My first blogger Work Rant...

I work for one of those high tech companies, doing chip design. Same unnamed place as CherkyB. Which probably explains us knowing each other, and his frequent digs about me (CherkyB - FYI - today's was Color Blind LumberJack day).

Unfortunately, I work for a team that took over a project from another team, which not only had their own way of doing things (one of the banes of chip design is having multiple teams doing similar things with different tool suites), but then decided to "play nice" with the rest of us, and start to converge on a standard tool suite. Except they knew how to do things better, so they bolted on some of their tools with some of the lead projects tools. But then didn't get very far along before a reorg got them to work on something else, and for us to take over that project.

I've been working on integrating one block from the lead project for the last 4 weeks. Why 4 weeks? About 1.5 of those weeks were waiting for this "better" tool suite to compile my code. Between the tools bogging down, trying to handle the load of a large team, and the tools being so complex and confusing, no one really understands what's going on and the documentation is either (a) non-existent, (b) explains only what the switches are, or (c) goes into gory detail on why they chose to do this or that, but absolutely zero detail on what the frack you need to do when you get this type of failure. So when something doesn't work, you have to find a co-worker who's either bumped into it before, or has seen something similar enough they can guess what's going on.

2.5 of those weeks were in ripping out large chunks of the original design, as one of the basic interface systems it uses doesn't exist in our design. (Guess who choose this? And guess what else? Our "better" version has 2x the signals, but is used for test only. Nope, can't have system A, that costs to much, but you can have system B, that's twice as expensive, and not nearly as useful. Great.) And then trying to replace it with what we can use. And then re-doing parts of it, as I learn more about how the original design was intended to work, and have to re-work our version. And then doing it a 3rd time, when I find out that one assumption I was told was wrong, and I need to cram more data crap down this new system in the same amount of time. And then a fourth time to clean it all back up into something that'll be easy enough to modify the original design to, and still fit onto system B interface.

Finally get all that done, and go to turn it in for the next full chip integration on Tuesday. 1st time I've done this on this project. Stupid tool #1 chokes just before finishing, and sits there. I was told that the process would take half a day minimum, so I didn't worry about it. After 4 hours, and no signs of progress, ask a coworker, and find out "Oh - that should have finished in 1 hour, and auto-submitted itself to the next step, so it's not working." Kill it, and do it again. 1 hour later, it finishes happy, and auto-submits to the next step. 4 hours after that, I find out that my turn-in was rejected, because there was a "merge conflict" with a co-workers change.

Which goes back to the beauty of the "better" tool suite. One of it's major features is to enable multiple people to work on the same code simultaneously, and auto-merge as part of the turn-in / build process. Except that the auto-merge only handles half of the simple merging, and pukes on anything simple, like changing the number of spaces on a line of code to make it read easier, even if you're not changing that piece of code. Seems that everyone else on the project has learned to live with ugly looking code. I thought they were just "less visually annoyed" than I was. So - first turnin was rejected, and I have to merge 1 file (out of 16) who's conflicts the tool couldn't figure out. Do this, save it. Go to sanity check it before it get's turned in, and it wasn't right. Fix it, and turn it in.

Somehow my fixes don't make the turnin, so it fails again overnight. Fix it again, and double check that it made it in. Compile. Failure. Why? This whole "simplified" process has wasted a day of my time, so I tried to do some work in another area to not fall behind. Except this better tool suite tries to understand so much of what you're doing, you can't just make another work area, you have to jump through hoops to tell it that it's really not related at all to your other work area, and yes, trust me, don't try to keep track of both of them together. And no thank you, please don't try to share the files between. And then frack, missed something - need to blast this work area, and try to set it up again.

But back to the turnin. Finally get everything cleaned up - merged code is done. 2 files that got updated with newer code from the other work area cleaned up. Compile again, and another failure. Code that hasn't been touched in days, but now won't compile. Some new checker must have been turned on. Compile again - phew, it finally finishes. Now, all the code in this area has either been regression tested in my original area, or in the area of the co-worker who did the orthogonal change. So, I could, with clear conscience turn it in.

But, I decide to the right thing and just regress it anyway, should just take an hour or so. After 4 hours, cause someone else put some long running tests into the regression, I have about 20% of the tests failing. All for the same reason, all for code that is in the changes I'm turning in, but that I haven't touched. Aka same code has been working for months on the lead project, and for the last 4 weeks in my local areas, until today. Now it complains about some runtime checker. Something else must have been turned on in the last day. Error message is cryptic, but as the logic is only used in 2 places, and 1 of them is to just feed back the existing state into the next state calculation, it's probably the other place. Take a quick look - yep, a multiple case statement without a default. Not the end of the world - easy to add the default, but annoying that it worked fine for months until the day after I tried to turn it in.

Compile it again - it passed. Regress it - twice this time. Once in a new area, so all the tests will pass, but it'll take 4 hours, and a second time, with only the failures form the first time, but if they'll give me pass / fail in less than 1 hour.

Double check that (a) all the files I want to turn in are in the right area, (b) that area was used for compile, (c) that compile was used for regression, and (d) nothing else is changed in that area. Should be smooth sailing. Of course not. Remember those "other work area problems"? Well, that was happening as I was getting this code cleaned up, so there's some little flag in some file that says I still have one file edited, and I have to either check it in, or break the lock. Go to my area, diff it - no diffs. Go to check it in, to clear the flag - no diffs, so I can't check it in. Try to turnin again, no - it's out for editing, so you can't turn in. Cross my fingers and just break the lock.

Yes, turnin works, but will the auto-merge and compile? Which brings us back to the beauty of the system. I won't know until tomorrow. The automated system to make all this parallel work and auto-merge possible, and allows the design to have full-chip models built and released multiple times through-out the day, vs. 1 or 2 times a week when we did it all manually only lets you get 1 or 2 changes in per week. Now, instead of all the changes going in on the same 1 or 2 days a week, they get spread out over the week, but for any one person, the through-put is the same. And it sucks, because the overhead of this system is much higher than the old system.

So - output is same, overhead is higher. That's called progress by some teams.

Think I'll go have some beer.

Funny Ads...

Over at Nava's blog, she's got a tall "Jesus Ad" on the left side, where you can find Masterworks of Religious Art. Funny thing is, if you're one of Nava's friends, the picture they show there is about the last thing you'd want.

Wonder how many people will click through just to see what other stuff they have that you can be amused by? I did, and found out it's for a "Family Art" place, and they has an "LDS Welcome" section. Wonder if CherkyB can finally get his magic underwear there? Or am I not supposed to talk about that fantasy of his?

Best Ads I've had, over on my purely political ranting site - What Part Of... (which I should probably just merge with this one) were for "Nude Lebanese Women" or "Nude Israeli Women", when I was blogging about the Israeli / Hezbollah war in the summer. Bummer that neither ad seemed to work. Or so I heard.

CherkyB has been getting some boring ads - including one for "American Girl", which, for those of you without daughters, or nieces, or outside the US, is a US doll manufacturing that has the whole merchandising thing down - dolls, tons of accessories, stories about your particular doll, etc. Good thing CherkyB's got a daughter, or we'd all be worried. After his "I love animals too" blog, you tend to get wonder where these things are going!

Nava just told me she had a really funny one - something about memory loss, but she can't quite remember. Then she said "I don' t know why they picked it." Maybe blogger watches how long it takes you to blog, and decided it was a memory problem, sweetie!

I wonder what the blog crawlers pull out to target ads for, or do they just pull everything, and then look for unique words. Like fascist, chrome, fighter jet, windows vista, Fred Flinstone.

JEET YET?

I read that and understand right away what it means ("Did you eat yet?", which boils down to "Jeet Yet?" for Minnesotans).

Found this US Accent Quiz on the blogosphere (over at SillyHumans), took it, and it hit the nail on the hammer -

What American accent do you have? Your Result: North Central "North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.
The Midland
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

I though Fargo was one of the funniest movies out there. Yep. U Betcha. Lotta guys thought so. Not to bad.

Insanity next door...

Belmont, CA's proposed smoking ban is not law yet, but is setting a dangerous precedent.

This time, it appears to be the CA Democrats that are losing their minds. First it was disagree with the Bush Whitehouse, go to jail. Now it's do something I don't like, go to jail.

Someone's smoke bothers you - ban it. Yes, 2nd hand smoke causes cancer, and kills some people. So does obesity and heart disease. Next up, are we going to ban fatty foods and demand everyone get so much exercise per week? Is that enough? What if I eat a lot, and follow the minimum rules for exercise, so am still overweight. Will they mandate exactly how much anyone can weigh?

Smoking inside buildings can be very annoying - I'll grant that. But banning smoking in all outside public areas as well? Don't like the smell, walk your ass 10' away.

I wonder how long it is before Belmont bans Republicans (war causes death, and Republicans cause war, right?), poor people (a majority of criminals are from poor families, so get rid of poor families, and you'll get rid of criminals). How about contact with other people? If one person's smoking bothers you, or their political believes, their music, art, etc., let's just ban having people physically able to see / smell / hear / touch each other.

That'll solve all of their problems for the short term. Bonus for the rest of us is that they wouldn't have many kids, not being able to touch anyone else. They could do some thru AI (artificial insemination), but that would still require some interaction between people, wouldn't it?

PS Came back to do some spell checking - Blogger Beta's spellchecker doesn't like Whitehouse - it recomments "White house", "White horse", "Whorehouse" and "Wodehouse". Gotta love it!

Leonard doesn't have much to say

The Tongue Splitter has been bottled for ~3 weeks today, but the b-trip to Bangalore got in the way of me labelling it previously, but less than 2 days after my return (see "The f... you at the drive thru..."), the labels are done, and passed the creative review of Nava. Of course, it helps that:
(a) I'm using one of her paintings as the main component
(b) I mention her on the label
(c) I got Avery Labels, so it's a heck of a lot easier to put on, so it's funner to do, so I spend a bunch more time on this one than I had previously.
(d) I think it's pretty good

Having the first two is a good idea, like throwing a bone to CherkyB, whose been in blog-purgatory for a while, and was Banned from Blogging.

So - one a good note, the Tongue Splitter is ready to drink, and I've had 2 already, and am working on the 3rd now. Slow down, big fella, you might say. But hey, I'm at home, I got jet lag, and the bedroom is only 25-30' away.

On a bad note I just found out that I'm not a true Hophead (scroll down ~1 page). I really enjoy hops and bitterness, but there's got to be enough malt flavor to balance it out.

Which reminds me of some of the food at Samarkand, in Bangalore. We had about 20 people there, and ate for about 2 hours, leaving food on the table when we crept away. Overall, very tasty food - kebabs were very good (but I've had better here), and the tandoori style chicken was amazing - succulent, and loaded with more flavor than I've had anywhere, even in the now closed Empress of India, in Sunnyvale.

But back to the point - one of the kebabs was "spicy", and the guys I was visiting were a little curious to know if I could handle it. It was spicy - not "grab a glass of anything to wash it down hot", but it had kick. But it had 5x more kick than anything else, so all you got was spicy w/ the texture of kebab, and a slightly oily feel. Aka spicy delivery device.

TexieD's "Dry Sauted Jalapeno's on Papadi" are hotter, more flavorfull, and caused much more painful memories the next day. But when it comes to spicy and tasty, TexieD beat Samarkand hands down.

They f... you at the drive thru

Got back from India this morning (about 2:15am Sunnyvale time), after a 24 hour (door-to-door) trip home that turned into 36 hours. And why? Is Joe Pesci said it best -

"Don't ever go up to the drive-thru, ok? Always walk up to the counter. You know why? Ok, ok, ok, ok. They fuck you at the drive-thru, ok? They fuck you at the drive-thru. They know you gonna be miles away before you find out you got fucked, ok? They know you're not gonna turn around and go back. So, they don't care."

The flight from Bangalore to London was delayed in taking off, but the captain promised to try to make up for lost time. Then we sat on the tarmac at Heathrow, waiting our chance to dart across the runways and make it to Terminal 4 . It's supposed to take 75 minutes to get from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1 (further rant on LHR and terminal changing later) and I have 20 minutes to make the flight. The lead flight attendant comes on and says "For our passengers carrying on to SFO, don't worry - please meet the agent at the bottom of the stairs, where they'll have a bus waiting to take you directly to your gate." Sounds great. Since they had a bus for us, not just a little car, and I was just a few rows behind business class, I stayed calm, and waited the few minutes to get off. I'm on the top of the stairs, when the regular bus to the arrival gate pulls off, and the agent at the bottom of the stairs, with a sign saying "Passengers to San Francisco", starts walking 2 people over to second bus waiting on the side. No worries, she's just taking them over in groups or something. Heck no - 2 people get on the bus, and off it goes. Get down to the bottom of the stairs and the agent w/ the little sign says "You've missed your connection - see the flight connections agent inside to get re-routed."

Why come on the intercom and tell us not to worry, if you're going to have the bus take off in 2 minutes, when 90% of the people connecting to SFO aren't on it? It's like there's 2 sets of people at BA - those that are trying to make things run smoothly, and those that are just doing their time. What am I going to do, come back and complain to the person? Once I'm off the plane, I'm gone. So - bus idea, great. Bus needs to leave in X minutes to keep the other flight on time, fine - just don't come tell everyone to relax, and make them suddenly expect that things are OK. I was already sure I was doomed, so getting my hopes up was unfair.

About 20 folks from my flight missed their connections (JFK and SFO being the major 2). I was near the front of the this group (but still about 25 people back in the line), so 2 hours later, when I finally made it to an agent, I did still have a slim hope of making it out of London to the states that day. No more direct flights to SFO, but I could either fly through JFK or Vancouver, and then Vegas, to SFO. I got the Vancouver route (figured it'd be less busy / risky than JFK), and the guy next to me got JFK. Even got an upgrade from normal Economy (World Traveler in BA terms) to Economy Plus (World Traveler Plus). Not business class, but it was better a bit better than economy, so I didn't complain. But, I didn't get told that if I my bags didn't make it, or if I chose to have my bags sent the next day, that in Vancouver I had a chance to catch a direct flight to SFO, and cut almost 5 hours off my schedule.

Nice thing about LHR is that they have a few smoking sections, so I had a few cigarettes, in between phoning Nava, emailing her my updated itinerary from a crap pay-per-use Internet connection with sticky keys, so I it took me 5 minutes to type a 5 line email. Why didn't I switch to another one? This was the third one I tried - first two just took my money and refused to connect, and the others were all full. Flight to Vancouver was OK - arrived on time, and then had to wait a few minutes to park. Rush off the plane, through immigration, and down to baggage claim. Bags start to roll-off as I hear my name paged, so I go over to the BA baggage office to be told my bags didn't make it. Bad news is I now have no car keys to drive my car home, but I they did save me 30 minutes of waiting and not having my bags turn up. BA baggage folks give me a form to get through customs (since I don't have my luggage now), so it's out thru customs, and into the US Departures clearing.

Get to US Departures (poorly signed, so I had to stop 3 times and study all the small signs to find my way), and find out that I need a boarding pass (Vancouver to Vegas is on Alaska, Vegas to SFO is on US Airways), so get sent back out front. Alaskan ticket counter is the furthest away from US Departures, but has no line, so I get my boarding pass, fill out the US customs form, and back in. US Departures guy ask how I'm returning from an overseas trip w/ no luggage, and then sympathizes with my delayed baggage story. Get through that, and then security (for the 3rd time that day), and head to my gate. It's 7:25 - plane is supposed to board at 7:35. Hit the rest room, and wait. 7:35 rolls around and no boarding. 7:45 rolls up, and suddenly people are walking out. Yep - plane just landed, so we'll be leaving late.

If I had known that, and had known that there was a 7:40 direct to SFO (at the other end of the terminal), I would have had time to try stand-by on it, and still get back to this gate in time. Plane takes off 15 minutes late to Vegas, but has a good tail wind, so we make up the time en route, and land on time. And then wait - first to let another plane out of the "alley", and then more for them to find us ground staff to park the plane. Rush off, and then find that I have to go from Terminal D, where Alaskan is, to Terminal B, where US Airways is. Wait 10 minutes for the train (and then 2 arrive), rush up to check in, and am told no exit seats, but I can upgrade to 1st class for $50. Pay that, and head off to security for the 4th time that day. Through security, and off to the gate, where they're about half way through boarding. Get on, settle in, and then wonder where everyone else is. The plane was only 1/3rd full, so I would have had room back in steerage, but who knew (well, I didn't - the ticket agent did).

Get to SFO OK, minus car keys, so head to the taxi rank. One guy about 10 taxis back asks if I need a taxi, to which I reply yes, but keep walking, as I thought he was trying to jump the queue. He starts following me, and as I approach the front car, I realized that it has no driver, so I turn to look, and there's the guy from the middle of queue, following me. He was first, but was hanging out back there, chatting w/ friends. Tax ride home is over $100 ($67.35 plus 50% "late-night" surcharge), but as I'm chatting with guy and tell him my car is at SFO, and my keys are in London, he says he can drop me back at long term parking, for free, since he's going back that way anyway. I decide I'm too tired to drive home again, so I just thank him for his offer.

Get up this morning, and call BA to find out the status of my bags, only to find out that I need a lost/delayed bag tracking number, which I can only get at the airport. Agent on the phone asks me why I didn't fill one out, to which I reply first, BA told me my bags didn't make it on the plane, so they knew, second I had to rush to get to the next plane, and 3rd, they'd already told me my bags weren't there, so why should I head over to BA international to find out again. And why do I need to fill out a form to tell them they still have my bags, when they know that they still have my bags...

Overall, about 1/3rd of the people were helpful, and helped get me back home on time, but not necessarily good at it (like not telling me to try the Vancouver / SFO direct flight, if I had time), or honest (like US Airways pushing the upgrade to 1st, when the flight was only 1/3rd full).

So - they don't always f* you at the drive thru, but they do it way to often.

Dedicated to CherkyB

My friend Alex sent me this one - don't enough know if he reads my blogs!

If he doesn't, the timing is impeccable.

His note:

"Life in England… Exciting venues to explore!!! ;-)

Warning! Not for individuals with a sensitive disposition."

Picture here.

I'll try to see if I can get some pictures of the original disturbing image in India :)

How do you know you've actually arrived in India...

All the Indians working at the airport would be 1 clue.

All the guys hanging out at baggage claim to help you find your bad would be another.

My guy, I'll call him Ravi-I-think-I'm-the-best-at-finding-a-sucker, picks me, and starts in. What does my bag look like, did I fly business class. Is it this one (no, it's a purple wheely bag - borrowed Nava's at the last minute, so I'd have more room for stuff to bring home, just in case), is it that one (no, it's purple), is it that one (no, that has wheels, but it's like a roll-on bag, just bigger). Off to the back area - it's coming out now. Nothing comes out that's purple. Purple - yes, exactly like the bag you helped the first guy with. Off to window to look at the luggage carts coming in, and then to the back again. Ok - it's really coming out now. Not this one? No, it's a roll-on one. One more trip to the back - I think maybe he's given up on me, as he's gone for 10 minutes, but he comes out smiling. It's really on the way this time - he found the bag w/ the luggage tag that matched my back-pack. Didn't notice him eye-balling that, but my bag comes out, and now he's rolling me out to customs. Stop him, hand him $2 (don't have any rupees yet, and he did make my bag come out a bit faster). Get the look of increduousness. No - $2 is not enough - I had to crawl over 7 baggage carts to find it. I broke down way to easily and gave him another $1, and let him know that was it. First $2 was fine - it was an interesting show, and he did help a bit. I am annoyed that I caved in and gave him another $1, just cause I should have seen it coming.

Out through customs, and into the threshold area, where the guys in suits meet you from the hotel. Guy from my hotel is walking somebody else out, I'm told, so I wait a few minutes. He comes back, and escorts me outside, to where the Taxi driver from my hotel is waiting, and hands me off. I thought the guy from the threshold area was the Taxi driver, so didn't have a tip ready to go, and whiffed it and he got nothing. Taxi driver was fun - not to chatty, but pointed out the highlights on the way. And let me finish my cigarette in the car. Smoking is such a mental thing for me - I can last a 3, 6 or even 12 hour flight without thinking about smoking. But, once the plane touches down, I need a cigarette.

So back to the question "How do you know you've actually arrived in India on your business trip?" Neither of the first 2 were really clicked - especially not the successive tip opportunities. Had a 1 day lay-over in Cairo on a trip once. From the porter hanging out on the floor (1st tip), to the front desk porter (2nd), taxi organizer (3rd), guy who takes your bags from the taxi (4th), guy who pushes your luggage cart to the airport entrance (5th), entrance to security (6th) and finally post security to checkin (7th tip). It's a fact-of-life in countries with high under-employment that the more times someone can get helped, the more chances there are for tips.

For me, it was the first cow walking on the street. Kind of like a teenager hanging out - no plans, no place to go, just there. That was when I got the "Oh - I'm in India" feeling!

And now I have rupees, which is very good, as my supply of $1 bills was out.



Le Meridien in Bangalore is quiet nice - rooms are good (3-4 star), and the service is great (4-5 star).



My room safe refused to accept a new PIN, so on my way to breakfast I stopped by the front desk to mention it. In the US, it'd quite often be "Oh - we'll inform maintenance", and then at some random point later, something might be done about it. Here it was "Are you going back to your room now?" No, I'm goint to breakfast "Ok - can you come by this desk after breakfast, and we'll send someone with you to fix it." Stop back by after breakfast, and "someone" is one of the person you're chatting with. No delays in trying to find someone else. Unfortunately, it wasn't stupid user error, or just a simple reset, so she had to call down to maintenance.

They came up and replaced the battery, but the lock still wouldn't work. So - out comes the safe, and 5 minutes later, I had a new safe installed and working fine. Sunday morning, 9am.

Good thing about visiting a country with under-employment is that they can have a full staff of folks to solve your problems right away.

Things Not To Do (While Travelling) - 1

Howdy from India. I've been here slightly less than 12hrs, but decided I should go ahead and start blogging about it anyway.

On the flight from SFO to LHR (that's "London Heathrow" for you poorly educated republicans who're about to loose both houses of Congress), seems there was one flyer who just wasn't having a good day. And decided to take it out on the flight crew.

After the first yelling and cursing match, about poor seating, food, his prostate, they re-seated the fellow once. Didn't witness the yelling and screaming, but did start to notice that when this guy said something, he immidetiately got the attention of 2-3 flight attendants (sounds better than the unisex stew-persons instead of stewards / stewardesses).

Not sure what was wrong with the second seat, but he was soon escorted by 5 flight attendents to the exit row in front of me, in the next group of chairs over. Things seemed OK then, except most of us wondered why he rated 2-3 attendants whenever he opened his mouth. We were jealous.

So the plane lands, and as we start to taxi to our gate, the captain comes on to say were 25 minutes early, but since some officials need to come on board due to an incident with a passenger, we need to stay seated until this is done.

A British version of a TSA comes on, walks to our section, eyes me and my neighbor, and askes which one us which one of us is Mr. So-and-so. As we're answering no, and suddenly wondering what either one of us could have done, 3 flight attendants who'd been hovering in the back, and 2 more from the front, all point out Mr. Gonna-miss-my-connection-and-maybe-get-that-prostate-examination-after-all. Mr. Airport security walks into the bulkhead space in front of the soon-to-be-very-unhappy-camper, chats with him briefly, and asks the flight attendants to hold onto his baggage. 2 minutes later, 4 bobbies come on board, lead by 2 of the biggest British cops I've ever seen (admittedly, I've only seen a few, but these fellas were big enough to drag my ass off the plane) came in, full gear (bullet proof vests, side-arms, handcuffs), and tell the guy, very politely, he needs to come with them. No handcuffs, no laying of arms, and they even let him lead the way to the back exit of the plane.

Moral of the story - if you're having a crappy day, or are just an ass in general, and it's to much bother to keep in mind that other people don't deserve your shit, go ahead and take it out on the flight attendants. They love that stuff.

Or, if you really wanted that rectal exam, maybe schedule it w/ your doctor. I'm sure he/she will use a lubricant, and stop before they loose their wrist-watch. Not these 2 big fellas - looked like they might not stop until they had checked to see if he still had his tonsils.

My 15 minutes of fame...

It started off innocently enough. New printer arrived, and Nava wanted it setup. Nava blogs it here, and posted this pict of me going into the loft in the garage, looking for the old printer box.

CherkyB posted it as Disturbing Image Found On Web, which then got into a minor argument on copyright infringement in the comment section of CherkyB's blog, and then my bragging that CherkyB had inadvertently giving my butt more publicity than it's ever gotten before. Well - except for a couple of times when I went into a gay bar...

And, to top things off, all 3 blogs may hit all time access records, all due to my butt.