Odyssey

Isn’t it funny – Entrepreneurs work harder than “corporate drones” only to build something with hopes of getting acquired by another bigger corporation, and then end up as drones in the acquiring company for next few years.

In the last few years, I have only seen a handful of entrepreneurs who actually move on to newer ideas after selling their first one off. It’s just too rare, though.

One of my next posts will talk about the lessons I learned in my very early-on bout(s) with high-tech entrepreneurship. Anyone can do it, but are the trade-offs worth the gains?

Posting this from my new iPhone, and have to say that I am pretty impressed!

I was thinking how much things have changed in the last 10 years. We now live in an increasingly connected society, at least from a technological point of view. Yet, at the same time, there are things that haven’t changed at all. We still have the middle east crisis. We’re still fighting hunger and poverty, and we’re still in search of a new source of energy!

10 years ago:

1. I was trying to get in a good college.
2. My primary computer was a desktop PC running Windows 95. The processor was 66Mhz Pentium.
3. I was experimenting with Linux in a big way.
4. I did not have an Internet connection at home.
5. I used to dial in to a few BBS’ across the world.
6. I was excited about being able to finally have a cable TV connection at home.
7. I was a computer “whiz-kid”.
8. I couldn’t cook to save my life.
9. I wanted to grow up to be an engineer working for the Indian Government.
10. I never thought I would move to a distant country.

Now, things that have remained unchanged:

1. The Simpsons is still the longest running prime-time animated series.
2. Human cloning is still banned.
3. Tony Blair is still the Prime Minister of Britain (although he’s retiring on June 27th).
4. India’s President is still from the minorities.
5. Toyota Prius is still quite a buzzword.
6. The middle east is still strife-torn.
7. The space race is still on, albeit between the West and the rest of the world.

I got rid of my leg cast yesterday. The good news is that the lesion was not malignant. Even though the cast is gone, I still have about half of my sutures still remaining, and am avoiding putting force on the incision area, which means no driving for yet another week.

Now, I got a chance to look at my toe for the very first time post-surgery, and I almost had an upset stomach. Basically, I was wrong when I mentioned that the incision was only 2cm long. It was actually about 2 inches in length, in the shape of a curve that extended from one end of the toe to the other. As you can see in the illustration, the surgeon removed the circular lesion by making a rectangular incision, but also made 2 additional cuts at the opposite ends to help sew up the incision. A straight line cut would not have held steady. According to him, it was one of the most difficult plastic surgery operations on the bottom part of the big toe, simply because of the lack of available skin and flesh. The incision is called a “Hurricane incision“, with the eye of the hurricane in the center. In his words, the post-surgery toe “looked like it was a gunshot wound”.

I am wearing what they call a “post-op shoe”, which is basically a well-padded protected slipper. Working from home has been a good, albeit boring experience so far. The good thing is that I saved a whole lot of money on gas by switching to telecommuting

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2007/06/the_high_frontier_redux.html

I’ll post my comments later.

First the iPod Shuffle, and now a Macbook! Granted, that the shuffle was a raffle prize at work, it still was my first official Apple possession. For the longest time, I imagined myself never ever buying a Mac simply because to me it never appeared as a serious development platform. Having grown up with DOS and then the ever evolving Windows platform, adopting an OS that still used Objective C for most app development just didn’t seem interesting to me.

Read the rest of this entry »

This past Friday, I had to undergo an hour long plastic surgery procedure to get rid of a lesion that had formed at the bottom of my left big toe. According to the surgeon, there’s a
“one in a million” chance of it being malignant, but I am still awaiting the biopsy report.

The lesion was circular, but the surgeon mentioned that he would have to take out a square chunk of tissue, followed by performing plastic surgery to compensate for the lost tissue. The incision was a 2cm square and took more than 23 stitches to cover up! I was pretty nervous during the entire ordeal as I had never had surgery before, but I have to say that it wasn’t that bad, except for the excruciating pain once the local anesthesia  wore off in the middle of the night.

I have a cast on my leg for the next 2 weeks. Of course, this means that I would be unable to drive to work, or anywhere else, for that matter. Thanks to my superiors at work, I would be able to telecommute/work from home until then.

Amazing how a harmless looking wound turned out to be something so serious….

I finally took the plunge into Amateur Radio and successfully qualified for the Technician Level license on the 12th. Although, I am still waiting for my license to arrive by mail and the call sign to show up on FCC’s website, I am also preparing to qualify for my General Level license, which would give me access to almost all the High Frequency bands for very long distance communications.

The preparation was pretty easy, and between purchasing the study guide and passing the license exam, I spent about 15 days. The Technician level is supposed to be an easy entry path for anyone interested in being a Ham. On the other hand, the General and Amateur Extra levels require much more intensive training in the fundamentals of radio communications, engineering, and regulations. It is definitely to my advantage that I have a degree in electrical engineering with extensive coursework in radio theory and antenna design.

There are exam sessions organized by volunteer examiners several times during a week, and all it takes is a simple email/phone call to register. The exam session I attended was organized at the Police Station/Courthouse in Wake Forest. I got a perfect score on the exam! The VEs coerced me into taking the exam for the General level license on the spot, even though I wasn’t prepared, but unfortunately, I wasn’t able to qualify for that. Needless to say, I am happy that I am now a “ham”, and look forward to graduating to the next level very soon!

Now that I have my license, I intend to complete the requisite courses mandated by the Department of Homeland Security, and successfully enroll in the ARES (Amateur Radio Emergency Service) and the RACES (Radio Amateur Civil Emergency Service). Other than volunteering, my other interests at this point are DXing (contacting other fellow hams around the globe), antenna design, and digital communications. There are a multitude of clubs and organizations around the globe, and regular events/conventions are organized on a fairly regular basis (hamfests, Field Day, nets), which makes it very easy for beginners to get their feet wet.

If you are interested in becoming a ham, too, please don’t hesitate in sending me an email for further information/guidance!

UPDATE: I just got my license information from FCC. I will now be known as Saurabh Garg, KI4WAH !

Not everyone remembers using dial-up networking to get on the Internet. This is more true for people who started using the Internet, in general, around the last 6-7 years. I used a dial-up connection to get online up until Fall 2002, which was when I finally got a 3Mbps cable connection.

Hence, after reading the announcement by the NCSU IT Department that they were retiring all their RAS modems, I was compelled to reminisce my first few days as a grad student. I ran Linux on my cheap hand-me-down desktop PC, and that meant (at least back then) that I couldn’t use AOL or any other dial-up service with the operating system without using some kind of a “hack”. Then, I discovered that NCSU had a pool of fast, albeit insufficient, modems that could be used for free off-campus network access provided you had an active campus ID.

The TCP/IP modems were pretty hard to dial into, considering that they were insufficient in number, and that most TCP/IP sessions are expected to last long. The shell access modems, on the other hand were always available. For those unfamiliar with shell access, it was basically a *NIX shell modified to fit the needs of remote dial-up users without providing them the capability of forwarding, or even running, any X server apps. You could still browse the net all you wanted using a text based browser like Lynx.

RIP, NCSU Dial-up RAS!

Came across this “interesting” personals on the local Craigslist:

The biggest challenge I have faced in life is finding company and ways to do things which I desire. Not everything is as much fun alone otherwise Adam and Eve could very well have been created of the same kind.

I am 26, grad student, 5′11, brown eyes, black hair, decent, ever smiling, inquisitive. Would not label myself as glass breaking looks but surely smart looks. As a person I am creative and surely intelligent. I enjoy movies, music, cooking, writing, poetry, reading, interesting conversations, travel, dreaming, sleeping, sports, photography, silence, emotions, occasional partying, blah blah. I love going out for walks, food or even to sit in the library with coffee. I am good with most things related to a computer. Haven’t been clubbing for long. I am easy going, peaceful, something between an extrovert and introvert, humorous, philosophical and friendly. I am the types who would go to a concert on the eve of an exam or could be awake for an entire night discussing world peace or which country has the hottest girls. I have missed entire semester of classes and still got an A. I have written 40 page love letters and chatted online 12 hours non stop. I am the kind who could dance the night away or sleep for 24 hours at a stretch. Nothing about me is deterministic and that is even an enigma for myself. As a person I have always lived maverick – my ways, my style and my choices.

I am only looking for friends or activity partners. I can be a great dependable friend and thats all I need. If you have different taste in music, have different choice of movies, drinks, places, culture, fashion, food and style – even better since it might turn out to be new and exciting to share and explore. As I said you should be different from the rest and confident about that. If you are special, you would be treasured. I believe there is always someone better than us and always someone worse but no one as unique as who we are.

I would love to play sports or go to a movie or share music, hang out for a coffee or meal, sit and have interesting conversations, go for a outing, for photography. We can listen to music together. We can be bored together, we can smile together. I don’t mind going shopping and have a classy taste. Probably we can play tennis or go for a swim. Probably you want to start gymming, so do I. Maybe we can share some stories about our lives and places we have been. I am interested in learning to play Guitar or dance. Maybe visit NY or CA or Greece or Switzerland sometime in the summer. I can teach you anything about computers and you can teach me something else. Maybe just interact on email or maybe just meet or maybe something else. I don’t know. There are too many choices.

My only expectation from you would be to find a kindred mind and a smart personality, rest all is relatively inconsequential.

BTW, I am not American. I am from India. Does this disappoint you? Well, sorry to waste your time.

Enjoy!

Now, since I had spare time on my hands, I began to analyze the person behind the post. This is what I concluded:

1. He’s not fat or “weight challenged”.
2. He has trouble finding friends even though he’s not an introvert — he could be an extremely unreliable/selfish person.
3. He writes 40 page love letters — he is pretty obsessive/stalkerish, or is easily infatuated.
4. He has tried Craigslist to meet women before, but failed, and attributes this failure to his being an Indian.

Now, this is what the female friend of an accomplice had to say about it:

1. “I am afraid of him”.
2. “He has written 40 page love letters than sticks in female’s minds as slightly obsessive stalkerish”.
3. “What the heck do you write for 40 pages? unless you have issues”.
4. “and he is Indian but only interested in American girls? hmmmm”.
5. “its the same as people who are close-minded and only date within their own race”…”yet even more odd….because they are only interested in one race and it isn’t even their own”…”or in his case culture more than race”.
6. “yeah but even more odd…so a russian girl that is studying…she is off limits….just sounds odd to limit yourself”.
7. “maybe he wants his green card”.

I gave the guy the benefit of doubt and take it that he simply meant ‘Girls of America’, but for some reason the accomplice’s friend wasn’t willing to give him such a discount with words.

In any case, can I now say that I understand women?