Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Google, Spikebuster and Me

Life is full of surprises. Here I am, a gynecologist who spends almost all working time treating women patients, and the rest managing problems of all sorts at workplace. Here I am too, spending a chunk of my private time thinking of solutions to problems, including technical nonmedical issues. One of these problems used to be spikebusters which would go 'phut' without any notice.
"They must be made in a certain country" said someone who read newspapers knew all about that country flooding Indian and also World markets with cheap products which would go 'phut' anytime. I refrain from naming that country (which that someone had named), because of two reasons - one is that my country is not flooding the markets with any products even half as good, and the other is that one should not buy these products on one hand (having a fixed ideas on their quality) and criticize them on the other. Anyway, all that is besides the point. I had a number of non-working spikebusters on my hand, which our engineers would/could not repair, and advised me to buy new ones instead. Finally I opened them, bypassed the circuit boards, reestablished electric circuits, and made them functional again. For like minded people, I drew up a diagram of their circuit boards and put it up on my blog, along with an explanation on how to repair them.
I used to get repeated hits for that article, mainly from my own country, that too mainly from Hyderabad. I was happy that my article was helping people. Today I had a surprise. I got a hit from Hewlett-Packard Company, Palo Alto, California, USA. Google search had directed that person to my blog article. I know there might be a few who will not believe me. So here goes a screenshot of the same.
There are number of issues here.
  1. The hit came from a country known for its technical superiority and consumerism both. Someone there wanted to repair a spikebuster rather than throw it away and buy a new one.
  2. The hit came from California, the silicon valley known for software and also hardware. They seemed not have a solution to a minor problem like this.
  3. The hit came from Hewlett-Packard Company, a company known for its hardware. If the Boss knew what an employee had done, he would hit the roof, unless the Boss himself had done the search and reached my blog :-)
I thought it was funny that my article link, probably on 12th or 34th page of a Google search would be reached by anyone. Just to be sure, I did Google search thrice, using different keywords each time. Here is the biggest surprise. Google ranked my article first in all three, including my circuit board image in Google images. I know the Google search results vary from country to country. But it seemed to be doing that in Hyderabad, India and California, USA. After all this, one is left wondering about the following.
  1. Has Google gone nuts, ranking a gynecologist's article on repairing a spikebuster first?
  2. Is Hewlett-Packard Company so down in the dumps that the employees have to repair their spikebusters and also that they do not have the technical know-how to do it?
  3. Am I going to choose a PC, laptop, or printer made by that company next time I buy one for myself or my department?
Update: 3rd December 2013
Another person working in Hewlett-Packard (making computer hardware), Europe, must be a gynecologist. Today he did an encrypted search and found my article on making a pelvitrainer. Here is proof of that.


प्रशंसा करायचीय, नावे ठेवायचीयेत, काही विचारायचय, किंवा करायला आणखी चांगले काही सुचत नाहीये, तर क्लिक करा.

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