Life is Great

[1] The primary unique key of a table in System A is now just another field in the same table of System B without unique constraints. Thus when System A attempts to collect information from System B, ultimately some records will be considered invalid due to duplicate key errors.

[2] Name X of 180 characters in System A is maintained separately in three 60 characters fields due to a legacy design but in System B it is fixed into one 180 characters Field Y. Hence System A will have to chop the contents of Field Y during data transfer.

[3] Somehow, the different (bull-headed) developers of System B and C could not agree to maintain the attribute of Field Z to be as a character according to the legacy System A. As a result, Field Z is an integer in System B and a varchar in System C. Contrary to popular belief, cross type data conversion always falls apart when a certain data value is encountered. Users, on the other hand, have to translate Field Z to mean the same thing when they see ‘1’ in System A, 1 in System B and ‘001’ in System C. Are their lives not supposed to be made easier?

You know, you remind me of the man that lived by the river.

He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town. And that all the residents should evacuate their homes. But the man said , “I am religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me.” The waters rose up.

A guy in a row boat came along and he shouted, “Hey, hey you, you in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety.” But the man shouted back, “I am religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me.” A helicopter was hovering overhead, and a guy with a megaphone shouted, “Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding! Let me drop this ladder and I'll take you to safety.” But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety.

Well, the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter, he demanded an audience with God. “Lord...”, he said. “I’m a religious man. I pray. I thought you love me. Why did this happen?” God said, “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a row boat. What the hell are you doing here?”

Friend: Hello?
PY    : Hello?
Friend: Hello??? Hello???
PY    : Yes, I'm here!
Friend: Hello?????!!! Where the f*** are you?
PY    : I’m at home, the line’s not good.
Friend: Hello?? Damn it! Helloooo??!!
PY    : Yes, yes, can you hear me?
        Okay, it’s not the line, it’s my phone...
Friend: Hello??? Hello???!!!
        For God’s sake, when the hell are you getting
        a new ph..
        [Disconnected]
PY    : (Sigh...)
        [Promptly call friend using land line
        before being disowned]

Prostitution is legal in Switzerland and there are full pages of advertisements for “massages” in Swiss tabloids. Pimping, however, is illegal and uncommon. Most of the prostitutes operate independently from small studios with their cellular phones. Swiss prostitutes pay VAT (Value Added Tax) on their services and some take credit cards. If they have a problem with a client, they will call the police to help them out. But this is as Swiss as they get. The majority of them are foreigners from Latin America, France, Eastern Europe or the Far East. Price charged includes all Swiss taxes.

Profound desire, true desire is the desire to be close to someone. From that point onwards, things change, the man and the woman come into play, but what happens before — the attraction that brought them together — is impossible to explain. It is untouched desire in its purest state.

When desire is still in this purest state, the man and the woman fall in love with life, they live each moment reverently, consciously, always ready to celebrate the next blessing.

When people feel like this, they are not in a hurry, they do not precipitate events with unthinking actions. They know that the inevitable will happen, that what is real always finds a way of revealing itself. When the moment comes, they do not hesitate, they do not miss an opportunity, they do not let slip a single magic moment, because they respect the importance of each second.

... a pretty young girl, for reasons which she has chosen or which have chosen her, decides that the only way she can survive is by selling her body. Some end up ruling nations, as Messalina did in Rome, others become legendary figures, like Madame du Barry, still others chase after adventure and misfortune, like the spy, Mata Hari. But a majority never had their moment of glory, are never faced by a great challenge: they will always be young girls from the interior in search of fame, a husband, adventure, but who end up discovering quite a different reality, into which they plunge for a time, and to which they become accustomed, always believing that they are in control and yet ultimately unable to do anything else.

“Prostitutes appear in classical texts, in Egyptian hieroglyphs, in Sumerian writings, in the Old and New Testament. But the profession only started to become organized in the sixth century B.C., when a Greek legislator, Solon, set up state-controlled brothels and began imposing taxes on ‘the skin trade’. Athenian businessmen were please because what was once prohibited became legal. The prostitutes, on the other hand, started to be classified to how much tax they paid.

The cheapest were the pornai, slaves who belonged to the owners of the establishment. Next came the peripatetica, who picked up her clients from the street. Lastly, the most expensive and highest quality, was the hataera, the female companion, who accompanied businessmen on their trips, dined in chic restaurants, controlled her own money, gave advice and meddled in the political life of the city. As you see, what happened then still happens now.”

“The Greek historian, Herodotus, wrote of Babylonia: ‘The have a strange custom here, by which every woman born in Sumeria is obliged, at least once in her lifetime, to go to the temple of the goddess Ishtar and give her body to strangers, as the symbol of hospitality and for a symbolic price.’”

“The influence of the goddess Ishtar spread throughout the Middle East, as far as Sardinia, Sicily and the Mediterranean ports. Later, during the Roman Empire, another goddess, Vesta, demanded total virginity or total surrender. In order to keep the sacred fire burning, the women serving her temple were responsible for initiating young men and kings on the path of sexuality — they sang erotic hymns, entered trance like states and gave their ecstasy to the universe in a kind of communion with the divinity.”

“No one knows why sacred prostitution disappeared, since it had lasted not centuries, perhaps, but for at least two millennia. Maybe it was disease or because society changed its rules when it changed religions. Anyway, it no longer exists, and will never exists again; nowadays, men control the world, and the term serves only to create stigma, and any woman who steps out of line is automatically dubbed a prostitute.”

The two greatest gurus of software development in Malaysia, Ralph Tee and Marcus Low will address your concerns about the career path of a programmer. Having charted many successes in their careers and earning the accolade of being the brains behind cutting-edge Malaysian technology which had penetrated the international market, Ralph and Marcus will cut to the bone, challenge your beliefs and present their outspoken views on the following:

1. Is there a future to being a software programmer? (As Ralph puts it, have you ever met a 50-years-old programmer? Is your programming career over after 35?)
2. What does it take to be the best code guru?
3. What should you do and not do when you are applying for a programming job?

If you are a programmer worth your salt, if you are a software developer who sees heaven in lines of code, this is a forum you cannot afford to miss.