Rediscovering me!

Wow, what a fabulous 30 years I have lived.  No regrets whatsoever.  There is something in me that started asking a lot of questions, not that I never asked to myself before.  In the last few years, I have been chasing a new target for life, a new reason, a new beginning.  It is always disputable as to what the heck have I done so far, if I have to begin something today.  I am going to keep it simple, no past, only today and futuristic visions from now on.

I have been a person, living the moment, all along and I will continue to be.  It was initial days in college (Vellore engineering college 2002 pass-out batch). We used to have students segregated in batches irrespective of their course they have opted.  I belonged to the "F batch"; there were totally seven batches named A to F, all valid for the first year only.  The batch concept was good, getting to know more friends than your course-mates; in fact most turned out to be long term.  Also, in the first year, it was all common subjects ranging from Physics, Maths, Chemistry, English, etc.,.

It was one of the English sessions.  Folks were called randomly to talk on the stage; the classroom was setup in such a way that the professor's desk was placed in an elevated platform (like a stage) primarily for visibility of the whole classroom.  I volunteered and started talking; topic being general stuff (anything).  I do not remember a whole lot of crap of what I had talked, but I do remember one thing.  I jumped into social consciousness and talked about how each individual should live only until 30 years and should prove worthy within that time frame; my vivid picture was to kill oneself beyond that time to let others live.  The thought still lingers in my mind; when I crossed my birthday, the plot thickened.  I have not realized myself the deepness in the thought I had glimpsed at that time, until recently.

The motive of that thought was to let everyone live.  The deep philosophy behind that was to give food, clothing and shelter to the next generation and move-on (die).  Why should one do that?  Because there is scarcity of all those basic items and humans were exploiting them already.  So what is the rediscovery? It merely cannot be attributed to life and death; it is about increasing efficiency for the duration of an individual's life.  This thought is the soul of "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand.  But objectivism is not all true, only the reason is powerful in it, is my thought.

So what next?  Frankly, the rediscovery is going to happen all my life.  To where I stand, I am equipping myself for better learning by learning basic stuff like driving, flying, diving so I can travel to learn what I want to and to do stuff.  Do what stuff?  I find my interests in rectifying social calamities such as water, food and electricity - so a need for "Energy".  Renewable or more efficient, either way, should get it done.  One of the things I have learnt hard is self-dependency and trying to work that logic into everything that I need to run my day to day life.  What is my day to day life?  All I need for survival is water, food (for body), shelter, clothing and food for thought (software development).  It is plain selfishness, one might say, but I am pretty confident that only when my needs are satisfied, can I stretch it to others.  By the way, by being a software architect, I feel when I search for my needs, I will find them in a way that sets an example for others as well, to find on their own.

For instance, when you have your own farm, you can have your own vegetables, rice and spices.  Grow cotton for clothes. You can dig up for water or take it from rain or ocean, purify and use it.  Set up a solar panel on top of your house for power.  Does any of this need any help from anyone once they are setup, I do not think so.  This was the most primitive way a human was living (self-sustained).  I do not need fashionable articles from Paris, rather I will make it myself when I need it.  I will trade for an item but only when it is in my reach, only when my basics are right. Just expand this thought to a village, we have a self-sustaining village. Expand this thought to a country, we have a "sustaining economy".  I think, it is the need of the hour in every place, for every person.  As Michael Jackson sung it, lets make this world a better place!

couriers enhanced!

With so much hype into Google latitude, it eventually came alive around Feb 4th, 2009. Ideas at best especially with Google, this one is just amazing. The thought of such a thing blew me off. I for one, have always wanted to reach out to people or things I need and right at that thought. Now I am a step closer.

Well, I have not planned for G1 or iPhone yet, but I will one day. Seriously, even without all these gadgets, we seemed to have used the latitude concept almost everyday. Let me throw some instances...

(1) Long before mobiles came into being and even before proper land-lines were operational, in a remote village in Tamil Nadu, India, the latitude (or rather map-sense or even Djikstra's shortest path algorithm) was used. One fine day, while none of us were home, the post delivery person (of course, Indian Postal service) had checked our home (those days, they used to check our neighbours too) and eventually couldnt deliver that day. But we were just a couple of hours from home, and when we figured out we missed a post (quite an important one), we were worried. Well, I had different ideas, I sat down thinking about the route (path) the post-man would have taken and kinda figured out where he would have headed and there he was, exactly where I expected him to be. All it took for me was a few calculations on his path (Djikstra's algorithm) and sense for direction (Latitude).

(2) Lets take another instance, the most recent one. It was on Feb 9th, just about 4 days since Google released Latitude, I was again expecting my parcel. This time though, I had a mobile phone and the parcel was to be delivered by UPS, me being in Redmond, WA, USA - a whole different ball game. I used Google Checkout to order a few toys (which had been outdated) online in ToysRUs - for some reason, the delivery address had pointed to my old address and still the address itself was wrong (Apartment number was missing). Sure enough, UPS attempted to deliver, and sure enough, I had called them and updated the address correctly. The only problem was, I had a flight to catch to Chicago around 6pm and UPS had given a nice commitment that they would deliver anytime between 9am and 7pm. I decided to give it a try and thankfully I had a friend in that old address and rushed there (I couldnt change the entire address calling UPS), stayed all day, and was constantly refreshing my tracking number page in UPS.com website. And there you go, at around 3:30pm, UPS made the mistake and they couldnt deliver stating the address was incorrect - well couldnt help that as there was a note (apartment number) to the UPS truck driver which he apparently missed, but thanks to the update system, the tracking number got updated in a few minutes after the driver missed it. I called up the service desk immediately and kinda asked them to send it back to ToysRUs and updated them I cannot recieve because of my travel plans. But the guy on the service desk (Mr. Brown), thanks to him, we had different ideas. He suggested I can track him down, as the driver would not have gone too far (just half an hour). He put me on hold, and in parallel, talked with the driver to connect both of us (both our latitudes). While the conference call was on, my search too was on, I started following the path of the UPS truck religiously, the directions as given by Mr. Brown and there he was, where I could spot him by a few blocks from my old address.

So contrasting time periods, so contrasting technologies, eventually solving the purposes. I love science and technology! So why did I bring in Google latitude here, ah! I hope you have figured it, Google Latitude can now be used to track the driver anywhere by the courier company and sure enough the truck driver can track me wherever I am to deliver it to me - probably someone would patent this idea as they would patent turmeric, and start making big bucks. Of course, the whole privacy war has started (actually heated-up for a while now), but yea, technology can only be enhanced from where it is currently! Google latitude, my brain is turning wild of ideas!