LSF, is a premier meet for Linux file system folks. Being invite only, its the only concerned people that attend or rather allowed to attend this workshop. This is its third year and mine first. Only 60 odd people on the attendee list. Odd. Every big name you can think of in the Linux kernel community was there, notable exceptions of Linus and Alan Cox, but they aren't file system major anyway.
Heres the workshop program: http://www.usenix.org/event/lsf08/. And there wasn't any scope for any and every discussion not to be enlightening. Being a primary note taker, I was all the more attentive than usual. Good for me. Will hang off my notes here, as soon as I get them compiled in a readable way.
LSF was co-located with USENIX FAST 2008 and a BoF was arranged on the last day of the workshop which was open to both LSF and FAST attendees. I found it very interesting, especially since it allowed interaction between people from academia and Linux kernel maintainers. We discussed many issues surrounding file systems and storage apart from taking a overview of the discussions at workshop.
I enjoyed my presence at LSF a lot, more than just the day full of technical stuff, its about meeting and interacting with the small esoteric group of kernel developers, whom I revere since my school days. And now its easy for me to convince my mom that its ok if I work more, if akpm works 60 hours a week at his age :)
Ok guys, pinch yourself if you want to, this is true. I'm thinking of joining a company in Redmond, called M$. I've already started preparing for the interviews. Megs tells me the most common question they ask, like any other company, is "why do you want to join M$?". I've come up with few possible answers. Here they are:
1. I'm a sinner, I think I deserve it.
2. I've heard lots bad things about your company, just want to check out if its really that bad.
3. I'm done with my life. I think suicide would be little too much.
4. Nothing else worked. Plans A-Y failed, you're my last resort.
5. I'm anti-social. Everyone hates me anyways.
Disclaimer: umm...aa..aaa..umm...a pinch of salt and a grain of humor.
This is one of those topics when I actually get to writing I feel why in the world I pitched such a story in the first place. But I'm glad to have all of my stories accepted. Its always more pleasure writing about things you're not familiar with than otherwise. And its always a pleasure writing in general, running around streets, meeting people, interviewing them and taking pictures. Its different than blogging in many ways.
I was researching about tipping trends and cultures worldwide for a small feature article. The insignificant looking thrifty money that we leave behind as a tip in restaurants surmounts to a multi-million dollar transaction in US alone. The waiter I interviewed at a Thai restaurant on Castro street, Mountain View, apparently makes more money than me and any of my friends. How's that? I inquired, but they have no new vacancies coming up anytime soon :)
Here's a study at Cornell about gratuities that I found both, useful and interesting - Beyond Gratitude and Gratuity.
Reminds me of the project presentation days...talk and answer same things over and over.
The UFL career fair was nothing much different than KSU's, but I found UFL students taking career fairs more seriously. May be because UFL has more students or may be because career fairs at KSU are not much fruitful to computer science students. Although I did took first couple fairs at KSU seriously, later I didn't because I didn't have to, except for the free goodies. Its nice to be on the other side of the table though. And its always good to go back to school.
Weather in Gainesville, I found, is noticeably different...its more on the hotter side, but winters are pleasant. In all the places I've been, I can feel the difference in not only the weather, but in the air...Kansas, Boston, Palo alto, Seattle, Pune and Florida. It doesn't have to be true though, I don't have enough samplings.
The highlight of this trip, apart from a mouth watering "peshal" egg curry by megs, is that I had to give an impromptu presentation at the VMware info session. Thanks to some of the colleagues who chipped in.
Its been quite some time I was thinking of doing this..and finally couldn't resist myself any more cleaning up the clutter this blog had become. The swanky blog header comes from a mix and match in gimp. Wanted to depict a blend of deep thinking, an observer, and the conglomerate of thoughts in a color contrasting with the other colors used on the template...and what came out is this. Also now the font is much readable than before.
Great song. I rediscover it every time I listen to it, especially when sung by those talented competitors on the various singing shows. Listen to this kiddo... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s25r3YLPQOQ. Thanks Viv.
Album: Masoom (1983) Song: Tujhse Naraz Nahi Zindagi (OST) Singer: Anup Ghoshal Music: R D Burman
A D tujhase naaraaz nahi zindagi, hairaan hoon main a b c# b c# b a b a f# e d e f# e f# f#
D o hairaan hoon main e d d e f# e e e
A D tere masoom savalon se pareshaan hooN main a b c# b c# b a b a f# e d e f# e f# f#
A o pareshaan hoon main d d c# b c# b a a a
A A Bm D jeene ke liye socha hi nahi, dard sambhalane honge c# d e d c# c# d e d c# c# b b b b b c# b f# a
A A Bm D muskuraoon to muskurane ke karz utaarne honge c# d e d c# c# d e d c# c# b b b b b c# b f# a
A A muskuraoon kabhi to lagata hai c# b c# b b b c# d c# b b
E A jaise hontonn pe karz rakhaa hai g# b g# b e b b b
Being in the default stream of Computer Science, its most likely that people like me end up spending most of their lives in bigger cities. And then the fond memoirs of a very small town like Manhattan, Kansas remains...where some lucky folks like me, for a short while, get to study, work, play, and make friends for life!! My k-state!
Enough said and heard about it. They call it "micro-blogging." Nothing fancy about it, just another buzzword. With it you can blog one liners..like where you are, what you are doing and feeling. Good thing about it is you can feed it right on your blog, like I have it with "What am I up to?" on the left. Also there are few firefox extensions as well that allow you twitt-ing from firefox. Twitter is ad-free as of now...or I'II be the first to dump it. Lets see how far it goes.
Kary says it all, both in words and in this picture compilation. Need I say more? Thanks Kary! and kudos to everyone! :D Feels its a lifelong vacation now :)
This is one of those topics when I actually get to writing I feel why in the world I pitched such a story in the first place. But I'm glad to have all of my stories accepted. Its always more pleasure writing about things you're not familiar with than otherwise. And its always a pleasure writing in general, running around streets, meeting people, interviewing them and taking pictures. Its different than blogging in many ways. 
