Looking back at 2012

New year party

Started the year 2012 with a party at Minneapolis, MN. I drove to the cities, two day before the new year, from La Crosse-WI where I used to live then. And I stayed at my friends place. I was determined to go to a party with fully dressed up. Its an inspiration from "Barney" :-), an awesome character in the series "How I met your Mother". I convinced my friends also. We all suited up & went to the new year party in EPIC event center. It was snowing on the midnight & its the first snow of the year. The night was very beautiful, people were all dressed up & looking nice. I had many drinks, didn't keep the count of it after couple of drinks, or actually couldn't keep the count :-), danced with strangers. When I think about it now, it was little heavy on the wallet :-) but definitely a fun night to remember.

  

Birthday

I am not big fan of celebrating birthdays. One of my friend, living in twin cities then, invited me for the Monster Jam event. I was reluctant in the beginning and said no to him. But later I realized it's my birthday as well on that day, then I thought why not go to cities & have fun.  So again I came to the cities to party with my friends for my birthday and went to the Monster Jam event as well. It was at Vikings stadium, liked it very much. The music and truck engine noises were so loud initially and later got used to it. I have seen these programs in TV when I was in school, got excited to see these live; big trucks, stunts, loud music and big engine noise. It was fun.

 

Came back to La Crosse on Sunday night and my wonderful friends were ready with a cake to celebrate my birthday. I was really happy that they came over to my place to celebrate it. They might have came to take revenge on me too :-) Happy to have them as friends.

  

32 mile bike tour

I was reading an article about the TCS CEO Chandrasekar, and in that he said he trained himself to run full Marathon at the age of around 45. I decided then and there, that I will have to run a marathon one day. So I decided to start with Half Marathon. I participated in a beginner  triathlon before and I know my training was not good as I was training alone. So this time I decided to train with friends and colleagues  Persuaded 4-5 guys to register for Half Marathon with me. Though its little selfish here :-), its a win win for everyone. We all registered for May event in Jan. Started training, created a Facebook event page and started posting the training progress. Since it was my first time, I didn't know how to train myself. Didn't know I need a good pair of running shoes. I bought a bare foot experience running shoe, trained hard, without proper rest and damaged my shins. I didn't even know what shin splints mean that time. Only after getting hurt came to know I needed a good running shoes that fits my running style and rest is equally important as training. I gave rest for couple of weeks and trained back again, but I couldn't recover from the damage in short time. Gave rest again for couple of weeks, but didn't help at all. So I decided to switch to 32 mile biking event. That's how I ended up doing 32 mile biking. Started training for it. I go to gym on weekdays and bike in the trails on weekends. On weekends I used to do 20-22 miles in my mountain bike @ 10 miles/hour pace. Meanwhile I moved to twin cities for other Job opportunity. But I came back to La Crosse for the event. All my friends who registered with me completed their first Half marathon and I completed my 32 mile biking. It was a good experience and fun to train with friends.

         

Moved to St. Paul, MN from La Crosse, WI

I was bored with my project, it was not technically challenging. Also I wanted to move to a big city. But that thought become stronger when I went to Salt Lake City on the way to yellow stone national park in Sep 2011. Though its not a big city like NY, its a good city. It has few sky scrappers. Then after few weeks the thought become weaker. Then I visited twin cities couple of times for new year & birthday. Liked the city very much. I decided firmly this time that I want to move out to a bigger city. I went and told my manager to release me, and luckily we got an opportunity in twin cities itself. Everything worked out well and I moved to St. paul. Though I was happy on one side that I am moving to a new city, new technical project; I was sad that I am going to miss the La Crosse gang. We had a booz party on a weekend before I left, & we had great fun on that night. La Crosse guys gave me a nice send off lunch, everyone was there that day. I was happy to see everyone on that day. Few of my close friends gifted me a unique funny tequila.

After moving to the cities, I really enjoyed working in the new project, had lots of  parties, made new friends, perspective on technology has changed. Definitely this is one of the top decisions of the year.

         

Half Marathon

Though I could not complete my first Half Marathon, I was determined to do a half marathon before 2012 ends. Luckily I found the Monster Dash half marathon in twin cities and registered for it. Came to know about the Lake Calhoun from friends, that it is a good place for running and biking. I am glad I found this place. I should say that this lake has contributed a lot on my half marathon training. Also slowly I started liking running outdoors, felt like that's my yoga time. But I kinda over did my training. Its enough if you were able to do 10 mile once in your training. I did 10 mile 5 - 6 times every weekend and I got my knee injured just 2 weeks before the event. I was scared that I will not be able to run this time also. I didn't run for the next two weeks. On the day of the event, my knees started giving pain after 10 min of run itself. I thought I will quit and walk out, but little part of my heart said to keep it going. I kept limping from mile 2 till the end but some how finished it. I was so happy that I completed the race.

45 mile bike ride
This happened just like that. I didn't have any plan for a long weekend. So I decided I will bike the grand rounds, a 50 mile scenic byway around twin cities. I took the bile rental and just did that. I was tough at the end. Once again a great experience to be remebered.

Create Maps or search from 80 million at MapMyFitness

Motor Cycle ride to Duluth

Long time wish to ride a motor cycle in US highways. Took my motor cycle license in 2011 summer itself but couldn't ride in 2011. Again I was so determined to tick this off from my bucket list by 2012. Once my customer invited me for a group ride, but I could not get the motor cycle rental for my size that day. I got Harley Road King, which is big for me. The Honda Shadow 750 cc is the right for me but it was fully booked almost all the weekends. After many attempts I got it in fall, as the temperature dropped to 50F and no was riding. Phew! a shivering experience to ride in 50F. But still enjoyed as it was my first time in US and moreover I was riding after a long time. I drove around 400 mile in one day :-)

When I look back the year 2012, I feel happy that I have few experiences to remember. Hope 2013 will be more interesting. Wish you all a happy new year!

Inspiration from movies

I wanted to write this blog for long time. I was reading a blog today and it inspired me to write this now, on a Friday evening @6  . This blog is just about the inspiration/lessons from movies.

I get inspired from lot of sources like reading great people quotes, seeing people at action (sports, movies, real life), and also I do get inspired from movie dialogues. Earlier I used to think that I am stupid that I am getting inspired from movie dialogues, but later I am convinced that the source of inspiration can be anything as long as it inspires me. There are many dialogues that has inspired me, I wanted to list them all and reflect my opinion on all the dialogues, but to keep this blog simple I will share some of the top dialogues (only) that I always remember.

#1  - Spider Man - Peter Parker: With great power comes great responsibility.

#2 - Batman Begins - Rachel Dawes: Bruce, deep down you may still be that great kid you used to be, but it's not who you are underneath, it's what you *do* that defines you.

#3 - Batman Begins - Thomas Wayne: And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.

#4 – Invictus –

Nelson Mandela: How do you inspire your team to do their best?

Francois Pienaar: By example. I've always thought to lead by example, sir.

Nelson Mandela: Well, that is right. That is exactly right. But how do we get them to be better then they think they CAN be? That is very difficult, I find. Inspiration, perhaps. How do we inspire ourselves to greatness when nothing less will do? How do we inspire everyone around us? I sometimes think it is by using the work of others.

Here's the interesting blog that inspired me today to write this one. This is from socialcast blog.

CLICK on the image to enlarge it.

Depth of Field

Yes, finally I bought the SLR and I hope it keeps my photography interest for at least next few months :-). I didn't do much research on buying the SLR. I was already biased to Canon, so I bought Canon T1i. Things that attracted me in this model are that it has 1080p HD recording, lens are cheaper than Nikon, and got it in a deal in Amazon :-).

My first experiment with my new camera is to feel the "Depth of field". Below photos give you a fair idea of what is Depth of Field.

Auto Mode

Shallow Depth of Field - Sharp Foreground and blurred background - Aperture Priority (Av) mode, Manual Focus, Av - f/5.6

Wider Depth of Field - sharp foreground & background - Aperture Priority (Av) mode, Manual Focus, Av - f/36

I used below items for this experiment.

1. Canon T1i with 18-55mm lens

2. Tripod

3. Laptop

4. Paper clips

I fit the camera to the tripod and adjusted the hight to the height of my table. I used tripod to avoid shake and to capture the same frame with different camera settings so that I can feel the difference of the camera settings. Connected my camera to my laptop for remote controlling the camera. I did this to see how it works :-), and also to avoid any shake in pressing the shutter button.

I set the dial to Auto mode and focussed the objects by moving over the mouse to the shutter button in the EOS utility. Once its focused, clicked the shutter button in the EOS utility. This results in the first photo. You can see that it automatically focused the clip at the far end and blurred the other two clips.

Now, I changed mode to Av and set the Av to F/5.6 and used manual focus to focus the nearest clip. This resulted in the second photo. You can see that the nearest clip is focused and other two clips are blurred. This is called as "Shallow Depth of Field". This is used to highlight only the object that we focus and blurs the background.

Now, I just changed the Av to F/36 and left every other settings as previous one. This results in the third photo. You can see that the picture is sharp almost till the farthest clip, The Depth of field is wider than previous photo.

I was so excited to see the results and thought for a second that I have become the professional photographer :-), though its a long way to go.

So, if we want to focus only the foreground object and blur the background then we need to set narrow aperture. Whereas if we want both the foreground and background to be sharp then we need to set a wide aperture.

To learn more about Depth of field you can refer to http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/depth-of-field.htm.

Does an Entrepreneur Need an MBA?

Article from Harvard business review http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2010/11/does_an_enterpreneur_need_an_m.html

I started my career as an entrepreneur at twenty-four years old, right out of college. I ultimately built and sold a $250 million global scrap metal company, an experience I wrote about in my book Starting from Scrap. HBR wrote about my experiences in the December issue.

After my book came out, I visited several U.S. business schools and met with MBA students to talk about my experiences launching a company in emerging markets. Many of the students who came to hear me speak were aspiring entrepreneurs in the process of getting MBAs. Many of them asked similar questions: "You didn't get an MBA, nor did many other successful entrepreneurs, so if I want to start my own company, is business school a worthwhile experience? Is it worth paying all this tuition — or will my degree just be a resume-builder?"

I once had a conversation about this topic with Dr. John Yang, the dean of the Beijing International MBA program at Beijing University. Here's what he had to say: "In my opinion, entrepreneurship is a matter of the heart, and education is a matter of the brain. It is difficult to teach a heart."

I share his perspective. By definition, an entrepreneur is one who takes risk. It's an attitude and an appetite, one which may be hardwired into one's personality. Education can influence one's attitude toward risk: for instance, understanding the principle of diversification or the long-term returns of equities versus bonds may make an investor more willing to create a "riskier" stock portfolio. But ultimately, can you teach someone to really enjoy taking risks? I don't think you can.

When I think about the value of an MBA for aspiring entrepreneurs, I see a parallel with the military. Countries spend billions of dollars training soldiers so they'll be ready for combat — they're taught to fire rifles and operate in simulated high-pressure situations. But that training only goes so far. A Marine colonel once told me that he never knows how a soldier will respond — whether he'll hide in his foxhole, run in the other direction, or stand and fight as he's been trained #8212; until the bullets start flying. How someone reacts in times of great stress relies largely in instincts and the makeup of his or her personality — and training only takes you so far.

The same is true with entrepreneurship. Understanding strategy, finance and marketing can be very helpful. But it's also important to possess self-confidence, a need for independence, energy and passion, curiosity, and an ability to communicate ideas. If you don't have these natural assets, you'll struggle as an entrepreneur.

I'm lucky, because those are personal attributes that I have. I don't have an MBA, but I've picked up many of the business skills I needed during more than 15 years running a company. (My grandfather referred to me as having an MBA from the School of Hard Knocks, whose official colors are black and blue — an expensive education that makes Harvard Business School appear inexpensive by comparison). Many of the lessons I learned from those tough and painful experiences I might have learned in an MBA program — and if I'd learned them earlier, my company might have been even more successful.

As the HBR article makes clear, if I'd understood the use and importance of financial and inventory controls, I could have prevented millions of dollars in fraud. Perhaps studying cases about companies that had grown too fast and lost control of both their finances and the quality of their products would have encouraged me to expand at a more sober pace. We wasted years trying to re-organize after over-expanding and perhaps missed countless opportunities in the process. I could have saved or made a lot more money had I taken some courses in business law or venture capital financing. (We ended up getting strong armed by our investors, and they got away with it due to our early-stage naiveté.) I also would have benefited if I'd known more about human resources and the need for well-designed compensation and incentive systems. These are just a few of the tools you can get in business school — and they're all tools I wished I'd had.

So I believe MBA programs do give future entrepreneurs valuable tools to help them mitigate risk and increase the probabilities of success. But even with those tools, only you know whether or not you have the heart to execute on the opportunities we all recognize to launch a compelling new business. That is when the real bullets start flying.

Stephen Greer is a senior advisor at Oaktree Capital and author of Starting from Scrap.

My day out on WI-35 state road

Its Saturday 2 PM, I had something planned to do in home but being in the home for all day on weekends somehow makes me feel that I wasted my day. Though I watch movies, youtube videos, chat with friends & update FB :-), I get a feeling that i haven't done anything interesting on that day. So decided to go out somewhere. I started my car without knowing my final destination. I just hit the state road WI-35 and kept on driving.

Just on my way I decided to go to "Goose Island", a state park in La crosse, which I heard about, but haven't been there before. I drove about 7 miles in the state road WI-35 and destination arrived on the right side. I drove around the picnic shelters, campground areas and enjoyed the river & shore. Then I parked my car and walked into the kayak rental, thinking that let me do the kayaking for next 2-3 hours and return home, unfortunately they didn't rent the kayaks today as water level is more than 6 feet high. What to do next??? Again I started the car without knowing my destination. Once I hit the WI-35 road, I thought of driving further south in WI-35 to see what else is there.

The drive was scenic, Mississippi river is flowing on the right side and bluffs on the left side. Whenever I see the board "Scenic Overlook" I stop the car to see the scenic view. One such view came on my left side. I had to drive over a steep bluff. The view was beautiful.

View of river Mississippi from a bluff on WS-35

The bluff had picnic tables and small hiking trails too. I did hiking for very short time and returned to the car and started driving in WS-35 further south.

Trail head in the bluff on WS-35

The next scenic view came and its the "Lock and Dam No. 8". I haven't heard about this lock systems for river navigations. Who knows? I might have read about it in school/college, I don't remember now. I read about the locks & how it works in one of the near by boards. Its impressive to see how man customized the rivers for his navigation needs. The Mississippi river has 27 locks and the one I went is the no. 8. After spending sometime in that place, I started my car and drove again further south in the WI-35 state road.

Mississippi's Lock & Dam system

The next spot is the "Blackhawk park". This' again a park similar to the Goose Island park. I drove around the campgrounds & small ponds, and enjoyed the scenic views & gravel road.

view of Mississippi & gravel road in the BlackHawk park

The road to campgrounds

One of the ponds in the Blackhawk park

After this park I drove further south in US-35, couldn't find any scenic spots for few miles and it was already five in the evening, so I drove back to home and reached my place at 5.30. Its interesting, that I enjoyed the drive and explored new places though I started with no plans. I bet, life is also gonna be interesting like today even if I don't have any future plans but just able to appreciate the present :-)