Recently (well not recently in the sense of last couple of months, but probably 1 or 2 years), television is flooded with celebrity talk shows. Our Kkkkk Karan has a talk show (I guess this is probably what started the trend, yes, you are right, I am talking about "Koffee with Karan"), Simi Garewal has a talk show, Koel Puri has a talk show, now even Rakhi Sawant has a talk show (Was it a talk show? well I guess it was atleast by definition). Even Sajid Khan and Farhan Akhtar joined the list.
I happened to watch couple of shows once or twice, not because I like watching talk shows, but because it just happened to be, sometimes just when I was surfing the tv, sometimes someone else was watching and I happened to be in the same room doing something nonsense and the words entered my ear but did stick to my mind.
But mind is the strangest thing, it interprets things and not only imprints certain things in certain ways, but the sleeping sense prevails sometimes and you see yourself in strangest possible situations alien to yourself. Thats what happened in one fine night. I was dreaming that I have bcome the host of a popular (viewers wise) talk show.
And we have Miss Y (Noone knows why she is famous, I guess she is famous for being famous, [read a Paris Hilton way] ) as our guest of the talk show.
And that dream of few minutes gave me some of the funniest quotes I personally shared with the gracious Miss Y.
And here the show begins..
Me: Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to the greatest talk show on earth where every week we bring you the face to face with some of the most famous persons of our time. (Indeed, we only invite those ppl who can boost our show's TRP, and the show is an all-nonsense-talk-show-without-any-specific-agenda. Our only agenda is to create controversies and thats what we, the people, our society likes a lot)
And today we have amongst us, Miss. Y, the famous blah-blah-blah .... continued for 5 mins like the salutations before entering of a great king into his RajSabha.
And then she entered, and people were stunned by the look.
With all gracious "hi"s and "hello"s we settled for our show.And no doubt, the show was a smasher that day.
Me: Miss Y, first of all thanks for your gracious presence in our famous talk so. Now starting with, it seems you are engulfed with a sea of controversies, but you still seem to be laughing always without having slightest of worry.
Miss Y: Its simple, "The man who smiles when things go wrong has thought of someone to blame it on."
Huh.. Started with a bang (later I realized that it was a quote of "Robert Bloch")
Me: Well, what is your idea about life and death. If I give you a chance to choose how you want to die, what you will choose?
Miss Y: Well life, as you know is beautiful. And as you can see, I have been enjoying every bit of it. Regarding death, given a choice, "When I die, I want to go peacefully like my Grandfather did, in his sleep -- not screaming, like the passengers in his car".
I thought for a moment, Wonderful, who cares about others.
Me: Lot of people consider you as a genius, and you kind of simply swim through all issues handling perfectly and efficiently. How is the feeling of being in a position like that?
Miss Y: "People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world,"
Really, this is the one that really made the mark .
Me: What is your idea about all science, man kind, universe all these jargon?
Miss Y: "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
Huh, a wisdom indeed.
Me: What is your idea about marriages?
Miss Y: "Marriages are made in heaven. But so again, are thunder and lightning." I believe in both.
Hmm, I started thinking twice
Me: In our poor country, lot of people are without jobs, they do not do anything and are upset and this is one of our biggest concern. Do you think you with such a position of power should do something about this?
Miss Y: Look, I do not believe much in that. In my opinion, "Procrastination is the greatest laborsaving invention of all time."
Yeah, thats the way we should think
Me: Recently we have a trend in bollywood which creates really long movies Whats is your opinion about that. Do you like long bollywood movies with lots of songs, drama etc or like short and to the point hollywood ones?
Miss Y: You know, I do not care about whether it is bollywood or hollywood. "The length of a film should be directly related to the endurance of the human bladder."
Me: What is your greatest fear?
Miss Y: Well, I think the worst time to have a heart attack is during a game of charades...or a game of fake heart attack. I wish not to be in that situation.
Me: ok, one last question. It seems that your friendship with Mr. X is grabbing lot of attention. Can you tell us what is going on?
Miss Y: See, a lot of people assume lot of things, as they just see it but can not feel it. "Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."
Applause, applause .. and I woke up realizing that I just finished one of talk shows.
P.S. (We talked a lot more things, edited not to offend any of our reader)
P.S. Most of the quotes are borrowed from funny quotes sites. And to tell you a little secret, the dream was completely imaginary.
P.S. This blog is intended only for humor, if anyone feels offended by any quotes, I sincerely apologise for that
Saturday, February 21, 2009
Saturday, February 7, 2009
Incidents, All in a day's work (continued..)
And we are back again ... with more funny workplace quotes.
If you are a first time visitor of this blog, you can read the previous post of workplace quotes from here to get some context.
Quote 1:
When after trying out several times unsuccessfully to download few files, our dearest colleague almost gave up. Someone amongst us suggested an alternative and that worked. Here is the mail snippet with happiness and joy all conglomerated.
=========================
"Champagne anyone? :-) :-)"
X wrote:
"It must have been the corrupt files like you all said. I deleted all the install files and downloaded again.
So it went through this time. Very nice!"
=========================
P.S. We wish these minor issues happen again and again so that we can demand champagne again and again. After all how many times in your life you will get a chance to celebrate with champagne.
Quote 2:
Wine and dine has been a part of our daily mail culture thanks to our dearest colleague. Here is a sample after successful conquest of an issue.
"Heard of "http://alwaysbroke-with-no-money.com/" ? ;-) Pinot Noir or not, I can bet you that some cheap red wine by the jug is sure to come our way if we scream louder ;-)"
P.S. Screaming louder can give you anything. Definitely screaming is the greatest strength of crybabies.
Quote 3:
Audience, do you have the power to line up workers for you to do something. No, you may not have, because you are not a Roman Emperor probably. But our dearest colleague definitely thinks like a Roman Emperor at least. You find out yourself from this snippet.
"I have lined up the QA folks to start testing this bundle - so please plan on giving the deliverable in the next day or so :-)"
P.S. QA: Quality Assurance
Quote 4:
What max can you do with status of your team members apart from preparing a consolidated report? Certainly someone thinks differently.
"Can you please send your weekly status? I need to send something by tonight :)"
P.S. We wondered what that "something" signifies for.
Quote 5:
What do you do when a project is about to be wrapped up? Certainly not all people have the exact idea.
"Are we almost at the finish line? Please let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help"
Quote 6:
Can a "something" be complex and simple at the same time. Well its probably a poetic simile. But in absolute sense of projects, I am not so sure of.
"On the Project X front, I was planning to involve you too as this will be a bundle as complex or as simple as Project Y for example. Hence, we may need your help too !."
P.S. Certainly creating a calculator program can be compared to creating a complex compiler, at least from project management perspective.
Quote 7:
A single word can be as important as salt in a curry. Here you find out yourself.
"I'm very keen to wrap this Release up as fast as possible, but XXXX has a very valid concern- we have done a great job up to this point, and we should spoil the game just because of being in a rush to finish up!"
P.S. This does not sound so encouraging without that "not" after "should". Is it?
Quote 8:
Any 2-3 words can form a meaningful subject line of an email.
Subject: How goes it?
Quote 9:
"We have the last of the two HOT issues in our court - and I know that the fixes for the same are being actively pursued (I think Person X is almost at the verge of closing issue 1 today with Person Y's help).
We are in the radar with these bugs for the age on them (again not entirely our problem). So, please ensure that we close them out as soon as possible."
P.S. My capability does not permit me to switch off the radar. Not that I am worried, but its a sense of urgency I want to show.
=========================================================
Folks, that's all for today. I am pretty sure we will have more updated versions very soon.
Note: I want to personally thank few of my friends (For now, I want to keep them in anonymity) for the material for this compilation, without whom these funny excerpts could not have been possible.
If you are a first time visitor of this blog, you can read the previous post of workplace quotes from here to get some context.
Quote 1:
When after trying out several times unsuccessfully to download few files, our dearest colleague almost gave up. Someone amongst us suggested an alternative and that worked. Here is the mail snippet with happiness and joy all conglomerated.
=========================
"Champagne anyone? :-) :-)"
X wrote:
"It must have been the corrupt files like you all said. I deleted all the install files and downloaded again.
So it went through this time. Very nice!"
=========================
P.S. We wish these minor issues happen again and again so that we can demand champagne again and again. After all how many times in your life you will get a chance to celebrate with champagne.
Quote 2:
Wine and dine has been a part of our daily mail culture thanks to our dearest colleague. Here is a sample after successful conquest of an issue.
"Heard of "http://alwaysbroke-with-no-money.com/" ? ;-) Pinot Noir or not, I can bet you that some cheap red wine by the jug is sure to come our way if we scream louder ;-)"
P.S. Screaming louder can give you anything. Definitely screaming is the greatest strength of crybabies.
Quote 3:
Audience, do you have the power to line up workers for you to do something. No, you may not have, because you are not a Roman Emperor probably. But our dearest colleague definitely thinks like a Roman Emperor at least. You find out yourself from this snippet.
"I have lined up the QA folks to start testing this bundle - so please plan on giving the deliverable in the next day or so :-)"
P.S. QA: Quality Assurance
Quote 4:
What max can you do with status of your team members apart from preparing a consolidated report? Certainly someone thinks differently.
"Can you please send your weekly status? I need to send something by tonight :)"
P.S. We wondered what that "something" signifies for.
Quote 5:
What do you do when a project is about to be wrapped up? Certainly not all people have the exact idea.
"Are we almost at the finish line? Please let me know if there is anything at all I can do to help"
Quote 6:
Can a "something" be complex and simple at the same time. Well its probably a poetic simile. But in absolute sense of projects, I am not so sure of.
"On the Project X front, I was planning to involve you too as this will be a bundle as complex or as simple as Project Y for example. Hence, we may need your help too !."
P.S. Certainly creating a calculator program can be compared to creating a complex compiler, at least from project management perspective.
Quote 7:
A single word can be as important as salt in a curry. Here you find out yourself.
"I'm very keen to wrap this Release up as fast as possible, but XXXX has a very valid concern- we have done a great job up to this point, and we should spoil the game just because of being in a rush to finish up!"
P.S. This does not sound so encouraging without that "not" after "should". Is it?
Quote 8:
Any 2-3 words can form a meaningful subject line of an email.
Subject: How goes it?
Quote 9:
"We have the last of the two HOT issues in our court - and I know that the fixes for the same are being actively pursued (I think Person X is almost at the verge of closing issue 1 today with Person Y's help).
We are in the radar with these bugs for the age on them (again not entirely our problem). So, please ensure that we close them out as soon as possible."
P.S. My capability does not permit me to switch off the radar. Not that I am worried, but its a sense of urgency I want to show.
=========================================================
Folks, that's all for today. I am pretty sure we will have more updated versions very soon.
Note: I want to personally thank few of my friends (For now, I want to keep them in anonymity) for the material for this compilation, without whom these funny excerpts could not have been possible.
Incidents, All in a day's work
I was an avid reader of Reader's Digest from my childhood days. And not that I like all the health, life, interview related articles of it, but most of the time I read the humor sections.
Amongst all types of humor, one of my favorite was a section called "all in a day's work", where typically people share funny incidents from their work. After I started my career in a software company, I always thought where are the extreme funny incidents that I used to read in my favorite magazine? Its not that there were no funny incidents, but those were either not directly related to my work, or at least it was never good enough to be put in a magazine.
But recently with work pressure or for whatever reason, one of my colleague started behaving really weird and voila, we have our daily share of workplace jokes distributed to us every morning we reach in office, just like a magician pulling out numerous stuff from a small hat.
Well well, I should not say like a magician since a magician knows what he is doing, its more of like an ordinary person given powerful role of a magician i.e. the hat with the stuffs or the stick with the magic power. With that, something is performed, but unknowingly. Our colleague is just like that, pulls out one by one surprise for us without his bit of sanity on what has been done/shown to outside world, in this case us. But anyway, we have our share of laugh with that, and I am going to share some of those funny tricks in this blog.
Day X: Incident 1:
As part of our job, we create bundles for software which is then distributed to other teams who test and can report issue if any. The bundles get created in an automated way and daily a new bundle is created. As per the process once a daily bundle is created that cannot be changed anymore and a new bundle with all fix need to be created. One day, a bundle had some issues and a team member reported the issue to our dearest colleague. Without even bothering about the actual issue, he responded back “The daily bundles are not in a good state he should try out newer dated daily bundles”.
You must be thinking whats wrong till now, right? But then the ultimate trick was performed. He went and stopped automated daily bundle creation without giving a chance to create a new bundle. The poor fellow who originally reported the issue, waited for 4 days to get an updated daily bundle which is kept in a specified location without knowing the irony that our dearest colleague has stopped the cause instead of fixing the same. He then sent a mail asking entire group how he is not able to find a newer bundle and then we found the trick. Someone amongst us sighed, “Yes, it’s always better to eliminate the cause rather than fixing it.” In this case it was the software bundle, don’t distribute newer ones and no one will able to find new issues. Simple, right?
Day X: Incident 2:
Anyone who has worked in any Unix based system, must have known that once you become a root user you can login as any other user from there. And in most of the internal systems for daily work, sudo functionality is provided to login as root user to perform specific operations. Since once someone logs in as root user, he can login as any user, it makes easier to facilitate this in a shared work environment where users need not share their passwords, but can change to any user id to perform specific operations as and when needed. Our dearest colleague now applied that trick in most unconvincing manner. Here is what was communicated to another person when giving access to machine and how the sudo functionality can be used
=========================
And mine is as follows:
machine: machine1
to login as me, do the below:
login to the machine with youruser id/ password
sudo su / passwd: (your password) su - (my userid) This will make your id as mine.
=========================
And once again, we were dumbfounded, if userid1 can mutate to userid2, I do not want to imagine the situation.
Day X: Incident 3:
This one is about the need to have a daily meeting . And here goes a snippet from the original mail.
======================
I've uploaded the Task List to track our progress with regards to the Project X at the below link. I would like to propose a team huddle twice a day for about 15 minutes to get a picture on how we are doing up until Date X. Our first meeting being Xday at YPM. We'll go from there and decide on the next steps.
======================
Until this mail, we never knew that we need to do a cricket/football style huddle for our project in a maidan .
Day X: Incident 4:
Another excerpt:
================
"The job is now DEAD. Can someone please fix this? We are gated at this point."
================
Getting a dead job is common in our work, we typically resubmit the same. But wondered as if our colleague is mournful for the dead job and asking for a medical attention from someone.
Day X: Incident 5:
================
Subject Line: Updated Wiki
Mail Body:
FYI here's the updated Wiki.
================
Do you see nothing wrong here. We also did not, until we found that, there were no wiki link ; instead an excel spreadsheet was attached in mail. We have gone speechless now.
Funny Mail Subjects and quotes
===============
1. Subject: "Play Pen: Wiki to scribble daily notes"
2. Subject: "The Last Lap" --> Incidentally this was kind of beginning of the project.
3. What can happen when a single word is in-appropriate. You read yourself below.
Appropriate statement: "Here is the intermediate bundle to test that we promised to announce."
Statement Given: "Here is the intermittent bundle to test that we promised to announce."
We wondered, if the s/w bundle was appearing and disappearing as per God's will so that it became a case of intermittent bundle.
4. What do you tell your teammate when he is going for a vacation to a nearby place and taken leave on Friday (P.S. Saturday and Sunday are holidays in all S/W industry)?
Our dearest colleague sighed with similar news: "Alas: 3 working days gone"
We wondered whether it was intentional that he wished our teammate to work over weekend or inability to find out that Saturday and Sundays are not working days at all.
5. "I used GUI to get here."
P.S. We can travel using Graphical User Interface.
6. "Yes, I'm planning to. Just debating if it should be in round one though or we should take a first crack at it within ourselves."
7. "Samir (Name Changed) is helping me come up with a detailed task list. Armed with this, we should make this project our top priority till Date X or we reach a 'complete' status.
This also needlessly goes to say that all vacations will be on freeze till then :-)"
Inferences from above mail:
- Every task list is now an armor which can be armed and used against others
- People find it funny when vacations are frozen because of work
===============
Thats it for today
More coming soon .. Do post your feedbacks :)
Amongst all types of humor, one of my favorite was a section called "all in a day's work", where typically people share funny incidents from their work. After I started my career in a software company, I always thought where are the extreme funny incidents that I used to read in my favorite magazine? Its not that there were no funny incidents, but those were either not directly related to my work, or at least it was never good enough to be put in a magazine.
But recently with work pressure or for whatever reason, one of my colleague started behaving really weird and voila, we have our daily share of workplace jokes distributed to us every morning we reach in office, just like a magician pulling out numerous stuff from a small hat.
Well well, I should not say like a magician since a magician knows what he is doing, its more of like an ordinary person given powerful role of a magician i.e. the hat with the stuffs or the stick with the magic power. With that, something is performed, but unknowingly. Our colleague is just like that, pulls out one by one surprise for us without his bit of sanity on what has been done/shown to outside world, in this case us. But anyway, we have our share of laugh with that, and I am going to share some of those funny tricks in this blog.
Day X: Incident 1:
As part of our job, we create bundles for software which is then distributed to other teams who test and can report issue if any. The bundles get created in an automated way and daily a new bundle is created. As per the process once a daily bundle is created that cannot be changed anymore and a new bundle with all fix need to be created. One day, a bundle had some issues and a team member reported the issue to our dearest colleague. Without even bothering about the actual issue, he responded back “The daily bundles are not in a good state he should try out newer dated daily bundles”.
You must be thinking whats wrong till now, right? But then the ultimate trick was performed. He went and stopped automated daily bundle creation without giving a chance to create a new bundle. The poor fellow who originally reported the issue, waited for 4 days to get an updated daily bundle which is kept in a specified location without knowing the irony that our dearest colleague has stopped the cause instead of fixing the same. He then sent a mail asking entire group how he is not able to find a newer bundle and then we found the trick. Someone amongst us sighed, “Yes, it’s always better to eliminate the cause rather than fixing it.” In this case it was the software bundle, don’t distribute newer ones and no one will able to find new issues. Simple, right?
Day X: Incident 2:
Anyone who has worked in any Unix based system, must have known that once you become a root user you can login as any other user from there. And in most of the internal systems for daily work, sudo functionality is provided to login as root user to perform specific operations. Since once someone logs in as root user, he can login as any user, it makes easier to facilitate this in a shared work environment where users need not share their passwords, but can change to any user id to perform specific operations as and when needed. Our dearest colleague now applied that trick in most unconvincing manner. Here is what was communicated to another person when giving access to machine and how the sudo functionality can be used
=========================
And mine is as follows:
machine: machine1
to login as me, do the below:
login to the machine with your
sudo su / passwd: (your password)
And once again, we were dumbfounded, if userid1 can mutate to userid2, I do not want to imagine the situation.
Day X: Incident 3:
This one is about the need to have a daily meeting . And here goes a snippet from the original mail.
======================
I've uploaded the Task List to track our progress with regards to the Project X at the below link. I would like to propose a team huddle twice a day for about 15 minutes to get a picture on how we are doing up until Date X. Our first meeting being Xday at YPM. We'll go from there and decide on the next steps.
======================
Until this mail, we never knew that we need to do a cricket/football style huddle for our project in a maidan .
Day X: Incident 4:
Another excerpt:
================
"The job is now DEAD. Can someone please fix this? We are gated at this point."
================
Getting a dead job is common in our work, we typically resubmit the same. But wondered as if our colleague is mournful for the dead job and asking for a medical attention from someone.
Day X: Incident 5:
================
Subject Line: Updated Wiki
Mail Body:
FYI here's the updated Wiki.
================
Do you see nothing wrong here. We also did not, until we found that, there were no wiki link ; instead an excel spreadsheet was attached in mail. We have gone speechless now.
Funny Mail Subjects and quotes
===============
1. Subject: "Play Pen: Wiki to scribble daily notes"
2. Subject: "The Last Lap" --> Incidentally this was kind of beginning of the project.
3. What can happen when a single word is in-appropriate. You read yourself below.
Appropriate statement: "Here is the intermediate bundle to test that we promised to announce."
Statement Given: "Here is the intermittent bundle to test that we promised to announce."
We wondered, if the s/w bundle was appearing and disappearing as per God's will so that it became a case of intermittent bundle.
4. What do you tell your teammate when he is going for a vacation to a nearby place and taken leave on Friday (P.S. Saturday and Sunday are holidays in all S/W industry)?
Our dearest colleague sighed with similar news: "Alas: 3 working days gone"
We wondered whether it was intentional that he wished our teammate to work over weekend or inability to find out that Saturday and Sundays are not working days at all.
5. "I used GUI to get here."
P.S. We can travel using Graphical User Interface.
6. "Yes, I'm planning to. Just debating if it should be in round one though or we should take a first crack at it within ourselves."
7. "Samir (Name Changed) is helping me come up with a detailed task list. Armed with this, we should make this project our top priority till Date X or we reach a 'complete' status.
This also needlessly goes to say that all vacations will be on freeze till then :-)"
Inferences from above mail:
- Every task list is now an armor which can be armed and used against others
- People find it funny when vacations are frozen because of work
===============
Thats it for today
More coming soon .. Do post your feedbacks :)
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