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Continuing the drive from Carlsbad, New Mexico, we drove to Santa Fe. There isn’t much to do in Santa Fe. The drive is perfect. And the drive to Albuquerque is full of great hikes.

Continuing the journey from Shakespeare ghost town, we visited Las Cruces (“The Crosses”), New Mexico, and El Paso, Texas. El Paso is a border town and for foreigners, I would recommend carrying a US visa or green card as there are temporary CBP checkpoints set up in its vicinity. I wouldn’t recommend spending more than a few hours in Las Cruces. If you are planning to eat then do check out the town/pueblo of Mesilla next to Las Cruces before leaving. Our next stop was El Paso, Texas. Right across the Rio Grande is the Mexican city of Juárez. ...

Java made a huge mistake of having no network timeouts. A network request can block a thread forever. Even Python did the same. The language designers should have chosen some conservative appropriate numbers instead. What’s surprising is that the Go language repeated it! Here’s a simple demo

The name “Chavez” has three syllables. And is pronounced in 5 different ways!

Duolingo is a waste of time. Here are better alternatives.

Driving from Phoenix, Arizona to El Paso, Texas. Lordsburg is a small town to stop over for a night. And here, we came across this hidden gem of a ghost town. It is only 7$ per person. The tour guide, a native of Ohio, who married the daughter of the owner, lives in this abandoned ghost town. He carries guns for the critters as there are tons of rattlesnakes around. The tour is about 2-hours. It is highly informative and I would highly recommend this tour if you have a few hours to spare. ...

The Bed of Procrustes is a short book consisting of quotes by Taleb. Unlike his other books, this book is mostly a collection of quotes. Procrustes used to stretch/amputate his guests who wouldn’t fit on his bed. Similarly, when our minds need to reduce information, we are more likely to try to squeeze a phenomenon into the Procrustean bed of a crisp and known category (amputating the unknown), rather than suspend categorization, and make it tangible. That’s the central theme of this book.

We started with the Wrigley’s Mansion. The mansion of the famous Wrigley’s chewing gum. The self-guided tour is free. And the paid tour costs 17$. Then head to Roosevelt street, the downtown area of Phoenix. There are lots of eateries and art galleries here. I would highly recommend having lunch here. Afterward, we drove to Papago Park. Phoenix Zoo is located here. Our goal was to do a small hike to Hole in the Rock. ...

The book summarizes the teachings of John from the course CS190 that he teaches at Stanford. Good system designers get to spend a larger fraction of time in the design phase. Poor designers spend most of their time chasing bugs in complicated and brittle code.

Indian passport remains weak, as per Henley’s 2021 index, India has visa-free access to only 59 countries and that excludes the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Schengen zone. Before ruminating on that, it is worth asking why China, which is 5 times richer than India in terms of per capita GDP is not doing significantly better either. The island countries of the Caribbean with a population of less than a million have better access than China. Even war-torn Venezuela has a better passport including visa-free access to Western Europe. ...