Brink of your comfort zone

What does it take to be a successful IT engineer. Indeed there is no magic potion that could do the trick. The way I see it, you improvise through continuously renovating or evolving yourself. I think this is best achieved by pushing oneself to the brink of his/her comfort zone. Imagine a circle of which the interior to be considered as your comfort zone. An ideal position would be to be right on the circumference of this hypothetical circle.

Falling inside the circle would make you lethargic, sluggish and gradually degrade your performance. The thing about comfort zone is that it feels just great and you like to be right there. It goes on with work getting easier, getting comfortable with the people around you, less variation and more mundane tasks. If you get lazy pulling yourself out of this situation, you might never succeed in doing so. Being inside the circle gradually squeezes out your ability to evolve.

Being outside the circle constantly would mean that you never get settled and are always thrown into difficult situations. This would wear you off after significant time and deplete your motivation to succeed.

The best position would be an equilibrium of both, sort of a status quo. It is important that you constantly reflect on yourself and be sure to pull yourself back to the circumference. This would let you evolve your skills constantly and at the same time reward yourself with your accomplishments and motivate to achieve even more.

Political Inclination in India - A thought

I tend to wonder, on what basis do citizens select a political partisanship in a country like India. India, to my knowledge is by far the most complex democracy. This country has a varied demography with its people speaking a great number of languages(~22), wide range of caste systems, different customs, traditions etc. To have a government satisfy all the peoples is not an easy job. A decision in favor of a majority people wouldn't necessarily keep a minority one happy. Unlike the United States, United Kingdom or just any other democratic nation, the demography in India is just too complex posing too many problems for a government to cater to.

My thought is that citizens chose a side more often because of a particular psychic inclination rather than actually evaluating a governments capability to deliver and prosper the country. For examples, the Christians along the western coast of Karnataka. This anglo-Indian population would rather vote for congress than the BJP(based on words from friends/colleagues). And this is because of a stereotype built around the religion and the party since independence. Similarly, I am yet come across someone following the Hindu religion and not supporting BJP. Again the stereotype. . . These factors play out only in India unlike other western democracies. For a candidate to really break these barriers and win a vote of someone who does not support his party would demand strategic campaigning (which I haven't seen much here in India). Leaders who come to power because of any such religious/cultural inclination seldom succeed in delivering a quality governance.

There should be a mechanism where the people get to assess and evaluate the accomplishments, failures and promises of a leader/party before they chose a partisanship. In fact, it is the educated citizens who fail to caste vote during elections. In this era of technology and social media boom, it wouldn't be a great deal to have such an evaluation reach them and help them take cognizant decision in choosing a side.

Hello Mars!

It has been nearly two years since my last post. With fb, twitter, Buzz, Google Plus, I have posting around here and there! I have got back to India after three long years in the US and am slowly settling down in the garden city.

It is NASA's MSL that aroused my "curiosity" and kept me tracking it off late. The car sized rover took off on Nov 26th 2011 and is expected to get to Mars sometime in August of 2012 and make a landing on Gale crater. The rover has around 10 experimental instruments within it. They are primarily aimed at answering questions such as water on mars, microbial life, life sustenance etc. There's a host of experiments that the rover is expected to perform.

The project budgeted at $2.5 bn was initially slotted for 2009 and after budget cuts and schedule slippages made it in 2011(Thanks to Obama). The nuclear powered cells are of virtually infinite life. With Phoenix and Oppurtunity exceeding their life by way long, Curiosity would be expected to achieve new feats. Oppurtunity is in fact still alive and is currently exploring endeavour crater. The scientists at JPL have planned an entirely new kind of landing strategy for the MSL. This youtube video is a fanastic animation.

I guess I'll have to eagerly wait for the next 8 months to see those high-res panoramic shots. The official mission page has a nice timer and is located here.

Got a new Car

 

Quite dissapointing that it took more than a year for me to buy a new car. I just got a 2003 Hyundai Elantra GLS Sedan. I got totally fed up of craigslist and all the scams out there. Eventually I got this through CarSoup.com. I bought the car from a dealer, so it feel brand new.

Too bad that I still can't drive it without a valid Drivers License.

Lake-shore Turtle

 

Our office crowd had taken a day off and spent together at a lake shore along the outskirts of Minnesota. As me and couple of my friends were passing a small path along the shore we happened to notice a turtle. It was the first I got to see a turtle not under captivity. Got to take a few macro shots of it. Neat stuff. . .

Married I am . . .

 

Don't know why I stopped blogging. Well, Hope I become regular again.

I am married now since MAY 27. I took off from work for a week and flew down to Bangalore. It was a quick one week with more of formalities. I enjoyed every part of it. Well, now I am back to work. She joined me couple of weeks ago as well. Its a good feeling to know there is someone back at home waiting for you. It becomes a good reason for you to want to go home.

For me it is a difficult transition from someone who prefers solitude to someone who shares his feelings and emotions. Its a challenge and I guess I am doing pretty good.

Fire in the hole

 

My shopping spree just doesn't seem to end. I bought Bioshock the game. I heard it has achieved quite a bit on the graphics, gameplay, strategy etc. Apparently won the game of the year as well. I also love first player shooter games and the ones which are not exactly too fast like Doom, UT etc. Bioshock's got the perfect concept.

Sorry, I can't type anymore. Gotta try the game. . .

New Cam -Sony W170

Got the next machine into my arsenal.Its a brand new Sony Cybershot w170. Its a whole lot of cool featurs. I bought the cam and a 4GM memory stick totalling to $294. Quite expensive, but indeed worth the deal.

Few of the noticeable features are as following.


=> 10.1 Mega Pix
=> 5X Zoom
=> Auto smile ditection ( with child priority)
=> Macro mode - Good for people having a good sense of photography.
=> Red Eye correction
=> Camera shake correction
=> 3.5 inch wide viewing screen

Baby! Do I have a toy!