Compilation error...

If you are a developer and your code is not working / doing wierd things, you like to know upto what point it works properly. For that the most popular way is to put print statements in between the code. Isnt that what you do often?

Well, our boss had some problem with some code, so he went to Tina, and asked her to see whats going wrong. To find, where it is going wrong Tina added a print statement like this @ line 39....

34 $response=;
35 chomp $response; #print"You entered $response\n\n";
36 unless($response eq "Yes" $response eq "Y" $response eq "y") { next; }
37 $line=~ /^(\d*),.*/; $id=$1;
38 $cmd = "c:\\PROGRA~1\\DEBUGG~1\\symstore.exe del /i ${id} /s $thedir";
39 print "Now I am at line 38";

On seeing this the boss started screaming, "wait wait what are you doing?"
"The code is going to crash, it would throw compilation error..."
She was shocked to see that the boss knows things technically and so started to see what wrong she did in the code. She didnt find any mistake. So she asked,"Whats wrong, Boss?"

He said, "ये तुमने क्या किया ? तुम लाइन ३९ पे लिखते हो 'इ ऍम अत लाइन ३८' , फ़िर कोड तो compilation error देगा ना । "
Arent we lucky to have this free entertainment ?

She never wanted to educate the boss, so she said "Ohh ya.. thanks for bringing it before we compiled" and then changed the line as:
39 print "Now I am at line 39";
And he was really happy.

Laptop screen brightness

I was in a meeting room with the Boss. During the course of the discussion, I told him that instead of giving verbal explaination it would be better if I can show a demo. He handed over me his laptop and pulled a chair besides me.
I connected to my machine via Remote desktop and started showing him a demo of our new project. After 2 mins I noticed that he is not able to grasp the idea, here is the conversation

Dilbert: Boss what happened.. is there any problem?
Boss: Yes.. actually I am not able to see the items clearly.
Dilbert: (Angled the laptop towards the boss) Is it okay now?
Boss: No actually there is a lot of glare from the window I am not able to see the screen clearly
Dilbert: Ok then lets sit facing the wall instead of the window so that there is no glare
Boss: Well actually हमारे बच्चे ने उस दिन कुछ keys दबाये | उस टाइम से ये screen एकदम काला हो गया है हें |
Dilbert: मतलब ?
Boss: ये देखो ना सब काला काला दिखता है
Dilbert: (Ohhh ! so you you don't know how to increase the screen brightness??? !!!) Ok wait a sec
Dilbert: (Fn+Home to increase brightness) Ok does it look bright now ?
Boss: Waaw !

My boss was working with a dull screen for a lot of days b'ca he didn't know how to increase the screen brightness !!!

Wren & Martin read this !

An informal chat between me and my boss....

Alice: So, how is your son?

Boss: Ya she has become very naughty.

How to RDC to a machine ?

The boss wanted to open a RDC (Remote Desktop Connection) to a computer named thisismymachine

Here is how he attempted it

Start->Run->thisismymachine





Waaw... so he was expecting windows to be smart and rdc to the machine by just typing the name in the Run dialog !!

This was the error




Well he did make some really funny gestures at this point, unfortunately I can't put it here...

IE6-Firefox-Mozilla HTML rendering issues

This is in continuation to the research project post

The boss finally got IIS up and running after 2-3 months of research. Well let me put it this way, he toiled hard to set it up for 2-3 months, then one fine he gave up and asked Asok to see why is it not working. Asok cleared the mess in a few minutes and bingo !! the website showed a IIS default page !!! The boss finally had a website running ! :)

Next day the Boss started working on a new HTML page [the default page of the website]. He added a few lines of text and a few hyper links [this took him about a week]

The Boss now wanted to see how the page looks on different browsers! Mind you this was not a page full of Java scripts and jazzy AJAX stuff; It was a simple HTML page with a few headers and hyper-links. Also, the target audience for the web page was about 100 internal users. However the Boss has loads of free time !

He checked how the stuff looks on IE 6 [its the default browser on his machine].

I always use Firefox [and he doesn't know how to install it] so he came to my desk and asked me to hit the website URL. Yukksss !!! what an ugly page !!! and an icing on the cake... at the top of the page there was this dirty heading text with green highlight.

[My mistake, I shouldn't have expected the Boss to have an aesthetic sense. ]

IE6 and Firefox done, he now wanted to test it on Mozilla. He went in our secured server room hunting for a Linux machine which had Mozilla installed. [The easier way would have been to install Mozilla either on his desktop or on an existing Linux machine; Again, he has the luxury of infinite time.]. After 2-3 hours of desparate search mission he had his hands on a Linux box with Mozilla pre-installed [It was a Debian PPC 64 machine, but don't remember it for sure]

It was 5:30 - 6 pm. I was in the server lab doing some installation on a new windows box. He came in and started working on his new found linux box. [I was observing all the activities he was doing :)]. He started the Mozilla, and typed the website URL. [Yuuks I had the sight of that web page again!! ]. For next 2 minutes he kept staring at the monitor. He went out of the lab to to his desk and came in again. He closed Mozilla, restarted it and again hit the same page. Once again he seemed very annoyed with what he was seeing. He made 2-3 trips to his desk and back into the lab.
[I knew he was confused about something, and I was more than sure I am about to hit a jackpot of "technical jokes" so I walked up to him]

Dilbert: Boss what's the matter ?
Boss: Strage heen.. I am curious to know why the web page is showing up like this in Mozilla ?
Dilbert: (Had a look at the monitor) Yes I can see every thing is looking very ugly
Boss: Yes.. but it looks good in IE6. Just now, I checked it 2-3 times from my desk
Dilbert:(I think it looks ugly in any browser) Ok.

Dilbert knew the problem but acted innocent .. so the conversation continued

Boss: See in Mozilla everything looks so big...
Dilbert: (To add more confusion) Yeh.. I can see... may be its the monitor size?
Boss: yes may be but my desk monitor is 19" and this one is 17". I wonder why the 17" monitor is showing bigger text than the 19" one.
Dilbert: Hmm... really strange !!

The boss then went to his desk and searched the web [I don't know for how many days] to see why Mozilla displays text DOUBLE the size of Firefox and IE6. For the next few days he kept broadcasting the newly discovered phenomenon "Mozilla shows bigger text than IE6 and Firefox".

So all you readers want to know why the text on Linux-Mozilla was insanely bigger than IE6 ??

Guess what ? the screen resolution on Boss's desktop machine is set to 1280 x 1024 and that on the Linux machine in the lab is set to 640 x 480. Isn't it only logical that everything will show up double the size ?

ROFL !!

Time Machine....!!!!!

Almost 1.5 years back, I joined this company. And since then my Boss sees to it that he keeps his team entertained.

On 5May2008, our Boss forwarded me a meeting request. It was for a conf call. There was a list of people who were to attend it. I found the subject of the meeting a bit wierd, as we have stopped supporting the product.

So, I went to check the date, and found that the Date of the meeting was : 17Nov2006.
(On this date, I had not even send my resume to this company for job. I clearly remember, that I sent my resume on 18Nov2006)

So, all the blog readers, pls let me know, if you have a time machine, I am all set to attend the meeting which took place 2years back.

Wake up Perl Experts !!

I (dilbert) am not a Perl expert, I use the language once in a while. One fine day I decided to brush up my Perl skill and started reading Perl Black Book

After I breezed throught some easy chapters, I hit an important milestone, the usage of my, local scope. This was something I had forgotten.. so I read it with great interest. I read the examples and the concepts become clear to me.

Asok (perl expert) was working at Wally's desk. I pinged him and just to trouble him I asked him to explain the difference between my and local, and he did it perfectly. Then Asok and me decided to check if boss knew these concepts (since the boss claims himself to be a technical expert).

I called up boss and we had this conversation

Dilbert: Hello
Boss: हल्लू
Dilbert: Tell me one thing, what's the difference between my and local ?
Boss: (A pause of 2 secs) See my is actually used for local variables. And local is different.
Dilbert: (Controlling his laughter) what does that mean ?
Boss: See local is mostly used to getting system/environment variables.
Dilbert:(Had enough of this nonsense) Ok. It would be good if you can give me some code samples.
Boss: Ok


Dilbert and Asok both have a good laugh about this. Within minutes the boss comes to Dilbert's desk (to give some "garbage" suggestions)

Boss: See my and local are there, but now Perl has come up with a new concept called our ! हाँ !

Dilber,Asok: (Putting up a straight face and controlling the laughter) Hmm.. ok

After the boss had left the scene, Asok and Dilbert broke into laughter :D:D:D



Larry Wall needs to be updated that our a recently added keyword!