As for the next 365 days or so, here are some things I like to do, in no particular order:

1. Continue to do the work I love while keeping my body in the same place as my heart & soul, living amidst people that have gone out of their way to help me in more ways than one. I could be asking for a bit too much but guess I have to right to dream & since one of last year’s dream did become a reality, I have no reason to believe this one won’t.
2. Pursue sports, photography & computers in greater detail.
3. Since the Thousand Mile Dream remained just that, I will drop the last segment from last year’s such plan and retain just run longer distances consistently.
4. Be more organized, disciplined, consistent and efficient in things I do.
5. Experience what it feels to be stinkingly rich.

As is common, our first reaction to this grief was shock [& denial] – we couldn’t believe that we had lost both games with very uncharacteristic all round performance, given how good we thought we were. Shock, being the natural anesthesia, did its part in protecting most of us from immediate pain [with some help from breweries & bars downtown]. But no sooner did shock and anger subside began a long and difficult period of pain and mourning – discussions often revolving around would have, could have and should haves. Pain showed no signs of relief as we heard the news about what our team’s pitcher and dear friend started going through. Returning a majority of the team from its 2009 edition, it wouldn’t be an overstatement to claim that the grief and the pain that life had sent our way brought us together, helped us stay closer and focused through out the 2010 season.

Regular season, like it had been in many a recent years, was a formality. We stayed undefeated through 12 games to win the regular season. Then again, we had won the regular season quite a few times before but winning the playoffs, for some reason, had always been a step [or two] too far away.

We beat the teams that we were expected to beat through much of play offs, including our arch nemesis to decide the winner of winners’ bracket – by doing pretty much everything right which we hadn’t in previous occasions. To their credit, they won the losers’ bracket and made it to the title game(s). Lo and behold, we did pretty much everything wrong and not taking anything away from them, they did every little thing right. And the result, a demoralizing 19-2 defeat. Bad side of this result was that that’s the worst we had ever played all season long. And the good side? We couldn’t play any worse.

So began the second [and final] game of the 2010 Church League – the ball took an odd bounce here and there, for either teams; the score swung like a not so simple pendulum and the lead changed teams, just like the weather in the UP. May be the good Lord wasn’t in the mood to call it a day and so, the game went extra innings with score tied at 9 apiece. An out, an intentional walk and a base hit saw our team have a runner in scoring position. With day light going down and heavens opening up with a few sprinkles, it was our rookie, Michael Rittenour, that jacked a warning track hit to bring the winning run home and bring home the team’s first ever championship.

Relatively wilder party ensued – Gatorade dumped on our manager, pie in the face for Michael, and phone calls to let our beloved members of the team, now staying elsewhere &/or that couldn’t play, know of the result. As many championship teams as I have ever been part of, this one meant [and still does] a whole lot more and extremely satisfying – for, the team as a whole came together to win it not just for ourselves, but for those that were once part of it and for one, that couldn’t play more.

To think that it was our destiny to win it all this season, would be a grave mistake – for, the same destiny – dressed up as our arch nemesis – kicked our you-know-whats in the first game. And for once, in 15 or so years for many of them and 6 for me, that we won’t have to worry about would have, could have and should haves; we won’t have to look at each other and hang our heads down – at least, not until we begin 2011 season.

When the Spring 2010 rolled in [yes, for once, there was actually Spring in Houghton/Keewenaw], snow melted and the way certain things transpired in later parts of March forced myself and a dear friend, Sarah, to (re)find structure in life, to regain and be more focused. Many a conversations with Amy, Scott, Lakshmi, aforementioned friends, several members of Michigan Tech Huskies family and of local community started nurturing the once buried seeds of running/completing the [10 mile version of] Hancock Canal Run.

Being the athlete she is, Sarah did all the literature search, had discussions with established runners and dug out few detailed training plans from the depths of internet. Being busy with lives and at the same time not yet having complete control over the events that take place in our lives, we decided to train individually by honor system – keeping each other in check often — in person, or via phone calls or text messages or facebook. And our aim was to not just finish but be within top ten of our respective age group.

It worked really well for the first few weeks and we stuck to the training plan we had agreed upon. With all that happened from last ten days of May through first ten days of June [procrastination, this, that, and The Legends of Table 23], to say that our training took a back seat is an understatement of cosmological proportions. If not for Terry posting the countdown to the race day and reminding us every single day till the last day, training may have never resumed and this post may have never been written. In spite of skipping few weeks in our training plan and jumping ahead to week six [or seven, I don't remember], we honored the honor system and still had plenty of fun until the very last evening leading up to the run [see evidence below].

Preparations and Thoughts via SMS

Final Preparations and Thoughts via Facebook

2009-2010 turned out to be the season that I had the most interactions ever with my beloved Huskies. Having never been an athlete but always wanting to emulate one, I decided to follow in their footsteps. While the reasons for which I woke up at about 2:30am on race day are immaterial, I did have my pre-run carb loading meal. Trust me, it did taste good and I have reasons to believe it did its job.

Weather on race day morning was near perfect – a bit chillier with west winds and relatively open areas of McLain State Park exposed to Lake Superior, all but last mile [or thereabouts] was well shaded from the sunshine. And this race re-taught me an important lesson – that there is a real difference between being an athlete and acting like one. Just like the previous & my only race, I started out running at the group pace (~9:10 min/mile) instead of the pace I was comfortable with (~11:30 min/mile). Carrying my trustworthy GPS may have slowed me down a bit but it certainly helped gather useful data.

Mile by mile progress via Garmin GPSMap 60CSx – yeah, my life is a science experiment!

Some detailed stats of the run – click on the graph to see a larger, legible version

As is evident from the Google Earth screenshot and Matlab graph generated using the data from my GPS, I did make adjustments to my speed, literally on the run, to conserve just enough energy to complete the run/race in under two hours. While I was [still am] very disappointed that I did not pass a single person during the entire length of the run, that I was the penultimate dude to complete it [121 out of 122 @ 1:52:27] and that there were only five more people who completed it after I did, I very well understand that I didn’t deserve to finish any sooner – given the [erratic] way in which I trained. And I am happy as I ever could be that I did finish it in under two hours as planned and that I wasn’t the last one to do so. Thanks to dear friend, Michael, for showing up on short notice to photograph my sorry you-know-what cross the finish line and one of me with Sarah [#92/35, 10 miles in 1:22:20], sharing the same stage [err, the same sidewalk].

Dynamic Duo of Hancock Canal Run 2010
Dynamic on your right and Duo on your left

With Amy [#87/100, 10 miles in 1:41:55] and Sophie

In summary, this one was definitely a case of mind over body and by mind, I mean my super-massive ego – a well-fed super-massive ego. While the training for and running in Canal Run 2010 did do its part in realizing my Thousand Mile Dream in part, it certainly has helped me respect my friends — supreme athletes, runners, swimmers, bikers, triathletes & iron (wo)men and, members of this wonderful community, who yet again helped me realize one more dream — a lot more than I ever have.

As for the next 365 days or so, here are some things I like to do, in no particular order; thanks to dear friend Nils Stenvig (@UPBeaches) for the coffee mug.

1. Continue to do the work I love while keeping my body in the same place as my heart & soul, living amidst people that have gone out of their way to help me in more ways than one. I could be asking for a bit too much but guess I have to right to dream & since one of last year’s dream did become a reality, I have no reason to believe this one won’t.
2. Pursue sports, photography & computers in greater detail.
3. Run longer distances consistently and for a cumulative of 1,000 miles.
4. Be more organized, disciplined, consistent and efficient in things I do.
5. Experience what it feels to be stinkingly rich.

Packing

As soon as Dr. Ashcroft confirmed that he would meet with me on 22nd April, starting date as well as much of my route were finalized. It also meant that I had to quicken the pace of packing all the stuff I had accumulated. For once, I decided to explore the options of packing materials and thanks to dear friend Frank [Middletown, NJ], I found fairly economical pricing [significantly cheaper than UPS] for boxes from U-Haul.

Folks from Alpha Moving & Storage showed up on time, as promised, and were very professional, quick & diligent in their work. I felt ashamed, to an extent, as I took just about the same amount of time to load random stuff into my car as they had taken to pack an entire apartment into their truck. Given that I had moved less than 15 months ago, I should have paid extra attention to accumulation of stuff – but it was yet another lesson in life that I hope not to forget.

00. Red Bank, NJ → Ithaca, NY (2009.04.21)

Running errands [returning unused boxes to U-Haul, getting a copy of auto insurance, etc.] took a while and I did enjoy one last good [home cooked] meal at Batman residence (@dataguru61). As planned, the last stop in New Jersey was at Coach Lombardi’s Grave.

265 miles in 5:30 hours including 1:00 hour stoppage

Barring about a mile long bumper-to-bumper traffic somewhere along I-80W, most of 265 mile drive was very smooth. I just wish every segment of the rest of this journey is just as smooth. Passing through the township of Scranton, PA and discussing [more like learning, to be precise] the concept of Universal Art and the underlying advaita philosophy (as mentioned in my recent reading, hamsageete by ta. ra. su. – thanks Vathsa, Latha for letting me borrow that book) with Deepti (@deepgemini) were the highlights of this stretch. Heavy rains and the hills/valley geography made the last 10 miles or so seem a bit longer but I reached Ithaca, NY, safe.

Waking up early enough on 22nd April, I was able to race against the rising Sun and photograph the Ithaca Falls. Meeting Dr. Neil Ashcroft was a wonderful experience – after signing my copy of his book, the discussions spanned research, weather in Cornell & Houghton, science and importance of science history, a hither to unknown [to me] story of S Chandrashekhar and more – all in about 20 minutes. Citing the original source, the summary of that story is below:

The Candlestickmaker intertwines astrophysics, the aspirations of an Indian family and lore into a captivating performance. Set in a family home of the Nobel Prize winning astrophysicist Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who discovered the theory behind black holes, the play follows the story of three main characters. Sunil, a young Indian New Zealand university student, who has set out with his Lonely Planet in hand to visit his Uncle CJ Rohan in southern India. CJ Rohan is a retired university lecturer who is awaiting the arrival of his esteemed uncle, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (known in America as the candlestickmaker). The superstitious Rohan hopes to gain his uncles’ recognition for his life’s work, a paper blithely setting out to explain the importance of what’s in a name. And finally, Kilayani, the three hundred year old cook who also serves as living memory of this family’s history. Kilayani has been witness to the families coming and goings for seemingly centuries and is now awaiting the return of her love foretold.

Jacob Rohan deftly plays all characters; through the frenetic changing of character through mask, he draws the audience in from the beginning. Rohan is joined on stage by a musician and a silent actor who is also puppeteer to an English speaking, Hungarian singing duck. These colourful threads of the performance are brought together by a stunning and versatile set. Tall, willowy lengths of bamboo from which woven candlelit baskets hang tower from one side of the stage, overhead, props are suspended from boards suspended by a rope and pulley system which is anchored down to the opposite side. It is amongst these ropes where the musician sits alternating between providing musical accompaniments and manipulating the pulley setting. Initially, the set with ropes and poles joined from one side to another, is reminiscent of the deck of a tall ship and the performers the crew for the journey.

The Candlestickmaker offers the audience insight into many journeys, the physical, the mythical, emotional, cross-cultural and scientific. By being instantly and convincingly transported to southern India, Rohan, invites the audience into a tale where the mythical and the real are meshed. A journey which seems more familiar than not, yet one knows that by the interval, there must be an impending disaster, a disruption in the chain of events. To formulaic perfection, the tale follows the science, as slowly the plans and desires of the CJ Rohan, Sunil and Kilayani begin to implode in the second act as the decisions and actions of each character imposes upon the others, resulting in a classic comedic tragedy.

For the next four hours or so, I ended up hiking parts / outskirts of Ithaca – meeting fellow Patriots in College Town Bagels [needless to mention the bagels were delicious] and checking out Buttermilk Falls, Old Mill Falls, Lucifer Falls and Taughannock Falls. If what I got to see in these four hours is just a trailer of what this area [upstate New York] has to offer, I would certainly love to visit it again at leisure.

01. Ithaca, NY → Watkins Glen, NY → State College, PA (2009.04.22)

Given the way Ithaca is geographically designed, it wasn’t too long before I realized that you are either going up or going down; and once you are on a flat road, you are probably out of it. And I used the same theory to confirm that I was out of the city limits. Knowing that I would spend quite a lot of time had I entered Watkins Glen, I decided to skip it – so that I could reach Penn State as originally planned.

Just as in the previous segment, I only had to face about a mile’s worth of slow traffic along US-15 – near NY-PA border – and couple other slow downs due to ongoing construction work. Somewhere along US-220, I did see Sunshine in my rear view mirror while thunderstorms were waiting ahead. Wish I had more time [and wish I was on a non-highway] to stop and take pictures of it. All said and done, it was a no-complaint ride and I reached State College around 6:45pm – and for the record, I tweeted at quite an annoying rate all along this drive.

250 miles in 3:45 hours including 0:45 hour stoppage

The next two days or so were spent hanging out/hiking with dear friends from Penn State University – Shivu (@pionshivu), Mahesh (@mahesh_shastry), Harisha, Umesh, Vipul, Vikas (@vikasargod), Sanghamitra, Piali; a good 45 minute long discussion about some aspects of educational technology with Cole (@colecamplese) [who I had met earlier at WordCampEd] and Allan (@agyorke); following that discussion with couple more – first with Nolen (an MTU alum, current PSU grad) about non commutative geometry and then with Shivu & Mahesh about RSA & factoring primes; photographing parts of Penn State campus that I had not done previously.

It was also pretty nice to have re-started the running process, albeit lasting only two days, with Mahesh and Vikas; though, our attempts to see Joe Pa were futile, I at least got to see how modest-looking his house is. Needless to say, my eyes were rather sore by the end of this two+ day stay in Penn State – I cannot delve into the details of everything I saw, but trust me – they will stay fresh in my memory, only to be replayed as and when my mind wants it

02. State College, PA → Canton, OH → Belleville, MI (2009.04.25)

Having spent a good part of the previous evening in hanging out with my gracious hosts at Penn State – dining at Olive Garden and following it up with discussions on varied topics till hours beyond midnight only meant that I wouldn’t wake up before sunrise and start the subsequent segment of the journey. When the journey did start around 9:00am, my Garmin GPS got confused by disappeared roads and the new I-99 corridor. May be the fact that the distance to the destination was increasing with passing time should have cautioned me, but my common sense [or lack thereof] took control of the proceedings. I saw an automobile with Michigan license plate ahead of me – on an otherwise empty stretch of the aforementioned highway – and assuming [wrongly] that they were going where I was going, I started following them. About 30 minutes later, I found myself in Tyrone township – located about 25 miles from State College, but only in the wrong direction

400 miles in 7:15 hours including 1:00 hour stoppage

While this showed me that I need to do my geographical research well and that I should keep the maps on my GPS updated, biggest takeaway was that I should test my common-sense before trusting it. Rest of the journey, once I found I-80, was fairly smooth as it has been so far. Only modification to the travel plan was that I decided not to deviate towards Canton, OH – the home of NFL Hall of Fame. From my [later] understandings of Peter‘s (@techieb0y) Theory of Interstate Travels, I realized that having a Garden State license plate while driving through Ohio was not a bad thing at all – I could zip through at/around 80mph and still not even be warned by the highway cops [as had happened over a year ago, when I was driving the other way with Michigan license plate]. If you are new to this rivalry, may be you should read this or see this.

Within about two hours of reaching Belleville, MI, we [Chong (@bigmaninjapan), Jess (@shorty_stylee) and Ryan (@bigryanb)] headed out to the Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti – to attend the Jaunty Release Party. From what I gathered, there were more people than expected [which was good]; I got to meet few old acquaintances and enjoy good food; what I didn’t expect was to be buzzed by the very first serving of Hard Apple Cider, but that didn’t stop me from having two more through the course of the evening!

03. Belleville, MI → Rose City, MI (2009.04.26)

Following sound sleep at Tim-Jess residence and a good Sunday brunch with Chong (@bigmaninjapan), Jess (@shorty_stylee), Jaskie (@ajjaskie) and Jon (@nuxi) at Fleetwood Diner in Ann Arbor, MI, these folks took me to my first sighting of The Big House – which apparently was under construction to regain its rightful title.

180 miles in 3 hours including 0:20 hour stoppage

Just like the previous three segments of this journey, this one too was uneventful – the only traffic log/jam being on I-75S. Within about three hours of starting the drive, I was at Kyle‘s (@kwschnei) parents’ place in Rose City, MI. After relaxing for a while, Kyle’s dad took me around to see an eagle’s nest and the famous Shoe Tree in St. Helen.

Kyle’s dad had taken Monday off to show me around the area and when he said we would be visiting Tawas City area, I shot an email to a dear friend to see if we could meet and she gladly obliged. Following breakfast at Sunrise Cafe in Lupton (an area that Arthur Godfrey used as a hangout – thanks Mitch for the information), we shot pictures of Tawas Point Light House, hiked a bit along the Lake Huron shore and then met with Penny at Tim Hortons for coffee. She was kind enough to take us to the Chamber of Commerce, pick maps and draw out a route for rest of our day.

We ended up checking out Turtle Marsh, Lumberman’s Monument, Iargo Springs and upon return to Rose City that afternoon, we spent time playing around with HDR & discussions on food/culture/tradition related topics with Kyle’s mom, while she made Spaghetti – which needless to say, was delicious

04. Rose City, MI → Munising, MI → Houghton, MI (2009.04.28)

Waking up early, I followed Kyle’s dad to St. Helen and must have seen at least 50 deer in about 20 mile drive. After getting my coffee-fix and making sure my car didn’t starve either, I set out with plans of making to the Mackinac Bridge in time to get pre- and post-sunrsie shots. Though I was late by just a few minutes to shoot the darker sky shot, I did get a decent shot as the sky was lighting up. Old Mackinac Point Lighthouse was a bonus!

475 miles in 10:15 hours including 1:45 hour stoppage

Upon crossing the bridge while watching Sunrise and eating Blueberry muffins [that Kyle's mom had prepared], I headed towards Whitefish Point and then to Tahquamenon Falls. In spite of all prayers and requests, weather gods didn’t seem to be co-operating and with weathermen predicting similar conditions for next 48 hours or so, I didn’t seen any point in making an overnight stay at Munising. Instead, 225 miles later, I was in Houghton, MI – around 3:00pm local time.

Some structures (especially in downtown area) were missing and some new ones have been coming up, much of the town was/is still the same – especially when it comes to the warmth of people/community. Even though there is no firm, mathematical proof for me feeling homesick going from Michigan to Jersey [while I didn't feel such a thing when I first came to Michigan from the other side of this planet], the observations are still valid. While I search for words to express my gratitude to all those folks all along the journey who were more than gracious and phrase my happiness for being here, you may enjoy the pictures from this trip

As for the next 365 days or so, here are some things I like to do [in no particular order]:

1. Try to do the work I love while keeping my body in the same place as my heart & soul, living amidst the people that have gone out of their way to help me in more ways than one. I know I am asking for a bit too much but guess I have to right to dream.
2. Pursue sports, photography & computers in greater detail.
3. Meet more friends that I have only known so far via email, chat and blog posts.
4. Be more organized, disciplined, consistent and efficient in things I do.
5. Experience what it feels to be stinkingly rich.

Huskies blew away Wildcats in Marquette’s Superior Dome (NMU’s home field) in a nationally televised Division II Football Game of the Week (thanks to CBS College Sports Network and FSN Detroit) to lay claim to the Miner’s Cup. During my recent trip up north, a bunch of these football players had promised to break my jinx and true to their words, that JINX is history now

God bless the internet and Skype, I got to watch this with buddy Kyle in Alaska. Honestly, I don’t think I have ever watched a game on TV (or any other program for that matter), in which I could claim personal acquaintance to so many – athletes, coaching staff and fans included. In spite of being over a thousand miles away from the venue, I couldn’t forget my usual role in such events and as such, ended up shooting some pictures:

These and rest of the pictures from this game are here.

This past week, a bunch of Physics Grad Students from Michigan Tech were traveling along the East Coast. Considering that this was the first such organized vacational activity that Physics Grad Students were undertaking since I joined the program in 2002, I was pretty excited to meet them and hang out. I had a pretty good time with them, although I may have smelt some feelings of my over-presence in their vacation – then again, the (bad) smell might have been solely due to my sweaty-self on a scorching hot day Roaming around the streets of New York City on back-to-back nights and at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in the nation’s capital was a lot of fun. And I must confess to the vacationers for two of my screw ups – once for poor navigation skills (or poor GPS usage skills) that made them walk a lot more in NYC especially when they were very hungry & tired; once in DC when my tire had a vertical cut between treads making it nearly impossible to drive resulting in most of them not seeing the Kenilworth Park & Aquatic Gardens. My sincere apologies.

As much fun it was to see them, hang out, catch up on a lot of things and clear some of their misconceptions about me (can you imagine – some of them had assumed I was mature, grown-up and well-behaved person, just because I graduated?), it was equally painful when we all parted ways in Washington, DC – knowing that they were returning to a more happier place while I did so to a not so happier one, was a hard pill to swallow

Knowing that every dog has its day, I am eagerly (read: desperately) hoping and waiting for mine!

Rest of the pictures from this settling down and setting up process are here: One | Two | Three

Some of my evenings were spent in watching my beloved MTU Huskies Basketball games – via HuskyLive (video stream on the internet). I was pretty disappointed with myself for more than one reason: this post-season turned out to be the first time in Tech history that both men and women basektball teams hosted a game the same day; although our men were eliminated in quarterfinals, women beat quality opponents (Grand Valley State University in QF, Wayne State University in SF and Ashland University in the Championship game) to not only win the GLIAC but also clinch a berth (or should I say punch their ticket) for NCAA tournament in Springfield, MO. I would have paid a million bucks (that is, if I had a million bucks) to be part of this momentous event but nevertheless I am pretty proud to have been part of the process. After the first couple games I saw [1 and 2] in Kenosha, WI, with many star players get injured through out the season, it was an awesome achievement. To see many freshmen and sophomore players step up to fill big shoes and not freak out/fall apart in the face of adversity was, needless to say, very inspiring

In other news, now that Spring is already here, I have started working out periodically to improve/strengthen my shoulders (thanks to Health & Fitness Center staff on campus) and I have found a softball league to play on this Summer. Kinda looking forward to that. Before my camera gear gets buried under dust, I should find entities (state parks, birds, wild life creatures, landscapes, etc.) to shoot pictures of. Please do check my Showcase often for subsequent pictures.

In passing, if any one knows whether the proposed June 2008 Version Two of iPhone (by His Steveness and Apple) is just a software upgrade OR it includes a hardware upgrade as well, I would greatly appreciate it.

The Move

After completing some required work with the University, I finally started moving from Houghton. It wasn’t easy by any means. I knew leaving a place (and all its people) that has (have) done/meant so much to me over past several years would be difficult but I had little clue it would turn out to be this emotionally draining. Owing to weather conditions and fatigue induced sickness, I had to split up the drive into three stages:

Day 1: Houghton, MI –> Fenton, MI

Driving through the UP was pretty smooth and one of my unphotographed waterfalls in Alger County, Alger Falls, had some visible flow of water (thanks to warmer weather conditions). This was probably the first time I have ever driven all the way upto the Mackinac Bridge following speed limit. And while discussing my emotional distress with Tim from BK Lounge in St. Ignace, he pointed out (as was pointed to him by someone not too long ago) that I should be happy that something happened, instead of being sad that it ended. These pearls of wisdom helped quite for rest of the journey

The common practice, for folks leaving the area through the Bridge, is to look back at the UP from the other side but unfortunately for me, the weather gods brought down a snow curtain. Blizzard like conditions (heavy snow as well as rains) prevailed for next 150 miles – forcing me to drive at 35mph on a 70mph Interstate. Driving through such weather took almost all of my energy and as such, was forced to stop for the night in Fenton – about 30 miles north of Ann Arbor.

Day 2: Fenton, MI –> Ohio –> Milesburg, PA

Not so good night’s sleep (owing to fatigue and kinda sickness) meant that I couldn’t start sooner. Drive through Ohio was covered mostly in fog and as such didn’t get to see much on either side of I-80. My friends in/from Pennsylvania had told me that their state was pretty and I got the first hand experience of it myself during the later part of the day. With so many hills and valleys and rivers/streams (pretty big ones too), it’s natural for me to expect a plethora of waterfalls. I should spend some time on the internet to find out more about this area and what all it has to offer. Fatigue induced sickness (again) as well as the abrupt non-functioning of low beam lamps forced me to call it a day sooner than I had planned – in Milesburg, PA – about 260 miles from the final destination.

Day 3: Milesburg, PA –> Delware –> Red Bank, NJ

Another of not so good night’s sleep (owing to the continued sick feeling) forced me to continue driving not before 9:30am. A short drive along I-80 later, I realized that I wasn’t staying too far from where a good buddy of mine lives. Rest of the drive, through Pennsylvania, Delaware as well as parts of NJ was pretty and I reached the apartment complex around 2pm. It took nearly 33 hours of driving and 20 hours of (not so refreshing) rest time to drive over 1200 miles but I finally made it one piece. As an unintentional bonus for driving this distance (as well as lifting/moving boxes around), I have lost nearly 7 lbs! Wish I knew loosing weight was this easier

Approximately 1200 miles

Settling Down, etc…

Getting into the new apartment was probably the last easiest thing I did during last few days – searching for useful shops, stores and setting up the place (from scratch) has been quite tiring, boring and most importantly, pretty damn expensive. Much of the first two days disappeared in sleeping – to recover from sickness and from pains in parts of the body I had little apriori knowledge about. Arrival of all the required (basic) facilities is taking its own sweet time and as far as accessing internet, Starbucks ($9.99/day) has been the only available option. The town/area is in stark contrast – in almost every aspect – to where I spent last several years. Similarity-wise, it has been offering some pretty amazing views of Sunrise/set – I should just find a good vantage point to take pictures from; my mailman (from the US Postal Services) – just like me – is a citizen of the (Green Bay) PackerNation! This is the last weekend before my work in the real world begins. Although I have very little clue as to what expect, I am excited about it – to learn new things and meet new people.

With Susan Mills driving me from airport to her house, I fell in love with the place within minutes and descending the Quincy Hill, I knew my prayers were answered as well – lush green forest cover as far as I could see, the Portage Canal and sparse signs of civilization… Starting with that, there have been way too many nice memories – each year was the best of my life and each subsequent year turned out to be better than the previous one. I got to meet very many people and almost everybody became a new friend; learnt a lot of things – sports, computers, physics, photography; realized that growing old was mandatory while growing up was optional (as can be seen from my behavior on most occasions) … However, there are quite many things I wish I had time (or made time) to do. In no particular order, here they are:

• Lake Superior Circle Tour: Approximately 1500 miles trip – had been on the back of my mind for a few years now but the officials across the border haven’t replied to any of my queries yet. This will probably have to wait a few more years now.
• Lake Michigan Circle Tour: This never even occurred to me until recently – very recently. I didn’t need any additional documents to go around it, but just missed out.
• Quincy Mine Tour: Came very close to taking it once in Summer of 2006 but never did it.
• Quincy Smelter: Have driven past it innumerable times but never did manage to go and shoot some pictures.
• Walk across the Mackinac Bridge on Labor Day.
• See and photograph more waterfalls and sports events.

Whatever I wanted to be and I couldn’t be in 20+ years elsewhere, I became all that (and even more) in these past 5 years – with constant support and encouragement from this community (with due respect to my teachers and friends from everywhere). Only disappointing feeling is that barring two – Parag Mehresh & Rupinder Singh – none of my out of state friends ever came to visit this wonderland. May be it’s the glitter of bigger cities and/or a busy work schedule and/or something else… but if you are reading this and if you are one of them, trust me – you missed a lot: miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles, rich copper history, long hikes in the middle of nowhere, places where your cellphone is just as good as the stone you are walking on, the largest fresh water lake, pristine sandy beaches on great lakes, purest breathing air, awesome fall colors, insane amounts of snow, …, and the cozy small town atmosphere with only two degrees of social freedom

As much as people love competition and challenges, there seems to be an inexplicable hatred towards sports teams that do perform consistently well over a considerable length of time. What makes it so ironic is that the team being hated so much is called Patriots and their uniform reflects national colors – go figure! Although I have no personal experience, I have very strong reason to believe that Chicago Bulls (these poor guys repeated a 3-peat of NBA Championships), L A Lakers (these guys pulled off a 3-peat as well), New York Yankees (well, everybody knows – they won 26 MLB Championships including 4 in 5 seasons in recent years), … have all gone through a similar phase during their respective good/great days. In my personal opinion, these teams have done so well that the popular term, Dynasty, is an understatement.

Again, being just a sports fanatic, I have very little or no knowledge/experience of what goes on inside these pro-teams’ locker rooms, on and off the field. But from a personal experience of playing with a certain team (name of the team has been left out – if you can guess it, consider yourself smart!) in a recreational league (Michigan Tech Graduate Student Council’s Summer Softball League) for four consecutive seasons, I got the first-hand experience of this hatred myself (and as a team). Until recently (and even today), not many from opposing teams realized the amount of dedicated hard work that we put in to produce the fairy-tale like numbers almost every week. Just to give a hint, most of us sacrificed Friday evening parties/bar (beer) time so that we could get up in time for Saturday morning practice – this happened every week, through out Summer and every season. Everyone who showed up for practice, did so with whole-heartedness for about 3-4 hours every week – meticulously learning the game, its rules and regulations, all the while getting to know each other and building the team concept. Why does any one need to know rules and regulations in a recreational league? First off, it makes the game safe (for yourself and those who play with you); and second, it reduces conflicts/confusions during the game… If the afore-unmentioned team went 44-5-1 over 50 games in four years with back-to-back championships, there were plenty of reasons that rest of the league didn’t care to know about!

Following my discussions with several different people, I have come to understand one reason for hatred against perfection: people like other teams to have chance at winning championships. However, who prevents those teams from performing beyond expectations to lay claim to the championship? Like a HOF Coach once said, if one needs to be the best, then they need to beat the best. Indianapolis Colts and Boston Red Sox are a classic example of this statement – not many (at least outside of Colts/BoSox-nation) felt sorry when they repeatedly lost to Patriots/Yankees and failed to win the big one. As much as I personally dislike these two teams, I do have great admiration for the way they fought and eventually won the title, beating their arch-nemesis along the way…

All said and done, more these teams (that have already established themselves as a Dynasty or better) win, more hatred comes their way. If only I could understand/explain this hatred towards PERFECTION…

I shopped around for a while and Host Monster looked to be a very good choice. Plenty of storage space, plenty of bandwidth and more … all for about $6/month. However, once someone gets used to having the root previliges on a Linux server, it’s pretty hard to live without it. Some of the web based utilities I have designed/developed need sudo powers and I just couldn’t do it with Host Monster. And that turned out to be the biggest reason I chose not to go with it.

Around this time, my buddy Kyle informed me about another online resource – Linode. 10 GB storage space, 300 MB RAM, 200 GB bandwidth and seemingly expensive pricing (~$20/month) – would have made it a less preferable choice. But the best parts of it all are the following: first, I get the root access and get to do whatever I want; second, I get to chose what Linux distribution I want. In all, it’s a virtual server that’s up almost all the time with me having all the necessary powers/previliges. That was just sufficient to suck me in.

As such, all the contents of this website (Photo Gallery, Showcase, Blog, Kagga and more…) are currently being served in beautiful high definition from a Linode virtual server. And will be so for a year (or more) at least…

If that’s the story of my blogs, using WordPress for my photoblog hasn’t been any easier. In spite of days worth of hacking, I can’t seem to get all the features I want and as such, the WordPress powered photoblog will stop in a few days as well. My gallery will remain in its place for a while but PixelPost powered photoblog will serve as the main (and probably only updated) section of my website. So, kindly update your e-bookmarks with the new URLs/links:

Old Gallery : http://sgowtham.net/gallery/
Photoblog : http://sgowtham.net/photoblog/

The following list summarizes all that I learnt – during my stay in Jülich as well as during return journey:

1. Addition isn’t always associative – especially when multiple processors are used in the process. For example, when addition is performed using N processors, the N parts that make up the final sum should first be sorted. Then, more importantly, smaller numbers – especially should be added first and then the bigger ones. Such an approach usually leads to a better accuracy of the final sum compared to when done other the way around.
2. IBM’s XL compiler is by far the most strictest. When Dr. Roberto Orlando had once mentioned that the PGI compilers weren’t as strict compared to the corresponding Intel compilers, I had very little or no idea about what it meant. While attempting to compile SMEAGOL on JUMP, I realized – on a first hand basis – what does one mean by a strictness of a compiler. Although commercial, unlike GNU or even Intel to a certain extent, I strongly believe that people – especially the code developers – should test their codes against IBM compilers. They can then charge just enough money to purchase these compilers and keep their subscription alive. Personally, I would have no problem with it.
3. Advanced ViM usage – thanks to Siegfried as well as Jan, I know couple more fancier commands that are and will be quite useful. Without the knowledge of these, most of my stay at the NIC would have gone in fixing just the very first column of many a source files – and you can imagine – there are few tens, if not hundreds, of them and each of them sometimes have few hundreds, if not thousands, of lines Now that I have some idea about and can actually read these magical, write-only, regular expressions within ViM, I plan to learn them in more greater detail – hopefully soon enough.
4. During a journal club meeting at the NIC, I was reminded of how I used to give presentations few years ago – stacking up each slide with as much information as possible (sometimes very hard to read) and then rushing through them with high speed narrations. It used to feel like my slides were newspapers and I was the newsreader! Thanks to some self realization (I don’t recall under which tree I was sitting when this thought dawned on me – could have been a beer tree for all I care) and His Steveness (during iPod release), I can confidently say that I have considerably improved my presentation skills and that people seem to understand/appreciate it a bit more.
5. HDR movies, if possible to make, would be really fun to watch.
6. We are already asymptotically dead.
7. People in this part of the universe cross countries like we (natural as well as adopted YooPers) cross counties.
8. For all practical purposes, I strongly believe that beer should be re-defined as a strictly non-alcoholic beverage. This idea is not entirely personal – first thoughts of it came while reading the hilariously hilarious Kannada work – gaaMpara guMpu – by daasharathi deekshit.
9. Walking is really good for health – I haven’t walked so much in as long as I can remember and it’s fair to say that I have rediscovered the joy of walking – walking long (really long) distances as I once used to do. It might also be fair to say that I have walked through, around pretty much every important (and less important) streets of Jülich during my nearly fortnight long stay. As a result of all these walking, one should expect that I loose some weight. But let me not be selfish here – someone else did and that’s just fine with me.
10. Internet Chatting IS Good: There was a time, not long ago… Sunday, the 6th May 2007, I was at this Lieveboll Café in Jülich and after few cups of cappuccino, I realized that all I had left with me was € 1.50. Citi outlet wouldn’t accept my card without a PIN, Citi officials in US wouldn’t send me the PIN, local banks in the area wouldn’t let me in without their card, local shops/restaurants wouldn’t accept credit card as a method of payment and worst of all, my knowledge of German started and stopped at Hallo… things were starting to get quiet ugly and desperate. But for this beautiful thing called Internet Chat and more importantly, Ralph being online (though in Houghton), which helped me get the German equivalents of ATM (Bankautomat or Geldautomat) – I would have literally been bankrupt for the reminder of my stay here! None of the Bankautomats worked but it was during an evening walk with my camera that I saw an International Geldautomat that gleefully accepted the Wells Fargo card like every other machine I had tried before and unlike any of them, gave me the MONEY!!
11. Learn the local lingo: Not every town would let me survive for fifteen days with the knowledge of just Hallo. I should have taken the advice of Ralph as well as Jon more seriously and learnt few more phrases.
12. Carry Hard Cash: Most business establishments, at least in Jülich won’t accept credit card as a mode of payment – especially if the card issuing bank is outside of Europe. If only I knew this before, I would have carried more currency with me and would not have missed some wonderful opportunities.
13. It DOES NOT matter when one books the airline ticket; all that DOES matter is when one checks in. It now makes (more) sense as to why most airlines provide online check in facility up to 36 hours before departure time.
14. Google is probably the most well known six letter word in almost any language – I guess it has crossed any/all linguistic barrier. Having it printed on a long sleeve black T shirt has lots of advantages. Carrying an Apple notebook does not hurt either!
    
    
    

    Me, in AMS airport – waiting for rescheduling of my flight

    
    

15. I think I like Amsterdam – given the plethora of museums, pubs, roof-top restaurants, night clubs, looong sandy beaches along with a very pleasant sunrise/sunset, I need more time than a few hours layover… Shortage of time, however, didn’t stop me from shooting some pictures of the airport and the city:
    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    
    

    
    
    
    
    

16. Courtyard Marriott, where I was put up for the night by KLM/NWA – is pretty awesome. Apart from the courteous staff and spacious rooms with nicer views of surroundings, it’s technologically well equipped:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

17. Keeping quiet (or mouth shut) can be very useful – I was about to ask, after requesting a combo package of Apple Pie with Nuts and Large Coffee in AMS, not to give me nuts. Something else kept me occupied and I had to remain silent – end result? Awesome tasting food:
    
    
    
    
    
18. Electric Power Supply in A330: I had no idea that even (parts of) the economy class in this carrier provided electrical power supply. Not only did this help me work on some presentations on the way back, it kept me awake – but for which, I would have completely missed the spectacular (pictures below don’t do any justice) icy shores/waters and rocky/mountainous parts of Greenland:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
19. If you had read my experience of reaching India from Amsterdam (in August 2006), you would know that a certain cyclical dilemma had been bugging me for a while. For the sake of completeness, let me mention it again – First, I did not know as to why KLM/NWA flew a low-tech DC10 carrier from Amsterdam towards Mumbai/Delhi while they fly a fancy (and well equipped) AirBus 330 from Amsterdam towards US (and other European countries). Whether it was the unfriendly behavior of flight attendants that caused the passengers (mostly desis; does not apply to all desis though) to treat the cabin as a dumpster? OR whether it was because the passengers (mostly desis; does not apply to all desis though) used the cabin as a dumpster that the flight attendants behaved in an unfriendly manner??

    Guess what? It’s no longer a chicken-egg thing and I have figured it out – at least most of it. It is the passengers (mostly desis; does not apply to all desis though) treating the cabin as a dumpster along with a mentality – by paying for the airfare, I own the plane & the crew and I can do whatever I want – that causes (or forces to be precise) the flight attendants to be unfriendlier. It’s too bad that people often forget, especially when outside of their country/community, that their behavior is most often seen as the general behavior of the country/community – and more often than not, the other fellas from that country/community pay a rather heavy price.

    How did I figure this out? Fortunately or unfortunately, the middle aisle in my row was (three of the four seats) occupied by few desis (seats 17 D, F and G). I saw it first hand, with my bare naked eyes, as they not only drove away the fourth member of their section but literally turned it into garbage disposal unit. Adding to all this, they opened a fast food restaurant, abused the magazine pouch attached to the front seat as foot rest and used all four seats as their bedroom (trust me, ugly is an understatement). Few nuts and bolts that hold the arm-rest are quite loose now.

    It was very very hard for me not to talk to those folks about what they did but realizing that I had failed to convince my father, through 1990s, not to throw chocolate wrappers on the street or in the BTS (public transportation system in Bangalore) made me realize that it would be waste of my time and energy to do so…

20. List goes on….

PS #0: It feels good to be home and trust me, there is nothing that comes close to the feeling of sitting in front of your desktop/server at home, after a several day gap, while enjoying some good/decent food/beverage

PS #1: Back to work from tomorrow (Tuesday) and I cannot wait to explain all that I learnt in NIC, Jülich – especially the tricks of trade about using Blue Gene/L.

PS #2: Softball season begins officially tomorrow as well. Church League on Tuesdays and Michigan Tech Graduate League on Thursdays. Can’t wait to get on field either

PS #3: Please check my gallery for these and other pictures taken during the past 14 days.

As with any other occasion, I did learn some important lessons and some of them are picturised below:

About the other important lesson regarding the Definition of Happiness, it’s so damn practical and hilarious at the same time, that you have to ask me in person to learn about it. Apart from these, this party made me an Irish – albeit for a day (or an evening to be precise) – and I don’t mind being one every year if it lets me have so much fun!

Can you read the letters on the beads? (I Am Not Irish, You Can Still Kiss Me!)

Rest of the pictures from the event are here.

Well, that is not the meat of this entry. Eversince Chicago Bears won their seat in the Super Bowl XLI, the commentators (and just about every other sportscaster, news reader, and so on) started the flood of statements – all in effect meaning — Lovie Smith, the first African American Head Coach to appear in Super Bowl. This flood only increased as Colts also so booked their Super Bowl ticket — Tony Dungy joins Lovie Smith as the first African American Head Coach to appear in Super Bowl.

Here’s something I don’t understand. For as long as I can remember, we have been trying to get past identifying people and their achievements not based on the color of their skin or the race they belong to. And for every one step we take in the positive direction, we seem to be taking two more steps in the backward direction – revoking unnecessary thoughts and forcing people to identify their fellows by color and/or race.

Just like just about anybody in the NFL family (owners, coaches, players, officials, front office staff, fans, …), I have the highest of respects/regards for Dungy and Smith. But come Super Bowl Sunday, I am more than 100% sure that much of the TV/Radio commentary will hover around two African American Coaches leading their respective teams. And come to think of it – one of them has to loose and the other has to win. What will the legacy of these two head coaches will be? The way media is portraying things, we will tend to (or be forced to) forget all the great things that these two have done to all the teams they have been with and just remember that Coach A was the first African American to win the Super Bowl and that Coach B was the first African American to loose the Super Bowl. Personally, I consider this to be a very big shame – on the media and on just about anybody who would make such a remark. Last year’s Pro Football (NFL) Hall of Fame induction ceremony also had one of them speak a lot about such things.

It’s not the first time that this has happened and it wouldn’t be last time that this will happen either but it’s about time (and we have been saying this for a loooooooooooooong time) that we stop saying and actually start acting/doing something about it. Now that I think about it, we would be accomplishing a lot in this regard if don’t even say anything – a rather very special case where doing something does not require any talking! If we don’t talk about it, sooner or later, we will (hopefully) stop thinking about it…

1. Research, Graduate School, etc.: Have been at Michigan Tech for over four years now – in what has turned out to be the best years of my life in more ways than I can list here. It’s about time I wrap up the on going projects, give a decent shape to my dissertation/thesis, save (defend) it and graduate before Summer semester arrives. This also means that I have to find a job to work, which in turn means that I will finally be stepping into the real real world.
2. Health: For reasons that I do not wish to mention here, I got into the habit of sleeping just few hours (on an average 4 during work week and about 7 during weekends) since 1997-98. Though it gives me lot of time to do very many things and has not affected my efficiency, I have come to realize that even simple sickness (such as cough) takes forever to disappear. Doctors (and lot of others) have convinced me that lack of sleep leads to reduced immunity and prolongs recovery process. I will try my best to stick to a healthy sleeping schedule – if not anything, I should have more time to dream.
3. Sports: Watched lots of sports last year (some live and many on TV) and played quite a bit too. Would very much like to keep this thing going and see more of my sports heroes. May be watch few more NFL games live at the stadium and definitely want to see Brett Favre in action for one more season.

   In college sports, I would love to see this rather stupid, mindless bowl system (College Football) scrapped. BCS (not the BCS Theory but Bowl Championship Series) does not make any sense. I don’t know exactly how rankings are calculated in BCS, but for all I know (and many of my friends, some NFL players including Tom Brady), Michigan must have been playing Ohio State for the National Championship. It would just be great if there are like 8 zones and top two (or four) teams from each zones makes it to the usual knock out like play off scheme – which will eliminate the untrustworthy human elements and their stupid BCS algorithm.

4. Travel: 2006 was the most travelled year in my life so far – Maryland, Virginia, Washington DC, Delaware New Jersey, New York, Washington, Oregon, Wisconsin, Florida and part of South India. Even NorthWest airlines thought I used them well and upgraded my staus These travels have helped me meet some amazing persons/personalities and hopefully, I will continue to travel more to many more interesting places.
5. Photography: Thanks to some many like minded friends, I know for sure that I have made significant progress in photography and that my photographs can now be considered decent. Would love to learn more and shoot more – hopefully reducing the number of pics I discard.
6. Computers: Learnt lot more than I ever imagined during last one year and would love to continue doing so. Hopefully, computers will continue to love me too.
7. Be more organized and efficient in things I do.
8. Politics & Other Such Worldly Affairs: Didn’t give a damn last year and don’t want to do it this year either.
9. More things – as described by a friend in her Notes2Herself.

Wish you all a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year

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, seeing people that I had only known via their email-ids, making lot more new friends, shooting tons (and tons) of pictures (over 4000 of them in about 30 days to be approximately precise) and doing somethings I was long wanting to do and such… At the same time, I didn’t find enough time to meet everyone I wanted to meet, visit all places I wanted to visit and do everything else I wanted to do either… This four-line poem describes, in short, as to how a moment turns into eternity.

kShaNavonde anantakAla tAnAguvudu
anubhavake sattva shiva sundaragaLamare |
mana tumbushashiyAgi, nenapamrutavAguvudu
kShaNadoLakShaya kANO – mankutimma ||
– DVG, 445

A moment becomes eternal in itself
When truth, beauty and God combine with experience |
Mind becomes full-moon, memory becomes ambrosia
See the infinity in the moment – Dim Tim ||

Amount of change India has undergone, especially Bangalore (that’s the only city I am qualified to, I guess, talk about), in the last four years was a bit too much to handle for me. During my roaming arounds, I did see significant improvements in certain aspects – such as better roads (mostly outside the city limits which are getting better), private construction of Nandini Infrastructure Corridor, better living conditions for some sections of the society (it’s not uncommon to find just about anybody with a cell phone; most of them have a car or two), day-pass system in local transportation system, efficient advanced booking centers for state transportation spread all around the town, renovated reservoirs and parks, heightened level of courtesy/politeness amongst certain class of officials/bus conductors/auto drivers,… and many such. At the same time, there are other sections of the society whose standard of living has remained the same or has gone down – in relative terms, state of the roads within the city limits (in most areas) is faaaar below decency, there is traffic and there are rules but traffic doesn’t follow any rules, pollution is beating its own previous day record and such… I had to resort to wild life (style) to convince my mom about her city’s pollution and Houghton’s nearly crystal-clear air… Worst of all, not knowing Kannada used to be a sufficient condition to live in Bangalore four years ago, but now it has become a necessary condition. Most people, at least I talked to in many areas, just assumed that I did not know Kannada and/or they just felt inferior speaking that language. Pitiful state considering the fact that this language has the maximum number of Jnanapeetha awards…

There were some embarrassing situations that /me was part of, couple of them that I remember now – both happening on the first Sunday of my stay in M G Road. First off, I hadn’t checked my mail in about 40 hours and I called Surya to know if he knew of any Cyber Cafe in the neighborhood. He did not answer but sent me an SMS saying that he was in a class and that I would be better off asking people around about Sify. All I wanted to do was send a return SMS to Surya about something and I just couldn’t figure out how to send it. After managing to compose the message, I asked couple youngsters walking along to help me send the message — one of them starts to stare at me, top to bottom (thinking if it was some cranky show with hidden cameras) and the other asks me, Where are you from? /me politely answers, Michigan, USA. The staring guy starts to laugh out, in a sarcastic tone, sending out the obvious message but finally helps me send the message. That’s how yours-truly learnt to send SMS.

The second one was even more embarrassing. I was walking along the same M G Road same day, only a few hours later and having lived in the wish, re-wish society for four years, I was trying to wish everyone who passes me with a smile and a nodding head. When I did this to a bunch of three other youngsters, I noticed some concern on their face. Couple steps later, I pause and turn around, only to hear one of them saying bechara, pagla dikhta he (translating to English, it means Poor chap, looks lunatic) and the other two nodded in consent. Well, that was the last time I wished some one on the street…

Given that my parents (and their computer) still live in Store Age (Kallina Yuga instead of Kali Yuga, lol), following is nothing short of an achievement, at least I think so. In about 10 days that I was actually in Bangalore and in about 5 such days I stayed in-house, I managed to convince them to upgrade themselves, in terms of technology, etc. As usual, /me started off with the disadvantages of the other operating system (and its so called free products), then explained to them the cool features of Linux, convinced them that Internet wasn’t actually waste of time/money with an assurance that I could be their remote sys-admin if they did get internet. Hard to believe? check out the pictures below

Dual boot start up screen on my parents desktop

Linux booting up…

Amount of travel I did (locally within the city and otherwise) gave me plenty of time to read much more than I thought I would. All the books I read were bought from Ankita Pustaka, in BasavanaguDi (don’t know where it is located? It’s a little shop in the basement/cellar floor, located only few steps from the BasavanaguDi BTS bus stop; books aren’t expensive as these guys do much of the publishing too) and spanned humour to biographical accounts to serious novel. They have been doing a terrific job as far as publishing books and publicizing them is concerned. First of the five books I read was gAmpara gumpu (by dAsharathi deekshit) – hilariously hilarious work about 5 dumb students and their teacher. There was more than one occasion when, while in some form of public transit, I started laughing out so loud that others around me thought /me was mad. But the ending (of the book) seemed rather disappointing but a short time later, I realized that there was a Part 2 for it. maraLi maThakke wasn’t as hilarious as first part but concentrated on some relatively serious topics and provided a decent ending to lot of things left open earlier…

Couple of biographical accounts I read (these are not exactly biographical accounts but more of memorable quotes and events) were about T P KailAsam (tyAgarAja paramashiva kailAsam; Kailasam joksu songsu by B S Keshava Rao) and beechi (beechi: bulletsu bombsu bhagavadgeete by B S Keshava Rao). I was (and still am) disgusted with some people who take these two’s (and of others too) in a disrespectful fashion and call them drunkards, etc. But I just cannot understand as to why the same people forget to see the easy-to-see and great contributions they made to Kannada literature – with T P KailAsam known as the Great Grandfather of Kannada Dramatics (ever heard of pOli kiTTi, nam kampani, bahiShkAra, sattavana santApa, nam brAhmaNike, banDvAlavillada baDAyi, The Woman – Eternal Sufferer and The Man – Conventional Consoler and huttadalli hutta, etc?) What was great about his works/dramas was that instead of usual Kings, Queens and Warriors as the main characters, he made heroes/heroines out of common, everyday characters we see on the street, apart from using pretty common language to great effect!

It was while reading about beechi, in the first few pages of that book, that I learnt about another great book – which essentially turned a only English reading/writing/studying Bheemasena Rao into an ardent Kannada reading/writing/speaking/studying beechi! (I have been told that out of respect for both the languages, he started writing his name using both of them – bee in Kannada and chi in English!) Again, I heard quite disrespectful words about this gentleman too – that he was a police officer with too much time on his hands and that he didn’t know what to do with it, so he started writing… and such other bull crap. Wonder how many people with any free time do even care to read what he wrote, let alone write something new? Anyway, the book that dramatically changed beechi (the person and the personality) was sandhyArAga, written by A N KrishNa Rao. Like I had mentioned in my previous entry, this is the best novel I have ever read in this language. It talks about art and life of an artist, and has also been made into a movie. But like a banner in Crossword (one of Bangalore’s new, hi-tech bookshop) said, it’s not a great idea to judge a book by its movie – as far as I understand, a movie cannot show/portray the thought process of a character as can be done in a book. sattavanu eddu bandAga and quite popular tiMmana tale are the other two his works I have read but but had absolutely no idea that he also wrote few thousand four-line poems along the lines of DVG’s Kagga. Classic example of his humility – having known the importance of his own work, he calls DVG’s timma as Sun while calling his own tiMma (note the difference in pronounciation between the two) as a Bed Lamp. Some day, I would love to read his tiMma‘s words…

I did buy few other books that I am yet to read – Dim Tim’s Muses (English translation of Mankutimmana Kagga; so, from now on, I can write almost-authentic English translation for any poem I pick from Kagga ), some explanation for Kagga’s poems, and so on from Anikta Pustaka while couple books about bird watching (literal one) in Crossword, following Kalyan‘s suggestion and Surya gave me a pictures-facts book about Sachin (yeah, Sachin Tendulkar – the legendary cricketer) – once opened, couldn’t keep it aside until finished…

Apart from books and traveling, one of the other entities I spent quite a bit of $$ was on music – no, I didn’t buy the new bollywood specials or anything like that but mostly classical music. There were some songs/compositions (sung by certain some artists) that I had been looking for a loooong time. Music World (Jayanagar 4^th and 9^th blocks) was where I got much of all what I needed while Planet M (/me was amazed by the amount of activity that goes on in this shop, on Brigade Road – talent identification shows, and such) and Calypso (Jayanagar 4^th block) got me some specific ones. Cutting the long story short, here are some titles I bought – jayadEva’s aShTapadi (BAlamuraLi kriShNa), Gems of tyAgarAja (M S SubbulakShmi), GaNesh keertana (MahArAjapuram SantAnam), bhadrAchala rAmadAs kritis (BAlamuraLi kriShNa), sadAshiva brahmEndra kritis (BAlamuraLi kriShNa), dAsa kritis (BAlamuraLi kriShNa, SubbulakShmi, VidyAbhooShaNa, MahArAjapuram SantAnam, B S RAja IyengAr, John Higgins, M L Vasanta KumAri, RAjkumAr bhArati and more) and some instrumentals from popular old movies – if I play the all of these back to back non-stop, it will take a few days to finish…

Last Few Days

With less than handful of days left to start the return journey, /me did quite many things that should have been done while growing up (Well, have I grown up? it’s up to your imagination. If you think I haven’t grown up yet, replace the word up with old) – hanging out with friends/buddies. Rags, Gunda, Rithesh, Surya, Suraj, …. (names in no particular order) were keeping company pretty much every day/evening; Nina was kind enough to have all of us (a.k.a. untailed & untamed monkeys disguised as homo-sapiens) in her South City apartment for an evening – wherein, it was after a looooooooooooong time /me played some ping pong and tennis (with proper rackets, net and court) for the very first time. Ping pong games were mixed in result (lost to Rithesh but ended up not loosing to Rags) and so was tennis – glad none kept any score in the latter. Another evening, Srimatha and Deepti decided to keep our (monkeys’) company and needless to mention, we turned Adiga’s (Malleshwaram) into a zoo – for as long as we stayed.

My decent (in terms of behavior) visits included one of my uncles, my teachers and my grand parents; and there is a distinct advantage in Rags having his house in Kanakapura Road – it’s on the way to everybody’s house Being the kind-hearted guy he is, he dropped me off at my grand parents’ place (thanks to Deepti for trusting us with her vehicle though) around midnight… It was pretty nostalgic feeling and a feeling of filling up some of the gaps (in that growing up/old procedure) all along these hang outs…

Return Journey

Packing didn’t take much time (I didn’t have anything much to pack – my checked in luggage weighed under 8 lbs on my way into India) and my mom stacked it up with variety of spices, to last me at least a year. I had enough concerns about customs related things for this part and it turned out that I was worried for no reason. Due to tremendous in-flux of foreign nationals (visitors, business, etc), customs officials have probably realized that it’s in the best interest of the nation to put up a decent show. After all, they are the first set of people anybody interacts and if the showcase isn’t too good, it probably doesn’t give a good impression of the house. The only detailed, if any, security check I had was in Bangalore (Jet Airways) and it took under 2 minutes. Thanks to Coffee Day Cafe having WiFi access point, my laptop was happy to connect to the net for the first time outside Cochin…

Flight from Bangalore to Mumbai was delayed by 30+ minutes (/me didn’t have to worry – I had a long layover later and very good company on board ) and changing terminals (from national to international terminals in Mumbai) was, as it was on 12th August, a breeze. Immigration clearance took few minutes (probably the most not-so-gentle official during my entire trip) and a Nizami Biriyani (in one of the Oberoi outlets) later, security check in too took about couple minutes. Only things I had to explain was the existence of three lenses in my carry-on luggage.

Surprisingly enough, the in-bound flight from Amsterdam arrived on time and my flight to Amsterdam started on time – I remember, in spite of my sleeping, that the same flight was nearly two hours delayed four years ago. As one good thing leads to another, I had better company for this segment of the journey – a Mumbai based construction engineer working in Virginia area. Discussions hovered mostly around management topics but it was good to learn about a new person and their area of expertise. A brief stay in Amsterdam was good – just long enough to make sure that my face didn’t look like that of a terrorist and force a detailed security check I was pretty disappointed upon learning that none of the US bound passengers could buy any gel (or anything like it) and that only meant I had to get rid of my beard with Dove soap Journey from Amsterdam to Minneapolis was the one I was eagerly looking forward to (owing to all the technological gadgets I get to play with ) and it did not disappoint me. Not only that, I learnt some finer aspects of life from a California based social worker who works in Romania (and other parts of Europe).

Entry into US had its share of surprises too – a very very simple customs/immigration check and not even an X-ray scan (of me, my carry on and checked in luggage) later, I was wandering around in Minneapolis/St. Paul airport, eagerly looking forward to eating some filling food. Maui Cafe screwed up my order but thankfully, Quiznos was right around the corner from my concourse. Even more surprising was the fact that Northwest was flying jet service in the afternoon. To everybody’s pleasantly shocking surprise, flight reached Houghton/Hancock 45 minutes early As usual, Wil was on time to pick me up and right now, I am at home – eating a self-prepared noodles and breathing air that I am so used to. Only problem is that I have just about 36 hours before I leave Houghton again — wondering if I should waste time in unpacking my stuff and re-packing it all over again…

(Pictures, those that were and were not part of the previous blog entries, have been arranged in some fashion in my gallery. If you wish to check them out, use this here. Comments/Critics/Suggestions are, as usual, more than welcome!)

The Journey

Honestly, while trying to book my ticket for this trip to Cochin, I had my doubts/apprehensions about Kingfisher Airlines. For one, I had never heard about it; for two, I didn’t know anyone who had flew with it. But all such doubts and/or apprehensions vanished within few minutes of reaching Bangalore Airport. Yours truly hadn’t printed the boarding pass (his parents still live in 3rd Century BC, with the computer at their place acting more like a desk decoration and/or paper-weight) but smartly dressed, young employees of Kingfisher printed them off with a smile on their face, in a matter of seconds and I was on my way into the terminal.

Security Check-In was smooth and when about to get my boarding pass (in a first class counter, for an economy coach seat!), I was told that the poster tube also had to be checked in (this airlines allows only one carry on luggage). Not only that, since poster tube was added to already screened luggage, that thing had to go through screening all over again. With a pretty long queue (like Hanumanthana Baala, colloquially speaking), it would have taken about an hour in the 4-years-ago system. But with the current system and Kingfisher, it took less than a minute. A screening official noticed me walking back, called me over, saw my research poster and stuck a security cleared sticker /me walks back to the other counter, only to find boarding pass waiting to be picked. Rest of the Check-In process was as smooth as it could be and the flight started on time. Cabin was very clean (yes, clean clean, if you know me) and food was, OMG, just too good. It was one pleasant surprise after another through out this journey and the flight reached Cochin on time too.

Sun rising over Bangalore – shot from Kingfisher Airlines

Aerial view of Cochin

Aerial view of Cochin

Return journey was pretty smooth and much similar – easy Check-In, great service, good food, on-time departure & arrival, and such. Never heard anyone complain about Kingfisher Airlines (locals as well as invited speakers from other countries) and it’s my personal favourite amongst private carriers in India I would recommend this to anyone travelling within India and just can’t wait to see them fly international…

The Conference

Thanks to some exemplary arrangements (more about this later), people were waiting with sign-boards to pick up and provide transportation to the hotel. In all, we were five passengers – Dr. Asim Ray, Dr. Robert Vajtai, Agnes Vajtai, Dr. John Jaszczak and yours-truly — in the van, and I had to wait until we reached the hotel to realize how far we had travelled (close to 50 km)! As it happened to be around the check out time, I had to wait for a while in the lobby – part of the time in talking to Dr. Jaszczak and rest, shooting pictures just outside. About 45 minutes and some chai later, I was guided to my room and I still hadn’t realized where I was staying. Minutes pass by, I access the internet in a WiFi fashion and 30 minutes later, I get a phone call from the service department, Sir, How was the connectivity and speed of our connection?. It felt kinda weird but same thing repeated 45 minutes later, when I was eating some food. It was only after these incidents that the dumb /me realized it wasn’t any hotel by name Taj, but it was The Taj! Took me a while to recover from that shock and honesly, I haven’t recovered completely from it yet.

Much of my time at this conference was spent outside the lecture hall but I learnt many valuable things – many such tiny little things, which an attendee wouldn’t normally worry about, which do keep the chain (of activities) connected. Barring few minor troublesome incidents, much of it was very smooth. Taj staff did an awesome job, providing us with things — whatever we asked for and however unreasonable it might have sounded at that instant — within a matter of minutes, and that too, with a gentle smile on their face.

About the organization of the symposium, this is the first one to my knowledge, where a very detailed spouse program was chalked out. Usually, they (spouse and kids) end up spending time in the hotel room/lobby and are bored to death pretty soon. But this one was pretty special – spouse/companion program included daily trips to few worth-visiting places, visits to popular shopping areas and the best of all, traditional Kerala massage (yes, a massage). Now, how many workshops/symposia you attend have these things?? This (and many other things) was (were) the brainchild(ren) of Poornima’s planning and something subsequent organizers should (or must?) keep in mind. Some felt that the conference organizers forgot the Indian aspects while arranging things – but hey, such is life — we don’t get everything right in the first attempt and as long as we make sincere attempts to improve, it’s fine There were cultural programs too – one organized as part of our symposium (on Sree KrishNa JanmAshTami) and several others organized by Taj as a part of their evening routine. Some snaps from our event are below:

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

Cultural Event :: Classical dance performance during Cochin Symposium

For more information about this type of music and/or dance forms, feel free to contact this, this and/or this person and they should be able to help you out, lot better than /me can do

To more important things now, food was just great – no one complained about this; I got to see and meet many people that I had only known by name; got to see Cochin in much better detail than last time, was part of boyz-only discussion on the last day (drawing maps of various cities), had couple of boat tours (sunset and backwater), and so on. The latter boat trip, in the backwaters of Kerala, was an eye-opener for me. /me, like few others on the trip were, was under the impression that backwater drive would be through narrow water-passages in a small boat. But it turned out to be more like a Lake Powell type experience – water-passages were huge (at least 6 – 8 times our Portage canal in Michigan’s UP) and the carrier was a house boat (with three full scale rooms, a kitchen, a chef and two who could drive). Needless to mention that I shot lots (and lots) of pictures and received another shock while trying to recover from last one – staying in Taj itself still feels like a dream and add this 4 hour boat ride to that!!

Some of the pictures below were shot on the way to our starting point and rest were taken while on boat.

On our way to Taj Garden Retreat in Kumarakom

On our way to Taj Garden Retreat in Kumarakom

On our way to Taj Garden Retreat in Kumarakom

Taj Garden Retreat in Kumarakom

Houseboat, seen during backwater ride

Another houseboat, seen during backwater ride

Seen during backwater ride

Seen during backwater ride

Houseboat from a houseboat, seen during backwater ride

Seen during backwater ride

Seen during backwater ride

Seen during backwater ride

Some part of our houseboat

It will be a while before all these sink in and for sure, I am reconvinced that this (Kerala) indeed is God’s Own Land. If you can’t convince yourself of this fact, blame /me and my photography skills – and, just take a trip yourself…

If you have known me, for any amount of time, you would know my crazyness/freakiness for technology and my dependence on it. To that effect, I have been making arrangements to have a new cell phone ready by the time I reach Bangalore. Just to get into the proper mood, I have been speaking to few friends of mine — catching one of them was lot tougher than talking to God himself. One other, while driving behind yet another friend, was acting like an amplifier for swear words. I will speak to few others before I start.

What else have I been doing? Been involved in looooong chatty-discussions with a nephew of mine – about things on which we don’t really agree with each other, but it has been a healthy debate so far. Apart from that, I roamed around a bit with few friends during the weekend – it was the first time all along this summer that I actually swam in L. Superior. First it was dip in Brunette Park (there weren’t any brunettes there, for miles) and next it was near Silver City (Ontonagon county) with Porcupine Mountains in the backdrop. Pretty sight indeed. For those friends of mine who are eager to know how I look (and have somehow picturizing me with few extra pounds), I am still the same old guy in many ways and still quite athletic — got pictures to prove it this time (Picture Courtesy: Bharath Choudhary and Santosh Karre, respectively)

While I am at it (that is, at my crazyness/freakiness), let me mention that I bought a ticket for an NFL game, later this November. Two of my heroes amongst current NFL players will be playing in that game. Let me kill the suspense and let it out. New England Patriots visiting Green Bay Packers in Lambeau Field. I get to see Brett Favre and Tom Brady in one game – former in what appears to be his last pro-season while the latter hasn’t even reached his prime (he has three super bowl rings, with a 10-1 play-off record – that’s an entirely different story and I will reserve it for an other day). In a nutshell, I am excited about it.

Returning to the main topic of discussion, I believe people (most of my relatives, some of my teachers and few friends) will be surprised to see the new me and many things (living/non-living alike) in India will equally surprise me too. Like it or not India, here I come…

1. those who don’t read if there is any technical content
2. those who don’t read if there is no technical content
3. those who read just about anything, irrespective of content
4. those who don’t read at all, irrespective of content

How easy is it to write something that meets the taste of all four (technically first three) aforementioned categories of people? I learnt it the hard way that it’s not so easy but it’s not too difficult either. So, part of my last weekend was spent in adding more categories and re-categorizing (most of) the previous entries. What I also re-realized is the fact that I am Geek/Nerd – which means much of my time is spent in research/computer related fields and as a result, most of the things that happen in my life are technical. This (directly / indirectly) implies that majority of my blog-entries deal with such things.

Does it mean that I don’t have a life beyond sciences/computers? Certainly not. Other things that I am interested are the following, with a description of why I seldom make them the subject of entries:

1. Reading: I used to be voracious reader (reading just about anything and everything that I could find) before my passion for computers was reborn a few years ago. I still read some books (and read them over and over again) – most of them are either manuals or user-guides, etc. Outside of computers/science, I read books like Mankuthimmana Kagga, Samskruthi, Jeevana Dharma Yoga (you probably would have guessed by now, DVG is my favourite writer – well, if you know about him) and so on. These may not be of interest to people of my age-group (I clearly remember my parents refusing to buy me these books), but now that I think about it, I should write about my understandings of these works.
2. Sports: I guess I do write about sports – that I watch (on TV and live) and play..
3. Music: I do listen to variety of music but my musical talent ends at listening. Well, that’s not entirely true – I did take violin classes last year and learnt how to play couple of simple songs. I even managed to have a fan club for my playing of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star number and that’s where my playing instruments stopped. About singing, I can confidently say that myself and Sonu Nigam (or Phil Collins) started singing in the bathroom. They have gone on to be great singers and I remained in bathroom
4. Movies: I am not a big fan of movies and you probably wouldn’t believe if I tell you that I watched Mission Impossible (not part III, but I) few days ago or Lagaan in 2004! Personally, I think watching TV, except for sports and some good documentaries, is a waste of time. It doesn’t mean, again, that I don’t watch movies at all – but the ones I watch somehow belong to the geeky/techno/sporty class. For example: Beautiful Mind, Dangerous Minds, Dead Poets’s Society, Italian Job, Oceans’ Eleven, Replacements, and so on…
5. Photography: I am an amateur myself and I have neither expertise nor experience to write about it.

So, in an attempt to please everybody, I have decided to concentrate on one given subject per entry, instead of mixing everything up… Oh, one more thing – I found the following on couple of my friends’ pages. A method to figure out what type of writer one is and I thought it wasn’t a bad description of myself… It said,

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer
Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you’re from. And while you may have some problems being “normal,” you’ll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it’s epic films, important novels, or vivid comics… Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

Though I am not entirely sure of my Sci-Fi writing capability, I am very certain about first sentence and half of the second! If you are interested, you can try this page. So, let me see how many people (remember to) read this entry (and possibly comment on it)…

Work week too got off to a decent start – I restarted the 231-step calculation, and wondering about how to force passwd not to accept stupid passwords (after a short discussion with Dave Kraus), then contrary to all my expectations, I receive an email from Google! AdSense Team – giving some information about appealing disabling of my account. I did send them all the required information they asked for, along with my guessed-explanation for so called invalid clicks. It remains to be seen as to what will happen to my appeal.

From xxxxx@google.com Mon Mar 27 13:26:39 2006
Date: Mon, 27 Mar 2006 09:11:19 -0800
From: Google AdSense
To: Gowtham S
Subject: Re: [#xxxxxxxx] *Google AdSense Account Disabled

Hello,

As you know, Google treats instances of invalid clicks very seriously. By disabling your account, we feel that we have taken the necessary measures to ensure that invalid clicks will not continue to occur on your site. Due to the proprietary nature of our monitoring system, we’re not able to disclose any specific details of these clicks.

Publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in Google AdSense. However, if you can maintain in good faith that the invalid clicks we detected on your ads were not due to your actions or negligence, or the actions or negligence of others working for you, you may appeal the closing of your account.

Google reserves sole discretion in considering whether to take any action on an appeal. In order to appeal the disabling of your account, please email us at xxxxx@google.com with the details requested below. Please compose a new email and do not reply to this message. We’re unable to consider appeals that do not contain all of this information:

- Your name
- Your company’s name (if applicable)
- Your publisher ID number (located in the AdSense code on your website with the format, pub-################)
- Your website’s URL
- Date your account was disabled
- Your website’s audience
- The source of your website’s content
- Frequency of content updates
- The primary sources of your website’s traffic
- The number of people involved with the administration of the site
- Any relevant information that you believe would explain the invalid click activity we detected

If Google decides to evaluate your appeal, we will do our best to inform you quickly and will proceed with appropriate action as necessary. If we have reached a decision on your appeal, subsequent or duplicate appeals may not be considered.

Sincerely,

The Google AdSense Team

Continuing with research and school related work, I tried compiling ICECAP – as initial attempts failed, I re-wrote the makefile and compilation succeeded. However, the test calculation (which should have taken about 20-30 minutes) took just couple seconds. I am more than convinced that something went wrong with the compilation process. LUG members (Jon – the Security Hole and Kyle) helped me with my passwd problem and the procedure is given in Note2Self page – it will definitely make users’ life lot more difficult but importantly, it will keep the system secure by forcing stronger passwords. I will wait until tomorrow before implementing in our group’s beowulf cluster.