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Oh valentine! Oh love! LOVE IsA NON-SPREADSHEETAL

I was going through Abhirupa’s post titled “Some say love is“, so thought of writing this valentine post. (btw I love the whole song collection, check this out “Love can build a bridge“).

Last Sunday was quite special, it was a pre-valentine day (and next Sunday is “what after valentine”) and the speaker talked about “Valentine day” (You can also read the chapter talking about Love and the whole book by Solomon). So what is it all about? Love? Gifts? Proposing? Expectations? or just a buzzyy?? Who careesssssss, let no other person defines what it means to you but you, you alone.

Where is love? Where is love :)?

When I wrote “Oh valentine! Oh love! Oh you lover”, I wanted to write about what love is. Here I am talking about love between an Adam and an Eve. The love between adams and eves are special as it is one which comes with a lot of choices when compared to parental or sibling love with one option. You are free to choose your lover (oh really!). You build a lot of expectation around this love line and almost make it over fictionalized. Still it is a special one, gifted to you by chance but it is your responsibly to work it out well till the end, so here I go:

Love is

  1. is a feeling: You can’t always express it in words, it is something you feel. “Are you in love?” is sometimes the most difficult question thrown at you. Verbal communication is also important but not a must (esp for Indian culture). The eyes says it all. The touch communicates it deeper and the separation(explained deep missing) explains all. You can take this valentine’s day and say it in your special way, “I love you! I really do“.
  2. is always one sided: When you love someone, it starts as one sided only. All the FOSLA members can redefine their clubs.
  3. is a little deeper than liking: I may start linking something about a person but to love that person it goes a little deeper. Love sometimes (most of the times) starts by getting attracted to something you like but it doesn’t stop there. It was just a beginning of something wonderful.
  4. is a COMMITMENT: Oh this is my favorite one. Love can start by chance but you cant stay in love by chance, it has to be, by choice, by commitment. Love is very strong but the lovers need to reach closer to true love with every moment, every step. Every fight makes it stronger, every dinner together renews it.
  5. is selfless: I don’t matter in love, it is more about your love and then we.
  6. is great understanding: It stands on understanding. I like this quote, “Sometimes love ain’t nothing but a misunderstanding between two well understood fools”.
  7. is strength: It gives you a lot of strength and IT IS TRUTH. When you are in love, don’t be afraid, just stand firm and say I am in love.
  8. is change: It brings a lot of changes in you. You start changing yourself to make the feeling grow and stay.
  9. is sacrificial: I don’t want to use the word sacrifice, I still want to say the word commitment and responsibility. You leave something, you change something but all is for good. You can still leave everything to make your love happy.
  10. is not for intelligent people: They can never understand these feelings, its ROI and the whole purpose of it. So never ever try to explain an intelligent person what love is and probably you wont have to explain it to a fool who ever been in love as he/she will understand through your eyes.
  11. is NOT COMPETITIVE: hell with those who says, see what his lover did or her lover did. You don’t want to buy a gift so that others can see and your social points for being a lover increases. I will choose to be a fool in front of the society to be the smartest guy for my love.
  12. is Open: There is nothing that one need to hide. You can feel very comfortable is saying, “Honey! I messed it up, Sorry”. Don’t lie but accept the faults :).

I wanted to write a lot about it but I need to reach office before the day starts shining really hard. I will conclude the part 1 of the series by calling LOVE A NON-SPREADSHEETAL. Love never keeps an account of bad things, it keeps erasing everything bad from your books/spreadsheets. “That day you said this”, “year and a half past since you said a sorry” and so on. Don’t keep an account of your love activities, let is flow smooth. Don’t define, don’t plan, don’t copy but just be honestly-committed-oneSidedly-selflessly in love.
HAPPY VALentine Day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Some relevant recent blog posts I read:

My Next post can be:
In love there is Honeymoon period and sometimes sun stoke periods too.

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Sun Micro bought MySQL for $1 billion

I generally don’t cover industry news on my blog but this is surely an exception, Sun Micro buying MySQL for $1 billion. I was reading Jonathan Schwartz (Chief Executive Officer and President, Sun Microsystems, Inc.), when I stumbled upon Helping Dolphins Fly, where he said, “we’re putting a billion dollars behind the M in LAMP. If you’re an industry insider, you’ll know what that means – we’re acquiring MySQL AB, the company behind MySQL, the world’s most popular open source database.”


Sun bought mysql

This is good news! I just digged a little deeper into the happening at reuters.com, which says,

Forrester Research analyst Mike Gilpin said the acquisition was not so much about going head to head in the database market with Oracle Corp (ORCL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) or IBM (IBM.N: Quote, Profile, Research), but about strengthening its position in helping to run the Internet.

Btw, Oracle is the owner of the InnoDB database engine in MySQL (There are other storage engines, see falcon). I wonder how this might affect the global partnership between Sun and Oracle.

“This is Sun girding its loins for battle against Microsoft in terms of who’s going to run the Web,” he said.

Many of the top Internet sites like Facebook and youtube are running on Mysql.

I still wonder $1 billion?????? Isn’t it too much. Ebay paid a whooping $4.1 billion for skype and later regretted for it. I just hope that it doesn’t happen with Sun. Only 1% of mysql users pay for it. The only question that remains:

Will Sun tweak the license to milk its $1 billion?

Anyway a BIG News for the day!

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MBA is not about #$@^%$ but about !#@%^$*

As I mentioned in my previous comments “MBA – More supply OR less demand“, I am eager to answer this question, “Aji, should I go for MBA?“. In last few years I had opportunity to work with various team members with and without MBA and from good B-school to average ones. I was a part of 2 year fully residential MBA from NIMC/AIMK. I have seen and worked with over 6 MBA batches myself. MBA is a course that can really fine tune but you need to do it REALLY RIGHT.

2 reasons why MBAs are were preferred:

  1. Brilliant minds were entering it. People’s first choice was top MBA institutes. Companies visits such institute to get the top brains not the MBA students. All the students were brilliant and MBA is just collecting them at one place. Some of the best minds I worked owned a MBA degree from good B-schools.
  2. For their existing educational background: Every time a company visited us they preferred a combination like “BCom+MBA”, “Engg+MBA” or “BCA+MBA(HR)” etc. Same happened with MCA, “Maths+MCA” or “PHY+MCA” were preferred over all other combinations. The three or four years of your graduation/engg is where you build some strong and basic foundations (Your thinking process and analytical skills are developed during the graduation phase). I never preferred BCA+MCA or BBA+MBA combination for that reason.

What MBA is (in general)?

  1. It is not about piling knowledge but about actions and approaches. (For MBA knowledge you can read some 20 to 30 books and get everything better than what is taught. You can try these books as well.)
  2. It is not about efficiency but effectiveness. (It sharpens your mind to be quick and to focus. How to work and think in a systematic way. It increases the output with the same level of efficiency.)
  3. It is not about syllabus but about out of syllabus activities (Read the interview with NITISH JAIN, President, S.P. Jain Centre of Management, where he talks about exposure and other activities) .
  4. It is not about work (or Net work) but about network (You can do that outside/without the campus as well but the college network is vast and fast).
  5. It is not about degree but about confidence and attitude (Be aware of the thin line between confidence and arrogance, almost everyone complains about it.).
  6. It is not 2 years of daylight classes but about 2 years of sleepless but full of masti nights (It makes you really bold, you can’t achieve this outside.).
  7. It is not about books and semesters but about people (wearing almost nothing at night) and team (well dressed in borrowed tie, stolen trousers and proudly owned jockey). (Different team tasks with varied team members teaches you more.)
  8. It is not about the classes by management teachers/gurus but about classes by management student (who happens to own companies and still learning the latest). (I always liked entrepreneurs/industry people teaching us than qualified professors.)
  9. It is not about CV but about first placement (Trust me, first placement sets the benchmark for many and a good institute can give you the best start but later its upt o you).
  10. It is not about preparing a secure career but about preparing you for risky decisions. (Confidence in you helps you take bigger decisions)

MBA is about

When to do MBA?

I am running my hands really quick on the keyboard to summarize my thoughts.

  1. For a better job: Indian Industry works on degrees for promotions/jobs (Sometimes it helps in getting shortlisted). I have some of my friends doing MBA just to fulfill their criteria for further promotions. Still there is no mantra for success so there is nothing to follow except “Whatever You Think, Think The Opposite“. MBA can put you in a well planned career stream with a better cash flow.
  2. If you are not a self motivator: If you are a self motivator (with enough confidence) then you can read the books and understand most of it in less than an year. If you lack self motivation then it is good to read the needed subject forcefully (as the classes and exams will force you to learn atleast some part of it).
  3. If you don’t know what MBAs actually study: What to study is 90% of the task. MBA curriculum are designed to give you (a quick) direction in a very systematic way.
  4. Not enough exposure/platforms: I been very lucky. When I was 19 I got a regional team of young people to lead. Even from very early I had opportunity to lead different sports team, school houses (school as vice-captain). It is not about your ability but about the opportunity that is available for you (There is another thought that you can make opportunity for yourself). If you don’t have enough exposure to team work, public speaking, presentations, paper presentation, documentation etc then MBA can act as a great platform to start with. I got enough exposure at NIMC.
  5. Continuation of your studies: If you are continuing your student life, MBA can do wonders (giving you an initial break and a network to float).

When not to do MBA

  1. Everyone is doing it: Don’t follow the crowd as most of them might not know what they do.
  2. When you want to learn something magical or at concrete/core level for success.
  3. When you don’t want a monotonous job.
  4. When you want to try something new.
  5. When you want to start a company of your own. (MBA is not needed to start a company, all you need is an attitude to fail and fight, MBA can just help you connect to a network of people with like minds..)

Related Posts:

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Why do I break rules so often?

Oh Aji! Why! Why do you break rules? You are not suppose to come to office late! You were suppose to join %$%% (designing compilers) not Grmtech (getting links and cheapo work) ! You are not suppose to put such a crappy title for your blog post “MBA is not about $%$%$% but about ^%^%^^“! (thats my next post) You are suppose to put the books in the library not in your cabin! You are suppose to sleep at 12 why you wake up till 4! and so on and on. I keep asking myself, “Why do I break rules so often?“.

I too know that rules are for better manageability and scalability but still it is not what defines success and happiness (or the purpose). IF THERE WAS A MANTRA OF SUCCESS THROUGH CONVENTIONAL WISDOM THEN EVERYBODY WOULD HAVE FOLLOWED IT.

The latest to my crime is opening a library in my cabin
Visitors around the cabin
(Prabhat and Anirudh, early birds to the cabinet book stall)

Zoom in to cabinet book stall
(Zooooooooomm in)

Do I really break rules?
No, I don’t. I really don’t! I follow them more than others as I follow the purpose and sometimes follow the theme closer than others. People do break rules but I really don’t :), I redefine (fine tune) it. Let’s take the above example that why I didn’t break the rule here.

Rule: “All books should be bought through library process and kept in library”.
Broken: “Bought it myself, kept in cabin, did not make an entry in library and became librarian myself”.
Purpose of a library:

  • People should read books, thats the only purpose. TRUST ME, thats the only purpose.

Purpose of a rule:

  • When we lost some books, when there were too many books and when it became unmanageable we made the above said rules. It wasn’t needed initially but later it was introduced.

Purpose of redefining/breaking rule:

  • People should read books, thats the only purpose. TRUST ME.

What about manageability?

  • Let the problem arise but before that let’s focus on purpose :). Once the problem arises (a good problem to have) we will make a rule and later will break it again.

I think more purpose oriented than rule oriented and believe that rules are made for us not we for rules, break it (oops i mean redefine) more often so that the purpose is fulfilled. There are many examples where breaking the rules helped, just search around and you will get many many examples.

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Video: Http Vs Https – Duplicate content issues


The solution using htaccess


# Redirecting the robots.txt file for htaccess to stop https crawling to avoid duplicate content.
RewriteCond % 443 [NC]
RewriteRule ^robots.txt$ robots_ssl.txt [L]

There are other ways of solving it too like

< ?php if ($_SERVER["SERVER_PORT"] == 443) { echo "< meta name=" robots " content=" noindex,nofollow " > ";
}
?>

You can even do canonicalization but it is not always possible as you want both the urls to be accessible.

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MBA – More supply OR less demand

In recent times I have seen more companies developing a bad taste for MBAs. I have personally advised few of my friends not to enroll for MBA programs (correspondence mainly) as they could go with more inline courses. MBA is (or was) a buzz degree.


Here are some of the thoughts at Bnet about MBA programs:

  • Five Hard Truths About the MBA:
    1. Hard Truth No. 1: The ROI isn’t what it used to be.
    2. Hard Truth No. 2: The training has become too theoretical.
    3. Hard Truth No. 3: Some of the people skills needed to be a manager today can’t be taught in the business school environment.
    4. Hard Truth No. 4: MBA programs propagate management fads.
    5. Hard Truth No. 5: The pressure to succeed inside MBA programs has weakened safeguards against cheating.
  • The Secret Guide to the MBA Curriculum:
  • What Executives Really Think of MBAs:
    1. Value the Program, Not the Degree
    2. Hard-Working, High-Maintenance
    3. Dropouts Make Better Entrepreneurs
    4. Practical Experience Is a Necessary Foundation for Theory
    5. Salespeople Don’t Need MBAs
    6. MBAs in IT

    “You Harvard guys don’t know crap about the way businesses really run.” – Howard Woolf, then a director of marketing at DEC, to a trio of consultants with Harvard MBAs as overheard by the author. Woolf is now president of the Converged Billing Solution Group at Comverse, a $1 billion-a-year provider of multimedia services.

  • Three New Year’s Resolutions for MBA Students:
    1. Get (more) comfortable with public speaking.
    2. Dial back on the procrastination.
    3. Stop relying on school for the easy excuse.
  • Three Things I Wish I’d Known Before Starting Grad School:
    1. Don’t stress over not having a business background.
    2. Three hours of class time at the end of a workday isn’t as bad as it sounds.
    3. Earning an MBA means more than mastering the coursework.
  • Finding the Value in Wasted Time:
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A new year is a restart option

I call it restart option. It is such a wonderful day where you get a feel of restart. From your messy last month, last year you can give your life a restart. You can buy a new book for your finances, a new work report, a new way to start your love life, a better plan for your spiritual activities. All happens on the very first day.

Happy New Year!

I wish you and your family members a very happy new year. Last year was full of challenges and a lot of important devisions made. I have a lot to that. I take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support and love. Also I thank God Almighty for His presence in my life.

Resolutions
Everyone is suppose to take these and here I follow:

  1. Will plan my finances better. Every morning I will add it to my budgeting section.
  2. Will write 2 books: 1) Blogging – Anonymity to Identity 2) (name hidden) A book on Online marketing, covering almost all aspects of online marketing.
  3. Will start a blog on spiritual experiences.

I want to make this year, year of Love, year of organizing and year of earning.

Afraid of making resolution?
As many, do you think resolutions are useless? Its a personal stuff then why do you say it in public? I can take these decisions anytime, why wait for the start of an year? What if I don’t make these resolutions happen?

Oh Man! Don’t worry! It’s the time to restart, you can do it anytime but its a mind game where you feel ITS REALLY A RESTART TIME (making it a little easier). When you make resolutions in public it helps you as a forced motivator. It helps you force yourself. You have personal commitments and the success of your decisions is completely personal but still a public resolution helps you put a little force on yourself. It also works as a reminder. So enjoy resolutions and have a very happy new year. May God bless you with all great things this year!

What is your resolution this year?

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Merry Christmas – Know the Greatest Gift

Merry Christmas to everyone! May God bless everyone with His Riches this year! Christmas is a great season of love, sharing, caring and joy. We forget everything bad and wish everyone a Merry Christmas with all Joy.

Christmas is just not about Drinking or Eating,
Its not about just gifting and meeting,
Its is certainly not about forgetting the Bday Boy,
Its not all about the vanishing Joy,
Its about Life, Its about the purpose and Its about YOU.

This Season I want to introduce you the Greatest Gift that a Christmas offers. I am writing this as many don’t understand the true meaning of Christmas and why it is to be celebrated (I don’t feel sorry for the commercialization done by the companies but I feel sorry for unthematic acceptance by us). We all know that it is about the Birth of Jesus but may not understand the purpose of it. I will write it in simpler words:

  • Jesus came to this world to give us a life through him. Every sinner needs to die says all the laws, so says the God too. Jesus came to die for us that we can get an eternal life through Him (Sometimes it is good to think what will happen to us after we die) John 3:16 says “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes on him may not perish, but have life eternal“. The Joy is the joy of getting a Life through the Saviour, so everyone celebrates it with such Great Joy.

So let this Christmas be a little more meaningful for all of us :). We celebrate it in a different way. “A family that prays together stays together“, we all fast this whole day and spend the whole day at Church praying, singing, dancing and thanking. It is a Great Day!

Merry Christmas to all!

If you have missed the cake do ping me before it is too late 🙂 Some captured moments before my finish my post.

Christmas Cake
(Cake distribution at Office)

Christmas Santa
(Santa on all of our computers :), thanks to Hardeep for this)

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Honey! I want to shrink my CV

Recently I had an opportunity to talk to some of the great industry heads with great experiences and few patents. It was more fun than serious talk. Talked about web 2.0 stuffs, experiences in startup company, cluster for DBs, when technology can become bottleneck, social network technologies and many more things. It was great.

While talking, one of the technical head asked me, “Aji, where do you want to see yourself after 3 or 5 years“. This is quite a common question when you talk to a career oriented guy. It was a brainy session but some answers come out of your heart irrespective of your brain size, it was just another moment where it just came out of my heart. I almost answered it this way,

“Honey! I want to shrink my CV”

I was so happy that my heart answered so wonderfully (sometimes you should just allow your heart to flow). After the answer there was no further question about my career, goal or objective. Here is a small briefing for those who don’t understand what it actually means. In some years I want to shrink my CV to one line, “Aji Issac, Team/founder/Architect/blah, XYZ product, 200* – 20**“. Thats an advantage of working with product based companies.

This also answer few common questions thrown at me at various occasions by our Team members:

  1. What will be my position after X years?.
  2. I want to be senior programmer after 1 year, senior-senior programmer after 3 year, super-duper programmer after 5 years and many be programming guru after 10 years”, does your company allows that?
  3. Why is my position the same for last 2 years?

In product based company your position keeps changing every moment:

  • After one year – 2007: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2 people)
  • After two years – 2008: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2000 people)
  • After three years – 2009: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by 2 million people)
  • After five years – 2011: Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product (Used by almost every other people who uses web)

Thats the time when you can say, “Aji Issac, ABC profile, XYZ product, 2008 – 2011“. Take pride in working for products and product based companies. For selfish reasons make it work. If you are a company head/founder then make sure everyone working with you have have enough shares/stocks of your product (in black and white) else don’t expect the same commitment (This small move can create all the difference for your company). Enjoy the day!

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Video: Knowledge is biased Ideas are not

Finding it really difficult to find time for blogging. Just spent two days in office to finish off the pending works. I got up a little late yesterday, around 9am as slept very late after work. This video is from the office bed (guest room). This video is my personal experience. I have seen people thinking too less of themselves just because of the knowledge limitation.

“So what if I am not from IITs or IIMs” was always been my attitude in life. Knowledge is certainly biased but Ideas are not. This concept is very difficult to conceive but once synced deep within blood you can discover a special person, a special confidence in you. I kept my attitude very high when I worked as librarian or a voluntary teacher (for 2 years, every Sunday, was great experience) or even when I was made secretary to Kolkata youth chapter. Its not how much you know, its about how much detailed you are, how much passionate you are and how much deep thinking you can do. So knowledge just adds on to your Ideas, fine tunes it but never a must for bringing a great Idea.

Enjoy the Video (I am not sure whether I was able to pen down my thought properly here, sorry was in real hurry, do ask/debate/agree comment). Happy Friday!