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Here are my resolutions for 2010. I've thought long and hard about what to put here, and I've come to the conclusion that resolutions, like software products or features, should be:

1. Realistic, and,
2. Measurable

The first because you don't want to set yourself up for failure. The second because you want to reflect on your success or failure in an objective manner at the end of the milestone (a year in this case).

Here I list 4 personal and 4 professional resolutions that I make for 2010.

Personal

1. Get in shape - Probably the most common resolution in America. But this time, for me, it's for real. I've gained almost 30lbs. since being in the United States and I don't want to carry that into my 30s (which is around the corner!). It's time for me to take charge of my health.
   • Measure: Lose at least 15lbs. and keep it off by the end of the year
2. Keep in touch - Quite often we tend to forget those with whom we don't cross paths on a regular basis. It doesn't mean that we don't care about them, it's just that it's easy to get lost in your busy life and not realize how much these relationships mean to you.
   • Measure: Message at least 1 significant person/week with whom you do not have frequent contact via either Facebook, Phone or Email.
3. Give back - By contributing my time and talent to a worthy cause. I still have to choose the cause and the organization but I would like volunteering to become a part of my lifestyle.
   • Measure: Be a contributing and active member of a worthy organization and help out with at least one major event.
4. Read more - This is not about blogs, discussion groups, or crowd-sourced news sources. This is about real books - literature. You only have so many years to live and there is so much to learn. Reading is perhaps the best way to understand the world and its people, and I intend to do just that.
   
   • Measure: Read at least 12 books by the end of the year.

Professional

1. Build a professional network - Getting to know people and the work they do outside of your immediate team is a great way to expand your own horizons and build relationships. I've so far lacked in this area and it's time to change that.
   • Measure: Organize a lunch meeting with a new person in a new team every month for the next year
2. Learn (more) - Learn about technologies I don't play or work with everyday. In my case, they would be related to the web, games, and mobile space to name a few.
   
   • Measure: Be able to speak confidently about the trends in the web, gaming and mobile space on an on-going basis.
3. Manage time effectively - Plan the day ahead of time. Make lists. Organize the calendar. Organize desktop and tools. There are literally hundreds of things you can do to make your time more effective and yourself more productive.
   
   • Measure: Do the things listed above such that I minimize the time wasted on context switching or organizing.
4. Take public speaking training - This is an important skill for a professional to possess. Even though my current job does not offer too many opportunities for me to speak publicly (team meetings don't count), I intend to take lessons such that when the opportunity does present itself, I'll be ready to go.
   • Measure: Join a public speaking group, possibly talk at an event.

You'll notice that the goals are not lofty. This is intentional since this is a start and there's nothing more dangerous to a nascent project that setting expectations too high. Hopefully by the time this year comes to an end, I'll be able to set higher expectations for myself. In the meanwhile, I think I have some work cut out for myself.

Too Big To Fail: Andrew Ross Sorkin
Buy from Amazon - $13.00

    Who knew that reading about the financial crisis could be so thrilling? In this book, Andrew Ross Sorkin, leads us through a gripping account of the events that led to that eventful day in 2008 when Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11, AIG got a $85 billion "bailout" and TARP was conceived and maneuvered through the Congress and Senate. With a style of writing that takes you right into the boardrooms of the financial giants of Wall Street, Andrew Ross Sorkin weaves the reader through personal accounts of the major players as they recount each hour of each day that led to the failure of almost all of the major financial institutions in America.
    Through extensive research, the author presents unprecedented details about the deals, the meetings and the hard work that went into preventing a total collapse of Western Capitalism. Through the words of Hank Paulson, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and countless other individuals in the Treasury, the Fed, and the law offices of the who's who on Wall Street, the reader gets a glimpse of how intricate (and fragile) the world of big money actually is. The accounts are objective and unbiased and take away the spin of the media, a pleasant departure from the populist rhetoric that engulfed us all as the events of those weeks unfolded.
    If not anything else, the reader will certainly be surprised to find out how close the next disaster could be. A definite read.

View from our apartment.

My good friend from college recently asked me about my opinion on cloud computing. I replied earlier today, but also wanted to share it with a larger audience. Comments are welcome.

 Honestly, I'm no expert in "cloud computing", so whatever I say, take it with a grain of salt. I don't think cloud computing is ready for prime time, and won't be in the near future, at least for home users.

 Of course, certain aspects of cloud computing, such as availability of data on any device and at any time are becoming more and more prevalent with the advent of web-based applications such as Google Docs or Office Live. As I understand it, the main purpose of "cloud computing" is to allow a person to be connected with his or her social network and data anywhere and at any time. Gone are the days when you had to have access to your home computer to edit a file. Cloud computing is trying to give onus to the user - rather than the machine - such that the task that the user wants to perform is the thing in focus, not the tool that he uses to accomplish it. I believe "cloud computing", for the home user, is a means to an end - "pervasive computing".

 Last year, I believe, more people in Japan accessed the internet on their phones than they did using traditional means such as desktops or laptops. To allow for such pervasive computing (phones, microwaves, washing machine?), there needs to be some way to synchronize the data between such devices - and what better way to use the already existing network called the internet?

 Enterprises are another story. Their motivation to move to cloud computing has more to do with the fact that IT budgets are the first that get cut when the economy goes down. Each IT department duplicates the work required to provide 100% availability, redundancy, other measures that make an office run. There is no reason why all this can't be abstracted from a small business, or even a large enterprise, as long as certain guarantees can be made. It's the latter reason why everyone has not moved to "cloud computing" yet. Also, the basic infrastructure required to make cloud computing feasible in all scenarios is just not there. Think of the bandwidth, and the effects of large events (NFL, 9/11 etc.) on the internet. Such interruptions would not be acceptable to businesses.

 Another aspect of cloud computing that allows for a heated debate is privacy. How much do you trust your provider? Who owns the data? Who has the right to confiscate it or audit it? Who is responsible in case of a breach? These questions need to be answered. Currently, I don't believe any of the cloud computing providers take any responsibility for any of these problems. That's a risk businesses and individuals needs to evaluate before making the jump. There's this notion of "acceptable risk" that gets set once a market matures. This just hasn't happened for cloud computing.

 Lastly, as I mentioned in my tweets, I believe the future of cloud computing depends on the standardization of data exchange format between "clouds" as well as the standardization of interfaces through which a client can interact with the cloud. For example, there needs to be a standardized way to describe an application, instantiate it, move data between clouds or geographical regions, identify an instance of a virtual machine in the cloud, control it etc. I don't know if that is going to happen from the get-go, or if providers are going to go on their proprietary ways only to later realize that they need to work together.

 Anyway, enough of my rambling :) . This is certainly an interesting space to watch in the next few years. I know Microsoft is working hard to enable certain scenarios in the cloud that a few years ago would have seemed preposterous. I am interested to see what others come up with.

That's what I see right now. Gorgeous.

This is the first in series of posts that describe my home network topology.
 
This is a simple diagram of the basics of the network. There are, of
course, other peripherals (XBox 360, Wii, G1) that I've left out of the
diagram for brevity.
 
Next up, VM infos.
 
 

The Windows Team Blog has a nice write-up on the device experience on
Windows 7. I worked on the delivery and management system for device
metadata packages. My code is responsible for querying the WMIS servers,
parsing the results, downloading the metadata securely, unpacking it,
indexing it, and providing access to the information in the metadata to
the clients (Devices & Printers, and Device Stage). It's cool to see the
effort finally paying off and being recognized as such.

 Enjoy the read:

 http://windowsteamblog.com/blogs/windows7/archive/2009/08/31/the-device-exper...