Dig this: It’s a balmy summer’s day, in a very picturesque house by the beach, on a outdoor patio with a thatched roof, with flowing cotton curtains, a tall Brazilian model with extra long legs, a hulk of a guy with an oiled up body, a bubbling Jacuzzi foaming up steam, a bottle of champagne on ice and the couple getting cozy.

The girl says, “Honey, would you help me wax a bit?”

“Oh sure baby…I would love to help you with the wax” says the hulk.

Freeze! Cut! Cut! Cut!…Visual over.

Reality: My wife asked me to help me out with the waxing. And, I agreed. Though it may sound romantic and intimate, interestingly it is not so. She bought a tub of wax and a wad of waxing paper. She wanted me to help. I wanted to help her so that I can get out of the house for a guys-day-out trip. And I had very little time to start with. Unfortunately, waxing on a short fuse is a very bad idea.

We have quite a big bathroom where we could have done this. Having never done this in life myself, I said, “Come on, why don’t we sit at the dining table” (A decision that will haunt me for the years to come).

The inner hurry in me manifested as enthusiasm. I wanted to do everything fast. The tub of wax said, “Microwave this for 30 seconds”. The zeal in me prodded me to enhance the entire process, and so I microwave-d on high for 60 seconds. Apparently, wax, not only has a melting point but also has a boiling point. And, boiling stuff doesn’t go well with the skin as well as with the mental stability of my pretty wife who is lying on a mat with sliced cucumber over her eye lids.

I said to my wife, “Relax! Let the master do his work”. I scooped some honey-looking wax and looked at my not so waxed-looking honey and went for the easiest part, the shin.

I gently dabbed. “Eeeeeowwwwww..what the f#[(< was that!” screamed my wife.

It blistered almost.

“The wax is damn hot you idiot”, she said.

Romance was starting to wane at that point.

I brought her some Aloe Vera, soothed the burning sensation, and apologized. I cut four big cucumber slices now, had two and gave here two to get her to relax. I cooled the wax a bit and the applied a clean rectangular strip on her calf. I put the waxing paper on top of that.

Now, the moment of truth.

Since I have already hurt her with my aggression, I wanted to be very gentle. I tried to peel the wax strip in slow motion.

Again she yelled, “Eeeeeeoowwwwww.. what the f#[(< are you doing?”.

I said, “I am being gentle”.

Apparently, the technique is to pull the strip off in one quick motion.

I learnt it. I was doing Strrrrrupppp! Strrrrrupppp! Strrrrrupppp! But the wax is a bad thing to work with. It made my fingers stick. Oh it’s icky. Whatever I touched got stuck to my fingers. I am a hairy guy. My decision to wax without a shirt was a stupid idea. The wax wouldn’t drip clean. High viscosity, I guess. The strands of wax fly about and have an inclination to stick to my chest hairs. The natural tendency to pick the fuzz complicates the issue.

We went through a lot of stick and goo and ick and ooh. Mess on the floor, stuck eyelids, twisted moustache, striped legs, flaring rage, foul language, kicked privates, clawed face. Yeah, my wife is such a pussy cat.

Finally, we both agree, it is more than justified if a salon charges $100 for this work. If my wife does want to pay them, I would gladly do.

My wife is all red, smooth, and melting at the same time. Now, guys, the visual is like a zombie with rotting skin walking. She is furious and doesn’t want to be in the same room as me. She barks at me “Clean this mess”. She rushes upstairs to the bathroom.

Now, the moment of temptation.

All hairy me (1-inch long hairs in my shin), wax and strips. Should I or should I not? I just wanted to know what the fuss is all about. I brave it. I dab a dollop of wax on my calf (my idea of obscurity). I plaster the wax paper clean and square on my calf.

Now, I am scared.

I ask my son to reverse his toy ride-able Jeep. I took a clip-on wire and clipped one side to the waxing paper (Yeah the one on my calf). I tied the other end of the wire to his jeep.

I prayed.

I say, “Gentlemen! Start your engines!”

My son yells “Green!” and steps on the gas.

“Eeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaoowwwwww!”

I understood that there are some things in life that can put a grown man in tears. Wax is one.

Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Premise: The Résumé of an IT professional is the most concocted document in this Solar System. The English language has a variety of words to differentiate a fib from fantasy.  Here are some words to describe the inexactitude in such IT resumes and a sample of such creative fabrication:
Note: Comments are in italics

BS (Bull Shit): I am a Software Engineer with many years of industry experience (The word “many” used to inflate an indefinite period as infinite)
Anecdote: I was on-call production support for 2 years (Did you miss the notice of termination that was sent in the mail?)

Cock-and-Bull Story: My summer in-plant training included programming for CNC machines (How many times CNC machines are programmed by a novice?)
Concoction: I have 7 years experience. 3.5 years in Basic and 3.5 years in C# (It must be amazing to exactly split the number of years of experience required)
Crap: I have 3 years experience with 6 different 6-month projects. (All projects are based on an interstellar anomaly where time is available in exactly 6-month packets)

Drama: I single-handedly established the Management Information System for a medium sized corporation. (Need we say more?)
Fable: I was a member of the core-team that implemented Online Mosquito Repellant Spray Reorder System. (And it should include, “We slew the dragon”)

Falsehood: I worked in the simulated version of the Production environment. (An original fake)

Fancy: My first job was the Senior Searing Chief Consultant (SSCC) of flash fried rectangular parallelepiped legumes (Yeah ….French Fries).
Fantasy: I worked for NASA (New Acres Selling Agents inc.) in their ACS (Area Calculating System). (Still every kid dreams of NASA, Pokemon and Hopscotch)

Fib: I have thorough knowledge of Miscellaneous System Administration. (Huh! Miscellaneous)

Imagination: I have worked with Python. Also have a little experience with Cobra (Should be CORBA).

Improvisation: I prepared and ran custom demos and tests for major customers to provide proof of functionality and performance (Isn’t that your job?).
Invention: I was trained in Windows 2007 (No such thing exist)
Lie: I am an honest individual with a special inclination to creative work (…and the nose grew longer)

Myth: I am a hardworking software engineer. (One screaming oxymoron)
Story: When I was working as Senior Systems Analyst, I was made in-charge of all application designs. (And there was Intelligent Design)
Tale: There were 150 people working under me. (Interesting place to work, I would say)

Terminological Inexactitude: I know COBALT (One Problem: Does not expand to Common Business Oriented Language). Worked in the Identification Division and Environment Division. (It’s all identified as gas)

Untruth: With all my Education, Experience and Expertise, we were able to deliver a quality product (Note to reader: Replace “With all” with “In spite of ”)

Last weekend, few of us friends were planning to meet at a restaurant in Detroit some 100 miles away from our home town Lansing. On our way, we stopped at a friend’s place to say “hello”.

We always communicated well with each other. In fact our communication was so good, that Nortel Networks was planning to do a case study on our talking habits to design their next Mobility Networking Solution. None of us ever felt the need to ask what, where, and when our dinner was going to be.

The drive was smooth, and about 10 minutes from the anticipated destination, I perform the usual landing procedures of checking my hair, the hat’s tilt, the sunglasses, the lipstick overload on my wife’s teeth, the breath-mints, the wallet-pat to the back and….and…and the feel-the-cell-phone-bulge.

The Personal Landing System (PLS) did not match with the Precision Approach Path Indicator (PAPI). Cell Phone missing! Cell Phone missing! Cell Phone missing! Whooooappp! Whooooappp! Whooooappp! May Day! May Day! May Day!

Experienced and certified to land on these conditions, I say, “My controls” and take a grip of the wheel. I can feel the sweat squishing on the leather clad steering. I don’t know where to go.
I say, “Relax…let’s call someone”. I figured that I really don’t know anyone’s number. I used to call everyone using the voice activated call feature and I don’t know even a single digit of anyone’s number.

I was sure the phone should have dropped at our “hello” stop and I could faintly remember my phone number. I pull into a motel to make a call from a public pay phone. Though I write User Manuals for a living, I don’t read the instructions to make a phone call engraved on the metal plate of the pay phone. I drop the two quarters that I managed find in my car and dialed my phone number. A very nice lady picked up the phone and said, “Humphrey’s Residence”, but the only problem was that I am not a Humphrey. I did not dial the Area Code. I lost my my two quarters and no one would give me change.

I drove to a gas station, nearby. I could not find one. I was already getting lost. I am driving fast. I am yelling at my son who is saying “Are we there yet?” My wife’s clothes seem to be gaudy. Every driver on the road seems to be a moron. Detroit seems to be cluttered. Speed limit boards seem to be very wrong. Steam seems to come out of my ears. Everyone seems to be scheming against me.

Now the worries begin about the lost phone. What if someone picks the phone?

• Oh my God! The text messages from that girl.
• Oh! The last dialed calls to that woman!
• Will everyone know who Sally is?
• Will there be crank calls to my wife?
• Damn it….why did I have to save my Credit Card number as “CCard”?
• Ah ha! The photos of the Bachelor party. Huh! Why did I have to take the seat on the stage next to the pole?
• Nooo! I lost a bunch of passwords.
• All hope lost on humanity: It’s a GSM phone and no one who finds it is going to return it. They will switch to a new SIM card.

My friends who were expecting to meet me figure out that I lost my cell phone. They also know that I don’t know anyone’s numbers. They also know what the alternative place I would have chosen. They call that restaurant. The bartender can only give a message. I let my natural GPS kick in. I reach the restaurant they are in. I let a sigh of relief. Everything was fine again. It is just that I lost my cell phone.

The next day morning, we receive a call on the home phone. “Hello, this is my name is Harold. I found a phone at this Seven-Eleven parking lot. Is this yours?”

Faith in humanity retained.

OCD Corporation came out with their new line of computers called Analyticus 2K7 and it seems to be the most wanted tech toy in the market.

Our friend Paul, got one for his birthday from his pretty wife Marsha.

Analyticus 2K7 processes most requests that includes home budget calculation, Reminder System, Lawn watering, Kids’ routines, Pet care, Maintenance and Cleaning, Regional News and a plethora of other activities that you want your wife to take care and she doesn’t.

Analyticus 2K7 prints out a daily status report first thing every morning of the things to be done that day. It is supposed to print “Things” in a column and the “To Dos” in adjacent column. However, because of a bug created by the software development team that attempted to work on Fridays, the printing shifted the “to do” part by one row.

Intelligent Software Engineer: Oxymoron.com

Perfect Software Engineer: Illusion.com

Perfect Project Manager: Miracle.com

Perfect Software User: Mutation.com

Software Tester: Testing123.com

Car Mechanic: Underthehood.com

Proctologist: DifferentPerspective.com

Cosmetic Surgeon: Bouncewitheveryounce.com

Funeral Home: Welldone.com

Dentist: TeethTotaller.com

Chinese Culinary Teacher: ChowHow.com

Women’s Table Tennis player: TTBird.com

Korean Piano tuner: TingTing.com

Priest: Wastedbullets.com

Asian Indian Recipes: Toiletpaperwillcatchfire.com

Thai Ice Hockey Team: GangPuck.com

Nike brand Sushi: Swooshie.com

Jesuit sponsored by Reebok: VectorRector.com

Massage Parlor: MuscleTussle.com

Gymnastic Home Helper: RubberMaid.com

Asian Buffet House: SankYou.com

A Manager who prefers stripes: StripedBoss.com

Art Director: GetSet.com

Internet Cartoonist: IToons.com

Short Basketball Team: SixFootUnder.com

This is an aggregation of inputs from a few software engineers.

On an average, a software engineer runs late everyday. The idea in their little heads is that, he or she left work late the previous day (That was actually a half-hearted compensation for the extra long lunch, the day before).

The moment he arrives, you can hear a lot of huffing and puffing, either because they are over-weight and trying to take the stairs or simply announcing their arrival.

He turns on the computer and some have two. Quite a few have two monitors. Inadvertently, everyone opens their personal mails. The argument is that, there might be some technological inputs from friends that could be directly used for the benefit of the organization. He reads the endless mails, the forwards, the quizzes, and even stuff that says, “Size does matter” or “1mp1ants @ny0ne?”

Then he opens the office mails and assumes the work clock has started already. He reads the endless forwards and forwards a few to the rest of the office colleagues. Some nice lady who got the forward gives a call and says “you are very funny”. Without a batting an eyelid, he says “thank you” and takes credit for some joke that has been on the internet for years.

Now, he opens up Microsoft Visual Studio .NET and Enterprise Manager (SQL Server). These are just development interfaces that give the impression that someone is seriously at work. A page with lots of typing is opened up on the screen to depict code. Depeche Mode, a music CD, is popped in. Actually the music is supposed to zone in the fellow for some concentrated development effort.

Now, he opens up small windows of the Internet Explorer or Firefox (in the case of some one I know). Some read their favorite blogs, some write their blogs and some evaluate how well their friend’s blog is doing. Invariably, everyone has mastered the art of peripheral vision. He can sense the heavy footing of their boss or the muffled wheeze of that painfully complaining user. And he does, the high speed “minimize” routine and scrolls down the code.

Then, he checks all the gizmos that are on sale on all the popular websites, do a comparison and call friends who bought something at regular price, just to give them post-purchase dissonance.

Some seasoned software engineers, closely monitor their stocks through the e-trade websites. Some download the market ticker. And they have developed this OCD to visually manipulate the stock market sitting in front their work computer. If you see those kinds banging their desks, it is not work stress, it is just that their stock dropped and they lost a few 100 dollars. May the force be with them!

By now, its 5 minutes to lunch time. At that moment, guilt strikes the hardly working software engineer. So to satisfy his urge to work, he queries an existing table. Lord God, forgive them for they know not what they are doing. For no reason, he looks at the data and scrolls down. The lunch buddies are ready to go out for lunch. At that moment, two screens full of code are opened and they fill the monitors to give an impression that someone has been busy working.

The half-hour lunches take 90minutes.

The post-lunch is slow, and usually there are some siesta meetings. Everyone is sleepy, all systems on hibernate. You get the idea. The software engineer realizes that his credit card was charged twice by the electric company. He places a call to the electric company. He fights the fight with the customer service representative.

Suddenly, he realizes to check the gas prices. He has a site that gives him the lowest gas price in the area and sends out a “feel good” public service email to the rest of his colleagues about the prevailing rates. That kicks off a water-cooler conversation.

Now, it’s time to do the walk-to-the-rest-room routine. To show how busy he is, he carries two printed sheets of paper and a pencil. He knows pencil has a better effect than a pen.  He refreshes, he is back.

Now, he goes to his boss’ office to ask three questions for which, he knows the answers already. This is a major move to indicate to his boss that he has been working.

Once he is back, he sends out an Evite for a party at his place. He spends half an hour to select the theme. By the time he is finished with the Evite, all the early arrivers (7:30 to 4:00 people) are saying “Bye now..have a good evening”. He makes it a point to say a loud “You too..See ya tomorrow!” to reiterate that he is staying back late at work.

Now he is ready to leave. He calls his wife to ask her what she needs to be bought from the store. After making a long list, he shuts down the system. He makes sure that the system ends with “Dun..dun..dun” music.

With a priceless look of being very tired, walks into the elevator and looks at the person who is riding with him and says with a sigh “Long day.. phew”.

The scenario: Weekly status meeting for a software project contracted to a software development company. Scheduled duration is 2 hours. All stakeholders present.

The story: Wilma, the secretary sends out an appointment to all the stakeholders and books a conference room. She forgets to send the agenda but never fails to order coffee and bagels. People file in at ten past nine for the 9 O’clock. Roger, the project manager, (contracted vendor) introduces the participants for the 5^th time in four weeks. He remembers everyone’s names. He has to, for he bills $250 an hour. 

Meg, the lady from the business unit comes in late uttering the usual words “I had to go to another meeting”. Actually she got late because she was talking with her girl friend about her cat’s diarrhea.

Roger, the project manager reiterates that he wants everyone to speak up and question stuff, no matter how stupid it could be. He has that fake earnest smile as he says, “There are no foolish questions” and he mumbles to himself, “…Only stupid people”. He then puts up a colorful slide of a mock-screen.

The dumbest of all, Annie the business area expert (basically, the most available person from the business unit who is scared of computers) talks first. She points out, “Oh! Oh! In the third sentence “seperate” should be spelled “separate”. Her equally dumb, walking partner, Anthony, the guy who hogs the bagels, chimes in to say, “Yeah! The font is small”. The project manager graciously accepts to change that.

One of the end-users wants to have two flags with two statuses each. Chang, the super normalized database manager steps in and says, “We should have one flag with 4 statuses”. He argues about size. That 4-foot-9 guy wants to keep everything short. Even the records.

Samantha, the business unit manager says, “I want to see data for all the products, in columns”. Sumanto, the Database Admin says, “Why don’t you all learn how to manipulate data in MS-Excel?”

Everyone can see Wilma taking down every word spoken. Or is she drawing doodles to entertain her wits?

At the one hour mark, Marie, the lady who has been sipping her tall oversized jug of water suggests, “Can we have a break?” Dhikshit (no short-forms available), the seemingly busy application developer, checks his mails in his blackberry. All he is worried about is whether that cute girl in accounting has responded to his lunch date.

Everyone returns in 15 minutes, butter up a bagel and sit down. Meg (non-technical end-user) figures how to ask the right question. She says, “I want to be able to query the data?” The insecure Dhikshit, the application developer starts explaining about Virtual Private Networks, Named pipes, Firewalls, Secure-Socket Layers, Encryption, Client-side processing and finally a report.  Meg’s fire fizzles out and accepts just once in a life-time download of data.

Since most of users blamed that the fonts were small, everyone agreed it was only the projector that was causing that. Also, everyone was asked to tilt their screens to an angle of 30 degrees to better differentiate the black from the navy blue.

Roger the project manager announces that he has to leave in 5minutes.  Marie and Meg say, “We too”. Wilma is asked to schedule another meeting the following week.

Pedro, the technology consultant is writing this article.

Meeting adjourned!

The moral: 

Bagels (and Cream Cheese): $52

Coffee (Regular, Decaf, Tea): $43

Human Resource costs: $4600

Time wasted: Priceless

 For everything else there is “Mass Tech Con”.