Think of Work

Tim Ferriss - The Twitter experiment

2009-03-17T22:22:00.000-07:00

To follow Tim ferriss at twitter click http://bit.ly/3Bp3Oe

To read about his twitter experiment, click http://bit.ly/11WX10

I love this Guy! He's the author of 4 Hour Work Week, a very interesting read. So he's started off this twitter experiment, every follower for Tim will help donate $3 for american schools.

The fascinating thing is to watch out how this social media exercise will bring in people with mostly word of the mouth and internet social media marketing.

In turn, I plan to get completly involved in this experiment. Web 2.0 - the potential is unlimited.

I started off promoting this experiment in

1)Twitter

2)My Blog

3)Orkut

4)Facebook

5)Yahoo messenger status (imkeshav)

6)Google talk status (keshavram)

I'll try more stuff later.

You can also help by promoting from your own sources, friends, mass mailers, shouting around etc.

Copy the link http://bit.ly/3Bp3Oe or http://bit.ly/11WX10

You can also create your own link at bit.ly. It will track all the clicks and maybe you can win a prize from Tim for bringing in followers.

Netgear installation wizard - not suitable for india?

2008-12-09T11:07:00.000-08:00

I just finished posting about the cool netgear USB network adapter. Then found out the installation wizard was buggy and stupid.

The USB device was installed and my network works through wireless. In fact this post is the second one after my desktop went WiFi. But after closing all the windows, there was this small screen hiding.

Now this is irritating. The installation was done and everything is working, where the hell does this window come from!!?

But the next screen was even more annoying.I can't select my country, India is not available. But this was legally purchased from a dealer. The label on the box shows that some xyz company has imported this.

But there is more. Trying to click escape thows a stupid message, trying to scare off a customer. Cancelling the installation? But ITS DONE!!

Time to shoot off a complaint to someone.

Wireless internet for Desktop

2008-12-09T10:16:00.000-08:00

Woohoo!! Right now my desktop has a USB dongle which connects through wireless to my D-Link wireless router. Don't we love it when you can spend Rs1100 ($22) and get rid of a single cable.

Some would say that is very expensive, but hey! my mom and sis dont have to jump over a cable everyday (The router was setup in the hall and the desktop was in my bedroom. The network cable was dragged across to my bedroom. Now don't ask why? It was installed while I was away)

We have used

USB Network Adapter : Netgear USB adapter Wireless-G WG111 802.11g - choose 802.11g over 802.11b for better speeds. This is almost an plug and play network device. Review

Update: Installation is done, but still buggy. Here

This comes with an installation CD. Installation is a 2 minute job -

1)Insert CD.

2)Run wizard

3)Insert dongle into USB port

4)Windows will detect the device and wireless networks. select your wireless network.

(Please note that wireless network should be available before this can be used,setup with a wireless router like D-Link )

For those not sure about this deal. Check out the below image.

Now to buy a multi USB port device. My outdated desktop has only 2 usb slots..oh well!!

Moved on from ThoughtWorks

2008-11-06T03:56:00.000-08:00

Well..that's it! I finally moved on from ThoughtWorks. It was a brilliant year at TWI, the kind of things that we did was simply amazing, the best fun times ever......the blog will also move on. A new life starts here .. http://keshavnarla.wordpress.com/

This went as part of one of my 2 EXIT mails (That's right, there were two exit mails)

This image can be edited at http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/

p.s - W.I.P means Work In Peace

Geeks shall inherit the earth

2008-05-22T04:12:00.000-07:00

Can you imagine this happening? But I guess we are OK with that :-)

ClearTrip - 4k and an explanation

2008-05-19T09:45:00.000-07:00

Update July 8th: ClearTrip.com has updated their cancellation procedure with the help of my feedback. I was pleasantly surprised that they were quick to update their website. These guys appear to be on the right path in creating an excellent business.

In fact, just last week (June 26th), I needed to make a air booking really fast and was able to achieve that at ClearTrip.com

I'm Back from Leh!!

First I'm very pleased that my feedback and sidu's post was well received at cleartrip.com and as a result half of the cancellation charges of 4000/- was returned by cleartrip.

As mentioned in my previous post, this is a detailed account of how my flight tickets got canceled. The sudden shock of accidentally canceling the tickets , made me realize the procedure had severe usability issues.

ClearTrip's account
They were quite adamant in saying that it was NOT a single-step cancellation process. Technically, they were correct. It is a two step process and I will attach images to show more details.

What I Say...
Although my original post was misleading about a single step cancellation policy, I still think the current 2 step process is very misleading.

My reasons
1. Customer's are confused about "Make Cancellations". Clicking this from the screen in image2 cancels the booking. I'm a shining example of this mishap.
2. Cancellation charges are not displayed anywhere through the process. ClearTrip will argue that cancellation "rules" are available, but I could not care less. As a customer I need to know the exact cancellation amount.

Closure!
I'm quite happy to get the 4k from cleartrip, instead of shouting and giving up, I worked closely with cleartrip to identify the issues. The guys at cleartrip were very patient while listening to my problems. I would take half the blame for being hasty in browsing around my itinerary and cleartrip has agreed to bear half my costs for any misunderstanding on their website. This is a good closure.

Hopefully this post clears the ambiguity on this episode.

Good News from cleartrip.com

2008-05-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Looks like my feedback had been taken into consideration after posts from me and Sidu. A cleartrip.com representative has told me that cleartrip.com is willing to bear half the cancellation charges. This saves me 4000/-. I will post more details about this after my vacation.

Tomorrow I'm leaving for my vacation to Ladakh. Unfortunately I had to cut short my vacation because my plans went haywire after this "cancellation episode".

I'm biking between Leh - Kargil

My Itinerary

Bangalore - Delhi Flight
Delhi - Leh Flight
Leh - Kargil Thunderbird
Leh - Delhi Flight
Delhi - Hyd Flight

More details and pics when I survive :-)

ClearTrip.com: Good communication channel

2008-05-04T00:35:00.000-07:00

My feedback has been accepted and I'm now in communication with one of the founders of the website. He seems serious about solving this bug or oversight in their website. I'm satisfied with their feedback mechanism.

There is a feedback link called "Tell us what you think", the top right corner in the image. Unlike other e-commerce websites this works very well.

Now I don't know if this email exchanges will help me save the 8000/- cancellation charges. At the least future customers won't have to face the same problem. Lets see what happens.

Before I planned my vacation, I needed a good website for Airline bookings. Most of my colleagues suggested cleartrip.com. It was initially easy to use and relatively faster. ClearTrip.com also appears to have the best deals.

However, this cancellation incident has changed my entire perception. Anything less of an actual compensation or re-booking will not bring me back to cleartrip.com. In fact, I'm using their website as a search engine to find the lowest fares and then going to the airline websites to book my ticket.

For example:- I require a booking for Delhi-Leh for next week and cleartrip.com shows that Air Deccan flight is the cheapest. So i'm going to book my ticket on AirDeccan website and the cost actually is 50/- more compared to cleartrip. But I would not want to take a risk.

On a side note, Jet airways has a shitty cancellation policy. The customer loses the entire basic fare in case of JetLite and 50% of basic fare for Jet Airways. AirDeccan cancellation policy is much better. Deccan also has an insurance option which could be very useful when you need your dates of travel to be flexible.

Lesson learnt : Read the cancellation details properly before you choose an airlines in India.

ClearTrip.com: Clearly You are Taken for a Trip

2008-05-03T08:18:00.000-07:00

Here's what happened. I was looking at my itinerary and accidentally clicked cancel at the top of the page.

And guess what: the ticket actually got canceled without a confirmation, that was being really quick, not to mention helpful, I just lost 8K. I planned this booking with a friend from the US and he has almost fainted when the news was told to him.

I have done many bookings and in fact spent 60k in 2007 on flight travel alone. So I have booked on many websites. But this takes the cake.

Interestingly here's a quick email response (just like the quick cancellation), not to mention polite from one of the tech support guys. Lets see if the feedback was useful.

Hi,

I noticed you recently left us some feedback:

"Here is what my colleague thinks http://blog.sidu.in/2008/05/cleartripcom-so-usable-you-lose-all.html Please understand that "simplicity" does not mean "stupidity""

Thanks for bringing this to our attention. I had already left a comment on your colleague's blog requesting his help for the details of what happened. There is no link on our site that is capable of immediately canceling a booking.

If you can help us in finding out the details, it will help us in fixing the issue. Would appreciate any help from you or your colleague on the details.

thanks
<>
http://www.cleartrip.com/hotels Choose from over 3000 Hotels in India

Flickr helps you blog

2008-05-01T04:12:00.001-07:00

back_home2
Originally uploaded by imkeshav

Aroj was showing me this cool feature with Flickr. You click on photo in your Flickr account and post a blog with this cool feature. It's very easy and intuitive.

But I have no idea, How it could pick my two blogs from Blogger. So you have to select your blog sites during the setup at Flickr and interestingly Flickr searched and picked my Google blogger accounts. Nice!

Cool Tools: Launchy and ZapGrab

2008-04-10T12:21:00.000-07:00

Get Launchy here

With a shortcut like Alt+F2, users can launch applications, open files, open websites, google for things and even do math. I love doing the simple math using the Launchy.

Thanks to Srushti aka superman for forcing me to use this tool. He is one of the firefox enforcers, these thoughtworkers go around our bangalore office, spying for anyone using Internet Explorer and then convince(read:threaten) people to convert to firefox! After joining ThoughtWorks, I've used IE only if an app does not support firefox and thats very rare.

For me it's the best cool tool. In fact, I like it so much that for the first time ever, I'm making a donation to a free tool (It's just $5). This was done while creating this post. Thats cool!

Check out Josh's website for Tips to use the launchy.

Get zapgrab here

Grab this tool ASAP! It's very handy and easy to use. A perfect tool for a tester to take screenshots of bugs. Especially if a part of the screen has to be captured.

From their ReadMe

How to capture the screen with ZapGrab

1- Press the button "Grab" (to capture)
2- Select the part of the screen you want to capture
3- Paste (ctrl+V) the screen captured in a presentation Powerpoint, a Word file,
or whatever document.

Some of the screens on this blog were captured with this.

Screensaver as a Reminder: Brilliant

2008-04-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

My colleague Clair came up with this idea. Basically you setup your own reminder on the 3D screensaver of Windows XP and your screensaver is visible many times in a work day. This is even more useful if it's a laptop.

I think this is a great Idea, pity we can't enter more than 3-4 words as text.

Just edited screensaver note as " Leave Early TODAY!!" (Its 12 Midnight)

I've also just installed POstIt from 3M. It is supposed to be cool with even an option to setup an alarm for your notes on the desktop.

Problem> I keep getting ideas or TODOs while driving or in the shower and by the time I reach office, I forget!

Sol1> Hi Tech and very reliable solution. Using my Nokia 6233's Calendar feature

This takes all of 15-20 seconds to create a reminder with t9 dictionary enabled. Perfect thing to do at a red light or when the traffic halts.

Sol2> Rustic and simple. Using a card/paper and a pen to write the TODO, have these things around your seat when you are driving.

Spam on my Blog!

2008-04-10T11:51:00.000-07:00

Looks like I'm becoming famous. I finally have my own spammers posting "useless" comment ads. Ah its nice to be viewed even if it's a program.

I need to figure how to stop these guys.

This is the one . Don't click it though ;-)

A wake-up call

2008-03-14T02:15:00.000-07:00

Working too hard and staying in the office too long!!

For the first time in my life, Last night I slept while reading a book with the light on. I always had enough energy to sleep on my own terms. This was the first time, I was never as tired...Not good!

p.s - I wanted to post this before something happens, I was just laughing at a Colleague and suddenly swallowed a chewing gum. Feels awkward!

Marketing: Good Idea

2008-03-08T05:21:00.000-08:00

The other day I was installing java and I see this on the status window.

This is a new one. I kind of like that they thought about putting something new on the old install status bar.

Enough is Enough

2008-02-28T07:08:00.000-08:00

I'm getting too busy for the important things. Trying to do all things at the same time is a disaster.

Reminder to self: Just do it!

2008-02-03T12:05:00.000-08:00

Work for ThoughtWorks India videos. Unfortunately i'm not in them ;-)

MaDMac

2008-02-03T10:44:00.000-08:00

I finally have it! I'm a dude with a Mac.

ThoughtWorks India has just rolled off the first batch of Macs and I was lucky to get one of them. So being a very serious professional, What are the first things we don on the new MacBookPro?

Fool around, of course! (The Mac comes with a built in camera)

The devs are quite jealous about me having a Mac, I wouldn't be surprised if they catch me in a dark corner and punish me for flaunting it around. But they did help me a lot in figuring out the controls and the cool features of OS X.

Another Friday Night in TWI Bangalore

2008-01-20T06:12:00.000-08:00

Another Friday Night in TWI Bangalore

What did you expect? A bunch of people hunched over their laptops furiously working for their project?

Not really!

It was a fun night at the ex-pat party at the Taj. The client and I joined Hakan and Party boy (Deven). We came back to the office around midnight.

The usual weekend crowd was around – Sidu, Irfan, Shishir, Thanga, Amey and Palani.

I decided to hang around the office until my roommate lands in Bangalore at 1AM.

The Crazy rockers

Yeh tho Pathshaala hein

Pathshaala: Initially it was a slow start with Irfan playing on his electric guitar. Joined Sidu and Shishir as the spectators. Now shishir runs around and finds a guitar (He calls it acoustic..but whatever). Irfans tries to give some tips about guitar-ing, soon the music from U-tube goes more violent and loud.

Things appear to go out of hand. (Oh No)

Common room: The “rocker” geeks move to the common room, trying to outdo each other in finding the most violent rock music. Its horrible.

The Crazy Thanga

Thanga is a man on mission. The mission – Install all required software on his Mac and only then go home! He’s battling it out and (looks like his sleep won over)

The SCARY!

Things were looking wild and crazy. But that was not the end. Something really scary happened. Palani started laughing! TWI Bangalore may be the only workplace in the world where you will hear a laugh as scary as Palani’s.

It is very hard to describe the sound.

But I can say this – The entire office reverberates with the sound.

In the virtual world

Meanwhile I find Sripad online from UK. All’s fine with the UAT at Brighton. We start chatting about the situation in office.

Its 3:30 AM and the guys start to disperse. Palani and Thanga are nowhere to be seen, they must be sleeping in one of the rooms. Sidu and Irfan take off. Shishir complains he’s hungry. We move to the café ‘Java’ in DD, have a nice English breakfast and then head home.

The day ends at 5AM and the lights go off in my room. It was fun.

Bonked my Car

2008-01-20T05:32:00.000-08:00

Dad happened to be in Bangalore for two days and was leaving on last Saturday. Since the airport was very close to the office, I wanted him to have lunch with me at the office before dropping him at the Airport.

A recruiting event was happening in the office and lot of TWers showed up. This was an opportunity to introduce Dad to some people in the office - my team mates, recruiting folks, TWs management folks.

We had lunch and it was time for Dad to catch the flight. So I dropped him at the airport and was coming back to office (in a hurry). I almost reached the office and that when it happens....

Screeeeeetch......BANG!, Crack!.

Accident happens, the "Crack!" was the crack in the windshield caused after my head hit the windshield. Damn! Should have worn the seatbelt. But don't worry I was not hurt. I guess this is what is meant by being "Hard-Headed"

Short Version...
The Car in front suddenly stops trying not to hit an Auto. I had to apply breaks, but there wasn't enough time and so..BONK!

Being a TWer had to be a geek sometime and so I just captured the scene through the wikimapi.

Here is a mail sent to my close friends...Mail link

Work at gun point

2008-01-20T05:22:00.000-08:00

One day I found a gun in the office. Don't worry its a harmless balloon gun and it does not work.

Other random pics taken in office

(That's a gun)

Office Images

2008-01-20T05:03:00.000-08:00

The last time my bro was in the US, he came with an NFL football. I picked it up from my home in Hyderabad and brought it to Bangalore to show it off in the office.

So the ball was on my laptop and an Idea (creative?) came up. Took out my mobile , captured an image and copied it to the laptop through the infrared port

I call it the "mirror effect".

The next picture is quite interesting. The image shows Sidey explaining something. Can you guess what?

He was using matchsticks to create one of the maps in the game Halo (xbox) over a smoke. The best time to get information from this guy including work related topics is to catch him in the smoking zone.

Revival: First Day in ThoughtWorks

2008-01-20T04:22:00.000-08:00

Now I've been in ThoughtWorks for the last 6 months and lovin' every moment of it. As I feared, I stopped making posts after joining TWs. It was very hectic with work and lot of other activities. The time just flew by.

Now this is my attempt at reviving my blogging. Started off by purchasing my own domain www.keshavnarla.com and redirected my blog to it. I plan to add more content into my website including a professional blog (whatever that means).

So lets start off with a post that has been lying around in my notepad for the last 6 months. I wrote that on my first day at TWs. It is incomplete, but I would rather see it here.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
July 4th, Wednesday, American Independence day

It's sort of an Independence day for me. Independence from boredom, office politics, from insecure people, rules, policies, restaurant lunches and more. This day I joined one of the most coolest companies in Bangalore, ThoughtWorks .

Two months of eager anticipation and expectations has come to this point. so there I was 9:30 am sharp at our Bangalore office all dressed up. Very soon someone helped me get inside and that marked the beginning. I'll skip the basics and get right to the excitement.

Great things on first day
1. Laptop & Mobile
2. Free Food
3. The Beach
4. Policies - Travel, new office keep it small, leaves
5. Environment - toys, guns, games, movies, bats, balls, junk etc
6. Trust - CEO's address, sick leaves
7. Gaming

Crap things
1. Lotus Notes.(I think i can change that...)
2. Lack of parking. (@#$%)
3. NO BEER

The first surprise was the DELL Lattitude laptop, I browsed online about TW giving Laptops (Notebook), but I was not sure if QAs were given and I was never given a laptop earlier. Now you may be wondering whats all this fuss about a stupid laptop, but the laptop is a symbol of good things among the 1/2 million IT work force in India. In most of the companies, it's the leads, managers, support folks who are issued a laptop. So a laptop hanging on the shoulder is message of importance for others, although this is fast changing. NOW having a blackberry is like instant stardom, only the Heads, VPs and other heads of state (company) were issued!

So the IS guy walked in and was talking about laptops, softwares etc and then he said the laptop here is yours. WOW! Now i get a laptop, amazing, wonderful, Heart race increasing and I couldn't wait to brag about it to my friends at the old company. All this time I had this expression of "I mean business" , i didn't want to look like the village idiot who's never touched a laptop.

Lunch Time
----------
This is the interesting part for most of the people. FREE FOOD. Lunch is provided free and also includes meat, and it tastes good too. Apart from this you have snacks, juices, bread, noodles, milk, cereals, honey etc at all times (I actually have a packet of orange juice right now). So whats missing? Beer!. All the other TW offices across the world have beer stocked, unfortunately Indian gov does not allow liquor in office premises. BUMMER!

So then I was sitting in the dining room and eating, there was this information board and one topic was "What we do well", and there were many cards about great environment, interviewing, policies, culture etc etc. I was wondering why there was

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The text stops there, I don't remember why it stops there. But thats all that is in my notepad.

Trying to continue where it ended...

I was wondering why there was no card mentioning Free Food, Laptop and Mobile. So up goes my card among the "Things we do well"

Last Day @ office

2007-07-05T01:55:00.000-07:00

July 3rd , Tuesday.

The day i was looking forward to, for the last 2 months. I was thinking of a great & fun way to say goodbye. Then it hit me "To the life beyond...", this was going to be the subject of my good bye mail. and the image, just look below

http://www.jjchandler.com/tombstone/

The email also included 6 pics of me and office dudes. These images covered my life at the company for the last 3 years. The guys loved the email. One manager even asked me how to edit the tombstone (so that's why the URL is included above).

My team also gave gifts, one was a Binoculars. I was supposed to use it for "bird" watching ;-)

I was a little worried the entire day about starting work at ThoughtWorks the next day. You see I've lost contact with the concept of working! No work for the last 4 months.

Our cubicles

2007-06-25T00:35:00.000-07:00

Friday, I had this idea to capture images cubicles of different individuals in my team. Turned out this was an interesting theme for a lot of my friends.

Here's the assortment of pics and an FAQ
Guy's Desk

Girl's Desk

Two guys desk

Manager's Desk

HR's Desk (Obviously a Girl)

After seeing these desk’s we can safely assume that a Girl’s desk has to HAVE A DOLL.

Question) Why is there a doll on every girl’s desk?
Answer) These dolls are used for different purposes – decorating, grooming, for play (when no one is looking).

Question) Why are guy’s desk so cluttered and girl’s desk so well decorated?
Answer) Guy’s are too busy at work to take care of their desks. On the other hand, the girls… Well what can I say, they are girls!!!.

Question) Is it true HR’s are all like this
Answer) Yes. Some are worse J

Question) What about the manager’s desk?
Answer) No comment.