Written on 2:35 AM by Tushar
Spring break is gone and probably it is too late to post about it but since it might end up being my only (official) spring break (as I will graduate by the end of this year) it's special:)
Joined on my new on campus job as a database programmer at Johns Hopkins School of Public Health(JHSPH). For the sake of job I need to travel to the JHMI campus which is at a 15 min drive from the Homewood campus. It's kinda cool coz I like to travel and ever since I have come here I was kinda trapped in one mile radius. JHMI shuttle runs frequently and it almost touches the downtown on its way to JHSPH. It is nice to see Baltimore city and most importantly its people! You don't get to see many people if you sit in the lab day and night so even this factor makes the journey exciting.
Trivia: In case you don't know Johns Hopkins School of Medicine is ranked 1 in the world.
Coming back to where I started - So I joined my new job which is the coolest job one can ask for! I am past the stage where having an office and a laptop are considered to be exciting...there are few things which are really cool about this job_ I have not worked in database domain before So I am learning A LOT on the job. Though it is not something that I want to do from career point of view it is nice to know something from fields related to your primary interest. During the break I worked for 3 days, revised the concepts related to stored procedures, views, SQL etc. Met a lot of new people in the office and it is nice to know that they want you!. Instead of sitting in the office working we (me and my boss) work in one of the cafes in JHSPH. It is so much fun! There is so much energy in the atmosphere. I like it there. Since the school of public health doesn't have a separate campus they have structured the building in such a way that it creates a notion of a lot of open space. I will post its pics sometime soon.
Met Atul Bhaiya at Mt. Washington campus who took me to his place for lunch. We had dalbati (The best among marwari dishes IMHO) watching the opening match of the cricket world cup!
Read a lot of blogs...slept quite a lot though you never get enough of it do you?
Finished watching one and half seasons of LOST...it's too addictive:)
Unfortunately could not go for skydiving...will see if I can make it in the summer.
Worked a little bit on my homeworks and read a few papers related to Virtualization.
And most importantly I became an uncle!
So spring break balance sheet looks much like the balance sheet of Indian Railways...huge profits which you'd never expected:D
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grad life
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Written on 2:20 AM by Tushar
Spent 22 hrs at a stretch working mostly on my Info Retrieval Search Engine assignment... Had a submission of OS project( Linux kernel module for hacking keyboard driver) as well on the same day. As usual the next PL homework is out and it is due in a couple of days...
Got Hackers delight, Hackers and Painters, The pragmatic programmer and Founders at work from the library...unfortunately at the same time! As I know that given my schedule I will have to return a few of them back unread.
I can't wait to read Founders at work!
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grad life
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Written on 1:55 AM by Tushar
by U2...
The first song played on my iPod:)
An interesting entry about the song on Wikipedia is here.
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celebrations
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Written on 9:58 PM by Tushar
brisk 15 min journey in the Collegetown shuttle
a walk in the Towson mall. (First time in past three months!)
a slice of delicious pizza
300 (what a movie! I have no words!! 'The future of cinema' - Time)
cheese cake (by Cheesecake factory )
Starbucks coffee
...... Just like heaven!
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celebrations
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Written on 5:29 PM by Tushar
Here is the list of books that I would like to read if time permits!
-Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Have put a request for this one in the library. I will be the first one to get it:)
-Hacker's Delight
Heard it is not as good as ‘Programming Pearls’ though which is a must read for everyone!
-Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Have started following Paul Graham’s blog too.
-The Pragmatic Programmer: From Journeyman to Master
TOC looks really good. Will read it during the summer for sure.
-Code Complete, Second Edition
Have heard a lot about this one! Had got it from library during the intersession but didn’t find time to go through it. It might not be very useful as of now coz of its sheer size.
-The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, 20th Anniversary Edition
This book needs no introduction!
If you wanna be generous then here is my Amazon wish list:)
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Books
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Written on 1:37 PM by Tushar
Storks had a field day today:)
My sis Tina gave birth to a cute baby girl:)
I can't wait to see my niece!
Sumit pointed out correctly "Is chote se baby ne tere ko "mamu" bana diya":P
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celebrations,
fun
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Written on 4:19 PM by Tushar
Stuff like this actually happens! Read on...
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Written on 6:35 PM by Tushar
Spring break has officially begun today. Temperature has shot up to 17 degrees C! What else would have been a better way to welcome the break other than watching “The untouchables” and singing songs in chorus as Girish and company played guitar!
Not getting much done since past three days but who cares as it’s spring break!…Woo..hoo! (Those who watch Friends know what this means better!)
Here is my spring break wish list (it’s different than the TODO list! Always!!)
- sleep
- sleep
- sleep
Cant stress how important this is:)
- Reading novels, reading anything!
Hari gave me links to some amazing blogs (mostly techi) all of which turned out to be really good. I came across one Marathi blog today and it’s brilliant! I guess it's time that I should start using technorati!
I wanted to get a couple of books from the library but since there were unavailable I got Harry Potter and half blood prince instead:). Siddharth gave me “The curious incident of the dog in the night time”…
- watching Lost
Believe me this serial rocks! I started watching it at the start of the Spring semester and people warned me that it is too addictive. Yeah that’s true. Since I dint wanna waste even a minute to think about what will happen in the next episode I stopped watching it for the good. This break might be a good idea to start watching it again!
- Blogging
This wish is easy to fulfill though!
- Watching movies
Have started well on this one by watching a movie a day before the break officially began!
- Skydiving
JHU folks are making plans to go for sky diving some where in Baltimore County. Hope I can make it!
- … (This covers the rest :) )
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celebrations
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Written on 11:11 AM by Tushar
Talked to Randal and looks like I am gonna an independent study in Virtualization and I/O…Well…at least the topic is fixed!
Will read a few papers before preparing a proposal on which problem I want to attack.
Here is one of the most famous papers on virtualization. All comments regarding the selection of the topic are welcome:)
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grad life
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Written on 11:00 PM by Tushar
Today is the day when I'd got my first admit to the grad school for the Masters in Parallel and Distributed Computer Systems:)
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grad life
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Written on 11:27 AM by Tushar
C ya @ Palo Alto,CA during the summer!
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grad life
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Written on 1:09 AM by Tushar
Yeah! That’s the word!
Hopkins is a cornucopia (of assignments!)
It is just yesterday that I finished (actually stopped working would be more appropriate) my OS slab allocator project and my plate is full again!
TODO list for next couple of weeks looks somewhat like this…
- To write a D language interpreter (Programming languages)
- Hacking the keyboard driver for QEMU using kprobes ( Operating Systems)
- To write a vector IR model based Search Engine (Info retrieval)
- To start reading some papers for the independent study (I hope that it actually happens!)
And the best part is I am not complaining!
There comes a point when you start enjoying the hard work that you are doing and I guess that is the first step towards turning geek :P
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grad life
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Written on 12:13 AM by Tushar
It was 930 at night and it was freezing out side. I wanted to get to Varun’s place to have yet another potluck(where we ended up having a great time watching Black Friday and chit chatting) so I called for an escort van (which is a free shuttle service provided by Hopkins to its students)
The van showed up on time. I got in and told the driver where I was going. He looked at me and said “Do you have polio? (Can’t you walk?)”
It took me while to register what he was saying. I was so used to the usual ‘Thank you’, ‘Have a good day’ talk that I was taking US people for granted for being nice and friendly. And tonight I was asking for something which was my right as a Hopkins student.
Do I need to tell that the driver got the ‘right’ answer:)
Lesson learnt: Don’t take things for granted. Coz as per Murphy’s law if anything can go wrong then it will!
Epilogue :
Reply from the director of the escort service at JHU...
"
We regret that you had an unpleasant experience with the Escort Van Service. We appreciate your feedback and encourage you to continue to use the Escort Van Service for your transportation needs to and from campus, within our one-mile radius service area.I was able to discuss your complaint with the Escort Van Driver who you claimed was rude and unprofessional. The driver was apologetic and said that he wouldn't let it happen again."
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grad life
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