About Running

I wanted to write something on this topic since quite some time. I am running since last few months and it has brought a kind of metamorphosis in my life.

My romance with running started earlier this year may be around February 2011. Thanks to my annual health report. My Cholesterol and Blood Pressure levels were slightly on upper side. It was a bit surprise for me, because I have a very active life and was particular about my diet.

Although there was nothing to worry about, I took it a bit seriously. I tried to dig into the root cause of the issue. Finally, we agreed upon the root cause: slow metabolism rate of my body.

I thought about two alternatives to get rid of this: Running and weight exercise training. Out of these, I chose running. I am a bit sluggish in doing gym/weight exercises.

As I started running, each and every muscle of my legs rebelled. During the first run, I could hardly run for 100 meters. But I tried to continue and slowly my body (Particularly legs) got used to running. Slowly, I increased my running up to 5 km without any break. On weekends I tried to push more and even touched 10 km at a stretch.

During the same time, I came across a book “Dare To Run” written by Amit seth. In this book, Amit has mentioned about his quest for running and his journey from starting to run for few meters to completing Comrades Marathon, in South Africa. Comrades Marathon is one of the toughest human marathons, which includes around 90 km of running, across hilly regions of South Africa.

This book gave a real boost for me and became a true motivating factor. Though I started running for maintaining my fitness, very soon it became my hobby. And at the moment it’s more than just a hobby.

When I start running, most of the time, my mind is overflowed with thoughts. But after some time, the thought process ceases. Then there comes a point where, my mind is free of any thoughts. I just try concentrate on my breathing. I get detached from the world around. My soul gets connected with god and I feel a kind of relaxation through out my body. Then I talk with my sub conscious and affirm that each step taken is guiding me to move towards my personal mastery. Then running becomes a spiritual way to connect with almighty, it becomes meditation for me. At the end of each run, I feel a sense of calmness and fulfilment. And to be honest, that period is the best one throughout my day.

Lessons Learnt:
Running has also taught me a few lessons.

• First of it is being patient about end results. A few months back, I tried to run in spite of severe pain in my left foot. Finally, it resulted in Ligament fracture and I could not run for next 2 months.



• Second lesson I learnt is to live in present and concentrate only on the task at hand. During the run, I focus all of my attention on the next step.



• Overcoming the mental barrier. The only factor which keeps us away from our personal mastery is our mind, the thought process. The same mind which was creating a mental block for me to run even 100 meters, obeys my determination to run 10 km now.

What next:
Continue running as much as I can and get benefitted from it. I am also eyeing for a Half Marathon on 6th Nov 2011. Right now, I have only 4 weeks of practice left. Though I haven’t tried any distant running since last 6 months, this looks a bit challenging. But I am still hopeful to make it. Currently i am struggling to run for even 2 km at a stretch. But i am determined to run as much as i can. So keeping my Fingers crossed and hoping for the best. !!!!!!!!!!!

Change Yourself First

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The following inscription is attributed to an Anglican Bishop (1100 A.D.)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"When I was young and free and my imagination had no limits, I dreamed of changing the world. As I grew older and wiser, I discovered the world would not change, so I shortened my sights somewhat and decided to change only my country. But it, too, seemed immovable.

As I grew into my twilight years, in one last desperate attempt, I settled for changing only my family, those closest to me, but alas, they would have none of it.

And now, as I lie on my deathbed, I suddenly realize: If I had only changed myself first, then by example I would have changed my family.

From their inspiration and encouragement, I would then have been able to better my country, and who knows, I may have even changed the world."

Finding Daily Inspiration

It is up to an individual to find the purpose of his/her life. To find that purpose, one needs to look at the spiritual side of life. For that, we need to invest some amount of time from our daily life. It can be anything like indulging in hobbies, spending time with our dear ones, reading, introspection, meditation,etc. And the list can go endless.

For me, Quotes written by great people gives me a lot of inspiration. It gives me strength when the chips are down and things are not going well. On the other hand, it makes me to feel better, when everything is going smooth. I just do not read it but try to remember it and apply it to me to some extent. Following are my 20 favourite quotes. These are collected from numerous web sites, blogs, books and other stuffs.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
“Lord, grant me the strength to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference- Reinhold Niebuhr

“Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.” - Martin Luther King, Jr

"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it." - Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"If you cry because the sun has gone out of your life, your tears will prevent you from seeing the stars." - Rabindranath Tagore

"It is very simple to be happy, but it is very difficult to be simple." - Rabindranath Tagore

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, ‘I will try again tomorrow.’” — Mary Anne Radmacher

“Do not follow where the path may lead. Go, instead, where there is no path and leave a trail.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou

“If you’re going through hell, keep going.” — Winston Churchill

“Winners compare their achievements with their goals, while losers compare their achievements with those of other people.” — Nido Qubein

“The secret of getting ahead is getting started. The secret of getting started is breaking your complex overwhelming tasks into small manageable tasks, and then starting on the first one.” — Mark Twain

"Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors.” — African Proverb

“You alone are the judge of your worth and your goal is to discover infinite worth in yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks.” — Deepak Chopra

“Change your thoughts and you change your world.” — Norman Vincent Peale

“The best and most beautiful things in this world cannot be seen or even heard, but must be felt with the heart.” -Helen Keller

"The less you open your heart to others, the more your heart suffers.” - Deepak Chopra

"The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times." - Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them." — Paulo Coelho (The Alchemist)

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires." - Paulo Coelho

"Anyone who loves in the expectation of being loved in return is wasting their time." - Paulo Coelho (The Devil and Miss Prym)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Resources:
Books by Paulo Coelho
News Papers
http://sourcesofinsight.com/
http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/36913.Rabindranath_Tagore

Lord Ganesha

Today is Ganesha Chaturthi, the Birthday of Lord Ganesha. This festival is celebrated throughout the India and the atmosphere during this period is so divine and electrifying. People bring the Ganesha idols in home, worship him and pray together.

In 1893, Indian freedom fighter, Lokmanya Tilak, transformed the domestic festival into a well organised public event. The motive behind this move was to bring people across all casts and communities together, celebrate the festival and bridge the gap among them.

Ganesha, the elephant headed god, is a son of Lord Shiva and Parvati. He is widely worshipped as the god of wisdom, prosperity and good fortune. Ganesha is associated with the root or mooladhara chakra in our body. This is the first energy centre and represents the earth element, providing a solid foundation for life. Praying to Ganesha is believed to bring stability enabling one to proceed with higher goals in life.

Ganesha is also known as Vighnahartha, the one who rules over the obstacles. He represents the energy which controls and removes the obstacles. Ganesha is also a symbol of quick thinking and effortless accomplishments.

Once, Lord Shiva held a contest between his two sons, Ganesha and Kartikeya to see who could circle around the earth first. The winner would receive a sacred fruit of wisdom from Lord Shiva. Kartikeya sped off on peacock and started circling around earth. Ganesha turned to his advisor, Mouse. The mouse suggested that he should encircle his parents Shiva and Parvati and tell them that they were his universe. Ganesha did the same as advised; Lord Shiva was flattered by that gesture, and gifted the sacred fruit to Ganesha.

Personally, I am a true devotee of Ganesha, and very much attached with him.
There is a divine connection and understanding between us. Whenever, I think about god, the picture of Ganesha appears in front of my eyes. There are various reasons and co incidences. I was born during Ganesha festival, I used to bring Ganesha idols every year in my home, even I met my wife for the first time in Ganesha temple itself.

Let’s pray Lord Ganesha to take care of us and our dear ones. May he shower his blessings upon us for great health, happiness and well being and give us strength to face the challenges, (coming along our paths) quite gracefully.

Things I would like to change in my life

Last week, a friend of one of my close friend passed away tragically in an accident. Her name was Rohini. Although, we never met with each other, I came to know a lot of things about her through my friend. She was the only child of her parents, their only hope in their post retirement lives. Rohini was on her way back to home while a drunken car driver rammed his car into her two wheeler. Rohini wore a helmet while riding, but the impact was so strong that her brain got badly damaged.

I was working in office that day while I came to know about that bad news. Her condition worsened as the day progressed. Though we never met each other, I was continuously praying for her life and giving hope to my friend. I was getting update after each hour, but finally Rohini lost the battle with life.

This incident made a lot of impact on my life, in particular my way of thinking about life. The faces of her parents flashed in front of my eyes. What about their life post their daughter’s demise? Would they ever have imagined such situation? How will they face their future? Let’s pray for her soul to rest in peace and to give her parents enough strength to embrace the future.

The incident reminded me of a speech given by “Ric Elias”, who survived from a plane crash a couple of years ago. The followings are some of the lessons he learnt from that incident. I am trying to elaborate on his lessons and relate it with the lessons I learnt from Rohini’s demise.

Everything can change within an instance:

We do take everything in our life for granted. Let it be our dear ones, our relationships, and our approach towards the life. We live our life as if we are going to exist on this planet forever. But all can change within an instance. I am not being pessimistic over here; rather I am trying to be realistic. So what can we do? Should we worry about our future and prepare for our death? No. Of course not. But we can change our outlook towards life. We can learn to live in the present and enjoy the taste of it. We can learn to avoid procrastination and try to do the things which we are supposed to do as early as possible. If we want to do something we like, but are not able to do so far, then try it now. Let it be a silly thing, don’t worry about others perspective. Just enjoy being in that moment

Eliminate negative energy from our life

Get rid of negative emotions from our life. A negative emotion can be anger, stress, ego, greed or anything which creates negative influence on our life. When I look back, I really regret about the time wasted by me because of these negative emotions. Getting rid of such emotions will help us to live a perfect life. Just imagine our life without any fight, disagreements, stress. Sounds great! After that incidence, I do not try to be right, rather I choose to be happy.

Be the best person in whatever role you are playing

Be the best person in whatever role you are playing in. Our role can change according to the age or situation. It can be anything like son/daughter, father/mother, mentor friend, etc. Try to be the best person in that role. We should be proud of whatever we did/achieved when we look back at the twilight of our life. The most important thing I want to do in my life is to be the best son for my parents and be the best father for my son. Above all. Above all !!.

I challenge the reader of this article to imagine if the same situation happens with you. Please don’t, but just imagine and just think about the things you would like to change before it. Time to take a step back and introspect.

About Love

Since my adulthood, i am quite confused about the definition of Love. Some say it is mysterious, magical, joyous, and immeasurable while other say that it’s something intended to display solidarity and well being towards another person.

Here i am talking about the love expressed in a relationship. Whenever i think about it, it reminds me about one story. A story told by the chief guest of Annual Gathering function held during my graduation days. The followings are the excerpts from it:

Once upon a time a well known hunter went on a tour to Africa. The African jungles are well known for the rich heritage for all kinds of wild animals. The hunter was particularly looking for a deer to kill. Deer was the only animal he could not kill until that time. The reason was deer are very quick and alert and hence are difficult to hunt.

One fine day, the hunter went to a jungle nearby Nairobi, Kenya. He went on to meet the local tribe men who, the hunter thought would help him to find a deer. After discussions with them, he found one guide who was well versed about the Jungle and the preferable location for hunting. Accordingly, the hunter went for hunt that night along with the guide.

They decided to build a shelter next to the nearest water reservoir. After building the shelter, they started to wait for a deer to arrive. The hunter saw on the other side of the reservoir. He could see the local tribal group was gathered in front of their huts. They had set the campfire and were dancing on the beats of drums. Some of them were singing.

In between, the mid night arrived. The hunter was very cautious. He sensed that a deer was approaching the water. The hunter removed his gun, set the target and was waiting for the right moment to shoot. After few moments, the deer came closer. The hunter put a finger on the trigger. Just before he could shoot, the guide deflected the barrel of the gun. The bullet from the gun pierced through the air making a loud noise. The deer got alert and ran away from the reservoir.

The hunter became irritated and asked the guide for his strange behaviour. The guide apologized and said to hunter “Sir, please do not kill that deer. You can kill any other animal from this jungle”. Hunter felt strange but did not ask any reason. They waited for the whole night, but could not find any other deer to kill. The hunter went back to his residence, a bit frustrated with the fact that he missed an opportunity to kill the deer.

The next night, again the hunter along with that guide came back to the reservoir. As usual the local tribe’s men were beating the drums and were dancing on its beats. The hunter could hear that music. Past mid night, a deer came to the reservoir. The guide sensed that it was the same deer he saved a night before. The hunter set his target and was about to shoot. Again the guide deflected the gun barrel and bullet was fired making a loud noise. Again the deer sensed danger and disappeared in the jungle. The hunter became very angry and asked the guide about his strange behaviour. The guide gave the same reply as the previous day. “Sir, please do not kill that deer. You can kill any other animal from this jungle”.

The next night, same thing happened, the hunter missed his target and the deer got disappeared in Jungle. The hunter had enough of it and got very upset with his guide. He shouted at guide and said that why the hell he was doing it. The guide as usual apologized to hunter and told the motive behind it.

He said, Sir last month another hunter like you came to this jungle for hunting. That time, the hunter killed one of the female deer. He took the deer’s head off to showcase his bravery and went back. The local tribe’s men ate the flesh of the deer and removed its skin. They used the skin for making the drum so that they can enjoy the drum beats.

The deer which is coming on this reservoir is the companion of that dead deer. But still he can feel the presence of his sweet heart through the drum beats. He can realize her presence through the sound of those drum beats, the drum which is made up of her skin. The hunter became speechless.

According to me, love is an eternal feeling, the connection of two souls. It doesn’t matter whether the person you love is with you or not. The only thing you expect is the well being of your partner. It is an emotion expressed towards a person we like, that he/she is being cared. There are no conditions, there are no boundaries. It is a divine feeling where everything looks so pure, bright and serene. There is no need of any words to express that feeling.

PLM and Cloud Computing

There is a lot of buzz around cloud computing today. If you don’t know much about cloud computing, the simplest description is to think about a bank of remote computers whose resources you can harness on an as-needed basis.

This trend of Cloud is increasing around all industry sectors and PLM is not an exception. Dassault recently announced about availability of V6 Platform on AWS (Amazon Web Services). Aras announced about availability of Aras Innovator on Amazon. Autodesk also aims for cloud with multiple projects like AutoCAD WS.
Dassault Systèmes announced a cloud-based partnership with Amazon.com’s Web Services arm that will enable clients to use its 3D design and manufacturing software remotely over the cloud. PLM and 3D software is traditionally memory-intensive, but by partnering with Amazon Web Services, DS will be able to offer clients a preconfigured environment to remotely run 3D and PLM software without having to buy expensive hardware.
Dassault Systèmes is leveraging multiple AWS services to power Version 6 platform, providing the following resources:
High performance and highly available compute resources: Dassault Systèmes is utilizing the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) to provide discrete compute environments for each customer.
Geographic reach: Dassault Systèmes leverages the AWS global footprint to provide the best experience for their customers, regardless of their physical location. By leveraging AWS’ Regions, Dassault Systèmes can ensure that data required to stay within a geographic boundary remains so.
Storage of easy-to-access design content: Using Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Dassault Systèmes can store volumes of design data without having to support an extensive array of legacy platforms. The combination of Amazon EBS and Amazon S3 allows customers to have immediate access to large storage volumes, coupled with the resiliency native to Amazon S3 for back-up purposes.

DS also announced its new 3DStore online (http://swym.3ds.com/#3DStore). The 3DStore will premier several cloud-based 3D and PLM business services:
1. 3DSWYM, DS’ new social innovation solution
2. n!fuze – for SolidWorks customers- and n!volve -for CATIA Version 6 customers- both taking advantage of award winning ENOVIA Version 6 technology
3. Access to 3DS products including 3DVIA and Draftsight
4. Access to experiences and applications from partners and customers.

Challenges in PLM implementation on Cloud: The following picture is taken from this blog: Amazon S3 – more than 449 Billion Objects.
These are the number of objects stored on Amazon S3 infrastructure. Looks Impressive. It can manage upto 2,90,000+ requests per second.
But what if the information from a typical PLM/Manufacturing company is put on Cloud?
The following information is taken from this blog:http://plmtwine.com/2011/07/25/cloud-plm-and-amazon-s3-scale/

Let’s talk about Boeing 747-400. If you exclude fasteners, Boeing 747-400 has about 3 million parts. For the whole history, Boeing delivered 694 of Boeing 747-400 jets. Now, let’s make calculations. There are only 650million S3 objects for each manufactured Boeing 747-400. Now imagine that 100 companies like Boeing have adopted cloud. Think about the amount of data. The cloud should include all part and manufacturing info, documents, drawings, revisions, etc. Is it really possible to map all this information on Amazon or any other cloud infrastructure? Not sure.
Now, just imagine that the cloud system goes down because of some apparent reasons. And also imagine the business impact on hundreds of companies who are accessing the cloud. Sounds scary. (Rather Amazon Web Services went down for few hours on 21st April 2011)

Security of Data :There is a lot of discussion by PLM vendors regarding cloud computing and the possibilities for SaaS (Software as a Service) via the cloud. And there has been almost immediate, response from users regarding concerns of security and privacy. The typical reaction is like, “PLM data is my company’s secret material – I would never store intellectual property on the cloud.” Or even if I use cloud computing, what is the guarantee that my data is secured against all interferences.
Bottom line: There is no doubt about ability of Cloud computing to satisfy the requirement of all enterprise sectors because of the way in which cloud technology is evolving. Also the cloud providers like Google, AWS, etc are very serious as well as optimistic about the cloud future. The companies are also very keen about adopting this trend, because of its cost effectiveness, easy scalability and virtualization . But the companies are also very skeptical about how cloud will map the complex data from PLM (Like, parts, specifications, drawings, revisions, etc) on its infrastructure. Second thing they are concerned about are the extent of security, reliability the cloud will provide, especially in a multitenant application.

It will be too early to come to any conclusion regarding the future of cloud computing in PLM industry. Probably the things will get much clearer over next couple of years, as the cloud technology matures.

Just my views.