چریدن برای بقا

وسط این هیرو ویر، کاشف به عمل اومد که جناب مایکروسافت از مصاحبه اول ما راضی بودن برامون مصاحبه دوم ترتیب دادن. بر این شدیم که یه گریزی به دوران پربار لیسانس بزنیم. بعضی موقعا خیلی دلم تنگ می شه برای اون دوران. خیلی دوست داشتم با معلومات الان برمی گشتم به اون روزا. سر کلاس، استادهای دودر، طرز فکر ساده اون موقع،... دوست داشتم اون موقع یکی پیدا می شد راه پیشرو بهتر برام تصویر می کرد.
داشتم می گفتم، درسای اون موقع، برنامه نویسی پیشرفته، برنامه نویسی شیء گرا، سیستم عامل.... کلی شو یادم رفته بود. الان این کاری و که میکنم اسمشو می ذارم چریدن، به عبارتی چریدن برای بقا

مشغولیت همه جانبه

وب لاگ کم می نویسم..
وقتم به سختی برای خودم می مونه
تز، گوگل، مایکروسافت..... همه همه...
به ظاهر زیاد هم نیستا ولی مشغولیت ایجاد می کنه . مشغولیت همه جانبه
شروع یه مرحله جدید زندگی هست، تجربه شو ندارم
فقط از این خوشحالم که این خودم هستم که برای خودم تصمیم می گیرم
دلم به یه ماه دیگه خوشه، آمریکا بعد هم خونه، بعدِ دو سال ناقابل

Medical Question form

امروز بالاخره رفتم دندودپزشکی برای یک چک آپ کلی. خوشبختانه مشکل خاصی نداشتم. اینو می زارم به حساب ارث خانواده پدری که حداقل توی جنس دندون شانس اوردیم. اول که وارد شدم به این خاطر که دفعه اولی بود که می رفتم اونجا می بایست یه فرم کلی از تاریخچه پزشکی پر می کردم. یک سری سوال بود که نشون می داد آیا فلان مریضی یامشکل و داری یا خیر. منم داشتم با یه اعتماد به نفس مضاعفی همرو نه می زردم و خوشخحال از اینکه وقتی فرم به منشی بر گردونم هیچ اشکالی بهش وارد نخواهد بود. یه دفعه به ذهنم رسید آیا ممکنه روزی بشه که این فرم با ترس و لرز جوری که هزاران مشکل بهش وارد باشه یعنی پر از دزد و مرض پر کنم ؟؟؟ چه احساس بدی خواهد بود!!! چه خوب از این نعمت سلامتی که داره هر از گاهی یاد کنه...
مهرداد در حال تز نوشتن-م.م-

Ideology

كمونيست: كسي كه دارايي هاي خود را ميان مردم تقسيم مي كند تا متعاقبا همه دارائي هاي مردم را ميان خود تقسيم كند.

سوسياليست: كسي كه نصف دارائي هاي خود را به همسايه مي دهد به اميد روزي كه همسايه هم نصف دارائي هاي خود را به او بدهد.|

مائوئيست: كسي كه گاوهاي شما را تصاحب مي كند تا براي دوشيدن هر يك از آن ها 300 نفر را به كار بگمارد.

كاپيتاليست: كسي كه گاو خود را مي فروشد و به جايش دو گوساله نرو ماده مي خرد تا در آينده زاد و ولد كنند و سرمايه اش چند برابر شود.

فاشيست: كسي كه گاو شما را تصاحب مي كند تا مجبور شويد شير مورد نياز خود را فقط از او بخريد.

نازيست: كسي كه گاو شما را تصاحب مي كند تا در صورت مطالبه اگر از نژاد او نبوديد، خود شما را هم تيرباران كند.

ليبراليست: كسي كه براي ترويج آزادي بيان و عقيده تا آنجا پيش مي رود كه به پيروزي سوسياليست ها يا كمونيست ها منجر نشود.

پوپوليست: كسي كه مردم فقير را با شعار "زندگي بهتر" به دور خود جمع مي كند تا با كمك آن ها كساني كه داراي زندگي بهتري هستند را از سر راه بر دارد.

ديكتاتور: كسي كه از مردم مي خواهد گاو آن ها بايد همانطور شير بدهد كه گاو او شير مي دهد.

امپرياليست: واژه اي طلايي كه همه دولت ها مي توانند بدون نگراني و به بهانه مبارزه با آن ، فقر، بيماري و عقب ماندگي كشور خود را توجيه و حتي يك پيروزي به حساب آورند.

ماركسيست: كسي كه از افكار فيلسوف آلماني "كارل مارکس" پيروي مي كند. يكبار "ماركس" در مواجه با دیدگاه‌ های مختلف پيروان خود گفته بود: "خوب است حداقل خودم می‌دانم كه مارکسیست نیستم!".

هندوئيست: كسي كه مي داند چگونه بايد گاو خود را بيشتر از همسرخود دوست بدارد.

My Supervisor Dr.Christopher Anand

he is a nice guy... i really like to work form him .. i don't know why but he might not be able to continue teaching in McMaster anymore. there is a comity who judges and rank Professors based on the reviews and comments given by student(mostly undergrads) and it seems that his was not good enough...
his grad student including me, made an on line petition to show our objection toward this decision... nothing is for certain now, and i hope he would stay in McMaster.
here is what i submitted:

filling this petition is the least i can do to show my support for Dr.Anand`s tenure application.

i think the word supervisor is not only about the courses, classes, thesis and grades, it`s about the relation between people, the way you treat others, it`s about moral issues.
before mentioning academic stuff i want add that as a new comer to Canada, having Dr.Anand as my supervisor was one of the most important reasons that made me not to feel so hard dealing with a new foreign environment while being away from family and facing lots of unexpected problems. he is so humble, knowledgeable and respectful man. in each student gathering in our department it makes me feel proud to be Dr.Anand`s student.

Unlike many professors, he doesn't put pressure on his students, but the interesting is that all his student love to do what they are assigned to, and that's because of the friendly relation between students and him. therefor, they do their best.

in the course i took with him(CAS 750), i feel that i really learned something that i can use in practice. he was always ready to answer questions, present new up-to-date references and he specify time to find a better way to help each student in specific at anytime. Another thing i do admire about him is that he is always on-line on Jabber(instant messaging) so he is always there if you need any assistance.

He brought me and few other students (Grad and Undergrad) this opportunity to work for IBM as CAS Fellow in IBM`s CAS (Center for Advance Studying).
it worths mentioning that most of the Universities in Ontario have lots of students and faculty members in IBM CAS ( U of T,U of Waterloo, University of Western Ontario, Queens and York) but not McMaster. he is the one who made this connection between McMaster and IBM, not only by preparing opportunities for students but also by presenting a very good job done by himself and other graduate students( theCoConut Project). i was there at the time our team,leading by Dr.Anand, presented our amazing results which showed a way better performance than the previous job done by IBM employees. I`m sure IBMers now consider McMaster`s Department of Computing and Software in higher position and if other professors from McMaster wants to send student to IBM they definitely have this meritorious preview in their minds.

when i compare the way he treats his student to other supervisor it makes me totally consent with what i had so far during last year, and if i were about to apply to McMaster once again and choose a supervisor, that would be definitely Dr.Anand again.

i believe before deciding about anything the comity must also talk with graduate students who was in contact with him mostly and ask their ideas.

Mehrdad Mozafari

CASCON 2007 Toronto (IBM)

CASCON is an annual computer science conference hosted by IBM that is held in Toronto, or more precisely Markham, Ontario. It is run by the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Toronto.(from Wikipedia >:D<) Working at CAS (Center for Advance Studies) during summer as a CAS Fellow, gave me a great opportunity to work in a very professional environment, which includes dealing with students, faculty members and many good experienced employees (mostly holding PhD degree in Computer Science ). i have been working on the new MASS library for new Cell processor which includes elementary function approximation in single and double precision.... there we go THE SWEET FLOATING POINT NUMBER STUFF ! but seriously it was a very good compensations for my unprofessional knowledge regarding this issues. i have to confess that i have all these from my nice supervisor Dr.Christopher Anand that assign me to this position. the CASCON was a good opportunity to present the project our team was working on. the CoConut project presents a new DSL(Domain Specific Language) embedded in Haskell (a Functional Language) that performs a suitable platform for mathematicians with novel ideas. it`s because of simulated Cell`s assembly function embedded in Haskell, so fair enough for those who know nothing about Cell`s assembly language :). we also have our own scheduler in order to produce optimized and efficient cell assembly language and job was to finally make it ready to run on target architecture (Cell BE). anyway!!! lets forget the details and talk about the conference a little bit :D. the conference was located at Sheraton Hotel in HWY7/Leslie in Toronto , quit a well known place, however the hotel was not as prestigious as i thought before. we had a poster in middle-ware section of the technology show case in the conference. each team have a section with a huge poster indicating the project`s name and the author names. so this is what we had on the board: CoConut-Optimizing code generation on Cell Arcitectur - McMaster University
Mehrdad Mozafari
Shiqi Cao
Christopher Anand
Wolfram Kahl


i think they were about 40 to 50 posters in the that area and all were sponsored by IBM so imaging what a huge funding is beside this whole story.

the hotel`s service was good enough . each day they gave breakfast, lunch and a snack at the evening. i met few Persian students mostly from University of Waterloo. There was a workshop for Compiler at the first day. and something weired happend in one of the presentation a guy (aged 25 to 27) was presenting his project and after 10 minute s the audience asked him few questions and he couldn't answer them i mean couldn't satisfy them , so he stopped to talk and then it seemed that he was overstressed in a way that he couldn't continue the talk. i thought he was about to fall down but few people went and help him sit and the talk manager gave a break right at that moment.

( in CASCON writing the blog, with a good feeling )
the workshop are so hard to understand unless you have a clear knowledge about state of the art, few things that draw my attention are:

-nobody tried to self praised
-nobody tried to impose his/her idea upon others, it was just a suggestion or a comment, thats all.
-they were all professionals, more that i imagined.
-at the end of the workshop there was a panel discussion mainly about about vague and unclear aspect of the cell that was going to be worked on in future.
- they were really trying to learn from each other in a humble way...
-being in a big, well known conference make you more motivated on the job you are working on(its because you know lots of more people had a similar point of view as you do)
-beside all the academic atmospheres is was kinda geeky environment, every body was talking about a shitty thing about compiler, algorithm complexity..... lol
-thats it

Mehrdad

US Immigration Visa-Montreal Oct, 2007

yooo Mister,
ok lets be honest now it`s all done ... let`s go for a flash back
my feeling : so now, what the heck !!!!! lol
i really mean it!! having or not having US green card is not a big deal for me now ( it was few years ago but not now ). thought, beside all these, you have a pleasant feeling after the completing the whole process...
ANYWAYS!!!!!
i start from the very first moment:
part1:getting the acceptance letter
it was my last final exam ( Software Engineering) in April 1, 2007 and the exam was really hard and i didn't feel good at all , so i came out of the classroom wondering what a gay exam and went for checking my mailbox. it was a weird one i open the envelop and the firt line was exactly this:
Congratulations! you are among the randomly selected US Diversity Visa Lottery applicant ...
i didn't get the point at the moment but i found it interesting after a while so i start having a mystic smiley face in the way that you could even see my cheerfull face frm a long distance...

part2: friends reactions
friend number 1: youuuuu Bastaaaaarrrredd.... Jesus Christ you are so lucky
friend number 2: you are so damn lucky you MASHADI ( it`s the city in Iran that i born in )
friend number 3:congrats Mehrdad ... مردشوره قیافت ببرن مرتیکه خر شانس
friend number 4: when should i apply for Green Card Lottery for the next year ...???
...
..
.
but i have to confess they were all nice and happy for me ;)

part3:receiving the appointment letter from US General Consulate in Montreal,QB
it was 20 day ago (September 19), again a new letter from Kentucky Consulate Center, addressing me: hey you Joe... come visit us in Montreal in 20 days and bring the noticed documents with your self.
Mehrdad: What the hell :(( i have lot to do and i`m so short of time...
ANYWAYS!!! i have to do the Medical Examination, prepare some letter, Translations, Support Statements... and more....

i have this feeling that okay, i`m begin selected randomly and there are the one who is after me not me after them !!!! so relax... they should not be as strict with your case comparing to others .
part4:Going to Montreal, Visa Interview and the Result
i rent a car cause i couldn't even think of going there by bus, beside the price for both were the same. 5, 6 hours drive from Hamilton to Montreal was terribly boring. the worst thing is you the SPEED LIMIT you have to obey in the highways (100 Km ) it sucks. though, no one cares about it and driving up to 120 was Okay, thanks god. i arrived Montreal at 8 pm, and directly went for the hotel in San Dennis Rue, nice not so luxurious hotel but good enough for a night.
after checking in i went for checking the place were US General Consulate was located. it was really close in Saint Alexandre Rue and Stain Cathrine Rue.

the day after i went to Consulate at 8:30. there were a line in front of a 30 floor Building.
the security measurements were good enogh, knowing you are from IRAN ... so they did their best to make sure i`m a morally accepted person and physically okay.
the consulate located at 19 floor, the only access was weired elevator having only one bottom..lol
there was a waiting room with about 30 people waiting for their turn. there were 3 more Persian among them ( God Bless Persian , overtaking Chinese these days ;) )
when my turn came i went to a window and a officer asked for few documents :
(to be completed )








few things to raise:
1-before winning the Lottery i always though if someone in my situation wines the US Green card Lottery, that person is devinly blessed from god ( nazar karde khodast hatman )..... now i understand its not a big deal....

2-i wish i won the Lottery before i get my Canadian Permanent Residency

3-it`s now a really hard decision whether to stay in Canada or completely move to US !!!!

4-i always dreamed of having job somewhere in US ( NY City or Silicon Valley ), now it`s really a good opportunity to make it come true

5-Montreal is so very different from Toronto, people or mostly more cheerful but you can slightly feel the European racism ...

6-taking a trip lonely is not that bad as i thought

7-i wish i new more French .. i promise to learn more ..... I DO

8-


- as i always believe : There is always the hope to meet an angle far far away........