Wedding (no, not mine)

I'm pretty sure my only readers are currently on their honeymoon ;), but I'm going to jot down my thoughts on the whole wedding madness of the past week while they're still fresh.

For those who stumbled on this blog, my sister got married this past weekend - the main ceremony taking place on Saturday afternoon, with various ceremonies and parties happening both before and after, all culminating with a grand reception on Saturday night (and a smaller after-party at the hotel where the couple's friends were staying).

Overall, the events (the music party on Friday and the wedding/reception on Saturday) went very well. There were many, many reasons and wild cards that could have made them a disaster, but everything turned out great.

We were very skeptical about our decorator since she didn't speak English very well and was terrible at returning our calls and emails. However, her work spoke for itself - her crew was the first to arrive at both the music party and on Saturday, and the decorations were far more beautiful than we had imagined.

The agenda for the music party had changed several times during the week - with pretty much every family member out of the 17 staying at home having an opinion on how things should go. Luckily, my uncle (my mom's sister's husband who flew in from India) was a very entertaining MC and we had some great dances, songs, poems, and musical performances. I think the only thing that we could have done better was to hire a professional DJ - our 'open dance' was a collection of songs that can be danceable, but only at certain parts of the songs. Being a DJ is a lot harder than it looks.

The wedding ceremony on Saturday was flawless. We asked our family friend from Austin to conduct the ceremony - he became a priest after retiring and has done hundreds of weddings for the Austin Indian community. He's great because he explains each step in English and is also very entertaining and funny. Although I didn't have an actual seat on the mandap, I feel like I was up there for most of the ceremony.

The reception went pretty well also, despite a few hiccups. There were some emotional speeches, an awe-inspiring musical piece by my cousins from Amsterdam who are professional musicians, a fun game devised by my sister's best friend, and some great dances (one by my aunt from London, who's a professional dancer).

I'm a little upset that the DJ messed up on the slideshow - the video was fine, but for some reason, you could barely hear the audio. My sister said she could hear it just fine, but some people later mentioned they couldn't hear it in the back. I was pretty shocked how many compliments I got for the cheesy dance I did with my cousin. We didn't have a chance to practice much with everything else going on, and I honestly don't think I did that great of a job - but I'm glad everyone else enjoyed it so much!

It's definitely been an exhausting week, but I'm happy that all the events went smoothly. Everyone seemed to have a great time, and I'm not aware of any major drama.

I have 2 major takeaways: 1) it's way better to elope than to go through this wedding madness, 2) I will not miss hearing my name being called every 5 minutes for a week.

Perfect Weekend

I went to the Bay Area last weekend for a surprise 50th birthday party for my uncle (my mom's cousin), and it was the by far the best weekend this year.

My aunt rented a house close to the beach on Half Moon Bay (about 30 minutes from SFO airport), and got food catered for the surprise party on Saturday.

My parents, sister and I got in on Friday night, and the different arrivals of family members throughout the weekend kept the surprises coming for my uncle. A lot of the people were already there, but my cousin from New York came in on Saturday afternoon, and my sister's fiance came in on Sunday morning just for the day!

I'm not sure if it was because we were on the beach, or because we were in a rented house, but everyone was in a really good and relaxed mood for the entire weekend.

Oddly enough, we didn't even do that much. On Saturday, after the party, we went down to the beach to watch the sunset, and my grandaunt (my uncle's mother) gave gifts out to all the women in the family. On Sunday morning, we went to pick up my sister's fiance and later went to a 4th of July parade (complete with a "Down with Big Banks, Credit Unions rock!" float - only in Cali).

The trip reminded me a lot of the cruise my family went on a couple of years ago. Although we didn't do a whole lot, everyone was in a great mood and that made the trip really memorable (even though there's not a whole lot to remember ;)). I think it also helps a lot when it's neutral territory so it's a vacation for everyone.

More BP madness

The lighter side:



An arguably better written version of my last post:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/12/AR2010061200170.html

BP Rant

As an engineer, I've been alternately baffled and angry that it took so many attempts to plug the leaking well.

I understand that the BP engineers were under a lot of pressure to get a solution in place quickly and efficiently, but it's shocking that they wouldn't know what the conditions were under water. They knew what the conditions were when they drilled the well in the first place - why was that knowledge all of a sudden gone when it came time to plug the hole?

If they only failed once, and within a few days of the initial leak, this would be somewhat understandable. However, it has taken 40+ days and more than 4 attempts to date before they pseudo-contained the leak.

If this was any other company (the one I work for included), they would have lost customers and heads would roll. This is not the case at BP simply because they are the largest oil company and it really seems like they geniunely do not care.

While there are obviously many lessons to be learned from this oil leak - and indeed the short-term history has been drastically altered by this event - I find the engineering aspects to be the most fascinating. Based on the fact that it took so many half-assed attempts to clog the leak - before settling on a method that actually increased the oil output for a couple of days - it appears that there is much more emphasis on building oil wells than there is on preparing for disaster recovery.

Luckily, there are very few oil leaks. But it is still astonishing to me that there isn't more effort directed at what to do if one does occur - pretty much every other high-availability, high-risk organization has some sort of contingency plan and it is a shame that BP did not have one.

Gov 2.0 Expo

I took most of this week off from work (what's up, 7-day weekend?) to attend the inaugural Gov 2.0 Expo in DC.

I realize that I'm clearly not the target audience for this type of conference (my manager bluntly told me that I'm a weird kid for taking days off work to attend an expo), but it was definitely an informative and inspiring experience. The best part is that there was zero pressure since I was literally just there to listen and observe - I'm assuming this is akin to auditing a class in college.

To sum it up, the Gov 2.0 movement - headed by Tim O'Reilly (who also galvanized Web 2.0, xml, web services, and laid the foundation for much of the social networking we have today) - is aiming to create a more open, transparent government by leveraging the lessons/tools of Web 2.0.

Obviously, this is a monumental task given that the government - at all levels - is notoriously slow to change and adapt, and due to non-trivial obstacles that stand in the way (e.g. data integrity, security/privacy, fundamental shift in power from top-down to bottom-up, etc.).

However, the past 2 days have shown that the movement is well under way with buy-in (and measurable, substantial results) from many of the major players - speakers included White House personnel, an Australian senator, former British government officials, and many generals from the Department of Defense.

While some of the 50-minute sessions seemed to drag, and became repetitive by the second day, the 10-minute keynote speeches were nothing short of inspiring and a complete validation of everything the conference was aiming to achieve.

The challenges facing Gov 2.0 are vastly different than those that faced Web 2.0. For a social network to be successful, it was necessary to already have a network in place. People were only likely to join Facebook or Twitter if their friends were already on Facebook/Twitter.

Although the aims of Gov 2.0 are varied, it seems the big push right now is for openness - or making the data that each agency holds (e.g. The Smithsonian only displays 1% of its total collection at any given time) available to the public in some form. The first way that comes to mind is via web services or crowd-sourcing. While discussing the Smithsonian, it was brought up that there are thousands of amateur photographers who would love to photograph the collections in the vaults and upload them to the website or via an app.

However noble the intentions of the general public may be with regards to making use of the vast amount of data that is currently locked up in these agencies, there is a justifiable concern that the quality of this data will raise eyebrows. This data has never been seen by the public - and probably not by the majority of the people within the agency. Making this data available in a form and with a level of quality that would be acceptable to the public is a non-trivial undertaking.

It is also worth noting that making this data available to the public on a grand scale creates a great vulnerability to an agency that is used to making all decisions internally and with limited public input. With all the lip service that is paid to wanting public feedback and valuing public opinion, it is a major policy and procedural shift to consider the public's viewpoint in every decision.

All in all, it was an exciting conference and it was great to see some fascinating and impactful applications of technology. Web 2.o was a necessary predecessor to Gov 2.0 in order to energize a population of users and developers - and to allow the the technology itself to catch up to what is needed in order to process these massive data sets in a timely manner. It will be very interesting to see what direction Gov 2.0 heads, and to see what our government looks like in a few years.

Stay tuned.

Can't stop laughing!

I don't know what it is about this comic, but I think it's hilarious. Oh, Pig.

This is probably going up in my cube. If people didn't think I was weird before, this will definitely change their mind. It reminds me of my favorite Richard Gere quote that adorned my cube back in Dallas - If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I'd think, no, actually I'm a giraffe.

What the Buzz?

Is there room for me on the Google Buzz bandwagon?

I don't know what Google is trying to do with this new service, as Buzz fundamentally doesn't add any new value to Google's other services - the 'sharing' aspect has already been there for awhile with Google Reader, and the only really 'new' feature is it allows you to comment on other's Gmail status messages (a la Facebook). Even the feature to add notes or share a link has been available, although rarely used, on Reader.

There has been a lot of hoopla about Google trying to take traffic away from both Facebook and Twitter with Buzz, but I think that this interpretation is misguided.

While Facebook and Twitter are 'loose' social networks (Facebook is great because it lets you 're-connect' - however that's defined - with long-lost high school and college friends; Twitter is even better because you can 'follow' celebrities and other people you will never meet in real-life), Google Buzz is attempting to create a 'tighter' online social network where your 'friends' are those you already interact with via Gmail contacts.

If anything, Buzz should drive more traffic to Reader rather than away from either Facebook or Twitter. The interface for each Google Buzz post is identical to Reader, and most of the sharing seems to be done from there.

Obviously, as a new service, there's still a lot to be desired and many features that most users don't know about. For example, while writing this post, I found out that you can click on a user's name and see all the buzz they've created(?)! Pretty nice feature, and one that's needed if people want to expand their network beyond their Gmail contacts.

It'll be fun to see how Buzz fares in the near future. Unlike Wave, which people could easily forget about since there were no email notifications, Buzz will at least stay in the minds of users since they'll see a link every time they check their email.

Entering the Lion's Den

Obama's State of the Union speech this week had moments that were reminiscent of his 2008 campaign. He had that same fiery tone and determination, and used history as a great motivator for why we must act. If you listened to the media, his campaign and the Democratic party was in trouble. Obama's poll numbers have definitely dropped since he took office, but the decline was more a reflection of reality than any failures on his part.

At the risk of stating the obvious, Obama is at his best when he delivers a live prepared speech directly to the American people. This is not to say he's only a good speaker or that he's all talk and no action. Speeches give him a platform to present his vision unfiltered from the media. His State of the Union was a great example of him portraying his perspective of the past year. He did a great job of mixing new policy initiatives with a fiery inspirational beginning and end.

Past presidents have put a positive spin on bad years ("The State of the Union is strong" when it was anything but), but Obama from the very beginning of his speech never once tried to pretend things were good. He laid out the facts and basically put the ball in Congress' court to get things done. He specifically went after the Republicans, challenging them to come up with practical alternatives instead of just voting down every single Democratic proposal.

Which brings us to the video in this post. I remember him saying he'd meet with the Republican caucus, but it seems that engaging with them in an outright Q&A is about as ballsy as dissing the Supreme Court when they're a few feet away (which he did on Wednesday!).

Many people expect the economy to take a turn for the better in the early part of this year. If that happens, Obama will have a lot more leverage to get some things done and the Democrats may even win some more seats in Congress.

It's interesting that after a full year of Obama's presidency, we still don't really know how it will turn out. He's trying to make decisions that won't see results until the next generation, but he was elected in a generation that uses Facebook, YouTube and text messaging - a generation that demands instantaneous gratification and instant results.

Let the madness begin

I've been helping my parents a bit with the planning for my sister's wedding.

The first big task (after getting over the shock/realization of how much you have to spend to host a somewhat decent event) was to find a venue.

It's pretty interesting to see the wide range of venues available. We saw everything from a small hall inside an office building off the side of the highway to a massive 600-person ballroom. As with most things, you have to look around a bit to see how you can spend money in the best way. It's even more true for weddings though, as the unit of currency seems to be $1000. One venue even charged $800 if you wanted a dance floor! She claimed that presidents had danced on it (but she was also kinda crazy - who shows the bathrooms as the first thing?!?)

My sister came last weekend from New York to see the venues in person. I think we ended up seeing something like 9 venues on Sunday as part of a whirlwind weekend. We drove from DC to NYC on Friday night to meet the groom's parents on Saturday, and then came right back from NYC to DC on Saturday night in time for dinner! I felt like I had jet lag for a good part of Sunday.

We finally settled on this nice, house-like manor just outside of town. It's far enough away to feel like you're on a farm in the middle of nowhere, but close enough to the outlet malls and IHOP to know that you're not. Not sure how I gave off this vibe, but the salesperson at the manor thought I was the groom the entire time! He seemed to be making more eye contact with me than with my sister or parents! And sadly, this wasn't the first venue where that happened.

When work meets real life

I'm used to working for companies whose products never see the light of day. Products whose ideas are great, but the company itself has very little direction or focus and so customers are few and far between.

It's been an interesting transition to work for a company where the product not only matters, but is an important part of people's lives. In a nutshell, one of our main products is the pivotal component used by a major telecommunications carrier for routing all SMS/MMS (picture messages).

So, an interesting thing happened at work today. We received a customer complaint from a small telecom provider that "close to 100% of their queries failed in the first hour of January 1."

Yup, you guessed it. All those texts/picture messages that everyone sends at exactly midnight on New Year's caused our application to stop working for other customers since the traffic was so high for the major telecom company. We're still trying to figure out (from an application/infrastructure point of view) what exactly happened, but the increased traffic is something we've never seen (at least not to that degree). Personally, I'm surprised that the application didn't crash.

Seoul!

I tagged along with my parents earlier this month to South Korea. My dad had a business trip to work with the military base there in helping the US withdraw forces by 2011 (here's to us being in Iraq and Afghanistan 'til 2050!).

If it sounds like a random, spontaneous trip, it definitely was. But how often do you get a chance to go to Seoul? It doesn't exactly make the list of vacation destinations.

Since my dad had to work during the week, it was up to my mom and me to figure out where to go and what to do during the day. Day 1 was spent wandering around the various palaces in the cities. I'm used to indoor palaces where it's warm and there's nice furniture and wall/ceiling decorations. In Seoul, palaces are mostly outdoor courtyards where you have to walk a bunch to the few indoor buildings only to find that they're completely empty!

Day 2 was Olympic day. We had originally planned to see the Olympic stuff in the morning and then something else in the afternoon, but we went the wrong way (3 or 4 times!) on the subway and then still got off at the wrong stop (you would think the main entrance to Olympic Park would be at the Olympic Park subway stop, but you'd be wrong) so it ended up taking the entire day. The park is actually really nice since they have sculptures scattered throughout, and I'm sure it's a great place to take a walk in the summer. However, when it's 20 degrees out and windy, and you have no idea where you are, and there's no one who can guide you, it's not so pleasant.

The next few days were spent wandering around the various markets. I'm not sure anything could have prepared me for the huge number of stores. Everywhere we went, there were literally thousands of small stores (most the size of an office cubicle) just packed with stuff. There would be one store dedicated to buttons. Stacks and stacks, and rows and rows of just buttons. Your could probably find every kind of button imaginable in that one store.

I think the most interesting specialty product was fabric. Here we have fabric stores. There, they had 3 or 4 floors of small, cubicle-sized stores all selling fabric. I don't know how people buy anything there. First, you have to pick one out of a thousand stores. Then, from that store, you need to pick one of 10,000 possible fabrics! I also think there was some understood system there about how to buy the fabric because we saw a bunch of teenage girls running around with these small notebooks with samples of fabrics. They seemed to be going to each store and collecting samples or something.

I thought the variety here was ridiculous. The amount of variety and choice available there gave me a headache.

Overall, the places we went to were very modern/Western. In fact, we only found a few stores that sold "traditional" Korean souvenirs/crafts. If it wasn't so clean and everyone wasn't so friendly, I would have thought we were still in America! Well, besides the fact that nothing was written in English, of course.

So, despite the fact that it was freezing cold, hardly anyone spoke English, and it was really hard to find vegetarian food, we had a great time!

TWoods

The whole Tiger Woods saga has completely shattered my world view.

The fascination stems mostly from what's not being said, and the fact that it's really people's imaginations creating the story.

This was a guy who people said could run for president. His public persona was one of an upstanding citizen who worked hard for everything he did, had a beautiful wife and kids, and was living a great life. I'm not sure if that whole image was one that he carefully managed or if this was the result of a great PR campaign, but either way, it was one that was held by a large majority of the public.

Stories like this make you step back and wonder how many other celebrities are guilty of projecting a public image that is very different (and in some cases, completely contradictory) to their own private lives.

Radio Recorder

There needs to be something similar to a DVR for the radio.

If you hear a song you like, you could press a 'record' button and it would store the rest of the song on a hard drive in mp3 format.

You saw it here first. Just like the light on a pen that I invented back in the 5th grade, and then was in a mall 10 years later.

Halloween Weekend

To get in the mood for Halloween, I saw Paranormal Activity on Friday night with a couple of friends. I had heard mixed things, ranging from the scariest movie ever to not scary at all.

Overall, I would say it had its moments with a pretty scary ending, but it was more psychological thriller than straight-up horror film. It was also a very well-made movie - great character development with good pacing of the storyline. The entire movie takes place in the house, and we only meet 4 characters. I don't know a ton about film and movie-making, but I think it's a great example of how to make a good film.

I searched online afterward, and I have to say that some of the "alternate endings" sound a lot better than the one they went with.

On Saturday, after the UT game (we're #2 now!), a friend and I headed to DC for Halloween fun. Our first choice had a ridiculous line around the corner, so we quickly needed to come up with a plan B. Our plan B place is usually really chill and never has a line. Not sure why (maybe since it was Halloween?), but there was a line there too!

Oh, and on the way to plan B, we went to this other bar that seemed a lot less crowded than every other place so we decided to check it out. Yeah, we quickly figured out why. Not only was it pretty crowded inside, but I got a full bottle of beer spilled on me within 2 minutes of walking around inside. Disgusting.

We finally ended up at another place that had a rooftop bar. This sounds a lot better than it was, especially since it was raining on and off, and we spent a good part of the (rest of the) night trying to huddle under the umbrellas. My friend said that it's usually a packed line to get to the rooftop, and I can see why there was no line now.

For costumes, there were a number of cereal killers (why was that popular this year?), a few Lady Gagas, a few variations of H1N1/swine flu, a couple of people from the Hangover, and a Billy Mays. We also saw a guy wrapped completely in bubble wrap. Not sure who he was supposed to be, maybe the bubble boy?

Lying

I've made an interesting self-observation at work this week.

I'm a terrible liar.

Not in the sense that I can't lie when I need to, because I'm pretty sure I could if the situation called for it. I mean that if someone asks me a question, I'm incredibly honest, almost to a fault.

I've noticed that others tend to "massage the truth," either to lessen the impact of negative news or for self-preservation. Well, that's not me. If someone made a mistake, even if it's me, I'll say it - even if others would rather go with the "we were being conservative" explanation.

I'm not sure if being able to lie more effectively is something that comes with more experience or if it's a personality thing, but my guess is that it's the latter since I have been told numerous times that I need to get better at lying (by my parents, no less!).

Cubes in the Kitchen!

Apparently, there's no more empty cubes left in our building, but we have contractors coming in next week from India and they have no place to sit.

So where to put the new cubes? The kitchen, of course!

Well, not the kitchen, but the break room. So when people are warming up their food or taking a coffee break, or even having lunch at one of the tables, there will be people trying to work just a few feet away. One of the cubes is not even 5 feet away from the TV which is on all day.

I do not envy them. They probably have no idea of their working conditions.

US Open

I've been watching a lot of tennis lately. Usually, I only watch the last weekend, with the men's and womens's semifinals/finals, but this year I started watching since the beginning.

This year's tournament has been really interesting, since a lot of the big names have already fallen - Roddick, Venus Williams, Murray, Sharapova, etc. It will be fun to see who the next crop of tennis players are in a few years after Federer and Nadal have slipped a bit.

I think tennis is one of the more dramatic and fascinating sports because there's no team to help you out. It is just you out there on the court, and you can either sink or swim. Since it's a 3 or 5 set match, it also forces you to play and makes the winner prove that they have both the stamina and skill to beat the other person consistently.

There have already been some great matches, and I'm sure the quality of play will just go up as we move on. Sucks that there aren't any Americans left on the men's side though. It's not looking great for the American wonderchild Oudin either.

OMG

There's no greater motivation to learn something than when you are forced to learn it. Sink or swim.

The main technical lead on our project has been on vacay for the past three weeks, and because the stars have lined up in a particular way, I'm the next most knowledgeable person. Everyone has been asking me all these questions about how things work and why they work the way they do.

I know some of the answers, but for most of them, I just give my best guess. Hope I'm right!

Luckily, he gets back on Monday so maybe I can get some work done again.

Wedding Fun

I went to a wedding this past weekend in Chapel Hill, NC. I already knew I wouldn't know anyone there (I hadn't seen or spoken to the bride since I was five, and we were on the bride's side!), so the main highlight for me was just going to be seeing the state - Duke, UNC, etc.

The Duke campus was pretty amazing. It was huge - we must have walked 2 miles and I think we only saw a small percentage of the overall campus. The architecture was also beautiful and unique. I can only imagine what it would have been like to go there for undergrad. I guess there's always an MBA, eh?

I actually liked how the couple did their whole wedding. It was a nice hybrid of American and Indian ceremonies - from the "we are gathered here" to the rounds around the fire. My dad commented that an Indian priest would never have conducted the ceremony since it didn't conform to the Indian traditions, but I think it's really admirable that the couple took the parts from each culture and modified it to fit their own vision of a marriage. At the end, it's all about your relationship and how you want your marriage to begin, right?

Most of the toasts were really, really good. As I said at the beginning, I didn't know either the bride or the groom, but based on the toasts, these people sounded awesome! Have you ever noticed that funerals and weddings are the two events where the people are portrayed as practically perfect?

I met a guy there who had the exact same name as me, except he spelled his name with an 'i' instead of two 'e's. I hung out with him after the reception when he met up with some of his high school friends. I'm not a huge fan of someone else having the same name as me, but at least he's pretty cool. His friends were all really nice and laid back too, and it was pretty fun to see another side of North Carolina, or the 919 as I like to call it.

Bribe?

Is it normal for the federal government to outright bribe citizens to buy things?

I'm specifically referring to the 'cash for clunkers' program and the $8,000 tax refund for new homeowners.

It's a tricky situation to get people motivated and confident to buy again, but using outright cold hard cash to get them in the door?