Prasanna Raj Aryal

Ahem,” he cleared his throat. My boss Joe Timbermann (JT) has a habit of clearing his throat when he is about to pile up some more assignments to my already heavy workload or to shorten a deadline all the same. “We should release this version by the end of this month. What do you think Rudy?” he said and gave me six more days to clean up the Aegian Stables. “Spring is a wonderful season to be working in, isn’t it ?” he added, before he left and I shook my head in approval. From the window of my work place, I could see him hurrying away in his car.

JT, who used to flash his pager when the technology was new, switched to mobile when it came into vogue. At the same time, he gave up his Maruti 800 and ended up with his Silvery Toyota Corolla. Ever since, he is on the move. Nobody knows precisely why he is always in such a hurry. The reason could be as personal as his wife pleading to come home early or as professional as a client’s computer crash; JT could handle every situation with equal composure and stealth.

But not me. I could not handle this newly thrown catastrophe. The thing could not be done within six days. But there was no escape. I prepared myself for a full-fledged struggle against the impossible. Then on, for six days I virtually immersed myself into the work of debugging; patching a few codes here, removing few lines there, running and rerunning the program until I was fully convinced that the module was now ready to be integrated into the main system. I had to give up my daily routine — conscious that should I fail to meet the deadline I would let everyone down.

By the end of the sixth day, I was almost done. But I couldn’t decide where exactly sho-uld I place a button to control the module. I knew JT would never be happy with my decision on placement of controls. So I let the boss decide. “How is it going?” “Almost done, but where should I place this button?

The workspace is all crammed up,” I said. “Ahem. Let’s forget whatever we’ve done so far. Rewrite the code in C and using Magic Crown Control as interface. That way we can use the workspace more effectively”. It was an earthquake! It took me almost a year to understand the code of the software written in the easiest of languages. This time JT was suggesting I learn C and then rewrite the whole of the code in the new language. “Will you be able to complete it by the end of next month?,” he dropped the bo-mbshell. I nodded in approval. He left, rushing as usual.