{"id":1850,"date":"2009-12-16T20:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-17T01:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=1850"},"modified":"2020-04-30T20:53:26","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T00:53:26","slug":"victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2009\/12\/16\/victory\/","title":{"rendered":"Victory"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Since I have whined, it\u2019s only right to report on the good times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everything came together today. I rolled in and delivered my final seminar \u2013 which I was able to take at a relaxed and deliberate pace \u2013 knowing that there was no need to prove it in the lab. This was mere exposition without need for anything more than \u201cI have done this, and you could too \u2013 using these tools.\u201d I talked about a little, off the cuff, about big brain stuff. Where scientific computing is going \u2013 that sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The big boss from Apple, the sales head for all of India, arrived and obtained sign-off from the customer that they were well and truly satisfied that I had delivered the training. This completes a delivery that started in April, and now said Apple, the re-seller, and us will finally get paid. They were quite excited about that, and we are too. We went with his team for a leisurely lunch at a sit down place, with tablecloths. We ate Indian style, sharing an assortment of appetizers and entrees surrounded by raita and garlic naan. We talked about our families, and then I tried to explain the American health care debate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After lunch, I finished up all but one of the customizations that had been stapled on at the last minute. I taught an APC battery unit to send mail when the power went down \u2013 installed a linux virtualization layer on top of OS X, and fixed various other things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And at the end, suddently, we were all friends. When I started making signs of wrapping up, the whole lab got together, and everyone (every single one) demanded a picture with me. Then a group photo. Then a group photo with the cluster. Then just the young guys from Apple, and so on. I\u2019ve got the group photo, along with my slides, here<\/a>. The grad students shared their aspirations of post-docs in the US, and the big boss of the institute invited me back any time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The young techies asked me to share my photos, so I plugged in my phone, pulled up \u2018terminal\u2019 and started typing. \u201cYou share photos from the terminal?\u201d they asked, shaking their heads in astonishment. \u201cThat\u2019s how we do it in the old school,\u201d I replied. \u201cHardcore,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I write these words from the back seat of a tiny car, hurtling through Kolkata traffic on the way to the airports. My driver is doing what can only be described as \u201cjabbering\u201d into his cell phone in Hindi, or perhaps Bengali. I honestly can\u2019t tell. At the airport, I will board a flight to Delhi, to be met at the airport by that same big boss from Apple. I will go to my hotel, and I will fall sound asleep.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will wake up in time to be picked up at 9am and taken to the Apple offices \u2013 where I have every intention of absolutely winging two days of ad-hoc training. I have re-written a day\u2019s worth of slides in the evenings and mornings for three days running here. These last two days were stapled onto the end of this gig at my insistence. They fulfill my requirement that I don\u2019t do international travel for periods of less than one week. I have the strong impression that now that the customer is happy, we\u2019re going to have a chill sort of session.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peace, out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Addendum: my Verizon cellular wi-fi card works here \u2013 but my iphone does not. Weird.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Since I have whined, it\u2019s only right to report on the good times. Everything came together today. I rolled in and delivered my final seminar \u2013 which I was able to take at a relaxed and deliberate pace \u2013 knowing that there was no need…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,26,61,43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-speaking","category-consulting","category-just-bloggin","category-travel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1850"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1851,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1850\/revisions\/1851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1850"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1850"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1850"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}