The Crapolla According to Fek'Lar

You Know You're DOOMED When...

you get the call to go back to India and the price of Immodium quadruples over night.

You've stumbled onto another issue of The Crapolla, a journal written for software professionals. No not the managers; I mean the people who do the work.

This Crapolla is sponsored by...

In This Issue...

Never let your chicken smoke a cigarette.

Amazingly Stupid

I see the US government is going to introduce yet another one dollar coin. The past two have been flops. The public just doesn't want a dollar coin.

The need for the coin is created by the enormous cost of printing dollar bills that wear out in 18 months. Coins can last hundreds of years.

What kills me is how completely limp the government gets on this subject. The solution is easy. You introduce the coin, and over five years you slowly phase out the dollar bill. The public accepts the coins eventually because that is what there is.

Why is this so bloody hard? Even Senator Ted Stevens should be able to get this into his pea brain and then down one of his internet tubes.

Back to Bangalore

I predicted this. I told The Hatchetman this would happen and even called the month it would. I've headed back to Bangalore to do more training. Between attrition, which is a serious concern, and the desire to increase the size of the team, we had 8 new people to train.

Bangalore was as I left it, busy, noisy, and polluted. Even the social strife was still here. The day I arrived, there was a riot over the execution of Saddam Hussein, and he was off'ed months ago. There seems to be a strata of society that is ready to protest at the drop of a hat, just like back home.

On the surface the riot was about the execution of Saddam. But under the surface this was caused by a politician stirring up his constituents about something that was not true. Kind of like someone we all know. I was asleep during the riot and did not participate in, nor was I affected by, it. After all, I'm just a laid back Californian.

Several people pointed out that only when I'm in the country do these riots happen. Perhaps the Indian government should make me persona non grata.

The state Bangalore is in has lost a 16 year court case over water rights to the next state over. Bangalore sprang into action and declared a General Strike, but then postponed it until the Monday after their big air show. No sense screwing up the weekend!

Cable television blacked out several stations from the neighboring state that got more water. This means there were fewer Hindu dance channels. Luckily, ESPN, The History Channel, Discovery, CNN, and Pro Wrestling were still available.

Speaking of ESPN, I caught a little of the Super Bowl. There's a big difference in coverage. In India you can see the game. It isn't obscured by all the dancing baloney they put on the screen in the US. But we didn't get the really good commercials either. When the Super Bowl wasn't on they played Cricket matches. I'm learning Cricket. Apparently, the object of the game is to hit a small ball. One day I hope to go to a match so I can yell at people for no apparent reason.

Last time I was in a 5 star hotel. This trip it was a 2 star. But before you start thinking it was a flea trap, it wasn't. It was much like many hotels I've been to in Asia, but this one had internet on my floor. Funny thing was the access point liked to over-heat. I don't know if the hotel had figured this out, but I found the gadget and reset it periodically. The hotter it got, the slower the throughput. I wasn't been able to get VOIP to work. Perhaps if I wrapped the access point in dry ice to keep it cool I could have gotten the speed up to DSL.

Let's say you find yourself in India, or perhaps you simply are forced at gun-point into going to an Indian restaurant. Let's assume your stomach isn't up for the food which pegs the spice-o-meter. What should you have?

I would suggest Butter Chicken. It's chicken so you probably know what you're eating. And the sauce, although not terribly buttery, isn't that spicy. You probably won't die from this... probably.

Speaking of chicken, the other day I was on the roof drinking Chi (that's where the Chi is made), when I heard a clucking sound. I searched around and saw a man, a woman, and a chicken on the roof of a nearby house. (I know this sounds like the beginning of a dirty joke, but it isn't.)

The woman lit some incense and waved it over the chicken, and then circled the bird three times. I thought, "this isn't going to have a happy ending for the chicken!"

The man also waved the incense over the chicken and then circled it three times. All the time Clucky just sat there.

Next, the man held the chicken while the woman gave it a drink of water. I wondered when they were going to give it the last cigarette.

You know that saying about a person running around like a chicken with its head cut off? I found out where that saying comes from. After Clucky was separated from its head, the body flailed about. Obviously, the nervous system was all screwed up, much like running a SCSI chain without proper termination.

I mentioned this to one of my western co-workers who was a little grossed out by it. But think about how much chicken you eat. How many times have you faced your food? 100 years ago people in the west would kill their own chickens. Now we get them frozen pre-breaded in boxes, or we go to The Colonel.

The ceremony with the incense? I look at that as this couple acknowledging the life they were about to take. They had a choice. They could eat the disgusting vegetables that grow in soil (and we all know what soil really is, don't we?), or they could eat the yummy chicken. They chose wisely, and thanked the chicken for the meal.

So when faced with eating Indian food, try the Butter Chicken. It probably won't kill you. Incense provided upon request.

After four weeks of a five week stint, I was pretty sick and tired of Indian food. I stumbled upon a good pizza joint that throws their own dough. It doesn't matter where you go, if the local bread is fresh, it's good. I ate pizza almost exclusively my last week in India. I only took breaks from it to have ice cream and Diet Coke. I'm not really sure when I'll be able to eat Indian food again, hopefully by the time I get sent back.

I started a pool. My students predicted the date of my return to Bangalore. I'll bring the winner a prize. Maybe an autographed picture of Ronald McDonald.

My laptop choice was a winner. The MacBook Pro running XP in a virtual machine gave me everything I needed in as small a package as I could get. If you need multiple OS's, virtual machines are the way to go.

When it came time to bug out, I learned from previous mistakes. I scheduled my connecting flight at Heathrow 8 days later. That's a week of R & R for me in England. Ah, cheeseburgers! How I missed you!

This Issue's Headline submission to the National Daily World Enquiring Globe.

Anna Nicole's Child Custody Battle Settled!

Angelina Jolie to Pay Royalties to Larry Birkhead

Let's play, "Who said this?"

Heard in the halls of various software companies.

"I hear the preferred way to execute people in England is to take them to dinner and make them eat British food."

"They really should ban Mentos from planes. Think of it, you bring mints on-board. Then get a Diet Coke from the Flight Attendant, drop in the mints and you have a weapon."
"Or a new viral video."

"I like the MOB. They know how to follow process."

"How much have you had to drink?"
"I started last night."

Excuse Me

I must prep for surgery.

Fek'Lar
They pay me to think. These are my thoughts. Do you think they are getting their money's worth?

Remember: The Crapolla contains my personal opinions. That's right they're mine, so get your own! And you kids get off my lawn!

Although written with the software professional in mind, my mind tends to wander all over the place, and I sometimes write about politics, mass stoopidity, dumb things I saw, and whatever else comes to mind.

From time to time, I use salty language, thus The Crapolla is not intended for children, or certain people in the Bush Administration.

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EOJ

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