Don't Worry!

I took my son out this evening. I was lost in my thoughts as usual, pushing the shopping cart in the supermarket. And my son, who was sitting on the cart, looked at me with an innocent face and went "Don't Worry, Papa"! I started laughing uncontrollably without knowing what to tell him. It was one of those magic moments for me. I knew for sure that I would not forget this day!

Oh, my new phone arrived today. I miss the touch screen that I had with my earlier phone. But you know, I now have a phone that works at home and in my office! I realized that I only had a PDA till now... I am still fighting with it to set up the subscription to my mail server. Hopefully, I will have it done tomorrow.

Yankee Fan at the Fenway Park

I finished my dinner last Thursday with a bunch of executives from four different large companies in Boston. My friend/client George (from Fidelity) was excited that the Red Sox were playing the Rockies in the World Series, a few miles from the Seaport hotel where we were staying/dining. He had this idea of going to the Fenway Park to hang around there and enjoy the atmosphere. We knew that there was no way we could get into the stadium, but it still sounded like a good idea. I decided to go, instead of working for a couple more hours. Five of us took a cab and went to the stadium. The atmosphere was electric! There were long lines to even get into the bars around the ballpark. We got into an Uno's, a couple of blocks away, after going around the stadium once. We watched the game till about the 7th inning in there. In spite of being a die-hard Yankee fan, I enjoyed the time I spent around the Fenway park. We hung around there till about midnight. And George took us on a guided tour of Boston on our way back to the hotel in a cab! It ended up being a strange but a very pleasant evening, after all!

Hectic Week...

I cannot believe that a new week is here already. The whole past week flew by me in a hurry. There was so much happening that I did not get a chance to pause and look back at anything :-(

The weekend was a totally different thing, though. I got to talk to two of my old friends from my engineering school days. It is such a pleasure to find old, treasured contacts on LinkedIn and getting back in touch with them. That pretty much made my weekend. And I got a chance to plan for the week ahead. Now I am really looking forward to my two weeks away - starting 11/10. I know that the first week away is going to be hectic in San Francisco. But I am off on vacation from 11/16 till 11/23, in Vegas and Grand Canyon. That should be fun. I just completed making all the reservations.

Intriguing thoughts...

I guess the next couple of years are going be very interesting, considering the following factors:

• The dollar seems to be enjoying the freefall, and doesn't seem like it wants to open the parachute anytime soon!
• Oil prices are reaching new highs every single day.
• The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are draining money on the other hand.
• Mortgage companies are closing shop as if they were dotcoms in 2001/02!
• Grocery prices have doubled in the last few years.
• Jobs are difficult to come by for most of the average population.
• People continue to work harder to earn less money.
• Chinese government and Chinese companies are buying stakes in large western firms.
• Western world is starting to boycott "Made in China" products (is that ever possible?!)
• IT and BPO businesses in India are starting to feel the heat. Some are closing doors.
• Hurricanes and wildfires keep hitting US below the belt.
• Earthquakes and tsunamis keep hurting Asia.
• Let us not even think about Africa. If even 1% of what they showed in Hotel Rwanda and Blood Diamond are true, natural disasters are probably a relief for them.
• Life seems to be cheap in certain Asian countries. And death is cheaper, with hundreds dying due to bomb blasts and other horrendous acts on a daily basis.
• And we have Paris Hilton, Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan.

What a wonderful world!!!

Blackberry Curve

Alright, I ultimately decided to divorce MS Mobile based Smartphones. After using four of them over the last three years, I convinced my wife to take my TMobile Wing. I just ordered a Blackberry Curve to use the HotSpot @Home feature. I can't wait to get my hands on it for a set of reasons. Firstly, it will be a change from what I have been using over the last three years. And secondly, this phone is rated very high by CNET (a few notches higher than my earlier phones). And finally, when have I been NOT excited to get my hands on a new gadget?! I will surely post my review here within a week.

Siddarth turns two

The weekend was spent in celebrating my son's second birthday. We had a couple of parties, and had a lot of fun. I took him out this morning, trying to snap some pictures with the foliage in the background. The wind two nights back really killed the colorful leaves, unfortunately. Anyway, here's the two-year old dude with his proud papa!

BTW, I have lost 9 lbs over the last four weeks. I do not think I will be able to hit the target of 10 lbs in a month, as I have been feasting myself with cakes, sweets, etc., over the last two days!

Global Warming

I have been watching "An Inconvenient Truth" in bits and pieces this week. I have never been a big fan of Al Gore, but the movie/documentary is really hard-hitting. I would strongly recommend it to anyone that cares about how our children will inherit this planet from us.

Indian Cricket

I ended up watching a cricket match after a long gap. I stayed up all night to watch the 6th one-dayer between India and Australia. My first observation was that the pace of the game had gotten much faster. Bowlers took less time between balls, and the teams in general took less time between overs. I had expected the opposite, given the ever-increasing need for TV commercials between the overs.

I fail to understand what the veterans are still doing in the team. Of course, there were a few dropped catches which made the difference in the end result. But I felt India still had a good chance to chase down the total. Saurav Ganguly and Rahul Dravid seemed to play as if we needed to retain wickets till the 50th over, and get all the needed runs in one over. And Ganguly, of course, is the ultimate expert at converting two's to a single! I felt really bad for the kids, as they had to endure a loss in spite of fighting hard. It was really refreshing to see Uthappa and Dhoni play their hearts out trying to compensate for the way oldies played. I sincerely hope Dhoni develops the guts someday to tell these old players that their shelf life is over and that they are being dropped!

BMW's Navigation System

I went on a short ride recently in a friend's new BMW 5-series car. I have always thought that Lexus and Acura offer better value for money compared to BMW. And this ride more than vindicated my thoughts. One thing I just could not ignore in the car was its navigation system. I just could not believe that a premier brand luxury car could have such a navigation system. It is so difficult to use that I could not help but laugh at it. Luckily, my friend was not offended. Apparently his wife shouts at him everyday for getting her that car - just because of its navigation system!

To start with, it does not have a touch screen. It has a dial knob, which you can use to scroll through the alphabets to select each letter of the destination address. I had seen it in an X5, way back in 2000. It looked cool on the first generation of navigation systems back then. But now, it just is a big irritant. My SUV's navigation system is a 100 times better, thought it is about four years older! I tried to google for any reviews of this engineering wonder. I found one review - http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,2929,00.asp, and I think the language used in it is highly diplomatic!

Google Vs Microsoft

I have been using Vista ever since they rolled out the beta version. Same holds good with Office 2007. I used to get excited to try out new technology and gadgets. But when I ordered my latest laptop, I realized that I cared a damn about the OS on it. My analysis shows me that the browser and Outlook are the platforms for my computer usage, more than 90% of the time. And I would guess that an average consumer does not even need Outlook. I recently tried Google Docs, and it impressed me. It has the bare essentials at this point in time, but I am sure it will get the bells and whistles in due time. More than anything, I like the fact that I do not need to get a new license every time I buy a new computer. I would rather pay 50 bucks a year, and be able to use the applications through all of my machines - even through my Mac!

With the OS and Office licenses contributing to a major portion of MSFT's revenue, I wonder where MS is headed...

More than $200M payroll...

...and the Yankees lose again the first round of the playoffs. Really a shame. But I think I took it easier this year, compared to the last two. Nuff said.

I have to bring my workout schedule back in line. I am still down only by 5 lbs. But I have had a chance to jog just once over the last week. Maybe with no more baseball to watch till April, I will have more time to workout more often.

Adrenaline

I have been very fortunate in my career to be doing something different every 3-4 years. Given how much of a child I still am, it kinda gets difficult to maintain an attention span of anything more than that type of time frame. While I have been very happy doing what I am doing, I guess I needed a dose of adrenaline to spice things up a bit. And I got two doses within a week! The opportunity to acquire a company came along, and has kept me busy doing something I have never done before. To add to it, executives from one of the biggest software product companies (probably the biggest) in the world got excited by our product, and how I positioned it to work with theirs. So, with two hot things going on right now, I couldn't be more enthusiastic!

Yankees kick off their postseason today. I hope all goes well with their quest for their 27th world series championship and that they are the last team standing at the end of this month! Go Yankees!