The fourth kind

According to a highly funded research conducted by a renown anthropologist, the humans are divided into three kinds by their ability to do mistakes

1. People who learn from other's mistakes
2. People who learn from their mistake and
3. People who never learn

For easy understanding of people who don't understand the meaning of anthropology, lets call the first category "ball-less", the second category as "balled" and the third as "steel-balls".

Ball-less

This category people consider themselves to be the most brilliant people alive. But to be frank, intelligence level of these people are just average. The biggest difference between them and the other humans is that, they have no guts to do anything or take any decision. Or in simple English, they have no balls. I'll illustrate this with a very good example: 

Let X be a ball-less and Y be a non-ball-less

X sees that Y lost 20% of his invested money in a very bad move. He concludes that equity share trading is very risky and only fools do it. They never understand or try to understand the famous quote that "Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing" and study about the market and then invest. They just back off ignoring the millions of people who actually make profit.

Balled

These people are the most commonly found human subspecies. Majority of them are ambiverts and always carry a will to live, even if they lose both their hands and legs are sure to be bedridden for the rest of their life. They take risk as they understand that world runs on the theory of "no risk, no profit" but they always play safe. It can be easily assumed that majority of us (Working class people) come under this category and wish to stay here. They always strive to maintain equilibrium between the different roles they lead in their life and get greatly disturbed when something goes out of sync. We can find huge variation in the intelligence levels of the people in this category. Also the risk they take is always directly proportional to their level of intelligence. 

Steel Balls

These guys are the guys with real steel balls. They don't know how or what they are doing but they just do it. Majority of the people who are actually successful or I would say satisfied in their life are of this category. Also the people who were successful but now live on the roadside are also from this category. They don't think, they just leap. They won't even think twice before betting their entire life savings on a poker game. Many a times these people are misinterpreted as morons by the other two categories because of their blind risk taking habit but there is a very high probability that they end up regretting that.

So to conclude this article i present to you the distribution graph created by a very complex calculation, which unfortunately cannot be disclosed:

Foot Note: Any queries regarding this article is deeply appreciated but would be more appreciated if it's kept to oneself!

JD Edwards: The first hardware-independent ERP

Don’t take the subject line the literal way, what I mean to say is independent of the configuration of the system on which we install JDE fat client, it always runs slow (JDE guys – You know the truth, Others – Please take this the humorous way, after all it’s a known fact that JD Edwards is the first as well as the best ERP and also first in all sorts of breakthroughs). The best example to illustrate this phenomenon is “Sandy’s Calculator”. 

For the simple minded people, to understand the concept of Sandy’s Calculator let me elaborate on the salient features of this magical box:

1. The only Window’s based system where the remote desktop applications are accessed faster than the kernel applications.
2. You can never use outlook on this system. There are a few interesting theories behind this  
   a) It takes an hour to boot. so there is no other option but to
       use some other system to check the mails when you get to
       office.
   b) If it’s some urgent mail you have to send, there is no
       guarantee that you will be able to send or that the mail will
       move from your outbox to your send mails
   c) You cannot use Outlook in this system because if you run
       Outlook, that will be the only process that’s actually running
       on the system.
3. If you have no Citrix client installed, forget remote desktop. RDA is too heavy for the calculator. (All thanks to Microsoft processes which consumes RAM as if all computers are supercomputers)
4. The time required for the boot is very much in sync with the time required for the shutdown, so no one can actually afford to shut it down until and unless the only thing you do in office is switch on the system and shutdown it down (ideal for certain people).
5. No one is sure if this laptop has any inbuilt speakers as the only sound we ever heard was the sound of the rattling fan striking on the borders of the laptop base.
6. You cannot use any IDEs because of the system configurations. So you have to be an expert coder as all you can use is notepad. And also please forget compiling. That might just be the last thing you ever do on the calculator.
7. The last time Sandy took that to ITICS, the technical guy literally cried and sandy ended up offering him a kerchief. He even offered Sandy another laptop and offered to display the antique in the annual fest organized by Capgemini University History Division but sandy refused because of the sentimental memories involved.
8. In order to use the keyboard, you have to be thoroughly familiar with the typewriter or else you might end up with broken finger bones.

The only reason I (we) call it the Sandy’s Calculator and not the Sandy’s Abacus is because, unlike Abacus it consumes electricity though the work done by both is nearly the same.

So coming back to JD Edwards’s performance, the quality of work done on the "above mentioned calculator" and on any other "new-age computer" is exactly the same for JDE. It seldom shows any partiality. Few days back in order to understand some flow / setup of JDE (am not sure), everyone was busy on the local systems. But to everyone’s astonishment, Sandy came up with the solution (It’s not a big deal considering how much a patient freaky genius he is - No he is a technical by soul not a funci) after working on that abacus I mean Calculator. So the only possible conclusion other than JD Edwards being hardware independent is, JD Edwards is not from this plain of our universe and that makes it unpredictable to us. But since that’s too much, the only possible conclusion is – Sandy has crossed over from an alternate universe but into the wrong timeline.

Why shouldn’t we have a night out on Sunday night especially when Monday is not a holiday

Long long ago, one Sunday, in mid February, after a consecutive Saturday (I was reading some important stuff which had nothing to do with me or anyone alive nor was it useful to anyone dead or alive in anyway) and a Friday night out (Because of a sadist senior and a brainless junior), I reached home very late (Busy day, had a “sort of” “lets discuss the geo-political issues of this world” meet and then had to attend a surprise birthday treat of a very dear friend of mine who is very much fat but thinks is reducing weight in the long run coz of his five minute walk everyday, which later turned out to be a “I’m screwed” treat – Further details regarding this statement will be published later when the time is right) and decided to watch some (due to unforeseen issues caused by Mr. Castle) episodes of Fringe I had missed earlier. Since it’s always difficult to grab a sleep once we cross the routine sleep time, I had no choice but to play Prince of Persia (The Two Thrones Chapter 29, Just 2 more two go!!) till sleep strikes me (after completing the missing three episodes of Fringe and an episode of Nikita). I had to wait till my morning alarm (I keep that to frustrate my roomie who always wakes up to switch this off before returning back to sleep, but if we look from a broader point of view, it’s nothing compared to the torture he gives the rest of us) to activate my sleep inducing part of the brain (Everyone knows that alarms are the best sleep triggering catalysts).

All thanks to the warm/hot sunlight that started burning my face since 8:00 AM, I was forced not to ignore the cruel intentions of nature by nine. Sigh!! It was not a pleasant sight, mainly coz of the following two reasons: a) I could complete just half my sleep quota of the night and b) It was already 9 and my shift timing was from 9 to 6 (Thank you Capgemini for not forcing us to maintain a 9 hours office time or reach by time though there is always a catch that we all know exists!! Now, if you ever start treating your employees like human beings, you will definitely be something close to a dream job), so I was left with very little time to wind up my morning engagements and rush to office. My long wait for the lift was then followed by the run for the train and the “as-usual” horrible train journey (It’s just five minutes, but horrible is not a quantity which has a time factor in its measuring unit) and the same bus journey and (This is new) the fat moron sitting beside me in the bus listening to some shitty music in loudspeaker (imagine that!!) as if he is the only person who has a Smartphone or could ruin my entire morning.

Anyhow, after all this crap, I reached office to find that there wasn’t any work assigned to me (all the work is in ‘pending further information from others’ status) and Sandy (Mr. Cool dude who assigns me work and motivates me and finally makes me do the work that is 100% boring, unproductive even for our clients – ‘they don’t know what they want and they don’t realize what they have’ and is also a social suicide if someone hears that we still do such outdated work) was on leave.  So what was the whole point in sacrificing my sleep and then come to office and waste this much energy? – Screw the productivity of others, especially of the people sitting near to you.

How to keep the customer unsatisfied even after spending 6000 times more than required for him

As expected from a year old laptop, mine had also started to shake on the table when in use (literally). I had lost a bush (KD did it, I take care of my lappy like a mother of her baby) which was located under the battery of my XPS. Being an industrial Engineer, I was forced to apply the Quality Norms (Basically, Just in Time) and ended up logging a complaint on Feb first week (My warranty expires on March 5^th) for this issue. First we had a small chat on the missing bush, then on the underperformance of the battery (5 hr. backup to 1 hr. in 3 months.. That’s Dell.. Everything is preplanned) and keyboard issues (nothing.. my keyboard simply rocks) etc. etc. and at last we stumbled on the flickering issue (Blurred display when I run on battery). We had a long chat (24 calls with average duration 4 minutes) on this issue basically coz he was more into troubleshooting than into replacing my bush (damn him)

So we carried on with the different troubleshoots (It was very much easy to manipulate considering that am a Linux user :D) and finally he decided that he is going to replace my motherboard as well as my LED display. He was continuously taking decisions on my laptop and I was waiting so that I can take up the "bush-issue" again but he never gave the chance. So finally when he was finished informing me how much screwed up my system is and what a rough user I was, I took up the bush–issue again and this time his observation/analysis/solution was way too quick.

• Dell doesn’t replace just the bush. They have to replace the battery if they want to replace the bush.
• As my battery is performing way beyond the expected level (according to him, dell 9 cell batteries are not supposed to give a backup of more than 30 minutes after 6 months and if its giving, it’s a flaw with the batter and not the other way around), they cannot replace the battery for me even if my laptop is shaking when in use.
• As battery cannot be replaced, we have no choice but to remove the other bush and make it aligned or attach some cotton under the back, so that laptop rests on place

So finally, after this week long discussion to replace a 5 rupee bush for a comfortable use, they are replacing parts worth more than 30K for free and still leaving me (customer) unsatisfied.

Btw, Dell Rockz!! Or to be precise, if any laptop actually rockz, its Dell!!