Who would win this epic battle?

On the one hand, Rokusaburo Michiba was named the Iron Chef World Cup 1995 Champion, defeating Chef Vissani in Battle Duck. His philosophy was that cooking has no borders, meaning that he would draw inspiration from all world cuisines in his cooking, especially when faced by widely varied challengers during his tenure as Iron Chef Japanese. He would often bring in flavors and techniques from French, Italian, and Chinese into his own Japanese cooking, and all during the same battle. A testament to this guru status is apparent in Battle Foie Gras, in which he prepared several dishes using the classic French ingredient, foie gras, in the very Japanese-style dishes. Genius? Yes!

On the other hand, Hiroyuki Sakai was named King of the Iron Chefs in 1999, defeating his dear friend Iron Chef Chen Kenichi for the title. Sakai, though principally a French chef, using French techniques in Japanese cooking, also often expanded his repretoire to include hints of Chinese cuisine in his many battles (courtesy of Chef Chen). The winningest of all the Iron Chefs (something like 86 wins to 6 losses), he is often called "the Delacroix of French Cuisine" for his magificently elegant presentations, and supposedly he has never lost a fish battle.

Post a comment, cast your vote!

¶ 9:58 AM 1 comments

Summer is well on its way into Town. We're getting into the mid-90s for the daytime highs, and the lows are hovering around the muggy mid-70s. The Sun beats down on everything its light touches. The smell of hot asphalt wafting up from the office parking lot takes me back to my high school marching band days, and the seemingly endless after school rehersals in the school parking lot.

Ahh, Summer.... Wait, wasn't it just Spring?

¶ 11:49 PM 0 comments

Five tiny little words. It takes about three seconds to spit them out. All are single-syllable. Though terse, they have a definite capacity for evoking pride of craftsmanship, and they give voice to tacit appreciation. So why is it so hard to say them? As easy as it is to dispense positive morale and self-esteem with five simple words, you'd think people would be edifying each other like there's no tomorrow. But alas, the very visible efforts of dozens of engineers continue to go unrecognized, just as they have for the last two years.

The most capable soldiers of the army fight on the very front lines of coporate business, but ammunition runs low, and there's no one behind them to resupply. All the while, the least capable soldiers complain about their lumpy matresses, and receive new ones. Why? Because their plight is directly viewable by the battalion commanders. The battle, however, is fought and won (or lost) on the front lines.

What does it take to get a pat on the back? Or a "Keep up the good work"? Apparently, it takes more than what we are doing now, which is practically everything. Unfortunately, we're already at the physical limit of our capacity for useful work. And of course, budget cuts mean staff cuts mean burn-out.

¶ 11:28 PM 0 comments

I am a genius. I am a freaking genius.

A year and a half ago, in my Enlightened foresight, I wrote a small application for the Pocket PC which acts as an HTTP client, retrieving a URL from a server and capturing the status code from the response header. I designed it smartly, and modularized it like I always do. Just today, I'm working on a proof-of-concept application, and hm... I could really use a simple HTTP client right here.... Where's that code...? Oh, here it is. Hm, let's see... I could just copy-paste this function over... a few minor adjustments.... Voila! Instant HTTP client! Total lines of code copied: 24. Total time spent: 15 minutes. Watching my peers' faces as I accomplish in 15 minutes what should have taken a day: priceless.

Kids these days don't seem to understand the true value of well-written code. Even more unfortunate, a lot of people who have been around for a long time still don't understand the true value of well-written code, nor can they write it. A lot of times, it's like the blind leading the blind.

And speaking of which, it's almost Intern Season here at Unnamed Technology Company. In the next several weeks, there will be masses of people hanging out in front of the Badging Office, waiting for their millstones -- er, I mean, security badges.

UPDATE: 2005 May 12, 2:09am: I realize I may sound arrogant and a bit full of myself. Well, I'll take any opportunity to boost my morale and self-esteem, especially since most of that has been stripped away by all the mindless toils of fixing other people's coding errors and bad code design. Mind you, in the 1 million lines of code of my project at work, I wrote from scratch 1000 of them, and had but 2 bugs reported on them, both user interface feature requests. If that's not Enlightened code, then I don't know what is.

¶ 2:56 PM 2 comments