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This was my welcome to my class students.
 Sat Apr 21 14:40:34 2001
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 08:58:52 -0500
From: Arunchandar Vasan
Newsgroups: csd.cmsc417
Subject: Welcome section 0101 folks !
Howdy folks:

Welcome aboard flight SB417, taking you non-stop to knowledge supreme in Comp. Nets. This is your friendly neighborhood TA (for the section taught by Dr.Bhattacharjee) posting the first message of the course.

At the outset, let me introduce myself. I am Arunchandar Vasan, despite whatever the instructor might call me. And those of you who find my name quite a mouthful ( I suppose all of you do; anyone pronouncing it right gets 5 bonus points ), please call me Arun ,pronounced as Aroon which in turn is pronounced as A-room with the m replaced by an n. Incidentally, this is how I explained the phonetics of my name to the wise professors of English at the UMEI to get this current job of mine.

Lest you think that learning how to pronounce the TA's name is all there is to computer networks, let's come to matters more mundane like office hours. My office hours will be (tentatively) Tuesday 2-3 & Thursday 2-3 (post meridiem of course) . In case you simply can't be there, send me mail and I'll see what can be done about shifting them around. I will be holding official office hours in AVW1151. Please post all your questions to the newsgroup unless you want them to be private. Believe me, the newsgroup is the best place to post about bugs in my code or the project specification. You will have at least 41 other souls thanking you ( 39 colleagues + me + instr.) and that I assure you, would count as credit for your good deed of the day. I'll try to answer questions as soon as possible. But remember, unfortunately, I too am human, which means that  questions posted on Sunday will probably be answered on Monday. On the other hand do not hesitate to post your questions as soon as you shout Eureka, someone else may answer it.

My office is in AVW4140. This is where I hold my unofficial office hours all day wherein you can get your quick question answered. A quick question is one for which it takes 5 minutes or less of TA cycles to answer it and any child questions it may spawn, despite your best attempts to fudge your code or answers to questions which I pose. Make sure I am in the office before coming over. The number is x-58162. If you want longer time, send me mail before dropping by.

You will need to all your assignments on the cluster machines ( those wonderful beasts so lovingly reared by the OIT and maintained for posterity without so much of a hint of a nasty thing like upgrading ....). Only registered students will be given accounts on the class cluster. If I have extra, I can fit you towards the end, in case you are unregistered. You can collect your cluster account by sending me mail.

While sending me email, please start your subject header with the string "CMSC417".This is a *must*. I sort emails before replying to them. So please, please, for the love of God (or if you want replies), start your subject with CMSC417.

Now that we have got to a good start with this lengthy post of mine, watch this space regularly for more info.

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Failure to check the newsgroup at least once a day might have an adverse effect on your GPA.

Adios amigos,
Arun.

P.S. In case you are wondering, I am not taking a class in creative writing. I'll make my subsequent posts brief.


This was something I wrote to my IIT buddies:

Hi folks:

Well I had quite a winter break till today morning. I seem to have fallen head over heels in love with the A.V.Williams building. I just can't seem to keep away from this place. Note well that coming to the campus daily does not indicate any mental activity of any sort and strictly precludes work which could be thermodynamically or otherwise be called useful.

I tried playing hide and seek with my advisor to avoid more work but unfortunately for me, he did not play ball. He somehow came to know of my existense on campus and searched high and low for me in the A.V.Williams building and finally found me out in my forbidden zone : my office. And the way he announced his knowledge of my existence was rather dramatic.

Today morning as I was busy writing rather important emails which had the potential of either solving the world hunger problem or proposing and proving the grand theory of unification ( pick one), I saw a dark shadow cast on my monitor. As the shadow simply did not go away, I had to turn around. To my utter surprise, I find my advisor staring at me with a smile that was somewhere in between sardonic and benevolent. As a self respecting graduate student funded by the University System of Maryland,

       I asked : Have thee any work for me ?
And he said : As thy giver of knowledge, I have work enough for your able and willing mind to work on.

And at that moment, as a result of the transformation of intense mental energy , more work was created for me out of nothing. This should explain the nuclear reaction which you might have heard or felt today morning. Does this not make your feeble attempts to create quarks, leptons, phonons and muons in some wile and wretched accelerator sound stupid ?

See ya,
Arun.

From: "Arunchandar Vasan"
Date: Tue Sep 17, 2002 9:37 pm
Subject: Re: [cs2kiitm] Hi all. Is everyone dead ? EOM.

SKC,

Your ignorance appalls me. Didn't you know that grad school is a near death experience ? Tsk, Tsk, you are missing an advanced course in practical metaphyics, my friend. Where else would you find such a heady cocktail of pure unadulterated junk posing as bleeding edge research, masochism in the form of servile devotion to your advisor, lack of something called life leave alone its social aspect, and non-stop admiration of the curves of a monitor ?

My advisor's prolonged periods of absence caused great concern in our department. Thankfully, a thorough investigation by all concerned revealed that he is very busy writing a paper called "SHIPS: A Scheme to Handle Incorrigibly Persistent Students". This will explain the protocol he uses to handle me for the greater common good of the professorial community. Expect this in next year's SIGCOMM. The poor gentleman seems to be suffering from an overdose of me. I only hope he doesn't go bonkers over my PhD - he has a family to take care of. Other professors whom I interact with are reportedly queuing up to join him as co-authors.

Research, aaahh.. the very word gives me a high, that great term accepted as euphemism for BS Piled Higher and Deeper, our contributions advancing the existing corpus of human knowledge, my bloody left foot, to sum up.

Anyways, I am dabbling in wireless stuff of late. Efforts are afoot to sniff everything possible in our building despite the fact that most signals in our department are generated by the microwave oven in the graduate lounge. Alas, if only people listen to me.

The unbridled enthusiasm shown by the current lot of freshers - all 53 of them - is more than sufficient to nauseate one. Yet, life goes on in the hope that they will realise their follies as well as the true meaning of grad school very soon.

I can hear the muttered curses right here in the comfort of my room. Incidentally, somebody seems to have figured out a way of keeping grad students awake in our building. The algorithm is remarkable for its simplicity and ease of implementation.

1) Alternate the temperature between freaking hot and freaking cold.
2) Add blinding illumination.

Hell to any poor grad student that might want to keep an eyelid closed.

I shall cease and desist from any more high flying nonsense before your curses become audible too.

take care,
arun

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