A puzzle for u!

“Conditioned” is one of my favorite words when I think of humans in general. Let’s see how well you fare in the puzzle attached.

4-squares.pps

Read Michael Lewis “The New New Thing” last week, a biography of Jim Clark ( Founder of SGI, Netscape, Healtheon among others). Engrossing and highly recommended to anyone interested in the Silicon Valley during the 90s.

Two things stood out in the book:

• derisively referring to a company called Google getting 75 million dollars in funding from KPCB during late 90s

• Jim Clark’s accidental spotting of the “Juliet” (a boat) hastened Netscape’s IPO and resulted in the Internet revolution.

Stem Cells

Here’s a good link to educate yourself on stem cell basics – very informative, interesting and concise.

Stem Cells

Seetha of Adobe

Intrigued by the name Seetha Narayanan popping out whenever I launch Photoshop, I googled the name and came up with this interview . Too much time on my hands as Seetha says!

There’s even a Seetha Flickr Fan group , how cool is that?

The Art of the Start – Free!

Startups.in is giving away three hardcover autographed copies of Guy Kawasaki’s “The Art of the Start” this month. To learn more, click on the link below.

The Art of the Start

Having read Guy’s “How to drive your competition crazy” recently, this is one opportunity that I did not want to miss!

PS – A brief synopsis of this book is also available on changethis

Enjoy!

Company Policy – Hilarious!

AN IMPORTANT NOTICE TO ALL EMPLOYEES

Company Policy: Effective from 1st Jan 2007

Dress Code:
It is advised that you come to work dressed according to your Salary.
If we see you wearing Prada shoes and carrying a Gucci bag, we assume you are doing well financially and therefore do not need a raise.
If you dress poorly, you need to learn to manage your money better, so that you buy nicer clothes, and therefore you do not need a raise.
If you dress just right, you are right where you need to be and therefore you do not need a raise.

Sick Days:
We will no longer accept a doctor’s statement as proof of sickness. If you are able to go to the doctor, you are able to come to work.

Annual Leave Days:
Each employee will receive 104 Annual Leave days a year.
They are called Saturday & Sunday.

Bereavement Leave:
This is no excuse for missing work. There is nothing you can do for dead friends, relatives or co-workers.
Every effort should be made to have non-employees attend to the arrangements.
In rare cases where Employee involvement is necessary, the funeral should be scheduled in the late afternoon.
We will be glad to allow you to work through your lunch Hour and subsequently leave one hour early.

Toilet Use:
Entirely too much time is being spent in the toilet. There is now a strict three-minute time limit in the stalls. At the end of three Minutes, an alarm will sound, the toilet paper roll will retract, the stall Door will open, and a picture will be taken. After your second offence, your picture will be posted on the company bulletin board under the Chronic Offenders category. Anyone caught smiling in the picture will be sanctioned under the company’s mental health policy.

Lunch Break:
Skinny people get 30 minutes for lunch, as they need to eat More, so that they can look healthy.
Normal size people get 15 minutes for Lunch to get a balanced meal to maintain their average figure.
Chubby People get 5 minutes for lunch, because that’s all the time needed to drink A Slim-Fast.


Thank you for your loyalty to our company. We are here to provide a positive employment experience. Therefore, all questions, comments, concerns, complaints, frustrations, irritations, aggravations, insinuations, allegations, accusations, contemplations, consternation and input should be directed elsewhere.

Regards,

The Management

Bangalore Book Festival

Selling books must be a thriving, profitable business in Bangalore – the vendors are sprouting up everywhere in recent times, on the pavements in the streets, small book fairs and the stores with buyback schemes.

One good outcome I assume is that number of book readers have gone up and are more sensible in selecting the good books from the pack. The bad side of the coin is the blatant violation of copyrights and cheap imitative paperbacks available at throwaway prices, less than couple of dollars. So far, there has been no crackdown on this piracy by the law authorities.

Be it Wodehouse novels, management classics (“Built to Last”), spiritual, motivational books (Kiyosaki) or the notorious “How Opal Mehta..”, you will find it here in the dozens. For an avid reader who is also wallet conscious, this is a paradise come true. Surely, one wouldn’t pay 100 bucks for a management book while it’s available for couple of bucks? Certainly, not I!

Bangalore Book Festival was held in Palace Grounds for couple of weeks and more than 50 reputed Indian publishers/bookstores had put up stalls with a diverse collection of books catering to all masses.

I picked up “The Nudist on the Late Shift” by Po Bronson, a compelling read so far – about Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs, salespeople, programmers and newcomers. It’s been fun reading the tales of the Valley. The author has vividly portrayed the characters and the events as they unroll creates a sense of awe at the accomplishments by the Valley’s residents.

Thomas Watson’s biography (IBM) was hard to pass up, Guy Kawasaki’s “How to drive your competition crazy”, “A Brave New World” by Huxley and “Lord of the Flies” by William Golding were others I bought.

 

Ebooks on investing

This link has the most extensive collection of ebooks on investing, Warren Buffett, Soros and Damodaran. Enjoy!

Three good books I have read lately :

• Free Prize Inside by Seth Godin
• Cat O’ Nine tales by Jeffrey Archer
• The New Buffetology by Mary Buffet

I picked up “Our Iceberg is Melting” this week, it’s on my list next.

I still can’t figure out orkut, do you dig it?

squidoo

I recently stumbled upon squidoo, creating a lens through which visitors can view the world. A lens only points to content rather than store the content according to Seth Godin. I found a few lens impressive and informative like this one.

seventymm, an indian online video rental service – a la Netflix is doing well. It has close to 9000 subscribers and is scaling it’s services to other cities. It should be interesting to watch how successful the venture is in the coming year. Indians are big movie buffs but would they be willing to pay 500 Rs per month as service fees while regular video outlets charge 30 Rs per DVD?

Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha was a good read, although too abstruse in parts. Iaccoca’s autobiography was colorful and astounding, I immensely enjoyed reading it. I have read a few excerpts of Seth Godin’s books, I am looking forward to getting my hands on Purple Cow. Made in Japan, Sony CEO Akio Morita’s autobiography is next on my list.

web 2.0 companies

Go2Web20 – I found this on Techcrunch, pretty handy compilation of diverse web2.0 companies.

Freescale semiconductors goes private for $16.7 Billion according to this news.

Is Deion Branch ever going to play for the Seahawks ? He’s just sitting there in my Fantasy team collecting no points. If only he had stayed with the Patriots!

who is sonia gandhi anyway?

Sonia Gandhi was listed 13th on Forbes 100 most powerful women this month.

Born Antonia Maino in Italy, Sonia married Rajiv Gandhi from the (non?) illustrious Nehru dynasty and has risen to become the president of the Indian National Congress, a political party in India. There are rumors abound that politicians flock around her aware of the wealth amassed by Rajiv during the infamous Bofors scandal and also by her power hungry mother-in-law Indira Gandhi.

Her greatest service to the nation to-date is to refuse the post of Prime Minister when offered and instate Manmohan Singh to the post. Or was this a politically motivated move to pull the strings behind the screen?

She was in Bangalore this Sunday to address her political party workers – hundreds of people from villages flocked at Palace Grounds to see her and hear her speak. Never mind the rumor that they were paid 100 bucks and were offered free meals and transport to gather. The meeting was held in the heart of the city resulting in chaos of the worst order, traffic jams and roads were trashed with paper cups, plastic bags and banana peels.

For a more dubious sketch of her by Subramaniam Swamy, you can visit this cached page.