Musings

With the wifey away on a shopping trip with her girlfriends on a Sunday evening, soundtrack of Talaash playing on the stereo and not really much "work" to take care of, its again one of those times when you can ponder about things that the daily regimen just doesn't let you.

One of the articles I read on my not-that-rare gluttonous reading spree in office was on what to seek in a career. Basically, you need to seek legacy, mastery and freedom , in that order. It all sounds very simple. First, seek a career where you can have some kind of lasting effect on the world. What kind of jobs really make the world a better place? Medicine, engineering and education are of course the usual suspects. But what about financial analysts or those people in advertising. Does their work really make the world better? May be in an indirect way. Some financial analysts "package risk", so that the small shop owner's odds of paying off his mortgage is better understood by the banks and they may be more willing to lend.  

The next is to aim to master a set of skills. And then you seek freedom to be able to choose what projects you take on,etc.  

The article is worth a read. But just like any self help article, you should spend more time analyzing your existing career and see how those principles may apply better.

Restart

I have been away from this blog for a long time now. One of the main reasons that I have not written anything here is that I have succumbed ever so sadly to that dreaded habit of procrastinating. And its not just blogging, but other areas of my life as well which have been so badly hit because of this.

Its not just procrastination I guess. Its basically not moving my ass and doing anything that I should be doing. Just do nothing, pretending to succumb to the pressures of a monotonous, stressful working life.

With this post I intend to come out of it. And lets see. 

Availability of time for Time Pass.

Interesting article explains how there is always time available for us to do timepass. Look at Wikipedia. Dont you sometimes wonder how come people have so much time to write/edit the content there. Fact is people are interested, and so will do it even if they are not being paid. Contradicts the Carrots and Stick approach we all are used to, whether in school or workplace.

Balls!

Very interesting story here. Apparently in Costa Rica, you can find round stone balls lying on the ground. Gives me the idea, a lot of people surely lost their marbles.

Full story here.

My "designer" desktop

Ok. I have got far too many queries as to how I got the above theme in Windows XP. So here goes:

1. First you will have to patch the uxtheme.dll file to enable non-Microsoft release visual style to be loaded in Windows XP. To do this get the patch here. Download and run the file, follow the instructions ( next, next, Ok, blah blah, yes, ...) and once done reboot your machine.

2. Download a visual style from the internet. A good set of them are here.

3. Unzip the downloaded files and copy them to Windows/Resources/Themes/ folder. Double click the visual style file ( usually you will have a style file along with some folders containing other stuff to make the style working) .

4. The windows display properties page should open up ( the one you use to change wallpaper, screen saver, etc). Click apply and voila, your desktop should look different ( hopefully :P)


Some times when patching the dll file in the first step, Windows irritatingly reminds you that doing this might make it unstable ( as though Windows is stable otherwise!) . This is normal.

I got the wallpaper from here.

Concept of Bankruptcy- Explained.

This is something I came across somewhere recently. It illustrates the concept of bankruptcy brilliantly and is a pointer to the present ( or are we past it ?) economic crisis. It's slightly long considering the nanosecond attention most of us have these days but its worth it!.

Bankruptcy for Dummies.

Once there was a little island country. The land of this country was
the tiny island itself. The total money in circulation was 2 dollars
as there were only two pieces of 1 dollar coins circulating around.1) There were 3 citizens living on this island country. A owned the
land. B and C each owned 1 dollar.

2) B decided to purchase the land from A for 1 dollar. So, now A and C
own 1 dollar each while B owned a piece of land that is worth 1
dollar.

* The net asset of the country now = 3 dollars.

3) Now C thought that since there is only one piece of land in the
country, and land is non producible asset, its value must definitely
go up. So, he borrowed 1 dollar from A, and together with his own 1
dollar, he bought the land from B for 2 dollars.

*A has a loan to C of 1 dollar, so his net asset is 1 dollar.
* B sold his land and got 2 dollars, so his net asset is 2 dollars.
* C owned the piece of land worth 2 dollars but with his 1 dollar debt
to A, his net residual asset is 1 dollar.
* Thus, the net asset of the country = 4 dollars.

4) A saw that the land he once owned has risen in value. He regretted
having sold it. Luckily, he has a 1 dollar loan to C. He then borrowed
2 dollars from B and acquired the land back from C for 3 dollars. The
payment is by 2 dollars cash (which he borrowed) and cancellation of
the 1 dollar loan to C. As a result, A now owned a piece of land that
is worth 3 dollars. But since he owed B 2 dollars, his net asset is 1
dollar.

* B loaned 2 dollars to A. So his net asset is 2 dollars.
* C now has the 2 coins. His net asset is also 2 dollars.
* The net asset of the country = 5 dollars. A bubble is building up.

(5) B saw that the value of land kept rising. He also wanted to own
the land. So he bought the land from A for 4 dollars. The payment is
by borrowing 2 dollars from C, and cancellation of his 2 dollars loan
to A.

* As a result, A has got his debt cleared and he got the 2 coins. His
net asset is 2 dollars.
* B owned a piece of land that is worth 4 dollars, but since he has a
debt of 2 dollars with C, his net Asset is 2 dollars.
* C loaned 2 dollars to B, so his net asset is 2 dollars.

* The net asset of the country = 6 dollars; even though, the country
has only one piece of land and 2 Dollars in circulation.

(6) Everybody has made money and everybody felt happy and prosperous.

(7) One day an evil wind blew, and an evil thought came to C’s mind.
“Hey, what if the land price stop going up, how could B repay my loan.
There is only 2 dollars in circulation, and, I think after all the
land that B owns is worth at most only 1 dollar, and no more.”

(8) A also thought the same way.

(9) Nobody wanted to buy land anymore.

* So, in the end, A owns the 2 dollar coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.
* B owed C 2 dollars and the land he owned which he thought worth 4
dollars is now 1 dollar. So his net asset is only 1 dollar.
* C has a loan of 2 dollars to B. But it is a bad debt. Although his
net asset is still 2 dollars, his Heart is palpitating.
* The net asset of the country = 3 dollars again.

(10) So, who has stolen the 3 dollars from the country ? Of course,
before the bubble burst B thought his land was worth 4 dollars.
Actually, right before the collapse, the net asset of the country was
6 dollars on paper. B’s net asset is still 2 dollars, his heart is
palpitating.

(11) B had no choice but to declare bankruptcy. C as to relinquish his
2 dollars bad debt to B, but in return he acquired the land which is
worth 1 dollar now.

* A owns the 2 coins, his net asset is 2 dollars.
* B is bankrupt, his net asset is 0 dollar. (He lost everything)
* C got no choice but end up with a land worth only 1 dollar

* The net asset of the country = 3 dollars.

There is however a redistribution of wealth.
A is the winner, B is the loser, C is lucky that he is spared.
A few points worth noting -

(1) When a bubble is building up, the debt of individuals to one
another in a country is also building up.
(2) This story of the island is a closed system whereby there is no
other country and hence no foreign debt. The worth of the asset can
only be calculated using the island’s own currency. Hence, there is no
net loss.
(3) An over-damped system is assumed when the bubble burst, meaning
the land’s value did not go down to below 1 dollar.
(4) When the bubble burst, the fellow with cash is the winner. The
fellows having the land or extending loan to others are the losers.
The asset could shrink or in worst case, they go bankrupt.
(5) If there is another citizen D either holding a dollar or another
piece of land but refrains from taking part in the game, he will
neither win nor lose. But he will see the value of his money or land
goes up and down like a see saw.
(6) When the bubble was in the growing phase, everybody made money.
(7) If you are smart and know that you are living in a growing bubble,
it is worthwhile to borrow money (like A ) and take part in the game.
But you must know when you should change everything back to cash.
(8) As in the case of land, the above phenomenon applies to stocks as well.
(9) The actual worth of land or stocks depend largely on psychology

PS: I m still trying to find the original author. This was just saved on my hard disk.

My new phone- the Sony Ericsson W350i

Ok. I went out and bought a new phone. Finally. It was long awaited by a lot people, excluding me. While the world was frantically buying phones with features of very little use, throwing out perfectly working, and convenient phones for fanciful but cumbersome ones, I was happily putting my trusted old Nokia 2600 to good use.

It served me well for 4 long years now- I never had an issue with battery life, though I had to get the exterior panel changed twice (it had more to with my rough handling of the phone than anything else). But of late a very peculiar problem cropped up. The battery was growing- literally. It was expanding and pushing the casing out. Now that was serious. I had heard enough reports of batteries exploding and I certainly didn’t want to be one of those unfortunate poor souls to have their ear, face or any other body part blown off my a Li Ion battery.

So I went off to buy a phone- to indulge in an activity, because of the involvement of millions of people in which, blokes like me make a comfortable living ( my company makes cell phone chips btw) . I had a look at the phones on display and was actually bewildered at the array of choices present. You had phones that could just about make and receive calls, and you had those which took photos, fetched your mail, played your music, and still let you make calls. But selecting a phone was easy- I wanted a flip phone, with camera, Bluetooth, music player and radio. I chose a model which offered all these at possibly the lowest price and haggled with the guy at the sales counter to give me a good price for my existing “explosive” phone, which he did. It was closing time and I figured out he hadn’t managed that day’s sales target and was willing to stretch the price a little bit in my favor. It was the Sony Ericsson W350i. The ‘w’ was indicative of Sony’s Walkman heritage and I thought out it would be a promising music player also.

When I came home the first thing I noticed about the phone was its size. Sure size zero was quite the rage with females some time ago, but this was taking things really too far, besides I didn’t want my phone to be female. The phone was really slim, and hardly had the width of a match box, which I actually found convenient considering that I have small hands. It has a flap which when closed doubles up as the user interface for the music player. I totally loved this concept. I really didn’t have to open up the phone and use the myriad keys to play music- all I wanted to do was pause, play, next and stop and these were all there as big chunky buttons right there on the flap. Very neat indeed.

One very useful thing about the phone is that when the flap is closed (when you are not using the phone’s key pad) it is in the music player mode. So you can use it just like an iPod. The sound quality is excellent with the bass coming out loud and clear. This I think is more to do with the superior headphones that are provided with the handset. Another useful feature is the ability to directly plug in a 3.5 mm audio jack using a small adapter. This is extremely convenient when you want to hook up the phone with that expensive pair of headphones you bought or a larger speaker system.

The other things about the phone are fairly standard. The radio is good, without giving a pause while changing stations. My old Philips Nike device takes a long time to switch from one station to the other. The Bluetooth and USB connectivity are great. The menu is also fairly intuitive, which considering that it’s not from Nokia is quite surprising.

All in all, a great phone!!!. One more thing I did notice. Buying a new phone does make you happy, at least for a day! I guess that’s why mobile sales are zooming the world over.