- I successfully ran Kodagu Marathon 2026! I wasn’t sure if I will be able to finish it this year. I ran my last half-marathon three years ago. I have been feeling completely out of shape for last couple of years: my running pace had been abysmal. But not only I finished the half-marathon but beat my PR by 2 minutes! I should have gotten a hair cut before the run.
- My manager at Toyota finished with me 💪🏼! He helped me save at least 5 minutes. I saw him after half-way return point. We ran last 4 km together. Fun times!
- My labmate and friend from Ph.D. times Adiya and his wife Chinmayee joined us for this half-marathon. He finished it in about 2 hours despite not in best of his form. We get to meet his 1.5y old daughter.
- Kaalu had really good time at homestay near Gonikoppal! She got to eat fresh chicken and eggs which she gulped down like a hungry monster. The homestay manager was extremely pet-friendly and he took extra care of Kaalu (I say almost spoiled her).
- Kodagu felt very dry this year. The local manager at homestay told me that there is hardly any rain this year. When driving past Brahmagiri range, I noticed no water streams which is a common sight during monsoon time. The Irfu waterfall had very little water.
- We couldn’t go the waterfall since they don’l allow dogs there. So we played downstream where people come to wash clothes! Ookie loved time in the stream and Kaalu was shirt-scared of deep and noisy water, as usual. But this time, she stood inside the water.
- Near Mysore, we found a pet-friendly cafe called Queens Coffee. It is ran mostly by women. It had all the good vibes — clean, colours that are easy on eyes, clean toilets, and very pet-friendly. If you pass-by, please visit and support.
- On lobte.rs, I was complaining about recent increase in LWN subscription prices and how declining Rupee has made it harder for me to continue with “starving hacker” plan. One kind soul on internet bought me a subscription gift. I felt guilty accepting the gift since I can surely afford it. But I didn’t want to threw cold water at the kind gesture. So I accepted the gift whole-heartedly and I donated $35 (starving hacker plan that I used to subscribe) to PARI (https://ruralindiaonline.org).
- I did some maintenance work for a few FOSS projects especially Smoldyn. The
cmakebuild system major version is4.xandpybind11was updated to3.xseries. Removed Cygwin support from build system since smoldyn can built on Windows now. - I’ve resigned from Toyota this month. I am service notice period. I’ll be joining Progress software from October 1, 2025 as a Principal Engineer on habitat/chef team.