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:

Jake: Whatup suckaaaaaaaaaa…

Me: Yo, I was thinking about what I’d learned about fending off an attacker in Rio – like hitting them in the ribcage or the groin. But then again, we are going to sacrifice drama.

Jake: We should get a gun.

Me: Okkk….

Jake: We should buy a gun there, and shoot Drama in front of the attackers. They’ll think we’re so bad ass that we shoot our own people.

I laughed for about 7 minutes straight. And then it reminded me of that scene from the movie Speed (don’t ask me why) where Keanu Reeves shoots Jeff Daniels.

"Sorry Drama, you sacrifice now."

"ai"

[picture courtesy Amazon]

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.

With my blog setup the way it is, if I ever need to move my content again there will be absolutely no impact to my readers.

Where has the best blog on the planet moved to?

Blog URL : http://www.Artificialignorance.net/blog

RSS/ATOM : http://feeds.feedburner.com/artificialignorance

My blog engine is running WordPress on IIS7 on Windows Server 2008 with MySQL as the database and is hosted by GoDaddy. I’d initially tinkered with GoGrid and their cloud computing offering to host the blog. However, I realized after spending about 3 hours that I’d customized their default Windows Server 2008 32-bit image with PHP5 so much so that spinning up another instance (if I ever had to) would be a giant PITA. However, huge hat-tip to the GoGrid team – their UI is intuitive and easy to use. Amazon Web Services was kind of a no-go because I really wanted to use Windows Server 2008.

I also played with WebHost4Life quite a bit as their pricing seemed very lucrative. However, I ran in to the perennial wordpress permalinks with IIS issue and was morally opposed to having to pay $5 extra/month just to have Custom 404 Error Pages (long story).

It is my goal to move over to using Azure when Azure is ready with PHP (and MySQL).

What happens to blogs.msdn.com/aniyer?

It is blogs.msdn.com policy to retain (meaningful) content, so all my old (meaningful) content will still be on blogs.msdn.com/aniyer. However, since our community server installation doesn’t support BlogML yet, I’ve been working on extracting my posts (sans the comments) and pushing them to artificialignorance.net. Eventually, all my content will move over (with little disruption to you as the reader).

That said, moving forward I will be adding posts to blogs.msdn.com/aniyer and in the body, simply linking back to the original post on artificialignorance.net with a disclaimer. I plan on doing this for the next six months or so.

See you over at Artificialignorance.net, yo.

"ai"

 
[courtesy: Penny Arcade!]

I don’t get it

Things have been pretty hush-hush on the inside – no one knew much about these commercials till they rolled out. I think it’d be easier for me to say what I did get about the commercials, which is pretty much nothing. I had to watch the commercials a few times just to get the subtleties of what they were saying. I was sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the punch-line, and I didn’t see it. From the New York Times article “Echoing the Campaign of a Rival, Microsoft Aims to Redfine ‘I’m a PC’“ :

“It did what it needed to do,” said Rob Reilly, partner and co-executive creative director at Crispin Porter in Boulder, Colo., and Miami. “People who got it, got it.””

I didn’t get it.

Lost?

When I saw the first commercial, I was hoping and praying that these commercials would be like episodes from the TV show Lost. That somehow magically all the pieces of the puzzle would start to come together over time. That said, Seinfeld “definitely and authoritatively” going off the commercials doesn’t make sense. That’d be like killing off Sayid in season 1. I also find it a little interesting that off all the blogs out there, Valleywag is the one that broke this story first. Not TechCrunch, not VentureBeat, Valleywag.

But that said, I completely agree with this comment that was left on the Windows Vista Blog:

“If you keep having to expain yourselves and defend the ad’s intent (which you’ve already had to do with the media to no end), then doesn’t that tell you right there the state of things? People just aren’t getting it.”

Things I liked about the commercial

I watched the commercials with the same group of friends each time they debuted. We laughed at the simple things. The continuity in the theme helped, like when Gates was still flexing the Conquistador in the 2nd commercial, and when the delivery kid says “Wow, two of the most accomplished people in their respective fields”.

I’m a PC

I’d created this T-shirt a few months ago:

 
I made it because I like the PC guy in the commercials. I like him better because he is portrayed as a little bit of a goof. How often does the Mac guy even speak in the Apple commercials? Truth be told, the Apple ads are really about the PC guy – he is the star. But what I am hearing is that in the next wave of our commercials is going to be about the PC guy. That there’s more to him than what is being portrayed.

Is it working?

I think of Arrington as the most influential technology journalist on the planet. Period. So for Arrington to say this,

“I can’t wait to see what comes next.”,

says something.

I think the commercials are working in that they are getting people wanting to watch the commercials. This will not be the death of Windows as some claim. Neither will it have any kind of short-term impact in sales. And that was not our goal to start with.

I’ve said this time and again, this company is full of ridiculously smart people. I quiver when I’m around some of these people. And they know what they are doing. But I think we can get more creative. I think we can get more specific. I do not think the commercials need to get heads-on and take on Apple’s commercials. Windows has been around for a long time and I think there’s a story or two I think we can tell a about everyday users.

“ai”

PS: Anyone a fan of The Office?

So, help me help you. What would you do if you were a Microsoft evangelist? I understand that I haven’t defined either what an evangelist is, what we do, or what our typical goals tend to be. But if you had the opportunity to set your own goals, and be an evangelist at Microsoft, what would you do?

Why would you want to do this?

• Help influence change, internally and externally
• Maybe you want to be an Evangelist someday? (Two years ago, I met someone at an MSDN Event who told me he wanted to be an Evangelist. He started working with me on a lot of events I was doing here in the Valley. We recently made him an offer to join our team as an Evangelist. I had no idea how good he was till he started working with me, and I referred him for the job)
• For the experience, perhaps?

I really appreciate your feedback. Really.

"ai"

thatsWhatSheTwittered (starts with a small ‘t’) is an amazing concept. Here’s how it works :

1. You follow ‘_twst‘ on twitter.
2. For every tweet that you twitter, you will get an automatic reply from _twst that says "thats what she twittered". If you think about what that means contextually, you’ll understand that nothing has ever made more sense. Ever. For example, check out this thwead (thats a ‘twitter thread’, also a cute way to say ‘thread’) :
   
3. Every interaction with _twst will automatically make its way on to thatsWhatSheTwittered.com and will appear in a threaded fashion (that is much friendlier than what appears on quotably.com). The site is currently in private beta.

I hear the co-founders are currently to raise a round in the 50-100 mil range. If you want in on the beta, please send an email to ‘thatswhatshetwittered@gmail.com’. 

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank Dan Lyons for his support on this project, but sorry Dan, I’m out of time.

"ai"

After everyone had done singing, and while everyone was applauding, I screamed "speech, speech". I thought it’d be funny given that the kid had just turned 1. But my funniness got muffled in the applause and no one heard what I said. Except for this prick guy who was standing right next to me. Just as the applause ends, he yelps "speech, speech, speech, speech, speech" like a baby howler monkey and everyone just erupts into laughter. I looked at him as if to say what the hell, but he was avoiding eye contact. The guy had clearly stolen my joke. I wanted to confront him after, but didn’t think it’d be appropriate with all the kids around. So I rolled my elmo-napkin in to a ball and threw it at him (from behind) later.

Everyone thinks he is a funny guy now, and that I’m someone who just loves to sing (happy birthday). So unfair.

"ai"

But I felt like I need to air this one out, because it felt good, just thinking about what I’d heard. A friend told me the other day that she likes hanging around me because I make her want to be a better person. How awesome a compliment is that? I make someone want to be a better person. It makes me feel so amazingly useful in the universe to make someone else feel good. Or just that I’m good enough to make other people (granted one person) want to be around me. My favorite compliment up to that point had been this survey comment I’d gotten after an event I’d done : "ANAND DOESN’T SUCK AS MUCH AS HE USED TO."

What was your best compliment?

now playing : "kryptonite" by "three doors down"

"ai"

I’m tired of being a victim of circumstance. Oh, the market’s slumping, oh, the economy is not booming as much as it should, oh, I have vasovagal syncope (I really did). What I’ve realized is that its one thing to feel down because you are a victim of something you have no control over, its commending to take charge and make change because you are down.

In 2001, I started at Cisco Systems as a Software Developer. I’d joined Cisco two months after it had announced massive layoffs. There were major re-organizations, but the conditions forced us to focus on what was important. I ended up being a part of a key project that was vital to the business and Cisco’s customers. It was meant to be. I think everyone followed suit (Cisco was a NASDAQ bellwether/sweetheart). Everyone refocussed and reprioritized. The pendulum started to swing.

Maybe I’m feeling so positive because thanks to Shaherose of Women 2.0, I got to attend the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner at Google last night. I got to hear from the likes of Irene Au (who I think is one of the most humble and modest executives I’ve ever heard) speak talk about their experiences. The panel comprised of several women luminaries who’ve set out to make a mark for themselves and the communities they serve. Some of them were accidental entrepreneurs. Some of them really demanded to be co-founders and retrofitted that need into a project, but either way, their presence on that panel was because of their accomplishments, which in turn came about because they were trying to solve some problem.

So with that said, I must say I’m pretty excited about this year. Sure the market’s slumping, everyone including their dog is having this unhealthy (somewhat unwarranted) paranoia about everything, there’s talk about an economic recession, but the situation’s exciting because conditions like these make way for some new things to happen. Some people are going to step up and make change; new ideas, new prodigies are going to be born and discovered. The pendulum’s starting to swing.

And let’s face it, who likes a stationary pendulum anyway?

"ai"
* – Credit goes to my friend Jas Sandhu – Jas can relate almost anything in the universe to a pendulum swing.

So, whats in a name, you say? Well, a lot… I respectfully disagree this notion about the fact that a name doesn’t really stand for anything or that, a name’s just a name, and all the other cliches that people with bad names have come up with.

For the first time today, I got both my first and my last names, completely butchered. We had our monthly team call today, and a moderator was responsible in introducing us when we dialed in to the meeting. She read my name out as "Amanda Iyer". I laughed it off. I’m sure every guy on the team suddenly started paying attention because he probably thought a woman had been added to the team *grin* (well, atleast I sure woke up, because I wasn’t sure who Amanda was, and then I thought to myself, "huh, a woman with the same last name as mine" just signed in)

If that wasn’t bad enough, a little while later, I called up Amazon to check on this order I’d placed 2 weeks ago. This customer service rep (@ Amazon), for some reason thought that proper nouns do not begin with capital letters. And so, he ended up calling me "Anand Lyer" – he confused the capital ‘I’ in my last name, to be a small ‘L’ (an ‘l’ i.e.). *sigh*

I’ve become a female liar…

When I was at Purdue, I worked part-time for the Engineering Computer Network. My then manager, Marian, had a tough time pronouncing my name. So she nick-named me "Andy". And that stuck for a bit… Only till it started to sound absurd. Starbucks and Jamba Juice both have this format where you tell the person behind the counter what your name is once you’ve ordered. And when I tell them my name is "Andy", they give me this look like, "yeah right Aapu".

And then once "Allen Iverson" broke in to the scene, and since our basketball skills are mostly alike (mine and Iverson’s that is), it made perfect sense for me to name myself after him. So "AI" has stuck – atleast for now. But, how ridiculous is it to introduce yourself as "AI", if you’re in a meeting with customers, managers and/or executives?

When I was at Cisco, I had the privilege of working with Kirk Lougheed. Kirk called me "A-Nand", like in "a nand gate". That was funny…

So, here I am now… Analyzing my name, its spelling, its origin… Why Dad? Why Mom? Frankly, I mostly know why. See, we have this tradition in my family, where kids are named after their grandparents. My grandad was Anand (and now, so are 3 of my guy cousins).

"Anand" is originally a Sanskrit word, and means "Happiness". Anand is not pronounced Anand. Its pronounced "Aah-nend". Some people even think it should be spelt "Onen". But you get the idea…

I’m gonna make sure my kids don’t go through this. I want to have unique names for them, but I still want it to be easily pronouncible. So, as of today, I’m reserving "Oye", "Mia", "Tia", "Ria" and all the other 3 letter names in the world (somewhere my girlfriend’s head is exploding). Now that I think about it, my sister was quite prudent in naming my niece "Dana". I’m guessing my brother-in-law had something to do with that.

Having been a software engineer, I feel like I’ve found a bug, which I need to fix right away. I feel like I need to ‘fix’ my name. I guess this is one of those "hidden" bugs in the code – the kind that will get shipped with the code, and will always stay embedded in the code. The kind we hope our customers never find out about… (I just re-read this paragraph, and yep, jeez, thats a horrible horrible geeky analogy – I’m probably going to have Rory Blyth have a crack at this post, and see if he wants to rewrite it for me).

In totally unrelated news, Maroon 5‘s kicking off their 2005 tour and is planning to have a show in San Jose, CA. Well, its not totally unrelated news – didn’t you think my title for this article sounded familiar? Yeah, "Random Jones", thats my new name… Also, probably a good time for a drink…

AI (and thats the letter "a", and the letter "i" – I am not now suddenly calling myself AL)

PS: Glen Gordon pinged me on messenger and asked if I had a middle name… Glen – you do not want to know… You do NOT want to know… :)

PPS: If you haven’t noticed yet, I’m going to have Rory Blyth’s name in, well, most if not all of my posts to this site. Even if there isn’t content in the post, you’re occasionally going to see something like :