Benanti-cam

yes, you too can watch my daughter on full streaming video

I gotta find a way to post this on YouTube. Any ideas?

And here comes the baby!

Well, she arrived a week early...what a surprise (thank god it wasn't while I was in China or NY). She's gorgeous, of course. Doesn't every dad think his kid is the cutest? I must admit, her head was elongated when she first arrived (yes, I was there for labor AND delivery), but they explained that was because of how she was positioned in the womb. Whew! I thought she was gonna have a funny head for the rest of her life!

Here's a pic at 2 day old --


Ain't she cute? Full head of jet black hair! I expected no less since I had the same when I was born (as do most Indian kids for those that don't know). She's been very quiet (except when hungry) and she poops a lot. Amazing how quickly they learn the burping and farting...and it takes forever to train us to not do that in public.

Well, I'm a proud papa and I'm ready to give her all the best in life. I keep thinking and just don't want to screw her up. Is that something that would be possible to avoid?

Understaffed at home

Ever feel like you could use a couple more hands? A couple more hours a day?

Yea, me too. Well, what the hell am I blogging for then....

In the next 5 weeks I am taking a trip to NYC, Shanghai, and then having a baby soon afterwards. Work has just completely taken over my life. I feel this need to accomplish things and instead I attend meetings where we decide on actions and then I don't get any time to execute on them. Is this what every job is like? What's the point of having an action if I can't accomplish it? I've started skipping meetings. Now when I do that, people call me on my desk, on my cellphone and tell me I'm missing a meeting. No Shit. That's the reason I'm not there is to get away from all you people so I can actually get something done.

Then I get passed random assignments that are way bigger than what I could possibly do:
- Perform due diligence on our latest acquisition -- No idea how to evaluate an acquisition.
- Examine our 2006 prospects and which countries I want to do work in -- yea, as if I have time to do research
- Create roadmaps for 4 different product lines - HA! Who has time to create a roadmap?

Then I get reamed out from sales reps who tell me that the tools they use are difficult to understand. And this is my problem? Did I tell your sales managers to go out and use a crappy quoting tool? "Maybe you should write a FAQ or a tip sheet on how to use it" suggests one sales person. Yea, that sounds like my job description, "help you use your own tools". Oh and did I mention that this is the only salesperson having the problem? Everyone else seems to be able to use the tool just fine.

Always great to see that we hire the best and the brightest.

December Baby

I'm introducing life to a new person. Well, not just me, my wife has a lot to do with it...actually, now that I think about it, she's the one doing most of the work.

We're expecting our baby to arrive around November 30th. I'm having a lot of heartburn with this date (not sure how much of a choice I had in the matter...well, ok I had some choice). Here's the problem:

I'm finishing my MBA program in Dec. Dec 9th to be exact. Part of the program is to travel to NY for classes. I've also elected to travel to London and China for a week-long class and my international seminar, respectively. My London trip is Aug 19-26, no problem there. China is Nov 5-11...cutting it a little close. And our regular (and last) trip to NYC for classes is Oct 25-28. Oh, and finals are Dec 7-9. All these dates straddle the ultimate deadline of Nov 30th, which is also a moving target.

Now, I know this is probably a trivial issue but I was hoping there wouldn't be an overlap. I could finish my MBA and start the baby "job" just afterwards. I should be thanking my lucky stars the baby was not born while I was in Term 1 or 2 like some of my classmates.

Liikely I'm stressing over this before I need to and it will probably be ok since my in-laws are closeby and my parents are coming in Dec anyways. Well, if I have any say (and I have very little, I know) Dec 10th would be a great day to have a baby.

My new house

I like my new house. It's nothing fabulous but it's 3 bedrooms and 3 baths and it's got a fantastic view. Here, check it out:







We're still trying to figure out what to do with our fireplace:

In all we like the house but the people who lived here before us had a real knack for UGLY. I mean, they kept the place in good shape but the paint on the walls is discolored and inside the bathrooms is the ugliest lighting I've ever seen (flourescent lights in the bathroom?). Ok, mostly they just smelled. We're still getting the funky smell out of this place. There's some odor that won't go away even after the carpets were cleaned and the house was cleaned from top to bottom.

Anyways, we still like the place and we'll likely stay for a few years until we've outgrown it (may be less time than we think).

I personally want to redo the kitchen and bathrooms right away but I have a feeling it might be a while before we get there.

Trauma

Someone once defined trauma to me as "anything that can initiate major change in one's life, not necessarily good or bad". I think this is a valuable description. I'm moving so this is major trauma. I hate packing up all my stuff and having to live in the realm of not really living in a place but having to live there while your stuff is not available. I'd rather someone just came to my house while I was at work and packed it up, moved it, and unpacked. Life would be much simpler. I'm sure there are people that do that but Do I really want to pay $1000 for it? Doubtful, I'm a cheapass too so the chances of that happening are slim.

I'm also taking a new job at work as a Product Manager. I'm excited about my new role although I've had to take a slight paycut for the pleasure of working in the group. I think it will be more exciting than just pitching solutions to customers, which is what I do now as a Sales Engineer (or Regional Technical Manager as we call it). I like facing customers but I feel there's no real strategy to what I do. I'm a tech geek just as I was when I was a consultant.

Now here's the downside, my commute increases (I currently work from home) so I'm really starting to wonder what the hell I was thinking. I'll like my job but the group is understaffed so I'll work much harder and I'll be wasting an hour going to work each way.

I have lots of trauma in my life. Now, it's not life-shattering, horrible trauma but its pretty painful having to go through all my crap and pack it up just to unpack 1 mile away from where I live now.

Web collaboration and information storage

Interesting company that Google just gobbled up: http://www2.writely.com/info/WritelyOverflowWelcome.htm


Another idea I've thought about...why should I be saving emails and documents in different hierarchical file systems or DBs? While Google desktop allows me the ability to search both, I'd rather be able to store all of my items in a single relational db with title, comments, and all the relevant details. I think need to be able to pull them out as needed without having to search each one independently for information. Why can't email and files live in the same hierarchical or relational system rather than distinct ones? I need a single information store for all my communication paths (so ideally even web pages, RSS, SMS, and every other way in which I get electronic info). Each one should have some meta data that I can search on and allow me to share or search for that information as needed. Google Desktop is a start but it doesn't solve the issue because I spend a lot of time organizing my email folders as I do organizing my file folders. Both should be the same and both should auto-learn the way in which I store data and the kind of data I create and receive. And they should understand whether this is work or personal as well as whether it's time sensitive or not.

50% done with Berkeley-Columbia's Exec program

As of this writing, I am officially 52% done with my career as an Exec MBA student at the Berkeley-Columbia Executive program. It's been a blast so far even if the work has been overwhelming at times. I don't do all the homework I'm supposed to and I can't always do all the readings I want to, but for the most part I feel like it's been an amazingly valuable experience.

I'm trying to compare this to two other people I know who are attending an MBA program at the same time. The first is my twin brother who is attending Columbia's Exec MBA program and the other is my friend who is attending IMD's full time (1 year) program.

I must say that the rigor of IMD's program has really impressed me. I don't even understand half of what Sia writes on his blog. I will say that it sounds like he's getting worked a lot harder than I am although with my full-time work, I think we both keep pretty busy.

Makes me wonder what the purpose of these programs are...is it really the rigor or does the rigor inspire the network? I like the folks in my program but I don't want to think I just ponied up $126K just to hang out and get to know them. Could I have learned all this from a book somewhere? Probably. Would I have met the same amazing people..maybe, but it would have taken me longer.

It does make me believe there isn't much difference between those that "succeed" and those that don't. Some of it's luck, some of it's the right people, and some of it's just being ready for the right opportunity. I'm hoping some of that hits me soon.

BTW, here's my friend's blog on IMD: http://sliceoftoro.blogspot.com

My next project (between moving into my new house and renting our old place): setting up zimbra on my Mac Mini: www.zimbra.com. These guys did email right.

LinkedIn

I've got a new LinkedIn profile on the web: https://www.linkedin.com/in/banjot

I'm digging this LinkedIn thing...I'm able to reconnect with lots of old colleagues and even classmates from my days at Brown.

Operational Efficiency in Tech companies

we had this debate during lunch while I was attending my block at Berkeley for the BC EMBA program. My Cap Markets professor asked how our operations class was going...to which we all avoided the question since it's ridiculously boring and the other professor was standing 5 feet away.

Anyways, we claimed initially that most tech companies don't understand operational efficiency because they haven't had to. I argued though, that this is going to change and has changed. I'm sure companies like eBay have figured out how to most efficiently perform transactions and list "junk" on their website. I can't imagine they haven't done that analysis....have they? As protocols and hardware become standardized at each level, things will become more efficient. Look at how networking has become easy, now if you tell someone how big an organization is, we can scale bandwidth appropriately.I think OS and hardware and web apps will get to that point fairly soon...the standards are already forming. Once that happens, operational efficiency will decide who makes money on it (essentially dropping your marginal cost for your products, allowing you to drop price and gain marketshare).

I know my organization is not efficient on sales operations and has managed some operational efficiency in our back-end operations (we've got 15-20 BILLION queries running through our systems today...btw, we run the .net and .com registry and largest SS7 networks in the US, so that's how we accomplist those feats). I don't think tech companies can actually figure this stuff out though. How do you resolve how many transactions are running through your system? Is it based on web traffic? is it based on users logging in? Is it based on users who bought something? Is it based on page views? All of these must play some role. The last company I worked for (Verizon Wireless) tried to figure this out but they were hopelessly scrambling to keep their infrastructure running and couldn't spend the time or energy to truly develop a holistic view of what actually went through the network. Nobody inside could even figure out what the bigger picture looked other than some of the Technical Directors, but they spent all day firefighting new problems. Amazed me that nobody wanted this information badly enough to spend significant $$ on it!

It got me thinking that it would be a great idea for a company. Wouldn't it be great if someone could tell you exactly what kinds of transactions populate your network. And based on some criteria of what actually encompassed a transaction, you could categorize the different types of transactions as well as model what an increase would look like. Ideally, you could also develop a way to decide on hardware and software that would allow you to understand what your bandwidth needs are.

The Sopranos

I've been stuck on the Soprano's for the last 4-5 months. I can't believe I missed this for the last 4 years. What a great show. My wife is a little sick from all the graphic violence but she seems just as hooked as I am. A sensitive guy with a little bit of a tough side.

I'm almost caught up now to the current season. My prediction: Tony Soprano gets whacked. I think I know what makes the show, it's the music.