more about this wonderful teacher, researcher and woman here..

The ride back from Chicago (ORD) to Austin this past Thursday was a B*TCH. The weather system all across the country had caused several Dallas Planes from ORD cancelled, so when I got to the airport it was chaos. I finally made it into the Admirals Club, only to find a mob waiting there..Upon inquiry I found out that my flight to AUS was delayed by an hour. I still was going to make it home by 10pm - as my family was waiting for me to pick me up.

When I got down to K8 (the gate) I found out that my flight was going to be delayed by over 90mts. Still looking good…

As we took off the pilot announced that weather in AUS was bad so we will be going southwest before landing…I read for the first couple of hours and slept for the last 1 and found myself still circling around AUS - pilot says the weather is really bad and he is waiting for an opening..after circling for 30mts we head towards San Antonio as we were running out of fuel..So we land in SA for what was to be few minutes to refuel and take off…We were there for over 30 mts…

In the meantime, I call Stef to find that she and the boys have been waiting for me with Krispy Kereme dounts and a extrahot Cappuccino (what a bummer)..I asked them to leave as I had no idea when I was going to make it to AUS.

I was 1.5hrs drive from home in SA, but on a plane that I couldnt do anything about..After about 30mts on ground in SA, the pilot says that the storm is moving south to SA and we should wait till it passes before flying to AUS. So we wait for 20 more minutes. Its past 11:30pm. Finally we are ready to leave as the system moves through SA, but WAIT, there is no gate agent to check us out - so we sit for 20 more minutes (come to find out that the airport had only 1 gate agent working for AA - it couldnt get any worse)

So we take off and make the 20mts ride to AUS only to circle more to get an opening. But this time we were lucky to get a break and land in AUS - the whole plane applauds. Its 12:30AM. We taxi upto the gate, but there are no open gates as all the empty planes for the next day are occupying the gates…Now we are 120ft from the gate17 and waiting for the plane to pull out. It takes us another 40mts before we are able to park and deplane..The time is 1:20AM and I am finally in Austin.

It was over 12hours in total that I was making my journey…Thank you American!

The first semester is done and I am happy I am done - but sad that its over as well…It was so much fun and grit - I was able to learn a lot on the 2 topics I was enrolled in. Dr.Ghosh was an awesome teacher and taught me the value of MATHEMATICS.
Our final project in Data Mining on Enron dataset was very well received. I will be working with Karlo (my partner) to take it to the next level. Dr.Khurshid was phenom  as well. He is a super genius whiz kid and still was humble enough to work with me on few web services topic that I want to pursue following his class.

I am taking a Web Server Programming course under Dr.Garg this summer. I am also doing a Linear Algebra Course and SICP at MIT (OCW). Followed by Stat 101 from Berkeley. Its all free ($)..
I want to use LISP/SCHEME in most of my class exercises so I kill N birds in 1 stone..I will be putting up my finished work on the online classes here on this site and link it from my blog.

As the memorial day nears, I plan on spending some time writing down some thoughts I have had for a while on several topics..I will be posting few over the next several days…Thanks to Stef for setting the precedence….

A good summary by Stef..much awaited post that all her friends have been bothering her to blog. I will make sure she has time to keep it consistent..

Paul Erdos - Man Who Loved Only Numbers

Hound of Baskervilles (Holmes)

Great Scientists

 Soldering

7 Habits for Teens

Alchemist

The Trombone

Hackers

I was on flight from AUS to ORD and sat next to Cedric Benson of da bears…

He is such a fantastic, down-to-earth, jovial guy that we had so much fun talking about everything under the sun..I was reminded of LT and because of this our entire family is Bears bound this year..

Good luck to you CB!!