Predict who is drunk using tweets

I have never blogged (to my knowledge) without something controversial before. This one is nothing like what i have written before.

For the last couple of weeks i have been playing with the idea of identifying if some on is drunk based on their tweets.

I started of with below thinking process.

Some one jumps on a site and says i want to monitor twitter id A.

We will gather tweets from that person every hour/time slice and basically analyze as below

1. Remove acronyms/#tags

2. Find number of spelling mistakes (using standard distance algorithms)

3. Find number of swear words (need to build some dictionary of swear words, not that hard :-))

4. Remember number of spelling mistakes and swear words/time slice.

5. Repeat steps 1 to 4 every hour/time slice

Say at about 10 PM in the night the person tracking twitter id A asks, is A drunk? Based on the trends in mistakes and swear words, predict if that person is drunk or not.

Sounds funny but could be useful. I even thought about revenue stream, connecting this to cab services who can push notifications to those twitter ids about being safe and not driving.

All for a social cause :-)

Addendum: Pitfalls of mobile keyboard dynamics that are hurdles for this project

• auto-correction
• typing while angry or tired
• typing while talking to someone
• last but not the least copy-paste

K

I am Scared!!!

I will be starting a new job this Monday and for the first time in my life I am scared. I have changed jobs umpteen number of times in my 15 year illustrious career (shortest duration with an employer is 1 week). With so much job changing experience on my back why am I scared? Below are the things that I will be loosing from Monday.

1. I have been working for a startup with 4 people since 3 years. I am not used to seeing more than 4 colleagues in a Day.
2. I had the freedom of working when I wanted, where I wanted.
3. I have not attended a single meeting since 3 years (demos to customer not included).
4. Not reported to anyone.
5. Other than some customers (read as IBM) and our CEO, I never had to deal with any idiots.
6. Since a year I have not commuted. I have been working from home(wfh) most of the days. I used to go to city on Fridays so that I could have beer with some friends.
7. When you wfh you get things like, you don't have to get out of your Jamis (Pyjamas), Going to Gym at 11 in the morning, volunteer work at kids school, cooking something nice for my daughter before she comes home etc.

From Monday the opposite of all those points will be true....(except 5, crossed fingers). I had an envious job till date but good things don't last longer. I am shit scared and excited for my new adventure.

Whom should naturalised citizens support

This morning when I was talking to a friend of mine i asked him a hypothetical question, if an Indian becomes a citizen of America, in future if ever America attacks India (i mean war) whom should that Indian support? My friend immediately answered, obviously motherland, India. His argument was that, Indian existed because of India. I asked the same guy, say some one disowns a kid and the kid is adopted. After the kid grows, if the biological parents try to claim the kid, whom should the kid support? According to the previous argument kid should support biological parents. In my opinion kid should support the people who adopted the kid. Biological parents didn't want him. If we translate that to naturalisation, an adult made a choice of accepting citizenship of America (for whatever reasons) and let go of Indian citizenship, he should support America. When i thought more about it, it is the stereo typical Indian/Human thinking that kids are indebted to parents as they exist because of them. That is horse shit, kids exist for 3 reasons; want, mistake & love of unprotected sex. No kid is indebted to parent.

Most of these naturalised fuckers are neither patriotic to the country they were born in (not much choice there), nor to the country they live in and happily accepted the citizenship of(by choice, no force). If ever I take citizenship of some other country, I, Keshav declare that I will support that country.

Sania, Shoaib & Ayesha

disclaimer: I do not have problems in any 2 people marrying each other (even if they both are men/woman)

There are already thousands of columns, jokes about this marriage. I really don't care who marries whom. Specially when they are from a faith which Say's, a brother can marry his brother's wife in the event of one's death. Is there a problem in that? I don't know but need not be mentioned in your bible. Hindu woman chose killing themselves when Mughals killed their husbands due to such hideous things. What is my interest in this marriage that encouraged me to write something about it? Well there are couple of things I am curious about.

1. Who made marriage over phone legal?
2. Is Ayesha happy to be a Muslim living in India?
3. Does Sania know what she is signing up for?

1. In which country is marriage over phone legal? (apart from Muslim countries) My curiosity is, did prophet write that? Did he know what a phone was? (may be he did, he was Messiah (mess ayya).) Even if he did, this is the guy who stopped his followers from eating the tastiest meat (pork), what can you say?

2. I am sure Ayesha is happy to be a Muslim living in India. If she is not, she better be. Since Shoaib and Ayesha both are Muslims, if she were to live in a country where Muslim law (I think sharia..) was the law, she had no case. As polygamy is acceptable in Islam(Wikipedia: In Islam, polygamy is allowed for men (making it polygyny), with the specific limitation that they can only have up to four wives at any one time. The Qur'an also clearly states that men who choose this route must deal with their wives as fairly as possible, doing everything that they can to spend equal amounts of time and money on each one of them), only thing Ayesha could do is fuck herself. I know that Uniform Civil Code is not fully implemented in India yet, still Ayesha had a case. This should be a lesson to all the Muslim fuckers in India who oppose uniform civil code. When their daughter's get raped and eye witness is a woman, they will realise why uniform civil code is important (curious? read about woman witnesses in sharia ).

3. Last but not the least, does Sania know what she is signing up for? She is from a community where some morons were complaining that she should not wear revealing outfit while playing tennis. She is bringing shame to Muslim religion(LMAO). I hope she has thought about what will bigger morons across the border have to say about this (after they jack off seeing her). My advice to Sania is, imagine yourself playing tennis wearing Burqa and a clinking chastity belt from Mughal era (chastity belt is, punishing woman to protect them from men, awesome invention. Couple years ago, a Muslim clergy in Malaysia was talking about bringing it back to protect woman from being raped). Opponents will complain that the noise made by your belt is distracting them (hahahahahhaaha...).

Is it worth IT?

(caution: unlike anything i have ever written before)

I am writing this an hour after I came to know that I had lost a cousin of mine in Kenyan (Kisumu) floods. This cousin of mine had lived in Kenya for 15 or so years and had moved to India around the same time we had moved from USA. He had moved to India obviously for his kids education. I am sure Kenyan education system will be as fucked up as their political and social situation. He mentioned that his house was robbed umpteen number of times when he lived there. He had also mentioned how unsafe Kenya was.Last when I met him was during a function before we moved to Australia. After coming to India he did not have a job and was staying home. He was one of the first guys in our family to have a masters in something. He studied fisheries. Its to do with fishing, storing fish, things like that. Job opportunities for him in India are very bleak. After couple of years of sitting idle at home he decided to take up a job in some middle eastern country. He moved there alone leaving his family behind. I am sure this was primarily not to affect his kids education. All said and done his kids had to live without their dad. I have no idea when he moved back to kenya. I remember him telling, his previous employer (owner of a fishing company) owed him heaps of money and he would not go back to that job unless the owner paid him. I came to know that he rejoined Kenyan company as he lost his job in middle eastern country. I am not blaming my cousin for making certain choices, just wondering if the last question that came to his mind was "Was it worth it?"

I know how it feels to grow up with out a DAD (physically my dad was there). Even though I saw my dad quite often, we were never mentally connected to him. He was always busy with his gambling addiction, leaving my mum to take care of the kids. I don't think any one of us (my brothers and I) can really say "I love you" to my dad. If we did say that, it would be the most hypocritical statement. When Hita asks me, "how come you never speak about your dad?" makes me speechless (in my mind I say, he was useless that's why). Some of my friends travel on their job (not talking about week or days of travel) leaving their families behind. Whatever is the reason/obligation for the travel (unless that's the only way to put food on table), there is no way to get that time back. I don't think my cousins death will make much difference to his kids as they are used to living/not seeing their dad often. You might speak every day on phone, but "out of sight is out of mind". If you are not there when they need, you not being there makes no difference.

I know that if you start thinking at meta physical level, if you are to die, you will. It does not matter where you are, what you are doing. What matters are the choices made before death. If there is feeling after death, I want to be saying "wow what a journey, thanks for that" rather than guilt of not doing something or not being there for my kids when they needed me etc.. Is this a revelation after hearing about a death? absolutely not. This event has cemented my belief that nothing is worth the time you loose with your kids (if you wanted them and are sure they are yours) and wife/partner (again if you want them and love their company). I do live(1000's of miles) away from my parents, but that's what birds do when they learn to fly, they build their own nest. Once you have a little one in that nest, you better stop flying. It is your responsibility to teach the young one how to fly. If you are not around (mother and father), your death will make no difference(forget about world, to your own kid) and that ain't worth it.

K

Teachers OR Cheaters

Couple of days ago, my daughter asked me a very interesting question "papa you never give me examples of your teachers, why?" I said hmmmm, give me couple days to answer that. When I started thinking about it (during toilet breaks), I realised that is so true. Apart from one man, I have never had a teacher (teacher means only in school or uni, mentors at work place not included.) worth mentioning. When I am at work or even doing day to day life things, it has never occurred to my mind that oh yea this guy had taught me this. I have dropped out of 2 schools in US, even there I didn't find anyone outstanding (may be cuz I dropped out :-)).

All my experience with teachers in India has been bad. In school they only had complaints about me(My mum had frequent visitor miles... :-) ), even when I was always in top 3 (until 9th grade I think). My faith in teachers was shattered when I came to know that they did not like kids who didn't contribute to so called building fund. One man who taught me math(for free, he happened to be math teacher for my mum too) in 10th grade, stands out. I realized, it was not a job for him. He loved teaching. When you do it as a job is when you fuck up. In India most of these teachers have private tuition's, which I am sure makes them disinterested in teaching properly in their day jobs. I have had teachers ask me to come to their tuition's when I asked question in the school (of-course in the staff room). Some of the teachers when I was in engineering, were terrible (doesn't help a student who has lost interest in education around 9th grade). Some of them were my seniors who graduated previous year. I don't think that young grads are incapable of teaching well(they were doing it while they were preparing for GRE, GATE whatever), but I believe teaching is an art. It is very similar to acting, If you don't have that talent it will take years to get better. Take people like Ajay Devgan, Karishma Kapoor etc (heaps of names from bollywood come to my mind). When they started acting they were pathetic, as they did more movies they got better. If it takes couple years (for some one with passion to teach) to be a better teacher, they would have had bad influence already. Students might start hating those subjects, hate school itself.

I don't think teachers play a big role after say 10th grade in personality development (after 15, if personality is not developed, then its a bigger issue). In primary and high school, teachers play a huge role. Teachers should not be hired if they don't have passion for teaching. How do you find out if they have passion? (same situation as finding good programmers). Well let them teach teachers before they go in front of kids. Have some training, make them sit in a good teachers class. Teach them ETHICS (very important, if madarsas can teach terrorism so effectively, I am sure there should be a way to teach ethics). Pay them well, ban private tuition's. Kids spend more time in school than at home (10 hours sleep, 8 hours in school, left is 6 hours... go figure...). We don't want pedophiles or fuckin morons who love child pornography. We don't want teachers asking kids to come for private tuitions. I know its easier said than done implementing some of these measures. One thing I know for sure is, teachers should not feel they have power, if they do they will be bad. We want teachers who teach not think they control kids destiny. There is a saying in kannada (I had told this to one of my lecturers in engineering, when he was bragging about marking my paper badly), here it goes "haalu anna haak bahudu, hane baraha bariyakke aagalla". Translation, You can provide food to some one, you can't change their destiny. All of us need to do KARMA... Lets do it well and sleep well at night (without guilt)

Jai sri krishna :-)

Indians being attacked in Melbourne, Australia

I have been reading heaps about this issue since last 6 months. I realised, i haven't written anything (bummer). Things i have read go from, its not racist its opportunistic. Honourable police department of Victoria even asked Indians to look poor and act poor. He even asked Indians not to take up taxi driving(fuckin moron, that means its ok if Taxi drivers are not safe). I read an article (here http://bit.ly/ddzBcI, don't know if its still there) which highlights the lack of manners in Indians. How Indians speak loudly in trains and listen to music loudly etc.. That sure is fuckin annoying. I have been annoyed by Australians/so called white people too. I call Apple head phones as "music to neighbours", If you like to listen to music in high volume and you are using apple head phones, god save your neighbour. Couple of weeks ago an Australian teen was asking my daughter where she lives (ass hole), unfortunately i had to be rude to him in front of my daughter (usually i am a very sweet guy). The article also mentioned that Indians don't say hi to a cashier at a store in reply. Does that mean its OK if he is attacked? My dad was a public transport driver (after retiring from Indian Army), how many people would have said thank you to him for taking them to their destination safely? None I am sure. I think it was not there in Indian culture. As we get exposed to, we need to learn. It is bad if we don't. A week ago I got bit by a manner less Indian on Facebook, can you believe that "virtual bad manners". Story is this, I commented on a post of my friend (which was something to do with Rahul Gandhi). In reply to my comment, friends friend replied asking me to get a life(to a total stranger). When I taught her manners she felt it was rude hahahahahaha....

Like every other article I don't want to get distracted from the real problem. Real problem is "A human being was attacked". Now what colour of skin that human being had, who cares. Does that guy have good manners? who cares. Does he have a right to be safe? of-course he does! I hate Muslims, I don't go around bashing people who are Muslims or have a beard like them. All these fuckers who are hurting people are either under the influence of ICE(drugs) or too much alcohol. If it is an opportunistic crime then some kind of material thing will be stolen. Hundreds (if not thousands) of laptops gets stolen in the suburb I live and in the night druggies sell it to Uni students for couple 100 bucks. When my MAC got stolen, this is what cop said "This is very common in this area, do you have Insurance?". I said, isn't it shameful to say that, it means you are not doing your job well. My wife stopped me from further friction, you don't wanna rub cops on the wrong side. If the attacker does not steal anything from the victim, then it is either racist or bastards are bullies. I read that laws in Australia regarding crime committed under the influence of ICE is pretty stupid (Specially if you are under 18), that's why kids exploit it.
By nature Hindus are cowards, if you don't know read some history. We chose Gandhi as our leader, do you need better proof. All Indians who migrate to other countries have their own reasons. May be they do not have a great life back home, which motivates them to migrate. All said and done you need to watch your own back. During such times its very important to behave smart. I have seen New york when it was scary to take subway at 8 PM. Below are some of my tips to Melbourne Indians;

1. Avoid taking public transport very late in the night.
2. If you don't have much choice, at-least don't travel alone.
3. If you cant do that either then you are shit out of luck, sit in the couch immediately next to the train driver.

Learning from Muslims (ooops, I meant Terrorists)
All muslims are not terrorists but some how all terrorists happen to be muslims?

Meaning of leadership: “process of social influence in which one person is able to enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task”

Meaning of Terrorism: There is no internationally agreed definition of terrorism. Most common definitions of terrorism include only those acts which are intended to create fear (terror), are perpetrated for an ideological goal (as opposed to a lone attack), and deliberately target or disregard the safety of non-combatants.

Yesterday's events in Mumbai reminded us of September 11 2001. My wife and I remembered what we went through on that day. After that day, I have always wondered about Bin Ladens leadership/managerial skills. I consider him as a great leader for a shitty/hideous cause (we think its a bad cause, but they think its martyrdom). I believe there is lots to learn from them. If not anything IT people can learn “planning and execution”.

Imagine a project (like the one that is carried out in Mumbai) of such magnitude being managed by a manager from an IT services company? (boy I need another post for it). We cant even deliver software on time, these guys deliver death/war with immaculate precision. I am sure they would have busted projects too, but whatever they deliver, meets their goals(I guess). Few things I would like to learn from these bastards are listed below.

1. What process do these managers use? Are they PMP certified, Scrum Masters, Prince etc. From what I know, they cant be using agile/iterative methods.
2. Risk Management: Do they have a risk log? To what level do they have contingency planning. I mean lets say they have requirement R1. What if they cant implement/execute R1. How do they mitigate it?
3. TEAM Morale: How does this manager keep the team morale. Think about it. If it takes 6 months to a year to plan something like this. How do you keep these shit heads who are ready to sacrifice their life's to believe in the same when execution time comes?. Is 72 virgins and 28 young pre-pubescent boys, in heaven shit still working? (I can quote the chapters of Qur'an if needed). I guess the problem is, the dead cannot confirm that they didn't get those virgins. How do they deal with unhappy employee? I guess he will die but will not get those virgins and boys. I can't believe prophet had envisioned Homosexuals in that era.
4. Recruitment: What kinda people do they hire? How do they know if the person fits into their organisation or not? Do they have firing policy if some one does not perform?
5. Training: Other than the daily dose of Qur'an, what do these guys read/learn? Is reading Qur'an enough to build such mother fuckers? I am sure IT managers would love to discover some book which will make their team members so committed.
6. Funding: Man how do they raise money? Are projects like these funded directly/indirectly by our Bollywood actors?
   

After all this our leader, honourable Prime Minister of India, in his address to the nation said “terrorists who attacked Mumbai were based outside India”. Sir, I agree you have great brains but you need to get some balls for yourself. You should also change your speech writer(if you have one). Whats up with this "terrorists who attacked Mumbai", arent you suppose to say "terrorists who attacked us" ? or you could have said “early information indicates that these people are of Pakistan origin”. I understand that, event of this magnitude may lead to communal riots and more losses, but trying to be politically correct(so called secular shit to appease minority) when some one declares war on us (on our own streets) is not a great idea. I think you should hear Roosevelt speech to know how to speak as a leader when shit hits the roof. I guess all our politicians should be sent for a crash course with Bin Laden (if he is still alive) to learn leadership qualities.

pissed off
K

Do we need ETHICS?

Last evening when we reached home after work, my wife was furious about something. I waited for her to start the discussion rather than provoking (you know how woman are...). She started, I cant believe how companies like Infosys bill/estimate. Its absolutely ludicrous and unethical. I started laughing(my usual sarcasm). She said I know that's one of the reasons why you don't want to work for such companies. I said, one of the best services company in bangalore I worked for, did not have billing ethics, forget about Infosys/Sathyam/TCS etc. None of them have ethics in their company message. None of the services companies do business ethically. I know I am making a very broad and bold statement, but that's what it is. If they are ethical they will not survive. Competition in prostitution business is cut throat. I remember one of the VP at Thomson Financials(TF) was fired as he took soft kickbacks from a Indian IT services company to make them the preferred pimp of TF (of-course VP was an Indian).

    I started thinking, why is ethics so important for some people? I guess when you don't have kids, you don't have time to think about these things and care about them. Once you have kid(s) (you wanted to have one), then things change. The way you think and look at things change. For example, lots of my single friends where complaining about 11PM pub closing rule in bangalore. I used to think, what's wrong with that. I am sure if I was single, I would be complaining too. The problem I face is, if I am not ethical then its hard for me to teach my kid to be honest and ethical. I try my best to lead by example. I am not claiming that I have accomplished six sigma in it, but I try. Its beyond my comprehension, how these people who work at such places go back home and teach their kids to be honest. Its like you smoking in front of the kid and then later when she is an adult advising her not to smoke. I am sure if you die a brutal death and the doctor says that smoking caused it, no sensible kid will ever touch cigarette in his/her life. I understand that kids don't come to your work place and see how dishonest/unethical you are, but wouldn't it prick when you ask them to be honest/ethical?

 
     The other side of the coin is, the guy who is paying should be smart. If he is not then why shouldn't we take him for a ride. I think if you work in services industry as a prostitute, you can only have ethics as an individual prostitute. If you start thinking at the pimp level, you are in for some pain (only if you have ethics). Long live the PIMP.

    After i wrote this post, i met phani for one last mountain goat before he heads to pleasure island (Bangalore, India). We started discussing on the same thing as he is one cool prostitute (i mean works in IT services, not a Jigalow) and we talked about how everything is relative these days. For example... say we are in a big restaurant and the guy charges less than what he is suppose to, how many of us go back and say that you have charged less. Very few of us will do that. My justification would be, bastard charges us so much, it is ok for me to be dishonest. I remembered my dad, as he always used to say "If you steal mustard you are a thief, if you steal an elephant you are still a thief". I guess that is not true any more. Today if you steal mustard and compare yourself with some one who has stolen an elephant, you are a lesser thief.

    Question is, should our kids be honest? If the answer to that is yes then, whom will they learn from?

K

Home Coming...

Guys, this is not about soldiers or cricketers, OK. This is about a Brahman trying to be a Brahman again(I am talking about myself by the way).

     I decided to be a vegetarian again as of 3/9/2008. It is coincidental that it was Ganesh chaturthi on that day. My decision has nothing to do with either Ganesha or his father Shiva. Some thing happened on 31/8/2008 (My wife will kill me if i discuss it), which made me realize how sentimental/emotional my wife is about this vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. I started thinking how bad she would feel sleeping next to a guy knowing that he might have eaten this animal or that animal. I wondered, if i was her what would i expect from my partner? So i decided to stop eating meat.

     I have also been thinking about being a Vegan. Don't ask me why, some how i wanted to try it. For people who don't know, Vegan means some one who does not use anything that has animal product in it. Lots of vegans don't eat animal products but wear them happily. Me being me cannot do that. I have a favorite leather jacket, damn i cant think of not wearing it. My wife has been convincing me saying, things that were bought before you being vegan, you can wear them, don't buy anything new. I do agree, she has a point hahahahaha..... So first step towards being vegan is to be VEGETARIAN. Does being a vegetarian make me Brahman? Not according to my definition(that's a post by itself) of a true Brahman. According to my wife, its one of the criteria to be a Brahman, so i am happy to satisfy that.

K

Prostitution vs. IT Services

I always believed that there is not much difference between prostitution and IT Services. I have tabulated my observations in the table below. Guys this does not hold good for every one, so please do not get offended. If u do get offended i don't give a fuck.

Trait	Prostitution	IT Services
Body part sold	we all know, no need to mention	Suppose to be brain
Initial Selling	Does loads of show and dance.What you see is what you get.	Lots of dancing. Only best of the lot is showcased. Not necessary you get the same.
Pricing	Loves T&M (Time and Material). For people from non IT background-This means you pay hourly. Does not reduce her rates based on the clients ability to pay. Bulk Discount offered(maybe). Fixed Bid works	Same here Fixed bid is always risky
Customer Satisfaction	Doesn't give a shit	some do, most don't
Gives options for clients to save money	not at all	most of them don't. They think if they do that they will run out of business
Change in requirements	I guess will not be acceptable. Lets say you get her saying one person will screw her and suddenly 2 or 3 people try to do that,she will have objections, surely about billing and has to do Impact analysis. There are other change in requirements but lets keep it simple. If it is T&M some might not have problem and some might.	Same here. I guess in T&M motto is to "embrace change" as it generates more revenue.
Billing	I think will have ethics. I am not sure, would she take money, even if the customer doesn't screw her.	What can i say, you guys decide.
Risk Management	Pregnancy/Cops/Diseases etc.. Don't know what they do... really.	Scope Management, Escalation Procedure, Impact Analysis.. what not. End of the day situation is same.
When shit hits the roof	Say you end up getting AIDS(hahahha), I am sure you will not find the same prostitute. Even if you do manage to find her, she will blame the condom you used (if you did). Say she accepts it, nothing much you can do.	Same here, if the software doesn't work, or has bugs. Blame Requirements. If there is no outstanding invoice, you are shit out of luck.
Highest Bidder Wins	If she has 2 options, i am sure she would choose the one who pays most	If you have 2 offers from Services company, which one will you choose?

I might be way off in my observation about prostitutes as i do not have much experience there. What the heck? Vatsyayana wrote kaama sutra just by living with prostitutes. I don't know if its true, i read somewhere that he never experienced real sex himself. I have very less experience in IT Services industry as well, but i have seen them. Rest is left for you guys to decide and comment. I am trying to answer the question “Is prostitution bad for Society?” It would be awesome if a real prostitute (you know what i mean) finds this blog and comments.
Sorry for the table formatting guys, that's the best i could do on blogger. Publishing this has been real hard work....

K

Agile+ in November

I was talking to one of my friends who works for IBM. She recently moved to a new project. She was very excited to be in an Agile project after a long torture of waterfall with client being a federal organization of Australia. Since she was new to Agile, it was natural for her to ask me few questions. I was keen to ask a few questions of my own. Even before i opened my mouth she said that she is a lead on that team. That made me more interested in knowing what kind of an agile is this (generally there are no team leads). She then mentioned something that made me laugh so much that my stomach still aches. She said they will be moving to "Agile +" in November. I laughed to my heart content and then Q & A session followed as below

My Questions, Her Answers

Q: What is the Iteration duration

A: 2 Months

Q: Do you follow TDD, what kind of tools do you use for Continuous Integration

A: Not heard of it

Q: Is there a testing phase

A: Yes, Last iteration of 4 weeks is testing

Q: Is the customer involved

A: Yes

Her questions, My answers

Q: Hows the design phase in agile

A: generally there is no design phase (BDUF vs Evolutionary Design)

Q: Do you think this is Agile

A: Please don't use that word (laughing....)

I believe some morons feel ashamed to admit that they are still doing waterfall/iterative development. They want to use the buzz words and hence use them as they want. I am not gung ho about doing things that some one else says you gotta do if you want to be agile. The bottom line is to do what works, that means produce "working software" (means different things for different stake holders) and "people building that software are HAPPY" (again each human being derives happiness from different things). 

From what i heard from her it more or less sounds like Iterative Development or RUP(Rational Unified Process, after all Rational was bought by IBM). I am sure these companies will soon create a governing body which will certify whether you are agile or not (like CMM or PMP etc. I think there is already Scrum Master certification, what a shame). More than her i cant wait to know what Agile+ has in store. Waiting anxiously for November to dawn while i hunt for knowledge to answer the question "Why do people run behind buzz words"

K

Bin-Laden Vs Mother Theresa

Day before yesterday, i got into an argument with one of my friends regarding “Selfishness” and “unselfishness”. The whole thing started off as a joke, as my friend being a woman said that men are selfish. Once the debate got serious i ended up asking my favourite question in this topic “Is mother Theresa selfish or unselfish”. As i expected she said Theresa is unselfish. I do not believe in it. My argument is that every one is selfish. We all do/want to do things that makes us happy. While we are doing that we might make others happy or sad, help people etc.., that does not matter. May be Theresa's parents did not want her to become nun (I am just guessing don't hold my throat), she did what made her happy. I will quote one instance (of course borrowed from history), Pope wanted Theresa to ride in a car, may be he really wanted her to ride in that car. She could have taken one ride in it, couldn't she? No, selfishly she declared that she would do with the car what she wanted to do with the car which was to sell it. Anyways as every argument ends we agreed to disagree and parted our ways.

Next day i started thinking about it and some how felt will this whole thing make Bin-Laden (The most hated Man) unselfish. According to him he is working for Islam and people who follow that religion. With the kind of Oil money Bin Laden has, he could have chosen to sit happily in a palace in SA with tons of woman around him(polygamy being legal in ISLAM) but instead he chose to be what he is. I am sure lot of you will say he is taking life's while Theresa was saving (per say). All said and done, below are some of the commonalities between them.

“RELIGION”, I seriously believe, with all Theresa did for people in trouble and stuff, motto was to sell Christianity. Theresa invested time, bin laden invests time and his own money. Obviously both of them spent most of their life doing what they believed in doing.(I am sure bin laden is not looking for any other job) Rest is for you guys to think and yell at me.

Comments are welcome... I am the almighty, i moderate comments on my blog(hahahaha). Feel free to wish me hell, before you do at least understand the Intent. I am neither undermining what Theresa did nor glorifying what bin laden does. I hate bin laden too, other than the obvious reasons, because of him Bush spent all my TAX money on WAR.

K

Visit to God in Melbourne

Finally after lot of convincing from my wife that i have committed enough sins, which requires a visit to temple, we ended up going to ISKCON which is very close to our house. Below are some of the observations from that visit:

As we entered i saw that there was some pooja going on in the courtyard so i wanted to checkout what's happening. A couple (Indian Guy married to OZ chick) where performing "Naamkaran" (Naming ceremony). Priest was an australian, and i heard him kill gayathri mantra left and right. How in the world can this guy chant sanskrit mantra? I know that these days even indian priests cant pronounce it properly but still it was very funny to hear the chantings being killed by a OZ priest.

When i was watching my daughter (she was sleeping), my wife visited the god and asked for forgiveness for all our sins. By the time my turn came to do the same they closed the doors. I asked them when would it open, a white lady replied "god is resting". I just bursted laughing and said "i thought he is suppose to listen to our grievances 24/7 365 days and thats what he gets paid for. That lady was in a hurry to eat, she said look come back at 4PM. I started thinking, if i was her i would have said, "god has just now left the building as he consults at lot of places".
I was hungry too so i proceeded to the kitchen, line was pretty big and circular. I figured out where i am supposed to stand and got into the line. In front of me was the mother of the OZ girl who was performing naamkaran. The indian daamad/son-inlaw(SIL) walked up to her and asked her to come get the food. Lady replied, yes thats why i am standing in line. SIL said, we dont have to stand in line as we are guests who have performed pooja here so we can cut through the line. She said that would be shameful and she wouldnt do that. I told her, i admire your discipline. If i was in your place i would have probably accepted that offer and got my food faster. She started laughing and said, very fact that you are appreciating what i did shows that you would not have done that. I told her come on, i am an indian i would cut through the line.... (no offence guys).

Finally it was my turn to get the food, I asked the guy how much should i pay. He said you can donate downstairs... while returning i put 5$ in the hundi and thanked lord krishna for the lunch and told him sorry to disturb him while he was resting.

Life in OZ Land.....

Vowing to the rigorous pressure from fan(s) (reddy thanks for encouraging me) of my writing i finally decided to blog today. We moved to OZ land (from now on for Australia) in the month of june. I was living a retired life for around 6 weeks. It was awsome fun as i didnt have to worry about earning bread (My wife was doing it for us). My daughter and myself use to just play all day.. i used to make lunch for her and hit the bed after lunch. When she gets up we used to go swimming. By the time we are done hitas mom would be back and i used help myself with some alcohol. I know i am making lot of you guys jealous. This lasted for 6 weeks thats it.
I had 2 offers in melbourne, one from a logistics company and the other a startup, to which i was referred by one of my thomson colleagues. I decided to join the startup even though salary was 30K AUD less. Its been fun working here. We are a company of 5, CEO is the only guy who does not code. Out of the 4, 2 are phds in robotics... (These guys are unlike the phds i have met in the past. SCA folks will understand) I am the most under qualified in the company... All of them are extremely arrogant, so i am feeling @ home here (hahahaha). Public transport is great and no hassle of driving. Remember commuting to office in blore....
I met one of my previous employers who have office in melbourne, i was told that they dont like me as i blogged something about them. So that makes the count 2 (not getting job cuz of blog). I think i am a controversial writer... hahahahaha

Now enough of personal ranting and making you guys jealous.....

OZ land is shit expensive.... For starters, Banana is 8$ a Kg.... Poor mans fruit in India. I was flabberghasted when i saw the price. After living in US this place is very expensive, even if you dont convert things into INR. Most importantly, Oz beers suck as much as US beers... and to make people buy Oz beer these bastards sell imported beer @ a very high cost... Corona costs 20$ for 6 pack.(reddy get some KF when u r coming here). They attribute high cost of vegetables and fruits to famine. One thing i have figured is, this country has less people and they want to make the most out of them. Come on guys get some people from a religion which preaches not using condoms (u guys know who i am talking about). Next 20 years OZ will be fighting to control population like India (hahahaha). My daughter has started going to school and guess whats the fee for one day (90AUD).

People are crazy about footy... Slowly starting to get hang of it. TV is pretty much crap as you get 4 channels without cable or anything.

Oh bfore i forget... i have changed my religion... not using Windows anymore.... on MAC... it rocks
I promise, next blog will surely offend IIM Students (Kartha, watch out hahahahah...)

Agile Enablement

I was talking to one of my friend who is big time into agile enablement. In fact I did the same for an organization as a consultant. I told my friend an analogy about how Christians sell their religion. I remember when I use to live in DC one of the Christian organization rep walked into my house and below is the conversation we had.

Rep: Can I come in
Me: You can but pls don’t take too much time (I am a huge fan of NFL and redskins game was about to start)
Rep: (after intro) “I think you are living in dark”
Me: I don’t like too much light, is the room too dark for you, I will switch on the light
Rep: No I meant about your religion
Me: (That’s all, that made the most cynical bastard in me come out.) Why do you think so, you guys light candles in front of Jesus which tells me that your god himself is living in dark and needs light. Your god shows you way with the light you have provided him (just humor guys, nothing to get offended)
Rep: That’s not the significance of lighting candles
Me: I am not interested in knowing, because the game is about to start. Take a beer, if you want we will debate after the game.
Rep: Shall I come back later
Me: Next time you come, bring a lot of cash.
Rep: Why
Me: So that you can pay me for my time.

Rep left and I watched the game. Coming back to enablement, I told my friend that agile enablement is similar to selling religion. He started laughing when I gave him a punch line, “Go Agile – Enlighten your Organization”.

At the end of agile enablement exercise, I asked the guy who paid me “do you think you are agile now” he said I am not sure. I said you need to hire me for one more month and started laughing. From that instance on I am trying to come up with a strategy to measure the quality of enablement? Working on it, hopefully will get to something soon.

My friends and I have had lot of discussions/debates about whether you need to sell a religion or not. Some of them believe that’s the problem with Hinduism. How can we, there is no process for conversion defined in Hinduism. Agile is more or less like Hinduism, “do whatever that works for you”… that said do we need to sell Agile?

My Journey of Job Hunt

For the first time in 10 years I have been asked by an organization to leave. Owner of the startup that I am working for does not want to spend money on product development. He has decided to close the Bangalore office and keep the Delhi office as it is much cheaper to operate in Delhi. So I am back in the market looking for a job. I have met so many idiots in past one month, wish I had enough financial backing; I would never work in this industry. Below are some of the conversations

I went to a company in Diamond District (they have some asset management product)

Interviewer (I): What would you do if you are stuck in a forest with flat tires and do not have spare, with your family

Me (M): my daughter has super natural power of fixing flat tires, she will fix it and I will move on

He got offended; I told him hypothetical answer for a hypothetical question. I really can’t understand what this idiot was trying to measure, if he was trying to measure how I would react to an unplanned event, i think I faired well.

Next Question

I: how many maruti zens are there in Bangalore

M: If you are trying to measure my presence of mind I can give you any number and you would not be able to do anything about it.

I: give a number

M: 100,281

I: how did you come out with that number?

M: fact that you can’t validate it/debate about it sitting in this room

He was again offended; I don’t see what was wrong in my answer. All these F**** can’t accept blunt answers for their stupid questions.

I met VP engineering of company called DumbObjects (Not the actual name, I don’t want to hurt core values of dumb people), below are some of the conversations

I: 15 days before the delivery of the project, architect (Key person) resigns, what will you do?

M: 15 days before the release if your project requires architects then you are in much deeper shit than him resigning (hahahaha).

I: I want to know how you would handle it

M: I will try to find out the reason for him to leave, if there is anything as an organization we can do then I will try else I will plan a smooth transition and let him go.

I: How many people have you fired?

M: I don’t have the count

M: I asked him what he would do in the same situation

I: it depends; I would probably convince him not to leave

M: That means you have an employee who has no clue what he wants or you are so charismatic that you can convince him. One of them has to be true; I don’t think the latter is true.

Obviously VP did not hire me, reason they gave was that they were not happy about some of the blogs that I had written. I told him; neither do I want to work for some hypocritical bastards. I asked him one question; let’s say I write an article about a social issue and you have a different stand about the same, you will not hire me? He did not have any answer.

It’s beyond my comprehension what all these morons are looking for in a person when they are interviewing. The very fuckin mentality that they are doing a favor by giving job to some one leads to such stupidity. After coming back to India, Thoughtworks probably has the best interview pattern. At least such stupid questions are less (not zero hahahhaa…).

Breeding Innovation

I keep thinking about a workplace that is conducive for innovation. What kind of environment helps people innovate?
Thoughtworks is one place i felt has fairly achieved it. An environment where people can express their ideas and opinions with out any apprehensions, is what probably breeds innovation. If organizations have environment where people have to blindly follow processes/hierarchies, they stop thinking. The best analogy i can think of is; all the rituals and religious things we do without knowing the actual significance of it. Some of them really made sense at that point of time but not now. A community is all about reviewing and adapting to changes. An Organization is nothing but a community. Its easier said than done but thats what the challenge is all about.
Some of the key things about environments conducive to innovation are

1. Transparent/Open environment: As mentioned earlier, an environment which encourages people to express their opinion/ideas. Important thing is that people should not have any fear that it will be used against them.
   
2. Confidence in youngsters we have hired: If this is missing, we start taking inputs only from people who have experience or rather old. Stereo typical mentality is that people with out experience will not be able to contribute at higher levels. I feel the other way is true. Some times old people have thoughts of their generation which do not hold good during present times.
3. Open feedback: if people cannot accept feedback/criticism about their ideas and take it personally, its a major hurdle for innovation.
4. Meritocracy:a system in which the talented are chosen and moved ahead on the basis of their achievement not based on their age.

Is "Change" that Hard

Last weekend i took my 1 year old daughter to swimming pool (was her first time at the pool). She was in the pool sitting in a floater. She started paddling her legs and flapping her arms with in no time. I was amazed seeing that. kids have such an inherent ability to adapt and learn, its just so opposite of us (adults). Above narration is a preamble to what i started thinking in the pool.
I work for a startup product company which is doing fairly well. We are at a stage where management wants to invest money in product development. Initially they were behind revenues, (this is the case with any startup, else they will go belly up) which has led the product to such chaos that its impossible to manage now. We had Product strategy meeting in Delhi last week to come up with a plan to make the product manageable. What i observed is listed below.

1. Resistance to change: When i was trying to explain some of the aspects of agile, lot of them were skeptical, especially people on whom organization is dependent on. I was trying to convince them that distributed development can be done with less pains using some of the aspects of agile. Resistance was from people who are considered as extremely important in the organization today. Since i termed them as bottle necks they were offended but sincerely when i think, they are bottlenecks.
   
2. Knowledge Transfer: Delhi office was started before bangalore office, naturally they have more domain knowledge than people in bangalore. Delhi public dont want to transfer knowledge, may be because they are scared of loosing their job. This is probably due to management not updating the people about organizational goal or people we have are so incompetent that they are scared of being laid off.

Both of the above mentioned observations are not good for a growing organization.
I was wondering looking at my daughter, why dont adults like us have what a 1 year old has?

Is Resigning a CRIME?

After coming back to India and working with more than 3 organizations I have found that resigning is a CRIME. I have observed in couple of places that boss stops talking to you and do not even smile when he sees you. Its not that I am missing something, I can’t stop laughing at such immature thinking. In such a globalized world its very common that people find better opportunity and move on. As an organization we should respect others dreams and priorities. This is what is missing in most of our organizations. If the person has spent lot of time in an organization that he may feel that his life has become monotonous and wants to do something new. Organizations should only try to reduce the impact of loss of such a person.
This is a nice story that I would like to narrate (its real). One of my friend who has umpteen years of experience joined Cognizant. After a week he felt that he was in a wrong place and wanted to quit and informed the same to BU head. As usual these guys think that they have such an amazing charisma that they can influence some bodies thinking and try to give a pep talk. This did not work, so the guy asked him to serve notice period. Can you believe it, for one week of employment 60 days of notice? When I heard this I was rolling on my stomach. What does this convey? People who are heading organizations are so irrational; they have even lost the ability to think. They don’t even know what is good for the organization and what is not. Lets take this scenario and elaborate. What will an organization get by this guy serving notice period. It would be such a loss for the company since they have to pay him for those 60 days and get nothing out of it.
This is the reason why I feel that organizations need to have some young blood at the decision making level. Having only young blood could also prove detrimental; it should be a nice mixture of young and experienced people. Young blood will most of the time have the guts to accept the market reality and take decisions based on the same.