Monday, July 25, 2016

Common sense and/or application of mind

What differentiates smart people and dumb people or idiots?
It is the power of common sense, a keen eye to observe things, validate what they hear or read, not take things for granted. It is about application of mind on simple things and not doing things blindly or mechanically. A lot of graduates know or taught only doing tasks and not application of mind. Over a period of time and a lot of skulduggery of their bosses and by learning from mistakes they become wise and start using common sense. They start perceiving information and how to relate it to what they already know. But some people are unwilling to learn or disinterested to learn and are sometimes pre-occupied with other than office work to continue being ignorant and committing a lot of errors and blunders at which point in time they are either given lesser responsibilities or are forced to leave the organisation.
A major part of the ability to think on things and apply their minds and be conscious of the environment and data while performing a task or taking a decision is dependent on the way the people are brought up during their schooling or college days. The environment, the people and the projects that encourages them or forces them to think through things is the key to understand how things work and what things affect and how they affect a certain object/objective. This enables them to do a self check with readily available knowledge/information in their head to understand the trade offs and take a decision or perform the task right in the first instance.
Curiousity is another factor that enables people to learn and apply their minds. Curiousity also leads to creative thinking and adds value to things and brings about new solutions. Curiosity too is a factor that has to be encouraged in the childhood and cannot come suddenly at an old age. This factor in turn can be identified and leads to a talent.
Determination helps people focus. Another key factor that avoids innumerable distractions and stops others needs taking over your identified goal. This also allows people to bring more of their resources (time, money, connections, etc.) to the goal instead of using their resources to do other things.
So, to be smart and use common sense, encourage people to increase their curiosity and help them achieve their goals for them to see the value of their goals achieved through determination.

Thursday, June 16, 2016

Financial lines of defense

One must have multiple lines of defense to call upon in need of any financial situation. I will list this order from the first line of defense to the last:
1. Credit card of self
2. Credit card of spouse (for this you both should have an add on card of each other)
3. Cash from ATMs drawing on your various bank accounts
4. NEFT/ RTGS/ IMPS transactions drawing upon the bank acccount funds
5. Taking short term loan from family and friends
6. Short term Fixed deposits in banks
7. Medium term fixed deposits in banks
8. Mortgage of physical gold to raise funds in emergency
9. Stocks or tax free bonds sold in the market/ Mutual funds
10. Selling physical assets (gold, land, building) though this will take time.
These are as per liquidity provided and the amounts available from the various sources.
These various financial instruments should be used to get the optimum level of returns for the risk and while not compromising liquidity.

Saturday, June 4, 2016

Big Hard disk companies skimp over providing data

I wanted to buy an external hard disk drive and had a tough time finding basic data to compare and choose the product. I wanted to buy among the big hard disk drive companies Western Digital and Seagate products, but their information on their website is grossly inadequate.
They provide so many varieties in the segment of portable external hard disk but do not provide sufficient information to distinguish one from another within this category.
Have a look at the information on their websites:


First, the real idea of portable is missing. I was looking for the dimensions of the products.
Second, the weight of the product is missing.
Third, their backward compatibility to the old operating systems is also missing. Will they work with Windows Vista? I cant say.
Fourth, what technology are they using? Are they mechanical or solid state devices?
Fifth, at what speed do they run? 5400 rpm or 7200 rpm? The faster they run, the hotter they get.
Sixth, WD speaks about the backup software in it. But what is the difference between these? Where am I supposed to look for it?
Seven, what is the power consumption of these hard disks? There should be some examples or range of numbers. Nothing is available.
Eight, I have seen some external hard disks being connected to laptops with two usb drives in the past as they need more power to run. I cant make out whether they need single USB or two USB ports to run.

Some of these are very technical, but some are very basic for usability and trade offs while buying a product.
The sad part is not only are these available on the website, these are also not available in the outer box of the external portable hard disk I bought. WD fortunately had the OS compatibility printed on it.

Hard disk companies talk of providing TBs of data but skimp on providing even some basic bytes of important data.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

Girl on Fire

There is a popular song by Alicia Keys called "Girl on Fire"
Hearing this song or going through its lyrics it is hard for me not to imagine if this song was not describing the now banned practice of 'sati' in India. Just saying...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sati_(practice)

Lyrics of the song are here:
"Girl On Fire"

She's just a girl and she's on fire
Hotter than a fantasy, lonely like a highway
She's living in a world and it's on fire
Feeling the catastrophe, but she knows she can fly away

Ohhhh oh oh oh oh
She got both feet on the ground
And she's burning it down
Ohhhh oh oh oh oh
She got her head in the clouds
And she's not backing down

This girl is on fire...
This girl is on fire...
She's walking on fire...
This girl is on fire...

Looks like a girl, but she's a flame
So bright, she can burn your eyes
Better look the other way
You can try but you'll never forget her name
She's on top of the world
Hottest of the hottest girls say

Ohhhh oh oh oh
We got our feet on the ground
And we're burning it down
Ohhhh oh oh oh oh
Got our head in the clouds
And we're not coming down

This girl is on fire...
This girl is on fire...
She's walking on fire...
This girl is on fire...

Everybody stares, as she goes by
'Cause they can see the flame that's in her eyes
Watch her when she's lighting up the night
Nobody knows that she's a lonely girl
And it's a lonely world
But she gon' let it burn, baby, burn, baby

This girl is on fire...
This girl is on fire...
She's walking on fire...
This girl is on fire...

Oh, oh, oh, oh ohhhhh oh oh oh ohhh oh oh oh ohhhh... [4x]

She's just a girl and she's on fire.