Uncategorized

HOW TO : Identify good talent

In the fortune magazine, there is a section (and for the life of me.. I cannot seem to find it online and I just cleared my dining table of all the back issues of the magazine šŸ™ ) on how business leaders see trends in real life and than make judgements on where the economy is headed. For example, if someone sees a starbucks they visit regularly become more busier than normal, that person judges that the economy is doing well.

I judge good talent (think sysadmin, dba, programmer, application engineer etc) in a somewhat similar fashion. I should note that this system is not perfect, but it seems to have worked out more than not for me so far. I judge their talent based on what browser and how they use it.

THE BEST

Ever see a person who has multiple browsers (not tabs) open and is doing a specialized task in each one of them? Their home screen is usually set to a specialized search engine (blekko, duckduckgo, wolframalpha) and they have add-ons that block ads and show them a variety of information of the site they visit. These are usually the best folks to have on your team. These are the folks that you want your systems designed by.

THE GOOD

This group tends to either use firefox or chrome. Has Google as theirĀ  home-page and know how to use multiple tabs. Yeah.. sorry, I a browser discriminator :). Since there can only be a few rock stars in the world, you should consider yourselves lucky if most of the members in your team belong to this group.

THE REST

Ever see someone, whose homepage looks like Google but is not.. And has a bunch of “toolbars” that take up 1/3rd of the screen. And has popups showing up randomly? Yep.. these are the folks you don’t want touching your code. Even with a 10 foot pole.. no sir.. Having these folks move to firefox and/or chrome doesn’t help the situation either :).

March 27, 2012 by HOWTO Management Uncategorized 3

HOW TO : Route traffic to loopback interface in Linux

Back in 2009 (last decade!! šŸ™‚ ), I wrote a blog post on how you can trick windows to route traffic destined to a particular IP address to a black-hole. In it, I mentioned the command to route traffic to /dev/null in Linux was [code]<code>route ADD IP_ADDRESS_OF_MAIL_SERVER MASK 255.255.255.255 127.0.0.1</code> [/code]

I ran into a need to try it today and looks like the trick doesn’t work :). So here is the right command if you want to route traffic to the loopback (or blackhole) destined to a particular IP address [code]sudo route add -host IP_ADDRESS_OF_HOST/NETWORK_MASK lo [/code]

For example if I want to black-hole traffic destined to 74.205.216.2, I would do the following [code] sudo route add -host 74.205.216.2/32 lo [/code]

March 26, 2012 by HOWTO Linux Networking Uncategorized 0

Dreaming

James Cameron successfully completed a deep dive into the deepest part of the ocean today. And with it, he repeated a feat that was tried 50 years ago. I cannot wait for the documentary he is going to make out of this dive. I put this on the same scale as someone flying to the moon and back. Yes, I know it was done before. But it has never been repeated again.

By doing this, Mr. Cameron has inspired to start dreaming again. That we can still fly to the moon.. that we can one day travel beyond theĀ boundariesĀ of our solar system

Thank you Mr. Cameron, for letting us dream again.

March 25, 2012 by Humanity Uncategorized 0

Driving in Texas

If you are ever driving in the country of Texas (yes, for theĀ uninitiated, Texas is a country by itself šŸ™‚ ), drive in the left most lane if you don’t want to get off the highway and drive in the rightmost lane if you want to get off the highway. Even the folks that only drive at 55 and are always in the right lane need to heed this advice..

Or you will be getting off and on the never ending “frontage” roads šŸ™‚

I shared by two cents!!

March 24, 2012 by Fun Uncategorized 0

DID YOU KNOW : Windows mobile and wildcard certs don't work together

Wildcard SSL certificates allow you to use one certificate for all sub domains (up to one level) of a host. Say I got a wildcard SSL certificate for *.kudithipudi.org, I would be able to use it to provide SSL on blah.kudithipudi.org, ssltest.kudithipudi.org, youcannotbeserious.kudithipudi.org and the clients won’t complaint about it.

For some reason though, Windows Mobile phones don’t like wildcard certs. So if you are ever scratching your head, why every other client works, but windows mobile devices don’t..stop scratching and get a regular SSL certificate for your website/application.

Apparently, this is the case with

  • Windows CE
  • Windows Mobile 5.0
  • Windows Mobile 6.0
  • Windows Mobile 7.0

Don’t you get the feeling that someone keeps using the same library and never bothered to check/fix it? And searching on MSDN or any other Microsoft resource won’t provide you this information. This is my own deduction after beating my head against the wall for more than 3 days :).

March 23, 2012 by DID YOU KNOW Technology Uncategorized Windows 0

Stay Hungry.. Stay Foolish

Just read a really nice article on the Harvard Business Review by Walter Isaacson on leadership lessons of Steve Jobs atĀ http://hbr.org/2012/04/the-real-leadership-lessons-of-steve-jobs/ar/pr . Ā There were a lot of points that Walter makes in the article, but the one that resonated a lot with me was the need to “Stay Hungy.. Stay Foolish“. This is similar to having a “hacker mentality”, which I believe is one of the keyĀ ingredientĀ for a person to be successful (professionally and personally).

Being a hacker means..

  • beingĀ inquisitiveĀ about how things work.
  • always being a student
  • being able to challenge “this is how we always did things”
  • never stop perfecting
  • remembering that one can (and used to) survive on ramen Ā noodles šŸ™‚
March 21, 2012 by Management Uncategorized 0

Project Uptime : Progress Report – 2

After I installed the new kernel as mentioned in this update, I was still seeing the server booting up with the older version. I tried to have the kernel install option (apt-get install linux-image-VERSION) to overwrite the grub config, but the server wouldn’t boot up after that.

So after a lot of head scratching and googling, I found the solution. Rather than have the install program automatically update the grub config file, you have to manually edit it.

So install the latest kernel using the commands as mentioned in my previous post (https://kudithipudi.org/2012/03/07/project-uptime-progress-report-1/) and when prompted about the having an existing grub menu and if you want to overwrite it, just say no. Then do the following

  • Check the new kernel image filename by running [code] ll /boot/vmlinuz* [/code]
  • Edit the grub boot menu by editing the file /boot/grub/menu.1st and add a section for the new kernel image.
  • Edit the default boot option to the new kernel image (NOTE.. the sequence starts from 0)
  • Reboot the server and enjoy the new kernel

Here’s my before and after comparisons for the server I am building

BEFORE Ā (this is after the line ## End Default Options ##)

[code]

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual (recovery mode)
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-16-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-virtual
title Chainload into GRUB 2
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

title Ubuntu 11.10, memtest86+
root (hd0)

[/code]

AFTER

[code]

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-12-virtual (recovery mode)
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-12-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-12-virtual

title Ubuntu 11.10, kernel 3.0.0-16-virtual
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-16-virtual root=/dev/xvda1 console=hvc0 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.0.0-16-virtual
title Chainload into GRUB 2
root (hd0)
kernel /boot/grub/core.img

title Ubuntu 11.10, memtest86+
root (hd0)

[/code]

BTW.. Grub is the boot manager (and a lot more) in Linux.

March 20, 2012 by HOWTO Linux Technology Uncategorized 0

Love kids..

We spent the weekend with Sri and family and I got a chance to capture some nice shots of Sindhu and Virat. Kids are such a pleasure to take pictures of.. innocent, dont_care_how_I_look..giggly šŸ™‚

Sindhu gazing at Virat

Virat loving the attention
Do you want my balloons?

Are you looking at me?

One happy family.. aren’t they beautiful??

March 18, 2012 by Photography Uncategorized 0