Video Games

A sort of pre-requisite for being in the technology world is that one should be addicted to video games. I just don't get it though. Why would one want to spend tons of time (urm and money) jumping over hurdles, killing alien bosses just to save the Princess...I think its fun playing Wario Moves on the Wii, but playing Final Fantasy for 75 hours sounds crazy!

Let me try and list my issues with playing video games.
1. Time : I tried playing Zelda. I did put in a few hours. After that, I just got irritated. Sure I am not the most patient person in the world, but why "waste" all this time to learn a few jumps, how to swing your sword and how to correctly press A and B together to shoot.

• I do understand that at least the gamer is using his brain and is not ideally sitting around and watching TV. But, if I want to use my brain, I will go work either on my own projects or on my day-job project. Either of them will be beneficial and no one can argue the useful-ness of using your time to "work".
• Of course the gamer could just be playing a game because he's taking a break and wants to get away from work. Fair enough: so why would you want to get deeply involved in something that will take 50 hours to finish! How is that a 30-minute break? Like I have seen, its really never 20-30 minutes, its about reaching the Save Point and then getting addicted to finishing the damn boss!

2. Money: I am sure people are aware that even if its not a ton ( and yeah right coz the XBox is sooo cheap) of money, you do spend $$ on various different gaming consoles and the games itself.
After Halo1, I want to see how they did Halo2, and oooo Halo3 is out....I played Zelda5 years ago and now they are releasing it for the Wii, I have got to buy it!
Common, you guys have heard this before. I rather spend money on cool sci-fi books or music( maybe ) or something cool!

3. Addiction: People spend hours upon hours just playing and playing and playing! They want to get to the next level, and specially for MMPOG, people get crazily addicted to it. Being this addicted to anything can't be healthy!

Ahh maybe its just me and my short attention span, but hey, we are talking about developers and software engineers too who are probably really impatient, and yet spend hours on their gaming console. Sometimes, I do like playing with my friends and having fun with the graphics and the remotes and the controllers. But, I wish I could get really excited about standing in line for hours for the next big game. I would love to use the Wii remote as a LightSabre just for the ooo factor, and that would last for exactly 20 minutes!

I Hate Documentation

According to dictionary.com, Documentation is defined as : Computers. manuals, listings, diagrams, and other hard- or soft-copy written and graphic materials that describe the use, operation, maintenance, or design of software or hardware. Alas, If only this was the true "definition" of documentation.......

In my company, I inherited a project - lets call it FBB for FooBarBaz. My work is fun ( yes even at a megacorp, work can be fun!). It gets tedious and boring and interesting and I spend long hours @ work, but I am not complaining about that ( at least right now)! What I would like to talk about is documentation on FBB. Documents are required for maintenance of a project, right. So when I come on board, and am expected to 1. start developing 2. fix bugs 3. and support the Support Team AND there is just no docs to make my life simple, I get frustrated. I volunteer to start documentation in order to help me, the next person, the system administrator, and the Support Team. Wonderful: I know exactly what another Software Developer wants to see in a document, and since I am so smart, this shouldn't be a problem. Right?

Nope.....In order for me to write up a document which is actually useful, I have to speak to the people who were involved in FBB since day 1. -> Problems!! Either they are busy, or in another country, or simply not available. So a Software Engineer with very less background in FBB and the system gets stuck with writing all sorts of document, only 'coz she wanted to make life easy!

This is not just one "How does FBB work" document, There are Operations documents ( futile for me to write them up on so many levels ), Delivery Stuff, blah blah blah. I waste my time in doing "work" that really should be done by someone else. And of course, this is a ASAP requirement, BUT I need to focus on content as well as the darn formatting.

Don't get me wrong - I think we need documents in order to plan, develop and maintain a system. But the problem here is that either we don't have enough docs or we have way tooooo many with so much redundant information, that people just get turned off by documents and documentation. Vicious circle...