hanging in there..

the last one week or so had been a minor version of hell on earth.

My current work assignment had me teamed up with one of the smartest engineers in my department - and we were in charge of migrating our product from platform A to platform B.

Being teamed up with him was both a delightful and a heart rending experience: I had learned lots in that time, but I truly realized the inner limits of my dumbness. It was a very humbling experience.

We were hoping (i was praying hard actually) that we would be able to get all the work done before he went on vacation - but this did not exactly happen. In fact, due to server issues, lots of work were left undone even as he left for vacation.

guess who has to try to figure out how to carry on?

It was not a problem of donning my super-hero tights. It was rather tough to deal with the stress (though not impossible). The problem was that I was already rather overworked and feeling the strain.. and manOhManOhMan - he left big shoes that are hard to fill and even harder to walk in.

.. so far, so good. approximately 1.5 more weeks to his return. So far, in his absence, we have encountered all the possible combinations scary situations (the type that makes you want run to the toilet to throw up). However, these were those which we had previously encountered while he was here (except that now, I have to solve them myself).

.. I'm now left with a nagging question: having experienced all that I did for the last 1.5 weeks, are the next 1.5 weeks reserved for some new scarier problems?

monday ramblings

met my head of department in the kitchen while grabbing a cup of coffee. Since the difference in levels between the HoD and me (pee wee engineer) is somewhat akin to a plankton to a whale, I'm normally inclined to tiptoe around him.

unfortunately, he spotted me and small talk was inevitable. Even though i was actually fighting the irrestible urge to fall prostate in reverent awe, some conversation was managed (as per the following):

Him: "Did you make the coffee?"
Me: "No" (wondering what this would lead to)
Him: "oh. good. else its too strong"

My immediate reply would normally be "there is no strong coffee. There are only wimpy coffee drinkers", but some instinctive self-preservation instinct helped me to hold back from an early demise..

Here's something which is bugging me now - how did he know that i make the strong coffees? Did my reputation go before me.. again?

a chunk of ugliness..

(Machine generated code)

.. if (true) {

return new SomeClass( ..);

}

throw new Exception ( "Missing return statement");.

I'm rather curious: which is more scary - that there is no return statement, or true can be false?

its finally monday!

No! don't call the boys in white yet. (This is, btw, not a political reference for those of you reading in from singapore).

I've relieved that its monday: after spending three quarters of my weekend on my back with fever, work seems like heaven. I don't seem to get sick on weekdays though - its gotta do with a family curse or something: dad never fell sick (much) on work days either. I guess someone up the family tree must have offended some supernatural power and left his offspring stuck with this mumbo-jumbo.

I'm now relatively healthy, full of energy, able to leap a building in a single bound (make that a short building), faster than a speeding snail and able to dodge bullets matrix-style (thrown by an extremely over-aged grandpa. how about it, gramps? you gonna throw that at me?).

Unfortunately, that modest list of extrordinary accomplishments above does not include solving strange bugs.

I'm now looking at gremlin-typed problems: those which appear and disappear mysterously, and despite the best application of logic, cannot be explained.

I guess the problem is here to stay: the evil spirit causing such problems usually require some maiden sacrifices to be appeased, and maidens are in very short supply in R&D..