Quick fixes to reduce your heating bills

- Buy some uranium from your neighborhood store and perform some controlled fission in your mini-reactor at home to convert some mass into heat. E= mc^2 ensures that a few grams will last you for the rest of your lifetime. Comes in handy when you have a quarrel with anyone too...

- If uranium is out of stock, buy some tritium and deuterium and invent cold fusion. This should solve the whole world's energy needs.. So while you're saving on utility bills, don't forget to go to Stockholm to collect your Nobel.

- Take some uranium, absorb the radiation in large amounts, turn into a mutant with lots of fur and hibernate through winter. You can expect another phone call from Sweden to collect the prize in Medicine.

- Keep your car running in the parking lot outside all year emitting CO2, increase global warming and skip winter altogether by changing the climate of the whole planet. That way you save everyone on their heating bills. Watch out for Green Peace protestors around your car though... Also write to OPEC to get oil on whole sale rates!

- If your car breaks down, sell it... use the money you get as a consequence to buy rainforests in South America. Set the rainforests on fire and enjoy the warm weather in Wisconsin. The polar icecaps might melt and might turn Madison into Venice, so don't forget to wear your swimming trunks before swimming to work.

- Wear everything you own every night before you go to bed. Of course don't forget to wear a deodorant after adding each layer of clothes.

- Petition the university to move the University of Wisconsin, out of Wisconsin. I am sure Hawaii doesn't mind having a University of Wisconsin in Honolulu. Also you become really popular with all the chicks and obtain additional perks for coming up with the idea.

Do the right thing!

I want to do the right thing, but I don't know what it is. I am prepared to make some sacrifices for my country but I am confused. What follows are just some meandering thoughts... thinking out aloud if you will.

One area I do see a great many things lacking are in engineering education. I refer you to an excellent article by Ramanand about the sad state of affairs in COEP.(The College of Engineering, Pune) This ofcourse isn't too different from what it used to be like when I attended COEP. But what is the point of training engineers better in Computer Architecture or VLSI Design (the things I am trained for)? The best the students I could train in COEP can do is to work for Intel or Texas Instruments in India or go abroad and benefit the US again. That still doesn't directly benefit India, or does it? Most of the engineers coming out of COEP go to work for Infosys or TCS or Wipro, where they don't employ these skills in their work. So even learning VLSI Design well has little effect in that sense. I could argue that maybe if a lot many people coming out of COEP knew the basics of chip design well, maybe some could start another outsourcing company which employed a lot many people, and eventually benefit the country. So well maybe there is some potential there afterall.

I spoke to Sumeet about this once. His opinion was that being in India allows you to influence the way culture progresses in some sense. You voice your opinion about the movies, music, TV programs that you like or dislike. Initially I used to think the only way that India would gain from me if I say decided to work for Intel India, would be through taxes. But Sumeet again pointed out that even daily groceries, entertainment and all other expenses are benefiting India indirectly, which wouldn't be the case if I work in the US. So I do see myself making a contribution by being a part of the economy even if I work for a multinational company.

But now what if I decided to earn in dollars and return say a percentage of my earnings back in ASHA or some other non-profit social initiative? Would that be a more worthwhile contribution?

Another thing I would really like to see is some improvement in the traffic situation in Pune. I see that there is incredible potential for some entrepreneur to create a positive influence in this area. If we had a transportation service which takes people from home to office (say common start and end points like Kothrud to Software Technology Park) imagine how much stress would be taken off from the roads! Incrementally, if people start seeing timely, clean buses, the demand for this service will increase and the traffic on the roads would drop. Pollution will go down. The company driving the buses will earn a lot of money, employ a lot of people, serve the city well. Its WIN-WIN-WIN... I can't see why no one is trying to do anything along these lines.

Don't Mess with Texas!

The warnings against littering in Texas read that. One of my friends from Iowa, found it rather funny too. I said, "If you ever wondered why George Bush is the way he is, well this explains it. Take him to Yale and Harvard, but you still cant get Texas out of him".

Austin is a beautiful city though. The number of expressways running atop each other close to my hotel was unbelievable... at some points almost 5 expressways criss-crossing each other. The weather was awesome. I even overheard one of these Canadian girls in the Tour of Austin exclaiming "How cool is it to wear a tanktop in December!!?" I am sure it must be a quantum leap from Ontario.

But Texas is really different from other places in the US. We were all introducing ourselves at NI and all the guys from Texas schools kept making making some weird sounds like "Hook 'em!" and "Whoop!". I felt rather left out because the Badgers don't have any such cool sounds to append when you introduce yourself in front of 60 other people.

Also being in Yankee country all this while, I had never seen any monuments to Confederacy before. The Capitol at Austin was replete with them. Some of my Northern friends were kinda afraid someone might shout "Damn Yankees!!" from some corner somewhere. But the Capitol was superlative! In line with Lone Star maverickness it is 6 feet taller than the Capitol in DC. (Wisconsin's capitol is 3 feet shorter than DC's) Mt Bonnel showed me another place I could never afford to buy a house...the lifestyles of the rich and famous, and there certainly isn't a dearth of them in Austin.

National Instruments itself was a wonderful company. The recruiters conducted a very well co-ordinated interview session with a very warm human touch. Even the work environment was superior with a lot of school pride. This added to the fact that I have such good friends in Austin make me wish I could... Suvid, one of my closest friends from school took me out on Saturday for a lot of fun. Everything from good Indian food, to freshly brewed beer at Friedricksburg, and from martinis & tex-mex at Trudy's to shakin' a leg at the best clubs in town, I enjoyed all the sights and sounds (smells and tastes) of Austin. And I'd love to have more...

Of Cold Weather and Warm Rooms

The heater in my room is relishing the cold weather outside. -6 degree Celcius and it's pleased to work to get my room back to 20 degrees. The heater was really jealous of the air conditioner who got to run all summer and through parts of Fall as well.

The fridge in my room finds it queer, to cool the food back to -6 degrees, while the heater is getting the room warmer. The fridge is lazy and tired from work all summer and dislikes the heater for making his job so much harder...even though his friend, the cold weather, is sitting just outside the window.

The food inside the fridge doesn't care. It's just sitting there waiting to be digested by the mighty enzymes of the gargantubrain sitting there watching television.(Did I mention that I'm watching TV?).

The electric company loves the fact that I heat a room in cold weather using electricity and then cool things in the warm room using some more electricity.
The environmentalists hate using electricity for anything... they'd rather move civilization to Florida.

I am pissed that the heater is raising my electricity bill. I dislike the heater, I dislike the weather and I dislike the fridge that cant use the outside air to cool the food. I love the food though... I am waiting to digest it and then sit watching television, wasting away my brain.

The Americans trying to read this post can't make sense out of the temperatures in degrees Celcius. They can't figure out why anyone would spend any time trying to write a post, no one is going to read anyways.

The Fat Lady Squealing!

Okay I don't know what's wrong with the world but somehow all the elements that make it up are conspiring against me. Firstly none of the career prospects are going anywhere... I am just waiting on the results.

Second I am trying to sublet my apartment and that's not getting sold. I've put out ads in every building close by on campus but its been 5 days and just one person asked to see the apartment. Well maybe its too early but that's forced me to walk in freezing temperatures(It is 0 deg Celcius today) to the Business school, Computer Sci, Psychology, Chemistry, Atmospheric Sciences Depts....

Third, I am getting parking tickets all the time. Earlier I used to keep my car on the street for 5 days instead of 2 and I never got anything.(I have a street parking permit) These days I try to move the car 3 hours past the deadline and the city has already taken away a 20$ bill from my wallet.

I just know that I cant leave anything to chance these days because "the fat lady" is cross with me! I just need to see that silver lining somewhere. I am alive and healthy and sane (or as insane as I was)

A Personal History of Personal Computing

I was talking to a friend about when he got started on computers and I thought that it would make a good blog post.

1988
The first time I was introduced to computers was in Class 3. Apple started a programming class for 3rd graders and I learnt Logo as a consequence. Logo was a really simple language in which you learnt how to program a computer to draw various shapes. At Apple I saw a Mac (5MHz) with a GUI and mouse, although I didn't get to play with it much. (Apple later turned into Aptech Computers in India.)


1989
In class 4, I started going to Datapro. They taught me the history of computers and MS-DOS. After that I learnt BASIC, Lotus-1-2-3 and Harvard Graphics. At this point, we also bought a home computer by Sinclair called ZX Spectrum (4MHz). This was a computer with a whopping 64Kb of RAM and displayed on the TV and stored/read programs in BASIC on tape. I played around a lot with this computer and it helped crystallize my knowledge of BASIC to a very great extent.

(What's an even more amazing story is this... One of these chips on the ZX Spectrum got burnt one day, and since the computer was made in England there was no way we could fix it. Turns out that a ZX Spectrum clone was manufactured in Pune in Bhosari under the name DB Spectrum and they repaired our ZX Spectrum one Saturday afternoon.)

I got to see a Commodore 64 (8MHz) as well around that time and salivated immensely on it, but my dad decided against buying one.(My dad is a very conservative person!!) Datapro continued in Class 5 and I was working on PC-286 machines as opposed to the PC-XT (based on Intel 8086 processor which I found out later) machines earlier. The XT machines were rather silly in that one had to boot from a floppy before running any other program. The teachers at Datapro ofcourse hid a lot of these details from you but it was fun nevertheless.

Unfortunately, there was a huge break beyond this and I didn't learn anything new for a long time. We also sold off the ZX Spectrum around Class 7 and although some of my friends started learning C in class 8, I didn't. We didn't buy a PC because the prices kept dropping and new things came out all the time. I really felt deprived and I was a little pissed off with my dad for not getting us a computer. The deal basically was that he had a nice computer with a COLOR MONITOR(!!!!! a very big deal at the time) in his office, so he didn't need to buy one. (This was ofcourse a shared computer and they kept their medical records in Foxpro which students at the University used for their BE projects for a while.)

1996
Finally in Class 10 we bought a Pentium (100MHz) processor based PC. Until this time I hadn't worked much with Windows even, but this was the point when I started learning about most of the Microsoft products. My father was working on a Global Project in Abdominal Pain and hence we got an Internet connection at home. This was in 1997, when most people in Pune didn't have Internet access. I started using the AOL Instant Messenger, Internet Explorer, Eudora.(My dad points out that we upgraded on numerous occassions beyond this time).

1998
In my freshman year in college I learnt C and I was also learning SQL, Java, C++ at NIIT. My skills at C were fairly limited initially but grew substantially by the end of college.

2004
Now I am working on many interesting things in Computing and I am even a Research Assistant in Computer Engineering at one of the top universities in the US. What's really great is that now I have two computers to my disposal, a notebook at home and a top-of-the-line desktop with a 19 inch LCD monitor (thanks to Professor Compton), both Pentium 4-based (3.4GHz) machines both from Dell. I love my 3632-12.ece.wisc.edu !!

I could even end up working on designing one of the fastest supercomputers in the world the SGI Altix series. I'll soon find out.

Wisconsin Badger's ranked 4th in the nation

This one is dedicated to the UW Badgers. I am so proud of our football team that has won 9 games in a row and is still undefeated this season. The games against Purdue and Ohio State were really close, but to be doing so well in such a tough conference is something that is very commendable. This is the highest I have ever seen the Badgers ranked, but it's such a pleasure to be on the winning side for once. And with John Stocco (our quarterback) improving with each game, I forsee a great future for UW Football for the next three years.

We just have two more games to go, one against Michigan State and the second against Iowa. I just hope that we win both our games and take UW to the Rose Bowl (outdoing the stupid U of M!!... I am sure I am going to get angry reactions to this one). UW ofcourse is the only team to have won back to back Rose Bowls from the Big Ten in 1999 & 2000. So let me brag and say that it's becoming a habit now.

Go Badgers!! Do UW proud!

Incredibly Incredible!

"Honey, where's my supersuit?!" Not a line you'd expect to hear from a superhero. You certainly don’t expect Superman to be scrounging to find his suit before trying to save the world. But Pixar's "The Incredibles" paints a humorous portrait of a super-family with ordinary problems like us ordinary folk.

I have such great admiration for the people at Pixar. The continuing theme that I have observed over Finding Nemo, Toy Story and every other Pixar classics is the amazingly imaginative storyline that the writer’s create. Then the graphic artists weave a completely beautiful yet believable world around their characters. The Incredibles is no exception and quality of every aspect of the movie is so extraordinary, I wonder how many geniuses are employed at Pixar.

The movie is about a family of superheros facing very real-world problems such as legal trouble, unemployment and commutes with gridlock. The visual appeal of the movie is something that can’t be described. Most of the movie has a 70's look and the hi-tech bits are then made to look like the 21st century counterparts. What also amazed me is the careful thought put into the invention of many characters and their special powers. You are then shown a visual symphony created by the various elements of the movie acting in unison. The final outcome is like a combination of Spiderman, James Bond and Brady Bunch.

The Incredibles is a must-see movie and in my opinion the best movie to come out this year. Hats off to Pixar! I am certain that many sequels are to follow this incredible movie and I can’t wait to watch the next of the Incredibles.

"Raj...You're Fired"



From this week I will be posting an analysis of the week's task on the Apprentice. This is just an exercise I am conducting for myself in order to improve my management/leadership skills and you are all welcome to post your own comments on how things could have been done better as well.

What I have realised about being the project manager on the Apprentice is this. The style of leadership suitable for every area of business is radically different. While most intelligent people could probably falter once and learn the correct way to manage things the next time, the candidates on the Apprentice don't have this facility.

Take for instance last week's show about the advertising campaign for the NYPD. Raj imposed the wrong military attitude on this campaign, as a consequence Elizabeth got fired because she didn't stand by her convictions. Andy, on the other hand, didn't care about the opinions of the rest of his team-mates and stuck to his guns about the kind of advertisement he wanted to execute. In the case of advertising, having the right idea and then sticking to it made the winner.

In yesterday's task the dependence on the contractor made a huge difference to the final results. Also Raj I think lacks that inherent business sense, and the lack of that common sense showed up in the tasks in the fashion industry, advertising and real-estate industry too. I admit he is someone who has a lot of panache but he frequently has the wrong idea and in last night's show he made the mistake of changing a 4 bedroom house into a 3 bedroom house.

The contractor was a huge variable on this task. Having control over the contractor had paramount importance. I think a reward-based competitive scheme would have worked well in this scenario. Employ two contractors to do two different rooms in the house. Tell each of them that whoever does a faster and better job at the first room will get to work on the upper floor of the house. Ofcourse I have the benefit of hindsight but well in many cases "not putting all your eggs in one basket" can make a lot of difference.

Bush Kerries on!

Why doesn’t this surprise me?! I’ve experienced this anticlimax for a fair part of my life... I root for some side during a game or a test match, passionately hate the other and it then turns out that the wrong side wins. This election felt like a 3 month long test match. I bet John Kerry feels a similar sentiment somewhere. But I realize now what a humongous waste of time this exercise has been to me. What have I gained by listening to those stupid debates and those hundred other news programs by Jim Lehrer and Tom Brokaw? I think this incident is going to wean me off election coverage, in much the same way that India’s failure at cricket during my teenage years weaned me off the game. I just don’t see the point of watching a game ball to ball, when you can pretty much come in late, enjoy the exciting last hour and make some headway in your research the rest of the day.

But maybe I have learnt a lot from this election about America. I have learnt about the immovable (Bible-smacking) South and my understanding of the people in the various parts of the US has improved. I’ve learnt that even stupid people can get ahead in life. So maybe it wasn’t all a waste. Maybe someday if I am taking part in Jeopardy, these inconsequential facts I learnt could help me answer some inconsequential questions.

Go John Kerry!



I really do wish that John Kerry wins. I am voting for him in the mock elections held by the International Students and Scholars Services... I have never voted before, not even in a mock election. (Well maybe voting in college and school doesnt count). I hope the stupid ( = Republicans) dont outnumber the sensible( = Democrats) in this election.

I am pissed with Kelsey Gramer (Dr. Frasier Crane), whose show has such pretenstions of refineness and intelligence. He is apparently supporting George W, inspite of all the wrong things he has done... Inspite of the lack of WMDs.

Will blog on the results on Tuesday.

Dream of Californication!

My first trip to California ever. I am impressed with the roads and the apparent affluence...(you see soo many BMWs here). It was also my first stay in a good hotel like Marriott and it sure was fun to order room service morning, evening and night.

But unfortunately for me, my trip is marked by another "first" It is apparently the first time it's rained here in San Diego in the last 2 years. And boy it saps the fun out of anything that you might wanna do.

I expressed the same displeasure with the weather to one of these interviewers at Qualcomm and he says "The day that I was hired out of Indiana, it was raining too." I said, "So this is a good sign, you think!? Maybe I'll get hired BECAUSE it is raining." The interviewer goes, "Well maybe people only get hired in Qualcomm when it rains." When I related this incident to another interviewer during lunch, he goes "Well, it rains 10 days out of 365 in San Diego. If we hired only on the days it rained, we wouldn't have a very large company now, would we? ;-)"

But picture this... you land in a strange city in a strange state 1800 miles from home. You land in the night and it's raining like crazy. You are then given an a Ford Taurus, a car you've never driven before. You're supposed to make a 15 mile trip up North on I-5 with the already challenging conditions aggravated by the fact that sooo many streets in La Jolla match the "*La Jolla Drive*" criteria! Sounds a lot like the setting for the "Expert" level on Need For Speed. Human beings such as myself are just apt to mess the directions up and land up some place 3 miles from where you're supposed to be and taking 1 hour for the 15 min drive. Oh well... better luck next time!(if there is a next time)

Phoebe: What do you know about chicks?!!

Chandler: Fowl?... Nothing!...

Human... NOTHING!!

Explanation on the Prolonged Hiatus!

In deference to some emails about my reasons for not blogging, I decided to post this quick one. Yes I am alive and well and sure I haven't been blogging, but lately there has been a deluge of "better things to do!"

When one is trying to home in on employment in some of the greener (and I must add "warmer") pastures of the Western coast of the US, time does deserve to be invested in preparation.

Secondly, to my misfortune some professors derive sadistic pleasure by subjecting people to lengthy homeworks. This week makes me feel that a diabolical mind is at work... Don't even get me started on how frustrated I am with the size of it. And what's more it carries 1% of the overall grade! I dont shy from asking the question "WHY??!!"

University Education at the Laundry!

Every trip to the laundry is an educational experience for me. I learn new physical and chemical laws which every person just has to discover. The Ig-Nobel prize winning discovery I made... I now know that pens when subjected through the drying process, tend to assume contorted shapes and spew out the liquids from their wombs onto the shirt you like to wear the most! I dont know why the ink has to spill onto the only shirt that you truly think you look like a hunk in. The Probability of that happenening is just so stagerringly infinitesimal, that I feel like it's some sort of divine punishment for my sins.

This was my first transition from the uniprocessor laundry of Robin 2(old apt) to the multiprocessor world of the Laundromat. I realised something about my native intelligence... that I really don't possess it. All of it is borrowed or acquired. But the more I observe how other people do their laundry, the more I learn how some old people apply advanced computer science theory in doing their laundry without even knowing it. There was this old lady there (who was probably doing her son's laundry) who would give even the best Operating Systems a run for their money... she was scheduling her drying jobs so well. She came ten minutes after I, and left ten minutes earlier. I'd like to believe that her son is the smartest man in the universe for making his mum do his laundry, but then again look at all the wonderful things he missed.

Another person I learnt something from was this fat guy who got his laundry in a suitcase, did it and then folded his clothes neatly into the suitcase and scooted off into the distance. I, on the other hand, was struggling with this stupid laundry bag that had become cumbersome because I hadn't done my laundry for so long.

One can truly learn so much at the laundry, from arithmetic to chemistry to physics to computer science... a few hours there, worth a few more in the classroom.

Mrs. Einstein Revealed




I am guilty of being a male chauvinistic pig for harboring certain opinions about women in the past. But with experience, I have realised that there are many factors that aren't accounted for in calculations of intelligence... that any generalizations cannot accommodate the many variables that could catalyze / hamper genius. The vast majority of Nobel Prize Winners are men, but it could be that expectations and support for intelligent women in society are such that they don't allow women to have incredible careers. Maybe its a huge male conspiracy. I am rethinking some of those thoughts now with some revelations about the genius of our time, Albert Einstein.

In a program on PBS, historians talk about an investigation into the facts behind the annulus mirablis (miracle year 1905), in which Einstein published 5 papers, each revolutionizing physics. Photoelectric effect, Special Theory of Relativity and Brownian motion are the first to come to my mind. Historians find it hard to believe that someone who was working fulltime (6 days a week) at the Swiss Patent Office, could manage to publish such path-breaking papers. When one then considers the fact that Mileva Maric, Einstein's first wife was a Haus Frau with more time to devote to physics things start looking fishy. What arouses even more suspicion is the fact that an editor at Annalen Der Physik recalls seeing two names on the papers and not just Uncle Albert's.

Then there is the fact that Einstein secretly shares the prize money with Mileva Maric evenly many years after the discoveries. Mileva was also an academic star at ETH and in fact takes one attempt to enter ETH (as opposed to 2 attempts for Einstein), and does much better than Albert in college too.(Maybe I don't count that much because I didn't do too well in college either... just waiting for that miracle year too.;)) The historians also point to the fact that Albert Einstein never produced anything as incredible as his theories from 1905 after he divorces Mileva. They don't completely discredit Albert Einstein, but contend that Mileva might have been a contributor to some of the papers.

If you wanna read more about this I refer you to The PBS Website.

You can also read about another lady genius Sophie Germain here. She was an 18th century mathematician who studied Math disguised as a man and dreamt about proving Fermat's Last Theorem. That's located at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/proof/germain.html

I want to believe that I can make a difference.
I want to believe that truth always triumphs.

I want to believe that goodness doesnt go unrewarded.
I want to believe that evil doesnt go unpunished.

I want to believe that looks don't matter.
I want to believe that things happen for a reason.

COEPaen! (Paen to COEP)

I am proud of my alma mater, the College of Engineering, Pune (COEP - more recently known as Pune Institute of Engineering and Technology). I think it is human psychology to criticize an institution when one is part of it (inherently some form of self-deprecation is common I think, as pessimistic as that sounds). But lately I have realized what a wonderful place COEP was to go to college. Few COEPians realise how lucky they were to learn there. I have this habit of bragging, but trust me when I say that on many counts, COEP really does deserve many plaudits. First the syllabus at COEP was superior. I've met many people from various universities in India and US, and none of them had VLSI design, Advanced Computer Architecture, Networking AND Image Processing at the undergraduate level. Admittedly few of these subjects were treated by anyone with expertise in the field, but a fair amount of it sinks in nevertheless due to independent study and discussion.

Which leads me to my second point, the excellent intellectual company you are in. I wont comment on some of the other departments in COEP, but E & TC had some of the brightest people I have known in my life. (For instance, Nachiket Kapre, my class topper is stunning people in Caltech with his brilliance ... Ajit Oke, from my class set a record highest CGI at Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore... Sumeet Kulkarni, the funniest engineer I've met, won a DAAD Scholarship to Germany after working at TI India... the list is really long).

I think there is more to learn from fellow students at COEP than from the faculty themselves. And most kids in COEP aren't just academically brilliant but talented as well. Most of them posess this rare humility and refineness that I have only seen in people from Pune. Like my project partner, Sankalp Dravid, who is a really nice guy and in addition won the best artist prize at Firodiya Karandak almost 4 times.(This is a inter-collegiate talent show contest).

In addition, there are atleast many interesting things to take part in, such as Rowing, Quiz Club, the College Magazine (winner of the best college magazine in the state for 3 years running in my times). J Ramanand, a good friend of mine from the BC Quiz Club won the Mastermind India contest last year. I think we at COEP, dont give ourselves credit for the many good things that COEP really deserves a pat on the back for. COEP, really is the cremè de la cremè in the Oxford of the East.

Two Movies - Indians come of age in the American Entertainment Industry

Well slowly but surely, Indian faces are becoming more common in the American entertainment industry. Yesterday I saw two movies with Americans of Indian origin playing siginificant parts in each.

The first was Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. It was the opening weekend for this movie and I think it's doing quite alright in a place like Madison. (where Indians are easily the smallest minority group) My take on the movie... I think it's okay. What makes a movie great is the re-watchability... meaning how likely are people to watch this movie again. H & K go to White Castle is probably worth one visit atleast. Kumar, played by Kal Penn (to my mind the first person of Indian origin as a lead in a Hollywood movie), has done a fabulous job!! I loved his performance in both American Desi and Van Wilder, so this didnt come as a surprise to me.The whole plot is about two guys, who want to have some White Castle burgers and how it takes them the whole night to have their hunger doused. Some parts are a lil too ludicrous and some are lil too gross but hey, maybe it was supposed to be funny. But you come out feeling happy about the time spent in the theater, with quite a few laughs.

The other movie I saw yesterday was M Night Shyamalan's The Village. It has been written, produced and directed by M Night Shyamalan, but was a huge disappointment. I won't give out the plot of the movie, but the first hour is very boring with the story hardly making any progress. I think the idea was very novel but the execution very poor. The timing when the suspense of the movie is given out is wrong and basically I was able to predict the rest of the movie from it. I just felt bad that I watched this movie after H&K go to WC. (okay not the effect I was aiming for ;) but works for me) My recommendations are that this one is best avoided.(not worth 8$) Maybe if its being shown free on TV, you can watch it while flipping other channels, but in the theaters its an absolute waste of money and time.

Well to mention the other Indians on TV these days: a) Apu & co in the Simpsons, b) Parminder Nagra in ER c) an Indian family in the VW ad d) an Indian grocery store owner in a Mountain Dew ad with Steven Seagal. Fairly long list and I guess future generations of Indians in the US would see a lot of people like themselves on TV.

I don't know what inspires Hindi movie makers to make movies and for Hindi movie buffs to watch them!!? I just saw Hum-Tum today. I am usually very choosy about the Hindi movies that I watch. There is such a large proportion of them that are so phenomenally bad, that I usually ask 10 people for an opinion before I take a leap into a movie theater.

Hum-Tum was another typical Hindi movie... best forgotten even before one leaves the movie theater. One knows the end before the movie begins and one even knows that there are going to be 10 foreign locations where the movie will be shot. That's the only thing that distinguishes Hindi movies these days... the locations that the same kinds of scenes will be shot. The hero is the typical bad boy who flirts with every girl and the girl is always projected as the one true and honest person, who'd never make a mistake.

One pleasant change in this movie is that a Computer Engineer (like myself) is projected as an ideal man, and I couldnt agree more this bit. ;-)(Abhishek Bachchan is a Computer Engineer in the movie.)

Although almost all Hindi movies are musicals, this one failed to impress in that department as well. Saif Ali Khan's acting was probably the saving grace, miles apart from everyone else's. The dialogues are rather cliched... I am now collecting the large number of brickbats that I am going to hurl at people who recommended this movie to me and caused me to waste 3 hours or my life.

Top few Reactions on the photos...
 
1)  Man, you clicked these photos?! You gotta be kidding. Where did you dhap them from?
 
2)  Ah... its my gene's... you get the photography thing from me!
 
3) I have dial-up I am not going to spend time looking at your photos! (reaction not expressed)
 
4) I have a black and white monitor of low resolution... why did you make them so big?
 
5) Some Digital cameras can make even idiots get good photos. Which one do you have?
 

Online Photo-Exhibition

You are invited to a SlideShow of the best of my photos from last year. These are mostly from Madison, Seattle, Chicago and Louisville.
 
For best results please view the pictures in Full-Screen mode. (Press F11 to Enter and Exit Full-Screen Mode). Dial-up viewers please be patient! :-)
 
Click Here -> Online Photo Exhibition

On becoming a Hyper-Intelligent Pan-Dimensional Being...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy says that "Mice are not, as is commonly assumed on Earth, small white squeaking animals who spend a lot of time being experimented on.
In fact, they are the protrusions into our dimension of hyper-intellegent pan-dimensional beings. These beings are in fact responsible for the creation of the Earth."

So this week I decided that I was going to turn into a guinea pig. This is one of my last-ditch attempts at becoming intelligent if not hyper-intelligent and develop some sort of a kinship with the creators of the Earth. I am growing in every dimension possible in any case, why not just turn pan-dimensional and give myself a run for my money! And when you're as cash-strapped as I am these days, the only way to make a living is to become a subject for some experiments.(I don't have a summer job and hence I am lil BROKE.)


This is the cool part about being at a large research university like the University of Wisconsin - Madison. There are soo many people doing all kinds of experiments that they need subjects to perform experiments on. For instance one of these experiments is trying to prove that exercises that stretch muscles have a adverse impact on the human body compared to the exercises that compress muscles. Another experiment in the Department of Psychology here needs subjects for studying the human memory. Well and they pay to the tune of 20$ an hour... If you add all these components up, I might make something like 300$ this month just for being a guinea-pig. So this really does sound HYPER-intelligent!

Credit cards that give you credit!

Tao Philosophy propounds the yin-yang principle that says that Good Seasons Follow Bad (and vice versa) and that there are good times in bad seasons (and vice versa as well). This they depict in the symbol shown below.



The events over the last week have convinced me of the truth of this principle. Ofcourse the integrating theme in my life is that it's all screwed up!! Initially I was in a great season... One of the greatest inventions from America is cashback for spending money on credit cards. My favourite card is from Amazon.com and they send you a 25$ coupon for every 1000$ you spend on it. The coupon can only be used at Amazon.com, so I get myself some nice gifts every few months. Last time I got the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Compendium and Beatles No 1 CD. This month I ordered The Complete Seasons 3 and 7 of Friends on DVD. Yoohoo for the good times!!

Ofcourse you always know at the back of your mind that the bad times had to follow. The DVD sets were being shipped to my old address from a year ago. Now I am certain if someone were to have these delivered to their house by mistake, they wouldn't hesitate to keep them and consider is divine justice for their goodness. So I made many a frantic call to UPS and they asked me to call them the day I see the online status change to "On Delivery". So I do that and they say that they would try to get in touch with the driver and ask him to make the change. Bad times persist... a few hours later, the status read "Delivered" and I was still far from being be-"Friend"-ded or dead. So they messed up ofcourse and thankfully I got the parcel from a dude in the apt office, who didnt even realise that I wasnt staying there any longer. Well so I am back in the yang.. or is it the yin?!;-)

This bit goes slightly against the Tao, but who cares let the good times roll. I got myself a Mastercard from Barnes and Noble. I dont know how this works but I spent just 200$ on it and they sent me a 50$ coupon!(GO figure... even I dont know why!) So now I am making up a list of things I should buy there... I am thinking of a large puzzle... like 1000 pieces or something. Also I am trying to look for a poster of the Chrysler in New York. It's one of the most elegant buildings in the world, and would be another nice thing to adorn the walls of my home. Any help with the shopping would be appreciated, so do drop a line if you can suggest something nice.:-)

A Time to... Manage Time!

I don't know if procrastination is a universal human malady, but it definitely occupies a lot of my time. I dont think I am a really lazy person as such but this summer my life has been about tackling one emergency after another. I am supposed to do some research in fast addition,but it just keeps getting postponed for one reason or another. For the uninitiated, let me clarify here that I am not a precocious kid in Kindergarten but a Grad Student trying to implement the Han-Carlson adder from the Pentium 4 machines.

The first week after I got back from India was spent in helping my roommate who had an appendix removal and driving him to Chicago thereafter. The next week I spent a lot of time dropping a 1 credit course
that was meant to be relaxing. I was supposed to start learning Golf, but as stupid as I am, I didnt know that the course got over while I was back in India. So I had to go through the whole redtape of filling forms and getting a letter from my advisor and the like, to drop a course that no one really cares about. The worst part was finding the emeritus instructor who just never came to the university to sign my course-change form!!

So that taken care of I started watching many lectures by Jan Rabaey from UC Berkeley. I have to say he is one smart man. If you have any interest in digital circuit design, please visit Webcasts @ Berkeley. So I haven't been completely unproductive as I might have lead you to believe.

Murphy's law states that "The time required to complete a task = The time available" and I think that applies to almost all situations, whether you have too little time or too much. But another minor emergency crept into my schedule yesterday. I was losing health insurance today because I am not employed in the summer. Now losing health insurance is really quite a big deal here, because it means you have to plan your accidents really well. So I had to trudge my careful way to University Health Services, to buy insurance. With my health insurance all recharged, I decided to court danger and went on a nice bikeride on a rather decrepit bicycle around lake Mendota. If you buy something, you have to use it right?! ;) Well don't worry I didnt need to.

Auf Wiedersehen Deustschland!

I've had this childhood dream of going to Germany. Why Germany you ask? Well cos I spent 5 years learning German in school and it seemed only apt that I get to torture Germans with the beautiful harshness of their language, especially with an Indian Accent.(Okay and picture this, I spent 5 years learning German as opposed to my mother tongue of Marathi). Now I was definitely not as well-endowed with German language skills in school as Satyen or Shantanu (two of my friends who went on exchange programs to Germany), so I have to relish much smaller visits to Germany than them.

And out of the blue, my dream came true... my return flight from Bombay to Chicago made a stopover in Frankfurt and I was released into Germany for an hour. So I felt rather excited at the prospect of using my atrophied "Wortschatz" (translate vocabulary) and German "Grammatik" again.

But as is the case with most things in my life it turned out to be quite a funny experience. Okay in order to not appear stupider than I am, I havent actually spoken German for more than 8 years now and I barely remember some words and some grammar rules now. But okay so I took a brave foot forward towards this attendant lady and asked "Wo kann ich ein Telephon finden?"... (translate "Where can I find a telephone?")I was feeling mightily pleased with myself for having managed to make one complete sentence in German. I said to myself, "Well so let the plaudits flow pretty German lady!" ;) And she goes "Oh, there is a phone in the corner there!" And this stupid experience repeated itself over and over at Frankfurt airport... Each time that I managed a perfect sentence the stupid Germans just kept replying in English!!!(Ofcourse I am not telling you about the sentences I messed up... hehehe) Much to my dismay, it appears as though they were practising THEIR English on me! Haha you say...So feeling rather downcast at not having won any compliments on my excellent German, I went to the restroom. I kinda paused when I saw this rather unclean bowl and bolted. The janitor there noticed my predicament and pointed saying "Die Toilette dort da!" and I reply rather smartly "Oh you mean the one there!".

A Passage to India ;-)

So I made my yearly voyage all the way across the globe to home in India. Some might call me stupid to visit Pune in the warmest of seasons but it turned out to be quite mild by Indian standards... The rain gods would smile each time the temperature reached 36 degrees (Celcius obviously)and the following day would be even cooler.

The best part about being back in India is the food!! Mum's cooking is as awesome as ever. Vaishali was ofcourse on the top of list for places to visit. Then came Natural's icecream... even though Wisconsin prides itself at being the "Dairy State", given the abudance of cow-like creatures (human and otherwise), they dont know how to make good icecream. I guess it is for the best... if there were such excellent flavors like Roasted Almond and Coffee Walnut, we would see many more pachyderms in the US. Fresh Mangoes with their heavenly taste are another huge reason why a summer visit is such fun!

Getting to meet so many old friends and relatives is also really nice. Everyone is kinda in a motherly mode, which does call for a lot of eating again but it's nice to have people fussing over you for a change. Ofcourse to offset all that gluttony, I frequented the Poona Club Gym every morning... I have gained some weight nevertheless, but I am consoling myself with the thought that maybe it is muscle mass! ;-)

And then there is the bird-watching... It's a relief to see pretty girls of your own kind and after a pretty-desi-girl drought of such proportions in the US, it makes one believe that there ARE plenty of fish in the ocean afterall.

But the one thing I hate the most about being in Pune is the traffic and the air pollution. The lack of road discipline is so phenomenol. No one walks on the footpaths at all.. they line up 3 people side by side and walk without a care on the streets. The arms of the road are never asphalted and people drive as if they were changing lanes all the time. I can't imagine surviving in Pune too long, I'd just have a heart-attack each time I go for a drive, when I get old. I hope Bangalore, the only place in India I am likely to settle down permanently in, is better than Pune in this regard.

Who wants to be... a President?

The usual wranglings of American elections dont take place in debates as often as they take place on the TV. There are a few interesting things that one can read between the lines when one watches these adverts on TV.

Take outsourcing of jobs... now that the US unemployment rate is at it's recent low of 5.6%, this might not be a major issue. But even at it's peak what John Kerry said was this: "I will stop giving tax relief to companies that outsource jobs abroad". So what it means is that Kerry wont pass laws to stop outsourcing altogether. He will just stop reducing their taxes. Chances are outsourcing won't change much because saving say 10% on taxes is peanuts compared to the 80% relief a company gets when it outsources.

Let me clarify that I am neither against John Kerry, nor am I for outsourcing. If all the tech jobs in the US are outsourced, it would mean that I will be "outsourced" back to India as well. I'd be paid a fraction of the salary paid in the US for doing the exact same tasks. So I have more to gain because of jobs staying in the US.(But I am not averse to the idea of going back to India either). Secondly about Senator Kerry... I think he is a better man than George W Bush. I know about as much as one can know about him from a google search and watching the ads on TV, but he doesnt appear to make as many slanderous ads as Prez Bush, which tell us a lil about his character. He also seems to have fought bravely in Vietnam, which is a lot more than Prez Bush's skipping work in the Army National Guard. (Not hard to imagine that no one remembers him.) The question is, are the uneducated/badly-educated majority going to put the president back in power? The president who conveniently connected Al-Qaeda with Iraq and opened a Pandora's box as a consequence... only time will tell.

I have always been impressed by the amount of wit most Americans employ in their day-to-day conversations. Not only are Americans funny, but casual conversation is usually filled with humor and incisive wit... I just dont know how to explain it. In India most people talk about the most mundane and obvious things... You got to a movie theater and see a friend there, and he goes "Oh did you come here to see a movie?". Instances of such rhetorical questions abound. In America though, all sorts of people from cabbies to bus drivers to receptionists have great wit in their talk. I dont think this is specific to Madison or Louisville, cos I have seen this even on vacation in NY and Seattle.

My sample set for another observation is rather small, but showbiz people write superior speeches...nothing short of genius. I've been to one Commencement (translate Graduation) ceremony speech by Gary Zucker (director of Ghost) and I was so impressed by the wit, the story-telling... just everything.

I read a transcript today from another Commencement Speech at UW Madison by Bradley Whitford (the guy who plays Deputy Chief of Staff in series "the West Wing" ) and I cant tell you how amazed I am by the fact that this person could also reproduce the high's of last years commencement speech. Transcript is located here. Trust me.. you just have to read this speech... its way too super!!!

साकेत

Late spark that I am, I hadnt managed to do this bit for quite a while... But I am proud of my language and hence this post is dedicated to Marathi (मराठी), the sweetest language there is!

For the uninitiated, Unicode allows Indian scripts to be written and displayed freely in Windows XP and Internet Explorer and many others. Hence my name appears above in the script of my mother tongue Marathi, which is a language spoken in the western Indian state of Maharashtra.

Quizzing in America...

I miss the BCQC (Boat Club Quiz Club in Pune) a lot. I wasnt the best quizzer in the BCQC and hardly ever even qualified for the final rounds of a good quiz, but it used to be the highpoint of my week.. the Saturday noon QC meeeting. Well these days I love this other kinda quizzing I do everyday. I watch a show called Jeopardy on NBC... and boy do I love it. I guess what gets you hooked on to quizzing is the fact that one seems to get a lot of these questions, at times even when the people on the show dont. In the privacy of my home, I am the superstar! ;-) My knowhow of US Trivia is trivial, but its entertaining and educational nevertheless... The format is a wee bit stupid, cos there is a bit of gambling involved and one can lose all the money that one has accumulated over the show... but maybe it is a money saving device by the show producers! It is no wonder that it is one of the longest running quiz shows ever... "This is Alex Tribeck!"

Play Jeopardy online

Virtual Machine to the Rescue!!

I just took a humongous sigh of relief a few moments ago because finally I found a solution to something that had been bugging me for the past many days. Basically I am trying to work on a project for Advanced Computer Architecture. My partner and I decided to work on architectural techniques to reduce power consumption dynamically. Now this is a very novel concept, where you change things in your processor based on detection of excessive temperatures.... say shutdown some parts of the processor or reduce the amount of speculative execution based on such a temperature reading. Well to test some of the techniques that we had in mind, we needed to use this Power Simulator called Wattch. Unfortunately, Wattch was coded in Princeton in 2000 and worked fine on Redhat 6.0. However if you try to use this code today to run on a Solaris or Redhat 9 machines youd get a bunch of errors because of datatype and function changes in the GCC header files. I spent almost a week trying to find the correct header files for all those teeny tiny functions in the code and took help from some of the smartest people in CS at UW, but all to no avail.

Finally Kai Ting, a friend of mine from GE suggested that I use a Virtual Machine from VMWare to emulate a new machine, install Redhat 6.0 on it and then make Wattch work on this Virtual Machine!! I havent completely tried the idea yet, but it's such a superb idea!! I think this will work and it will finally help save my butt like big time. I was scared that I would do really bad on the course, because my project was going soooo bad but now seems like there is hope! Thanks Kai and thanks VMWare.... Deeper Thought (that's my dumb PC at home) has a Virtual Machine running on it now!!

This one is dedicated to John!!

Okay if you have been to my blog before (that is a set of two people.. mum and dad!!;-)) you'll notice that I somehow managed to lose something on the top of this blog. So how did I possibly do that?! Okay, that is thanks to my friend in Caltech, John! John is one of those really smart kids you'd only see at Caltech. He is a 20 year old but he is a first year graduate student in Caltech CS. (Can you imagine how extraordinary that is!!?) He finished both high school and college at UCLA in 2 years and then his professor at UCLA drove him down to Caltech during their Grad School interviews... and John was accepted without an application or a GRE score... nothing... If that isnt enough he is working for Google and also BLOGGER!! So if you add those things up that tells you something..(that something I guess I shouldnt tell!).

My Favourite lines from all movies bar none!



So, if I asked you about art you could give me the skinny on every art book ever written...Michelangelo? You now a lot about him I bet. Life's work, political aspirations, the Pope, sexual orientation, the whole works, right? But you can't tell me what it smells like in the Sistine Chapel. You've never actually stood there and looked up at that beautiful ceiling. I've seen that. If I asked you about women, you'll probably give me a syllabus of your personal favorites, and you've been laid a few times. But you can't tell me how it feels to wake up next to a woman and feel truly happy. You're a tough kid. If I asked you about war, you'd probably throw a sonnet right at me, right? Once more, until the bridge, dear friends. But you've never been near one. You've never held your best friend's head in your lap and watched him gasp his last breath, looking to you for help. And if I asked you about love you'd quote me a sonnet, but you've never looked at a woman and be totally vulnerable. Known that someone can level you with her eyes. Feeling that God had put an angel on earth just for you. And you wouldn't know how it felt to be her angel. To have that love for her to be there for her forever. Through anything, through cancer. You wouldn't know about sleeping sitting up in a hospital room for two months holding her hand, because the doctors could see in your eyes that the term visiting hoursdidn't apply to you. You don't know about real loss, because that only occurs when you lose something you love more than yourself. I doubt you've ever dared to love anybody that much. I look at you and I don't see an intelligent, confident man: I see a cheeky, scared, shitless kid. But you're a genius, noone denies that. Noone could possibly understand the depths of you. But you presume to know everything about me because you saw a painting of mine. You ripped my fucking life apart. You're an orphan, right? Do you think I know the first thing about how hard your life has been, how you feel, who your are, because I read Oliver Twist? Does that incapsulate you? Personally, I don't give a shit about all that, because, you know what: I can't learn anything from you I can't read in some fucking book. Unless you wanna talk about you, who you are. Then I'm fascinated. I'm in. But you don't wanna do that, do you sport? You're terrified about what you might say. Your move, Chief.

Ennui again?!

My mom thinks it is rude to tell people that you are bored or to show any sign of "ennui".... I dont know what the deal with that is but today I am just feeling a lil tired in life. I am generally a pretty stable and reasonably happy person but there are some things that make me feel weird whenever I ponder over them. I keep reminding myself of something my mom always tells me... We are like ants in this universe and that the problems that any one ant has, has absolutely no significance to the world at large. All the pearls of wisdom that I get from my ancestors and that I hope to append to and pass on to my kids and hope they remember these things when they are feeling blue!

I just returned last week from a superb trip to Seattle... I really liked the place. I wish the place, where I decide to spend my life is like Seattle... alive and stunning! The strange part was that you'd expect to see lots of Indians in Seattle. But strangely enough, I hardly saw 2-3 of them on any given day. I am guessing they must all be working hard in their offices with little time to visit malls or the tourist spots there.

I have a feeling that my lack of enthusiasm in life has something to do with the fact that nothing that I do now, can really match the high's of last week. Well what can i say?!

Wonderful trip to Chicago

So I finally made a trip to Chicago yesterday. It's a journey that was long overdue because I landed in the US on O'Hare about two years ago and it was the mid-way point on every trip I made anywhere. But as fate would have it I never went to any of the touristy sight-seeing places in Chicago.

Yesterday I went there and finally did some of the things that can only be done if you are in Chicago. I first headed to the Art Insitutite of Chicago . I somehow found out that the greatest number of Monet's are housed in the Art Institute. And boy was I pleased... Monet's Pissaro's Picasso's Gauguins Degas... just about any famous artist you can name had an entry there. I am still pondering over whether I should go back to India for a job, but things such as these trips are just not possible in India. I mean I know that I just have no idea about good Indian art and I am probably more familiar with these artists and paintings because they make the news more often... I dont know...

Then we, (Nivedita) and I walked down to Navy Pier. That wasnt the most prudent of decisions as such because it was farther away than we imagined, and the cold weather didnt help either. Took some photos there, moved around the city in the free trolley.

If you wanna see pics from this trip they are located here.

Really interesting article on Outsourcing!



Click here

Saw Forrest Gump again today and it just reminded me of some excellent quotes:

"Why dont you love me Jenny? I am not a smart man, but I know what love is".

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Drill Sergeant: (Afemo Omilami) Gump! What's your sole purpose in this army?

Forrest Gump: To do whatever you tell me, drill sergeant?

Drill Sergeant: God damn it, Gump! You're a goddamn genius. That's the most outstanding answer I've ever heard. You must have a goddamn IQ of 160. You are goddamn gifted, Private Gump. Listen up, people...

Forrest Gump: Now for some reason I fit in the army like one of them round pegs. It's not really hard. You just make your bed real neat and remember to stand up straight and always answer every question with "Yes
Drill Sergeant, Sir!

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Forrest Gump: I don't know if we each have a destiny, or if we're all just floatin' around accidental-like on a breeze. But I, I think maybe it's both, maybe both happening at the same time

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Forrest Gump My mama always said you got to put the past behind you before you can move on.
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Jenny Curran (Robin Wright) Do you ever dream, Forrest, about who you're gonna be?

Forrest Gump Who I'm gonna be?

Jenny Curran Yeah.

Forrest Gump Aren't, aren't I going to be me?

Car Trouble

I think I had a close shave today in my car-buying endevor. So I am bidding on this car in an Ebay auction and the car looks excellent. The seller claims it has no spots or marks at all. The pictures on ebay are really small but the lady selling the car sends me 2 really large ones, and she looks fabulous! (I mean the car ofcourse...;-))

The reserve price on the car was 3500 and I had even asked if we could settle this matter outside of Ebay. Well the lady was greedy and decided to see how the auction proceeds and asked me to bid on it. I won the auction but I wasnt completely happy with the idea of buying a car I hadn't seen or gotten inspected. So I was glad that it got over below reserve price because that way I can go to Chicago and check out the car properly before I pay any money. Well I call up the lady and she has turned into this bitch.... no jokes... she spoke so rudely to me, I even asked her why she was pissed off at me. Then she complains about my not bidding upto Reserve Price, but somehow we get around to the point where she gave me her father's business address, where I am supposed to come in the next two days to check/take the car. Fortunately for me I ran the address in Google and came up with three things with that address. One was something called C & C Truck Repair, second Car-o-Practors Collision Repairs, Master's Auto Body... all businesses dealing with repairing damaged cars. I shall never know for certain but my guess is that its some car that they fixed in their shop after a collision and now they are trying to sell it off as a new car. Thank goodness I escaped these people.

Microsoft Bashing once again!

Another reason to do some Microsoft Bashing... I bought a new laptop a few days ago with a WSXGA+ monitor...(If you dont know the fullform of that.. dont worry.. nobody does!)
Okay truthfully, it's rather neat in that it has a widescreen display... so i can open two applications and set them side by side. For instance say youre doing homework and need to keep one window with a PDF document with homework problems and another DOC file to solve the homework in, you can keep these two side by side and be fine! However I am sensing some Microsoft treachery/conspiracy in the Internet Explorer support for Wide Screen Display formats. Now any image that I open in IE looks pathetic, patchy, jagged edges... your B grade on Image Enhancement 101! As opposed to this, if you browse through MSN Explorer all pages look perfect! It is my contention that Microsoft is trying to force people to use MSN Explorer by making IE look bad. And look at the number of things that are combined into MSN Explorer... Its a nifty peace of software... you wont go through that effort unless youre aiming for global domination!;-)

Ofcourse smart kids like me turn to Mozilla Firefox...Click here to download the latest and coolest version of Mozilla located here:
So lets all go for

Career (un)Fair

I was visiting Microsoft today at the career fair and I don't know why but people in these large monopolising firms start to think they rule the world. I am a graduating Master's student... so usually all of us would have a 2 page resume. The guy at MS desk goes... "this is too long, next time you come here cut it short and make it one page." He did speak a few decent words in the middle but some more mean remarks followed... what makes anyone think there is going to be a next time!!... If you've looked at my credentials online, you'd realise I might not be the best kid on the block, but I am a sound person intellectually and I know my stuff well. For people to pass judgement thru their "I am the big guy from big Microsoft" lenses just means they are missing out on someone who could make a contribution in the same way that they are making one.

The person at the Qualcomm desk was much nicer. He said that I have a very good chance of being selected and that I should submit my resume online. So it wasnt a complete waste...

Making someone poop in his pants..

Last nite I was walking my usual walk home... slipping and stumbling on the fresh winter snow, when all of a sudden I notice this well-clad gentleman ahead of me relishing my fancy figure skating at an intersection. I looked up at him at the end of my performance and my eyes met his... and suddenly he realised that a dark dude on the street at 1 am in the nite is suspect and not the kind one wants to mess with. He bolted suddenly like a wildebeest ready to run from the tiger... and I rather enjoyed scaring this guy. I was headed home by a different route but I wanted to go the extra mile to make this man's horror story come true. So I followed him and the poor soul tryin to walk as fast as he could, with me trying to outdo him... It was good fun!:-)
If youre the person who pooped in your pants last nite, readin this blog, dont worry... I dont know where you live!

Tough semester...

Seems like I am going to need some dreams for an insomniac this sem. I am taking what I think are the toughest courses that are being offered and all at the same time that too... First is an independent study with Katherine Compton. It is this rather interesting project in Reconfigurable Computing on Place and Route Tool... Again there is Professor Hu belaboring the obvious in VLSI Array Structures for DSP. Finally there is the brilliant and funny Professor Wood teaching CS 752 Advanced Computer Architecture.

But all in all seems like a whole lot of work if you also take into the account the fact that I am going to work on a PA position 20 hours a week. :-) God save my brain!

Care to watch H2G2 in 2004?


Usually this blog has purely egotistical content, that would generate the least bit of interest on the part of any person other than myself.(In fact now that I think of it.. I dont read it myself either!:-)) Well if you're visiting my blog today, youre in luck.

I just read this article on Slashdot about a new movie based on the hit radio-show the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Most of my friends from college, spent most days quoting incessantly from H2G2.... which meant that inspite of being the lazy bum that I am, I had to read it!! (or get excluded from all conversations... which happens pretty often in the US for me anyways... Here I have to buy an Xbox and mod it and do some more piracy, to be an "awesome!!!" cool dude)

So if you ask me in pure American, "Dude, where's this article at?!" It's Here

Flight back to Madison

Finally I completed my co-op in Louisville and reached Madison last nite. Probably one of the unluckiest days of my life.... so many things conspired to force me to spend 5 hours on the Louisville and Chicago airports. First the friend who was to drop me came in a Coupe` with a half-filled trunk. Then the cab takes 30 mins to arrive.. The cabbie was driving really slow and when we got to the airport, there were these large African-American guys ahead of us who spent 30 mins asking the stewardess about changing their tickets. As if that wasn't enough of a misfortune already, it turns out I was looking at the Arrival time in Chicago instead of the Departure time from Lville.(It was only 20 mins apart since they're in different time zones).

It was such a miserable time, and finally all I could do was to call up all of my friends in the US and talk to them. So at least I could catch up with everyone!

Sorry Mr. Dubey...

Just a correction that I would like to make to something I wrote two posts ago. I think I made a mistake about Mr. Dubey. I claimed that there was no way for me to say if he was honest or not. But it turns out there is... A person who complains about corruption has to be a clean person because a dishonest person would be afraid of getting caught in the resulting whirlpool himself. I am sorry if I appear to be cynical and untrusting of people... Its a strange quality I have developed.