Drupal.org Offline

I found it amusing to see even http://drupal.org goes offline occasionally due to the huge number of connection requests made to the MySQL website.

Is drupal framework tailored to handle heavy loads?

The Art of Story Telling

In my days I have seen movies, read books, listen to stories and even played video games to escape from reality, to free myself from the worries around me. And in this process no one else has been more successful at keeping me at the edge of the seat than "Hideo Kojima"

In one sentence, the guy has got unmeasurable talent especially in the "Art of story telling."

There are many great story tellers throughout the history of mankind, be it Homer the blind guy who wrote Epics like "The Odessey" or "The Illiad" to modern day story tellers in the form of Comics writers like "Stan Lee", to tell story in an interactive media like a video game and bring it to life is a totally different ball game.

The traditional art of story telling does not allow the person who experiences the story to be a part of story or control the characters in the story. But we play the role of the silent spectator. Video games brought a whole new perspective to this by bringing in the person who is getting to know the story also be a part of it even to some extend control it.

Kojima was pretty much an unknown character to me until 1999, that is when I got my Playstation and out of the many random games I selected from the guy who was selling me the games was "Metal Gear Solid" not much of a name to me back then, I tried to play the game couple of times and gave up trying because I just couldn't get past the guards in the initial stage. It was another year later I decided to give the game another try, since I had no other game to play with and got stuck with this one. Once I got hooked into the game, it was more like watching a movie and not a game. Long cut scenes complex story lines. All this was good but what really freaked me off was one of the boss fights in the game between "Snake" the Protagonist of the series taking on a guy named "Psycho Mantis". Now Psycho Mantis is a character that possesses telekinetic and telepathic powers makes it impossible to hit him with any weapon you got, I got frustrated after 3 consecutive defeats and later on was hinted in-game via the radio that I have to switch the controller port from Port-1 to Port-2, the logic being Psycho Mantis cannot track your movements anymore since you switched the controller port, it a bit of breaking the fourth wall, but you just gotta give it to Kojima to think of something innovative like that, a very brilliant way of using the second controller port of a video game console other than using it for a 2nd player support for the game.

The characters he introduce in the game makes an everlasting impression one of my Favorite characters being "Gray Fox", hence I adopted my nick Fox to honor the character. A very inspiring character to me.

And that game was just first in the series, it took some time for me to get into the game but after that I have been a die hard fan of the Metal Gear Series. I went to the extend of downloading and playing the original Metal Gear (1984) and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake (1992) and played them via an emulator in my computer.

Following Metal Gear Solid (1998) in 2001 he released Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and everytime he released a new game in the series the surprises did not end, the twist here was you play as a new character "Raiden" and get to watch "Snake" in action and not play as "Snake" himself. In the third installment Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (2004) the whole game changes you are taken back to the chronological beginning of the story line where it all began. I even played a sniper battle that lasted for 3 hours (yup sat through the whole night).

I got myself a Playstation Portable and now a Playstation 3 to continue playing the rest of the Metal Gear series.

What makes these games, worth just more than an action flick are themes that are covered and the presentation of themes.

• War and Peace
• Nuclear Disarmament and Deterrence
  
• Genetics
• Social Memes
• Scenes

The characters are pretty complex and spans across multiple series within the game. The concept of "Soldiers without Borders", in a broader sense of speaking does symbolize a world without borders or differences.

Even though, I want to go through the details of each of the games, I would not do justice to Kojima's presentation within the game. You have to be a part of it, play it, feel it.

I hope to meet Mr.Kojima in person one day. May be even get a copy of my Metal Gear Sold 4, autographed by him.

Functions & Relationships

I am supposed to be programming some filter functions into a website when I write this blog entry. (Yeah yeah, I know it is not what I was supposed to be doing, me programming a website and all sounds like Bullshit, But Why?! It helps me pay for my bills :-).)

I have been under a lot of pressure lately, from parents or should I say parent, my Mom of course, she has been driving me nuts asking for my Salary slip probably to put me up for sale in some matrimony site and guess what! even a computer illiterate like her knows there are matrimony websites and was suggesting I put a profile up there.



After watching the above Leonard Hon video (A guy who makes life out of wedding videography and who is real damn good at it), I decided to write somethings about relationships in my life. Worth a read when I get old.

I feel like you know one of those stuffed teddy bear put in a toy store shelf waiting be sold to some little 6 year old girl who will see it and like it and then annoy her parents to buy her the teddy. And the teddy even gets to sleep with the girl :-D.

But life isn't so smooth for the teddy, the teddy never had a say about anything in its life or the girl who bought the teddy.

Things have been on a downhill in the relationships, the previous one was a total disaster when I asked the girl for a photo and she freaked out. Said "I do not give my photos to strangers", even after one year of knowing her. Always made excuses that her aunt died and her other aunt is down with Asthma when I asked to meet with her.

Coming to think of it I do not know if I had a uphill with relationships.

Lets rewind the clock back to exactly, to October 2006 back in Cognizant technology solutions where a weird psycho was taking class on soft skills and asked me who my first crush was and I replied so innocently with "It was my 486 PC when I was 13 years old" - My Mom sold the PC without even asking me it was a sad day for me, I used to play old the "Duke Nukum" Platformer in that when I used to go to Kuwait, even though I had a Playstation beside me.

Then there were the dreams of the mysterious "Girl" and she was a bitch too, got married without even inviting me. I guess that is the closest I have gotten to a girl, at least I said I love her by looking at her eyes.

During my days in Chennai I got in touch with 2 women. One an old acquaintance a very lively girl, I should have met her for a face to face chat when she invited me to Ascendas, but on that very day my 500 GB HDD developed a bad sector and I was running to Ritche Street to get it repaired (important data you see) so that meet went to the drain. But I guess she was not my type, lived in a fantasy world. She got married to some dude in TCS. I did not even attend her marriage (even after a personal invite, got food poisoning on the eve of marriage) I hope they are living their life to the fullest.

Which brings me to the other Woman, lets call her Irene, the most interesting relationships develop in the most unexpected places. I met her online in a game called Human-Age, from the moment I met her I knew that this world has at least one woman who had the qualities which I seek in my life partner. And to this day Irene is the person who is the closest female friend I have. I still pop questions about proposing, dating, girl psychology to her whenever I am in doubt on what needs to be done.

So that is a short summary of relationships I had so far, yup most are just crappy fantasies and some just weird and freaky. As I grow older everyday I question myself on the question of getting married, with my parents pressuring me from one side (I have become independent of their pushes and pulls they try to impose on my life since I left to Cognizant where I kind of changed myself). I do not know if I actually falling apart of just going through some phase in my life. I just feel not ready to take up the responsibility of a relationship. I do not believe that relationships between two person can be developed overnight or couple of months via an arranged marriage (theory states otherwise, that arranged marriages are pretty successful.) Most of the time it works here too, take two pieces of wood, apply super glue on the flat surfaces and the press glued surfaces together with our hands supporting the either sides.

• First piece of Wood == Groom in Arranged Marriage
• Second piece of Wood == Bride in Arranged Marriage
• Super Glue == The Wedding ceremony (and things of similar kind)
• The hand holding the first piece of wood == Groom's Family
• The hand holding the second piece of wood == Bride's Family
  

So you see why things are kind of successful at least from an Indian perspective.

Recently I have been having thoughts on the complexity of the relationships, and it is way complex. some have even tried to explain it via the use of game theory, it is a good read and worth a shot. But it does a bit more than reducing the decision of two people based on mathematical equations, prisoner's dilemma and relationship matrices. It involves people making sacrifices, compromises, understanding one other, taking decisions. I guess I am not ready for any of those, not yet.

I believe that one should go out there and find a mate for themselves and it is not the job of their parents do so.

Maybe one day I will or Maybe not.

Good days

Yesterday was a good day.

1.Blogged after a pretty long time
2.Had couple of pegs of Vodka
3.Had some tobacco in mouth
4.Smoked some pure weed wearing a "Pink Floyd" T-Shirt
5.Listened to "Pink Floyd"

Sometimes makes life worth living :-)

They dont't really care about us

A close friend of mine who quit IT sometime back for higher studies gave his view point on the company I used to work for. Seems that his views were more interesting, especially when it got posted in the internal blog and got blocked :-)

To be sung to the tune of Michael Jackson’s ‘They don’t really care about us’

Heavy head
Achin’ head
Everybody gone bad
Situation
aggravation
Everybody allegation
In formals
on cubicles
Everybody just resources*
kick kick
thrown out
Everybody’s gone mad

All I wanna say is that
Cognizant don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that
Cognizant don’t really care about us

Beat me
hate me
You can never break me
Will me
thrill me
You can never kill me
hire me
fire me
Everybody *do* me
Kick me
kick me
Don’t you bloody cheat me
All I wanna say is that
Cognizant don’t really care about us
All I wanna say is that

Cognizant don’t really care about us

Tell me what has become of my life
I have worked for 3 years
bloggers who love me
I am the victim of
policy brutality, now
I’m tired of being the victim of injustice
You’re raping me of my money
Oh, for God’s sake
Look into my eyes
And tell I worked for charity…
Set me free

(repeat)
I’m tired of bein’ the victim of shame
They’ve thrown me in a
class with 3rd bucket names
I can’t believe this is the
Company from which I grew up
You know I do really hate to say it
The HR people don’t wanna see
But if Gandhi was living
He would be spanking all ur bottoms om om au au, yeah….

All I wanna ask is does
Cognizant really care about us?
All I wanna ask is do
They really care about us?

Coming to why this post: Did you know that if you resign, your manager is given 2
option:
1) Release you after exactly 2 months or
2) Release you after 2 months minus your vacaction leave. In case, your PM needs you to stay the entire 2 months in order to get replacement and for KT session, then your vacation leave is gone waste. The HR confirmed yesterday that they won’t be reimbursing the vacation leaves.

Plus if you have put the papers now, forget about spending the Christmas with your family and everyone you love.

If I take my case, that would mean 19 days of vacation leave which I earned have gone waste. Was I really working for charity for 3 years here? This policy change wasn’t even announced to the company ‘resources’! What-the-hell??!!

*Resource: Available source of wealth; a new or reserve supply that can be drawn upon when needed

Please give your comment on this. I’ll be in office in another 30 - 45 minutes.

P.S. This is a post that was the result of pure frustration… Try understanding my situation

It is true you know. These companies are just blood sucking leeches just a matter of time before you realize they are sucking you dry.

Political Transaction

This once popped up when I was trying to do an online transaction for a T-Shirt I was trying to buy online. What are the Odds that the letters B J P, gets picked randomly from a set of 16 letters which are there on my ATM - Debit Card. Lets see

1 * 1 * 1 / C(16,3)

which translates to

1 / 560

Or in other words there is a 1 in 560 chance of that happening.

P.S: BJP is the short form of one of the bigger political parties in India.

After entering the correct values I ended up with this.
The followed by this error. Finally after about couple of hours got through the banking site. And I was able to purchase the T-Shirt.

A Tip

Tip - A tip (also called a gratuity) is a voluntary extra payment made to certain service sector workers in addition to the advertised price of the transaction.

Source: Wikipedia

This has been a subject of discussion amongst myself and my friends for a real long time.

We have discussed this at various points of time, from college days to as recently as today. The concept of tip was always confusing for me.

Here is my point, since tips always deal with Tertiary sector (Service Sector), and the definition is bit vague it states "certain service sector" workers. Who are these certain service sector workers, classic example would be the waiter who served you in the restaurant or a taxi driver who just dropped you off at your destination.

I have worked in the service sector of the economy for the past 3.5 years as an IT worker, so I think I do qualify for a tip, even though I have never got one. I have gone beyond the call of duty many times to get a job done. At the most all I have got is an appreciation mail (and it does not cost a thing) and most of these mail comes in a template these days so fuck that. But then you might say that I get bonus at the end of the year, hey but then which company doesn't give bonus to its employees and more over the company I worked in actually gave bonus as a part of the salary and not as an addition to the existing salary.

In contrast, whenever I went out with my friends to a hotel, the waiter was tipped regardless of the service that was provided. And many times I have asked my friends on what basis you tip the waiter, and even put forward the question why do you tip the guy after such bad service?

Bad service includes (not a complete list)

• Delayed order taking
• Delayed serving
• Not filling up the glasses of water when empty
• Bad quality of food (of course you might think you are doing injustice but hey!!! you ain't tipping for the crap)

Here are some of the reasons that were stated to me on why tipping (in restaurants) has to be done (some of these were quoted to me directly.

• "I want to gain respect" -- Wokay money can buy you anything
• "Next time I come in the waiter will remember me" -- As per Zeigarnik Effect the waiter may better remember customers who do not tip him, in a restaurant were tips are regular.
• "Next time I come in with my Girl friend I will be given the best place in the restaurant" -- Once again depends on the amount of tipping done in the restaurant if there are regular tips the effect could be worse.
• "I get exclusive information about the dishes and specials" -- OK its something like KKK and I wanna be a part of it
• "I may look like I am a miser" -- I just gotta blow the money so that I look like a rich bitch in front of others.
• "It is a norm / etiquette / without tipping I am doing unethical activity" -- My neighbor jumped in the well, so I should do the same without thinking twice.

What is the standard tipping rates? Magical number 10%, so I eat for Rs 5000 in a posh restaurant I have to tip Rs 500, no matter how much crap the service is.

So basically what you are doing is a very diluted form of bribery something that Indians are very accustomed to.

Any established rules, of course not, these are unwritten rules, you do it because you seen somebody else do it and it gets hard coded into your mind, just like how you need to suit up with shoes, socks and tie for an interview, because others do the same (believe me I have done this) and you do not even know if that guarantee's your job.

What is funny is the rule of tipping doesn't apply when you have food from a small side shop where you are directly served and you don't need to pay a lot for the food. But you just gotta tip the waiter who stood there taking away your empty plates in a buffet where you serve yourself. I think in this case the waiter was doing what is expected of him and not something out of the ordinary.

In some countries tipping is expected out of you, so you just got to tip the waiters. I do not completely agree with this rule.

Here are my rules for tipping.

• Service should be above par, only exceptional service quality need to be rewarded. Any service that is at par or below par shouldn't be rewarded.
• If the food is good and not the service tip the chef and not the waiter.

Hence I tip the guys at these small side shop restaurants, because of the value for money in the food they provide and sometimes great quality food. An example being a juice shop in Trivandrum, that gave us 3.5 glasses of "Orange-Lime Soda" when ordered for 2, so for the price of 2 I am getting 1.5 glass extra and this is not an error in calculation, they do it for all their customers and their juice is above par compared with most of the juice shops in Trivandrum.

Today I tipped a waiter in a restaurant, I did this for the first time whole heartedly. This is what happened.

I ordered a cup of black coffee, I was given a cup of black coffee and as soon as I began to sip the coffee after stirring it, the waiter came by and said to me

"Sir, the coffee which I gave has more water and less coffee, so if you hand me the cup I will fill it up with more coffee"

I was kind of surprised, but this statement. He took away the the cup which was 3/4th filled.

After sometime he brought me a cup that was full and had stronger coffee flavor.

It takes a lots of guts to do the action he did and I admire his spirit. "Above par, excellent service", for a bill of Rs 211 (including other food) I added an extra Rs 50 as tip. He deserved it.

Positive Improvements

Not a lot in life has been improving, but learning Kung-fu certainly does have some positive effects.

Got beat up in a Sparing match, they guy opposite to me was a Wu Shu black belt. Within seconds I was a sticker on the wall. Got struck in the throat twice and almost dislocated a jaw. Now my chest muscles are all paining after the heaving thumping.

Hey but look at the positive side...


My DotA improved :-)

Not a bad game I must say.

Cart Wheeled

The hands went over head, then thrust down, the leg slowly rising to synchronize with the thrusting down of the hand, both hands placed on the ground, the whole body upside down, a sudden slip of the right hand on the sweat present on the ground, tumbling down and rolling over to hit a brick wall.

All in the name of doing a cart wheel in my Jow-ga class. I was lucky not to get a dislocated shoulder. After some massaging by the instructors the pain was bearable.

I must be getting old for this act.

The Birthday Experiment

Just a small experiment I tried out for this birthday.

I moved my birthday to about 11 months ahead of time in Orkut just to see if anyone in this hopeless world actually does remember my birthday (i.e. other than my parents)

After a bit of waiting and the birthday pass by here are the results

No one actually does remember...

It means I am successful at keeping a low profile, probably in due course of time people will actually forget me :-)

P.S: I did get two greetings from very close friends, I think this was because of the Facebook Profile (Damn you Facebook!!!)

The Trek

So finally I am trying to get things done, the things I want at least. For the first time in my life I did a trek. And let me tell you the feeling was awesome, I got a very very small glimpse of the western ghats.

Our aim was to get to a place called "Pakshipathalam" it is a 7.5 KM trek from "Thirunelli" in Waynad. All of us got out by 6:45 AM to our road trip to Thirunelli, we had some break fast from a small hotel en route to Thirunelli.

The Trekkers

With the very little experience in photography I have, I managed to capture some of the snaps of the trip.

The initial part of the trek was very tough for me, since the path was a bit steep, I was running out of breath very fast. The constant motivation by my friends made me go on. Special thanks to the stick handed over to me by Ashik and the Ventolin Inhaler which I have always carried with me.

With a stick in my right hand and an inhaler in the other, there was nothing that was going to stop me (does an evil grin...)

Music playing in head - Take my breath away - Cher

Most of the paths were winding through the forests

The winding path

After a small climb the tall canopy began to clear out and the view became clear and what I saw is best described by the picture, I may not have the artistic sense to put it in words.

A glimpse of Western Ghats

Our Pro Photographer

I have never enjoyed the raw beauty of nature like this. The view was just awesome, for moment I just stood there looking at the lush green forest slopes.

And then we saw the watch tower.

Music playing in head - All along the watchtower - Bob Dylan

The Watch Tower

We took a 15 min break here, the view from top of the tower was pretty cool, I took some shots of Manuel and Ashik while I was at the top of the tower.

Looking at Ashik

Looking at Me

After the short break we went through some more winding path and after that the land was less steep and more flat, we passed through these meadows, I was seeing meadows for the first time. It was more of open grasslands, with intermittent clumps of forest.

Music Playing in head - No Ceiling - Eddie Vedder

No Ceiling

He leads the way, from behind

After about 3.5 hrs of Trekking we reached the top of Pakshipathalam, A moment I caught on my camera.

Facing Hills

The guide told us that if you go over the edge, the probability of finding your body is minuscule. We could clearly see the Kerala / Karnataka border here.

The Borderlands

After this we made it into the caves, there are these dark pits in the caves where bats dwelled. Even though we could not reach the bottom of the caves, we traversed the caves and it was all calculated placements of foot and partial jumps, one small slip and that would mean a "game over", the place reminded me of "Indiana Jones"

I am a relative of Indiana Jones

The trek down was a bit tough as the legs were paining and I was constantly slipping down the slopes. In about 3.5 hours we made it down to our starting point. We were all dead tired from our trek, and we got in this shop on our way back. The tradition is to have tea and Unni Appam from this shop, if you were ever going through this way.

The Shop Owners

Oh boy isn't this refreshing

After a long trek, tired and aching bones what do you do?

Go to Manuel's house and have the dinner of your life. Manuel's mother makes excellent food and I loved every bit of it, it was a full course dinner. I loved the tender mango pickle.

The most imba food in this part of the country

Looking forward to more adventures with friends...

Makes life worth living...

P.S: A special thanks to Irene, who motivated to move my arse to have a look at the big world out there

Last.fm Bug

Jefferson Airplane is pretty cool, I wish I lived in their era...but I noticed this strange bug in the song listing.



The Union Underground got Anachronistically between "Bullet for My Valentine" and "Jefferson Airplane"

Strange bug, the first one I noted in Last.fm in 4 years after I started using it.

What goes around, comes around

Oh yeah, I got a new project manager, and most of you know the stories, if not you can find it Here, Here, Here, Here, Here, Here & Here

Life in Zyxware has been good so far, even though the work is Drupal Centric, the freedom in work makes me forget about the nature of work.

But the irony in life is the fact that due to the very weighted dice I got, I have a project manager once again. Compared to the previous experiences with absolute retards, all I am expecting is some one who will leave me alone.

Since I work off timings usually, the manager had requested me to meet her personally. So one day I woke up early and went over to the office to meet with this new manager.

Let me try to recollect the event, I went through the door and there she was sitting over the dining table damn my work place is taken now...anyway after the morning greetings, I went over to the food table made a bowl of corn flakes.

Now why corn flakes, I usually need something to keep me distracted in manager meetings, I usually take a pen and pad and start doodling nonsense into it keeps my calm when questions like "Is firewall hot?" is asked to me and I was hungry.

Project Manager(PM): So I heard you have got some industry experience and you have worked in a company before

Me: True (Not that I am very proud of my career)

PM: So then you know about time-sheets and meeting project deadlines etc

Me: I have had some experiences (Glimpses of the Coca Cola Incident Flew by in my mind)

PM: So why did you quit?

Me (Sipping from you corn flakes bowl): I had issues with my project manager

PM: Oh, tell me about it...

(Man was that a long story to tell...)

PM: I think, what you had is just a bad experience, I do not think companies like Infosys here have this bad politics.

Me: Oh really? Do you want to see mail forwards from my friends here in Trivandrum Infosys about internal politics?

PM: So you had issues when estimating in your project

Me: Yes, kind of.

PM: Where I used to work he had an estimation team that does all the estimations

Me: So you don't involve the developer in the estimations?

PM: We do we all have a big meeting (going on ....)

(Tell me about it, I used to sleep through the big ones)

Me: So how do you actually estimate a work?

PM: We got the concept of function points, it means we divide the task into a numerous function points and then we estimate on the basis of this function points.

Me: Say If I have a task to display a "Hello World" string from a Database on to a Web Page, how would you estimate this?

PM: We would divide the displaying Part into a function point and the retrival part into a function point and then do the estimation for each of them.

(Sounds reasonable, but look what happens)

Me: Ok, sounds fair, but there is usual rule of thumb for estimation, Say I have been given to write a script for the system I am working in, I know exactly how much time will it take to write the script, for example let us assume it takes 4 Days, I will estimate it to 4 Weeks. After this it goes to my Project Manager, here I sit and argue with my Manager on why I need 4 weeks but as usual I he will try to reduce it and will finally end up with 3 weeks, and once it goes to the client, the client will say that his team can do it in 2 weeks then how come you take 2 weeks. So then we reestimate the project to 1 Week development and 1 Week Testing.

PM: Yeah...

Me: So thats how projects get estimated practically...

PM: So are you happy with the work here.

Me: Of course not, I am not happy, I really do not like the work I am doing, but I like open source and the philosophy on which Zyxware was built which is why I chose to work here in the first place.

PM: So what would you like to work in?

Me: In core computer science.

PM: What is core computer science?

(Something that is not worth answering to a person who don't know about it)

Later on...

PM: So I am trying to implement processes in here, currently everything is a mess.

Me: True, but when you implement processes things get more complicated and people tend to loose their freedom. If such a situation arises in Zyxware, I will quit the company, there are no second thoughts on that. Also a process is good if people adhere to it, most of the time processes are just placeholders no one actually follows it. The only reason processes exist is so that the company passes through some Audits.

PM: I will try to implement them in such a way that it does not affect the current work style.

Me: Have you read Dilbert by Scott Adams?

PM: No

Me: You should, it is a must read book for managers. It talks about all these aspects of processes, estimation etc from a comical stand point. But it contains serious stuff also. It is a must read.

PM: Ok, anyway let me see how these processes can be made out without affect much of the current work style

Me: Yes thats what everyone says and then all of them ends up as Darth Vader.

Anyway new changes have been coming into system slowly by surely, one of them being "Thought for the day" in the mailing list, my friend says he used to do that in his company when he was in bench and had lots of time to waste.

And today...

PM: How is the work progressing?

Me: Its progressing

PM: Are you happy with the client?

Me: Of course not, I am not happy, I will let you know if anything changes

Good thing my friend called over the mobile phone I had a chance to escape another non productive waste of time conversation.