𝒟ℯ𝒶𝓇 𝒦𝒾𝓈𝓁𝒶𝓎 𝒶𝓃𝒹 𝒮ℴ𝓃𝒶𝓁, As the echoes of laughter and love still resonate in our hearts, we want to extend our deepest thanks and gratitude for the breathtaking celebration of your 20th wedding anniversary. The two enchanting events, the intimate हल्दी ceremony at your house and the mesmerizing exchange of wedding vows and reception in the picturesque park in Piedmont, were nothing short of magical. 🥂 The हल्दी ceremony in your home was a heartwarming affair, filled with the essence of love, tradition, and family bonding....

Since 2016, I started to follow a self improvement regime :person_running:. I began with an exercise routine, followed it up with journaling, then blogging, and meditation (buddhism). To date, I have lost weight, gained muscle, feel more in control, have a clean bill of health, and more clear in my goals. However, in the last few months, I have been frustrated with myself. I constantly make the same mistakes, and in retrospective should have performed better....

I recently started reading “How Not To Be Wrong - The Power of Mathematical Thinking” by Jordan Ellenberg. It is an accessible book for people who have been out of touch from rigorous math. Jordan provides examples of erroneous day to day headlines, and then points out issues in judgments made. Jordan does not try to provide rigorous proof, but is able to channel our intuition to make us comfortable with his conclusions....

Meditation is not a cure to our sadness, anxiety, and stress. However, it can provide us ways to manage them well. This is more like a promise than a definite outcome. So, what are the direct and immediate benefits from practicing regular meditation? Concentration meditation, which is when we focus on our breath, makes us experience peace and bliss. How does it do that? Scientifically speaking, this practice shuts down our “mind wandering” default mode network in the brain - which is always scanning past and future for interesting things to think about....

I find it incredible that an ordinary human ~2600 years ago was able to provide powerful insights into human nature and reality. In essence, Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, made two statements: Change is occurring all the time both in and around us Self is an illusion we make up for ourselves, and this leads us into a flawed perception of reality When taken together, these statements give us the root cause behind the general dissatisfaction (dukkha is Buddhist term) we struggle with as human beings....

I have a hard time dealing with failure. I am guessing this is the same with most others as well. I go through the following chain of thought: why? why me? what did I do wrong? what could I have done instead? is there a way to salvage the situation? Simultaneously, I also go through another set of thoughts: is this a precursor of things to come? am I destined to fail at other new things or even my current endeavors?...

I enjoy reviewing classic industry papers periodically. The DynamoDB paper is fascinating, approachable, and deepens insights on almost every read. Finally, its a good reminder that good programs accomodate different concerns to optimize for others. DynamoDB was built for handling amazon.com’s shared shopping cart problem. Most Amazon customers have a single household account, and any household member should be able to add items to a shared shopping cart at different times on their devices....

If everything behaved like freshly scented flowers, life would be much simpler. Unfortunately, this is not the case for most of the things we store in our homes. Moving supplies, exotic lamps, pens, printouts, camping gear, old art, jewelry, fancy kitchen gadgets, clothes, sandals, shoes, and many other items have limited utility, yet we continue to carry them from one home to another. The accumulation of these items is due to several factors....

Moving to a new house can be surprisingly disruptive and challenging, even if you spend more than a month preparing for the move. In our case, it took us four days to complete the end-to-end move, despite all the preparations. We finally moved in on Saturday and spent the whole day setting up the new kitchen. Vanya cooked our first supper in our new home, which was Tacos with a delicious dessert....

Building and operating large-scale software is a relatively young field, and many industry practitioners, including software engineers, often overlook the necessary considerations for doing it well. While “Hello World” examples of software development may serve as good tutorials, they can also give the impression that solving software problems is a trivial task, which fails to acknowledge the significant amount of work and dedication required to achieve quality results. When developing a typical service solution at a big tech company, the following factors must be taken into account:...