Stress testing

Software engineers would be well aware of this term and might have been through this too. But, since it was my first experience and one worth writing, so I thought to share it here. This is how it went, I cannot say "this is how it goes" because I think different companies have different ways of stress testing and there actually might be better ones than what we did.

We were a team of 15 to start with. Each member in the team was provided with simplest, extremely monotonous, moronic, robotic tasks - to click on certain modules for producing results and then measure time till the results were out. Then repeat this around 150 times with different permutations and combinations. If you think we could have skipped some of them, we could not. We were asked to record time consumption from start of task to result output. No, not by looking at out watch and noting it on some notebook. But, by first installing a stopwatch on our systems and then noting down time for each of those tasks in an excel sheet with predefined rows and columns for each task and user. Since this was not enough it was informed that each task must start at same time by all team members. That would happen only when the team lead says to do so. So at 10 am when every one took their seats to become Google pigeons, confusions arose from which task to pickup first to how to report the time observed in the sheet. At last when things started this is how they continued : Team lead would say "1 2 3 start", and we would start running. Yes, running! Running, our fingers on the mouse, on keyboard - to click here and there on the product, start/stop watch, note down time consumed for producing results varying from 1.5 seconds to 15 minutes and more. Then wait till all 15 are finished with that task and move on to the next one that would be informed by the team lead.

I have heard how load testing is based on increasing load after every successful execution. But, we followed a different approach starting with 15 from 10 am to 5 pm. Cycle was repeated with only 10 users from there on till 9 pm and only a 5 user test was performed from 10 pm to 1 am. Well, that downfall in users was planned due to unavailability of manpower at night so our poor managers had no other choice.

So, at 1 am when I was finally free, my stress limits had been tested. How much stress do I feel upon doing such high level work for almost 15 hours with only tea/coffee or meal breaks and no more.

My stress testing seems to have passed as I am still writing.

P.S - Its not good to write about one's workplace because it reveals a lot about what we actually do and what people think we do. But, since it was an incident that was totally out of the blue for me so here it was to be.

Paternity leave

When it comes to gender equality most employers claim to be pro women and are more than eager to explain how they ensure women do not get the feeling of a lesser mortal in their organization.

Yesterday I came across the term 'paternity leave' while reading something on mint.

During evenings I am often at my elder brother's place. He had to take leave yesterday because baby was feeling too sleepy and bhabhi had to attend an important meeting. The daily routine of leaving him at day care could not be followed so bhaiya decided to go for the 'miss'. So, when I said to bhabhi "today I read about paternity leave, isn't that a great idea?" Well, to my surprise she replied - such a leave does exist and to my utter surprise she informed it's a 1 week leave!

What is the 7 day leave for? May be it is a gesture from the employer of the would be father to acknowledge that they know his wife is expecting so he should be with her during that time.

"What if companies could give one month paternity leave every year till the child is 3 years old or so?" When I muted this to bhabhi, she was very much in favor of it.

So why don't HR managers come up with something like that. One reason could be, If the father takes leave to take care of the baby allowing the wife to go on work, it does not give any fruits to husband's employer in fact it adds to the productivity of wife's organization. So this step would be considered to be one for the benefit of other organizations.

But, this could be a good tool for the companies who take this as an initiative because this would definitely make the father think many times before he decides to jump over to another company with no such arrangements. In fact in case of couples working in same industry, this could be an attractive policy to poach the other half by rewarding the first half with additional leaves because benefits would not go outside the company.

It would be like a bond for 3 years signed by the parents not for a few hundred thousand rupees but for the convenience of their child.

Does literacy matter?

It does not if it is only about reading and writing and not about the education of understanding and following.

I workout in a gym during evening which has 4 treadmills. These poor treadmills run incessantly due to a rush during peak evening hours. So that they are used judiciously, the instruction in front of the treadmill states "Please use for a maximum of 15 minutes at one time". Yesterday when I was ready for running they were all occupied. After waiting for about 2 minutes I checked how much time these health conscious individuals would take to get down. 3 of them were already above the 20-minute mark, with ladies having run for more than 25 minutes. Finally when I got one treadmill, next to it was a girl may be in her late 20's running for the last 30 minutes. She finally stopped at around 37 minutes - yes, I continued to peep into her speedometer with utter frustration and almost on the verge of asking her to get down.

This triggered the question in my mind whether literacy matters or not?

Looking at the above incident it seems being literate is not enough to make things better because though a gym incident does not impact my life or anyone else' for that matter but incidents like this where people take U-turn under a crossed U or throw garbage in front of a dustbin do reflect society's mindset.

I think literacy matters only if it educates us!

Lost but not found.

In March I had written about a lost and found case. That was when I lost my laptop and then found it in less than 12 hours. Other than that I missed my passport twice on transit airports(Johannesburg and Bangkok respectively) and in fact found it before I realized what I had done. All this in less than 1 year of time. Thanks to all the generous people of the world for returning the goods.

Well, as I expected at that time, my quota of luck was being overused so when I lost my camera last Friday, chances of finding it were less. Since there were not too many things I did with my camera on that day. I cannot imagine anything else but having dropped it from my pocket while driving back home. May be that was the price I had to pay for being lucky all the previous times.

Though there is one more thing common in previous incidents - all of them happened outside India and this one right here in Bangalore. But, there is nothing anyone could have done even if they found it rolling in the streets - I never wrote any contact number/address on the camera cover.

I had been planning to start a weekly post containing 5 pictures about Bangalore and its lifestyle. I guess I delayed it too much and now it will remain uninitiated until I buy a new one.

Kholo Kholo

Taare Zameen par might be a meaningful movie. But, I am not writing any review here, I obviously cannot write one before the release.


But the song I find most meaningful goes like this:

kholo kholo darwaze, parde karo kinare, khoonte se bandhi hai hawa, milke churayo sare.
aa jao patang le ke, apne hi rang le ke, aasman ka shamiyana aaj humein hai sajana.

kyun is kadar, hairan tun,
mausam ka hai mehmaan tun, duniya saji tere liye
khud ko zara pehchaan tun.
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar,
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin,
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

Basi zindagi udasi tazi, hansne ko razi garma garam sari abhi bhi hai utari.
zindagi to hai patasha, meethi meethi si hai aasha, chakh le rakh le hatheli se dhak le ise.
tujh mein agar pyaas hai, baarish ka ghar bhi paas hai.
roke tujhe koi kyun bhala, sang sang tere aakaash hai.
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar,
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

khul gaya, aasmaan ka rasta dekho khul gaya.
mil gaya, kho gaya tha jo sitara mil gaya , mil gaya.
raushan hui sari zameen, jagmag hua sara jahan,
ho udne ko tun azaad hai,
bandhan hai koi ab kahan
tun dhoop hai, cham se bikhar
tun hai nadi oo bekhabar,
beh chal kahin, ud chal kahin
dil khush jahan, teri to manzil hai wahi.

kyun is kadar, hairan tun,
mausam ka hai mehmaan tun.

Sung by Shankar and music from Shankar, Ehsaan & Loy. You can download the song from here.

Play and donate

On FREE Rice you can donate rice by playing vocabulary quiz. I came to know about it from Sandesh's blog. It's an interesting initiative and the web page is very simple and effective.

It's a UN initiative to let people play vocabulary based quiz and for every correct answer 10 grains of rice are donated. Donations go to UN World Food Program .

It also informs that approximately 3.8 billion grains have been donated since its launch on 07-Oct. I donated too and would suggest others to spend 5 minutes out of a few hours of monitoring cricket scores on the net or while chatting with your friends.

Deviating a little from the main topic and looking at the two aspects of the
website.

Vocabulary:

I don't think such a quick quiz can improve one's vocabulary substantially. It
takes time for an individual to assimilate new words and such time does not exist in this case. But, it could still be used as a refreshment from busy schedule or to gauge your vocabulary levels. If you try taking away just 2 words a day then some lingual gains could be made as well.

Donation:

UN being the most respected organization when it comes to world development, I cannot challenge the effectiveness of this initiative. But, I have doubts about how much rice registered on the servers actually translates to real rice? And then we all know about the rest of the delivery chain and how much will reach the end! Going by the 3.8 billion figure, it translates into approximately 3,80,000 KG of rice, assuming 10 grains would weigh 1 gram. Per capita consumption of rice in Indian urban areas is around 4.7 Kg per month. Considering higher consumption in other countries, in less than 3 months this program should have donated rice to feed 70 to 80 thousand people for 1 month. I doubt so many people would have been freed from hunger. But it is worth spending a few minutes every day for a fraction of that.

So go ahead and spend a few minutes.

Kashmir. Behind the Vale - Book Review

Author: M J Akbar
Publications: Roli

You might have read and heard a lot about the Kashmir issue, so have I. But, I know most of us have formed opinions, views and images based upon what we were told or we heard. This book could help many a people who ever had any interest in knowing more about Kashmir.

M J Akbar takes you through centuries of history of Kashmir from the times of Kingdoms in early ADs to 1990. Yes, only till 1990! He shed’s light on all aspects of Kashmir from its kings to people, from religion to regions etc.

It makes for a good read if you have some kind of connection with the state of probably have visited it sometime.

Few lines from passage about how Islam came into existence in Kashmir - After a very unstable period of 12th century where the change of kings was more frequent than change in weather came a king in 13th century, popularly known as 'Bud Shah'. After stabilizing the state he wanted to change from Buddhism to Public's religion, which at that time was Hinduism. Since Hindu pandits could not decide which of the 4 castes the King should join he was not granted the permission to become a Hindu. He then decided to become a Muslim and he did. Over the next 50 years of his prosperous rule he did everything right a king should do. He built mosques and temples with equal devotion. But, then people followed him and so followed Islam in Kashmir.

How history is formed !

But, then one book on a subject as wide as that may not be enough.

Future of the forgotten redboxes

Indian postboxes are all set to get new and refreshing looks. Yes, the picture on the left is the future. Designed by IIT Mumbai this is how they will look like. I think it is an an ambitious project from department of post.

Now the question of-course is how important is it to change the looks of postboxes nationwide. Each postbox would cost around Rs 10,000 and approximately 3 lakh such boxes would be rolled out all over the next 3 years read more.

In my opinion it really was not so critical to change the looks but the existing postboxes were really old, dirty and if I ever had to drop a letter in the post box which, I do only when I fill some forms for entrance examinations, I always had a feeling - would this be ever picked up?

But if things go as planned then they would come into place on a BOT (build, operate & transfer) format. They would be used for advertising resulting into additional revenue stream and other benefits like rust free steel, common lock for all post boxes etc. would definitely reduce operational costs for India post which is a good step forward for the extincting behemoth.

But, who writes letters these days? Well many do but invisible to us living in urban areas who prefer typing over writing. But, how could the postal department revive its usage in the urban areas?

One suggestion from my side would be to insist all primary and secondary school teachers to insist their students to actually write letters to their parents, friends or teachers when they are taught letter writing in class 5th to 8th or so. Looking at the number of students in those classes in the urban areas definitely could make a good contribution to postal revenues.

Otherwise we would see kids collecting letters in addition to stamps as a hobby because they would be as rare as stamps itself and letters hung in museum with tag line "this is Indian letter".

Broken News

This Tuesday I was on Delhi airport for almost 8 hours waiting for my connecting flight, which fortunately was only 1 hour late.

Delhi airport being many times better than Bangalore airport, I got a seat easily in comparison to the struggle for standing space on Bangalore airport. The plasma TV in front was airing IBN7 (Hindi news channel from IBN and network 18) and here is a short extract from one of its breaking news.

My assumption that every alternate news is tagged as breaking news was proven incorrect as the red flash for breaking news never disappeared for the next 8 hours. Yes, every news was breaking news!

One of the news goes like this:

delhi hawai adde pe hua hungama

Indian airlines ki flight pe hua hungama

Flight 102D pe hua hungama

Already 5 minutes into the news there is no reason explained for the so-called "humgama". Each line of news flashing as a headline. The news report continues with red flashing light stating “BREAKING NEWS”.

yatri subah 5:30 se airport par

Flight ka samay 8 baje

yatriyon ne plane par chadne se kiya inkaar

Plane par 104 yatri sawar

Plane ki der se yatri naraz

These pieces of headlines flashed more than 5 times each. How much was the delay, what made the travelers unhappy etc. - no information. May be the news channel did not find such things important enough. This was followed by the next breaking news about some guy buried alive etc.

Now that being breaking news I think IBN7 will soon have brothers and sisters like IBN8, 9, 10 etc. because there are so many flights getting late everyday on so many airports in India, there would be surplus content.

This poor quality news is not unusual neither are people like me writing about it!

Sad part of the story is, "hindi' news channels are miles ahead of English news channels in this with STAR news and AAJ TAK miles ahead of their competition too. Hindi seems to have become a language only for 'masala' and 'gossip'. In fact growing number of Hindi news channels- there are already around 9 each having short slots for national news and rest all booked for such breaking news and about 4 English news cahnnels further emphasizes that there is definitely a lot of market demand for such content which is not a great news in itself.

People who may still want to watch news in Hindi would depart too as there is hardly any news and probably we would soon get to hear parents telling their kids "beta hindi news channel mat lagana, achhe bachhe aisa nahin karte".

Yahoo can do but Google cannot!

Nice post on digital inspiration which lists some of the the things Yahoo search can do but Google cannot.