Archive for November, 2009
The pram
Parenthood brings in its own slew of experiences, I won’t talk about the often cited ones like holding your child in your arms and the realization experiences
. My mama (the marathi kind), gave us a pram for Anasuya. Everyone was excited … the baby was bringing her own entourage.
Today, we sat for assembling the infernal thing. With a single pager for a manual, and two guys (that’s my father and I) … it was obvious that we had no need for instructions! So came the exercise of figuring out what goes where … in that process of figuring things out, we made discoveries … the oohs! and the a-has!! were multifold. As with almost all D-I-Y assemblies, we finished it and still had some parts to spare (wonder where they go!!?!).
I wonder if they purposely make it confounding, so that the parents get realizations in the process of assembling it?
Job-Switch model

The Job-Switch model
In a flash of brilliance (or so I like to think), I decided to plot down some parameters on why people change jobs. So I randomly (or you can say intuitively
), took two axes and created the 2×2 grid which MBAs are famous for.
The interpretations are multi-fold, I have put down some of my views, now lets discuss!!
Perfectionist
This one I am not.
A friend of mine once told me that my grammar was attrocious. I was shocked, appalled … then denial struck in. Me!! Bad grammar??? Noooooooo!!! I called him a grammar Nazi.
Today, as I was reading through a blog of another friend, I saw the painstaking process through which she goes when making a post. A first cut in Word, then grammatical changes, then posting on the platform, and then revisions. With many re-reads thrown in.
In the process of making a blog post, the content and the idea keep on getting refined. I compared that to my writing style and I realized, that yes … I do create a lot of grammatical errors … in the process of blurting out my post, no reviews, no revisions, no drafts. Let’s see if I can be a better blogger by revisiting my work.
Theory and Practice v/s Practice and Theory
I graduated in 2006, one of the last subjects I took was IT Enabled Marketing (ITEM). Another was Business Models for E-Commerce (BMEComm). The subjects were easy to crack, and were a breeze. We call these mickey subjects, since the subjects are easy to cruise and you get along by putting half the effort required.
After graduating, I was (and am) involved in 2-3 web start-ups. Great ideas, good people … but none of them know exactly what is it thats to be done. Everyone explores. They finally get it right, and so did we. The thing that gets to me, is that we have been taught all this … in theory. But then we never appreciated that theory then. Theory is useless without practice, and practice without proper theory is a blind struggle.
Today, I am tempted to open by texts and see if the models that we have been taught make sense. I am sure that they.
As I stand on a platform to make the jump, I would like to have some sound theory with me as well.
Love-Hate relationships
A friend wrote this post on her blog. She has explained it in great detail, I recommend you go through that post before proceeding. Here’s an excerpt -
In the words of a programmer friend, “Project Managers are glorified postmen. All they do is pass on emails from the management to us and progress updates from us to them.” Another friend strongly suspects that the reason his PM looks into his laptop screen so hard is because he is trying to concentrate on beating his own AOE record.
Certain functions within an organization are placed in such a manner that they co-correct each other through symbiosis. For example, Sales and Finance – one drives revenues, the other drives profitability.
PS – Good to know that I am referred to as a programmer
, I take it as a compliment!
Technology
It amazes me to what extent technology can amaze people. The sheer amount of possibilities it opens up for them … the happiness and surprise that you can see on their faces, it’s a treat to watch. It’s almost akin to the expression of when aborigines first discovered fire … the expression of … “ohh!! aisa bhi hota hain?“. Makes my day every time.
Wordled!
Wordle is an online web application, which creates cloud tags from different sources of data … text files, bookmarks, you name it!!
Elevators
Ever noticed people in elevators?
- Stare straight at the elevator door/indicator/ceiling
- Stay silent
- Are in a perpetual state of apprehension … standing still, but still waiting
In that case, I think elevators are the epitome of captive audiences.
Won’t it be a great place to run audio advertisement jingles?
