Life

Goodbye, my friend

- Life, VMware - 13 Comments

Goodbye, Vinay

I lost a good friend Sunday.

Vinay Venkatesh, also known as djgraphite, was a friend and co-worker at VMware. We had known each other for many years, since before he joined VMware, from the #adium and #growl channels on irc.freenode.net back when I worked on libgaim and he worked on Growl. Vinay was always helpful , friendly, passionate, and full of creative ideas. This extended to his work on VMware Fusion

A few years ago, Vinay interviewed for a job at VMware in my team. We hired him for the relatively new Fusion product for the Mac. This was my first in-person experience with him, and we quickly became friends. I remember spending hours in his office talking about all sorts of things. New games coming out that we wanted to play, projects we were working on, new gadgets, ideas for Review Board, architectural changes we wanted to make to our products at work, what we did on the weekends… Anything and everything, really.

While we developed separate projects at work, we often ran ideas past each other. Vinay shared my desire to improve the common and per-platform code bases we each worked on, and while we didn’t always find the time to implement each idea, much of my discussions with him led to improvements in all of our desktop products: Workstation, Player and Fusion. Over the past month, I’ve spent considerable time on a project that was largely his brain-child. The details aren’t important, but suffice to say that it’s an important part of the future versions of all our desktop products. Every step of the way, I consulted with him, making sure I was on the right track, asking for advice in the design, and getting code reviews. Continuing on that project without him by my side is something I’m certainly not looking forward to.

His work was just a small part of his life, though. Most important to him was his friends and his family. Making friends with Vinay was easy. He was inviting, outgoing, funny, and loved meeting new people. He had a lot of friends at work and outside of work. I thought I knew a good number of them, but I realized since just how few I knew. We were important to him and he let us know that.

It was also no secret to anybody who knew him just how close he was to his family. He spoke of them often, with praise and love. He would tell us about his sister, how happy he was that she was getting married, how excited he was that she was moving closer to him. He would talk about his parents and tell us how every time he visited them they would ask when he was getting married. We would joke that one day he’d return after a trip with a bride around his arm.

When I think of Vinay, and this is how I always pictured him, I think of him laughing. He was generally a very happy, upbeat guy. Liked to joke around, share stories, and spend time with friends. One of the things he really helped drive at VMware within our team was our Thursday Movie Night. Every Thursday (more or less) we go to dinner and then come back to the office and watch a movie. Vinay loved Movie Nights with us and often provided the movies and dinner recommendations. Outside of work he’d host parties at the house he shared with many of our friends. His last party, which I regretfully didn’t attend due to conflicting plans, was a Halloween party on Friday the 30th. I hear it was a lot of fun, and I’m glad he was able to enjoy himself one last time.

On Sunday, around 1PM PST, I got the terrible news. Vinay had been in a motorcycle accident, and died on the operating table.

I got the news on Twitter, shortly after dropping off a mutual friend at the train station. I didn’t believe it at first. My mind said “No, this is a joke or just a misunderstanding,” but part of me knew the truth. I quickly dialed people, trying to find out what happened. I reached my friend Scott at the hospital, who was with Vinay when it happened. He told me the news that broke me.

I wanted to blame someone, but this was one of those freak accidents. He was with a group of people, riding his motorcycle, when he hit a groove in the road that knocked him off his bike. There were no external injuries, but they couldn’t stop the internal bleeding. He died shortly after.

News spread vast, over both Twitter and Facebook. A group of us organized at the house he shared with others, trying to comfort each other and come to terms with what had happened. None of us wanted to believe it, but we couldn’t deny it had happened. It was a night of hell. The next day wasn’t any better. Very few of us even attempted to go into work, and those that did gave up being productive quickly. Throughout the day, information spread, again over Twitter and Facebook, about the funeral plans, which were set for Tuesday the 3rd.

The funeral was hard, but it was a nice ceremony, as nice as these things go anyway. It was evident just how many people cared for Vinay and how far his influence had spread. The room we were in was not small, but it was so packed that people were overflowing into a second room. The turnout was huge. After we paid our final respects, many of us went back to the house, comforted each other, and shared stories.

It was a tragedy, and certainly too soon. I do find some comfort in knowing that Vinay went out doing what he loved to do. It also brought people together. I met some great people from one of his many groups of friends tonight, as well as finally meeting his family. I wish these meetings would have happened in better circumstances, but I’m certain Vinay would be happy to know that in some way, he brought his friends closer.

Rest in peace, my friend. We love you, and we’ll never forget you.

Goodbye, my friend Read More »

Everything breaks :(

- Life - 15 Comments

So.. My Wii stopped reading discs. Just as I came home with Mario Galaxy. It makes some pretty sad clicking noises and then informs me that I should join in on its sadness.

I can’t say I’m at all surprised. I’m pretty good to my electronics. They just don’t return the favor. Let’s take a journey through the past.

  • 11 dead Palm PDAs (one right after the other until I got one that worked).
  • 7 dead harddrives in the past four years (latest 2 months ago).
  • Various fan problems, motherboard problems, display problems and keyboard problems across two different ThinkPads in the past two years.
  • 2 dead motherboards on two desktop computer (both mid-2006).
  • 1 dead LCD (a few months ago).
  • 1 dead DVD player (just a few months ago).
  • 1 dead MP3 player (just gave out one day).
  • 1 dead UPS (earlier this year, just stopped one day).
  • 1 dead car radio (a few months ago, just weeks after buying the car, which has always been in great condition).
  • 1 defective gear shift brake circuit (same car, couple weeks after the radio).
  • 1 dead Wii.

There’s more. I just can’t remember off-hand. Either the quality of everything sucks these days or anything electronic just commits suicide in my presence. I’m not sure which.

Everything breaks :( Read More »

Terror on Amtrak Bus 3717

- Life - 9 Comments

This past night, Thursday the 8th of February, I journeyed home to see my family by way of Amtrak. It was a typical train ride, followed by what should have been a typical bus ride for the final stretch home. Not surprisingly, the bus was delayed an hour and a half. When it finally arrived, the bus driver told us “Tonight is going to be a very late night.”

None of us had any idea how true this would be. Aside from one person, perhaps — The Terror on Amtrak Bus 3717.

Sitting in the shadows at the back of the bus was a crazed man who was very high on something, and it wasn’t life. Few knew he was even there, at least for the first 10 minutes of the trip. And that’s when we first heard him speak:

“Three of you are going to die a painful death tonight.”

Half the people on the bus heard his words, but most paid no attention to it. Just a common jokester messing with friends, some of us thought. It wasn’t long, though, until someone began to panic and called out for the driver.

“Driver! Driver!!”

There was a loud scream.

The bus came to a sudden stop and the lights flashed on. Everyone turned to look at the back of the bus. The crazed man was repeatedly punching an older lady in the face as her daughter watched in horror.

Without hesitation, four men jumped up and pinned the attacker down. Two held on to his arms, holding them such that any movement would cause the arms to twist painfully. The third had a hold of his feet, while the fourth had a grip on his head and neck, strongly hinting that he would gladly snap the neck if the man dared struggle.

The victim’s face was covered in blood and the daughter was crying with fear. Seeing that the man was restrained, the bus driver immediately called for the highway patrol.

10 minutes went by, though it may as well have been hours. Eventually, the police pulled over and stepped onto the bus. Two went to the back and cuffed the crazed attacker, while a third attended to the lady.

The next hour and a half was a blur of testimonies, uniforms, and contact information exchange. By the end of this, we learned two things.

  1. If the attack had not happened, the attacker would have left the bus on his next stop, which was a mere 15 minutes away; and
  2. There was already a warrant out for his arrest.

Finally it was all over. The assailant was gone, people had been let off at their stops, and the lady was deemed “well enough” to avoid an ambulance trip.

Remember, boys and girls (especially the girls). Make sure that when riding a bus, you sit as close to the front as possible. It’s far safer and gives you more protection against the hidden terrors that lurk in the shadows of the back of the bus.

Terror on Amtrak Bus 3717 Read More »

Foo Camp 2006

- Life - 3 Comments

This year, I was one of the lucky few who received an invitation to O’Reilly’s Foo Camp. Like many people, I had heard just how cool this exclusive get-together is, but I was nowhere near prepared for how mind-blowingly awesome the Foo Camp experience can be.

I arrived in Sebastopol on Friday afternoon and began to unpack my tent. The tent I bought ended up being bigger than I expected I think I grabbed the wrong one, but it worked out fine given that I was sharing it with Alex Graveley. Alex wasn’t there yet, though, so I started to unpack it myself, which ended up being a bit difficult… But then a very kind and helpful Mark Shuttleworth walked by and offered a hand. Before long, the tent was set up and I was ready for the fun.

There were only a handful of people there at this point, so I decided to walk around and see the place. One of the rooms had this interesting table with a map on it. A projector was mounted above, and people were around the table, turning and tilting. It was quite cool. Turn the table and it zooms in and out. Tilt it and the map moves. It was the most natural way of viewing maps that I’ve ever used. Quite addicting in a way.

Outside was this kind of round spinnable art thing. It was like the table, but had this colored fluid sand-like substance inside. It was held up at an angle, and when you spun it, the sand-like stuff made some cool patterns. That was also fun to play with. 🙂

Before long, most of the Foo Camp guys were there, and we gathered under a tent to introduce ourselves and learn what was in store for us. It was amazing to see the people who were there. The creators of Digg, del.icio.us, LiveJournal, Second Life, 43things, Amazon, Meebo, Django, Chumby, people from Google, Microsoft, Intel, Yahoo… The list goes on and on.

I went to several sessions. There was one on the future of IM, another on robots, one on Dr. Who vs. Snakes on a Plane, another on Chumby hacking. I think I went to another one or two, but I can’t remember right now. They were all pretty interesting, and there were many more I didn’t have time to go to.

As mentioned above, one of the session talks was about Chumby. Chumby is a cute, soft, squishy Linux computer that is designed to sit next to your couch or your bed or whatever and stream flash content to you. The software and hardware are all open source, and there’s people modifying the casing of the Chumby and sticking it in teddy bears, Teletubbies, Hello Kitties, etc. It’s currently very pre-alpha (both the hardware and the software), but we all knew that. The Foo campers received free Chumbies. The public release will be in like 6 months or so, and should by then have more features and be a bit more stable. Still, it’s an interesting concept, and I hope they come up with a killer app for it. With an intended price tag of $150, it could be a good purchase with the right target audience and apps.

At nights, we would play Werewolf. This is pretty much a Foo Camp tradition, and is played well into the night. I was a werewolf only once, but we kicked ass that one time 🙂

Let’s see, what else was there… A Google plane flew overhead and took pictures, which will go on Google Maps at a 2 inch resolution. There were flame-throwing robots, a clown, lots of good food, new friends, a reverse scavenger hunt… Probably more things than I can list. It is the best event I have ever gone to, and I hope to be invited back next year. To whoever it was that put me on the invite list, thank you. This was an opportunity I will never forget.

(More pictures available in my gallery and tagged on Flickr.)

Foo Camp 2006 Read More »

Snakes on a Plane in a Movie Theater on a Friday

- Life, VMware - 5 Comments

Several members of our team at work went to see Snakes on a Plane on Friday. A number of us have been looking forward to this movie and were jazzed about it. I didn’t expect it to be a good movie, but I expected it to be enjoyable. It actually exceeded my expectations in a number of ways. They even made somewhat of an attempt to come up with a plot! Not that you need one, given that in this movie, you have motherf***’n snakes on a motherf***’n plane. I mean, how awesome is that?

I don’t know if he was kidding or not, but Samuel L. Jackson mentioned on the daily show (video) that he’ll be in the sequel. I don’t know whether a sequel would be a good thing or a bad thing, but if they make it, it should definitely be called “Snakes on a Plane Again.”

And to further add to the, um, coolness? … someone made an All Your Snakes are Belong to Us video.

Oh, and Alex Graveley is now a zombie.

Snakes on a Plane in a Movie Theater on a Friday Read More »

A Nintendo DS Lite! And it’s all mine!

- Gaming, Life - 6 Comments

I was talked into buying a Nintendo DS a while back, and was about to shell out the money when I found out that the DS Lite was in development. So I waited… and waited… and then preordered… and waited some more… And now I have it! It’s quite cool, actually. I bought New Super Mario Bros, Mario Kart, and Princess Peach (for my girlfriend). I think I’m going to buy Brain Age and Tetris DS in a couple of days.

So I’m looking for two things now: Friend codes and game suggestions. If you have one of the above games and wish to share your friend code, or you have any games you highly recommend I buy, please either post a comment or e-mail me.

A Nintendo DS Lite! And it’s all mine! Read More »

Bocce Ball

- Life, VMware - 2 Comments

The VMware Hosted UI group (the group I’m a part of) went on a team-building exercise today. We had a nice meal and then went to play Bocce Ball, which is a game that until today I had very little knowledge of. It turns out to be a pretty cool game, with some strategy involved. Our team kicked ass 😉 I’m actually hoping to play again at some point soon. Perhaps we can buy some Bocce Balls and play in the hallways by our new offices.

Oh, yeah, so we moved offices at work. My nice corner office is no longer mine. However, the new office is actually bigger, and the view isn’t too bad. I’ve only spent a few hours in it so far, but it’s not as bad as I feared. I’ll have to take pictures soon.

Bocce Ball Read More »

My little Home Theater PC

- Life - 1 Comment

A few months ago, I bought a nice little Sony Vaio desktop computer from a co-worker for a really good price. I saw that it had TV out capabilities, as well as two TV tuners, so I thought it’d be fun to get something plugged into the TV. So I got it all set up and played around, but the Giga Pocket software that came with it was really quite pathetic. I ended up just using Explorer for a while to view my videos, but that required either having a keyboard and mouse hooked up, or using VNC. I would have put Linux on it, except the TV tuner was incompatible with Linux, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if the rest of the hardware was as well.

Then a story ran on Slashdot about a wonderful little project called Media Portal, which is essentially like Freevo or MythTV, but for Winodws. It’s open source, written in C#, and works well. Although still a very early beta (0.1.0.5.1 is the current release), it lets me do almost everything I want to do. I can play videos, music, view pictures, check the weather, and all the other standard stuff.

Unfortunately, the little remote control and receiver that came with this Vaio was incompatible with everything but their Giga Pocket software. I ended up going with a SnapStream Firefly remote and receiver, which I must say works quite well and is comfortable to hold.

The setup was starting to work well enough, but the video quality sucked. I was using standard composite cables, and as I also use a TiVo, I didn’t want to give up my TV’s S-Video port. My DVD player was using my component ports on the TV, but I figured I could experiment a bit in that area, and purchased a DVI-to-component adapter for my Radeon 9600 Pro. I plugged it in and was amazed at the sharpness I got in comparison to the composite and even S-Video cables. I could actually read small text, even though some of it was still flickery. Ah well, it’s not like it’s a monitor.

The last major piece of the puzzle was a good case. A big silver Vaio tower next to my TV just wasn’t all that appealing. So I shopped around and saw the SilverStone LC03V case. It was love at first sight. I found a vendor selling it for a cheap price and purchased it, along with a new black DVD-RW and a black In-Win CR-I530 (USB/Firewire/Audio/Compact Flash/Secure Digital/MMC/Smart Media/MiniDisk) expansion bay. Unfortunately, the audio and firewire ports don’t work on my crappy Vaio motherboard, but I’ll replace that someday.

Everything arrived and I put it all together. It’s very sexy. I put the case in front of the TV and noticed that I could actually read the text on the TV in the case’s reflection. Oh yeah, while I was at it, I bought a new stick of RAM for my main desktop, bringing it up to 1GB.

Despite the suckiness of Windows, the media box generally runs well. The only times I have problems are when Windows decides it’s time to interrupt what I’m doing to tell me that I should upgrade to Service Pack 2, or when the virus scanner pops up, or when I start up Windows and it tells me that I’m not smart enough to decide the resolution I want, and that it wants me to bump it up from my custom resolution for my TV to 800×600. But it’s Windows, nobody really expects to be treated intelligently anyway. As long as I don’t have to reboot often, it works well enough.

I’m in the process of working on a plugin for Media Portal to allow me to see and update my NetFlix queue from my remote, as well as browsing other movies and seeing their video clips. It’s starting to work pretty well, but it’ll be a while before it’s ready for normal use.

I need to resist the temptation to put any more money into this for a while 🙂

My little Home Theater PC Read More »

Galacy Scam

- Life, Security and Privacy - 57 Comments

We got our phone bill this month, and my parents noticed a charge from a company called Galacy Web Hosting. Looking back, it seems we’ve had this charge for awhile, but never noticed it (don’t ask me why). Anyhow, they called up ILD Teleservices, who Galacy was going through for the charge it seems. They were put through to Galacy web hosting, and the guy there played back a recording from January of me agreeing to sign up for web hosting and to the fee.

I remember the conversation. I did agree to do the survey, but never to web hosting. Why would I need web hosting? I do it myself, and if I grew tired of that, I know people at places who can host me for free. I am pretty confident they have digitally altered the conversation, rearranging parts of it to make me sound like I was agreeing.

I’m not the only person this has happened to. There’s a whole list of complaints about them and Integratel (they appear to be related).

My mom got the service removed, but apparently, we couldn’t get the account creditted. So I called them back. I started by calling ILD. When I mentioned Galacy, the girl on the phone just kind of sighed, and said they get this a lot about this company. They said they’ll make sure it’s off our account, and to call up Galacy. I called up Galacy and got the same person my mom got this morning in the billing department. He recognized our number immediately, and quickly said he would credit all past bills. I made him confirm this. It’s a shame I didn’t get it on tape though.

We’ll see what happens here, but if anybody gets a call from Integratel or Galacy Web Hosting, hang up immediately. Even if you don’t agree to anything, you may be agreeing to everything.

Galacy Scam Read More »

Scroll to Top