[This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is here]

We eagerly popped in the Basic Instinct Video CD into the computer driver, and eagerly started up the computer to watch what was rumored to be the greatest movie of all time. But the computer just frustrated us. It was too slow to play the cutting-edge-at-the-time MPEG video that was on the disk. The computer constantly stuttered and jerked, and couldn’t  manage to play the movie smoothly. Getting your hopes up and meeting with disappointment like that is very frustrating, and encourages people to do stupid things. We knew that we had to make the computer faster, and that there was a setting on the motherboard that would boost the speed of the CPU all the way to 66 MHz. I suggested we should enable that setting, so that the computer would become faster, and we could watch the movie. But my friend was skeptical that would work.

Friend: “If the computer could run faster, why would Intel make it run slower on purpose?”
Me: “Because Intel is stupid. They probably don’t know it can run faster.”
Friend: “What? But they made the CPU! How can they not know?”
Me: “Look… Do you know how your Kidney works? The kidney is inside you, but that doesn’t mean you know how it works.”
Friend: “Hmmm….Good point!”
Me: “Of course! The CPU is just like a Kidney. We’re just making the kidney do whatever it does, only faster. Its that simple!”

And so, we shut down the computer and flipped the switch on the motherboard, and started up the computer. The computer booted up fine, and when windows started, we started the movie. This time it played brilliantly! SUCCESS! HAHahahaha!”

We settled in to watch the famous “Basic Instinct” movie. I ran to the kitchen and quickly made some popcorn, you know, to make the movie experience more authentic.

The movie started. Just 2 minutes into the movie, my friend started sniffing around, trying to smell something.
Friend: “Do you smell something burning?”
Me: “Its just the popcorn.”
Friend: “No… I think something is really burning.”
Me (lost in the movie): “Shhh… This is the good part… Look…”

Sharon Stone, the heroine of the movie, sits down on the chair in the police station and lights up a cigarette. The policeman asks her a question and… FLASH… BLUE SCREEN!

The computer crashed! The screen reads “Windows has encountered a fatal error and has shut down to limit damage to your Computer!”. What the hell? Limit Damage to the computer? What damage?

Just then, from the corner of my eye, I see a white smokey thing coming out from the back of the computer cabinet. Uh Oh. This is not looking good. I open up the case of the computer to see what’s smoking inside the computer. The case is very hot to touch. And just as I take out the side cover of the computer… BOOOOM… a fog of white smoke comes out of the computer!

Me (Coughing) : “EEiiikkees!!! WHAT IS THIS!!!!”
Friend: “Cough.Cough… I think someone is coming… COUGH COUGH!”

The timing couldn’t be worse. My parents have just returned back home. I can hear them as they walk in.

Dad: “Something smells weird… Something is burning!”

He walks straight into my room. By this time, I’ve had the presence of mind to pull the power cable off, but its too late. The room is filled with smoke!

Dad: “WHAT IS HAPPENING?!?!”
Me: “Hi Dad. What’s up? How is Murthy uncle?”
Dad: “Is the… Oh No! Is the computer burning?!”
Me: “NO NO! Technically, its only smoking…”
Dad: “THE COMPUTER IS SMOKING!?!?!”
Me: “Well, look at the bright side. At least I’m not smoking! He heh.”

My Dad never finds these kinds of jokes funny.

Dad: “How did this happen?!?”
Friend: “I… I think my mom is calling me. Bye then!” and he ran off
Me: “Ummm… Actually… I… I set windows screensaver to “Fire”, and the fire…JUMPED OUT… and hmm…. I mean…The virus must have given the computer a fever and… maybe… eerrr…”

In retrospect, I should have blamed it on a short-circuit or something, but if I had that kind of presence of mind, I’d be a different person altogether. Anyway, after that, my Dad put me to computer classes, because he thought I should wreck other people’s computers before trying it at home.

You know how they say that there are lessons in failure? I learnt my lesson that day too. “Always have a believable excuse ready before starting off on any project”. This mantra has served me well over the years!

• 5 Comments

Back when I was a kid, I used to get a lot of toys as gifts, but they never used to last. I loved opening up my toys to see what’s inside them. My dad used to get me toys, and I used to pretend to play with them for a while until my dad was watching. As soon as he went inside, I used to take a screw driver and open them up, and fascinatingly dissect all the parts inside them. Of Course, I could never put them back, so when my dad used to ask what happened to the new toy he bought me, I used to say that our kid next door stole them from me. The poor kid got a bad reputation, and I got new toys.

Anyway, this fiddling was not limited to just toy cars. My Dad had just bought me a brand new computer. This was way back in the late 90s when computers cost more than a years’ supply of household groceries. My dad thought of it as an investment though, since he figured that introducing me to new technology would pique my curiosity and help me learn lots of new things. He was right, I did learn a lot of new things. Mostly cheat codes to games like “Prince of Persia” and how to find secret levels in “Dangerous Dave”.

After the computer was around for several weeks, I started to wonder how it works. During this time, they used to teach us “Computer Science” in school, so I figured that the teacher would know. So I went and asked her if we students could open up one of the school computers to study what’s inside it.

Me: “Teacher, can you open up the computer and show what’s inside?”
Teacher: “Why do you want to see what’s inside? I already drew the block diagram on the board yesterday. What were you doing then?”
Me: “No, I mean, can we see what’s REALLY inside. There can’t just be 3 boxes called “ALU” “CPU” and Memory… there has to be cooler stuff inside…”
Teacher: “You’re not supposed to open up computers!”
Me: “Why?”
Teacher: “Because there are viruses inside!”
Me: “You mean computer viruses? But…”
Teacher: “Yes, computers have viruses inside them just like dogs have rabies inside them. If you get one of those computer viruses, you could fall sick and DIE!”
Me: “Oh?”
Teacher: “That’s right. These are the real things that they don’t teach in your text books. Listen to me!”

I took what the teacher said to heart, and got really freaked out. I mean, rabies was bad enough, but what would happen if I really got a computer virus? Scary stuff! I decided never to open up my other toys, God knows what other viruses are inside them.

That feeling lasted about 2 weeks, before I was itching to open up the computer again.

I had a friend in my class who was also interested in these kinds of things. The two of us gathered the courage one day and decided to really open up the computer to see what’s inside. The opportunity came when my parents went out one day, and my friend and I were left alone at home. We decided to take the big step.

I got a big can of cockroach killer spray (in case any viruses jumped out), and then proceeded towards the computer. I had the screwdriver in my hand and my heart was thumping. As I screwed apart the back of the computer, my friend was starting to panic.

Friend: “What if we die?”
Me: “At least we’ll die bravely!”
Friend: “Should we get a flashlight? I’ve heard that the dark monsters are afraid of light. The viruses may be too…”
Me: “Keep quiet… Just be ready with the cockroach spray of something happens…”

I unscrewed the cabinet from the back, one screw at a time. When all the 4 screws came out, both of us looked at each other, prepared to face whatever monsters would jump out of the computer. I slowly removed the side cover plate out and……..

It was absolutely brilliant. There were no monsters inside! Just a beautiful collection of multi-colored fans, wires and cables. At the bottom was a big circuit board, with literally thousands of shiny metallic wires soldered. It was like a giant city for little electronic chips. Our experiment was a success!

Before my parents returned, I had screwed the side panel back on to the computer. We decided never to mention that we had opened up a super expensive, delicate piece of sensitive machinery to my Dad. He would have flipped out.

But since we had opened it up once, we couldn’t just stop then! We kept up with our guilty pleasure of waiting till there was no one in the house, then secretly opening up the case and going through the insides of the computer. One of us would constantly be on the watch near the door to warn if someone unexpectedly came back. Once we had our fill, we’d careful hide away all evidence of our actions, and hide away all the screwdrivers and other jumpers we’d removed from the computer below the bed. I guess this is what the other kids did with their Playboy magazines.

After a few weeks of this, we’d learnt enough about the workings of the computer to know about motherboard jumpers and clock speeds. I remember thinking at the time that the motherboard looked ABSOLUTELY nothing like what the teacher was telling us was inside a computer. It was like telling kids that there is a giant chariot pulling the sun across the sky everyday, and the kids believed that, never asking any questions, just believing. I became convinced since then that my school was a big fraud.

Anyway, so this was the time that the Video CD arrived on the scene. One small shiny silver disk contained a whole movie! Someone told us that we could watch the movie on a computer, provided that we had a fast enough computer. My friend, the same guy that helped me open up the computer, got hold of one of these disks containing the movie “Basic Instinct”. We’d heard a lot about this movie, and wanted to check it out ourselves. So, as usual, when there was no one in the house, we popped the CD inside the computer, and waited for the good times to start.

Update: Part 2 is here

• 9 Comments

Now that placement season is on us, it is a good time to review some “guidelines” on how to get a job. A lot of people unnecessarily get stressed about making a living in this world etc…, but as this article will show you, it is just a matter of following a few simple steps.

Résumé
Many people don’t know this, but “résumé” is a french word that means “fictional short story”. It is usually 2-3 pages long, and details the chronicles of your life in an entertaining fashion. What you write in your resume is very important, and if you are having trouble filling it up with funny anecdotes, this exercise may help:

Think about what Superman would do if he had Einstein’s IQ and could time travel. Write down all his adventures in your resume and put your signature at the end of it.

Hobbies
Most resumes have a “hobbies” or “interests” section. The key to filling up this section is to write unverifiable claims that show what an interesting person you are. Here are some tips to fill this section:
Wrong: “Hobbies: Lazing around, testing various sleep-inducing methods and collecting swear words in different languages”
Right: “Studying abstract impressionism, skydiving, helping impoverished poor people.”

No need to mention that the abstract impressionism is “TV”, skydiving is really throwing paper planes from rooftops and the impoverished poor person you are helping is yourself.

Interview
This may sound ironic, but the best way to do well in an interview is to have a misplaced sense of very high self-esteem. Most interviewers can immediately detect if you are low on what’s called “self-confidence”, so you have to go into the interview thinking you are Robert De Nero (or Julia Roberts for you ladies). Here are some tips to get you through the interview:

Puzzles
Think about it: there are more candidates than there are puzzles, so the interviewer is going to be asking the same questions over and over again. The best strategy is to ask your friends who went to the interview before you, and then act surprised when the interviewer asks you the same question. When asked a question you know the answer to:

Wrong reaction: “Aahaaa! I know this one. Page 45 of ‘100 most asked interview questions‘. Answer is 25″
Right reaction: “Hmm… Interesting. I will break down this problem into components…” (…5 minutes later…) “…and therefore, by equation 5 above, the answer is 25.”

“What are your weaknesses?”
This is a very popular interviewing question, designed to measure your self-confidence. Be careful when answering this one.

Wrong Answer: “Chocolate is my biggest weakness. No, wait… French Fries. No, Chocolates. Wait…It’s really french fries…I think.”
Worse Answer: “Gossip”

The right answer is to say something that is really an advantage to the company, and you cannot help doing it.

Right Answer: “I tend to work too hard, sometimes late into the night, because I find it unable to give up on a problem without finishing it, because I want all my colleagues and bosses to like me so much, that I am willing to do their laundry too.”

“Do you have any questions for me?”
Most interviewers will end with this question. This question is one of the most misunderstood parts of the interview. Be careful of asking the wrong question here.

Wrong question: “Does the company make you work like a donkey while constantly beating your behind with a stick?”
Worse question: “Are you allowed to take office supplies like pens and staplers home?”

When the interviewer asks this question, what he is really saying is “I’ve had a long day taking to half-brained, overanxious kids who want nothing but money from this company. Do you know that the company is not even paying me overtime for interviewing you?”

So, in this situation, don’t trouble the interviewer by asking about the company. He is already frustrated with it, and don’t remind the interviewer about it. Ask instead about his dog, or if he saw the latest Rakhi Sawant movie.

Follow these steps properly, and you will not be disappointed. Let me know how it goes.

• 16 Comments

[This is part 2 of a series. Part 1 is here]

Legend has it that Jon Nash invented Game Theory to figure out the best strategy that can be used to pick up girls in a bar. This eventually led to the Nobel Prize in Economics (and he also got the girl, By the way), but I figure that game theory can be used for much more practical applications: Getting out of household chores. Take that, Jon Nash.

So I’d managed to convince The Wife to try out the auction method to allocate household chores. After much cajoling, she’d finally agreed, and we were going to have a “trial run” with 4 household chores. We were ready to start the auction, and I was ready with my strategy!

<WARNING: MATH CONTENT!>
The auction was designed as a combinatorial, no-reserve auction. In game theory terms, this was a 2-person zero-sum game, and my strategy was to bid up one item to 3T/4 (where T is total money available), so that I could buy the rest of the items, since x < 3T/4, and I could win the rest.
</WARNING>

So the auction starts in earnest. The wife notices that I’ve started to bid a bit heavily on the ‘I Will Not Make The Bed’ chore. She starts to get a little suspicious, and she bids on that item too. Rs. 200. I bid Rs. 300. She really wants to teach me a lesson, I think, because she ups the bidding on the item, and bids Rs. 350. The image of me getting up all sleepy headed in the morning and struggling to make the bed day after day comes to my mind. I start to feel a bit nervous. I bid Rs. 400.

The wife gives me a stare. Ah, she’s trying to psych me. But I’m not going to fall for her mind games. I want to stare right back, but I don’t really have the guts to do it, so I stare at the ceiling fan instead.

She bids Rs. 450 on it. This is my chance!

I suddenly switch strategy and start to bid on the other items. Since she has so much of her fake money tied up on the “I Will Not Make The Bed” item, I outbid her on every of the other items. She doesn’t seem to be too worried about this, (probably because she does all these chores anyway, and the prospect of making me make the bed every morning is pleasing her no end).

Wife: “So I guess that’s it. All the chores have been sold, and looks like you have to make the bed! You can start right away!”

Hah! The auction may be over, but the game is not. Like the undead cursed thing from the movie The Mummy said, “The End is only The Beginning“.

Me: “Actually, I would like to apply for a loan from the HCB.”
Wife: “HCB?”
Me: “Yes, the HouseHold Central Bank. I’m going to use all the items that I won as collateral, and borrow Rs. 500 from the bank.”
Wife: “Wait… How did the HCB get the money to lend to you?”
Me: “Oh, all the proceeds of the auction go to the HCB…”
Wife: “Wait a minute… How can you…”

Before she can protest, I interrupt her.

Me: “So, I’m going to use this Rs. 500 and buy the “I Will Not Make The Bed” chore as well.”
Wife: “Hey, wait a minute. I won that!”
Me: “But I’m buying it for a higher price than you paid, so it’s fair.”
Wife: “In that case, I am also going to apply for a loan too!”
Me: “Unfortunately, you don’t have any collateral to apply for loan, since you don’t own any chores now. But if you want to put your remaining money in a HCB fixed deposit, you can earn an annual interest rate of 9%, so you can try again next year”

The Wife is giving me The Look.

Wife: “So lets summarize. Your bank took all the money from me, I didn’t win ANY chores in the auction, and not only did you win everything, you will also not do any chores around the house. Correct?”

Me: “That is correct. See? By following the rules of the free market and the banking system, you can see that everyone benefits tremendously.”

Apparently, I was profoundly mistaken. What happened next was rather unconventional, but I was forced to accept it as “fair” under some severe threats of being homeless. The Wife proceeded to appoint herself as the Director of the Household Central Bank, and made some questionable “investment decisions” to “lend” ALL the chores to herself.

So here I am, cleaning the dining table, yet again. Not only that, I also have to make the bed from now on. Arrrrghhh! I am now preparing a petition to the Director of the Household Central Bank to waive off loans held by some poor subjects.

• 7 Comments

After my previous encounter over negotiating household chores went down the drain, I was thinking of new ways to try and get out of the drudgery. I really really hate cleaning the table after dinner, and I was summoning all my creative forces to help me on this one.

After cleaning the dining table yet another time, I sat down all exhausted in front of the TV. The news was coming on, where the TV news anchor was making a big deal about rising inflation.
TV anchor: “…and with the rising prices of petrol and food grains, it is the poor aam admi that is suffering…”

Me: “That’s stupid. The inflationary pressure is being created by the central bank trying to hold down the rupee to aid special interest exporters groups and not to mention the fiscal deficit created by the absurd agricultural and commodity subsidies meant for… you guessed it… the poor aam aadmi. See?”

The wife gives me a blank stare.

Me: “You don’t see?”

As soon as I said that, a profound understanding of the universe hit me. In that moment, I had the deepest inspiration o my life. It came to me like a bolt of lightning, and I suddenly saw the world crystal clear, and my brain had it all figured it out.

Economics! The impenetrable fog of misunderstanding that permeates our lives, the key to confusion and obfuscation.

Me: “I just had a great idea!”
Wife: “Really? What?”
Me: “Lets have an auction for all the household chores!”
Wife: “Excuse Me?”
Me: “Yeah! Like how the government auctions off the spectrum to the Mobile companies.”
Wife: “Ooo… I don’t know…”
Me: “This is a great idea! We’ll write all the household chores on a piece of paper, and then we can bid on them!”
Wife: “Is this like the time when you tried to convince me that the XBOX is an investment?”
Me: “THE XBOX IS A VERY GOOD INVESTMENT!!! WE SHOULD BUY 2 OF THEM! But anyway, that’s not what this is about.”
Wife: “This sounds like another of your schemes!”
Me: “No, really. It’ll be a fair and genuine auction. Here’s how it works: First, we take some fake money…”
Wife (voice dripping with sarcasm): “Real auction, fake money. This doesn’t sound suspicious at all…”
Me (ignoring, completely excited): “…and then we write “I won’t do chore XXX” on pieces of paper…”
Wife: “…wait… I thought this was about doing chores, and not avoiding them…”
Me: “and then we bid for the pieces of paper. At the end of the auction, I won’t do all the chores that I bought, so you have to do them and vice versa”
Wife: “Wait… This is ridiculous. It doesn’t make any sense…”
Me: “No.. No… Think about it. It is completely fair. Since both of us have the same about of fake money, we have equal buying power, and we can buy chores that we REALLY REALLY don’t want to do, but we can’t buy them all, so we’ll have to do SOME chores…”
The Wife is holding her head and giving me THE LOOK.
Me (still not getting the hint…) “…and the price of the chores reflect the marginal scarcity… of.. the… err… hmm… Why are you holding your head? Headache?”

SCORE!!! Economic Theory: 1 Common Sense: 0

After much convincing and explaining, I finally managed to convince the wife that this was a fair scheme to divide the housework and it would work perfectly. I started writing all the household chores on pieces of paper, and lined up some fake monopoly money, and we were ready to start. This was going to be fun…

[Update: Part 2 is here]

• 11 Comments

Regular readers of this blog will know that there are lots of kinds people that I hate, and somewhere in the top 10 are the folks that think the laws of physics are optional. I hate movie directors as it is, and when they get this “The laws of physics are more like guidelines” attitude, it just flips me out. Someone has told them they have the artistic license, and these directors have taken it as a license to murder common sense and logic, and they do it with unapologetic abandon.

I saw a spectacularly stupid example of film making recently when I went to watch “Wanted”. I mean, I’m not one to miss a movie with Angelina Jolie in it, but this absurdity of this pathetic excuse for a movie is is unparalleled, even in nearby parallel universes.

The premise of the movie is that there is this dude who has physics-defying shooting abilities. He can, for example, “curve” a bullet, much like Beckham curves a football. I feel like I should sit down with the director of this movie and explain to him aerodynamics, then drill into his tiny head the law of conservation of momentum, and make him work out the equations for the differential air resistance required on a rotating bullet to overcome the momentum of the bullet which, by the way, is about 64 Kgm/s and nearly impossible to do. Maybe then he’ll see the light.

But oh no, he goes on, gravity and momentum be damned, showing absurdity after absurdity, while half the audience gawks at the special effects and the other half gawks at Angelina Jolie, leaving only me with my constantly increasing blood pressure to wonder at how this director can have hung out common sense to dry out of the window like this. Sometimes I feel the government should tax such movies extra and use the money to start a “physics for dumbasses” course for movie directors.

Anyway, the director is obviously inspired by Rajnikanth movies. There is this scene where the bad guy shoots a bullet at the good guy, and our hero has to save the good guy. What does he do? Simple: He shoots at the bullet with HIS gun, and his bullet hits the bad guy’s bullet, knocking it out, and saving the day. Doing that requires a reaction time of 10^-2 seconds, which is not enough for his eyes to even capture the image (4×10^-2 seconds), let alone his brain to see, interpret, analyze and recognize the image, then decide, send the signal to his muscles, which have to co-ordinate and contract and relax, align perfectly, and finally press the trigger. Reminded me a scene from Ramanad Sagar’s Mahabharat where they did the same thing with arrows.

This kind of macho-super-human abilities work only for Rajnikanth (of who, for the record, I am a HUGE fan). I mean the 20-something kid in the movie is no match for our evergreen Rajnikanth, (they tell the story of this girl who starred as Rajnikanth’s daughter, later his girlfriend, and now as his mother, while Rajnikanth who has absolutely not aged) who executes these movies with his signature snazzy super style spectacularly. Rajnikanth is at least 2 orders of magnitude cooler than anything hollywood can produce, and their uninspired lift of a Rajnikanth movie leaves much to be desired.

And oh, there is no interesting scene with Angeliena Jolie either (if you know what I mean), so absolutely no point watching the movie.

• 9 Comments

“You don’t do any work around the house!” the wife said, making no effort to hide her obvious displeasure.

A conversation that starts like this is rarely going to end agreeably, and at some level, I already knew that. But my consciousness thought it could squirm out of this one too, just as it had done for the last 25 years of its existence.

Regular readers of this blog will remember my brilliant strategies to avoid cutting tomatoes that has worked with reasonable success. Being lazy and avoiding work is a high risk strategy, because you may end up doing more work that you’re trying to avoid (I’ve discovered this through my extensive experience in this area), it is the morally right thing to do. As the great Socrates once said:

He who strives to be lazy,
Will live life nice and cozy.
Doing do work, that’s just crazy,
That’s the secret of life my dear rosy!

Translation: “Lazy == Good”.

I decided to take the path shown by enlightened souls like Socrates and Deve Gowda, and was ready to stand firm by the principles I believed in.

“No more excuses. From tomorrow, cleaning the dining table after dinner is your work.” the wife said.

This is one of the great injustices of life that nobody focuses on. A dining table takes costs a fortune to buy, not to mention the several years of visiting furniture shops. After doing all that for the dining table, you’d think the wretched thing would be grateful to you, but NOOoooooo! You have to clean that damned thing. What injustice! The media should be focusing on these real issues - issues that matter - instead of just going about hyping irrelevant things like Global Warming.

Anyway, I was in a no-win situation. I simply looked the other way and said “hmmmmmm……”

“You’re also going to make the bed from tomorrow”.
“I protest!” I say feebly, without any conviction in my voice whatsoever.
“That’s fine. You can protest all you want. But just get the work done.”
“I don’t want to make the bed. I don’t like to do that.” I said, trying to make a squeaky voice to gain her sympathy. I’m going to try and push my luck to see if something comes out of this conversation that is certainly heading towards a showdown.
“Well, that’s too bad.” The wife says, not biting my sympathy maneuver.
“OK, I’ll trade that with you. You make the bed and I’ll do some of your work.” Brilliant! I had found an opening, a way to wiggle out of this!
“What work of mine can you possibly want to do?” the wife says, in a deeply cynical voice.
“I’ll clean the table after dinner today.”, I say. Getting close… one more strike and…
“But I’ve already cleaned the table!” she says, exasperated.
“And whose fault is that?” I say, triumphantly.  SCORE!!!!

For the casual observer, it may seem obvious that this argument had gone in my favour. I could have almost said “Hence Proved!”, and the force of logic and reason was with me. But logic and reason don’t count in situations like this, apparently. The wife then proceeded to PROVE to me, in her own special way, that I was going to do both chores in the house for the next month.

This battle had been lost, but the war has just begun. I started to hatch my next brilliant scheme…

• 8 Comments