Another Barack in the Wall

An extract from Obama's speech at Berlin - a metaphor taken too far

Speaking less than a mile from where President John F Kennedy enraptured Berliners in 1963, he warned of the danger of allowing "new walls to divide us from one another".

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," he said, emphasising his lines with clipped, precise movements of his hands as his words echoed through the huge crowds.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand," he continued, as applause began to ripple amongst his listeners.

"The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand," he said.

"These now are the walls we must tear down," he concluded to screams of approval.

Silly question: Was the Berlin wall Made in China?

The Gates Bill

We were on one of the London's infamous bendy buses this weekend. The windows in these buses are almost big as the doors. Anyways, one of the doors wouldnt operate in the middle of the journey. The driver stepped out of the bus, tried a few things and then came back completely turned off the engine and started again - and guess what it started working! So, I have decided to amend The Gates Bill which states that "stuck Windows can be fixed by a restart" to now include doors.
The Gates Bill is more universal than what you think

Inspired by Inspiron

A few months back, Bundar's inlaws and outlaws visited them for a few weeks. His Dell laptop was running literally 24x7 to watch Sun TV, cricket, etc online. A few days after both parents left, the heavy weight use took its toll & his laptop conked. Dell diagnosed it to be motherboard problem. I told Bundar "You had no choice, Bundar. Otherwise, your mothers would have been bored"

Courtneys

I recently called up Courtneys to enquire about gym membership rates. The guy on the other end of the phone asked me in return "How much are you looking to spend?". I was really annoyed to hear that question - no average Joe I know of is looking to spend his money. Average Joe also would rather play online bingo than play the can-you-guess-Courtneys-gym-membership-rates-over-the-phone game. Its not like I called up with a budget of £1 per month (or £1000 for that matter) in mind to haggle nor did I call up a real estate agent not did I call up my bank for investment advice. I wanted to say "Great question, wrong place" but being the nice guy I am and modesty being my middle name, I went with a simple "Why do you ask?" but I had to endure a few more rounds of stupidity & temporarily change my middle name to rude to finally get a quote over the phone.

In the end, it was really a flat rate for all practical purposes and there was really no tact whatsoever to his line of questioning. I hope its just the guy being stupid, not Courtneys in general.

p.s: 100th blog :)

Powerpoint Gap

There is an unofficial term called the "powerpoint gap" in software sales.

Typically, the sales guy will go make a fancy presentation and impress a prospective customer. The customer will spend large amounts of money to buy the software that can solve all his problems based on the powerpoint or a proof of concept. He starts complaining when he realizes that the software cannot tie his shoelace automatically nor can it make his cup of tea or solve his sleep depravation issues. The technical guys/consultants tell the customer the real deal and the software is then developed to suit the customer's needs although he would have still tie his own shoe-lace, etc. The software version that was used for the proof of concept was an alpha or a beta release at best.

Replace, the sales guy with BAA; the customer with BA - and you have the familiar powerpoint gap issue at T5. And, T5 sounds like a beta release too!

I guess BA is not ready to go GA, yet.

A Lost Kesh

This long Easter weekend P & I were in the beautiful Cotswolds region. As we were preparing to leave the hotel on day 2 of our trip, P was frantically looking for something all over the room. Then she asked me "Have you seen my comb?" to which I replied "Maybe it got lost in the Comb Mela".
That was my contribution to aid the search :)

Gone with the wind

If you live in London, you couldn't have possible escaped seeing those Big Black Bins labeled as "Big Black Bins" (duh! Thanks, Ken), specifically mean to collect recyclable waste. UK as a country is quite crazy about being green. I think it was taken to the extreme recently with the councils wanting to charge households by the amount of waste they generate and also penalize them if they dumped anything recyclable in the general rubbish. Prince Charles recently gave a recorded speech as a hologram in Abu Dhabi to reduce carbon footprint. The UK government has made a commitment to generate 10% of its energy demand from renewable sources such as wind energy by the end of 2010.
So, green is good is the general perception. Wind energy is good. Windfarms help generate electricity, and it's a reality. There are companies now that provide electricity via windfarms.
But, this has to be optimized with the age-old wise adage "Too much is too bad". Last week, 10000 homes in UK were left without electricty. Why? Rain and high winds!!! So, how high can the wind be without killing the electricity that it can provide? It probably makes a good PhD topic for multi-objective optimization.
I guess we humans are not very different from wind. Neither are stable when they are high.