71 posts · 2016–2026
Blog
This is my space to post random thoughts. And I get too many of them too often. I am opinionated about some stuff too. I rarely update this blog though. But I want to change that 🙂
Leave me a comment if you like or dislike anything!
Latest
Be Bored. It is not a bad thing
Meet Alan. It could just as well be Daisy, Rahul, Faiz, Maya, or you. It doesn’t matter. Alan likes to stay stimulated. That’s how his dopamine [1] works. Any…
2026
Be Bored. It is not a bad thing
Meet Alan. It could just as well be Daisy, Rahul, Faiz, Maya, or you. It doesn’t matter. Alan likes to stay stimulated. That’s how his dopamine [1] works. Any…
New Site using New Stack....for FREE
I saved $1000/year by cancelling subscriptions I didn’t need. And you can too…well, maybe 😀 Back in 2015, when I was forced to create a website for myself as…
Eid, Sweet Serenity, and A Gift for Myself
Since it was Eid, I took a day off. It was a bright, sunny day with clear skies! Has anyone ever told you that summers are gorgeous in Seattle? I woke up later…
Grief
Rizwan Haider, my nana (maternal grandfather), passed away on April 20th, 2025. He had terminal cancer, and contrary to my opinion, the family decided not to…
2025
2024
Random things I recently read that caused wonder…
Without much explanations, here you go! You might have a temptation to relate with at least some of them. I say, go relate. Feel as much as you wanna feel…
How are you feeling?
We feel how we feel. We sometimes feel happy and sometimes feel sad. Often times, it’s a mix of the two and usually on a spectrum. A lot of our happiness and…
Luck
Sometimes I wake up thinking about how did I end up where I did Sometimes I am in the shower contemplating life and its “meaning” Sometimes I wonder what would…
2024
I have 2 perfectly functioning hands. I also have 2 perfectly functioning eyes, ears, and legs. I have a pretty much perfectly functioning physical body. I am…
2023
The conundrum: shave or no shave -
I have people in my life who do not endorse me keeping a beard. I also have people in my life who maintain the opposite viewpoint. Personally for me, I live in…
Three stories - part 2 and 3
Story 2 - Old lady at Bartell’s who sits at the checkout window in downtown Seattle I had a minor cold and went to Bartell’s to grab some over the counter…
Dating tips from a Penguin
My parents had an arranged marriage. They didn’t see one another in person except on the day of their marriage. They got married and then fell in love with…
Conversations with Jeff
I like my therapist. His name is Jeff. I have been seeing him last few years. I think everybody needs a therapist! You ask why? Well, maybe I’ll write a post…
Three stories - part 1
Story 1 - Gym guy who sits at the front desk I go to 24 Hours Fitness regularly in downtown Seattle. It has been my routine for the last couple of years. A few…
Are tech layoffs end of the world?
My work visa is tied to my current employer, which happens to be Meta. If I lose my job at Meta, I’ll need to find a new employer to sponsor my work visa or…
Real men do cry
I cried on the phone talking to my dad. Crying might be an understatement. I was bawling. There was something I shared with him moments ago that lead to this…
What is fear?
Khalil Gibran It is said that before entering the sea a river trembles with fear. She looks back at the path she has traveled, from the peaks of the mountains…
Nana’s tryst with smartphones
My nana or my maternal grandfather is about 88 years old. Nobody knows exactly how old, not even him. He just has a faint recollection that he was born around…
2022
An H1B worker gets to meet family
I have a niece and a nephew named Kabir and Alisha. As of Dec 29th, 2022, they are 6 and 4 year old respectively and live in Dubai with their parents. My…
Ikigai
5 supercentenarians across the world were interviewed by the authors of the book “ Ikigai “. Here’s what they had to say. 1. “Eat and sleep, and you’ll live a…
What are your problems – part 2
tl;dr – Your life is probably great that millions of people would wanna swap in an instant. Scenario 1 – someone your age somewhere on this planet was told by…
What are your problems?
I had an interesting coffee conversation with someone a couple of days ago. We started talking about general interests, work, life, philosophies, struggles…
Are you “intelligent”?
tl;drA lot of us need to stop generalizing “intelligence” as a factor of only being good at science and/or analytical problem solving…
Amazing people do exist!
I had an awesome experience with one hell of an amazing person last night that I feel needs to be shared so here it is. Me and a group of friends decided to…
2021
2020
Sexism, misogyny, and prejudice against women
Fig. 1. A quote by Alix Kates Shulman Source: https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1175444 This post is going to be a relatively long reflection against all the…
Why complain?
“……Nothing is never gonna be perfect. There is always gonna be a problem……Moral of the story is why complain? I kept doing what I kept doing and I got better…
2019
Who is a gentleman?
This poem is written in Hindi by Gaurav Solanki and recited by Ayushmann Khurrana.
Part 1: Understanding Crypto Currencies and Blockchain for Newbies (5-7 minute read)
Note: This is only part 1 of the series “Understanding crypto currencies and blockchain for newbies”. I intend to make a part 2 as well where I’ll dive into…
Rising fascism in India
I have lots of thoughts around this topic but Mahua Moitra, MP from Krishnanagar, a town in Nadia district, West Bengal, covered it nicely. A high-spirited…
H1B denial and stuff
Hey guys! Been a relatively long time since my last post. I have been a bit busy – moved to a new city and a new team at NetApp. Why did I do that? I had to…
Gym routine
Hello people! So I was following a gym routine for some time that I would like to share. I wouldn’t say it’s for beginners but if you have been working out for…
What is depression?
Q: I see it happening all around us that as we grow older, depression becomes a natural emotion within all of us, and takes a toll on human beings. How do we…
2018
Mental strength
Many people out there forget how important mental strength is. If you don’t believe you can do something then you won’t…simple as that. If you can visualize…
LRU cache
I had heard a lot about this interview question from people but honestly, I never studied it in school. Maybe I skipped one of those classes that talk about it…
Hadoop on containers
I have started working on a project to make Hadoop/Spark run effectively in a containerized environment. And while microservices like a web server are well…
Monitors: An Operating System Structuring Concept
While re-visiting to recall the differences between Semaphores and Monitors, I came across one of my OS class homework where I had written a summary on…
Society
“The sea’s only gifts are harsh blows, and occasionally the chance to feel strong. Now I don’t know much about the sea, but I do know that that’s the way it is…
Coin change problem
This question has been asked a lot in interviews and is one of the classical dynamic programming questions. Problem statement : Given a bunch of coins of…
Failure in life
Failure of your [work] is not failure in life. Failure in your relationships is. ~Ev Williams
Aisa dekha nhin khoobsoorat koi….aafreen aafreen
This is an amazingly well sung song by Rahat Fateh Ali Khan (mostly) & Momina Mustehsan. Just heard it again by chance and felt refreshed. Had to share it 🙂
Kadane’s algorithm
If you have seen interview questions like find the maximum sum in an array using any contiguous sub-arrays in it then you should read further. We have…
How to control your emotions during a difficult conversation
Today I read an article on how to maintain your composure and keep calm while being in an argument. With whatever little experience I have, I have seen people…
I won’t back down
There are some songs that you instantly connect with, that pump you up, that makes you have goosebumps. But I also think that the effect of a song on any…
All I need is…
Maybe I am emotional in the moment, but this song is pretty powerful. And while I think different people can infer and relate different things with this song…
Do right moments exist?
There is never a “right moment” for the revolutionary event, the situation is never “mature enough” for a revolutionary act – the act is always, by definition…
Ugly numbers
Ugly is a number whose only prime factors include 2, 3, and 5. 1 is considered to be ugly by convention. For example, 4 (2×2), 6 (2×3), 20 (2 *2 * 5) are ugly…
Get HTTPS for free!
There are several non-profit certificate authorities out there now that provide with free SSL/TLS certificates. On of them is Let’s Encrypt. I recently moved…
Problem of longest increasing subsequence (LIS)
Let’s explain the problem with an example. Assume the array is {10, 22, 9, 33, 21, 50, 41, 60}. In this case, there are several increasing subsequences like…
Dynamic programming – optimal sub-structure
In THIS post, we covered the overlapping sub-problems part of dynamic programming. Now we will talk about what do we mean by “optimal sub-structure”? Assume we…
2017
Persistent block device naming
In the last couple of months or so, I have been playing with building a hadoop cluster and stuff. This also involved dealing with lots of JBODs and configuring…
Unlimited wants of Home Sapiens!
Insaan ki ḳhwahishon ki koi intiha nahin Do gaz zamin bhi chahiye do gaz kafan ke baad ~Kaifi Azmi
High-level overview of artificial intelligence
I have been reading a little on the history of AI and stuff. If someone who is new to this field and wants to know more from a very high-level what this is all…
Dynamic Programming – Intro
I’ll confess – I always had (or maybe still have) issues solving dynamic programming (DP) questions. I mean, it’s just complicated, not as straightforward to…
GoDaddy to Linode and LAMP to LEMP
So, I have been using GoDaddy’s servers to host this website for over two years now but I wanted to move away from it for several reasons. Some of them being…
What am I gonna live for?
I haven’t been doing anything productive I feel for the last so many weeks. This feeling has started to feel more intense of late, especially today. Feels…
Toilet: Ek Prem Katha
Recently, a friend of mine suggested that we watch this new movie called Toilet: Ek Prem Katha. I do like watching movies on social issues, especially those…
Some random quotes
I am about to rub my white board after a long time but before I do that, here are some of the quotes I like on there. “The only place success comes before work…
More on the Raspberry Pi cluster – concluding post
Alright, so, I have graduated as of writing this post. I should have completed my last story about Raspberry Pis and how it went in more detail but I have…
Attempt to build a Spark cluster on Raspberry Pi
Fig. 1. An Artik10 board We started off building a Spark cluster using 10 Raspberry Pi1 model B+ since that is what was available in the lab at that point…
2016
Building a Spark cluster on Raspberry Pi
I have been a bit lazy of late to update this post. I have decided to write a little in a bunch of posts than one super long post since that scares me 🙂 As a…
Eraser: A Dynamic Data Race Detector for Multi-Threaded Programs
As a part of my OS class this semester (Fall 2016), we have been reading a bunch of very interesting papers. I wish to blog every paper I read for this class…
Iqbal reminiscing the old days
Aata hai yaad mujhko guzra hua zamana Woh baagh ki baharein vo sabka chehchahana Aazaadiyaan kahan vo apne ghosle ki Apni khusi se aana apni khushi se jaana…
I don’t need dollar bills to have fun tonight
This song really appeals to me because usually, having fun is equated to spending more money, which, IMO, couldn’t be further from truth :)
Faraz to Iqbal
Kaafir ke dil se aaya hoon yeh dekh kar Khuda maujood hai wahan par use pata nhin ~Ahmad Faraz
Iqbal to Ghalib
Masjid khuda ka ghar hai, peene ki jagah nhin Kaafir ke dil mein jaa, wahan khuda nhin ~Allama Iqbal
Ghalib to God
Ghalib sharaab peene de masjid mein baith kar Ya vo jagah bta jahan khuda nhin ~Mirza Ghalib
Ghalib’s dejection
Koi ummed bar nhin aati Koi soorat nazar nhin aati Maut ka ek din muaiyyan hai Neend kyun raat bhar nhin aati Aage aati thi haal-e-dil pe hasi Ab kisi baat par…
Got to get up and try!
Disparities!
Hum aah bhi karte hain to ho jaatein hain badnaam Vo qatl bhi karte hain to charcha nhin hota -Akbar Allahbadi
People will always say something
Kuch to log kahenge Logo ka kaam hai kehna ~Anand Bakshi