"Your responses are strictly confidential and will not be individually identifiable"

This was part of an e-mail I got from my company HR department.

Interesting part was, every employee got a seperate login password for the survey. The e-mail even came with a statement saying "BECAUSE THIS INVITATION AND PASSWORD ARE UNIQUE TO YOU, DO NOT FORWARD THIS EMAIL OR PASSWORD TO ANYONE ELSE."

Now I might be dumb, but I am not that dumb.

If you have information on which password answered the survey in what way, you can relate that password to the person it was sent to and so, in a matter of a few seconds, find out who was responsible for the glowing tributes and who made the rotten remarks.

All in all, the message is contradictory.

If my responses are confidential and not supposed to be individually attributable, why have a seperate password for every person?

Beats me. And I am not completely sure about that "not individually attributable" part. But it does not matter. I am always honest in my survey responses, whether people know I responded or not.

If I think a person did a good job, I will say so. If they suck, I will say that too.

Oh well, I guess I will have to submit my responses for the survey soon enough. Just don't feel like doing it today. Just the possibility of answering such stimulating questions like "If you were offered the same salary and compensation package at another company, would you leave us?" is more than reason for me to avoid it for as much time as I can.

But I cannot avoid these questions, which I sincerely feel should also have a "Duh!" option as an answer choice, and will have to spend ten minutes of my life going rapid-fire-click.

Oh, well...at least I don't have to do it today.

The desert is moving

I saw this on the news yesterday.

Beijing was being swamped with sand blowing in from the Gobi desert near by and all the residents of the city were forced to wear face masks to move around. Smaller villages outside the Chinese capital did not fare as well. Here is a picture of a house almost completely under sand.

I was quite surprised to see so much sand in Beijing, but after reading a bit (on the net, of course), I found that more than 27%, or 2.5 million square kilometers, of the country comprises of useless sand!

And here's another (disturbing) fact...just 7% of Chinese land feeds about a quarter of the world's population!

And all this while, people have been predicting that the desert will move closer.

I am in the middle of reading this book called "The coming collapse of China" by Gordon Chang. The book is mostly about the economics and the politics of economics in China today. The point, however, is not the apocalyptic pronouncements of the book but a startling prediction the author has made which I am seeing before my very eyes.

Chang says China's countryside is suffering "the worst environmental crisis in the history of the world. Flooding and deforestation are making the rivers run black and promoting the encroachment by the desert on arable land."

This is a very strong pronouncement. Of course, the sand has blown in from the desert for decades. This is not news. What is new is the intensity and the increase year on year.

Since I have not yet finished the book, I cannot say whether I get the author's point or not.

I will say this, though. He does make some very serious assertions. None of them look pretty.

Any ideas for de-jinxing this guy?

I wrote about him a long time ago (see "Goodbye, My Friend"). Today he went through something really terrible.

As you know, there are three of us (one of them being the guy I'm talking about, the other being the Incredible Hulk) who are collegues-turned-friends. From the day we met, there was something that went way beyond being collegues in office. The camaraderie was palpable. A lot of people noticed that. Especially because I have a reputation of being unapproachable. And here I was, having a great time with these guys.

There is so much time we have spent together, laughing our heads off while making fun of each other. The butt end of the jokes is usually the Hulk, who is actually a really cute stuffed Winny The Pooh. This guy has the most luck I have seen a single person carry. And it is in this singular aspect that the other guy falls short.

This guy's luck is so bad, things go out of the way to happen to him. If there is shit to happen, it will happen to him. If there are bugs in a particular piece of software, he will hit every single one of them. The only display to konk off on the new Mac Book line happened to him. The list of incidents just go on.

But today, something happened that really shook me. And I am sure it shook him as well.

The pair of them, along with a couple of friends, decided to go to Lake Tahoe (since they stay in the Bay Area and it's a relatively short drive). When they started driving up towards Tahoe, they got stuck in a blizzard with extremely low visibility. Even with this guy having a 4WD Merc with snow chains on, driving was not easy.

So they decided to not proceed and to turn back. Before they started on their way back, they needed to clear the ice that had formed on the windscreen which was stopping the wipers from working.

While this guy was clearing this, he realized that there was a car, with no snow chains on and a hysterical woman at the wheel, hurtling towards him. The car was completely out of control and was headed right at him. There was no way for him to move out of the way quickly because of the five feet of snow they were standing in.

Luckily, for all of us, the car slammed straight into the Merc and the impact threw this guy a fair distance, right on the snow. The Merc suffered a broken axel and my buddy a few bruises.

After a long tow back to the Bay Area and a visit to the doctor the nect morning, all of us can now take a sigh of relief. He is hurt a bit, but not seriously injured.

Thank God!

I don't know why these things keep happening to him, but they invariably do.

Anybody know a fairly fool proof de-jinxing method?

No hopes for the title

Sir Alex put a lot of words in press talking about the pressure Manchester United were going to put on Chelsea for the Premiership and that the fight for the title was not over yet.

It all started with ManU's fantastic victory over Arsenal, with one of the best display of footballing skill from Wayne Rooney. He scored the first and then provided for the second. In that match, ManU did not look troubled at all and Sir Alex was hoping to carry that momentum into the next match against already-resigned-to-relagation Sunderland.

The only topic of discussion before the ManU-Sunderland match was the margin of defeat Sunderland would be humiliated with. Nobody talked about a draw. After all, Sir Alex had already said that the title would come down to goal difference and ManU was going to do everything to lower the goal difference, starting with this match.

But after 97 minutes of lackluster football, Manchester United finished their game with Sunderland with goal-less draw and a single point.

All hopes of catching up with Champions Designate Chelsea are over.

Doesn't Kimi look like Frank Burns?

For all the people who did not see the series "M*A*S*H", I forgive you. For people who have, you may see a similarity.

For the benefit of the people who have not seen the series, MASH is a hilarious series on the American involvement in the Korean war. MASH stands for "Mobile Army Surgical Hospital" and the series is about a bunch of doctors who are positioned close to the front to patch up casualties of the war.

Frank Burns is the idiot of the series. He is a Major by rank, but a major A$$hole by behaviour. He is hated by almost everyone in the unit and is the butt-end of almost all the jokes at the MASH 4077 unit.

Now back to the subject.

Look at these pictures of the actor who played the character of Frank Burns and then compare it with Kimi Raikonnen, McLaren Mercedes' hope for the Formula 1 title.



Don't you see a similarity?

I wish I could find photos of both in similar poses, but this is the best I could do.

Still, even in the above pictures, Kimi looks a lot like Frank Burns.

And behaves like him too...the Retard!

You can make out from the post that I don't really like Kimi Raikonnen very much.

I would do better if I hit it on my head

I am, of course, talking about my putter.

I was at the Palm Springs course at Batam for my first golf round in five weeks. Of course I was raring to go after such a long lay off, but was also extremely apprehensive about my game, especially the short game.

The round began with a double bogey caused mainly because of a three putt after my chip had landed 10 feet from the hole. This trend carried on all over the front nine which I completed with a heart wrenching 52 out of which I had 24 putts.

TWENTY FOUR PUTTS OVER NINE HOLES!!!! Oh the agony!

I was having trouble dropping short putts in. I had completely lost my feel with the putter. The only thing that was a saving grace was my long game.

I am now almost always teeing off with my R5 driver and doing a fairly decent job of it. Except for the occasional fade, I am hitting the driver absolutely straight and to considerable distance.

I am averaging about 285 yards with my R5 and my longest drive was a 335 yarder monster which allowed me to be 10 yards from the green in two on a long 568 yard Par 5. From there, after being in a position to either chip in for eagle or to chip in close and putt for birdie, I chipped horribly to 20 feet past the hole and then three putted for bogey. Oh the agony...aah the shame!

By the way I was going, I was predicting that I would be on my way to another worst unless I did something about it. And slowly but steadily, my feel around and on the green improved. My chips started to get closer to the hole and my putts started to drop.

And then I did something that pleases me immensely.

I parred five out of the last six holes! Four in a row from the 15th to the 18th! Aaah...

With that final burst, I hung my head low with a 95 and 41 putts! 41 putts! Can you believe that? Only relief was that the back nine was 17 putts as opposed to 24 on the front nine.

If only I had putted to my average, which is around 33 putts a round, I could have played to my regular scores of high 80s. But then, if wishes were horses, putts would drop!

All in all...Thumbs up on the driving, thumbs down on the putting. But at least one thing is for sure...if I get my putting feel back, I am in a much better position to attack the pins thanks to my long driving. Because of my driver, most of the par 5s are now reachable in 2 shots and most par 4s are a pitching wedge away.

The only way for my game, I hope, is up.

Let's see how it goes.

The doctor recommends more practice!

Wimple?

Apple announced that, with the use of their BootCamp software, users of their new Intel based Macs could run Windows and Mac OS side by side.

This is a new strategy for Apple, who until now have been steadfastly a single operating system (OS) company. Ever since the first Mac rolled out, Apple has refused to buckle down to the increasingly Windows centric world. Until now.

So what does it mean to the world?

Well, for one, you can now run Windows and Mac OS X on the same computer. You can choose to boot your computer either on the traditional Apple OS or on to Windows. This opens up a plethora of options for users who like the design and the looks of the Mac, but have applications which dont run on the Mac OS.

I hate to be a spoilsport, but I dont find this announcement to be anything great.

I have tried dual booting my computer for years now (thanx mainly to the Linux revolution and now the Solaris effort by Sun Microsystems). What I have realized is that, while I have the option to boot multiple operating systems, I tend to prefer using one of them. So that OS keeps all my files and my preferred applications. I rarely go to the other OS, mainly because it does not have most of my applications.

So if you bought the Mac, you bought it to run Mac OS X, which is a really cool OS, but does not run some of my most critical applications (Intelligolf is one of them, if you must know).

If you run OS X and Windows on your Intel based Mac, you still need to install all your applications TWICE. You have to maintain two copies of your data, cause you cannot see Windows NTFS file systems under OS X and OS X file systems under Windows. So you cannot really share data between the two OSs that you have installed on the Mac.

One of the biggest differentiators for the Mac so far have been the OS. OS X, and it's ease of use, has been the reason people buy the Mac. And there is also the fact that the Mac looks a hell of a lot cooler than most computers out there. But nobody buys the Mac because of the internals. The selling point for Apple is always what you can do with the computer, not how it is built.

Another problem I see is support. Bootcamp does allow users to "Install" Windows on their machines. But what about drivers for all the Apple hardware? What about updates?

As far as build quality is concerned, the PC market has matured quiet a bit and is almost as good, if not as good, at making computers as Apple is. They may not have the flair at making their computers as attractive and "cool" as Apple has, but they are not extremely far behind either.

I user an Acer Ferrari 4005 laptop and it turns a lot more heads than I have ever seen a PowerBook do. It is also far more powerful and allows me to do unbelievable things. And it runs Windows without complaint. And runs all of my favourite, and critical, applications.

So while the news of Apple actually promoting the installation of Windows on their hardware is a big one, I dont think it's of any great consequence.

If you are in the market for a Mac, it's because of OS X. Not because it runs Windows as well. If you are in the market for Windows, you have a lot of options and Apple may not be the best choice for you.

If you want both OS X and Windows, I think you are confused. Or you just want it to feel good that you can run Windows as well.

But I dont think you will use it as much. That's just my opinion. Feel free to disagree.