Farewell To Arms aka the great smart phone debate

A morceau ( in 5 acts though )

Act 1 Sometime last month:

An Autumn night, gorgeous weather , swirling wind gently blowing multi colored leaves along the sidewalk. Starbucks, the aroma of coffee in the air , laughter ,giggling ,music, people yakking on their phones.

In the corner the intrepid hero of our story ( that would be me ) sheepishly looks around and pulls out his phone, quickly starts up some music and hides it back in his pocket; furtive glances did anyone notice? Two tables away a sharp indrawn breath , an immaculately coiffured women can scarcely believe her eyes!! She leans over and tells her friend who looks at me with shock and disgust which then turn to gentle pity.

For you see gentle reader it is Nov 2010 and I am still carrying an iPhone 3.0, not 4.0 or even 3gs but 3.0 and this is Seattle where the baristas at Starbucks have opinions about WEP and WPA-PSK2.

I take a deep breath, NO MORE !!!!, enough of living like an outcast. Head over to the ATT store. Yeah we have “IT” in stock the clerk grunts. Great hook me up then

A harp plays in the background as angels lift me up and a warm glow of goodness all the way from Cupertino envelopes me , I am in the Jobs cocoon where all is right with the world .

6 phone calls later, to tell everyone I am now a fully functional member of the human race, I am struck by an odd co-incidence, almost no one I called seemed to be able to hear me very well , also two of the calls sort of dropped on me and in one case the phone just hung and required a reboot ( you heard me Scotty Reboot the iPhone now ). Clearly AT&T sucked !!!! god why they couldn’t get their act together was beyond me I mean just look at the super human goodness of APPL. I am cheered and I rejoice in the shadow of my Sheppard though the valley of AT&T

Act 2 THREE WEEKS LATER:

Winter. Cold. Harsh. Grief. Leaves Dead. Rain. Coffee Bitter. MY LORD! MY LORD! WHY HAST THOU FORSAKEN ME , for my god is a bitter vengeful god and the iPhone 4.0 is a joke of cosmic proportions.

Act 3: Elsewhere in the Universe :

Free Windows phones for the borg collective. It’s all they can talk about . a prototypical user using a prototype starts telling everyone on FB how extraordinary the Win Phone is . I am sorely tempted( also apps get written in Silver light as opposed to hahahahaha Objective C ). Plus the fact that I cant talk to anyone on the phone makes it a little hard to keep calling it a phone

Act 4: So you see I still own some MSFT stock

Same Store. Returning the godmobile. Clerk grunts a little . Samsung Focus? Thank you . the clerk takes my iPhone away , some embarrassment ensues when I refuse to let go and he has to start tugging at it. Since I am holding it around my groin area this excites some comment “ Look Mommy they are playing the game that Father Tim used to play with me “. Finally weeping gentle tears that run down to the floor and into the pacific sound I take the focus and leave. Make phone call , OMG crystal clear phone quality.

Act 5 Er so V3 is due when now ?

In the distance walking into the sunset our intrepid hero awaits ( not sure whether the iPhone 5 or Win phone 2.0 )

Tales From the Crypt: Academic Success , Rigorous endeavours in college and other Fairy Stories

 

As a child , growing up in a family where academic  success and learning were considered extremely important it was common to constantly hearing of cousins who just finished their post-doc work from MIT or uncles who casually were doing doctoral dissertations at Princeton etc.

it was fairly well understood (at home!! )the path I would take.  IIT or some such graduate program followed by  a masters from an IVY league school and then of course a doctorate etc etc.

Showing a strong streak of individualism however I choose a somewhat different path. While my academic um experience was conceptually similar to obtaining an Phd.  from an Ivy league school it should be pointed out I was never able to explain that concept to anyone else , even my dog seems amused and suspicious when I tell him about “conceptually similar” and my grandfather when he heard OF IIPS ( my college ) responded with telling his friends Don’t Ask Don't Tell.

In a league of their own. QUITE SO !

Anyway IIPS well um er quite so was six years of interesting times including the super-heroic efforts me and my friends made to keep getting a passing grade, Without further ado I  proudly present

“Scenes From a classroom 2 Vignettes ”

1) United we Stand :  Differential equations or some such ghastly paper, Messrs Shailesh and Anurag come with a truly brilliant idea to combat the forces of Evil ( that would be Dr Saxena our math teacher ) As part of IIPS’ commitment to continuous hahahaahahahaha excellence the entire term consisted of mini tests what have you  and for this paper we were set a syllabus involving  two  chapters.

I had managed to study none of them  another classmate Prashant would not come right out and say it but there was suspicion that he actually enjoyed this shit and might even have prepared for this exam.

The other two clowns in this story ( see above )  had decided to split up the load and study one chapter each  thus each would solve one question each and er ahem help the other person with the other question ( there is a technical term for this sort of on the spot helping during an exam but I forget what we call it ).

Cometh the hour cometh the man , as I am sure the intelligent reader has guessed by now nether of our intrepid duo was able to solve the problem in the area they had agreed to tackle.  It was a treat to watch them furiously yell and scream about each others sheer incompetence. Of course since  no actual talking was allowed all the yelling and screaming had to be done using eyebrow gestures only . You have no idea how much contempt and anger you can exchange via eyebrow wriggling till you sayw these guys go at it. Oh Prashi did well in the test, we all kicked his ass later. It was good.    

Moral :    They key to happiness is low expectations

 

2) Mnemonics, buttocks and high political Office :  Last Day prior to an end sem. No one has any clue as what the syllabus was or even what damn paper was about. Only thing to do then yup parrtyyyy. Drinks at my place so on and so forth.

 

At sometime early in the evening Prashi finally decides its to study ( side note: he did well in the paper as we would later learn yup we had to kick his ass again ). In time immemorial form we resorted to mnemonic shortcuts to try and memorize Stuff.

At this point we need to make a brief diversion to talk about a young lady ( one of our juniors ) who used to study in our college , for reason involving whatever I’ll just say that her initials were VJ and well she had an ass that was um not  easily  forgotten and so of course it seemed totally natural that I came up with NPVJSJPM as an answer to some god forsaken list of things to remember ( Nangi Pungi VJ Shailesh Joshi Prime Minister )So far so good so , much more drinking cursing yelling and finally next day arriveth and we’re off to the races  and yeah wouldn't you know it that question shows up and we are all thrilled that we know one at least.

Except Shailu …. You see Showing a rare degree of honesty his subconscious mid simply refused to accept him as a PM and so Shailu of course remembered the mnemonic as ( Nangi Pungi VJ Shailesh Joshi CHIEF Minister ) and that boys and girls screwed things up somewhat

Moral: I like big butts and I cannot lie

The Story of my Life : Part Three

MaKe Believe press and whatwereyouthinking Inc proudly present  “Mr. Chandran in the 21st Century” a joyous threnody in 3  parts a veritable magnum opus , New York Times says “What can we say”

In Part One we learnt almost nothing an  in Part two I see no reason to change that situation

Part Three : 2009 – Present

Started working for myself and boy was that super scary. Yes there were no mid term reviews or annual ones and no exhortations to do more with less, the mandatory sexual harassment videos were no more ( just to be clear , as an employee in the past, these videos were opposed to sexual harassment they were not a training in how to sexually harass people ) but also there was no time off , ESPP health benefits blah blah blah all very interesting

Also in early 2010 after meeting with a doctor who pointed out my weight situation was going to make saving for retirement irrelevant since I would almost certainly move to becoming worm food before I was 65, I decided to try something out. ITs a work in progress in about 6 months I lost a total of 48 pounds, since then however have managed to gain about 21 of it back. DAMN DAMN DAMN. Oh well !!

Also made a trip to India after ages

was super super fun . You can read about it here and here and here . SURPRISE !!! also here.

and that boys and girls is it for now

The story of my Life –Phase Two

MaKe Believe press and whatwereyouthinking Inc proudly present  “Mr. Chandran in the 21st Century” a joyous threnody in 3  parts a veritable magnum opus , New York Times says “What can we say”

In Part One we learnt almost nothing. Thus it only makes sense that I write about Part two.

Part Two: Going to California (2005-2009 )

By early 2005 it was clear to me that my job at that time was running its course .  Since I  still believed that software developers changed the world ( sometimes twice in a day )  and clearly the thing for me to do was to achieve even greater levels of meaningful impact I did the only thing possible—I went to work On Vista ( in all fairness to me it was still called Longhorn at that time , had I known it would eventually become Vista… :-) )

Just for the record if you have ever been er um lucky ( you heard me ) enough to own a Vista laptop and then you had to connect to a wireless network then the charming little wizard thingy that got you there would be me . Now that that is behind us..

So I’m at work one day( in early 2006)  listening to “going to California” by (who else ) Led Zep  when I get an email from an ex-softie who is apparently heading up a team in Intuit and they are doing some fabulously exciting amazing new cutting edge stuff. It sounded awesome although a little probing confirmed that yeah it was still tax software but not the regular boring 1040 or Schedule K1 boring fuddy-duddy stuff but the new improved amazingly flavoured taxtacular stuff . Well I mean how could I say no  to that.

Moving to California and thusly out of the ‘soft was probably one of the hardest decisions' I have made , for all its fault Microsoft is an amazing amazing company and it definitely made me a much much better developer and gave me a look at the challenges involved in shipping real software to millions of users There is a famous quote “A one in a million bug at MSFT means by end of day tomorrow “  and that is so true. It really is an incredible ride and I would recommend it everyone ( unless you are doing anything else of course :- )). But apart from that there's Seattle.

its kind of hard to describe but I love the Pacific northwest and at the time I knew we would miss it but hey CALIFORNIA YEAH !!

Also sometime  after I left so did BrianV ( rumour has it his new compensation package was slightly different than mine ) so I guess I was way ahead of the curve

Ok I am going to keep the California thing short except to say i) I HATED IT and ii) I HATED IT .

apart from everything else having to pay a 10% state income tax really sticks in my craw when nothing fucking works in that state. if wanted to be taxed to the bone and get no govt services why I could have just stayed back in India

A couple of really important things did happen while I was there though. It turned out that, EVEN IF you hire nekkid cheerleaders to come to the office everyday and massage you , tax software was about as exciting as watching paint dry  and just to be clear Intuit did not hire the cheerleaders and there were fairly clear that they weren't going to expense them either  so in 2007 I switched jobs again and joined a startup

By early 2009 we were so fed up of San Diego and wanted to come back to Seattle so badly that in June of 09 I convinced my boss to let me work remotely from Seattle and we moved back ( loud cheering) Cannot explain how thrilled I am to be back

In late 2009 it was obvious my startup was running out of cash to the point where they could no longer afford me , and then I did something which is still not fully sinking in – I decided to go to work for myself and you know exploit cheap labour back in India etc. It turned out Intuit was good for something after all I incorporated etc etc

But that boys and girls will be all nicely rounded of in Part 3

The story of My Life ( subtitles optional )

 

Ted Chiang is an amazing sic-fi short story writer . He really hasn't published that much maybe like 10 odd short stories but each of them is an amazing I mean amazing gem . One of them which I personally love is a novella titled “The Story of your Life” ( read it today )

Phew getting through a meaningless introduction to a blog post that seems mildly relevant and sufficiently gravitastic ( not a word.. meaning loaded with gravitas )is hard I tell ya

Anyway re-connected with an old friend after years on line ( can you guess which site this was on hmm anyone , anyone no ..ok I‘ll give you hint it rhymes with SpaceCrook ) and of course there was the usual hey what have you been up to, where are you, with have you achieved, my car is bigger than yours I hope etc etc :-)

Since I am hoping that I keep meeting old friends who will keep asking these questions from now on I plan to point them to this post.  MaKe Believe press and whatwereyouthinking Inc proudly present  “Mr Chandran in the 21st Century” a joyous threnody in 3  parts a veritable magnum opus , New York Times says “What can we say”

PART ONE : THE EARLY YEARS ( 2000-2004)

Midnight Dec 31st ( or is it Jan 1st I never can tell  ) , I am in New York with Anurag , Ram and other assorted drunks. Anurag has convinced me that Rum and milk is actually not only a cocktail but also healthy for the liver. I am convinced and proceed to test this theory thoroughly. Elsewhere in Anurag’s “spectacular view of the Hudson thus signifying material wealth and success and therefore hoping that said apartment will behave like pussy magnet” apartment  I hear someone describe with considerable verve and animation how they saved the world by contributing to the Y2k rescue effort. I am comforted in the  knowledge that they will probably never breed!!!.

OK they the new century is upon and and by golly I even have a cell phone from sprint PCS (TM) to prove it.  Wife joins me in a few months and I start my work at Microsoft which if I understood the recruiting brochure correctly would change the world, realign the solar system make the milky way more beautiful on alternate nights and allow Stephen Hawing to come up with a Theory Of Everything as a series of PowerPoint slides”

<GEEK> : Did work on distributed transactions and business frameworks . slowly started realizing that it was exactly as geeky as it sounded</GEEK>

Also in late 2004 we got what was probably the best thing ever both our dogs

 

   

The Zumba Experience

Zumba: From the Latin for “ to make a fool of yourself in public while being simultaneously aware of your pelvis in ways you have never been aware of before “.

alt-def: HA like that ‘s what you're going to believe ???

So our local gym offers Zumba in two flavours , there's the paid , “if you have some sense of rhythm and wont make an absolute ass of yourself” version ( Yes!! this would be the one where the instructor looked at me and went “Er yes certainly well that is to say if you must participate well I mean I suppose technically er that is , I mean we could dim the lights, ha ha , or maybe you could stand in the corner and not move too much my dear fellow” when I asked him if this was the Zumba class.)

In sooth verily as the man said it is better to give than receive for when I gave him the news that I was asking for someone else and not me his relief was a joy to behold , made me feel like Santa Claus it did

And then there is the Fridays Night Free Zumba or as I like to call it “Darwin’s Theory explained in 15 easy pelvic Thrusts aka the strong will whirl and twirl the weak not so much”

Some months ago after some incredible arm twisting ( we’re talking “ if you love you then you would” arm twisting ) I consented to drop in on one of these Friday night shindigs. It did not go well.

<Editors Note: For privacy issues as well as our ongoing commitment to a cleaner nobler America and so that we may continue to support any and all efforts to save the kids , the actual events of the class have been regretfully censored>.

As a PSA I decided to categorize most of the participants there

< Editors Note: The author has assured us that his wife has a separate category ( the incredibly gorgeous one ) and so does not fit into any of the categories discussed below>

i) The Crazies I mean super passionate: These are the people who turn up early so that they can get a spot right up front to ahem “observe the instructors foot moments” a little better. While more study is required the author is convinced these are the same people who sat in the first bench during school and kept raising their hands when asked rhetorical questions during presentations.

ii) The competent: Show up on alternate weeks and have a grim look of someone who is about fight a WWF match but don't remember who was supposed to win . Every once in a while members of this group will show some flair and instead of treating a twirl as a structured 360 moment without losing balance will add a nice pelvic moment at the end. On certain occasions show a sense of “rhythm” as well . Some members of this group will eventually migrate to Group i

iii) Humans are born with a sense of rhythm and refutation thereof: This would be the group , which if I worked really hard like for a few years, I might get admission into, currently they keep mumbling about not being a good cultural fit

iv) The looky-loos : Toned women bending and grinding....MEN !!! ‘nuff said

Oh Well…

but since that night on quite a few occasions when I am feeling low and blue I stroll over to the viewing area to watch people Zumba( see Latin defn above ) and cheer myself up .

Tales From the Crypt : A Tale of two interviews Part One : Dressed for Success

In my long ( oh so long ) professional life like most of us I have conducted hundreds of interviews and have seen it all from the guys who are clearly smarter and brighter than me, thus allowing me to get on my high horse and exploit the fact that I am the one asking questions to the candidates who in my opinion have  managed to get stuck in Darwin's  waiting room somehow. Still some are absolute standouts in my mind……

The first job I did was at a place called Ruksun,  now for the six billion odd people who have never worked there you have my sincerest sympathies. I only stayed there for about an year but man it was hands down one of the greatest places to work ever.  Ruksun had made living and working at office 24/7 really really easy they were basically located in a bunch of bungalows with pretty awesome facilities for sleeping , bathing ( optional ) on site so it was not uncommon during crunch ( aka all the time) to hang out there for days on end  ( also fully functional pool table helped )

Anyhow so cut to a Saturday, I had been working without a break for silly things like bathing shaving etc for about 72 hrs ( did manage to grab some sleep though ).  Whilst words cant really do justice to my appearance lets just the say the UN Commission for refugees and homeless was offering me princely sums to appear in their advertisements to raise money . I also was wearing ( it was 9 in the morning on a Saturday for gods sake ) these incredibly short white shorts ( no they were not boxers although the diff was hard to tell ) and a T shirt which was half stain and half toothpaste and its color was somewhere between “Mystery’ and “Whaaaaa” .

So anyhow I was sort of lazing in the sun coffee in hand debating whether to go home or sleep or work when out of nowhere ( keep in mind this was 9 in the morning and I had not yet finished my coffee ) the HR lady turns up and half yells and half hisses at me  “Did you not remember you are supposed to interview fellow today”   ( it is a testament to what Ruksun stood for that in spite of almost an incredible degree of pain that flitted across her face on viewing me in all my sartorial splendour she did not suggest I spend some time on rejoining the human race )

So  I grabbed a copy of said resume and ambled over to the lobby. Picture if you will a brochure for the “what the well dressed man is wearing to a power interview”. Well our candidate could have walked right of the centerfold from his perfectly fitted  suit to his shiny shiny leather shoes to the knife like creases on his trousers the guy radiated supreme elegance. I meanwhile proceeded to carefully wipe my hands on my T shirt then realized my hands had gotten worse so then proceeded to wipe them on my shorts before shaking  hands with him.

It is rare to be able to realize fully how others view oneself but in this case the guys face was like the most expressive thing I have ever seen. Horror and anger were woven together so seamlessly that at first I thought he was having a stroke but then when you added the silent tear behind the laugh it was clear that what he really wanted was out  of here.

I can see it now , with hopes in his heart and song on his lips he must risen bright and early that morning  and chosen what to wear with so much care and thought and as he walked into the Ruksun Lobby he must have been filled with the confidence that comes to those whose shoes are polished just right and whose trouser creases are sharp and crisp and then ….. me

Interviews in Ruskun usually have two people interviewing the candidate and I forget who the other guy was and the interview itself was fairly boring ( he did not get the job ) but there was a moment that will stand out in my mind forever…., as a witty and whimsical attempt to break the ice , early on , I told the guy “Six months ago my friend I used to dress just like you , this is what Rusun has  reduced me to , and yes it will happen to you too .. Do you still want in”

I will never forget the actual pause on the guys face as he seriously considered this question , I could not help it I just started laughing hysterically ( which I am sure made he feel right at ease :- ) )

Next Time : What to do in a group discussion when someone like me is in charge AKA weep softly, curl up into a ball and whimper.

This India Part 5

Just back from Bangalore , in pune now

So far Bangalore has been a clear winner on this trip weather wise, also whilst I am sure the traffic sucks ass I was lucky not to  get into any jams as such. But of course as we all know by now Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat.

One of the greatest pleasures in this trip for me personally has been the ability to pay someone to shave me , man I miss that in the US. I found one guy in Bellevue who dies a straight razor shave and it costs $50. well I mean …….

Cheap labour equals awesome barbers, waiters and what have you …hooray for overpopulation. Also a couple of weeks ago someone we know has a resident nurse to take care of them. Nurse had a cardiac incident and then folks in the house were trying to hail a cab/rickshaw and four of those bastards would not stop even when told there was a medical emergency. I guess overpopulation does reduce the intrinsic value of life as well. Damn!!

Begging is still an art form/valued skill clearly, and I had  this totally surreal moment in my head recently. I was at a barista and as I was coming out  this  lady\women\girl child with kid in tow was going

<Editors note: in orders to preserve the thematic integrity and narrative cohesion of this piece in place translation has been provided, any loss in intensity and impact is of course as per the Patna convention considered the readers fault”>

Her: Please Sir some money sir very hungry sir baby also hungry Sir

IN my head I am going “ Well Steve Doug James Paul Peter we really would welcome some extra offshore work you know”

Her: Have not eaten for a long time sir a little bit of money is all we need

Me: Yes we are six sigma lean agile extreme MSFT TLA JAVA HAHA certified

Her: Sir Sir Sir please Sir

Me: Certainly we can finish in 4 weeks what you want it localized for Pashtu and Swahili yes well then 5 weeks my dear fellow

I don't know for whatever reason looking at her all I could see  was every BPO software services blah blah blah company with their arms outstretched( this is not to ding anyone I am trying the same damn thing to make a living , it just popped into my head that's all ) . speaking off when I was growing up the phrase du jour was body shopping . Apparently that was too much high praise as it indicated someone was willing to pay for  ahem our bodies so now we have <cue drum roll>  “staff augmentation”. Neat no?

Back in pune now winding up vacation ,sad to go home but on the flip side my doggies :-) hooray.

This India( Part Cuatro)

The wedding is done and like most Indian weddings it was loud in parts it was hot it parts it was fun in parts and it there were enough tears and laughter to go around for everyone. Also a percentage of the population managed to get offended at something or the other and others got offended at the people who got offended still others were offended that someone else was offended before them for the pet thing they has planned on getting offended at and finally of the six thousand nine hundred odd idiotic suggestions made by distant relatives, moronic friends, all and sundry four turned out, on close investigation, to have some merit. In short a pretty good time was had by all.

In our youth one of the places we used to visit often to eat awesome cheap Chinese used to be a place called Eddie’s Kitchen ( no I have never met Eddie) , so anyway with the stars of nostalgia burning bright in our minds etc we showed up around 10 ish for dinner. The first intimation I received that things might have changed a little was the fact that all four of us found our arms sticking to the dinner mats. While I was still figuring this out it became clearer to us that the AC was not working, however there was a AC looking object that was working hard at generating noise thus saving him all the annoying trouble of music.

“Well ambience was never the thing here anyway the foods the thing” I tell myself and we all start of by ordering soups. OK short version everything went downhill very rapidly , the guy brings back 4 soups and disclaims all knowledge of which is which. I have never ever seen anything like that , the waiter told us “ how would he know which was which”. At this point the four of us finally figure it out by some trial and error and then my sis-in-law told the guy this manchow soup looked unlike any manchow she had ever seen. Mumbling to himself the guy took it away to fix and brought it back exactly the same only this time he has added some noodle on top. It was surreal.

Then things got really exciting , after the dude got out the food it turned out there was no silverware for anyone so I asked the guy to get us forks and knives and in what can only be described as the Nobel prize move for incompetence our man brings us back two pairs when there are four guests. I then asked him what his plans for the other two were at which point the guy goes and comes back with one more set it was soooo bad it was funny

The meal endedth and unbeknownst to us it turns out the table we were sitting out well it had only two legs and one end of the table was attached to the end of the wall on a ledge half an inch wide and by attached I am going with fevicol……yup as we were leaving the whole thing came crashing down would have been very entertaining for the other guests if there had been anyone else there ( another clue an empty joint on Saturday nights…)

How much sharper than the <insert metaphor> is the disappointment of a place that has been a staple of awesomeness once and now…. just the ashes of memories etc sigh

I go to Bangalore in a couple of days apart from all the other stuff I am going to be doing there am sooooo looking forward to meeting some really good friends from the past, lets hope they haven't stopped being awesome too :-)

also want to visit fanoos and koshys as well , lets hope they are doing well .

In other news the weight is slowly but surely coming back on . eff it the food is just too good I’ll go through the pain of getting rid of it again in the US

BP spill, where will it end am a little worried fucking asswipes….

This India (Part Tres )

Visited Crossword a few days ago. For the uninformed this would be like a barnes and noble right down to “yeah you can read the book without paying anything “ to even more drastic “we do returns within 15 days”. Very nice place I love it.

I think the only two retail outlets I can be happy at are tech related places like Frys ( worlds greatest store ) and bookshops.There is something about bookshops I just love, every time I enter one it feels like home, something I’ve grown up with my whole life, be it the crowded you cant browse thank you very much store like Manneys ( pune people will know) to the crossword of today. I have many, many things to thank my parents for and many to yell about as well :-) but making sure my brother and I would become life long lovers of reading was by far the greatest gift they’ve given us , all you new parents out there , make sure your kid(s) loves to read there is no faster path to knowledge and no easier way to stay entertained and trust they will thank you for it one day .

Napster , bit lord and iTunes pretty much made sure that CD shops are dead , the number of people in the 3 retail CD outlets in the US last year was probably less than the number of people at a jack the ripper fan club meeting, and I am guessing the Kindle will do the same to book stores( yes yes yes I have heard every argument there is for the feel of paper , try explaining that to the check in lady at an airport when she looks like a headmistress at an erring pupil and sadly nods her head “You sir are overweight … and so is your checked in luggage” < yeah that one hurt> )

The people who read tons of book have already spoken,they are migrating to the Kindle en masse and yet I cant bring myself to buy one, there’s just something about turning the pages , randomly sampling pages at a book store before making a buying decision etc( i have trouble shopping for books online I need to see the book so these days I decide what I want to buy at the sore then i come home and order it online , there is always a way) …….. on the other hand I am fairly sure this is the first sign of aging as well , this is the clearest I can recollect me objecting to a technological shift that is just logically better. I am basically yelling and screaming “In My time ….” We’ve all seen the old idiot who keeps using his chequebook at the check out counter instead of plastic and mumbling something about all this “new fangled stuff’ and although I’ve been as angry as anyone I’ve always sworn that I am not going to be that guy and I wonder is the Kindle my “chequebook story”. Stay tuned on that …

In other news the wedding ( Sanjyot’s cousin ) is proceeding along much like a force of nature :-) even as I writing this intense prep is on all around me … I am like an oasis of calm amongst a sea of you know not calm

ALSO FRIGGIN SPAM SMS IN THE COUNTRY IS AMAZINGLY ANNOYING. Urgh

More later

Shiny Happy People

On FaceBook ( where else ) the other day a friend of mine posed the age old Question, “why are diamonds a women's best friend”? Well I mean please the answer is obvious its because Dog was already taken. Given that men picked dogs and women diamonds it is instructive to compare and contrast a dog with a diamond. for the really really really socially and culturally inept I have taken the time to post some helpful guidelines including visual cues

DOGS

DIAMOND

Some other differences include

• Dogs are generally cheaper both to acquire and maintain
• Dogs are messier
• A dog is not forever
• Gifting someone a dog will not usually get you laid
• a diamond spelt backwards is dnomaid which to me is far more believable than the other one
• Paris Hilton does not know the diff between the two clearly
• walking your diamond and wearing your dog is generally considered bad form( unless of course… see PH explanation above )

This India ( Part Deux)

So did something incredibly brave the other day, I took a rickshaw and ventured into the streets, this was like real heat and grit and dust amazing stuff like being a participant in a reality show called “So you think you can act in a 80’s art movie”

Felt all pioneer like , Go west young man etc ( oh yeah I was driving down to the spa for a massage like I said I was brave not stupid )

Talking of rickshaws the other day I was in this cab and I was driving shotgun and the guy driving me was like a kid , nice guy we got talking and talk turned to politics somehow and so I asked him what Raj Thackeray was up to these days with all the non Marathi people go home thingy and so the kid thinks a little

“So sir when you do your job , you’re in software no ( I nod ) then you basically sit down think really hard and bang away at your keyboard because you want to make new softwares?” I was loathe to destroy this romantic notion of how software is built with tales of tiger-lockup off site program management meetings and six sigma lean agile non waterfall techniques and I mean I probably really should not mention aspect oriented pair programmed test driven lunacy I mean development so I just sort of agreed. “So Raj Thackeray also has a job sir and his job is to make sure people know about his party before the elections nahi to vote kaun dega unko”

By itself this incident means nothing but it was kind of nice to meet a slight example of an informed electorate. God I am so sick of these tea party idiots

In other news the lights went of the other day. Got inverter though so suck on that MSEB.

The food is still exquisite. I cant get enough of it ( yes yes yes I know what happens to the food later ) Pretty soon I will be moving out from home to get closer to the wedding site lets see how that goes.

Still have not found time to visit the Bishops School that veritable font of learning ( thank you Mr Beamon, rot in hell Mr < you know who you are > ) hopefully can get there while I am here, for all of its faults it still was an awesome place in retrospect.

Tried downloading a video ( 350 MB ) from my box in Seattle via TS and explorer said it would take 8 hrs… sigh but wait , wait genius to the rescue < cue mission impossible music >

1. First TS into Seattle box
2. TS into my go-daddy box from seattle box
3. Upload video to go-daddy box
4. download video using http to local india box

total time about 90 min as compared to the 8 hrs( the pipe sizes matter and the 8 hr case is the worst pipe case also i think the TS copy is way slower than http )

whooohoohahaha ( yes fine next week I’ll work on getting a life )

OK Quick Question if you ask someone to play you a Zeppelin song and they play Stairway to Heaven does this mean

1. They know nothing about zeppelin , this is the only song they have heard off
2. They think you know nothing about zeppelin so hope you know this one
3. They have heard plenty of Zeppelin and actually think this one is the best

Finally I leave you with this ( no reason at all )

He that would keep a secret must keep it secret that he hath a secret to keep----H.A

This India ( Part Uno )

So its been a week or so actually 10 days now I think since I got back to the country of my birth , land of my fore fathers, the India of the East ( wait what?? ). Man this place is just overwhelming both the good and the bad ( there is no indifferent though )

To start with this is my first Indian summer in 10 yrs …. GOOD NEWS there is no global warming . Also Indian street vendors are now making omelets without the need for any sort of fire, stove etc . The heat is un-friggin-real and if one more person tries to tell me mumbai is better than pune or vice-versa and talks about heat vs humidity I plan to drown them …in hot water. they can decide then once for all which is worse death by boiling or drowning in your perspiration. but I digress.. calm happy thoughts now cool thoughts

The food is beyond amazing like to die for ( also based on govt statistics very likely you will die from it ) one of my fave moments was when I realized the reason the dal makhani was soooo makhani was because the tadka was in ghee. I could literally see my arteries waving a white flag but not with too much energy though. And man what can I say about the kababs. Not kebobs or kabbobs or meat- on- a- stick but the heaven that is a well marinated flavoured reshmi kabbab hai hai. Did I mention paani poori.

Ok good moving on, the other almost incredibly mind numbingly amazing thing about this place is the traffic. How do I describe this now. Imagine if you will that bill gates has mated with Meghan fox( gratuitous pic somewhere below) and their offspring is

1. age appropriate
2. genetically endowed with all of Ms Fox’s looks
3. legally endowed with all of Mr Gates’ Money ( ok fine so this analogy has some holes in it )

Now further imagine that this women runs an ad in the paper saying that the first one billion people who want to have sex with her are welcome to and the winner will be getting all her money. Now imagine the rush to get to her place. Ok that is India during OFF-PEAK hours. Also my cab driver truly has a fantastic sense of irony and amazing dead-pan delivery, which he illustrated by telling me that rickshaw drivers in his opinion were the most dangerous drivers of all time , and as I started nodding , he calmly broke a red light turned into a one way in the wrong direction and then proceeded to nearly run over in quick succession a cyclist a dog a cow and then a rickshaw-walla. after which he gestured to the passing rickshaw guy to underscore his point, a bravura performance I have already sent his address to Mr. Daniel Day Lewis.

Managed to meet a bunch of friends of yore , clearly every one has traded in their carefree rocker days for the wonderful suburban life :-) ( too old to rock and roll to young to die :-) ). Was still pretty awesome though. Also everyone and their younger brother ( with a few exceptions ) works for a company(ies) that…….”count on the expertise and experience of its skilled architects and engineers to provide an excellent atmosphere for creative and practical solutions.” Also some of them provide “emphasis on thorough business analysis, robust architecture and clean code all brought together through effective use of agile processes ensures high quality and timely deliveries”.Also others have chosen to emphasize process-driven project management so that projects are handled carefully and professionally, at all times. And finally some “deliver custom applications and provide consulting grounded in reality; they help organizations become efficient through Agile and Lean practices and principles. By hiring exceptional people, we can solve our clients' biggest and most pressing problems. All of our services are offered both on and offshore, and are delivered with pride and passion.”

There who says India is not doing cutting edge awesome stuff in tech.

I think the biggest thing for me is the density of people man and how small the houses etc are here. The US is really blessed in terms of land per person. More later..

Beauty and the hot derriere

So last weekend was at a friends place , potluck , good food , vino, fun conversation, all in all a rather nice relaxed evening . Somewhere during the evening the conversation drifted to a variation on the freebie list ( see friends Season 3 ep 5 essentially list of people you get to sleep with without upsetting anyone ) this conversation was more like a, who’s on your all time hit parade list . Just about everyone's list was predictable and ok ( some surprises though someone bought up Liam Neeson and on some thought I have to say I agree )

Anyway in yet another sign that I am getting too old for most things, I was thinking later on that , at this point in my life what do I find really good looking . We all pay lip service to “beauty being in the eyes of the beholder”, so what do I behold as beauty” Now don't get me wrong a gorgeous derriere is clearly up there, but still what is sublime and transcendent to me !!. Here in no particular order, continuing my obsession with lists is a list of the truly beautiful

1) John Patrick McEnroe at Wimbledon serving , racing towards the net , his opponents return of serve clearly too good , and OMG a volley that defies the very laws of Physics. For those who are too young to have seen “The Tiebreaker” ( if you have to ask etc etc ) catch it on you tube or something but man John McEnroe was blessed in a way I have not seen since

2) This one is actually two people and there is a curious symmetry about it but Mohammed Azharuddin flicking a ball of his legs , all wrists and the fielders applaud ; the gods smile down and David Ivon Gower’s almost incredibly lazy and languid yet whipcord quick cover drive are truly amazing. I am an atheist, but if ever there was a POC for god it must be these two cricketing strokes. I remember watching Gower play as a kid for the first time and I could not believe anyone could hit it through the off side like that ( in later years Ganguly would come close to achieving that peculiar slow motion gracefulness that many left handed cover drives seem to have but there was only one David Gower) and Azza well I certainly cannot in prose do any justice to the magical flick of the wrist that would transform a full blooded swinging yorker into “that’s 4 more to Azharuddin”

c) Led Zeppelin: No one even comes close like none, maybe floyd and “the doors” but Jimmy Page and Robert Plant are for my money still the amazing producers of sound ever. “Going to california” and “Battle of Evermore” still remain amazing tunes

d) Boyer Moore : (Geeks only warning ) if you ask anyone in a interview how they would implement strstr ( searching one string within another ) 99% of people would give you the naive implementation in which basically you run two loops comparing letter by letter from SrchString and Text and if you miss then start over in the next position in Text. An alternative to this technique is the Boyer Moore search which is incredibly clever but even more interesting to me incredibly beautiful . I remember when I first read about Boyer Moore I literally wanted to jump up and down with joy at the sheer cleverness of this and als0 man thank god I work in an industry where something like this is possible ( shortly after that I continued to do my day job which was shipping Vista so never mind :-) ). The basic idea behind Boyer Moore is this . Say you are searching for the word “Hello” in the string :

Director Ken Annakin had been interested in aviation from his early years when Sir Alan Cobham gave him a flight in a biplane.

Now in the naive method you would first check if the first letters matched ( in other words you would check ‘H’ with ‘D’ ) The cleverness of BM is that, it is way faster to check the last letter. In other words you first check the fifth position in the Text ( thus comparing ‘C ‘with ‘O’ ) The point is if the last letter does not match there is no point in checking the previous letters there cannot be a match . There are complicated wrinkles, see wiki for details, but basically after checking the 5th I will check the 10th again for a ‘O’ because otherwise “Hello” can’t fit there again . Truly a testament to raw intellectual horsepower”

e) George Raymond Richard Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. It will take too long to explain just read it already ( sic-fi fantasy warning :-) )

f) Kasparov-Karpov World championship Match 1985 ( this would be the first rematch :-) ) Game 16 --Sicilian Paulsen . The Kasparov–Karpov games in the 80’s remain to this day some of the best chess ever and Game 16 is a masterpiece .. again really hard to explain but a really really beautiful game , I have rarely seen such a beautiful game . Chess in general is a truly exquisitely beautiful game ( also can get real ugly sometimes :- )) but some games are like just an amazing trip on shrooms man!!!

g) Finally !! your dogs your kids ( under the age of 10 while they still listen :-) ) and the love of your life will always be beautiful , this is just the way it is :-) I still find my dogs gorgeous and as for my wife from the day I fell in love with her to today she remains gorgeous to me. Chances are pretty good she will be that way tomorrow as well :-)

Some other time : What is UGLY to me :-)

Sacks of Gold aka Caveat Emptor

So once again Wolfram and hart have been shown to be at the center of all things but for this episode we call them Goldman Sachs it seems. The financial crisis is well behind as Wall St and the politicians tell us and who amongst us would not believe them ( never mind that my 401 K is still stuck at 1 K  :-) ).    From the moment this nonsense started and everyone started blaming the folks who did not pay the loans back I personally felt something was very wrong with that picture. People not paying their loans back could not have caused this  level of death doom despair and destruction,  and of course now we all are way more familiar with CDS, CDO’s and my favourite the Synthetic CDO and then we have the Magnetaar trade ( Magnetaar is amazing definitely worth a post on its own )

But the attitude that amazes me the most is that “people should know what they are doing when it comes to investing your money after all its your money you should be careful about what your investment consultant does with it”.   BUYER BEWARE!!!!.

What a charming idea, so lets think this through some more

1) You to the doctors office complaining about a mild pain in your left buttock hoping of course that the cute nurse will want to conduct an hands on investigation ( oh sorry wrong post ) ..so you go to the Doctors office  complaining of a headache. The doctor prescribes a new drug incrediablekickbacksrus-azolex.

Unbeknownst to you you the makers of incrediablekickbacksrus-azolex are paying the doctor a commission for every drug he sells and one of the charming side  effects of this drug is on weekends you would start sounding like William Hung. Naturally you are not pleased and you rush back to the office ( on Monday ) to rave and rant at the Doctor. However you are completely mollified when the doctor points out that “If you had taken the time to do a degree in clinical pharmacology coupled with some classes on Neuro chemical disorders and a smidgin of genetic variation disorders and of course a quick study of  statistics  to evaluate the results of the lab results of the clinical studios on the drug you almost certainly would have known that this was going to happen to you . BUYER BEWARE!!!. you chuckle thinking to yourself damn that doctor was right after all….

2) It is that time again , aka time to buy a new car. but this time you are prepared and so the process goes incredibly smoothly and you pat yourself on the back ( well in your head anyway ) and  head out with your new pride and joy. Sadly what you did not know was that the car you bought was an absolute disaster because of course as it turns out there is only one place in town where you can get it serviced\fixed. Filled with the righteous anger of a Juvenal , you head back to the shop but thankfully a painful scene is averted as the dealer points out if you had only taken the time to do the mechanical Engg. degree( like your grand-dad suggested when you told him about computers )and had you super specialized in automotive construction and design and of course spent some time as an apprentice mechanic then this would clearly have never happened to you.. BUYER BEWARE!!!. you chuckle thinking to yourself damn that dealer was right after all….

3) I am thinking of painting the den( kindly stop giggling in the back .. what  ?yes well technically the wife is thinking of painting again but we are of one mind , yes well I would rather lie in bed eating pizza and watching tv but this  is awesome do it together fun time what? yes well .. oh shut up ) . So you head of the the holiest of the holy ( home depot of course ) and the nice friendly paint salesgirl  ( blonde since you ask )  tells you about this incredible new paint product called “craptasticInc”. Apparently it will make your walls glow like nothing you have seen and cure world hunger etc etc. In your minds eye you can already see what a spectacular finish this will look like , 8 hours later the paint has damaged the walls and roof  beyond repair your general contractor takes one look at the damage calls home and tells his kid not to worry and to start applying to the colleges after all ,” No no the fees won’t be a problem now”. You stare at the ruins of your dreams and hopes and head back to the store… damn chemical structural and materials management were the ones you did not study this time apparently ..BUYER BEWARE!!!!. you chuckle thinking to yourself damn that salesgirl was right after all….

By now I am sure the astute reader has noticed a trend while the vapid and concerned reader is amazed at how much bad luck I am having . I don't know anyone would agree with caveat emptor in any of the cases above so what is different with money. When I buy a product or SPECIALISED advice I pay for said product\service and as such am entitled to protection ( at least in a civilized society ) What is about money that makes otherwise sensible people say … “well its your money you should take care of it”. well its your health why blame the doctor and pharma if they poison you.

And the thing that blows my mind is Goldman saying “well the counterparties to this deal were banks to clearly they knew what they were doing and so we did not disclose the adversarial position we had on the deal with another client who oh by the way was also setting up the portfolio of what went into the Synthetic CDO” (  almost certainly most of this is legal , but well of course it is legal Goldman paid a lot of lobby money in the late nineties to get the law written for god’s sake )

Translation : Doctors are not entitled to any protection from fraudulent drugs and corrupt doctors

Closer-to-home-translation: I buy some software that installs a couple of root kits some malware etc  but that's my fault since as a software person  I clearly am supposed to know what I am doing. ( spelunk and grok the exe you lazy swine ).

I guess bottom line I don't understand the buyer beware attitude when it comes to investments…

 

Next Time : The magnetaar trade and damn why couldn't I have thought of that :-)

10 step plan to lose weight ( guaranteed or your money donated to a charity of my choosing)

At the start of this year I weighed about 273 pounds currently I have lost about 50 ish pounds ( which still makes me pretty fat ) but its been an interesting journey and I thought I’d condense everything I’ve learnt into 10 simple rules if you will( I just love giving back to the community don't you know )

< Editor’s Note : Some of these steps at first glance , or even the 1000th , seem unrelated to weight loss. Mr Chandran has assured us that we are entitled to our point of view.>

1) Donate your remote control to Goodwill

2) Eat your soup with chopsticks

3) Attempt to convince the patent office to patent of your latest invention , a bridge that goes half way across a river and then turns back making a giant horseshoe for people who tend to change their mind a lot.

4) Attempt step 3 only this time on the phone---using sign language

5) Learn mandarin from a Cantonese speaking instructor

6) Use the X box as a pair of dumbells

7) Watch the movie “Memento” backwards

8) Drink only between the hours of 09:00 to 08:00 hrs. Use the remaining hour wisely

9) Try and convince the IRS that your paunch is a dependant deduction

10) Also Eat less and Run more . Also.

Some Lesser known Units of Measure

The year was 1960. The 60’s were going to start and all the cool kids were looking forward to all the weed and woodstock that would follow.  Elsewhere though more serious matters were being discussed by the Système international d'unités and from that momentous meeting we got the following measures and unitsmetre,kilogram, second, ampere,kelvin,candela,mole. These measures are now widely accepted in the world,  however certain independent rebellious countries still exist that proudly defend their national right to stupidity by refusing to adopt these standards. Principal exceptions are Burma Liberia and the United States ( vive le revolution )

However my personal belief ( supported by my personal dreams ) is that the committee left out a whole range of major measures and units. We therefore present a number of  measures we want the committee to consider adopting  by the year end

1) One Sarah Jessica Parker ( symbol: sjp ) is the unit of measure for anti-arousal. One sjp is the amount of anti-arousal needed to completely counter the effects of 1 Viagra. One sjp is composed of a 100 Julia Roberts ( 1sjp = 100 jr )

2) One Joe Lieberman ( symbol LOSER ) is the unit of measure for deuschbaggery. It is defined as the amount of deuschbaggery needed to cause the Dalai Lama to throw stuff at the person. It is composed of a 100 BillOReillys A KiloLieberman is also sometimes referred to as a Limbaugh

3) One Sarah Palin ( symbol sp ) is the NEW unit of measure of vapidity. The sp has officially replaced the gwb. It is defined as the amount of non-knowledge required to make the dumbest person in your life till then look smart.

Editors note : It should be noted that while some people maintain that since 1sp * 1 LOSER = 42 * sjp therefore we see that  42 = (sp*LOSER)/sjp. Also as  was proved in the elegant treatise Hitchhiker et al…  42 is the answer to everything. Thus we are left with the puzzle that if a person endowed with the vapidity of a Palin were to multiply ie mate with someone with the deuschbaggery of a lieberman and the  product of that union were divided by ( that is multiplied by the reciprocal )  of a sjp then would that person in essence be the answer to everything. Pending research , this has been called the Conjecture of Everything . The conjecture was recently adopted  into cinematic form with some limited success as Avataar

4)   One MorganFreeman ( symbol mf ) is the unit of perpetual youth, although more accurately is a measure of the rate of change of perceived aging.One Freeman is when the rate reaches zero. This is a somewhat controversial unit , purists have insisted since this is a both a limit process and perceived value it is not a real measure but eff em.

5) One Haiti( symbol ht ) is the new unit of natural disasters. It is defined as a magnitude of suffering that cause me to consider a charitable donation

Tales from ye older crypt

Editors Note: Every once in a while in an attempt to convince himself of the accuracy of his long term memory , the author will bring up some charming whimsical and yet insightful tale from his youth. Some artistic license, as  always is to be expected but the thematic accuracy  has been largely preserved. The names of various individuals have not been altered in any way since the author has no interest in  protecting anyone. However in some cases initials have been you used. You know who you are !!

Ye Firste Tale : She’s got the LOOK

 

Chapter 1  Prelude to a crisis

It was a dark time in Indore. Storm clouds were gathering in the distance. The armies of evil were amassing from the west and from the east the forces of darkness were conspiring . The north was not sure why they should have been singled out by the compass and the south was telling anyone who would listen , that in reality the magnetic south pole was the geographic north and so the compass actually favoured them…     The ring wraiths were  in full force and ominous sounds could be heard every night. The screams of the damned would chill men’s souls  and children would shiver in nameless dread. YUP the semester was coming to an end and exams would be upon us.

In these trying times we meet two intrepid practitioners of the dark arts of  computer science S.J, and  A.S, , who in their youthful exuberance are on a trip of fun and frolic to a godforsaken place called Mandu. I having a prior commitment to sleep could not make it ( Also a somewhat lengthy conversation I had with an Old Monk the night before might have played a part )

The trip itself was fairly uneventful, or so I am told ( there was a near death traffic incident but this was India where rather than keeping  to the left or keeping  to the right more esoteric rules like keeping to the shade  applied, so no real worries ). The other event was that some idiot managed to lose the keys to their Kinetic

 

and while this could have been  a problem thankfully the scooter was not locked and a local mechanic opened up the thing and hot wired it. Now of course you cant be doing that in front of a bunch of geeks and so next thing you know A.S and S.J were explaining to the mechanic about how from the moment they had been born their fondest dream was to learn how to start a Kinetic without having to worry about silly things like the ignition key. After much negotiation the dude spilled all,  and our intrepid duo was armed with *yes its true* knowledge

 

Chapter 2 :  *Bat eyelash ask for help, sit back and watch*

 

It was a dark time in Indore . Oh we’ve covered that already. Cool, So anyhow a few days later …

It was a lovely day , the birds were chirping the flowers blooming and er also some construction noise in the background and dust everywhere and well you get the idea.

I was walking into college a little late ( the monk had raised some very powerful ideas regarding Ice Vs Water and the subversive nature of lime cordial ) and in fact it was fair to say that all the lectures for the day were over so in many ways I was quite late.

As I entered the charming driveway that was my college

 

I could not help but notice a certain amount of aaah labour and commotion around a kinetic Honda parked in the driveway.

We now meet the another character in the soap opera that was my college ; Ms. Sancheti or Priyanka to her friends or anyone who did not want to look like an absolute ass calling her Sancheti.( as an aside and I’m just saying , I am typing this is Windows live writer and when I typed in priyanka the automatic spell checker suggested piranha:-). Not sure what to make of that . Priyanka had many a stellar quality including an almost superhuman ability to lose her scooter keys, and also she could turn a number of er people( with penises)  into er shall we say less than fully coherent human beings and convince them it was in their absolute best interest to help her by just sort of looking and sometimes  talking . I can only illustrate this by saying that when she announced to a bunch of  guys that she had lost her keys to the kinetic; one of the ideas seriously being considered was that she should sit on the kinetic and about 6 or 7 guys would take turns carrying her and the scooter about 10 odd km home. Thankfully better sense prevailed and the next idea was the everyone should spend about  24 hrs combing over the entire college using the grid method to locate her keys. There was some talk of offering a reward to the finder as well. Showing a rare combination of vision grit and loud voices our heroic duo calmly announced that they in fact could hotwire a Kinetic so would the idiots please leave. The fact that they had no tools did not deter them cause as one of them would recall later in telling the tale , “after all, all  Priyanka has to mention is that she needed tools and then we could sit back and watch who would win the race , the idiots running home to get them or the dudes racing to the shop to buy them” .

Like their illustrious forebears before them A.S and S.J were clearly masters of their domain. Oh what a heroic sight it was to watch them wrestle with screwdrivers, pliers and other paraphernalia  as they were clearly trying to teach the kinetic who was boss. I remember feeling at that time, WOW so this is what the Wright brothers must have felt like then.

So at any rate this then dear reader was the sight in front of me when I entered college. It was good and it was fine and I was just shooting the breeze when S.J took a  break from his back breaking labour to discuss strategy regarding the final assault that he and A.S were planning to make sure the forces of righteousness would prevail. There were a number of technical details ( who was responsible for arranging the soda and ice later etc ) that I wont trouble you with but in about 7 min ,we had a working plan in place. Events moved briskly after this , and shortly after a particularly tricky washer bolt combination had been nullified by a fine backhanded top spin screwdriver-in-the-wrench-for-leverage move the paneling succumbed and…. Houston we have access to the electrical subsystem.

Now that the specialized knowledge was about to be employed everyone stepped back, tension was running high as A.S carefully started caressing the wires , red, blue or black was the question in everyone’s mind. I meanwhile was idly twisting the handlebars of the kinetic and noticed something very, very interesting viz. it was locked. I was super impressed, not only did these guys know how to hotwire the system but they were going to break the lock without any damage to the vehicle ( the no-damage clause was something Priyanka was very clear about )

SO I walked over to S.J and congratulated him on how he had figured out on breaking the steering lock while preserving the spirit of the no damage clause. “What do you mean break the lock ?” he said. Well I responded if you don't break the lock and just hotwire the damn thing all she can do is drive around in  circles no?

“OH hmm yes quite so circles hmm ha-ha hmm” he said. And then he gave me a look. To the day I die I will not forget that look.  It turns out no one had though of this little detail. I could not help it,  this was in  fact when ROTFLMAO became real for me. Ah Friend of my youth  companion through thick and thin , brother in arms through 12 semesters of end terms , person with whom I have driven a Luna together, I feel for you . I weep bitter tears now when I think of how all your hopes were dashed and the pain you must have suffered. Then again WTF were you thinking not thinking it through huh?. Meanwhile A.S had finally made a decision re which wire to attack first but alas the news had to broken to him too. Oh yes got to see the look again. More ROTFLAMO, this time: keeping time to the beat of “We Will We Will Rock you”

Priyanka came over to enquire( and point out that on the third roll on the floor I had missed a beat ) and I took this opportunity to congratulate her on now having the ability to drive around in circles. Lets just say there was a look but it was slightly different  from S.J and A.S’s looks .  At this point some more of our friends were included in this little episode from Amar Chitra Katha  and don’t you know it half of them went about giving looks and the other half were taking ROTFLMAO to new levels er depths er spins well something.

Well that was it , I don't quite remember how it all got sorted out eventually everyone concluded that the entertainment section was over for the evening and went home and what of me dear reader why I had a date with the Old Monk of course

 

WHAT HAVE WE LEARNT FROM THIS PARABLE : Not much

 

Some time the future ye Seconde Tale : Probabilistic methods theory and practice as applied to Mrs. Tokekars DCM Paper aka A.S wins we all loose

Hodge Podge and the search for mathematical competence

Sir William ( middle name unknown—to me  ) Hodge was born in 1903 Edinburgh Scotland. At the age of 33 he was appointed to a chair at Cambridge, which he held till 1970. He was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1938 and awarded the society’s prestigious Royal Medal in 1957. In 1959 , a gracious sovereign bestowed upon him a knighthood, but I mean at that point they were practically giving them away.

As a young boy nothing much is known about Hodge , although there are strong rumours that he conceived of the bread sandwich ( the bread goes in the middle and on the outsides you see ) but care must be taken in accepting this rumour as it was started by me. Here. ( my deepest felicitations dear reader you are now watching history being made, well remade anyway and who is to say the second time wont be better ) . Indeed there are great many similarities between Hodge and me and whilst an exhaustive comparative analysis is left as a exercise to the reader I would like to point these salient points;

Hodge and I, both on our own figured out:

1. Breathing
2. Running
3. Long Division

But here alas significant difference arise; whilst I turned my gift at long division into a fine understanding of sophisticated  concepts such as percentages , surds , and mental multiplication by 2 , William Hodge would go on to spend much of his life pretty much proving nothing and leaving behind at best a conjecture. ( for some reason this has been called the Hodge conjecture , what are the odds huh ).  There is also some substantiated chatter about how he “was one of the leading figures in developing the relationship between  geometry,analysis and topology” but its not that useful when trying to order a latte , and having a crazy dog running around your legs , while you try and figure out how many calories the second shot of vanilla syrup really has( long division to the rescue again) .

At any rate without further ado I present one version of the Hodge conjecture:

Every Harmonic differential form ( of a certain type ) on a non singular projective algebraic variety is a rational combination of co homology classes of algebraic cycles.

OK then, clear as mud I take it ( if you actually understood this please mail me immediately, I have much to say to you ). When faced with understanding new concepts  the mind often reverts to what it knows , as a tool to understand the new ( witness Rudy Giuliani’s use of 9\11 as a  way to discuss , climate change ). So of course on encountering the Hodge conjecture , I at once used long division , albeit in an somewhat ah unorthodox way, I decided to eliminate\divide all the long words I did not understand leaving me with….

Every form of a certain type is a rational combination of cycles.

Notice  how much easier this is and (wait for it )even better this is no longer a conjecture it  is in fact obviously and plainly false ( see Gisele Caroline Nonnenmacher Bündchen’s   form and

let me know if you are thinking about cycles rationally or otherwise ) ( this technique is called reductio ad absurdum AKA wait till I reduce your statement to something plainly absurd you stupid idiot!!!)

Jolly good what !! as the bad British writers would say. What does all this have to do with anything you might say at this point ( or even earlier in fact) Well nothing really but I am so friggin pissed that all through my life I have had incredibly I mean really incredibly bad math professors\teachers. I used to love math once, and whilst I will never get so bright that Hodge will ever make sense to me , it still pisses me of when I think of how badly those idiots taught me calculus , statistics, probability ( aka poker to some people ) and a bunch of other awesome stuff( yes awesome is in the eyes of the beholder ).

Anyway this year 2010 , I have decided to start relearning math on my own , I have some specific areas I do want to look at , long term I really want to understand Andrew Wiles work re Taniyama-Shimura . This would be Fermat's last theorem for the rest of you .I am pretty confident of getting this done by 2020. Its good to have goals in life ( other goals include winning lottery tickets ,and building 6 pack abs but I mean I only have till 2020 so…)

Stairway to Heaven

So I am at the gym today running up a sweat on the treadmill( thank you thank you , you at the back kindly stop choking on your laughter )with my personal trainer at my side, wisely nodding and saying “good job” regularly ( so regularly in fact that I am getting a little suspicious about how good I really am doing ). Anywhoo we start talking about she gets compensated, and it turns out, she gets paid per client and here’s the kicker while the club will send the odd client her way , she’s pretty much responsible for getting new clients. Rev share is roughly 50-50.

If a trainer is not generating enough revenue well then …..Quite so. Its not really that diff than any sales\commission based job , BUT it struck me that this job this per hour commission job is really on the fast track to nowhere in terms of making more money. ( please note this is not a post about money cant buy you happiness, and how job satisfaction is about .77 times as important as orgasms etc etc ). This is just a non profound realization that you can end up in a job thinking things are really really great but for whatever reason , THIS IS IT, you will never ever make any real wage increases from now on. My trainer is in a really tough spot, lets say she get super fantastic at her job like twice as good, well I sure as hell am not paying her double. Also while I have no proof of this, rumour is she sleeps bathes eats and works out on her own to make sure her trainer look is maintained. For the vapid and  irresponsible reader, this means there is an absolute upper limit on the number of clients she can scale to.

So bigger picture , are you in such a spot? Do you care. Until recently I used to basically dev and yup like it or not I was like her. Say I wrote code twice as good ( whatever that means ) well no one was going to pay me even 10% more for that . And in fact the amount of money I was making well that was it , anymore and the employer starts thinking fondly of outsourcing and hiring fresh grads from college.

I thought I had gotten around that by picking up jobs on the side contracts , outsourcing them myself , etc etc but the reality is I am again rapidly coming up against a wall in terms of revenue that I can make. Scaling will now have to involve hiring more developers and worse either finding business or hiring someone to do that , which is really like saying I am completely changing my job and again this is not a call to arms or some such crap never forget laziness is the second most powerful force in the world ( stupidity is first in case you were wondering )

I think it really helps from time to time , to do a gut check ; Can I convince someone to pay me a lot more money to roughly do what I do now albeit a lot better( I stress money here because in our current system I  really believe it is the purest estimation of perceived worth) . If the answer is no well either figure out how to do something else OR if the money does not matter then great but at least you know.

Old School !!!

Was at the pro club( for those out of town this is like one of the best gyms ever ,I think definitely the largest one in the country ) the other day listening to some tunes on my phone and ordering a coffee at the coffee shop.

Some pixie haired, barely legal, girl rings me up and then remembers what she learnt at orientation viz, be friendly and chat with the customers. “What’re you listening to”? , she manages to trill in a sing-a-long voice while smiling at the same time ( I tried this later at home and managed to scare the dogs). Um Led Zeppelin I mumble back. The girl clearly has no idea what I am talking about. This is a tense moment in her young life, faced with the absolute knowledge that hour(s) of training will not help now , she resorts to the safety play…”Oh Old School nice”, and of course I wittily retort “nope just means I went to school a long time ago”. We both laugh although once can detect a certain strain in my hahahaha. And then as I leave it strikes me , “old school” is not code for “cool” or “the way things ought to be” etc, its actually just effin code for OLD. AS IN makers of fast cars , aftershave, cologne, sexy leather jackets, cigarettes, and alcohol no longer think you are a key demo. AAARRGGGH.

And then I start thinking about other such insidious phrases that sound great but really mean “This is LIFE…. bend over”

For example “Work Life Balance”, what a charming phrase bringing to mind a well rounded life, the aggressive go-getter at work taking time to listen to a piano concert recital perhaps , or the passionate yet ethical worker who also whips up a souffle in the evening for a quaint old school ( see what I did there ) dinner with the kids. Wunderbar Wunderbar…

There is however a small catch. When a company ( specifically the recruiter or hr person or your boss ) talks about work life balance…… they are not talking about the same person !

Its genius and despicable wrapped up in the cloak of fiduciary responsibility. Added bonus it shows they care ..

Oh well the coffee was kinda nice though and if I try really hard someday I will have no work and no life …. balance is very hard

Back to Seattle

(Editors note: Some parts of this episode are made up . Some are true. And some are just mean. Artistic license has been interpreted to mean “Because I can “. See if you can spot which is which )

Sometime ago we flew from San Diego to head back to Seattle. By itself this should have been a fairly uneventful trip , nothing to write about etc, etc but clearly I did not count on the the fiendish ingenuity of the TSA, the airlines involved and of course the cabin crew

To start with , at San Diego I realized things would be a little different when we had to walk on the tarmac to the plane. At first I could not quite understand what was expected of us , I mean there we were in the wide open spaces with a couple of toy display aircraft that were clearly models to amuse the children I mean they would never actually…. ,

“Please walk this way in a single file ladies and gentleman , yes Sir those planes can indeed fly, yes Ma’am with the passengers in the plane, No Sir the pilots will also be flying with you , Sir for the final time you may not double or nothing on your life insurance”

Thus with a certain sense of adventure and trepidation we entered the plane to see this ……

Now please note this looks really good in terms of the leather so think more like refugee camp reject furniture and you will begin to get the idea

Anyhow we managed to get to LAX ( I should point for the roller coaster ride aficionados, that you aint seen nothing till one of these babies goes through what the pilot called “minor turbulence” but I am referring to as anti-peristalsis on steroids. )

LAX , entry point to the City of angels, LAX gateway to the fabled land of dreams, nightmares and porn, LAX where Hollywood celebrities and you have a remote chance of oxygen carbon-dioxide exchange, LAX where um if you are on a commuter flight from San Diego you have to walk a mile across the tarmac in a mad rush to catch a connecting flight only to be told by a helpful TSA agent that you are in the wrong terminal , at this point the agent will turn over his shoulder to share the joke with his co –worker ”really Ernesto these people want to go to terminal 4 not 2 hahahahah estos idiotas estúpidos”.

So armed with the knowledge that we are the wrong terminal, and that our only hope of getting to the right terminal rests on the whims of Juan the bus driver who is currently off somewhere studying “Learn English in 30 days ,45 if you are a dummy”, I did what any reasonable Indian would. I pulled out my iPhone and checked my email.

Finally the bus arriveth. The TSA guard lets us through telling us sternly to walk in a single file into the bus. Somewhere behind us we hear a man phone his friend Jack. Soon three TSA guards wrestle him to the floor and helpfully tie his head to his ankles. We thank the fates above that we did not call Jack and say hi to him, and board the bus.

Gingerly I sit down and here’s where things get interesting\ridiculous. The bus is merrily driving across the tarmac and planes are landing and taking off and taxi-ing all around us. Now I know the incredibly well-oiled machine that is the ATC at LAX ( vive la TLA ) is taking care of all this but I am still wondering if this is an appropriate moment to have an anxiety attack when I see this little gem

This is by far the funniest sign I have seen in a really, really long time. I start laughing uproariously, when a sudden cold thought strikes my heart! what if Juan has only got to chapter 3 in his book ( The use of ‘a’ , ‘an’ and ‘the’ , controversies and nuances thereof ) . My blood turns to ice and my vision reaches a Zen-satori level of clarity. My world turns into a Kill Bill movie ( this time with a nekkid Uma Thurman) and in glorious Eastman Kodak colour I watch with a certain anticipation as the bus rushes towards the landing aircraft. In a split second I evaluate the possibility of flying through the window of the bus and cart-wheeling into the cockpit of the aircraft where I will distract the pilot with the story of “nihilism as a rap song” thus giving the other passengers in the bus the desperate few seconds they need to bash Juan on the head and stop the bus.

I review the plan, it seems flawless, but as bitter experience with longhorn( vista to the hoi polloi) has shown , one cannot plan for everything (or in the case of Vista sometimes one cannot plan for anything ). I take my first deep breath prior to the commencement of my strategy but a slight misstep causes the breath to go wrong and I find myself writhing on the floor battling a cough—aah despair, death, doom, and destruction.

JOY JOY Juan got to chapter 5 after all ( “what to wear when driving a bus that might be required to stop for aircraft” )

So he stops !!!!!

<Editors note : Juan was terribly embarrassed when passengers pointed out that in fact he has dressed most inappropriately for above occurrence )

Anyway back to reality, the bus driver idiot drops us of somewhere in the middle of what looks like Mordor in gray.

As as aside if you have not read and obsessed over “The Lord of the rings” this would be:

1. a good time to start OR
2. Kill yourself

After much huffing and puffing we find an artfully concealed flight of stairs and ascend upwards. We enter a terminal and our co-passengers erupt into joyous celebration. This must be what the D-day parade looked like. Hark!! in the distance I see a fair maiden sink to her knees to kiss the hallowed grounds of Terminal 3 but wait!! nope only a lost contact lens. Whilst we feel blessed at this near spiritual experience we are also reminded of course that Surgit amari aliquid quod in ipsis floribus angat( what is that you say , GODS ABOVE what are they teaching you plebeians these days ( translation:In the midst of the fountain of delight there arises something bitter, which stings in the very flowers) )<Editors Note: With ref to the delightful bit of Latin prose ( Surgit ….), due to certain complicated legal issues we are not able to comment on the cries of “stole it from Wodehouse did you” . We deeply regret the inconvenience >

A TSA guard , casually just sayin, asks us which airline are we on. Alaska we reply in one voice, reassured in the knowledge that we know the answer. Ah ha ,says the women who in certain angles undoubtedly resembles Helen of Troy although the effect is most believable in the dark , when you are asleep, in that case folks you will need to be at Terminal 4 , this of course is terminal 3. Repeat co-worker skit( get this Shevonne these folks are flying a Alaska and are in terminal 3 hahahaha stupid idiots )

NEXT TIME : In which we learn that it is possible to miss a flight , the long trip to terminal 4 ( scenic route ) and strange story of the passenger that would not snore and yet be really , really annoying

Unorthodox yet potentially effective enhanced interrogation

As we all know now Messrs Bush, Cheney, Yoo Addington,Feith,Rumsfeld,Wolfowitz and the CIA in the last 8 odd years have developed a series of ahem non conventional techniques to get the proverbial bad guys to spill all. Brilliant in its vision and breathtaking in its stupidity the only flaw of course is that they don't work. But the basic idea I think was rather clever, after all why limit yourself to in-the-box thinking.

Therefore after much thought and research ( largely conducted while in the loo ) I have come up with some other techniques suggestions plans

1) All interrogations must be conducted in a language , that the detainee does not speak. Thus they will find it very difficult to lie.

2) Detainees should be constantly threatened with plastic surgery to make them look like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

3)Detainees should be encouraged to use Google maps to find their way out of Guantanamo. Signs however should be erroneous causing much confusion and mirth. Guards should keep saying "Should Have used Bing" in an bad Scottish accent .

4)All access to Facebook should be denied

5) Compulsory sign up on twitter to follow Barry Manilow and Sarah Palin

6)Insist that detainees memorize the words to every Air Supply Song.

7) If all else fails tell them that they will be starring in a remake of Matrix III and that the movie will be continuously be broadcast to the village, Harsh yes, extreme maybe but on the whole justified I think