Washington D.C Day One.

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve blogged so if I started now, and talked of everything that’s happened this would be a post not worth reading because of it’s length. Quick highlights would be graduating high school, securing a summer internship at FunMobility, and just enjoying myself on this long summer break I’ve got myself.

And one of days I’ve enjoyed myself is by going taking a much needed trip to Washington D.C, or maybe the East Coast in general. I won’t be going anywhere outside of D.C. on this trip, but I don’t mind as there is much to do here. We landed here last night around 5 in the evening, and we were greeted by my great-uncle at the airport. Just spent yesterday evening catching up and talking.

Today, however was much different. Got up rather late (likely due to the jet lag), and left for D.C. rather early. Took the Metro in (Red Line… the same one that crashed a week ago) and got into D.C. in just 45 minutes. We quickly went over to the National Air and Space Museum where we spent almost all day, until leaving around 4:45 and heading for the Washington Monument. I really love D.C., maybe come here for my Master’s Degree? I’m an avid fan of politics, and just standing around all these wonderful buildings really gets a sense of enthusiasm running in me. All the monuments, memorials, and museums has a lot to show us outside of the textbooks I have read in high school. Anyhow, we walked around the National Mall and saw the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorial from afar, as well as the Capitol Building and White House. We’ll be dropping by those later this week (including a tour of the Capitol).

It’s not even been a day but I’ve already got a favorite moment… Meeting the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu. Dr. Chu was only sitting next to me and my family at SFO when he was quickly shuttled off by security when the plane began boarding. I had a slight suspicion it might be him, but only came to realize it when the guards surrounded him. Nonetheless four hours and forty minutes after a long plane ride, I approached Dr.Chu at the baggage claim here at Washington Dulles asking for his autographed, and he complied and signed my book. Definitely an awesome moment, getting to meet him. He might be the fifteenth in the line for Presidential succession, but his job is one of the most relevant ones in the modern world, as it has to do with climate change. Good moment. More to come soon enough.

-Rahul

Official: I’m a Bronco

I’m not a Golden Bear. I’m not a Mustang. However, I am another type of horse, a Bronco. With that, I’m happy to announce that my next four years, after Foothill High School, are going to be spent at Santa Clara University, and here’s why I chose it:

What I’m going to be doing:

I’m going in as an Undeclared Engineering Major, so I’m going to have some time to see and which type of Engineering grows on me, but at this time it seems like it will be Computer Science and Engineering. The opportunities are really great, in terms of both college and future jobs. As an undergraduate, I will be able to join courses that allow me to monitor a NASA Satellite currently above China, improve the onboard systems on BMW cars, or possibly build an entirely Solar powered House funded by the Department of Energy. I like the fact that I can put what I learn to use. The corporate connections look equally great. On Preview Day alone there were students who had yet to finish their schooling or were preparing to graduate that were taking up positions at Apple or Google.

It’s all part of the plan:

The real finisher was the opportunity to possibility of doing a 5 Years Bachelor’s and Master’s in Engineering. Getting the opportunity to finish up the Engineering part of my schooling faster, and head to a MBA (possibly also from Santa Clara) seems like a great idea. My whole plan has been to get a Bachelors, and then an MBA, but if I can insert a Master’s by doing one more year I have no problems at all.

Location:

The campus is small but I’m never been the guy to care what the campus looks like. For me the location was more important in the overall general area, Santa Clara being in the Silicon Valley. There are plenty of opportunities in the Bay Area so why leave?

-Rahul

Posted via web from Rahul Krishnakumar

Official: I’m a Bronco

I’m not a Golden Bear. I’m not a Mustang. However, I am another type of horse, a Bronco. With that, I’m happy to announce that my next four years, after Foothill High School, are going to be spent at Santa Clara University, and here’s why I chose it:

What I’m going to be doing:

I’m going in as an Undeclared Engineering Major, so I’m going to have some time to see and which type of Engineering grows on me, but at this time it seems like it will be Computer Science and Engineering. The opportunities are really great, in terms of both college and future jobs. As an undergraduate, I will be able to join courses that allow me to monitor a NASA Satellite currently above China, improve the onboard systems on BMW cars, or possibly build an entirely Solar powered House funded by the Department of Energy. I like the fact that I can put what I learn to use. The corporate connections look equally great. On Preview Day alone there were students who had yet to finish their schooling or were preparing to graduate that were taking up positions at Apple or Google.

It’s all part of the plan:

The real finisher was the opportunity to possibility of doing a 5 Years Bachelor’s and Master’s in Engineering. Getting the opportunity to finish up the Engineering part of my schooling faster, and head to a MBA (possibly also from Santa Clara) seems like a great idea. My whole plan has been to get a Bachelors, and then an MBA, but if I can insert a Master’s by doing one more year I have no problems at all.

Location:

The campus is small but I’m never been the guy to care what the campus looks like. For me the location was more important in the overall general area, Santa Clara being in the Silicon Valley. There are plenty of opportunities in the Bay Area so why leave?

-Rahul

Updates

Apparently I have yet to announce this, but I’ve been testing out another blogging service while also running this posterous account, and before I degress into that account and why I’m doing it, I just want to make sure people who read this understand that I am NOT shifting away from posterous. I have begun blogging on http://rkrishnakumar.wordpress.com recently, and the main reason I’ve been doing this is due to:

• the high level of customization WordPress offers its users, in terms of multiple pages (Home Page, About Me Page)
• the pure html coding, and possible pasting of widgets and so on.
• the WordPress iPhone app. This thing is really cool.

some of these things are items I hope Posterous will begin implementing as features in the upcoming year (essentially anything but the iPhone app) is something that could make Posterous amazing, yet possibly distance itself from simplicity. 

So though it may seem a large enough gap between my last post (december 25th) and now, I have in fact blogged on three occasions on my WordPress account, but unlike Posterous, I have not found a way to transport my WordPress posts over to my posterous account, as I am able to do with Posterous. Nonetheless, here are some updates, all very random.

I continue to be moving forth on my college applications, a little over halfway now. I recently submitted what I feel is my number one school of choice: Santa Clara. Now I’ve got the schools in the Midwest to apply too (like there late submission dates). My school has prevented me from entering Senioritis full on, because Finals are still yet to come, but they are now just a week away. Got some borderline grades, so I’ll have to do good on those to keep myself sane to some degree.

Band has now slowed down drastically, but we’ve still got some exciting events coming up. February 7th, you can see us at the Chinese New Years Parade in San Francisco, and April 13th-April 18th will be my last major band trip, to the island of Oahu. Both these trips seem very exciting, and we have smaller things in the middle.

I’ve started watching the TV show Chuck recently, after my recent band trip to Phoenix (we watched it on the tiring bus rides). I’ve come to fall in love with this show, and I’m trying to cram in an episode a day. Hopefully, I can start catching up, or start watching new shows all together when Finals and Semester One of school are over. I’ve got House, Weeds, Chuck, and The Office on the list so far. A.R. Rahman, an epic music composer from India (my home state too) won the Golden Globe for Musical Score last night for Slumdog Millionaire. I haven’t managed to watch the whole movie yet, and only the first 30 minutes or so, and it’s quite sad. It shows the true reality of how life can be in India, with Hindu-Muslim riots, which can obviously cause much havoc in the lives of the already poor. And for randomness, I’ve started listening to Lil Wayne much more now, and I’m really enjoying his songs now, particularly his album Tha Carter III, one of the best selling albums of 2008. There’s a great song in it called “DontGetIt” also known as “Misunderstood”. For those who don’t mind some explicit language, it is a great song from a rapper’s standpoint on his views regarding the education system, drugs, crime and so on. Very insightful.

O…and the Palm Pre. This new smartphone from Palm looks really cool, not because everyone thinks its better than the iPhone. It has interested me because the SDK requires you to only know HTML, CSS, and Javascript to code for it. I find that quite fascinating since I think I can say I’m 12% decent in those languages, compared to maybe 4-5% in languages like Java. Going to keep an eye out on it.

-Rahul

 

Posted via web from Rahul Krishnakumar

2009 and Two Great Memories

Didn’t have a post celebrating the new year, so I’ll announce it now, Happy New Years to all of your out there. Though I’ve been pretty diligent on welcoming the holidays and other special events in the past couple months, this time around I had no computer to blog. Why? Because I was spending a great time in Arizona with Band. The first of two great memories to kick off this new year.

Though my Band, the Foothill Marching Band would only manage to get 13th out of 13th place in the Fiesta Bowl National Band Championship it truly offered us a new perspective on how bands throughout the United States perform, and how they vary from us. Most bands coming from the Midwest, where band is much more competitive and accepted in society then here in California, managed to easily crush our band. Yet, as a Senior and being on of my last competitions, I still feel good knowing it’s one of my best shows to date. Aside from the competitions itself, the trip in general was fun and another trip that will forever be placed as a memory. From the small things like getting in trouble for funny things, my roommates, and our trip to Disneyland all created a enjoyable, and a worthy trip. We even missed a day of school.

The other memory is on that doesn’t directly affect me, but brings both sadness and happiness, and that is Macworld. Apple held its last Keynote presentation and speech in conjunction with IDG Expo aka Macworld, just yesterday where they announced some exciting new things but nothing iPhone or Macbook Air worthy. Yet this brings sadness because Macworld, has forever been the epicenter of some of the greatest things to come out of Apple, and it will all stop now, yet that will never stop the innovative and creative ideas that are brought to life by Apple. The part that brings happiness, is knowing that Steve Jobs is all okay and well, and is in fact not fighting cancer, or not lying on his deathbed. Yet he is suffering from a hormonal imbalance, which will apparently be fixed in due time.

Kicking off 2009, these are the two most important events so far in the first week, which have shaped 2009 into a bold year, which can either be full of surprises, or utterly disappointing. Hopefully the former.

P.S. Microsoft’s CES Keynote > Apple’s Last Macworld….

-Rahul

iPhone

This application alone made me want to come back to wordpress. my blogging experience began about a year ago and it began on wordpress. Yet being a fan of simplicity and cleanliness I switched to tumblr a few months later, only to change once more to posterous, where I have been actively blogging (actively being a couple times a month) lol. However over the past month or so I’ve begun to feel that wordpress truly offers the most features including blog customization and a mobile application. With all this I was left with no choice to come back and try wordpress so here it is: rkrishnakumar.wordpress.com

This was typed on my iPhone.

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