Story of Me

It surely seems to be the best tablet in the market. The configurations are mind blowing and luckily we got it at a rate cheaper than what flipkart and other online guys were offering at :)

More about it later. If not by me, will ask Mohsin to write something about it for sure :P

Had fiddled with eucalyptus almost 2 years back (http://peeyush.livejournal.com/553650.html) but that time it was more of personal fun stuff. This time it's official business. Nope, we are not setting up cloud as that has been already by done by hell lot of "don't know how many" people in country. There's a certain specific activity granted to us almost a month back. We kept requesting one of our sister unit for access to their cloud but instead of providing access, they just kept replying back with 'training dates'. After getting pissed off literally getting training date even after 3rd request for access, finally decided to setup one locally. As expected, moved on to the latest Ubuntu edition (12.04 LTS) which comes with MAAS goodie. Now this MAAS goodie turned out to be more painful than the eucalyptus goodie of last time. First of all, something is messed up with its dnsmasq thingy due to which nameservers are probably not giving right results. Essentially I could not install the MAASdhcp package which was required for me to setup the local cloud as per their primitive recommendations. Why primitive recommendations? Because 12.04 guys haven't put up anything more than primitive help on their wiki pages for setting up MAAS. So even though my network requirements are different and setup conditions are different than what their limited pages say, I was forced to create an artificial environment as per their recommendations. And even after doing that, the stuff just won't move ahead beyond basic installation courtesy lack of dhcp package in their base installation. And as for installing the nodes, after recognizing the MAAS server on network they would just power off. While their documentations state that nodes will power off after completion of setup, I doubt if anything like that has happened. Because the nodes were not manageable from the MAAS dashboard and nor did they boot up as MAAS node after rebooting. Anyways, I haven't given up on it yet and would be continuing the stuff in later part of next week. Monday and Tuesday will be busy with meetings at Delhi. And I do hope that the officials at Delhi would be able to grant us access to their cloud setup which our sister unit has indirectly refused to help us with.

In case you are wondering why we didn't try out the public cloud stuff, well, we did that too. We did try 1 hour of fiddling with public cloud provided by canonical folks and we surely are grateful to them. Did few installations on it and did got onto the openstack dashboard but could not do more than that. We tried copying WSO2 Stratos setup on that instance but copying 2.1 GB turned out impossible in 1 hour's time. So that didn't lead us too far either.

Unfortunately for these reasons, been losing out to race against time for the activity assigned to us. But, will surely catch up with it soon as had done in past :)

In past, I had upgraded both Ubuntu and RHEL from one major version to another and it had worked fine without any issues. Both incidents were almost 5 years old. Thought that now things have come pretty far off from the beginning so may be things would be much more easier than those times. But upgrading wasn't a smooth road. Nonetheless finally got the minty upgraded from Lisa to Maya. The issues faced were following

1) The ZTE dialer that I had installed from net in 'Lisa' edition didn't have any upgrade path for 'Maya'. Hence, the dpkg failed to execute post installation scripts. Referred some online help to realize that the script from the dpkg has to be edited for eliminating lines referring to ZTE.

2) The kernel wasn't upgrading from 3.0.0.20 to 3.2.x version because GRUB configurations have changed in the newer edition. It's not longer in the xx/share folder but in xx/lib folder. Accordingly edited the grub configuration files to map it to the new path and then kernel upgrade was completed.

3) The hibernate thing ain't working still even though power manager for both Mate and Gnome have been set with necessary parameters. Will need to see if ACPI need to be reconfigured for something.

Everything else seems to be okay except for the fact that Mate display in Lisa seemed prettier than Maya. May be some upgrade hasn't worked out fine. As for KDE and Gnome, they are pretty much okay. BTW, KDE seems to have come far ahead of Gnome in recent times. I have liked KDE more than both Mate and Gnome in Linux Mint.

Once these basic headaches are gotten rid of then will be moving onto messing Linux Mint with the WSO2 Stratos which seems to be demanding more than what laptop has got to offer. For example, the Stratos doc says that Stratos itself need 4 GB and the system should have at least 8 GB before it could gather courage to execute Stratos engine. I have a bad feeling that my laptop may end up cursing me and dying non-peacefully in the coming week courtesy these adventures :P

And they would be - Coupling and Sherlock. And incidentally, Steven Moffat has to do something with that. This guy seems genius in catching up with nerves of today and coming out with brilliant scripts. Of course, needless to say that script won't do any good if the actors don't do their job. For both telly's, all the lead actors have done justice to their characters. That's what make both fun to watch.

Exams over on 9th but nothing changed. Couple of reasons. Busy-ness just got busier with activities in office and with 4 assignments waiting in line for submission within few days. I guess the regular blogging thing might need to wait up for some more time. Hopefully the next weekend would be different :)

This time's upgrade of PDF Creator asked me if I would like to install PDF Architect. I am happy I agreed. PDF Architect though not licensed under any open source license(s) by pdfforge folks, is quite a convenient utility in do limited editing of PDF files - be it cutting out pages, reordering them or rotating different pages within same PDF to different degrees. This tool has helped me sort out messy scanned PDFs.

Scary and interesting. Reading not complete yet. Going through wiki stuff right now after reading intro stuff in the D N Dwivedi book -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_the_Great_Depression
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deflation

More to come... probably tomorrow

As more and more lectures are coming to end in this semester, I am yet again left with my regular questions. How do these subjects of this semester connect with each other? Last year, working out the overlaps gave me a sense of satisfaction in understanding how things correlate to each other. For some reasons, I ain't getting very clear picture of this correlation thingy this year. At some points, there seems to be connection between Production Management & Managerial Economics. Financial Management doesn't seem to be connecting with any other subject. Last year, at least there were some seeming overlaps between Financial Accounting & Business Law. For that matter, all the remaining subjects seem to be standing in isolation. Something is wrong. It shouldn't be like this. Can't accept that those whoever designed course curriculum, decided subjects in semester by throw of a dice. They must have had that big picture in front of them. They must have identified important parts of it and then knowing the dependencies, would have worked out some sort of ordering and placements of subjects across semesters.

Why am I so bothered about this? I can't be satisfied by looking at those beautiful paintings on those individual pieces. I need to fit them together. I need to see and understand the big picture. Hence, that want of needing to understanding the connections and overlaps. Knowing is good but useless if not applied.

But won't have time for all this right now. Will have to see if that understanding gradually evolve as I go about reading books. Remaining, will build up during vacation time. For now, it's time to get back to exam prep :)

So, here I am posting hopefully the last picture from the last picnic that I have had been to :)

Ref Book: Research Methods for Business - A skill building approach by Sekaran et al

Will be posting whatever I am reading through this book and finding interesting. My personal views, if any, will be formatted in italics. As for the book, it seems pretty easy going at least for now. Simple language and simpler examples. Though the book focuses on how to plan and execute research from business perspective, the points seem relevant for application in other domains as well.

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Definition: Business Research [BR] is organized, systematic , data-based, critical, objective, scientific inquiry or investigation into a specific problem undertaken with the purpose of finding solutions to it.

Hallmark of Scientific Research:

1. Purposiveness: Research has definite aim or purpose
2. Rigor: Rigor connotes carefulness, scrupulousness and the degree of exactitude in research investigation
3. Testability: Research lends itself to testing logically developed hypotheses to see whether or not the data support the educated conjectures that are developed after a careful study of the problem situation
4. Replicability: Results of the tests of hypotheses should be supported again and yet again when the same type of research is repeated in other circumstances. In other words, hypotheses should not have been supported merely by chance but should be repetitive.
5. Precision and confidence: Precision refers to the closeness of the findings to reality based on a sample. Precision reflects the degree of accuracy or exactitude of the results on the basis of the sample to what really exists in the universe. Confidence refers to the probability that our estimations are correct.
6. Objectivity: Conclusions drawn through the interpretation of the results of data analysis should be objective; they should be based on the facts of the findings derived from the actual data and not on our subjective or emotional values
7. Generalizability: Scope of applicability of the research findings in one organizational setting to other settings. The wider the range of applicability of the solutions, the more useful the research is to the users.
8. Parsimony: Simplicity in explaining the phenomena or problems that occur, and in generating solutions for the problems, is always preferred to complex research frameworks that consider an unmanageable number of factors.

Seven-step process in the Hypothetico-deductive method:

1. Identify the broad problem area
2. Define the problem statement
3. Develop Hypotheses
4. Determine Measures
5. Data collection
6. Data analysis
7. Interpretation of data

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What makes a good problem statement?
A problem statement is a clear, precise, and succinct statement of the specific issue that a researcher wishes to investigate. There are three key criteria to assess the quality of the problem statement: It should be relevant, feasible and interesting.

From an academic perspective, research is relevant if a) Nothing is known about a topic, b) much is known about the topic but the knowledge is scattered and not integrated, c) much research on the topic is available but the results are (partly) contradictory or d) established relationships do not hold in certain situations.

A problem statement is feasible if you are able to answer the problem statement within the restrictions of the research project. Restrictions can be about availability of the respondents, samples or resources such as time and money.

Problem statement should be interesting to you as that would help in driving you in completing research.

Thanks to my dear friend who happened to give me another idea about moving forward with bizo thingy. Bizo won't happen through the college route for some unfortunate reasons. Nope, we didn't get rejected. Professors have been supportive even till date and am sure they will help me out whenever I would request them for guidance. Just that I don't think I am capable of working out this thing in group. Hence, would be testing out this idea on an individual basis.

Remember those new year plants? Unfortunately one of them withered away. And then there was this pair of nice formal shoes that I had bought more than an year back but used it very carefully and rarely. I guess I may not have used them more than 20-30 times in last year. Sole of both shoes tore away. Both incidents hurt. You can't always protect things by being overprotective. Don't know about the plant thing but at least that shoe incident taught me this. Be a responsible user but don't become too fascinated about something and become too overprotective about it. Couple of reasons. First, every thing has a shelf life. No matter whether you use it or not, it's gonna wither away at some point of time. And second, if you are not putting it to the application then that object, that thing is deprived of its purpose. It's like you have forced something to live a life outside the terms of their intended purposes. Everything, everyone deserve to walk their last with sense of fulfillment. No one should have that feeling of "something's amiss" at the end of their journey.

I want to do a thousand million things in my life. Might have done a few thousands. Can't say for certain as I don't maintain any count. Besides, keeping count can be a bad thing. It would mean that I would be more interested in starting something new but not conclude whatever was started. Hence, no counting business. Just do it. Just finish it. Those thousand million things should be all those whom I have brought to best possible logical closure from my side.

The God must be crazy is a wonderful movie. The initial 20 mins of it are quite enlightening where they go about describing the kalahari tribe and then compare it with civilized world for few minutes. That comparison is true to the core.

Simplicity is bliss :)

Usually I do not take rickshaw if I am traveling alone for couple of reasons. I prefer to stick to public transport for ecosystem and secondly, I do not like rickshaw folks robbing citizens through rigged meters. Oh yeah, those guys are back with rigged meters and if you think there's any escape from it then I doubt it. But before I get too critical about rickshaw folks, I met this gentleman who drives rickshaw with number MH03-AK-1696.

In morning, I took this rickshaw to get down at S V Road, Bandra. As soon as I got inside, I was impressed with the indian flag theme he has got in his rickshaw. So, I complimented him saying ki aapka rickshaw bahot sundar hain (you have got a beautiful rickshaw). He looked perplex. Then I pointed to the indian flag outline and asked him if it's based on indian flag theme. He replied yes with a smile. Usually by the time we cross Lucky Hotel, in rickshaws with rigged meters, the meter crosses 1.3. This guy's rickshaw didn't even cross 1.0. So I decide to continue in his rick. The total meter came to 5.2 (which is barely .4 points more than what's supposed to be the right reading). Asked his permission to click him and post it here :)

Two more pics beneath the lj-cut
( Read more... )

Routine during 1997-99: College - 0700 to 1600 hrs, Asiatic Library - 1645 hrs to 1800 hrs, Bro's office - 1830 till 2000 hrs

Routine today: Office - 0900 to 1730 hrs, College - 1830 till 2100 hrs

What's missing in today's routine? Library time. Time spent in Asiatic Library during college years was pretty important to me. Why was that? My Science College that time didn't have ample compie books. Asiatic Library came to rescue on that front. I used to go through books of Asiatic even if I would not understand them completely. It was like even if I was grasping barely 20% of it, I was happy to have learned something more than "the usual". It's a different matter that I didn't do very well in one of the interviews post passing out because just theoretical knowledge wasn't enough to convince the person on other side of the desk that I "understand" the subject very well.

Few things haven't changed. It really didn't matter to me even during those times who scored how much marks. All I knew that time was that to get into industry, I needed to learn as much as possible beyond the college syllabus. Today, I am barely finishing what's in the syllabus itself, forget extra readings. Definitely not liking this!

I gotta repeat what I did right during those years and correct where I went wrong. Situation is quite alike. Replace college library of 1997 with office library of 2012. Barely have any books in office library that would help me in lessons I am seeking. On the other hand, JBIMS library is full of material that I need to read. The basic problem being that library shuts down by 2000 hrs everyday. By the time we are out of lecture at 2100 hrs, library is already closed. Don't want to give up on lecture because JB faculties teach through their experiences, something which one doesn't learn from books. Don't want to miss on that either. So, lectures are pretty important as well. And now my problem lies in how to increase my library time without compromising on the lecture part.

Okay, there's one more problem. Dealing with compie subject in 1997 was relatively easier. Read the book and try test it on a compie available at College lab or Bro's place. Of course, not all software was available to learn everything that I was reading but still it was pretty much OK. That's not the case with the current Management Lessons. There is no compie, no closed environment where you can try out. Rather it's an open environment, open place where you gotta learn by observing and testing out your ideas. Whatever you are learning, you gotta observe and understand from the market. That's why "Bizorion" became so important to me. It's a tool for me to test out things that I am learning in class or through books. Lack of an appropriate tool implies that you are bound to get distracted and end up in chaotic situation. And hence, I gotta try things even on experimental basis. Like they used to say - the more errors you get in your program, the better opportunity you get to learn in programming. Same would be the case here. The more mistakes I commit with this tool, the better my chances are of learning better.

Time to hit the road of 97. How? Yet to figure out...

Simple. By being complacent, to start with :)

Ain't that what the famous quote means - Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

Forget institutions or big empires or brands etc. For that matter, the biggest institution that we deal with is within ourselves. Our soul is that one large and great institution that we tend to ignore on a continuous basis.

I always used to tell and believe that every new development will call for maintenance. It's factual for almost everything in life. The only way to sustain anything against beatings of time is by consciously working towards maintaining it. Maintaining involves correcting the errors, repairing the breaks and guarding against greed/complacency/pride etc. For you will see that every great fall had either of these factors playing some role. When you don't correct the errors, these small small things will keep growing and emerge into an untameable monsters. When you don't repair the parts that start to break apart, the crack starts moving towards the foundations. Once you lose on the foundation, it's just waiting for small blow to crumble to pieces.

Now to the guarding part. What's the biggest problem with greed? You get blinded by its shiny side. You try to grow so big at uncontrolled rate that you just can't "maintain/manage" it thereby allowing cracks to come in and then you crumble. Complacency can be linked partially to pride and partially to laziness. Pride makes you feel that there ain't anyone like you and you keep toasting self in that glorious mirage. And when the mirage breaks off, remaining time is miserably spend in coming terms to the reality. For that matter, pride is the most damaging emotion of all. What about complacency? It ends up hurting in long run just like how hare lost to tortoise. In real life, it's not just a race between two. It's never two :P

Now that I have had experience of dealing with 4 different types of phones, am thinking of listing certain things that I liked or disliked about them.

Phone	Like	Dislike
Sony Ericsson K300i	Support for 65K color, Good VGA Camera, Video Streaming, best phone in its bracket	Joystick stopped functioning and eventually broke off, had to get it repaired twice (once it was paid repair). Neither FM radio facility, nor storage space available to save-n-play music. Charging point/socket starts malfunctioning within no time as plugging in and plugging out was very specialized (for eg - pulling out is literally snapping action). CSTN display leading to inability of reading from screen in daylight.
Sony Ericsson w350i	Walkman series phone with great sound effect, accessories were good, Good camera, Best phone in its bracket. Never had to get it repaired anytime and worked quite efficiently.	Phone's very delicate - The flip open cover breaks off very easily. Charging point/socket starts malfunctioning quite soon (one then has to basically adjust the position of wire etc to ensure that charging happens.
Maxx MX475	Large Display. eBook reader was able to read in text files.	The list is pretty large. First of all it's a chinese phone with some lame software. Which means that those guys will put up a long list of features, half of which are false claims. Camera is pathetic, bluetooth suffers blues and half of the time phone refuses to read from memory card requiring you to reboot phone again and again. In all possibilities, avoid buying of any such chinese phone, be it Maxx or Micromax or Spice or alcatel or karbonn or lava or any damn phone that claims to offer too much for too less a price.
Asus PDA P565	Steal deal. I haven't got any smart phones with even near equal features coming in less than 6K. Had loads of features, no false claims by the manufacturers. Have gotten compliments from many friends who called it all names from cute phone to sexy phone etc.	Screen size turns out to be small if you are wanting to use your fingers for typing. Means that you end up resorting to stylus most of the time. Stylus ends up damaging screen more than what ordinarily fingers might damage. And screen is critical for touch phones :)

I have hated qwerty keyboard phones from day one as they would rob phone of a good screen size. I have hated touch phones because either stylus will damage the screen (slowly and steadily) or you will end up messing screen with sweaty fingers. Simple phones are good till the time some or other part will start faltering in it. In all essence, I am yet come across phones which have worked sturdily beyond 3 years. We are directly or indirectly forced to get replacements after every few years. But then that seems to be trend for almost all kinds of electronic devices/gadgets. It's like people are working hard and spending money in introducing new features rather than improving upon robustness or longer life of these devices. May be because either we have been child-alike when it comes to buying 'toys' (or gadgets, if you find that acceptable word) or the companies find it more important to stay in competition through exhaustive 'feature set' thingy rather than earning long term respect. Phones for that matter seem to have become more of commodity rather than luxury item. Hence, companies are spending more in feature set and mass production rather than improving qualities of reliability and sturdiness. Or may be, Nokia is the only company which is working on that sturdiness thingy and hence is losing out in market competition in terms of feature sets. Because to be honest, I belong to the cult who would purchase other phones because they offered more features than the nokia ones.

Ouch!

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More reading material at http://peeyush.livejournal.com/590123.html

Why? Just to see if TV Tuner thing works in from Windows XP Guest OS within VM of Windows 7 :P

Small excuse for putting up self portrait on LJ :P

Yipee!! Have cleared Sem 1 of MBA. Not with good/great marks but still it does the job for me (for the time being). Hopefully will do better than the best in the remaining sems :)

But then coming on top ain't as important as understanding the concepts and principles to the core. And by that I mean all the things that are beyond the textbooks but which are prevalent in the field and in practice.

Just that second sem ain't going great. Very few faculties seem to have impressed the class while with others class is finding difficult to connect with. That's not what one would expect from a good MBA college. I hope the higher-ups in JBIMS pay heed to these issues and not let quality of education go down.

1) Reactivated FB! Why? Didn't want to give up "TheRealPeeyush" URL on it :P
2) Took a full day lecture in DB after a long long time. How was it? Tiring and non-interesting for my own self. Next time, either I am going to take in full module or won't take any lectures at all. And taking full module is nearly impossible considering JB thing, so mostly no more lecturing business for next couple of years.
3) Finally filled up IT verification form for office in last week amidst all the busy-ness thingy. Feeling relieved about it.
4) In talks with a company to see possible collaboration worked out provided there's a appropriate sync up between us.

That's all for now. Will be back after the break.

One of the many gifts of LJ is the sudden Russian spams. In past I used to delete them straight away. Today, I thought of using google translation services to see what was getting posted on my old pages by these bots. In fact, for fun sake, I will use this particular post to become aggregator of those russian spams translated in english.

1. It's straight to the point! In other words you could not tell! :)


2. Do not regret that I spent a couple of minutes to read.


3. I am glad that your blog is constantly evolving. These posts are added only to popularity.


4. Thanks for the article! I hope the author does not mind if I use it for their course.


5. Do not regret that I spent a couple of minutes to read.


6. Informative, but not convincing. Something is missing, but what I do not understand. But I will say it bluntly: - bright and benevolent thoughts.

Since last two months, we have been playing "mera laptop tere laptop se achcha!" game in office. I was sort of fighting on all fronts arguing that HP laptop were much better in quality but had to give up on the battery power saving thing (refer second para from http://peeyush.livejournal.com/610110.html). Well, last week I discovered ways of disabling battery charging in HP laptop through their utility - HP Power Assistant. Though they could have surely made it as easy as it is in Dell but for now even this will work for me.

Coming back to the long statement - On price to performance basis, HP surely beats Dell amazingly well :P

Wokay, I was not ready for it just like all other times.

For non-programmers - What is exception handling? It's like handling an unplanned incident that occurs.

For programmers - This is strictly not exception handling... It's more like managing branch condition sort of thing.

Again, for non-programmers - Ignore whatever was said to programmers and stick to whatever was told to you :P

Back to the exception handling stuff. There are enough things I plan and program for self. Then there's some change in event either enforced through the environment or self. Every thing goes haywire for sometime and then you work doubly hard to bring it back to norm or the normal path of executions. Damn! too many jargons...

For non-programmers - I think you can safely stop reading beyond this point instead of getting confused and referring goodies from wiki...

For programmers - Still there? You can also exit now. Actually, why should you be interested in poking your nose into someone else's exception handling in first place?

To self - I have got 5 mins more to get self on track and get started with the day. Reminder - three blogs waiting on you to update on the three lectures that happened in last week.

Loved her two tracks so far
1) Blue Jeans
2) Videogame

Her vocal tone is quite unique and addictive

I had missed the first session, hence no blog to cover the first one. So far have missed two sessions in all (first one being MM last wednesday).

Prof discussed the definition of Industrial Dispute stating which kind of work is covered under the definition of Industry. There was long discussion on Arbitration and how arbitration is binding on both parties with no possibility of any appeal in court. In other words, once the arbitrator has passed his/her judgement, neither party is permitted to approach court for any change in verdict. Prof then discussed about introduction of THE ARBITRATION AND CONCILIATION ACT in 1996 post liberalization era. This was introduced essentially to mitigate concerns of foreign investors who were scared to invest in country because as per them workers are over protected in the country. There was also deliberation on why workers are protected whereas Managers aren't. Reason stated was that it is relatively easy for manager to get new job whereas workers don't and their families are dependent on them with not much scope of financial support available if and when they lose their job(s). During this discussion I was reminded by statement made by Managerial Economics Professor. She had stated that there is lot of disparity when it comes to following scenarios
1) Around 90% of population contributing to Indian economy do not enjoy security in terms of gratuity/pension/provident fund etc.
2) While 50+ % population is engaged in agricultural activities, agriculture rarely contributes to more than 20% to Indian economy. This isn't the case in other countries where the work contribution equals the economic contributions. In other countries, courtesy automation in agriculture, only 10% of population is engaged in agricultural activities and agriculture in those countries contribute to 10% of their economy. Yeah, this second point is not relevant but have put up here seeing that I hadn't put it up in ME wala post (he he :P).

There also was discussion about certain activities which are carried out by companies like forcing their employees to sign bonds which is not legal however in want to get exposure, employee succumb to such tactics. Thankfully I haven't had this sort of binding on self till date but then it would false to state that I haven't seen illegal stuff happening around.

It's a funny little hypocritic world that we live in. I personally have started believing that law can't bring order in people. Also assuming that it would be able to correct misdoings all the time is an impractical hope.

Closed down FB account for second time in last week. Reason? Couple of reasons. First, thanks to office blocking FB helped me getting over addiction of FB. Second, there were less of proper updates or thoughts coming in from friends on FB. Most of them were either tagging everyone in some weird photographs or applications or were just copy-pasting quotes of someone else. The only usability of FB was in reminding everyone's bday to me through some mailer. But then I am not very good in wishing and greeting people irrespective of remembrance of bdays.

As for GP, it was hopeless from beginning. It would have gone on any given day. Just that deleting FB became trigger to it. Do I stop here? I think there's wordpress, blogspot and twitter's which are waiting to be deleted :)

This post is coming exactly a week late. Hence, my memory might be tricking me about whatever I am writing here.

Ms Varsha is prof for this subject. Topics discussed were
1) Macro-economics
2) Micro-economics

She informed that the syllabus stresses largely on micro-economics with very introductory or short base on macro-economics. She inquired about our knowledge or understanding of Indian economy. Different answers came in wherein she either extrapolated or contradicted our understanding. Listing out some of the statements that were spoken by students
1) Young economy - This is based upon studies conducted that relatively Indian Youth base contributing to country's economy is larger than any other country's economy.
2) Emerging economy - Prof stated that we are no longer counted as developing nation but developed nation to large extent.
3) Urbanized economy - Prof gave example of how transportation is charged in villages also as against the earlier models of people taking lift in bullock carts. In that sense, the economic sense in people has turned urbanized.

There were subsequent discussions on infrastructure scenario in India with a possible bubble burst in Realty domain leading to crisis like the one in Latin America. I asked whether weakening rupee is or is not an indicator of economy to which Prof replied that though it should be, fortunately it isn't an indicator in our case. Our economy is growing powerful even though rupee seem to be weakening. That's one query which is still open at my end. I hope to understand it on my own through readings.

There's a design change that we were discussing last wednesday. While implementing the changes itself is quite challenging, here's what happened when I tried to rattle my brain for 15 mins. Essentially I increased the challenge with some additional plan from own side. Net result? I am conceiving a monster that would need to be tamed in a month's time.

I know this post is cryptic. In case we are able to tame this imaginary monster of mine, I promise to put up a more clearer and comprehensible post on LJ :P

Thankfully, our prof hasn't changed for this topic from previous semester. Prof Phophale is going to take up this subject for us. He has been one of the best faculties we had in last sem and so we all were quite relieved to see him come back in this sem for us. He has warned us that this subject has more failure rates in comparison to the first sem subject essentially because no longer do we enjoy the consideration of being new to the "finances" subject. He stressed upon practicing problem solving as well as understanding multiple terminologies that cloud the subject. I was surprised to hear this because till date, I used to think that only IT sector is full of Jargons and multiple terminologies but seemingly finance too suffer from same pain.

Books to refer: Financial Management by Khan & Jain

Syllabus Coverage by faculty:
a) Ratio Analysis
b) Fund Flow/Cash Flow
c) Sources of Funds
d) Dividend Policy
e) Capital Budgeting
f) Working Capital Budgeting
g) Cost of Capital
h) Capital Structuring

He explained the mapping of horizontal versus vertical structuring of Balance Sheet. He then moved on to the classification of source of funds which so far has this picture -

Sources of Funds
1) Longer Term
1.1) Owned Funds
1.1.1) Shares Capital
1.1.1.1) Equity Shares
1.1.1.2) Preference Shares
1.1.2) Accumulated Profits
1.2) Borrowed Funds
2) Short Term

He started from bottoms up (viz., types of Shares Capital) and managed to close discussion till Shares Capital. Owned Funds onwards as well as short term are left for next session. Prof explained the implications of going for Shares Capital mode in terms of initial investments followed by the market expectations in terms of dividend releases. For example, investment incurred in going for an IPO can be between 5% to 10% at times depending upon market conditions. In case the IPO doesn't meet the targeted objective then again expenses rise for underwriting (Note: To be read in detail myself). For equity shares, the dividend release also increases load/expectations in terms of profit margins that one has to target. For example, to give a dividend of 10 rupees, the kinds of margins that are worked out at different levels need to be taken care. Reason being that company would need to have some profit reserved for itself while releasing part of it as dividend to share holders. Paying dividends are critical to maintain reputation in the market. Sometimes one even has to work out dividend based upon what competitors are offering. I remember this example even taken up in last semester by one of the professor (or may be the same professor). When Infosys started giving out bonus shares to its share holder, it has put pressure on its competitive companies like TCS etc to do similar. He explained also the psych for companies to utilize their earnings in increasing shares capital versus putting in reserves/accumulated funds. While doing so, he took up the topic of Preference shares and how companies that have close relatives as its only share holders going in for increasing shares capital (in order to increase security of their heirs) versus using the money for own purposes. He introduced to his personalized term of "floating owners, fixed management" during the course of the discussions.

One thing I personally appreciate of Prof Phophale is that he goes into understanding of concepts. For example, he asked the class about derivatives (lim x tends to 0/infinity thingy). While the whole class stared at him blankly, he then stated that derivative indicates the fluctuation in your own value against the changes happening in the one of which you are derivative (dependent) of. This happened while he was talking about impact of globalization and money flow between countries. He explained that a company from other country would not invest in your country if they do not have guarantees of getting it back whenever they need it. While prof was discussing money flow, I was somehow tempted to think that probably that's the reason though everyone is claiming that economy is good, rupee is unable to grow stronger. May be because the money flowing in the country isn't ours in first place :P.

Phew... There's lot of ground for me to cover. Don't know how I am going to do but I gotta do it somehow.

Am approx 4 days late in putting up the log from the lecture. Week has been quite tough in terms of time, activities and health. Yeah, putting up excuses like a school kid for not putting up things on time :P

Faculty for this subject would Prof Anil Pande.

Topics discussed
1) Definition of Marketing.
2) Types of Marketing: Social vs Societal.
3) Classifications of Market: Classification based on product, region, scope etc. Some points were discussed about Meta-market, call-market etc.
4) Definition of need, want, demand/desire etc.

Apart from these points, there were some deliberations on FDI impact on retail sector. An interesting experience in regards to the societal marketing experience was shared by faculty.

Marketing Management Books recommended by Prof were from following authors
1) Ramaswamy, Namakumari
2) Philip Kotler

Assignment to prepared presentation covering 4P's of my company due for submission in next class.

Apart from many blogging accounts that were created in past, only LJ survived. Flickr is used only to post photos but no longer do I browse through photos of friends & family on flickr. Haven't logged into twitter in last 1 month and facebook also is becoming rarity. Nope, am not attracted to google+. GP is pathetically boring to even start with.

Everything starts with a craze which continues for some time and then it starts to fade away. Waise it's a good thing to happen. Otherwise we would never be motivated to come out with new things in our lives :)

There was sufficient help available on net to get Reliance USB based data card enabled on Linux but unfortunately there wasn't much of info available. At least the ones (info that is) I used couldn't get me too far. Nonetheless, this is still some progress. For that matter, this post on LJ is coming through Linux using Reliance connectivity.

Would be trying to get Java Source code compiled in evening. Getting reliance up on linux was critical for that part. TV thing can wait.

Passing link of source that helped me get reliance thing enabled - http://reliancewireless.wordpress.com/2009/05/01/setting-up-your-reliance-broadband-connection-in-linux/

As for the tv tuner stuff - tried to follow steps given in - http://linuxtv.org/wiki/index.php/Em28xx_devices

Downloaded mercurial and cloned the v4l-dvb source onto the lappy. But make threw error which I have listed beneath the LJ cut.

( TV Tuner error thingy )

Another thing that's bothering me is about some sort of law that's gonna force DTH thing on us. Government surely knows how to tickle people in wrong way. Anyways, for now I am just concerned about the thing whether and how would I be getting DTH thing connected on lappy. The current tv-tuner goodie would become obsolete for me as soon as we are compelled to switch to DTH in apartment. Hence, not even buying the new tv-tuner box which I was contemplating a week back when Gadmei UTV300 refused to install itself on Windows 7 64 bit edition.

For now, getting back to compilation of Open JDK 7 source...

Before I start blabbering, putting up this pic from office wherein I was the jailor and Ranjit, well, had that jailee kinda tshirt on him :)

Last week of the last year closed on happy note. Got new laptop viz., HP ProBook 4330s with 6GB RAM. Naturally the idea would be to mess around with it with some untested variant of Linux preferably through Virtual Box. While I was contemplating messing with Oracle Linux, Mohsin informed that it has pretty bad rating in Linux Community. Asked him which one is the best. He told me MintLinux and voila, within 10 minutes we had both 64bit as well as 32bit variant of the ISO downloaded and ready for fiddling around. Laptop had come ready with Windows 7 Professional (64bit). Tried to used "Windows Virtual PC" for getting MintLinux running within Windows. For some reasons, thing didn't work out very well with it. Then, it was turn of VirtualBox with which I had pretty good runs in last few years. Unfortunately VirtualBox messed up mouse movements within Guest OS. But that was ok once you know the relative distance of click-effect.

In case you are wondering what happened to the old Sony Vaio laptop, it is currently hosting CentOS and is the reporting server for Vaishali in office. 5 months back, its XP installation went kapoot. I didn't want to reinstall everything and tried eveything known to me (except for admin password :P) to recover OS to working condition. But it didn't work out well. Meanwhile I also got busy with college thingy and ended up borrowing Rahul's laptop for more than 3 months. Those were guilty feeling days actually. Robbing Rahul of his laptop, unable to rectify my own laptop I finally decided to request for new laptop in office. Gave the specs and got this nice little lappy for self. That's all for the Sony Vaio story. As for ProBook goodie, well I think it is pretty good except for missing out on two goodies. I was hoping that it would have blue-ray reader and secondly, I was hoping that HP would also come out with "battery charging disabler" feature. I love Dell for that one feature as it helps save battery life to greater extent. Now that I am constantly worried about lappy's battery, I quite often end up running it on raw power.

Coming back to the OS stories. In this week, I tried to get my old USB tv tuner thing hooked up on lappy. Seemingly the software that Gadmei USB 300UTV provides doesn't run with Windows 7. That was good enough reason to now get MintLinux out of VirtualBox and on-to raw hardware. Cleaned up VirtualBox and tried installation only to get stuck on the partitioning fun. HP guys supply lappy with 4 primary partitions with each one dedicated to different requirements. It wasn't allowing me to resize partition as creating any more partition would force Disk to be set to "dynamic disk". Windows flashed warnings that only one bootable partition would be allowed to boot onto the OS if I dare to change disk to dynamic one. Didn't want to risk the Windows 7 installation, neither did I want to mess up recovery settings. Chose to give up "HP_Tools" Partition to reduce existing partition count to 3. And finally got MintLinux running on the lappy. The USB TV is still waiting to happen on MintLinux but at least machine got new minty flavor of linux on it. MintLinux seems to be derivative of Ubuntu Distribution. Don't know how good or bad it is in comparision to Ubuntu. But waise Ubuntu was coming out with used up looks. MintLinux looks relatively fresh. Another good thing of hooking up with Linux is to get back to few software distributions which I would have otherwise missed. This month's plan would be to fiddle with Apache Camel and CouchDB.

Now let me move out the space of MintLinux and lappy. Team decided to get the Dell 1950 class servers cleaned up in this week. I volunteered to take up the installation job. By mistake, ended up installing Ubuntu 11.10 (64 bit) desktop edition in first go. After that downloaded Ubuntu 11.10 server 64 ISO. Installed that only to realize that for some weird reasons OS is mounting filesystem in ReadOnly mode. I checked out which version of Ubuntu was certified for Dell 1950 series. It turned out that 10.04 and 10.10 have been certified for our servers. Decided to go with 10.04 essentially as it is LTS edition. Will migrate it to 12.04 as soon as that one comes out. 10.04 booted quite fine but now the PostgreSQL that it came with was older edition. Didn't want to compile Postgresql source onto the server. Chose to use backports supplied by Martin Pitt (https://launchpad.net/~pitti/+archive/postgresql). Got Postgresql 9.1 running on Ubuntu 10.04. 2 servers out of 3 are now stable with 10.04. Third one will be updated by wednesday. And yeah, hopefully my talk on couchdb will also happen on wednesday. Will try to schedule talk on camel in next month. That reminds me, gotta finish few things for college project also. As of now, BizO has turned more into college project rather than personal agenda. That should not be happening. I was dead serious about it. Gotta be serious again before it goes dead...

Not going to be a memoirs post. Just to say that last year was quite satisfying one. Had good trip with family in Jan, admission completion to JB in Feb, tackling some crisis situations in March-April, getting new gadget (PDA) in May, studying once again starting from June and post that everything has been roller coaster ride. So much that I have very happy yet faint memories of it. Happy because, like I said, everything has been quite satisfying and faint because I didn't even get time to put them on LJ.

2011 has been an year of change in many ways for many people n many nations. It was an era wherein economies plumped, (supposedly) dictators collapsed with people initiating the change. Does it mean that all the great and good things have happened in 2011 and there ain't anything better to expect in 2012? Not exactly. Change has always been there. 2011 just happened to be a number that came out prominently to be recorded in history books. People love to revolt, rebel for all kinds of reasons. Even I do. Nothing wrong with that. But chose the right cause and do not desert it midway. If we are able to bring out some change, it doesn't mean that the story ends there. Rather change marks beginning of new story. It has to be brought to a meaningful conclusion. That means that it's gonna be a hell of a journey and indeed a long one for sure. The only difference being - you can't complain especially if you were the driver of that change.

Yesterday the last purchase of last year was marked with buying of two plants, pics of which was posted in previous post. I was at Lamington road trying to get PDA's lock button fixed. I spent almost 15 minutes wandering around thinking what to buy for new year. Couldn't find anything that would stir me excited. Ended up coming to Mahim by bus and while I was waiting for bus at Koliwada stop, I happened to notice a nursery just behind the bus stop. Felt like buying a few plants from there. Ended up fixing on two. And was literally very happy. I don't think buying something very expensive from lamington road would have given me that sort of satisfaction that I got from a 50 rupees purchase of these two plants. While buying them, I had exactly the same thoughts in my mind that I am blabbering in this post. These two cuties mark the change and now I have to grow them and grow with them through these changes. Am hoping to learn few lessons of life from these two plants. Last year, I remember going through some posts from a few of my friends who were disappointed (dejected quite badly) about certain things that transpired (or didn't transpire) in their personal lives. I don't know what they were and am sure they were bad enough for them to make them feel that way. Yeah, $hit happens. But that doesn't mean that we still can't find good out of it. Ain't that what mother earth does? Even with all the nonsenses that we do with it, it goes about spreading life with all that crap we load it with. Be like your mother. After all, it can't be bad to aspire being someone you love the most :)

May it grow with a glow on its face
May it bring a smile n shine on your face
May you love it n live it in all happiness
May your dreams come true in all realities

Some are so catchy that you get addicted to it in first hearing. Some take some time and couple of hearing at minimum for them to start settling in your heart. And remaining... Ears reject them right away before even they get registered with your head. Evanescence's latest album (which also happens to go by band's name: evanescence - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evanescence_%28Evanescence_album%29) falls in second category. While 'my immortal' was addictive in first listening and still remains my favorite from this band, it took time for two songs of it to get registered in heart. "Lost in paradise" and "My heart is broken" are seeming nice after few repeated listening. "What you want" seemed pretty ordinary by standards of Evanescence. None the less, I have been feeling happy to have come across new songs from few of favorite rock bands having female voices as lead vocal. While I have listened to all of "Within Temptation - The Unforgiven [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Unforgiving ]", I haven't heard all of "Lacuna Coil - Shallow life [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shallow_Life ]" and "Evanescence - Evanescence". Would be posting my ranking of songs from these three albums soon. Not now, as I am too busy listening to these three talents on lappy :)

Quite often through random readings and random observations, random thoughts about failures creep into the mind which unfortunately ain't too random in our lives. Okay, before I proceed I think it would be important to put in disclaimer. Nope, results of my first sem are not out yet. And this post has nothing to do with anything about current adventures as well. Like I said, it's random. Purely random.

I was just thinking about the times about how failures shaped my life. Thankfully I haven't had too many encounters with this thing but whenever I had, it did help me in some way or other. The most important, to me, has been the 'injection' of humility which otherwise I would go about misplacing from time to time. Why is humility important? To me, it's a phenomenon that acts like reset button. The first thing it resets is viewpoint. Be those view of self or of others. When everything is going right, it's easy to overlook limitations. Only when something falters, we try to do 'assessment', realize limitations and rebuild the models. More than others, it's important to have this thing worked out for self. Why? Traveling with eyes open hurts less than rushing at speed of light with eyes closed.

Does it mean that we should lower our expectations or stop dreaming? Limitations and expectations are two different things. With the changing environment, changing people and changing self, our limitations also keep changing with time. Having a proper view of limitation helps us plan proper and meet that target, that expectation we have from self. I will never be asking anyone to lower their expectations or to stop dreaming. Never do that. After all, beyond the realms of this world, dreams are the only other world we have with ourselves. Failures should not make us paranoid or even skeptical for that matter. Apart from helping us re-assess ourselves and that injection of humility, failures do not have any importance in our lives. You can leave them exactly where you met them. There ain't any need to carry it in your heart or to make it a partner in your journey. Cycle is simple. Avoid as much as possible. But in case you meet then do assessment, enhance your knowledge base and bid bye to it with an hope of never meeting it again :)

Almost all of them. But infinity is my favorite. Why? It's the only number I know (which I don't know) which is unbounded, free from any constraint. Probably the only number that somewhat matches close to human potential.

There ain't anything in this world that's unachievable. One lesson that I have learnt from the longish history of human civilization. All you needed was a person crazy about his/her dreams and would do all odds to get even with his/her dreams. The supposedly impractical crazy heart driven people who would go deaf to world and work under some sort of hypnotic spell. Am I that person?

Nope, not yet. I am still that soul which loves to engage in all sorts of adventures while maintaining harmony with peace and happiness. I can't stay fixed to one thing. Supposedly a limitation as per few of my friends but to me, it's some sort of being limitless in the number of things one can do in his/her life :)

A business idea is never a part time activity. Once you get into it, it's supposed to suck in all your energy, all time as if it was one big black hole. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to happen with many including myself. Things seem to have gone a complicated and unfortunately, onto a forgotten track.

This is for self. Gotta get back and change the game :)

is the one which draws images in your imagination while you are listening to it with your eyes closed. It doesn't need to have great lyrics. Nor does it need to have great variations of tones and melodies. All it should be able to do is fit into your heart, change your mood and bring in peace.

Was playing 112th game of Spider and ended up scoring 1120 score which also incidentally happened to be my top most score till date. Wow! :)

Last few months in office have been weird. Good thing is I always knew whom to trust and whom not to. And last few months for that matter actually helped reinforce my understandings of the clout around me. It's tough walking around with the people you don't trust. And there is no point dragging on, wanting to keep people happy all the time. It eventually burns out.

I think it's about time to get back to how I was between 2001 till 2004. I was friends with only 4 people those days. Today it may as well be just 2. Does the count matter? Nope, it never did. It's important for me to stay right and stay at peace. And that's how I am gonna be :)

Is it about keeping maximum people happy or is it about doing the right thing? If it's the earlier basis then it keeps you away from latest headaches of confronting people but it bring backs the problems in much larger form if your decision was a wrong one. If it is to do the right thing then even if you may have whole world against you at this moment, the long term outcome of it will definitely be superior and better. Does it mean that one should be okay having the whole world against him/her? Personally, I believe that it's not that tough to survive these troubling moments of world going against you. Rather whatever nonsenses you are forced to bear, shall bring in more strength in you. You gotta remember that this current time will pass and you will eventually have a better tomorrow. Because people come and go but it's that 'right decision' which will be the nucleus to your better tomorrow.

1) Yatra
The lady asks at airport - 'pick up tau hain na'. Guy crosses his fingers and says 'of course!'.

Problems? Well, the ad showed that the guy didn't even know if services expected by his wife will be provided by Yatra guys. He kept crossing his fingers nervously for each of those demands/expectations throughout the ad. MakeMyTrip ad wasn't great but comparatively it did better job in showing MakeMyTrip in good light.

2) All advertisements having Akshay Kumar in it
I am yet to find any advertisement of Akshay Kumar appealing. His contribution is only to Shahrukh Khan. Why? He has made Shahrukh Khan's advertisements bearable.

3) Overdose of Kareena+Saif combinations
Am getting this constant feeling that somehow these two folks are forcing their buyers to buy in batch of two. Or may be the other person doesn't want to get out of camera range while the first one is being shot. Among the two, Kareena sucks badly at any given advertisement. She is the Shahrukh Khan on the lady side. Though it surely is tough to identify who's more lousy. Priyanka Chopra or Kareena.

Am finding creativity level going down with media folks. The only place where it seems to be in ample is News Channels.

The planned thing worked to large extent. Specifically identifying the overlapping part and studying them first. But in between exams, I also over did this planning and scheduling thing. Honestly speaking it was less of exam preparation but temptation of trying out couple of extra features of PDA. Listed out daily study plan prior to exam in last three exams. The first one was disaster as I didn't leave any buffer between those scheduled items. Each time it would ping back stating that next item has to start, it would introduce some panic element knowing that there's some way to go before getting onto next topic. But by last exam got the hang of it. As for the results expectations, I don't know how it's gonna turn out to be. Knowing that I hadn't prepared well (or at least to my satisfaction) and also that I did some experimentation with preparation before and during exams, I will have to see the net effect of it.

To close this one, let me summarize what worked and what didn't for me in last 14 days.
What worked:
- Identifying overlaps and scheduling preparation accordingly.
- Buying books. Can't rely upon library thing all the time. In fact this time instead of buying books just a week prior to exam, I would try to have the lot beforehand with me.
- Writing down analysis of my understanding of topics being read. Especially in notebook and/or LJ.

What didn't work
- Handwriting practice. Got to get it on regular basis now instead of just 5 days prior to exam thingy. Especially the speed writing thing.
- Too much scheduling and planning.
- Adhering to syllabus for exam. That was more of playing safe vs knowledge gaining thing. I didn't like this part especially. I should read the whole book in order to get maximum out of it and not just exam preparation thingy.

I am not out there to compete with people and try score best. I gotta make the maximum of my learning. I want to understand how market, finance and law works. It's not for degree or for becoming entrepreneur. All those would be bonus if those are gonna happen to me.

For that matter, I know that actually becoming entrepreneur doesn't require any degree. Kripa, my national college batch mate was best example of it. He was entrepreneur before joining college and passing out of college. Rather in my small group with Yunus and Kripa, he was the one who struggled most during college time and yet he scored better than me and Yunus in BSc. He still keeps working on different projects, different ideas. It just needs some crazy idea/belief inside to get the entrepreneurship up and running. That's something I would like to learn from him sometime.

And now to close this post - it surely felt good to be back to LJ :)

I ain't great with exams. But I hope to change that in an year's time. How? Okay, this is still on experimental basis and actual validity may be known/learnt only after implementation followed by results.

There are 6 papers with gap of 2 days only between 1st and 2nd paper. 2nd till 6th are back to back. What's the objective? Earliest objective was to do best. But the way I am geared up, it would be a dream to survive it. But then if I am to dream, I would still want to dream to come out best. Yeah, not giving up. Not yet. Never, for that matter :)

So how do I do it now? I mean, the preparation part. I had some initial plans which seemed okay as was repeated by one of my friend in his/her suggestion to me. The plan was to prepare in the reverse order 6th to 1st. Second plan that I had was based upon the subjects overlap. For example, I am seeing overlap of some topics between Organizational Behavior & Principles of Management; Quantitative Techniques & Cost Management; Financial Accounting & Business Law. That was to group the studies of subjects as per the overlapping thing. That unfortunately is opposite of the earlier plan (6th to 1st wala) as 1st and 6th subject happen to share the overlap. None the less, I am still going on with the overlapping thing because that coincides with my very first objective. If I am to have holistic view of everything that matters and applications of it in proper way then I need to understand how different tools of trade are going to fit with each other. Another thing to remember is that I doubt if I would be able to revisit these subjects post exams due to ongoing constraints. I therefore have to do the best learning not just for paper but also for practical knowledge of these things for future also. I don't want this thing to be just the regular college student experience. I want to assimilate these things into me, to be able to apply them and practice them.

Sorry for digressing. I ended up talking about long term objective mixed with the current objective at hand :P

Coming back to the preparation part. I have decided to go about reading the planning and management by objective chapters first to understand how to plan even for preparing for exam.

What happens next, will be let known after 20th. Till then Sayonara :)

For example - "how to improve your handwriting without reducing writing speed in 2 days" kinds of book. Recently a friend looked at my handwriting and said - "my god! How awful it is! How's prof going to read your answers?". All I wanted to reply back was - Please do not remind me of this thing again! ever!! But didn't as I tried to read whatever I had written. How did I feel? No comments!

Handwriting was never my forte. But saying that doesn't help, does it? So I tried to write readable characters. Now they do look readable while I am writing. It's a different matter that after a few days, they are not still not so readable :P

Anyways, for now I have no other option left except to remember topics by writing them. Why so? Because reading ain't my forte either. Why on earth am I suddenly being reminded by all the non-forte's!

I guess my elementary school teachers would be having good laugh right now :P

This year has been year of accidents. Not at personal level but at globe level. Almost every 15 days, have been hearing news about some or other disaster striking some part of earth. Be it earthquake, tremors, floods or just about anything. For some reasons, this year also has shown how much we value our lives, our futures in light of current greeds. Short term benefits winning over long term objectives. Mining ain't stopping. Constructions not stopping either. Don't know if this is our way of waging proxy war against Nature's undo button. Will we ever stop to try heal the planet? I doubt. But then I still haven't lost all my hopes on humanity. It has been one race that has risen stronger and better whenever subjected to worst crisis. Besides, if not human race, whichever race is selected by Nature to survive and sustain will bear the responsibilities of healing the planet.

Tomorrow could be the day when whoever will be left behind, shall lead the front :)

Yesterday's lecture was on Sensitivity Analysis using Simplex Method. I came in bit late so missed out the initial discussions on how to get started with application of simplex for the job. Reproducing what I remember from the lecture.

Sensitivity Analysis also called as Post-optimality analysis (as learnt from section 4.4, page 158 of N D Vohra's book) is used to understand how the solution will be affected if the parameters are changed. For example, let us say that we are into manufacturing of product that requires some mix of machine hours with labor hours. As per our evaluations, we find two out of three products (X1, X2, X3) to be manufactured in following proportion A.X1 + B.X2 where A and B are the units of products X1 and X2. If tomorrow we want to introduce a new product X4, then instead of reworking on the LP from scratch, I can use simplex table to find out whether it's worthwhile to introduce the product or not. Simplex for that matter has enough application in terms of identifying what should be the new mix if any of the resources are constrained or are now available in ample. Furthermore, how much of those could be reduced or increased can be understood by the shadow pricing for these parameters. If you want to introduce product X3 into the mix which was left out in the earlier equation due to 'impacting profit in negative', you can also figure out what should be the new price/profit that's need to be fixed to the product in order for it to be introduced into the game. This is all I remember based on the exercises that were carried out in the classroom yesterday. I do hope to solve a few problems in this week so as to get grasp over the subject.

Couple of things for me to try out in addition to this, is to find out if there are such tools available in OS so that I can fiddle with them in office. Subsequently, would like to have discussion with sir if these statistical tools / OR could be applied in office. And as for all the topics that I had missed out putting up on LJ in last few months, i will try to reproduce those topics based on my studies of textbooks rather than what I remember from lecture as I don't remember much now. Brain's too messed up :)