It was little under a year ago, July 18th, 2009 to be precise, that I saw many a good friends [Brian, Cal, Ian, Laura, Nils and more] effortlessly run past the (34th Annual) Hancock Canal Run finish line that my mind sew the seeds of being one such in its 35th edition. Training [if it [...]

It’s that time of the year again. Although December 31st is just another day and is just as good as any of the other 364/365 days, last day of the year nevertheless serves as a good point in time-line to pause and reflect upon what the year brought along. The list of what the year [...]

As I may [not] have mentioned, I have been on the move for the last 8 days or so. Unlike the last time I moved, I took enough time to plan out the journey as much as possible. If you are short of time, just know that I am now in the same place where [...]

It’s that time of the year again. Although January 1st is just another day and is just as good as any of the other 364/365 days, the eve nevertheless serves as a good point in time-line to pause and reflect what the year brought along. The list of what the year did to me is [...]

As weird as it might sound, none of the men’s team from my school, Michigan Tech, had ever beaten a men’s team from our arch rivals, Northern Michigan, when I was part of the audience. I thought it had to do with my physical presence in the gym but apparently watching them over the internet [...]

It has been nearly five months since I moved from Upper Michigan to the East Coast. I would be lying if I said I liked this move and that I have been enjoying my stay here in general. I would also be lying if I said I haven’t met cool/kind/friendlier people in this part of [...]

Yes – I agree and thanks to my buddy Kyle for reminding me earlier in the evening about … me not having posted anything in a while. Apart from mundane aspects associated with settling down and setting up an apartment from scratch, I haven’t done much to write about. On that note, I must accept [...]

The much awaited (federal) document showed up in mail a day before SuperBowl and that meant I had to ship a bunch of boxes to my new address, give away a bunch of other stuff, …, get ready to move and, move. Talking about Super Bowl, the party turned out to be a nicer one [...]

Hard to believe … but it has been approximately 66 months since I came to US. I don’t even know where or how to begin explaining my experiences as a graduate student in Michigan Tech University and as a resident of Houghton community. Flying out of MoTown and seeing the sky-scrapers all around, I remember [...]

As much of the human kind (at least those who follow NFL – a.k.a. the American Football) has come to learn, the New England Patriots became the first team (since the league went to the current 16 game format in 1978) to go undefeated during a regular season. Except for folks in the New England [...]

With all that has been going for the past several weeks and some significant developments, it feels like I am in a race car … driven by somebody else! To keep up with these changes, one of the very important things I had to do was to find a new home – eHome of sorts [...]

The thought of closing my blog-shop has been hovering around my head for a while and I even had an idea of merging my blog with the photoblog – but the latter turned out to be a not-so-great idea. Using it from version 1.5 (current version 2.2), I have learnt lots & lots of things [...]

From my recent ramblings in this part of the e-world, I can convince myself (and hopefully you too) that I had a pretty productive/fruitful trip to Germany – mainly for work (workshop, Blue Gene/L) and needless to say, some extra-curricular activities (Cathedral & Brewing Houses in Cologne, Historic Jülich Citadel and Brown Coal Mining near [...]

Well, so far I have had the feeling that St. Patrick’s Day was just a very valid reason for drinking good beer and lots of it but this time around I realized that it was a friend’s birthday – a big one at that. To keep the story short and make it more interesting, let [...]

I know I have been writing, at least in the last two entries, what might be considered by many as techno crap. Continuing the trend, I changed the OS (the Operating System) in my laptop from you-know-what to Red Hat Enterprise Linux. With that, ladies and gentleman, I am very very proud to announce that [...]

OK – only 5 of my 11 picks for the ongoing NFL Playoff season turned out to be right, and more importantly, my favorite team – New England Patriots – played uncharacteristically to loose another Super Bowl appearance. But no regrets – Colts played really really well in the second half to win the game. [...]

What do I want to do during next 365 days? My list has been under preparation for a while – very much expected to grow further and here are some excerpts: Research, Graduate School, etc.: Have been at Michigan Tech for over four years now – in what has turned out to be the best [...]

It’s that time of the year again… to flashback on what has happened, what went right, what did not, and such… Personally, this has been a wonderful year in many different aspects and not so good in few others. If it’s true that a picture is worth a thousand words, the following (though not as [...]

In A Nutshell All in all, although I felt severe shortage of time sometimes, this trip to India was a pretty good one. Attending the Cochin Conference, visiting schools/institutions I studied in, talking to my teachers, hanging out with friends, roaming in/around/outside of Bangalore, seeing places that I had never seen before in my life, [...]

Before I go on and write good things, as usual, I must write about bad things. Like I mentioned in my previous entry, all the excitement I had about Bangalore vanished into thin air (or thick smoke, to be precise) within few minutes into the traffic. These certain bad things and some good things need [...]

Much of preparations from my side for the upcoming trip to India – tickets, I-94, travel letters, transcripts, proof of Fall semester enrollment, and of course some packing – are done. That leaves me to do one last thing – keep counting days. Less than two and half days to go before first leg of [...]

Since my last b!@#$ing about people (a.k.a. friends) not reading my blog, some of them actually did read (one of them somehow managed to read a two month old entry) and few of them even found enough time to leave comments. Guess I should do it (i.e., b!@#$ing) more often. I have come to realize [...]

Well, two of the three things that were supposed make me better did happen – for last thing, Pistons beating Nets, I might have to wait till Eastern Conference paly-offs. However, there were other things that made up for Pistons’ loss. A short photographic outing in the snow-melting grounds of McLain State Park (you must [...]

Like I mentioned in the previous entry, it took me nearly three days getting back into routine. I spent few hours in writing a very useful script – to prepare initial files for a 231-step calculation. Other scripts I have written so far for this project were simple in the sense that they required either [...]

I had heard about this from Dr. Pushpa Murthy a while ago (when I was flying to Grand Canyon in August 2005) but had never taken enough interest to go and see it myself. After sleeping over the matter for nearly 6 months, I went to Twin Lakes today, for a casual photography ride and [...]

If you did read my previous entry, I had quite a few things on my weekend’s ToDo list – most important being to prepare myself (laptop, camera, lenses, batteries,…) for Saturday’s game. It has been a while since I got out of bed before 6 am on a Saturday and it felt good getting up [...]

Some of us, by which I again mean some softball players, decided to drive upto the Misery Bay on Saturday afternoon : it’s shallow – water doesn’t get above waist level for about 250 ft into the lake, it’s warmer than Calumet and even if the water was cold, there is a river that joins [...]