Saturday, December 30, 2006
Sunday, December 24, 2006
Sunday, December 17, 2006
winter break begins !
Fall semester exams got over on Thursday and that evening we had a final farewell hangout at PHI on Forbes with the graduating batch from 8 pm thru midnight. I got out at around 11:30 pm as I was not feeling comfortable in the smoke anymore.
Next day, I hit the gym for a few hours and enjoyed the steam room and the spa (Carnegie Mellon is a luxury brand - no second thoughts about that). Later, I had a talk with a recruiter about my offer and discussed the conversation with my career services folks to take a feedback if my conversation was in the correct direction.
On Friday evening, I decide to get freed of all the thoughts of the placements, etc. Consequently, we went for farewell of Shashank, an exchange student from Singapore. Playing charades was a nice light-hearted event with sumptuous meal (yummy !) to follow along with audio/video in the one of the Porter Hall rooms.
Later, we made a sudden decision to hit the Prive Ultralounge and have a good time - dancing !
Ambience: Good
Bar: Average to good (they messed up on my tab)
Crowd: Average to good again.
Dance floor: Can be well arranged.
DJ: Average to good (giving him good for being sensitive that there's Indian population and playing a Bhangra #)
Overall, I will give it a rating of 5.5 on a scale of 10. This is because I have experienced better ones earlier!
Next day, at 11 am, the phone rings - the dreaded call...from the landlady - is she going to visit? is the kitchen clean for her inspection? is she going to impose a fine on us? Apprehensions in my mind dont let me think but I HAVE to pick up the phone. What if it's a call to inform us of something else (say, cancellation of her inspection trip?). When I talk with her, she says, the maintenence guy is going to come in a while. Phew - a relief - because I was expecting something else. Meanwhile, I get ready before he comes because I have a lunch to attend with one of the earlier MISM reps as they are going.
Lunch was ok with a greek wrap (I've never had lunch at Shadygrove and so, I didn't know what to expect...shadysticks were nice though). Surprisingly, the Shadyside area was slightly crowded on a Saturday morning. It may be primarily due to holiday season and people doing holiday shopping.
Post-lunch, I came back and went to Waterfront for a small piece of work and later, got hung up on phone with a close friend and talked for long hours - it was as if we were catching up after a long time. Finally, I got hold of this great book by Mary Buffett "The Tao of Warren Buffet". I recommend it to everyone who wants to be successful in general.
In the evening, I came back to pickup my friends and went back to Waterfront for the movie Apocalypto. Nice movie ! It was nominated for a golden globe award in the best foreign film category - no wonder, it had English subtitles. More about the movie on one of my other blogs!
The weekend has been hedonistic so far and I want to catchup with my temple proceedings alongwith some other meetings. I wish I could've travelled to India or PRC this vacation but there are some things which are out of your control and you need to accept that !
Next day, I hit the gym for a few hours and enjoyed the steam room and the spa (Carnegie Mellon is a luxury brand - no second thoughts about that). Later, I had a talk with a recruiter about my offer and discussed the conversation with my career services folks to take a feedback if my conversation was in the correct direction.
On Friday evening, I decide to get freed of all the thoughts of the placements, etc. Consequently, we went for farewell of Shashank, an exchange student from Singapore. Playing charades was a nice light-hearted event with sumptuous meal (yummy !) to follow along with audio/video in the one of the Porter Hall rooms.
Later, we made a sudden decision to hit the Prive Ultralounge and have a good time - dancing !
Ambience: Good
Bar: Average to good (they messed up on my tab)
Crowd: Average to good again.
Dance floor: Can be well arranged.
DJ: Average to good (giving him good for being sensitive that there's Indian population and playing a Bhangra #)
Overall, I will give it a rating of 5.5 on a scale of 10. This is because I have experienced better ones earlier!
Next day, at 11 am, the phone rings - the dreaded call...from the landlady - is she going to visit? is the kitchen clean for her inspection? is she going to impose a fine on us? Apprehensions in my mind dont let me think but I HAVE to pick up the phone. What if it's a call to inform us of something else (say, cancellation of her inspection trip?). When I talk with her, she says, the maintenence guy is going to come in a while. Phew - a relief - because I was expecting something else. Meanwhile, I get ready before he comes because I have a lunch to attend with one of the earlier MISM reps as they are going.
Lunch was ok with a greek wrap (I've never had lunch at Shadygrove and so, I didn't know what to expect...shadysticks were nice though). Surprisingly, the Shadyside area was slightly crowded on a Saturday morning. It may be primarily due to holiday season and people doing holiday shopping.
Post-lunch, I came back and went to Waterfront for a small piece of work and later, got hung up on phone with a close friend and talked for long hours - it was as if we were catching up after a long time. Finally, I got hold of this great book by Mary Buffett "The Tao of Warren Buffet". I recommend it to everyone who wants to be successful in general.
In the evening, I came back to pickup my friends and went back to Waterfront for the movie Apocalypto. Nice movie ! It was nominated for a golden globe award in the best foreign film category - no wonder, it had English subtitles. More about the movie on one of my other blogs!
The weekend has been hedonistic so far and I want to catchup with my temple proceedings alongwith some other meetings. I wish I could've travelled to India or PRC this vacation but there are some things which are out of your control and you need to accept that !
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
IIT
Indian Institute of Technology are becoming more and more popular in Dilbert - check out today's strip ! Young Asok has long way to go.....lol !
Monday, December 11, 2006
iptv harp
http://www.fool.com/news/commentary/2006/commentary06121110.htm?source=mppromo
its all coming together....iptv , zune, ipod, all the pieces complete the zigsaw puzzle - entertainment is the future !
its all coming together....iptv , zune, ipod, all the pieces complete the zigsaw puzzle - entertainment is the future !
Sunday, December 10, 2006
ie7
Most of the features are picked up from Mozilla and hence, they are nice. However, some problems prevail:
1. IE crashes a whole lot more when compared with Mozilla - that's annoying especially while you are composing that web-based email or making that entry into the blog.
2. IE still has ActiveX - something which I consider as a big threat.
3. The tab-closing X is at the window tab itself - this is not good as per usability as the tab can be closed without it being highlighted and lead to potential loss of information on that window by accident.
Seems like the folks in Redmond have some more miles to walk before their products come close to those created by the open-source folks.
1. IE crashes a whole lot more when compared with Mozilla - that's annoying especially while you are composing that web-based email or making that entry into the blog.
2. IE still has ActiveX - something which I consider as a big threat.
3. The tab-closing X is at the window tab itself - this is not good as per usability as the tab can be closed without it being highlighted and lead to potential loss of information on that window by accident.
Seems like the folks in Redmond have some more miles to walk before their products come close to those created by the open-source folks.
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
valuation
This course has been awesome so far !
Carolyn Levine, expert in Accounting, today taught us how to value a financially distressed firm. We had an assignment on Rite-Aid of the time when they were distressed.
Her earlier lectures on various topics have been good as well. I hope my project group on valuing a firm goes well. We opted for Spherion amongst the list of companies which professor chose as being mispriced. Letsee what we come up with --well, I will get back to work now.
Carolyn Levine, expert in Accounting, today taught us how to value a financially distressed firm. We had an assignment on Rite-Aid of the time when they were distressed.
Her earlier lectures on various topics have been good as well. I hope my project group on valuing a firm goes well. We opted for Spherion amongst the list of companies which professor chose as being mispriced. Letsee what we come up with --well, I will get back to work now.
Monday, December 04, 2006
roomie's offer
It was such a pleasant news today morning ! Arun got an offer from Cisco ! Offer is completely gangsta-style...Cali location and one of the best networking firms in the industry.
As soon as all the roomies are done with their job offers - we plan to host parties (party every weekend) at our townhouse .....it will be a Spring party season !!!
As soon as all the roomies are done with their job offers - we plan to host parties (party every weekend) at our townhouse .....it will be a Spring party season !!!
Sunday, December 03, 2006
future
check out Dean Khosla's clip on future role of American engineers. He walks the talk - check out the number of inter-disciplinary programs offered on his campus.
Cross-cultural sensitivity, management techniques, and ability to be a good engineering manager are the keys to be able to deploy assets globally.
....thus begins my journey in search of a global career.....
Cross-cultural sensitivity, management techniques, and ability to be a good engineering manager are the keys to be able to deploy assets globally.
....thus begins my journey in search of a global career.....
Friday, December 01, 2006
Course: Principles of Finance
The course on principles of Finance introduces the basics of financial principles to the students. The course's objectives is to enable future IT managers to understand how project selection is done by the Finance office when IT proposes a project.
CAPM, NPV, FV, etc are imbibed well with the assignments provided for the course.
Lynn Pastor is the instructor for this course and her grading scheme is highly objective. I have not seen other programs offering such a mix of courses which are so relevant to the industry needs.
This calls for the recruiters to look once more into the valuation of the MISM students who have grasped these concepts well before they make an offer.
CAPM, NPV, FV, etc are imbibed well with the assignments provided for the course.
Lynn Pastor is the instructor for this course and her grading scheme is highly objective. I have not seen other programs offering such a mix of courses which are so relevant to the industry needs.
This calls for the recruiters to look once more into the valuation of the MISM students who have grasped these concepts well before they make an offer.
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