BrainDrain

The Joy in Pain

2009-07-27T00:17:00.000-07:00

6 months back, I remember scolding Dilip, when he completed his half marathon, and asked him if he was crazy to run such distances. Today I completed a Half marathon... 13.1 miles.. 21kms. The feeling at the end of it was awesome. A sense of accomplishment, which I have been lacking for sometime now ;).

The run started off 5 miles from Golden Gate bridge. For those who know the area, along embarcedero road. The first 5 miles was easy, plain roads before the uphill to Golden Gate. Two 31.5 degree gradients, and I was pushing myself to keep running. A "walk" just doesn't count as "running". Although sometimes. it felt like people walking were overtaking me
Enter Golden Gate bridge, and it was covered in fog completely. With close to 20000 runners in the event, this was one place where it felt really crowded. Just one lane for runners in each direction. The constant overtaking, and apologies kept you distracted for the next 2 miles. The 7.5 mile marker was at the end of Golden Gate bridge, and I was happy that only less than half the distance was remaining. 2 miles back on Golden Gate bridge, and reached close to the 10 mile marker. Legs still felt very fresh, and I was happy with my pace. I was clocking 10min miles constantly.

The last 3 miles were really tough. I expected this to uphill in parts, but to my suprise, it was uphill all the way, with flat road in parts. Although, it was not too steep, the constant uphill tires you out, and slows you down. For the first time, I saw myself searching for the mile markers. 3 such miles, and I was there at the end of my first Half marathon. 2:17:18 was the clock and a complete relief.

As i said, a sense of accomplishment, but then, this is only half the job done. The real thing is in another 3 months. A Full marathon (26.2 miles), and I am so looking forward to it.
2 months back, I ran a 10K, and I knew i would definitely be able to complete the half marathon. I can't say the same thing about the full marathon now. Although, the half marathon has boosted my confidence immensely.

I have been limping all day today. My knee hurts ( I kind of sensed it around the 6th mile). Getting down stairs has never been so difficult. With every step, there is pain. But there is a lot of joy in that pain.

2 months and too many things..

2008-07-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

My best friend Dilip, who is a fan of my writing, reminds me that he badly misses my blogs these days. So I am back to drain all the things that were clogged in my head for the past 2 months. Don't blame me if it stinks :D

May 8th: Left for California, to finalize on our new home. NetApp was calling, and after spending 3 months here last summer, I knew we had to act fast, if we needed a good house. I had booked a Nissan Altima, for rent, but it turned out that they din't have any of it that day. So, I upgraded to a Chrysler 300 for an additional $5 a day. And wow, it was an amazing car. Sheer power, and a pleasure to drive. I started looking for houses, and I immediately liked the house, that we are currently in. It was real good deal for a 3-bed, and it was just 2 miles from NetApp. So, that very day, after talking to Parag and Manish, I finalised the house.

May 17th: The primary purpose of coming to the US was successfully completed this day. I was declared a Computer Scientist, well officially. I have already been called that unofficially by my friends before :D. That was close to a perfect day. We got hooded, took pictures, had a good lunch, a small nap and then to top all of that, an excellent dinner with all my friend's parents. Quadir and Sanket, had taken a lot of pain, to get 7 of us a beautiful photo frame, with our graduation photos in them. The photo they put in that frame, was one of the best of mine ever. I remember telling myself that I should write a blog about this one day.

May 20th: Finally a trip to the Grand Canyon. Yes, i hadn't seen GC in the 2 years that I was in Arizona. Anyway, Parag, his sister, bhakti, me and Vad had a great time at GC. We stayed overnight at Flagstaff, and reached GC in the morning. GC is just breath-taking. You have to see it to appreciate it. No amount of photos do justice to this nature's wonder.

May 23rd: Trip to Florida with my PESIT Pals, VK, Sohan and Harish. I flew into Dallas on 23rd. VK and me took the early morning flight to Tampa Bay on 24th. We picked up Sohan, and went to Universal Studios. Harish joined us at night, and visited Disney World and Clearwater beach over the next 2 days. We had a scary incident at Tampa, where we almost drove close to the runway of the airport, thanks to a dumb GPS. It asked us to make a right turn, and we followed it blindly. It was dark, and it took a few minutes to realize that we were in a prohibited zone.

May 28th - Jun 8th: Had one of the best times in Tucson. Stayed at 2201 Park Adams, because our lease at Crossroads had ended on 31st May. We had so much fun everyday. Pending treats, pot-lucks, farewell dinners, evening tea which overlapped with dinner most times. And yeah, Poker night, in which Quadir Bhai was finally dethroned. Parag bought his Nissan Sentra SE-R. He got an awesome deal, and he had made his biggest purchase ever.

Jun 9th: After all the goodbyes, we leave for California along Cal-1, with Parag and me time-sharing the driver seat. We halted at Santa Barbara for the night. Had a very good dinner at Taj in SB downtown. We drove along the scenic Cal-1 route the next day. It was an awesome drive, 200 miles parallel to the pacific. Some very scenic views, although I must say the Pacific stinks because of the weeds in the sea. Enter bay-area, and I get my first ticket, for driving with a California license. Yes, you read it right. The officer told me that my Arizona license was invalid, and so my California license is invalid too. Don't ask me how , why. He just wanted to give me ticket, it seems.

Jun 11th - July 3rd: We start our marathon shopping session, which by the way, is still going on. It was my first time, settin up a new house. I give my California License test again (4th time I was giving an IP), and come out in flying colors, and ofcourse a paper CA temporary license and a punched AZ license :P. I joined netapp on 16th June. Manish started at Juniper the same day. Parag, who was chauffering us for a week, joined Netapp on 23rd. I get my first pay-check, and am devastated after looking at the take-home. Man, Uncle Sam eats 40% of my bread, and he expects me to pay 8% sales tax for the butter.

July 4th: I walk into the Nissan dealership, and after 6 hours of haggling + waiting + signing contracts walk out empty-handed. I just booked my Nissan Altima. It would be delivered to me on July 7th.

July 7th: I picked up my brand new Altima. Drove it to Uncle's house, and did a small pooja for the car. The best car, I have driven so far.

So, that much for 2 months. The brain has drained, and so has the stomach, and off I go to eat.

Seshu's magic with words

2008-05-06T18:46:00.000-07:00

RaviSeshu is my friend here at UoA, and just check out this amazing MS Poem he wrote.. really worth bookmarking.. I am sure, I will have an equally good laugh when I read this again in a couple of years from now :)

Testimonials!!

2008-04-30T13:02:00.000-07:00

For quite sometime now, I have been thinking about the concept of testimonials on orkut. I have been lucky to receive 2 genuine and 1 timepass testimonial from my best friends. But, all these days, I never accepted them and my argument was that, the testimonials are for me, and I will keep it. May sound wierd, but I still believe it. I had argued about this long back, with Bhavin, but suddenly something made me revisit my decision. If someone can put in so much time and effort to write something good about me, it would be unfair on my part, to not acknowledge it. So, now, you should now see 3 testimonials on my orkut profile :D..

My apologies to Dilip and Bhavin for having accepted your testimonials so late. But better late than never, right guys?? :)..

PS: The "something good" part does not apply to Sriwatsan's testimonial. Although I accepted it because it was funny.

Way to go!!!!

2008-04-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

ISRO today launched 10 satellites in one go through the PSLV. This is supposedly a world record. In these days, when NASA seems to be making all the news, its good to see ISRO catching up as well. Way to go ISRO, and good luck for your Moon mission.

Source: IBNLive

Tagged!!!

2008-04-26T00:42:00.000-07:00

Looks like I am the last one to reply among Nat's List. Anyway, better late than never. :)

1. Last movie you saw in a theater?
The Great Debaters - Good moving with amazing dialogues.

2. What book are you reading
Started reading "The Chamber" by Grisham, and there is a good chance that I will dump this half way. The story is stuck in the same place for the last 100 pages.

3. Favorite board game?
Would love to play Chess, Carrom, although i am not good at any of these.

4. Favorite magazine?
None.

5. Favorite smells?

Smell of a new car. :)

6. Favorite sounds?
Kunnakudi's Violin and flowing water amidst forests.

7. Worst feeling in the world?
When someone blames me for something that I din't do.

8. What is the first thing you think of when you wake up?
Oh No.. its morning already!!!

9. Favorite fast food place?
Hardly used to eat in fast-foods :). Gramin in Koramangala is one of my favorite restaurants though'.

10. Future child’s name?

Haven't decided, but will definitely start with an "i" :P

11. Finish this statement. “If I had lot of money I’d….?”

50% charity, 50% for me :D.

12. Do you sleep with a stuffed animal?
Nope!!

13. Storms - cool or scary?
Scary..

14. Favorite drink?
Buttermilk

15. Finish this statement, “If I had the time I would….”?
Go back and read some high school physics and chemistry :D.

16. Do you eat the stems on broccoli?
Whats broccolli ;).

17. If you could dye your hair any color, what would be your choice?
Purple

18. Name all the different cities/towns you’ve lived in?
Bangalore, Chennai, Tucson, Bay Area.

19. Favorite sports to watch?
Cricket, Tennis.

20. One nice thing about the person who sent this to you?
Natasha - A good and sweet friend who gives homeworks :).

21. What’s under your bed?
Some books, and some junk(due to lack of closet space).

22. Would you like to be born as yourself again?
Only if I can remember what all I did in this life, I would like to carry it over from where i left it :P.

23. Morning person, or night owl?
Def night owl!!!

24. Over easy, or sunny side up?
Looks like this is some 'egg' related Q. I don't eat egg in "direct" form, so N/A.

25. Favorite place to relax?
Park bench with lot of greenery and shade.

26. Favorite pie?
None

27. Favorite ice cream flavor?
All flavors.

28. Of all the people you tagged this to, who’s most likely to respond first?
Dilip. The rest are already on Nat's list. Cheating Nat!!! :P

Woh 7 Din

2008-04-04T19:03:00.000-07:00

Some of the things that I did over the last week.

1. Google Reader: Spent 2-3 hours subscribing to all the interesting RSS feeds on the net. Digg, Engadget, Scientific American, MAKE magazine, PhdComics, and many more. The advantage of Google reader is that I now spend 2 hours everyday reading all the junk stories on all the popular sites on the internet. On a serious note, some of them are very informative. Also, to my fellow bloggers, I have subscribed to your blogs, and I no longer need to visit your page to see if you have posted something. My apologies, if the hit count on your blogs, do not go up as much as they used to.

2. wget() : I downloaded the entire vyasamadhwa.org site. The site mainly has discourses in Kannada on topics like Mahabharata, BhagavadGita etc. wget is a sooper command which can download content from the web. It has some really cool options. To know more about wget, type man wget on Linux. Windows users use google :)

3. carprices.com: Which car do i buy? New one or second hand? merits, demerits? Can i afford one? Do I want a new one? These are just a few questions that are bothering the graduating batch at UoA. :). carprices.com is a decent place to start to know what you can and cannot afford, before you get into the details.

4. LICENSE!! : I almost forgot. We rented a car last weekend, and I finally got my driving license. Huge Relief!!!!

5. LOTR Marathon: I watched 6hrs of non-stop Lord of the Rings. What started of as a one-DVD-a-day thing, ended up being an all-night thing. Just couldn't control myself after The Two Towers. I started Return of the Kings at 12:45AM and it went on till 4:45AM, all thanks to Bhavin's extended DVD set. :D

Hope I get to do some useful stuff this week.

What do you do???

2008-03-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

When you have 2 things, both equally good , equally interesting, and well, equal in almost all respects, but you have to choose only one of those two, what do you do???

DeCipher this...

2008-02-28T21:50:00.000-08:00

This is one of the dirtiest C code I have ever written. If you can decipher this, you can consider yourself GOD in C. I know its pretty dumb to ask you to do this without knowing the context, but then to be GOD, you have to have such supernatural powers. :)

uint64 next_ptr
uint64 *HEAP;
uint64 heap_size;

if((*(uint64*)(*(uint64*)next_ptr - 8) > *(uint64*)&HEAP) &&
((long)(*(uint64*)(*(uint64*)next_ptr - 8) - *(uint64*)&HEAP)/8 < heap_size/2))
{
memcpy((uint64*)next_ptr, (uint64*)(*(uint64*)next_ptr - 8), sizeof(uint64));
}

Life of a Grad Student

2008-02-28T18:26:00.000-08:00

I guess I have been so busy (my inner mind says "Come on!!! accept it .. call it lazy").. OK.. so lazy that I had forgot to keep a tab on the comics at phdcomics.com... The reward for this laziness was that I had a good laugh for 15 minutes, catching up on all the strips since Oct '07 :).. See laziness is actually GOOD.

For all those, who are grad students you MUST read the comic strips in here. The author Jorge Cham, portrays the life of a grad student perfectly. For to-be grads, DONT READ THE COMICS NOW.. Bookmark the site and remember to read when you are, say 2 months into your grad life.

PS: If you are a new reader, read all the comics from the beginning in order to enjoy the comics better. Which means, as of today, you would have to catch up "only" 983 comic strips. So start reading sooon!!!!

Oooops..

2008-02-10T12:50:00.000-08:00

For all those, who made the mistake of reading my last blog, please read this one as well. Supposedly, the online software that i mentioned in my previous blog will only file the resident tax form (1040EZ). International students have to file 1040NR-EZ. I dont know what difference this makes, but technically 1040NR-EZ is the correct form for international students. But hey, I filed 1040EZ last year and I filed 1040EZ this year as well, AND I have got a mail which says that my e-file has been accepted by IRS. So....

A 'Tax'ing Ordeal

2008-02-08T11:39:00.000-08:00

YESS!!!!... I am done filing my taxes. Phew!!, I am sure, I dint spend this much time, to even make the money, for which I am paying taxes :).. But, if it was not for Intuit's Tax Freedom Project, this whole process would have been a bigger nightmare. Seriously the tax forms in the US are much worse than India's forms. Add to that all this complexity of Federal Tax and individual state taxes, sometimes, you just want to give up. But then, Uncle Sam generously held back 20% of my salary in taxes, when i owed him only 10%. So, I had to fight it out, and I WON!!!. :D

For all those people in the US, I would definitely recommend Intuit's Tax Freedom. You can e-file your taxes here, and if you have earned less than 30K last year, you can file for FREE.. BTW, this is a legitimate site referenced by a AZ Govt Site. So, I guess its safe to use.

Happy filing!!

Andaz Apna Apna

2008-02-06T18:16:00.000-08:00

Well.. obviously this is not a review for Andaz Apna Apna. Firstly, I badly wanted to write about something, but couldn't think of anything, and secondly I was watching this movie yesterday for the zillionth time. And I never get bored of this movie. This is one of the best comedy movies ever. Importantly, comedy is part of it from the first scene to the last scene, unlike other comedy movies, which tend to cross the stupidity line somewhere in the movie. I remember watching this movie with my cousin, and we would rewind it and watch a few scenes over and over, and literally fall on the floor laughing. So famous is this movie still, that, dialogues in them, are part of our conversation now here at UoA. People literally wait for an opportunity to use them. Some of the famous dialogues

"Tum lo tum lo, tumhare birthday he."
"Tumhe than, man aur Dhan se sweekar karonga"
and the best.. "Sir lakh lakh ke pachas cheque honge sir"

If you cant recollect these dialogues, its time to watch it again. Enjoy!!

PS: I thought zillion was some number like billion trillion. It turns out that, its just a fictitious number, used to imply a very large number. Fact for the day :).

Happy Birthday to me :)

2008-01-31T08:24:00.000-08:00

Wow, a second post, and so soon.. I have to praise myself for this :P. This post marks my 25th Birthday. And it surely was a memorable one. Check out this cake that my friends at UoA had made. I mean, they MADE it. Hats off to you guys..

On the superstitious side, this post has another intention. My Mom always used to say that if you start something, make sure you do it again atleast on the second day. If you don't do it, then it supposed to be Dvithiya Vigna, and you might never do it again. So, here it is..

The Beginning of the End..

2008-01-30T19:16:00.000-08:00

After a lot of thought, I finally decided to start blogging. I have been a regular blog-reader, and writing is not something i really enjoy. However, over the last couple of months, my laziness had reached new heights, and I have now got tired of being lazy. The good part, though, of being lazy is that it brings out all these new urges to do some extreme things, which you would normally not dare to think of when busy. I guess blogging is one of those many urges that was fortunate to materialize. Hoping that this post will mark an end to my laziness :). Time will tell.