It hurts

It has been more than 2 months since I blogged. But past two months have been pretty interesting (and has changed me a lot). I have done things I never did before and I have said things I never said before. I preferred other things over my work (which I had never done before) and didn't bowl a single ball in cricket for two months (pretty unusual considering last two years).

I stopped watching online lectures..which I used to do pretty regularly and couldn't finish a single book lying in my bedroom since last two months. But then I never stopped watching movies and having fun time with friends. Frequency to gym was certainly reduced.

I feel that all this time (during which I did not do all these things) was not at all wasted. But it was time well spent. I discovered new abilities to do things and say few words which I never knew existed in me.

Sometimes I even wondered.."What the heck has happened to me ?"...I thought it was work stress for sure. But then something inner in me says there was more to it. May be I am bored with all those things..May be I want a change....But then, I still felt like doing these things I have been doing..its just that I never actually did it.

But now, I think I should get my act together and do things I have been enjoying. And if life throws lemons on me..I will make a lemonade and cool myself. If it throws oranges..I will turn them to orange juice..

I know you don't care about "whatever crap" (in somebody's language) I wrote above. But then why the heck did you visit this blog.

Back to gym and whey protein shake...

Travelling Salesman Problem

Funny !

Experience & Judgement

I came across this wonderful fact

Q. How does one obtain good judgement?
A. With experience.

Q. How does one obtain experience?
A. By exercizing poor judgement!

Engineers and Logical thinking

What is it with engineers that we always think in a pre-defined logical manner ? Especially with software engineers who program computers. While talking with people, we seldom empathize with others. We lack human aspect in our talk. We are so often drowned in instructing dumb computers to work for us, that we mirror similar behavior while talking with people. We are inclined to think that everything has mathmatical proof and are lost in search of that proof. People, unlike computers, do maintain context and they don't need to be explained and proved everything in detail, not atleast mathematically.

I especially miss these aspects while giving presentations. Here is what CEO of Luminous Networks rightly points out (taken from the book - Presenting to Win, The Art of telling Your Story by Jerry Weissman)

It's funny. As engineers, we tend to look at the challenge of selling our story as a lifeless, logical proposition. We forget the human factor. The message must be honed to address those human motivations. We forget that it's living people we are selling to!

Here comes the Nexus ....

Cisco says that the new data-center switch would be able to copy all the searchable data on the Internet in 7.5 seconds, download Wikipedia's database in 10 milliseconds or download 90,000 Netflix movies in less than 40 seconds. It also can run 5 million concurrent transcontinental videoconferences using the company's Telepresence Collaboration systems, a company spokeswoman said.


I am feeling fortunate to be part of engineering team of this next generation data center platform. Go Nexus...

More details on this link at Marketwatch.

Hang on tight

Duh ! looks like nothing is going in my way. At least three things have certainly not worked in my favor during last 3 days.

Anyways, I will hang on tight as usual and fight it out. Just getting feelings out somewhere...

Good old school days !

Group Lunch Etiquette

It has happened to every vegetarian who has ever gone to group lunch/dinner with their friends, colleagues or family.

Here is the scene. You go to a nice Italian restaurant (Olive Garden..anyone ??). You have mix of vegetarian and non-vegetarian people in your group.

You decide to start with appetizers.You order Bruschetta (Vegetarian) and Silican Scampi (non-vegetarian). Guess what, Bruschetta shows up before Silican Scampi and everybody jumps on to Bruschetta. Then Silican Scampi shows up and its just non-vegetarian folks gulping it.

Outcome: Vegetarian are starved on appetizers.

Similar thing happens during the main course. Again vegetarian people have to order more food while non-vegetarian people cannot finish theirs (since they already gorged lot of vegetarian stuff and are now full).

Outcome: Lot of non-vegetarian food is wasted !!

I am sure you can empathize me on this, especially if you are vegetarian.

Monday Blues

The world's most effective speed bump !

Dual boot your iPod

Yes, you can dual boot your iPod with open source firmware. Rockbox is an open source firmware for mp3 players. It supports may players from Apple, SanDisk, Archos, iRiver etc. You can play games, have screensavers, play other formats like ogg, divx etc on your iPod.

Wow..wonders of open source

Here is the link on CNET.

http://www.cnettv.com/9742-1_53-29035.html

My Linux Desktop

Screenshot of my current desktop.

Do you index or day trade ?

I think each time you make the index a smaller portion—I'm talking about the indexes that are now out in the ETF field, which seem to get narrower and narrower—you're offering more choices. We know that the investor is his or her own worst enemy. In the last 10 years, the average mutual fund in the market grew at about 10 percent a year. And the average mutual fund investor putting money into the wrong funds at the top, getting out at the wrong time, putting nothing in at the beginning of the bull market and pouring money in at the end, had a return, believe this or not, of about 3 percent. So in the last 10 years, if you compound those two mutual fund numbers, that 10 percent grows to 125 percent of whatever the number is that is being compounded, and that 3 percent grows to 30 percent. And that has something to do, I think, with how we look at risk.

I look at the stock market, I think correctly, as in the long run having very, very low risk. Because my view of investing is that you own the business, it has the capital, and that capital will ultimately grow over an investment lifetime. And when the market went down 50 percent in 1973 and '74, and 50 percent in 2000 and 2002, it doesn't even matter. You've got all this money at the end of the period, and you just put blinders on and ignore these foolish fluctuations. What the stock market is, quoting Shakespeare I think, is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. And when you think about the daily machinations of the stock market … that's probably an understatement.

Quote by John Bogle in That Was Then, This Is Now from Journal of Indexes

The Day The Routers Died...

Lyrics

Featuring recording of the "The Day that Routers Died"

(Set to AMERICAN PIE, by Don McLean)

a long long time ago i can still remember when my laptop could connect elsewhere

and i tell you all there was a day the network card i threw away had a purpose - and worked for you and me.... But 18 years completely wasted with each address we've aggregated the tables overflowing the traffic just stopped flowing....

And now we're bearing all the scars and all my traceroutes showing stars... the packets would travel faster in cars... the day....the routers died

Chorus (ALL!!!!!)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55 Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh But I spose we'd better give it a try I suppose we'd better give it a try

Now did you write an RFC That dictated how we all should be Did we listen like we should that day

Now were you back at RIPE fifty-four Where we heard the same things months before And the people knew they'd have to change their ways....

And we - knew that all the ISPs Could be - future proof for centuries

But that was then not now Spent too much time playing WoW

ooh there was time we sat on IRC Making jokes on how this day would be Now there's no more use for TCP The day the routers died... Chorus (chime in now)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55 Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh But I spose we'd better give it a try I suppose we'd better give it a try

I remember those old days I mourn Sitting in my room, downloading porn Yeah that's how it used to be....

When the packets flowed from A to B via routers that could talk IP There was data..that could be exchanged between you and me....

Oh but - I could see you all ignore The fact - we'd fill up IPv4

But we all lost the nerve And we got what we deserved!

And while...we threw our network kit away And wished we'd heard the things they say Put all our lives in disarray

The day...the routers died... Chorus (those silent will be shot)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55 Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh But I spose we'd better give it a try I suppose we'd better give it a try

Saw a man with whom I used to peer Asked him to rescue my career He just sighed and turned away..

I went down to the net cafe that I used to visit everyday But the man there said I might as well just leave...

And now we've all lost our purpose.. my cisco shares completely worthless...

No future meetings for me At the Hotel Krasnapolsky

and the men that make us push and push Like Geoff Huston and Randy Bush Should've listened to what they told us.... The day...the routers....died Chorus (time to lose your voice)

So bye bye, folks at RIPE 55 Be persuaded to upgrade it or your network will die IPv6 just makes me let out a sigh But I spose we'd better give it a try I suppose we'd better give it a try

Words and performance by Gary Feldman

100 Years of Engineering at USC

Vadodara shows cricket was never metro-dominated

From the article

......
Vadodara [cricket] players have always rubbed shoulders with the country's best and given its cricketing lineage one can safely say that they have not come second best.
....

....
So the next time someone says that players from small-town India can dream of making it to the national [cricket] team, just mention the name of Vadodara.
....

Read the full article at here.

....

My Bookmarks

I finally started bookmarking on del.icio.us

Here is the link http://del.icio.us/binarysemaphore

Don't come flaming if you find it geeky :-D

Total Stock Market Fund Vs S&P 500

If you are wondering what is the difference between total stock market fund (like VTSMX) and S&P 500, here is good list. Thanks to Valuethinker from http://www.diehards.org

1. tax efficiency - TSM should be much more tax efficient (because it only has to buy and sell on IPOs, M&A, bankruptcies etc.).

2. lower operating costs - for the same reason as 1, the amount of transactions (and therefore market impact costs and dealing costs and spreads) should be lower for TSM.

3. arbitrariness of the S&P500. This is a list of 'top stocks' chosen by a committee. This means it can be 'gamed'. And it is. It is a profitable hedge fund strategy to buy entry candidates, and short exit candidates, in the weeks leading up to a promotion/demotion announcement.

That performance comes at the expense of holders of the S&P500-- the index fund buys at too high an entry price, and sells at too low an exit price.

(smart index funds fight this, DFA certainly does. But in general, holders of the S&P500 will lose performance against this hedge fund strategy).

4. note the S&P500 doesn't just exclude SCV (or mid cap value), it actually has a marked tilt towards 'large cap growth'. That's in the nature of a capitalisation-weighted index (a dollar of profits in a high growth stock gets a much higher PE ratio, and hence market cap, than a dollar of profits in a 'value' stock).

5. theoretical completeness. If your goal is (as best as possible) to invest in the investable 'universe' of stocks, why eliminate 23% of that universe of stocks, from the start?

Note Burton Malkiel recommended TSM over an S&P500 fund, for reasons similar to above (having recommended S&P500 in the first 6 editions of his book).

Computer Science Vs Information Techonology

The confusion prevails. According to Joe, I work in Information Technology (IT) sector (and certainly I do). But my job is not IT, it is in Computer Science (CS) field. I work (in team, of course) on development of products which are used by IT professionals. This is kind of similar to difference between Aeronautical Engineer (the one who makes airplanes) & Pilot (and one who makes them fly).

I don't blame Joe for this confusion. After all, I have Bachelors degree in IT and Masters degree in CS.

Here is an excellent discussion on the difference between CS and IT on slashdot.

Slashdot Link

Many on Slashdot think that CS is superset of IT. I concur.

Memory Management Techniques

Just last week, I was discussing with my colleague about different memory management techniques and which one should be used (apart from vanilla malloc/free implementations).

Since malloc/free are implemented in user space library, it is beneficial to optimize (or change them entirely) their implementation to take advantage of program behavior & cache locality

IBM developer works has an excellent article on this, particularly comparison table at the end.