From rediff.com:
Yahoo! the global Internet communications, commerce and media company, is the latest on the block to begin outsourcing its software requirements from India by setting up a development centre in Bangalore, its first outside the United States.
There's been a lot of talk about this among some of the engineers at work. "How long until we don't bother hiring US engineers?" and stuff like that.
It's too soon to tell what it all really means, but it's a real reminder of the fact that we live in a global economy.
Amusingly, there's a typo at the end of the article: "As one of the first online navigational guides to the Web, Yahoo! caters to over 235 users in 25 countries in 13 languages." It's been pointed out in the comments, but I guess the rediff.com folks don't bother to read those.
My body hates me.
Thursday night, not long after dinner, I felt a bit sick. Not really sick, but I had a pain in my stomach. At first I assumed that Murphy was messing with me--going for a replay of the Denny's Episode.
But after a few hours, I realized it was something entirely different. The sensation reminded me of the pains I had before my gall bladder was removed last year. A slowly building dull pain in my upper-right abdomen that eventually became quite intense for an hour or two and then would slowly go away.
The differences this time were that (1) the pain wasn't nearly as bad, and (2) I no long have a gall bladder.
Figuring it was just some odd problem, I went to bed hoping that it'd be gone in the morning. I woke up yesterday morning to find that it was mostly (but not completely) gone. It wasn't so bad that I couldn't eat, so I had a banana and muffin for breakfast. I went about my morning routine and headed to work.
Sitting at my desk, the pain got worse and I started to feel very, very warm. The pain got worse. I decided to try waiting it out. But after 30 minutes I gave up and decided to go home. There was no way I was going to get anything done anyway.
I arrived home and sat in the Lazy Boy recliner with a laptop on my lap. The pain got worse. Then it occurred to me that I could have picked it up from someone. After all, on Thursday, I had picked up the Friedl's from the airport. They had been in Japan for 6 weeks and there was a bit of sickness going around while they were there.
I gave up and laid down, hoping to sleep it off. No luck. It was too damned hot to sleep. So I laid there, annoyed and in pain. For hours.
Eventually I got up and went back to the computer but wasn't really able to focus. Most of the night continued this way. I tried laying down and/or sleeping on the bed, couch, and even the floor. (The floor was nice and cool as the cooler air came in.) It still hurt.
After a while, I noticed that the pain wasn't getting any better but it also wasn't getting any worse. It still reminded me a lot of a gall bladder attack. I began to wonder what could cause such a thing. What if the clamp/staple/whatever that they left in place when they disconnected my gall bladder had come loose? Maybe it had hooked on something and was now tearing up my insides?
Who knows. I'm no doctor.
I considered going to the hospital. Several times. But each time I told myself that I couldn't stand the thought of sitting in the waiting room for 2-3 hours (though the air conditioning would be nice). I convinced myself to give it just a couple more hours. Around 1:30AM, I moved back to the couch and was able to get comfortable. I slept there, on and off, for about 3 hours. I woke up feeling a bit better and decided to go to bed for real.
Waking up this morning, I felt better. I was terribly hungry (hadn't eaten for 24 hours), thirsty, and generally worn out. I did the dishes and had some breakfast (peaches and a banana). The pain is virtually gone, but for some reason it feels like it could return at any moment. That's probably just my paranoia. I hope.
Like I said, my body hates me.
From Phil Greenspun:
I'm not going to say who it is because he'd be embarrassed but perhaps the incident reveals something general: people over the age of 25 shouldn't use Unix/GNU/Linux/whatever, unless they are full-time professional Unix sysadmins. The dialog boxes on WinXP are annoying but for those of us nearing 40 perhaps it would be nice to have the computer ask "Are you sure that you want to overwrite all the most critical files on this machine?"
Maybe that's another vote for Mac OS X? :-)