Two stories

This morning I was searching my outlook for some particular info in an old mail and I happen to end up with reading this old forward from a friend, and felt its worth sharing it here


NUMBER ONE


Many years ago, Al Capone virtually owned Chicago. Capone wasn't famous for anything heroic. 
He was notorious for enmeshing the windy city in everything from bootlegged booze and prostitution to murder.

Capone had a lawyer nicknamed "Easy Eddie." He was his lawyer for a good reason. 
Eddie was very good! In fact, Eddie's skill at legal maneuvering kept Big Al out of jail for a long time.
To show his appreciation, Capone paid him very well. Not only was the money big, but also Eddie got special dividends.

For instance, he and his family occupied a fenced-in mansion with live-in help and all of the conveniences of the day. 
The estate was so large that it filled an entire Chicago City block. 
Eddie lived the high life of the Chicago mob and gave little consideration to the atrocity that went on around him.

Eddie did have one soft spot, however. He had a son that he loved dearly.
Eddie saw to it that his young son had the best of everything: clothes, cars and a good education. 
Nothing was withheld. Price was no object. And, despite his involvement with organized crime, Eddie even tried to teach him right from wrong. Eddie wanted his son to be a better man than he was.

Yet, with all his wealth and influence, there were two things he couldn't give his son; he couldn't pass on a good name and a good example.

One day, Easy Eddie reached a difficult decision. Easy Eddie wanted to rectify wrongs he had done. 
He decided he would go to the authorities and tell the truth about Al "Scarface" Capone, clean up his tarnished name and offer his son some semblance of integrity. 
To do this, he would have to testify against The Mob, and he knew that the cost would be great.

So, he testified. Within the year, Easy Eddie's life ended in a blaze of gunfire on a lonely Chicago Street. 
But in his eyes, he had given his son the greatest gift he had to offer, at the greatest price he would ever pay.
Police removed from his pockets a rosary, a crucifix, a religious medallion and a poem clipped from a magazine.

The poem read:

The clock of life is wound but once
And no man has the power,
To tell just when the hands will stop
At late or early hour.
Now is the only time you own.
Live, love, toil with a will.
Place no faith in time,
For the clock may soon be still.




STORY NUMBER TWO


World War II produced many heroes. One such man was Lieutenant Commander Butch O'Hare. 
He was a fighter pilot assigned to the aircraft carrier Lexington in the South Pacific.

One day his entire squadron was sent on a mission. 
After he was airborne, he looked at his fuel gauge and realized that someone had forgotten to top off his fuel tank. He would not have enough fuel to complete his mission and get back to his ship. 
His flight leader told him to return to the carrier. 
Reluctantly, he dropped out of formation and headed back to the fleet.


As he was returning to the mother ship he saw something that turned his blood cold, a squadron of Japanese aircraft were speeding their way toward the American fleet.
The American fighters were gone on a sortie, and the fleet was all but defenseless.
He couldn't reach his squadron and bring them back in time to save the fleet. 
Nor could he warn the fleet of the approaching danger. 
There was only one thing to do. He must somehow divert them from the fleet.

Laying aside all thoughts of personal safety, he dove into the formation of Japanese planes. 
Wing-mounted 50 caliber's blazed as he charged in, attacking one surprised enemy plane and then another. 
Butch wove in and out of the now broken formation and fired at as many planes as possible until all his ammunition was finally spent. 
Undaunted, he continued the assault, he dove at the planes, trying to clip a wing or tail in hopes of damaging as many enemy planes as possible and rendering them unfit to fly.

Finally, the exasperated Japanese squadron took off in another direction.
Deeply relieved, Butch O'Hare and his tattered fighter limped back to the carrier. Upon arrival he reported in and related the event surrounding his return. 
The film from the gun-camera mounted on his plane told the tale. It showed the extent of Butch's daring attempt to protect his fleet. He had in fact destroyed five enemy aircraft.

This took place on February 20, 1942, and for that action Butch became the Navy's first Ace of W.W.II, and the first Naval aviator to win the Congressional Medal of Honor. 
A year later Butch was killed in aerial combat at the age of 29. His home town would not allow the memory of this
WW II hero to fade, and today, O'Hare Airport in Chicago is named in tribute to the courage of this great man.

So the next time you find yourself at O'Hare International, give some thought to visiting Butch's memorial displaying his statue and his Medal of Honor. It's located between Terminals 1 and 2.

SO, WHAT DO THESE TWO STORIES HAVE TO DO WITH EACH OTHER?

Butch O'Hare was Easy Eddie's son!

Back to the Memory Lane - III

Back to the Memory Lane - III

Back to the Memory Lane - II

Back to the Memory Lane - I

We were busy into talking and it took a while for me to notice the airhostess who was standing near us holding napkins. She grabbed two napkins for us and I stretched my hand for one. I unfolded it to clean my face. I closed my eyes, kept it on my forehead and that was when these lines in a Book by Coelho came in my mind, "When trying to seduce a woman, a writer always says: 'I'm a writer', and scribbles a poem on a napkin. It always works". I took off the napkin from my face, but still kept my eyes closed, took a deep breath and smiled to myself.

"What’s so funny now?" her lips were moving louder than her low pitched voice.

I turned to her, her raised eyebrows were seeking for an answer from me and she was trying to tie her hair.

"Nothing and I don’t mind if you want to call me with names for laughing with myself"

"I was with an impression that I am the craziest and here we have someone to prove me wrong"

"Thank you"

“You are most certainly welcome, but before that tell me why were you smiling?”

I told her about why I was smiling. And she started smiling now and before I could ask her anything, she asked me, “Don’t you want to give it a shot with me?”

“What?”

 “You mean, you can’t write anything poetic or romantic?”

“It’s that you are not up to my level”

And that was when we got to know about each other. We spoke a lot and before we taking our own way, we exchanged each other’s email ids.

Excitement of going back home, even after 2 weeks break is almost overwhelming. I had totally forgotten about her until I received a mail from her, which I have checked 2 days after she had mailed. There was nothing special written in her mail except for she informing she is back in town and also she had added her contact number. I was one among many addressed in that mail. And generally I don’t respond to those mails addressed to mass. So, I didn’t bother to reply.



[Will continue this in the next post.. soon...]

Coverage

“Is it free for you during weekend?” he asked her.

I got shocked, not realizing what exactly he wanted to ask her.

She dint get it either, she responded back with a question mark on her face.

“I mean, is it free for you to make a call from your cell phone during weekend?”

She responded positively this time, “yeah”

“Which service provider do you have?”

“US carrier”

“Do you have network coverage now?”

“Yeah, we get it here; it’s the only one which has coverage in this area”

“Do you mind if I use your cell phone to make a call?”

Again a bit of hesitation on her face, but she responded with “yeah, of course”

He had to make a call to his girl friend and there was no network coverage for both T Mobile and AT & T service provider                !! Its surprisingly strange that even in such a well known tourist places, there won’t be good coverage by these well established service providers!

While I was driving through one such remote [or rather no coverage] area, suddenly I got a message, and it was a Voice Message. That was the only time I appreciated “You have a new Voice Message” getting displayed on my cell. I took my car to a halt at the shoulders and for next ten minutes, we guys were busy making calls!

===============================================

There is more of coverage problems, though very different one this time. One of many disadvantage of being away from home [in a different country] is Coverage of Medical Insurance. If your parents/dependents are away, then your medical insurance won’t cover them! I need get medical insurance for my mother and sister, who live in India.

===============================================

During our last meeting at office, out Product Owner told, “Team, our coding/software release standard says that we should be having at least of 80% coding coverage from now onwards and lets start with You [pointing at my friend]”

“But, why me?” was his immediate response.

I told him, “Dude, I have 2 tips for you, code it so that you don’t have many if else and switch statements and the 2^nd one is, if ever you have lots of such codes, comment out all else statements with #if 0”

Having said that, I started thinking on that on a serious note. It can be a good practice if we write code with ifs and not else.

For example:

Rather than writing code with lots of ifs and elses, I think its better to write it so that, we avoid else conditions.

Advantage being:

(i)                  well readable [lots of if else confuses me a lot]

(ii)              maintenance is easy [maintaining blocks of if else or to modify one is a tough job]

(iii)          don’t have to worry about code coverage!

One such sample code [which I wrote now, though this might not have lots of significance]

int AddContacts(ContactDetails* pContacts) {

      int res = OK;

      if(pContacts){

            ContactDetails* contacts = new ContactDetails;

            if(contacts) {

                  if(pContacts->name) {

                        contacts->name = new char[strlen(pContacts->name)];

                        if(contacts->name) {

                              strcpy(contacts->name, pContacts->name, strlen(pContacts->name));

                              //copy other data similarly...

                              ...

                        }

                        else {

                              res = ERR_MEMORY;

                        }

                  }

                  else {

                        res = ERR_ARGUMENT;

                  }

            }

            else {

                  res = ERR_MEMORY;

            }

      }

      else {

            res = ERR_ARGUMENT;

      }

      return res;

}

Re-writing the same with avoding the else condition.

This function below takes care of all the error condition that above code is doing and also the same functionality.

int AddContacts(ContactDetails* pContacts) {

      int res = ERR_ARGUMENT;

      if(pContacts){

            //set error as ERR_MEMORY

            res = ERR_MEMORY;

            ContactDetails* contacts = new ContactDetails;

            if(contacts) {

                  //set error as ERR_ARGUMENT

                  res = ERR_ARGUMENT;

                  if(pContacts->name) {

                        //set error as ERR_MEMORY

                        res = ERR_MEMORY;

                        contacts->name = new char[strlen(pContacts->name)];

                        if(contacts->name) {

                              strcpy(contacts->name, pContacts->name, strlen(pContacts->name));

                              //copy other data similarly...

                              ...

                              res = OK;

                        }

                  }

            }

      }

      return res;

}

And also, one can write C++ codes very effectively and efficiently by avoiding if else statements with polymorphism [by constructing an object of different type for each such cases and directly invoking that functionality on that object]

===============================================

When asked us about who is suppose to work on a task, my colleague/friend of mine told my Product Owner, “I am done with my part and now its Girish’s responsibility”

I said, “Ok, I will do it” though I seriously got pissed off with this, but I dint utter a word at that time.  I came back to my desk and avoiding a conversation with him as I knew that if I do, I might take a toll at him. Even after giving more than an hour gap, I was still unhappy about it and I wanted him to know about it.

“Since when you started deciding upon what I am supposed to be doing?” I asked him.

And this time he got pissed off for me asking like that and he stopped talking to me ;)

===============================================

When we were entering office through the main entrance, we saw few of our colleagues standing outside the back side entrance in a group and into some serious discussion. We ignored them and got into elevator, and I could not resist my curiosity and asked my friend, “what would be they doing down there?”, but I asked that in kannada (my mother tongue].The lady who was in the elevator with us, got that context though the last thing she would know is a word from Kannada and told me, “Few Indians and few Chinese are trying to communicate with a Spanish to guide her to USA Embassy”

To Kill a Squirrel

I think I have killed a squirrel this Sunday.

When we were kids, they used to tell us the story of Squirrels helping (Lord) Rama in constructing the bridge to (Sri) Lanka to find his wife (Sita). The moral of the story was to convey us that every little things matter. One doesn’t have to think about how big/huge (quantity) is the help, but the idea of helping someone, doing those small little things also count.

Rama was so impressed with the aLilu Seve of these Squirrels that he took them all in his hand, one by one and with his three fingers he marked three lines on its back, which represents Rama, Sita and Lakshmana.

We were told that touching those lines on a Squirrel’s back means good fate for us and seeing a Squirrel before exam means good luck! During our school days we used to spend more time on looking out for a Squirrel than to study for the exams. We used to throw stones at all the birds and monkeys if they try to eat any fruits in our neighborhood, but we never used to do anything even if Squirrels finish off jack fruits or mangoes.

Last week, I drove to Missouri with two of my friends to visit few of the Springs in Shanon county. We were on our way back home through a hilly road which was going in all zigzag passion. I saw this Squirrel on road from certain distance away from it. I could manage to apply break and the Squirrel, which was on its way to cross the road stood for a while and it seemed to me as if it has made a decision to go back from where it started. So, I turned the steering towards right, which is away from it so that it gets its way. But half way through, it changed its mind and turned back. So, I had to turn the car towards left now, to avoid me running over it. I don’t know what exactly went in its mind, but I was so damned afraid that I would kill it by then. I dint had much time to apply the break to get the car to a complete halt and this guy sitting in the back seat of the car had motion sickness and I was worried that he might end up vomiting as he was totally uncomfortable with that hilly road. But still I could manage to slow down the car a bit; I managed to avoid it coming under the front wheels, but then came this small jerk. And I end up running over it!!

I had to grow up from being a kid to what I am now, I had to relocate to USA two years back from Bangalore [Bengaluru], and this Friday, I had to drive all the way to Missouri from Dallas to kill a Squirrel.

Ah, its bothering me a lot, I think I have killed a Squirrel L