Back when I was in school, evenings were usually dedicated to badminton. Since all schools ended at the same time as mine, it was a race to get to the court before everyone else. A few minutes difference could mean a wait of an hour.

Inspite of all the running, there usually were about 30 kids who would turn up to play in the two available courts. Usually who got to play was decided by “Round Robin” where the best were separated from the rest. Court time was a scarce commodity and could be bartered for precious gifts.

It was free for us defence kids but everyone respected the dress code. Everyone would wear knee length socks and neat polished shoes. Playing barefoot or in heels was unthinkable.

Fast forward to 2008. I join Jayabheri club forking out a tidy sum. Place has good wooden courts, airconditioned too. Perfect.

Except no one turns up.

Club supposedly has 180 members. In the past 1 month, I have seen about 20 unique people all together!

I have seen people play barefoot, seen them playing in the latest Levi’s. Imagine a guy driving up in an Accord and then proceeding to play barefoot . Shatters many a romantic notions of the gentlemans game.

But anyway, yesterday was probably as low as I ever wanted to go. Turned up at 7 sharp all sprightly.

3 8 year old kids playing . Watched them play for a few minutes. 5-10-15-20-25-30. At which point of time one of the kids took pity on me and comes over and says

“Uncle will you play with us ? “

And desparate as I was for my game, I played with them :(. ( FWIW they were probably playing for the first time) .

Saving grace was that a few people did turn up after the first game with the kids..but still..

Q:Who has the most frequent flier points in the world ?

Answer: Clark Kent

PS:Clark==Superman

Whats the most immediate reaction on reading the below? I am conducting a small survey.The I in the story can be assumed to be me.

“The other night I was walking along the beach, hand in hand with my girlfriends. Suddenly this huge f**ing space saucer came along and zapped me up into its belly. There were all sorts of lights and gizmos flashing and loud beeping sounds all over the place. I lost track of time except to realize that it was a very long time. Finally after what seemed like an eternity they zapped me back to earth.”

Mom: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer: “Did you know X ran away and married Y in a church?”

Dad:  “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer: “I fell into bad company and got into gambling, Can I get a loan. I will return it promise!”

Girl Friend: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer: ” Doesent your sister look hot in that blue top?”

Irritating team mate: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer : ” I don’t talk to underperformers”

Random relative: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer: “Did [Random relative]’s son come back to India because he was fired in the US?”

Boss: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer : ” Forrester says the job market in India is growing at 30%!”

Random Blog commentor: “What’s with your hair, why cant you get a hair cut? “

Answer : STFU!

I bought myself 4 wheels around a month ago.

While I have driven a little earlier, that driving is at best forgettable. My close relatives might not forget that easily since it was their pockets that I burnt but we are digressing here.

The car was parked in the multi level car park in office. I chose a time when I thought no one would be around. Saturday evening 5 PM to actually attempt to bring it home.

As expected when I reached there, there was no one except one cab driver and his cab about 200 ft away from my car. Perfecto. No one will ever know.

Slid (it’s a small car and I am big) into the car. Slam gear into reverse and press accelarator. Screeching sound. No movement. Hmm, press accelarator harder. More screeching. Slow movement.

Did the guy I bought it from cheat me ? He seemed nice.

Press accelarator more.More screeching. Knock on the window. Shift to neutral. Roll window down.

Damn how did this driver 200 ft away notice ?

“Saab sab theek to hai?”

“Haan haan, kyon kya hua?”

“Hand brake laga hua hai”

Shit shit.  Have to come up with smart explanation.

With accent- Amrekin style.

“Oh haan, America me hand brake hota hi nahi hai”- What the! Did I just say that !

“achi baat hai saab”

Have to explain this to him in more detail and convince him.

“Arey aap ne to dekha hi hoga ..ye gaadi pichle 3 mahino se yaha mlcp me hi hai”

“Saab 3 din se dikh rahi hai”

Bloody did he make the car park his house or what.

“Acha ok ok, thank you ab aadat aa jayegi”

Go out of his view. Park car. LOL for about 10 minutes reliving what I just did.

PS: Free pick and drop facility for those in Hyd. Make sure you have insurance though

There was this hype around the whole Live Mail launch recently with a flurry of mails hitting my inbox.

I went and got a live id since I got one I liked. Tarun happened to crib to me about Live mail client around the same time so I went and installed it to see what it was all about. Compared to OL 2007 it wasn’t really all that great but I let it hang around on the system that night.

A large part of my work depends on using the “Send Mail” feature in the bug tool or in ppt or in excel. As usual I clicked on send mail to send a mail and it opened up the live mail client.

The bitch of a software went and took over my send mail and set itself as the default mail client! And I couldn’t find anything in Live mails options that would allow me to revoke that. Turns out that the default mail client setting for a mapi connection (Ask google what that means) has to be set in IE!

So that’s why “Bye bye Live Mail” for me.

PS: I told it not to be the default. So stfu.

What you do or don’t do ends up making news.

For example ? This

My dad has an old LG Reliance phone. The one that Reliance launched it’s services with. It’s old and has a severely limiting feature set. For example- No camera, no web browser ,no color screen and so on. The batteries been changed a couple of times and still dies on occassion, but he’s gotten used to it. He can write sms’s (in all capitals ), he can get cricket scores , fast dialling and all that.

I have been asking/offering him to get a new phone but he’s not really too keen. I guess the main reason for that being that he will have to go through a long learning cycle again. Finding out new ways to do things he could do earlier  would in itself be a big task- forget  using new features like camera’s and mp3 ringtones or GPRS.

It’s the same story for a lot of us. Once we get comfortable with something, we tend to stick on to it and ignore minor niggling issues. For example, I am used to winamp 2.0 look and feel and even if I do move to a new winamp, I try to keep the old look and feel.

I was at an LIC office recently and noticed they run Win NT and on top of that a command line based Star Office. Been sometime since I have seen either. Which brings me to a point I have learnt well over the past year.

For corporates the decision of -when to change -AND- To what to change to-is a whole lot more complicated. Software companies and OEM’s would like enterprises to move to the latest and greatest at the earliest. But when say you are a State Bank of India-Changing from Windows 2000 to Windows 2003 or from RHEL 6 to RHEL 9 is a big big big deal. You have to count not just the cost of the new software and hardware but also the cost of retraining 1000’s of employees who are used to one way of doing things, the endless hours of testing to make sure all old app’s work, the support costs so on ad infinitum. Even if the new systems can help you do something in lesser clicks, still the learning curve is steep.

In the enterprise world, OS’s are hard to transition to/from. Its not like a single consumer who has nothing but music and movies on their computer.

The Web ecosystem is also similar even though the basic structure is totally different. It’s very rare that web interfaces are completely overhauled. I am used to finding my get mail button at the top left and if it’s shifted suddenly, it would disturb me. Google hasnt changed the start page much, Yahoo changed little by little over the years.

The commonality doesent end just yet. Both in the offline as well online worlds, companies that manage this change better are the one’s that make money. Being able to get new users while retaining existing one’s is the challenge.

PS: There really is no point to this. If you were expecting the solution to handling change, keep looking and let me know if you find it. These are just notes I have been making to myself for a while and thought it worth sharing .

These days we are getting feedback on the Beta/Release candidate builds of XP SP3 we shipped to some customers.

While looking through the feedback and formulating the questions to ask the customer , I constantly try to put myself in their shoes. Let me explain why-

If for example I call up my broadband provider with a complaint, I completely hate it when they treat me like a vegetable with fingers.

Cust Rep- Please click on start , go to run and type cmd and hit enter

Me- Duh Duh Duh Duh. Why not just tell me to open a command prompt.

Cust Rep - Please type i p c o n f i g and hit enter.Now can you tell us what you see ?

Me- Duh, I told you already ! The whole freaking problem is that I do not get an IP address! Your DHCP server isnt working! I don’t get a DNS either , which leads me to think that maybe my port on your switch itself is down

Cust Rep -  Yes Sir I completely understand.Now can you go to start prompt right click on my computer and go to manage hardware.

Me- Damn you!

Now, having had this experience, I know it sucks when the person on the other side does not give credit to my intelligence. The difficult thing is identifying if the customer is a novice or an expert .

If I was to give instructions on collecting netmon traces to a TAM from Dell, he would probably hate me - but if I assume everyone using XP is a techie and end up asking a school teacher to collect netmon and netdiag traces and ftp them to a server she/he would hate me just as much.

I usually end up starting at a novice level and based on the response scale up my ask and questions to the customer. It’s been working fine for most of the time except on an occasion or two .

What really does help is that I have the freedom to do so. There is really no script that I have to follow like the customer service rep’s at call centers have to. I can create a relationship with the customer and formulate questions based on how much they are able to understand and do.

The whole cycle of handling customer feedback has been a great learning experience for me. It’s for once put me on the “other” side of the customer and helped me understand the various way’s people interact with their computers and Windows.

I was gifted a painting (reproduction obviously) by Selvador Dali. Its called “The persistence of time”.

It’s pretty depressing actually, scary even (made me think about life and such things).

I wonder what the gifter had in mind when gifting.

More about the painting is here