Updates..

• I met with the professor yesterday, and he sure as hell cannot produce a single cohesive sentence in English. I am a bit disappointed that I would not get a writing buddy, but what the hell, a prof is a prof is a prof.
• My longterm undergrad student came back from vacationing in Indonesia. He brought me 4 pounds of fresh prime coffee beans! I love that guy!
• I have to finish off a report by this evening and I have not started yet. So its going to be a lot of writing today.
• Spoke to my dad last evening after a gap of about 3 weeks. There are some interesting and good developments on the business front, but I am keeping my fingers crossed till I see something materialize out of all this.

New Minion

QoH has given me a new minion to work with, and the best part is that he is a TENURED PROFESSOR! Yes, you read it right. I am going to have a tenured professor work under me! This professor is on a sabbatical to our lab and is from an Asian university. QoH does not have time to work with him, so he has given me the task of working with the professor and planning his sabbatical. I am hyper excited about this. I have had undergrads, Master’s students, and PhD candidates work for me before, but never a tenured professor. This is going to be fun! I am meeting with him on Monday, so keep tuned.

Things that happen on a 2 hr flight

[Image from NASA]

• Get seated next to a 45 year old German lady
• Realize that you are turned on by her
• Freak out that you got the hots for a 45 year old lady and prepare a list of all the hot women you have dated.
• Get to number 9 on the list and run out of names.
• Realize that your life is no going no where and you just lost the last iota of self-respect you had
• Get the whole I am going to change my life from this day forward moment
• Write down a 2 year plan on back of a napkin
• Realize that the plan hinges on clearing the quals and you are on borrowed time to start with
• Get depressed and start solving Sudoku puzzle from the flight magazine

Working in SFO

I am spending the week in San Francisco at one our project sponsor’s sites. I am learning a new technology from the guys who invented it, so its really cool. Today we took the tour of the site with a senior R&D guy, and it was absolutely amazing. The complexity of their operations was something I hadn’t quite expected or fathomed. Towards the end of the day it occured to me that if I were to build this company today, it didn’t stand a chance. No venture capitalist would invest in so many diverse technologies to give the unbeatable edge it has over its competitors today. Considering it is an industry leader, and has remained so for the last 15 years or so, there is clearly something wrong with the VC models that we are following. The VCs are looking for that silver bullet without considering the fact that any bullet could be the silver bullet if they invested in getting the right situations. Why are VCs so risk averse? On one hand, we realistically cannot expect them to dole out billions in good faith and hope, on the other the few millions they part with is not adequate to build up any kind of engineering advantage that can sustain competitive development. No wonder all the engineers are so disillusioned about starting out on their own. Is there a solution to this problem that I am not aware of?