is the pain of being alone. Nothing I can think of conveys the difference between solitude and loneliness better than this.

Another point is - we tend to confuse solitude as the state we are in just because we are alone and not in pain. Since we are not in pain while being alone, it can not be loneliness. So, it has to be solitude. Thus goes our logic. However, real solitude is when you are able to reach your inner-self. When you emerge out of it, you should have some new insight that would help you better yourself.

I am no expert but only way I can simulate something close to solitude is by being alone and more importantly by doing absolutely nothing. OK, thinking apart. If you can stop thinking too, bonus to you. First thing to create solitude is to shut ourselves to all kinds of external stimuli. Shut down TV, radio, internet, magazines etc. and try to spend a couple of hours on a comfortable chair doing nothing. Try it and you find it so hard. Within minutes, your hands stretch to some near by book or remote or your laptop or radio or phone. Even if we start off with half hour, that is a challenge to go for.

Loneliness is artificial. It is a sense of being lost, being disconnected. I hope nobody ever have to go through that. Loneliness is most often self inflicted. In this modern world, we have become so paranoid, we hesitate to welcome people and experiences into our life thinking that something or somebody may exploit us. No wonder we continue to build walls around us and religiously make it higher and higher everyday that let alone people reaching out to us. They don't even know we exist. If loneliness is the result of such lifestyle, you need to first get out and smell the roses before trying to get into solitude. Pick up the phone, call people. Reach out to friends. Send e-mails. In one or the other way, reconnect with whatever you are missing. You alone have got yourself into that state and you alone can get yourself out of it. There are tonnes of things to help you. Most likely you will reach out equally desperate lonely souls and you will feel better. After you have reconnected back, you can follow some steps to get those golden few moments of solitude.

Without consciously creating moments of solitude, we will probably skimming the surface of life's ocean. As they say, surface swimmer gets nothing except salt water. Only deep divers emerge out with pearls hidden deep under. Choice is yours - pearls or salty water from surface level swimming.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:50 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, 18 August 2008 12:07 AM EDT

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The way we see the problem is the problem. - Stephen Covey, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

I agree. This is the case most of the time. Problem is not a problem at all. It is a situation. How we react to a situation can result in given situation becoming a problem or opportunity. Why do we react to a particular situation in a particular way? If you observe, there is a very small amount of time from we recognize a situation to how we label it- as a problem or otherwise. That small time is used up by 'self-talk'. Self talk is how our brain interprets the situation and comes up with a monolog that we hear. Even if we aware of this mechanism, we can go a long way in controlling the kind of self talk that we generate. This self talk is mostly negative and that's how we see many situations as problems. This self talk is the result of years of conditioning. We call it conditioning or what ancient Hindu sages termed as 'samskara'. This our auto-response to situations based on life's worth of experiences in the past. Once we recognize this, we can consciously make a point to insert a deliberate gap between seeing the situation and coming up with conclusion. You may not be successful at once. Even after inserting deliberate gap, you may hear the same old 'self talk'. That's ok. By becoming aware of this tendency, you are already taken a very important step. Keep trying and very soon self talk subsides and thinking improves. You get better clarity. This is a life long exercise and worth every effort. Treat it as experiment. There are no success or failure in experiments. Only outcomes.

When we change the way we look at things, things we look at change.- Wayne Dyer.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 9:50 PM EDT

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I normally shop online as much as possible. Other than perishables, I try to shop as much as possible all online. It saves times and aggravation of ever crowded stores. Crowd did not use to be this much back when I lived on east coast. On the west coast in California - may be because of high population density-stores are really crowded. Hell of an experience.

From time to time, still need to hit these stores for some urgent purchases. I used to go to Walmart for most of the times. Their prices are the best. But, they just don't seem to understand that it is not only the price that matters but also the ambience. Materials in Walmart stores are so densely shelved and haphazardly organized, it takes way too much to find what you want. Store personnel are not very easily accessible and many do not speak decent English. Shopping at Walmart in California is like entering hell. There is so much crowd that you bump into some cart or some person obstructing your way every step. By the time you clear all that it will take 2-3 hours to finish shopping for a few simple items. Ever since I moved to California, occasional visit Walmart has been mind-numbing exercise. Los Angeles area Walmart stores are the worst due to extremely high population density. Bay area Walmarts are little better but still it sucks to shop in person at Walmart. Online is okay.

For a change, went to Target today after not finding a couple of items at Walmart. What a refreshingly pleasant experience. Aisles are so spacious. So many cash registers. Much fewer people. Overall a refreshing experience. I am going to give up on Walmart at least while I continue to live in California. May be I will revisit them if and when I go back to the east coast. On west coast, with this much population density and their densely packed stores really drive me crazy.

Some practices at Walmart also drove me crazy today. For example, I wanted to buy a few cartridges of Mach 3 shaving blades. With great difficulty found them. They were in a locked cabinet. Looks like people steal them so they keep it locked. Wasted 15 minutes to find a store personnel to have it opened for me. She came, opened the cabinet, took out the 12 pack I wanted and then just left mumbling something. Looks like she wanted to ring that in right away. Before even I could realize she had vanished with the cartridges I wanted. May be she was waiting for me at some cash counter and I did not find her. Neither I wanted to ring that in right away as I had few more things to buy. What a pain. So, did not buy it there. Bought it at Target. No such stupid rule over there. Mach 3 were right there. Just picked them up and paid at the counter.

I normally shop a lot at Amazon.com. Firstly I use Amazon.com Visa card for almost everything. So every time I spend $2500, Amazon.com sends a gift certificate for $25. It is like 1% cash back. Not bad. Then I just go and buy most of the things at Amazon.Com. Prices are probably cheapest online. Amazon.com also works with several other stores and you are bound to find the best deal. For clothes, if you know your size well, www.blair.com is the best place. Returns are a breeze. Stuff is good. Prices are one of the best. Choices are also very good.

Anyway, Target got me as their customer for now. Walmart- good bye for time being. Fix your stores first and then we will see. Till then shopping at Walmart is something I won't even consider.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 8:50 PM EDT

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For those of us in the software business, 'if then else' is all too familiar. Most of our code is made up of writing lines after lines of code to handle all sort of exceptions that may come to the program in terms of inputs or other conditions raised by the software ecosystem. I read somewhere that there is more code in every program to handle exceptions than providing the functionality. It may take only few lines to get a program do what we expect it to do in ideal conditions. Most of the other lines of code are to handle if this happens or that happens. Thus the terminology - if then else.

Recently a friend of mine opened me up to another aspect of 'if then else' syndrome in our daily lives. Look at everything we do. It is full of 'if then else'. He made a case that our lives have become complicated because of this uncontrolled 'if then else'. Every time we think of doing something, we start thinking about all possibilities. Some idea comes to mind and then come plethora of 'if then else' pop up. Mind, having limited processing power and not being instruction oriented, can not process all these conditions. Result - confused mind. My friend has changed his philosophy to this - do whatever comes to mind first. If something has come to mind, it has not come just like that. Without your knowing, it has already been internally processed and that's the only reason why it has risen up to your conscious mind. If the particular idea was not a good one, sub-conscious would have killed it much before it bubbled up to conscious. So, if our sub-conscious has already done the processing, why do we want to engage in the futile effort of further analyzing it when we know that processing power of our conscious mind is so damn limited? Simplest way to put all this is- power of instruction. I also agree with some theories that say that more intellectual we get, less intuitive we get. Left brain has its own place but thinking that we can figure everything out is a fallacy.

My friend has since then started doing whatever comes to his mind. He just does not think twice. I asked him how well he has fared. He said he has been relieved much off late from the burden of over taxed mind. He stopped exploring all possibilities.' Just do it' is his philosophy. With several examples, he also made case that majority of his actions have turned out fine. Some actions taken based on first thought have been wrong but he could reverse them without much problem. Another benefit is he has been able to accomplish more. I thought how that is possible. I understood if you act more and think less, certainly you have more probability of accomplishing something more. So, increase the probability by doing more and thinking less.

For many of us, this is going to take fairly long time. First we have to take a step back and convince ourselves that intuition is the best logic. Secondly, we should open up to having to clean up the mess more often than not. But, being able to act more is important I can not think of a better way than 'just do it'. Otherwise, more thinking and more confusion.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:20 AM EDT

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"Ask....Thou Shall Receive" - Bible

For whatever reasons, we want so many things in life for ourselves but we don't seem to make enough effort to ask for them. You can probably recall from your own experiences. Every time you have yearned for something with all sincerity, you have got them. It may not have been easy but chances are you were not denied either. Many times, when we want something so desperately, the whole process seem to happen without our conscious knowledge. Won't it be great if we can take sometime to reflect on the process and systematize it so that we can use the steps to get more and more things we want?

I think the first step is to spend enough time to really think about what we want. It is easy to get what we want only if we know what we really want - so goes a saying. So, crystallize what you want. This is a long and slow process. Best done on paper. 'When you start inking, you start thinking.' Another point is to start listing every reason justifying why we want what we want. You can see for yourself many times we can not even come up with a handful reasons to justify what we want. If that continues to be the case after a few days, what we want is not something we are going to get it easily because destiny caters only to our needs and not our greed. So, ask for those things that you really need and have enough reasons to convince yourself and HIM all the reasons you need. This lack of reasons is the key reason we do not get all that we want. There is no need for us to get all that. On the other hand all that we really need normally is given to us when we sincerely ask for it. When we sincerely ask for anything, we are also blessed with all resources to operationalize the plan to go and get it. You can validate it for yourself. Look at your education, degrees, jobs, titles,family, friends, foes etc. You got it because you asked for it and your needs were justified.

Another thing is when you ask, people normally do not deny. They will hardly deny when you can furnish some good reasons. They did study of this phenomenon on test subjects in photo copy shop. There was a line of people waiting to copy their documents. One man wanted to cut the line and do his copying ahead of others. He simply asked and people let him do that. They repeated the same experiment with other set of people. In the second case, the person who wanted to cut the line asked people if he can cut ahead of them and most importantly gave some reason to justify his request. This time they observed he got much better response. What made the difference? People are understanding and they respond better to reasoning. They repeated these experiments in several places and results were same everywhere. Ask and you shall get it. People just can't say No. It is hardwired in our psyche to say yes most of the times. If it was not like that we would not have survived as a society. Every time we say yes, we know that we may be in similar situation someday and we would need others to say yes to us too. So, ask and you shall get it. It is sad that some people misuse this but that is such a small fraction. We should not and will not learn to say No because someone sometime misused our inherent goodness.

So, resolve to ask with all sincerity anyone anything you really need and see for yourself you will get it. Ask for a million dollars. You shall get it - provided you have solid reasons to show why you need it.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 3:58 PM EDT

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It is a mistake to try to look too far ahead. The chain of destiny can only be grasped one link at a time. - Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

It is amazing how much time and money is wasted on so called 5 year, 3 year and 1 year strategic planning. Who knows how the things will be after 1, 3 5 years? Every year, half the time, companies are doing just that. Looking far ahead than anyone is capable of. They burn enough cash on that. Some companies even have strategic planning departments. They do their best to imagine the future and produce tonnes and tonnes of paper and nobody ever reads or implements them and it is back to usual 'what's the problem of the day?'

Early navigators scouring far out lands knew this. They had figured out that they can see only so far. But they could see their guiding 'North star' all the time in the sky. Using such a star as their reference point, they would recalibrate the course of their voyage once in every few days. What is the 'North star' for business? They are the goals we set for ourselves. They may not be as accurate as 'north star' because 'north star' is not affected by changing circumstances but goal may need to change. But, well defined goals can be pursued over 1,3,5 year time horizons. So, we have goals in the form of 'North Star', we start off with a strategy which will guide as far enough as practical say 1 or 2 quarters and then we take a step back and recalibrate our course. In case of ships, they may have veered away from the defined course for a while due to weather or some other obstacle. It is the time to recalibrate the course by again pivoting the 'North star' as the reference point.

Birds migrate from place to place. They know where they are going. But, do they follow the same route every year? No, they do not if the route they decided on has some problems such as wild fires or something else. They have some inherent GPS which automatically reroutes them. Sometimes they may end up using a shorter route or if the birds think taking shorter route will put them ahead of their schedule, they may choose to temporarily halt so that they can burn up the extra time. That's how we should run businesses. Following the plan blindly is like driving on a pre-defined route regardless of road conditions.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 2:03 PM EDT

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Nice way to look at guilt and anger. I think it was Buddha who said - 'you are not punished for anger but you are punished by anger.'

Best way to feel little less guilty about everything is to learn to forgive one most important person - yourself. It is easy to find people who are able to forgive almost anyone. You may even appreciate how a great soul that person is. But, ask him if he has forgiven himself for every mistake he has done. Chances are he is regretting them even now. So, learn to forgive yourself first. Mistakes are done and that's about it. No point feeling guilty about it. Many people feel guilty about lost opportunities. If the opportunity was meant for you, you would have seized it. Best way to look at such lapses is to reconcile that such opportunity was not meant for you. You can probably relate to it from your own example if you are professional worker. You really wanted to work for that cool company, tried your best to get through but you did not. They did not hire you and you forgot about it after a while. How does it feel only if you learn later that the company started having several problems afterwards? Is your guilt justified? Looking at every such miss as 'Boon in disguise' is the best way to look at bad things that we may not know all details at a given point. Bottom line is if you learn to go with the flow, you will eventually reach the ocean. Sooner or later. 'Don't sweat the small stuff. And it is all small stuff.'

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:52 PM EDT

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If you have no time at all, forget it. This post is not for you. Some of us tend to have some time on hand from time to time to kill time. Reading, watching TV, sports etc. become usual. Then gotta find something else to try.

Try this when you have to pass time next time. Best done when you are in front of a computer. This can also be done on a simple piece of paper with a pencil. It becomes easier to do on computer and a word processor like MS-Word.

Game is simple. Just remember any name and put it down. Then try to recollect when was the first time you heard it. Normally we learn names in some context. It may be while meeting someone new or through some incident. Start writing about the incident in 3-4 sentences. This may also remind you the approximate timeline when you remembered it. You can note down that also.

Funny thing is when you start doing this with names, as you write the incident when you first heard the name, it is possible that you will remember another 3-4 names. Just capture them. You can analyze them when you have to play this game again. If you choose a common name, you have to try really hard to remember the first time you heard it. As soon as you thought you remembered the first time you heard it, a thought starts lurking which will lead you to another earlier incident when you remembered it and so on.

I find this to be an amazing activity to go back in time.

Now you may ask - what's the use? Only use I could think of is that it may help you reconnect with some people you have lost in touch with. Once you choose a name, you can try to search that on the net and may find a way to reconnect with that person if you want.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 8:05 PM EDT

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If you have VoIP based telephone connection from providers such as Vonage, you may notice that call quality becomes poor when you are uploading large amount of data during activities such as uploading a large file or uploading movies via Bit Torrent etc. This is when a neat gadget like HBB1 Broadband Booster can make world of difference.

On high speed internet connections, download speeds are adequate but upload can become a problem as upload bandwidth is much less. So, without an intelligent QoS (Quality of Service) mechanism, your networking infrastructure does not know what to prioritize when upload bandwidth contention happens. This broadband booster does an awesome job of prioritizing VoIP traffic over other traffic for the duration of the call and thus improves the quality of telephone call. You can check this for yourself. For example, you can notice how your uploads are throttled down as soon as you begin a telephone call.

Great gadget. It uses smart algorithms and there is nothing much to tweak at all. This is good as many do not know exact details as how to configure QoS on some latest routers which do let you manually configure QoS settings. Price is around 60 dollars. I bought it on eBay. Another good source for excellent prices is buy.com.

I had also tried similar gadget from Linksys (Cisco company). But, it was not as good as Hawking. Hawking pioneered this technology. It appeared to me that Linksys also introduced one to just be there. Somehow, that did not work well for me.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:42 PM EDT

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Magic Jack - a neat gadget. If it lives up to its promise of unlimited phone calls for $20 / year, this is going to do nothing less than revolutionizing the way we have come to use telephones. I think it will at least few more months before all issues are ironed out. It still has some rough edges and does not work consistently and reliably. So, even if you buy it and find it working reasonably well for you, do not rush to cancel your other telephone service yet.

This gadget has created a lot of buzz among VoIP enthusiasts. There is a very informative 'unofficial' forum for Magic Jack. You will find tonnes of good information. A lot of undocumented neat information as well. You may want to go there from time to time as technical support is not very good with Magic Jack.

Overall, a neat toy if you are a VoIP geek. Go try it. You have nothing to lose as they are offering 30 day free trial. Even if you want to keep it beyond the trial period, it is just 50 bucks.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:29 PM EDT

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Tim Russert, a famous TV personality, passed away last week.

I saw Tim Russert in person when he was the chief guest for convocation ceremony of my alma-mater, Suffolk University, Boston, in 2003. Russert was there to be the chief guest and also receive honorary doctorate from Suffolk University. He received such degrees from many universities.

He spoke pretty well. He talked about his life's journey, had several words of wisdom for graduates and gracefully received the degree. He did not last the entire function which went on for 4 hours or so. He was gone soon after his speech and receiving his degree. But, still left a good impression on many who were part of the function.

It was little over 5 years ago. May 2003. I too received my MBA degree in the same function. So, it is somewhat personal when I read about his demise. Moreover, he is probably the one TV personality I have ever seen in person.

My his soul rest in peace.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 12:22 PM EDT

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My old wireless router stopped functioning after giving good service for over 5 years. It works fine as a regular router but 'wireless'ness is gone for some reason. May be something wrong with the transmitter. It was an old Belkin router bought in 2003. Good service so far.

Bought a new router. Belkin G. Nothing fancy as I do not play games on the net to require a fancy router. I have a separate Hawking Broadband booster to provide QoS (Quality of service) for VoIP phone. So, the router QoS does not matter much. This is a simple router. Much smaller than my earlier bulky router.

Worked out of the box. The set up CD is a waste of time. You do not really have to run it. Windows recognizes the router easily and you are online in no time. Always remember to configure some sort of security for your router so that nobody easily steals your broadband connection. It is easy to configure security using the console and choosing some simple encryption scheme.

Somehow I messed up the settings while doing something and wireless functionality was gone. I could go online by connecting directly to the router but not wirelessly. It was a mistake I had done while renaming the wireless connection. This was hidden somewhere in their console and I could not easily figure it out. So, called Belkin tech support. The engineer was very knowledgable and helpful. He set me right in no time and I have had good experience with this router since then.

Bought this at Best Buy as I could not wait a week to order it online and then receive it. That's how we are addicted to net these days. Right? The price online is much better. You can probably get the same router for $30 or so. At Best Buy, it was close to $40 plus taxes etc. On top of it, going there, parking and all hassles. I wish I had bought this one at the first sign of my older router dyeing. Anyway...

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:52 PM EDT

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San Francisco bay area normally has nice weather all through the year. Sometimes during summer months, weather can become quite hot. Since the weather is nice most of the time, many apartments do not have air-conditioners. I happen to live in one such place and when it got really hot a few weeks back, need for a cooler or air-conditioner became apparent.

I bought this one - http://www.air-n-water.com/product/AF-340.html. No complaints about the cooler as such. It does seem to do its job pretty well. Pretty heavy duty cooler with a large water tank where you can put water and if you desire ice cubes too. I wish it was bit smaller. Picture on the internet site looked smaller but in reality it is slightly larger than a mini-fridge. Since it was going to be a chore to return such a large item, I chose to keep it. Hopefully, it will be a good investment.

Few things to keep in mind if your apartment does not have an air-conditioner. You can buy a portable AC but you have to work the details of installing it before hand. They are not easy to install. Even the most portable AC requires some sort of mechanism to push hot air out and you need to do some do-it-yourself work to fix it. Since I was not game for all that especially if it required alterations to the windows etc., I chose to go with cooler.

Coolers work only if the humidity is not high in your area. Most of the dry areas should be fine. If the air is humid, they do not work well. Also they need to be placed in such a way that, they can draw fresh air which gets circulated over a wet screen to provide cool air. If you can not place it in such a way, cooler may not work well for you. Coolers also consume much less power. If you put ice cubes also, the room gets cooled pretty well.

The online retailer Air-N-Water seemed like a good place to shop. They have a wide variety of coolers and ACs. Prices seemed very competitive. They also offer free shipping on selected models. Just be careful about their restocking fee and return shipping if you have to return something if you do not like. Their 15% restocking fee plus having to pay return shipping was certainly a deterrent for me to return my cooler. I would have bought something much smaller if returning was free.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 10:36 PM EDT

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"Our biggest problem is that we do not have a bigger problem."

Create problem and go solve it. Some people think goal setting does not work very well but problem solving does. OK, if goal are not for you, then go after problems. The problem does not necessarily have to be your problem. It can be anyone else's problem too. You can be sure that you will be welcomed by anyone if you say you want to solve their problem. Go solve it and see how minor your current problems look.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 1:00 PM EDT

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Not sure if you have ever used UPS' 'I want my stuff now' feature. It's pretty neat. If you are like many, most of the times when UPS tries to deliver your package, you are away at work. They a leave a note and then make few more attempts to deliver. In the mean time, you can call them, ask them to hold your package at their facility, then you go and pick up your package when it is convenient to you. That's the normal process. There is another nice feature that I discovered recently.

When you get that note from UPS informing you that they tried to deliver and missed you, you can normally go online and when trying to arrange for alternate pick up method, you see a small hyperlink 'I want my stuff today (now)'. Once you click that, you can pick up your stuff on the same day as long as you are making that request within their time window. What happens is that when you select 'I want my stuff now' option, you can go to the nearest UPS center at the end of the day and pick up your package. This is especially convenient if you miss your package on a Friday. You do not have to wait till Monday to pick up the package. After you select 'I want my stuff now' option, UPS arranges to take out your package when the driver returns at the end of the day and they open their center for a short time at the end of the day (normally after 8 PM) and you can go and collect the package. UPS is pretty good about making sure that they can really hold the package for you on the same day. That's why they ask you to expect a phone call from UPS after you have placed the request. Normally within an hour after you place the request, they call you and tell you the time and place where to come and pick it up. You go there, follow the same process by showing your missed-delivery notice and ID and collect your stuff.

I was very impressed. I had missed the first delivery attempt on Friday. It was not going to be possible to be at home on Monday or visit UPS office to collect on Monday. I was preparing to wait for next week end to collect the package. Then I came across this nice feature and thought why not use it. I clicked 'I want my stuff now' link, provided my phone number. As expected, got a call from UPS within one hour and was asked to come to their facility at 9 PM sharp and that they would be open only for 15 minutes and I should collect it within that time. I went there around that time and there were quite a few people already. Looks like people like this feature very much. No wonder. Collected my stuff and was back in no time.

It is because of this kind of convenience features that UPS has continued to excel. I will certainly consider buying some UPS stock in the future. If a company can execute so efficiently, it is worth my business and investment. I liked their process very much. They want to make sure that they can really hold the package for you on the same day. That's why they ask you to wait for their call and only after they confirm, they ask you to come and pick it up.

Good job UPS.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 11:41 PM EDT

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B - Believe

L - Listen

A - Apologize

S - Satisfy

T - Thank

BLAST, in the words of David Novak, CEO of Yum Brands (which owns Pizza Hut, KFC etc.), sums up the customer management philosophy at Yum brands.

Cheers!

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Posted by Mahesh at 3:27 PM EDT

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