This Week I Learned - Week #121

This Week I Learned -

* With respect to Disaster Recovery, a “proactive” hot site allows you to keep servers and a live backup site up and running in the event of a disaster.  A hot site is a must for mission critical sites. A “preventative” warm site allows you to pre-install your hardware and pre-configure your bandwidth needs. Then, if disaster strikes, all you have to do is load your software and data to restore your business systems. In contrast to a hot site, a warm site relies on backups for recovery. A “recovery” cold site is essentially just data center space, power, and network connectivity that’s ready and waiting for whenever you might need it.

* This exhaustive list of things to test for in a Windows desktop application comes from a Microsoftie who says - "When I look back on my LOB-app-building days, I don't know how anything I built ever made it into production"

* "Reading Code Complete was a watershed event in my professional life." -  Jeff Atwood

* "You're an amateur developer until you realize that everything you write sucks." -  Jeff Atwood

* Research carried out by the Carnegie Institute of Technology shows that 85 percent of your financial success is due to skills in “human engineering,” your personality and ability to communicate, negotiate, and lead. Shockingly, only 15 percent is due to technical knowledge. A person with less education who has fully developed their EQ (Stress can be a huge killer of emotional intelligence, so you also need to develop healthy coping techniques that can effectively and quickly reduce stress in a volatile situation.), Moral Quotient (Make fewer excuses and take responsibility for your actions. Avoid little white lies. Show sympathy and communicate respect to others. Practice acceptance and show tolerance of other people’s shortcomings. Forgiveness is not just about how we relate to others; it’s also how you relate to and feel about yourself.), and Body Quotient  (Good nutrition, regular exercise, and adequate rest are all key aspects of having a high BQ) can be far more successful than a person with an impressive education who falls short in these other categories. - Forbes

* Vikas Swarup on the success of his book "Q & A" which was made into a movie, "Slumdog Millionaire" - “It all started with a report I read in some newspaper about children living in slums using mobile phones and the Internet. That was quite a revelation. It showed that old class barriers were melting away and anyone can achieve anything....The reason for the novel’s global appeal, I imagine, is that though it is set in India, the issues it deals with - love, loss, friendship and humanity - are relatable to every culture and community”

* “The plausible impossible” is a term of art unique to cartooning. It is what holds Bugs Bunny up when he runs off a cliff, traverses a yawning chasm, and continues running on the other side..What keeps Bugs aloft, what makes the impossible plausible, is not looking down - from Al Jaffee's Mad Life

* MAD magazine "was designed to corrupt the minds of children. And from what I'm gathering from the minds of people all over, we succeeded" - Al Jaffee

* Weather & bugs can cause havoc - World output of Olive oil is expected to fall by a third to 2.3m tonnes this year, its lowest level since 2000. The shortfall is largely due to arid weather in Spain, the world’s biggest producer, and Xylella fastidiosa, a bacterial disease which is ravaging olive trees in Italy - Economist