Category: Graduate School
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My introduction in the Piazza forum for Graduate Algorithms (GA)
At the beginning of every semester, each student is encouraged to post on the forum (i.e. Piazza), introducing themselves and answering the following questions: What is your name? Where do you live? Why take Graduate Algorithms? What do you hope to learn? What other OMS courses have you taken? What is something interesting about you?…
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Distributed Computing @ OMSCS over – what a ride!
Last semester, I decided to enroll in the brand spanking new Georgia Tech’s Distributed Computing course offered for the first time (as part of OMSCS) this past Spring 2021. What a ride! Learned a ton, including Lamport’s Logical Clocks, the FLP theorem, and the notorious PAXOS for consensus. Hats off to Professor Ada and the…
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Distributed Computing CS7210 Distributed Computing – A course review
Distributed Computing was offered in the OMSCS program for the first time this past semester (i.e. Spring 2021) and when the course opened up for registration, a storm of newly admitted and seasoned students signed themselves up — me included. I was fully aware that I was walking into unknown territory, a bleeding edge course,…
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Distributed Computing – Goodbye and thanks for the wonderful semester
I just finished Spring 2021 at Georgia Tech OMSCS and published a farewell note on the classroom’s forum (i.e. Piazza platform) and would like to share that here: This was one hell of a semester! Hats off to professor Ada and our great TAs — I learned a great deal about both theoretical and practical…
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What are good models and what models are good?
Schneider, F. B. (1993). What good are models and what models are good. Distributed Systems, 2, 17–26. Paper Summary In his seminal paper on models (as they apply to distributed systems), Schnedier describes the two conventional ways — experimental observation; modeling and analysis — we normally develop an intuition when studying a new domain. And…
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Distributed Computing – Lesson 1 Summary
Summary Distributed systems are everywhere: social media, internet of things, single server systems — all part of larger, distributed systems. But how do you define a distributed system? A distributed system is, according to Leslie Lamport (father of distributed computing), a system in which failure of some component (or node) impacts the larger system, rendering…
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Failure: I want more of it.
Students in the Georgia Tech program collaborate with one another — and collaborate with professors and teacher assistants — through a platform called Piazza. But at the end of the semester, this forum shuts off to read only mode, meaning we all lose connection with one another. Because of this, I recently created an e-mail…
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Weekly Review – Week ending in 2020/11/01
No Halloween this year I used to love Halloween growing up, not so much the dressing up part but the knocking on doors and getting handed fist fulls of candy. Now, as an adult, I love returning the favor and always think about giving out larger than average candy and chocolate. But not this year,…
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Five tips for surviving (or thriving) in the OMSCS program as a computer science graduate student
Overview In this post, I’m sharing five tips that I’ve picked up over the last 2 years in the program. At the time of this writing, I’m wrapping up my 7th course (advanced operating systems) in the OMSCS program. This means that I have 3 more courses to complete until I graduate with my masters…
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Finally clean air & Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/18
Hooray! Today is the first day in a couple weeks that air quality is considered good, at least according to the EPA. I’m so pleased and so grateful for clean air because my wife and daughter have not left the house since the wild fires started a week ago (or was it two weeks —…
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On letting go & Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/17
With working remote and establishing a (somewhat) daily routine (that has become pretty monotonous), it’s sometimes easy to forget that we’re in the midst of a global pandemic. But that reality is amplified because of the recent wild fires, forcing those of us living in the pacific north west (PNW) — and those living in…
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Making sense of the “sense reversing barrier” (synchronization)
What’s the deal with a sense reversing barrier? Even after watching the lectures on the topic, I was still confused as to how a single flag could toggle between two values (true and false) can communicate whether or not all processes (or threads) are running in the same critical section. This concept completely baffled me.…
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Crashing and burning during lunch & Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/16
I had mentioned yesterday that I slept horribly, waking up early and starting day off at around 03:45 AM. That wake up time was brutal and as a result, I crashed and burned in the afternoon, leveraging those precious 30 minutes of my lunch to nap in my wife’s / daughter’s bedroom (a room with…
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Tired like a zombie & Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/15
Today is going to be rough. I slept horribly, waking up multiple times throughout the night. Ultimately, I rolled out of my tri-folding foam mattress (a temporary bed while my daughter and wife sleep on the mattress in a separate room as to not wake me up: that parent life) at 03:45 AM this morning.…
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Honoring my body’s internal alarm clock & Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/14
This morning my body woke me up later than usual. After a few blinks, I squeezed the corner of my Casio G-Shock watch, the green background lighting up and shining the time: 05:55 AM. Ugh. About an hour later than I wanted to wake up. On one hand, I’m bummed because I won’t be able…
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Remembering September 11 & Daily Review (day ending on 09/11/2020)
Yesterday was September 11. On this day, every year, Americans grieve and we are all reminded of the unforgettable day back in 2001 when the New York twin towers collapsed to the ground after being struck by the hijacked planes. I sure remember the day. I was about 12 years old at the time and…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/10
We often talk about work life balance, separating the two major parts of our lives. On some level, I agree with the philosophy, believe that work is work and life is life. But at least for me, what happens at work bleeds into my personal life, and vice versa. When I have a shitty day…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/09
After freeing a spider into the front yard, I noticed that the coffee mug (in which I trapped the spider in) was decorated with a beautiful web that the spider must’ve spun overnight. Almost every other day, I spot a spider dancing across the white walls of my bedroom. Instead of squishing them to death…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/08
The most interesting side effect of writing these daily reviews is that they stir up meaningful conversations with my wife. Apparently, much of what words I set on paper never make their way out of my mouth (despite thinking that I did verbally share them). Surely this situation of my brain tricking me into thinking…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/07
Yesterday Writing Blogged and published an entry describing my naive scheduler for project 1 Emotions I disassociated and my mind wandered into its “own world” after my wife Jess asked me to watch Elliott later that afternoon. I think part of the reason why I got so worked up had less to do with her…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/04
Yesterday Writing Blogged and published an entry for my daily review Blogged and published an entry explaining the libvrt’s bit map data structures that map virtual CPUs to physical CPUs Music Noodled around on the guitar, playing chords in a minor key up the neck (need to start structuring and mixing up my practice sessions…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/03
Writing Blogged and published an entry for my daily review Blogged and published an entry on L3 Microkernel Mental and Physical Health At the park, ran around in circles while holding Elliott in my arms … that sort of counts as exercise, right? Music Nothing at all Graduate School Migrated from my Virtualbox environment to…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/02
Writing Blogged and published an entry for my daily review Blogged and published an entry that shows the steps for building librty’s documentation from source code (since the manual no longer exists on the official website) Mental and Physical Health Met with my therapist, who I see every week (except last week since I had…
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Daily Review – Day ending in 2020/09/01
Yesterday Writing Blogged and published an entry for my daily review Blogged and published an entry that snapshots my understanding before starting on project 1 of advanced operating systems: writing a scheduler and writing a memory coordinator Music E-mailed the singing instructor that I’ve been seeing for the last couple years, informing her that lately…