Waamax

What’s one good thing about being super busy?

Wait! I have no time to think on that. Back to work.

During a recent password audit at LMC, it was found that a blonde receptionist was using the following password:

“MickeyMinnieMileyHueyLouieDeweyDonaldGoofySacramento”

When asked why she had such a long password, she said she was told that it had to be at least 8 characters long and include at least one capital.

No offence intended to any blondes. I rather like them.

Source: Unknown

Here’s a situation.

I give you $300 with the following options:
a) Give you $100 dollar more
b) toss a coin and give you $200 more if you won and nothing if you lose

It was found that most preferred option a.

Here’s a little change

I give you $500 with the following options:
c) you need to give me back $100
d) toss a coin and pay $200 if you lost but nothing if you win

Now the option d was a more preferred one.
But from the probabilistic theory all these four choices are identical. They all have the expected value of $400. Then why do we have such strong preferences?

Because we are more willing to gamble when it comes to losses but are risk averse when it comes to gains.

“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, and die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” – Robert A. Heinlein

A mathematician and an engineer are sitting next to each other on a long flight. The mathematician leans over to the engineer and asks if he would like to play a fun game. The engineer just wants to take a nap, so he politely declines and rolls over to the window to catch a few winks.

The mathematician persists and explains that the game is real easy and lots of fun. He explains, “I ask you a question, and if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5. Then you ask me a question, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $5.”

Again, the engineer politely declines and tries to get to sleep. The mathematician, now somewhat agitated, says, “Okay, if you don’t know the answer, you pay me $5, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll pay you $50!”

This catches the engineer’s attention, and he sees no end to this torment unless he plays, so he agrees to the game. The mathematician asks the first question. “What’s the distance from the earth to the moon?”

The engineer doesn’t say a word, but reaches into his wallet, pulls out a five-dollar bill and hands it to the mathematician Now, it’s the engineer’s turn. He asks the mathematician “What goes up a hill with three legs and comes down on four?”

The mathematician looks up at him with a puzzled look. He takes out his laptop computer and searches all of his references. He taps into the air phone with his modem and searches the net and the Library of Congress. Frustrated, he sends e-mail to his co-workers all to no avail.

After about an hour, he wakes the engineer and hands him $50. The engineer politely takes the $50 and turns away to try to get back to sleep.

The mathematician then hits the engineer, saying, “What goes up a hill with three legs, and comes down on four?” The engineer calmly pulls out his wallet, hands the mathematician five bucks, and goes back to sleep.

[source: engineeringhumor.com]

This year started with an MBA on mind. Almost all the paper works were done for my top priority colleges and admission results were expected. But still I was wandering on applying to few more colleges (I was so desperate to start my MBA this year). Time for results and loads of emotion swing with some results on my favor and some beyond my control. Joy when accepted at VT, ecstasy when accepted at Pittsburgh and was rejected at UMASS.

Work was always fun at Bikalpa. ‘Work hard, party harder’ anthem was never let down. Numerous ‘Party of the century’ by the Bikalpians, but the greatest was mine … says every one.

Came to VirginiaTech for my MBA, New road to New York in 18 hours, loved Blacksburg, learned the football game, all of a sudden my football became soccer, facebooked and twittered like never before, never been so confused and determined at the same time, cycling never was so fun, met some great new friends at VT, enjoyed all those VT Nepalese get together and parties, played bhailo in Tihar, danced for the first time, enjoyed the first snow fall, experienced the different American system of study, first semester - was smart enough to get lucky and loved the tail gates and the VT football games at Lane. Last weeks of 2009 was for the overwhelmingly impressive New York City and life keeps getting better and I have never been so sure that there is hell lot to be explored in one life. For the moment, it’s the New Year eve at Time squares New York.

Life was not always fun in 2009. I tore my ankle ligaments and rested for almost one and half months. Got rejected twice for F1 visa, made ad hoc back up plans (now I wonder some of my back up plans were better than plan A). There were broken promises and relationships. We are not perfect but we don’t live in a perfect world either.

Few things stayed the same in the year 2009. My faith in love, friendship and my belief on life and beyond is as optimistic as ever. And the new challenges keep on getting tougher.

Thank You Friends. Cheers to 2009!!

I told you i love short stories. Good stories define the magic of art. Here is one of my favs from the era of plato.

One day, Plato asked his teacher, “What is love? How can I find it?” His teacher answered, “There is a vast wheat field in front. Walk forward without turning back, and pick only one stalk. If you find the most magnificent stalk, then you have found love.” Plato walked forward, and before long, he returned with empty hands, having picked nothing. His teacher asked, “Why did you not pick any stalk?” Plato answered, “Because I could only pick once, and yet I could not turn back. I did find the most magnificent stalk, but did not know if there were any better ones ahead, so I did not pick it. As I walked further, the stalks that I saw were not as good as the earlier one, so I did not pick any in the end. His teacher then said, “And that is love.” On another day, Plato asked his teacher, “What is marriage? How can I Find it?” His teacher answered, “There is a thriving forest in front. Walk forward without turning back, and chop down only one tree. If you find the tallest tree, then you have found marriage”.

Plato walked forward, and before long, he returned with a tree. The tree was not thriving, and it was not tall either. It was only an ordinary tree. His teacher asked, “Why did you chop down such an ordinary tree?” Plato answered, “Because of my previous experience. I had walked through the field, but returned with empty hands. This time, I saw this tree, and I felt that it was not bad, so I chopped it down and brought it back. I did not want to miss the opportunity.” His teacher then said, “And that is marriage. You see son Love is the most beautiful thing to happen to a person, its an opportunity but you don’t realize its worth when you have it but only when its gone like the field of stalks. Marriage is like the tree you chopped, it’s a compromise . . .

I never realized I talk about connecting dots more than a normal man does. A friend of mine made me aware of that. The startling question he posed was ‘Do MBAs have a fetish for connecting dots?’
Well I was like ‘Excuse me’. That’s an over generalization and I was never aware I was using that word so frequently. Well it’s nothing about sounding stylish, classy or sexy at all. It’s just a desire to know the truth. But as in life every things depends on your perception. When I told one of my MBA friend about my interests of moving towards consultancy, his only remark was ‘Wow consultancy sounds so sexy’. Duh?

But the thing here is about knowing the gaps and articulating facts and information so that it makes sense. And my nature says, either you have the full picture or there is no picture at all. It bugs me up big time when I can’t figure out the relation between things that matters to me. Two of my friends, one in China and one here in US were sharing comments in facebook and I had no freaking idea how they both know each other. Of course they never talk to me about each other. Now that bugs me up. And for me, to find out how they know each other is connecting the dots. There are numerous such scenarios everyday.

So Basically for me its more of a curiosity to know the truth rather than sounding stylish or sexy. And yeah, I have a fetish for knowing the truth.

Because it depends entirely on the project managers and not on the project management tools. I am a great believer of Agile manifesto which suggest that individuals are always well over tools.

So no matter how good and sophisticated tools you use, they are only as good as the person using it.

Holiday starts early here at VT with almost 9 days for the ThanksGiving. The only complain about the holidays is that they run out quite fast.

Let’s enjoy the freedom.

Back in Nepal I never use to see the weather forecasts. Firstly, they weren’t accurate always. And secondly, I didn’t felt the need for that. So when I got caught in a sudden rain, it used to be a surprise and fun too (not that I always appreciate returning drenched from my office)

But here in US, the weather forecast are amazingly accurate and I already have this habit of seeing these forecasts for the anticipation of the first snowfall (Yes, I am yet to see a snowfall). So all this makes the everyday weather kind of boring. You already have an idea on what the rest of the week is going to be like. Where is the fun?

There are few things that are pleasure to behold. One of them being Rahul Dravid playing his square cut.

The process of using wide ranging and interacting data to understand processes, problems, and solutions. The opposite of one factor at a time (OFAT), where ones natural born tendency is to change one factor and “see” what happens. Statistical thinking is the tendency to want to understand complete situational understanding over a wide range of data where several control factors may be interacting at once to produce and outcome. Common cause variation becomes your friend and special cause variation your enemy. Attribute judgements of good and bad are replaced with estimates of significance with given confidence.

src: isixsigma

More to come on this….

To her who was careful on putting her money in the bank, does not take risks, and does not borrow more than she can pay back comfortably — if everyone had this mindset we might have escaped the mess we are at now

To everyone - Now that mindset won’t help us get out of this mess

Doesn’t that make sense? Yeah, it does.

Why push for customers when you have a different set of customers pushing themselves for the products. Know your market. Digg in.

You know about exams. I mean who doesn’t. I can’t remember how many exams I have taken till this age. But one thing has never changed. The dread.

I just took the stats exam today and I was all cool just before the start. I have read all the material pretty well and was confident enough to crack even the toughest probability nuts. But see. After exactly 75 minutes later I found myself all wrong. I was splashed by a bucket of freezing water just to remind how wrong I was. Needless to say I screwed up the exam.

So what’s the catch? Are exams always meant to be that way? Well one good thing about all these repetitive experiences is that, they warn you of your complacency. In a sense they will always charge you up with the feeling of insecurity or feeling of being a beginner again. That reminds you of facing the unexpected, facing the chaos or broadly facing the real world.

And you know the best thing about exam? No matter how much you screw up the last one, they always keep on coming. I better catch it next time.

Regardless of what we discover, we understand and truly believe that everyone did the best job they could, given what they knew at the time, their skills and abilities, the resources available, and the situation at hand.

From Norman Kerth, Project Retrospectives

5 minutes from my finance class ( September 8 )

As the wall street figures starts climbing everybody seems to be in a rush to get the bigger piece of the pie. And everybody is rushing even more to claim the credit of economic recovery. So this issue “U.S. economy gets lift from stimulus” dated Sep 9 on wall street journal talks on the economy stabilizing and regaining from the brink, and analyzes different stimulus and plans that were put together on overcoming the greatest financial crisis since the great depression.

Some economists argue that it was because of the Bush administration that provided the recovery to this crisis. Some argue that it was due to the federal reserve’s aggressively buying of Treasury debt and mortgage backed securities. Some said that it was due to the stimulus packages and programs like ‘cash for clunkers’ under Obama’s administration that ignited the recent recovery.

To give a better picture to the scenario my finance professor described the following analogy:

A teen was speeding on his Ferrari on a highway at an amazing (unbelievable) speed when he met an accident. When he crashed with such a speed he broke all his bones and damaged all his organs and was in the brink of saying his final goodbye. Somehow he managed to still be alive. But with such severity and critical condition nothing could be said just yet. At the hospital the experts were bemused when they saw this case. It was nothing even close to anything they have ever seen. Nothing was working and nobody had any idea on where to start and which body part to focus on. So each expert tried out his own way on the patient. Each one tried completely different tactics and methods to the injured boy.

Now after about couple of months, the boy seems to show some sign of progress. Now each expert wants to be the first one to claim that it was his method that was responsible for the recovery.

This scenario depicts today’s situation on global economic progress.

Recommendation from my professor Dr. Raman Kumar:
As this is a kind of situation where the world economy is in a state no one has ever seen before and no one has any idea on how to precisely save the economy, it’s worthless to argue about whose method was responsible for this slight progress. It’s the time to try all the methods and work from all the possible sectors to save the crashed economy. And to make sure nobody get away with driving the unchecked Ferrari in the future.