Varun Nair’s Personal Blog

Power-napper par excellence

That’s me. Since my college days I have a habit of sleeping for an hour in the afternoon usually just after lunch. We usually used to have our lecture from 1 to 5 in the afternoon and since attendance was not mandatory for most of the courses I would skip one or two (at least) and sleep nicely.

However things changed when I left the nice comfy world of college to earn my livelihood. Was it acceptable to sleep in office? What would colleagues think? What would my boss think? But I was lucky enough to always end up in liberal-attitude projects and understanding bosses and so never had to really confront those questions. So my power-napping still continues. The duration has come down to 20-30 minutes but not the effectiveness.

Again things changed when I had to lead a project. When you are a team member you do not have to think much about being a role model or setting an example. You can go where your heart takes you. But is it nice to sleep when you the project leader? Again to my happiness I realised that people usually do not care much about these things. As long as you do the work efficiently, help everybody out and do well in your formal and informal responsibilities everybody looks up to you. In fact catching a few winks makes you look like somewhat of a “rebel” and add to your coolness quotient, an unintentional but not undesirable side-effect

Power-napping leaves me fresh and releases new reserves of energy. It improves my mood and concentration span. And I have managed to regulate the nap periods to 20-30 minutes quite consistently and therefore it does not have any significant impact on my schedule. So my dear friends if you feel very drowsy at work I recommend you try this very effective technique, I am sure it will bolster your energy by at least a couple of hours.

Bloggers immune from suits against commenters (at least in the US)

Nice move: In the US a Federal Court has ruled that message board operators and bloggers will not be held responsible for postings made by others on the board or blog.

Examining the impact of Sec. 230 on this case, the court noted that “Congress intended that, within broad limits, message board operators would not be held responsible for the postings made by others on that board,” adding that allowing bloggers and message board operators to be sued for the statements of commenters on their sites would have an “obvious chilling effect” on speech.

I wonder if an Indian court of law would also rule in a similar way.

I don’t like laptops

I don’t like laptops. My fingers keep hitting the wrong keys, my palm keeps grazing the touchpad causing my mouse pointer to go haywire, I have to actually search for keys and I have to pore into the tiny monitor. Even my next system is going to be a good old desktop, that’s for sure.

Monday blues

It’s Monday. And I have been bitten by the Monday blues bug. Am sitting here, composing this post but have to go to office in another hour or so I wish I could take a week-long vacation. Just pack my bags, take a few books, con some friends into coming with me and go someplace without any planning. Some place where we can just chill, talk, relax,play and ignore our routines and schedules for a few days. Sigh.