By the way, at the end, the translation for the Hindi voice-over is:

[the woman texts the husband]: “It’s been 25 years, but you still don’t understand anything about women.”

This quote isn’t as much an epiphany as it is just trying to find a way of describing what I really like to do…every day. This notion of finding simple solutions to complex problems also describes the kind of people I enjoy working with. Are you with me on this?

Notes:

1. A program on your computer, just like Microsoft Word
2. For Windows, Internet Explorer (also called its acronym, “IE”) is the default browser. If you don’t know which browser you are running, you are likely running IE.
3. At its basis, a Web Browser takes a web addresses (also called a “URL”) like http://www.mraggarwal.com as its input, and outputs the result on the screen, which is typically a web page.
4. There are four main Web Browsers on the market:
- IE (Closed Source by Microsoft)
- FireFox (Open Source)
- Google Chrome (Open Source by Google)
- Safari (Closed Source by Apple)

I found the following video to further help exemplify and provide another learning medium. I hope you enjoy it:

Where was this logic with the handling of the economic crisis? That approach has really just been “spend as much as possible, as quickly as possible, without waiting to assess the benefit.” I always thought people working with numbers were supposed to be the most logical. And in a time when we are at the cusp of an epidemic with the “swine” or “Mexico” flu, I am more likely to accept questionable and conservatively irrational decisions.

I guess, something about reading that quote just got me thinking.

When do other people’s joys and sorrows begin to affect you to the point where you are being “too empathetic”? What kind of person is prone to being/becoming “too empathetic”? Do you even believe there is such a thing?

I think there very well could be such a thing, and in a society where we feel that people are becoming less sociable, I tend to believe we will end up with some level of social “climate control” issues…where people cannot form the proper balance with many important social constructs, including empathy. I am concerned that people will begin to go to the extremes of feeling either too little empathy (I believe that everyone feels at least some small amount of empathy) or too much empathy. I believe there will be empathy balancing techniques that will be devised and training courses for the “social climate control” crisis we are already facing or will soon face in our technology-driven, impersonal world.

What are your thoughts? I know many people must be seeing this as it unfolds in front of all of our eyes. Maybe we can get to this and improve people’s quality of life in the current and future generations faster than we can find ways to solve the ozone issues or viable alternative fuel sources.

So, I want to know 2 things:

1. Is there anyone else that finds this to be as annoying as me (and/or would find this feature to be incredibly useful)?
2. Does anyone know of a way to make this happen (yes, I will even pay money for code, instructions, or even to have an add-in built)?

I happen to think there is simply no better email client on the market, but this one little feature request has eluded me for years.

The mixture of Polynesian, Japanese, and other East Asian flavors is superb. And the freshness of the food makes the consistency of quality unmatched.

I am interested in this question, the answers, and the thought processes which drive those answers at the macro-level: the level that drives one’s life in general.  Many people do ask this question at this level, but not nearly enough spend appropriate time thinking about it or actually answering the question.  Further, very few people take actions to get closer to making the answers a reality.

I believe this is a question that anyone who is looking to continually improve their career — and life in general – should explore.  Naturally, the answer depends on many variables.  One of those variables is time, and thus it should be re-asked on a fairly regular basis. 

Although answers will vary, I believe the thought process that leads to the answer is something worth discussing, and perhaps even recommending for those who find themselves lost from time-to-time (that “lostness” includes all of us as we find ourselves in new territory constantly throughout life — know-it-alls need not argue this point, since you can’t tell me you have already been as old as you will be tomorrow).

I don’t have time to play a full game of psychologist, so for now, I would like to open the forum with just reiterating my suggestion that each person take time to:

1. Ask yourself “What should I spend my time doing?” for life in general
2. Document the thought process (variables) that lead to your answers
3. Answer the question (make plans)
4. Execute on the answer/plans; if you find a gap with your current situation, start taking steps to make positive changes
5. Break your life down into smaller chunks and repeat 1-4 until you get as detailed as desired/needed

At some point, we may get to a point where people sharing their approach to answering — for that, #2 may one of the most valuable, while also being the least private/intrusive to share.

The reason I hate saying Skype sucks is because the idea, the implementation, the marketing, and the user adoption has been great until Wednesday, August 16, 2007.  The question is “Can all of that outweigh the horrible experience over the past two days?”  The answer is “No.”  Why?  Because a service that is so widespread and is actually used to accomplish mission-critical business functions should NEVER go down.  Granted, most users do not pay a penny to Skype, they make/have plenty of money.  And they’ll be the first to admit that a mistake like this is unacceptable to themselves, their users, and their stakeholders.

However, and this is a big HOWEVER, I believe Skype is better in the end for having this happen to them.  This wasn’t an internal/corporate issue that made some heads roll and was pushed under the carpet.  This will likely never be forgotten by the organization or its users/customers.  Therefore, I believe Skype will plan for technology risk mitigation more/better than any other vendor offering similar services going forward.

This touches on an incredibly important issue I am particularly concerned/vocal about: large scale, technology risk mitigation.  Skype going down is one thing, but think about the other organizations/entities/applications/etc. out there that likely have worse code (yes, Skype said it was an issue in the software) than Skype.  In fact, if you can’t wrap your arms around that, just think about how talented the Skype developers were/are compared to some of the people in IT that you may know who work at large organizations (public and private) throughout the World.  I know these things happen every day, and I’m very interested in hearing more about exactly what happened with Skype, but I hope the widespread nature of this can send a wake-up call to some of organizations out there who have even more far-reaching, mission-critical objectives than Skype.

If they don’t get it soon, don’t worry, I’ll get on the ball and make sure it becomes a priority for the places I care about (i.e. utilities companies, government, etc.).