The Ugly Truth About Success and Failure

I failed and succeeded multiple times in my life but never experienced such an intense response. I realized that success and failures brings out the ugly truth; the difference between real friends and just friends (acquaintances) from the set of people I call friends.

The events in the last week or so have turned my life around. From being hopeless about the future to suddenly planning a brighter one, everything changed in 5 days. Never ever in my dreams I had ever thought this would happen so fast, but I think the negation of Murphy's law (If anything can go wrong, it will) got better of me.

Since then I have been observing an interesting change in behavior of the people around me. I am most of the times oblivious to the reaction of the people around me. I have been through multiple events where some people around me described me as socially inept or a misanthrope. This time I have been forced to change the approach and observe closely the people around me due to some of the responses. Human beings are either social or antisocial animals and without a choice I have to be in one of those categories (I fall in later most of the times, :P).

I had calls from people I hardly ever expected. Completely bummed I had to retrospect and recalculate the imbalanced equations I had in my mind. I suddenly realized the people I hardly spoke to and never ever bothered about, were genuinely happy for me. I had a feeling that some out of those had a strong dislike for me, I was wrong and I was happy for a change I was wrong. Some of the words just changed my opinions about the people, I could feel the genuineness in the words and I was stunned for the first time in several years. The good old friends didn't disappointed me either. They were there in the rough time and it was good to know they were still around when the time has improved.

Also it was good fun to watch people who once wrote me off as a loser coming to congratulate. It is amazing how such people change their opinions about a person based on their success and failure w.r.t time. Their opinions are like a sine wave and such people are the most dangerous to have around. They judge the person by his social status more than his character and are highly untrustworthy. I would prefer to be at the top of the hate list of such people (I guess am very successful in this). I call such people the sine wave people.

I accidentally discovered another set of people who say, nice things on face and will slander in absence. In general their opinion about successful people is that they succeeded because they got lucky (with very few or no exceptions to this rule according to them). I still fail to understand if it is their jealousy or prejudiced opinion about that person that makes them sulk. More than a category this is a tendency and I call Sullander (Sulk+Slander). I would be lying if I say I never had this tendency, but I am happy I have banished this long back. I think every one of us at some point of time in life has this tendency and I don't think there is an exception to this statement.

Over the years I have met many people who were suppose to be my friends and only a few have lasted. I think it is the mutual respect and value for character that keeps me and them together. Instead of judging each other on success and failures we have judged each other by the character.

It is the people who criticize when you are wrong but never write you off, praise when you succeeded but make sure you keep your feet firmly on the ground are the people I call real friends. The act like a feedback loop that helps you achieve the set point and stops you from loosing stability. They are far and few and they get filtered with success and failures in life.

Over the years based on the ugly truth concept I have realized that real friends are not always the ones I hang out with or share most of my time with, real friends are those with whom I share my success and failures alike. They might be the ones I speak once a month or once a year or some whom I meet every day, its not a quantitative but a qualitative measure.

I have coined a saying for the ugly truth,

There is a set of friends who want to participate and share your joy, and there is a set who will share your sorrow, the intersection of the two sets gives you the set of friends that you want to share your success and failure with !

How to DEBUG COMMANDLINE PROGRAMS in VS2008

This is for less knowledgeable people like me....It took me 3 days to figure it out... I googled a lot and never managed to get an answer for this....either it is assumed too simple and obvious or ..........

Debugging a code which runs via a command line where you type in executable file name and arguments to be passed to it....

e.g. executable file name -> lp_solve
@command line
>>lp_solve [input arguments]
>>lp_solve model.lp

You cannot debug this file just by clicking the debug option as the "argc" and "argv" will never get initialized.

There is very simple setting in VS2008 (it might work for other versions of VS but is not tested).

1] Go to project->properties
2] In properties -> Configuration properties -> Debugging
3] Debugging opens a tabular structure in the right half
4] Select Command Arguments
5] Type all the input arguments in double quotes in Command Arguments (you are done)

6] Close the dialogue box, put some break points and click on the play button in debug

Thanks to Cibin George for his valuable input.

....moral of the story consult the experts. If you can google it in 3 hrs you cannot in 3 days....

(SIMPLE THINGS in LIFE are NOT ALWAYS OBVIOUS)

The Funny Concept called Earth hour

..........this concept of earth hour is against physics...

see how

Light and electrical appliance are supposed to be switched off to save energy......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_Hour

by definition.....shut all devices runing on electricity....
1) Lap top is 'on' using a battery [1] that was charged using the electricity before and when u switch it back u will use the same amt to charge it back.... I will charge my laptop at 9:30 again wohoooo.....

saving = 0

2) Cell phone on [1] ...battery charged...blah blah.... i will charge cell phone at 9:3-pm ....

saving = 0

Now the biggest QUESTION for all................

... anybody who answers this convincingly.......i will take my words back.....

Energy can neither be created nor be destroyed...............................

Einstein
[1] siddharth's blog [http://when-us-beckoned-me.blogspot.com/2009/03/earth-hour-2009.html]
save energy = convert and store
use it later... !!!! :(

So i think the concept should be "save energy for future" and not save energy...

...i got bored writing technical paper and thought writing blog would be interesting..........

but now I know....................


thinking itself SUCKS...........and writing SUCKS more.............