Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

June 5, 2023

Map Directions can’t always be trusted

Filed under: Humor,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 5:49 PM

There are too many cases where someone followed Google Maps or Apple Maps blindly and ended up somewhere they weren’t supposed to. Before Google maps was available Map My India was the most up to date option available for maps in India. I remember one time me and Gaurang were on my way to visit friends and the map kept insisting that we take a left from the top of the flyover. This was before the time when algorithms would auto update the route if you missed the turn so it kept insisting that we take a U-Turn and turn from the top of the bridge. Ended up having to restart the session before it gave us an alternative route.


As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I remind myself that you can't always trust google maps.
As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I remind myself that you can’t always trust google maps.

Even with Google Maps you have to watch where it is trying to take you, I once was directed to take a road that was about six inches wider than my car, (It started a bit wider and narrowed as I drove into it) had to reverse back out of the way before I got stuck there. Apple maps is even ‘better’ in that Australian Police had to release an advisory back in 2012 warning people about its Potentially Life Threatening” Misdirection.

There is no system that is 100% up to date and accurate but it is expected that when you are you following directions, you use your own brain as well once in a while so you don’t end up in the middle of a desert, or drive into a lake or take a longer way to get where you are going.

– Suramya

May 29, 2023

There are Two kinds of people in the world…

Filed under: Humor,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 7:23 PM

There are Two kinds of people in the world…

There are Two kinds of people in the world... 1. Those that think EOD means 5:00pm 2. those that think EOD means 11:59pm
There are Two kinds of people in the world… 1. Those that think EOD means 5:00pm 2. those that think EOD means 11:59pm

Which one do you fall under? I actually fall under neither because for me EOD is when I sign off for the day which is usually about 1am-2am depending, as when I say EOD I mean my End of Day i.e. when I log off for the day/night.

– Suramya

May 22, 2023

How not to do Interview Screening: Take 1000

Filed under: Humor,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 9:05 PM

Interviewing people is hard and each of us has their own bag of tricks and filters we use to identify the correct candidate for the position. However, some of the ways that people use to filter out applicants just make you go ‘Wow!’ with a head shake. One such example is below:

The iPhone is so much better than any other phone it isn't funny. I now check for phone type in interviews and automatically disqualify the Android Users
The iPhone is so much better than any other phone it isn’t funny. I now check for phone type in interviews and automatically disqualify the Android Users

Using a phone preference as a filter is not the right way to filter out candidates, if this becomes the norm then folks will start filtering candidates on what music they like, what brands they wear or what car they drive. Unless you are working at apple rejecting people for using an Android phone (which for the record is way better then iPhone) is foolish. It is also extremely classist, it automatically filters out people who can’t afford to buy an expensive iPhone as the General cost range for an iPhone is between $500 – $1,500+ whereas an Android phone would range between $100-$1,750+. It also filters out people who care about compatibility of their phone with other users at their home as it is hard to connect an iPhone to an Android ecosystem.

Plus it tells me that you are more concerned about arbitrary markers of evaluation than actually relevant criteria. Personally, I think that if the person interviewing me is using something like this as a filtering mechanism then I am better off getting rejected as who know what insane criteria they might come up with for performance evaluation once you join and start working with them.

I do have a lot of thoughts on interview processes and how some companies do screening but that is a post for another time.

– Suramya

May 18, 2023

Lost in Translation: Movie Synopsis edition

Filed under: Humor — Suramya @ 10:52 PM

This screenshot of the synopsis for ‘Alien’ popped up in my feed earlier and I couldn’t stop laughing.

“Space ship people get up from sleeping coffin and have eat. Computer woman find strange noisings on planet and astronauts go to seeing. Astronauts find big elephant man who dead then find too many egg/

Astronaut is possess by egg demon and new egg demon is come when eat bad noodle. Seven friends and cat all try to find egg demon before ship go home but is hard working.

Who will life to escaping? Who is bad milk blood robot? Scream not working because space make deaf.”

This reminds me of “All your base are belong to us” which was another masterpiece of bad translation.

– Suramya

May 17, 2023

Request to advertise ‘Men’s Beauty’ topics on Linuxgazette.net

Filed under: Humor,Linux/Unix Related — Suramya @ 7:18 PM

As some of you might know, I host a mirror for Linuxgazette.net and this usually results in an email every couple of months for changes to the existing articles and requests to advertise. I recently received an email requesting information about linuxgazette.net for advertising. Now there are a few problems with this, firstly I don’t host linuxgazette.net I just host a mirror of the site. Second problem was the content/topic they want to advertise on the site:

Beards seem to have become popular again, but do you think they will stick? Time will tell, but personally, I wouldn’t mind seeing more men with a cleanly shaven face 😍

I’m getting in touch today because I have some clients looking for advertising opportunities that are related to Men’s Beauty (Should I call it Men’s “Beauty”). After I stumbled across linuxgazette.net I figured I’d reach out and see if you ever work with brands, or have a media kit available.

I mean historically Linux admins do have a reputation of keeping big beards but this is ridiculous. Of course I know that this mail was probably sent out by an automated bot but it did make me laugh .

– Suramya

March 6, 2023

Twitter is down… Again!

Filed under: Computer Related,Humor — Suramya @ 11:07 PM

Twitter downtimes are becoming more and more common, and even though I don’t spend that much time on Twitter anymore (Mastodon is so much better and more fun) this was too good to ignore.
If you visit Twitter.com (or any url on twitter) right now instead of the content you get an API error message stating that “Your current API plan does not include access to this endpoint, please see https://developer.twitter.com/en/docs/twitter-api for more information”.


Current API plan does not include access to this endpoint

Looks like the team managed to nuke their own connections to the API while attempting to restricting some API calls to paid customers only. Although this is an error that should have been caught in UAT or QA testing. I mean that is the basic 1st thing to check to see if all services are working after a major change like this one. But it looks like it was pushed to prod directly without validation.

I guess firing a majority of your teams with almost no notice or Knowledge Transfer sessions is a bad move and makes it harder to keep your site up and running. Who knew?

– Suramya

March 3, 2023

Someone is now claiming that they can’t use Microsoft Windows for “Religious Reasons”

Filed under: Humor,News/Articles,Tech Related — Suramya @ 3:10 PM

The Operating System (OS) wars have been going on since we have had computers and the ferocity with which some OS users defend their preference at times borders on that of fundamentalist religions. The following incident just takes it to the logical conclusion, where a new joiner in a company doesn’t want to use windows on their office laptop because their religion does not allow use of Apple or Microsoft owned Operating Systems.


Employee claims that she can’t use Microsoft Windows for “Religious Reasons”

I wonder that their stance is about using other software/websites/services owned by Apple/Microsoft. Have they stopped using Github because it is owned by MS? What about LinkedIn? or Mojang, X-Box? or any of the thousands of companies they own or have stakes in. Do they use Beat headsets? Shazam? Akamai? Apple either owns or has stakes in them and a ton of other companies as well.

I personally use Linux as my primary OS and would always prefer to use it whenever possible. However, I have had to use Windows at work in most of the companies that I have worked in because that’s what the standard setup was over there. I did push for Linux in some of the orgs and we ended up replacing Windows with Linux for some of the developers in a few companies. That being said, refusing to work with an OS because you don’t want to is a bit over the top for me and calling it against their religion makes it even more out there…

Source: Whitney Merrill on Mastadon

– Suramya

December 21, 2022

“Linux is a meme and only autistic people use it” brainstorm from an anonymous coward

Filed under: Humor,Linux/Unix Related,My Thoughts — Suramya @ 8:28 PM

It is funny how people will make up stuff to explain why Linux (or any other OS) is difficult and why the person making the pronouncements can’t get it to do what they want it to do. Recently, the screenshot below came up in my feed and it made me laugh. As per the author only autistic people use Linux and everyone else “has just fallen for the meme”.


Linux is only for Autistic People

I have been using Linux almost full time since 2001 and am definitely not autistic. I can’t identify trains by their sounds and instead of not being able to talk to girls, according to some I sometimes talk too much. I have no interest in learning the names of the cast for any TV show and as far as I can tell I am leading a pretty normal life.

The genius who penned this (and I am of half a mind that this is just someone trolling Linux users) doesn’t seem to know that it is used to power 96.3% of the world’s top web servers and Android is based on Linux as well. It is the world’s 3rd most popular OS (after Windows and Mac) and while it has its own quirks it def doesn’t need you to know the in’s and out of the computer in order to use it. In fact in my experience, it is easier to install Linux and have a functional setup than it is to install Windows as Windows requires a lot of extra stuff to be installed in order to be productive while in Linux most of that is already pre-installed or built-in.

This was good for a laugh so I wanted to share it here.

– Suramya

August 29, 2022

Can you explain complex ideas using only the top 1k most used English words?

Filed under: Humor,Interesting Sites — Suramya @ 10:27 PM

They say that the best way to gauge if someone understands a topic in depth is to see if they can explain it in language simple enough that a 5 year old can understand. Too many people use acronyms and buzzwords to explain stuff that just confuses people and makes it harder to figure out what people are talking about. There was an old XKCD joke about explaining something using the top 1k most commonly used words in English (See an example about a Rocket below). There is a book about it as well called the ‘Thing Explainer‘ that I had gifted to Vir (my Nephew) a while ago. They both (Vir & Sara) love it and still refer to it quite often.

Theo Sanderson was inspired by the idea and has created a website where you can attempt to explain something with only the top 1000 most commonly used English words.


Up Goer Five

Writing like this actually sounds a lot easier than it is and when I tried it, it took me a few tries to write something that passed the test. Check it out and share your creative writing. 🙂

– Suramya

July 1, 2021

Never used foo/bar/baz as variable names, can I still call myself a programmer?

Filed under: Humor,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 4:14 PM

Just realized today that in my 24+ years of programming I have never named a variable foo, bar or baz. These are the goto names for placeholders in code & metaphysical variables and have decades of history behind them. Most programmers use them for temporary variables or place holders. Since I have never used them, can I still call myself a programmer? 😀

Jokes aside, you should use good variable names in your code that are meaningful, easy to read and concise. Some guidelines on how to do that are below:

Also, another point to keep in mind is to avoid acronyms that can have a different meaning in a different language or resemble rude words etc. See the screenshot below for an example of a ‘bad’ variable name:

Example of a bad variable name
Example of a bad variable name

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

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