Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

If you have had a roommate who takes ages in the bathroom because they are busy catching up on social media or a company who wants their employees to spend less time on breaks there are a few anti-user designs that people have been pushing over the past few years. Such as a slanted toilet designed to make it painful to sit on for more than 5 minutes and other such hacks.

I have a better way to ensure people are not spending too much time in there. All you have to do is ensure that the Wifi and Mobile data connectivity in there is poor and folks will automatically stop spending too much time in there. This idea came to me when I was stuck in such a restroom with very limited cellphone coverage and poor wifi signal.

Obviously this is a joke post not meant to be taken seriously so please don’t do this to your workers. 🙂 Yes, I am zonked out due to all the travel I have been doing. Why do you ask?

– Suramya

The more I read about these so called geniuses or TechBro’s as they are called, the more I feel that they are living in their own fantasy world with little to no contact with the actual real world. Take the following as an example:

Tech Bro discovers Hanging out

What he is describing in fancy words is a group of friends hanging out, something that I have been doing since the late 80’s and others have been doing for millennia. Other such geniuses have re-invented the bus, dorms, Roommates etc etc etc.

They are so out of touch and surrounded by yes-men that they think they are the world’s smartest and have the cure for all ills. Not realized that they are just regurgitating fixes for problems that have been solved for years or rebranding things people have been doing for ages.

– Suramya

This was posted in our Apartment Complex Whatsapp Group:

Hi anyone got VGA to VGA cable. Need to try something before i buy one. I disposed the one I had, actually my wife made me do it

I am going to be using this to justify not emptying the cupboard full of cables and old computer equipment that I have 🙂

– Suramya

Apparently CERN has an onlyfans Page which they call ‘The Fantilator Page’ and it is impressive.

Example pic from the page with 46 fans (and 2 power supplies)

Check it out if you have a few mins to kill

– Suramya

It is great to have siblings because they make sure that you are grounded and don’t get too full of yourselves. My sister Surabhi sent me this image to ensure I know what they think of my specialization.

What Professionals think I do when I say I work in Cybersecurity and what my Family thinks I do

Well, in all fairness when Gaurang became a ships captain we told him he was a driver of a ship (instead of a bus). So, I can’t really complain…

– Suramya

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.

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

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

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

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

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