Distorted Hideously Beautiful Aliens

I seldom celebrate anything in a big way these days.  Why is it so?  Perhaps novelty wears off after years of the same motion.  Last Tuesday, attending our weekly Spanish class was a bunch of married people.  The singles, we presumed, were out celebrating Valentine’s Days.  I wanted to do something special.  But work lately has been hectic.  It zapped all my juice away.  The best thing to do is to chill at home.  Last evening, Cynthia asked if I wish to celebrate my Ex-O birthday in a big way (don’t ask what ex is!)  Gee, no thanks.  It will be on a Tuesday.  If we have not given up learning Spanish by then, we would be celebrating my big Ex-O birthday with our Spanish classmates and teacher.  That is a big if.

Learning Spanish has been a rough journey lately.  To me, it is like scaling Mount Everest.  The lack of coursework and the absence of an end-of-the-course examination seem to have put me onto an auto pilot mode.  That means, doing nothing.  Spanish grammar is confusing.  Subjunctive – a mood that expresses how one feels about the action – brings me down to my knees.  It is like taking the already confusing Spanish grammar – indicative in different tenses – and doubled it up.  For every conjugation that exists in the mood of indicative, there is an evil twin that has the label called subjunctive.  These distorted hideously beautiful aliens multiplies, and soon making me unlearned all that I have come to know.  Oh dearest subjunctive, why must you be so mean?

Year 2012 turns out to be a golden year of video gaming.  It is like having the top ten world renowned writers suddenly decide to publish a book this year.  It may take you eight to twenty hours to read a book.  Games these days may take up to 100 hours to consume.  If I spend two hours a day playing video games, it would take fifty days to finish one game.  Possibly seven games a year, top.  For now, if my favorite games are to be released on time, I am likely to have Final Fantasy XIII-2, Kingdoms of Amalur, Mass Effect 3, Diablo 3, Guild War 2, another Blizzard game, and BioShock: Infinite to complete the top seven spots.  Oh yes. I suppose I will see you next year instead.

What do a bunch of technologists talk about over a dinning table?  Technology.  Given a choice, I would rather talk about the latest Hollywood gossips.  Or even better, the upcoming F1 season that is due to start in less than a month’s time.  Or Japanese hornets raiding the honey bees.  Or any bizarre videos I have viewed lately in YouTube.  Even the new Nikon DSLR camera could be well qualified as a mouthwatering dinner topic among a bunch of business associates.  No, we talked about software bugs.  Now, before you yawn and dose off, that evening, there was something profound I have come to reflect upon.  You see, I was once a Bug Whisperer™.  I have devoted the early part of my career in squishing bugs.  I can see the bug’s roots like no other can.  For the bugs that can be surgically removed, I weed them out without hesitation.  For the bugs that are too entrenched into the scheme of work like tumor cells, I quarantine them and render them ineffective.  Back then, I pictured myself as a surgeon, dealing with some of the ugliest things hidden underneath a file name.  I took pride in what I did, believing that I was on a mission to make this world a better place.

My question is: Why do we see bugs as acceptable features?  You buy a car and do not expect it to come with any defeats.  You buy a kettle and expect it to boil water every time you press that button.  It is almost impossible to see defeat free software application, or a bug free game.  We have patches after patches to fix the problems.  We have a big team of technicians solving issues and testing fixes.  We build an economy whereby people’s livelihoods depend on the very existence of bugs.  And hence contributing to the resilience of the bug nation.  Software is unlike machinery.  A bug free piece of code could last for eternity.  Perhaps building bug free software is as impossible as crafting a machine that runs forever.  It is time that wears down the latter; it is the lacking of that plagued the former.

The happiest moments of my day are two.  I wake up seeing that someone is still sleeping; I travel to town and pick that someone up after work.  My friend’s wife once commented that Cynthia is like my pet.  Wherever I go, she is there.  Whatever I do, she is also there.  The more I think of it, the more I am convinced that I am her pet instead.  That’s right.  No dogs in the house please.  I don’t want my role to be made redundant.

Kupo?