Saturday, August 27, 2005

The best people I have known so far

In the middle of my lunch, I had an idea of mentioning few awesome people I have known so far. They are not extraordinary but have something which makes them a little different. The names are not in any specific order :


    Joe Mocker - The silent guy who knows everything. I worked with him in the project starlight which is the core engine for most of the external web venues for sun.com. I have never seen a better listener than him. He corrects you in a manner as if he is just learning. A guy with a huge potential. I will not be surprised if he becomes a VP of some engineering team at Sun, or CIO of some company one day.


    Dr. Prabhat Ranjan - Phd from Princeton University. A scientist by profession, an Engineer at heart. I could have knocked at his door in the mid-night and he would have helped me. A guru of Linux, open and keen forever to learn new things. One of my first ideals. Last I heard, he has become a professor in some college in India.


    Dr. Shashank Chaturvedi - An ex IITian, and a chemical engineer turned physist. He was as good in C-programmning as he was in shock wave analysis. He could steer in your eyes and would find out how much you know. Last I heard he was working as a sr. scientist in a reputed research laboratory in India.


    Hideya Kawahara - The brain child behind the project lookingglass. Project looking glass is a futuristic 3D workspace being currently developed by Sun Microsystems. I love guys with passion and futuristic appeals.

    Greg Cowin - The coolest guy ever. He established atomatron and once used to be my project manager. He never called himself a manager, and used to develop codes along with the team. As clear in his goals as it ever gets and knew how to reach there.

Sunfire and LOM

My sunfire decided not to boot one day. The problem was I couldn't diagnose the problem as the only way to get to the output is through the console (or hyperterminals). The funny part was that I had left the RJ45-DB25 adapter in India over the last vacations. So my sister had to parcel it. After struggling with the LOM prompt (1 hr of research to find the esc character) and playing with the various options, I found how to get to the OK> prompt. Tried to load the kernel from a CD but it simply hangs. Looks like as if the harddisk itself has gone bad. I will try to buy an off the shelf IDE harddisk and will try to install solaris on it. I am not sure if any jumper configuration would need to be changed. I had pretty much everything stored in my beloved machine and am not sure if I would be able to salvage the disk.

Friday, August 19, 2005

A sweet day

Today is Raksha Bandhan an Indian festival dedicated to the love and bonds between brother and sisters. I wish I had sent any gifts to my sisters. On gifts' websites you only find a few types of things. My sisters are not a typical saari and jewellery type girls. They prefer cricket, formula1, computer games, tailspins and Tom & Jerry over singing, dancing and probably other girlish stuff. I am sending all my love and all my best wishes to my sisters - the best sisters you can ever have.