In his cradle

Till death do us part.

Why put death as a full stop? We (our consciousness) live even after death. Death is just the end of this physical body. From the earth it has come, and to the earth it will return back. We are not our bodies. We are waves of the oceans. Where do you think a wave that arises in the ocean go? Back to the ocean, right! In the same way we get absorbed back into God, from where we came.

We may chose to come back after some time or whenever, to take birth on Earth. Because this life on earth is a means of realizing God in entirety i.e. achieve nirvana. Wherever we may be with or without bodies, we are in safe hands always – God's bosom. He tucks us away gently into his merciful hands and sings us the lullaby that we used to hear when we were kids, you remember?

This very world that we live in is magical. Actually, scientific in the core and magical in the icing of it. Hell / Heaven and other worlds can all be found on this beautiful planet itself. Where are these worlds? When we feel happy, remember we are in heaven. When we feel bad, we are in hell. The gradations or intensity varies.

There may be other worlds. By that I mean other planetary systems where life may be there. Not maybe there, I suspect there is. But I have no direct experience of the same. To tell you the truth, this planet itself is enough. Because there are so many unexplored mysteries of the Earth alone which fascinates me, that I rarely think of other worlds.

One thing I know for sure the whole universe is a sacred place in the benevolent mercy of my Lord.

Regards,

Guru30

Change Thyself

It's very difficult to change people, mainly because of the baggage that they carry as habits. This included me also. I went to a restaurant and started eating a dish a particular way. Every time I would go about it the same way, till I stumbled upon another option. Then I realized how much a victim of my habits am I.

This is where software helps. For example say you are using a particular version of MS Office and somebody else on the other side of the planet is also using the same version. Well the common thread that runs is the same user interface. If you speak of a macro that both have used, they both understand it. (if language also is the same)

At the other end is personalization. We cut and chop and make personalized dashboards or other gizmos catering to our taste. This is our habit compatible. In fact, this is required but not always mandatory. As an example take Mozilla Firefox which has skins. The default skin is quite pleasing, but for the habit people, they keep changing skins till they discover that the default was pretty much it.

I'm not against personalization or for rigid standards. Both are required in a 50:50 way for a normal user. Aah, that's hard to define – who is a normal user ? I would say, a clear person as far as dianetics is concerned. The average Joe or the moderate Stan. A person who is willing to change his views as far as values are not under consideration.

Cheers,

Guru30

A happy and a safe world

Most of the people around us are good. They are just reflections of our own character. You do good, you get good people around you. I'm reminded of the truism 'Right Thoughts; Right Words; Right Action' which if we practice, leads to happiness in the long run. If you ask me, what is the greatest weapon that we have in life, my answer would be truth.

As far as the projects for a services company is concerned, it always starts with Requirements gathering (assuming that the contract is signed). We should practice the following in order to get the best out of this phase. Viz. Listening, Mirroring (repeating what was said at regular points of time), noting (taking notes) and revisiting (revising).

For Analysis & Design stage we should practice the following, viz. Mapping requirements to design, using design standards and fallback plan. For coding it would be viz. Using coding standards, doing unit testing, walkthru's and review's. For testing phase we would require test plans, writing exhaustive test cases (with tool or without) and creating a database of bugs.

As in a project there are different phases, life also comes with the same concept. The earliest stage is newborn (and just like a newborn baby needs more attention than say a toddler, the projects also in the beginning need to be given more attention to) and then we pass through teenagers, young adults, married people, procreation, giving back to the world and finally renunciation.

Although this has been said simply, the practice of the truism mentioned above is a challenge for all of us. And the day we are all on the same page regarding this, we will have a happier and safer world.

Cheers,

Guru30

Share the world

Share – a deadly emerging paradigm. The question that we must ask ourselves is, why do we want to share? The answer is simple. We all like to be appreciated and we also like to appreciate others. The other aspect of sharing is to spread stories. For e.g. You bought a new TV today, and it doesn't work and hence you blog about that. This can be out of frustration or with the feeling that nobody else should fall for the trap or sometimes both.

The other aspect of sharing revolves around 2 major factors viz. What to share and who to share it with. Sounds complicated; actually it's quite simple. Ask yourself this question; What are the things in your life which you would not want to share with anyone. Then increase the level of sharing. Denote for e.g.: I can share this personal idea with Mark; I cannot share office status with Betty and so on.

We have to be very careful before we hit the Share button. For e.g. If you mean to share something with a Group, better be sure that all people in the group should be amicable to your post. This is one danger area, as some people may get offended (due to whatever reasons) or some people may tag you everywhere. One is ignorance and the other is indulgence.

As we know that every concept has its ups and downs, we can surely say that the pros are more in the case of sharing. We have migrated from the days of reading the web to actively participating in it. What's the next step? I personally feel that while sharing your stuff, related stuff would get shared automatically by a Semantic Web. Another thing that comes to my mind is fusion. If somebody is researching on say accountancy, automatically a package suggestion like for Tally or Quicken would be useful for this person, and hence auto suggestions would be the wave of future sharing...

Thanks & Regards,

Guru30