Nirenjan’s Space

Put eight monkeys in a room. In the middle of the room is a ladder, leading to a bunch of bananas hanging from a hook on the ceiling. Each time a monkey tries to climb the ladder, all the monkeys are sprayed with ice water, which makes them miserable.

Soon enough, whenever a monkey attempts to climb the ladder, all of the other monkeys, not wanting to be sprayed, set upon him and beat him up.Soon, none of the eight monkeys ever attempts to climb the ladder. One of the original monkeys is then removed, and a new monkey is put in the room.

Seeing the bananas and the ladder, he wonders why none of the other monkeys are doing the obvious, but, undaunted, he immediately begins to climb the ladder. All the other monkeys fall upon him and beat him silly. He has no idea why. However, he no longer attempts to climb the ladder.

A second original monkey is removed and replaced. The newcomer again attempts to climb the ladder, but all the other monkeys hammer the crap out of him. This includes the previous new monkey, who, grateful that he’s not on the receiving end this time, participates in the beating because all the other monkeys are doing it. However, he has no idea why he’s attacking the new monkey.

One by one, all the original monkeys are replaced. Eight new monkeys are now in the room. None of them have ever been sprayed by ice water. None of them attempt to climb the ladder. All of them will enthusiastically beat up any new monkey who tries, without having any idea why.

And that’s how any company policy gets established.

I’ve just finished watching the new Star Wars movie made by Panic Struck Productions. Revelations takes place between Episodes 3 & 4. It’s available as a free download from their website, or from one of the many mirrors.

From the movie:
Seers once shaped the path of the Jedi Order. But their visions grew unreliable and the Jedi came to distrust those with the ability. Seers hid their visions or left the Order forever.

Caught between them is one woman who cannot deny the truth of her visions as all race to possess an ancient Jedi secret.

This is a good one. I’ve received an e-mail from none less than Bill Gates himself, offering me a job at the Microsoft Hyderabad center. Read the e-mail for yourself.

From: billgates@microsoft.com
Subject: Vidya Mandir alumni
Hi,
   You have been offered the position of software engineer in the WINSE team at our microsoft development center, Hyderabad India. Please reply if you are interested. You have been recommended by one of your Vidya Mandir classmates.

What do you think?

… comes great responsibility. Jon Stock writes on the effect of personal blogs on the internet, and on people in general…

Courtesy: Ravi

As we have MoM’s in our respective places of work, so do we have a MoM here - the Minutes of the Meeting (for those not so much in the know). Or should it be the MoCBM - for Chennai Bloggers’ Meeting? Whatever it may be, here it is, for both those who were there, and those who weren’t.

Sudhir and I landed up at the target venue, the Halt & Shop shopping mall opposite St. Dominic’s school, a good half hour early. We went to the restaurant opposite and made small talk while waiting for the rest of the gang. Suraj messaged me asking me if it was too late to come, but as I tried calling him, there was no response, and I pretty much gave up. Soon, the first suspects turned up - Magix & Curses, Sandhya and Arvind. Following them were Ravi and Shiva. More culprits turned up quite quickly after that - Praveen, Shekar, Sophia, and Ravages.

Eleven’s not a bad count for a meeting in a remote location (relatively speaking…). So after a quick round of intros, we made a beeline for the top of the mount. Parking our vehicles a little way down, we walked the rest of the way to the top. The view from the top of the mount is amazing. The rest of the folks have some good snapshots of both the view and the inside of the church. We made our way around the place, chatting and generally having a good time. Unconventional - that is the single word that would describe this meeting. The only thing missing was the plates of steaming hot bajji’s like we had last time…

There was a pretty funny incident going on over at the airport pretty nearby. A United Express plane was circling the area. We initially thought it was a convoy of planes, or the same plane was circling the area. It later turned out that he was circling the area, but in a manner that we didn’t think was quite… sane. He kept circling, landing on the runway, and after taxiing a few hundred meters, he’d take off again and resume the process. He did this atleast a dozen times in the one and a half hours that we were there. Either it was some kind of training process, or some kind of a stress test, or the pilot’s kid going “Appa, appa, innoru round polaam pa…” We still haven’t figured out why.

Sandhya was continuously rambling on throughout the meeting that she had to leave by 6.30, apparently the set curfew time by her mother. The frequency of these ramblings slowly increased, and as the clock approached 7, the frequency became high enough that it could be considered as a panic alarm. We soon broke up, and Sudhir, Sandhya, Arvind & I left before Sandhya’s voice frequency became a siren, while the others stayed back to continue the chat, and the eats…

… to the Bloggers’ Meet to be held this Saturday. Something important has come up, and I’ll most probably be held up in the office. I’ll do my best to make it, but no promises…

For some odd reason, my broadband refuses to connect. I am back to dialup, at least until this problem is resolved.

Looks like Ferrari’s domination of the circuit is taking a beating. But although they may be down, they are definitely not out yet. I’m sure Schumi will defeat all odds to secure the first place once again.

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!!!

The next edition of the Chennai Bloggers’ Meet (CBM) will be held on Saturday, the 9th of April, 2005, at St. Thomas Mount, opposite St. Dominics near “Halt ‘n Shop” shopping complex.

Folks, drop a comment here, or at Sudhir’s Blog if you are coming. See ya all there…

Most of you would have seen this already. GMail’s bottomless graph, now offering a storage capacity of ∞ + 1. Right now, the storage space has exceeded 1300 MB and is continuously increasing. Login to your GMail account to see the currently available storage space.

If anybody wants a GMail account, drop your name in the comments box. I have tons of invites to give away…

I was pretty neutral when Vijay told me about Kribs going offline. When I saw his post, I was pretty convinced it was the real deal, until now…

Kribs, I’ll get you back one of these days, mark my words…