A new payment method

Anyone game for it?

Still looking for someone to play a game of scrabble with me.... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1083703/Beat-THIS-high-word-score-skydivers-pictured-playing-scrabble-13-000ft.html

If you are the one I am destined to play a game of scrabble with, do send me a post. Looking forward to it.

New initiatives

RBI has come out with some initiatives. But unlike the usual ones of protecting the investors, this one stands out. It is about educating young people about basic finance. They even have a youth scholarship program for people between 18 and 23. It is heartening to see a brilliant institution of this country doing all in its powers to see that India doesn't end up as a debt country like the USA. Here is the ad for your reference.

Questions to ask before outsourcing

What to Outsource

Here are some questions to ask yourself when trying to identify functions and activities to outsource:

• Is the activity central to generating profits or creating competitive advantage?
• Is the job a routine task that could be easily communicated to someone else?
• Does the task wastes valuable time and energy?
• Is the function temporary, or does it recurs in cycles?
• Does the activity drains resources that could be better used elsewhere?
• Is the skill required for the job so specialized that it costs more to train someone in-house to do it?
• Is it something nobody wants to do?

Will it be less expensive to have someone else do it?

Estimates

"Knowing others to know yourself" Well, that seems cliched and as if another person is a mirror. Well, today, I asked a classmate how much time it took to complete a certain topic that is to be done for tomorrow. The person replied with "2 hrs" and "I don't know how useful this input will be for you". If I am right by choosing a candidate of around equal intelligence, interest in the subject and motive, then I should take the same time to complete that topic. The reasons it will vary are because of the variable parameters like sleepiness, tiredness and the difference between the estimated and actual differences in the intelligence, interest in the subject and motive. If there is a big difference between the time, analyse why is the difference. Was there a wrong basic assumption which needs to be corrected? If so, do it. You are now one more step towards perfection of estimating your time based on other's time. I have always been a staunch believer in using this theory to get an estimate of how much time I will require to do chapters that I don't even have an idea of. On all the previous emergency times(read before the exam day), this technique has been very useful to me. So start getting to know others well :)

Schrodinger's girlfriend

http://noenthuda.com/blog/?p=530

My favourite motivational speech

"Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are. It will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. It's about how much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. Now if you know what you're worth, then go out and get what you're worth. But you gotta be willing to take the hits and not be pointing fingers and saying 'it's because of him, or her, or anybody'. Cowards do that, and that ain't you. You're better than that. "

Dancing with the Stars

This undated handout photo provided by NASA, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, shows a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The Hubble Space Telescope is working again, taking stunning cosmic photos after a one-month breakdown. The Hubble Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore said the $10 billion telescope is as good as it was before a shutdown in late September. That glitch scotched plans for spacewalking astronauts to upgrade the telescope this month. (AP / October 31, 2008)

One more step ahead

I recommend all emotionally stable adults to read the book "God's Debris" by Scott Adams. The reason I say adults and emotionally stable is because it dwells into thoughts that are very scary and the thoughts can play with your head. It can make you feel like a nobody in this world. What the book proposes is very extra-ordinary and tries to predict the future, but not the usual kind of future, but the future of mankind and what is our significance in all of universe. One of the propositions of this book is that each of us are like individual cells in a body who just does its functions without even knowing the existence of many other cells, and the human as such. Similarly, we all have a role to play in this universe as it evolves. Also, all the people in this world will connect to each other and help evolve earth which is itself a living particle of this universe. This connection I can see in the form of the internet spreading like wild fire, making people's lives even more transparent to the world. Now, people not only put up their photos on the web, but also their record their whole day's activities and put it on the web. Also, special web services, take photos of a typical person every 3 minutes and these get uploaded to the net automatically. Basically, our whole mankind's lives are being put on a framework from where humans are going to use it for further analysis to do something of a higher significance. Maybe to help test a human robot. The below link just made me think of God's debris and the future. http://www.businessweek.com/globalbiz/content/oct2008/gb20081027_886542.htm I am not very sure if the distant future is bright... I am not even sure if the near future is bright... I am not even sure if we had to have something known as conciousness to do whatever we are supposed to be doing to help evolve the universe...