Random Rants/Adventures in Life

On a typical workday, quarter of the team is chasing documents down, one quarter is furiously working to making sure version control guidelines are being followed while preparing for the status meeting, one quarter is passing outdated versions of the same documents out and the final "smart" quarter is quietly following the new revolution in business !! Document management is a nightmare in most organizations. No one is quite sure of the most current version, people who are working on a particular section take a break, meeting notes are stored on someone's PC, hard drives crash, intranets are not updated and on and on. Most organizations do have some sort of content management solution in place, but nothing seems to work. Either the solution in place is too technical for employees to use or the solution is too simplistic to offer anything of value. Often, the solution is not a true solution at all, because it is not available outside the company domain to work on. In such ...

What to do ? Assorted pics lying in the temp folder, to be uploaded is the best solution ! Picture Courtesy : Mi

I have been travelling a lot in India on my current trip and it has been a pleasure on several sectors. One such sector where I have made several trips is the new Baroda - Ahmedabad Expressway, also christened as National Expressway - 1. The road surface is excellent, the National Expressway has definitely a feel of an American Interstate and you can routinely average speeds of 120 kmph without breaking a sweat (Unless you are in a private Volvo bus careening at 100 kmph and making you feel you would be airborne any moment !!) However, three things struck me on NE-1. The toll on NE-1 is 61 rupees (@ USD 1.37) one-way between Baroda and Ahmedabad. What is the rationale behind having 61 rupees and not say 65 or 60 ? Someone indicated that is a formula based on the per kilometer toll calculated by the National Government. This sounds absurd to me. The rates on a toll road should be based on the local conditions. People travelling on a toll road in this sector have a choice of using t...

Spoiler Alert – Some observations, mostly a long rant !! Not that I would be missed a lot, but a big reason for the “enormous” delay in getting online was my total inability to get a high speed internet connection at hom e. The "smiling" icon on the left is of Iqara communications . Amit Varma of India Uncut makes a very valid point when he says , " Telephones In the 1980s, it would take you years to get a telephone in India. Today, it takes anything from a day to a week. Q: What has changed? Ans: Competition. That's why competition is a good thing, even if the competition keeps messing up. So Tata Indicom may give me sucky service and Reliance may hassle me in different ways, but I have options. And it's because all these options exist that even MTNL's service is vastly better than in the pre-liberalisation days. Competition rocks. And even though liberalisation is no panacea, without it, I wouldn't be online right now and typing this. Would you be read...