Artificial ignorance

I spent the majority of my day yesterday in a training session here at IGN. The session was aimed at helping us get better at communication, teamwork and at helping us get better as leaders in the organization.

I noticed some common themes and issues surfaced during the course of the day. And somehow for me, I felt like the solution to most if not all these issues all came down to one thing – I wish everyone would ask more questions and stop making assumptions. I felt like exercising this would rid us of a whole bunch of organizational challenges.

I wonder what it is that makes us morph ourselves from having this childlike mentality where we constantly ask questions. Maybe we don’t want to come across as not being as aware or as knowledgable as everyone else around us? Maybe we’ve been around intolerant people who just don’t like being questioned? Another theory – we sit in classrooms most of our lives and we’re talked “at” and spoken “at” by teachers and instructors. We are asked not to speak unless we’re spoken to. As I think back to my years in school and college, while I wasn’t discouraged from asking questions about something I didn’t understand, interrupting class wasn’t encouraged either. The class was X minutes long, and there was a strict agenda. It may have occurred to you to interrupt and ask a clarifying question, but how often did you actually do it? Why not? Continue reading

I’ve always been an avid basketball player. Of all the sports out there, I find basketball to be one of the few sports that has the fewest barriers to start playing. But living in San Francisco, a city that tends to be fairly cold year around, I find it difficult to play ball outdoors. So back in December 2006, I found one of the few full-fledged indoor basketball courts near San Francisco – a ClubOne facility in Oakland. I headed over there and played ball. I played for about 4 hours straight. The last time I’d exerted myself like that was back in high school.

Soon after I was done, I noticed that I was surprisingly short of breath. I sat in the locker room thinking about how I’d gotten through 4 hours and not felt a thing (I’ve since noticed that typically the adrenaline overrides any sensations that I may have been feeling while I play). What was bothering me even more was this heavy feeling I had in the left side of my chest. Against my best judgement, I decided to suck it up and go home. I was convinced that I wasn’t having a heart attack – I was 26 and in pretty good shape. There was no way. Right?

I woke up the next morning, and didn’t feel any better. My chest pain had gotten worse. So I headed to the ER at UCSF Parnassus and got myself checked out. After an epic wait of about 3 hours, and some fairly simple tests, the physicians concluded that I was perfectly fine. The diagnosis was … fatigue. The medication … advil. I was asked to go home and rest. Several days passed and the chest pain got better but it didn’t go away entirely. I did my due diligence and Googled the heck out of this condition. Try googling for “chest pain”. Trust me, it will scare the living daylight out of you. You will be convinced that you’re having a heart attack. Continue reading

My friends and I are headed to Rio for Carnival in exactly 31 days. Every time we speak to someone about Rio though, all we hear is how dangerous the city is. One of our good friends’s girlfriend is Brazilian, and she has told us multiple stories about how her guy friends have gotten roofied there. However, everyone we know has come back from Rio alive or unscathed. Which makes me think that one of us is likely not going to make it back.

I suggested that in the circumstance that something were to go wrong, that we sacrifice Drama to the attackers – that they take him and keep him and in return let us go. However, Jake had a better suggestion.

The following took place after my trek back from the gym this evening: Continue reading

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve imagined writing this post. Well, the time has finally come – I’m packing my blog and moving it off of blogs.msdn.com. http://www.Artificialignorance.net will no longer redirect to http://blogs.msdn.com/aniyer.

Why am I moving?

Simple – I wanted more control over my blog. Blogs.msdn.com and community server have been great, but I seem to need more than the capabilities that community server gives me in terms of manageability and customization.

While Microsoft doesn’t care that I use my blog to write about things unrelated to Microsoft, there have been readers who’ve asked me why I write about  wanting to marry Kaavya Vishwanathan, for example.

I’ve been wanting to use WordPress forever now. I’ve heard personally from Matt as well as from other sources about how good the engine is, how the user base is growing so rapidly, the availability of all these 3rd party plugins etc. etc. (not to mention the ability to use Facebook Connect for my commenters to leave comments on my blog via Disqus) Microsoft and the IIS team in particular has been investing a lot of time in PHP on IIS7 and Windows Server 2008, and I want to put our theories in to practice. Continue reading

I’m just as perplexed as anyone else about the commercials. I’ve been following our advertising story closely for the last couple of months right up to our launch on 9/4. But this cartoon nails the way I (and most of my friends seem to) feel:

 
[courtesy: Penny Arcade!]

I don’t get it Continue reading