Saturday, January 16, 2010

3 Idiots- Life’s Learning



1. Never try to be successful , pursue excellence
* Success is the bye product & the result
* Excellence always creates Success & it is a process of continual improvement
* Never run after success
* Let it happen automatically in life

2. Freedom to Life- Life is beautiful
* Don’t die before the actual death
* Live every moment to the fullest as if today is the last day
* Life is gifted to humankind to live
* Live & Live happily towards happiness

3. Passion leads to Excellence
* When your hobby becomes your profession , the passion becomes your profession
* You will be able to lead up to excellence in life
* Satisfaction, Joy, Pleasure & love will be the outcome of the passion
* Following your passion for years , you will surely become somebody one day

4. Learning is very simple- Never stop
* Be humble
* Teachers do fail, Learners never fail
* Learning is never complicate or difficult
* Learning is always possible whatever rule you apply

5. Pressure at head
* Current education system is developing pressure on students head
* University intelligence is useful & making some impact in the life , but it cannot be
at the cost of life

6.Life is management of emotions & not optimization of intelligence
* Memory and regular study have definite value and it always helps you in leading a life.
* You are able to survive even if you can make some mark in the path of the life.
* With artificial intelligence, you can survive & win but you cannot prove yourself
genius.
* Therefore, in this process genius dies in you


7.Necessity is mother of invention
* Necessity creates pressure and forces you to invent something or to make it happen or to use your potentiality.
* Aamir Khan in this film, 3 idiots, is able to prove in the film by using vacuum pump at the last moment.

8.Simplicity in life
* Life is need base never want base. Desires have no ends.
* Simplicity is way of life and Indian culture highly stresses on simple living and high
thinking, and this is the way of life: ‘Legs down to earth and eyes looking beyond the sky’

9.Industrial Leadership
* Dean of the institute in 3 idiots is showing very typical leadership. He has his own principles, values and ideology, and he leads the whole institute accordingly.
* This is an example of current institutional leadership. In the present scenario, most of the institutes are fixed in a block or Squarish thinking

10.Love is time & space free
* Trust your partner
* Love is not time bound and space bound.
* It is very well demonstrated in this movie same love was demonstrated by Krishna
and Meera.
* Love is border free, time free, unconditional and space free.

11.Importance of words in communication
* If communication dies, everything dies.
* Each word has impact and value in communication.
* One word if used wrongly or emphasized wrongly or paused at a wrong place in
communication what effect it creates and how is it affected is demonstrated very well in this movie.

12.Mediocrity is penalized
* Middle class family or average talent or average institute is going to suffer and has to pay maximum price in the life if they do not upgrade their living standards.
* To be born poor or as an average person is not a crime but to die as an average person with middle class talent is miserable and if you are unable to optimize your potentiality and die with unused potentiality then that is your shameful truth.
* One should not die as a mediocre. He/she has to bring out genius inside him/her and has to use his/her potentiality to the optimum level

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Sachin Tendulkar - A legend completing 20 years






@Hashim Amla
"Nothing bad can happen to us if we're on a plane in India with Sachin
Tendulkar on it."
Hashim Amla, the South African batsman, reassures himself as he boards a
flight


@yaseer hameed
"Sometimes you get so engrossed in watching batsmen like Rahul Dravid and
Sachin Tendulkar that you lose focus on your job."


"To Sachin, the man we all want to be"
- What Andrew Symonds wrote on an aussie t-shirt he autographed specially
for Sachin


Beneath the helmet, under that unruly curly hair, inside the cranium, there
is something we don't know, something beyond scientific measure. Something
that allows him to soar, to roam a territory of sport that, forget us, even
those who are gifted enough to play alongside him cannot even fathom. When
he goes out to bat, people switch on their TV sets and switch off their
lives "
BBC on Sachin


But the finest compliment must be that bookmakers would not fix the odds -
or a game - until Tendulkar was out.


"Tuzhe pata hai tune kiska catch chhoda hai?"
"Tuzhe pata hai tune kiska catch chhoda hai?" Wasim Akram to Abdul Razzaq
when the latter dropped Sachin's catch.


@Brian Charles Lara again
Sachin is a genius. I'm a mere mortal.


Mark Taylor
"We did not lose to a team called India...we lost to a man called Sachin" -
Mark Taylor, during the test match in Chennai (1997)



@M. L. Jaisimha:
"The more I see of him the more confused I'm getting to which is his best
knock."


@McGrath
"The joy he brings to the millions of his countrymen, the grace with which
he handles all the adulation and the expectations and his innate humility -
all make for a one-in-a-billion individual,"


@Wife Anjali
"I can be hundred per cent sure that Sachin will not play for a minute
longer when he is not enjoying himself. He is still so eager to go out
there
and play. He will play as long as he feels he can play,"


by HAYDEN - i feel is the best SACHIN QUOTE
he said
"I HAVE SEEN GOD, HE BATS AT NO.4 FOR INDIA"


My Personal Best
"Even my father's name is Sachin Tendulkar."
Tendulkar's daughter, Sara, tells her class her father's name after the
teacher informs them of a restaurant of the same name in Mumbai


KUMBLE : I am fortunate that I've to bowl at him only in the nets!




@ shahrukh
quoting Shahrukh from an interview
Que: Who do you think as most important celebrity ?
Shahrukh: There was a big party where stars from bollywood and cricket were
invited. Suddenly, there was a big noise, all wanted to see approaching
Amitabh Bachhan.
Then Sachin entered the hall and Amitabh was leading the queue to get a
grab
of the GENIUS!!


@Navjot Singh Sidhu
India me aap PrimeMinister ko ek Baar Katghare me khada kar sakte hain..Par
Sachin Tendulkar par Ungli nahi utha Sakte..


@waqar younis
He can play that leg glance with a walking stick also .


A banner once said-' I WILL SEE GOD WHEN I DIE BUT TILL THEN I WILL SEE
SACHIN ' that quiet defines Sachin-The greatest.


Sachin Tendulkar has often reminded me of a veteran army colonel who has
many medals on his chest to show how he has conquered bowlers all over the
world -- Allan Donald

And i remember reading in one of Allan Donald's interview. This interview
was in Cricket Talk
and 7-8 yrs ago.

I was bowling to Sachin and he hit me for two fours in a row. One from
point
and the other
in between point and gully. That was the last two balls of the over and the
over after that
we (SA) took a wicket and during the group meeting i told Jonty (Rhodes) to
be alert and i
know a way to pin Sachin. And i delivered the first ball of my next over
and
it was a
fuller length delevery outside offstump. And i shouted catch. To my
astonishment the ball
was hit to the cover boundary. Such was the brilliance of Sachin. His
reflex
time is the best
i have ever seen. Its like 1/20th of a sec. To get his wicket better not
prepare. Atleast
u wont regret if he hits you for boundaries.


Peter Rebouck - aussie journalist
On a train from Shimla to Delhi, there was a halt in one of the stations.
The train stopped by for few minutes as usual.
Sachin was nearing century, batting on 98. The passengers, railway
officials, everyone on the train waited for Sachin to complete the century.
This Genius can stop time in India!!


NKP Salve, former Union Minister
This was when he was accused of ball tempering
"Sachin cannot cheat. He is to cricket what (Mahatma) Gandhiji was to
politics. It's clear discrimination."




Andy Flower:

There are 2 kind of batsmen in the world. One Sachin Tendulkar. Two all the
others.

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Steve jobs convocation speech.

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much.

Tuesday, April 8, 2008

Ten traits to look for when hiring a programmer

Programmers come with a wide range of skill sets, hail from many countries and cultures and can have differing backgrounds and experiences. Nevertheless, certain qualities can mean the difference between a great programmer and someone who's not so great. Here are 10 things to look for when hiring a programmer.

1. Curiosity
Great programmers never accept things "as is"; they need to poke deep inside something, even when it appears to be working fine, to learn more. This is how many problems are solved before they are problems, and it's usually the quickest way to fix acute issues. A programmer without this mentality will usually end up lacking the knowledge underlying why they are doing what they are doing, which means they're working with blinkers on. Unless candidates are very shy, their curiosity, if they have it, will show strongly during interviews.

2. Clear thinking skills
It may sound obvious, but programming is an exercise in logic. People who can add two and two to get four are common, but people who can take "2 + x = 4" and figure out that "x" is equal to 2 are much less common.
This is why I have always preferred programmers with strong maths or science backgrounds. It makes them a bit better at programming but, more importantly, it generally indicates good logic skills. When I discuss the job, I sometimes leave blanks in what I'm saying to see if the candidate can fill them in. In addition, if your hiring process includes formal testing, that's a good time to test logic skills.

3. Top-flight reading speed and comprehension
Another "duh" when it comes to programmer productivity is that most of their work is not the typing of the code. A significant portion of a programmer's day is spent reading, whether it be other people's code, websites with examples, documentation or project specs.
Programmers who read slowly or, worse, don't understand what they're reading, will be inefficient at best and dangerous at worst. You probably don't want someone on your staff who misreads the spec and spends three weeks doing the wrong thing; that's just embarrassing when you need to explain the delay to the project sponsors. It's really hard to gauge reading skills during the hiring process unless you use a formal testing process.
4. Attention to detail
Attention to detail is a close cousin to curiosity. A programmer who pays attention to detail will tend to be significantly more productive than one who doesn't. It is, unfortunately, extremely difficult to measure this quality during the hiring process. Still, sometimes things happen during the hiring process that show that a candidate has this trait. Maybe it's a casual remark or just a minor incident that occurs during the interview.
For example, I once had an interviewee casually compliment me on my shirt and mention that he was a fan of that designer; that spoke volumes about his attention to detail. Of course, a severe lack of attention to detail can sometimes be obvious too; the candidate who walks in with trousers unbuttoned or toilet paper stuck to a shoe is clearly not paying attention to detail!

5. Quick learner outside programming
Unless your company develops programming tools, such as compilers and IDEs, your programmers are working with projects outside the realm of programming. Just as journalists need to understand a little bit about the subjects of their stories and good teachers need a working knowledge of the field they're teaching, good programmers are able to learn about the environment their software will work within. Of course, you don't need a CPA with a computer-science degree to work on your accounting software, but a programmer who can't understand the basics of the maths and business rules involved is going to be a liability.
I take candidates I'm seriously considering on a tour of the facility and provide a brief, simple, jargon-free overview of the company and how it works. Candidates who ask pointed questions that show they understand what I'm talking about, or who otherwise show comprehension, get extra credit in the overall hiring decision.

6. Self-learning skills
It's rare for a programming shop to have the budget and time to provide training to its programmers. This is unfortunate, but it's a business reality. The result is that most programmers self-teach their skill sets (ideally with a mentor handy) once their formal schooling is over. Programmers who are good at self-learning are going to be better at programming.
During the interview process, I like to ask questions such as: "How did you learn to do that?", when the candidate talks about something difficult; or: "How do you get new skills?"; and: "Do you read any programming-related books, magazines, websites, blogs, etc?". Candidates who aren't just capable but who are eager to teach themselves new programming skills......tend to be much better to have on your staff than those who don't like to learn outside a formal training program.

7. Passion
Some programmers are "daycoders": people who write code 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. They don't think about it in the slightest outside those hours. That's perfectly fine; not everyone can be a super geek who lives and breathes code. I have hired people like this in the past to fill a gap or to work on the sections of a project that are routine. But when I need to hire a top programming candidate (regardless of skill or experience level), I need to be hiring someone with a passion for the work.
Passion is a "make or break" during crunch time or on a project that requires tricky techniques, rare skills, and so on. After all, daycoders won't be motivated to learn the best way of doing things and will instead just do what they've always done, which may not be the best way of doing things. Daycoders are also difficult to retain without a steady stream of raises and a high level of perks, since they are there for the money, not for the work. Passion will be fairly obvious during the interview. Candidates who get excited when you talk about your project or who are talking about their past projects are the ones who display their passion for the role.

8. Adaptability
Have you ever worked on a programming project that ended with the same specs it started with? Neither have I, and I am including short projects that lasted less than a day! Programmers who don't handle change well will probably not be very successful, except on long-term, waterfall-type projects that last years, usually under government contract. That is not to denigrate those kinds of projects or programmers, of course. But most projects are simply incompatible with a lack of adaptability.It's pretty obvious during interviews when candidates are not adaptable or handle change poorly, particularly if you ask questions such as: "Did the requirements change often?" Candidates who say something like: "Sure, but that happens on all projects and it's a fact of life", are winners. Those who roll their eyes and respond with: "Yeah, that's why I could never get anything done!" will probably not be a good fit for most environments.

9. Good communication skills
"Communication skills" doesn't mean the same thing as "speaks perfect English": it means "being able to convey an idea accurately and effectively". Pictures, sounds and hand motions are all part of communication skills. Programmers who have a hard time getting their point across or understanding what others are trying to tell them will not be effective in the long run. This is a difficult ability to properly measure in a phone interview, but when candidates have difficulty communicating even in a face-to-face interview, you can be sure that they'll have a hard time on the job as well.

10. Who's the boss?
Programmers are a notoriously independent group of people. Indeed, I believe that's one of their strengths and it's great not having to micro-manage people working on technical projects. However, a good portion of programmers struggle with the idea of "I am the boss and you are not." I know, it sounds tyrannical. In a way, it is. Managers often need to make decisions for nontechnical reasons and they may not be able to explain those reasons to their team (secrecy, politics, not enough time, etc).
A little bit of pushback, particularly on bad decisions, is something I encourage and fully support, especially if the boss doesn't realise that it is a bad decision and if the feedback is delivered correctly. But when the boss says, "I know from the technical perspective this is a bad idea, but this is how we need to do it," it's final. All too often, certain "rogue coders" will ignore their marching orders and go do their own thing. Even worse, they have a tendency to run their mouth to anyone and everyone about how stupid the boss is and how he or she obviously does not understand programming — which may or may not be true. This sinks projects and does nothing but cause animosity and hurt team morale.
This mentality can often be seen during the interview process, especially when you're asking about past work experiences. Rogue coders love to talk about their "evil, idiot, pointy-haired slave driver" former managers, even when it is wholly inappropriate to do so, like in a job interview. Well-adjusted programmers will say things such as, "I disagreed with some of my manager's decisions at a technical level, but I know that those decisions had to have non-technical issues factored into them."

Thursday, March 13, 2008

A simple gesture

A simple gesture could save someone’s life. No, that does not happen every time but it pays to be kind to someone.

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed that the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder.

Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked, Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history. He was having a lot of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

Mark went home after dropping Bill at his house. They continued to see each other around school, had lunch together once or twice, and then both graduated from junior high school. They ended up in the same high school, where they had brief contacts over the years. Finally the long-awaited senior year came.

Three weeks before graduation, Bill asked Mark if they could talk.

Bill reminded him of the day years ago when they had first met. "Do you ever wonder why I was carrying so many things home that day?" asked Bill. "You see, I cleaned out my locker because I didn't want to leave a mess for anyone else. I had stored away some of my mother's sleeping pills and I was going home to commit suicide.

But after we spent some time together talking and laughing, I realized that if I had killed myself, I would have missed that time and so many others that might follow. So you see, Mark, when you picked up my books that day, that simple gesture, you did a lot more. You saved my life."

----------



Today, give a stranger one of your smiles. It might be the only sunshine he sees all day.

H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

A Legacy Of Love

What should be our legacy of love be? Here is something for you to ponder about.

As a young man, Al was a skilled artist, a potter. He had a wife and two fine sons. One night, his oldest son developed a severe stomach-ache. Thinking it was only some common intestinal disorder, neither Al nor his wife took the condition very seriously.
But the malady was actually acute appendicitis, and the boy died suddenly that night.

Knowing the death could have been prevented if he had only realized the seriousness of the situation, Al's emotional health deteriorated under the enormous burden of his guilt. To make matters worse his wife left him a short time later, leaving him alone with his six-year-old younger son. The hurt and pain of the two situations were more than Al could handle, and he turned to alcohol to help him cope. In time Al became an alcoholic.

As the alcoholism progressed, Al began to lose everything he possessed - his home, his land, his art objects, everything. Eventually Al died alone in a San Francisco motel room.

When I heard of Al's death, I reacted with the same disdain the world shows for one who ends his life with nothing material to show for it. "What a complete failure!" I thought. "What a totally wasted life!"

As time went by, I began to re-evaluate my earlier harsh judgment. You see, I knew Al's now adult son, Ernie. He is one of the kindest, most caring, most loving men I have ever known. I watched Ernie with his children and saw the free flow of love between them. I knew that kindness and caring had to come from somewhere.

I hadn't heard Ernie talk much about his father. It is so hard to defend an alcoholic. One day I worked up my courage to ask him. "I'm really puzzled by something," I said. "I know your father was basically the only one to raise you. What on earth did he do that you became such a special person?"

Ernie sat quietly and reflected for a few moments. Then he said, "From my earliest memories as a child until I left home at 18, Al came into my room every night, gave me a kiss and said, `I love you, son.'"

Tears came to my eyes as I realized what a fool I had been to judge Al as a failure. He had not left any material possessions behind. But he had been a kind loving father, and he left behind one of the finest legacy of love, a most giving man I have ever known.



Our days are numbered. One of the primary goals in our lives should be to prepare for our last day. The legacy we leave is not just in our possessions, but in the quality of our lives. What preparations should we be making now? The greatest waste in all of our earth, which cannot be recycled or reclaimed, is our waste of the time that God has given us each day.

Billy Graham

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Valentine's day special quotes

It takes a minute to have a crush on someone,
an hour to like someone,
and a day to love someone.
But it takes a lifetime to forget someone.

Love is broad; if you love someone, you love all things, not just their beauty.
Love is narrow; you love one and only one, compared to them, no one matters.

God gave you 2 legs to walk, 2 hands to hold, 2 ears to hear, 2 eyes to see.
But why did he give you only 1 heart?
Probably because He wants you to look for the other.

It hurts to love sumone who doesn't give you the time of day.
But it hurts more when you realize that sumone you don't give the time of day loved you & gave it up because you loved another.

Love is what can be felt not told,
it can be given but not sold.
It comes when u least expect it,
and leaves u when u most need it.

You don't love a woman because she is beautiful,
she is beautiful because you love her.

A happy man marries the girl he loves;
a happier man loves the girl he marries.

He who loves 50 people has 50 woes;
he who loves no one has no woes.

### Happy Valentine's Day ###