COVID-19 Follow Up

To follow up after my March 3rd post about Leena getting sick with COVID-19 and testing positive....

I probably had it the first time in March of 2020, after I was exposed to it at the office, before New York City closed offices down.  One of my coworkers came to work sick, with a fever and coughing up a storm.  That time I had about three weeks of an on again off again sore throat and fever.  Both were so mild my wife didn’t realize it, and at times I had to remind her I wasn’t feeling well.  At that time tests were only available to the terribly sick, the wealthy, and the powerful, so I never got tested and can only speculate what I had.

Then I had it in March this year, 2021, and while it wasn’t the worst, most painful illness I’ve had, it was far from pleasant.  Both me and my wife had it, but we were fortunate enough not to have it so severely we needed hospitalization.

In hindsight, the first effects of it in me turned up before I knew I was sick.  I knew I was exposed to it, because my wife was sick with it, and had tested positive.  About a week or so after her test I read a news article about the governor of Mississippi, which had his photo.  And for a few days every time I was by a mirror I kept silently remarking how Tate Reeves was my doppelgänger, how we looked so uncannily alike, as though we were twins.

Me and Tate Reeves, side-by-side

Around the same time I also noticed a lot more red spots on my skin.  I’ve had acne problems since puberty, but that week I had more reddish, prominent bumps around.  Not large numbers, not like a rash, but red bumps on my face, my arms, my belly…. It’s rare I don’t have any, but this was more than I’d normally have at one time.

After a few days of that, one evening I had a sore throat.  I felt it, but I held out hope that I was merely dehydrated, although drinking water didn’t help.  The next day my throat was still more sore and I was unquestionably sick and my whole body felt sick.

Then I had a weekend and I developed a mild cough.  Monday I actually felt slightly less sick, overall, but the cough was worse, more coughing more often, while still not being terribly forceful.  I went for a COVID-19 test that afternoon at a nearby clinic, and two days later it came back positive.

Tuesday, though, Tuesday it all got worse.  Tuesday morning I woke up to eat breakfast and begin work, but all I could do after I ate was lie down on the floor and take a nap for an hour and a half.  Then I got up and worked, not feeling well, having trouble focusing.  I had a headache and I felt like I had a fever, even though our thermometer never measured a temperature above 98.6 degrees F.  Whenever I tried to speak I coughed.

The following day was worse.  After breakfast I felt everything from the day before, sick, sore throat, cough, with an even worse headache, and adding in nausea.  I took my 90 minute on the floor by the computer, and when I woke up realized I couldn’t work, so I sent some emails that I was sick.

I slept on the living room floor till my wife woke up in the bedroom (she’s on a wildly different schedule than me) and then I slept in the bedroom, waking up now and again to use the bathroom and sip some water.

That evening I took a shower, a long, hot shower.  It felt nice.  I just sat in the tub, reclining against the back of it, feeling the hot water hit my belly to ease the nausea, slam into my throat to ease the cough, and pound my face and forehead to massage away the headache.  

I was in there for an hour and a half or so, then I got up and I was dizzy.  I could barely stand, wobbling on my legs all over.  I bashed my nose against the tiles of the tub, and while trying to gauge how much blood was pouring out I lost my balance and crashed out of the shower, banging my head against the tiled floor.  I found myself looking up at the toilet, my feet still in the tub.  

I called for my wife, who came in and helped me sit up.  She got me a few glasses of water and held an ice pack to my bleeding nose for a while until I’d calmed down.  

Following the bathroom incident I felt like the peak of the COVID-19 infection had passed.  The next few days I still had a headache, still felt sick in my body, still had a sore throat and cough, but it wasn’t as bad as leading up to the shower.

I took the next couple of days off from work, spending most of the time sleeping.  By the end of the following weekend I no longer felt sick all over.  The headache was gone and I felt normal, except for being fatigued and having a cough when I tried to speak aloud much.  Cough drops didn’t work on it, cough syrup did little, if anything.  Cherry flavored candy helped as long as I sucked on them, not ones that purported to be cough drops, just plain old candy.  Other flavors, not so much.

Now it’s close to two months since the first symptoms and I still feel tired more easily.  If I’m active I get to the end of my energy a lot faster than I would’ve before COVID-19.  I’ve had Raynaud’s Syndrome as long as I can remember, but now my fingers and toes, and my arms, are much colder for the current weather than they would’ve been in previous spring seasons.  When my wife wants to test out the new air conditioner in preparation for summer, I’m fighting it because I feel cold.

For other health reasons I’ve been checking my blood pressure almost daily, and during the couple of weeks I was sick with COVID-19 my blood pressure was noticeably higher.  

So that was COVID-19 for me…. I’m lucky I didn’t have it as bad as millions of other people have.

CD-ROM Express from PC-Kwik

The final product released by my old employer, PC-Kwik in 1996.

So, I was browsing around a few weeks ago for the PC-Kwik logo for some reason, I don't quite recall now and saw someone on eBay selling an old copy of CD-ROM Express for just a couple of bucks, and a bit more shipping.  I thought it was worth it for the nostalgia...

I worked at PC-Kwik from September 1993 till we shut our doors on December 31, 1996 (though I'll admit that last day I jetted around 3pm rather than stick it out all the way till the end of the business day at 5pm).

While I wasn't one of the main developers of the CD-ROM Express utility, I did write the MS-DOS based install program for the DOS/Windows 3.1 version of it (but not the Windows 95 version).  And I was the main QA tester for both versions, and I was the editor of the user manual.  

I also helped with the design of the box.  Initially the designers made it so there was a complete image of a CD within the Mercury helmet, but I thought it looked bad, like someone took a car cigarette lighter to a plastic helmet, and suggested resizing it, cutting off the bottom so that the curve aligned with the curve of the helmet, the way it is above.  I think it looks much better this way.

Unfortunately CD-ROM Express failed as a product.  There were several reasons, including bad timing, we released it just as consumer level CD-ROM drives themselves got fast enough to obviate the usefulness of CD-ROM Express.  

While skillful, and maybe lucky, marketing could've gotten around that, this just wasn't the product our customers wanted to buy from us.  Doing technical support I talked to PC-Kwik customers every day, and they made it clear what they wanted us to make was Super PC-Kwik, our fast hard drive caching utility, and our PowerPak programs, for Windows 95.  If we could've converted those from DOS to Windows 95, they would've bought them.

But alas, we didn't listen to them...

Was I an Asshole at Work?

Question:  Was I an asshole at work today?

It’s finally getting warm in the office, enough that the previous two workdays I turned on the air conditioner to 74 degrees (Farenheit, or 23.3 Centigrade, for those who use that).  Two of my coworkers, who got in later than me expressed relief that it was on finally, that it was so much better than the prior week or so.

For me, though, 74 degrees meant the blasted thing was blowing air most of the day and as I have Raynaud Syndrome, I was terribly uncomfortable, teeth chattering, shivering and struggling to type on the computer with my numb fingers.  That happens with Raynaud’s, when it’s even just chilly and I’m sitting still or standing still, I get very cold, and dressing warmer helps without fixing it.

Today, though, today I got in first and I set the air conditioner on 75 degrees instead of 74 degrees.  Throughout the day it only cycled on a handful of times, and only for short periods, not enough to freeze all the heat out of my body.  And I enjoyed the occasional breeze that blew in through the wide open window next to me.

Heck, I felt a touch warm, myself (and for me that’s far superior to feeling teeth chattering cold).

I know my coworkers were probably uncomfortably hot and sweating in our cabin, but nobody actually said anything aloud to me.

I also know that out of the four of us who share that cabin, I’m the only one who knows how to turn the air conditioner on.  It’s a weird system, a standard remote control, but a very loose integration with a thermostat on the wall.  Only two of us in the company actually know how to use the thermostat.  We’re not keeping it a secret, we’ve explained over and over and over again to everyone else, but no one gets it.  Everyone else just uses the remote control, which ends up causing problems outside business hours…

Since last summer, the remote in our cabin walked off.  It had been on the desk underneath the air conditioner for the past eight years.  But the guy who sat there moved desks, leaving the remote there, and then left the company.  Now the remote is nowhere to be found.

Sure, the three people who were looking a bit uncomfortable in the heat were the ones who cleaned the spare desk and threw away all the accumulated junk, so in my mind, they bear a bit more responsibility for the lack of an air conditioner remote than I do.

But still, was I an asshole for prioritizing my comfort in the heat over my coworkers’ obvious, but silent, suffering, knowing that I, and only I, could fix it for them?

Follow-up Question:  Will I be an asshole at work again tomorrow?

Eerie Subway Ride

Well, that was kind of eerie...  I was on the 4 express train, that as usual had stopped in the tunnel between the last two stops, probably while they wake up the sleeping or belligerent passengers from the previous train at the final stop. The wait time is usually 3 to 4 minutes, twenty at worst...

Only this time it was neither hot nor cold, so the noisy HVAC system cycled off, making it very quiet on the train.  Other than the faint buzz of the fluorescent lights, the silence was broken now and then by other passengers with music in their headphones, teachers grading papers on their laps, shifting in their coats, opening a briefcase, a quiet cough, and what-not.  There were about a dozen of us, mostly sleepy in the early morning, no one talking or interacting.

Then a rumbling sound from the distance behind us, quiet, faint, but soon building up like thunder rolling in as a bunch of people looked up towards the back of the train.  It became a steady boom Boom BOOM *BOOM* as the local 3 train flew by on the track beside us, then faded away in the opposite direction.

Crappy Week at Work

So, last week was literally a crappy week here at the office...  The morning of the first day of the week someone used the bathroom next to our work area and left a couple small piles of crap on the floor when they finished, I guess they couldn't get it all in the toilet.  And that person isn't one of the very small number who will take responsibility for cleaning their own messes in the common, shared parts of the office, and frequently leaves urine all over the floor near the toilet.

The other bathroom, on the other side of that one was out of order, and the only one that has a sink in the same room as the toilet, having gotten clogged a couple of weeks earlier and simply locked to keep people out of it (I don't have a key).  As the week progressed, people stepped in and smeared those little piles of crap around the floor of the working bathroom.  Wonderful.

With the window next to me open, as long as the fan was left on, the smell didn't really reach as far as my desk, but not everyone leaves the fan on when they exit the bathroom.

It was pretty gross.

I thought about cleaning it up myself, but I felt nauseous at the thought of bending down to clean up someone else's shit off the floor (I mean, someone who isn't my wife who I chose to share a life with) who should be a mature enough adult, who's raising half a dozen children, to clean up their own fucking mess like that.  Certainly, if I had an accident like that, I would have cleaned it up.

At least the cleaning woman came in some time Friday or Sunday and the office is now clean again.

Office Space - Employees' Loss for Boss's Gain

Office Space - Employees' Loss for Boss's Gain

At work we've downsized slightly, so my company has been moved to a room in the basement and the upper floor of our offie rented out to another company.  Having downsized slightly again, the boss is looking to move us into a smaller room in the basement and rent out the room we're in now.

He's also the landlord, the owner of the building.  He bought it, a classic Brooklyn brownstone, and converted the bottom two floors into office space and rents out the top two floors as residential apartments.  His own private office is on the first floor, and he has his own private bathroom.  for the rest of us, including the company renting the upper floor space, we shared three small bathrooms, only one of which has a sink inside for washing in private.

As the owner of the building he decided to refinance it.  One of the conditions the bank had was that the bottom floor could be rentable as residential space.  So, to accomplish that he had the toilet removed from one of the three small bathrooms and converted into a shower, then locked so no one could go in there.

Now, as a career employee, I've never been under the illusion that my bosses would value me over money.  They're in business to make money, and I'm a resource that does work to help bring it in.  I've worked for companies that couldn't give out bonuses or raises because sales weren't good enough, yet the bosses and top managers kept getting raises and bonuses and all that.  I'm used to that.

But I've never had a boss so plainly demonstrate his value for money over employees as this.  I mean, he took an existing space that employees were using on a daily basis for their comfort, and changed it to one we can't use and doesn't in any way help us do our work better, which wasn't a resource he personally used in the office, and isn't going to use in its new capacity, all for his own person financial gain.

This sucks.  This is definitely the lowest I've ever felt my value to a company as an employee.

Code Complete - Target Audience For Code

Twice today I read quotes or paraphrases of a statement from the book Code Complete by Steve McConnell, "Write Programs for People First, Computers Second".

I certainly understand that, I've been doing maintenance programming for the past 20 years, so I know what it means to be the human/programmer audience for code.  I know how hard it is to read bad code and how hard it is.  I'm also fully aware that a lot of code that is hard for people to read is often buggy so though the computer understands it, the computer doesn't end up doing what the people would prefer it was doing.

And I know what it's like to work with a guy who refuses to write easy-to-read code angrily telling anyone who gives him feedback, "I don't care! If someone is too stupid to understand this, then that's not my problem!"

It's not that I don't know what it means…

However, thinking about the statement itself…

If the computer isn't your first target "audience" for the code you write, why are you writing it?  You might as well not write code if it isn't primarily for the computer to execute.

That database code?  If the computer is only your second choice as a target, how about hiring some file clerks and giving them the instructions?

That graphics program you're writing, if the computer isn't your main audience, how about going and buying some top quality pencils, brushes and paints and go out in the fresh air instead of sitting on your butt in front of the computer?

So, really, if the computer isn't your primary target, you should write the code at all.

That said, of course, once you're committing to writing code to solve the problem, by all means write it so the next poor schmuck can read it and understand it (bearing in mind, that next poor schmuck might very well be you in a short while…)

I Haven't Been Trained On That (or a mild work rant...)

For years at a previous job, where over time I'd written a lot of code for a number of modules of our software, including creating whole modules by myself, one of my favorite jokes was when someone would come to my desk to ask me how a particular part of the software worked, especially if I knew the querent knew I wrote that part, I'd answer "don't ask me, I haven't gotten training on it yet."

I was just trying to be a little funny, and even if I said it with a straight face, I still didn't let them leave my desk without giving an answer to their actual question.  Whether it was funny or not is not my current point...

Unfortunately at my current job, that is the actual answer I get to a lot of my queries of other developers who've been working on the software far longer than I have.  The developers who wrote parts of the software tell me things like "I know I wrote it, but I don't remember how it works, you'll have to figure it out on your own."

For the last few months I've had one task on my plate that has me sort of whipped...  But I can't get any instructions on how to set up the test data to duplicate the problem so I can come up with a solution.  The answer I get from the developers who've worked on it is "talk to So-and-So" and when I talk to that person, "I don't remember, read the source code."

And it's not like I remember every detail about all the code I've written, and when people have asked me questions about my code, I haven't always been able to give an immediate answer.  I've resorted to "let me review and do a little research, and I'll get back to," but currently I don't really get that, I just get a "I don't know, you're on your own," sort of answer.

Work Ethics

At work today the secretary was preparing to be out of the office tomorrow and asked if she could give me the cash to pay the cleaning woman tomorrow.  It's not a problem at all, so I agreed.

I was already thinking about it, and knew I'd better pay the cleaning woman when she finishes, and I was looking up online for a Spanish translation for "I will pay you when you finish."

Later, when I went to the secretary to collect the envelope of cash, she said "don't pay her before she's finished."

My first thought was that if I paid her all $60 up front for six hours of work, that she'd stretch out the cleaning to a full six hours, rather than whatever time it actually takes.  When I told the secretary that, she said, "no, if you pay her first she'd probably take the money and go home."

It must say something about my work ethic that my vision of cheating still including actually getting the job done.

It must also say something that I'm not qualified to manage people...

A Requirement or A Choice?

One of the things I've been thinking about lately is whether religious restrictions and activities are a requirement or a choice.

For instance, I work in an office where everyone but me keeps strictly kosher.  I respect that, and I make sure all the snacks I bring to work are certified kosher, and I don't start conversations with others about what non-kosher foods I eat outside the office, though I'm honest if anyone else brings up the topic.  And I don't tell anyone else that they should change their ways (let's face it, being an observant Jew is not a bad thing, it's not like being a heroin junky or something that harms others) and I generally don't disapprove of other people living their lives the way they want.

But a few times I've had discussions about meals and some of my religious coworkers sigh and say they wish they could eat what I eat, "but I can't eat that."

On fast days that are still work days, some (not all, of course) of my coworkers lament that they can't eat or drink all day, as much as they would really like to, and they don't sound happy about fasting.  On those days, out of respect for my coworkers I choose to not eat or drink, so as not to make the fasting harder on them.  It's a sacrifice I choose to make, and I don't grumble about it during the day, and generally I don't even mention that I'm doing it unless someone else brings the topic up first, I accept it's my choice.

Yesterday I did not fast on Yom Kippur, a choice I made to not participate.  In an online conversation someone else said they wished they could eat, and that while I cut my finger on a food related item during the day, they said that they'd happily make that trade themselves, a cut finger for not fasting.

So, why not?

I think I'm missing something.  People are following religious restrictions, but in some cases don't sound happy about them.  They don't sound like they accept that being religious and following the religious activities and restrictions is a choice they've made.

The word "can't" implies that one doesn't really have a choice, that someone else is forcing it on you, possibly against your will.

What I'd rather here instead of "I can't" is "I won't" or "I choose not".

What is computer programming?

Recently on Slashdot I read a comment about a new Microsoft programming environment, TouchStudio, for the Windows Phone 7 that allows programmers to write programs on the phone to run on the phone.  Another commenter wrote:

So, it appears to be not true programming but just script manipulation.

Well, that brought up something that I've heard a lot, especially as a professional FileMaker Pro application developer...  What is programming?

Other developers working in FileMaker Pro used to say that it wasn't programming, but just "scripting" or things (often with some concerns over how it would look on their resume and what negative effect it would have on future career options).  Sure, with FileMaker Pro we didn't sit down with a text editor and write code to compile or interpret, it had a lot of point -n- click, choose items from a list, etc. to create a script.  And FileMaker Pro used the term "script" for code written in it.

But I don't agree that it isn't programming.

To me, computer programming is simply about instructing the computer what to do later.

Later is any time after the instructions are created, whether it's a one-time fix for something, or a piece of code that'll run a thousand times a second for a few years or an event handler to deal with users clicking an OK button somewhere or a scheduled task for every day at 3pm.

The way I see it, whether it's assembly language, BASIC with line numbers,  C, Java, SQL, JavaScript, FileMaker Pro, LabVIEW, Access, Python, Ruby, Logo and a virtually unlimited list of others (and I could grudgingly add VisualBasic...) if you're using it to tell the computer what to do sometime after you've given the instructions, it's computer programming...

Blessed be those who speak to inanimate objects...

...For they shall be computer programmers.

From a sign on my uncle's old office in the math department of Whittier College in 70's...

Safety in Crown Heights

I work in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, which is predominantly lower class black, along with lots of French speaking blacks from Caribbean area, with a smaller, but very visible community of Hasidic Jews.  Unfortunately it's not one of the safest neighborhoods in New York City...

I'm sometimes a bit nervous walking from the subway station to the office.  It's about five or six blocks, but I go through the sort of edge of the neighborhood where I see the ethnic mix pretty strongly.

This New York Times article from early December last year mentions that there had been 66 shootings up till that point in the year in Crown Heights.  Later in December there were at least two more murders that I know of, both on the same block as our office.  One was a body the police found in the empty derelict building directly across the street.  The other was an armed robbery gone bad in the laundromat in the same building as our office.

After the laundromat one a coworker of mine recognized the victim as someone he hadn't met but saw in the same Russian immigrant synagogue he went to, so he bought a bullet-proof vest that he wears everything he comes in and out of the office, even for lunch or a quick walk to the office of our biggest customer, two doors down from us...

Now that my apartment lease is almost finished I mentioned at work that I'm about to start looking for a new apartment.  One of my coworkers, who lives a few blocks from the office asked, "why not move ot Crown Heights?".

I told him I don't feel very safe there.  He said it's safe, there's nothing to worry about.  I mentioned I feel a bit uncomfortable walking to the office from the train station and he said "well, that's just the fringe of Crown Heights where it's a bit rough, other parts are much nicer."  I mentioned the two murders in December and thought about it and said even his wife doesn't feel safe there, but he hadn't really taken her seriously before, but now that I brought it up she might actually have something...

In any case, I'm more interested in the Park Slope neighborhood for now...

Falling Behind

Wow,  I realized I'm really falling behind nowadays...  It was easy to blog about my daily adventures during the couple of weeks when we had all the Jewish holidays and the office was closed Thursdays and Fridays, giving four day weekends...

But the last couple, with five day work weeks, and pushing myself to get up to speed at work, have made it harder to take the time.  Earlier to bed each night to try and be rested well enough for the next workday...

I have a few things in mind to write, I just need to make the time to do it...

First Walk Home from Work, Wednesday

This is what I wrote to Leena after I walked home from work Wednesday afternoon...

------------------------

Whew, am I tired now...

I closed up the office early, around 4:50pm, since the official closing time was 5:23pm, an hour before sunset and the start of a Jewish holiday.  I was the last one in for the final hour and a half, and only three of us were in at all during the day.

When I left the office I walked up to Eastern Parkway, about five blocks, where I usually turn right and walk a block to get on the subway at the Utica Avenue station.  But then partway to the subway I thought, "ah, it's a pleasant evening, not too hot, not cold, I'll walk up Eastern Parkway and get on the subway somewhere else."

I walked west on Eastern Parkway, quite some distance to where I thought it was intersecting with 9th Avenue, where I've walked around before.  I was mistaken, but didn't realize it at the time.  I thought I was near Grand Army Plaza, but I wasn't.

So, I made left turn on a street there, thinking I was somewhere else.  Granted, it was still the right direction, I was just farther from home that I thought.  I ended on the east side of Prospect Park, which is a gigantic park in Brooklyn.  The neighborhood on the eastern side of the park wasn't very nice but I figured it was still daylight so I should be safe enough.  At one intersection I crossed the street and into the park, figuring I'd simply cross through the park, and I know the neighborhood on the other side is a wealthy, nice one.

But inside the park the roads all curve, nothing goes straight, and since I was wearing sandals I was paying more attention to walking carefully on some of the dirt roads than the direction I was going (I'd swear, in the dirt it looked almost exactly like someone was wearing shoes made for a horse!), so I ended up exiting the park still on the east side, instead of crossing through it, though I didn't realize that till I got out of the park and found a nearby street sign.

It was then that I realized I didn't have a good idea of where I was.  It was mostly cloudy, so the it wasn't entirely clear where the sun was in the sky, but I found what seemed a bit brighter and figured that was pretty much west, and the street I was on outside the park was aiming a bit left of that, which is southwest and the direction I wanted to go.

I walked that way for quite some distance, till I came to the end of the park and a circle as an intersection, which I pretty much remembered from a map is the southernmost part of the park, and the right direction for me.  However, I wasn't sure which direction to go from the intersection, as there was a nearby freeway and big streets that I didn't recognize and I didn't recognize any of the street names there, so I was lost...

I picked a direction based on the sun and where I knew my destination, still a long distance off, was and walked that way until I saw some streets with names that really puzzled me.  I passed E. 8th Street, and then E. 7th Street, but in the opposite direction from which I expected the numbers to change, since I live on 54th Street, I wanted to see the numbers go up, not down!

From there I thought the E. on the signs might mean I was on the wrong side of a major street, so I walked over an overpass above the major street thinking the other side there'd be W. on the signs, but there wasn't, and then I saw E. 6th Street and got confused even further...

Ah, but the iPhone 4 has a compass!  I pulled it out and matched up the direction and new I was facing the right direction, even though the street numbers were going the opposite of what I wanted.  Definitely puzzling...

Ah, but the iPhone has a map program!  I pulled it out again and used the map, which uses GPS to know exactly where the phone is, accurate to a few meters.  It zoomed in on my exact location and I realized that the East numbered streets aren't part of the same numbering system as the directionless numbered streets, like 54th Street, and I was actually going the right way, I just wasn't yet into the area I knew...

As I walked, the iPhone figured out what direction I was walking and rotated the map so I could see where I was going on it and I planned out a route to take.  I was closer to home than I realized when I came out of the park, it's just that I didn't know the streets in that area.

Eventually I got pretty close to my neighborhood, a few streets up the hill from where I've been before, but I hit the numbered streets at 32nd Street, so at least I knew the direction was right and where to go.  By then I was sweating and rivers of it were running down my back under my shirt, which was nearly as drenched as if I wore it in the shower.

Around 45th Street I stopped in a small restaurant for a couple of slices of pizza.  Not as good as the one I keep going back to near my apartment, but I was really hungry and a little thirsty, plus my clothes were getting more and more uncomfortable from the sweating, and I knew I wouldn't want to stop and eat much further because of that.  And besides, I didn't know it wasn't going to be as good until after I got it...  Anyway, it wasn't bad pizza, just not the best.

After eating there I still had another 20 blocks or so to go in a zig zag pattern and it was well past sunset, so getting dark out.  I passed through other neighborhoods I hadn't seen before.  In one I saw lots of Jewish families heading out to holiday services, but dressed different than the Hasidic Jews in Crown Heights, with many of the men wearing big furry hats instead of black fedoras, which I've looked up and figure out where the Bobov branch of Hasidic Jews.

Then on 8th Avenue for a few blocks every single business had Chinese lettering on the windows and signs, and quite a few had not a single letter of English at all.  On 7th Avenue it was similar, but a bit more English in the mix, and on 6th Avenue, where I've walked before when going to Sunset Park, it was a mix of Chinese and Spanish, including some signs that had both and restaurants advertising Chinese and Mexican food (at the same restaurant...).

Finally 5th Avenue, which I know well enough and then down on 54th Street where I live...  And last, my apartment and a hot shower.

First day of the new job...

I got up early, showered, had Cheerios and Silk Chocolate soy milk for breakfast, then did the washroom thing, got dressed and left for work around 7:30am.  The workday starts at 9am, but I wasn't sure just how long it would take to get there...

The Atlantic-Pacific subway station, where I had to change trains, was hot, very hot, like an oven in the tropics, so by the time I got out at my stop I was sweating like mad.  And I still had a six or seven block walk, mostly downhill, to get to the office. 

When I got to the office, around 8:05am, the grill was still down and blinds covered the windows so there was no way to see inside, and obviously, no one was there.  There's no company name or anything there.  Since Yishai had given me two addresses, one that the company will be moving to later, I figured I'd go up and check that out, in case they'd actually moved already.  That was six or seven blocks up the hill, pretty close to where I got off the train, but it was just a construction site and looked unfinished.  So back down the hill again.  

At the office I was sweating so much my clothes were soaking through...  The grill was up, so I pressed the doorbell and some guy came to do the door.  I asked "is this Kashrus.com?" and he asked, pretty gruffly, "who are you?"  I told him who I was and that I was starting with the company this morning and he became quite friendly.  He let me in, gave me a quick tour (it's not a big office, there's the admin and sales section, and the techie section, maybe a total of a 12-15 desks) and we chatted a few minutes.  He gave me his phone number to give him a call if I needed anything here in New York City.  But then he had to get his day's work started...

People started coming in slowly and soon Yishai, the guy I interviewed with, showed up.  He found the computer he'd left another developer to start setting up for me last week and gave me a choice of desks, either under the air conditioner or by the window (although the cubicle walls block much view except the trees and sky high up) and I picked the window, since by that time I was getting fairly chilly in my wet clothes...  

We spent a little time getting my computer set up, but then he had a lot of things to take care of.  He showed me where to find some information on our software and said I should shop online for my new work computer and sort of let me to it...  It was pretty overwhelming to be told to just shop for my new computer with no details of specs or a maximum budget or anything.  Always before I've just been given whatever computer the company had to give me, with almost no choice what-so-ever.

Around 3:30pm we had a meeting in which he went over in some detail how the software is used, who the people are who use it and what they do with it, so that helped a lot.

I left the office around 5:30pm and it was a fairly easy set of train rides home.  I just missed one train at each station where I had to catch one, so I had to wait a little longer.  Getting out of the 53rd Street station I saw a bright flash, and there was a pleasant thunderstorm for a while around the neighborhood.

And now it's almost bedtime...

Yammer in the Enterprise

For the last year or so at Tieto (which I just left on August 31st, in preparation for my returning home to the United States) I used an online micro-blogging site, Yammer, with my company account.  Someone in Tieto in Europe had already set up a company "network" within Yammer and somehow I found out about it (I don't remember, maybe I read it on the company's internal blog or somewhere).

It was fun, I enjoyed it.  There were occasional technical discussions and a sometimes helping others with Java and sometimes getting help from others where I was stuck.  Most of the discussions had to do with bigger corporate things, like knowledge management, about which I don't know a whole lot, but interesting to read ideas from some very smart, very skilled people.

Most days I posted something when I first got in, "ah, Tuesday..." with a bit of a description about my commute to work, or something about life in the office in India.  Some was for me to vent, some was just things I figured someone who hadn't worked in India would find interesting about working in India.  While there was rarely any follow-up comments from others, I got a few emails in private that people enjoyed reading those, so that felt pretty good, especially since I enjoyed the writing.

Probably what I got most out of it was finding out that Tieto does more than just the project I worked on, and the few physically around it. I mean, I knew that, but had no idea what the rest of this company was other than "they" or "everything else". It turned Tieto from a gigantic company of mostly totally faceless "other" people into a bunch of people I never worked with but were real people.

Before using Yammer I knew that Tieto was quite big, but the only things I saw were my project and some of the other ones at the Pune office, which is only a tiny fraction of what Tieto does.  And the people I interacted with were only a tiny portion of Tieto's 17,000 "experts" (as we were all called).  And after I found there were a lot of good people there, and while my team was fantastic there were others I'm sure I'd have enjoyed working more closely with as well.

So, I'd recommend Yammer for anyone who works in a company or organization that's too big for everybody to know everybody else.

Exiting Tieto

Tuesday was my last day at work at Tieto.  The exit process was a real pain in the neck (this ties to my earlier post where I said my team is pretty insular, so I hadn't dealt heavily with other departments at Tieto for a while...).  There was a lot more paperwork involved than when I quit First Insight (my employer before that went out of business, and I got fired from the one before that...).  I had to get a half dozen signatures from various managers around the office in different departments.

Three of those managers were people I'd never met and didn't know on sight and didn't know where their desks were located.  Not one of them would be helpful enough to give me instructions on how to find them in the office.  One, the payroll guy, was nice enough to tell me that his desk was located "in the office" (uh, yeah, duh!), but cut off all communication when I asked for somewhat more precise directions.  Fortunately one of the women in HR, Vijaya, was assigned the task of following up on my exit paperwork and asked if I needed any help, so she gave me good instructions how to find them.

I had a couple of project related meetings in the afternoon, so I waited until after that to get the IT department's signature, in case they took my computer, which I needed.  Good thing, too, when I went to their office and said I needed to do the paperwork they cut off my network account before I ever made it back to my desk.  Fortunately I'd already copied the document I was working on and had to hand off to another teammate to the file server first, and I also emailed it to three people just as a backup.

Before that I also wrote a couple of farewell emails, one to my team specifically and one to all the people I've interacted with in the office, whether teammates or even just people I never talked to but always shared a smile with in the hallways...  That came out to over 50 people...

My department had a small party with cake to celebrate the department's birthdays and give me some flowers.  I made a lousy speech that I was unprepared for.

Then I went to the HR department for their signature, only to find their office empty.  Someone sitting nearby said they were all in a meeting.  That was about 5pm.  I went back around 5:10pm and they were still out.  At 5:15 they were still out and I started to worry that they might return, but being late in the day just pack up and leave without checking emails or things.

So, I sat patiently on a filing cabinet outside their office until their meeting finished at 6:35.  And even then the paperwork wasn't done.  There was some confusion about my missing a signature of a nonexistent manager.  The form had a space for a "configuration manager" but neither my solid-line manager nor my dotted-line manager knew what that was, let alone who that was.  By the time HR got back and explained that my solid-line manager needed to sign there with "not applicable" my solid-line manager had already left for the day for some follow-up medical tests (he was really sick earlier this year, with typhoid plus a serious kidney infection simultaneously that left him hospitalized for a few weeks) so it wasn't possible to get that.

The HR guy said he'd follow up with my solid-line manager the next day and get the forms, email me a PDF and courier the original to my address...  Of course, now Thursday is finished and I haven't received it yet...

After that I turned in my ID badge and key card, then the HR people escorted me out of the secure part of the office, into the reception area.  I guess they do that for all exiting employees.  They didn't make me feel like I was suspicious of anything and chatted cheerfully on the way out about my experiences in India and what my plans are for going home.

Then I waited there for a while for my teammates to finish work so we could all go to La Pizzeria for a team dinner and a farewell for me.  My original plan was to go home, shower and things, then get picked up at my apartment, since they have to drive right near it anyway.  But with HR's extended meeting I just waited for another fifteen minutes in the reception area instead, without taking a rickshaw home.

Dinner with my team was fun.  I guess since I joined Tieto after I was already getting homesick here in India I'd never really talked to my teammates before about the good memories I had of earlier in my stay in India, so a lot of that came out.  Someone even commented that they never imagined I'd eaten at as many restaurants as I talked about, since by the time I joined Tieto I was rarely ever eating out anymore.

Tuesday turned out to be a strange day to finish a work week.  It's left me quite confused as to what day is what since then...

Cross Cultural Training

At work when my project first started preparing to be working in a distributed fashion, some of us put together a page on our team's wiki about cross cultural difference to help each side communicate with the other... I just thought I'd share it... I'm the author of much of the language part (but it definitely wasn't me who wrote about the shorts... (if it was it would've been miniskirts...))

Cross Cultural Training

IS IT ALL ABOUT JOHNSONS TANNING LOTIONS IN THE UK???

OR IS IT ALL ABOUT THE FAIR & LOVELY CREAMS IN INDIA???

OUR GUIDE TO MOVING BETWEEN THE TWO COUNTRIES!!

	Moving to the UK
1	Dress-Code in the TE-UK office is Business Attire. Friday's is dress down day, so you can wear casual once a week
2	Football is the sport that the British are crazy about
3	Most high street shops will close in the UK at 5pm. Shopping Centres usually on the outskirts of the cities will stay open till 8pm/9pm.
4	You will most often have to call for a Taxi in the UK, unless you are in the city centre. You cannot flag them down anywhere like in India
5	10 Downing Street is the prime minister's residence and office.
6	The British say 'Holiday' not Vacation.
7	The english do not use heavy spice or masala in foods, so people from India will often find it very bland.

	Moving to India
1	Dress-Code in the TE-India office is Casual. If you are lucky, you will even see guys in shorts
2	It is common for people to have a dependancy on others, Drivers, Maids, Service People
3	Cricket is a religion for people in India
4	"Two minutes" doesn't really mean two minutes, it's just an expression.
5	10 Downing Street is one of the prime nightclubs in Pune
6	In Pune, the rickshaws will only use their meter for charging for longer distances. You will have to agree a price for short distances, out of town or night time. The meter formula is to multiply the meter amount by 6 and add 2 to get the fare in rupees.
7	You Don't have tip anyone unless you feel like. Unlike America where Tipping is mandatory!
8	Don't assume "Yes" means "Yes."

	General Business Rules Cross-Site
1	Time – Everyone should be on time both for physical & non physical meetings
2	Bank Holidays in India differ to those in the UK

Other Useful Hints

Certainly another sort of cross-cultural thing is English word usage… Indians often use English translated almost straight from their mother tongues, Hindi or Marathi (or others from different regions) which to a native English speaker sometimes doesn't make sense, or makes sense but isn't quite right.

An example, was when one guy was not feeling well and came late, someone said "he would be in later". In U.S. English, that would properly be phrased as "he will be in later" with "would" leaving some doubt, like "he would be in later, however…". Indians use "would" the way we'd use "will".

Indian English is also a lot more passive than the more active American and U.K. English seems to be… Like someone might say "this computer is having 2 MB of RAM" compared with American or U.K. English where it's "this computer has 2 MB of RAM".

In India "there" means "here", while present and future tense are intermixed. For instance, if someone in the office wants to tell people they will be out of the office the next day, they say "I am not there tomorrow" rather than the English or American, "I will not be here tomorrow".

In India the word "doubt" is often used to indicate a question, such as "I have a doubt about story XXX". English and Americans interpret "doubt" not as a question but a concern, saying you have a doubt about something means you think it is not right.

The word "some" is used differently in different types of English. In American and U.K. English "some" often means something is unknown. For example, if the ICT fellow writes "users cannot connect to the system for some reason" then that means they don't know the reason. In Indian English, "some" often means the writer knows but isn't saying, such as "the meeting is canceled for some reason" means there is a definite reason the meeting is canceled, but the writer isn't telling you.

The word "keep" can also be used differently. In American and U.K. English, keep means not to give something back. Saying "I kept the phone" means you did not return the phone and it stayed in your possession, while in Indian English, "I kept the phone" means you hung up the call and physically put it back where it belongs (e.g. the receiver on the cradle, or back on the charging unit).

When discussing multiplication in arithmetic, English and Americans say "times", while Indians say "into". So, in India, to calculate the rickshaw fare when the meter says 5.00, an Indian would say "5 into 6 plus 2" to get 32, but English or Americans would say "5 times 6 plus 2" to arrive at the same answer... The confusion comes in that for Americans and English, "into" would indicate division more than multiplication (e.g. 5 goes into 30 6 times, that is, how many 5's are in 30).

Don't assume "Yes" means "Yes."

"We'll try," is the "diplomatic way of saying, ‘We really can't, but we don't want to tell you.' Indians have a certain aversion to saying, "No."

Americans/British want a direct "Yes" or "No. For Indians, the tendency will be to say, "Yes," and try to make it happen at all costs. That can create wide miscommunication and variances in expectations.

2nd Class Citizens

Having worked in India for nearly a decade now, as part of distributed teams where the project is based either in the United States or the United Kingdom, I've just usually gotten the impression that the team in India is treated as 2nd class citizens.

One of the issues is communication. On a day to day basis, those of us in India are expected to inform the team in the "home" office what we're doing, what our status is, what our progress is and when we have holidays, etc. On the other hand, those in the "home" office don't. In India we're left to guess what's going on in the "home" office and are frequently surprised when they have a holiday and don't show up to work, since they never sent a team-wide mail saying "the office will be closed...".

Then, when it comes to meetings there's a huge difference. Whenever the team begins to be distributed the Indian team is told over and over about the importance of showing up to meetings (i.e. phone conference, video conferences, instant message chats, etc.) on time, as Indians have a reputation for not being punctual. And each time we're even a little bit late in India we're reminded of it.

However, it's the team in the "home" office that's more consistently late, at both companies where I've worked. The meetings are almost always in the afternoon, evening, or even late night, in India, and mornings in the U.S. or U.K. and those in the "home" office complain about how hard it is getting to work in time for the meeting, and it's even worse when there's snow or ice in those places.

The worst was at my previous company where our engineering manager worked from her home office in Alaska, and let us know that she was sorry about being consistently late, 7am was just too early for her to get up, get her coffee and get to meetings.

For other aspects, most of the teams' servers are always at the "home" office, the source repository, document servers, program installation directories, QA servers, email server and so forth. Even if there's a lot more people on the team in India, it can be a bit more inconvenient for us to access all of them, and a lot slower.

Some of it makes sense, since the "home" office is closer to where the customers are, and where the people who have the most experience with the customers' needs are. But some of it could run a lot smoother with more respect for the team in India.

Just the Fax

As part of the job hunt I recently had to print, sign and scan a document to either fax or email back to the potential employer. The woman who owns Pica Type, a computer dealer we're friendly with said "no problem" that she would be happy to do it for me.

But she also gave Leena a brochure of HP printers and scanners and things with a recommendation that if we want one, a low-end Deskjet with printing, scanning, faxing and copying would suit our home needs. It probably will, although we'd have to jump through some nasty hoops to get ISD in order to send faxes out-of-station...

But it got me remembering my first job at Maynard Rigby and Associates, back in 1992-1993. As the junior member, I was given responsibility for all the faxing the company did. The boss, to save money, didn't buy a fax machine. It was a spare computer with a scanner, modem and fax software. And a pain in the arse...

In order to send a fax I had to:

1. Print the document the sender gave me.
2. Scan each page, one-by-one, plus a handwritten cover sheet.
3. Convert each page, one-by-one from the scan software's format to the fax software's format using some utility that only did one document at a time.
4. Rename each page's file to the fax software's naming convention.
5. Create a fax job in the fax program, specifying the base filename of the set of image files.
6. Get everyone to not use that phone line.
7. Hit a "fax" button in the fax software.
8. Repeat steps 6 & 7 until the blasted thing was successful.

Very inefficient. Then again, as the most junior, cheapest and most technically skilled person in the office, it was less inefficient for me to do it than anyone else.

At my second job we had a real fax machine, the first one I ever used and what a complete luxury that was!