Dad and his scooter

My dad has this way of starting the scooter that is unique, enticing, and
unforgettable....

He starts it off by searching for his keys. This is one activity that
frustrates him like no other. If you want to see 1 frustrated dad(mine I
mean) loose something off his and get him to search for it. He starts
swearing, and muttering and mumbling, and gets on my mom's nerves till she
comes in, and surprise surprise.... she finds it in 2 minutes flat.

O.k. not the most congenial way to start off a drive but there....

The next problem happens when he finds out that the neck-lock key has
fallen out of the key ring... More frentic searching later he has located
it....

Then he goes down to the parking lot, and tries to pull out that beast
which has neatly fossilized itself in one corner....

he gives it a mighty big tug and it comes off it's centre stand....

then there is a whole orchestra of neat manouvering before he manages to
turn it around and facing the exit... (think of 4 point turns of tankers in
the atlantic)....

finally when it's facing the entrance he wheels it out onto the street.

here he puts it on it's centre stand and then opens the petrol tank to
check if there is petrol...

he then locks the tank and then turns on the fuel cock to on....

he then 'primes' the engine by holding onto the clutch and then kicking the
starter slowly.....

since this fails ( the last time petrol flowed into the engine was 3 months
ago), he pulls it towards the ground....

that pose is something that has always managed to piss me off.... it looks
like he is trying to wake up his horse, and instead of going and giving it
a solid kick on the butt he is whispering to her. Not that my irritation in
any way dettered my dad... It was his communion with his steed.

Then he rights the machine.... and goes around to the other side..

Mind you all this is on centre stand....

Then one kick and the scooter starts....

only to stop again....

then a few more kicks and it would finally roar to life, like a wheezing
asthmatic.....

he then gets to the other side...

being blessed with his pot belly, he attempts to slide in between the
handle bar, till his bulk eases past, and then like a tanker clearing the
Panama canal he pulls free.....

And then the slow movement of the centre stand and then the little comedy
played out as mom tries to get on.....

and all this when mom requests him to drop her off because she is getting
late....

No wonder he says i drive rashly when i move out from rest(locked bike) to
mom sitting in 1 minute flat.....

can say mom enjoyed driving around with dad....

best summarized as dull but safe, directly in contrast to her married
life...

Safe maybe, but never, dull.

googly

google are hiring in Bangalore. rather nice place the coppernicus labs...

rather a nice job

article

i have just been reading a few well written articles (here and here ) about user interfaces and Linux in general. I have to say that i agree with both the articles...



Working here in a corporate environment where Windows is the norm, I guess I have become a better hacker. My emphasis is now on using the tool to finish the job rather than any obsessiveness about which tool I use for the job. It's been a very slow zen like awakening, but I guess now I don't care about the horse or the saddle anymore. It's more about the stillness of movement.



So how does it matter wether you can check the source code of the tool or not as long as you do the job with it. If you need the source for a tool to do something with it, go get that tool. Yes. This is quite a schism from the zealousness I exhibited about Linux, but I guess I am a better hacker for the break. The sword does not matter now. Only the fan.....

I suppose a few people can use this.

and i suppose to a few people this actually makes sense...

and a few more would need guide dogs....

Architects Lotus notes and rot

If architects built buildings the way programmers wrote programs then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy all of civalization.
--Parker's Law


To suitably expand on this theme let me pick on one of the associated pieces of malware that infests any large organization, this piece of cantakerous code being the one piece of dog poo that most corporate managers go gaga on. Side note: why do corporate managers go gaga over dog poo?. LOTUS SODDING NOTES, is the biggest, crappiest piece of software that it has been my profound lack of pleasure not to be able to avoid meeting. Most other pieces of software atleast put up a pretence of doing something. Not so this piece of shit. It doesn't plain do anything period.

The other day I was travelling down a lift when an English client steps into the lift with a BM from our side and he says something like 'why is it that i am not getting any of the statistics of how many times you guys use the washroom' and our BM says it's a r5-r6 migration issue. And the Engelsmann says 'Oh!'. "oh!" right. See! Everybody knows this piece of software does nothing then why the hell do we have it.... Why don't we say 'screw you IBM' and write some other piece of software that actually delivers the mail to us.

The SOP for our project now includes the following statement. "After mailing a document to someone, call him up to inform him you have done the same. Lotus Notes is a little(sic) erratic at times." Bullshit! This piece of twat is erratic at all points of time. Point 1: I have set the replication time on my local machine to be a minute. i.e. every minute Lotus notes makes sure my local copy is in sync with the server. But the damn thing doesn't replicate at all. I have to sit here and go punch the replicate button every 30 seconds to make sure the damn bloddy silly piece of poodle crap that someone ran over with a truck and splattered onto a BMW actually bloddy effing works.... I mean, I don't expect much from work but can't the silly thing even automate this....

Arrghh... I can put up with almost anything guys. In fact, over the last four years i have put up with much worse, one time having to check my mail on a monitor that had it's centre part burned out due to a wierd experiment with a few rubber bands, a brick and the innards of one very dead goat. I had to move the monitor image left right to read my mail, and actually write code...... + the development environment had only a single line editor..... so i could only write one line of code at that time. + this was a Kernel driver thing so the code used to go like this.

symoops->(
symoops->tail->msg,
symoops->send->(char *(void * foo) ),
(char *)(void *) buf

);

and so on. But all that is ok, compared to this piece of twat.... Lotus Notes plain sucks and if Kappor the bloddy nitwit, ditch delivered son of a Tirkish cretin still hasn't got the message. It still sucks you son of unmarried parents. It is the grossest, most horriblest piece of software ever to have come out after Emacs o.k. (Emacs still holds the top spot for plain yuckiness. If you don't believe me then tell me would you like to press Alt-Ctrl-Space-S-Shift-Star all together to save your documents. I mean come on Stallman we have only 10 fingers ok.) But then Lotus notes is giving Emacs a run for it's money.... I mean open new workspace, make mail local then check your bloddy mail..... Argghghhhg.... Mitch Kappor I hope that you contract mumps....

blog take blog

if i were to ever do a take on blogging itself

this would be my emotion....

this is how work is now....

a little shitty

ok got the images now.... let's rock.....

man been a week since i last blogged....

joined the Tidel pool and swam in excess of 10 hrs. for the last two days....

am so tired i could crap now....

and ashok is back....

how is he managing to put up those pictures on his blog....

gotta see that.....