Life or Something Like It....

How many times have you heard yourself say this - "Life sucks!!! Why is all this happening only to me?? God is unfair..Or does He exist after all??"Any of these or their variations means you are going through a bad patch or you are having one of those "dog days".

I've has numerous such dog days...Herez one such typical day...I am fast asleep...Its 7.30 AM in the morning..The alarm buzzes..I promptly switch it off anf go back to sleep counting on my body clock to wake me up exactly ten minutes later (I thought I'd programmed my body clock to do that...wake me up ten minutes after that inital realworld alarm .Wait..did I say I programmed??Then you know what to expect)...

So as the story goes....I get up half an hour after the inital alarm...thanks to my friend's alarm..I switch on the geyser...And off goes the power.....I go to the dark bathroom...knock the bucket down..producing some noisy vibrations that ensue a few more noisier vibrations from my room-mate who is still fast asleep..I try to be done with some of the regular morning chores(You know what I mean) and the water dosen't flush....Therez no power for the motor....Now nothing irritates me more than this ...How many of you beleive in Murphy's laws??

I cleanse my body and mouth quickly with ice-cold water.. come out...cant find the best fit apparel for the day....I finally make do with a not-so-good one....get dressed up quickly (just half an hour for getting made up :(...have to make up for the extra slumber)...go down gulp down the dosa without the chutney (no power for the mixie, you see) and walk out in the morning crowd hoping to magically get a seat in any of the BMTC buses.

Having gotton used to the BMTC buses for over six months at Bangalore, I consider myself fairly good at judging a bus by its front and back looks (as well as I do with people - one of my innate snap judgements)...I know which of them to get into in order to find a ladies seat atleast..I skip as much as five six or six buses to get into the seventh...And as good old Murphy would have it, five or six times out of seven, my judgements are wrong...I end up standing my five-kilometre-one-hour-bus-straddle through the traffic pleasantly brushing the equally pleasant co-passengers..

I finally reach my office...and dutifully start working..I check my mails and orkut scraps...An hour passes by and I decide to switch over to my Solaris box finally...There has been this bug that has to be fixed since two months...Its a very simple fix, the testing is just a little elaborative..my team-lead reassures me...I make the code change..itz simple enough...the usual copy-paste...I build the product image...the build fails....Looks like some OS issue...I try to resolve it my way...I reboot my Solaris box....it dosen't reboot....complains something in technically very foul language and expressions...and refuses to honor my commands...I seek my supposedly tech-savvy team-mate's help to resolve the issue...After some dilly-dallying he finally takes agrees to take a look..He tries some commands that he knows I wouldn't know and gives me the same-old expression and conclusion...Its broke....He then retires to his own tech-crunch blogs that he has to catch up with...

I call up a friend in the OS team for help...He promises to come by in an hour....I relax in the relaxing Windows box...orkut and Google Talk again...Just then , (as good old Murphy would have it) my team-lead walks by my monitor and takes a look at those interesting scraps and chat one-liners....(You get the most interesting pop-ups only when your team-lead is standing by your system)..I demonstrate the issue to her and she gives the same old expression again...Try to fix the issue and have the bug-fix checked in....

My friend from OS team does turn up....takes a look at the poor box...types a few commands that I would have been probably aware of, if only I had discerned what they were...These OS guys have a way of typing those fast Solaris commands so fast that they and only they know whats happening...And the box seems to be talking to them in a totally different way than it does when I try handling it...It responds to their touches while it refuses mine...After a few minutes, he declares "I know what it is...you've broken the link to the /bin file". "Oh no, I didn't"..And while I keep rejecting his claims and am trying to think of plausible explanation, he quickly creates the link and reboots the box..and Lo and Behold...it boots......Wow.......Lunch time....

And between the afternoon siesta, I try to build the image and test it...(It takes an hour and a half to test that fix, its just a little elaborative you see)...And the fix dosen't work..I am not shaken....One of the golden rules in Software is that if your fix works for the first time, therez something seriously wrong about the fix, I re-iterate this new-age Murphy's rule to myself and go back to the code fix..I take a deep breath and an astute look...And there...I'd forgotten the negation operator in the condition check, and it devotedly behaved the opposite way, as it should....I make that change, build and test...And this time while I test, the server refuses to start....And the logs report some new error that I have no clue about..(Another of those golden rules - Whenever you look at the logs, you will find an error you have never seen before)..

While I keep brooding about it, my manager walks by with my lead..They look rather annoyed..."Did you test the fix you made about Bug XXXXX on Monday??"He asks rather loudly I thought..."Yeah, I did"...I respond rather meekly...."The product is not installing in Windows, and reports the error related to your bug-fix. QA have raised a new P1 stopper ...This is the last build for the release and this issue is delaying it up...Yyy Xxx from QA says this problem is even reproducible in Solaris....If yes, this is a SERIOUS problem, This is rather shameful of us.Check that out"...He leaves, leaving me thunder-struck.

Now, I am shaken....Not yet stirred though...I try to install it on Solaris....I chant all the prayers I can think of....I call up my mom and ask her to pray....Time dosen't fly...it crawls....And finally yes, it does install on Solaris.... and another round of testing by a team-mate doubly ensures that...The bug was only with Windows...It wasn't as bad as we thought...I heave a sigh of relief....I know I can't take more for the day....And yet the P1 stopper....my manager's temper..

I walk back to the stop reflecting how doggy the day was....Why is all this happening only to me?? God is unfair..I pass a neigboring temple that I used to frequent on normal days...I somehow don't feel like praying anymore....I am too exhausted for it....And then I see him....waving at me enthusiastically from the temple.....He smiles broadly while he waves...And then he returns to sweeping the temple...The old hunchback who has made that temple his home...the wrinkled skinned septuagenerian to whom I spare a penny or two whenever I frequent the temple and get a toothless broad smile in return..Today I didn't give him the penny, but he did give me that smile and a wave...and he didn't know...he also made me realise that I'm blessed after all....and he also made me discern the beauty of life or something like it....It is worth living after all these dog days....

Let Murphy go and hang himself.......