Random thoughts

Even my worst critic would agree that I travel fairly regularly.
Buses.
Cars.
Autos.
Trains.
Flights.
Anything that moves.

The crowds that engulf me are families, kids, matronly aunts and jolly uncles, late 40s trudging along their arcs of life, and the omnipresent 20 some things. Dedicated. Focused.

The chatter goes on around me.
Someone is calling home.
Telling bye bye or hello to their mates, loved ones.
Business men on their bijnesh calls.
Additionally always there are office calls. More like calls from office. Or to office colleagues.
And these are always about :
Status updates
Issues
Escalations

And that one single messaging :
- I'll dial in tomorrow for the client call
- yep send me an email. I'm carrying my laptop.

These guys and girls. They are not in management roles. Not people who carry around office blackberries.
But they always carry their laptops home.
I'm one of them.

So are we ever really on leave?
Will someone die if I don't log in tomorrow?
Why should the business be impacted by one person going on leave?
That's ridiculous.
And that's the reality.

Coming home

My mom used to change the house a lot. When we were kids, my mom would regularly move the furniture around the rooms, trying to see if the house yielded more space than before. It was great fun for us kids. We got to push the chairs and tables around once in a couple of months, and felt very strong. At that time, dad was mostly out of town, posted in towns far from us. Given the travel involved, and the safety issues associated with it, dad would usually visit us once in a fortnight, sometimes a month.
Now that I think of it,  I wonder sometimes how it made dad feel. Coming home to a new home time and time again, at the same address and with the same people in it, but just different in little ways.

When I left home to go to college, we lived in a flat in Baroda, a city we had moved to 2 years ago. I still didn't have a hang of the city, but I was slowly getting a feel of the house. It had a basement that I studied in, a balcony out back with potted plants. And then I moved.
While I was in college, we bought a house in Baroda. The first time I saw it, it was a half constructed house, but the walls already felt of home, and it came associated with a permanent address, something I had never experienced in life.
In a few years the house was finished, we moved in, we made it home. All this while, I was in a bigger city, far far away. Every trip home I would find new additions. A new show piece in the drawing room, a microwave in the kitchen, new sheets that I hadn't seen being bought, and other things small and large that were part of the house.
Last trip, it was a new room. A room with cement walls, large windows, a fancy design. Wall color and furniture choices were the questions most discussed. This will be my room, and hence my choices are important. What should the shelf look like, will there be a low bed, or a study table, where's the best light.

What I couldn't voice , and probably will never be able to, is that I never want all this. I just want to come home and be the little me again, happy with what I painted in drawing class, feeling strong and invincible. That's what coming home should be about.

Let’s learn to Invest

It’s 30^th of July. And I'm repenting why I was so lazy throughout 2013-14 and didn't care to make good investments. And as you can imagine, it takes a fair bit of brain-muscle to find the right investment, and a stronger willpower to save money and ‘invest’ in that right investment.

Why I am writing all this here, you ask!

Ah huh!

You haven't noticed the dots yet.

So I’m also repenting that I now need to rewrite a code that works perfectly alright, makes all the right noises, and generates the numbers that it’s supposed to.

But here’s the ‘Kick’. {No it's not worth a 100 crores either}

If I pass it on to you today, I’m sure you will spend 5 days understanding it, and then spend the weekend cursing me over a bottle of water. And you will come back on Monday and the code will not make any sense whatsoever anyway.

Here! Look! That’s the second dot for you.

2 dots are good enough to draw a straight line, and hence, draw conclusions. But let me give you a third dot to make life a little bit easier.

Next month, there’s going to be an inspection, the type we call ‘Quality & Compliance’. They are going to be reviewing everything. And when I say everything, I mean everything.

They will look at your desk [Is there confidential stuff lying around?]

They will look below your keyboard [You are writing all your passwords on a sticky and sticking it under the keyboard aren't you?]

They will look into your system’s history [No skeletons in that closet I hope!]

They will look at your documentation [dot the i’s and cross the t’s my lad]

And they will look at your code, its input, its output, its log, and anything else they can find.

Based on the above scenarios, I think you should clean up the code a bit. Add a few comments to describe the various sections in the code. Oh wait! Sections! Hmm! I didn't exactly write the code in sections. There was a lot of trial and error and copy and paste. Maybe you should start there. Organize the code into sections first. What? You can't pull them apart? Why? Oh, they are written that way you say? Fine by me, the audit is all yours then. Oh don't be scared boy. Maybe!!!!! Yes, right, that’s a good Idea. Spend the weekend here in office, and write the whole thing from scratch. Make sure you build it in sections, demarcate them by writing comments, add defensive codes, handle exceptions, and while you are at it, teach it to make a good filter coffee as well.

There, I said it. There’s your third dot.

Do I make any sense now?

Not yet?

Go wash your face, get some coffee, and come back to class by 11.15.

We will then go over how you should think, plan and then write programs. Got it?

“Invest time upfront, rather than jumping off the cliff and hoping you grow wings”

–Justmade Itup

Investments are subject to risks. Please store the pig in a safe place after investing.