A case for and against God

A recent death in my family has caused me to re-examine my relationship with God. Being an atheist (will get back to this), every condolence worded in clichés like "She's with God", or "She's in a better place", trigger a very emotional and existential whirlwind of a crisis within me. What is the purpose of life if being with God is the end goal? What good are your degrees, patents, accolades, your unnoticed sacrifices, your selfless acts, if you cease to exist? What is the point of writing a book that no body will read in its entirety and then burning the book? Should there be point?

I've been on both side of the isle. I've been a devout Hindu while growing up and been a complete Dawkinian atheist for most of my adult years. However, I find myself trying to go to the temple and think about God in times of joy and sorrow. And when someone asks about my allegiance, I give them a wide range of answers, ranging from the obtuse:"What is God?", to vague:"mostly atheist", to random:"Yes, I'm a pastafarian".

I can't call myself pure atheist, because, well... I like going to temple & praying. I can't call myself an agnostic, because I'm not ambivalent, I do not have any doubts about the existence of God, and I'm not religious as I don't think that reciting certain texts can give me an edge over others. So, what am I? I am all three, and I'm neither of those at the same time. All the three groups approach the concept of God differently.

Credit: Andrea Baldwin (http://6iee.com/378783.html)

Life is an uphill journey that starts with birth and ends with death. That is the undisputed, cold fact. Imagine a life, of just climbing up a steep set of endless stairs, with no guard railing on the side. The sole purpose of life is to thrive and propagate, but how does an animal, who, by the freak of nature, questions the futility of the exercise & the purpose of existence, survive? The first thing, most of us, who are afraid of heights, would do is imagine a guard railing. Is the railing really there? No. Does it help me climb the endless stairs towards death? Yes, of course. That guard railing we imagine is God.

This is where the factions come in. A general atheist with a mouth piece would yell that there is no rail. He doesn't care if the person relying on this mental construct is scared of heights. He doesn't care if he could help pull someone up the stairs. If he is not scared of heights, he rallies that no one else should be either. A garden variety religious person, on the other hand, tries to convince a scared person that the railing is real. He rallies hard to convince others that not only the guard is real, but his stainless steel railing is much better than the plastic railings others have. He convinces others that it is perfectly alright to lean on this railing. He convinces others to fight for his cause. Of course, we need stronger railing to stop us from falling into the bottomless abyss, don't we.

Not everyone is bad though. An enlightened atheist might distract you from the deep abyss and show you the wonders that lie ahead of you. You can always create other mental constructs to alleviate your fears. Even most people who identify themselves as religious, fall into this category. Why else would they believe in the power of small sheets of paper with numbers printed on it? (Money.. in case you didn't get that). Similarly, there are a lot of religious people I know, who would just point to the railing to comfort the scared climber. Nothing wrong with that.

An agnostic, would just give an ambivalent answer. He would look straight ahead and tell that he's not sure if the railing exists. He is not sure, either because he is not sure whether the person is referring to an actual railing, or, he just doesn't care about the answer.

So what am I? I'm whatever the person who needs help climbing the stairs of life needs me to be. My own relationship with my God, or any other mental construct, is my own, and varies with the ebbs and flows of life. Defining any relationship with a single word, will take the depth out of it. Love without devotion is nothing. Devotion without conviction is nothing. Conviction without awareness is nothing. We rise from nothingness and we go back into it. Nothing encapsulates everything.

Humans have had the need to box off their uncertainties in their life and attribute it to a higher power, or a foreign country, or a sect, or anyone but themselves. This disassociation helps them achieve extraordinary feats in life, and has definitely helped the human race progress at an accelerating pace. As long as one knows what God is, and use it to imbue positivity in their own life and in the life of others, God is and will remain, the most redeeming feature of the human race.

Programming and the art of shoe polishing

One of the most most undocumented occupational hazards of being a software engineer is that the rest of the world is not privy to our thought process, nor do they have a deeper understanding of what we do. Yes, coding is a part of it, and a very big part of it, but, it is understanding of the system that separates good engineers from the bad ones. Coding is easy, coding a system is hard. There is a whole lot of difference between learning english and writing a novel. Just as an exercise, let's imagine that the task at hand is polishing shoes. Our protagonist is the engineer(SE). The product manager(PM), the quality assurance(QA) engineer & shoe polisher(SP) have the supporting roles in this play.

Bad Engineer's Life
PM: I want our company to polish shoes. We will provide supplies to our shoe polisher team who will polish the shoes.
SE: I'll get on it.

[CODE]
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- Distribute polish to each SP.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish on each shoe.
- Take shoes from them.


QA: Hey! Your team used brown polish on black shoes. I'm filing a bug.
SE: Oops. I didn't know that. Let me fix it.

[CODE]
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- Each shoe has a COLOR.
- Distribute polish to each SP. Each polish has a COLOR.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish(COLOR) on each shoe(COLOR).
- Take shoes from them.


QA: Hey! Your team put black leather polish on my black canvas shoes. I'm filing a bug.
SE: Oops. Hey, why would the customer even want to polish canvas shoes?! Please test my system  properly.
QA: I don't care. You should not ruin your customer's shoes.
SE: Let me talk to PM.

PM: You should not ruin your customer's shoes.
SE: Ok.

[CODE]
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- If shoe is CANVAS then return to the customer.
- Each shoe has a COLOR.
- Distribute polish to each SP.
- Each polish has a COLOR.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish(COLOR) on each shoe(COLOR).
- Take shoes from them.


QA: Hey! SP still polishes my hip hemp shoes from SF. And why should the customer wait for shoe distribution to get his canvas shoe back? I'm filing a bug. Hey PM, the code is unstable!!
PM: Hmmm :(
SE: Let me fix it.

[CODE]
- Get shoes from Customer.
- Return shoe if NOT leather shoes.
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- Each shoe has a COLOR.
- Distribute polish to each SP.
- Each polish has a COLOR.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish(COLOR) on each shoe(COLOR).
- Take shoes from them.


QA: After 1 work day, the shoes don't look polished. Something is not working.
SE: I don't know, it works for me. Can you try it again and let me know?
-- After one day --
QA: See.. I told you so. I'm filing a bug.
SE: Oops.. the polish got over after a day. Let me add more polish each day.

[CODE]
- Get shoes from Customer.
- Return shoe if NOT leather shoes.
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- Each shoe has a COLOR.
- Distribute polish to each SP.
- Each polish has a COLOR.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish(COLOR) on each shoe(COLOR).
- If SP is working more than a day, then distribute more supplies to each SP.
- Take shoes from them.


QA: The product passes the test cases.
PM: We can sell this code to SUPER-MEGA-STORE then. Let us do some scale testing. They order around 100 shoe polishes a day! This could be a big order for us. I feel like Steve Jobs.
QA: Sure, whatever, I'll test out the cases.

QA: PM, we polish 100 shoes in a week! We need to handle that many in a day!
PM: SE.. make it so!
SE: I'll try. We can handle around 15 shoes in a day, we need to get 7 times as many SPs, maybe 6 times if we get stronger and faster SPs.
PM: Hmmm... We'll have to pass the cost to SUPER-MEGA-STORE

SUPER-MEGA-STORE: We like the fonts on sign board outside your establishment, take our money                                           and give us the product please.
--- After Deployment ---

SUPER-MEGA-STORE: Hey, nobody wears black leather shoes in our Sunnyvale store. We have too many unused black polish cans in our stores right now.
SE: I'll fix it.
...
SUPER-MEGA-STORE: Hey, one of the SP died while working. The shoes are now piling on!
SE: I'll fix it.

[CODE]
- Get shoes from Customer.
- Return shoe if NOT leather shoes.
- Distribute shoes to each SP(shoe polisher).
- Each shoe has a COLOR.
- Distribute polish to each SP.
- Each polish has a COLOR.
- Ask each SP to use the given polish(COLOR) on each shoe(COLOR).
- If SP is working more than a day.
- If polish(COLOR) is over, replace it.
- If SP is dead, get new SP.
- Take shoes from them.


SUPER-MEGA-STORE: Hey, we want canvas shoes to be washed too.
SE quits.

This happens over the period of a year. SE's own unscalable and spaghetti code have tormented him. The fluidity of requirements from the customer adds fuel to the fire. When one SE quits, other SE takes his place, mutating this code even more into an unrecognizable mess.

Now let's see what happens with a more experienced engineer:

Good Engineer's Life
PM: I want our company to polish shoes. We will provide supplies to our shoe polisher team who will polish the shoes.
SE: I'll get on it. What kind of shoes though?
PM: Leather shoes.
SE: Any specific set of colors? Google lists some common colors as BLACK, BROWN, NEUTRAL, WHITE, CHERRY RED & CORDOVAN.
PM: Hmmm..
SE: Also what about speciality leather shoes like those make with crocodile leather?
PM: Market research shows that people mostly wear BLACK and BROWN shoes, so let's stick with that.
SE: Any particular brand of polish you want me to use.
PM: Use the CODEYMAN brand. We can get bulk discount from them.
-- A week later --
SE: Hey I found out that one box of polish can polish about 250 shoes. I also spoke to my SP friend. He can shine 10 shoes in a day. Do you know about how many shoes we'll be shining a day?
PM: You ask too many questions, I somewhat hate you. SUPER-MEGA-STORE might be interested, but that is just a rumor I heard. But you haven't yet started writing code.
SE: So how many shoe shines a day?
PM: About 100 maybe?
SE: So we need about 10 SPs working each day. We can have 20 SPs who work on two rotating shifts. This would reduce the downtime if something were to happen to them.
PM: Stop doing a PhD in this! I want the code.
SE: Also 100 shoes a day is 700 shoes a week, which means 3 shoe cans would be used in a week. We need to keep more inventory of cans, to keep SPs from waiting on a polish can if someone else is using it. You can use this to set a price point for the product.
PM: I hate you! Give me an ETA.
SE: I'll sketch some informal design plans and revert in 2-3 days.

.. Time goes on ..
SE: PM, I'm going to be code complete in some time. I want the QA to add test cases.
PM: So the product is done?
SE: No, I've just written the code and did some unit testing. System testing etc will take at least a  month.
PM: So the product is done? I'll tell the Sales team to sell the product.
QA: I'll start testing it as soon as I'm done testing some other thing the SE doesn't care about.

SE: Here's the code

[CODE]
- Don't allow customers without BLACK or BROWN leather shoes.
- Let there be X BLACK polish cans and Y BROWN polish cans.
- Every 12 hours:
    a. New set of 10 SPs come in.
       - If less than 10 SPs come in. Pay the exiting employees overtime to pick up the slack.
b. SPs distribute the shoes amongst themselves, trying to maximize the amount of shoes of a particular COLOR.
c. Each SP takes the cans of polish corresponding to the shoe colors he has. He decrements the number of shoe polish cans available by 1.
- If the number of shoe polish hits the threshold T, he puts an order into the system to get more polish. This way they don't have to wait for polish if it runs out.
d. If SP runs out of shoes to polish:
- He'll put the polished shoes on the rack.
- Hel'll repeat steps from b. again.
e. When SPs are ready to leave:
- If less than 10 SPs leave then:
  - Find if SP is dead and put a replacement SP for the next rotated shift.
  - If SP is hiding, then ask him to leave.
- Take shoes from them.


PM: (During review): Please use spaces instead of tabs and use the function names according to  coding standards.

QA: Hey, edge condition issues. If I'm getting 100 shoes/day and one SP dies, the backlog never goes away.
SE: Oh yeah. Let's add a fudge factor of 11 SPs. Will take care in release.

PM: How is the quality?
QA: Seems to mostly work. Not many open issues I think.
PM: Great, let's deploy it.

SUPER-MEGA-STORE: Hey, your system doesn't handle bursts of more than 110 shoe-shines. We need a burst of 200 during Christmas holidays.
PM: Sure. We can include redundancy and burstiness of shoe-shine traffic in your tarrif. This would translate to hiring seasonal workers.

SUPER-MEGA-STORE: I need to get canvas shoes washed too.
PM: That feature will be supported in the next release.

SE: Shouldn't be a big deal. I'll design similar product for canvas-shoes and encapsulate both the products behind an api that is multiplexed by shoe type.
PM: Whatever.. just do it.

SE goes home.
SE: Honey.. I'm home.
Wife: Whatever! you spend all your time at work. I hate you.

.. SE is sad.

You are not special..

Are you from a country that has some sort of currency? 

Now that you are intrigued by my idiotic question, please allow me the liberty of asking another one. If you are filthy rich in one country, lets say that you are a millionaire in US, living in a house that was featured on "Cribs", and you move to country that doesn't recognize your wealth. Do you instantly become poor? The answer is a resounding yes. Then all this proves is that you were rich only because you and other people around you, attached some value to the pieces of paper with numbers scribbled on them. The whole economy functions only because everyone sees some value in those pieces of paper. If I'm able to convince people that my torn sock has some value, then other people will think I'm rich. I'll be actually rich, when I believe that my torn sock is valuable, or if I exchange it for some belief system that I actually believe in (e.g. hard cash) before the reality catches up.

Let's look at social circles. There isn't much disparity between people within a circle, I.e. you wouldn't find people who are a lot poorer or a lot richer than you in your active circle of friends. Money act as differentiator here because it forces a change in priority, e.g. you wouldn't take a trip to Hawaii with friends if you are short on cash, but would definitely go on local hikes because it hardly costs anything.  Gradually friends turn into acquaintances and are sometimes forgotten. Slowly but steadily, you lose touch with people (Note that there are other reasons why people lose touch, but I'm just trying to point out this particular one). If you have lived a relatively fuller life, you'd accept the fact that people move in and out of our lives, just as we move through their's. Without our knowledge, forces of economics drive people closer to each other and rips us apart. All this, because we believe in a common currency!!

Forget money for a second, and think about culture. Think about it as money. What happens when a white catholic from America meets an upper caste Hindu brahmin from India? How does that interaction go? Let's assume for one second that the American has never heard or know anything about India, and the Indian doesn't know anything about America.. what then? Their interaction would completely depend on the place and environment in which they meet. If they meet at the Indian's house, the Indian would probably find the American less modestly dressed, lacking any knowledge of his religion, his traditions, bordering on blasphemy. The American would see the Indian in the same light if the meeting happened in America, he would find the clothes, food, traditions, deities with multiple hands completely weird. Both of them would find each other less cultured. Assuming both of them to be decent humans, the Indian would encourage the American to go to temples and introduce him to scriptures, on the other hand, the American would do the same if he is religious, if not he'd encourage the Indian to watch some opera or Broadway to get some "culture". If either of them disagree, there would be hostilities thrown around. 

Sadly that is how most of the wars start, because of both parties fail to understand the different point of view because it is so radically different. We got around the money problem by having currency exchanges which arbitrarily pits currencies against each other based on supply and demand and not the purchasing power it facilitates in the region where it is prevalent. I.e. if a 1 USD = 60 INR, and a couch costs 1 USD in USA but 30INR in India, who is richer, the guy with 30INR or the guy with 1USD? Still, these currency exchanges allow retention of economic status all over the globe... because everyone believes in some currency and they are more or less inter changeable.

Should we setup a culture exchanges like currency exchanges then ? If you can distinguish between Chardonnay and Sauvignon Blanc, should you be considered a high priest in Navajo? Would you consider Dr BalmuraliKrishna and Puccini similar? Would you see Baptism and Upnayanam in the same light regardless of your religious inclinations?

Of course that would be absurd. Cultural, economical, sociological inequalities are all absurd because they depend on a belief on an arbitrarily defined concept perpetuated by people. These concepts might be bit alien to people who have not interacted a lot with other cultures and have spent their whole life in a cocoon. 

Attacks on our rigidly held belief system tend to anger us. If the belief system is big enough, it might even start a war. A lack of a belief system, however, evokes nihilism, depression and general sociopathic tendencies. This seems to be a catch 22 situation. A belief system has given us distinct evolutionary advantage, even if has been something which defies logic. However, evolution's only concern is the survival of the species, not it's well being. (A recent study shows that chicken taste good to humans because chickens wouldn't have survived in the wild without human help, so humans started rearing tastier breeds of chickens while ignoring the other breeds). It may very well be the case that a fundamentalist faction exterminates all other races (as has been tried multiple times in the past) on earth.. We might end up becoming a paragraph in a grade school book. We might all be doomed to the same fate as Neanderthals when homo sapiens roamed the earth. Of course, the process won't end there. There'll be fractures in the victor's factions, a power struggle between the sub-factions, and eventual destruction of culture and advancement. 

Humanity is stuck in a feedback loop and is shaped by our own intellect, the limits of which, we cannot comprehend. We need a better approach, and we need to shape our own destiny as a race. What matters to you, doesn't matter to anyone else and vice versa. Why shouldn't we accept the disparity in the belief systems without being combative?

Sh*t will always fly

Are you living in the perfect world of your own? Do you want something to change? Chances are that you do. If you don't then you probably have achieved nirvana and are reading this blog from a higher state of existence.

Dial your life back by a few years, dial it as far as you can go, access your oldest memory. What were your problems back then? You were probably not old enough to understand any financial problem that your parents might have, you were probably fed by someone, someone did your laundry, somebody chauffeured you around, you had friends who could play with you, and even a discarded carton was a spaceship to you... but what were you worried about? Grades!! thats right. Even though, your life was perfect, so much so that songs have been written about fantasies to get back to childhood, you worried about that 1/2 a grade that you didn't get in history. You thought that life would be perfect if you could just get that 1/2 a grade. Of course, now you know that, your life was perfect, and it was immature of you to want that 1/2 a grade.. or maybe you think that the want of that 1/2 a grade shaped who you turned out now.

Fast forward a few years now, just before you go to college. You think that you could ace all the classes you took few years back, if you could do it now.. and you'd be right. Now you are hot headed enough to ignore any problems that your parents might have, and think of yourself as a new generation of whatever. Still everything is paid by family so life is good. But you are still worried about grades and the college you get into. You obsess over it for a year or two. And you think that life would be good if you could just get into a good college. Of course, now you know that, your life was perfect, and it was immature of you to base your whole life around the want of the greatest university.. or maybe you think that the want shaped who you turned out now.

Few more years into your life, you are now in your prime, just before you graduate. You have the closest friends you'll ever make in your life close to you, you have a clear goal of what you want to do in life. Your bills are still paid by your family and you are too busy to be worried by any problems back home. And what do you obsess about? Your job.. that's right. You obsess and obsess over finding the right job. Maybe you find it, maybe you don't. You still think the life is not perfect.

A good university, a good job, a new gadget... everything gets old and transparent. We humans are evolved only to notice change, not something that is stagnant.

Few years into the job, your life is still not perfect, you have a good job, but now you obsess over your personal life. You think that your life would be perfect if you just got married. Even with all the accolades you won, all the friends you have, you don't have a perfect life... And of course, we want to make it perfect, don't we.

So fast forward a few years, you'll get married. This is where my experience ends.. of course there are still things in my already perfect life that I need to change to make my life "perfect"... But we as a species should realize that our lives are perfect the way they are. Life changes, and since a non-believer in destiny, you have the reigns of your life in your own hands. Life adds more code to your monolithic operating system, and you should know that more code mean more bugs, but remember that more code also means more functionality. If life didn't have imperfections then you'd not move the train of your life to a better destination.

Don't think about that half a grade, your college search, your job search, your spouse search, or any other imperfections that you handled. Think about your schooling, your college, your friends, your job, your spouse. You'll see that you have a rich life.. enjoy it and be thankful for the imperfections that makes it richer.. cause even if you are billionaire space cowboy with pet unicorns, sh*t will alway fly.

Thank you Team In Training

This has been one of the most productive year for me so far.. working on an awesome project in Cisco, got few paid gigs as a photographer, and ran a marathon.. that's right ran a friggin marathon!.. Everything else I did this year pales in comparison. I still choke up when I think of crossing that finish line, no matter how abysmal my finishing time was..

It all started in May. I was pissed off at someone (and lets just leave it at that), was driving back home and stuck in traffic, there was a radio ad for Team In Training, a team that trains people for marathons, triathlons, crazy hikes, century bike rides etc to raise money for Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.. I thought..fuck it.. I'm going to run a Marathon. It was just a whim, I had no desire to be an athlete, nor had any relation to the cause.. it was a Forrest Gump moment for me where I just wanted to run.. for no apparent reason..

Now you guys have to remember that I used to bunk PE/games classes back in school and spend my time in the lab/library.. the last 5K I did was about a year ago, when I just woke up one morning, wore a sketcher shoe, and ran a 5k organized locally.. no practice etc.. i.e. I was in as good a shape as an average engineer is. Every rampup weekend run, which started at a measly 4 miles, was followed with me lying on the bed for 2 days, limping, and bitching and moaning for the rest of the week.

I don't really think my words can do justice to what the staff of TnT (Team in Training) has brought into my life. I know it is a cliché but they really did change my life. I'm normally a pretty distant guy with an EQ of a dead cat, so I thought that I'd be pretty thick skinned to whatever they had to say.. I just thought that I was there for the run. Coming in contact with all the honorees, cancer survivors & people still suffering from cancer has given me a different perspective of life. When you see a grown man cry after he exclaims that he was told that he'd be cancer free after 15 years, or when you realize that the person running & motivating you for the past 10 miles had cancer and was going through chemo just few months ago.. or when you find that a bubbly, high spirited lady decided to run 3 marathons, one for each kid she had, after she was told that she was in remission.. it puts things into perspective. Life is fragile and we take so many things for granted.. we tend to be lazy and jaded & stop aspiring for greatness and just settle for mediocrity. That finisher's medal hanging in my room, doesn't remind me of my accomplishment, but my time & experience with the team, which I'm going to cherish for ever, and if life permits, return next year.

The training was kind of harder than I expected, more so because of the time commitment it needed. I was running on Tuesdays, Thursdays & Saturdays and was supposed to cross train on Monday & Wednesday.. this meant that I couldn't go out with my friends on friday because I had early morning runs the next day..or Sunday because I was sore from Saturday. I think most people at my work don't remember me walking straight :P now. It was also a revelation to me that it was much easier to build stamina than the musculoskeletal system. What that means is that for longer runs, I used to hurt my legs  faster than I used to get tired. It is no secret that I have a huge ego, so on any given run, I had a choice of either hurting my ego or hurting my leg.. I obviously went with ego.. against all the warnings from my coaches.

I've hurt my IT band, hamstring, medial shin, lower shin, ACL & Achilles tendon running.. (of course few months ago, I'd have said that I hurt my leg.. but you pick up stuff when you are on the first name basis with your massage therapist). I've bled from my nipples, and yes it is funny until it happens to you.. guys wear something called nipguards, which actually make you look like the models on paid only porn sites which put a star on the unmentionables (come on.. every teenager with access to a computer has been to those sites).. I don't remember any body part below my neck that hasn't been hurt at one point or the other. The remedies to these ailments are as weird as the ailment itself.. the best being icebaths.. it is exactly what it sounds like. You fill the bathtub with as much ice as you can manage, and dip yourself in it for 15 minutes.. you might yell obscenities for the first few minutes, but your legs will thank you later. But nothing hurts more than random advice from people who have never run in their entire life..

The way training works is that you ramp up your distance every 2 weeks, but run half the distance of your longest run during week in the middle to rest, so when I was up to a 20 miler, I was supposed to run 10 miles.. just to rest. A masochistic moron that I am, decided to replace it with hike, it was a 11.3 mile hike with 2.5K feet elevation! Even if you feel ok, your body would still be in recovery mode.. so when I ran 20 miles the next weekend, I pulled something.. and was kicked out of track the next tuesday. I couldn't really walk and although the possibility of stress fracture was dismissed by a quick visit to the doctor, running was out of the question.. I just had 3 weeks to go for the race. With a lot of ice cupping, compression wrap, ice bath, foam rolling, massages and intense cardio at more than 1hr/day, I tried to make up for the lost training runs. I was still limping a bit, but atleast it didn't hurt, which was a good sign.. It would have been a wise decision to just back out and live to run another day, but as I said, my ego hurts more than my leg, so I pushed on and made it to the marathon.

I was following the Jeff Galloway's method of running and was doing a 4:1 interval ( 4 minute run and 1 minute brisk walk) & based on my training, I was expected to finish in 5hr50min...well that didn't happen. At mile 18 I started falling apart, my limp became more pronounced and I could feel my legs locking up.. still kept on going till mile 21, but couldn't keep up my rhythm. They say that you run a marathon in 3 parts, first with your mind, second with your body, and third with your heart. I was at the last leg and lost my heart! I became deaf to all the cheers, all the bands playing, all I could think was to just jump of the bridge and end the misery (and Emily Dickinson's "Success is counted sweetest" playing in my head meant that I sure as hell wasn't going to quit the race and live). Suddenly like an angel, one of my coaches came and started running with me, she told me to run only if I could run faster than I could walk.. so I ended up just walking the remaining distance.. she stayed with me till the finish line.. I zoned out everything else and just zeroed in on her continuous chants of "Lift your legs, tighten your gluts".. After which I just became more or less an automaton and finished the race. I don't think humans have the capacity to assimilate greatness without going overboard.. but I'd say this.. I cried like a baby for 30 minutes after I finished the race.. It was not because I considered finishing a marathon an overwhelming accomplishment, but because I was overcome by the gesture of my coach.. Thank god for those Oakleys, I didn't look too different to the onlooker than any other marathoner in pain. It was not even a cool guy cry.. well it was at first.. but then I started tearing up so hard that I had to gasp! They say that starvation during any extreme sport does weird things to your mind.. but I don't care.. I don't care if I was out of my senses.. but I don't think that I can thank my coaches enough for what they did.. Coach Meghan.. if you are reading this, you ROCK!!

The other important aspect of the race was fund raising. I was supposed to raise $2900 in donations. I was able to raise $2400 just by shooting two events!.. the rest came from my facebook friends.. not only did it make me more confident as photographer, but it also reaffirmed my faith in my friends (those who paid anyways :))

It has been 2 weeks after the race, I'm still limping, but I can't wait to get back track and experience it all over again... GO TEAM!!

A philosophical discourse..

I don't know if its my intelligence :P or my innate desire to pick a fight that I seem to get into flame wars on almost all the social networking sites I am on.. Here is the latest pearl of wisdom from a google Buzz conversation I had with a friend Elan.. (I hope I don't incite another flame war by posting this :) ...

Elan's Blog, God - The Outdated Theory God - The Outdated Theory WARNING: The following essay might sound like ATH101: Introduction to Atheism. Agnosticism is Meaningless If you know me well or if you have not hidden me from your Facebook... Sridhar Iyer – now you are just being rude to agnostics :P   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – :P just trying to push the envelope.. You guys should just makeup your mind one way or other.. Agnostic towards God is like saying you are agnostic towards 'a flying teapot' :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – Atheism= believing in "no god", Agnosticism= not believing in god, but keeping an open mind.. Believing in something that you cannot prove or disprove (existence or non-existence of God..) is just as bad.. doesn't make a difference if you follow the Bible or the God Delusion..   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – Nope.. Atheism is 'not believing in God'.. You don't believe in any form of personal god and don't pray to him.. if you don't believe in a personal god you are an atheist.. Even Richard Dawkins will never say there is no God.. He just says 'there almost certainly is no god'. Agnosticism is the state where you believe there is possibility for a God. "Believing in something that you cannot prove or disprove (existence or non-existence of God..) is just as bad" Not always and not for God. Just because you cannot disprove god does not mean there is a equal probability for the existence or non-existence of God. Just because you cannot disprove the existence of a 'Flying Spaghetti monster' or 'Pink Unicorn' doesn't mean that you need to be a agnostic towards them. No one is agnostic about them. You don't have an open mind about their existence. The God followed by all humans is as improbable as a 'Flying Spaghetti monster' or a 'Pink Unicorn'.   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – Well.. there is always a non-zero probability for everything unless proven otherwise. Flying Spaghetti monster or Pink Unicorn are probable unless proven otherwise.. I guess we have our own definition or Atheism/Agnostism. God might be like the complex number 'i'.. every mathematician knows that it is not a real number, but that doesn't make its existence any less important for solving complex equations.. and all related fields... I strongly believe that Atheism is believing in "no God".. why? Because you always see atheists and religious people preaching about their beliefs.. be it God or !God.. its just as faulty.. How is your writing a blog post any different from a Bible thumper you meet on streets? .. you both are prisoners of your own beliefs. Agnostics are cooler and don't really care which team wins :).. Mathematically speaking unless life is turing complete, it will not be possible to explain life using life (or any living being).. not matter how advanced the life form is..   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – I do agree that the semantics of Atheism and Agnosticism overlap. But comparing religious fundamentalist to atheist is just a gross error. This is tiresomely often repeated statement especially by agnostics. It is like saying a blog post vigorously supporting/preaching 'Slavery' and one vigorously opposing slavery are the same. To quote from my bible, god delusion :P "when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side" Agnosticism from this perspective is not cool.. You are just being lazy and apathetic.. :)   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – ok.. lets establish one thing.. whether or not you believe in God, do you like the concept? if you do.. then concept of God is not the same as concept of Slavery.. all the hatred in the world is due to the conflicting concepts of God and "my daddy strongest" complex in humans.. And if you think that concept of God is worse or just as bad as slavery.. then you have sunken to the same levels as religious fundamentalists.. I never said that truth lies midway..I'm just saying that neither can say what the truth is without being any kind of a fundamentalist.. Agnosticism is just not drawn to the polarizing forces.. You are right in pointing that I'm apathetic.. I could care less about what is the truth here (existence/non-existence).. not sure if that is true for all agnostics.. For me it is similar to vi/emacs, windows/linux, canon/nikon flame wars.. I don't care which is better .. I'll continue to use vi, linux and canon because they get the job done and if you use emacs, windows and Nikon.. I won't write a blog article writing why your choices suck.. I just don't care as long as you get the job done..   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – yes the religion followed by many humans is as bad as slavery, if not worse.. If you don't think so then you are misinformed.. Let's make clear what God we are talking about.. I am not talking about the God that Einstein refers when he says "I am convinced that God does not play dice". I am talking about the god followed by major religions like Christianity, Muslim and Hindus. I don't like those GODS! This whole fight is because religion motivates people to do some terrible things and gives a false world view.. Extreme examples: 911, Ayodhya dispute, genital mutilation on children. Not-so extreme or violent but still terrible: Girls wearing Burkha, people thinking earth is few thousand years old, people building creation museums saying that evolution is totally false and giving alternate explanations from religious texts. These are all serious issues, comparable to slavery, to the society motivated in the name of God. I don't think these are okay and I will present my opposing honest opinions against these believes. I don't mind you calling me a staunch or fundamentalist atheist as long as you don't say I am as 'bad' as the religious fundamentalist. My intentions are to inform people about the more realistic view of the world. I can never do anything harmful, in the name of non-existence of God. And come on.. the God problem is definitely not same as emacs/vi problem although I would say emacs is better. :)   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – Now now.. you are confusing God with Religion.. I'm referring to Einstein's god (as you mentioned above).. Religion is a whole different ballgame.. I just think that religion would have evolved as sort of teams in gameplay.. having teams fosters team work and feeling of belonging.. then somewhere down the line you got rowdy fans (football/cricket etc etc.. ) who throw trash at the other team.. it is the same concept.. Religion can be a google group for all I care.. and given enough time, people will fight over which google group is better.. God is a concept.. it is an idea.. Religion tries to give it a shape.. might not be a good idea.. Agnosticism/Atheism has nothing to do with religion.. it has to do with God.. the concept.. not a version/manifestations of god put forth by humans.. Acc to some article, religion might have given us evolutionary advantage by using human psychology against human to help in the evolutionary growth.. concepts of adultery/murder/theft/greed etc are deemed as sin by the religions.. by doing something that is not hardwired in human brain, we made sure that we lasted longer than other species.. Also if the concept did not serve humans well.. it would have been outdated and dead eons ago... of course we have examples of all the bad things religion has done.. but what about all the good it has done ,lokmanya tilak and ali brothers used religion to unite people in India to fight for independence.. it gives hope to tons of drunks, drug addicts who need some mental support.. I'm not saying that the concept of religion has done more harm than good or other way round.. I'm just saying that rather than rejecting the concept outright, it should be left alone. Taking religion from people would mean taking hope from a lot of people and leave a void in their life... even if there is no god and all the religions are bullshit.. doing that is not a noble deed. Unless you have a better idea to replace religion/god with, there is no point bitching about it.. then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior? Would you rather tell a 2 year old kid that there is no Santa or would you just let him be happy and later tell the kid about it when he grows up or realizes it himself?.. Most of the people on the planet are like that 2 year old kid..   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – Dude you just butchered the definition of Atheism.. Atheism has everything to do with religion.. And religion has everything to do with God. Without the religious God there is no scope for something like Atheism to rise and people like Richard Dawkins to write a book like 'God Delusion'.. They don't care about the Einsteinian god that you like.. that is just a metaphor.. And no one follows such a god religiously.. You just oversimplify by calling a religion as football team or google group. And regarding the evolutionary advantage of Religion there is a field called Evolutionary Psychology. Richard Dawkins being a evolutionary biologist does discuss about it. The fact that religion has survived so many centuries doesn't mean that it has a survival advantage. His theory is it could be a evolutionary by-product of something else that has a survival advantage like being 'obedient to your elders'. He gives the example of a insects that seem to willingly fall into fire and die. Obviously this behavior does not have a survival advantage. But investigation shows that the insects have evolved to use the light from celestial objects like (moon) to travel in a straight line and hence they mistake 'candle fire' for celestial light, fall into them and die. Anyways he doesn't argue that this theory is true or false and neither do I. These are just interesting theories. And all the good things that you said about religion is refutable.. You don't need religious scriptures to have morality, for mental support, etc. The religious texts are just outdated.. There is still some morality left in the world because majority of us don't follow the morality from religious scriptures literally. So if you pick and choose morality from religious texts our morality should be coming from somewhere else! Same way one can give numerous arguments that religion is causing mental stress instead of giving support.. Instead of me giving all points it would be better if you read 'God Delusion' :) I am okay with my 2 year old playing with Santa. But I am not happy about 20 year olds in the world thinking like 2 year olds. It is NOT OKAY. And when my kid is old enough I would be careful enough to give him scientific literacy without imposing any belief system on him. The problem with the majority of religion is the kids don't have a choice. The terrible thing is a kid is born as a 'Hindu' child or 'Muslim' child or 'Christian' child. He is taught that his GOD is better. By the time the 2 year old becomes 20 it is too late.. You don't need a replacement for religion. People can live a happy fulfilling life without religion if they are educated and if they can think the right way. Religion is not a necessity.   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – "Unless you have a better idea to replace religion/god with, there is no point bitching about it" I can't believe you actually said that!!! So you mean to say I don't have the right to bitch about 'genital mutilation on children', 'girls wearing burkha', 'people calling earth as 6000 years old', etc All these are directly derived from people believing in their GOD. I don't care if there are 1000 good things that can come out of religion. Just give me on valid good outcome which cannot be achieved without religion which can justify the horrific deeds I have listed above. Only way to refute these stupid things is to tell people that "Your religious texts are bogus.. Your god is bogus.. Just throw away your religious texts and start thinking!!" The only way to eliminate slavery is not to search for a replacement.. just reject it.. "then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior? " YES.. How many times should I say you. "when two opposite points of view are expressed with equal force, the truth does not necessarily lie midway between them. It is possible for one side to be simply wrong. And that justifies passion on the other side"   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – Yes.. more or less I agree with you.. religion does have everything to do with god.. but god has nothing to do with religion.. ok.. so we have just established that you hate Religion as an institution.. (and I agree with you) Your last paragraph can be summarized as :"People should be sensible and should get along and not use God to fight with each other".. people are not sensible, they never will be, they will never question god/religion.. Human brain is not that evolved yet.. nobody is taught that their God is better.. they are taught about their god.. they just don't know anything about the other gods.. this misunderstanding causes conflicts.. Religion is not the problem here.. people are.. People have killed for money, love, real estate, power.. doesn't mean that these are bad..people are.. This topic have been discussed by tons of philosophers over the centuries.. I doubt we will find a solution in a book or on google buzz :) .. Let me clear in saying that we have similar opinion and that concept of religion is dated.. I just don't know whether taking it away from people is such a good idea.. (this has nothing to do with atheism/agnosticism). If I were to eliminate religion, I'd do a study of controlled group of individuals who are brainwashed to believe that there is no religion and then comparing the before/after happiness index. .. >"then aren't you as bad as religious fundamentalists who think their belief is superior? " >YES.. How many times should I say you. then..my friend.. we have nothing to discuss :)   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – BTW.. do you mind if I cut paste this discussion on my blog?   Nov 1, 2010 Elanchezhiyan Elango – "People have killed for money, love, real estate, power.. doesn't mean that these are bad..people are.. " Like I point in my blog, people have killed based on race, language, etc too. That is no excuse for religion. And I don't agree that people are not evolved yet to live without religion. It is not that complicated. When people can be taught to follow religion, they can be educated to not follow religion blindly too. We just need some revolution in education systems and the way we bring up our kids. I can totally imagine a society whose kids were not labelled with any religion, no religion imposed on them, no religious text taught literally and taught good science where people live happily without the religious gods. The concept of God will always be there. People will just stop believing in some stupid gods. Everyone will be invoking Einsteinian God which is totally harmless and 'God Delusion' will become irrelevant like the 'Bible' "BTW.. do you mind if I cut paste this discussion on my blog?" Sure.. It's a honour! :P   Nov 1, 2010 Sridhar Iyer – haha.. good luck with this revolution.. forget other people, we can't even convince our parents :P   Nov 1, 2010

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A new era in technology..

If you have tapped the pulse of the tech industry, you would have smelled the winds of change. This is an exciting time to be in the bay area.. rarely does anything makes me come out of my blogging slumber (blame it on twitter). 

Let me list a few facts to start with and then we'll extrapolate the trends (just google them to verify):

• Intel bought Infineon's wireless division.
• Newer Android smartphones sport 720p hdmi ports, 1GHz processor, 20GB memory (more or less), 512MB memory, some have a separate graphics processor. A phone with a dual core processor will be a reality before the end of this year.
• Google is pushing forward on web apps, use case of these is still not obvious.. they don't really believe that someone will open a browser and then click on a button rather that type the web address. 
• Google is working with Verizon and Motorola to push out new android phones.
• Google worked with Verizon to support net neutrality *excluding* wireless networks.
• IP TV/Hulu is becoming more and more popular.

Clearly all the big wigs are in on this (whatever this is).. everyone except Microsoft that is. Google has positioned itself as the next Microsoft.. not by coming up with a new OS and trying to displace Windows from the computers, but by just making Windows irrelevant. Android is now what Windows was 20 years ago.. By making Android freely available to the hardware vendors as the kitchen sink mobile OS that can run on any hardware (by totally leeching off Linux, but that's not the point here), Google has made sure that Android will go farther than what WinMo or iOS can ever dream of.

Most of you reading this blog will agree that the phones we have now are more powerful than the first computers we owned (even if that was just 10-12 years ago).. ofcourse we don't need a 1GHz processor to make phone calls or play small games.. where is this all going?

I believe that smartPhones ( or lets call them just phones because single purpose phones might soon be in museums) are set to displace our computers and even our cable connection. Why would we need a cable connection if we can view all the content online? and if we can view the online content on TV?! Why would we need an internet connection if our phones are connected via 4G(in a not too distant future). What if when connected our phones to our television sets and desktop environment were to magically appears?!

Let me describe a device that has been cooking in my head (not too radical). This device is an android phone.. just a run off the mill evo or droid. As soon as you connect it to your TV (via some micro usb dock), you desktop automagically appears.. running android or some variant of chromeOS. You can run android apps or some apps that are not suited on a cellphone like google Docs, photoshop etc. I'm guessing Google will be releasing a web app store just for this platform. Open the verizon Vcast app or some app from one of the network houses to watch streaming television (maybe via some sort of "tv" mode).. Throw in a bluetooth keyboard/mouse if you wanna use it like a regular computer. Once 4G becomes prevalent, this sort of device can easily be as pervasive as a toaster.

Google has positioned itself well.. It owns the whole content delivery mechanism and if Google and Verizon's recent proposal is accepted, it's own content will get preferential treatment. In one fell swoop it would have monopolized multiple markets.

Intel knows this very well.. it also knows that majority of its revenue comes from desktop market, so it acquired Infineon to get itself in the mobile game. It went a step further and acquired McAfee. If android's market penetration reaches the same level as that of MS Windows.. it will unfortunately suffer the same fate.. which is.. become the main target for malware/viruses etc. Acquiring McAfee was just a logical step to ensure that it has a safe ride when android has its "Windows 95/Windows Me" phase :) .. plus since more and more of our data is moving onto the cloud, cloud security is still a new and emerging market.


Well.. all you can do now is grab some popcorn and enjoy the ride.. some day you'll be telling your kid about computers that just sat on a desk or that needed a separate bag.

Picking a bone with google buzz

Love it or hate it; people are using Google buzz... mainly because they don't have a choice (or are not aware of it). For the record, I like it, but mainly because I'm an egotist..
Google came up with Google wave couple of moons ago. Even though based on a solid concept, it failed to generate any traction because people were not really interested.. well they might be interested, but if they are anything like me.. they were mostly lazy and didn't want to build up a circle they can wave with separately. I've tried couple of social networking sites; hi5, 360, orkut, facebook.. they only cater to the people who are interested in social networking, and even if something new came along, which is much better than say facebook, people won't switch because all their contacts are still on facebook.Google seem to acknowledge this fact.

Google has employed gazillion PhDs, but what a waste it would be to not have the products they designed be used by the public. Gmail user base is waay bigger than facebook's, so it makes sense to pork down the products down the existing user's throats... whether they want it or not. They might add a disable button once the media hullabaloo dies down and stupid bloggers stop blogging about it :P. Although the strategy is nothing short of genius, it is somewhat similar to forced labour. The end user is forced to beta test their products, whether they want to or not. (In Google's defense,  they own you because you use their awesome free email service).

Another issue the GBuzz exacerbates is "parallel posts" (a term I just made up). To get more visibility, people typically plug their contents on various websites (facebook, Buzz, twitter etc). When I post my pictures on flickr, they are pulled by Buzz and facebook automatically, and sometimes I post links to them on twitter too. People leave comments for the same content on flickr, twitter, facebook and Buzz; I have to follow 4 threads of conversation, which is more or less redundant. Same issue with my tweets that are pulled by Buzz, Orkut and facebook. All these websites have their own API, why don't they use the api's of the other websites to post back the comments to the original source (more work but better for the users).

People have been shouting about privacy issues in GBuzz (and for that matter in any famous webapp).. here's the truth, if you care about privacy, don't log in... and nobody really cares what you do in your basement. You can always disable your profile, filter "label: Buzz" directly to your trash/archives if you don't want GBuzz..

That been said, Google, if you are listening, here are few feature requests:

1. Some sort of a RBAC (Role based access control), at the very least let me separate my contacts into groups and make my buzzes public to only the group I choose. I want to discuss my weekend at Vegas with ONLY my friends and my cousin's report card with ONLY my family.
2. The buzz page is a mess right now, I have no idea which buzzes are new and which are old and which are the old buzzes with new comments. Some sort of color coding would be great.
3. Add a Gbuzz pane to the bottom of Inbox and have the buzz notification skip the inbox by default.
4. Integrate twitter/blogger/wave/facebook/orkut/flickr api so that the comments on the original site and buzz are always synchronized.
5. Send me that Nexus 2 you've been working on.

You know what Google, even if you choose to ignore these requests/gripes, I think you are gonna be alright.. don't worry.. the force will always be with you.

What does the new year promise me?

It is pretty late to post a new year post, but.. meh..

I made tons of resolutions last year. Of course, I didn't follow up with all of them, but some of them did stick. Notably I read 4.5 books, made $3K in the stock market, started cooking regularly, hiked regularly and backpacked across Europe. And few of them I failed miserably to keep up (got two speeding tickets :P). So all in all, 2009 was a good year for me.

I have been blogging alot less lately, mainly because I'm tweeting more and because I have to censor some contents (politics, culture, religion etc). To vent it out, I've been maintaining an anonymous blog where I can bitch and moan about all the issues I want.

This year I just have one resolution: to make 2010 more dynamic that 2009, to grow more, to do more, and to be more. Growing up is a strange process; people tend to develop tunneled vision (they see what they want to see and shut everything else out), become more cynical, throw their ideals for something more practical and short term.. needless to say, I hate growing up. In 2010, I promise myself to keep open to ideas, stay optimistic about the future and never ever compromise on my ideals for any sort of instant gratification.

Does that mean I'm not putting anything concrete on paper for 2010?.. Absolutely not. It means that my 2010 resolutions are the same as my 2009 resolutions. I'll just learn from the mistakes I made in 2009 and attack the list with new found experience.

2009 was also a year of profound realizations. Over the years I've gradually been turning into an atheist/agnostic. My belief system is somewhat closer to what Deepak Chopra preaches, which simply put, says that if God is divine, humans can't imagine what God would look like or even want, so there's no such thing as "acting on his behalf". Since religion is so closely tied with "culture", I had dismissed it as another construct used to divide human society... I was mistaken. Culture is snapshot of the society; loosely put, it is just an average of the phenotypes. If you think of cultures as states in a state machine (human evolution), you can almost plot the evolution of the human society. There are hundreds of cultures on this planets, which are constantly evolving, effecting each other and in contention with each other. This will always be the case and is some what necessary for cultural evolution, but at the very grass root level, all humans are the same; they hate change, want to be loved, and want to be happy. As long as we accept these facts and not care too much about where the culture is heading or how "cultured" we are (which seems more like the std deviation now :P ), we'll be fine as a human race. If you don't agree with me, I'd suggest that you travel more :).. Once you break your cultural boundaries, it is easy to see that everyone is the same. I've been really lucky to have experienced it first hand..

So 2010, here I am with an open mind, free of prejudice, knapsack full of dreams and a list of what needs to be done this year :).. help me become a better, more accomplished man.

Some Sci-fi love

Sci-fi and fantasy as a genre have few patrons, the rest however are non-appreciative, or just downright insulting.

I not only love the out worldly experience that can only be communicated by these genres, but also the profound depth and messages these deliver. Yes, it's not real and yes it can never happen, but when has that stopped it from being communicative of human values.

I'm making a case for sci-fi movies like The Matrix trilogy, The Watchmen and television shows like Battlestar Galactica. Let me tell you by saying that I'm a big.. I mean really big fan of these shows, so it really grind my gears when people just go and watch these for special effects or just dismiss them as "kids category". The beauty of these genres is that they are the only ones successful in mixing socially relevant messages with entertainment. Others don't even come close..

Today BattleStar Galactica aired its final episode and I was in tears (yes geeks do cry, you just need to know how to make them cry). On the cover it deals with a race of humans (preceding our own, but somewhat still futuristic) in conflict with cylons (androids, which are almost humans), but at it's crux it spotlights human nature, both its dark and bright side, and tries to stretch the morally grey area in the middle to include everyone of its audience. The show was carefully engineered to instill hate against the cylons into the audience, the show then had the "good guys" commit justifiable crimes against the cylons, like torturing/suicide bombing (socially relevant ones at present), which although as I said, were justifiable but unethical, thus making its audience a part of the show. Its shows like these that make you introspect and helps you discover yourself.

BSG presented me with same moral dilema as The Fountainhead, and hands down, has been the best thing I ever saw on the tube. If you can look past the FTL drives, the dilithium crystal, the mental projection of cylons, i.e. all the jargons that alienate some people (mostly non-geeks), the message conveyed is pretty strong, you just need an eye to spot it out. This message is ofcourse hidden, if it wasn't, it would be a documentary. At some level, sci-fi/fantasy movies are documentaries after you peel the onion. Plot in these movies/tv shows is so thick, that it almost pains me to find people talking about it at a totally superficial level.

Take Matrix: The Revolution, the last fight sequence, when Neo is walking amidst darkness, rain and hundreds of Smith copies, and fights one of them at the end. The fight ends with Neo fighting Agent Smith and ending the war between the man and the machines, but how many of you noticed what the director wanted you to see? The song in the background was ancient Vedic hymn "Asatoma Sadgamaya", which signifies the victory of good over evil, the multiple copies and the darkness signified multiple faces of evil in dark times and the song itself points to the fact that Neo had already won the war by making his choice and knew the outcome. The choice, that architect was advocating in most of second sequel. The movie worked on so many levels, and each time I see it, I discover a previously uncoverd hidden meaning in the movie.

Coming back to BSG, well, that is the only sci-fi piece I know of that married belief, faith and science. It talked about angels & daemons, about gods, about prophecy, while still being mostly a sci-fi show.This show made some startling plot twists by projecting one of its main protagonist as a real angel, while couple of others as some sort of agents of "God", who play major role in turn of events. It tried to perpetrate the existence of destiny, of hope, of human values.. kudos to the BSG team, when they could have just got about same TRP ratings, had they shown a nonsensical, visual effects loaded series.

Watchmen, is another such movie. I read the book about two years ago, and I must say that although I don't really like the casting (except Silk Spectre ofcourse), it conveys the real essence of the book (not what Harry Potter movies did to the books). The book is more detailed, of course, but movie comes quite close. It makes you see the world from the eyes of the demented comedian, the omniscient Dr Manhattan, the genius..yet human Veidt, the idealist Rorschach, the observer Night Owl. I really love how the actions of each superhero is justified by their portrayed viewpoints, and forces the reader/viewer to agree with writer.

Sci-fi has come a long way from "Attack of Mars" to BSG/Matrix, it deserves prime time... definitely more than the mind numbing reality shows and soaps. Isn't it time the kirks, spocks, jon shephards, adamas, starbucks,trips, gaetas,McCays etc got more attention than "gossip girl" or Simon Cowell?

So.. what's next??

Unless you live under a rock.. you know about the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. Here are the events that happened prior to that:

• November 26: Mumbai terrorist attacks kill over 100, 287 injured
• October 30: Explosions kill at least 64 in north-eastern Assam
• September 30: Blasts in western India kill at least seven
• September 27: Bomb blasts kill one in Delhi
• September 13: Five bomb blasts kill 18 in Delhi
• July 26: At least 22 small bombs kill 49 in Ahmedabad
• July 25: Seven bombs go off in Bangalore killing two people
• May 13: Seven bomb hit markets and crowded streets in Jaipur killing 63

(Source: http://www.andhranews.net/India/2008/November/27-India-eight-bomb-attacks-76148.asp)

Do you see a pattern? Apart from destabilizing Kashmir, terrorists have attacked the other three corners of India (North:Kashmir, East: Assam, South:Bangalore, West:Mumbai and Center:Delhi). What the hell is the Indian Intelligence Service up to? But I won't rant on the state of Indian Union and the politicians, or the eminent lack of crisis management. I want to ask why.. why on earth did the terrorists do it? Was there something they needed? When they held hostages at Taj in Mumbai, they didn't ask for money.. they didn't mention Kashmir, they didn't mention religion.. then what might they possibly want??

Now, am not an intelligence expert or a conspiracy theorists, but I do have a brain which constantly needs to connect the dots. Can't anyone see that these are not terrorist "attacks".. this is an act of war. No.. not between nations, but between India and the "terrorist" (if that's what they choose to call themselves). These are well known guerrilla tacts to overcome a bigger, more sophisticated army. The kind of war which we never have seen before. Of course.. they won't challenge us in a "real" battle. The art of war is to play according to your strengths, not weakness, which is exactly what they are doing.

Let me take off my Indian hat, and look at the situation from a perspective of a third person. (you get good at it if you play AOE/Caesar et al.). Lets call the terrorists X. Now we have to work the facts and have a strategy to understand what they do and why they do it.

Lets have some facts:

• America is to increase its military presence in Afganistan.
• India doesn't hate anyone. It has a neutral attitude, ergo it doesn't hate the west, so it is not on the good books of the terrorists.. I mean X.
• India and Pakistan have a very sensitive border.
• India and Pakistan are densely populated and diverse, plus being from the same chunk of the continent, its hard to differentiate Indians, Pakistanis and Xs from each another.
• X is loosing its stronghold in mid-east and Afganistan and is being forced into the Indian subcontinent.
• India is doing absolutely nothing to resist this.. and seems unaware of this incursion.
• Pakistan appears to be doing something, but is overwhelmed by religious extremism.. for every forward step it takes, it seems to go back two steps.
• The whole world is suffering an economic depression and doesn't want to be bothered.
• High profile outfits remain untouched while their human-bombs, the pawns, continue to wreak havoc on the whole world, continue to get caught, continue to die. Just imagine a chess game in which you have unlimited pawns to gambit..
  
• India, Pakistan and US are the most visible players in this game, and they should each verify the authenticity and innocence of the other two countries and ascertain if they are being double crossed.

Feasible actions that can be taken (if and only if none of the major players are helping X out):

• Put India and Pakistan on a state of war with X and declare emergency in both the countries. Dispense any logistical bureaucratic crap, that has so often hampered progress in both the countries, till the issue is resolved.
• Let India and Pakistan co-ordinate attacks with USA. Let USA push the X overlords from the west periphery while India and Pakistan do it from the east end.
• Put the whole world on vigil in case one of the X overlords try to hole up in one of the other countries. (I wish it would be as easy as sending a text message to get some action taken)

Well.. it's all easier said than done. I hope that atleast a common enemy brings India and Pakistan closer to resolve their personal conflicts.

How we change..

8 years back: Pack a week early to go from Kanpur to Lucknow (77 miles)
5 years back: Start shopping a month before travelling from Kanpur to Bangalore (945 miles)
2 years back: Pack a day early to go from Syracuse to Boston (261 miles)
1.3 years ago: From Bangalore to Goa(267 miles).. friends shouting: "dude pack lets go."

Now: Leaving for India tomorrow morning (8000+ miles).. and am writing this blog.. god bless me..

Another car related stupidity..

Yes.. I know.. another car related post.. but bear with me.

This morning I stepped out only to find one of the car tires flat.. well no worries I said, I have road side assistance; called the number to change the flat ( cuz I paid for it!!).

A guy in a large trailer/truck (the kind that carry 3-4 cars on their back) came and changed the tire with a smallish spare tire.. when leaving he told me that the tire was not flat, was infact fine but looked like that because it was parked so close to the curb .. Duh!!

I was so embarrassed to ask him to change it back again and I had no idea how to change it. Asked my room mate for help again who showed me where the jack was stashed in my car ( I sound like a retard :( ), showed me how to use it and the way to screw the tire etc (for even torque distribution). After huffing and panting and sweating profusely on a windy evening.. I changed the tire back.

What a pathetic misadventure on a weekend!! On the bright side, I did discover a nail in the wheel and that I had banged my wheels on the curb so badly that I would need to get them checked... damn.

Car hack..

As all of you know (if you read the earlier post), that my car has a Bose audio system. It sounds really awesome with 7 speaker surround sound and 9 subwoofers and/or pods (the term am not sure of but my car geek friends refers to.. sort of the refers to the speaker design that moves back and forth alot, so if you are standing close to it, you get a different feedback for the beats.. these pods are fixed next to my legrest, so the whole experience is pretty rad when you are driving).. ofcourse, I'm no audiophile.. the only speakers I ever purchased were the cheap Rs300 speakers in India, so my perception of the sound quality might be skewed.

Ok.. back on track. The only thing that this audio system lacked was an auxillary input to which I could plug in my mp3 player to (which is NOT an iPod). I went to the dealer and  was told that it would cost me $700 to replace the sound system, of course he had to bear with my loud WTF sigh.. there was no way on earth I was gonna do that. Next I went to some random car-audio store and asked him for a relatively inexpensive solution, and he showed me some gizmo for about $140 that interfaced directly with iPod, but did expose an auxillary-in.. but I didn't wanna pay for an iPod interface that I would never use, so I searched around for a simpler/similar solution.

Now fm transmitters were totally out of question, I had tried them and the sound quality sucked. Using that on the bose system was like tying a gold chain to a monkey. I noticed that there were tape/MD drive buttons and slots on the dash, but no tape drive, which led me to believe that there would be way to directly hook up a mod chip to that interface and get clean unadulterated music directly from my mp3 player (which is creative zen sleek iPhoto.. i know, it's relatively unknown, but it was the only mp3 player in my budget with a fm reciever in it). I googled "tape/md drive auxillary input mazda6", and voila! found Mazda6 forums where people were discussing exactly the same issues, and I discovered AuxMod in one of the archives, which was exactly what I needed.

Needless to say, I ordered it (but was definitely vary about the shady site), got it in a week by UPS, wrapped in torn magazine pages! Well, at $60, I wasn't exactly expecting a well wrapped manual with funky CDs that I would just toss into the trash. Next roadblock was installing it, the car-audio mechanics were charging about $200 for installation (I checked at two differnt places and they both gave me similar quotes.. another classic WTF moments), so I decided to install it myself (against the advice from all my friends/roommate and the ridicule by the car-audio mechanic who gave me a "yeah right" look ). My housemate let me borrow his tool set for my little adventure.

Had to rip open the cup holder, the gear interface, the glove compartment and the whole dash to reach the damn radio. Took me 4 friggin hours to install it and route the auxillary cable inside the armrest. After battling through some unmodular interfaces, weird sockets, mind numbingly complex plugs and being almost starved, dehydrated and exhausted to the point of unconsiousness, I pulled it off. This was one hack, not for the faint hearted.

It worked like a charm and was a totally rewarding experience. Finally.. took a long cold shower, took her out for a spin and treated myself with some bhel-puri and jal-jeera at Lucky Dhaba :)

H1B issues.. the jargons and the laws surrounding it

Let me start by stating that this entry is based on my perception of H1B laws and jargons. They might not be accurate (if so, do correct me). That being said, this entry is specifically for family and friends in India, who might not exactly understand my erratic/fluctuating travel plans or my "headless chicken" rant about immigration laws which is usually high on jargon. I know they are not alone in feeling helpless halfway across the globe.. there are atleast 32,000 people with higher US degrees who might be in similar situation (Based on the tentative figures released by USCIS).

Starting with basics, keep these acronyms/jargon in mind as you go through the rest of this post (I have tailored this entry to my specific case, so I won't be going into anything that doesn't concern me.. life is complicated enough as it is):

• F1 Visa: Just ignore the word Visa, and think of the word status. Having F1 visa means, having student status.
• H1B Visa: This visa means that my primary purpose of stay in the US is to work for a US based firm.
• OPT: (Optional practical training) You can think of it as apprenticeship or some sort of a project work that you do after graduating from a US university. After graduation, a year of OPT period is allotted to every student when he can work in a US based firm. Even though the student has graduated, he is still in F1 visa (i.e. he is still considered a student). It is during this period that he can apply for a change of Visas ( from F1 to H1 => student status to working status).
• POE: (Point of Entry). This comes into picture when you apply for a change of visas (F1 to H1). If you apply for H1 under POE, then you'll have to leave the US and get your Visa application stamped at the US Consulate in another country for the visa to come into effect(Mainly your home country.. i.e. India, else you have high chances of getting stranded in a different country :) ... seriously!!)
• COS: (Change of Status). This means that you don't have to leave the country to get your Visa stamped for the visa to be effective.. you can get it stamped whenever you want (when you are in India).
  
• 1 April-1 October: H1B applications are accepted from 1 April each year till the quota of 65,000 for regular candidates and 20,000 for candidates with higher US degrees is reached. Once the visa application is accepted, it becomes effective from October 1(I think).

With those out of the way, until the last year, things progressed in following fashion for an International student with higher US degree:

1. Secures a job while he is still a student(under F1) atleast two months before graduation.
2. His prospective company applies for H1B Visa in advance in April.
   
3. He graduates in May (taking the generic/my case in consideration).
4. He joins the company which had applied for his H1 and starts working on his OPT(still on F1.. remember)
   
5. Visa gets approved and his Visa status changes smoothly from F1 to H1. Note that he still has a good 6-7 months of OPT remaining.. but since he is no longer in F1(i.e. not a student), those 6-7 months doesn't matter now.

Since I have been know to have a knack of getting myself in highly complicated situations, Here's what happened with me. ( Note that parts of this will be exactly the same for those who didn't make the H1B lottery last year).

1. Got a job in mid April. H1B Visa Quota already full :(
2. Graduated in May.
3. Joined Mailshell in June'07 (on OPT, still F1 status)
   
4. Mailshell applied for my H1B Visa in April 1'08, but OPT only valid till June'08. So essentially June'08-October'08 without a valid status in US. Of course, H1B visa was applied under POE since I had to leave the country. (I hope you remember all the jargon I explained earlier). There were 32,000 applicants for a quota of 20,000.
   
5. Mailshell agrees to have me work remotely from India for 4 months. ( and I booked the tickets, planned out my stay etc etc.. )
6. Near about April 3'08, new bill passed allowing for the OPT to be extended for another 17 months (a total of 29 months now provided that Mailshell registers for some e-verify program).
7. Another ammendment stating that OPT for students(like me), who have gap between OPT expiration dates and H1B start dates, will be extended automatically to cover the gap(provided that they get their H1Bs), comes into effect... This applied to me since I got a reciept for my application(meaning that I made the lottery and had chances of getting a Visa approved).
8. Remember my application was filed under POE... well if it is POE, the ammendment I mentioned above wouldn't make much sense since I would have to leave the country anyway to get visa stamped. (Folks, you see the conundrum here.. to cancel the fligh tickets or not to cancel.. aaah!!)
9. Lawyer applied for an ammendment in my application to change it from POE to COS which means that I wont have to leave the country before October...(only now I wanted to).
   

Now no matter how advanced US may seem to the rest of the world, its not (no offence here).. there's still lot of beareucracy and paperwork involved (although much much less than India :) ), the dhs(who manage immigration at the borders) might not have access to the updated USCIS records, and they would need papers to prove that I have the right visa to get through.. in other words, person leaving the country might as well get a one way tickets.

After talking to my lawyer, and friends ( some of whom have access to huge law firms specializing in immigration) , I was convinced that leaving country at this point would be really risky. So there goes my plans for a India trip.. (I intend to take the first flight to India in October.. On the bright side, I will be celebrating my birthday with them after 8 years)

If you think that I got the short end of the stick (which I did).. think about my friend who had to postphone his marriage!

Hopefully I explained this well enough without assuming too much about the reader while remaining within acceptable limits of verbosity :).

PS: To all Indian readers of this enty: It would be great if you could translate this article to Indian languages of your choice (need atleast hindi and tamil).