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Loosing weight!!

Most people make their resolutions around the New Year. My resolution to loose weight and get into shape came around when I went on vacation with my family over the thanksgiving weekend. We went to the Grand Bear Resort in Utica, IL for the holidays. The resort had a indoors waterpark and when I got ready to get into the water, I felt ashamed to undress because of my shape :). I came up with a resolution than and there to get into shape. I was never a fit person, but the two marathons I ran in 2004 and 2005 forced me to work out and as a result, feel good about myself. I want to take up running again and hopefully fullfill my lifelong dream of learning to swim and complete a tri-athlon.

My sister and brother-in-law were good sports and decided to keep me motivated by announcing that they were going to loose weight along with me. We have a small bet going along to keep us on our toes. I wanted to find a tool, which would keep us connected with each other about our progress. My search lead to several sites, that would do this.. and I finally decided on Traineo (http://traineo.com/). It is a web 2.0 site that allows you to keep track of your goals and progress. Very cool..

Now.. the real challenge is to loose those flabs :).. Wish me luck!!!

December 1, 2007 by Food Sports Uncategorized 1

I just cannot resist it..

I promised to myself to post at least once a month on this blog :-).. So this post is to remind myself about this promise and fulfill the 1 post per month obligation :).. Alright.. I am cheating :).

December 1, 2007 by Fun Uncategorized 0

Boney M : Greatest Group Ever

I first listened to music by Boney M, when I was a kid and the impact of the catchy tunes was so profound that I can still recite them :). I finally ran into some of their videos on Youtube. And boy, can Booby Farrell dance :). Here are some of the videos for your pleasure.

Boney M – Daddy Cool : http://www.youtube.com/v/2c-M8mHsFEY
Boney M – Ma Baker : http://www.youtube.com/v/Dt77ZqE1bCA
Boney M – Brown Girl in the Ring : http://www.youtube.com/v/6qJTyGmZeLo

October 13, 2007 by Fun Music Uncategorized 0

The world is a wierd place!!

I came across this interesting article on the BBC news website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7040191.stm) which lead me to think of how wierd the world we live in today is.. Essentially the article is about the publishers of Harry Potter, sueing a religious organization for building a “Hogwarts” like temperory castle as part of their celebrations of “Durga Puja”. It is quite common during these celebrations to mimic popular settings (be it either movies, events or books). I understand that the publishers have to protect their “intellectual” property, but is it fair to sue a group of people that are just trying to have some fun when they are not exploiting your “intellectual” property for commercial gain? I guess, there is nothing called “common sense” in our modern legal dictionary. 

October 11, 2007 by Rantings Uncategorized 0

One word : Funny!!

I came across this description of a phone with the capability to take two sim cards. Found it on a site that sells wholesale Chinese goods (read : “ripped off models”). I couldn’t stop laughing at the claims the manufacturer of this phone put on the site.. Imagine a phone, you can use to “share happy & secret with different people” :)..

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“DUAL SIM CARD CELLPHONE!!

What`s dual sim card phone?and what it is used for?
It is a cellphone that can help you put two SIM cards in one mobile. It can make you realize one mobile with two SIM cards,this one allows to manage two GSM Sim cards in one mobile phone,This means users can switch between two numbers or networks. More and more people have two mobiles. One is for work and one for private.this phone can let those people make things easier by just needing to use one phone.
Mobile is becoming a daily necessity. Nowadays more and more people like moving, especially businessmen are wandering from one place to another frequently. “Fliers” are often envied at the price of high roaming charges & long-distance fee. If your mobile is with dual sim card, you can freely switch between different numbers of different areas , avoiding high roaming & long-distance charges. Friends or customers from different area can find you by calling your any numbers. It can reduce half mobile charges economically.Many people hope to leave an integrated space to their closed lovers. Super twin card can set up a special line for you. One mobile is with 2 numbers, different number is for different people. Two numbers let you enable to share different happy & secret with different people.It becomes the life belief of people in E century that work hard and completely relax. It will not get the largest achievements and happiness unless you put all moods in one thing. If your mobile are with super twin sim card that one number is for business and the other for private, you can put into work thoroughly and enjoy life completely. this phone can improve your life quality easily.”

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September 16, 2007 by Fun Uncategorized 0

Operational Tips : Password parameter changes in Group Policy

I am planning on sharing some of the “Ahh.. we should have thought of that” moments on this site as I run into them. First is to remind of me of my past mistakes, so that I can avoid them in future, and two is help other folks out. Here’s my first one..

We decided to change the password parameters in our companies group policy recently. The password expiration was changed to 60 days from 120 days and password complexity was enabled.  We thought this was a pretty straight forward change and wouldn’t get the helpdesk swamped with calls, since the new policy will take affect as the current passwords expire..

Wrong!!! AD checks the last time your password was changed and compares it to the password expiration time frame in group policy. And you could just imagine, the look our helpdesk folks gave the engineers when they got swaped with people calling them that they are being forced to change passwords and all the ones they used before don’t work.

Morale : Decrease the password timeout in intervals. i..e in our case, we should have decreased the expiration date 10 days at a time. That way, you minimize the impact the change.

September 9, 2007 by Technology Uncategorized Windows 0

HOW TO : Configure wireless NIC on Fedora 7.0

I decided to play around with Fedora to brush up on my Redhat skills. I have been using Ubuntu for some time, but wanted to see what the newly released Fedora 7.0 offers. With each new release, Linux is coming closer to becoming an operating system that a normal user can install and start using right away. Gone are the days of plowing through config files to get everything working. Thats why, I was pretty surprised when the wireless card in my laptop didn’t work with the default install. Here’s how I got the card to work in Fedora, using ndiswrapper (An opensource project that enables the usage of Windows drivers in Linux).

  • Install kernel headers by running “yum –install kernel-devel”
  • Install gcc (compiler) by running “yum –install gcc”
  • Download ndiswrapper from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net (make sure to download the latest version)
  • Unpack ndiswrapper and run the following commands
    • make uninstall
    • make
    • make install
  • Download the windows drivers (.inf and .sys files) for your wireless card and copy them to a location on your harddrive
  • Change the working directory to the folder where the windows drivers have been saved
  • Install the drivers by running the following commands
    • ndiswrapper -i driver_file_name.inf
    • ndiswrapper -l
      • This command should show that the device has been installed and enabled. My output looks like this
        net5416 : driver installed
        device (168C:0024) present
  • Configure an alias for the wireless card by editing the /etc/modprobe.conf file and adding the line
    • alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
  • Configure NetworkManager to startup automatically by running
    • chkconfig –level456 NetworkManager on
  • Restart your machine and you can start using the wireless card by using the “NetworkManager” applet that starts when you log into the GUI.
June 3, 2007 by Linux Technology Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Delete exchange account on a Windows Mobile device

I use a T-Mobile Dash as my phone and mobile messaging platform. For those that are not aware, you pull e-mail from any Exchange 2003 server with SP2 from a Windows Mobile device over the air, using direct connect. The management features are not as robust as Blackberry for managing Windows Mobile devices, but it is a free feature :).

I have been trying to figure out for the last few weeks, how I can switch the exchange server that my DASH has been configured for. Finally, a lot of googling revealed the following steps.

On your mobile device,

  • Go to Start -> Active Sync
  • Click  Menu – >  Options
  • Choose Microsoft Exchange
  • Click on Menu-> Delete

NOTE : This will delete all your e-mail, contacts and calendar entries that were synchronized using the old exchange server.

May 13, 2007 by Networking Technology Uncategorized Windows 18

WordPress 2.1.x and FAlbum issues

I use the FAlbum plugin for WordPress to display pictures from my Flickr account on this site. When I upgraded WordPress (the publishing platform that powers this blog) to v.2.1.3 from v.2.0.9, I noticed that I couldn’t see pictures from my Flickr account on the site anymore. On further digging, I saw an error message in the admin page for FAlbum that the Flickr Key was not valid any longer. I tried to reauthorize FAlbum on Flickr, but that didn’t work either. Googling for the error message “( [stat] => fail [code] => 100 [message] => Invalid API Key (Key has expired)” didn’t turn up any useful pages. So, I tried something I haven’t done for a while :), I visited the support forums for FAlbum and found the issue right on the first page. It looks like Flickr had expired FAlbums Key for some reason without any explanation. The author suggested using a new key and I was up and running in a few minutes. Just a reminder, that Google is still not the omni persent God :).

Now, you can go back to enjoying “My Pictures” :).

April 15, 2007 by Technology Uncategorized Web 0