Thursday, July 08, 2004

Smooth days begin this way

Broke my goggles again. These were borrowed from Amit. And this meant not much swimming done today. Plus need to replace Amit's goggles, get myself a pair, and post the various stuff I have been hammering about.... Lots of stuff, but a shitty start to today. Let's see how it all turns out....

IT& IT. What the heck is the matter with it?

July.
Glorious beautiful July.

Full of sunshine, fresh air, glorious hot breezes during the day, cool night time breezes during the ermm.. night, the call of many birds, including amongst them the mynah, the hyenah and other varieties.

But to the it-man, an offshoot no doubt of the neanderthal man, the one creature that holds his attention, the one bird for whose call he would gladly shoot himself, is, the it-bird.

Yes folks!

Come July it's IT-time in IT-town and IT's all happening round about here.

IT-folks long accustomed to mumbling about in vague acronyms, confound us even more by peppering their speech with TA (tiresome acronyms) that do tend to pollute IT.

Yes. IT is the buzz, the most happening thing in this IT-town, and if you don't have a clue, then cheer up.

Neither do I.

But others do.

It is during such confusing times, when you sit in these hallowed halls of IT emitting hollowed howls of anguish brought about by how you are going to face it, that we offer you "The Everyman's guide to ITIT. All that you ever need to know about it".

True to it's Zen style it just contains one line:

"Give me all your money", but then let us as experts explain the situation to you.

1. You have a job. This is very different from you doing any actual work. In a job you get paid, while you may occasionally be called upon to work. Acutally this isn't strictly true. One of my colleagues Lux has grown from a piece of dried mucus into a lichen like organism and is slowly evolving (we mean really slowly here), into something human. He also has a job. How does him being a lichen prejudice him against having a job? No it doesn't. See!

First rule of IT: don't ask silly questions. Logic is out for lunch here.

2. While in this job, you fondly imagine you are being paid. Hwahahahahah! Suckers! No you aren't. We deduct IT at source, then we deduct IT at hand, and then we deduct your foot, and some more just because we like it. We are sadistic, moronic, felines, but then hey! why did you ever think HR or IT wallahs were Human. Correction: IT practitioners fall into two categories: idiots and morons. while the idiots go about collecting money the morons give it to the idiots.

Second rule of IT: All your bases are belong to us. See point one.

2.a) HR actually happen to be from another planet. Truly! Sure. They happen to be evil monsters from the third dimension whose brains if they were of silk wouldn't provide enough matter to make a pair of nappies for a baby mosquito. Sure that statement was a blatant piece of overexageration and misrepresentation, but only fair considering that in the yearly appraisal HR condenses your 48,000 lines of mission critical C code to "utility project, buggy but useful, not a team player".

3. From the pay you get, we deduct a sizeable sum as IT, and if you are IT practitioners we deduct an even bigger sum, because you scum don't even laze about. Neither do we in IT, but then this is good, because if we did laze about you would all be in dire trouble....No! There's nothing you can do about it. Yes! It amounts to racketeering, but then hey! we make the rules. As a small consolation you get to call us the Government but then we get to rob you. [Evil Smelly Laughter]

Third rule of IT: We can rob you and that's legal.

4. In an universe as confusing as ours, there are only two things that are constant and appllicable to one and all. Corruption and IT. Hold it. We just said applicable. Though ideally we would like all the world to pay us it, all the smarties don't, damn them. You do! And you want to know why? Would it help if I speak slower.

Fourth rule of IT: There's no escaping from it. Especially if you are dumb. You are dumb.

5. Emancipation, Redemption and other features IT returns.

Fifth rule of IT: IT returns don't. Unless we'd like you to return some more of it to us.

6. Form filling: IT involves a lot of form filling. So does IT. While both pride themselves in being paperless, this just means that you have to enter your name to the department using a keyboard, dried with the snot of the dirty millions, and God! help you if your last name is Jonnalnagananandanavalanan, and the N key in the keyboard is stuck.

Sixth rule of IT: Paperless means paper less. You just fill less forms on paper. You don't fill up lesser number of forms.

7. Beuracracy: Let's face it. These sons of bachelors working in IT will not help you save yourself from a ravenous maiden, without forms signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, lost, queried, found, submitted to an audit, public enquiry, lost again, buried in soft peat, and recycled as a firelighter. But then hey! when your daily pathetic existence is an endless chain of form filling in order to use the 11th floor toilet because you are in a state of emergency, and the request has to first be ratified by the pl, the dch, and then his neighbour's dog, beuracracy doesn't matter so much does it.

Seventh rule of IT: The red tape has been provided so that you can hang yourself.

8. Always drive safely. O.K. nothing associated to IT, but then hey! that's always a good thing to put in because kids could be reading this message huh!

Eigth rule of IT: Drive safely.

O.K. In a big break with tradition, we have given you only eight laws, unlike custom which dictates a round number like ten. So.... Sue me!

Anyway folks. That's it from it experts here, while we retire and fill it up. We will be back soon in the month of July with even more exciting titles

"It returns"

"Itty bitty details for it"

"Darn it!"

"The l(IT)mus test"

"What is it anyway?".



So leaving you soon, but back again and soon as July heats up with more bird calls from it-birds to it-nerds....



So long folks....



Tuesday, July 06, 2004

a trip to delhi

ok. I was in delhi for the last one week. It's been quite interesting
to say the least. I have had to contend with villanious bus drivers,
drunks, security, army, police, rag pickers, cyclists, rickshaw
wallahs, kabuke dolls, and before a dead chacha, a bua who had a heart
attack, a chachi who had to have an operation, another chacha with low
bp, a tau with high bp. The works as you may call it. So a lot of
stuff to fill up my blog with...
so just hang on as i try and write it all up

TCS Security Initiative

Hello all,

This, is TCS's 10 point security programme that we would like to distribute to all associates, but unfortunately mailing it to more than 5 people at a time could make it a "security incident"* , so we have decided to mail each of you individually, one every day. Since TCS has over a million employees ( top 10 by 2010 you see), this will take slightly over 300 years to accomplish, but we are confident we will achieve it nonetheless. It's steady but sure progress, and TCS should be a secure organization never mind the pace of change. Of course, provided Lotus Notes doesn't screw up, but that's a different issue altogether....

So in order to educate all our associates we proudly present below:

TCS's 10 point Security Pogrom ( carefully conceived by congenital cadavers):

1. You the TCS associate (from now onwards referred to as ass), hereby promise to be paranoid about what some American, in his usual drunken stupor reported wrongly and fondly believes to be his address, or the last four digits of his pin. You shall value this information more than you value your underwear, and swear to value this more than your wife or kids.

2. In case somebody tries to access this data ( heaven alone knows why they would want to!), you have agreed to fight the good man's fight for liberty freedom, and protection of American's inalienable rights to privacy, which is odd considering how a large percentage of the population are exhibitionists, and have agreed to protect this data using all means at your disposal. This includes bribing, biting, gouging out the adversaries eyes using nails, and heaven forbid, threatening him with the Tata Security Policy.

3. In case some of this tasty data leaks into the enemy hands (assume that they have copied it onto some harddisk or whatever), this constitutes a security incident. And all security incidents will be reported to ISM. ISM will then inform IDM who will immediately start out, and reformat the enemy's disk making them feel rather silly. Lux one of our valuable associates points out that IDM will not only format the enemy's disk but also your hard disk, so everyone will feel rather silly, but after years of dealing with ISM, this is something we are all accustomed to.

4. Security Incidents: What is a security incident?
If you wear your abdomen guard on your knee, it is a security incident. If you tell people your name, it constitutes a security incident. Please remember that the threat occurs not due to the information which could be simple, but through the possibility of misuse of that information. So anything at all constitutes a security threat.

5. TCS employee's will proudly display their ID Cards, so that it is visible to even a guard sitting behind a six foot long desk.
Does this require magnification: yes
Can everybody then see this card: yes
Does that constitute a security incident: yes
So, you need to ensure that your id card is seen only by people authorized to ask you for your id card. In order to relieve this quandary, we have devised a set of handshakes, and hidden signals ( modeled after the freemason handshake)
Contact Ythee, lux me or pras to learn these handshakes

6. You hereby agree that you threaten the security of the organization by your very existence, and breath. So try not to breathe. In fact, our most valued associates are our tables and chairs who haven't breathed for quite some time.
Pras one of our valued associates has a question.
"Ramesh is lying down on the ground and breathing very heavily", he says. "Is that a security risk"
Lux clarified the issue.
"Ramesh is actually being held down by JP and Partha, and is being slowly strangled by them", he said in a press release. "Therefore the risk though high is diminishing". He also added that it was important to concentrate on the big picture and not on minor footling inconsistencies

7. Security=paranoia both of which are paramount

8. It is possible that you could be kidnapped by our evil competitors and interrogated, and in the ensuing torture that you are sure to go through you may end up revealing trade secrets.
e.g. : "Tell us what is the last sql statement you wrote", sneers an evil competitor.
"Tell us or we will rip of your nails".
"Arghhh...!", you scream in pain as they rip of your toenails "the sql statement was select * from gasp* CustomerAccount".

In order that such a situation does not come to pass, we at ISM request that you do not remember the last sql statement you entered. In fact, it would be best if you did not know sql at all. It would be glorious if you did not know anything about computers at all. This way you minimize the chances that you are a security threat to the company, and grow in value to us. Top management is quite valuable to us, because of their virtue of being clueless about anything at all. But you should have figured it out by this time. Lux has issued a security notice to ask you to ignore the confidential information that we have inadvertently leaked above.
Remember the golden rule "Ignorance is secure".

9. Paperwork. TCS has loads of paperwork, and surpasses the erstwhile Soviet Union in terms of kilos of paperwork generated. But we unfortunately cannot provide anyone shredders to shred this ton of paperwork. Therefore we request you to eat the paperwork, if you cannot shred it. This will increase your standing in your boss eyes (not to mention his cubicle), your EVA, and also your flatulence. But remember the old maxim. Only gasbags go up to the top. All relationship managers will provide salt and pepper, to facilitate the easy digestion of such reports

10. Dave. I am sorry Dave. But you were not supposed to know that there was a tenth security policy. Well... This policy deals with how we deal with our customers if there is a security leak, and it involves chopping of their arms, legs, eyelids, sewing up their mouths, nostrils, cutting of their tongues, and as an afterthought killing the person. Well, since you now know this policy, please remain seated at your desk and expect a small deputation to visit you anytime soon.

Yours for ever and ever,
Ram