Mahesh's Third Law - Rewrite After The Third Update

Rewrite after the third update

Corollary

For sure, yea and most definitely so after the third bugfix!

The third time you update a piece of code with a new feature or new functionality, take a look at the module, and see whether it can be re-written better, differently, simpler, with more documentation, etc. Odds are that it can. Odds are that the time you take to do the rewrite will be more than paid off the next time you edit this code.

Mind you, if you've been updating the code due to bug-fixes, there is something profoundly wrong with what you are doing, so take a long hard look at not just the module but everything else. Is there a logical/semantic issue here? Is the code being rushed into production? Are the requirements bad? Do you need help? (and so on, and so forth...)

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The Best Pizza in the Americas - Filo (Buenos Aires)

In Buenos Aires, there exists Filo (975 San Martin) where one can get Damn Fine Pizza, and much more importantly, the Alle Patate - A pizza with a topping of thinly (oh, *so* thinly) sliced potatoes and rosemary.  Shockingly good stuff.  One that The Nikki has been trying to replicate for a while.  The potatoes (raw.  but they are sliced translucently thin, and i suspect the few minutes that the pizza spends in the oven are sufficient to get 'em Just Right) maketh the pizza.  To make it truly bad for you, they bring you a little thingie of olive oil to pour on, over, under, and around the pizza, which doesn't help things at all. 
Don't be put off by the touristy vibe - or the neighborhood - it is, and always has been, quiet possibly the best pizza I've had in the Americas.  Do note, however, that this is Roman style Pizza, i.e., thin crispy crust (that stays crispy for the entire duration, however infinitesimal that duration may be due to the rapidity with which you will wolf down the pizza).
Still, good stuff.  Run, don't walk...

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Mahesh's Sixth Law - If you need to convince yourself, Something Is Wrong

If you suspect that there is something wrong, but then proceed to convince yourself that everything is OK, then there actually *is* something wrong.


Corollary
Its probably *much* worse than Just Wrong.

Hmmm, is that something burning? From the stove-al area? Where I was just making myself brekker?
Naah. Probably not. I did char the bacon (mmm. bacony goodness) slightly. Probably just that.
I should get up and go take a look. Just play safe.
But, but, but, I'm comfy, there is a particulary interesting commercial on TV, and my dog has her head on my feet.
Besides, it probably really is the charred bacon. Yeah, thats it.
But I don't usually char bacon. I'm pretty good at bacon (mmm. bacony goodness).
Nah, theres a first time for everything. And this is my first date with the Char of Bacon.
I guess i'll ignore the burning smell.

0 points if you believe that there was nothing wrong.
2 points if you believe that I did char the bacon,
5 points if you believe that I forgot to turn off the stove, and the frying pan is now a bubbling mass of copper and steel
25 points if you figured out that the dryer had shorted out, and was slowly turning the towels into buckytubes...

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Great - 4% chance of Heart Disease

As I plow through this report in detail, it became apparent that i basically have a 1 in 25 chance of getting heart disease once I get into 'middle age' (60?).

Its a chance mutation, which kicks in *after* the child-bearing years, which basically means that over time it accretes in the general population.

I just wish theyd' say more about *what* they mean by Heart Disease. Heart explosions? Plaque? Mitral valve failure? Failure in Love?

Sooo confused.....

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Airline "Food" - American Airlines Chef's Conclave

Supposedly, AA has a "Chef's Conclave" which puts together the "food" we get to consume in the air.  Last week, I actually *read* the description on my airline meal.
I quote

"To meet your discriminating taste, we have created a range of innovative cuisine.  Many menus are inspired by some of the most highly respected and talented chef's in the United States."

Is it just me, or does this smack of wacky-speak?
Which of these menus?
The one I was looking at last week?  Which included that - be still my beating heart- oh so innovative and cutting edge item Beef Filet?

I wonder which "highly respected and talented chef" came up with that?

I can just see it - Tom Keller, Charlie Trotter and Grant Achatz sharing a doobie -
(deep puff)
"Oooh, I know!  Lets do a Beef Fillet!  Yes! Yes!"
(deep puff)

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Aaaargh! Mac People! Aaaargh!

Consider the situation.

You are trying to do something on your macintosh. Doesnt matter what.  Something.  You just can't figure out how to do it, so you ask....

At this point, the road bifurcates.

The road more traveled (i.e., the way the rest of the  world - and clearly, the way any sane person - does it)  :  You get a response saying "Ah, just do blah blah blah..." or "You can't do that. Sorry mate..."

The road traveled by Apple Fanboys (i.e, you want to do something different.  Quel Horreur!) : You get about 38 responses saying "Why do you want to do that?"  "Oh, thats not a smart thing to do!"  "Don't do that!", "Nobody does that!", etc., etc.

What is it with Mac people?  

I *dont* want to use the Search Bar in Safari.  

Really. 

I..Just..Dont..

I want it to work the way Firefox works - type in your query in the URL bar, and google searches it for you.  Is that so difficult to comprehend?  Ye Gods, you would think I'd suggested that one have sexual congress with an Eggplant.

Instead, I get a bajillion replies saying "Firefox does it wrong", "Use the Search bar", etc., etc.

Also, a few saying "Let me know if you get an answer", but mostly just implying that what I want to do is wrong.

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Dividends? Or Ponzi Schemes?

Picture me, John Fortune100, the CFO of BigCo. Its that time of the year - when Dividends get paid, and I'm faced with a (somewhat) minor issue - there just isn' t that much cash sitting around. Now remember, Cash Is King - supposedly - in the Dividend world. I can play silly buggers with virtually any amount of paper shuffling, but in the end, if I need to pay Dividends, it is Cash Money out the door. And all I have is my standard operating profits sitting around - oh, say, 10 cents.

I could just ship that out to the shareholders. In fact, I used to just ship that out to the shareholders. But this time around, I have an epiphany - nay - a veritable brainstorm of historically epic-ian proportions. Its 2004, and credit is cheap. Heck, Wall Street is practically giving money away, and all I have to do is borrow from my friendly Wall Street Banker, and Boom!, I've got all this money, which, lets see, I can pay out as a Dividend. Cool! And I get a big fat bonus check to boot! W00t! And before you ask, I'll just borrow even more next year, and use that to pay back this years loan, and so on, because hey, my stock price is going up, and that means my company is more valuable, and that means I can get a bigger loan from Wall Street, and I get a bigger bonus, and I get to pay a bigger dividend, which makes my company look even cooler, which makes my stock price go up even more, which makes my company even more valuable, etc., etc. Genius, I tell you, Sheer Genius.

"Huh?" "Whut"? "WHAT?"

Yeah, yeah, it couldn't be *that* simple, could it? Auditors, the public, everyone, couldn't fall for it *that* simply, would they?

As it turns out, it *is* that simple, and yes, they *could* fall for it that easily.

Floyd Norris has a nice writeup in today's NY Times about how Cheap 'n Easy loans financed the monster dividend payouts from 2004 through 2006. Go read it, but if you don't feel like it, it basically boils down to what John Fortune100 just did up above. And the inveitable is happening. Come the turn of the tide, there are going to be a whole passel of un-necessary bankruptcies, as companies are going to be unable to roll-over their debt.

Cheap money my ass....

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Musings on the Free Market, and Leg-Breakers

At some point in the past, you might have said to yourself - "What is this pesky Free Market thing that everybody keeps talking about?"
If you are too lazy to actually spend the time and use the Inter-tubes, and books are way too verbose for you to bother with, you will do what pretty much everybody else does in these situations, which is
a) ask someone, or
b) go get a drink and forget the question.
Odds are that you'll do (b), but on the off-chance that you actually do ask someone, and that someone is a wee bit smarter than your average turnip, you'll find out that  Free Markets just don't work in isolation.
Huh? Whut?

Look at it this way - if Bob offers to mow your lawn for $20, and John offers to do it for $200, and promises to not break your legs, you pretty much know who gets to mow the lawn. The whole point of government, law enforcement, regualation, etc. is to ensure that the Johns of the world don't get a chance to exercise their Leg-Breaking skillz (or not exercise it, as it were!).

But what about the poor Leg-Breakers of this world?  Ever looked at the world from their perspective?  They need to make a living too, right?  So there you are, a perfectly good Leg-Breaker, plying your trade, and along comes Government saying terrible things like No Leg-Breaking, Level Playing Field, Fair Markets, No Selling Arsenic As Sugar, and other horrible stuff that keeps you awake at night and prevents you from being able to feed your kids the caviar that they so richly deserve.

The first solution to this problem is fairly straightforward - Just go ahead and co-opt the government. And the Leg-Breakers did that in spades all through the late 90s and the early part of this millennium.
Now, when the Gummint said Level Playing Field, the Leg-Breakers chuckled 'cos they knew that the Gummint was actually saying Waaaay tilted Playing Field in the Leg-Breakers favor.
Which was great, and the Leg-Breakers made a ton of money, and life was good, and there was caviar every night for their kids, and everyone slept well at night after drinking plenty of Nickel & Nickel.

But, nothing ever remains simple.The Leg-Breakers  did the math again, and said "Screw this. Why am I even bothering? I'm spending all this money on Lobbying, and Paying People Off, and Stuff. In fact, as far as I can tell, if I walk around not Breaking Leg at $200 a pop, I get the $200 now, but the Government isn't actually going to come after me for a long long time. So yeah, screw it - I'm just going to ignore the Law".

And there you are.
You end up with John Satyam, or John Madoff, or John Lehman, or John AIG, or, well, you get the point. The bottom line is, the Leg-Breakers Just Don't Care.
As far as they're concerned, its always Nike time!   (Just Do It! in case you didn't get it)

And in the end, we are left with a couple of simple questions. Take the whole Satyam thing as an example, where (to put it way too simply), Satyam made up fake financials, complete w/ non-existent money in their bank accounts, their auditors (Price-Waterhouse-Coopers) signed off on these, and the banks never complained about the fake bank-statements.  Sooo,

• Either PWC was complicit in the whole affair, in which case they should certainly hang. But, what does that mean vis-a-vis all the other companies that they audit? Are they scamming us too?
• Maybe it isn't PWC. Maybe the Banks did it. In which case, they should certainly hang. But what does that mean vis-a-vis all the other companies that use the same bank? Are they scamming us too?
• Maybe it is neither. Maybe it was just Satyam. In which case, they should certainly hang. But what does that mean vis-a-vis all the other publicly traded companies? Are they scamming us too?

Regardless of how you look at it, the whole system is out of whack.
Seriously.
And, as far as I can tell, nobody gives a shit...

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