Written on 7:44 PM by Tushar
Happy Valentine’s day to one and all!
Flashback:
When I was a kid I used to collect cartoon strips of a series called Love is… by Kim Casali. I still have a note book full of these strips in some corner of my room back in India. It was one of my prized possessions. I was delighted to see that those strips are now available as a book…a must have!
What did I do last year on the V’day ? :
Bought a book by (Robert) Love :P…So geeky!
What did I do today?:
Slept for the whole day at home… Snow storm warning were issued yesterday night. I left for the lab at 8pm and decided to stay there at night. In the morning when I was about to go for my classes I came to know that JHU is closed due to heavy snowfall! On my way back I could see it was snow every where. It was so beautiful. Had planned to go back and click the pics of JHU campus today but slept for the whole day instead. Seems a large portion of east coast is hit by snow storm. Minu sent some amazing pics. Have a look!
Posted in
celebrations
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Written on 12:42 PM by Tushar
Check out '100 best companies to work for 2007' !
Interesting to see that even though Google tops the list there are only around 10 'pure' software companies in the list. By 'pure' I mean excluding the financial companies which happen to have pretty big software divisions.
Choose the one you wanna work for!....TODAY!!
Doesn't that sound like a crappy TV commercial:) ?
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Written on 2:01 PM by Tushar
It is Sunday and I am sitting in my office working on my stuff(It is not really as boring at it sounds!). Had called mom and jiji to get the update of what’s happening back home. Had been to a wonderful get together last night at Varun’s place. I had asked him to arrange some sort of gathering and around 20 desis turned up for the potluck. We had a helluva time from 830pm to 2am (That is when I left the party went on even further) watching ‘Darwaza Band Rakho’, having delicious food, playing antakashari, playfully ragging the Indian newcomers to Hopkins and dancing to the tunes of catchy hindi songs…Will cherish those memories till the spring break as we may not get an opportunity to arrange another one before that coz it’s Hopkins baby! It wont give you time to breathe once the semester begins.
In the spring semester I am taking Operating Systems, Information retrieval and Web agents, Programming Languages and auditing Transaction processing systems. Will also do an independent study with Randal on a topic in storage or file systems. Havent given much to thought to it till now.
Operating systems-
Unfortunately Shap is on sabbatical now and his PhD students are taking the course. I am enjoying it a lot coz it will be really heavy on implementation of concepts. My RA work is really paying me off now.
Information retrieval and Web agents-
David Yarowsky is good at what he does and this course is really good to learn about the vast field of natural language processing, info retrieval, machine learning, info extraction…I am happy that I wont graduate without taking a spoonful of knowledge in this exciting field.
Programming languages-
This is the second time I am taking a class under Scott. The course is really good and teaches the type system of programming languages. Scott’s website is really informative and his course is really well structured. I had enjoyed taking the course in my undergrad and hope to learn more this time.
Transaction processing systems-
Randal simply rocks! The course teaches how to go about implementing a transaction processing system including paging, locking etc and also deals with advanced database concepts such as query optimization etc. Randal’s lectures are very informative and he touches variety of topics while teaching. I will be auditing this one so that I can concentrate more on my research work this semester.
There is plenty to learn this sem and I am really looking forward to it.
Some really exciting things are gonna take place in Feb and watch out this space for more…
Posted in
grad life
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Written on 10:56 PM by Tushar
It is the night of 1/29 and Minu sends me an email containing website of Jim Gray @ Microsoft. We talk about his excellent work in area of databases and transaction processing, his ongoing projects at JHU and Cornell, his Turing prize etc. During our discussion I mention that my advisor @ Hopkins Prof. Randal Burns is doing some work with Jim. Interestingly enough one of my lab mates at HSSL works with Jim in one of the database projects. Minu tells me that she is taking a class @ Cornell with Johannes Gehrke who is working with Jim.
It is the afternoon of 1/30. Two minutes to go before my Transaction processing systems class which is taught by Randal starts. Minu calls me up to inform that Jim Gray is missing! Gehrke gave the news in the class. I enter the class and Randal does the same announcement…what an unfortunate coincidence!
Posted in
grad life
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Written on 7:38 PM by Tushar
I landed in US with lots of hopes and also a burden of expectations that my dear ones have from me on 15th Aug, 06. Yeah, that’s the Indian Independence Day.
Well…time has flied and I have magically survived the loneliness, home sickness and tremendous pressure that Hopkins courses put on you. I am happy to see that I have got better! I am better prepared to face the challenges with a positive attitude towards life.
It is 26th Jan, 07 and something ‘overwhelmingly positive’ has happened in my life. Yeah that’s Indian Republic day.
These things tell me that no matter how far I am from my dear ones and my dear country there always is a special bond which connects me to my people.
This reaffirms my strong belief in the saying from The Alchemist _ “When you want to achieve something the entire universe conspires and helps you achieve it!”
Posted in
grad life
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