IMs and Life

Last week was msn messenger’s 10th birthday. Life has changed so much so because of a messenger! I remember coordinating my project in college YM, No doubt I do that in Office Communicator today too!

Some good experiences about messenger – Meeting old friends, Keeping in touch with some one who is Continents apart or just pinging anyone on a morning and saying Good Morning. Even seen cases of people falling in love on a messenger! – Cupid lives in messengers too!!

What started as a bug fix to keep track of a person on MS Net meeting started off this revolution (Source : http://windowslivewire.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!2F7EB29B42641D59!41264.entry?sa=427562354). Also its grown just from sending text messages to Voice, Video chats, Online collaboration, Instant file/photo sharing etc.

Messenger has become so much so a part of life and changed life so much, be it as a Windows app or a Web app or even a Mobile app. I can easily say I cant live without pinging someone on the web each day in my life!

Coming to some facts and impact on environment :

Imagine if a single-page letter was mailed for every one of the 1.6 billion Messenger sessions that happen every day. The individual pages lined up one after another would stack up to the moon within a day! The weight would weigh 33 times more than the Endeavor Space Shuttle (with boosters and tank).

And by the way, using Messenger instead saves 2.8 million trees every day.  :-)

Long live the Messenger Phenomenon!

IsLifeBecomingSad() //update!

Had a great weekend! Met friends, went out, caught up with the world. Waiting for the coming weekend, Sure it’ll be much better!

Function is returning false for now!

yay!

IsLifeBecomingSad()

Haven’t had time to catch up with life, world, family, friends, books, blogs etc in the last 3 weeks :(

Sure the function above returns true when I pass the above parameters to it

Am I becoming a workaholic??

The year that was….

2008 was a mixture of good and bad as usual. But it has changed my life considerably.

Some of the stuff in 2008 were

My entry into the corporate life

Staying away from home! : Now I too am in the group who crave to go home now and then! lol.. Apart from this responsibility, making independent decisions are a part of life now.

Meeting new people, travelling places! : Away from home means friends are god and goddesses! Anyways I have made many good friends in this year. Every time a re-shuffle happens I have missed lots of people and got adjusted and realized that Change is a part of life, you can’t ignore it! But some of them have influenced me a lot.

Waiting for weekends : I too wait for a weekend starting Monday! Wish weekdays were weekends :P

A longing to get back to Student life : One thing a college pass-out  longs is getting back to student life! I too have got this from a long time and trying my best to get back! All you guys in college and wanting to get out of it please note this!

Lost my pet, she was like a sister to me!(Ref prev blog)

With hopes of a better year, as always!

Srinidhi!

9 Years of awesome association

It was the 30th of June 1999, when we got a pet home. She a terrier x pom. From initial apprehensions it was a great journey into the years that came.

She became famous among our family, friends and neighbours. She was/is a daughter for my parents, a sis to me and a grandchild for my grandparents. She even had Uncles and aunts! Such was the attachment we shared! I remember a family friend who still says I'm an uncle for the doggy!

Months passed and years too.. She was the babe of the family and we too were of that opinion. Companionship, acceptance, emotional support, and unconditional love were highly noticed.

I remember her taking only the front seat of the car! Never used to sit in any other seat! She used to jump from the back seats into the front. Dad was her fav and when he's around she acted like a queen in the house!(She was 1 anyway).

Memory takes me to all pranks she used to play. Now its all just memories to remember, cherish and ponder about. The morning licking, the walks, the long drives, her naughtiness while we gave her a bath, the birthday celebrations, the gifts she received, all as a movie seen.

It was a great life lived! I donno if she made it happen on us, or the otherwise, or was it both ways? The last one seems to be the correct one.!

On this day as she is laid to peace with due respects in the grounds of People for Animals, I salute the charm and the attachment we shared.


Hats off to you Sonu/Boshi/Puttu/SaNNi!
Miss Yaaa...
Remember you always..
God bless,
Srinidhi

The importance of FOS (Factor of safety)

This is going to be one of my first technical posts!

Scenario: It was a rainy day yesterday and I had gone out to meet a friend. It was about 9’O clock in the night and I started from his place to mine. None of the autowalas were willing to drop me to my area and the ones who agreed were asking for an astronomical sum of money for just 4-5 Kms.

At-last after some 20-30 mins of auto hunting, I finally got one. It was on sharing basis (meaning he can pick-up as many people on the way!). Anyways I took it without having any other options.

There were already 2 people in the auto and I got in. After some time he stopped at some place and he picked up two more guys, they got in and were seated next to the driver. After a few mins another one! The auto was already loaded to its limits and the driver claimed passenger6 to be a friend and made him sit in the front! Passenger6 squeezed his way into the auto, and here it is auto loaded with 7 people including the driver! I don’t know if the driver had any place and where he rested his a.. on!

As I said it was a rainy day and there were many ponds formed on the way, I just hoped the auto would hold up and cross the ponds in 1 piece!

At last after a half an hour journey (Usually takes 10 mins if 3 passengers are in the auto!) there I was in my area, after I got down I remembered the concept of FOS and imagined what would be my plight if it weren’t implemented!!! (Guess the engineers at the auto making company use an astronomical number as factor of safety!!!)

Definition of FOS: FOS = Failure Load / Design Load

Explanation in terms of auto: Designed for 4 people, assuming that each passenger has an avg weight of 70Kgs, it is designed for carrying a weight of some 300Kgs excluding the self-weight. Now imagine weight of 7 people and their luggage, the load would be easily beyond 600 kgs!

Even if you load the auto more than what it is designed for, it won’t breakup, as failure load is much higher than the design load, as FOS is taken into consideration while in design! (Ex if you design something for 20Kg and the FOS is 3, Failure takes place only at 60 Kg hence even if you load it beyond 20Kg, to certain extent it holds!)

The same hold good for all people who go triples on a bike!
Thank you FOS!!!

The Goal, A Process of Ongoing Improvement

Its 2 months i bought this book THE GOAL. A book bought when one of my close friend recommended reading it. Since then i have been a fan of Eliyahu M Goldratt. Being a mech engg manufacturing plants have always fascinated me and I could follow the story very easily.

A truly inspiring book for young engineers and managers to be!!

The main character is Alex Rogo, who manages a manufacturing plant where everything is always behind schedule. A second story line, which only occasionally intersects with the main topic of the book, describes Alex's marital life.

Alex Rogo plant manager working desperately trying to improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster, so is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant-or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a physics professor from student days-Jonah (Goldratt himself)-to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done.

Though a fat book, the narration and the suspense keeps the reader wondering "What will happen next??" and this happens on and on even with the secondary story too! (This was what kept me reading it without stops sometimes till 2 am!!)

Though a fiction I've learnt a lot about Approach to a problem,Problem solving, Thinking Processes and paths, work-life balance etc.

Even though you may feel its for mechanical&production engineers when you go through the preface of the book, I feel it gives all people a serious message about the thinking process usually adopted and gives an idea on 'how out of the box' thinking can help solving problems easily. Also after reading the book the reader,( be it a CEO, a Manager, a student or even an ordinary human) gets a fair idea of "what a GOAL is ?"

I've recommended this book to all my friends and continue to do so even now.

Now i've bought a book "It's not luck" authored by Goldratt expect a post on it in the coming days!!!!