Sudarshan Gaikaiwari

and all I got are these photos

“I can think of nothing less pleasurable than a life devoted to pleasure.”

I came accross this quote from my subscription to the quote of the day service. It is by John D Rockfeller the noted industrialist. There are a bunch of other quotes from him here. I am not sure what Rockfeller meant by the pursuit of pleasure. There is no greater pleasure than becoming better at something. Be it becoming a better programmer or working out to develop a better physique. I cannot imagine a life more pleasrable than one dedicated to these pleasures. Everyone has his/her own idea of what is pleasurable. At the same time there I see no point in living one’s life with someone else’s standards of what is pleasurable. Some people like to chat and gossip with friends others read thousands of blogs. I have found that it is easier to have close and meaningful relationships with people whose ideas of pleasure and outlook towards life in general match mine

http://www.agitar.com/downloads/20060516-webinar_-_lunch_with_kent_beck.html

This a great talk by Kent Beck on “ease at work”, a talk about attitudes that programmers should adopt while at work.Do listen to this if you write code for a living.

Highlights

• Ease means that one is in a state of comfort “it is ok for me to be here doing what I am doing”.
• Difference between Yosemite and Great America ( a recreational park in the Bay Area). You can have a good time at Great America but the next day your still the same person while going to Yosemite can change you.

It has been a day since I have listened to this talk and I am still trying to adopt these attitudes.

I came upon this paper while googling for “group buying”. I was really fascinated by Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) mentioned in this paper. Now how can I use this in real life? The problem I see is that it is not that easy to assign weights to various attributes. Then again most of the time I make most decisions entirely randomly so a framework might at least give the whole thing an illusion of a process.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Enjoy

I just came across this definition

Geeks, Nerds, and Dorks: A geek has a very focused knowledge of a subject (that guy that memorized the language of myst), a nerd is a master at many subjects (that girl you go to when you need homework help), and a dork is just plain socially inept (Napoleon Dynamite).

Now I guess “dork” is what describes me most aptly and Napoleon Dynamite is a movie I really identify with. I remember watching that movie with a couple of friends in Las Cruces. Now both of them (a guy and a girl) were among the “in” crowd all their lives. Both of them could barely sit throught Napoloen Dynamite. Maybe they found the movie extremely slow or maybe they too saw some relections of themselves in the movie and did not like what the mirror showed them.

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