In one of my previous blogs, I shared some of my views about crunch time on work. Now, I come to know that I am not alone in this world of crunch time sufferers.
I came to know about this unhappy spouse of an employee of one of the world's leading Gaming company. EA - Electronic Arts. Ever played their Football game. Boy oh boy! its kind a realistic and very very addicting. You cant just take your mind off while playing the game. But, merely nobody would ever think of the pains the developers of the game had put into the wonderful product. The fun they had lost, the families that had suffered their absence, nobody would give these things a damn. But atleast find some time, to read this article in the link below.
This was written by a spouse of an emploee of EA. Also, if you have time, just look at the comments and response that this had received from the world over, not just from the gaming industry but from everyone....
EA_Spouse
The next time you ever happen to play a game, take some time apart from the fun you have had, to thik about the ppl involved in having provided you with that much of fun. But, please, dont just think of the creamy layer. like the CTOs CEOs of the company. You do not know their actual role in any project.. :)
Cheers
Joe
Thursday, February 24, 2005
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
Responsibilities in Work
R E S P O N S I B I L I T I E S......
Have you ever shouldered some? Or have you ever thought you need to be given some responsibilities? Well, I do. Taking in responsibilities gives me some confidence and courage. The ounce of pride which will help you attain ur goal easily and quickly. No headweight stuffs.
But in the IT industry, many can come across who are just reluctant to be responsible. They are just freaky enuf to be DJs, VJs or street side romeos. But, nobody has a clue as to why they are into a software industry. And to many of our amazement, they occasionally do well in certain areas. Like, keeping them physically well and mentally alert all times. After all, they have nothign to worry about and so they can always be ready to take up anything new. but seriously, they just take up but dont carry them for long :). Kindly apologize me, if you are one such person.
When some responsibilities are handed over to you, it is either because the other person trusts you so much and think you are the right person to do this job or you are put under test and its ur duty to do well in this job. If you arent going to keep up to the expectations in the latter case, then you can soon expect to be shown the way out. But, in the former case, the effect is kinda depreciation. You dont loose anything all ofa sudden. But slowly, you are loosing your values. Slowly the other person will loose trust in you. Soon, you will find yourself without any job. Well, who trusts you to give you a job...
There are some freaks, who will never understand the seriousness and never even have a clue of what is expected of him. When something is told to them, they just claim themselves that they have all their life to complete their task. My God!!! How do the HR recruiters miss out on these qualities.? Years back, I had a colleague of mine, who just used the office as a mere browsing center. By that time, our boss was not there to keep an eye on that F*. (Well, I just mean to say Fool) We took the responsibility and had warned him of his performance quite a number of times. But he was reluctant. Then, there came the day when I had to ask him, infact, ask him strongly that I needed him to finish off his task in another couple of hours. I was really shocked when he just shouted back at me on top of his voice. Things went rough from then on.. The point I wanted to make here is, I still dont understand why ppl are ignorant towards the responsibilities vested on them.
Well, on the other hand, taking all responsibilities on ones shoulder isnt that good too. That could end up in a real fuss. Be ready to accept responsibilities and accept whatever comes your way and most importantly, give your best to keeping up to the expectation, no matter what it takes. Well i started this blog with a diff thing in mind and i had gone in a diff direction now. No probs. This is understandable because, nobody after working for more thatn 15 hours continuously, will be able to think as clear as he would have some 10 - 12 hrs back.
More on the next blog
Cheers
Joe
Have you ever shouldered some? Or have you ever thought you need to be given some responsibilities? Well, I do. Taking in responsibilities gives me some confidence and courage. The ounce of pride which will help you attain ur goal easily and quickly. No headweight stuffs.
But in the IT industry, many can come across who are just reluctant to be responsible. They are just freaky enuf to be DJs, VJs or street side romeos. But, nobody has a clue as to why they are into a software industry. And to many of our amazement, they occasionally do well in certain areas. Like, keeping them physically well and mentally alert all times. After all, they have nothign to worry about and so they can always be ready to take up anything new. but seriously, they just take up but dont carry them for long :). Kindly apologize me, if you are one such person.
When some responsibilities are handed over to you, it is either because the other person trusts you so much and think you are the right person to do this job or you are put under test and its ur duty to do well in this job. If you arent going to keep up to the expectations in the latter case, then you can soon expect to be shown the way out. But, in the former case, the effect is kinda depreciation. You dont loose anything all ofa sudden. But slowly, you are loosing your values. Slowly the other person will loose trust in you. Soon, you will find yourself without any job. Well, who trusts you to give you a job...
There are some freaks, who will never understand the seriousness and never even have a clue of what is expected of him. When something is told to them, they just claim themselves that they have all their life to complete their task. My God!!! How do the HR recruiters miss out on these qualities.? Years back, I had a colleague of mine, who just used the office as a mere browsing center. By that time, our boss was not there to keep an eye on that F*. (Well, I just mean to say Fool) We took the responsibility and had warned him of his performance quite a number of times. But he was reluctant. Then, there came the day when I had to ask him, infact, ask him strongly that I needed him to finish off his task in another couple of hours. I was really shocked when he just shouted back at me on top of his voice. Things went rough from then on.. The point I wanted to make here is, I still dont understand why ppl are ignorant towards the responsibilities vested on them.
Well, on the other hand, taking all responsibilities on ones shoulder isnt that good too. That could end up in a real fuss. Be ready to accept responsibilities and accept whatever comes your way and most importantly, give your best to keeping up to the expectation, no matter what it takes. Well i started this blog with a diff thing in mind and i had gone in a diff direction now. No probs. This is understandable because, nobody after working for more thatn 15 hours continuously, will be able to think as clear as he would have some 10 - 12 hrs back.
More on the next blog
Cheers
Joe
Friday, February 18, 2005
Spread the Aura of Happiness
Aura!! this word was of less importance to me until I happened to chat with one of my friend. Until then, I was able to identify the thing exactly. Everybody has a personal space of influence spread around them. Depending on each person they come in contact with, it may either be a master or a slave. Master / Slave is just terms to indicate the behaviour and nothing more than that. This aura is their influence among a group of ppl a person interacts with.
There are also stories which say, "Ppl with strong Aura can acquire other ppl's strengths. blah blah.." But the good guy, the "Aura of Happiness" is something which, everybody isn't gifte with. Even wondered of the people who always laugh around, giggling, smiling and always having fun......
Take some time to think about those ppl and watch them closely. Those selfless creatures exist in the world, to mainly encourage and enthusiase (ignore, if wrong) others. But, if looked closely, even they have their own sad stories and personal problems with which they can be feeling gloomy all day., But they dont live their life that way. Instead they keep it to themselves and just pass on the flowers of happiness to everybody they meet. I have wondered what they could get back in return. The answer I got was, Happiness, true happiness.
When you are happy, not only you are happy, but your environment and your colleagues and other of ur mates are alllll happy. soo happy that everybody will forget their personal grievances and live a happy life. Today, once my problems got fixed, I was just making fun for every other thing. And we were just firing on all guns without feeling tired at all. We were putting in extra hours without much of a trouble. When you crack out jokes, you will soon realise that you are not alone. soon, others will follow suit, and then the entire place is filled with fun n frolic.
wow, feels like heaven. really, happiness is what every heart in this world crave for. So, am going to try n make everybody cheerful as much as I can. I am a good one to try out. I am determined to try till I succeed.
With sheer determination.
Joe
There are also stories which say, "Ppl with strong Aura can acquire other ppl's strengths. blah blah.." But the good guy, the "Aura of Happiness" is something which, everybody isn't gifte with. Even wondered of the people who always laugh around, giggling, smiling and always having fun......
Take some time to think about those ppl and watch them closely. Those selfless creatures exist in the world, to mainly encourage and enthusiase (ignore, if wrong) others. But, if looked closely, even they have their own sad stories and personal problems with which they can be feeling gloomy all day., But they dont live their life that way. Instead they keep it to themselves and just pass on the flowers of happiness to everybody they meet. I have wondered what they could get back in return. The answer I got was, Happiness, true happiness.
When you are happy, not only you are happy, but your environment and your colleagues and other of ur mates are alllll happy. soo happy that everybody will forget their personal grievances and live a happy life. Today, once my problems got fixed, I was just making fun for every other thing. And we were just firing on all guns without feeling tired at all. We were putting in extra hours without much of a trouble. When you crack out jokes, you will soon realise that you are not alone. soon, others will follow suit, and then the entire place is filled with fun n frolic.
wow, feels like heaven. really, happiness is what every heart in this world crave for. So, am going to try n make everybody cheerful as much as I can. I am a good one to try out. I am determined to try till I succeed.
With sheer determination.
Joe
Its sometimes better to take the easy way out
So, I now gotta believe in the fact, "Its a fresh new day each day.". Yesterday, I was terribly disappointed with the way things ended up. And I ended the day with nothing but resentment. But as my friend has in her email signature
"Life can be learnt backwards,
But it must be lived forward" - Kierkegard
How true!!!
Today, when I called up my boss to know about the issue, I soon learnt that she didnt even bothered about taking a look at the issue. She was busy looking at some other thing. But then, backed by all her years of experience, she was guiding me to do that and this, experiment and let her know of the result. We both tried (even today... but this time, the approach was totally different) several times and atlast, boy oh boy, she finished the issue with a simple question. "Why do you have to try n conserve too much when you have loads of stuff for the taking?"
I ll tell you what. that one question striked me very hard and with that i managed to finish the issue. Actually, I was optimizing the game to work in the weaker phones with restricted memory and other restrictions. But the particular phone, which was creating problems for me yesterday (my god, pls forgive me if I had blamed it badly yesterday. I am really sorry ;) ), had loads of memory, with which I dont have to do any optimizations. I just rolled back my code to its prev state without any optimizations and you should have seen my face light up like a 1000 watts bulb. I was very happy, a sense of relief suddenly filled me up and I am back to normalcy.
My boss summed it up with this sentence
"Its sometimes better to take the easy way out"
Yesterday, I said i have to wait to know whether that was a silly mistake or a valuable lesson to be learnt. Today, it has now proven to be a valuable lesson, a lesson, worth to be learnt in ones life. It is sometimes better to take the easy way out. sometimes, we find our mind very much preoccupied so that, we will just stay ignorant to think of the easier solutions. If we had just taken the time to think out of the box, we would have found that there wasnt any problem really existing...
So, Always, try to think out of the box... stay calm n think clearly. You may arrive at a solution, if one exists or atleast, you will realise that there is no problem for which you need to find a solution...
Cheers
Joe
"Life can be learnt backwards,
But it must be lived forward" - Kierkegard
How true!!!
Today, when I called up my boss to know about the issue, I soon learnt that she didnt even bothered about taking a look at the issue. She was busy looking at some other thing. But then, backed by all her years of experience, she was guiding me to do that and this, experiment and let her know of the result. We both tried (even today... but this time, the approach was totally different) several times and atlast, boy oh boy, she finished the issue with a simple question. "Why do you have to try n conserve too much when you have loads of stuff for the taking?"
I ll tell you what. that one question striked me very hard and with that i managed to finish the issue. Actually, I was optimizing the game to work in the weaker phones with restricted memory and other restrictions. But the particular phone, which was creating problems for me yesterday (my god, pls forgive me if I had blamed it badly yesterday. I am really sorry ;) ), had loads of memory, with which I dont have to do any optimizations. I just rolled back my code to its prev state without any optimizations and you should have seen my face light up like a 1000 watts bulb. I was very happy, a sense of relief suddenly filled me up and I am back to normalcy.
My boss summed it up with this sentence
"Its sometimes better to take the easy way out"
Yesterday, I said i have to wait to know whether that was a silly mistake or a valuable lesson to be learnt. Today, it has now proven to be a valuable lesson, a lesson, worth to be learnt in ones life. It is sometimes better to take the easy way out. sometimes, we find our mind very much preoccupied so that, we will just stay ignorant to think of the easier solutions. If we had just taken the time to think out of the box, we would have found that there wasnt any problem really existing...
So, Always, try to think out of the box... stay calm n think clearly. You may arrive at a solution, if one exists or atleast, you will realise that there is no problem for which you need to find a solution...
Cheers
Joe
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Crunch time on work
oh my god, this has been a reaaaaalllllllllyyyeee loonnnnnnnnggggggg day. And that too, without too much of a progress in the work schedule. This doesnot in any way mean that I was just sitting idle doing nothing all day long. Never!! I had enuf of squeezing my lovely little brain just to fix one issue.
basically, I am a game developer for mobile phones using j2me. Gaming!!! that sounds fun right? but i ll tell you that may ALWAYS sound fun only when u r sitting in front of a game terminal. But if you are the person doing all the decision making stuff and painting stuff(if not doing, atleast programming ::), yes, thats what i do) from inside that terminal, I ll bet you might not always have good times. Game development is equally fun and exciting as it is for game players. But the things is, those people dont cooperate with each other well. While developing a certain game, We initially start off targetting certain handsets. And that fortunately or unfortunately is the best of the lot that is available in the market. with full features and the best platform available, you will not find it difficult to write a game for those phones. But later, when the game is successfuly developed for the target handsets(initial targets), there comes the real crunch. There are hell a lot of cell phones available in the world and not all of them are a boon for developers. some are really a curse for developers. They will just claim that they support this and that... but to the real extent they do support, but only to a minimal extent. like, the features are minimised and the resources are far too low, giving a programmer not much room to free his arms and legs,..... actually free his program...
but, due to the low cost and easy availability they would have penetrated the market very well. and we poor developers are asked to support those phones too. And you know what. it takes more time to port these games to certain handsets than it takes to design and develop a new one for a better handset.
huh, see how much pain i am having in my heart.. i can just go on like this spittin out everything in my mind. but, to hit the button, today, i was put into one such task. ahmmm not really today, but for the past week, and today has been the real crunch. The port was scheduled to be delivered yesterday and since there was an issue (which i very innocently thot would be a simple fix) and we had to take it up today even. I started off with huge confidence to get the work done by early afternoon. but as time passed by, I was trying many many many many many many many, sooo many fixes and workaround. but nothing was fruitful. The problem really is the same piece of code works fine on some devices and on some other devices it spells curse for me. The culprit of my day today is the Nokia 3650 phone. And the better phones( claimed better only for this reason) are nokia 6800 and nokia 7210.
Actually, the Nokia 7210 is another curse for developer with a very miniscule heap memory. that too, when porting ur game from a hefty phone will give u very less chances to be happy all day. But with all my days of experience I managed to track this issue down with quite a bit of ease. But the 3650 hit me right on my stomach in an unexpected time and u know, it really hurts. At the end of day, after trying several times ( I guess, King. Ghazni even would have given it up far earlier today), I had escalated this issue to my boss. She will have a look at it and get back to me pointing some really silly mistakes or with a valuable lesson to learn. Will wait till tomorrow for knowing which one, it would be.
But the real point i wanna say is, I just feel like all the hardwork i had put in today has gone useless, since i was not able to fix this silly(not so really, will have to wait to decide on this) issue. This has given me nothing less than a sheer mental torture. hmm, thats the way every developer out there is living their life. I have heard many sad stories about the EA sports employees. I, atleast get some time to go home (but only for sleeping). Those ppl are working like hell so that they don't even know abt their world when they have their work pressure.
Every work has a certain period where the worker will feel the pressure. But the job a software developer is very different. Think of any other employee. Comes in at 10 in the morning. looks at his files till 5 - 6. completes all his work. goes home happily to spend with kith and kin. But a s/w engr. comes in by 9 - 10 starts his work (may be the one that he left yesterday) , goes on and on and on and on and on and on... then by midnight or early next day morning, realises that he needs to get some sleep, goes home with the pondering about the pending work. slips thru the bed for some time but still pondering over it again n again.. Where is his time to be spent with family n frenzzzz. Come on God!!! you are really clever in creating this job... Is this a boon or a curse?
with heavy eyes
Joe
basically, I am a game developer for mobile phones using j2me. Gaming!!! that sounds fun right? but i ll tell you that may ALWAYS sound fun only when u r sitting in front of a game terminal. But if you are the person doing all the decision making stuff and painting stuff(if not doing, atleast programming ::), yes, thats what i do) from inside that terminal, I ll bet you might not always have good times. Game development is equally fun and exciting as it is for game players. But the things is, those people dont cooperate with each other well. While developing a certain game, We initially start off targetting certain handsets. And that fortunately or unfortunately is the best of the lot that is available in the market. with full features and the best platform available, you will not find it difficult to write a game for those phones. But later, when the game is successfuly developed for the target handsets(initial targets), there comes the real crunch. There are hell a lot of cell phones available in the world and not all of them are a boon for developers. some are really a curse for developers. They will just claim that they support this and that... but to the real extent they do support, but only to a minimal extent. like, the features are minimised and the resources are far too low, giving a programmer not much room to free his arms and legs,..... actually free his program...
but, due to the low cost and easy availability they would have penetrated the market very well. and we poor developers are asked to support those phones too. And you know what. it takes more time to port these games to certain handsets than it takes to design and develop a new one for a better handset.
huh, see how much pain i am having in my heart.. i can just go on like this spittin out everything in my mind. but, to hit the button, today, i was put into one such task. ahmmm not really today, but for the past week, and today has been the real crunch. The port was scheduled to be delivered yesterday and since there was an issue (which i very innocently thot would be a simple fix) and we had to take it up today even. I started off with huge confidence to get the work done by early afternoon. but as time passed by, I was trying many many many many many many many, sooo many fixes and workaround. but nothing was fruitful. The problem really is the same piece of code works fine on some devices and on some other devices it spells curse for me. The culprit of my day today is the Nokia 3650 phone. And the better phones( claimed better only for this reason) are nokia 6800 and nokia 7210.
Actually, the Nokia 7210 is another curse for developer with a very miniscule heap memory. that too, when porting ur game from a hefty phone will give u very less chances to be happy all day. But with all my days of experience I managed to track this issue down with quite a bit of ease. But the 3650 hit me right on my stomach in an unexpected time and u know, it really hurts. At the end of day, after trying several times ( I guess, King. Ghazni even would have given it up far earlier today), I had escalated this issue to my boss. She will have a look at it and get back to me pointing some really silly mistakes or with a valuable lesson to learn. Will wait till tomorrow for knowing which one, it would be.
But the real point i wanna say is, I just feel like all the hardwork i had put in today has gone useless, since i was not able to fix this silly(not so really, will have to wait to decide on this) issue. This has given me nothing less than a sheer mental torture. hmm, thats the way every developer out there is living their life. I have heard many sad stories about the EA sports employees. I, atleast get some time to go home (but only for sleeping). Those ppl are working like hell so that they don't even know abt their world when they have their work pressure.
Every work has a certain period where the worker will feel the pressure. But the job a software developer is very different. Think of any other employee. Comes in at 10 in the morning. looks at his files till 5 - 6. completes all his work. goes home happily to spend with kith and kin. But a s/w engr. comes in by 9 - 10 starts his work (may be the one that he left yesterday) , goes on and on and on and on and on and on... then by midnight or early next day morning, realises that he needs to get some sleep, goes home with the pondering about the pending work. slips thru the bed for some time but still pondering over it again n again.. Where is his time to be spent with family n frenzzzz. Come on God!!! you are really clever in creating this job... Is this a boon or a curse?
with heavy eyes
Joe
Monday, February 14, 2005
Valentines Day!!!!!!
Hi all,,
Wish you all a Very Lovely n Enticing Valentine's Day. This day is meant for love and not just for Lovers. The feeling of love that can develop between anybody. Those who call themselves Lovers are an extremity. I am not here to wish them a happy valentine's day at all. Coz, they consider (if they are real n true in that feeling) each day to be a valentine's day.
People often misunderstand a valentine to be their lover or their spouse or something.... But according to me, a valentine is that person whom u think u are more cared for, more interested in, most of the time u feel urself thinking about them. Someone who you consider as a real treasure in your life. Someone who has changed ur way of life after their entry in ur life. Someone whose acquaintance you want all your life. And if you ppl think these are very synonymous to those Lovers , then pls forgive me, I am not mentioning that.
A valentine can be a parent, a best friend or a brother or sister. Anybody... for that matter. People all thru the years have changed the way a valentine is understood. But I would like to stick to its real meaning. Love happens everywhere.... and it is one love that we feel which is more desperat than any other. Many find it difficult to identify this. And i am such one.... well i have partially identified but its still in the process of ........ never mind.
k, then, its time
later
joe
Wish you all a Very Lovely n Enticing Valentine's Day. This day is meant for love and not just for Lovers. The feeling of love that can develop between anybody. Those who call themselves Lovers are an extremity. I am not here to wish them a happy valentine's day at all. Coz, they consider (if they are real n true in that feeling) each day to be a valentine's day.
People often misunderstand a valentine to be their lover or their spouse or something.... But according to me, a valentine is that person whom u think u are more cared for, more interested in, most of the time u feel urself thinking about them. Someone who you consider as a real treasure in your life. Someone who has changed ur way of life after their entry in ur life. Someone whose acquaintance you want all your life. And if you ppl think these are very synonymous to those Lovers , then pls forgive me, I am not mentioning that.
A valentine can be a parent, a best friend or a brother or sister. Anybody... for that matter. People all thru the years have changed the way a valentine is understood. But I would like to stick to its real meaning. Love happens everywhere.... and it is one love that we feel which is more desperat than any other. Many find it difficult to identify this. And i am such one.... well i have partially identified but its still in the process of ........ never mind.
k, then, its time
later
joe
I welcome myself
Well,
Here comes DJ into the world of blogging. I am aware of this silly blogging(oops! did i say it is silly!!) months ago. But got really interested to start one just minutes ago. Since I always go by my intuition, I started one now. And here, I am going to be posting all stuffs that involves me and that had interested me in a day. I ll try to keep the posts regular on a daily basis. But since there isnt anybody to keep an eye on me., I may take an excuse occasionally. But did i mention that I always find many occasions. ha ha haaaaaa
OK then, let me be short and sweet. I welcome myself into the world of blogging..
thanks
joe
Here comes DJ into the world of blogging. I am aware of this silly blogging(oops! did i say it is silly!!) months ago. But got really interested to start one just minutes ago. Since I always go by my intuition, I started one now. And here, I am going to be posting all stuffs that involves me and that had interested me in a day. I ll try to keep the posts regular on a daily basis. But since there isnt anybody to keep an eye on me., I may take an excuse occasionally. But did i mention that I always find many occasions. ha ha haaaaaa
OK then, let me be short and sweet. I welcome myself into the world of blogging..
thanks
joe
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