Tuesday August 21, 2007

Great America (place for thrilling rides) We recently went to Great America which is known for its thrilling ride. Basically it was a fun event organized by our group and the place was chosen by exercising their vote for different places and guess what I was campaigning for it. Anyway, the best rides were Invertigo, Xtreme Skyflyer and Top Gun. In Xtreme Skyflyer, Srini and I experience the breathtaking thrill of hang gliding and skydiving. You'll be hoisted 153 feet above ground, and dive at speeds up to 60 miles per hour while free-falling 17 stories toward the Earth skimming just six feet above the ground. On the other hand Invertigo was equally thrilling with lots of ups and down. The complete list of rides with description can be found here. (2007-08-21 22:11:59.0) Permalink

Wednesday April 05, 2006

Mount Hamilton (California) Last weekend, we all went to vist an observatory at Mount Hamilton. This time Anil also joined us. The forecast for Sunday (2nd April) was rainy but we still wanted to go somewhere. Since I came to Phani's place little late, we started our trip (75 miles) by 1.30 pm. The drive from base to the hill top is 19 miles. We first went to alake which was our first stop. We started to find some trails but by that time clouds started gathering momemtum. So we had no option but to go towards observatory soon. Once we reached at observatory, it had started raining. We could hardly see San Jose and other nearby place. But later when the mist and cloud cover settled for few minutes, we could get the glimse of lush green mountains. The wind was also killing us. Mount Hamilton is one of the tallest mountains overlooking the Silicon Valley at 4,213 feet above sea. The observatory is very beautiful and if you want to know about stars this's the place which you would not want to miss. The photographs in the observatory explains many things like comet, moon of saturn and so on. You may want to take a look at the photographs at Chandan's page. (2006-04-05 18:00:00.0) Permalink

Wednesday March 15, 2006

moved to UFS filesystems group Finally I moved to filesystems group (aka Data Technology in Sustaining group) in USA. I'll be working out of California. I've not settled yet; trying to locate apartment and other necessary things to setup. I've started driving but unlike India it's very different. It's been raining here for quite sometime. I hope I'll soon get to venture out on the bay area hills; may be once the rains stops here. (2006-03-15 07:30:00.0) Permalink

Tuesday November 22, 2005

what am I doing these days... I have been going on some great treks in Himalayas with Uncle and in Western Ghats with Uncle and Dipankar. At the work front, I have been working on many things like backports of exisitng bugs which are fixed in Solaris development release, Thread affinity Group with Jonathan Chew, Kernel bugs and all. A while ago Surya Prakki asked me to work with him for Read-only support of ReiserFS 4 on Solaris. So we have been experimenting few things on file system stuff also. I may move to a different group and in the new role I'll be working on Filesystems along with other kernel areas. This would be a good learning excerise for me as I have not worked much in filesystems area. This would be good for shaping growth oriented career path also. Having spent five years in core kernel, it's time now to explorer new things.

Thread affinity Group project is eating too much of brain and with the help of Jonathan Chew we are making slow and steady progress. Backports are almost finished except for x66/amd64 backport. ReiserFS 4 support is on. UFS bug fixing and escalation work will soon start. PICL (platform information control library) is kind of stable now. There were couple of backlogs of bugs which I fixed in the recent time. Heading for learing new things... (2005-11-22 23:40:00.0) Permalink Comments [0]

Sunday August 14, 2005

Kite flying... On the eve of 58th Independence Day, my uncle thought of doing something different. He came to my place at 10.00 am on 15th Aug and we decided to participate in Kite flying while we were finalising plans for our next expedition in Sept/Oct 2005. Our plans to Jog Falls and Agumbe had not materialized due to personal problems at uncle's side, so we were doing nothing during the long weekend. I spent most of my time watching CNBC TV18. Though I did miss 'Swades' movie which I wanted to see on 15th Aug. Anyway, the kite flying was at Jakkur Flying club (Bangalore) and uncle had already bought kite and other things.

The wind was perfect for kite flying. Initially we had little difficulty in controlling the kite as and when it flew in the sky, but soon we got to know the trick. Well I'm not going to discuss about the trick or how to fly kite. After a long time, I was thrilled to participate in kite flying. In my childhood, I used spent most of my time flying kite in New Delhi. I hardly used to study. My mom used to beat me up whenever I spent hours for flying kite. Those were great days and only memories are left behind.

There were lots of people flying kite. Some people had come down from Mysore and other places to participate in kite flying. They had very interesting kites. One of girls group had at least 100+ kites bind together and were touching the skies. It was looking spectacular. Few others had very big kites. I don't know how they were able to hold/control the kite for so long. We were having difficulty at times to control the kite when it almost touched the sky :-). Oh! I didn't bring my little camera :-(

We would have flown our kite twice in the skies. At times I was having little difficulty in managing the kite so that it doesn't interfere with other kites. At times, other kites were troubling our kite. In fact eagles were also attracted towards the kite. I don't know what kind of affection they were seeing :-). Nevertheless we had good fun at Jakkur Flying club. Organisers had asked us to bring down the kites when a plane was suppose to take off. The plane came so close to us that most of us were scared when the plane took off just above our head. Kids had great had that time.

Last but not least I was impressed to see the enthu in kids at the play ground. It reminded my past. (2005-08-14 19:19:05.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Tuesday December 28, 2004

Happy New Year 2005!

Happy New Year 2005 to those who read my blog. May all your dreams come true and brings all the happines to you and your family.

As the mist of 2004 is beginning to settle, we think about our big plans for the next year and I'm sure you too will have big plans for the new year. This year has been too good as far as office work and trekking are concerned. I made loads of presentations on Solaris 10 to customers and developers. I also executed one of the spectacular expedition (Goe-chala) this November.

SUNW was consolidating at $3.5 - $4.5 levels for quite some time in the past and is out from those levels quite nicely. I'm sure that SUNW would outperform market expectation in the new year.

In the coming 2005, I think India would emerge as a leading Global player. The growth in India would bring lots of foriegn investment.

I too have some big plans for the next year. I wish to do Skiing, high altitude trekking and expeditions and may also go for Sky Diving (if I happen to go to USA). Moreover, the work is expected to get hectic in the new year.

Happy New Year 2005! :-)

Wednesday December 22, 2004

Investment advice

Yesterday, I was watching CNBC TV18 (it's a business channel in India) after heading for home little early when I noticed something really interesting. The program name is "Your Money" which comes at 4.30 pm. Investment guru's were giving advice on retirement polices and what one should do for the retirement. One guy gave a very good advice. He said "why not save money now and retire early -- lets say at the age of 50". I think it's a very good idea if we can save some money now and use it for the future and utilize them once we retire. Why to take the pain of struggling for money later if money can be saved now for the future. And those who are earning well, I think they must think about it.

And then as usual, I started dreaming about it and I thought that a nice wooden house in the front of snow covered peak would be an ideal home after taking the retirement. Having tea with your wife in the peaceful atmosphere would be really good. That's when my mom broke my dream. This dream did give some relief from the heahache.

Well! think about this if you'd like to have extra fun after you retire.

Tuesday July 20, 2004

Introduction

I work for Solaris Kernel Sustaining and Engineering in India Engineering Centre located in Bangalore, India. I have been working with Sun Microsystems since Novmeber 1999.

My hobbies include :-

* Trekking -- Western ghats and Himalayas.
* Mountaineering -- We did rock climbing, ice and snow crafting, high altitude rock climbing, and artificial wall climbing.
* Driving Car and Travelling -- Maurti 800 (a small car)
* Listening to Music

I had done 28-days Basic Mountaineering Course at Nehru Institute of Mountaineering India in Novmember last year 2003. I'll soon be posting my diaries on mountaineering and few treks. So stay tuned.

My recents trips in 2004 are :-

* Yaana and Gokarna Trip in January
* Savandurga car trip on 1st Feb
* Moonlight Trek (Kumarparvath) on 7/8th Feb
* Trek near Ooty and Connoor on 28/29th Feb
* Car trip (700kms) on 13/14th March to Hassan-Mulliangiri-Kemmangundi
* Kudermukh Trek on 3rd and 4th April 2004
* Trip and Trek in Kinnaur (Sangla Valley, Peo and Kalpa) and Spiti Valley of Himachal Pradesh (30th April to 9th May)