Bill Gates' 11 Rules of Life

I recently get an email over bill gate's 11 rules of life which has inspired me and i want to share it ...

BILL GATES' SPEECH TO MT. WHITNEY HIGH SCHOOL in Visalia, California.

Love him or hate him, he sure hits the nail on the head with this!

To anyone with kids of any age, here's some advice. Bill Gates recently gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Rule 1: Life is not fair -- get used to it!
Rule 2: The world won't care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.
Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won't be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.
Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.
Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping -- they called it opportunity.
Rule 6: If you mess up, it's not your parents' fault, so don't whine about your mistakes, learn from them.
Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren't as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you are. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent's generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.
Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.
Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.
Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you'll end up working for one.

Generating insert statements from any table of Sql Server 2005 with any data type

In my experience, I have came across deploying many systems, creating scripts for new tables, there was always a issue how to generate insert statements of a sql server table, previously in one of my company that I have worked for many years they use to have a tool for generating insert statements but now thanks to sp_executesql , it has make life easy for every support software engineer, here is a simple sample script to generate sql insert statements , the example is from a sample employee table containing two fields employee_code varchar(3) and employee_name varchar (50)

set quoted_identifier off

declare @sql1 nvarchar(1000)


set @sql1="select 'insert employee(employee_code, employee_name) values(''' + employee_code + ''',''' + employee_name + ''')' from employee"

print @sql1

exec sp_executesql @sql1;

Remember if you have a table with values with single quote or binary data then you have to change this script accordingly.

How to get Cross Browser Compatibility Every Time

How to get Cross Browser Compatibility Every Time
There are different ways to acheive cross browswer compaibility. Some of them is given below

1.) Design html using w3 standards.
2.) Design css using w3 standards.
3.) Code javascript that supports all browsers.
4.) Validate your design and scripts using different tools, some can be find below :

Web Page Validation with W3C
Markup Validation Service
JSLint (Tool to check quality of javascripts)

This site Mozilla Browser Detection and Cross Browser Support has good speak regarding cross browser support and its implementation. For designing issues you can find the summary below.

Great tools to check live website on different tools , it will be very useful to any web designer 7 Fresh and Simple Ways to Test Cross-Browser Compatibility

Below is the summary which i found on different blogs and websites for development of good website i.e. Cross browser compatible.

1.) Always use strict doctype and standards-compliant HTML/CSS
2.) Always use a reset at the start of your css
3.) Use -moz-opacity:0.99 on text elements to clean up rendering in Firefox, and
4.) text-shadow: #000 0 0 0 in Safari
5.) Never resize images in the CSS or HTML
6.) Check font rendering in every browser. Don’t use Lucida
7.) Size text as a % in the body, and as em’s throughout
8.) All layout divs that are floated should include display:inline and overflow:hidden
9.) Containers should have overflow:auto and trigger hasLayout via a width or height
10.) Don’t use any fancy CSS3 selectors
11.) Don’t use transparent PNG’s unless you have loaded the alpha

Real Time Business Intelligence through BAM

Microsoft has introduce a great tool with biztalk i.e. called BAM (Business Acitivity Monitoring) which helps greatly in real time reporting, KPIs etc, Let me first define what is BAM.
This tool can really resolv e the problem of getting real time MIS, KPIs, Dashboards etc. Just think of it , if a marketing manager get his real time sales, if finance manager get his real time funds position , research analyst can get realtime market trends, CEO can get his realtime company position (Sales-Expense / Market trends / Business deceissions etc), CIO/CTO , I.T. Heads can get Helpdesk KPIs.

What is BAM ?

BAM is a collection of tools that allow you to manage aggregations, alerts, and profiles to monitor relevant business metrics (called Key Performance Indicators or KPIs). It gives you end-to-end visibility into your business processes, providing accurate information about the status and results of various operations, processes, and transactions so you can address problem areas and resolve issues within your business.

Who Uses BAM ?

BAM can be used by Business Analyst, End Users, Management (CEO, CIO, Marketing SVPs etc) and on the technical side Programmers, Software Engineers, System Analyst etc.
What Technology Used in BAM ?
BAM used as Excel Addin by which any end user can design Activities, Views, Aggregations etc, at back end BAM used biztalk engine, orchestration (for workflows), Sql server database to mangage its data in active and temporary tables.
BAM web portal can be used in sharepoint, also we can directly interact with data from BAM databases created during installation of BAM.

For more detail on BAM , dowload microsoft training KIT

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc963995.aspx

Tools used Commonly For Business Intelligence

- Different kind of Office Suits : MS Office , Open Office (For e.g. Excel)
- Reporting Tool (For e.g. Crystal Reports, Sql server Reporting)
- OLAP Tool (For e.g. Business Objects, Microsoft Analysis Services, Cognos)
- Data Mining (Data mining is itself tool for Business Information Management system, it’s a kind of technique to explore data on different patterns, its main goal is forcasting, predictions etc)
- Dash Boards Tool (For e.g. Excel , Infragistics, Dundas)

Also Microsoft has comprehensive information on their website regarding BI http://www.microsoft.com/BI/
For dashboards, visit this page http://charts.jorgecamoes.com/how-to-create-an-excel-dashboard/

Need of Informative Applications

In today's world corporate/business people want information on their finger tips, whether its marketing people want to know disperately about their sales targets and customer relations, whether its finance want to know disperately about their budgets and financial consumptions, whether its I.T. want to know their helpdesk KPIs , whether its research people want to know about current market trends , all they want is information on their finger tips and their comes database , BI (Business intelligence systems), MIS , Dash boards and these are not possible without good database design skills , db ware house design skills and strong sql queries , reporting , and analytical skills. Businesss users doesnt tell their requirement effeiciently rather then they describe it in nut shell which system analyst or a software engineer has to transform into system language and thats where Sql queries and reporting skill comes into play.

In my 9 yrs of expereince i have came across many business systems where people use to feed different informations but doesnt have desired output which TOP management needed to run their day to day affairs or which can help taking decissions, which results loosing market competition , loosing crucial sales, loosing crucial opportunities etc.

So in Business when it comes to information, Systems should be efficient enough to be called as a expert system which generate different Business Intelligence reports, MIS, dashboards and all should be realtime.

PMP Cleared

I have cleared my pmp on 6th April 2009 and below are the points i have observed while preparing for it.
1.) No need to get office holidays (its not necessary you can utilize sat and suns and few hours in weekdays) , as I didn’t take much holidays only 2 to 3 days in which I played with my small daughter as I cant study more than 4 hours J
2.) Go through RITA 3 times each (V.V Important)
3.) Go through PMBOK only 1 time specially areas marked by sir Asad in PM Exam preparation day .
4.) Go through slides only 1 time.
5.) Make a note of input, out put tools & Techniques specially for procurement, risk, time and scope and I would recommend understand and learn by heart (becz we don’t practise them in local market)
6.) Understand properly PMIsm like WBS , WBS Dictionary and others mention in RITA , it is V.V.V imporant, I have seen WBS 10 questions in my exam so make sure you get learned every corner of it.
7.) Practise numericals with formulae given at the end of RITA, practise calculating floats etc (this appear in 6 questions in my PMP.
8.) Procurement chaper is v.v important I got atleast 15 to 20 questions over it, make sure you learn every corner of it ( as I have never done procurements in my local & international projects).
9.) Quality control ,again this topic is v v important, Thanks God I have understand this properly , 7 to 8 questions over it.
10.) So you see all together there are few areas on which PMI focus so learn that , I will recommend to attempt rita fastrack , not a lot of 1500 questions, I only attemp 100 questions two time on 2nd last day.

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PMP Starter Tips : BOOKS RECOMMENDED

Recently i have finished my PMP Course and found following tips regarding going through pmp books during your pmp exam preparation , so check it out below

PMP BOOKS RECOMMENDED

• Fresh Project Managers : PMBOK 2004 plus OReilly Head First PMP (2007)
  
• Average Project Managers having 2 to 3 Yrs Experience: PMBOK 2004 plus PMP Exam Prep, RITA Fifth Edition
  
• Expert Project Managers having above 3 Yrs Experience : PMBOK 2004 plus PMP-Professional Study Guide 4rth Ed by Kim Heldman