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!!!!

Officially an engineer!!!!!

Its already 1 week after the graduation day was held in my college. After 8 months it was back to college once again, full of fun, meeting friends, teachers, and some special people who always made college days memorable!

The function began at 1030 and before that we were all given the attire for the function. In the attire some looked serious, some funny, some like Harry potter without the wand!

The function was Presided over by Dr Kasturirangan, The former chairman, ISRO . After the oath, It was the address of the chief guest who spoke very well about India's achievement in the space technologies!! Also it was an inspiration for young engineers like me to emulate from the incidents he mentioned. Some of the the key words which caught my attention were "Respect yourself b4 respecting others, Spectacular successes and failures " and many more.... At the end of the function It was as usual photo sessions and lunch time...

After a few photos and a yummy lunch the day came to an end with some Ice creams as treat from a friend who had secured a rank!!!

All in all it was a wonderful day worth it for spending the whole day together with the ones I'll miss through out my life(Including the college, classes, campus, food point (food poison) friends, teachers and other staff)....

And for all of you who didn't turn-up on that day YOU MISSED IT!!! :P

1+ Years of great friendship

It has been a year and a half since a friendship between 4 people started and has gone strong and come a long way in each others life.

Similar interests, mutual respect and strong attachment with each other are what friends share between each other. These are just the general traits of a friendship.

To experience what is friendship, one must have true friends, who are indeed a rare treasure. We have found it in us, that makes me say with full confidence that we have found the treasure!!

As Aristotle puts it "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies". We have been in there, in each others' joy, sorrow, success and failure.

Hope it remains evergreen and go a long way through life.

And this new post is just to commemorate our first meet on 13th Jan 2007!

Happy New Year 2008!

January 1st is here, and you know what that means. People vowing to lose weight, stop smoking, stick to a budget, save money, find a better job, become more organized, exercise more, be more patient, eat better, getup early etc......

New Year is the time to bid farewell to the old year and welcome the coming year. It is the time to forget and get past memories that are no longer useful or worth pondering upon. It is the time for new beginnings and new starts in life. As the well known saying goes,"Don't cry because it is over, smile because it happened" This essentially means that there is no use crying over spilt milk. You cannot turn back time and do things that would benefit you.
It is time to start afresh and do things in a different manner

Let the new year bring in
New Aspirations....
New Hopes....
New Resolutions....
A Whole New Beginning...

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

A trip down memory line

It is around 8 to 9 years I’ve been introduced to the internet. It was in the 8^th standard of school that I first used the internet. Those were the days when it used to cost some 1Re per minute for usage. I first created an email ID on hotmail, the only famous mail service provider. I still have that mail id and still use it! It is the only mail id which doesn’t have a number in it and has my full name in it! The main purpose of it was to mail my grandpa’s friend who went to the US often.

More than me it was my grandpa who was more excited cos of the switch from snail mail to e-mail! I remember it used to take some 10days for the letter to reach USA and then to get a reply from him another 10days but the whole process took a few minutes on the e-mail. Every evening I remember accompany my grandpa to the internet surfing center to check for mails.

All this excitement grew when I was bought a computer in the 9th standard. Mine was the fastest comp among my friends in school cos everyone in my class who had a comp powered by a Pentium 1 working at some 66 or 100 MHz, with 8 to 16 MB of RAM. Mine was a Celeron 400 MHz! with 64 MB RAM. It could run any game that was present at that time. All this made my friends envy my computer :D. Now it feels funny that a 400MHz processor used for a computer is used in a mobile phone!

A few months later I got a dial-up net connection from SIFY at my home (Sify and VSNL were the only ISPs those times). It too was a first in my friend circle! It used to cost Rs 350 for a 10hr subscription! From then on checking mails was easy, by then many other websites were started like yahoo etc. Some newspapers had also started websites. When relatives used to come home I used to show them what internet could do! All were astonished that it has news, mails, information about anything on earth. I still remember one of my relatives say “Ayyo istond ella idiya idralli!”(Meaning does internet has some much to offer!)

It’s almost a decade old story, I have changed my computer twice from the Celeron to Pentium 4 and then to a dual core laptop and switched from a dial-up to a Broadband connection.

GBs of data have traveled and continue to travel to and fro across networks. Little did I know then, that internet would grow so much from just e-mails to entertainment, infotainment, social networking, blogs, search engines, VoIP, Instant messaging, videoconferencing, e-banking, e-bill payment etc… As a result of which we have reached a stage where we meet friends more often online than face to face.

The Internet has changed the way we think, search for information. Anything in this universe which we know of is available at a click of a button! Internet has become a household phenomenon with accessibility even on the GO and the broadband has revolutionized the way we connect to the internet. I even hear my grandpa and the others of his age asking me to do a Google search of some Veda or some other spiritual stuff.

Going ahead in time I’m sure that the next generation internet has more and more surprises to offer, like it has done in the past!

Internet has become so much so a part of life that sometimes I wonder “how the world would be?” without the information super highway “The INTERNET”