What's up...

A really long time since my last blog post...to count a little over 5 years. Life has been really good and lots of things have changed in this world. To recount what happened in these 5 years would take a really long time..but just to recap few major points. World is getting warmer - courtesy of cheap oil prices and clearing of large swatches of rain forests, earth is getting filled with plastic everywhere, lots of animals are getting extinct as I type...but who the hell cares..right? 

People are so selfish that they don't worry about what nature has provided us over a million years and all it take to destroy is just 50 years. To kill a mighty elephant, the majestic rhinos for a mere part of the body is crime. I wonder how will the wild life be in 40 years from now...I hope elephant and rhino might still be not extinct.

It is also very sad to see people not even caring to reduce plastic usage...all it takes is to take a reusable bag for groceries and recycle that plastic that you can't avoid buying. But sad to see even educated people...even phd's not caring anything about this. Sad to know that our oceans are filled with trillions of tonnes of plastic...GOD! 

Humans should realize it is still possible to act to stop this and take corrective actions...but alas we don't listen till it is too late..!!!!!

Adios till the next blog!

Project defense

As usual, long time since my last blog.....it time to add in some new updates. First of all I would like to talk about my master's project defense. Before the final presentation, I gave a demo presentation to my advisor Dr. Sid Green. He wanted me to speak a little louder and gave an example of Abraham Lincoln's presidential acceptance speech. During those days Lincoln didn't have a microphone and had to speak in his own voice to address the whole crowd. That is why Lincoln is considered to be a Legend.

This also reminds me of a completely un-related scene of Tom Hanks's speech in the movie Forrest Gump. I absolutely loved that movie, the whole theme of it - "just doing best in whatever you are doing" is simply mind blowing. I want to watch that movie again. This also reminds me of a quote from the evergreen classic, Shawshank Redemption - "hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies". Man we can learn so much just from the quotes in that movie. Hats off to Stephen king for writing the novel, Frank de bont for directing it and Morgan Freeman, Tim Robbins for acting in it. A real classic.

Business Analytics

Well its been forever since I posted my last blog.....the thought of writing one again came from compulsion not of interest. One of the classes I was taking this summer had a part where I needed to write an article on Emergence of Business analytics. The prescribed book to look for guidance is Competing on Analytics by Davenport & Harris.

Well Analytics, the idea seems to be for those business school geeks, who seem to go to the depths of each fundamental detail and brainstorm every possible, bullshittest idea to generate one more buck form an already existing model.

When I started reading this, I realized its not as nerdy/geeky as I thought before. One example is Netflix inc. which started as a rival to blockbuster. The legend goes that Mr. Hastings (now C.E.O of Netflix) got hit by a $40 late fee for Appollo 13 he rented out. He started with an idea of developing a model which has montly rental just like a gym. The result is outstanding.

He used analytics in the form of clustering to determine the tastes of audience and kept the customers happy by offering best choices and kept the no's increasing. The result - a $1 billion company in 2006. Staggering!!!

Hope

This week has started really gloomy..it has been snowing like hell on saturday and sunday and it was all cloudy on monday. My mind was also in a similar phase with gloom all over.

I was just waiting for the sun to shine bright again and hoping it will bring with it the warmth and courage to my mind. It was really terrible to hear about my colleague getting fired last week. It added a lot to the gloom I was having today. I dont know-all seems to be like destined to gloom.

And this is when I realised that during these times, we really need to trust in HIM and keep working. In times of pleasure and happiness everyone will have trust, but only in testing times like these do we need to have that faith that everything will work out well, if we give our best shot.

My mind has kind of came out of that gloomy attitude towards more sunnier, merrier attitude as I wrote this blog post. Cheers to HOPE......and I recommend lots and lots of it!!

TERROR strikes back....

Well I just want to plain express my feeling after seeing what happened 5 days back...terrorists raided Mumbai and killed around 200 people....randomly without sense, purpose or motive.

The first thing that came to my mind is how come 10 people could do all this when Indian elite terrorist task force, Commandos, police were present there in hundred's right after the incident. My simple Understanding is we are unprepared and we should be more prepared in the future. I remember Moscow theater siege and school siege carried out by Chechen terrorists and If you correctly remember Moscow siege, they were holding more hostages and had bigger ammunition. But still Russians used sophisticated techniques to sweep them and reduced the fatalities. That is what I think is lacking in Indians, we are not prepared, I heard of commandos getting killed in Taj hotel cos evrything was dark and terrorists were firing randomly....it sucks that we dont have night vision goggles, smoke grenades, other equipment etc..

Ofcourse nothing is gonna change now, at most they will cancel some bus routes, rail services, Cricket matches etc.. and tension will rise, bush will come cool down India ( he needs pakistan help in Afganistan and doesnt want them to leave it). India being a great patient peaceful side will take this and will do nothing.

I am not pessimistic, but I want to start from my side, I will try to learn some self defensive techniques and will try to learn some courses so that I can help in such situations rather than just waiting for the army to save us. Because I know they cant save me if I am in that situations. Lets not keep the blame on anyone and lets try to change system & I wish our governament be more stronger towards pakistan( I know this is impossible).

Utes crush Cougars!!

Well I just returned from one of the most passionate games your can ever watch-BYU vs UTAH football. Few rivalries can match the intensity of these games. Nick named as Holy war, it draws huge crowds and passions run high.

Me along with Kannan reached the ground around 3.35 PM and the game kicked off at 4.....we were right in the middle of a whole group of MUSS(Mighty Utah Student Section) fans. And the fun thing was there were some BYU fans right infront of us...they were a small group in the middle of the big crimson tide(Utah's color is crimson). Poor guys they were the target of all different kind of projectiles(popcorn, papers, ice cubes, even burritos) and the fun part was a BYU guy started eating one of the burrito thrown on to him, and Utah fans were shouting saying "hey that burrito has shit man"...it was really funny, but I felt sorry for that BYU guy...but yeah he should expect animosity if he comes inside the Reds area!



the BYU fans(dressed in Blue & having Y written of T-shirts)...






Utah players emerging from the tunnel.........

The stadium was set in the middle of mountains and its a beautiful view as the sun set in the stadium

Red Red everywhere....


An enthusiastic Ute supporter


James & his brother were a great company all throughout the game, particularly in explaining rules & ofcourse the whole MUSS group was awesome...After the game, supporters just ran into the stadium to revel in the glory of winning the Moutain west conference, Entering the bowl & most importantly beating BYUThe board says it all....poor BYU fans, they were whacked badly...well I heard they behave decently in their home ground when BYU-Utah game happens...but we are not so good :D

Goo UTES!!!

Youtube it......

Google it....this is a old saying...the new phrase is Youtube it......it sound strange huh...but face it, here are some stats from wikipedia:

"Few statistics are publicly available regarding the number of videos on YouTube. However, in July 2006, the company revealed that more than 100 million videos were being watched every day, and 2.5 billion videos were watched in June 2006. 50,000 videos were being added per day

It is estimated that in 2007, YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000, and that over 13 hours of video are uploaded every minute. In March 2008, its bandwidth costs were estimated at approximately $1 million a day"

Do I need to tell more...just like what google helps in finding about stuff, I just use youtube to see how to do it. Gone are the days when people used to read, its time to listen and see. Its not that people became lazy, its just that technology is making life simpler for us and making us lazy.

The other day I remember, I was googling for how to change my vista login wallpaper and inadvertantly searched it in youtube, since that tab was open and to my amazement, there was a good tutorial on how to do that.God that was so nice! And yes I am like using google from the time I wake up to the time I sleep. Google owns internet now, the only major point it needs to acquire is facebook and I am pretty sure they're gonna bid for that soon.

Like in Harry potter's Muggle world, we are living in a Google world!