Quotable Quotes

Interesting Quotes I found in a dairy - 

The optimist sees oppurtunity in every danger, the pessimist sees danger in every oppurtunity

However great a man is, he has to bow before God and his barber.

If you do anything just for money you don't succeed.

A liar needs a good memory

Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for the stars

Observation, not old age, brings wisdom

A bad servant can never be a good master

The Power on Generosity

Excerpt from an excellent article from www.mindtools.com

Here are some practical tips to enhance our generosity of spirit:

1. Give people a sense of importance: In Adele Lynn's book, In Search of Honor: Lessons from Workers in How to Build Trust, we learn that 55% of workers value "giving people a sense of importance" as the number one item for building trust in the workplace. Consider what small actions you could take intentionally today to make people feel that the work they do is important, and that they themselves, as people, are important to your team.
2. Give feedback, not criticism: If giving frequent criticism is your style of management, consider some of these questions: Is your motivation genuine, or is it to gain points? Are you picking the right moment? Are you stopping to reflect how you might deliver the feedback while still honoring the other person?
3. Give people visibility: Giving people visibility in your organization is a special gift we bestow to help others shine and grow. I encourage you to think how you might give people more access to senior executives, and more access to your boss. Consider as well that people like to know that their boss's boss knows the great contributions they made to a project, or about their significant effort in writing a report that does not bear their name. Knowing that our leader is representing us well to upper management is a high-octane motivator, and engenders fierce loyalty.
4. Give anonymously: Real generosity of spirit is doing something for someone without their knowledge. Think of one or two deserving people in your organization that you can help by planting a career-enhancing seed on their behalf - perhaps saying something positive about their work to someone in authority?
5. Know when to forgive: Martin Luther King said that "The old law of an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind." Consider how harboring vindictive thoughts, even though so compelling at times, is nothing but violence to oneself. A characteristic of a generous person is a total lack of resentment – it's in effect being too noble, too big for that. Who do you need to forgive? What do you need to let go?
6. Give encouragement: Look around you and pick someone who needs encouragement, and resolve to give them that. Consider that some people have never received encouragement in their life – not from teachers, not from bosses, not even from parents.
7. Give opportunity: One of the most valuable gifts we can give someone is giving them a chance. Is there someone right now to whom you could give a second chance to prove themselves? If so, what active steps can you take to create the right circumstances for them to succeed? What doors can you open for someone who is well deserving, but not well positioned to be noticed?
8. Share your knowledge and experience: Resolve to become a philanthropist of know-how. What knowledge, expertise, or best practices can you share with others as a way to enrich them? For inspiration, read about other leaders who practice teaching in their organization for everyone's benefit – for example, Jack Welch, whose calendar was filled with hundreds of hours spent teaching thousands of GE managers and executives at the company's training center at Croton-on-Hudson; or the ex-CEO of Intel, Andy Grove, who devoted considerable amounts of time to teaching newly hired and senior managers his philosophy on how to lead in an industry where innovation goes stale very quickly.
9. Give moral support: Public speaking is known to be among the greatest fears experienced by millions of people. The next time you attend a presentation given by an apprehensive team member, practice giving them moral support. The simplest of generous acts are abstaining from checking your Blackberry, giving the odd nod in agreement, and practicing looking with kind eyes. Finally, take some inspiration from Walt Whitman's beautiful words: "The habit of giving enhances the desire to give." Giving is like building a muscle. It requires practice and persistence – once it becomes habitual, you will emerge as a stronger leader

Software technical online tutorials

http://www.technicalcontents.com/

This site has lot of articles.

Info about Pune

Another link which has info about Pune. This is government wiki site with discussion boards.
http://government.wikia.com/wiki/Pune

Info about Pune

Another good link giving info about Pune.

Eg: Pune hotels, Pune hospitals, Pune yellow pages, etc

http://www.punesite.com/

MBA

Following link gives info about MBA in India. It also has info on distance learning.
http://www.indianmba.com/

Never walk without a goal

A nice article I found on www.realage.com
Walking shoes -- check. Pedometer -- got it. But do you have a goal?
No goal? Better set one. It doesn’t even matter if you hit the mark. People who put a target on their radar -- like walking 10,000 steps a day -- walk a whole lot more than people who don’t have a goal. Studies prove it.
The End Game -
Walking 10,000 steps a day is an ideal physical activity goal, according to new guidelines. And in a large review of the research, scientists discovered that people with this goal -- or a personalized step plan -- literally walked the extra mile, logging about 2,000 extra steps a day. Plus, when people tracked their progress with a pedometer, they lost weight and improved their blood pressure.

Go Green

The following link tells us about the 50 things to do to save our environment.
http://www.morganstanley.com/about/community/littlegreenebook/

How are realized profits different from unrealized or so-called "paper" profits?

A good article I found on http://www.investopedia.com/
When buying and selling assets for profit, it is important for investors to differentiate between realized profits and gains, and unrealized or so-called "paper profits".Simply put, realized profits are gains that have been converted into cash. In order words, for you to realize profits from an investment you've made, you must receive cash and not simply witness the market price of your asset increase without selling. For example, if you owned 1,000 common shares of XYZ Corporation, and the firm issued a cash dividend of $0.50 per share, you would realize a profit of $500 from your investment. This is a realized profit because you have received the actual cash, which cannot be lost due to changes in the marketplace.

Similarly, let's say you purchased your 1,000 XYZ shares at $10 per share, for a total investment of $10,000. If XYZ Corp. were presently trading on the market for $15 per share and you sold all of your 1,000 shares on the open market at $15, you would realize a gain of $5,000 on your investment ($15,000 - $10,000).

Now, suppose that XYZ Corp.'s shares were trading at $15, but you believed they were fairly valued at $20 per share, and therefore, you were not willing to sell at $15. Because you would still be holding on to all of your 1,000 shares, you would have an unrealized, or "paper", profit of $5,000. Of course, if you have not closed out of your position and realized your gain, you could still lose some, or all, of your profits - and your principal as well.

On the other hand, because you have not realized your profit, you are not required to claim the gain as income; thus, by holding your shares instead of selling, you can potentially defer taxable income for a year (or many). Of course, the reverse is true for losses - realized losses can usually be claimed by investors as capital losses, offsetting other capital gains, while paper losses can not.

Portal for public grievances

Indian government has the following site to register administrative related complaints
http://pgportal.gov.in/index.html

The Best Place to Walk

A good article I found on www.realage.com

A walk on a treadmill or a walk in the park? Either one will get you fit, but the walk in the park may make you feel a whole lot better!
Research confirms it: Exercising in a green environment puts you in a better frame of mind than working out in a sterile gym. Go figure!
The Green Scene: In a study, people walked on a treadmill and viewed pictures of urban areas or images of rural scenes with lots of green spaces. The result? Besides bringing down blood pressure, viewing the green scenery improved energy and activity levels, raised self-esteem, and boosted mood.

Coverity and open source code

Flaws found in open source codes

Tom Espiner - 2008/05/21 08:56:01
http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Flaws-found-in-open-source-codes/0,339028227,339289125,00.htm

A project funded by the US Department of Homeland Security has praised improvements in open source security, while outlining some common errors.

Coverity, a commercial code analysis company spun out of Stanford University, has been running its Scan project with Department of Homeland Security funding since 2006.
On Tuesday, Coverity released its Open Source Report, which gives results of bugs in more than 250 open-source projects. Coverity declined to give details of individual projects' faults, but instead gave a list of frequent coding errors.

Coverity did single out some projects for particular praise due to the cleanliness of the code, including Amanda, NTP, OpenPAM, OpenVPN, Perl, PHP, Python and Samba.
The most common type of code defect, accounting for 28 percent of all the defects found, was the NULL pointer dereference, as the use of pointers in C/C++ is error-prone, according to Coverity.
"This type of error often occurs when one code path initialises a pointer before its use, but another code path bypasses the initialisation process," stated the report. "Pointers are a notoriously challenging programming concept that many languages elide altogether (eg Java). Senior developers know that new programmers frequently have trouble understanding pointers."

Because pointers are often used to pass data structures by reference between pieces of program logic, they may be the most commonly manipulated data objects due to repeated copying, aliasing and accessing. Therefore, it is not surprising that the most frequently used artefacts will incur the most errors in manipulation, said Coverity.
The second most common type of code defect are resource leaks. While some resource leaks are pointer-related, others may be the result of misusing an application programming interface (API), said Coverity.

Other common code defects include unintentional ignored expressions, use before test and buffer overflow vulnerabilities.

Copyright © 2008 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.

Ebooks

Ebooks download link
http://www.giuciao.com/books/book.php?id=5521&by=Business&ord=id

Quality Assurance

Another good link provided by Roger Pressman in his book 'Software Engineering'
http://www.asq.org/

Good PMC and PMT links

PMC link - http://www.punecorporation.org/betterroads/Home/Home.aspx
This link shows map of pune city. Complaints for pot-holes on roads can be filed directly on the map.
PMT / PMPML link - http://www.pmtpune.org/index.asp
From this link, you can find the bus routes in Pune.

Software Engg links

The following links were mentioned in the book 'Software Engg' by Roger Pressman as additional reference material
http://www.sei.cmu.edu/ - gives info about Software Engg Institute and CMM levels
http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/ - gives info about software technology support centre

Vitamins and minerals

Use the link below to know what and how much vitamins and minerals you need as per your age group
http://www.oprah.com/health/oz/programs/young/solutions/solutions_vitamin.jhtml

Nice Birthday Wishes

Let the god decorate each golden ray of the sun reaching u with wishes of success, happiness and prosperity 4 u, wish you a super duper happy birthday.

Look outside its so pleasant moments sun is smiling with you trees dancing for you birds singing for you because last night i asked them all to wish you happy birth day!

MSDN code gallery

I found this link on one of the 'daily developer news' email from www.codeproject.com

http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/

Stress free life

Some time back, we had reader's digest subscription. A free self improvement book came along with it. I have found it very useful. The name of that book is '100 ways to a stress-free life'. I don't think this book is available in the market. But the author of this book is G. Gaynor McTigue. I found his homepage and seems like he is very reputed author writing books on self-improvement. The following is the link of his website.

http://www.pickmeupbooks.com/ggaynor/index.html

Tej Gyan Foundation

Every Tuesday, there was a program on vividbharti from Tej Gyan Foundation. It gave very good information on spirituality and how to live life successfully.

Tej Gyan Foundation website
http://www.myhappythoughts.com/

Great program on vividbharti, pune - radio

Vividvharti is the oldest and best radio channel in India. Apart from songs that are played, a lot of information is given here. It has surely helped me to gain a lot of knowledge.


Daily a program is transmitted by Centre for Learning Resources, Pune. It helps students of std 5th, 6th and 7th to learn English.

Link: http://www.clrindia.net/index.html

There was a nice poem/song that was created by them. It was really funny and I wanted to post this here :)
The song tune is based on the old hindi song
Yeh hay Bombay! Yeh hay Bombay!
Yeh hay Bombay! Meri Jaan!!



Following are the lyrics. The text in italics is for understanding the characters (people) who say that stanza. (Read the poem without the italics :) )

First Friend
Found a peanut! Found a peanut!
Found a peanut! Just Now!!
Just Now! Found a peanut!
Found a peanut! Just Now!!

Second Friend
Where did you find it? Where did you find it?
Where did you find it? Just Now!!
Just Now! Where did you find it?
Where did you find it? Just Now!!

First Friend
In the dustbin! In the dustbin!
In the dustbin! Just Now!!
Just Now! In the dustbin!
In the dustbin! Just Now!!

Ate a peanut! Ate a peanut!
Ate a peanut! Just Now!!
Just Now!! Ate a peanut!
Ate a peanut! Just Now!!

Had a stomach ache! Had a stomach ache!
Had a stomach ache! Just Now!!
Just Now! Had a stomach ache!
Had a stomach ache! Just Now!!

Call a doctor! Call a doctor!
Call a doctor! Just Now!!
Just Now! Call a doctor!
Call a doctor! Just Now!!

Doctor
Operation! Operation!
Operation! Just Now!!
Just Now! Operation!
Operation! Just Now!!

And the doctor says :)
Found a peanut! Found a peanut!
Found a peanut! Just Now!!
Just Now! Found a peanut!
Found a peanut! Just Now!!

Technopreneur

I found this link in IT magazine. It attempts to bridge the gap between innovators and the marketplace

http://www.techno-preneur.net/main.htm

Self improvement

A very good link for resources on self improvement
http://www.mindtools.com/

Free ebooks download

A good free ebooks download link

http://knowfree.net/

Software coding resources

Vijay Mukhi's Technology Cornucopia
http://vijaymukhi.com/

Codeguru
http://www.codeguru.com/

MSDN
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/

Top 5 Habits to Increase Longevity

An excellent article I found on yahoo...

Top 5 Habits to Increase Longevity Posted Tue, Dec 18, 2007, 6:12 pm PST

Is it really possible for anyone to live happily to 100? The good news is that your body was designed to be 100 - you just have to get out of the way.Getting out of the way means taking an honest look at the habits and lifestyle you are living with today. Most of us have developed habits that limit our true health potential.
But don't let these bad habits of the past discourage you - it is never too late to make new choices. What you did in the past can be changed, and your body will respond in kind. What matters is what you do from this moment forward.

Top 5 Daily Habits for Your Longevity

It takes 14 to 21 days of repetitive behavior to form a new pattern in your brain. Once the pattern is formed, it becomes an automatic behavioral response.
As you develop new healthy habits, they will begin to replace bad habits. These healthy lifelong habits are adapted straight from the time-tested traditions practiced by centenarians all around the world, and I can say with certainty that they will transform and rejuvenate you!

1. Eat five small meals a day:
In the Western culture, meals are taken three times a day, but it is much better to eat five smaller meals. When you eat smaller portions five times a day, you deliver a steady stream of nutrients, blood sugar, and energy to your body throughout the day.
Additionally, eating this way is less taxing on the digestive and metabolic systems and also reduces your risk of heart disease.

2. Climb the stairs instead of using elevators:
The health benefits of a daily exercise program cannot be stressed enough. Regular exercise can help promote physiological well-being, strengthen the immune system, maintain joint mobility, increase energy - and the list goes on.
Look for opportunities all through your day to work in physical activity. Power-walk, run, or ride your bike instead of driving. Begin a daily tai chi practice. Join a gym and actually go! Practice safely and watch your health results pile up.

3. Laugh it up!
We know from research that laughter and joy boost immune functions, especially the production of the natural killer cells that help protect the body from illness and cancer. Laughter also increases the release of endorphins, compounds that give you a sense of well-being, in your brain. Without a doubt, joyful people live longer and healthier lives.

4. Drink 8 glasses of water every day:
Water is essential for all healthy body functions. Centenarians from around the globe cite their native water as the source of their health and longevity - and the scientists agree with them. What they all have in common is pure water sources located far from any city, free from chemicals and toxins.
Choose filtered water; the best filtration processes are the ones that use activated charcoal, which removes the impurities but leaves the water-soluble minerals. Also, do not store water in plastic containers because the polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) can leach into the water.

5. Unwind with meditation:
Stress is the root cause of most of the diseases that shorten our life span. In our modern society stress will continue to increase - unless you find techniques to manage it. Meditation is the best way to release tension and revitalize your being. It teaches you to breath properly, which is critical for eliminating up to 70% of your body's toxins and wastes. It also quiets your mind, lowers your stress hormones, and teaches self-discipline, which is a necessary attribute to achieving your health and longevity goals.
Try this beginning meditation:Sit comfortably on a chair or the floor. Breathe naturally and close your eyes. Each time a thought appears, put it inside a balloon and let it fly up into the sky and disappear. Do this until the thoughts are exhausted. After a bit, your body will feel very light, and your mind will become still. The first few times it may take a while, but it will get easier and faster with practice.

I hope you use these healthy habits for years to come! I invite you to visit often and share your own personal health and longevity tips with me. May you live long, live strong, and live happy!

By Dr. Maoshing Ni
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