World cloud generator

Wordle

Books to read

Have reserved the following two books at the public library. Hopefully will get a chance to read these everyday once Shlok goes to bed.

Einstein's Dreams
Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Captain Shlok

It's a lazy afternoon, Tanu and Mom have gone out for Miss India North Carolina contest as one our friends, Heena, is a participant in the contest. I have been left home to entertain Captain Shlok, he doesn't seem to be very happy with me though.

Systems programming

I started my career in India as an Java application programmer. This was completely different from my training as an engineer in my undergraduate school. During my undergraduate days some of my favourite courses were compilers, systems programming and operating systems. (To be honest my undergraduate training was pathetic and makes me puke when I think about what I learned in that period).

One of my favourite undergraduate book was Modern Operating Systems by Andrew Tanenbaum. I specifically remember one of the chapters in that book deals with RPC and the NFS protocol. I am really glad that I am working on some of these technologies now. I think getting to work and develop such technologies would have just being fantasy for me if I had decided to stay back in India. My graduate studies and research really exposed and trained me on distributed computer architecture, systems programming and am loving it.

500 miles in a day

Tanu and me drove to and fro this weekend to see some more apartments in SC. This time we went to Lexington, SC, a very nice suburb known to be the best school district in SC. The suburb has some really good parks, malls and eat outs. This is really important for us since Shlok will be with Tanu for sometime and I will be working from SC couple of days a week as well.

We have almost decided on the apartment which lies in a very peaceful community. However the best part for me is that the apartment community is near Lake Murray , which as per the locals is the largest man made lake on planet earth. Tanu and me were taken aback when we drove over the dam constructed over the lake. The lake seemed as vast as a sea, with sail boats, pontoons and speed boats floating over the blue waters. There were some small islands as well with some really beautiful houses constructed on them (damn, one day I am going to buy one of those for my retirement).

Also there is a state park located near the lake which seems to rent out boats and kayaks. I am really hoping I will be able to kayak the lake next summer, since I haven't kayaked at all this year.

Boneheads

Varuna Yajna

How to castrate a bull

Just finished reading How to castrate a bull . A very simple read. It is fun to understand the history behind NetApp and learn how Netapp developed the concept of NAS which has spawned a new billion dollar storage industry.

IBM T60

Netapp has given me a new IBM T60 and am simply loving. The first thing I did on getting the laptop was to rip off windows and install Linux on it.

Facebook

Can't believe my Mom and some of my uncles are on Facebook, I think it is time for me to give up on it.

Weekend grilling

Snigi and Max were here for the long weekend, so we had a great time together grilling food, watching movies, playing cards and eating more food....Fortunately Shlok co-operated as well.