Sleepless Days !!

Working the night shift this week...and am having some sleepless days as a result !!

This is odd...it wasn't this hard the last time I tried this back in B school...you start your day (or night) with evening coffee and snaks, head over to the comp lab, check mails, chat on yahoo, play some quake, listen to the folks fighting over "age of empire", and probably gurpi sitting there crying "yaar, band karo yaar, bhookh lagi hain.... already missed lunch...dont want to miss dinner...", grab dinner, and get back to the lab...continue "working" till 1 am...then run over to thapas for maggi / anda burji before they close...(gurpi still going "yaar...pause karo yaar....thapas will close....haven't had lunch today...)....get back to lab....and finish off the night with some more quake and work and then breakfast...peaceful slumber through the day...wake up for coffee and snaks....and repeat....

So, back to the topic...

What to do with your meals? Do you still eat them during the day and go hungry during the night or devise a dinner - midnight snak- breakfast plan? Or do I just eat breakfast-lunch-dinner in that order, but in the night?

I currently am not skipping breakfast lunch or dinner either during the day or night !!! That should be too much food going in right there...need to "weight in" again at end of week.....

What do you do with your beer? You cannot drink it in the evening coz you are heading to work, but you cannot drink it in the morning either, coz it's just morning ??

When do you sleep? Get back in the morning and sleep till afternoon? Or wait till afternoon and sleep till evening?

The shopfloor guys have been really helpful by giving me some ground rules...

1. the 2 am break is lunch break and what you eat is lunch...

2. avoid the sun on your way home....

3. get home, finish your beer..and sleep off....

4. and of course...the day before your off day is called friday no matter what day of the week it is

Sounds like once you have these priorities set, the rest of the stuff should fall in place automatically...dont know yet...just my first day with rules !!!

ഓണാശംസകള്‍

ഓണാശംസകള്‍

onaashamsakal - onam wishes to one and all....

i don't remember wishing each other in the family back in the day, we just celebrated it...

and of course it was necessary to add "onamalle?" (isn't it onam) to all conversations...and onam could be the reason for anything...
like the husband who had a bit too much to drink "onamalle?"..or you bump into ur neighbor whom you haven't seen outside the house all year - "onamalle?"

the only thing my father used to tell me every onam - "drive carefully, you may not be drunk, but everyone on the street is.."

The American life - the flip side

That lady must be at least 90 years old, filling up gas in her old Buick..

Bent over, hardly able to lift the gas nozzle, she did that, and walked around and cleaned her windows..

You see this so many times every day..

Some days u think "wow, that's remarkable..", other times u feel it is so sad!

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Pandora Rocks....

pandora radio continues to amaze me: Started out ranking metallica and couple other heavy bands...and its been playing select songs from RHCP, nirvana, U2 etc...based on previous song rankings...and of course those were all songs i really like...

now that i've ranked those songs, today it played "three little birds" - bob marley

of course i love that song....but a software figuring out u like a bob marley song when u've only ranked rock ????

thats a WOW...

the music genome project rocks !!

and it followed marley with hells bells ACDC :))

Captain Speak

Another great start on an old rickety delta 767...

Aircraft started pushback and suddenly all the lights and air conditioning go out, then emergency lights come on. Captain comes on PA and says "folks, while we were pushing back, our APU fell off-line, we should be able to fix it shortly" - a very technical announcement, that caused all the other hiccups that followed...

Before we proceed with that, couple of quick explanations.

1. The APU or auxillary power unit is like a power generator on the aircraft - this runs everything while on ground and not connected to ground power. Once airborne, usually most power is taken from the engines.

2. This flight is from the middle east, to the USA, and the passenger mix is at least 50% "cautious" US citizens (as they tend to be in this part of the world)

So back to live action - a moment of complete darkness, then silence - as air conditioning stopped, and then dim emergency lighting comes on. This is followed by a hurried announcement from the captain that something important (as three letter acronyms make them sound) fell off !

Everyone still had a brave face on. Some folks were calling the flight attendants to check what went wrong.

We get towed back to the gate. The inside of the plane feels like an oven by now. The human body does generate a lot of heat!

Once connected to ground power, the lights and AC are back. Maintenance folks come on board, and with them are some of the border security forces. Seeing the security forces, there is some real panic visible.

Maybe the flight attendants asked the captain to do some damage control, so he comes on PA again. "Folks, we do not have any problem. This aircraft has a third engine, which is a small engine, which we do not need for flying, and that's what turned off. I would bring my family on board this flight - the security is just part of the procedure".

Explanation #3 - this is a security cleared internatinal flight which pushed back from gate - as good as a mechanic going out of the country to work - which is why the security escort was required.

The captain did manage to turn this fact around rather beautifully. And thanks to the captain again - the original problem being discussed between passengers becomes:

"did an engine fall off??"

Flight attendant call buttons ring furiously. Someone actually reported sick so they could get off the flight, and that took another 15 minutes to get the passenger off. I hear someone behind me go "This is too much sh*t man, Am not paid well enough for this. Am gonna get a job back home"

One passenger gone, cabin doors closed again, and OFF goes the lights and AC, and a moment od complete darkness, and on come the emergency lighting. This is followed by the captain on PA "folks, they pulled our plug too soon from the ground, just a moment and we will get our apu running".

"They pulled our plug"??

Same drill - flight attendant call buttons. Now the lead flight attendant gives the "arrival check" call followed by "we have another passenger who reported sick, folks, if any others are not feeling well, let me know RIGHT now. I am not gonna open the doors another time. I have to get back home and do my weekend grocery shopping and other errands. We do not have any problem with the flight - it is just like your car stalls on start!"

Ah, great analogy maam, a car stalling compared to an aircraft stalling. I can picture it a lot better now. The stalled car rolling to its stop, and the stalled aircraft flying "all the way to the scene of the crash" as Ron White once said.

Thankfully that was our last sick passenger and our last power failure.

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The hooker with a bitch flavor !!

True story, with slight modifications (like the movies?) :)

Here we are in an arab country, for a week, on work...pretty conservative place (that's a factor in the incident below)

We finish up dinner on day 1 and the waiter goes "wud u like hooker sir?" - and my boss's eyes pop out - "a hooker?". Waiter shows a blowing action to the mouth, and the boss's jaw drops, till the waiter actions like he is blowing some smoke out, and we figured out what he was talking about.

The boss ends up trying out an apple flavored hookah...

Day 2, we finish up dinner, and the same waiter goes, "would you like hooker sir? We got bitch today!"

"A bitch?"

"Yessir, the aaple, the bitch, the stroberree"

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Fouls, Flopping and Game Time....

Watching soccer again after long....all my old frustrations with the game seem to be coming back up...used to hate all the flopping, the power given to the referee (and the damage done by wrong calls) and the time wasting tactics (which include flopping and delaying throws and kicks, substitutions etc.)

But we do have solutions for all these currently in other games which could work very well here.

Fouls are managed pretty well with the current yellow-red card system, but there is no real review happening of what actually happened. The TV viewers see that it was or was not a foul, but the referee's decisions stands. Something similar to the NFL's coach's challenge should work very well here. Every time the coach suspects there is a wrong decision, they can throw the challenge flag, and the decision is reviewed "upstairs". To prevent too many challenges, the team loses a timeout for a wrong challenge - but we don't have timeouts in soccer - so maybe have a set number of challenges like tennis players are given - maybe just 2 wrong challenges per half and any number of correct ones.

As far as flopping and time wasting tactics - this could easily be fixed by moving to a play clock as in basketball or many other games - not a running game clock . Maybe overall time can be cut from 45 to 35 or 40. Clock stops for out of bounds, goal scores, foul whistles, substitutions etc - any time the game is stopped, clock stops. And game stops exactly at 40:00 - no extra time given. If a ball is in air towards goal, that can be saved or counted if it goes in.

It will also be very good to have the ref call out every decision - we do not yet know if the ref denying USA's 3rd goal called an offside, or foul, and if foul, on which player. Again from NFL - every decision on field is announced by the lead referee to the stadium on mic and TV.