lunatechian (lunatech-ian)

I have been playing with s9y's cml-rpc interface for a few days now. Here is a small article on how you can post to your s9y blog using the command line.

If you have not yet read the book iWoz, you have to go out and get this book and read it cover to cover. It is an amazing book and I could not put this book down once I started reading it. It is an amazing book and I could not put this book down once I started reading it. Woz is an excellent storyteller and his tone of writing is conversational. Every engineer should read this book. It tells the stories of sleepless nights and how much they are worth. It talks about persistence and passion and how they really make a difference. One of the profound statements that Woz makes is " I chose to be happy ". The book ends with Woz's thoughts on being a great engineer:

• Don’t waver.
• See things in gray-scale.
• Work alone.
• Trust your instincts.

One surprising thing in the book is the absence of any mention of the EFF, of which Woz was one of the founders.

Ramki explaing some subtle points. However, just think of it as a demo of b**b-catching and laugh

He-he .. look at this. British pensioners regret not having more sex, says poll.

Seven out of 10 people aged 65 and over said they would make more time to make love if they could have their days again.

[snip]
[snip]

Sex was followed by travelling the world (57 per cent) and changing professions (43 per cent) as the most popular wishes pensioners had if they could go back in time.

Other regrets included saving for a pension (40 per cent), standing up to their boss (33 per cent), marry someone else (21 per cent), spending more cash on luxuries (19 per cent) and setting up a business (16 per cent).

You have heard what the more experienced have to say. Now go out and have more sex and travel more - leave those angle brackets alone for now

An update on my hiring and retaining post. This discussion was also happening on the pmclininc mailing list. One of the posters said that the good managers measure their job satisfaction using this list of questions

• Do I know what is expected of me?
• Do I have the right materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
• At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?
• In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good work?
• Does my supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about me as a person?
• Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
• At work, do my opinions seem to count?
• Does the mission/purpose of my company make me feel my job is important?
• Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
• Do I have a best friend at work?
• In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my progress?
• This last year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

There has been a thread going on in the india-gii list about hiring and retaining talented coders in india. Here is the email that the original poster had posted

Over the past few weeks I've met with several people who are all
having the same headaches

1. Hiring talented coders
2. Retaining talented coders

The first is usually down to lack of talent (coders directly out of
college just don't have the "new " skills (for example) in things like
ajax, ruby, but have core knowledge of things like C, and what I call
"old" languages), and also salaries wanted, especially if you are
trying to sell abroad and compete with pricing abroad, i.e brazil,
russia, ukraine offer lower prices these days.  

My thoughts about this

When hiring freshers, I don't think you should look for what languages
they know. Instead you should
- try to gauge how much of the fundamentals they know
- if they (freshers) are self-learners

Point 1 can be checked by asking them about sorting/searching
algorithms or networking or process management (basically the topics
which are covered in their operating system course or their data
structures course).

Point 2 can be checked by seeing if they have contributed to any free
software project and actually asking them to show their code (it is
after all free software and there is no NDA).  If a fresher has worked
on an open source project, it usually means
- he knows about version control
- he knows about mailing lists
- he can work without much supervision
- he can work with a distributed team
- and most importantly, he can work with a team

In the email, the original poster had also mentioned this point

the big guns (tcs, infosys etc) hire like 10K users in a go, and its
seems that the prospects of getting a good wife/husband are directly
linked to the name of the company on the CV (again this maybe biased,
but am seeing it more and more).

WTF!! ROTFL!!