GodCatch - Caught on the wrong foot!

Today I interviewed with the world's no 1 software giant - Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT). Feels awesome to blog this on Google's own - Blogspot!

As the title of the blog goes, I was "caught" on the wrong foot. Mera bad luck hi bad tha! I messed up the once in a lifetime opportunity. All my hard work on preparation for the interview went in vain; even my thesis stuff didnt seem to click this time and I was unable to impress him. It was one of those evil days in my life.

The evening was spent drinking Dr.Pepper to add "jale pe namak" (already have a sore throat still). The night was wonderful though, with a call from NetApp for an informal session at PK's.

My resolve now is stronger..i will complete the scheduler this year. going at this rate, the file system, memory management, drivers and UI wud take another 4 yrs. Including the time to integrate all this together, I will be ready with my GodCatchOS in 5 years from now..and maybe will do this as my PhD from Berkeley or Stanford!

Shud I dare to say this: Microsoft, u have another Google coming in the next 5 years.. BEWARE!

God Catches Cold!

I caught a bad cold and even worse sore throat infection yesterday. That too when I had a thesis meeting with my prof and another paper discussion and research at VBI and HW due the next day and IBM info session and my cooking turn. Oh what a bad timing to fall ill!

I somehow managed to go to campus and do ALL of this pretty well in fact. But at the end of the day, I fell in bed at 10pm, too early as compared to my normal standards these days. I got up today morning felt a bit better and as the day passed, I almost forgot that I was sick at all.

Was this bcoz of Valentine's day effect?

Cooking is Fun!

One good thing I learnt here is cooking is fun!! I dont see the reason why most females (especially wives) complain about the pain of cooking. Well i agree, its a bit difficult in India, bcoz you need to actually cut vegetables, knead the dough, etc. In the Americas, everything is packed and frozen..(may not necessarily be healthy, but who cares when u r already eating a lot of cheese and chicken to compensate)so much easier to just cut the packet and ur done!

I have become an expert in most Indian recipes like the famous Maharashtrian zunka eat it with tortilla and u will keep eating, rajma, moong dal are my other delicacies. Want something real quick, fried rice and Maggi taste awesome.

I must admit that i havent tried a lot many breakfast recipes like upma, pohe...so thats still an OFI.

Happy Cooking guys.. enjoy it and u'll like it!!

Beautiful February

Its a beautiful Saturday morning in February, my favorite month of the year. I feel like going out for a long walk, but assignments which are due next week hold me back. I start working on them and soon find them pretty interesting. I am solving this Networks problems and one of them was "whats the width of a bit in meters?" and i am like what??, am i reading it correctly?..i confirm that thats what is asked and soon find out what it means intuitively.

I had a voice chat with kary and we had fun using traceroute finding where the common web servers were "physically" located. I had a cup full of Butter Pecan icecream too. The night ended with a movie "From here to eternity" one of the oldies (black and white) based on Pearl Harbor. It was enuf to put me to sleep.

More when I wake up!

Life of a Systems Programmer

I have started working on my Masters thesis these days. It involves a lot of changes to the 2.6 O(1) scheduler and I am having a few (rather many) nightmares.The kernel has been compiled 140 times already and my laptop hard disk has to bear all the heat. I fear it shud not crash; its making all kinds of weird noises when i run my scheduler. It would be nice to have a simple way to try out changes in the kernel instead of a full recompile each time; any takers for this project?

My Windows XP machine too seems to be behaving oddly these days with crashes being the norm rather than the exception. It failed to detect a LAN connection and running 2 VM's (out of which 1 was doing fsck) on top of a meagre 1GB memory put the final nail in the coffin. I tried using Ubuntu (one of the freebies i got), and it failed to install wireless connection, so dumb of it.

As you can see, life is currently full of pain handling all different types of s/w and Operating systems. Wait for the launch of GodCatch-OS, thats what i say to pacify myself; after all thats what is every system programmer;s dream!!

Happy Republic Day

Today, we celebrated the Indian Republic Day at Virginia Tech. The Indian Students Association had organized a flag hoisting ceremony. It felt great to sing the national anthem after a long time. The flag fluttered beautiful over the Tech winds..awesome sight to watch. It was good to see Indian students (grads and undergrads) coming in good numbers.. just shows how much everyone loves India and misses it. We also had a few Indian families who have settled in Blacksburg come for this event.

The event was followed a a speech by Dr.Dutta, who is involved with International Affairs at the University. I also enjoyed the coffee (which was needed badly due to the cold out here), and muffins.

This event was also the first to be organized by the new ISA members and they indeed did their HW well. it was well organized.. hats off to them! Hope we get to enjoy many more events under their tenure.

Racket Ball

This weekend, I found time to play racket ball at War Memorial Hall, Virginia Tech for the first time . Its a game similar to squash. Me and Aseem teamed up versus Vikrant and Vivek. I played pretty well and in fact we defeated our opponents in 2/3 sets. I remembered the time when I used to play a home version of squash with Akki (my brother). I used to always corner him and the similar techniques could be applied in racket ball. I have always felt that I am pretty good in doubles tactics. We had a badminton tournament organized when I was in CalSoft and I had teamed up with George, our HR who is in his 60's. To my surprise, we gave a very tough fight to our opponents. I must admit that we lost that game, but putting up a good fight was important.

I plan to find time for racket ball at least once a week. Its a good exercise and teaches you team player skills like court coverage and co-ordination.

First week at Classes

The first week turned out pretty good. My body seems to be slowly adjusting to the new schedule, wakeup at 8am instead of 10, sleep at 12 midnight instead of 2am. The exercise routine is on its way too and I hope I will get time (if not, find time) to continue this.

Classes have been interesting too - meeting new Professors and discussing technology again..its fun u see! I am also actively trying to make some American friends in class - u see it helps to get a ride to Walmart!! Assignments dont seem to be pouring in as yet, but as they call it, its the silence b4 the storm!!
I have started my first attempt to learn Java, which seems decent upto this point. Surroundings have forced me to learn this, u see Survival of the fittest is the mantra in the Software industry and Java is surely HOT.

Time to cool off.

Google AdSense

Guys, I just thought of earning some money based on my web presence (my website).

i have signed up for Google Adsense and included the code on my webpages. So now Google displays some relevant ads on my webpages and I earn few pennies for every click from my website.

Do take a look at http://filebox.vt.edu/users/adeodhar

Good to learn how Google might be earning its revenue and if luck has it, some might flow into my account!!

Plz remember to click at least one and donate generously to me!..

On your mark, Get set, GO!

The Spring semester is about to begin in a couple of days.

You can imagine my situation after having a good 1 month break!
Classes have to be attended, assignments have to be done on time again, marks have to be earned CONSISTENTLY to keep up good grades. Its a lot of work for a kid like me. dont know how my tini little brain handles all that.

But once the semester begins, its really a lot of fun. The campus is all full with ... and a lot of activity all around. Occasional snowfall changes the landscape entirely and I love to play in the snow. Days start flying.. Monday and Friday seem to coalesce and Sat, Sun are spent doing projects with friends.. thats a lot of fun again. Life suddenly has meaning as against vacation where time literally has to be killed.

Hope i get time to blog during this semester.

Search is ON

Its the end of the 1st semester of my Masters program and an ideal time to look out for internships beginning in the Summer. Resumes have been sent across and now I keep waiting for interview calls. Hopefully, the mail box will be full soon with lot of opportunities. I really need to catch God for this!!

I would love to be in a position where I can choose where I want to go. My ideal location would be of course in the heart of Silicon Valley, California. The reason being simple - i would get to see another part of the US, especially the West coast. Besides, a software engineer's life is a waste if he doesnt go to Calif at least once in his career (thats what I feel sincerely, plz ignore if u disagree).

More on the progress as days pass!

Houston Retreat

It was a perfect way to celebrate 5 months in US.. a gettogether of DYPCIans who had come for MS in Fall 2005.

We (I, Kary, Guddya) met at Vivek's place in Houston, Texas. Amit flew from Maryland, me from Florida and Gud from Kansas. It was one of the dreams come true - things which we had imagined before departure in India were finally taking shape.

The first day was marked by Munich , the new Spielberg movie we watched at AMC theatre. We later went Ice skating at the Galleria. Not to mention how many times I fell, i was falling more than skating - an utter shame for me. All others did pretty well especially Gud and Viv who picked up quite fast. But it was fun indeed.. hope to improve next time!

How can one miss NASA or shud i call it "nasha"? The Johnson space center was good and it gave an educational angle to this trip. Clicking photos was fun there. We also went on a Tram tour where we met (oh cant mention the name)....
It was interesting to watch Gud and Kary chat with her for minutes.. on all topics related to NASA ... dont know why they cudnt gather enuf courage for a photo session with her!

On the third day, we went to Hermen Brown Park.. again cant miss the snaps we took there thanks to Kary's ideas from DCH. The food at Souper Salad was delicioius..

I must mention the mehmaan navazi by Vivek and his parents - this trip wudnt be possible without it.

In all, a well planned and enjoyable vacation.

Florida trip

I'll talk today about my Florida trip.

Plans started early December when i could see that I had a whole month ahead with not much to do after my exams.

Internet has made things very easy indeed. Just chatted with my friend Sachin in Gainesville who was excited about it. Tickets were booked via Orbitz too.

We rented a car in Gainseville and set off with 2 other friends for Orlando, Florida. Hotel bookings had been done via online bidding for Courtyard Marriott near Orlando Airport.

We visited the 2 theme parks - Universal Studios and Universal Studios - Islands of Adventure.
It was amazing. the rides made us really crazy especially the Hulk, Mummy and the Duelling dragons.

We then drove to St.Pete, one of the beaches in Tampa, Florida. The waters were really cold. It was good to visit a beach in US, my first one indeed. Besides, it was Gulf of Mexico alike the oceans seen in India. I really enjoyed a mile long walk on the beach.

We came back fully refreshed for tackling the coming Spring semester.

4 months in US

I just realized today that I completed 4 months of stay in Virginia, USA.

Days have really gone fast.. not much time to roam around.. but I am desperately looking forward to the month-long December vacation.

Plans have been made to visit Florida and Washington + maryland. Houston is on the cards too.

I hope at least 2 of these materialize and make my vacation a memorable one!

My Website

Today it gives me great pleasure to launch my own website.

Heres a link to it: http://filebox.vt.edu/users/adeodhar

Maintaining a good website is important for a Grad student. It helps to make your work public so that you get comments and critique on it.

feel free to comment on my website.

For Prospective employers: I am actively looking out for Internship position in Summer 2006.

bye for now,
Abhijit Deodhar.

Hello World!

This is my first Blog ever.
Hence i name it as Hello World! , similar to learning a new computer language.
I started this blog today to give a vent to all my thoughts about the world around me.

Lets see how it goes!