OnStartups and Life ...

I read Dharmesh Shah's thoughtful posts at onstartups.com. I really like how he makes you think and encourages you to start something of your own. It is obvious that he does not necessarily make it sound simple (contrary to popular belief), but he surely makes the case in simple terms.

Maybe it brings the missing element (the courage) out of me, someday!

And why should I think what I do must change the world or how it operates? That's hard, probably and is the forte of the legends. I need to do simple things one at a time, for my own sake, to recognize the importance of failure in life. Ultimately, success is, like someone has said, ability to go from one failure to another, without any loss of enthusiasm.

To conclude, I understand Sydney Harris' quote:

Regret for the things we did can be tempered by time; it is the regret for the things we did not do that is inconsolable!

Now only if I realized it!

GMail and sent mail ...

I don't get it. One of the most important requirements from my e-mail client is the facility to preserve e-mails that I send. I may want to delete a conversation (as GMail calls it), but that does not mean I want to get rid of what I wrote as part of that conversation.

Well, in today's GMail UI, it is not evident how I can satisfy this (basic) requirement as a user. To elaborate the point:

1. I send an e-mail or get an e-mail from someone.
2. I start the conversation and after 4 rounds of send-receive, I decide to delete the conversation from my Inbox.
3. Later, I want to know what I wrote as part of my responses. Naturally, I click on Sent Mail folder and to my dismay, I find no trace of the same.

Now, there could be something missing and there could be responses like "Why delete? We have gigabytes of data storage." or "Undelete it from the Trash" etc.

But that's not the point. The point is, a normal expectation from "Sent Mail" is just redefined by GMail and to my surprise, this is not a bug in GMail? I am sorry if I am missing something, but without a doubt, how I can satisfy the above is not at all evident on GMail UI.

Weird!

The thing is ... is that ...

Let's do a poll. Have have heard of such a strange arrangement of words --

The thing is ... is that ... she does not know.

?

(Note that this is a pattern and it manifests itself in several other contexts and situations).

I get irritated when I listen to such a statement. It happens in a face-to-face conversation. The speaker probably chooses to do something like this mainly to appear fluent. But I have seen this pattern in the statements made by people whose mother tongue is English.