Vinu’s Online Cloud

As it happens to lot of Indian in their mid 20s, parental pressure starts once you hit 25 and you see all your friends and cousins in the same age bracket getting married, settling down and having kids! Though the desire remains to do all that, I am sure we all feel marriage is something that should just happen and force yourself into. After two back to back breakups from my side this year I thought a lot in terms of what be so called guidelines I intuitively look before asking someone out / consider them seriously!

Was seated outside the doctor’s office to show my broken finger due to the accident (4 weeks over finally!) and I used the time to make the list of qualities I think look in a prospective partner:

• Ability to Love & care abundantly (would be good if unconditional ;P)
• Moderately attractive (to me) and Good Looking
• Active, Talkative, Intellectual and Energetic
• Understand and Appreciate Technology/Science
• Artist in some sense
• Career wise: Have total focus or be LOST (like me !) and flexible to do different things that one enjoys

I am basically viewing married life as honey-bee colony i.e complexity science. Basic rules / guidelines and let the magic flow. And yeah, effort is need to make the relationship work with constant adaptations to changing aspirations, expectations and perspective for the person, couple, immediate family and the society!

Of course, exceptions always remain for the rules, the chemicals in the brains are hardly ever predictable Guess, this year didn’t turn out to be that great - here’s hoping for the coming year to be a lovely experience …

All the best to the Singles and looking category …

Managing Emotions in the workplace article from Knowledge@Wharton puts together what I feel and believe in. Being more of a people person and preferring to work in ace teams - emotions do play a important role in my life at work. I personally feel there is never an end to learn how to manage them. Just quoting those lines I feel were important for my reference. Go read that link if are reading this …

“We engage in emotional contagion,” says Sigal Barsade, a Wharton management professor who studies the influence of emotions on the workplace. “Emotions travel from person to person like a virus.”In the paper, Barsade and Gibson consider three different types of feelings:

• Discrete, short-lived emotions, such as joy, anger, fear and disgust.
• Moods, which are longer-lasting feelings and not necessarily tied
  to a particular cause. A person is in a cheerful mood, for instance, or
  feeling down.
• Dispositional, or personality, traits, which define a person’s
  overall approach to life. “She’s always so cheerful,” or “He’s always
  looking at the negative.”

All three types of feelings can be contagious, and emotions don’t have to be grand and obvious to have an impact. Subtle displays of emotion, such as a quick frown, can have an effect as well, Barsade says.

The researchers’ paper discusses a concept known as “emotional labor,” in which employees regulate their public displays of emotion to complywith certain expectations.

Part of this is “surface acting,” in which, for instance, the tired and stressed airline customer service agent forces himself to smile and be friendly with angry customers who have lost their luggage.

That compares to “deep acting,” in which employees exhibit emotions they have worked on feeling. In that scenario, the stressed-out airline worker sympathizes with the customer and shows emotions that suggest empathy.

The second approach may be healthier, Barsade says, because it causes less stress and burnout, particularly emotional exhaustion from having to regulate one’s emotions and “play a role.”

Barsade says research suggests that positive people tend to do better in the workplace, and it isn’t just because people like them more than naysayers. Positive people cognitively process more efficiently and more appropriately. If you’re in a negative mood, a fair amount of processing is going to that mood. When you’re in a positive mood, you’re more open to taking in information and handling it effectively.”

While you can’t necessarily change your coworkers, people can take steps to avoid catching a negative mood, according to Barsade.

Barsade’s research has taken her into a variety of workplaces, most recently long-term care facilities. Her research found that in facilities where the employees report having a positive workplace culture — she calls it a “culture of love” — the residents end up faring better than residents in facilities with a less compassionate and caring work culture. The residents reported experiencing less pain, made fewer trips to the emergency room, and were more likely to report being satisfied and in a positive mood.

Someone in the BCB thread asked for people’s recommendation for domain and hosting solutions. Folks in the group responded with list of urls to contact and all they had to qualify was its good. From my experience, I bought a domain for myself six months back and I am playing around in it in kind of stealth mode.

Domain from http://www.net4domains.com/ and hosting at http://dreamhost.com/ (got a free url for a year there). Touch wood my experience has been good in terms of there has been no downtime and everything works. Things I have played around with this online are:

• Got google for office account to work
• Get command prompt access to install drupal, wordpress etc.
• Try Facebook apps
• Try hacking general code whenever I get time

Basically a space to hack around when i get time and interest in the internet world!! rapid protyping you see

But I think there are somethings to think about before going to a specific vendor and buying domain& hosting solution. To name a few:

• Support from the Vendor
• What purpose you want to use the hosting for
• Uptime through customer
• Cost (this is not much of a differentiator)
• Payment Options … ;P (matters if you are in India!)

The list of Urls provided in the mail thread from people were:

http://www.icdhost.com/
http://www.godaddy.com/
http://jodohost.com/
http://manashosting.com/
http://www.hostingsmart.in/
http://symonds.net/
http://www.bluehost.com/
http://www.hostgator.com/
http://www.slicehost.com/

What are your thoughts? I would like more options here …