I got my RC9800i. Did you?

I recently bought Philips RC9800i Home controller to control all the A/V devices and I am really happy about it after using it for about 2 weeks. Not to mention that I had 5 remotes that I was switching between them all the time. I was initiallly deciding between

1. Logitech Harmony 880 Advanced universal remote
2. Philips RC9800i
3. Philips TSU7000 home control panel

I didn't choose Harmony because it is not future proof and didn't like the big huge remote. But this is the best remote in $200 range. I would have loved TSU7000 but didn't want to spend > $700 bucks for a universal remote. Also, I wanted a simple device without the customizability and programmability as I know I would have time to do anything with it.

I got my RC9800i for $400 bucks which was the lowest on the web at time of my purchase. I initially had trouble setting up the devices but after few iterations mastered it. What I love about it:
1. Form factor
2. Activity based and ease of use
3. Out of the box experience is great and my firmware update etc went w/o a hitch
4. Comes with 802.11b Wireless support and uPnP support. I can connect this to Philips Media Manager and download Pictures/Songs etc to the device
5. Allows Multi-Room/Multi Device configurations.
6. I belive I could use RF Extender to extend the range if I want to

But I still have few issues to sort out which could very well be bugs in the product:
1. It does not recognize my PMM even though it successfully connects to my WAP. Opened up bunch of ports as suggested, turned off the firewall and did all the standard tricks. But no avail
2. It does not turn off my DVD player when I switch to watching other activity.

A Bookful month

Yes, I was able to read 3 books this last month even through the tight work schedule. I would have to rate all 3 as excellent and I would recommend this to anyone. Here are the titles:

Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions

The Best Software Writing I: Selected and Introduced by Joel Spolsky

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

If anyone has any good suggestions on non-fiction, drop me a comment!

Brownie, you are doing a heck of a job

Well, why the heck then the FEMA director, Michael D. Brown was sent back home and not leading the relief efforts? I think the president is making himself look like a fool by making statements like these w/o getting to the bottom of it before putting his stamp of approval. I wonder if loyalty weighs more than anything else in order to get the top notch job in Bush Administration.

An interesting revelation in the light of recent disaster is that the Director of FEMA had no experience or background in emergency management at all. He worked as undersecretary to "Arabian Horse association" before taking the job at FEMA. Didn't the Bush Administration find anyone more appropriate for one of the most important jobs in DHS?

Talking about Katrina, I heart goes for those who suffered and lived (or lining) the nightmare and for those who died, I don't have words to describe my sorrow. It didn't have to end this way.

Longest presidential retreat in at least 36 years

Well, I am talking about Mr.Bush again! Our beloved president made history again. He has done so much for the nation that he thought he deserved a 5 week vacation (yes a little less than 1-1/2 months and not to mention that this is his 49th trip to the ranch!!!) and he didn't miss out the opportunity. I don't know of any employer in U.S that gives its hard working employees 5 weeks a year vacation. I get a pitiful 3 weeks which is nothing IMO.

Here is the more important piece of information. Last time he took a month's vacation, we had 9/11 and this time it was Katrina!

One thing that I still could not understand is that what about those frequent trips to Camp David and the ranches? Do they count as vacation too or are they considered sort of telecommuting like we know in the tech industry? I know he is the dumbest president but he also proved that he is a slacker as well.

Here is the WashingtonPost.com article and on the funnier side, the coverage from TheOnion.com

The illusion of fairness

Let me first say that I got a 3.5 review this time and got a hefty bonus etc etc. So I am not the so called loser wining. My average review rating is way above 3.0 and after having gone through this for the couple of years, I still think that the review system is unfair and does not encourage colloboration, team effort and make people more individualistic. I really felt good at the moment I knew I got a 3.5 rating. Soon after I exited my manager's office, my enthusiam vanished as I started thinking about my teams accomplishment and how almost 1/3 of the team got screwed with 3.0 even though I think the team did an amazing job. My boss's boss refers to our last year as "Running Hot" implying the long hours put by the team and the team's drive to the finish line on time. Well, if that was true, I would have expected everyone in the team to get an equal share of the pie. That didn't happen for certain.

What is the solution? Read the employee feedback in MS Poll. In other words, the management is not listening to the employees in this matter!!!

One and only thing I wish for

Everything in my life is something I can live with. The headline Israel Confirms Plan to Seize West Bank Land for Barrier in NYTimes got me into disliking the Israel govenment even more for its actions. While I appreciated the gaza withdrawl, it had not changed much of my attitude towards the government. There has been so much land grab (since the six day war) for the sake of security and I don't know how it thinks it can take land just like that. What the fuck is the international community doing? It is a complete joke if it thinks putting physical barriers is going to save it from all its trouble and stop people from hating Israel for its actions.

There are only 2 thinks I wish for.
1. Dismantle all jewish settlements in westbank and Gaza. If people think they like to stay there, let them get palentinian citizenship. No matter what the history is, Israelis and the government do not own middleeast and all its land.
2. Return all the land it grabbed since the 1964 war

and I can promise that they can live in greater peace than what they have now. I would recommend the following books to get some idea about the history of the situation:
Six Days of War : June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East
Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land
The Missing Peace : The Inside Story of the Fight for Middle East Peace

Apples and Oranges

I am really glad there is this thing called "Blog" that lets me capture my thoughts as they happen and makes it possible share it with others. The other alternative would have been to use the good old diaries which nobody would have had the opportunity to look into.

I wanted to write about why Microsoft will never become Apple ever. Quite often, I would have disagreements with the way decisions are made at my product team that runs counter to what I belive is the essence of the software. To begin with, here is a real life encounter with a developer last week about an issue:
I notice that a dialog in our product is not looking nice and there was lots of dead space here and there and so I went to the developer to discuss the issue and ask him fix it (I wish I had the time to fix everything!). He asked me 3 straight questions:

• Is the functionality broken?
• Is there some sort of data loss?
• Is it crashing under any circumstances?

The answer to all the 3 were "No" and he asked me why should he be fixing what I see? The dialog looked ugly and I thought that was more than a good reason to fix it to make the product look better and customers wouldn't mind using great products that look good as well.

Fast farward to this week: One of the internal users (and this happens in one of my machines as well) complained that the selection doesn't look good in a dialog control which any customer would see first when booting the product. What did the product team do with the bug? It just won't fixed the bug without any investigation as to what is causing this issue and if this is a regression caused by some code change. The reason for shooting down the bug is that the developer thought that it is o.k to ship like that!!!!

I wasn't surprised by these reactions or with a lot things that happen I disagree with. I wouldn't buy a car that is ugly no matter how functional it is. Software isn't for professionals only. It is designed to be used by everyone (take the case of Microsoft Money which my Mom uses). The software I use makes a fashion statement about my tastes as much as about my choice. I would want the software be designed well and looks cool just like the physical things I use everyday like the Mp3 player. There are a lot of style concious users out there like me who would appreciate and consider a product on the factors other than the functionality.

Lets be real. Microsoft isn't known for making software that looks great. Tell me one software that Microsoft shipped in the last decade that won many acclaims for UI design and for the coolness factor? Microsoft tends to focus more on functionality and addressing the customer needs and so focusses less on few things that are important as well. Here is some information that supports my arguments:

• All the UI in our product team is not designed by the so called product designers or graphic designers. They are normally done by program managers and developers who sometimes are fresh out of collage with no background on industrial design or with UI guidelines.
• There is no consistent UI guidelines across the product. When a new UI needs to be done, the PM will give the general layout and the developer will do his best to make the dialog look closer to the layout desired with no thoughts about adhering to some standard UI guidelines about spacing/margin between controls, height/width of the controls or the dialog form factor etc. The end result is a functional ugly looking dialog.
• All Microsoft prodcuts look the same with a standard menus/toolbars/context meu stuff with the bluish or the grayish look. Agreed that the users don't have to learn new user interfaces, but that shouldn't stop us from trying out new things or build interfaces that are better.
• Theming an application is unheard of in many Microsoft applications. With the exception of Media player, virtually there is no app that allows users to customize the visual themes to fit his tastes or moods! I am talking about an app that has close to 50+ million users and everyone will be running the familier and boring grayish UI.
• http://www.actsofvolition.com/archives/2001/december/windowsxprough will give you some ideas to where I am leading you! These things may be small but matters so much shows how much we care! Microsoft Software is used by hundreds of millions of people worldwide and I expect lot more attention to detail and design given the large audience

I just hope that "Windows Vista" breaks this tradition and makes software visually compelling, consistent and easy to use. This is one place where I always think Apple wins my credits a lot.