Flavorwire did a piece about the most beautiful University Libraries in the world.
http://flavorwire.com/240819/the-25-most-beautiful-college-libraries-in-the-world

Some of them are truly beautiful, like this library at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore:

I’m pleased that one of my almae matres made it to the list, Widener Library at Harvard:

But sad that UIUC did not make it with its ingenious underground library.

Did you know that by building the library underground, UIUC was able to keep the Morrow Plots, one of the oldest gardens in Central Illinois, in full sunshine!

Yesterday was my Master’s degree graduation ceremony from Harvard. I’m done!

 
 
These were three guys I’d had some classes with. Not too many folks I know graduated yesterday.

From Harvard Graduation

But plenty of others did graduate!

From Harvard Graduation

This guy is a hoot. He is the “High Sherriff of Middlesex County” and he comes to “Declare this meeting IN SESSION!!” He shouts it and raps his cane on the stage three times.

From Harvard Graduation

Asian Tiger Mom snuck into the student section.

From Harvard Graduation

And Placido Domingo came by to receive his honorary degree. He serenaded Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she came up for her honorary degree. She’s not my type, but what an impressive lady.

It feels great to be done!

The bound copy just arrived from the printers.

From My Thesis

I will soon deliver it to Harvard for their library. Feels amazing to be done!
Title: Elastic Load Balancing in Amazon Compute Cloud

The Harvard Chinese food truck is back on Oxford street. Nice!

My good friend Donnie and I used to snack here after CS121. And by snack, I mean to eat a huge tray of Chinese food for $6 and sit around when we became too fat to move.

The cart is parked on Oxford Street near Harvard, immediately in front of Maxwell Dworkin Hall and near the Harvard Law School. It seems to stay from 11am-2pm, though the good dishes usually run out by 1:30pm.

Today I had Szechuan Pork on black mushrooms.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

The first semester of grad school is challenging and all-consuming. Last night while I was coming home after a very long day and night on campus, I was thinking of how I could summarize my three classes this semester. If my education were a high-rise building under construction, these are the courses and what they are teaching (and in some cases, preaching).

CS121 – Formal Systems and Discrete Math – How to analyze the foundation of your building to make sure it’ll stand, years before you lay down the first brick

CS244 – Cloud Computing and Network Design Topics – How to make your building green and last until the year 2150

CSXXX – (can’t criticize till i get my grades) – How to build your dream house out of cardboard & green apples and paint it with clay, because this is the only way a real builder would ever build a house.