Orange: MIS guest speaker session

Orange: MIS guest speaker session

MIS guest speaker session

Weird day yesterday was. Started with heading to school for a guest speaker session. Meeting terrible news on the way. And then getting marked absent for leaving class to attend to a phone call. Which led to even worse repercussions.

Anyway, the guest speaker was Mr.Sajid Khan. And he spoke about IT Assurance and Risk Management.

Wouldn't expect there to be much room for creativity there but read on.. =)

IT Risk Management leads to 3 key risks :

1. Confidentiality of the Data
2. Integrity of the Data; making sure that its reliable
3. Availability of the Data
   

There are 4 major firms who offer this service

1. Earnest and Young
2. KPMG
3. Price Waterhouse Coopers
4. Deloitte

A good knowledge of business administration, IT aswell as Accounting and Auditing is essential for the effective provision of this service.

You can assess their services on the following bases :

1. IT entry level controls : strategy, policy and procedures, training and development
2. IT general level control :
   SDLC (System Devp. Life Cycle) and Change Management (Integrity),
   Logical Access (Confidentiality),
   IT Operations (Availabilty).
3. IT application controls : with SOX 404 (a requirement to show that internal audits are working) With IT being an integral part of the audit.

My Wishlist

http://www.google.com/shoppinglist?a=SWL&email=sabzeee%40gmail.com&id=9198766775160813132

making this was so much fun. =) on a big perfume high so there's alot of those in there.

Being Twenty Something.

Was going through my computer a couple of days back and I came across this article. This'll be a hard one to connect to creativity though haha.. just something I wanted to share I guess. Something I for one could most definitely relate to. Even though it meant me recognizing the fact that I was now twenty something - my brain somehow refuses to let me age past 18.. need to snap out of it before I become one of those older people who refuse to accept and act their age.

Being Twenty-Something
They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and you wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get hot and scared because you barely know where you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you are.
You look at your job. It is not even close to what you thought you would be doing or maybe you are looking for one and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and are scared.
You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly change is the enemy and you cry and cling on to the past with dear life but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. The average ones plateau, the smart ones rise.
You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough to get to know better.
You love someone but maybe love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you are not a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap and getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You wonder what in the hell is wrong with you. You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender! We are making a lot of mistakes, but helping one another learn from them. We will piss one another off, and laugh at the end of a conversation that started.
What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it and we are all in this together. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. We are friends, and in 10 years we will be friends who have figured out where we fit in in this world.....We always think that what we had was the best...or would have been the best. Whatever you will be, you are now becoming. Everything will be alright in the end. If things aren't alright, then it's not the end.

Applelove.

I love baking. Cooking infact. But baking is what I'm most interested in. With experience I now know how to halve recipes, double them, make them a little less sweet for my health conscious family without taking the flavour away - turning my chocolate cake recipe into a mocha cake just by adding some coffee to it. Thats how I related cooking to my blog.
One of my favorite recipes has been passed down generations. skipped one in this case though. :) since my mum isn't much of a baker. and i know that family recipes are usually kept as wellkept secrets but I'm sharing this one with you guys. =) try it and let me know how it turned out.

Apple Upside Down

Ingredients

2 1/2 cup apples - thinly sliced
1/4th cup butter or margerine
3/4th cup Gur
2 tbspn lemon juice
1/3rd cup oil
1/2 cup ground sugar
1 tspn vanilla essence
1 egg
2 tspn baking powder
one fourth tspn salt
two third cup milk
1/2 tspn cinnamon powder
1 1/2 cup flour

Melt butter in baking dish. Sprinkle Gurr. Arrange apples in baking dish. Sprinkle lemon juice and cinnamon powder. keep aside.
Cream oil, sugar and vanilla essence. Add egg. Beat well. Add sifted dry ingredients with milk. Pour batter over apples. Bake on mark 4 for about 45 minutes. Let it cool a little and turn it upside down. Serve with fresh cream.

Okay here's where your room for creativity comes in. Play around with the amount of lemon juice and cinnamon powder you put in. Cinnamon is one of my personal favorite flavours. So I almost always add over double the amount mentioned in the recipe. ( sometimes i even add it to the cake batter). Havent yet tried it with another fruit since i love everything apples, but I'm sure if tried with bananas or even peaches i think the cake'll turn out good.
be sure to share the results of any experiments. =)

Sound of Silence

I'm posting the lyrics to one of my favorite songs. Its titled "Sound of Silence" and the lyrics are absolutely brilliant. One of my favorite parts is ".. people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening.. " seems so true in this day and age.
Apparently it was featured in the recent movie "Watchmen". Have yet to see it but i hope its used appropriately.

Give the song a listen while reading the lyrics..



Hello darkness, my old friend,
Ive come to talk with you again,
Because a vision softly creeping,
Left its seeds while I was sleeping,
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence.

In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone,
neath the halo of a street lamp,
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of
A neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence.

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more.
People talking without speaking,
People hearing without listening,
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one deared
Disturb the sound of silence.

Fools said i,you do not know
Silence like a cancer grows.
Hear my words that I might teach you,
Take my arms that I might reach you.
But my words like silent raindrops fell,
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon God they made.
And the sign flashed out its warning,
In the words that it was forming.
And the signs said, the words of the prophets
Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls.
And whisperd in the sounds of silence