Blow Horn Please

As I've suggested before, traveling by car in India is like Manhattan rush hour gridlock with everyone driving at full speed and all pedestrians jaywalking. I've discovered over time that there is a distinct method to the madness, though admittedly that method is chaotic at best and shrouded in mystery. Here, then, is Ben's Guide to Driving in India:

1. Only slow down when a collision is imminent, unless it is a collision with a pedestrian. Pedestrians will not inflict significant damage and only serve to slow down traffic. Do not bend to their malicious will.
2. Honk incessantly, gratuitously, and repeatedly, even when no other cars are nearby. Do so not in anger, but rather for the joy of honking.
3. Lane markings exist for their aesthetic value, to be freely ignored outside of an art course on dotted line appreciation. Your objective is to pack the road as tightly as possible, not to look neat and organized.
4. Hug the car next to you as closely as physically possible, even at the risk of a collision. Cars like to be hugged.
5. Service your vehicle only when it is no longer operable. Ignore any dashboard alerts or regulations.
6. Wear a seat belt if one is available. (There won't be.)

On a related note, the best on-road exhortation to drive safely that I saw carries a family message: "Think about kids & wife -- care your life."

Of course, the essential companion for pedestrians, Ben's Guide to Walking in India, is a bit briefer:

1. Fear for your life, and for godsakes, stay out of the road -- those drivers are crazy!

Branches

I have a major life decision to make these days: what my post-HBS career will look like. I want to start the education company whose business plan I co-authored this semester. However, it just doesn't make sense to board that boat without the right crew, and it's not yet clear that will work out.

My backup plan is hardly unattractive. Israeli friends are launching a hedge fund and need a competent operations manager. I'm not sure why that prompted them to think of me, but I'm flattered to say the least. As moving to Israel is part of my 10-year plan, I wouldn't mind doing that sooner rather than later.

It's a major decision, though, and will likely have a significant influence on the path I follow in my career as well as my personal life. Wish me luck.

The bearded maybe

I've been growing a beard for the past month. (More accurately, it's been growing on its own and I just haven't interrupted yet.) I'm astonished by the utter polarity of reactions I receive. There's no continuum; it's either, "Wow, a beard looks great on you -- you should definitely keep it!" or " So... how long do you think you're gonna keep that thing around?" -- nothing in between.

Which begs the question of what I plan to do, or put another way, whose opinion I trust most. This is a losing proposition for me, as somebody or another inevitably walks away thinking I just don't value them as a person. I should learn never to change anything, so as to preempt any perception that I'm soliciting feedback.

Anyhow, I think the beard is fun for now, and it took a while to get past the itchy stage, so it'll stay for the time being. Maybe a trim is in order, but I'd probably just alienate the rest of the beard fan club that way.

Notes from the road

Wow, India sure makes a fast impression. People. people everywhere. The place certainly has the feel of a third-world country.

Immediately upon exiting the airplane, a smoky haze is evident in the air. I wondered whether there had been a fire in the airport, but I'm assured this is all normal. It turns out all of Delhi is the same way. I feel like I should be wearing a gas mask. So much for all those years of not smoking.

Ten minutes into the car ride and I've seen two men urinating in public, about ten dogs, and a big-ass cow. No lanes on the highways, or at least no regard for the markings that do exist. Cars somehow flock together like a packed herd of scared elephants.

A tiny tent village on the side of the road, people walking in the middle of the street with reckless abandon, constant car horns, bicycles almost everywhere I look.

And then I see it, holy crap -- a monkey, running wild! And damn if there aren't more, too. No seriously, there are freaking monkeys running around. On the ground, atop buildings, pretty much everywhere you'd expect a monkey not to be.

Driving from Agra to Jaipur now. There are animals all over the freaking place, almost more than people. Mostly cows, but a few sheep and goats, buffalo, and an occasional elephant. Massive boars are kept in towns sometimes because they consume some of the trash randomly strewn about. Note to self the virtues of this possible alternative to cleaning my apartment...

Time to start planning the next trip

I'm in the taxi on the way to the airport. It costs 150 shekels, or about $37.50, to get to the Tel Aviv airport -- more than the amount required to reach neighboring cities. In light of the 9/11 attacks, I suppose that's a good thing, as any plane flown low enough to attack Tel Aviv would seem mighty out of place.

In truth, though, terror attacks aren't really on my mind. Rather, my fondness for this place occupies my present thoughts so heavily. My reluctance to leave overshadows my excitement to visit India. I had a great time visiting friends and family with my dad, and as before, I find myself leaving wanting more.

So maybe it wasn't entirely accidental that I couldn't find my passport this morning. I noticed it during my last-minute "essential inventory" check prior to leaving the hotel room for the airport, and for a minute I thought I would not be leaving today. When I finally unearthed the damn thing in the back pocket of the suit pants I wore last night, my dad expressed disappointment that I wasn't stuck in Israel just a bit longer, and as soon as he said it I realized I felt the same way.

I'll just have to start planning the next trip.

Stay in school

I just completed the most rigorous academic semester of my life. Whatever reputation 2nd year of HBS has as a slack year is completely undeserved, at least in this case. (And isn't HBS all about cases?)

Apparently, I did it to myself. I made the mistake of taking more than a full load and doing it with 5/6 paper/project courses. I failed to heed the advice of those who had come before me, and it came back to bite me.

But I learned a ton, and in the end successfully managed to get everything done. (Grades are not out yet, though, so my use of the term "successful" is perhaps premature.) I'm not looking forward to my last semester at HBS, but only because it is my last. I'd add another year to the degree if they'd let me. Maybe if I fail all my courses next semester... hope my mom isn't reading this.

No PHPeeking!

One thing that really gets my goat is when a website's URLs expose the underlying processing engine used to generate the content of the page, rather than reflecting the content type of the page itself. For example, "about.php" instead of about.html. Who in the world needs to know that PHP generated the page after it's already been rendered as HTML. (I don't mean to pick on the PHP developers out there. Of course, ASP and Java Servlet users are just as guilty of this nonsense.)

Fundamentally, a URL is part of the user interface of a web page. The user can almost always see the URL, can always bookmark it for later reference, and sometimes wants to be able to remember it. There are plenty of other URL naming conventions that should be followed to ensure a high level of usability on a website, but hiding the engine from the user is generally a simple process that can often be automated using three lines. Drop the following "code" into a .htaccess file, which is supported almost every web host running the Apache web server, in the root of your website:

    RewriteEngine on

    # If requested .html file doesn't exist, rewrite to .php
    RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
    RewriteRule ^(.*)\.html$ $1.php [T=application/x-httpd-php]

Now why don't more people do that?

Bus-ted

Though I ride the same bus every morning, the same driver looks upon me blankly each time I board, as if to say, "fare, please" (though likely less the "please" -- we're in Israel after all). His memory can't possibly this bad, or else he'd certainly not know the way to my stop in Herzliya each morning. But I'm only all to happy to oblige the man. I love proving my credentials, demonstrating openly my right to ride for free and then proudly strutting on board with out the exchange of so much as an agora. I can't help but wonder whether he derives a reciprocal pleasure, thinking to himself every morning before he comes to work, "What great fortune in passenger fares awaits me today?" and then experiencing a small elation as each traveler presents their offering.

Mozy on over for a perfect backup solution

I was devastated last May when my computer hard drive completely bit the dust without any warning whatsoever in the middle of my Negotiation final exam. I was no less distraught upon realizing that my last backup had been around nine months earlier, leaving me with no records of any of my coursework other than the online transcript HBS offers.

I've done my research, and the best-of-breed backup solution I've been seeking for many years is now available. It's called "Mozy," it's free for up to 2GB of data, and you can click this link to get an extra 250 MB of space. (I pay the extremely reasonable $55/year to back up an unlimited amount of data, so I do not directly benefit from your clickage.)

Why I'm so ebullient and effusive with praise: Mozy is cross-platform (well, Windows and Mac -- still waiting for Linux) and automatically backs up files incrementally, over the Internet, securely, in the background, without competing with you for bandwidth or CPU. It's a long-standing dream come true (yes, I dream about perfect backups), and as long as Mozy continues to exist (and I believe it will thrive), I will never again in my life be without a backup.

Click this link and you'll get an extra 256MB on top of the

There's no place like homepage

It used to be the case when a person wanted to sell their house that they would buy a classified ad in the newspaper. Maybe there would be some fliers outside of the house, or distributed via real estate agents, that contained a couple black-and-white photos. Eventually the photos became color, and people started listing their homes online.

But technology is in a continual state of advancement, perpetually offering new opportunities to open-minded thinkers. In the latest iteration, real estate has been given the YouTube treatment, and doesn't it make all the sense in the world?

From Wired:
Craigslist and YouTube Make Great Roommates

I wonder whether my parents, who want to sell their beautiful New Orleans home -- untouched by floodwaters -- will consider this approach, or whether Dad's A/V equipment is reserved strictly for videos of family members voluntarily humiliating themselves on camera.