The Monkey's Desk

Dec 4 2006

2006-12-03T21:38:00.000-08:00

Didnt go to Chicago for TG. Prices too high to buy at the last moment. But did get some clothes, dvd player and phone..

Comp busted on TG eve.. and though i had ordered for the power adapter using UPS 2nd day.. it didnt arrive till 4 days after TG.. and worse.. they shipped the wrong one. My comp needs a 90 W adapter and they sent me a 60 W. But they were nice enough to send me a 90W overnight though. Need to return the 60 W now.. All my movie plans during TG went to the drain thanks to my comp going into a coma.. Those are traumatic times when your most loved and faithful comp dies on you with no fore warning..Anyways.. all settled for the time being.

Been playing basky for the last 2 days and I majorly suck in the game. Need to work on those strategies.

Going to cal between 19 and 22.. Leaving to India on the 24th.. lots of shopping to do.

Security project needs to be started soon else major cup wonly.

Demo time again at Med school.

Research is stagnating...

29 October 2006

2006-10-29T20:10:00.000-08:00

Pretty painful week to say the least...
- Finished.. or rather submitted my security project. no clue on what grade thats going to fetch me..
- Missed out Prestige even after going out to the theatre becoz someone was too slow to walk.. arghh.... For a 1015 show, all except one were waiting in the parking lot till 1010.. and by the time we reached, all tickets were sold out for a half empty theatre.. wierd yet annoying..:-(
- Got to start glomosim coding..
- Need to work on traumapod this week.
- Defly planning to watch prestige by this week.. Will see how that goes..
- Need to decide on TG plan to chicago.. Too many variables right now to decide on.
- Got to get a cooler for my super heating laptop.

October 5

2006-10-06T20:42:00.000-07:00

-Last three days been at the Med school setting up the demo. But alas, the tv crew didnt find our demo good enough for them to shoot i guess :-(
-Got to start searching project ideas for security. The midterm is around the corner too. Got to start muggging for that now.
-The weather is getting cold again.. and i am hating it.
-Got the two chargers from amazon.. look nice..
-Need to get back to my research.. better do something before I go india.
-Got to start security project.looks scary to me..:-(

25 September

2006-09-25T15:49:00.000-07:00

-Washington trip with LS and junta from UMCP. Nice time :-)
-Ordered battery chargers.
-Havent got my security book yet :-(
-No idea of how I am going pass security this time..:-(
-Installed Xine and other kewl stuff.. again!!!
-Missed Sudha Raghunathan Kutcheri.. Had to come to lab for some work :-(
-Looks like CEG's kurukshetra is going to start.. finally...
-Research still at ZERO
-Spoke to Dodo before she left back to Hyderabad..
-Working on Demo for tomorrow.Lets hope it works out this time.

20 September

2006-09-20T16:18:00.000-07:00

- Screwed up screen resolution in FC5. Had to reinstall entire distro from scratch:-(
-Installed ndiswrapper. Wireless card was working only for 2 minutes and then would not work. I still had an IP, but couldnt connect to the internet. Was pretty confused. Killed dhclient and restarted dhclient. Works like a charm now. Not sure what is happening, but happy as long as it works :-)
- Went to Rajesh B'Day treat. was pretty fun, me being the 'bridge' between the V and NV:-)
-Just gulped down a plate full of awesome paayasam from chechi.
-Installing random linux software. Hope i dont screw up this time.
-No where near starting real work though :-(

Quick Updates on what has happened in the near past

2006-09-18T12:43:00.000-07:00

-Finished internship at Virginia.. Nice experience. Had Great fun :-)
-Moved to new house, but in the same old darn 'wasteland' gardens. Was pretty hectic.
-Volunteered at Securecomm 2006. Nice experience. Met a couple of 'researchers' and got first hand experience of attending a conference. No paper yet :-(
-Taking two courses this sem. Pretty afraid of security class. Got to start mugging soon.
-Passed Phd Portfolio.:-)
-Going to India from dec 24 to Jan 29..Yipeee :-)
-Got to start work towards getting a publication..
-Sriram LS coming over the weekend..nice fun expected..
-Spent around 4 hours configuring my vimrc to set syntax highlighting for glomosim code. Going nowhere with regards to coding though:-(
-I have no .emacs in my home directory.
-Came across a wiki entry for FC5 . Most useful till now.
-Thinking about writing something that will aggregate all my scribblings for the day and post it to blogger at midnight.. Reserved for later.
-Still cant get raaga work on my linux firefox.
-Looks like getting raaga work on linux firefox isnt that simple. Got fundaes from here

The not so silent reflections

2006-07-11T20:40:00.000-07:00

I was at my office, where in the name of an internship, I have been rather passing time to the extent that i can feel time coming back to where it started, when I, like any other sincere intern switched to google mode.. Google news being my first stop.. and thats when my heart went pounding...
Seven blasts rock Bombay..
No.. this post aint abt the blasts.. if you are looking for that, I am sure there a lot of news sites all around, happy to satisfy ur hunger to the galore.
Mumbai will not shake..The never-say-die attitude of Mumbai will triumph.. thats what all and sundry had to say..Well.. does Mumbai have a choice.. It cant shake, lest the world come to a halt. But my arguement is.. if the world knows Mumbai wont succumb to such cowardly acts, why do those asses plant these bombs in our great city?? Is it just to create terror and bring in fear?? Looks more like a plausible answer.. and how do we treat these menaces.. Hamurabi has the answer.. a tooth for a tooth.. Fear for fear... Our country needs to instill fear in the minds of these perpetrators.. cowards that they are anyway. And how do we do that... Look at Israel and the answer unfurls smoothly.. Anybody whos seen the movie munich can pretty much visualise how the israelis nabbed the killers.. we need something of that sort.. SOmething by which these mercenaries, veiled by cowardice, shall tremble at the very thought.. No.. this is not violence. This is just a big nation warning its fiends.. "Dont mess with us"..

And what is most saddening is when the GOI takes a soft stand on these issues, as is going to happen this time too.. Commissions will be set up, which should rather be omissions in the history of this great country. But on the bright side, the average Mumbaikar did rise up to the event.. Ye world ... heed this.. Mumbai might be the rudest city..yet its the most humanest too.. Contradictory?? Aint life just full of contradictions?? Kudos to the Mumbaiwalas who showed who is boss when it mattered the most!!!!!

And yeah.. the Mumbai Bloggers too swung into action soon enough.. Check out mumbaihelp.blogspot.com for traffic updates, nearest shelter and hospitals.. Great thought guys ...

Advertisements..

2006-06-11T20:13:00.000-07:00

Just felt how despo the advertising world here is. the advertisements back home ,compared to the ones here, were nothing but superb. These guys here have a simple way of making advertisements..
Go to the walmart of advertisements..
get the cheapest one..
put ur brand name at the end.. QED.

That explains the National Geographic Chameleons on Geico's ad.. the pretty lady changing her attire every frame on the automechanic advertisement..

Going back to advertisements back home.. i have always liked the one .. i think for tide... where big B interviews a boy for admission to school... where the boy goes.. "Muje poetry bhi aathi hai.. Yellow yellow dirty fellow".. On those lines.. here is my contribution...

The clock is ticking,
My eyes are blinking,
The bed is beckoning,
For I may continue my dreaming.

and ye who read this,
Get back to work and stop screaming..

After a long time

2006-03-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

Clearly its been a long time since i have come to this corner of the blogosphere. Anyway, its 4 in the morning and i need to read on some CA to catch up on the HW which was supposedly assigned 2 weeks ago. Thats the typical procrastination i would like to see gone away from me... but alas its not going to be that easy.. Catching the top spot was the news article about placementst at IIMs. With whopping salaries of $190,000 no wonder India has produced marvellous B-schools. Its not the money that matters, but the fact that empolyers from all over the world are ready to come down and get these guys into their organisations, even at this cost. Its time for me to get back to CA.. Till next time..

PS: I am out to florida for the weekend. Hope to embellish this blog with the pics of florida soon.

This week

2005-12-30T14:12:00.000-08:00

This week has been quite a week. We went out as part of our "Explore Baltimore " program. Well Monday was a fed holiday.. so all the more reason to sleep. Woke up late in the afternoon. Was playing around with the new A610 Canon gifted by my bro. Havent played much with it yet. Rest of monday was spent in chatting and grading.Slept around 6 am tuesdya morning. and woke up at 1 in the evening. not much of activity this day too.. went to insti hoping to catch up on some work.. Spent some time cleaning up my school comp. had loads of throw aways. Well that done.. sat down for some work.. THats when Venki came in. He had gone to Rockville.. Well i might have forgot to mention our wash trip.. IT was amazing.. more on it with pics at a later post.. Spent time talkin to him. Took the 6 shuttle and came back home. Mahesh and PJ came over for dinner. After dinner it was the innaugral session of the Rajini Fans @ UMBC... and what better way than to start it off with Padayappa.. Rajini in Padayappa was dam good. God level.. After the movie at Mahesh place, we came back home and were discussing abt the movie and thalai in general.One of the most useful discussions we have had in a long time.. Crashed and woke up at 12 in the afternoon. At 3 we decide we are going to white marsh mall.Being the speedies that we are, we miss the 430 bus and take the 510 one. Man.. baltimore is scary at nights.. Reached White marsh at 630.. went around shopping for some CDs in staples. Good thing was Barnes and Nobles had a " book for a buck " sale. Got 2 arbit books... one on reiki.. other one.. i dont even remember.. thursday and friday have been quite eventless till now.. lets see what is in store for the new year..

A semester that whizzed apast

2005-12-23T08:45:00.000-08:00

In less than 4 months my first semester in this country is over. I still remember the night at the Chennai Airport when i was to board a plane that would take me 8000 miles across the Atlantic, to a place, many have come and will come with the hope of reaping it big. Bidding a bye to my parents whom i have never missed for more than a month in my entire life, to my friends who had come a long way and stayed put for a hectic upcoming day..those are times i can never forget. You might call it nostalgia or whatever fancy adjective you wish to term it.. but one thing is for sure.. Anybody and everybody has the same feelings buried in their heart.. what differs is how much of other things seem to have piled up on top of those. Coming to the present.. The last 2 weeks have been a pretty hectic... projects, submissions, final exams and so on and thats when the nostalgia hit me and hit me hard. When the final exam got over, it hit me harder. Got reminded of those wonderful days as a BE Student at AU.. How we would dash out the evening of the final end sems to the beach and laze around till late night.. the innumerable hours of sleep we all cherished.. For some reason, i feel like i could have gone more times to the bessi beach.I seem to be missing it right now.. How many times me and Venki would have roamed around T.Nagar figuring out the best eat out.. Murugan's.. Mansukh.. Archana and quite a few names i dont remember. Well those were times.. times i can never forget.. Right now.. i am stuck in limbo. In a place where u just cant get those pleasures.. those pleasure however small.. yet invaluable.

This sem has been pretty scary for me.. Slacked a lot in the beginnign.. Only the results can tell...

Till then.... adieu

Tests,tests and tests.

2005-10-13T08:28:00.000-07:00

its that time of the year again.. when tests just circumvent your normal working of the brain. My first test at G-School has been horrible rather than pathetic.. I have a test tomorrow and i hope its not a repeat performance. One thing i have noticed here is that i am absolutely witout any focus, completely aimless, lack of concentration and a bag full of other things which for decency i aint exposing here.Back in India, I was this good boy , studying ocassionally and living a happy life.. But now, neither am i studying nor am i happy.. May be they are linked.. May be....

Aargh!!!!

2005-08-29T12:15:00.000-07:00

Been in office for about 3 hours and have done nothing useful...I am in no mood today to do anything... Want to sleep.. Had less than 3 hours of sleep yesterday. Moving into my apartment took the life out of me.. SLept only at 5 in the morning.. It was fun to sleep with a roomie.. and its an exciting time for somebody who hasnt been in hostel till now.. So coming back to our house.. ITs pretty well furnished now.. we have tv, music player, microwave and other BASIC essentials.Got a stand for TV and Mplayer too yesterday.. Spent some time with roomies.. it was dam fun when 4 boys get together in a cacophonous melange.. we spoke everything from Rubik cube to the best cereal available.

Came to UMBC in the morning.. Missed the TA training session due to yours sincerely waking up late. went to UHS to get PPD test. Some ppl feel palani is a long name. so they shrink it and call me Pal.. wierd!!! Headed to the lib to get a book on gen stuff,, couldnt lay my hands on it.. so settled for another.. lets see how it turns out to be..

Let me see if i can read anything useful today..

Moved in

2005-08-28T10:54:00.000-07:00

We have finally moved into our apartment.. Its been a long 2 week wait for my roomies.. Atleast I had my brothers place to refuge in.. Anyway, the wait is over and we signed the lease. Soon after that the excitement on my roomies face explained it all.. they ran and grabbed their stuff.. while me and achuth(one of the roomies who was temping nearby) got our act on and started moving stuff from his basement to our living room..we stored things we got from our moving out seniors and hid it there .. just like rats do.. atleast we remembered where we put our stuff.:p It was fun moving things like beds,TVs(yup.. we got 2), lamps, microwave and stuff down the road.. it was an experience enough.. THanks to my NCC camp life i have done things which are more demanding than this one.. So once the moving out activity was over, we all cherished that well deserved rest.. resting our heads on the wall and feeling the newly cleaned carpet.. After that stint of inactivity,we got back to work soon.. we made a list of things we have, need to buy and so on.. My bro and sis have been pretty much our only access to transport.. he he ..he brought in some essentials ..Hurray!! i have my own bed and reading desk.. think the desk will most probably be used for the TV in the living room.So we went shopping and spent nearly 3 hours getting the bare essentials.. Dunno how to define bare essentials if it requires 3 hour shopping.. Well then dropped my roomies at our place and went to my bros place for the night..

Today Morning i moved in my bed and a box.. will move the rest in the evening.. Back in UMBC and like every grad stud.. first thing first .. Checking Mail i mean..

Let me get back to that paper i need to finish..

One more week went past

2005-08-26T19:43:00.000-07:00

Well its been another week.. Quite eventful though.. Gave ITA test on monday.. Passed the dum thing but still been recommended for some American diction course.. Spoke to the co ord and she said that i spoke very fast.. Well, my speech isnt fast for most people(read as World population -1).. ANyway will give the thing a try.. says it will help me to do things better.. lets see.. this week has just been quite administrative.. had to get some forms filled and stuff.. Attended a meeting of the group and finally have been assigned some work by my advisor.. not concerned with the group project though.. Spoke to my Management and we should be able to move into our house by this weekend... hopefully before the sem kicks in.. This is going to call for some muscle power though..

I am trying to read a paper now.. but just cant keep going.. Need to get back to focus soon..

A new life

2005-08-17T03:55:00.000-07:00

Well i have landed in the USA and after umpteen(actually 2 till now) orientations on grad life.. I am getting grip of what to expect. one thing i have been hearing is As a grad stud i belong to the field of CS rather to a class.. he he.. thats a big ideal now... Life here in the US hasnt been very different compared to India.. coz I am going from home right now.. like a school kid.. being dropped and picked by my brother.. Real life as a grad will come in another 2 weeks.. till then ... I can wait ....

Its been a long time..

2005-07-16T08:41:00.000-07:00

Yup, its been a long time since i have blogged here.. Not that i am busy or anything like that... its just that i have been doing a lot of travelling these days.. just came back from Kumbakonam yesterday.. Its been a wonderful trip.. but the hutch dog has been unfaithful as usual.. my balance is now a negative 15.. from 75 two days back... Not even a single call or sms have i made or received during the time out... The customer care put the same old story of getting rectification within 48 hours and blah blah.. Totally HUTCH SUCKS MAJOR TIME...

And..i have lost 3 of my precious teeth to the dentist's pliers.. got Bilateral Root Canal to go also..

Anyway got in touch with a lot of school ppl and am feeling good..
Hope to stay in touch with them forever...

Life is indeed beautiful

2005-06-01T09:04:00.000-07:00

ok.. if you have seen the title.. you can probably guess what i am going to blog about.. and no ...its not about philosophy( hey .. wait may be it is... what can i say???)

I saw the movie Life is beautiful and .. man is that movie one of the most beautiful movies ever..
to cut it short its about .. a father and son.. italians by birth.. get caught in Nazi camps.. the father never lets the son know anything about the darker sides of life... He says stories about how the camp is like a game... and the winner gets a TANK.. the boys favourite toy.. At the end the dad dies ... but the boy and his seperated mother re unite... But what caught me the most was the ending .. When the boy goes...WE HAVE WON...Indeed we have won.. No matter what difficulties come.. man has stood against them ... and won over them.. its the human spirit which is indestructible.. And with a spirit like that no wonder LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL...

I give this movie a 11 on 10... so stop reading this blog and go see the movie.........http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0118799/

Nostalgia

2005-05-23T05:41:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the first contingent of the AU team at Micro left for hyderabad.. Well we were all there at the airport giving them a hero's good bye.. Hey thats what we went for... but alas the sight of a coffee shop and food corner... changed the tables and the heroes as well... NO more good byes .. no more take cares.. it was only.. hey leave me something... is this veggie.... dai.. give me a piece.. all the way..
SO coming back to the sombre side... there they were ... at the airport... the stud bhu in his army like pants and an equally stud like white tee... After the customary byes and machan take care..it was all the time a photo session with akki somehow getting obsessed with giggis camera.. Akkis new photography interest... "SHoot not the face... but the ear..." Not the person..but his nose... Probably this is what is called body art.. whtever it is..its yuck...
A little about bhu.... hes one of the coolest guys at AU.... not to mention that all CS guys are KEWL..he is a great stud... and with a whopping cgpa 0f 9.6 what else do you call him.. ONe interesting thing about bhu is that he can lie without the slightest of reactions... Good thing is ... at the end when everything seems over.. he says.." Obviously i was lying"... Exactly how obvious it was to the victim.. i dunno.. Great partner to do project with... Does most the things on his own.. so your pretty jobless with him battling out the intricacies. This man is a fighter when it comes to marks.. uses all tricks of the book(even those out of syllabus) to get that extra mark while the remaining of us are happy to have passed, One of the best thinkers and programmers i have seen, he is always down to earth... Lucky was MS to have picked him..

After about 45 minutes.. there was the second player of team AU who incidentally also was carrying the tickets... Bhu's eyes lit up when he saw Player 2 ... otherwise known as Pavi..
NOt much galla after that... except for giggi's uncalled for as usual yucky jokes.... THese days giggy's jokes are anything but yuck..no longer the usual fun stuff... Scene changed..All of a sudden everyone kinda became quite.. and then the traditional BYe da... take care .. keep in touch... and as we saw the two leave for security.... I am sure everyone one of us there could see 4 glorious years running in front of our eyes...

Fun filled day

2005-05-07T11:49:00.000-07:00

its a great new idea we have got.. Email wars as we chrishten them... not a soul to be lost,.. not a bullet to be fired... just emails to be shot left and right.......

Today alone the mail count was about 60 .. took a whopping 2 hours to clean my inbox....... never mind how it started.. for none knows.. but what we do know is that its great fun.......

Other than this hiatus of pleasure.. my life is being quite a lot mundane.. these days me stuck to the net like a lizard to a wall.. its yuck i know.. but thats what best describes my new attachment.. I crash only at 3 these days and wake up past 10 in the morning.. darn .. I dont like that change.. and am going to change that change for once and ever...

The art of nicking

2005-05-04T13:30:00.000-07:00

Todays has been quite a day of ups and downs. The down side is I screwed up yet another interview, this time a tele interview for a start up. Its been nearly a year since i aced an interview. The last time was at ISL. This really gives me doubts as to whether I cracked ISL coz of me or they had no one else.

The up side is me and venk went to this restaurant which seemed to be serving good food. Blame me to call it the up side.. but hey atleast i learnt where to look for good food for now. This place is quite interesting . It can accomodate only upto 50 at a time while they are queues of people standing for hours together. the funny thing is it is right next to a dhabba and the dhabba stands no chacne compared to this place's following. SO fairly thi s is how it goes..... YOu get to this place ... tell your name and no.of ppl to the door man. and anxiously wait to be called... The waiting period could be anywhere between 10 min to an hour. All this time you get to the tempting smell from the dhaba.... but as casablanca stood there... you too stick to that tiny portion of ground over which many a ppl have walked. When its time to get in, the smile on everybodys face inside.. tells you the remainig part of the story.

One thing about which I have been thinking for a while is the nick names we carry in college. Arent nicks supposed to tell more of the person ....... But most nicks we carry around are just arbitrary cut down versions of original names.. names which have to no significance to the inner personality.........
newNick= getNick(old name);

getNick(char s[])
{
return(substring(s,random(i),random(j));
}
Or how else can one explain how ashok got the nick ash... I am pretty sure(i hope) hes got nothing to do with Ms India. or jegan being called jug...... Some nicks just get lifted out of movie chars ...... like Daddu..... But all is not that bad.. We've got some decent nicks too

Dude-- The name Muk prefers to be called ...... given for his pro-american attitude and slang and blah blah.....
Monkey------ yours sincerely was chrishterned with this great name for some reason which as usual is beyond the realm of understanding

Sleeping beauty--Jug has no competition in this arena atleast....

So next time we give nicks it better be something the receipient would be proud to hang around with........

To go or not to go??????

2005-05-01T02:32:00.000-07:00

Thats the question....... Well I hate being the spoil sport ...... But it just doesnt make sense going back to the same old boring place where people just exhaust their glut till they can figure out something else useful to do.. We were there just yesterday... Again going back makes feel the sleep angels coming on their way down to my room.. I am aware that in a month or two we will each tread our own paths as destined by the FORCES.. may be never meet again ... but that aint reason enough to go now...... never will the fear of seperation ever justify the spirit of unity.. whatever that means..

I have arrived

2005-05-01T02:26:00.000-07:00

After quite some time of contemplation I have decided to get myself entranced by the dazzling splendour.... Ok cutting out the bullshit... I have decided to blog right here and right now....