It is my belief that all we own in this world is time. And we can chose how to spend it and with whom to spend it. All of us to varyiing degree have control over some portion of our time. I am sure this is not an original thought. Different people have said the same thing in different ways. I remember vaguely Steve Jobs saying that death makes decisions really simple, would you spend your remaining time doing what you are doing today.
My other realization perhaps a bit late is that time can’t be averaged. Take kids for example, you can’t say that instead of spending 1 hr everyday with them you will take 20 days off and spend every waking hour with them. It’s not the same. You can’t average it out with kids or with yourself also. 20s is the time to do some things, 30s to do other things, 60s something else. The slice of time over which you average has to be really small for it to have meaning … a week is the maximum I would say.
One is lucky if one can spend time with people they want to, and not get bogged down in providing for essentials or chasing one’s own tail.
Categories: Kitchen Sink
My dad once told me that “Children are not a portfolio”. It is not if one does well and one doesn’t you feel good. I now have 3 daughters and am begining to understand the meaning of the words.
Categories: life
Google Tech Talks March 15, 2007 ABSTRACT If happiness is an inner state, influenced by external conditions but not dependent on them, how can we achieve it? Ricard will examine the inner and outer factors that increase or diminish our sense of well-being, dissect the underlying mechanisms of happiness, and lead us to a way of looking at the mind itself based on his book, Happiness: A Guide to Life’s Most Important Skill and from the research in neuroscience on the effect of mind-training on the brain. Speaker Bio: Matthieu Ricard, a gifted scientist turned Buddhist monk, is a best selling author, translator, and photographer. He has lived and studied in the Himalayas for the last 35 years where he currently works on humanitarian projects. He is an active participant in the current scientific research on meditation and the brain.«
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1424079446171087119
Categories: life
I had a sales VP couple of years ago. we used to debate a lot about life and stuff. He asked me why I drive a beetle. I told him my philosophy is to not buy a car above 20K. He was apalled I think to have a CEO who would think like that. One of our perpetual debates was what should be done for our kids.
I explained to him my philosophy is that we are happy if reality exceeds our expectation. as a child our expectations are set on the income of our parents (and unless you have a huge inheritance), reality is set by your own income. So if you come from a wealthy family and then have to struggle you would be very unhappy. So I want to grow up my kids middle class and they will be happier the rest of their life.
He thought this was all BS. He said you are ruining your life and also of your kids. You should live life extravangantly and then your kids will aspire for the same and this will make them more successful than you.
Eaither point of view had merits. We ofcourse agreed to dis-agree and discussed this constantly.
Categories: Change Control
October 30, 2008 · 1 Comment
We all reach a point in our lives, where we stop and ask why? Why am I doing what I am doing? It can happen on a vacation or on due to the loss of someone close to you? Or it just hits you….
I dont remember the dicrete moment when I began thinking about this, but several conversations helped me to find this answer. The first was with a “guru” who was visiting canada. I was visiting my sister (first cousin) who lives in Surrey. The guru was visiting from India and I liked him, unlike most other people I had seen he was not interested in taking money … but seemed very genuine. So I asked him “what is the goal of life” And he replied the “goal of life is happiness”.
That started the thread in my mind. I agree with him that the goal of life is happiness. But in addition life is about balancing happiness today with happiness in the future. A drug addict is happy in the present but has given up on the future. The balance is different for different people, and you know when you have it. the question is if you dont have it, how do you get there?
Categories: Change Control
October 23, 2008 · 1 Comment
Like every other tech executive in the valley I got hooked to email on the phone about 4 years ago. I used for varying periods a treo, samsung i600, blackberry and then the blackjack. About 3 months back I gave up my Blackjack. Went to Fry’s and bought a 10$ go phone which can only make calls and has a phenomenal battery life.
My wife was not sure if this was temporary or permanent. I have just transitioned at work from a CEO to CTO role and she thinks i am looking for change everywhere. Maybe true but this is a great one.
I have to admit it has not been easy. we are so addicted to being constantly interrupted that the urge to check email or read the news is so strong, when there is a quiet moment. It is almost as bad as the urge to smoke (although I have never tried that … so am speaking metaphorically).
I had a moment of weakness at VmWorld last month. I was awaiting something important and gave in … putting the sim card back into my black jack. It did not have enough battery and did not run last enough to get any email. At lunch other people check email atleast 5 times if not more.
Another big change because of this is that I actually have to carve out time to read email. Earlier I would read it as it was coming in. Now I have to sit down and read it systematically. I miss some of the emails … and take longer to reply to others. Steve Dow at Sevin Rosen Funds once said to me we are not doctors, someone won’t die if we dont read and answer email. It is true although very hard to do.
Why did I do it?
I have 3 daughters and more often than not, I found myself reading email when driving. It occurred to me doing this was stupid, It will only take a moment to lose everything. So I stopped.
Categories: Kitchen Sink
Tagged: blackjack, samsung, smartphone
Solidcore Hosts Web Seminar on PCI DSS Auditing and File Integrity Monitoring Requirements
Trustwave Speaker to Discuss Managing Compliance with PCI DSS Section 11.5
CUPERTINO, Calif., June 25, 2008 – On Thursday, June 26, 2008, Solidcore® Systems, Inc., the leading provider of software to detect and prevent unwanted change, will host a Web seminar to provide expert guidance on the difficult auditing and file integrity monitoring requirements within the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). The Webinar will help companies better understand the current PCI DSS compliance challenges, and will provide best-practices and a solution for overcoming them.
http://www.solidcore.com/
Categories: Change Control
From VC Circle http://www.vccircle.com/2008/06/24/inventus-opens-shop-in-india-to-invest-upto-10mn-in-early-stage-companies/
Finally, Kanwal Rekhi’s much awaited venture capital fund has been officially launched. The US and India based Inventus Capital Partners announced its entry with $125 million corpus at a press conference in Bangalore today.
The firm will invest $1-10 million in 15-20 early-growth companies over the next few years.
The firm has a four-member investment team, and will have its headquarters in Menlo Park, California (where else?), and Bangalore. Besides Rekhi, the team has John Dougery (both of them based in Silicon Valley), Samir Kumar and Parag Dhol (the latter two based in Bangalore). The firm will also have advisors like Saurabh Srivastava, former founder of Xansa, Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford University professor (and also a start-up advisor to the Google & Yahoo! Founders), B. V. Jagadeesh (serial entrepreneur), and Sridhar Mitta (former President of Wipro’s R&D).
Thefund will look at investing in technology powered companies, particularly software products, services, embedded software, consumer internet, semiconductor and mobile services companies.
Interestingly, Inventus took more than two years to kick off its activity as the news of his launching a fund first broke as early as 2006.
Categories: Change Control
Link: http://www.brianmadden.com/news/2765
Well as far as I am aware, XPe as it stands to day will be available through till sometime in 2010, but it seems more news is getting out about is?s possible Vista based replacement? My personal view is that MS should take a deep hard look at the *LACK* of take up and interest in Vista before heading down this path anytime soon ? but that doesn?t mean they won?t try regardless. Now of particular note from the details below from Mary Jo Foley is the indication of the size of the OS? XPe may have a *core* size of 40Mb but it is typically 350Mb or so when deployed - does that mean that with a core of 300Mb for Quebec that the typical load will be around 2.5Gb and larger? If this is the case then it?s just as well that Flash manufacturers are able to keep making larger and larger memory modules? But, really?. activation?? for an embedded OS ? give me a break!!! That is unless MS are going to repeal the restriction that they have always had with the embedded OS in that they have always…
Categories: Change Control
Over the years people have learnt that there are some battles you can’t fight and win against Microsoft. You may look at the list below and say, “huh” that might have been true of others, but Vmware is different. I won’t argue with you, some companies like Apple have beaten Microsoft on these points, but the odds are low and it’s a difficult play to pull off.
- Features: you can’t win by having more features
- Slick UI: Microsoft will design the best UIs ultimately (Apple being the only exception to this rule)
- Desktop Oriented Software: MS had demonstrated uncanny ability to assimilate any features that came out on the desktop
- Speed: Lotus 123 vs Microsoft Excel, they eventually got it right and beat the speed
- Integrated Developer Systems: MS has a lock on this, they will integrate virtualization into visual studio, debuggers etc, making there solution the best
- Price: you can’t undercut Microsoft on price and sustain the business model
So if you are Vmware what do you do? Vmware is in hyper growth mode and in such a phase people are so busy trying to deal with the day to day operations that most thinking becomes incremental, not because the people are not smart, they are incredibly smart: but there is no time to stop and ponder. Incremental thinking usually results in product roadmaps and directions which will fall in one of the six buckets above.
If you are VMW how can you beat MSFT: hypervisor, Virtual Infrastructure or Management & Automation or something else? MSFT, Xen (Citrix) and others pose a thread to the “hypervisor”. NTAP, EMC and other storage/networking vendors pose a threat to the Virtual Infrastructure Layer. Management & Automation is already a crowded market. So how does VMW find a blue ocean to expand into?
Categories: Virtualization
Tagged: microsoft, vmware
