Where is my data, can i use it, and can it help me??

In the quest to live a better, organized and more productive life you need all your data! And that exactly has been my quest for a long time, I have lots of data:

• Financial : Money and Quicken files from last 6 years (2001-08), Paper bahi khata from Seven Years (1995-2001) and Excel Sheets from several years (2005-2008)
  
• My day, what did I do: Paper based time tracking (1995-2001), Outlook files from (2003-2008)
• Health data, workouts: In Excel from 2002-08
• Contacts: In GMail, In Outlook (fortunately synced with my cell phone!)
• Blogs: In Blogspot and Wordpress since 2001
• Website: 2001-2003 (http://cse.ucsc.edu/~vaibhav and personal http://www.vitraag.com)
• My pictures: Organized in folders marked in format YEARMONTHDATE-EVENT since 2001
• My Videos: Roughly 8-9 disks in DV format!
• Friendships, Social Networks - Facebook, LinkedIn, Orkut
• Bookmarks - In Google
• Work related files, code and documents since 2001!
• Music: Songs as MP3 and ripped mp3s!
  

So as you can see I have a lot of data!! and I have been a big fan of measuring and tracking things. However I feel that I was more productive and has a better of things when I did paper pen tracking of how I spent time and money! Now i'm at loss - the primary symptom of digitization is that my data has lost its focus - I have data scattered everywhere for example what I do daily is scattered between outlook, google calendar, and mobile phone (ofcourse i'm less organized now :)), I have no good way of keeping track of my day....

I know this is tough problem for the computer industry etx.. but first and foremost I want peace of mind.. now a days my brain feel soo much scattered I feel like I dont have good handle on things and need to read more and understand things in order to do anything. I have come to believe that this is some kind of a dis-order may be ADD but i dont think I have been a non-focus kind of guy - just the thought of me not knowing about my stuff makes me a want to read and organize more which in turn leads to more reading and organizing and the end result is that I have very little time to get anything done! So this might be a bigger problem but I have come to believe that the cure needs to start with centralizing my data and creating a dashboard for it and all this has to have a very concrete tracking mechanism and a goal against it...

Festival Of Forgiveness - Michammi Dukdam

Today is the "Shyamapana festival". Shyamapana is a festival of forgiveness; its popular among folks of Jain faith. This day is a culmination of a weeklong fest of repentance called "Paryushan". To quote an article :

“For 357 days of the year we carry out our responsibilities to our business, our family and our career. We live a very busy, worldly life. In the process, we accumulate a lot of mental and emotional clutter. We gather unnecessary baggage of pride, fear, animosity, greed, ego and delusions in our thoughts and feelings. So Paryushan is the time to clear that clutter and make a bonfire to burn that junk, that rubbish which is corrupting our minds, our lives and our relationships. The Jains have designed the special eight days of Paryushan as a time of reflection, purification and renewal.”

So over the last year if I have hurt your feelings in any way or form, please forgive me -"Michammi Dukdam" and give me a mandate to start a new score!

Take Care and have a nice weekend!!

cheers,
Vaibhav
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~~My Jain Influences~~
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Support my 204.5 mile bike ride to Portland
Support my climbs
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Water!!

THIRST

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: design crisis)

Vegetarian Nutrition

I have been trying to keep an excel sheet of what i eat. However i think i'm going to try and babble about my thoughts on diet, so that i can be more clear and get some feedback. In addition to my diet i'm also trying help my dad (who is obese) to figure a better diet.

So, things which are deficient in Vegetarian diet are Protein, Calcium, Vitramin B12, Iron and Zinc.

Few initial general tips:

• Tofu can be an amazing source of protein, iron, zinc, and calcium.
• Vitamin B12 - The best source is fortified cereal.
  

Some specific Obesity tips in general:
When BMI (Weight / Height Squared) in kg/sq.m is more than 30 its termed as Obesity. Treatments include -

• Low Calorie Diets
• Exercise - spinning, walking
• Make a goal (half marathon walk??)
• No Caffeine
  
• More water 64 oz ie 8 glasses
• Measure Cholesterol
  

We struck gold, what next? Can we build Indian sports?

We struck gold, what next? Can we build Indian sports?

It’s a historic moment in the history of Indian sports. First ever individual sport gold medal in the Olympics! Abhinav Bindra has made us all of proud. United States has an450 men old Olympic team while the Indian contingent is just about 59! We might not have quality sportsmen to qualify for the big event but the hope of 1.1 Billion Indians is revived by this feet.

Some cynics remark that every 30 years India gets a gold in Olympics so the next will be due in 30 years. Do you think so? Can we do something to change the dire state of Athletics and Sports in general in India? Can we get the nation to think something more than Cricket? Of course all of the nation wants to think something other than Cricket but they need a pillar they need a hero to hold on to. Abhinav might be just it -? We the NRIs (right ? - I'm one now) give quite a bit back to the nation in terms of supporting education, aid during natural disasters etc. But how about if we have a Hope fund for Indian sports! Especially the individual sports? The idea is that this fund trains may 5-10 Indian sports stars from early on - gets them the appropriate coaching from abroad and nourishes their dreams and ambitions. We need more Bindra's to make our believe in themselves and something must be done about it - more on a consistent, quality driven and citizen fueled approach.

A common result of such success it media hype and melodrama. We often have seen that we the desis fall so much to emotions and just get over-whelmed by feelings. The next steps , action and what we ought to do is usually missing! And thus our circles of misery and overjoy continues :). So what could be the next step to promote more athletics in India. Among the NRIs and at least in North America is very popular to try endurance sports like Marathon, Cycling etx. Usually these events are coupled with fund-raising - so how if we associate these events with the cause of moving the state of India sports one notch up. Concrete how if on the Marathon event we invite one of the athletes from India to participate. Usually a fund raising marathon team is about 40-60 people. So if everyone contributes $75-100 we have enough to sponsor an Indian athlete to participate in the event!!! What do you think of the idea?

Ma and Bapu in Seattle - Week One !

I have been looking forward to my parents' visit. They arrived to Seattle last Sunday and below is a video diary and here are pictures of what we have been up to last week. We had a fun time camping in Fort Casey State Park on Whidbey Island - this was first time camping experience for my parents :)!



I took extra care to make the experience a little pleasant! The forecast was rain so we headed for a little less damp and open area. I also switched to an air mattress instead of sleeping bags - and yep brought in all the big pleasures of car camping like chairs, grill, firewood and yep - watermelon!! Oh my parents love the sweet corn!

On a side-note I have been trying to motivate and encourage my folks to pay more attention to their health. The great success is now they track their weight and blood-pressure every day!! A sweet result of this is that now we can correlate the days they have high blood pressure to the days when they are sitting at home!! So yep going on walk is an incentive to see those numbers do better. I think the next step for me is to get a pedometer for Dad so that he can keep track of how many steps he walks every day!!

However the big deal in whole deal of parents' health is healthy eating!! With typical east indian cuisine a lot of oil, and unhealthy fat makes way in to ones diet. My elder sister who is a Dermatologist gave a tip to try and control the salt intake first, and stress a little more on fruits. I need to make sure that Mom now starts cooking healthy stuff and yep! not give in to pressure/ craving from me or Dad :)!!!

Ride Report - STP 2008

This year I'm doing a video report of our Seattle to Portland 2-day, 200+ mile bike ride. Be gentle with my experimentation in movie making and spelling skills, and if you have not donated already please consider supporting this ride, by making your contributions here.



I have shared the pictures of ride here.