Of aliens and urinals

I just had a very short trip to Pune , with to and fro travel by KSRTC bus .
The KSRTC website dates back about 50+ years when "Pune" used to be called "Poona". This is important since I have type the source and destination, there isn't any dropdown for selection. And putting the destination as Pune results in the error "an unknown error occured" or some generic crap like that.
Finally made the booking after getting this knowledge from a friend.

So we go on the scheduled day to this filth of a place called the KG bus stand. First thing that hits me is the odour of too many people in one place. Smell of unclean armpits(likely) , unwashed underparts(probable) and rotten limbs(possible). Now I know I can't ever live in Mumbai again :(

I visit the restroom.
W/o the stiff upper lip, it's "i go to the loo".
Or , "use the toilet".

You cannot be honest and use any of the above for the loo in the bus stand. A honest quip would be
"let me go have have my nose on a high with the stink of ammonia and methane, avoid fainting or having epileptic seizures , control my pulse to avoid turning into a green monster, avoid slipping on some human faeces and take a leak."

On the way back by bus, in a stop for dinner, there was a toilet for aliens !
You enter the toilet through the narrow door , and find only one urinal and it's upside down.

The appropriate screws have been unhooked to get a very wet experience.
So, when your pissstream hits the inverted bowl it splashes urine back in your direction. This may be important for an alien species which survives by drinking urine mixed with slight amount of cholera infected faeces.
Yeps, there are bits of goo stuck to the urinal. Wonder how someone managed to shit into the urinal. Must from the other alien species which shits into the urinal and hence shares a symbiotic relationship with the pee-drinking one.

Do excuse the language here, i can't describe this in milder words. And please do carry a pair of adult diapers rather than using public toilets. And remember that urinals are meant for pissing , you have to use the other similar looking bowl for shitting, ask your nearest public toilet attendant for additional information.

Gtd is back with a vengeance !

I just made David Allen richer by 16$ and got my first legit(!) copy of his book.

I'll use "Things" on my iPod touch this time, instead of Thinkin Rock on my lappy.

Don't want this to sound like Anne Frank's diary again, but i have to say that, this is just to stop me from digging further when I find myself in a time-management hole :(

Test post from iPod touch

Well, if this works I'm gonna be a regular.

Totally f*cked up doc

Want to puke without any food in your belly ?

This is the documentary for you "Bumfights Presents - Terrorists, Killers and Middle East Wackos "
I got this one from my regular nightly routine , Start->Firefox->Bookmarks->Mininova->Documentaries -> Sort by seeds.

The entire doc film runs for about an hour with short video clippings which contain beheadings , chopping up of genitals , disembowelling , amputating limbs, general slaughter, rape , stoning , shooting and road/air/boat accidents.
All of the above with "happy happy" country music in the background.

The psychopath in you , will be interested in hearing the guttural sounds made when a throat is slit or the subdued whimper which follows a few bullets in the torso.


For me , I've lost enough bile to need an intravenous drip.

Matrix

There were 8 servers connected to one of our switches, each contributing 4 nics.
Each NIC supposed to be on a separate VLAN.

After the power maint. on the weekend, we found that our VLAN config got all mixed up.

Now one pair of servers had all 8 nics on one VLAN, with next pair of servers on another VLAN and so on.(!)
Conveniently we had forgotten the switch password.

Now the only way to reset this on cisco is to get a console cable connected to serial port of a laptop
and play with the mode button.
Wasn't enough time for that ( and we didn't find a console cable) , so we had to "transpose" the VLAN matrix.
The VLANs were EST (tagged on the switch ports) , so had to rejig all cables to get the original config back.
That's not easy if you throw in patch panels and unlabelled cables into this mess.

6 hours of manual labour on a Sunday ? That's real dedication , mate !

Fabric issues

I wonder if anyone's got the hang of Lefthand Networks VSA.
Not as simple to configure like Netapp or a Clariion in my opinion.
The thing has just too many areas to look at for getting stuff done.
I figure it's still better to use the VSA ,than the aging CX-320 for ISCSI.
Don't want to do too much to that old beast , its too cranky.

The other thing that cranky is our fabric.

I had shutdown our switches before a scheduled power maintenance on Sat.
On the brocades I ran a normal sysshutdown.
Come Monday after power them on, and this switch is acting all weird, the web interface doesn't work and
even a "zone show" results in "Fabric busy try again later" ??
Rebooted it , still the same issue .
I had to perform a persistent disable of the switch , fast boot it , then re-enable config to get it to work.
Dunno what was the RCA , I guess I need someone with a BCFP to analyse the supportshow dump for me (Or I should get one myself)

4 gig problem

I had bought extra RAM for the box , upping total to 4 gigs.

I install the chips , boot up Vista and check under “My Computer-> Properties” and it shows 4gigs. So , chips are ok and everything’s cool.

Week passes by , I’m try to run multiple VMs and seem to run into a performance snag .

So , I start the windoze troubleshooting ritual by opening up task manager. So here comes the funny part , it shows 2.5 gigs of physical memory ? But “My Computer-> Properties” shows 4gigs ?

After reading up forum posts on this , here is what I understood.

1> My Computer –> Properties shows you the physical memory present on the box.

2> Task manager will show you the physical memory that is actually getting used by Vista.

3> PAE is disabled in Vista (PAE lets 32 bit windoze OS’s go above the 4GB barrier)

4 If you have 4gigs , then this formula applies : Memory that can be used by Vista = 4GB – Graphic Card RAM (1 gig in my 8600GT) – Some RAM used by BIOS (~ 300 MB)

So , don’t go to 4GB on Vista 32bit , 3GB should be okay . Or install 64bit Vista (that’s what I did )

Ping Pong !

Squeeze those brain cells to get some blog juice ….

Life is beautiful

The job promotion into training is beginning to change life in many ways.

It was my karma to do this job.

Even as a support engineer , I was spending more time on helping others, than tackling my own work.

As I am just about to complete my first off-campus assignment , I sometimes feel like a stage performer during the training sessions.

I have learnt that a little humour goes a long way in building a student-instructor rapport.

Animated expressions and antics leave a longer lasting memory than plain vanilla "stand on the stage and talk" speeches.