Live like you mean it

New Years at Snigi's place

2012-01-03T07:55:00.000-08:00

Winter Grilling

2011-12-19T08:17:00.001-08:00

Durham Food Bank

2011-12-15T16:40:00.000-08:00

Spent a day volunteering at the Durham Food Bank today. Was a nice experience. Made me feel glad that I studied well and got a degree otherwise life would be really difficult.

Long time....

2011-12-11T18:17:00.000-08:00

It's been a while that I posted anything. Have been really busy with family, work and workout....Have started swimming regularly as the doc has asked to stop running for couple of weeks because of my knee....I am really enjoying swimming but need to work hard on my stamina....

This weekend was good except that Shlok is sick. Had Abhi and Poonam for a cookout at our place....fixed the dishwasher completely by myself...went swimming...had fun with Tanu and Shlok.....Looking forward to busy week ahead....

Labor day

2011-09-06T11:21:00.001-07:00

From Labor day 2011

Kramer vs Kramer

2011-07-26T20:27:00.000-07:00

Watched Kramer vs Kramer. One of the best movies ever about a Father Son relationship.

Austin trip

2011-06-26T16:01:00.000-07:00

From Austin trip 2011

Old friends are like an old pair of shoes, always comfortable. As I grow old I realize that there are fewer and fewer people that I can really connect with. You make your life long friends when you are young and I have been fortunate to have an awesome bunch of friends who have always been there for me.

Veritgo

2011-06-08T20:54:00.001-07:00

From skydive

Jumping from 15500 feet.

Godel's incompleteness theorem

2011-04-29T20:41:00.001-07:00

A beautiful explanation of Godel's incompleteness theorem using diagonalization.

Happy 2nd Birthday

2011-04-25T11:59:00.001-07:00

From Shlok's second birthday

Spring gardening

2011-04-16T21:16:00.000-07:00

From Shlok

Tanu and her little helper were putting up new plants today. The little helper was too eager to help his mom.

Perfect evening

2011-04-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

It's grey and raining outside. Tanu and Mom are watching a Hindi movie and cooking great smelling food. Shlok is playing toys in his room while I am reading a book in my room and waiting for dinner.

Masters of Doom

2011-03-29T17:41:00.000-07:00

Finished reading Masters of Doom. A really good read, infact I liked more than The Soul of a new machine

Shlok enjoying time with Grandma

2011-03-21T16:29:00.000-07:00

From Mom visit 2011

Awesome day at the beach

2011-02-22T06:43:00.000-08:00

From President's day 2011

Shlok getting naughty

2011-02-07T19:33:00.000-08:00

From Shlok

The elements of computing systems

2011-02-05T15:18:00.000-08:00

Have started reading (and have in fact completed more than half of) The Elements of Computing Systems. The book is more about learning by doing than learning by reading. I have also been completing all of the software projects as I go through various chapters in the book. It's been a great learning experience and I wish I had something like this during my undergrad days. It's must read for all Computer Science students.

Christmas

2011-01-03T13:06:00.000-08:00

From Christmas 2010

Came back from a great vacation, completely recharged for the new year.

Angry birds - The best game ever

2010-12-19T14:16:00.000-08:00

Have been hooked on to playing Angry Birds on my phone. This is one of the best mobile games I have played after tetris. Shlok is addicted to it as well. Both of us clear atleast 1 level every night before we sleep. Much better than reading bedtime books :)

10 days of Christmas

2010-12-17T14:00:00.000-08:00

Gearing up for another vacation. This time heading mid-west to meet my sis and cousins for 10 days of Christmas and New Year. Lots of good food and booze.

California

2010-11-29T19:32:00.000-08:00

From California 2010

Had been to California during the Thanksgiving week. Had a great time roaming the state and meeting all of my relatives and friends during our trip of 9 days.

Udaan

2010-10-09T16:25:00.001-07:00

Tanu and I watched Udaan this evening and we really loved it. It's worth watching if you are a parent and since it is available via streaming on Netflix .

Loving Mac

2010-10-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

I have switched over to using MacBook Pro for work and am loving it. The best part of the macbook pro is that I have got port working, so I can get all of my open source tools on Mac as well.

Shlok's day at the farm

2010-10-03T14:19:00.000-07:00

From Shlok's day at the farm

We took Shlok to a farm yesterday afternoon. Was great fun. We are now gearing up for Diwali followed by Halloween.

Shlok goofing in the parking lot

2010-09-23T08:43:00.000-07:00

Touch me not

2010-09-10T11:25:00.000-07:00

From Shlok

Udaan

2010-08-26T19:39:00.001-07:00

Has awesome soundtrack. Waiting for the release of the DVD.

Statecharts

2010-08-23T16:50:00.000-07:00

Most of the software development that I have been involved until now has used a non-deterministic approach of solving problems. As a results some of the details are missed and I have hit some unexpected bugs. These bugs are especially expensive and painful as we get close to the release date. I have been in unpleasant situations because of such problems.

Few weeks ago I moved to the SAN (Storage Area Networks) development team at Netapp and came across some really good engineering ideas like FSM (Finite State Machines). I had studied FSMs in school but never had an opportunity to use them in real life until now. FSMs have a property of forcing developers to think about software in a more deterministic manner and seems to result in much less buggy software. There is an initial learning curve involved but once you get a hang of it, the tool is a time saver.

However being amused with this model of software design I started reading more (research papers) about it and then stumbled upon "UML statecharts" which are basically FSMs on steroids. This design model is much more powerful and reduces design complexity by adding hierarchical layers of abstraction. Also there is a very good paper "Coverting Statecharts into Java code" which explains this concept really well in practical terms. I am hoping to get a chance to use this tool someday, however I need to reckon to use the right tool for the right job.

Family time

2010-08-08T15:15:00.001-07:00

Rainy evening

2010-07-27T19:24:00.001-07:00

From Life

I am glad that it rained today after quite some time now, so I decided to take a stroll after coming back from work. Was beautiful.

Summer Evening

2010-07-06T07:11:00.000-07:00

From Shlok

Shlok Kissy

2010-06-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

The Annotated Turing

2010-06-22T15:04:00.000-07:00

For past couple of weeks I have been reading The Annotated Turing in the evenings. No question this is one of the best computer science books I have. I still haven't finished it but I am bit bored of it now. It is pretty heavy on Math and requires serious concentration while reading. It's more like learning than reading for pleasure and hence I have no motivation of pursuing it further, at least for now. However I am happy that I read (not read conquered) the first 9 chapters of the book and wish I had read the book during my undergraduate days when math and logic were fresh on my mind. Hopefully will get back to the remaining chapters sometime in future.

Also I bought Godel's proof from amazon and am excited to read it.

Enjoying the ocean

2010-06-21T17:18:00.000-07:00

Had spent the weekend in the coastal town of Charleston.

Feeling alive!!!

2010-05-20T16:13:00.000-07:00

I spent most of the evenings this week assembling my road bike which had arrived in parts via mail. I got it ready yesterday night after the brake assembly. Woke up at 5.30 am this morning, tested and made sure that the gear assembly on the bike was fine as well. Went to work after that and came back by 5.30 pm.

I had my dinner at 6 pm, read a little bit and then decided to take my new road bike for a spin. Boy!!! what a feeling. Road biking is completely different than mountain biking. It's much more faster and much more thrilling as compared to mountain biking (which is more adventurous but slow). Next week I plan to practice around in the town to get a hang of the bike, especially changing gears. After that I plan to ride my road bike daily to the office. A perfect combination of fitness and fun (and lots of sweat).

Road bike

2010-05-11T19:40:00.000-07:00

Bought a new road bike to commute to office at least twice a week. Have dumped my mountain bike in the garage.

Naaka gang

2010-05-02T17:54:00.001-07:00

From Shlok and Vishal's Birthday

All the US members of the Naaka Gang were are our place to celebrate Shlok's first birthday. Had a great time!!!

Birthday morning

2010-04-22T19:21:00.001-07:00

From Shlok's First Birthday - Home

The greatest pleasure in life is doing what others say you can't

2010-04-06T19:24:00.000-07:00

I have been waiting for almost two years to write this blog post. The reason being for the past two years I have been working on a software project at Netapp, which most people thought was a foolish thing to pursue however it got completed today (I cannot reveal the details of the project for obvious reasons).

It all began three years ago (2007), when I had delivered two successful projects in a single release. At that time I was confident than ever and came about with the idea of this "foolish" project. I remember giving a presentation about the "foolish" project and bragging about it making into the same release that had my previous two projects. I was super certain that nothing could stop me from implementing this project. I went about designing and implementing the project and after fighting some tough battles was able to finish it in about 6 months by mid of 2007. I was feeling great about myself. However the worse followed as people started using the feature I had developed. It failed miserably and caused lots of pain especially since it started blocking the work of the other teams. My changes were about to put the whole product at risk and that is when sanity kicked it and we had to back out all of my changes towards the end of the year.

This failure was one of most embarrassing periods of my life. It was difficult facing the reality that I could fail, as I had never failed before. Also the worst thing was my manager (at that time) had taken a huge risk along with me and I had let him down. It was extremely tough sucking my ego and accepting failure. But in the end I did.

After the fiasco, I was almost about to give up on the idea when my manager came up to me and offered me a second chance. Second chances are extremely rare in life but I was fortunate (have always been) to get one. However this time I decided to slow down and not rush with the whole thing. I also tagged along with a senior engineer who was simply super brilliant. I had to do lots of soul searching after the failure and I did that by reading lots of books about the techniques of crafting a high quality software. Reading the books, practicing and working with my collegue I realised how naive I was. I started acknowledging my short comings and started consciously working on them. It was lots of hard work but when I look back now it was all worth it.

Since I had failed the first time implementing the project everyone was really skeptical about our second try. The battles we had to fight, the investigations, the measurements that we had to conduct, were ten times harder than before. However we stood strong and weathered all the storm. The first victory was getting our design accepted and we succeeded at it after presenting it to some of the senior most engineers at Netapp located at different geographies around the world. However once that was done my collegue had to leave our tag team and I was by myself once again. The next challenge was driving the implementation. This involved lots of coding, sleepless nights debugging, conducting inspections, reviews, no weekends. Everyday during the implementation phase I use to find a new problem however the thought of me getting a second chance kept me motivated to fix everything that stood in my way. I kept on going until finally when I have merged in my changes today.

Truly this has been one of the most exciting journeys that I have had as far as my profession goes. I can only hope I am faced with similar challenges again in the future. However I have learned some really important life lessons on the way and would like to share

* Opportunities are not given, you need to create or grab one for your self. True success lies in not doing what everyone else does but in doing what no one else wants to do.
* Failure is the biggest stepping stone for success. If you don't fail that means you aren't pushing hard enough in life. It is worth failing 99 times inorder to succeed once.
* When you fail, you just need to grab yourself up and move on. (This is applicable in relationships as well)
* Keep your skepticism in check, we tend to be more skeptical as we grow old. Too much skepticism is the surest way of killing new ideas and innovations.
* You need to keep on updating your knowledge. The day you stop learning anything new you are as good as dead.
* You live only once and hence it is important you do what you really like and are passionate about (Even today writing good software gives me the same happiness as writing my first C program)
* At the end of the day, career, money, success and fame do not matter if you don't have a happy family to come back to. For home is the place where your heart truly is.

The Annotated Turing

2010-03-31T09:51:00.000-07:00

Bought The Annotated Turing from amazon yesterday. Am dying to read it. Currently am reading Calculus made easy

Mirror...

2010-03-29T20:47:00.000-07:00

From Life

Shlok going out with Mommie....

2010-03-21T20:16:00.000-07:00

Shopping...Boring....

2010-03-11T17:20:00.001-08:00

From Shlok

Dreaming in code....

2010-02-28T18:07:00.001-08:00

Past two weeks have been really tough since I have been putting in almost 10 - 12 hours of work (C programming) almost every day. My project is at the stage of completion and we are currently conducting extensive reviews. As usual there are last moment issues to resolve and the time is really short....When I am not working, I am usually "dreaming in code".

Shlok and Tanu

2010-02-13T10:12:00.001-08:00

Twisted

2010-02-10T16:37:00.001-08:00

Immigrant woes

2010-02-06T08:09:00.000-08:00

Have been following the "Mumbai jobs for Marathi" debate for a while now. I find the argument simply baseless and utter bulls*(&. I think the Marathi leaders should realize that the economic opportunities in Mumbai are not created by Maharashtrains but mainly Gujus, Marwadis and Sindhis. Also it is important to note that most of the Bollywood consists of non-Maharashtrains. I think the leaders of Marathi manus are trying to pull off a political stunt and unfortunately ignorant Maharashtrains will fall for it.

The situation in Mumbai is quite similar to the one in the US. Because of the economic crisis, Obama has been pitching jobs for Americans. However the the mainstreet in US is still hurting in spite of the wasteful spending of the stimulus money. More government employees are now making six figure salaries (really boils my blood as it is our tax money), the fat cats at the banks are still making millions of dollars while layoffs at private businesses have still not stopped.

I guess, the political saga is same across all democratic countries.

Let it snow, let it snow

2010-01-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

From MorrisvilleSnow10

Tanu and me decided to take a walk across our neighbourhood...

Movie weekend

2010-01-29T19:51:00.000-08:00

It is expected to snow heavily in Morrisville this weekend, as a result we plan to stay inside most of the time. However we bought some awesome movies to watch this weekend

1) Rocket Singh
2) 3 idiots
3) Wake up Sid

Infact we have already watched Rocket Singh and I think it is one of the best Hindi movies that I saw in a long time. I am glad we bought the DVD, will definitely watch it again.

Hamara Bajaj

2010-01-25T20:23:00.001-08:00

From Detroit Trip

Onto Windoze

2010-01-13T19:48:00.000-08:00

For past seven years I have working exclusively on Unix based platforms. In fact even at home all our laptops and desktops have Linux running on them. Damn, even my cellphone (Android) runs Linux.

However my next adventure at Netapp is about to introduce me to the wonderful world of CIFS . Now since CIFS is a closed proprietary protocol by Microsoft there is hardly any good documentation available. However some good folks have reversed engineered the protocol and have posted a free book online. I am trying to learn the guts of the protocol using this book.

Hoodie

2010-01-08T14:18:00.000-08:00

Cold walk

2010-01-03T14:58:00.000-08:00

Morrisville is currently engulfed with a cold wave which is suppose to last for atleast two weeks. Due to this I had cut short my Columbia stay (after we got there from Detroit) as I had to rush back home to start the heaters to keep our home warm and prevent the water pipes from brusting.

Anyway I decided to take a walk through our sub division on this chilly afternoon. It was freezing (28F or -2C) but the sky was beautiful

Fermat's last theorem

2010-01-02T10:57:00.000-08:00

Finished reading Fermat's last theorem by Simon Singh. A really nice book about mathematics. For the first time in my life I could grasp some of the mathematical concepts so clearly via this book. I wish I had read this book when I was in high school.

Morning

2009-12-21T18:39:00.000-08:00

Outliers

2009-12-18T10:51:00.000-08:00

Have been reading Outliers for a couple of days now. An awesome read and highly recommended. My friend has articulated really well what the book is about.

The moral of the story is, to be an Outlier you need to work super hard (10000 hours of practice) in addition to being at the right place at the right time.

Avatar + Netapp

2009-12-18T07:17:00.000-08:00

Today our team at Netapp is going to watch Avatar in Imax 3D, unfortunately I will be missing it since I am working remotely from Columbia.

However the release of Avatar is a very proud moment for our (performance) team at NetApp, since Avatar was using NetApp as storage for all of their rendering work, without breaking a sweat. It's always fun working on the cutting edge technologies.

Tipping Point

2009-12-13T13:59:00.000-08:00

Finished reading Tipping point by Gladwell. I really wanted to read this book but finally got it after my ex-roomy Ankur strongly recommended it to me. The book makes some really good points, however I think Freakonomics was a better read.

I have also got Outliers by Gladwell. Plan to read it next.

christmas shopping

2009-12-12T19:59:00.000-08:00

Mom, Tanu, Shlok and myself had been outside for holiday shopping today....We are gearing up for our week long Christmas trip to detroit....

Also bought Motorola Droid and switched over to verizon (screw at&t)...It's a super awesome phone...Much better than iPhone. Clicked and uploaded the above picture with my cellphone

Khanderayachya Lagnala

2009-12-08T20:37:00.000-08:00

Mom is back from India and she bought along a Marathi SAREGAMAPA DVD on her way back. All of the songs in this DVD are really good but "Khanderayachya Lagnala" is my favorite.

Shlok on youtube

2009-12-05T10:02:00.001-08:00

Playlist Shlok

Sunrise

2009-12-02T18:12:00.000-08:00

Live long and prosper

2009-11-27T19:50:00.000-08:00

It was a chilly Friday evening with it being dark outside and fog every around our house...Shlok was sleeping upstairs...We had our fireplace on in the living room...We had cooked some awesome food for dinner along with some sweet desert (hot brownies)...Tanu was sipping a juice...while I was drinking a cold ale...and we were watching the new "Star Trek" together...Sometimes life feels too perfect to be true....

Hike at Bond Lake

2009-11-26T15:36:00.000-08:00

Had been for a hike today with Shlok and Tanu...This was the first time Tanu came out for a hike after her pregnancy...Was great fun

One year since Mhais...

2009-11-25T17:44:00.000-08:00

Can't believe it's been more than a year since we (the ghati gang) enacted Mhais ....Was watching the video on youtube today....Was so much fun...Wish could go through that experience again.

Crazy weekend

2009-11-23T16:25:00.000-08:00

Shlok has been staying with me since Tanu move to Columbia about 12 days ago...We could not ship Shlok with her since it's new place for us....and we have friends and doctors in Morrisville but know hardly anyone there...

Tanu was suppose to visit us this weekend but was drained out due to the flu...To make matters worse she was really homesick and was missing us a lot....So I decided to do a crazy stunt of driving with Shlok to Columbia for the weekend....I wrapped up my work bit early on Friday and started packing...I picked up Shlok from the day care at 5.30 pm...fed him at 6.30 pm ...bathed him at 7.30pm and put him to sleep by 8.30 pm...I then installed him in the car seat and drove 250 miles straight to Columbia...Was this worth it? definitely!!! Seeing Tanu smile and seeing Shloky sleep comfortably next to her that night made it all worth it....

Getting back to Morriville was all the more adventuresome, since I repeated the same feat but this time I drove continuously through heavy thunderstorms....Gave Shlok a big hug and big bottle of milk once we reached home...Can't wait for Tanu to get back home tomorrow for thanksgiving weekend...Hopefully we will be catching up a lot with our friends here in good old Morrisville...

Saang Saang Bholanath!!!

2009-11-22T15:41:00.000-08:00

Shlok loves listening to this song while having his dinner

Yoga

2009-11-17T19:00:00.000-08:00

Had given up on Yoga since Shlok was born...But have started back again...Unfortunately haven't got back to the complete yoga sessions that I use to do every morning...Anyway however crazy my schedule is (especially managing work and home along with Shlok)...I somehow squeeze out 15 minutes each morning for "Anulom Vilom" and "Kapalbhati"...

Have skipped the gym for couple weeks now...hopefully will get back on a regular workout schedule as well...

And oh yeah and haven't read anything lately..that sucks too..

Wrapped by Python

2009-11-14T10:17:00.000-08:00

One of my colleagues pointed to this python website having nice slides/tutorials on some of the advanced concepts in Python.

Screen

2009-11-07T03:25:00.000-08:00

Have been playing with the ridiculously awesome Unix screen command. I regret not knowing about this until now.

Screen is an awesome tool which lets you create several terminal windows on a unix server and lets you to connect them from any host. I have created development, unit testing etc windows on my office Unix server. I do development work using these windows on my office machine and once I get back home I get the same windows on my home machine using screen. This is super awesome and has boosted my productivity like anything, since I have the habit of keeping > 10 windows open at a time and I do not have to reopen these when I get back home. Love virtualization.

Shlok the tigger

2009-11-06T14:32:00.000-08:00

This was Shlok's first Halloween and Tanu dressed him as "Tigger". It was fun to see all of the kids from our community drop by our house for "Trick or Treat". Tanu and Shlok we sitting outside the garage meeting folks and treating the kids from our neighbourhood while I was busy inside making preparations for the dinner with our friends.

MTV Enjoi Shlok

2009-10-29T19:06:00.000-07:00

Uploaded new pictures of Shlok .

Look who is naughty

2009-10-26T18:56:00.001-07:00

Leapforword

2009-10-10T09:52:00.001-07:00

Leap For Word is officially a Non-Profit organization.

"No risks, No rewards"

2009-10-06T18:42:00.001-07:00

Today I had a review meeting where I presented a software design for a very large and complex project for NetApp's next release. The review meeting went really well and it seems that our design has been accepted. This was the first time I gave such a presentation to so such a varied audience consisting of Technical Directors, Senior engineers etc spanning multiple geographies and time lines.

This is the most complex project that I have ever worked on. It will really awesome if we are able to pull it off, since I was the original proposer of the project and that no one else wanted to undertake it because of the complexity.

Fall's here

2009-10-04T21:59:00.001-07:00

It's getting cooler...And Shlok is getting cuter.

Parenting an infant

2009-10-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

I went to the public library today to pick up "Einstein's Dreams". However on reaching the library I decided to browse some more isles to see if I could find anything else interesting. I stumbled upon the book No: Why Kids--of All Ages--Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It and thought it would be good read for Tanu and ended picking it up as well.

However on reaching home after reading "Einstein's Dreams" for a little while, I decided to give the other book a try. This idea turned to be really good and I really enjoyed reading the sixth chapter of the book regarding baby's first year. This chapter was really insightful for me and some of the highlight's from this chapter were

i) Infants need to be touched and cuddled a lot during the first year
ii) TV should be avoided completely for the first two years of a child's life to avoid attention problems when they reach the school age
iii) Developing a strong connection with your child influences his behaviour in a very positive way.
iv) It is very important to make your child feel secure during his first year (i.e. do not yell or scream at him if he makes a mistake or irritates you). There is scientific reason for this, the reason being under stressful situations our body emits cortisol which dampens the memory centre of the brain. Hence if the baby experiences stress repeatedly the constantly emitted cortisol hinders the ability of the baby to register memories effectively.
v) Reassuring experiences lay the groundwork for sense of trust and security, while frightening incidents (like scolding) leads to a sense of insecurity and mistrust.
vi) It is good to expand the circle of connection for the babies i.e. it is good to have grandparents around a lot during the first year of the baby (Fortunately this is true for Shlok)
vii) Infants tend to put most of the things in their mouth, the reason being taste is the most developed sense for infant out of the five senses. As the other senses develop this habit decreases gradually and dies of eventually.
viii) As babies grow they start playing more with food as their sense of touch develops. This is because they want to sense the texture of food.
ix) Till 18 months of age infants misbehave not deliberately but out of curiosity, hence when you say No, stay it firmly but with a gentle tone. Also it is important to support this curiosity than to kill it.

World cloud generator

2009-09-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Wordle

Books to read

2009-09-28T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-26T20:08:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-25T19:13:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-22T20:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-19T20:43:00.000-07:00

Varuna Yajna

How to castrate a bull

2009-09-18T18:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-14T18:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-08T18:38:00.000-07:00

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.

Saturday evening

2009-08-30T15:31:00.000-07:00

Have been working most of the weekend...However yesterday evening was fun, with Abhinav, Poonam and Poonam's mom at our place for dinner. Poonam's mom is flying back to India next weekend and we really wanted to invite her for dinner at our place. It has always been fun to meet Abhinav and Poonam over weekends. Before Shlok we use to play lots of games or watch movies on saturday nites (with Vipul and Heena joining us sometimes). However our definition of weekend fun has changed now, it is mostly about having fun with our kido.

Ganapati Bappa Moriya!!!

2009-08-23T18:29:00.001-07:00

Shlok trying to grab a piece of the Modak.

Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places

2009-08-03T19:49:00.000-07:00

Tanu has got a job with Intel in Columbia, SC (about three hours from home). So she, Shlok and my Mom will be moving there soon and I will be driving to and fro to meet them over the weekends. Also Intel seems to be bit flexible as far as family goes and said that she could work from Morrisville for extended periods especially during festivals and family get-together occasions.

Also can't believe an old friend of mine from iflex, Hemant Verma and his wife, are currently located in Columbia, SC as well, thanks to Facebook.

Mountain biking again...

2009-07-26T11:04:00.000-07:00

I had mountain biked a lot during my summer internship at Las Alamos, New Mexico in the summer of 2004. I really enjoyed the experience and was in a great shape (had lost almost 20 pounds) after that.

I just learned the past week that the town of Morrisville had carved a mountain bike trail from our sub division to Netapp. Damn, am excited about this and will tuning my mountain bike soon. I plan to ditch my car and bike to office instead.

Measure your charm....

2009-07-23T18:14:00.000-07:00

On facebook

Leap forword

2009-07-18T20:55:00.000-07:00

Why leap forword makes sense for India.

Passport

2009-07-15T19:44:00.000-07:00

Tanu and me went to the post office to apply for Shlok's passport today. Can't believe, it took us less than 10 minutes to complete the application process. We just had to fill in a one page form and everything else was taken care off.

Also it's funny, that our son is an American while his parents are desis. Lucky him.

Evening Strolls

2009-07-01T20:22:00.000-07:00

Shlok is more than two months old now and we have started taking him out for walks. Infact that idea has backfired a bit since he hates being at home now. Whenever he cries I take him out of the house and he shuts up as if I have pushed his stop crying switch. Anyway Tanu and me take him out for a stroll every evening around our subdivision in the baby carrier. He really loves the stroll with all the trees on the pathway, but becomes a pain in the butt once we get back home.

Leap Forword

2009-06-30T07:27:00.000-07:00

One of my dear friends from my under graduate days, Pranil Naik, has started a project in India to promote spoken and written English skills amongst financially challenged young men and women. The project is aptly named Leap Forword. Will be working on getting it promoted in the US.

Good Quotes

2009-06-14T07:51:00.000-07:00

* We r all a part of a puzzle in somone's life. U may never know where u fit, but someone's life may never be complete without U!!!
* A smiling face doesn't always mean the absence of sorrow but the ability to deal with it.

Getting xxdiff working with svn

2009-06-02T18:30:00.000-07:00

I simply love xxdiff as a diff tool to compare source code. Unfortunately there is no easy way to get xxdiff working with svn and hence I wrote a small python based tool implement this svn feature.

#!/usr/bin/env python

import sys
import os

if len(sys.argv) != 2:
        print "%s filename" % sys.argv[0]
        sys.exit(0)

if not os.path.exists(sys.argv[1]):
        print "File %s does not exist" % sys.argv[1]
        sys.exit(0)

filename =  os.path.split(sys.argv[1])[1]

cmd = "svn cat %s > ~/tmp/%s.old" % (sys.argv[1], filename)
os.system(cmd)

cmd = "xxdiff ~/tmp/%s.old %s" % (filename, sys.argv[1])
os.system(cmd)

30+

2009-05-24T09:08:00.000-07:00

I recently turned 30 years old (fsck!!!) and a thought crossed my mind about what were the best thirty things that happened to me in my life so far. I think following make up the list

1) Spending summers at my grandparent's place
2) Dad taking Snigi and me to the movies
3) Standing 1st in my school for my 10th grade.
4) Spending evenings with my Naka (best) friends
5) Spending college summers at Vinayak's place in Panchgani
6) Mahableshwar trip with Amit, Makaad and Sameer
7) Trip to Goa with SPCE friends
8) Time spent at Bangalore for my first job training
9) Walks on Juhu beach
10) Mom and Dad's 25th wedding anniversary which was a kind of mini-wedding
11) Getting my US F1 visa
12) Landing in Chicago and going nuts over the US
13) Getting assistantship at Clemson
14) Working at PARL (Parallel Architecture Research Lab)
15) Barbecue parties at Will's place
16) Clemson weekends at the pubs with Ankur, Bully, Bonda, Matt and Korade.
17) Raquette ball and Frisbee games at Clemson
18) Writing the script along with Matt for the desi play at Clemson
19) Mountain biking at Los Alamos for 3 months during my intern ship (which I hated)
20) Tanu and me spending time at Harvard square in Boston
21) Tanu and me hiking chimney top (the tallest peak in Tennessee)
22) Watching "Before Sunset"
23) Weekend cooking and drives to Wilkesboro
24) 2006 4th of July camping trip
25) 2006 New years at time's square with Salil and Pritam.
26) Showing Mom and Dad around in the US
27) Tanu and me kayaking at lake crabtree
28) Poker nites with Morrisville friends
29) Buying our first home
30) Most important of all, Shlok arriving in our lives.

Shlok one month old

2009-05-16T17:19:00.000-07:00

Shloky will be a month old tomorrow....It's hard to believe that it has already been a month since he arrived....Waiting for him to grow up a little more so that we can go camping and kayak-ing together in the summers.