... story continues from the last post ...

So we wake up the next morning and my brother, his wife and I going to take a flight from Delhi to Vadodara - which is a dinky little town in the state of Gujarat.  It's where my sister's in-laws live and we were headed to a follow-on reception to their real wedding which occurred a few weeks ago in North Carolina.

There are about 4-6 flights daily from Delhi to Vadodara across 3 different airlines.  The flight's about 1 hour long.  What's nice is that other than Indian Airlines (which is an old crap-hole of an airline), most of the other domestic airlines are relatively new and have brand new Airbux planes.

So we show up at the airport. 

Stupidity #1: The weight limit on a carry on bag is 8 kg.  As in 17-18 pounds.  Hell, I can swing my weight 20 pounds over the course of a month or so.  What was even weirder was that you couldn't carry more than that, but they let us check the bags in - for FREE.  So apparently it's just the overhead compartments that have a crap design.

Stupidity #2: They have two jetways into the plane - one in the front and one in the back.  We were in row 17 out of 23.  So we went from the rear.  Of course, there were at least 10 people that come in from the front entrance to get to row 19-21.  Geniuses in the making.  And that meant we had to wait near the galley - aka next to the bathroom.

Stupidity #3: I don't know why (ethnically smellier feces, lack of enough / strength of cleansing) but most public restrooms in India reek - horribly - like make you want to vomit.  So that's what the whole galley / bathroom smells like.

Stupidity #4: We sit down. Announcement.  Flight is delayed one hour.  Why?  No reason.  Everyone is boarded, doors are latched close.  Weather is sunny.  Barely any departures happening from Delhi.  Vadodara only gets an arrival every 2 hours or so - i.e. impossible for them to be busy.  My guess - either (1) a cow somehow wandered into the luggage compartment and they had to get it out, (2) the pilot wanted to take a tea break or (3) someone checked an astrological calendar and decided we weren't landing at a good time.  Seriously, any of those three is as likely as whatever the true reason was.

So we finally get to Vadodara - which of course is about 20 degrees hotter - now up to about 95 degrees and of course, very humid, lots of random livestock in the street, tons of dust.  Not pleasant at all.  My dad picks us up at the airport.  He is of course sweating like crazy.  My sister's in-laws are hosting us and putting us up so we head to the hotel where we're all staying.

Now I am not a "pretty boy".  To provide context, my wardrobe is basically jeans and short sleeve shirts and if it was more socially acceptable, I'd probably have 20 copies of the same outfit and just repeat daily.  Plus, I spent four years living in a frat house, so I certainly don't need some super clean place to stay.  But something about India - unless you're in a five star hotel in a major city (and Vadodara is not anywhere near a major city), you'll end up in a place where - well a place where being in a Holiday Inn would be considered an upgrade.  And it makes no sense, because these cites (like Vadodara) are in the millions of residents and get tons of visitors annually.  So you'll end up at this hotel where generally, you'll have no water pressure, you're lucky to have a western-style toilet, your bed sheets will not be truly clean (aka weird dirt and spots that aren't the Motel 6 kind but they're still sanitation-wise bad), you're lucky to get an air conditioner and if you do, it will have to be on full blast and will create this strange mixture of a cold but humid climate.  Here's a pic of the bathroom - got to love the combined shower with bathroom floor.  Makes drainage easier.  And of course the bucket.  Gives you more pressure than the shower cause you can throw water at yourself.

So we're in the room and I go to hang up my suit in the closet.  I open the door and the thing has 5 mothballs in it - and they're reeking the whole thing up.  Now on the one hand, I was pissed cause I no longer had somewhere to hang my clothes - then again, I guess I should have been appreciative because otherwise, I might have had moths in my room.

And my last task before heading to the wedding events was to stop by a tailor our family uses.  This guy just rocks - he's actually the only store owner I've ever encountered in ALL of India who is consistently reliable and gets things done right by the time he says they'll be done.  I had to drop off a bunch of clothes to be altered - dress shirts that Ami thinks I wear too baggy and she wanted them narrowed up and then some slacks that no longer fit (as I'm about 30 pounds heavier than when we got married).  Yup, Ami loves that fact.

Okay - well we had some bumps, but now it was time to get ready for the "Sangeet" - basically the "night-before" party filled with live music, dancing, food, etc.  Coming in the next post ...

So I'll do this as a series of posts because otherwise this will simply get too long.  This trip was ridiculous - being there and coming back.  Most absurd ever ...

April 2 - got on the plane, first leg from Seattle to Chicago.  Totally normal.

Second segment - from Chicago to Delhi.  15 hours direct.  A bit long but my brother got me bumped to business class so the flight would be fine.  Now the "fun" began when i left the Admiral's club and went to the gate.  As I approached, they were just about to start boarding - as expected, with First class and then Business class. 

See the typical Indian believes a few things

1. There are rarely lines.  Generally, people just amass towards the counter, gate, door, and there's always a bit of pushing and certainly not a FIFO situation.  You just go in when you can.

2. Secondly, you generally feel the need to be first.  And somehow there's a fear that if you're not the first person on the plane, it will somehow run out of all of the compartment space or you will get a crappier seat.  So everyone is not only unable to stand in a line, but they're also all trying to be first.  Fun.

Of course the airport workers were having none of this.  It actually got bad enough that one woman had to close the entrance gate and state that they would refuse to let anyone else on the plane until everyone backed up 10 feet. 

At this point, I was still very amused / in a good state of mind.

So I got on the plane, and here starts the next set of farces.  First, people come in through business class as they head to economy and though everyone clearly has an assigned seat, there's always a couple of folks that think you're supposed to just grab the first seat you can.  And it's rightfully yours unless the owner shows up and then they have to adamantly make clear that they have that seat and then finally the poacher will move on.

Still amused.  Got to Delhi fine, got my luggage, no problems with customs, etc.  Then saw my brother and went to his place.  His wife comes home, there's food and we go to bed. 

All in all, the trip started out fine.  Some comical amusement related to some different social norms but nothing ridiculous.  That starts in the next post ...

From the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120693497288376503.html?mod=yahoo_hs&ru=yahoo

Ad Notes
DoubleClick, Google Top Web Ad Market
March 31, 2008

Some new data confirm that when it comes to delivering ads to Web sites, DoubleClick Inc. and Google Inc. dominate the market.

DoubleClick, an online ad service recently acquired by Google, captured 35% of the market in January, and Google had 34%, according to research by Attributor, a start-up that tracks and analyzes where content appears on the Web. Yahoo Inc. came in a distant third, with 12%, followed by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN with 10% and Time Warner Inc.'s AOL with 5%.

Attributor crawled the Web to track which companies were responsible for delivering the ads across 68 million domains and 25 billion pages. Because most Web publishers don't have the technology to manage, serve and track the ad campaigns on their sites, they outsource this work to firms with ad-serving technology. Less than 5% of the domains surveyed used more than one ad server.

The survey is the first of its kind. Until now, most Web-measurement companies had estimated the market-share data based on panels of Web surfers. Attributor plans to release monthly results showing this data.

This is definitely bad news for us and other companies trying to get mind share from advertisers.  I am surprised Neelie didn't have more to say about this.

There are obviously many benefits to open source development, but at the same time there are a lot of down-sides.  One of those being a lack of focus - often due to changing perspectives and/or disagreement amongst the many distributed and non-organized people working on the same effort.  Some open source groups have tried to get around this by adding moderators and controllers, but the moment that open source goes a bit too far in this direction, it will take away a lot of the same open spirit that allows it to succeed.  An interesting dilemma ...

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/30/2113200&from=rss

OpenDocument Foundation To Drop ODF

Posted by kdawson on Tuesday October 30, @05:46PM
from the microsoft-cheering-from-the-sidelines dept.

poet sends us to Computerworld for a story on the intention of the OpenDocument Foundation to drop support for Open Document Format, OASIS and ISO standards not withstanding, in favor of the Compound Documents Format being promoted by the W3C. The foundation's director of business affairs, Sam Hiser, dropped this bomb in a blog posting a couple of weeks ago. Hiser believes CDF has a better shot at compatibility with Microsoft's OOXML, and says that the foundation has been disappointed with the direction of ODF over the last year.

A friend just sent this over ... http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Negotiate---Tips-for-Yahoo-5794173

Last week, I had the following exchange (I'm sure I'm getting the exact words wrong, but the gist of it is what matters):

Hiring Manager: "So what's your final call on the candidate?"

Dharmesh: "I'm comfortable with extending an offer and think they'd do a good job"

Hiring Manager: "You basically told me we shouldn't hire them?"

Dharmesh: "Why?"

Hiring Manager: "You said you were comfortable with the candidate.  We shouldn't be hiring people that we're comfortable with; we should be hiring people that we're really passionate about."

Dharmesh: "I think that just speaks to my passion."

etc ...

It got me thinking about the word "comfortable" and what it means to different people (yes, I am stuck on an anal retentive definition-related blogging streak).

One of the definitions for comfortable is: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comfortable

4. more than adequate or sufficient: a comfortable salary.

There are a number of experiences or things that I would calmly describe as comfortable or good or fun.  Whereas others would raise their voice, gesticulate and talk about how super great and awesome things things were.  Both of us could be passionate and think things were at the upper extremes of performance.  We'd choose different words and we'd express ourselves differently.

At Microsoft, some folks associate this with the Bill Gates and Steven Sinofsky style of expression vs. the Steve Ballmer mannerisms.  However, the important thing is that although they have different styles, both of these sets of guys manage to convey their passion.

So what's point?  Well basically that (1) there are people that successfully express passion and motivate others without jumping on tables and (2) even if you're more reserved with your word choice and mannerisms, you need to make sure you're not seen as being apathetic.  And it's that latter point that I've certainly got to work more on - so if you see me seeming "bleh", feel free to smack me around.  It's good for both of us. 

Just don't expect me to end up doing this.  ;-)

One of my largest pet peeves is when a person uses a word without knowing what it means.  There's a long list of words that folks misuse, but "exponential" is probably at the top of my list of pet peeves. 

Basically, any time there's really rapid growth, folks will characterize the growth as exponential - this is particularly bad with consultants and MBAs (or perhaps I've just spent too much time with these two groups). 

Exponential growth means the growth rate is proportional to the current size.  The growth isn't proportional to time, and it isn't just growing fast.  It's a specific mathematical relationship.  And yes, it's not that different in the near term, but exponential growth implies a pretty dramatic difference over time.

Here's a graph showing a linear, quadratic and exponential function:

So a small request - next time you think about calling something exponential, just make sure it's really exponential, and not sub-exponential like the other two above.

It's the end of my first week in Windows Live. Most of the week was spent (1) meeting with other business groups that we'll be collaborating with - Windows, Office, IE, etc., (2) trying to determine strategic options for massively growing the size of our business, and (3) moving, avoiding the re-carpeting and re-painting, etc. Met some very cool people that even more so reassured my excitement about Windows Live and the opportunities (and huge competition) for this business. It's going to be a fun opportunity.

I also wanted to point out a cool new service from Windows Live called Events: http://events.live.com/.

It's similar to Evite but already integrated with your contacts, e-mail, IM, blog, etc. - and it does a better job with photos and allowing you to customize your event.  Jay Fluegel (now working with me) was previously the Product Manager for events - you can find out more about the new service on his blog: http://jay.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!FCE3AA5E9CD7EF8E!5409.entry

Last highlight from this week. In case you live in a hole and missed it, Microsoft's stock price is up ~15% this week and almost 20% for the month - largely driven by our kick-ass earnings and higher guidance: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119264686055062256.html

It's been a good week. Let's hope there are more like this one.

Very random, but I got to thinking about Madonna today. So first off - she is clearly an impressive woman - especially when you consider how much she has accomplished, her tremendous fan base and how she has managed to stay relevant over such a very long period of time (over 20 years?).

This was only further reinforced with the stories that she's about to sign a $120M deal with Live Nation to produce 3 more albums over the next ten years: http://edition.cnn.com/2007/SHOWBIZ/Music/10/11/madonna.deal.ap/index.html

But then, I saw this: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21494412/ - a list of Maxim's Unsexiest.  Sara Jessica Parker at the top - yeah got it.  Smoking all day + frizzy hair + weird fashion sense = yeah got it.  But Madonna as 4th unsexiest?  Come on - she's 49, has had multiple children and still gets paid boatloads for her musical talent.  Everyone thinks she's awesome.  There's no way she should be on that list. Glad we divested our stake in MSNBC.

Madonna rocks ...

It's Friday, 10/19/07 and today's my last day in Microsoft's Corporate Strategy Group. It's pretty hard to believe that I've been here almost 2.5 years (well two years + an internship) and that I'm leaving some of the best people I've ever worked (and partied) with. 

At the same time, I'm really excited about what's coming next. Monday, I'll be joining the product management team in Windows Live focused primarily on building a seamless experience between Windows Live and other MS products/services (Windows, Office, etc.).

More to come soon, but with the move to Windows Live, it's definitely time for me to get a blog started (especially since I've been talking about it for years). So here begins the journey ...