Slumdog

I have always complained about 'Masala' bollywood movies with same old stereotypes and storylines .
But, if you have to make Masala-ishtyle movies , you better make 'em like this one.

I got a copy of the movie just coz it was receiving rave 'phoren' reviews and expecting that this would be, again, one of those same old western-indian crossover movies.

It turned out to be one of the best Masala movies I have ever seen (although I don't see many) .
Quoting a Bollywood cliche 'Isme action hai , Romance hai , Gaana hai , Mast item hai , fullto maximum paisa wasul hai baap '

For someone who has stayed in a Mumbai slum (in an old haunting past that I can't blank out) , I can vouch for the genuineness of the sets and life potrayed. Perhaps it is that emotional connection that makes me treasure this movie.

Mordor anniversary

Just another month to go .... Yeehaa ! I will be completing one year in my current company.

Had to scrape through the last few months , twas horrible .

Now I can update my resume and post it all over the place  !! One year is a reasonable looking time in anyone's CV.

Getting a new job isn't a big deal for someone with 6 yrs of experience , but finding the right one is a dark art.

Cookie

Ah ,the naughty one . There has been no peace in this house since she has arrived . But I like it this way .

Either , one of us is running after her to wrest socks out of the hellish jaws , or we are busy trying to keep her away from gnawing something/someone else.

A vampirish smile with sweet looking eyes which are waiting for right time and right body part to pounce at. Package also features a deep growling sound with a dolby woofer enabled bass booster.

Loves plastic and suspicious looking items like fur toys, sprite bottles and electrical wires.
WTF, BOFH excuse #97 may be true after all !!! (Small animal kamikaze attack on computer power supplies)

ESXi 3.5 "bare-metal" inside a VMware Workstation VM

This is pretty neat . I can run these "thin bare metal" hypervisor ESXi free versions from within VMware workstation 6.0 . I followed the steps provided on xtravirt.com for regular ESX 3.5 and applied it for the hypervisor.
All you have to do , is to create a new "Other Linux 64bit" VM and then close VMware and add the following in the VMX file :

monitor_control.restrict_backdoor = TRUE
monitor_control.vt32 = TRUE
monitor_control.enable_svm = TRUE (add this only if you use an AMD processor )

Then download the freeware hypervisor iso file (ESXi 3.5 U2) off the VMware website and install it.
I could setup the management network and connect VI client to access the ESXi box.
We can even setup VMotion by using a VCenter VM and 2 ESXi boxes , with shared storage provided by a filer appliance like openfiler.
This is going to be my next step , I'm off to buy more RAM to run all of these , would be difficult to squeeze all the above VMs in 2gigs.

In other news

Night shift ends in 3 days, will be back to regular day schedule for at least a year.

Was my birthday on 28th July , one more candle added.
My sister sent one of the best birthday wishes I have read so far

"If I could gift you something in my life,
I would give you the ability to see yourself through my eyes.
Only then you would realize how special you are to us :)"

Lamentations 3:37

"Who is he that saith and it cometh to pass when the Lord commandeth it is not"
-- Lamentations 3:37


Ah there it comes.

Here comes the bipolar swing again, a big one , goes to the sad pole this time.
This must be how bordering the edge of lunacy feels like.

A small family feud does the tip-over this time.
Retreating into my shell of misery , I start the self-sustaining manic-depressive cycle.
Looking at the world through narrow jaundiced eyes, fail to find any joy anywhere.

Of course , I do have family and friends trying to coax me out of it.
But asking a depressed person to come out of depression is like asking a diabetic to start producing insulin.

I do not have any reason to be really depressed, I am afflicted by the commonest of problems.

Hey , who doesn't have trouble brewing in their work-life ?
And does everyone get a US visa on first try ?
And who doesn't have family fights once in a while ?
And who doesn't have to juggle with finances ?

The issue , I think , is the fact that all of the above happened right around the same time.

I now take solace in the hope that it will swing to the other side soon and I will be back to my normal happy self again .

Can I get some sleep, please ?

F**king pissed at this damned night shift. Got to do it for at least 2 months every year . Sucks big time , coz I can't sleep during daytime . Heat and a lot of noise.

In this pathetic shit of a city , everyone likes to blare horns and want to go top speed in side alleys .
It's supposed to be a side alley in a residential area , you a***les ! Don't they know people like peace , more than the sound of fart growling engines ?!!
Has anyone here heard of a concept called noise pollution ? Forget the decibel meter , measure this damned noise on the Richter scale.

Especially auto drivers . Don't know what bloody vintage those rickshaws come from , their engines grumble like those road drilling machines.
Must be pouring 50% kerosene or something. Makes me have weird dreams about sucking their brain jelly out and squashing it. Dreams about disemboweling them all and becoming a martyr .

Plus , its hot as hell in the afternoons.
So that's the time the power goes off. Load shedding, i guess. Nice.
The gay sadists in the power corp must be having fun imagining sweat dripping bodies , when they flip the switch.

Top that up with loads of work in the office. I am really having a hell of a bad time these days.
Cherry on the topping ? Misery knows no company.

Ahh, power's back on . Sweat's drying . Will post this now and try get some sleep again .
4th installment today.

Goodbye Cruel World

Time to stick to family , they will always be there for me.
To all the others ..leave me alone.


Goodbye, all you people,
There's nothing you can say
To make me change my mind.
Goodbye.

Rescued by blood

Somebody said it right "You are your own worst enemy" .
Last couple of weeks have been slightly crazy , with my bipolar disorder swinging my moods from pole to pole. For no apparent reason that I can think of, the demons in my head were gnawing away all that was happy and good. Making me feel like my grey matter was turning into wriggling maggots.

Here comes little sister to the rescue , a cold-blooded reptile when it comes to feelings , moods and all that sentimental bullshit. Knew I could trust my own blood , we were always there for each other.
She takes in all the information that I give her , then turns all my feelings into chopped liver.
Her input is all your feelings at work or play .
Her output is a cold-logic processed data flowchart that can be literally pasted onto a Visio diagram.

Some people are real shredders when it comes to all the fluffy stuff and you cannot help but admire them .

Moral of the story ? I have to place this thought in my head, and make sure it stays there ,
"Suck your own thumb next time , you wimp !! Don't you f**king lose control over your go*damn moods again , you as**ole !!"

cat /etc/motd

"You cannot be lonely if you like the person you are alone with."
-- Wayne Dyer

Getting Things done

Getting Things done (GTD) is a project management
method proposed in the book by David Allen

It follows the principle of recording all the data (or thoughts) that we receive , into a database (either in software or in meatspace) , so that the mind is free from the work of storing this volatile data and can spend more effort in processing information.

Here is what David Allen says about this action management method :
“Get everything out of your head. Make decisions about actions required on stuff when it shows up — not when it blows up. Organize reminders of your projects and the next actions on them in appropriate categories. Keep your system current, complete, and reviewed sufficiently to trust your intuitive choices about what you're doing (and not doing) at any time.”

Check this wiki link for more information on this.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done


As suggested in the seminar, I have tried using quite a few software based tools , the one that I liked the best is a free java based software called "Thinking Rock" , which strictly adheres to the GTD principle.
As they say , the best things in life and software are free.

Powertop

I got this one from my manager , it is a must-have for Ubuntu on laptops.
Run "apt-get install powertop " to install.
Simply run "sudo powertop" when on battery .
It gives you useful suggestions on conserving power.

Hardy Heron and VMware annoyance

Ever tried using Hardy with VMware workstation or Server ?

Try launching a windows VM (virtual machine) inside and switch it to full-screen or quick view mode .
Then come back to Hardy , you will find that the Shift and Control keys don't work anymore !
Switch context to the windows VM again , they seems to work fine inside it.
This problem is intermittent and the only way I can fix it is to run "setxkbmap" (I got this from Launchpad Bug #195982)

Running setxkbmap alleviates the problem only for a short while.
It will reappear intermittently , on switching contexts.

I use my laptop with a secondary monitor . My laptop runs Hardy and my production (official) machine is a windows xp guest running on VMware .
I have the guest use the secondary monitor in full-screen mode and Hardy takes my laptop screen.
To switch contexts (which I do often) , I simply move my mouse cursor to the other screen (they are spanned with nvidia twinview)

Since there seems to be no solution for this bug yet , I have created a custom launcher in the gnome panel for running setxkbmap (See image) . I click the launcher whenever the damn bug pops up !

SAN admin anyone ?

I spoke to my old friend, a few days ago. He wants to come to Bangalore and get into the storage industry and become a SAN admin.

It gets real funny when people say that , what exactly do they mean by that , I wonder ?
Its like saying I want to get into the "computer" industry !
Just goes to show that little knowledge can be worse than complete ignorance.

I asked him, what does he want to learn about storage ?
No surprises here , he mentioned he wants to learn about Clariion .
Damn, I have heard this about a zillion times. I always get that stupid answer.
Clariion is one of the low-end arrays made by EMC , it doesn't even have an active-active storage processors !
I wonder why nobody talks about symmetrix or Hitachi HDS etc.

But in any case , a SAN admin job doesn't just involve managing arrays. In fact , that would be the least of his
concerns , most of these boxes have "made for dummies" type GUIs.
I advised learning more about switches and storage technologies in general and then moving onto specialized topics , like individual arrays and associated technologies.
That does not mean that you ignore arrays altogether , but you can take up arrays later.
The major part of the work is the fibre-switching , patch work , zoning and most importantly, implementation.
It becomes less of a "button-pushing" and more of a planning affair.


My friend also mentioned that he is trying to learn Unix , which he believes will be an advantage in the storage industry.
I seriously don't get this , WTF has Unix got to do with the storage industry ??
There is negligible host based configuration involved these days, nobody does any kind of LUN masking from the host side.

I offered my opinion , which is most likely going to be ignored . For one person offering the right bit of advice , there will be ten other fools trying to convince in the other direction.

Grep fan

Major part of my work involves checking for certain events in log files and try to trace out activities that happened just before and after these events. This is commonly called Root Cause Analysis (RCA).

Earlier , when I was new into this job , I used to do a "less" on the log files , one by one .
Then scroll page by page in each log to find out where the interesting parts were.

It became easier , when I learned about the "/" in "less" . If ya hit "/" when in less , you can perform a simple search , and sort through the results by "n"(next).

Now I don't even do that , I just do a
grep -i "event_im_searching_for" "list_of_log files or wildcards" -A5 -B5

The A5 , B5 give me 5 log entries before and after the event ! Can't get any better than this.

This may look childish to a Unix guru , he would probably use some regexes with grep to do this even better . But I'm learning , I'll get there.

Can't live without tail -f

Let's say performing a step produces an unexpected result or an error.
And you want to find out more information from the logs about the error.

Initially I would gather all the logs on my end , and then I would do the "grepping" thing on them.
But every time I tried a troubleshooting step(and it didnt work or did something else ) , I had to go back in and then do the "grepping" again.

Found out that this works out far better , if you do this with tail -f.

Open a few ssh sessions to the esx/unix/linux box.
Do a tail -f /var/log/whatever for each log file that you want to examine.
Then perform the step that produces the unexpected result or error.
The "-f" continues polls the logs , so it lets you see the relevant information from the logs in real time.

Work Work !

Its madness . I am now working more than 12 hours a day. Spend 10 hours in the office , then come back home VPN in and continue working .

I recently got a dell precision t3400 desktop , in addition to my dell d630 laptop,
Pretty rocking fast , I spent 4 hours after shift, playing UT2004 (it has a nvidia FX5700 !)

Nightlife

The biggest myth about this place is that it has a nightlife .
Nightlife ?? this place f**king sucks !

There isn't anyone on the roads after 10pm. Even on the main/arterial roads , you will find very few people on the roads.

I stay in jayanagar , I went to HSR layout yesterday and saw the same thing there.
10pm in HSR and the place looks like a ghost town.

I miss my old Bbay ...

Busy week

It has one hell of a busy week . Work is zapping up all my energy .
I really seem to have no time to sit and think ,or write.
The good part is , there seems to be no lack of company these days.

Rant with my Aunt

Me: Greetings my fair Agony aunt !!!!

Agony_Aunt: :D

Me: i gotta a chance to blow me trumpet ..i gave some friends my blog link
it makes me so happy , if people read what i write , it makes me feel like a real writer of sorts

Agony_Aunt: :D any updates on it

Me: not yet ..there is actually a lot of stuff i really want to write , but i cant ..coz it will be politically incorrect
about friends n stuff
some people wont like it being posted out on the web for the whole world to see it

Agony_Aunt: u don't have to name them
and what about freedom of expression

Me: i know.. but i haven't taken some Hippocratic oath for journalism yet
so i don't really have to report things as they are , or as they appear to me
there is one thing that scares the shit out of me and I want to write about.

Agony_Aunt: u can write what u feel though and what is it?

Me: last weekend SX, AX n me ..were talking about arranged marriage
very touchy topic ... its a bloody gamble i say
since all 3 of us don't have too much time , pressure is already setting from our folks
we were planning on watching a movie together ..that got canceled and we sat and talked for a few hours on this !!

Agony_Aunt: he he So what was the conclusion

Me: viva la resistance !! we fight till the end !!

Agony_Aunt: he he

Me: seriously dudette ,,you don't know how lucky you are !
imagine an arranged marriage setting
in our "liberal" families , you get to go around for a few weeks before deciding
in a few weeks , how the f**k are you supposed to know how the person is ? I mean anyone can "fake" it ! ..
i am a guy who excels at procrastination , but I can act like a super-active dude for a week without sweat
same goes on the other side ..its so damn easy to fake stuff when you want to
i don't mean to say , i'll be faking it ... but the other side might and probably will
its natural to appear more pleasing and charming , when you interact with people of opposite sex with the intent of understanding them ..

Agony_Aunt: :D
inhibitions is what i see
u got to go with open mind

Me: doesn't come that easy to someone who is emotionally inept

Agony_Aunt: i know what u r talking bout
i also question peoples intention a lot before i can trust them
:(
but its not a very good thing

Me: exactly , too much of the logical reasoning kills all emotions and render us emotionally inept ..Sometimes I feel that I should be a carefree emotional fool

Agony_Aunt: :)

Me: strangely sometimes you have a situation where this person is getting into your inner circle ..but you wont let them ,
because your logical questioning attitude doesn't let you
man ..am i ranting again ?
im ranting ..shit

There goes another one ...

Another weekend gone..

Saw "Spiderwick Chronicles" and loved it , I am gonna download this and keep it in the movies folder. This is kind of a must-watch for any fantasy movie buff.

Nothing else to write about the weekend , but it was far better than the dreary ones ...

"Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way"

One Missed Call

Whoosh , big relief ! I took care of the damn screw up that I did yesterday.

Today , three of us watched a movie "One Missed Call".
It's been a while since I have watched a horror flick , and this one had quite a few scary scenes.

Rest of the day was uneventful and mostly spent chatting about incidents during this week.

Here is the best part of the day , I got a copy of FarCry ! Yaay!
One of the best FPS RPG's I have ever played !

Feedback

Got feedback from a Pune friend that my blog sounds like Anne Frank's diary in WW-II !

Have noted another rule.
4> There should be intermittent posts about "happy" experiences .

Momentary lapse of reason

Man , I screwed up big time ! What was I thinking ??
An inch close to losing the only close friend that I have in this place .

How the hell did I manage to do that ? Well I was carried away with this bloggin thing n wrote my heart out ... excerpts from a previous post(Solitude) : "slowly getting bored of each other " and "run out of topics to talk about".
And like the idiot I am , I show her my newfound love for writing !

What happened after that ? Elementary my dear Watson , she fell silent .
I vaguely try to explain , that I meant the line in future tense and not something that is happening now . Does that work ? ..No !

Well ? Dunno .. I'll apologize again tomorrow.

Have noted the following rules for future posts:

1> Make sure they are politically correct.
2> Do not mention about close friends / siblings /parents or anyone else who has the capability of making you feel miserable.
3> Write honestly , but skip over "harmful" details.

Solitude

This has been one hell of a lonely place. Before moving here , I had never suffered such boredom attacks , weird.

I do have a sizeable number of old friends who settled here earlier. But , weekends are the only time we can meet , and even that is difficult because of their commitments.
Sometimes when all the planets are aligned , we go out and have some fun.

Weekday evenings are horrible , I come back home and boredom creeps in right away.
I try watching some telly , but that doesn't help, I try my ps2 , but that bores me too.
Fortunately(?) , I have a friend in the same predicament and we give each other company almost daily. Gradually , we will run out of things to do and topics to talk about and get bored of each other.

Things are always fun , when you have a group of 3 or more friends. But others won't be able to make it on weekdays because they either stay far away or work in shifts .

Eventually , I will adjust to this hermit lifestyle and hopefully start enjoying solitude .
Till then , I'll try to manage.

Bus Travel

Auto travel was getting really expensive .

Thought I'll go by bus from Jayanagar to Majestic. Conveniently there is a bus stand right opposite my hotel.
Asked a couple of people at the bus stand for the bus number for the route( Routes on buses are printed in Kannada )
After couple of "Goth Illa's" and "Nahin maloom's" , I get the answer.

Waited for a couple of minutes , and here comes a bus with that number.
A couple of people climb before me , ask the driver something and suddenly want to get down.
Meanwhile I am pushed into the narrow entrance of the bus by the crowd behind me .
I managed to get into the bus , but I feel something odd . I check my denim pockets and my cell is missing !
Well , I thought it must have fallen down while climbing into the bus. I get down from the bus and check the bus stand , it isn't there.
I go into the hotel and called my cell , it rings and someone picks up , Yaay!
I tell him that it's my cell and ask him where he is . He tells me he's in the bus and will be getting down at Majestic.

I caught an auto , reach Majestic and call my number . The message says my cell has been switched off. I now realize what had happened , I vaguely try my number many many times .
I come back dejected to my hotel room , and for the next couple of hours retry my number.
It feels like a part of you has been cut off , and an n72 did not come cheap.
I call my sister and tell her about this . She had noted down the IMEI id numbers of all our phones . It is possible to track down the thief with that number , she says.

Happily I went to the police station , told the SI about this and he says that I probably lost the cellphone. He isn't ready to lodge an FIR , says instead of that I can write a signed handwritten note and he will take care of it . I wrote the note and I described the entire incident and then he tells me , it is impossible to catch cellphone thieves ! wow !

This has never happened to me when commuting in extremely crowded local trains or buses in Mumbai .
This was my first week in this city . Since then I have never travelled by local bus , nor plan on doing so in the future and neither will I buy an expensive cell.

Autowallahs

Finding an autowallah ready to go by the meter , is a good way to test the limits of your patience.

This would be my advice :

1> Never get into an auto without telling him to go by meter. Get down if he does not agree to meter and names his price . This can be frustrating at times , but follow this as a matter of principle.
2> Do not catch Autos standing outside Shopping Malls and IT companies . Walk along the road and catch a passing one.
3> Be wary of any "shortcuts" taken by the autowallah , he is lengthening your ride to increase fare.

The Language barrier

Everyone here understands and can speak Hindi or English.
But they choose to speak in one of the local languages when in a group , and not in hindi/english , which would be understood by the entire group.

Imagine this , you are with a group of 3, including yourself. The two are merrily chatting in a local lingo , cracking some jokes and you don't have a bloody clue on what's going on !

This is pretty common here , but can get worse. You can't help wonder ,they could be talking and joking about you !

This has driven me to learn the local lingo , I can already understand and speak some of it.
Very helpful with autowallahs ...

Mordor

Mordor is the hellish place from Tokien's middle earth. The closest resemblance to this in the real world , is a place called Blore. This is the place where I live and work.



For an IT professional , this place offers limitless possibilities . About my specialization (Storage/Virtualization) , they say "Saare storage ke raaste yaahaan se jaate hain ".

If you want to move ahead in your career , this is the place to be. Staying in Mumbai/Pune won't take you there fast enough.

That is the only good thing that I have seen so far about this place .
There may be more , and perhaps I will know later what they are( and keep adding them)

I really don't mean this to be a hate-column . My opinion is purely based on my upbringing and the Mumbai culture that I come from .

My first blog attempt

I really don't know how to start off.. what should be my first post, I wonder ?
I should just leave this blank , im afraid i'll destroy this blog by rambling on my first post.