Pig and Chicken

Chicken: Let's start a restaurant!
Pig: What would we call it?
Chicken: Ham n' Eggs!
Pig: No thanks. I'd be committed, but you'd only be involved!

The analogy can be easily applied to developers and stakeholders. But we, being developers, can't really say what the pig said, can we?

The tales

I attended yet another training session by Mallon Associates. I absolutely adore these guys, especially their vast knowledge, their experience in industry and subtle sense of humor. And something common between all these guys is, they love to hate microsoft and joke about them. Some of these stories, even if told repeatedly, are great to hear.

Paul told about how microsoft made money by selling beta version of windows 98. They made people take their not complete-in testing phase product, made them test it, give feedback and actually managed to take money from them for this effort. That is like the most cheekiest thing one can ever do!

Another funny thing about microsoft is the progress bar that they have. Why is it called a progress bar when it loads fast initially and then seems to be stuck at a particular percentage for ages. You can easily demonstrate this while copying a file. Actually it is more irritating in vista wherein it appears even when you open explorer.

One interesting fact that I was not aware of is, when you open a browser window, windows has to make 40000 registry reads. Now I will say that is a design flaw. Why do you want to be so dependent on registry! Another one was the messed up locking(lock(x)) in Sun, and microsoft copying it blindly instead of correcting the mistake. What happened to पुढच्यास ठेच मागचा शहाणा???

The Epic

My poor language skills cannot do justice to what I witnessed on Sunday night. Here is the article from Times about the greatest Wimbledon final ever.

Like a couple of gladiators from a vain, bygone era, they waded into the darkness, sparring, assailing, conjuring magic until the last point was snared out of each other.

The world watched in awe, and disbelief, from the edge of its ice-cold seat, as the coliseum called Wimbledon came alive on a glorious Sunday night.

If anything, there was just one minor twist in this heroic battle: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal didn’t carry on and on like worn-out warriors, until they were overpowered by fatigue; they didn’t gasp through the last act on weary legs, drooping arms and withering souls.

In fact, they found new life and new purpose after each shot, each point and each game; every skirmish was like a mini epic, each surpassing the previous one in its grandeur and execution. Amazingly, they were not goaded on by the prospect of defeat or doom, like those gladiators, but by the promise of salvation itself.

True, the rain gods intervened and gave them breaks at the most appropriate of times; true, the evening was cool and pleasant, supplying both with a fresh breath of energy whenever the long arms of doubt or exhaustion were creeping in.

But 4 hours and 48 minutes? Can any other contest scale such heights of pure perfection, nerve-pounding rallies and ethereal shots that till now existed only in some other solar system, or some other dimension?

In the end, of course, Nadal emerged victorious; actually, there was never any doubt, right from the beginning, that he would win. But believe-it-or-go-take-a-walk, it was Federer who played the more divine tennis; he was sublime throughout, whipping out one eye-popping winner after another.

He served better (25 aces to Nadal’s 6), derived more out of his first serve (73% against 69%) and even won the same number of points while receiving (33%); indeed, overall he won just five points lesser than the Spaniard (204 to 209).

But then, the story of his downfall lurks elsewhere: in unforced errors. He made 52 mistakes while Nadal, playing near-perfect percentage tennis, managed only 27. The truth is you could see defeat, despair, in Federer’s eye; you could read it in his body language, at virtually every step.
Nadal too was ambushed by doubt: his brows too furrowed and his lips pursed, quite visibly in the fourth set, but it was transient; he had greater self-belief, more power and higher reserves of energy. He was virtually omni-present, gliding all over the court like a free bird.

Federer, on the other hand, looked mesmerized, walking on a tightrope of his own making. He didn’t win too many games actually; he saved most of them. Each time he held serve, there was only relief, even in his own box, rather than conviction or hope. He was broken just four times but he himself managed only one out of 13.

The fact is, just like at the French Open where he was demolished by poor tactics, Federer got it wrong here too. He was always in a hurry, while patience would have been a better bet. Whenever he made that pre-determined charge, he was beaten by a laser-driven passing shot; whenever he attacked Nadal’s second serve, he was caught by a surprise.

Nadal’s ploy was simple: he attacked Federer’s body with his serve, not giving him any room to play his forcing shots. He delayed his own game till the last moment, leaving Federer unsure and frustrated. With a delicate flick of his wrists, like a table-tennis player, he made the Swiss scurry from one end to the other.

Federer was, in fact, so wary of Nadal’s forehand whiplash that he used his own inside-out winner sparingly; more destructively, he attempted to volley only when he thought he had Nadal’s backhand in a corner. Almost every time, he was greeted by a cross-court beauty. Why didn’t he see it?

As devastating as it may sound, Federer won only 56% of the times he approached the net; Nadal, on the other hand, converted as many as 71%. Basically, Federer was beaten at his own game; it can’t get worse than this for him. Can he ever overcome this nightmare? Can he ever tame Nadal? Or has Nadal already become the gladiator supreme?

Day of Heroes

Yesterday was fun. I got up only to see brutal rains slashing down. It seemed more like a cloudburst. And with high tide coming in picture, Mumbai was under water yet again. The unending woes of traffic jams and delayed train/plane schedules added to the agony. The weather forecast was "incessant rain for next 24 hours along with strong gusty winds". So obviously, it had to stop raining. Everything was back to normal by afternoon.

After seeing the havocs rains had created over the last few years, I took a wise decision of working from home. Its always difficult to WFH in such a scenario, especially when just a day before I had got hands on Heroes season 2. So mission of the day was witnessing Sylar's comeback. It was quite entertaining, but not as much fun as the first part. I guess they had to cut down part of season 2 because of writer's strike. After all, it couldn't have been of just 11 episodes.

Today, in office, we were discussing about the superpowers a person can have. To name a few:
1) Someone who can see HEX code besides a color.
2) Someone who can manipulate reality the way we can do in paintbrush (cropping, rubbing out the colors etc.) Note I am not saying photoshop. We can't use it remember???
3) Someone who can be used as wifi router. With him holding the LAN cable, the whole room becomes wi-fi enabled.
4) Someone who can understand the code just by looking at it.

The last one being the most useful one. Today I spent so much time in figuring out why I wrote a piece of code about a month back. Having a code interpreter will be so handy man. For the sake of simplicity, lets call him CI.
Me: I can't seem to remember why I flipped the order of name and description of only Exchange.
CI: (After a quick glance at the code) Thats because GUI doesn't understand ExchangeDesc you fool. It expects ExchangeName.

Wish life was that easy!