Present-tense and future-tense

My Phd plans are abonded for the moment. Looking forward to completing my Masters project to end the course in a good shape. My savings are depleting and probably will have to get back to earning mode before I attempt to join a PhD course soon.  If only I didn't have to get myself entangled in mortgage web. With the economic scene looking quite bleak I am not even sure if I can get a decent job post studies. Which means, it makes sense to still apply for PhD position somewhere. Atleast there will be some source of income albeit of a small measure. I am not sure where this will get me. In the bigger scheme of things, I dont know how much all these things really matter.

My sup wasn't too bothered about the changes in plans. Have to find a project with boundaries and scope drawn. I am now familiar with sensor networks and with the 120+ node testbed coming up, we can cook up some work to do but still nothing concrete is there. There is someone working on performance improvement in TCP to support bandwidth greedy applications. Might hitch a ride with him on his work to completion. Whats left is the implementation aspects and carry out some measurements. This should take probably around 6 months or so beginning Jan.

For now, I am off to B'lore tomorrow night. For some reasons, I am not too excited. Not sure why. Hope it will be a nice pleasant 3-week ahead. 

Stuff to read during the vacation:

1. Papers (most of it related to TCP/networks)

2. Algorithms (CLR)

Hope to wind this book by the time I return. Guess its too optimistic. Lets see.

---------------- * ----------------- * ---------------

And for some good news. Rash has started writing her book finally. Still a lot of research pending though, but after some good inputs and a lot of encouragement (after seeing her snippets of writings) she is all gung-ho about this project. The workshop she attended recently was conducted by some literary agents. All were in awe with her work and hoped she would complete it. They have no doubt in her talent but since its a very ambitious, complex and time-consuming project its difficult to predict when this project can be wound up. Hopefully in 18 months time, it should be ready.