I like to be in control of my destiny

I don’t have a Facebook or twitter account and that surprises a lot of my friends since I am such a geek :). And the reason I keep (kept) giving was that I want to be in control of my destiny. In this case, destiny being content. While Facebook and Twitter provide you with a easy way to connect with friends/relatives/stalkers etc, I believe it gives a lot of leeway on control over the content for the companies running these applications. I have all the means and ways to communicate with my friends and advertise what I need to world. How I do that? That is a blog post that I have been “drafting” for the last couple of months :)..Hope to publish it soon. And looks like the wider audience is finally waking up to it.

Check out this article on ReadWriteWeb regd how the tech leaders are calling for a boycott of Facebook and advocating for an open social networking protocol (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/more_web_industry_leaders_quit_facebook_call_for_o.php).

Another article on the same website, speaks about a study by the Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in Korea, which shows that Twitter is really not a social networking site, but more of a medium to broadcast your content (http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/study_twitter_isnt_very_social.php). Doesn’t really support the argument I made earlier that Twitter is not going to make it..but it certainly supports the notion that once the hype is gone the influence of twitter as a medium will decrease.

May 12, 2010 by Rantings Technology Uncategorized Web 0

Express.com DNS outage

I am sure a lot of people shop on express.com , but I probably get the credits for being the first blogger to post that express.com has not been responding to DNS queries since ~7:00 PM CST (4/26). Looks like Qwest is hosting DNS for Express. The name servers (most probably global load balancers) are not responding to DNS requests.

Here’s what I get, when I queried for www.express.com

Nameserver trace for www.express.com:

  • Looking for who is responsible for root zone and followed h.root-servers.net.
  • Looking for who is responsible for com and followed h.gtld-servers.net.
  • Looking for who is responsible for express.com and followed dca-ans-01.inet.qwest.net.

Nameservers for www.express.com:

  • dca-ans-01.inet.qwest.net returned (NORECORDS)
  • svl-ans-01.inet.qwest.net returned (NORECORDS)

I feel for the poor ops team scrambling around to bring up the service :). Another reason, you want diversity in your DNS hosting.

April 26, 2010 by Networking Technology Uncategorized Web 0

HOW TO : Configure mime type mappings in Jboss

Instructions for configuring the mime type mappings in Jboss. Mime types essentially tells the application processing the content (typically a browser), what the content is. More information here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_media_type).

  • Locate the web.xml file for your Jboss instance. It is usually in $JBOSS_HOME/server/INSTANCE/deploy/jboss-web.deployer/conf/web.xml
  • Locate the setting <mime-mapping> and make the required edits. For example, the code for defining the mime type for javascript looks like this



js
application/javascript

  • Restart Jboss
April 12, 2010 by HOWTO Technology Uncategorized Web 0

True Leadership..

As I was channel browsing yesterday, I happened to run across an episode of NOW on my local PBS station. It featured a Harvard educated man that decided to run for the mayor of a rundown steel belt town (Braddock, PA). Besides being impressed and humbled by Mr.John Fetterman, I thought he displayed all the characteristics of a true leader (IMHO).

  • Having a Vision
  • Committing to the Vision
  • Thinking out of the box to implement vision
  • Thinking objectively

Highly recommend watching the video, if you have the time 🙂

April 12, 2010 by Management Uncategorized 1

Industry Jargon : Hotel Industry

For my records..

  • ARI : Availability Rate Inventory. Any transaction that is querying/updating these three items is terms as ARI updates.
  • REVPAR : Revenue Per Available Room. This is the revenue the hotel makes per room in the hotel.
  • Total Pricing : The total price a customer has to pay to book a room in a hotel. It kinda sounds obvious..but when you understand that the total price depends on
    1. The price the hotel wants to charge (which again depends on who is selling the room)
    2. The tax at the city/state level
    3. The price of additions (services like Internet access, breakfast etc)
    4. Commission of the middleman.

It becomes a big deal :).

April 6, 2010 by Hotel Industry Jargon Uncategorized 0

First run of 2010

I kicked off the 2010 running season with the Shamrock shuffle held on March 21st. Jhanvi was going to run it with me, but was not able to due to health restrictions. She is planning on joining me for a couple of half marathons this year :). Hopefully, she won’t beat me as she did last year :).

I finished the 8K (5.1 miles) a couple seconds short of 1 hour :). Official chip time was 0:59:51. Results are published here. Looks like I am going to settle in the 12min/mile pace. That has been my pace for the last couple of races.

April 5, 2010 by Running Sports Uncategorized 0

Lessons of the Trade : Easy method to detect lame salespeople (companies)..

Some background.. I get an email from a sales rep from one of the biggest telecom provider. The sales person attached a 4 MB document that shows the services offered by the company in one page.. Yes, a one pager document that is 4MB in size!!.. And this document tells me how this company can do everything other than wash my dishes for me..that they are biggest and baddest out there.

Do you think that this person even gave a minutes thought before filling up my mailbox with a 4MB attachment? Nope.. will he be getting my business? Nope.. It is not that the sales rep sent me such a large attachment, but because the company that can supposedly offer the best technical solutions out there cannot figure out a way to show their offerings in a single page without bloating it. Shows that the company is not innovative and thinking of customers.

Maybe I am being harsh here.. but then I have pretty high standards :).

April 2, 2010 by Management Rantings Uncategorized 2