A Dog, Me and My work

It was a fine evening. I was just back to my desk after a small discussion. Unusually, Ananth pinged asking if we wanted to go to the cafeteria. Either he was so hungry or he has started taking gym seriously again, that, he doesn't want to go there on an empty stomach. (Dude, if you are reading and smiling, welcome). Swetha and myself went to his cubicle; he suggested we go to the tea shop downstairs, which actually made me happy because the cafeteria is sadly getting tasteless by the day.

The elevator opened out to the ground floor and we walked outside the building. Nithya and Reshu were sitting by the lawn. We greeted them and headed to the shop, which is a hand cart type and closed in a way to form a counter. Ananth had mentioned that they were here and, we thought, perhaps, waiting for Janith and Nithin to bring something. I could see Janith devouring on a bajji look alike and Nithin searching for something in the big plate of Bajjis, Bondas, Samosas and other unhealthy but damn tasty stuff ("snacks"). I was surprised to see Molaga bajji and pulled it out of Janith's hand - natural instinct! Soon, Reshu and Nithya realized that our presence rules out food reaching them and were sensible enough to join us in the tea shop.

The big plate of all the snacks was being emptied rapidly, one item at a time. The molaga bajjis were too good. As we were relishing the snacks, a stray dog, kept circling around us, wagging his tail, with its tongue almost fully out. I'm sure that if he could speak, he would have definitely asked us to share whatever possible. At first, we neglected him, though I felt a small pinch of guilt and I noticed it on others' faces as well. Nithya went all "Awwww" like.

Recently, I learnt from someone that we shouldn't serve salt to dogs (most likely false, I believe) and I looked into the shop to see if there was anything to give him. The buns attracted attention and I pulled out one (natural instinct, again, :P) and put it near the dog.

He went near the bun and smelled it. As you can guess, and only to make me feel humiliated (I KNEW IT), he discarded the bun and kept looking at us. Yes, there was heavy laughter following that. I even noticed a couple of people other than us, laughing. I was so pissed that he insulted me and my bun, so, I looked away and the others just neglected him. He kept staring at us for a while, then went back to the bun and smelled it again, as if giving due consideration. This repeated a couple of times and finally, he started eating the bun. Well, had no choice.

Having eaten the bun, he came back to us and continued looking. Well, for an arrogant dog that rejected food, he had a nice appetite and relatively less self control. Reshu tried to shoo it away, we moved a bit and nothing was good enough for it to leave.

It was looking away from me and in an attempt to crack a PJ, I said, "Well, I'll get you one more bun, only if you would come to my desk and run that script assigned to me".

Instantly, it just turned its head towards me, shrugged slightly and walked away.

Realizations are indeed unbearable! :(

Minutes of Meetings (MoM)

There is no such fun like a meeting where you play a responsible part and a set of dummies report to you and look upon you as the sole savior. You keep giving them instructions and learnings from your side. You see enthusiastic faces beaming at you (Beamer), a couple of them constantly suggesting ideas (Suggester), some of them making notes interestingly (Noter) and some even constantly sipping from their water bottles (Sipper) to keep alive and afresh. Except for the one round the corner, who has been keeping silence (Silencer) since the start of the meeting, you are happy with all the dummies sitting around you. You don't get enough of such meetings, do you? Finally, you decide to end this session of the meeting. The group disperses.

Once outside, the dummies get into a discussion.

Beamer: Hey Suggester! Looks like you have a complete idea of what is going on. I did the mistake of beaming in the beginning, I had to carry that on till the end.

Suggester: Are you kidding me? I just had to get words out of my mouth to keep from falling asleep. I guess Noter would share with us all he took down.

Noter: Well, if looking at a weird, hairy guy with muscles sketched out of a ball pen, I'm ready to share it right away. Well, Sipper had come prepared with a water bottle and all. We'll see what he has to say?

Sipper: Each time I sipped some water, I wanted to keep it in my mouth without swallowing, so that I stayed awake. It always works for me, but today, I fell asleep every time and kept swallowing. I have to rush to the restroom now. Before that, the only one left is the Silencer.

Silencer: All the time, I was cursing the guy who dragged me into this project. He promised me that there would be something that I had worked on before.

And you go to your equal and say, "I never knew the people would be so attentive. I need to actually prepare next time."

There are a lot of mannerisms and one-liners that constitute the body language understanding in a meeting.

1) If you have a list of tasks to be completed within a specific date and your manager says he'll give you a wishlist, it means, he is going to convince you that all the tasks are to be done.

2) Starting with "I want to know exactly" and ending with "approximately what I want you people to find out" implies, one has no idea about what has to be done.

3) "Lets take it offline" - a polished way to say, "Will you stop the crap?"

4) "Well, I was wondering about it too. We have to look into that", is a reply that most often (kinda always) means, "Woh! You caught me there dumbo!"

5) Turning the mobile to the silent mode - Meeting starts.

Turning the mobile back to loud mode - Meeting is too long, hoping to get a call and take a break.

6) "I'm done with this, any comments from your side?", is the statement that every dummy waits for so that one can give that gracious smile, a quick thanks and rush to the rest room.

PS: 1) This is just a right-to-left or left-to-right ear post. Don't think too much about it. Personally, I "love" meetings.

2) My B'day wishes to the Mozart of Madras. God Bless Him and He Bless us with his Music. Long Live Rahman! :)

From 2008 to 2009

Date: 29th December 2008

Time: 7:10 PM

All of you are aware of the situation around. You'd have received our CEO's mail stating that the requirements should be frozen. However, we will keep up the promise of completing this training that is supposed to run till the end of next month. This programme was started off as a community service for rural students, hence its our duty to keep up to our commitment.

With all this, there is one thing that we should remember. Whatever be the situation we must concentrate, be dedicated to our work. At the same time, lets not give up on enjoyment. Have a great time on New Year's eve. Go and have a blast! In the end, you shouldn't feel bad on missing out on all the fun, in case you are not employed here. Its important to have fun.

Oh! I almost forgot. In case you have any other offers, please go ahead and take them. Be dedicated. Be strong. Thanks for your time.

Date: 29th December 2009

Time: 5:45 PM

This is a very good opportunity. Comparing to what you've done till now, this must be pretty challenging. We'll split the background study we discussed and do some research on the numbers, which means we are going to start this with mathematics and later, go on to decide if some re-designing is needed. In short, we are all gonna get busy and be like that for sometime. We shall meet again tomorrow and pick it up from here.

A satisfied me started to my cubicle, thinking about the big transformation from last year.

I hope they don't scrap this feature in case we couldn't achieve it by April.

And... here we go!!!!

Happy New year all my readers. Let 2010 bring happiness to all the world!

A swapped mistake

Warning: Clueless/Helpless Software guys will definitely get this

Date: Some date in 2019

It is a normal, sunny (rainy?) day in Chennai. People have somehow made it to their offices amidst the jam-packed roads and the unpredictable weather. In short, it was just any other day for a Software Engineer Trainee (SET), except that he was assigned a high priority issue to deal with. For the sincere employee in SET, he immediately sets off to work and opens the file called MathOperations.cc (a c++ codefile that has code for the various Mathematical operations - say addition and subtraction).

It is not that complicated to understand what was in there. He starts reading the code to get a gist of what's been done. The start couldn't have been breezier and the flow smoother. For someone, looking at his face, they could have easily read that he is definitely enjoying what he is doing.

As he was reading, he saw something. His eyes constricted, nostrils widened, mouth curved and his cheeks bubbled up. Something is wrong! This is when the camera focuses on the screen that reads!

Sum = num1 - num2; //Sum is num1 - num2. COMMENT HAS NO TYPO
Difference = num1 + num2;//Diff is num1 + num2. COMMENT HAS NO TYPO

Now, its obvious that the SET gets so angry and frustrated. It is understandable that he abuses the coder who did this so many years back. It is right that SET thinks that the coder was nothing but stupid. But, what the SET doesn't know is......

10 Years earlier... (spiral swiveling)

Feature Lead (FL): This is a funny problem. Are you sure it is swapped?
Ex-Software Engineer Trainee (XSET): Ya, it is swapped. I've checked my part of the implementation. I don't think anything is wrong there.
FL: What about the middle part that calls your implementation and assigns the sum and difference?
XSET: Well, thats just assigning my sum and difference to the respective variables right? It is fine. I've double checked.
FL: Do one thing. Check up with the Interface part and see if they have displayed the right values for sum and difference.
XSET: Fine. I'll get back to you after checking.

Two hours later...

System Architect (SA): Oh! They have swapped it in the interface part, huh?
FL: Ya.
SA: Send a mail to the team in the headquarters and request a change. We have 2 more weeks time for the delivery.
FL: Ok. I'll do that.

Two weeks later.... The Delivery Day!

FL: Finally, the team from the headquarters replied. It seems that they are not going to change it there. They have asked us to change the implementation by swapping the sum and difference.
SA: Oh! Do it that way. Raise a bug on your side and swap the values in your code.
XSET (thinks): So, all that is left to do is inform the Mathematics forum (who maintain math standards) that we are swapping the meanings of sum and difference of two numbers.
XSET (says): But, wasn't this design reviewed and approved? Wouldn't changing this defeat logic?
SA: I understand that there is a logical mistake here.
XSET (thinks): Oh, is it? I thought I did not concentrate in my first grade math class.
XSET (says): So, aren't they supposed to change it?
SA: The thing is the headquarters have released the customer documentation and in that they have gone by the interface definition. If we request a change now, they might come to a conclusion that the architects of the company are stupid.
XSET (thinks): Well, Can we blame them?
XSET (says): So, I'll change the code and look stupid to some guy who looks at this code in future.
SA: Well, you can add a comment near the implementation that points this out.
XSET (thinks): A comment that says "To really know who is stupid, check the interface part"?
XSET (says): Well, lets see. Even if I add a comment, it is human tendency to think that the comment has a typo rather than understand it the right way.
SA: So, you add the comment and write in CAPS: COMMENT HAS NO TYPO.
XSET (thinks): ARGGHHHH!!!
XSET (says): Ok. I'll do that.

You know.. You know.. You know..

Its been a while now. Everyday while driving to office or back home, when am stuck with some issue in office, or whenever I have the enthu but not the resources, I've been making mental notes to write about lots of stuff, but after I get home do nothing other than watch a couple of episodes of F.R.I.E.N.D.S and crash.

List of posts this is a compensation for:

1) Swathi's Engagement - Went great! Working on putting the videos and photos together to make a compilation.

2) Being stranded in the middle of the highway because of bus breakdown - Let me not get started.

3) Hangover Monday (because of No. 2) - People in office (at least with those I interacted that day) would have thought so. I tried to keep a low profile. Trust me! :P

4) Sp@rrow's B'day - I wanted to write about the time we flung him into the swimming pool. TWICE!!! Anyways, Thanks to No. 3, I couldn't. Happy B'day Vivek! (Imagine today is Monday DUDE).

5) Turn-over Tuesday - Lots of things "turned" over and I realized its gonna be difficult to meet my deadline on Friday. I can boldly say I wasn't responsible for 99% of those. But, noone cares about that. I'm sportive enough! A new learning added to my repository.

6) Weak Wednesday - All hazards from No. 5 taken care of (thanks to my Feature Lead and lots of other colleagues) . But, I was weak and down from cold and it took some time to catch up.

7) Timing Thursday - Everything was shaped to what was planned. Of course, I did a lot of cut backs in gtalk chatting. And somehow and kept to my deadline. Not only that, as promised I went with Deepak and TK (Classmates) to dinner for TK's Birthday. I just wish all those people whose B'days I wanna celebrate, lived in Chennai. But those idiots are spread in B'lore, Calcutta, Cbe, Kuwait, and lots of other places. Can't blame them. I lived in Madurai once upon a time.

8) Frightening Friday - All the timing sense in No. 7 did not count, because ME and my feature lead missed out our Manager in the CC list of the merge request which marks the end of the completion. Well, I know "Oops!" Also, I had to face a stupid issue for which I'm dedicating a separate post.

9) All is well - Finally, as in Indian movies, ALL IS WELL! I hope I don't write a revert post for this on Monday (or make a mental note of it)! We decide to catch a movie (long time since we had a colleagues outing) on Saturday and booked tickets to "A Christmas Carol".

10) Rainy Chennai and Sunny Chennai - People who live in Chennai would rather appreciate Sunny Chennai because rains in Chennai are nasty. Its not rains. Today I was driving down Anna Salai and it started raining. I looked up and I felt a writer's dream come true: "It was a rainy day. Drops of rain poured out of the blue sky". As fast my t-shirt was getting wet, faster was the drying process. Finally, I reached Sathyam Cinemas and found out that the front side of my t-shirt was wet and the back side was not dry; IT WAS BURNING! Weird weather!

9) A Christmas Carol - OH MY GOD! People have such a talent of spoiling a classic. Mr. Dickens, please haunt the writer, director of the movie and if possible Jim Carrey too. However, the 3-D effects were good.

10) Ampa Skywalk - The new mall in Chennai is another version of City Center. Its nothing great. Have to check it out once the 8 screens of cinema and the actual Skywalk is open to the public. I guess its just one other place to hang out and spend money!

PS: Indi Blogger finally approved my blog and gave it a ranking of 63. Thanks to them!

Looking up and around

I look up and around,
A fresh breeze blows within.
An occasional smile.
The aroma of fresh filter coffee -
I get going.

I look up and around,
A swarm of bees flying around.
I search for the INVISIBLE hot-air vent
But in vain.
I keep going.

I look up and around,
Its definitely time for a break.
I signal for some time,
But I know.
I will have to go.

I look up and around,
They don't want to frighten you.
But, their look does.
Don't have a choice,
I better keep going.

I look up and around,
The steam engine at its peak.
Calm faces of the cuter sex,
Work better than the chillers.
I know I have to keep going.

I look up and around,
Known faces beaming at me.
Meaningless blink of the eyes,
They seem to keep going.
I try to keep going.

I look up and around,
The back of my head exercising.
Hunt for freshness starts,
I know it doesn't exist.
But, I have to keep going.

I look up and around,
Few called it a day.
Few laze around.
Few stay put.
I force myself to keep going.

I look up and around,
There are definite echos.
Yet I'm still here.
I'm not lonely.
No other go, have to keep going.

I look up and around,
Feel the souls resting.
Spot-lights on the rest,
I work a smile on my lips.
I keep going.

PS: Dedicated to all those I ditched this weekend. Sorry guys! I have to keep going.