Walk Alone

They had it coming.

Hooligans who got money to spare. So they buy their children packets of plastic (so thin, they should be banned) during the month preceding Holi. And you know it - suddenly residential areas turn into pitched urban battlefields that would have done the WWII defenders of Stalingrad proud.

They got money to spare. So they buy those biscuits that come in packs of hundred and feed it to the dogs lazing around. And Darwin’s law takes a back-seat. With no competition for food any longer, the damn mongrels multiply; leading to turf wars. At night. Ever tried sleeping through the ruckus that screaming, growling, howling, barking, whimpering dogs make when they are involved in turf wars? At night?

And they live in the apartment below mine. Which is on the ground floor. They got money to spare, right? So what do they do when a relative is getting married? Turn it into a goddamned Ekta Kapoor production, thats what they do. And of course, they save money (how else do you think they get money to spare?) by appropriating the society grounds to serve as the stage for the production.

I wouldn’t have minded a family gathering. But when the damn brats put up a 1000W speaker 5 metres from my window and pump it to full volume for 6 hours daily till 11:30 in the night for 3 days running… Sonuvabitch!

Those bastards should be castrated and fed to the very dogs they feed their biscuits to.

They got no decency at all.

Varun has announced the much-awaited (for those who knew they were coming) BE Electrical 2006 awards. Bhise followed it up with the technical awards, whatever that means. I would say both were interesting reads. We do like to conduct appraisals, after all. And what the heck, maybe these guys themselves are now a bit more sure about their equations with others.

I do not have an affinity for awards. They are ephemereal. What qualifies me for an award now may not be so after sometime. What I do prefer is setting up teams (No, not your typical eleven member cricket teams; so Amey, go back to the bench). Which is something of an irony - I’m a bit (hell, largely) a lone wolf sort of guy. And more often than not, I - a “good ole chair-bound, tapping away at the keyboard” kind of guy - pick out teams patterned after special ops teams. Call it a hangover from reading a bit too many military espionage novels. Be well aware that the people I invite may not have killed a mosquito in their life. They may even refuse to be on my team, but then, hey, I got backups.

Before you fall off your chair visualizing me tagged up in a SAS BDU - a spec-ops team usually has a guy (or many guys) back in the command center - he looks after them, looks out for them; he’s their control. Thats me.

Varun Rajkumar - Want to know why he’s first? Remember Age of Mythology? In there, there’s a warrior with more hitpoints than Arkantos - Ajax. Thats the perfect description for Varun. Dependable through and through. Tends to get high frequently. Short tempered and brutally honest. Your team shall not lose. No matter what.

Kapil Bodkhe - Need a cool head in the team who also has the know-how to get a job done. I have yet to see him blow his fuse. This guy works, without breaking into a sweat. Ever.

Vidyadhar Bhise - This guy is a veritable mine for contacts. You work him right, he drops the names to get your stuff done. Ask me. Catapulted into the tech team without slaving my butt even once beforehand. Head of Tech Team, no less. Also good for getting things done in a hurry.

Hrishikesh Thite - You are kidding! I don’t want to lose because I let this guy go. Throw stuff at him like you throw a ball at a seal. If he’s in the mood (which is the case most of the times) your job is done. Keep those meatballs at hand, just in case…

Amey Kulkarni - Nothing like a random variable to keep a control on his toes. This guy has an unsurpassed capacity for getting beaten up. Got into a cluster-fuck? Put Amey on point and get your team out. Be ready for a case of bad nerves though. This guy is irritating with a capital I.

Piyush Shah - Take Kapil. Remove icy cool and put in tempered steel. This guy does his job. Does it well. And can and does blow his fuse.

Haridas Dave - This guy does his work. And you are left figuring just how the hell he does it.

Yogesh Tarate - One word. A smooth operator. OK, three words.

Vaibhav Patwardan - Job. Well performed. Nothing more is needed. This guy is on my team.

Bhalchandra Bhat - Want someone to work the system. Not much can be achieved by being clean and honest, after all. Use this guy. Watch him and watch your back.

Thats my A team. The one I’ll put out into the field first. Of course, I got a backup. The second tier, to speak of - the B team.

Deepak Ujania - If you had spent less time chasing pussies and instead, hunted the big cats, I might have placed you above.

Aditya Save - What can I say? This guy has the stuff to make it up above, but somehow, he often doesn’t make it. Ask him yourself.

Bhupendra Amodekar - Ambiguity can easily overshadow skill-sets. Dude, learn to avoid mouthing off before completing the thought process.

Pramod Gupta - When I need a memory machine disguised as a human, I’ll ask you to step up. Can you show me the 4-bit counter again? Or was it a decade counter?

Vikas Dixit - Firecracker for a mouth. Enough said.

Himanshu Bari and Rohan Barge - Always seen them together. Even while copying in the exams. The proverbial laughing man and the “I can be a total hunk” guy; together.

Nikhil Parkar - One piece of advice. Don’t get on his bad side. You will never be able to live it down.

Anwesh Das - Talented. Laidback. Too laidback. End of story.

Apratim Ambade - This guy is useful. He knows a lot of stuff. To start with, standup comedy for the benefit of his team.

Nikhil Manjrekar and Deepak Yawalkar - Ever heard of the silent types who always complete the task? These two are it.

Anay Dhoraje - Can be trained. Useful.

I have not identified the B team members’ capabilities as well as I’ve for the A team because I don’t need them as urgently.
And thats all. Well, its not to say that I’ve said FO to the rest of you. There’s not much to set you apart from each other, thats all there is to it.

A big shout out to the 06 batch. You have made me somewhat different from when I left junior college. I’m sure of it.

adj. & n. (something) causing irritation.

Its late afternoon. Quiet (as quiet as a locality in Mumbai can get). You are figuring out how to make your page reload using Javascript, in which you are a novice. You have five tabs open in your browser and you are busy trying and evaluating the best method. And an IM contact pops a window on your desktop with a greeting that is so reeking of artifice, you lose your cool.

Your irritation causes you to take your IM contact to task for that pretense. What follows is a vicious cycle of irritation causing you to shelve your coding and take out your anger (frustration?) on the contact, resulting in a conversation which only serves to increase your irritation.

After it ends and you have your application ready, you wonder about the cost of that interruption.

…was one of the most interesting experiences ever.

Grabcode is a WP plugin available from xmouse. The author, David House, developed it as a stand-alone PHP function and then wrapped it in a plugin. Unfortunately for me, the plugin-related activity on his blog died down around August 2004; with no active link to download the plugin. Finding no other resource on the net, I emailed Mr. House, asking him to mail me the plugin.

I wasn’t expecting a reply. I have sent an e-mail directly to a developer just once before. It is still unanswered. The developer of grabcode, however, replied within the half-hour, with the plugin attached, and with a warning about possible incompatibility with WP 2.0. The plugin works, as the previous post shows. I informed Mr. House about this and then asked him a question about improving the CSS. While relevant to the plugin’s display, it was something he could have justifiably ignored. This time the reply came in a quarter hour.

There was no reason for Mr. House to reply to a complete stranger’s e-mail. Further, there was no reason to answer his unrelated query. But Mr. House did both. With a conciseness that solved my problems without wasting time.

Its developers like him that make code come alive.

By nature, I’m a timid person. I get anxious easily. A bit more pressure and I am scared. A bit more and I’m terrorised. As a corollary, I find others stepping on my toes very easily. In particular, I hate the patronising tone used. As if. See this post and this one. The comments, to be specific. How many of us like to be told to do something. How many of us like it when we are asked, rather firmly, to think in a specific manner? The clincher comes when we are asked not to think or do something. If you can’t detect the perp, here’s one more link, again, in the comments. The person is not to blame. He is confident of himself. Thats always a good thing. But when that confidence seeps into his language and degrades others? When the tone of his language takes the air of superiority? When that person is able to threaten others’ confidence with mere words? When the only thing the person seems to do is negate each and every thought that you state?