Today I had a nice opportunity to attend a session on "Logistics & Supply chain management of Mumbai Dabbawalas" by Dr. Pawan Agrawal held in my organization. He is a well known Educationist, Founder, Motivational speaker, Author to mention a few. The talk was mainly about famous Mumbai Dabbawalas and how their system of delivering lunch boxes have helped Mumbaikars since decades. He spoke about the Dabbawalas, their passion and work culture. And how they have implemented a flawless system and running this since 1890. The details were staggering and I was really impressed. I was already aware of few facts about Mumbai Dabbawals like they having "Six Sigma" certification, how they use the local trains and etc. However below were few points which I learnt in this session:
Only an existing employee can refer to a new candidate and have to take full responsibility of his efficiency. If the new candidate doesn't succeed in reaching the set expectations, he will be expelled and the guy who referred him will lose the chance of referring anyone else in the future.
The new customers who seek Dabbawalas' service will have to go through background verification process before they are accepted.
Dr. Pawan Agrawal was equally impressive with his delivery of speech. Full of energy and humor which kept everybody's attention till the very last minute of an hour session. The session was more or less the same as the one which I've posted above. This above video will be enough to know about Mumbai Dabbawalas. And more details on Dr. Pawan Agrawal can be found at his website: http://www.drpawanagrawal.com
I must begin saying that I have played the card game, Uno in last couple of months so much that it's more than what I've played in my entire life and that too considering all kinds of card games put together. Yes, it's no mere exaggeration. All thanks to my son, who will be turning 4 next month and to my wife. He loves the game so much that he's okay playing it for hours together. To test our patience to the last possible limit, he even requests for couple of rounds just before he goes to bed at midnight. He even teases us and makes naughty faces when he wins, which surprisingly happens most of the times. I mean, as if forcing us to play at midnight wasn't bad enough :) Well, his liking towards card games started an year back when I introduced him self-made flashing cards to make him learn alphabets and numbers in a new interesting way rather than just make him write repeatedly. He used to guess the alphabets and numbers enthusiastically every time I flashed a card. And he in turn tested me by taking the cards and flashing at me. Later I proceeded with actual deck of 52 cards and play aimlessly with him. He used to like just placing his cards one by one at the middle by calling out the number and type of card aloud. The main reason I thanked my wife at the beginning of the post is not just because she forces me to play Uno now but for the reason that she is the one who taught my kiddo this game in the first place. She regrets it even more when he forces her to play it when she is totally exhausted and bored of it :)
I remember, as a kid I never played any other card game except Wrestling cards. The deck of 52 was kinda forbidden in my house. My mom considers it gambling in plain terms and she made sure we never got those cards in our hands anytime. Me and my sister used to get scared seeing those cards in presence of my mom whenever we found them in others' place accidentally. Now I'm wondering what will be my mom's reaction on learning my son's liking towards cards including the 52 deck cards :-p So, what's your story w.r.t card games? lemme know..
From past couple of weeks my wife was upset about her HP Pavilion DV6 laptop getting overheated. She even mentioned that the laptop did shut down on couple of occasions. So we did some R & D on the cause and probable solutions. Cleaning up the fan of the heat-sink along with the paste around the chips, buying a cooling pad were what many suggested. Yesterday morning she shortlisted couple of cooling pads and sought my comments on finalizing. That's when I got a crazy idea of opening up the laptop and cleaning the fan and thermal paste as that was one of the issue for overheating. That was a crazy idea considering the fact that this is my wife's laptop and one can imagine what can possibly happen to me if anything goes wrong with it post the dismantling & reassembly. Needless to say, I would have to buy a new one for her after facing the other consequences. So you know, it was indeed quite a very risky and crazy idea to start with. Knowing all that, I still wanted to take the risk as I badly wanted to open it up completely and experiment ;-)
Before starting I made sure to check few articles and YouTube videos to ascertain few details. Once I had all the necessary information I unscrewed the back-panel, unplugged hard drive, the display, the front panel, the keyboard and finally the motherboard along with heat-sink. Yeah, that's pretty much everything in a laptop and it took more than an hour.
I even opened up the fan unit and to my surprise I saw more dust than I anticipated.
Next was the old thermal paste applied to the CPU and the GPU. Thermal paste also called the Thermal Interface Material(TIM) or grease. I felt the paste applied was more than required from the manufactured. I'm sure they know better however with many recent articles including many manufacturers in their websites (E.g. Intel) have recommended just enough of the paste to be applied. I cleaned it up along with the heat-sink plates which stick to the chipsets.
I didn't have the thermal paste handy with me so I decided to visit a local shop. I couldn't believe that they were selling a tube for just Rs. 20 /- for which the online shopping sites cited Rs 300 to more than 1000. Well, I don't really know whether this local tube is a reliable and good but still went ahead trying it out anyways. There were many recos and suggestions for these thermal paste but somehow couldn't wait for the extra delivery days for the online ones.
So here I was ready with a thermal paste and super cleaned chips. I applied just a drop of paste on each of the chips and placed back the heat-sink and pressed it hard so that the paste spreads on the surface properly as per the procedure. I assembled each and every part back to their right place carefully and was ready to test the laptop back. Now, believe me, all this whole time I was keenly supervised by my wife. And this was the moment when I was really tensed, of course. I pressed the power button and waited for the display to turn on and proceed with the normal boot up and the laptop was up and running. I tested necessary basic tests and everything was just fine. My observation was that it was comparatively radiating less heat now and even the noise made by the fan was smoother. However, my wife will be getting back with the actual results after little more extensive usage. Keeping my fingers crossed in the meantime.
Update [22/07/2016]: After 6 days of extensive use, the laptop is much cooler now and the results are exceeding expectations actually. Few tips from this exercise:
If your machine is under warranty then DO NOT open it up as it voids the warranty.
Make sure you have complete information and materials required before opening the laptop.
Do not hurry in any of the intermediate steps of dismantling or reassembly of laptop parts. You don't want any problem while pulling out or plugging in of any bus or anything. Be gentle and careful.
Have alcohol solution to remove the old thermal paste, which I didn't have. And went ahead by normal cleaning up with dry paper and soft cloth anyways.
If you are sure of any particular good thermal paste, go ahead with it. I took a chance here with locally available one. If the heat situation hasn't improved, I would have to do this procedure again with a better paste this time.
Do not place your laptop on your bed or soft cushion base while your work. This might affect the cooling process.
This post requires a little bit of background so please bear with me here :) My career in IT industry started with one of the finest mobile manufacturers, Motorola. And later I moved to one more mobile manufacturers, Samsung. During the first few years in mobile industry there weren't any Play Store or App Store for the platforms; All the applications came in as inbuilt applications and only few games came as separate downloadable java applets. Later when iOS and Android platforms rose to the stardom beating all the existing platforms and manufacturers the game completely changed w.r.t downloadable applications and many other aspects. With that little background I'm here to write about the applications that I've developed so far and a small landmark concerning one ;-) During my Samsung stint, I didn't work for Android mobile devices but worked for Samsung's own Tizen platform and devices. My scope of work was at the platform side mainly in the middleware which enable all the applications to do their work. But that didn't stop me from having a desire to upload my own applications in the app store which is open for all the end users to download and use. I decided to work extra to develop my first Tizen application called 'Quiz Time' (Android version is also available in Android Play Store which is developed by my wife, Varsha). Quizzing is something which I enjoyed during my school days and also won many competitions back then. Keeping this interest in mind I wrote this quiz application with 4 categories i.e. India, Cricket, Science & Technology and World with devels in each categories. This was a simple app having SQL database in the backend and UI was developed using EFL framework. I finally had great deal of satisfaction, more like a sense of accomplishment, when the app was uploaded and made available in Tizen app store :) I followed this by developing one more application called 'Auto Wi-Fi' which mainly helps in saving power by managing the Wi-Fi status based on scheduled times and the state of Wi-Fi connection. The response to this application was even better with ~500 downloads during initial launch of a new Tizen phone in Indian market. Now when I see it's current status, it stands firm with more than ~50,000 downloads. Though it's not an over the top experience but certainly a feel good factor! And BTW, I later went on to write one more application which was very simple. A Counter app which helps during sports activity or agents in retail shops etc. I found this was missing in Tizen phone when I was playing a game and I was required to count. This was so simple that I could write it in a day and upload to app store. However, it later got suspended due to it's simplicity. lol :-D Here is the current standing!
Moving to a new location is hectic and more often than not changes your day to day routine and kind of slows you down for at least few weeks. And that exactly happened with me. I recently moved to a new location in Bengaluru and since then I became perhaps little lazy for the running activity. Furthermore my new interest in 'The Game of Thrones' tv series too kept me busy during nights and it certainly didn't help me waking up early :) Now that its season 6 finished and there is a long time for the next season to start, I decided to get back to my running activity. And it's been a week now I am punctual and regular. On the first day of my this stint I stepped out of my residence layout and to my surprise, I noticed a nice and clear running track around a nearby serene lake. Well, I was aware of this lake but wasn't expecting convenient track around it for a walk or run. Moreover, it wasn't a cement or laid out track but a usual flat natural surface which might have been seasoned by regular walkers for quite sometime. Since then I've been running around this lake and this certainly is one of the best places I've turned to for running in Bengaluru.
These days the weather is cloudy and rains sometimes which certainly helps for morning runs. The drizzles don't stop me going for morning runs. And just like day before yesterday the run in the morning drizzle felt great. I must say it was my first run in rain and I enjoyed it. Planning to register for few runs in coming weeks or months as it's been years I haven't participated in any official runs. Hoping for the best.
