Past & Present...

She: Are you upset?
Me: Yes, I am...
She: Why?
Me: Why should I not ?
She: Tell me... I am your wife...
Me: You are my wife...
She: What?
Me: You told me to tell you that you are my wife? Didnt you?
She: Ha Ha... Okay, What are you doing now?
Me : Thinking...
She: What are you thinking about?
Me: No one can possibly express all that they are thinking...Because, when they are telling it, they are going to be thinking about something else and so on and it will be an infinite loop...That, is a true statement...
She: Are you mad at me?
Me: No, not now.. and, that, is a true statement...
She: So, you were and now you are fine...
Me: I am fine now... and that is true...
She: Okay, stop it ...
Me: Ha Ha Ha...:)
.
.
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[Me = Me, She = Shoba...:)...]

Abstraction

When I look at evolution of new technologies, one commonality that attracted my attention was that they all strive towards abstraction. When it gets to solving a problem, we want the problem or rather the solution to escalate to a level where all the underlying levels are either already solved or taken care of by someone else. For example, a calculator is a fine example (may be a very shallow example..:)). When you use it, you implicitly assume that it is doing the right thing. You dont care about the algorithm or circuitry it uses. All you care about is that, it gives you the right result. And, a CEO or someone who gets the results from an accountant who uses the calculator probably doesnt want to know the sequence of calculations that were used as long as he gets his result and so on. For someone who is a benefactor of technology, it is a boon to not having to know all the underlying mechanism. But, for someone who develops the technology, is it true?

In life, the interesting stuff happens only during transitions. I think, managing transitions is what life is all about. Whenever people talk about anything, they
only talk about the first few minutes or hours or months or the last few... Anything that happens in between is either overlooked or not talked about...The reason why transitions are more exciting is probably because it is also the most vulnerable part. Anyway, that was a digression of my thought flow... What has this got to do with abstractions? When technology goes through transitions, things dont always look good. As abstractions are abstracted, they are unstable and some people almost always dont want everything to be abstracted since they lose a sense of control over what they do. So, technological transitions suffer this major hurdle as it paves it's way through.

One of the hot topics today in technology is virtualisation. Virtualisation of all kinds. In a nutshell, what businesses want to do is to give users an interface to manage stuff and everything else will be taken care of behind the scenes. For example, you dont really need to have a computer. You will have an interface that will emulate what you get out of a computer. You could ask for a computer with linux or microsoft OS with xyz applications and you will get it on demand. Your disk storage will be on demand. Your internet speed will be on demand. You will be given services which will make sure that your data is secure. You dont have to worry about software upgrades. You just pay for a single service... Abstraction of technology to a level where the user doesnt have to tinker around anything by themselves... If you are a "server hogger", you may not like this. If you are a sceptic about security, you might be concerned. But, this is the model that will be followed as technology progresses. You will hear terms like Virtual Machines, Virtual Platforms, Virtual I/Os and so on.

To me, virtualisation is just one facet of abstraction. The interesting thing about abstraction is that, businesses can capitalize on peak consumption or lack thereof. Look at airlines, they always try to oversell tickets with the assumption that not everybody who signed upto travel show up. Same is the case with internet bandwidth. You will be amazed at how much of oversubscription happens on a given link. Again, the same is true with computer utilization. How many of us use our computers to its maximum computational capacity. We all aspire for the fastest computer though..:) As technology gets abstracted to the next level, industries can make use of the inefficiencies in individual's usage so that more people think they have all the computational power they need... It is good for the consumer because they dont have to deal with installing new software or hardware which in some cases, might require a PhD even for the "skilled"... Though abstraction is fact of life, I still think there is a sort of vacuum that it leaves behind for the fresher aspirants...

Eateries

I headed home from work with such a determined mind that day, that I was going out for dinner. This happens often, but what else I had made my mind about was the fact I was not going to set foot in the kitchen that lovely Friday evening! Dinner plans were made, and we set out amidst certain excitement that comes with getting your child to stop cycling outside, and wearing something nice.

We arrived at the haute restaurant and waited for an hour outside clutching out tickets in our hands, waiting for our turn with the menus. We finally went in and sat, and when the waiter busied himself with notepad and pen to take down our orders, we gave him the first order of the evening. A special order - nothing on the menu.

A boiled egg we asked with as much nonchalance as we could muster. The sure footed waiter faltered, he stammered for a response, and said - "a-a b-boiled egg?" Yes, we beamed. I stepped in and comforted him with the assurance that I would be ordering something from the menu. "We love your food", we told him before he broke out sobbing. I could see the pride in his restaurant shattered in his eyes.

You can take my daughter to the fanciest restaurant with the most fantastic menus, but of late, what satisfies her immensely is a boiled egg. We all ate our favourite dishes, and handed a special tip to our waiter who had gone through considerable difficulty obtaining the boiled egg from the seasoned chef.

Everytime I step into Coldstone Creamery, and order a small plain vanilla icecream, I go through a similar experience. Don't blame them - check this out!
http://www.coldstonecreamery.com/icecream/original_creations.html

0-100K in 8 years

I distinctly remember the May 1999. Awe and unknown of living in the foreign land far away from the safe nest was not over yet. Got the hang of right lane and left hand drive from Suresh and co. With the backing from pros who bought Passats & Audis when Corolla & Civic are the standard, I went to car shopping.

I will leave the car shopping in dealership to another blog. In summary, after tug-of-war, we settled on the price and I signed the dotted line to get my Acura Integra, the brand I never heard before. To sound knowledgable I educated myself to 0-60mph time, horsepower, fuel efficiency etc. (though I have to find what they meant much later).

It was Mile 0 for both me & my Acura. Driving up and down on El camino is how it started. The journey continued... From weekend Tahoe drives to adventurous long drives the car has travelled with me everywhere.

Acura saw so many things as we both traveled together.
- It carried a awe stuck early 20s bachelor and his friends across the valley aimlessly
- It moved job with him
- It saw aggressive 90 mph (in 40 mile zone) changing into to passive 65mph in freeways.
- It smiled at its driver's changing music taste
- And happy at driver's changing life status (bachelor->married->father)
- It even worked a small squirrel's part in getting its driver married to a beautiful girl(would-be mapillai is owning Acura so he must have some taste in life was the comment by cross-reference guy :) )
- It safely carried the new born around in the compact back seat

Apart from the aging issues it never disturbed its lazy owner much.

Yesterday as I was driving past Auto Mall parkway after 8 years and few months later, the car odometer touched 100000. I am happy to travel so far with you too Acura-Integra 4FGP160!

Is Spirituality for the weak?

As far as I can think back, I could never accept the fact that someone can advise me on what I can do or what I cannot. I don't know if it was the culture or the environment or the people I have been associated with, I always thought I knew exactly what the right thing to do was? I could never accept advices like, speak the truth or follow the path of god or accept failures as a fact of life and move on, etc.,... Well, there is some truth to any advice and in an ideal world, it all sounds good. But, I think there is a big fudge factor to every ideality and one cannot follow rules. What does this have to do with spirituality? one might ask... What about us that defines what is right or what is not? Why do I not seek a solution into believing in ideas which seemingly acts as a panacea to a majority of people ? Or, am I believing in certain ideals implicitly that I dont realise?

Fundamentally, I consider all living things as a big normal distribution with the stronger beings on one side and the weaker on the other. No wonder why survival of the fittest took control and continuously pushes the distribution to the stronger side. In such an environment, given that humanity comes under a single umbrella, what is the hope for the weaker side? I think spirituality solved the problem. Firstly, it gives hope for those who strive to be on the stronger side. Also, it says other things like, if you lead a good life (honesty, hard-work etc.,) , you will lead a great life in the next life and that, money is not everything and that dignity and life-style will make everyone remember you... I think these are ways to console oneself and attribute a reason to their weaknesses. Though I may sound sarcastic and blunt when I say all of this, I should also accept the fact that this is the only reason why the world still exists... One might say that law and order and other factors play a role in keeping us intact. I dont think so... Assume a case when there is always a war between the strong and the weak, the world may not be a good place to live in... One could argue that, there are still wars between the stronger group and the weaker group...But, I am talking about the micro levels...

I cannot stop but admire the vast majority of people who take up the most difficult of jobs and yet, hold on to their dignity and not divulge themselves into a multitude of other criminal activities they could do to break the system. If enough people start thinking the wrong way, I am sure the world wouldnt be a better place to live. Spirituality keeps them under control, which, even the strongest of governments cannot achieve very easily...I really do admire the hope in everyone...When I look down on someone, I also realise that there is someone stronger than me commenting on how contended and happy I am with the life that I am leading... Am I spiritually controlled? I dont know. May be, spirituality isn't something that is quantified as how religions define it.. Hmmm...Am I on the weaker side of the spectrum and am I just inventing a way to justify my beliefs on what I think is right? I dont know...

Complicated...

Not sure if I have written about this before. May be I have. But, one has to vent out their frustrations too in a mind sharing community like this..isnt it? And, chances are that, everyone will have a list of "n" topics in which they get frustrated. So, the manifestation of it in different forms do show up when one keeps it transparent...

Anyway, one of the common terms used in a company is that, some "xyz" is very complicated. I get annoyed whenever I hear that term. There are things that I understand and things that I dont. Not because I dont understand it after reading up on it, but rather the ignorance part of it. I think, just the ignorance aspect of a topic doesnt make any topic complicated. It just means that it may not make any sense when someone talks about it. But, once you understand, you know what it is... Here, the term "difficult" should not be confused with. Something that is difficult to understand could be termed complicated. But then, if something is difficult to understand, then it just shows that one is more ignorant in the topic talked about. For example, a brand new recipe for a chef is something that he can understand though it could be very difficult from a layman's perspective. When I say this, I do have to mention that some people just ride on terminologies. For example, they will use the term LRU instead of least-recently-used or LIFO instead of last-in-first-out when they talk to someone who is already ignorant of what the other person is talking about, making it seemingly difficult to understand hence move towards branding it as complicated. When you know the real meaning, a lot of it would make obvious sense.

I understand that people strive for publicity and being termed elite and so on. But, if the purpose of the conversation is to just prove that, like an interview or a marketing/sales pitch to another company, it makes perfect sense. But, when it comes to pure transfer of knowledge, it is not about telling people what you know, it is about telling them what they don't know in a language that they can understand. If that were the case, nothing is as complicated as it may seem. I do agree that, as you add more and more detail to a concept, it does get a little ugly to quantify in a simple statement. But, all concepts are built on basics and everything else is just an if-else condition within that basic theme. Bottom line, good speakers and good listeners can make this world less complicated...:)

Do you love Coffee???

I was walking back from school today and started thinking about a simple choice problem. Let me start with the basic set up and assumptions. Assume that we are all part of organization X. The members of the organization are myself, mano, meera, brainwaves, saumya, mindframes and survivor (others are welcome to join and should not change anything, except the division of the pie). Let us assume we have a big boss "M". We are all coffee lovers and at present the office does not have a coffee machine. The machine will cost the firm $ "c". Now "M" being the kind of guy he is, decides that he will buy the machine only if his staff (we) value the machine sufficiently to justify the expense. Not buying the coffee machine will not lead to any loss of productivity is an inherent assumption. Therefore the only decision driver for "M" is that we value the machine sufficiently.

Each one of us have private valuations for the machine. The valuation is not the cost of the machine but what is utility that the coffee machine gives me or you. In other words, if asked to contribute to buying the coffee machine, what is my willingness to pay for the machine. Let each of our potential contributions be "x with a subscript i representing each of us". "M" does not drink coffee and his decision rule is that the coffee maker is worth buying if and only if the sum of all the "x's" is greater than or equal to "c". In other words, if the sum of our individual contributions is greater than the cost of the machine, the machine will be bought. Hence what we think about our valuations is important in the outcome and each one of us prefers an outcome where the machine is bought.

Question: What can "M" do in this situation?

Solution 1: "M" can call each one of us privately to his room and ask us for what is our personal valuation. If the sum of our revealed valuation is greater than the cost, the machine is purhcased! Sounds good but there is a problem.

Remember that though we are asked for our valuations, we do not bear any cost. Therefore, one or all of us can inflate our true valuations, because our objective is to get the coffee machine and since inflating the valuation is not costly, the mechanism achieves the objective. "M" being a smart person himself decides that this is not effective and decides against this.

Solution 2: Suppose "M" decides that each one of us will make a contribution equivalent to our valuations and then if our total contribution exceed the cost, the machine will be purchased. Any excess cash collected can be used to purchase say beans. Is this solution optimal? Again it sounds good but there is a problem.

Let us assume here that we are good friends, but do not want to contribute more than an equal share. Also assume that we cannot collude. Therefore our private valuations are known only to us. Now it is possible that some of us might try to free ride on the others. Therefore there is a possibility of understating our true valuation, because we want the same benefit with a lower contribution, expecting another person to subsidize. Hence, again the situation leads to a failure. Therefore "M" rejects this.

What would be the best strategy that "M" can use to resolve this problem? Any suggestions? Is the problem interesting or would modifications be better?? I'm thinking about building examples which can probably be used for teaching design of management control systems (which is something that I want to teach at some point). I presume that such situations probably do arise in real life when there is a need to buy some goods in an organization which are useful collectively. If yes and you were part of it, please do share your experience on how it was solved.

Summer Reading & Viewing list

Started this thread to get summer reading & TV/Moview viewing list.

First reading suggestion Blink is already in.

Bring on your suggestions

Attaching Kqed's summer list. Some of the things stand out on first glance are,
- The Assault on Reason, Al Gore
- The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
- Finding an Angel to Fund Your Business, Joseph Bell

=======Kqed listener suggestions ====
The Savage Detectives, Roberto Bolano
On Chesil Beach, Ian McEwan
Atonement, Ian McEwan
Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001, Steve Coll
Lost City Radio, Daniel Alarcon
Amsterdam, Ian McEwan
The Looming Tower, Lawrence Wright
The Butcher of Beverly Hills, Jennifer Colt
The Mangler of Malibu Canyon, Jennifer Colt
The Vampire of Venice Beach, Jennifer Colt
Liberty Falling, Nevada Barr
High Country, Nevada Barr
Lisa's Travel Diary, privately published, no author specified
The Medici Conspiracy, Peter Watson
A Journal of Ramblings, Joseph Le Conte, published by Yosemite Press
Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Vincent Bugliosi
Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini
A Thousand Splendid Sons, Khaled Hosseini
Black Swan, Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Finding an Angel to Fund Your Business, Joseph Bell
The Terracotta Dog, Andrea Camilleri
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
Taking The War Out of Our Words: The Art of Powerful Non-Defensive Communication by Sharon Ellison
Power, Faith and Fantasy, Michael B. Oren
The Known World, Edward P. Jones
The Assault on Reason, Al Gore
The Yiddish Policeman's Union, Michael Chabon
The Gravedigger's Daughter, Joyce Carol Oates
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America 1789-1989, by Michael Beschloss
The Inheritance of Loss, Kiran Desai
Imperium, Robert Harris
Pompeii, Robert Harris
The Shadow of the Wind, Carlos Ruiz Zafon
Betraying Our Troops, Dina Rasor
1968, Mark Kurlansky
Salt, Mark Kurlansky
Cod, Mark Kurlansky
The Basque History of the World, Mark Kurlansky
Providence of a Sparrow, Chris Chester
The Last Days of the Incas, Kim MacQuarrie
What to Eat, Marian Nestle
Kushiel's Justice, Jacqueline Carey
Halsey's Typhoon: The True Story of a Fighting Admiral, an Epic Storm, and an Untold Rescue by Robert Drury and Tom Clavin
West of Jesus: Surfing, Science, and the Origins of Belief, Steven Kotler
The Places In Between, Rory Stewart
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, J.K. Rowling
The Magician and the Cardsharp, Karl Johnson
The Bread Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
The Pie Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum
Alice Medrich's Cookies and Brownies, Alice Medrich
Sweet Minature, Flo Braker
How Doctors Think, Jerome Groopman
The River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze, Peter Hessler
Infidel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali
The Short Bus, Jonathan Mooney
The Untold Story of Milk, Ron Schmid
Last of the Breed, Louis L'Amour
Ordeal by Hunger, George R. Stewart

Blink

I am reading this book called BLINK by Malcolm Gladwell, which was supposedly my gift to Suresh for his birthday...LOL.... It's a book about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye. It is a National Best Seller, not just “New York Times Best Seller”. I have read a couple of chapters so far and am already impressed. It is a book about instant conclusions that we come to, on meeting someone or while buying a car etc. There was a chapter talking about “Looking at Thin Slices” where the author talks about the conclusions that we come to after reading the thin slices about someone. In a nutshell, it says one does not have to be around a person for a long period to know about him/her. A few hours should be enough. I guess we follow this in arranged marriages in India. A few moments, knowing what interests a person helps us in our decision .The author cites Tom Hanks as an example. I have never come across a person till now who doesn’t like Hanks. Have you? When questioned, people always said that Tom comes out as a decent, trustworthy, down-to-earth, responsible human being, which is also true.

There is a dark side to thin slicing. You might make snap decisions by looking at a person and we all know appearances are deceptive. The book cites car salesmen and how they reacted to white males, white females, black males and black females in a particular experiment. All the participants were portraying as well educated professors and dressed the same. Invariably, the entire salesmen asked 552$ above invoice for white males, $1500 for white females and even higher for black males, with black women leading the pack. Are they racial? No. They are unconsciously associating women with less knowledge about cars and “woman and black” is the worst combination. Wonder what would happen if I walk alone into a car shop. :-) If you want to know how you would react to people, there are some cognitive tests at http://www.implicit.harvard.edu which are quite interesting and tell how you associate race, sex etc.

Some more interesting facts – Did you know that most doctors who get sued are not the ones who make lot of mistakes, but rather the ones who spend less time with their patients. Doctors who spent 3 minutes more with the patients and sounding concerned always got out easy in spite of their mistakes , where as those who sounded dominant, not even arrogant, were sued though they might have been good.

There was one more example about how people do things unconsciously. This was about flash dating where men and women get together and talk to each other for 5 minutes . Basically, the women sit in each of the chairs and the men take rotations and talk to each woman. You would have seen this in movies. There was one woman ,lets call her Jen, who liked Ron very much. When asked before, she had said that she was looking for a smart, intelligent guy. Ron was funny and charming, but not exactly intelligent. After those five minutes, when asked, Jen said she likes funny and charming guys. Looks like it continues for may be a month and then reverts back to smart, intelligent guys. All this is done unconsciously. Maybe, when we get married, since we make snap decisions after talking to a person for a few hours or minutes, there must be something that we find attractive and we unconsciously change our likings to make the marriage a success unless there is an overwhelming difference which makes the marriages fail due to the dark side of thin slicing.

Sivaji - can we go any lower?

The most expensive movie in Tamil cinema and what do we have to show for it? Absolute TRASH! I'm not a member of the "Superstar" hate club, but some level of logical consistency should be part of a movie. It was outright disgusting. The screenplay, plot, comedy, romance and yet another larger than life potrayal. It is amazing that one person has had all the success in the world without any diversification at all. Imagine a 60 year old guy running around a tree with a 20 year old girl. hmm what more can we say. For quite a while I was a die hard fan of Vivek, but this movie was a real let down. The chemistry and flow is completely missing. Wonder where all that money went?

One among the many ludicrous concepts used (spoiler warning!). Rajni is out after all the bad guys and takes away loads of black money from them. The next step is agonizing to watch. He exchanges Indian currency to US dollars in the United states (obviously it is a bad deal) and then distributes the money to his friends who will donate it back to India. Now surely this is gobbledygook!

Have you guys been to the movie as yet? Hardcore Rajni fans please excuse. I think time is better spent watching a nice cartoon. That is real entertainment. I would trade hours of Tom and Jerry for Sivaji any day.

BTW: I came across the blog of this unfortunate person who happened to write a bad review of Sivaji. His rejoinder to "Rajni Veriyans" is interesting. (lol)
http://ada-paavi.blogspot.com/