Blackberry addiction

I am one of the ‘newbies’ in the world of Blackberry. In my early days of programming, I would get a pager to do ‘on call’ duties on a rotation basis. I still remember the nightmare I used to get as I was put in the pager rotation while working at MCI Worldcom. The nightmare was not due to the fact that I have to wake up in the middle of the night and login, it was due to the fact that I was only on the team for two weeks when I went oncall and I had no clue what was going on from a programming perspective. I did not understand the data or the purpose of the ‘jobs’ that would run every night (As hard as I try to avoid the mainframe Cobol, JCL jargon, it is bound to show up in this post, so ignore those and move ahead). An year or so later, I joined Qwest and went oncall after about three months of my joining there. While the initial two or three weeks were a bit edgy, I soon got very comfortable with it and even volunteered to take oncall duties during Christmas and other holidays if I was in town. But still, a pager was still not something that I fell in love with.

Years later, now, when I think about it, a blackberry is just an extended version of a pager, but something packaged so nicely that , carrying it is seen more as a style than a burden. I am also not sure if they use pagers anymore, even in mainframe shops, may be they are all using blackberries.

I am already a little notorious for my email addiction. Apart from the core sleeping hours of 11 PM to 5 AM or so, I check my six or so different email accounts every 30 minutes or less than that. Now you may ask if I do anything else other than checking emails, yes I do. I have become so efficient in checking my emails that it only takes me a minute or two to switch between Yahoo, Hotmail, Google, ISP email, work email and my alternate hotmail (??). So within about 5 minutes, I would have checked all these accounts and fired off some replies.

Now imagine me carrying a blackberry. Those in Halifax region watchout, I am one of those addicts sending emails while waiting at stop sign and at traffic lights. . Well, if Vani is with me in the car, I usually take it a little more easily, but if she is not around, I sometimes send 5 emails on my way back or to work !! I know, I know, it is a berry berry vad habit, and thats why I am here. Is there any help for such addicts? Do you think it will go away as time progresses? I have had the blackberry for a  little more than a month now. Any advice??

Venkatesh.

Facebook – An interesting battle of the Media

Ok, I admit. I have become a Facebook junkie (in addition to the email junkie, Orkut junkie, Torrents junkie etc that I already am). Of course, like any addiction, you never think that you will be addicted to it when you start it. My facebook life started with Patrick Bohan inviting me to be a member of this online community. Two interesting things happened since then (Well, actually three, but let us leave George Clooney out of this one for now, so only two).

Last week’s Chronicle reported that our Premier, Mr. Rodney Macdonald has a facebook account. It is probably a means to connect with the younger generation, but that report increased his number of ‘friends’ in facebook by hundreds, if not thousands. Curiosity got the better of me and I too sent in the request to be a friend of the Premier. And, I was promptly accepted as a ‘friend’ . Now I am not sure if the Premier would recognize me, that is his new ‘friend’ if he saw me in the street, but hey, that is hardly under discussion here. I am friends with the Premier and thats it !

Now comes the interesting battle that I promised in the title of the blog. As Ed McHugh once pointed out (one of my favorite authorities on Marketing communications, a gem of a person), Halifax does not have a decent radio station to listen to, which is why more people are tuning to CBC Now, however, that is not my reason to listen to CBC. I do not care much for the western music and I prefer to listen to the likes of Rahman and Ilaiyaraja in my car if I need music, but most mornings, I am just happy with Don and Liz and their information morning in CBC. Now, Don is one of the most pleasing personalities to listen to on air. Before looking at his picture, I had him associated with Frasier (TV Show), but obviously he has more hair than Frasier and also has a successful family life (unlike Frasier, again). Last week, Don Connolly opened a face book account and is now on a mission to get more ‘friends’ that the Premier With about 2 hours of air time every weekday morning in one of the most listened to channels in Halifax, I don’t think it is a tough act to do. Also Don does not come with any political view or motive, so anyone can connect to him as a friend. Most liberals would stay away from becoming a friend of the Preem I suppose.

So, that is the Facebook story. The ultimate winner in this story is of course, Facebook.com and they are now the second largest networking site I believe. The first one being myspace.

Sharkwater – an eye opener

Yesterday I watched the sneak preview of the documentary ‘Sharkwater’ . It really was an eye opener in terms of what we are doing to the eco system in the ocean.

 The movie starts out with a personal statement. The first few minutes you almost feel like it is a personal movie and you dont get too involved in the message. But then it starts getting better. The length of the movie is a bit questionable and I think it can be safely reduced by another 20 minutes or so without impacting the message.

The movie on the whole is a very good effort in bringing to light the forces behind shark hunting and finning. I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is concerned about our planet. Go see the film and try to do something to save the sharks or in other words, the planet. Good job Rob Stewart !

-VT

Yaathra, LinkedIn and such..

Of late, lot of my waking time (other than the work time) has been dedicated to this indian festival that I am helping to organize. Yaathra is a one day festival/event/gateway to India.

I am glad to say that things are going really well, even though I would like to see more people from the community participate in the planning phase of the program. The objective, to me, is two fold. The event will provide an exposure about India to visiting people, agreed. But an even more important objective in these kinds of events is that it will help you strengthen your community and create a better bonding between the members who work together in organizing the event. I dont see that happening a lot, but there is still time left and hopefully, I can motivate a few people to join the organizing committee.

I am excited to get on board two platinum sponsors for the event ! That is a great support and will give us some flexibility in terms of spending. I have to thank my contacts for that. Since the announcements are not public yet, I cannot reveal the names of the organizations here.

What else I have been upto other than Yaathra? Not a whole lot, really. I did update my LinkedIn profile with this blog address, to increase hits I also got a few of my colleagues to recommend me on that site.

 Thats all for now, still waiting for my first comment from the blog site Any takers for that role??

 -VT

Non-Profit vs Professional organizations

For my regular work, I manage projects at my office. My pastime is to manage projects for SICAM, the non-profit organization for south indian culture in maritimes. We are getting ready to host the show Yaathra – A voyage to India.It is a day long festival, with a dance show at the end of the day.

The plan is to have displays, food, cultural programs through out the day. While I seem to think that managing both projects (at work and off work) is almost the same, my other half seems to think otherwise. I do agree that there are some differences, but basically they are both people and task management. As long as you have broken down your project by tasks and assigned resources to each of the tasks, they are similar.

The difference comes in the part of resources. While at Work, you have access to recruit members for your project team. Whereas, in the outer world, you have to recruit volunteers. You have to clarify the objective of the task, help them, sometimes force them and guide them through to the end. I guess, I cannot after all use the same techniques.

I would love to hear from others out there who have had good success in managing major non-profit events. What all did you do to get volunteers? How did you reward them at the end?

Eating healthy!

Ever since I joined the ‘New Menu for Life’ program at work, all my friends have been hearing about healthy eating  choices from me. So I thought, why just torture the friends you can see, why not torture the whole world out there Besides, I also need to get off the block and write something in these pages. I know that once I get going, I am hard to stop

So today’s speaker was a Naturopathic Doctor. It was interesting to hear her presentation and she had several valid points. But what made it more interesting was the fact that she was preceded (last week) by a nutritionist and they both had contradictory things to say. Here are some examples. You can decide for your own what is right and what is wrong.

1. Sugar – According to nutritionist (hereafter referred to as NT, since I cant seem to get that word right), sugar is sugar is sugar. Doesnt matter if it is honey or brown or white. Whereas our Naturopathic Doctor (ND) claims that white is refined sugar which is really bad, brown is better but Honey is best. Your pick?

2. Salt – NT says sea salt is just a fashion and no diff with the regular table salt. ND differs, sea salt has more minerals (iodine in particular) and is good for you. But I thought they added Iodine to the regular salt anyway, or don’t they?

3. Oils – Oils are all the same (well, almost) and Olive is the best – NT. Nah nah, Olive is good if you are only cooking at medium heat, for high heat use coconut oil says our ND.

 They were both good and had supporting evidences for their claim. But ND says that our bodies are better adapted to deal with natural things than with stuff that we have changed, like refined sugar. That seems to be a logical argumet.

Overall, the eating healthy part is great and I am enjoying the increased awareness. It has also resumed the trips to the gym and more walking has been added to the agenda. So its all pointing towards a great summer, I can’t wait for it to be here !

 Eat healthy and stay healthy. And dont forget to leave comments !

 Ciao…VT.

So, what’s different now?

You might be asking yourself this question when you see another blog and you are right to a great extent. As some wise man said ‘There are only so many stories to say, and most of them have been told already’. You may not find any mind cracking material in this blog, but you might find some everyday thoughts that you have forgotten about And we all need reminders. As I progress on my work and personal life, I wish to share some of these thoughts with the hope that it will re-kindle your memory.

Feel free to leave a footmark.

 Cheers..VT.