I have been fighting tooth and nail in as fair a manner as I can think of in the local market for the last two years. It has been lot of fun. It is just like playing a big game where you have real life players. I have come across some bad business practices and some rotten ones. This is one rotten one that I came across recently from one of my competitors.

Today we had a meeting at Zyxware of a few members GNU/Linux User Group Trivandrum. We had a discussion on figuring out plans to organize awareness campaigns against the proprietary standard OOXML and to popularize ODF.

Recently OOXML sneaked through the back doors as an ISO standard. Yielding to pressure strategies from Microsoft, ISO members voted for taking OOXML as a standard. There has been wide protests across the world against this as there is already an ISO standard for documents viz the Open Document Format. The free software users group in Trivandrum is also planning to show solidarity to the community across the world in this regard.

I am not a music buff. As a matter of fact, I don't listen to any music at all. I never listened to music while at school. I started listening to music while at my college during my bachelors degree. That was just an experiment and I soon lost my interest, if at all there was any. There was however one song that came out sometime during that period that really caught my attention, not because of the music but because of the lyrics. It was "It's my life" by Jon Bon Jovi.

Vishu is a traditional festival of Kerala. People wake up early on Vishu and try to see only auspicious stuff when they open their eyes on Vishu day. To facilitate this people noramlly keep auspicious (supposedly) stuff ready to be seen when they wake up. Since this does not apply to me I woke up very late today. I think it must have been the effect of three consecutive sleepless nights. If I don't get at least 6 hours of good quality sleep the succeeding day would inevitably be ruined. I would have a bad pain in my eyes the whole day and I would normally be listless and irritable. The long nights sleep was well due and I had a pretty good day.

Yesterday was one of the most exciting days of my life with Zyxware since the release of the Zyxware Health Monitoring System. The first publicly held GNU/Linux Install Fest in Kerala was successfully concluded yesterday. More reports on the event can be found on the GNU/Linux Users Group Trivandrum Mailing List and the GNU/Linux Users Group Trivandrum Website.

I enjoy being in the company of people who enjoy logical and analytical discussions or who has a passion for the society or a passion for the environment. I broadly classify these people as rational people as I believe that all the three aspects - analytical discussions, passion for social causes, passion for environment are all rational. Ever since I returned to India, I have been trying to get myself into a company of such people. It took me almost 2 years to figure out such a company and join one.

It has been more than an year since I started blogging. The blogging initially consisted of writing down detailed discussions on specific thoughts that I found interesting. I have been documenting that through my blog - http://www.thondomraughts.com. In addition I have been updating major events at my company through the company site - http://www.zyxware.com.