Jan 1 – As usual, woke up and did nothing during the day . This was during my vacation back home after a grueling semester at Carnegie Mellon.

Jan 4 – Met some old buddies back from college days and reminisced of our good old days.

Jan 11 – Unfortunately, my 3 weeks of vacation had ended and I had to fly back to Pittsburgh to start the spring semester.

Jan 14 – Begin the grueling spring semester, and promptly get yelled at by the client. That was one of my biggest lessons, do your research and do it damn well. The next few weeks were spent revisiting our documents and research.

Jan 25 – Began a new project involving software cryptography for sensor networks. Had a really good time on this project.

Feb 14 – Interviewed with Green Hills Software. The phone interview, in their words, “went very well” and they scheduled me for a flight out to meet them at their Santa Barbara campus.

March 6-9 – Had a good time in Santa Barbara, if not successful at clearing the interview. Left for a short vacation in the Bay Area.

March 13 – Interviewed with Redback Networks in San Jose. This interview was set up in just 1 day, as I was flying back to Pittsburgh the next day.

Apr 23-25 – Set up our exhibit at the Children’s Museum of Pittsburgh. It was a very simple game but attracted plenty of attention.

May 6 – Big bunch of presentations for the CenSCIR symposium at Roberts Hall, CMU.

May 8 – Gave a big presentation for our project. All that we had done over the past two semesters was condensed into a half hour presentation. This is what I call the Reverse Kolangal Effect.

May 13 – Gave another presentation for another project, the one we did for the Children’s Museum. This was a much less formal one and a simple exit to end the semester, and the course.

May 18 – Graduated!!! And it was a really long and tiring day, but worth every second of blood and sweat.

May 20 – Flew back to San Jose to get ready to join work.

Jun 3-6 – Flew to Vegas, and visited the Grand Canyon.

Jun 6 – Left Vegas and flew to Los Angeles.

Jun 8 – Visited Universal Studios, LA

Jun 9 – Returned to San Jose.

Jun 20 – Moved to a new apartment near work.

Jun 30 – Began working at Redback Networks.

Aug 28 – Got my US driver’s license.

Sep 1 – Now that I had a US license, I rented a car for the Labor Day weekend. Went and visited my cousins in the area.

Nov 22-29 – Flew to Dallas for the Thanksgiving break. Met up with old friends.

Dec 21 – Bought my first car, a 1997 Mazda 626.

Dec 31 – Worked my butt off all day, and spent the evening on a space simulator

Dr. Pausch was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer in September of 2006, and in August 2007 was told that he had maybe 3 to 6 months left to live. I can immediately think of one of Rajnikanth’s dialogues from Sivaji – “Saagara naal therinji pochu na vaazhara naal naragham aayidum, santhosham thaanga mukiyam”. Most people would wallow in self pity on hearing such news, but not Dr. Pausch. The way he treated this information is close to stunning. He did not wallow in self-pity, but instead put his heart and soul into doing the things that he wanted to do.

Probably the most important lesson that I’ve got from his last lecture is this quote: “The brick walls are there for a reason: they are not there to keep you out, but to give you a chance to show how badly you want something”.

I was lucky enough to see and hear Dr. Pausch again during my commencement ceremony in May, where he delivered an inspirational speech to the class of 2008. One of his most insightful comments was “It is not the things that we do in life that we’ll regret, on our death bed; it is the things that we do not.”

Dr. Pausch, your work has inspired masses of people. Requiscat in Pace.

Basically, the public transportation infrastructure in most cities will make seasoned Chennai/Mumbai travelers cringe in horror. (Well, not really, but I’ve seen more frequent 29C buses in Chennai than a 500 bus out here in Pittsburgh). You really need to have a car to get anywhere important.

Having said that, I must still comment that Pittsburgh has one of the best bus networks across the US. Like the Mumbai trains, the buses here follow a rigid schedule (well, mostly). You can pick up a schedule free of cost from any bus, the University Center on the Carnegie Mellon campus also has a number of bus schedules of all buses that pass in the vicinity of the university. These schedules give daily timings, along with major stop points and a map of the route. You can also go online to the website of the Port Authority of Allegheny County and enter your starting location and destination intersections, and the website will automatically give you a few routes which you can follow, along with the timings.

The HS-26W was plagued with problems from the day I bought it. A week later the gadget died. Since it was just a week since I bought it, I managed to get it replaced with an identical piece. Two months later, that died.

I took that piece to the Nokia service center on Mount Road. They told me that they could not repair it and would replace it. Fine, I said, but the replacement took another two months to arrive. Two weeks later, the replacement gave up.

Finally, when I went back home last month, I managed to return it and get a refund on the product.

Come on, I can expect one piece to fail, but all the replacement pieces as well???

Anyway, to keep you dedicated readers updated, I’m now in the “land of dreams”, to be precise, I’m in Pittsburgh, PA, to get even more precise, I’m doing my masters in embedded systems engineering at Carnegie Mellon University.

After coming here, I realize that my experience with traveling, cooking, housekeeping, etc. could be very useful to a lot of other people. Let’s first start of with cooking – it’s not all that most people hype it up to be… it’s damn simple, even a kid could do it; however, it does take time. That is the only trouble.

Traveling – depends on where you are. Pittsburgh has one of the best public transportation networks in the USA, and you can even go online and plan your bus trips. I hear quite a few other cities have a good transportation network as well, though I haven’t been anywhere yet to comment on them.

Housekeeping – now comes the hard part, but I kid. Assuming that you rent an apartment, you would usually look for one that has all features, namely microwave, dishwasher, laundry, etc. So there go the majority of the chores, save mopping the floor/vacuuming the carpet.

Shopping – you would pretty much find everything you need here.

Future posts would concentrate on individual topics…

Nokia HS-26W Bluetooth Headset to be used in conjunction with my old toy – Nokia 6681.

Nothing great by way of features, but then again, a headset is a headset, not a toy. Anyway, the voice quality is pretty good, although it does get a bit cumbersome wearing the set for a long while – tends to press my ear a bit.