minimunch

Why are Women Journalists afraid of taking Interviews of Sardars?

B’coz Women Journalists have ID card hanging on their Breast written PRESS !

I got this fwd from one of my colleagues…

Have you ever waded through a mess so grave that it took weeks to do what should have taken hours? Have you seen what should have been a one-line change, made instead in hundreds of different modules? These symptoms are all too common.

Why does this happen to code? Why does good code rot so quickly into bad code? We have lots of explanations for it. We complain that the requirements changed in ways that thwart the original design. We bemoan the schedules that were too tight to do things right. We blather about stupid managers and intolerant customers and useless marketing types and telephone sanitizers. But the fault, dear Dilbert, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. We are unprofessional.

This may be a bitter pill to swallow. How could this mess be our fault? What about the requirements? What about the schedule? What about the stupid managers and the useless marketing types? Don’t they bear some of the blame?

No. The managers and marketers look to us for the information they need to make promises and commitments; and even when they don’t look to us, we should not be shy about telling them what we think. The users look to us to validate the way the requirements will fit into the system. The project managers look to us to help work out the schedule. We are deeply complicit in the planning of the project and share a great deal of the responsibility for any failures; especially if those failures have to do with bad code!

“But wait!” you say. “If I don’t do what my manager says, I’ll be fired.” Probably not. Most managers want the truth, even when they don’t act like it. Most managers want good code, even when they are obsessing about the schedule. They may defend the schedule and requirements with passion; but that’s their job. It’s your job to defend the code with equal passion.

To drive this point home, what if you were a doctor and had a patient who demanded that you stop all the silly hand-washing in preparation for surgery because it was taking too much time?2 Clearly the patient is the boss; and yet the doctor should absolutely refuse to comply. Why? Because the doctor knows more than the patient about the risks of disease and infection. It would be unprofessional (never mind criminal) for the doctor to comply with the patient.

So too it is unprofessional for programmers to bend to the will of managers who don’t understand the risks of making messes.

The above is an excerpt from a book by Robert Martin, titled, “Clean Code – A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship”

There was a farmer who grew superior quality and award-winning corn. Each year he entered his corn in the state fair where it won honor and prizes. One year a newspaper reporter interviewed him, and learnt something interesting about how he grew it.

The reporter discovered that the farmer shared his corn seed with his neighbors!

‘How can you afford to share your best corn seed with your neighbors, when they too are entering their corn in competition with yours each year?’ the reporter asked.

‘Why sir’, said the farmer, ‘didn’t you know? The wind picks up pollen from the ripening corn and swirls it from field to field’.

If my neighbors grow inferior, sub-standard and poor quality corn, cross pollination will steadily degrade the quality of my corn. If I am to grow good corn, I must help my neighbors grow good corn.’

The farmer gave a superb insight into the connectedness of life. His corn cannot improve unless his neighbor’s corn also improves.

So it is in the other dimensions! Those who choose to be at harmony must help their neighbors and colleagues to be at peace. Those who choose to live well must help others to live well.

The value of one’s life is measured by the lives it touches.

Success does not happen in isolation. It is very often a participative and collective process.

So share the good practices, ideas, new learning with your family, team members, and neighbors.

In fact, TEAM is Together Everyone Achieves More

BP doesn’t need an engineer at the helm. It needs a leader.

Of course engineers matter, when the task is stemming damage from the largest oil spill in U.S. history. BP needs all the talent it can get. Scientists, engineers, and technicians, including the 2500 BOP employees sent to the Gulf from all over the world, have a critical role to play in cleaning up the environmental mess.

But BP must also clean up an organizational and cultural mess. The company needs a leader who engenders confidence. CEO Tony Hayward has had over six weeks in the spotlight to demonstrate his leadership capabilities. Yet the situation keeps getting worse: escalating damage in the Gulf and a whopping 35% drop in BP’s stock price.

A true leader faces facts, presents a situation fully to all stakeholders, and models accountability. A leader does not attempt to minimize the extent of a problem or promise action faster than can be delivered. A true leader sets appropriate expectations and delivers. He or she does not duck responsibility by shifting the bulk of the blame to someone else.

About a week after the April 20 explosion, Hayward was quoted in the New York Times as asking his executive team, “What the hell did we do to deserve this?” Recently, he declared that “I want my life back.”

Mr. Hayward, it’s not about you. The only consideration should be what’s best for the institution and its stakeholders. Eleven workers are dead, and damage to the ecosystem and coastal livelihoods are incalculable. Tony Hayward’s actions have not been responsive, and when that happens, a manager is dispensable. He can’t be the only person who can run the company during this crisis — which means that BP has even more BP (big problems) ahead.

Though Hayward has received public support from the chairman and top managers, we can guess that they’ve already privately conferred about a successor — unless the board is asleep at the switch. How could there not be gossip, speculation, and jockeying for his job? Behind-the-scenes maneuvering like this is common at other major companies facing less financially and environmentally disastrous situations.

Hayward became CEO three years ago to help stem the loss of reputation from a 2005 refinery explosion in Texas, when the company was fined a record $87 million by OSHA for failing to correct safety violations, and a 2006 pipeline leak in Alaska, which resulted in $20 million in criminal penalties for neglecting to repair corrosion. Hayward came in on a promise to change the culture and emphasize safety. So much for the safety platform.

Pointing fingers at Transocean because it was their rig and a failure of their equipment further hurt Hayward, even though others, such as Halliburton, the company in charge of cementing the well, are also playing the blame-shifting game.

A company can outsource the work but not the responsibility for it. One failure surely was the failure to apply high standards to suppliers and partners. Companies are now expected to take end-to-end responsibility for what they produce and sell. The SODDI defense (”some other dude did it”) doesn’t get CEOs of major companies off the hook.

Lapses seem to have been everywhere; e.g., in preparedness, alert systems, communication, and worst case scenario plans. BP has hired a new U.S. media relations head who had once worked for former Vice President Dick Cheney. (Pause to ponder the irony of invoking the Cheney-Halliburton-Iraq connection, which surely was not positive PR.) How can the CEO hold anyone else accountable if he or she doesn’t model accountability?

The public doesn’t expect miracles. Stuff happens. But it’s reasonable for stakeholders to expect that every possible step will be taken to prevent the stuff from happening in the first place and then to keep it from get out of control if it does. When stuff happens, a true leader should apologize quickly and take responsibility. The focus of a true leader’s attention is on the victims.

Why is Hayward still running BP? He should be smart enough to resign before being fired. It’s well-known that CEOs of organizations on a losing streak are notoriously hard to dislodge — look at how much General Motors bled before Rick Wagoner was out the door. But this circumstance is not minor, unlike Hayward’s initial protestations. It is not a slow accumulation of losses — BP’s finances were in good shape before the explosion. This is an acute, explosive situation with short-term urgency and long-term consequences. The problem is not PR.

Before other executives shed crocodile tears for Hayward, with secret snickers of schadenfreude, they should heed the leadership lessons. Confidence (as I say in my book by that title) requires accountability first and foremost. Like Hayward, leaders must learn to say out loud three important little words: “I was wrong.”

You’ve probably never heard of Dr. June McCarroll, but she’s truly a woman who left her mark on the world. Born in Nebraska, she was a general practitioner who lived in California. Interestingly enough, her claim to fame lies outside the world of medicine. An accident was the trigger that got her thinking about making our highways safer. Her car was sideswiped, and she determined to do something about cars that crowded others off the road.

Driving on a road that bulged down its center, Dr. McCarroll noticed that the bulge helped to keep motorists on their own side of the road. That gave her an idea. She tried persuading the town council to “paint a line down the middle of the road” to set an example and “lead the nation in public safety.”

She got the typical bureaucratic response. However, she was someone who would not take no for an answer. So she took her idea to the local women’s club. The vote was unanimous in support of the project. Still, she continued to face bureaucratic stubbornness for seven long years before her idea was implemented.

In 1924 the California Highway Commission agreed to experiment with a centerline on two sections of Route 99. Accidents on both test stretches diminished dramatically, and soon the entire state boasted McCarroll lines on its highways. Most of the world has since followed suit. Message: When you conceive an idea in which you fervently believe, go after that idea, especially if people you respect believe it’s a good one.

A Senior Manager working in an MNC, as usual after lunch, goes to the cafetaria for coffee.

He relaxes in canteen. He sees a canteen boy cleaning tables there.

To Kill time he decides to have fun with him.

He calls him.

Senior Manager - (Asks canteen boy) : How much do you earn?

Canteen boy smiles…

Senior Manager - what are your future plans?

Canteen boy keeps quiet…

Senior Manager - where do you see yourself 10 years down the line?

Canteen boy gives a cold stare.

Senior Manager – When I came to Bangalore I din have anything…. Now I have everything…

I Have Name in Society……….,

I Have Money………,

I Have Respect…………

What do u have ?

Scroll down to find out his answer

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Canteen boy – Sir… I have Work….

Senior Manager leaves the cafeteria silently…….

Please use your laptop in the right place and right time.

Very useful information
A good friend of ours in Mequon lost their 25 year old son Arun Gopal in a freak fire accident at home June 4th. This is exactly what happened. Arun had graduated with MBA from University of Wisconsin-Madison
just two weeks earlier and had came home from the campus for a day.

He had lunch with his dad at home and decided to go back to to clean up his room at the campus.However,his dad told him to wait and see his mother before returning to the campus as she was due back from work in a couple of hours. He decided to take a snooze while waiting for his mom while his dad went out.

Neighbors called 911 when they saw black smoke coming out of the house.The 25 year old Arun died in the three year old house. It took several days of investigation to find out the cause of the fire. It was determined that the
fire was caused by lap top in the bed.

When the lap top is on the bed, the area below it is blocked and the cooling fan does not get air to cool it and that is what caused the fire. Arun did not even wake up to make any effort to get out of bed as he died of massive carbon monoxide inhalation. The purpose of this “forward” is to make aware that most of us use our lap top in bed and often go to sleep with it next to us. Please make it a practice not to do that. The risk is very real. Make it a rule either not to use the lap top in bed. Please be careful friends!!!

An economics professor at a local college made a statement that he had never failed a single student before but had once failed an entire class.

That class had insisted that socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The professor then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on socialism. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.
After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B.

The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little.

The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F.

The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the professor told them that socialism would also ultimately fail ….because……

when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great ……….but ………

when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

It could not be any simpler than that.

What a profound short little paragraph that says it all :-

“You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.

You cannot multiply or create wealth by dividing it.”

Dr. Adrian Rogers, 1931

A lady bought some bathing soaps from a shop. When she opened one of the packets, she found that it was empty. There was no soap in there; it was just an empty wrapper! She lodged a complaint against the manufacturer and got her claim. That being settled, there was a task before the management of the soap factory. How had this happened? How could they ensure that the incident did not occur again? They had suffered enough bad publicity besides having to pay the compensation to the lady.

After a detailed investigation, it was discovered, that during the process of wrapping, it so happened that inevitably, one or two wrappers did get through, having no bar of soap in them! There was no way to make out the difference between a full wrapper and an empty one. The process of handling each one separately for this purpose seemed to be very cumbersome. So, the technical head was given the job of devising a method to overcome the problem. The man prepared a detailed report and proposed the setting up of a computer based system that would weigh and scan each bar, for the empty packs would not get detected by a normal x-ray machine. He proposed an expenditure of a large amount to put this system into place.

The management heard him out and passed the order to release the funds and to buy the machinery that he had proposed. An uneducated worker said, “Excuse me Sir, for my impertinence, but I have a solution that shall cost a fraction of what you are planning to go in for.”

The management hesitated initially. But eventually they heard him out and agreed to try out his proposal. The next day, the worker brought a strong industrial fan. He put it at an angle near the conveyor belt on which the packed soap bars were coming through and switched it on. The few empty wrappers that came through got blown off by the fan! The rest of them went past easily.

A simple solution, for a complex problem! This goes to prove that ideas are not the monopoly of the educated.

One day I hopped in a taxi and we took off for the airport.

We were driving in the right lane when suddenly a black car jumped out of
a parking space right in front of us.

My taxi driver slammed on his brakes, skidded, and missed the other car by
just inches! The driver of the other car whipped his head around and
started yelling at us.

My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was really
friendly.

So I asked, ‘Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and
sent us to the hospital!’

This is when my taxi driver taught me what I now call, ‘The Law of the
Garbage Truck.’

He explained that many people are like garbage trucks. They run around
full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of
disappointment.

As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it and sometimes
they’ll dump it on you. Don’t take it personally.

Just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. Don’t take their garbage
and spread it to other people at work, at home, or on the streets.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let garbage trucks take
over their day.

Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets,

So … Love the people who treat you right.

Pray for the ones who don’t.

Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it!