{balki Blog}
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Man and his friends (who are in the same age-group) go to a social event at another common friend’s place.  This host and her friends are from a younger age group, probably 5-7 years younger.

Man, his wife and the friends start chatting about the event after returning home.

Man: I felt pretty old hanging out with those youngsters.

Man’s friend: That is the reality, you better get used to feeling old.  You are not that young anymore!

Man’s wife: Whatever.  They will also grow older one day and can relate to what we are feeling now.

Man: YES!  And with any luck, at our age, they will be much more uglier than we are.

Man and his wife go for a community event with a bunch of people.  The group is dominated by single women in their 30s.  The conversation inevitably turns to their travails in the dating world and the uphill battle they fight to find that perfect match!

Single woman #1: You know, I am always appalled by the quality of single men out there!  I never know what to infer from the two-line ads?

Single woman #2: Amen to that.  And I am tired of 40-year old men that have no direction in life and still staying with their parents!!!

Single woman #3: I met this really nice guy on an online dating service but I had to run away as soon as I came to know about his strange religious habits.

Enlightened woman #4: Ladies, ladies.  I have the perfect panacea for all your problems: “SPECIFICITY”.  After being burnt several times with generic personal ads and equally mundane guys, I turned to being specific with my ads and never turned back.  You should try it and the “Law of Attraction” will work for you.

Man: Yes, you should try specific ads like “Brad Pitt (after his networth increases by another 200 million)” or “George Clooney (after he becomes 15 years younger)“.  You can’t get more specific than that?

All single women together: %$#! you, a**hole.

I recently wrote the GMAT (Graduate Management Aptitude Test) and scored a respectable 720 (95-percentile among the 100K or annual test takers).  A few other friends also want to take the exam to get into some of the prestigious business schools in the country.  There is an abundance of online, offline, printed, free, non-free material available to help prepare for the exam. 

A common discussion topic is what are the top 3 resources/books that one should leverage to get a decent score on the exam? (especially important for us old blokes because we pride ourselves in multi-tasking and prioritizing!).  I prepared from 6-8 books and probably did not do a lot of advance research to pick the optimal resources.  Here’s my research and experience results posthumously!

In chronological order, culminating to the exam date:
1.

The book has great elaborate test strategies for all verbal and quantitative sections of the exam and that should smooth out any fears the unprepared might have.  The book has nearly 600 pages but you can breeze through most of the strategies and exercises relatively quickly.  I made high-level strategy notes in MS OneNote as I came across in the book so I didn’t have to keep referring back.  Send an email to bkodarapu at hotmail.com if you need those OneNote strategies.
Suggested % of time to allocate: 40

2.

The one-and-only, official, globally-respected book for GMAT preparation, period!  The Official Guide has several advantages:

• only resource with actual questions from past exams
• questions ordered in the increasing order of difficulty
• fairly good solution strategies

If you have time to review one book only, this should be it!
Suggested % of time to allocate: 40

3.

Not for the faint-hearted; use at your own risk!  I like the book because it focuses on the toughest possible questions at the risk of making you look dumb.  I probably answered only half the exercise questions right no matter how hard I prepared.  If you are consistently getting 75% or more questions right during practice, you’ll probably score 750+ (99 percentile).

So, use your judgment, decide for yourself if you need to use the book based on your results from the first two.
Suggested % of time to allocate: 20

Happy preparing… next time, “Online resources”.

Yes, I admit it.  I have been addicted to web browsing and have been in denial for years.  It is very subjective what I browse for.  For example, I just browse technical, professional and social networking related topics.  But that is not an excuse for being an Internet Addict.  So, I resolved to come out of the closet and look for cures and support groups on… yes, you guessed it right, on the Internet

I went straight to LifeHacker.com and found PageAddict, a free extension for Firefox.  PageAddict does one job and and boy does it to do that well! 

PageAddict essentially keeps track of your Internet activity and over time you can set time limitations (per day) for categories of pages a.k.a tags that you define.  If you cross that limit, you will be flicked on your head with a warning that you are no longer eligible for additional browsing in that category or sometimes no browsing at all!

If you cross the addiction-level threshold in any of the categories, you cannot browse in that particular category/site anymore.  To limit browsing at the highest level, you can always restrict yourself in the default “undefined” category as well.

So, all you internet addicts, please resolve this labor day weekend to come out of your denial and win over internet addiction using tools found on the internet!

Minor limitations (bugs?):

• Limited to browsers only and that too specifically for Firefox.  For example, PageAddict cannot control how many blogs you are reading in your favorite weblog reader.  This is blessing in disguise for me because I do most of my “pleasure browsing” on Firefox.  If I am using IE, I am more than likely working.
• Leaving a browser open keeps the clock ticking so if you forget to swap applications before you take a stroll, your addiction activity will be artificially inflated and can result in rapid withdrawal symptoms.