The brush of your steps.

Not sure what got me this morning... For the last two weeks I have been showering with cold showers to the point where I was no longer scared. It was quite fine until this morning when I had pretty much had enough. I think it was probably the fact that my life was too disorganized and too many things were happening that I needed to take a step back and organize some before I went ahead again. I am doing daily workout routines focused on upper body (MWF) and general cardio with swimming (T/TH). The routines somewhat wore me out each day, and I think that's what is slowing me down in work. After spending my entire summer at Google where I had chosen a schedule that worked for me. I woke up really early, and went to work for a good 8 hours, ate well, and then went home to relax and maybe do some side work. So, now that I am starting in the Fall, what is happening? I think its mostly that I am not taking enough classes for those to be a responsibility on their own. I finish all ...

I figured I'd give everyone a quick update. I am still here after all those cold showers. I spent the weekend up at my girlfriend's place and I must admit I unintentionally felt like I cheated the cold shower therapy since her cold water is pretty much just fresh water (much warmer than mine). In my defense I couldn't make the water colder (I put it on the coldest setting), and I am back now to my freezing cold water, and it's getting better. This morning I almost caved in, but I manned up and went for cold again. As for my impossible goal, I am doing well. I am getting better every day. I believe I did about 7 seconds yesterday hanging off the pull up bar in a Tuck Front Lever position  (you may have to scroll down a bit, or just Ctrl+F it). I am going swimming again today, and workouts tomorrow. As for the paleo diet, I have admittedly failed as I succumbed to some one-time cheating over the weekend (felt bad not trying my girlfriend's chocolate cake, etc). H...

Today was a day of a lot of firsts. For starters, I completely abandoned Windows as an operating system for my desktop. It just wasn't worth it. I had Linux already installed and just upgraded to 12.04, and I can't say I miss Windows much at all. Python came preinstalled, and Numpy + Scipy + OpenCV was about 20 minutes. Yeah, goodbye Windows. Doing this for my laptop as well in about 10 minutes after I finish this post. Then, I went swimming and that felt phenomenal. I did quite a few laps and I was really proud and I decided today would be the day. No more screwing around. No more weak 'I can't do this'. From today onwards, I would give it my best and push myself to the limit. I'm starting swimming on Tuesdays and Thursdays in addition to the morning workouts on MWF. I might go back for more swimming on Saturdays if its not too packed, or just throw in some body workouts in the dorm. And then I said, well, I might as well throw in the cold shower therapy...

I don't know what it was but it was one of those days where I just needed to write. I had a pretty awesome day at work and gave a demo presentation at an event at Google which turned out to be fantastic. I've been working somewhat hard the past few weeks but my motivation just hasn't been there like it usually is. I think that is probably because of a lot of thoughts that have been going through my head about my motivation in life and why I do things. I had also just gone to a talk at Google about the guy who wrote the PhD memoirs which was also incredibly thought provoking. At the end of the day, I also had a pretty deep talk with my girlfriend in what would finish my day with more thoughts than my mind could handle. I was excited, but overwhelmed. There was only a few days left before I would head back to Georgia Tech, and start my traditional life again. Recently I subscribed to Joel Runyon's site and started getting his newsletters and this got me pumped. Within...

Sometimes, it amazes me how powerful words can actually be. There's true beauty in the methods we use for communication, which raises even bigger questions about why we are here, and the things that we are doing in this world. Perhaps we aren't doing anything. Perhaps we have some greater meaning. Or maybe we are just the toys of some evil god somewhere. I don't really know, but I think I realized today, I don't really care. Whether its communicating, or expressing what we did today in poor or great manners, words are just a means of describing. They can stir emotion, and move the world, but alone, they are nothing but useless symbols and drawings. We, human beings, give them meaning. So, what is the true purpose of us as human beings in this earth? I have thought of so many things and I can't help but think that happiness is often posed as the answer. Sometime in a few years people usually want a family, a significant other, and children, others want to see ev...

I need to figure out what the next big thing is going to be. Let's sit back and think in the last 10 years, what has become famous on the Internet. Immediately, my two most visited sites are Facebook, and Google. Facebook is a very social company that aims in connecting users, and creating links between them. They have done exceedingly well in building connections with the concept of 'friends', but a bit more poorly in terms of actual interactions with people, Facebook chat isn't very personal and messages and writing on people's walls are not the best of interactions. Google in contrast has focused mainly on search on the web, and advertisement. Search is really about organizing the web's information, and advertisement is, well, a smart way of making money. So, the two biggest things that have come out of the Internet are a social component, and an organization component. What else is there? We could include things like Wikipedia, which is a subset of the or...

Today I had a fun adventure where I had to save every penny possible to get from the San Francisco Airport (SFO) to my cheap hotel in Mountain View. I wanted to do it in under 10 dollars, with the hotel running me about $100.00 I thought. I succeeded for the most part, but there were some mistakes that I felt in the future I could improve. So, this was my adventure. The first part was pretty plain and simple, I left SFO through BART ($4.00) to Millbrae, and then took Caltrain ($4.25) to the Mountain View stop. Upon arrival, I walked around 25 minutes to the hotel I had previously looked up. It turns out it was sold out when I got there, which shoved me a bit out of my comfort zone, walking with my luggage at midnight around Mountain View. It scared me a little, and that was good, it's always good to get scared, and learn new experiences. From there I walked maybe a minute next door to a Comfort Inn, which happened to also be sold out. The experience however, was completely diffe...