Code Wars : Episode 5 (Pi – The Rationale)

Name: Pi (Name changed to protect Identity)

Sex: Male

Age: General (The highest post in the Indian ArmyJ)

Height: 6’ 1’’

Brain:Body Mass = Is an MBA. (Need I say more? help me out here… let ur imagination run wild)

I don’t really know into how much “hot water” this profile would be getting me into, but none the less I really feel that if I don’t profile this person, I would leave this blog wanting…

Pi as he is lovingly called (other variants are Paai – by southies including me , Piee – by Maharashtrian’s and “Phai” by himself during telecon’s, so the actual three lettered verbiage seldom makes an appearance) is the heart of the project ( I was about to write “Brain” and then realized that its us who do the coding… so gave him the most important part of the human viscera). Put in simple words… he sees to it that all of us are occupied with fruitful work that can be billed to the client and none of us takes up writing blogs for a living.

(Now that I think of it... I can actually call this blogging of mine “lighter vein Profiling” First coined by me on the 30^th of July 2006, and rake in some moolah all the while…Note to self: Take this up seriously).

Now for his hobbies, he is an avid reader an even avid borrower (of books… I am now certain that my book has been formally shredded, and mailed to my residence address…, that I have touched his frayed nerve ending… that’s what ppl refer to in Hindi as “dukhti rakht par pair rakhna”) , he is also into jokes, but he enjoys being on the listening end as opposed to the cracking, in which I find immense pleasure (immense doesn’t even come close…I actually mean immenserererer), so our lines never cross… he enjoys (or at least pretends to enjoy) the joke that I crack…(lest I make him the subject of the next joke…) what ever be the case, he pulls it off quite well.

He is an M.B.A professionally (Master of Business Administration) and personally (Married, But Available) and that is what knits us together as a team… we get to check out babes with our PM. (note to self: Remove this)

The subject that he “Mastered” in his masters was “The art of Motivation” , One might think that it a real good subject to do a masters in… but unfortunately for us, the book contained only a single chapter i.e. “The Carrot and stick approach”.

To the un-gyaaned: (wikipedia offers no solace here, so I have resorted to a different website: http://adtimes.nstp.com.my/jobstory/jun26a.htm)

K-gyan: A very widely known motivational concept is the “Carrot and Stick” approach. Many managers see motivation in terms of this notion and so their efforts to motivate is limited to asking the question; should I bribe people or simply threaten them? However, when put into practice, this concept is found to be more complicated than this…. More available at the website.

The classical approach is to hit with a “stick” when one falters and reward with a “carrot” on doing good work, but he has adapted to the situation quite well and has implemented the approach with the carrot tied to the end of the stick as shown in the image below…

The good thing in this approach is you actually get the carrot on performing well… and the bad thing…the “carrot” here is not a metaphor.

I have never felt so free with any of the PM’s that I have ever worked with, and neither have I had such strong opinions (read cared enuff) about them so as to pen it down.

The reason being all male PM (and prospective male PM’s… I am being specific so that some day if they do go thru the blog… they can identify themselves) in my earlier company were all… lets say “their mommy was a female dog”

After working for Pi, I would not even think of getting my project changed to something that is not managed by him, whatever is the incentive, and most of my team mates would be supportive of the fact, as they think on the same lines. (Note to readers: this is not a kiss up; will let you know when I am kissing up, and boods I am excusing you)

Overall he is a great sport (which you might have guessed by now… if you are reading this in my blog… if you have received this thru a mail… he is not such a great sport after allJ), he is a great listener… (gurls u will be impressed to meet this great guy… only thing that might bother you a little, is that he stuffs cotton into his ear… but that’s a personal choice… and I draw a line between personal and professional life… my blog, as u see, is strictly professional.) And is all ears and more importantly acts upon your opinions and suggestions. He is also defendant of his resources and lets no one lift a finger on us…

Now for the downside for the guy… he excels in all fields but at the same time cannot bear a hurt ego… he goes to the extent of purchasing a car to set his ego right… but this in no way impedes the relation ship the project shares with this guy, we don’t mind that… (by we I am collectively referring to the entire project members) all males have issues with ego and we are good as long as we don’t need to bear the financing of the car with part of our take home salary/bonus, plus we get additional free transportation for parties.

It’s well over 2 pages that I have started describing this guy, and I still have a lot to cover up before I finally end this.

You can discuss on any subject with this guy… from the “Birds and the bees” talk to “technical” to downright “financial”, he knows every subject there is to discuss… (He is quite talented u see… no sarcasms here)

The reason why he makes such a good “Boss” is that he is an opportunity seeker, always on a look out for better opportunities (both in-site and onsite) for every member of his team, well almost everyone (except for a few GL’s … to be dead precise.. 1 GL).

K-gyan: GL (Acronym for group leader): Is an Individual who manages a group… sheesh… how much denser do people get here.

As a man his age (I am in no way hinting that he is Old… no sarcasms here either) his dance moves can put a 20 year old to shame. And my… does he move…, he even has a trademark move called “The pelvic gyration a la Pi”, which is just plain awesome considering the fact that he is not a yoga instructor, well…not at least to our knowledge…

K-gyan: The pelvic gyration a la Pi: a classical dance step which when done with a girl “sans clothing” can guarantee u a kid in nine months J. Don’t even bother looking this up in Wikipedia…

K-gyan-addendum:

For the dense..er who walke’th amongst us the “sans clothing” in the gyan above is applicable to both the dancers and not just to the girl…and discounts for any infertility issues… just when you think that things couldn’t be any worse.

Finally to sum him up in four words:

“He is the best” … believe me (I need not even put this in words... cause my salary revision is all done…, but the truth prevails and this is it. Every one in our team would agree upon.. At least the people profiled…)

Well after reading all this I know what people would be wondering, at least my peers back in my office… and that would be… “Does this get me any vouchers…” to be frank… I really don’t know… but shoppers stop is real close to ma home… (Wink Wink)

Put ur hands together for this man with the “ratio(nale)” hidden in his name and who is always available for intelligent discussions (now I realize why he used to avoid me all the time) , give it up to π… and this closes the circle of my project… well almost.

Code Wars : Episode 4 (Ghauri – The nuke)

Name: Ghauri (G) (Name changed to protect Identity)
Sex: Lets say… has a torpedo in his pants…go figure out
Age: Major (But looks quite young for his age… )
Height: 5' 8"
Brain:Body Mass = Proportionate. (Do you know how much pain it is to come up with different ratios every single profile?.. you think that’s easy… come be my guest blogger.)

Ghauri…“The nuke” of the team has a very explosive personality, and you can actually hear the explosions if the environment is really conducive. (Conducive environment constitutes of a starved Ghauri, Black Chick peas in the cafeteria and a pin drop silence 1 hr after the lunch) even in case you miss the explosion (generally he attempts to implode it… but is unsuccessful most of the time) you would hear the lift off signal from him… the code word for lift off is “kaun tha?” with the surprised look on his innocent face.

But don’t be ever deceived by his looks and take him for granted, for if he expects the work to be completed by you, and if you slip the target… he would probably screw u so hard, you would end up with nappy rashes at places you would have least imagined. So steer clear of this individual when it comes to work.

The nuke, unlike my other friends, is from Dehli, and any inappropriate comment on dehli babes is enuff to send this guy into a frenzy, and his dense mode takes over and he would go to any extent to defend the babes of his hometown.

He is probably the only guy who falls in love at the drop of a hat: All of his romantic escapades are described in brief.

Well you don’t expect to see them here do you?… go check out his brief collection… 1 per escapade… and my…. The first time i entered his house I thought he had brought me to some wholesale chhadi bazaar (there were so many varieties that Ms Lewinsky would have had the day of her life selecting a memento).
So you can take my word for it that this guy gets more action that he can take (and some ppl are blunt enuff to tell to his face that he got more than what he deserved, who said to whom is a huge secret)

Until the day I met him, I used to believe that the sight in “Love at first sight” is generally pleasing to the eye, but after the day I met his crush I realized that there is more to love than that meets the eye… this missile is definitely a heat seeker and take my word for it.

K-gyan: Wikipedia describes Heat seeker as follows: Anything which uses infra-red seeking are often referred to as "heat-seekers". Infra-red (IR) is just below the visible spectrum of light in frequency and is radiated strongly by hot bodies. Many objects such as vehicle engines and aircraft generate and retain heat, and as such, are especially visible in the infra-red wavelengths of light compared to objects in the background.

Now that I have taken pains to Bold and italize the word of utmost importance in the description above, you might very well imagine the amount of heat that the person in context used to generate, (Believe me, she used to generate enuff heat to fry off all the hair from my and boods body… if you are wondering who she was… trust me… she’s better un-known… for once known “sweet dreams” loses its meaning).

Only point that we used to agree on this specimen was, that we both used to think that she was “mirror cracking” material, Poor ghauri, to this day he thinks that its a metaphor for "good looking".

As for the technical front of this guy, he is the key resource in the project that he works on. He is versatile in most languages… except at times, in English… can’t blame him, he would have been good if we had been coding in English all the while.

His greatest fear comes from knowing that HS has a undisclosed soft corner for him. He is constantly picking upon Boods and ends up successfully running away proving the point that “a lean mean machine” can have many advantages other than the word (three letters beginning with S) that has been skipped in the phrase.

He is at the receiving end of all comments in the group and is intelligent enuff to accept them without being judgmental about it. In short “a great sport”.

He is the Second most helpful person when it comes to personal favors (I top).

One more peculiar habit of his, that can be attributed to his royal upbringing in delhi, is that he is intimately attached to his throne. Now that he is no longer in his kingdom, he yearns for a decent throne… that is one of his top criteria when looking out for a new home… the last place where he lived … if I remember correctly, did not have one… and that was the year when our company had a lot of issues with “core dumps”.

He has had his share of wonderful moments when he used to share his flat with a “lets say for pure phonetic pleasure” a Pun with a Bun (PWB henceforth). One night he actually came close losing his company (Now a "Sir Richard Branson" enterprise) to an UnBunned Pun… Since that day he sleeps alone in a locked room.

His varied interests range from oogling (extra “o” for extra pleasure) at girls, oogling at guys, oogling at his bai and (just for the rhyme of it... oogling at “the constant in the area of the circle”).
This is just the kind of guy who would give anyone the run for his money… (Take me seriously here, he picks u money and runs….)

Ladies and gentleman, please pucker up and plant a wet sloppy one on this guy… trust me… you wouldn’t be disappointed.

Code Wars : Episode 3 (The White Adder)

(Well it’s actually “The white ladder”)

Name: Her Shah (HS) (Name changed to protect Identity)
Sex: Female (Sex changed to accent name)
Age: Major (And if you account for the height… well… it stays the same… who ever said anything about age being dependant on size… geez… I am surrounded by morons.)
Height: 6' 3"
Brain:Body Mass = long int.

He is probably the quietest guy in our team, with a great attitude. He is the most calm and composed when it comes to coding, a great sport who does not feel shy exposing his legs once in a while for the gurls to oogle at.

HS is generally shy when if comes to the matter of the heart (comme moi et boods, c’est vrai, je parle et ecrit francais tres bien, merci … don’t even bother to understand this… its in French…) and keeps his friends to himself. We however do suspect that he does have a babe and the reason for the suspicion is the frequent flyer points that he has collected from traveling to Hyderabad.

HS generally follows the top down approach of analysing things and has a higher view of details , with 6’ of elevation; it’s difficult to view any thing base up. He generally refrains from commenting on anyone/anything while we go on a suicidal rampage (Note: suicidal for the person we are commenting on and rampage for us), but when he finally comments the outcome is so great that the person commented upon never looks back in the eye.

Though not obvious, this is one cool guy who drinks, smokes and makes hay while the sun shines. He has an undisclosed soft corner (What is undisclosed is the location of the soft corner) for “Ghauri – the nuke” (up next on ma blog… read all about him) and goes go-go on seeing ghauri sporting a Crock… (Intentionally abbreviated).

He has a passion for learning stringed musical instruments and is a quick reference when it comes to syntax in COBOL. As for the technical aspects of him... You need to send across a self-addressed stamped envelope at this address …(xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Address masked to protect identity).

We (as in me and HS) share a lot in common, one of the most distinct things is that we resemble each other, ppl generally mistake me for him and vice versa , even after taking into account the fact that he is a good 6 inches taller than me… well coding in COBOL makes people denser.. It’s an occupational hazard that we live thru.

The other thing that we share in common is that both of us have a “/dev/null” salary account. I never knew that they had such accounts at my bank ... that is until it was too late...

For the sake of the common man, here’s Wikipedia to the rescue:

K-gyan: In Unix-like operating systems, /dev/null or the null device is a special file that discards all data written to it, and provides no data to any process that reads from it (it returns EOF). In Unix programmer jargon, it may also be called the bit bucket or black hole.

The null device is typically used for disposing of unwanted output streams of a process, or as a convenient empty file for input streams. This is usually done by redirection.

In simpler terms, the account actually flushes out our salary before we could even catch a glimpse of it.

I don’t have much to write about this awesome guy…given the fact that he is not much of a prank player… so ppl put your hands together for this steadfast friend, Her Shah….

Code Wars : Episode 2 (The Flatulence Extempore)

Name: BoodBooda (also referred to as BurrBurra by the dehliyites.. Spelling errors intended)
Sex: Male
Age: Major (Qualifies to run for the post of the president… but "walks" actually.)
Height: 5' 10"
Brain:Body Mass = A large number (at all times other than 6:00 am/pm suffers from a classical case of semi-sardar-no-turbanisis, which causes his bell to ring at 6 instead of the predestined 12). His number is affected by 2 facts… 1. He does not sport a turb… due to which his projected brain size is reduced… and 2. He gulps beer by the gallon resulting in very distinctly projected Body mass.

There is not one party that goes by where he (hence forth called lovingly as boods) does not bring up the mention of booze, as u see 80% of his body mass is filled with the frothy golden liquid (and by frothy golden liquid i mean beer ... this explanation is for the ppl with narrow minds and even narrower attitude towards life).

Well boods is in no way narrow(mentally as well as physically)... you would have to redefine narrow to wide in order for him to fit the title (COBOL jargon... non techs please excuse).

Over all he is one fun loving guy who potrays a general sense of dis satisfaction at the way the company treats him...always getting into trouble with "the constant in the calculation of the area of a circle" (project specific chipher... needs a double digit IQ to dechipher, if you are not a person from the same project as boods... dont even bother to check your IQ).

Technically he is a tester ( i wanted to name this episode "the testis done (Intentionally spelt without a space)" but then changed it to the thing that he more often indulges in...) but he spends more time drinking, oogling at babes, swimming, creating wave pools for the ppl in the swimming pool and his patented talent of creating a jaccuzzi in the bath tub... than the amount of time spent in testing.

The guy has the memory of at least 10TB (999Gb in his PC and the rest on his head) and he distinctly remembers all the data for the test cases and tests are done in a breeze.

He is shy when it comes to gurls... well as a matter of fact we both are... I some how think that he has a JAT gene somewhere.

For those of us who dont have a clue who Jats are, here’s Wikipedia to the rescue:
" The Jats/Jatts (Hindi: जाट,Punjabi: ਜੱਟ, Urdu: جاٹ) of Northern India and Pakistan, are descendants of Indo-Aryan tribes.
In India, they inhabit the states of Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat. In Pakistan, they are found in the provinces of Punjab and Sindh.
The Jats ,like most South Asians,are mostly farmers;however they are also found in many other professions. A large number of Jats serve in the Indian Army, including the Jat Regiment, Rajputana Rifles, Sikh Regiment and the Grenadiers, among others.
The Jat regions in India are among the most prosperous on a per-capita basis (Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat are among the wealthiest of Indian states).”

Put in a subtle way they are dense individuals inhabiting the northern flange of the Indian subcontinent who also share the same problem of expressing their love for ppl. They are so dense that they kill each other over a girl and the girl does not even have the faintest idea that she is a WMD.

But our dear boods is not so fierce, as a matter of fact we had the crush on the same female in our company… aware of his “gene” I entered into a “graceful exit” treaty with him… saved my skin…

K-gyan: graceful exit: a concept highly beneficial in the “single Phool multiple maali” environments where the other maalis agree to throw down their Fawdas and walk away if the phool falls for a maali. (One note of caution: The Fawda remains as long as the phool remains in the tree)

If you are wondering abt who the girl fell for… she probably ran away with some one from her own batch… (Don’t worry boods, she doesn’t have a clue what she has missed ;), that is apart from the free Jacuzzi)

I guess I have covered all aspect of the flatulence extempore and provided the readers with some gyan in the process... ( i always give importance to the process of imparting gyan... for gyan is what makes the world go round, without gyan.. well ppl would make it go elliptical)

The reason why I was in a position to write a lot abt this person is because we share a lot of things in common (except for unmentionables , not that we are judgemental about it, but purely because of size constraints… his is too large for me and mine hardly fits him ;) )

Put your hands together for the round faced, beer guzzler…boodbooda.

Code Wars : Episode 1 (The Macro Flasher)

Before I begin to describe my friends, I would like to clarify that every one featured in the blog were asked to respond to a mail with the contents similar to the one below and on receiving a favorable reply they were included in the same.
The mail went somewhat like this

" I am kicking off a new topic in my blog and i need to know ur willingness to be a part of it. please reply back with "I don’t mind... go ahead and s**** me in your blog" in the subject line if you don’t mind being written about or "Why don’t you go to the loo… Pull down your pants and love yourself" as the subject if you do not wish to be written about... “(Contents might have been edited to suit all tastes).

I have received quite a few replies with the first option, so starting off without much ado... the Macro Flasher.

Name: P-earth (also Stars in one of the earlier topics)
Sex: Male
Age: Major (I don’t do minors ;) its against the law)
Height: 5' 10"
Brain:Body Mass = ∞

That is the class of this person... has an infinite brain to Body mass ratio, thanks to his body mass that is nearly equal to nothing.

Strengths: he can walk java, talk Java, laugh Java because Java is a very Funny language.. He is dangerous when he starts to talk java under the influence of kaapi, he also Flash’es (the macromedia variant)

Weaknesses: Apart from lack of physical strength (Aka Brawns ) we (including me) don’t have any weaknesses, subtly put we believe in "Brains better than brawns" and believe that all goons fit in the general Hindi movie goonda variety and are generally Fat and could easily be outrun. (That’s the reason for us maintaining a strict regime)
(Note to self: Write abt P-earth... )

What makes p-earth stand apart is his uncanny sense of inviting the axe to his foot. He unknowingly converts deadlines to unrealistic deadlines (as a matter of fact he corrects unrealistic deadlines of the good variety to the one that is actually bad)

Tech Info: Unrealistic deadlines (ud) come in 3 flavors viz: good, bad and ugly. The good ud is the one in which the time is planned to be in excess of the actual efforts required. the bad ud is one in which one needs to put in the max required work hrs every day for the planned period (in my company 9) and the ugly ud is the one in which ppl need to slog on saturdays and sundays to finish the task in the planned time frame.

In case of P-earth he amazingly convinces and belittles the task which to him (read java guroo) is a mere 5 min, sets the time frame accordingly and coolly quits the project and hands the task to a fresher who reels under ud of the ugly kind.

It’s kinda funny to us since we are not affected by it in any way and also because we are bold enuff to revisit and extend the deadline... poor fresher has no chance. (the fresher usu quits or resorts to medications of the "grass" variant)

With such a huge Brain to BM (body mass) ratio;ideas come naturally to him, java ideas are one thing but what makes the others dread him is that nothing is alien to his brain... he churns ideas in every field by the dozen... he probably has a lot of opposition at the "idea meets" but he generally comes thru and some scapegoat reels under the knife.

On the personal front he eats shoots and leaves (a true vegetarian) who reels at the mention of an egg (he may boast that he has had eggs in the past... he is not lying... actually he remembers his past birth quite vividly all due to the grace of his infinite (B:BM) ) he thrives well on vegetation of any kind, he sleeps well knowing that he has not harmed any living creature.

On a more personal front, he is a guy who writes poems on love but doesn’t accept the fact that someday he might find someone "jo uski dil ki ghanti bajayegi" (had to have this in Hindi for the pure phonetic pleasure).

We used to try convincing him otherwise, but he revealed to us the qualities that he expects his “would be” should possess and we were convinced that he is not going to fall in love for at least the next two births.

For our satisfaction we had an excel sheet filled with the information of prospective single girls and tried to apply P-filter on it: here’s the result. (The sheet originally contained 150 rows of hand picked data)

She must be a girl (ok… we never thought that u were straight) 100 rows selected. (Whoa there were guys in the sheet… I knew I shouldn’t have asked shepherd to fill in the selection)
She must be a Tamilian girl. 50 rows selected.
She must be an Iyer Tamilian girl 30 rows selected.
She must be a vegetarian. 20 rows selected.
She must know to cook South Indian food. 10 rows selected.
She must know to sing Tamil songs. 5 rows selected.
She must know all devotional songs sung by MS Subbalakshmi by heart. 1 row selected.
We were happy that we have found him a match. But we rejected her… reason: she was 80 years old.

What ever I might have written in this blog, one thing is for sure he never gets angry at any of the pranks that we pull on him… and he is only dangerous when he speaks caffeinated Java.

Put your hands together for the Macro Flasher (Macromedia + Flash + Coder).

Ground work...

I work for a Software Company located in Pune, and no its not the one run by an indian, as a matter of fact i was working for an indian IT company a few years back, was plain fed up of the office politics that existed there and i quit... have never been happier.

The company that i am presently employed in is one swell employer, great pay, good decent CODING work, conducive work environment, flexible timings and a great group of peers who make working here a breeze... (if only my friends felt the same abt me :))

Agreed that my company does not invest in infrastructural flamboyance (here after referred to as IF) as some Indian IT cos, it is a good sign as i am assured discreetly that i would be working as a software engineer as long as i am with the company.

My greatest fear with the company that invests in "I.F." is that some day when the second generation takes control of the administration, they might actually turn the company into a hotel (hotels rake in abt 700% of profit, much more than what is possible in IT) and with campuses in almost all states of India...Wohooo... its Sea food instead of C and MSM (Mysore Masala) instead of MSN (the messenger).

The employees are retained... where in the world would they find so many fresh talents... (where even 2 live KT's could get u into the company). Only the course in the Leadership Institute (IL) changes. the employees also retain their designation... an SE would remain an SE, only the meaning changes SE now is "Sambhar Expert" the other designations follow suit. (NOTE to self: You tangent off Exceptionally well).

So now that my worst fear is taken care of, i get to code in an environment that is not only friendly but also caters to my overall growth and guess what... i also get to blog about it.. not in my working hours though..

Now for My peers who would be holding the center stage in this blog one at a time, i dont really know how many episodes will be written but i plan to begin with the intorduction and overall characteristics of each one of them and then increase the gamut to cover them all in one single work environment. we would also have guest-appearances from projects across, but they would be introduced as and when they come.

So heres setting the stage for a great performance...
The Writer.

A New Beginning.

After my good friend left for dubai, this blog needed a new subject, it took me all this while to think about what would make an interesting as well as a hilarious read and i have reached to the conclusion that i would write about my peers in India.

The person would not be directly referred to in the writeup but none the less would be entertaining enuff for both who know them and those who dont.

Looking for the first victim...