Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Humor....

It is not often that I post something that I have read. But here is something that made me laugh real hard.. good one :)

Read it patiently….amazingly comical By Dave Barry... humour writer... Pulitzer Prize winner too I think...

So I was at this party, and I wound up at a table where three attractivesingle women were complaining about - Surprise! - men. Specifically,they were complaining about the pickup lines that had been used on themin a bar a few nights earlier.

One woman said: ''This guy comes up to me and says, 'Are you a teacher?'I mean, is that supposed to be romantic?''All three women rolled all six of their eyes.

Another one of them said: ''This guy says to me, 'I've been looking atyou all night!' So I go, 'Hel-LO, we just GOT here.'''

At this point all three women - and I want to stress that these areintelligent, nice women - were laughing. Not me. I was feeling bad for the guys.

I realize that there are certain hardships that only females mustendure, such as childbirth, waiting in lines for public-restroom stalls,and a crippling, psychotic obsession with shoe color. Also, females tend to reach emotional maturity very quickly, so that by age 7 they are no longer capable of seeing the humor in loud inadvertent public blasts of flatulence, whereas males can continue to derive vast enjoyment from this well into their 80s.

So I grant that it is not easy being a female. But I contend that naturehas given males the heaviest burden of all: the burden of always having to Make the First Move, and thereby risk getting Shot Down. I don't knowWHY males get stuck with this burden, but it's true throughout the animal kingdom. If you watch the nature shows on the Discovery Channel, you'll note that whatever species they are talking about - birds, crabs,spiders, clams - it is ALWAYS the male who has to take the initiative. It's always the male bird who does the courting dance, making a totalmoron of himself, while the female bird just stands there, lookingaloof, thinking about what she's going to tell her girlfriends. (''And then he hopped around on one foot! Like I'm supposed to be impressed by THAT!'').

Male insects have it the worst. The Discovery Channel announcer is always saying things like: "After the mating, the female mantis bitesoff the male mantis' head, and then she and her girlfriend mantises use it to play a game that looks a lot like Skee Ball.''

Because I live in Florida, my patio is basically a giant singles bar for lizards. On any given day during mating season, I'll see dozens of male lizards out there making their most suave lizard move, which consists of inflating and deflating a red pouch under their chins. They seem to think that female lizards really go for a guy with a big chin pouch, but I have never once, in 14 years of close observation, seen a female respond. They just squat there looking bored, while all around them males are blinking on and off like defective warning lights.

Every now and then you'll see an offbeat TV news story about some animal, usually a moose, that has for some reason fallen in love with, and decided to relentlessly court, something totally inappropriate, suchas a lawn tractor. This animal is ALWAYS a male. On the TV, they show ithanging around the lawn tractor with a big, sad, moony look, totallysmitten, while the lawn tractor cruelly ignores it.

My point here is that, in matters of the heart, males have the brains of a walnut. No, wait! That is not my point. My point is that perhaps you women could cut us males a little bit of slack in the move-making process, because we are under a lot of stress. I vividly remember when Iwas in 10th grade, and I wanted to call a girl named Patty and ask herto a dance, and before I picked up the phone, I spent maybe 28 hoursrehearsing exactly what I was going to say. So when I actually made thecall, I was pretty smooth.

''Hello, Dance?'' I said. ''This is Patty. Do you want to go to the Davewith me?''

Fortunately Patty grasped the basic thrust of my gist and agreed to goto the dance. This was a good thing, because if she had shot me down, Iwould have been so humiliated that I would have never have been able togo back to school. I would have dropped out of 10th grade and lied aboutmy age and joined the U.S. armed forces, and as a direct result theRussians would have won the Cold War.

That is the awesome power that you women have over us men. I hope you understand this, and the next time a guy walks up and uses some incredibly lame, boneheaded line on you, I hope that, instead of laughing at him, you will remember that he is under the intense pressure of wanting to impress you enough so that you might want to get to know him better and maybe eventually, perhaps within the next 15 minutes, marry him, thereby enabling the survival of the human race, which believe me is the only thing that we males are truly concerned about.

In conclusion, let me just say to all females everywhere, on behalf of all males everywhere, that you are very beautiful and your eyes are like two shining stars, unless you're a female fly, in which case your eyes are more like 2,038 shining stars. So please give us a chance. And if you're not interested, could you introduce us to your lawn tractor?

Friday, April 07, 2006

Poindi, Potche, Its Gone

We had just delivered the code to the clients and now, the system is in the testing phase. Now our Client comes to us with a bug reported by the QA group. She asks us if this was by design meant to be the way it is or was it a pre-existing issue. We tell her that this feature existed in production, but only under one particular condition - for a case where multiple components were used. When used as a single component, the bug isnt evident. Now, that we have enhanced a feature, it doesnt work for any component.. So the client aptly summarized the situation - 'You have made the system consistent by making it not to work for all the features.'

Monday, April 03, 2006

94444 44414 & 28999599

Have you noticed the way people spell out the phone numbers? I was just thinking about how they spell out er.. read these out. Each person has a different way of doing it. Now, isnt that confusing?

You are used to a certain way of reading the telephone number and suddenly, somebody calls you and adds a different punctuation and reads the number to you in a completley new way. Would you understand it? Well for me, I kinda get dis-oriented for a while..I guess my brain is tuned to look at the phone numbers in a certain way and a new way is well, new.....

Okay let us take the example of this cell phone number 94444 44414 ( I do not know whose number this is but it just caught my fancy ) and some of the ways or saying it..

Person 1 : 94(Ninety four) 44(fourty four) 44(fourty four) 44(fourty four) 14(fourteen)
Person 2 : 9(Nine) 444(triple four) 444(triple four) 414(four one four)
Person 3 : 94(Nine four) 444(triple four) 444(triple four) 14(One four)
Person 4 : 9(Nine) 44(double four) 44(double four) 44(double four) (That is three double fours.. this is for extra clarity that people say ) 414(four one four)
Person 5 : 9(Nine) 444(triple four) 4(four) 444(triple four) 14(One four)

When it comes to landlines numbers, it is more fun.. Say you have a number 28999599. The possiblities are little less, I know, but I have heard the weirdest possible ones in these eight digits. Not just the punctuation that differs but also the language.. and if u r someone like me(only the English!)..then man that is surely gonna drive you nuts. Okay so here are some ways of spelling it out

Person 1 : 2(Two) 899(Eight Nine Nine) 95(Nine Five) 99(Nine Nine)
Person 2 : 28(Two Eight) 999(triple Nine) 5(Five) 99 ( double Nine)
Person 3 : 28(iravathi yetu) 99(tonutri onbadhu) 95 (tonutri anju) 99(tonutri onbadhu) (same as Person 2 but in tamil tho!!!)
Person 4: (I term this to be the best I have heard so far..)
rendu kodi, enbathi onbadhu lashathi, tonutri onbadhu aayirathi, ainootri tonutri onbadhu

Oh my God! the number of combination!!!! I am not putting them all down...no no...that would take me ages...
Well, I understand that each person is unique and has a unique way of "looking" at things. But, just one question.. Shouldnt we have one standard way of spelling..er.. reading phone numbers?wouldnt that make lives of people like me easier??

Disclaimer : All the numbers mentioned above are numbers that caught my fancy and any resemblence to an existing landline or cell phone is a mere coincidence.