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?

When I’m interviewing a candidate (regardless of the role they’re applying for), I start off by asking the candidate a bunch of ridiculously vague questions and I see how they start thinking about answering the questions. The best candidates usually take a step back and ask me a whole bunch of questions about my questions. That makes the candidate a “fit”, IMO, even if the answers they provide are not correct.

“how would you design a vending machine”

I once had a candidate design the most perfect cola dispensing vending machine on the planet. As soon as I’d asked the question, he didn’t say a word, went to the blackboard and just started designing the vending machine. Sure, it isn’t rocket science to design a vending machine you say. But there’s a lot to factor in. And he factored in all the right things. Then I told him, “you know, I really want to sell iPods and peripherals through these vending machines. In Japan.” The first words out of his mouth after I’d said that were, “is Japan on 100-110V or 220-240V?”

“what is the stock price of NFLX today”

If a candidate knows what the exact price of a stock is at a given time, that’s got to be just great chance. Some times the best answer is “I don’t know”. And I try to get candidates to get used to saying that. If they can learn to ask questions and say “I don’t know” in the 30-40 minutes I spend with them, I consider them a good fit.

“should I buy NFLX stock today”

None of the candidates I interview are in a position to answer if I should buy a certain stock or not – trust me. You’ll be surprised what some of the candidates say. The best answer to this question is, “I don’t know”. Or better yet “I’m not the right person to answer your question, but I may be able to point you to someone else who may be able to better answer your question.”

Having someone on your team who “takes you back to basics” with naïve question asking is a really good thing. Often times we tend to take things for granted when we’re really far along down a thought process. We made some assumptions way back when which forced us to get to the conclusion that we’re faced with today. I suggest you work with someone who is willing to challenge those basic assumption from time to time.

Asking questions is also a polite way of “influencing someone”. My old boss, Paul Murphy, did this extremely well (“Everybody loves Paul“). It’s a clever way of getting someone to provide an answer that you really want to hear.

I’m a big proponent of people asking tons of questions. It’s a cultural thing that was encouraged at Microsoft. I’d love for it be more accepted for people to ask questions, no matter how naïve the questions might be. At IGN, we’ve already started to go down this path and have culturally accepted exercising the “Five Whys“. As a society, I’d love for us learn to be more tolerant of question-askers.

@ai

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.

That was in late 2006. Since then, the chest pains come and go intermittently. They are extremely painful when they happen. The issue usually gets aggravated after an exerting workout. Sometimes, I think I’m on the verge of a heart attack.

I followed through after going to the ER back in 2006 and got tested by a cardiologist who concluded that there was nothing wrong with my heart whatsoever. I saw a doctor who was convinced that I had acid reflux (GERD) that was causing me the discomfort. I got on medication for fixing acid reflux. Another doctor was convinced that it was likely an issue with my throat. I was asked to participate in a swallowing study (no jokes – and I did them). Nothing was wrong. These doctors were using a process of elimination to try to figure out what was wrong with me.

There have been days when I’ve told myself that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with me. On Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, I’d feel otherwise (I used to work out regularly on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays – the day after the workout, I’d feel like the muscles in my chest were in a knot). So I stopped working out. And I felt better.

A couple of years ago, I found a new medical practice – the OneMedical group. I had a new “group of primary care physicians”, as opposed to just one. At the time, I was also having frequent headaches that I attribute to my bad allergies. Finally one of the doctors at OneMedical asked me to see Dr. Greenberg about my headaches. Here we go, I thought – more referrals, more running around. I went to Dr. Greenberg and he spent a solid 20 minutes asking me questions – that was unlike anything any other doctor had every done. He asked me if I had any other conditions that he should be aware of – I casually told him about the chest pains not really expecting any kind of a response.

Me: No other conditions really, just these occasional chest pains – my doctor thinks its acid reflux. I’ve had it for years.
Dr. Greenberg: Ah, Costochondritis.
Me: Wait, what? You have a name for this condition?
Dr.: Yeah, it’s not uncommon and it’s benign. No big deal. Let’s get back to the headaches.
Me: So I can ignore the chest pains? Will they go away?
Dr.: Oh yeah. Think about it – your ribs expand and contract all your life as you breathe. Occasionally, they cause discomfort if you exert yourself too much. They may not go away but nothing to worry about. Apply Volatren the next time you feel discomfort.

Holy shit. Here I thought I’ve been having mini heart attacks for the last 4 years. I’ve been diagnosed. And of course better yet, it’s not that big a deal!

Costochondritis. The other chest pain. From wikipedia:

Costochondritis is a benign inflammation of the costal cartilage, which is a length of cartilage which connects each rib, except the eleventh and twelfth, to the sternum. It causes pain in the chest that can be reproduced by pressing on the affected area between the ribs. This pain can be quite excruciating, especially after rigorous exercise. While it can be extremely painful, it is considered to be a benign condition that generally resolves in 6–8 weeks. Though costochondritis appears to resolve itself, it can be a recurring condition that can appear to have little or no signs of onset. These episodes can be years apart from one another. Treatment options are quite limited and usually only involve rest and analgesics but in a very small number of cases cortisone injections and even surgery are sometimes necessary.^[1]

Costochondritis symptoms can be similar to the chest pain associated with a heart attack.

So, why am I writing about this? Why now? A few months ago my friend Cyrus pinged me on IM and told me about  a friend of his who was googling Carnaval in Rio. Turns out she stumbled upon my post on Carnaval and saw a picture of Cyrus in my post. What a small world I thought…

So I’m writing about this chest pain I’ve had on the left side of my chest for the last 4.5 years in the hope that somehow this post will get indexed. And that someone googling for chest pains who is not really having a heart attack (if you think you’re having chest pains and you’re really having a heart attack, trust me, you wouldn’t be googling it at the time) and has been through their fair share of doctors who are at best ‘guessing’ about a patient’s condition knows that there is likely another reason.

@ai

PS: I’ve been quiet about this recent onslaught upon Google and search result quality in general. This is a great example of where something like PageRank can work against you. Basically, if I were to trust Google’s results, I would have been convinced that I was having a heart attack.

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:

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]

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.

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"

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

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?

I’ve been a Microsoft Evangelist for a few years now. From an inside-out perspective, it seems like things are going well. We spend a lot of time before a fiscal year begins laying out our goals. And typically, we do the best job we can to execute. But the thing about this job is that you don’t really know what you are missing. Is meeting the goals we set out for ourselves good enough? As Microsoft ambassadors, are we doing what we are supposed to be doing?

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"

I’m proud to announce the beta launch of thatsWhatSheTwittered.com. The co-founders gave me an early preview of the site. This has to be one of the most brilliant ideas I’ve ever come across, and I’m proud to be a part of this new venture.

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"

I was at a friend’s son’s birthday party last weekend. We were all huddled around the parents, and the kid, with the cake and everything. No one seemed to be taking the initiative to start singing happy birthday. The parents didn’t wanna do it. So I screamed out "1, 2, 3, happy birthday …" and everyone magically followed suit. I felt really good about that. All those years of idolizing Papa Smurf and watching him be this unsung paternal hero who leads others with his profound words seemed to have paid off.

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"

Sure a lot of my blog posts are self-righteous, self-involved, non-humble posts. This one’s not very different.

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"

A few years ago, I’d made a new year’s resolution – the resolution was to not make any more resolutions. This year, I had to break my pact. I made some resolutions.

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 :