Weekend getaway to Yosemite National Park

The Group, From Yosemite National Park

Yosemite National Park, it was this weekend. Thanks to Madhav for planning out everything, and everyone who looked hard for a place to stay. Everything was flawless, until one the members had to back off just 6-7 hrs before we started off!!! This resulted into another one backing off. The head count reduced from 8 to 6, and all the plans seemed to go for a toss. Not to mention the additional $$$s we would have to shell for now unnecessary bookings.

After seemingly endless arguing, cursing, cribbing and yelling... we retired to bed. Thankfully we managed to get some sleep. Oblivious to the fact, we had more sh_t to tackle. We started off, happily, pulled over for a nice brunch at Subway. And the horror struck... One of the 2 cars won't start. Soon we realized that the battery has completely drained. F__k! We were kind of in middle of nowhere. Something is definitely !@#$ing wrong with this trip :( After endless calls to idiots (aka Enterprise Rentals), endless waiting, repeated explanations, hunting for replacement, we finally decided to swap the battery at our expense, after a technician jump-started the car. Damn! 3-4 precious hours of the trip lost. I was almost certain the trip would be a disastrous failure. Thank GOD, I was wrong :)

Beautiful butterfly From Yosemite National Park

The fun of trip was manifold: I was hitting car on American roads for the first time, we had a good Chief Navigator (aka Vikram), near flawless itinerary and despite of sh_t, everyone maintained their cool and were positive of having a good time.

This car sucked, though. From Yosemite National Park

Near endless driving for about 800+ miles a lot of which was on curvy roads across amidst the scenic Sierra Nevada Mountains, seeing all we had intended to... this trip, after all, was more than a success! The best part of the trip was hiking to the mouth of Vernal Falls. The near 1 hour hike and reaching the top was epitome of successful trip!

Mesmerizing Vernal Falls, From Yosemite National Park

Link to my Picasa Album: http://picasaweb.google.com/princeatul/YosemiteNationalPark#

Verdict: An amazing place to go, but go while there are waterfalls, which is during mid/late spring.

The whole album...



Photo credits: Atul Talesara (Self)
Equipment: Canon EOS 30D + Tamron 18-200mm

Californication and Visit to Lake Tahoe

The day I landed in Calif was unexpectedly and uncomfortably hot. For the first 2 days since my arrival, the mercury levels refused to come down. Damn! I cursed the people who kept swearing by Calif's weather claiming it to be THE best. Weather back in my (???) Pittsburgh is far better, barring the freaking winters. But soon the third day heat levels eased down and the temperature through the day is very pleasant and a little chilly by the nights.

You guys must have already seen the photos of surroundings I live in and my experiments with photography. After office, we (as in roomies) occasionally swim, play lawn tennis, TT, and even sit on our lazy a$$es every once a while staring blankly at our TFTs. Some are permanently glued to phone, though. I barely get time to do anything besides regular job... so I'm struggling to find the most efficient way to commute to and from office, get work done fast so that I can pursue other activities. Everything, eventually is about time management.

Last weekend was my FIRST REAL outing after coming to States!
After hogging on Subs by the highway

From Lake Tahoe Set 1

The 7 of us set out to the destination Lake Tahoe. Some 5-6 hrs drive from our place. But only we know better :D None of us have actually driven on US roads, so Madhav was the bold a$$ to take the initiative to hit the rented SUV on Uncle Sam's roads. But braver are we, the people who sat in that SUV ;-) The best part of the trip, interestingly, was our GPS... since it was our first time driving around downtown, freeways and highways, GPS confused us a hell lot than it aided us :D We managed to miss every single turn the GPS instructed us to take, despite 7 bright CMU-ECE raccoons applying every conceivable logic on it :D Resulting in the most irritating 'recalculating route' message... It wasn't until the time to drive back home that we almost managed to drive to GPS' instructions :) But all in all, Madhav did drive very well, despite of being tired and fatigued.

We started very late from home, and hence ended up spending all the precious time traveling. Lake Tahoe, is really a very nice (and romantic) place. We barely get to see such vast expanse of clear and clean water back home in India. I have never seen so many shades of blue and green in one single place :) We couldn't do much of any activities except for a stroll on a trekking trail.
Serene Lake Tahoe

From Lake Tahoe Set 1

I managed to shoot a little over 500 photos, not all of which are present in the album. There are over 200 or so in Ravi's camera! Will share once I get my hands on them.
Nature's perfection: She's hovering in mid-air against strong winds for a fish to come in her sight! On spotting one, she would dive with lightening speed, catching it almost every time she dived! It was fun watching this amazing little feat.

From Lake Tahoe Set 1

Verdict: A very nice place to explore, but don't go to Lake Tahoe in winters, it is all covered in snow. And start early so you get more time to explore the place. Do try your hand at water sports.

See the whole album Lake Tahoe set 1

Photo credits: Atul Talesara (Self)
Equipment: Canon EOS 30D + Tamron 18-200mm (wish I had a CPL filter)

Lots of photos

Some photos, siting unshared for long time!
0. First Photos from my Canon EOS 30D

First Photos from my Canon EOS 30D

1. ECE Day 2008: Every year ECE organizes a BIG fun-n-fair to let the hungry and tired raccoons (aka ECE'ians!) eat and relax!

ECE Day 2008

Why raccoons? Here it goes from our department website:
Introducing the ECE Raccoon
The unofficial ECE Day mascot is the raccoon. The idea developed at a SAC meeting when discussing the defining characteristics of an ECE student's life. SAC members found that the raccoon best exemplified those characteristics since they, like ECE students, tend to be nocturnal and are always scrounging for free food. Raccoon eyes are indicative of the sleep deprivation that sometimes accompanies an ECE education.

--- edit some more photos 19-May 08 ---

2. Photos from plane

Photos from plane

3. Sunset, flowers mountains and much more

Sunset, flowers mountains and much more

4. Humming bird, bees and ducks

Humming bird, bees and ducks

5. Flowers, Squirrels and Leaves

Flowers, Squirrel and leaves

WD320, she's sexy!

With me increasingly relying on my laptop these days, I had always worried about it crashing! For people like me, who rely on their laptops for a hell lot of things in their lives, the biggest fear is loosing all the data, and have NO backup! I believe that if data is worth keeping, it is worth backing up!
As, one of the numerous, old saying goes:

Being too busy to worry about backup, is like being too busy driving a car to put on the seatbelt.

So, some time back, I plunged into yet another research... choosing the best external hard disk. And guess what, I found her! She's sexy, sleek and efficient!

Isn't she cute: My WD 320

There are 2 kinds of drives, to choose from. And for a while I considered building a not-so-very-common thrid option too.
0. 5.25" external HDD, the one with bigger form factor
1. 2.5" HDD, sexier of the species, aka passport HDD.
2. Internal HDD in an enclosure, a home-grown solution.

I went with "passport", not because it's sexier, but because it fit my needs better than others. So, how does one decide on the HDD, I've come up with my own metrics. This, by no means is complete, but a good place to start.

0. Purpose
You will be surprised by the fact that too many people going out to buy HDD don't have a clue WHY are they doing so. When asked, they say 'To store data'! WTF, I gawk! What else will you do with a hard disk??? Shove it up your ___, huh? ... Coming to the point, I classify needs into two:
- Backup
- Increased Storage
You either want additional space for backing up all your critical data Or you want to _just_ expand your storage capacity for more data: viz. music, movies, ebooks, etc. And once you have decided on that, 80% of your job is done. But the rest 20% will take much logner. Choosing the right model.

If you want a backing store, reliability is the MOST important factor. The speed (5200rpm or 7200 rpm), the form factor, and noise are the least of your worries. You don't mind if it takes a hour to back up on a reliable HDD, but you sure as hell would be pissed off if you can backup everything in 15 minutes but there is no guarantee that you can rely on it the coming morning!

All the external HDDs that I looked at, the 5.25 ones were built with only one goal in mind: Speed! So all of them spun at 7200 rpm. And as a side effect, they run pretty hot, reducing reliability. To make it worse, most vendors these days don't put fan on HDDs! To cut the cost, of course. Thus, they rely on users to provide the right environment. As a result, the rate of failure is very high. So I ruled our 5.25" HDDs. At least all the current models.

WD320 is soooo hooked on to my lover, my TP-T43

1. Capacity
Now your job is easier, within the budget you have, you will want to go for the one with highest guarantee/warranty period and then highest capacity. Mind you, the manufacturer will ONLY replace the HDD if it fails, they will charge a @#$ing hell lot of money (of the order of a grands of dollars!) to recover your data. So be very paranoid about reliability when you buy HDD for backups. BTW, simple solution is to buy two and mirror the backup! (Yes, that's the result of taking Greg Ganger's Adv. Storage Systems this semester!) But it can be expensive, and more of a headache to maintain the 2 in sync.

For the same capacity, the passport will be more expensive than the bigger one. But mind you, do research on the reliability well. The market is flooded with so many models, that you might be tempted to take the latest and fastest one. I would recommend taking a generation of HDD older than the bleeding edge ones. The passport versions are really cool, actually the size of your passport, don't need external power supply and you can carry them around with you regularly. 5.25" ones, on other hand, are bulkier, heavy, spins faster and hence are much more noisy, generate more heat, have higher data transfer speeds, and needs an external power supply. You definitely can't carry these along regularly. But they have amazing capacities, of the order of TBs on regular consumer models.

So, what I chose is Western Digital My Passport 320GB (Model: WDME3200TN)
It's sleek, sexy, smart and very very silent. I don't care that it runs at slower 5400 rpm, I feel safe when I entrust her with my GBs worth of backup data. If you are looking to buy one, I strongly recommend only WD or Seagate. And yes, if you choose, you MUST buy a decent HDD hard-case to protect your prized possession, I recommend CaseLogic for that.

WD320 with CaseLogic hard case, I just love that red color!

For now, I just dd out the whole partitions to WD-320. What I am yet to do is device a nice incremental backup system from the off-the-self Unix tools. And any recommendations in that regards are most welcome.

Oh, I missed they third option, I bet you are interested. It's a simple solution. You buy a regular internal HDD, ones that go into your desktop PCs. They are hell more reliable than external ones. Buy a nice external enclosure, the one with good fan and thermodynamics. And BINGO! Fit your HDD into it, and you have your 5.25" equivalent external storage! But I failed to find a good external HDD case, and so dropped the idea. If you don't care about the looks too much, and are more hungry for capacities, I urge you not to rule out this option completely. It will definitely turn out much cheaper and more reliable than other options. Of course you won't get those jazy si-fi-movie-like glowing lights, if you care about it!

Photo Credits: Self
Equipment: Canon EOS 30D + Tamron 18-200mm

Logical! Debunking the myth...

Yeah! Shaolin is back after a long time... you people guessed it right, I was deep buried in a zillion assignments... I'm through with yet another semester. And I think I'm still alive, sane and kicking a$$, more than ever before!

So what I have for you today... well this was just one of the many random stream of thoughts which I keep experiencing during mental turmoil of attaining harmony. Or, maybe it is a thought that takes birth as some random alpha particle from the outer space bombards the neurons; just the way it randomly flips a bit on memory bus running at near-optical speeds.

It, by no means, is as pristine as the original thought, but then... doesn't everything dilutes the moment it comes out of your mind! I still thought of putting it up here.

If you are tooooo technical, you tend to be come too logical! Wow! Ain't that good! I would argue otherwise! Well, almost. Why...being more logical is definitely a great plus, as long as you don't have to deal with "REAL" humans. What do I mean...

Haven't you ever been in a situation where you couldn't reason something... something that you couldn't explain despite the fact that you fully understood the situation. Get me one parent who has been successful in being absolutely logical with her kid EVERY single time! No! You won't find a single one! All the hard earned logic is not better than rat's sh_t when it comes to reasoning with kids! I think it's a little more clear that I want to say: You can't reason every single thing in your life every single time. Logic, as Akio said, HAS to take a backseat when dealing with humans.

Wish I had a good example to quote here, all that penned down for this post weren't good enough. I had to scrap them. So this might be too abstract and difficult to connect to, for some of you. Still I trudge on...

There are many such numerous situations where logic JUST takes the backseat. As Akio Morita, the founder and father of Sony sums it up nicely:

You can be totally rational with a machine. But if you work with people, logic often has to take a backseat to understanding.

After all, that's what makes us humans, each being bilogically the same (now medical students, don't argue on DNA, ok!) but radically different from the other. Otherwise, if every one was AS logical as machines, all the time, all the same, would we be any different from the machines!!! Ever read Roger Penrose's Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of Consciousness?

Then... how do I fix it? At my job I HAVE to be logical... rational to earn my daily bread! Yes, by all means, be logical, be the MOST rational person you can become. But don't loose that human touch. The touch that makes you so human in the first place. When the need arises, become a human, again. And above all, be cognizant of the time you have to switch from one to another.

The only way to do that is to do something different every once a while (Note: Watching idiot-box as doing something different is NOT the answer. As the name suggests, watch too much of it, and it will turn you into one of it's species, Saggy, I know you are going to disagree :D ... but may be you are one of the few smart ones to know _what_ to watch on that idoit box!). One nice way is (now I can't bet my a$ on it that it works, but hey, it is logical that it works ;-) )... read novels, and play sports where you deal with LOTS of real humans. Get your a$$ of your routine once a while and do something completely different. Easier said than done, but hey, who said sanity comes free! I envy my brother who's dentist and has to deal with differnt patient every single day!!! He's far good at dealing with humans than I am.

Such hobbies makes you think differently every once a while, many a times not so rational. So pick a hobby, preferably where you interact with other humans and you have regained your identity, just what GOD wanted you to be! Probably you have gone bonkers by now :)

CMU ECE Hammerschlag Hall

Another photo of my adorable department, in peak winter season, CMU-ECE (Hammerschlag Hall)

Nice shot of Hammerschlag Hall in winter

Credits: Jay, aka Vish.

Updates: Moved to ECE, MS interview and more!

There's so much to update (just because I haven't posted for so long) that I don't know what to write and what to skip. Not-so-great midterm performance, 60+ hrs load of 15-410 OS alone (a course that won't even count towards my graduation requirements!) + 2 other heavy courses, one of which has writing a complete e2fsck (EXT2 filesystem consistency check utility) as an average complexity level project ~~~phew~~~ Can't complain, because I asked for it.

Since I always like to leave on a good note I'll start with rough stuff...
One of the most !@#$ing thing that happened was that our 3rd roomie shut off the gas heater, just because _he_ didn't want it... while the temperature out here was freaking below minus 11C (-11C) and winds were blowing at more than 45kmph! With our house having lot of gaps near the wall-floor linings, indoors was more chilly than the actual temperature, it wasn't possible to even sit at home for a minute :( I'm just baffled how !@$#ing selfishly stupid a$$h__e someone can be!!! When I asked why, he shamelessly replied: "I didn't have a problem with shutting the heater. And I thought you guys wouldn't have objection to that as well"! Who the !@$#ing hell is ok with switching heater off in sub-zero temperatures!!! Do we look like some kind of God forsaken devils to grow thick fur over night just to combat chill! Every passing day my belief in 'Commonsense is not so very common' only gets stronger. He emailed us he wants to disconnect the heating, on questioning he doesn't reply and next day... ~~~poof~~~ heater is out! Had he approached us, I'm sure something could have been worked out. And above all, winter's going to last only a week or so now.

Our attempt to buy electric heater went futile because every salesperson (controlling his laughter!) told that they are sold out on electric heaters LONG back! They all almost meant what the hell are you talking, heater NOW??? So, I and Vish packed our bags and shifted to school (ECE lounge to be precise) for about a week, sleeping in cramped sofas, using our jackets as blankets and eating hotel-food, something we had NOT done in past 8 months! All the $s we saved by not eating in hotels got spent :( Meanwhile we managed to get gas heater re-connected, and we are back home-sweet-home! And just because of the same roomie, we had to live in hell at the onset of winter, just because he didn't turn on the gas connection with the agency. Since we had taken care of internet and electricity, gas connection was hit baby. He kept shunning it forever. That time too we used to wear thermals, 4 t-shirts, 2 sweaters, head-cap, socks, gloves, and still couldn't combat chill! He survived then because he was never at home. Baahh... it was pathetic!

But here we are, still alive! Touchwood! I trust it's sheer miracle that we are alive. And it's even much bigger a miracle that we didn't bash him up despite the fact that his actions inflicted unbearable suffering to us, TWICE! Ahimsa Parmo Dharma, my parents and gurudev taught me. But please don't test my patience.

On the lighter side...
After nurturing my long hair for 5 months, my desire to grow a ponytail faded, because it started taking inordinate amount of time to clean-comb-oil-and-maintain it! And taking the feedback from my loved ones on my last hair-cut, I decided to go for a haircut once again (Ouch! Oh sorry, that was a reaction from my wallet!) And we had another round of hair-cut! Vish flatly refuses to let me take his picture, but I'm more generous ;-) I know you all are dying to see my new haircut so that you can laugh your a$$es off again, for days... but this time I didn't opt for crew-cut. It's something better than that...

New haircut, better than last time's cut, isn't it!

But problems aside (really?)...
The most important development for me has been my switch from CMU-INI to CMU-ECE, something that I had been contemplating for very long and only materailzed at the start my current Spring'08 semester. Of many reasons, the top 3 reasons for the context switch are:

• I hate being compelled to take compulsory courses that don't spark my interest. I realized that I would have to take a lot of them at INI, so I moved to ECE where there is no compulsion on taking a particular course
• Second reason is that I didn't see much value out of taking 172 credits at INI as opposed to 96 in ECE. You might think more is better, but NO! People take filler courses _just_ to reach that 172 mark, meaning, they have to take courses that don't interest them, don't teach them much, and neither do they add significant value. And, NOM, but they have to do that A LOT! That's dreadful waste of precious time, at least for me. And remember, never waste time, for time is GOD's money!
  
• My first compulsory security course was a DISASTER, it sucked BIG time! So much so that I even had a one-to-one talk with Director of INI about it. And she's more or less already aware of this! I couldn't even drop the course because it was a compulsory course at INI. Not that I didn't fare well in it, but I couldn't learn much compared to the effort I put in. Neither did most of my class-mates. So it dawned upon me that I should switch departments and switch context to my first love: Systems Programming and Filesystem/Storage

Thanks to Vish for giving me insight into ECE's requirements, which don't make for an understandable reading.

My new-found home: ECE Hammerschlag hall before dawn in winter

Second exciting thing that conspired was the much-coveted MS-Seattle trip. After a lot of contemplation (remember? I'm more of an Unix person and MS is diametrically opposite to that technology) I decided to sign up for MS interviews. I got myself scheduled after the midterms, in the Spring break so that I don't have to miss classes. As you all know, the to-and-fro air tickets are paid by MS, the hotel was booked by MS, food expenses would be covered too!!! Wow! Goodies don't stop here, MS asks you to stay back a day after (or before) your interviews so that you can explore Seattle! And the best part is, that additional day's traveling expense + food + hotel will also be covered by MS! Ain't that GREAT!

Yes, MS pampers their to-be-interns a lot! I won't talk much about the interview except that interviews were great, my skill-set to team matching was disappointing, and MS HQ is mind blowing: very huge, well maintained, and shuttles made out of very hi-tech environmentally Green cars! Money flowing alllllll around! And the receptionists were just .... oh GOD! Plus I met my old time college mate who works at MS. An hour's worth of talk with Buffy was quite refreshing and enlightening. For the first time she realized that I too can talk, a lot!

I, firsthand, experienced the MS Surface Computing. Video I shot doesn't do justice to it, so won't share it. But you can always Google it out.

MS Calling

~~~smooch~~~ Wish she were real....

Once in a blue moon

This stems from an passing remark one of my profs (I guess he has to be David Eckhardt) made during his lecture:

"Every once in a while occurs a million times in the processor!"

programmer B: Aahh... forget about that case, I wouldn't worry about it. It won't happen.
programmer A: What? Never? Are you sure? Really Never?
programmer B: Hmm... Well, what I meant was, it would happen only very very rarely. Once in a blue moon, you know. With negligibly low probability.
programmer A: How low, 1 in million, billion, trillion? (lets use billion for simplicity)
programmer B: Hmm... 1 in a billion, that is 1 followed by 9 zeroes, 1/10^9 == 0.000000001 ~~beaming with bright eyes~~~ Yes, I guess so. You see, it's really unlikely to happen. It'll be right 99.999999999% of the times!
programmer A: My dear friend, at blazing CPU speeds of 1 GHz, 1*10^9 => 1*10^9 == 1 billion intructions/actions happening every freaking second, your '1 in a billion' would occur once every second, 60 times every minute 3600 times every hour! And I'm not even taking about 24x7 servers!
programmer B: Darn! Holy s_!t

Just to illustrates why the job of a system programmer is so tough. He has to be right EVERY single time! 99.9999999999999... is next to useless! His program has to run correct a 100% of the times, PERIOD!

On a similar note...

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in human history - with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila.

-Mitch Radcliffe

Atul meets Ash!

Aahh... It's been VERY long I posted something...
I bet your a$$ you clicked on the link only because you thought I met Bollywood's Aishwarya Rai! See... there are many ways to lure people into visiting your blog :-P
I've NOT been able to post a lot of new things that I'm learning here at CMU, only because of the amount of time and rigor it takes to write a good post. I don't have time even to itch :D Already have a backlog of so many posts :(

Why this post then? That's because my brain's completely saturated right now and can't get a bit out of it... anyone taking 15-410 and working on P2 can understand what exactly do I mean!
Ok, so amidst this frenzied activities, my really really old hostel buddy Ashwin (aka Ash) came to Pitt.

Ash, blissfully happy, reading his GF's email on his blackberry!

Not a great timing, but we had an opportunity to re-unite maybe after a decade!!! Thanks to Ash that he reminded me a zillion times that he's coming down to Pitt, and we better meet. I promised him we'll meet, didn't know how will I make it. And he was here only over the weekend with plans to fly back on Monday. I won't mortify you guys with _how_ I managed it (Atul, thank you soooo much for saving us the pain to read that ;-) ) so here's the reunion photo:

Ash and Atul in SCS atrium (yes, I'm aiming at Jackie Chan's Drunken Master-2 hair style!)

It was after weeks that I was sitting chatting with a buddy wearing a completely relaxed demeanor! I bet others around must have doubted that I quit 15-410!
Sorry Ash that I we couldn't have excellent Indian lunch that you promised to treat me with :( It's always so exciting to connect with old-timers! (read every one of those links, if you have time!)
Thanks a lot for being persistent and patient, Ash :-)

Bonus photo: Cool dude waiting for the shuttle!

Equipment: Sony W700i
Photo Credits: Self