Sailesh's blog

Test via Windows Live Writer

2008-09-05T16:18:00.001-07:00

I am writing this post from Windows Live Writer. This software is a way to post to and manage multiple blogs from the same software.

Hey, this is a test...

2007-09-30T12:11:00.001-07:00

Hey, this is a test of new phone to blog service called Jott. It's also a white messaging service I thought I will try this out by writing my first blog post to the phone. Hope you had a nice warm Sunday, I am trying out all kinds of fungle things on the web, I found it's one of the most exciting ones, hear see if this technology really works.

Click here to listen

Powered by Jott

$100 laptop

2006-06-02T19:02:00.000-07:00

Folks, check this out.. the first look at the $100 laptop !!

The one laptop per child project.

My first election coming up

2006-05-25T22:19:00.000-07:00

For the first time in my life I am eligible to vote and at a location where I can. On June 6th, CA has a primary election where there are a couple of propositions on the ballot too. I got a call yesterday from a LA Times pollster asking me a ton of questions. He made me realize that I better bone up and get educated on the local issues. For those of you wh0 havent done so, here is a link to the secretary of state's information booklet.

Mostly it seemed like the pollster wanted to know whether I thought any of the democrats could beat Arnold Schwarzenegger. Other questions included whether I could name recognize a bunch of people. Except for Senators Fienstein and Boxer, I dont think I recognized the rest.

But what I think about the main political issues is that californians have not been well served by their elected leaders. Hence they have resorted to propositions to circumvent the elected leadership. Unfortunately since most of the people are apathetic and dont vote, the propostions get used by special interests to get bad and binding decisions.

I think it was a very bad decision to put a cap on the property taxes. Home owners should pay taxes proportionate to the value of their asset. This would raise most of the money necessary for the state to function. More importantly I think it would lead to a significant cooling in housing prices.

Wine Tasting & Jazz Film Noir in the city!

2006-05-20T22:04:00.000-07:00

Went to a great wine tasting in the city today. Hopped on the train in the afternoon to meet a bunch of people at Ghirardelli Square. The event was Uncorked!. For about $35 you get to see a bunch of wineries (quite eclectic ones) along the street close to the square.

The day was one of those brilliant sunny days in San Franciso, an ideal day to go drink wine. Every now and then we would go off to the steps on the waters edge and watch the bay swimmers as well as the many sail boats. We tasted some great wine and got a very good deal on an excellent cabernet.

I then capped the day off with another one of my favorite combinations: Film Noir and Jazz. This was a movie series at the Balboa theatre from the SF Jazz Noir film festival. We watched this really well made and well accompanied movie I Want To Live. Susan Hayward gives a very powerful performance as Barbara Graham, the last woman to be executed in California.

After watching this movie, I cannot think of anyone who can still support the death penalty.

Company trip to see the Da Vinci code

2006-05-19T22:00:00.000-07:00

We had a company outing to see the Da Vinci Code. I had previosly listenened to the book on a CD and was sorta OK with the movie. While the movie seemed mostly true to the book, it did not seem to capture any of the drama. The characters seemed very flat and the acting seemed sorta tiring. I dont know whose fault it is, but I think they all could have done a better job.

I also realised that as a company outing, movies are inconvenient in getting to know your co-workers. Would much prefer a more active event like bowling or hiking etc..

The Play Pump

2006-05-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Today I watched an amazing episode of PBS Frontline World. Thank you PBS for bringing this amazing quality programming. Among the episodes stories, the one that appealed to me most being engineer myself was the Play Pump.

Trevor Field, a retired advertising executive came up with this amazingly simple idea for helping thousands of african women solve a very important problem: How to get clean water? And he did this with such a simple yet efficient solution: harness the power of children at play. He designed the play pump. This is basically a pump built into a children's merry-go-round. When the children play with the merry-go-round, they actually are causing a pump to work to pull water from bore well and store it in an overhead tank. Check out the full story at the above included link.

I just love such cool engineering solution to some of the world's pressing problems...

Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting

2006-05-07T22:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to my friend and co-worker Jason, I got a chance to fly to Omaha and attend the annual meeting of Berkshire Hathaway Inc. For those of you who dont know the difference between a stock and a bond, BRK is the holding company of Warren Buffet, the second richest man on the planet.

First about Omaha: I like this town!! Its all very green in spring and the weather is cool.. very pleasant... but very importantly, the people seem very friendly. From my conversations with bar staff and waitresses to my friendly interactions with police officers, I came away with the impression that mid-western hospitality is definitely not a myth.

The BRK annual meeting is a big event held in the Qwest center in downtown omaha. Its quite festive with around 24,000 people in attendance this time. Tip: you need to get there very early to get to ask Warren questions, but you can sleep in if all you want is to see him speak.

Most of the day is a long QA session where Warren and his taciturn partner Charlie Munger answer a variety of questions. The topics ranged from impact of immigration on BRK companies to whether Warren can help his shareholders donate to charity with the same kind of diligence as he picks his companies.

My single biggest lesson: The strategy that Warren uses to pick companies and stock isnt rocket science. Its the incompetance of all those Wall Street analysts who earn enormous salaries but produce returns no better than the S & P that make Warren a super star.

Warren is just a reasonably smart guy who diligently spends his time understanding a company to a minute detail before deciding to invest. He only invests in companies he understands and can predict their performance. Thats why right now he is sitting on a corpus of about $40 billion.. he just hasnt found any good companies to invest in.

I'll write more in another post... am waiting to see what Jason has to say on his experiences..

Inefficiency in doctors offices

2006-05-04T08:06:00.000-07:00

I am appalled. I have just returned from a significantly irritating visit to a doctor and a physical therapist. I usually don't have any reason to go to a doctor other than to get a release signed for working out in a gym. This time I had an appointment because I was having issues with my new desk at work. For some reason or another I ended up having to wait 45 mins.

Grrrrr..
Its just amazing that any service provider would treat you so callously as making you wait without any explanation. But most people seemed to accept this as a fact of life that doctor's offices will run late. I think this is because they assume that the doctors are providing the best possible service to other patients and since they would expect similar levels of treatment, this is OK. But what this really does is completely mask the inefficiency in the system.

On time service
Let us look at other services that we receive and the expectations we hold . Let me start with servicing my car. Lets say I have an appointment for 9:00 to have my oil changed. Once I arrive there and sign the paperwork, my car is assigned to a bay and typically work begins on it within 5 mins of my signing the paperwork. Some service stations even allow you to drive up to a bay and get all this service done without even getting out of the car. Customers usually begin to get annoyed if the wait is greater than 15mins before some attention is paid to you. I can think of other services like the bank, legal help etc. where you are seen by appointment and people are served reasonably promptly. So what so special about the doctor's office?

The culprit
Well, some may argue that looking after your body is much more complicated than servicing your car; plus what happens if they find problems with your car which causes it to take more time. What happens to other customers who may have to wait because of this? Typically when this happens, things get juggled around and/or another appointment is made before significantly inconveniencing other customers.

So I would claim that there is nothing special about the doctor's office and I think we should have a similar expectation of prompt treatment. But I'll go further and point who IMHO is the culprit: the front office. The job of the front office is to manage people who come in, arrange for their records to be available and then assign a doctor or guide you to the appropriate doctor if you already have a relationship with one.

Most doctor's front offices seem completely dis-organized. They still seem to be making scheduling appointments using pencil and a date book. A lot of time seems to be spent in looking things up or identifying the right data needed to get the patient's record. Then there is the wait to access the patient's record which is still stored in paper form in some sub-basement somewhere. Only after all the paperwork is assembled, you are added to the queue to see a doctor. If at any of these various steps there is a delay or a mistake then you face significant waits.

Trillions to be saved
I wonder whether we could save trillions if we had somebody like Wal-Mart, FedEx or Xerox look at these processes and streamline them. Here are a few quick suggestions:

Understand the workflow for a given patient and enter them into the queue as soon as they enter.
Provide mechanisms for patient to help you by giving them the ability to checkin by themselves and verify important data either online or at a kiosk at the office.
Provide the patient with constant feedback as to where they are in the process and give them options if there are unforeseen delays. Offer some form of compensation.
Train the front office staff to be effecient and evaluate them based on the average wait times at the office.
Use technology to significantly speed up the transfer of information from one station to another within the office.

I hope someone is working on these issues and considering suggestions similar to mine. If not, I guess I will have to bite the bullet and look into doing this myself!

Interest rates!!

2006-04-02T22:32:00.000-07:00

It just dawned on me that I am losing money!!! WTF!!! I am not doing anything with my money...well, thats the problem. My credit union offers a paltry 0.5% interest. Given that inflation is > 3 %, I am losing money by just letting it sit there. Their asset management account (read money market) is only slightly better at 0.75 %.

So I looked around and found that paypal is offering 4.45% annual yield. I am going to give that a shot and see if I can keep ahead of the inflation curve. But I just can believe how bad these banks are when they earn >4% interest when they loan to each other but give us poor souls a measly 50 percentage points...especially a credit union which is supposed to be not for profit..

Barneys Birthday

2006-03-26T16:21:00.000-08:00

One of my former NASA associates Barney Pell threw a birthday party that I went to this weekend. It was a fun party with tons of people. I couldnt stay too long as I had to give someone a ride back to south bay (but Barney if you ever read this post: I promise to party hard the next time!!)

Barney is cool.. he has been in a bunch of places cambridge, whizbang, nasa, mayfield and now has started a new company in the search space called powerset.

Maan going back into the city is fun.. havent done that in a while... must do that more...

Off to a one man play

2006-03-22T19:16:00.000-08:00

One of my co-workers is performing an one person play. Sameer has previously played roles in a couple of movies and this time he is both writing and acting this piece. The performance is somewhere in Noe Valley... should be fun..

Heading back to the US

2006-03-15T18:14:00.000-08:00

Am heading back to the US from a thoroughly fun but exhausting trip. I think I was at home for only 5 days!! The rest was spent travelling!!

I am not looking forward to this plane ride back. Am flying singapore airlines via singapore and seoul to SFO. Singapore Airlines is a great airline but things have been going down in their standard over the last 4 years. My biggest complaint is with the food which to me is so plastic and inedible that I rather starve!! The service is not up to mark either..though when I do get help, the people are very nice. On the whole I am quite disappointed with SIA but maybe its because they used to be so good.

Maybe they should just allow people to bring their own food and give us a break in price!! Or let us buy a meal that is fresh packed rather than freezer packed!!

Trip to Vaishno Devi

2006-03-13T21:54:00.000-08:00

Just after my trip to Bangalore, I left to go the famous Vaishno Devi temple . Sanjay from Singapore (on hearing about my plans to go the temple) also decided to join and was able to make arrangements within a couple of days. This is one of the biggest changes in India Travel arrangements can be made very quickly and reasonably reliably.

To go the temple, we had to fly to Delhi where we were met by our friend Sudhir. We spent the day there till around 4pm when we left by train to Jammu (on the banks of the Tawi river). This was my first trip to the beautiful state of Jammu & Kashmir. From Jammu you take a tourist taxi to Katra which is the base camp town for the 14.5 km hike to the temple.

I took my new Garmin GPS 60CSx on this trip and here is a link to the kmz file that shows the trek. Load it into Google Earth and you can see my entire trek!!

I had a great darshan of Mata Vaishno Devi.. and everything about the trip was great...well everything except that I couldnt sleep on the train and hence hadnt slept for 3 days in a row with a 30+ KM trek thrown in!

All the same it was great to be about in a part of India that I had never been in!!

My impressions of Bangalore

2006-03-06T21:14:00.000-08:00

So I was in Bangalore for 2 days. My impression was of a city growing very fast in terms of money and people but not in terms of infrastructure. There is talk of citywide wireless access but roads and electricity infrastructure isnt there! The housing market in Bangalore is in the typical asian skyrocket mode. Just like Hongkong and KL, prices here have shot through the roof! Current prices for a luxury apartment are about Rs: 2800 per sq feet (~ Us $ 63). This is twice the price it was 2 years ago! Not even in California does the price double in 2 years!!

Still its less than the CA price of ~$ 375 per sq feet!!

my short trip to Bangalore

2006-03-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

I just got back from Bangalore where I met two of my friends: Sunil and Gosakan. It was quite nice to see them well settled with homes and kids. Their lives seem so much different from mine.

This was also my first experience with India's cheap airlines. I flew on Air Deccan.
The tickets were quite cheap (~ $60) and I was able to book through the net. However note that security at the airports require you to carry some kinda printout to show that you are a passenger. Their organization at the airport seemed a little confused but not too bad. In contrast to a US traveller, I was not asked to provide identification at any time in the airport. The flight was a ATR 42 and did go on time. However my return flight was delayed by about 2 hrs. This is because they operate on such tight schedules that they need an incoming flight to turn around.

The other cheap airline that impressed me was Air Sahara (which has recently been purchased by Jet Airways). Unfortunately they seemed to ask for some kinda indentification which I wasnt sure I could provide. Later it turned out that I could have given them a CA driver's license number (I thought I had to provide an indian issued ID).

I'll write in my next post about Bangalore...but before I sign off here is a plug for Gosax's company:Get excellent cost effective patents done at IP Procure. I act as their west coast rep.

Nandini and Keshav at Singapore

2006-02-26T06:15:00.000-08:00

On my way over to India, I had a stopover in Singapore. I went over to my friend (Asan classmate) Sanjay's place. Sanjay left the day before to India so I met Nandini and played with Keshav. I also promised Keshav that the next time I would fit in a nice chess board in my cabin bags but this time he would have to do with ghirardelli's chocolates.

This break in singapore is nice both because you meet friends and you get a chance to stretch out and take a shower become human after the 13 + 4 hour trip from SFO to SIN via Hongkong. When will they invent a better means of travel? I am quite sure we have the technology to reconfigure today's aircraft to carry the same number of passengers in greater comfort. However I guess such a redesign might be too costly? Dont know... but I dont think I can stand these long flights

3 weeks at Kosmix

2006-02-24T06:11:00.000-08:00

The first three weeks at Kosmix have been wonderful. The people are great and environment is quite easy. I am so glad to be finally in an environment where things happen as fast as you want them to happen either because you can walk over to the person responsible or if no one is, then you can do it yourself!

It also so cool that just within these 3 weeks I was able to contribute something useful to the company! I am also learning a lot about web applications and the truism of using the internet as your lab. Put a feature out there and the world will till you whether it works and how you can modify it to make it useful.

Now I am off to India for 2.5 weeks for a quick vacation before I get back into the swing of things at work.

First Day and a Kosmix article!

2006-01-30T21:31:00.000-08:00

Today was my first day at Kosmix. Spent a bunch of time on the every present paperwork changing all my benefits, entering my name and address in a gazillion places. Jeez, what we need is one application that I can put in my name, phone number and some of the relevant particulars and it should fill in that stuff for every form.

Anyway, it was a cool but low key day. Got of to a decent start I think, with my computer mostly setup and stuff. Now its on to figure out what I am really supposed to be doing there.

BTW: here is a cool article on the company: silicon beat

Other folks at Cosmix

2006-01-23T07:47:00.000-08:00

Here are some links to other people at Cosmix that I found on the web..

Jason

Mark Johnson

FYI: we are hiring jobs@cosmix

New Job: Cosmix

2006-01-18T21:15:00.000-08:00

After a lot of soul searching and literally praying (since this is going to be a leap of faith) I have chosen Cosmix as the company I going to work for (or laze at!!) .

They are a very young vertical search engine company with an excellent team. The vertical of choice has been HealthCare but watch for future developments!!

What will I be doing for them: that so top secret that even I dont know!!!

Hiking and more!

2006-01-14T21:26:00.000-08:00

Today we did a moderate hike at Windy Hill. The gang:John, Eric, Bart and self.

The main point of this hike: 360 degree panoramic views of the bay area!! see the ocean and the bay all from one place!! spectacular.. will post photoos when I get them from Eric.

Added plus.. if you are lucky u get to see a real live Coyote!!! aahooooooo!!!!

but this was just past the rains so the paths were a good bit muddy and we got liberally muddy as well..and then we tramped into my car.. but on the whole didnt really mess up that much..

Also let me mark this hike as the place and time when we (mostly John and Bart, but I want a share of the royalties too!) came up with the "When in Doubt" Guinness ad along with a bunch of dirty limericks!!

its a new year

2006-01-10T21:02:00.000-08:00

Wow its a new year.. such a lot seems to have changed from 2005. Without the phd, I feel so much more free...free to really enjoy life!! Its also time to make big changes.. so I am planning on my next career move..

Am interviewing at:

Google

Yahoo

Composite Software

Signal Demand

Cosmix

and one other stealth startup. Lets see what the future holds for me!

no more phd!!

2005-12-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

Sorry I have been away from the blogosphere for a goodish bit. Here are some of the salient events of the last 6 months:

Successfully did the triathlon: Put some despo training.. swimming every day for 8 days before the tri.. completed the tri but nothing to write home about. Atleast I am a swimmer now!

Discontinued my PhD: One of the main reasons for disappearing was to take a sabbatical and work on my phd. Did that for a good bit and finally decided I was no longer interested and the time deadlines made it a cruel and unusual punishment. So I am free of a significant millstone.. but on the down side, I out a ton of cash, bazillions of hours and no Dr. to show for it :((

Now its the end of that old year... I became a US citizen .. did a triathlon .. dropped out of the phd..
Here is looking forward to more cool stuff

Powerset

2005-11-29T21:08:00.000-08:00

One of my former NASA colleagues Barney Pell, who left NASA to work as Entrepreneur in Residence at Mayfield Partners has now started a new company! Its called Powerset. He says it will use AI in producing better search results.. I going to follow his company closely.. knowing a little of Barney, I am sure its going to revolutionize search!

Triathalon dry run!!

2005-07-16T09:30:00.000-07:00

Just got back from the mini triathalon (tri for fun) in pleasanton. The winner finish time was 58:15. Mitch and I think our biggest issue is the Swim. I am frankly scared of the swim and unless I can do 10 laps at the pool without a break, I dont think I can do this. I need to really increase the rate of training to possibly 4 times a week.

Anantha & Pushpa visit

2005-07-15T09:27:00.000-07:00

Anantha & Pushpa along with Asha visited us today. It was a whole lot of fun chatting with them. We all had an excellent South Indian dinner and it was a good break for them from the rigors of unpacking. I enjoyed the free and open conversation...its easy to talk to people you have such a comfort level with.

Asha is still the firebrand I knew so full of energy!! I am glad that they moved, I certainly need more friends in this area!!

I also became a member of netip today: www.netip.org

July 4th

2005-07-05T09:23:00.000-07:00

Oops.. didnt really plan for the long weekend. A tentative plan to visit Bart & Liz at Bart's dad's farm in Kansas fell through. The main issue was the high cost of airfare to a small town in Kansas at short notice. So I will have to find another time to play farmer.

So the only fun thing I did this weekend is watch the fireworks with Aimee. I managed to hookup with Tania at Shoreline but then she had to wait for Chris. So Aimee and I hiked up a nearby hill and had an excellent view of the fireworks!! Wish they were longer...

Found some cool websites

2005-06-24T08:34:00.000-07:00

I got an email this morning about an SDForum event happening next week on the future of vertical search. When I went over to that site, I found links to various cool companies. Some of them are:

Technorati

Snap

Raw Sugar

Simply Hired

Feedster

Looks like this is the future of search. Sorta what happened with online shopping sites. Once there were too many you needed a meta shopping site (like jango) that would then search many of the shopping sites.

cycling to work

2005-06-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

I have been cycling to work for the past couple of days and its been fun. Yesterday I rode in with an average speed of 15mph though my usual average has been 13.5-14.0 mph. Its about 4.5 miles to work from home and there are several lights that I have to wait at, then there are the two security gates on base.

My friend Pamela rides on the weekend and she claims an average ride speed of 16mph for rides of over 50 miles. I need to speed up to be that fast.

It all begins

2005-06-20T14:44:00.000-07:00

I have been resisting blogging as I figured I really should focus more on understanding things rather than telling other people stuff. But then I realized may be my journey to understand might be useful to others. So here goes...one more blog among millions...

2005-01-24T07:37:00.000-08:00

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