Good Times

Yesterday was a good day by most counts.

First, the France telecom guys showed up (after their crazy SMS to me two days ago that they will come on the 9th of November at 00:00hrs!).

Turns out that the wire was disconnected in the circuit box outside my apartment. They attached it, and my Internet works! :)

The Second (and perhaps the biggest) piece of news was that my journal paper to the IEEE Transactions on Computers, which was under minor revision, has finally been accepted without any more changes. Now just a week more to upload all the files, and it will be done :).

Thirdly, I realized that neuf now allows free phone calls (using the VoIP phone that comes as part of my DSL plan) to INDIAN LANDLINES also!

Fourthly, I finally installed 64-bit Ubuntu Linux on my new desktop, (pre-assembly picture here) and can properly use its 4GB of RAM and 500GB Harddrive. And yes, portal is running well on it :). See screenshot below.



And the final good news came last night, when I realized that the free channels that come with my IPTV (again, part of my DSL plan), include Zee Music! Finally, auto-playing new bollywood video songs in the background :).

Life, in short, is good.

-A
P.S. Tonight is nuit blanche, and I will be meeting Barman and Dalal from my ITBHU days. More good times :)

Married!

No no, not me, but someone (some - two?) very very close to me :-).



Just came back from a weekend in India, where the handsome Pranay and the lovely Tripti cemented their love and friendship of nearly 10 years into the bond of marriage. I am still speechless trying to express my emotions about this, having been witness to their beautiful relationship since literally the day he laid eyes on her :).

It was also a good time for a reunion of GAP, the three co-creators of Grover-Arya-Pathak productions, which created quite some theatre (and made quite some friends) back in BHU.

Here we are :)



and here we are, more complete, with Varun's wonderful wife R, who also played a wonderful hostess to me in Mumbai.



2 down. 1 to go :-).

There were, of course, more people from ITBHU whom I met after a long time, and we had tons of fun. We also had the first meeting of the co-founders of Never Forget, since Varun, Aman, Anupama, and I were in the same city. Pictures coming when I manage to upload them :).

and now, the first time since last Wednesday night, time for some more-than-3-hours-of-continuous sleep
-A
P.S. Guess who is in possession of two kilos of the finest fresh Indian Mangoes :-).

Positive Developments

After my last post on fighting negativity, I think it is only fair that I share with you specific updates on those very things that were negative that day.

Firstly, Ms. Anjali Waghmare has been provided adequate security by the govt. and will proceed to represent Kasab in the Mumbai terror case. I, for one, will be closely following the proceedings of this case.

Secondly, the J&K Chief Minister, who has already shown that he is tech-savvy, has ordered a probe into the manhandling of the RTI activist Mr. Ganai. Another issue I will be following.

And in other positive news, the ITBHU Global Alumni Association has finally received notification that it is a bona-fide tax-exempt non-profit :).

And further, someone has been elected to the post of "Deputy Directory - Website" of the above organization :).

On the work front, my RFID readers are here, and I can get started on the experiments I wanted to do for some time now.

And finally, thanks to A again, here is another playlist of some nice songs.



ciao!

Hunger, Terror and Music

First all, thanks for your comments on the new look (ranging from 'you look good' to 'I never thought you could look nerdier').

In main news, as last year, and the one before, I am fasting today for the fast-a-thon organized by the USC MSU. A whole bunch of other people are too, and so far it has been good. Each year when I do this, I realize how one's sense of smell increases when one is hungry :(. I think I now realize how the hungry kids at the BHU Temple felt when they are around the snack shops. [Note to self: Must try to introduce such a system in my next workplace]

In other news, as I was looking at my incoming traffic yesterday, I realized that Abi had linked to my post about Randy Pausch! I must say I am honored to be linked from his blog, but also a bit perplexed as to how he saw my blog post in the first place :-?

In any case, it was a pleasure reading his posts, esp. the one about myths about terrorists. I feel proud in mentioning that he is a fellow ITBHU alum :-).

Finally, check out the songs of Laga Chunari Mein Daag, amazing stuff. I especially like Hum to Aise Hain and Kachchi Kaliyan - very nice lyrics and good music. With Rani Mukherjee, Konkona Sen and Jaya Bachchan, this one is a must watch!

That's it for now folks... I will resume work [and the wait for sunset :-)]
-A

Paper, Poster, and Tricolor

The past couple of days were spent in Santa Fe, NM, at DCOSS - a premier conference in sensor networks, my research area. Apart from presenting my paper and poster, I was also here to help my advisor in organizing the conference.

The talk took 20 minutes [the presentation had gone through some 5 revisions in the process], and at the end of it, to my horror, noone asked a question! Obviously, I had failed to connect with the audience. Then the session chair, who is bound by duty to ask a question if the speaker gets none, asked me one I answered it, and suddenly, 5 hands went up in the audience! I was like, where the hell were you guys before?!

Anyways, I answered the questions, and proceeded downstairs for my demo. To my pleasant surprise, both the keynote speakers, Richard Karp and P. R. Kumar, both very big guys in the area, spent some time at my poster/demo, and seemed interested in my work :).

My advisor was also pleased with my performance, and so I figured that it was a good time to talk about my future plans - that of going back to ITBHU as a faculty member.

Once again, surprisingly, he was not the least bit concerned with the "why are you missing out on golden opportunities in the states" argument that I have been given so often by others who know of my plans. He was very supportive, and seemed to appreciate the idea :). The only requirement - do lots of research before you graduate! But hey, isn't that what a PhD is all about?

So, in summary, things are looking up, and tons of more work needs to be done, but I am excited!

-A
P.S. I visited Los Alamos last night and met Zack. We went for a hike, got some freshly made pizza with his girlfriend, and saw "The Matrix" on his home projector. Good times!