This month has been very busy for me both personally and professionally. We are in the middle of releasing a major piece of software and our systems have not been very reliable and have resulted a number of long nights and days for me. This has streched me a number of ways. But I realize how much I love mission critical operations and organizing around a release.

I am taking a very interesting Product Design and Development class this term and it sucks that I cannot meet my team in person this term, I think that it would have really helped to get this thing jumpstarted. We are planning to enter the MIT 100k Competition this year because the idea is quite exciting.

I also came back from my stay in Mauritius and looking back I cannot see spending the month of January in any other way. I am in the process of following up on my trip and planning the next things. There are a number of things that I need to do in order to continue this. It is quite interesting since this is a long term project on my part and I need a few other things to be in place in order to sustain it.

As a part of this process, I am going to attend a conference on Recycling here and I am quite excited about it. It is kind of out of a fluke that I saw that there was a conference on here. I am hoping to make some connecitons and build a network to start a partnership to solve some of the problems I am working on.

I have been hooked on to emusic.com and am very happy with their service. I tend to avoid buying music on iTunes and it is annoying that the Amazon MP3 service is so limited outside the US.

Oh yes and I finally bought a Mac: Mac Mini and I know that it is underpowered but it is exactly what I was looking for. I use Linux and Windows on my laptop for work, play and school but needed a machine for the music, movies and since it is hooked on to my sound system, it is great. I don’t have to turn on my laptop for everything. So far I am very impressed by the experience and the general fit and finish of the product. I like the iLife products and they have done a really good job with the way it is presented.

In the same vein I got rid of my land based internet and am on a HSDPA mobile network for my internet. It is great since it is quite cheap and works pretty much everywhere. It is quite interesting to have broadband internet pretty much everywhere and not be tied to WiFi. I had tried WiMax before but was quite disappointed with its performance especially for "traditional" broadband applications. While HSDPA is not the greatest, I think that it is good enough. WiMax is annoying becuase of the stupid rabbit shaped modem. I have a tiny card for HSDPA and a USB controller also so it works well and is discreet also.

Since I moved to a new apartment, I am in the process of redecorating the new one with a help from a friend of mine. I am so excited to do this because it has been a while and I am using real tools to create new furniture. Ever since I moved into the software world, I miss my hands on using tools job that I used to have before.

This week has been quite hectic but I plan to go to the Gym again. I was a part of the company Gym last year but I kind of dropped of because of my other commitments but this time I have decided to pick it up again.

I am planning to travel a bit during the summer here. It is very handy to do it over the weekends and I have really not taken any advantage of the whole thing just because I have been so caught up with the university and all the other things that I have on my plate. I decided to take one less course this semester and therefore am taking it a bit easy. I realized that I was not enjoying the time and just struggling to move from one thing to the other. But ever since last semester when I started taking Violin lessons, I realized that I need to take a break from the constant work and all the projects. I do think that this time has helped me build up my resume and skills.

A very close friend bought the Honda Civic Type R the new one and the other day i was looking at it and saw some of the parts that I was involved in. It was kind of a blast from the past, because I was involved in the design and testing for these parts. I am very impressed by the new Civic especially the new iVTEC engine. That way Honda is a great company that has preserved its racing identity.

I have a bunch of things to update professionally and personally especially on my work in Mauritius and the future plans. I will be back here soon enough after a few things fall in place which I think should be there in next week or so.

So over the summer last year, a very close friend and I started a company and created a website and we did not really do a lot after we released it because we got busy with other things, I was checking the site the other day and was quite surprised to see that the site had about 20 odd users. Now I know that it is nothing but still was a bit of a surprise to me because we have not done anything at all. So now I am trying to work with my friend to see if we can do something there since the difficult part of building the service is done. If anyone who is reading this wants help with marketing a website as a side project please drop me a email, I would love to talk to you. This could look good on the resume and we can have some fun with the project. We are obviously very excited and passionate about our site but dont really have a lot of marketing skills. So any help will be greatly appreciated.

More later with some photos and the rest.