Overheard : Comment about weather

Comment from a lady coming out of a portable toilet, during the Northface Endurance Challenge Half Marathon this weekend

You know, it is cold, when you don’t want to come out of the porta-potti!!

It was 36 degrees!! 🙂

October 26, 2009 by Fun OverHeard Uncategorized 0

RECIPE : Palathalikalu

Recipe for Palathalikalu, a dessert from the Guntur region in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India. It is a classical dish and is usually made during the Sankranthi festival. This used to be a “must have” dish in my childhood, but it has become into a exotic dish in recent times. My brother in law made some recently and I was surprised, how easy it is to make the dish. Here is an attempt to share the knowledge :).

Ingredients :

  • Rice Flour (1.5 cups)
  • Brown Sugar (2 cups)
  • Milk (1/2 Gallons)
  • Butter (Ghee) (3 tablespoons)
  • Cashew Nuts (1/2 cup)
  • Cardamom Seeds (eilachi) (~15)

Preparation :

  • Knead the rice flour into a dough by adding 1 cup of brown sugar and some warm milk.
  • Add the rest of the brown sugar to the milk and bring it to a boiling point
  • Put the prepared dough in a cookie press and drop it into the milk as short noodles (use the cookie press template with round holes of ~0.25 inches in diameter)
  • Roast the cashews slightly in butter and them to the milk (along with the butter)
  • Crush the cardamom seeds and add them to the milk.
  • Let all the ingredients boil for ~15 minutes and you are ready to enjoy palathalikalu

Wasn’t that easy? :).. You can also add raisins to the dish based on your preference.

Visuals :

The Ingredients


The Cookie Press (Indian Version 🙂 )

Creating the noodles

Yummy!!


October 17, 2009 by Food Uncategorized 1

I guess I am a superman :)

I successfully completed the Chicago Half Marathon held on 9/13 in 2 hours and 44 minutes. I know that is nothing to brag about 🙂 (in fact my worst time so far for a half marathon).. but considering that I didn’t train for it at all and had a couple shots of tequila and some beer the night before, I think I did OK. But boy was I hurting at the end.

I ran the race with my friend Sri and his friend Rama Krishna. Obviously, I was the late finisher in the team.

Here is our pre-race picture

p.s : Please don’t take this as advice to start drinking before embarking on a long run :).

September 20, 2009 by 2009 : Half Marathons Running Sports Uncategorized 1

MisCommunication

Another picture from a chain mail :). My friend, Shashi, forwarded this via e-mail. Sarcastic look into communications in the corporate world. Not sure which publication this is from, so apologies in advance if this looks like palgarism. Click on the image to view a larger and legible image.

July 24, 2009 by Fun Management Rantings Uncategorized 1

Cabling Mess

My friend passed on this picture from a e-mail thread.. I would love to meet the person managing this network :). Imagine having to trace a cable…

July 17, 2009 by Fun Uncategorized 0

HOW TO : Install Wireshark on Windows 7

[UPDATE] Wireshark works without any issues as of version 1.2.3. This release includes WinPcap 4.1.1, which has support for Windows 7 and 2008. Looks like the issue was with the drivers not being signed digitally.

I recently upgraded my laptop to Windows 7 RC from the beta version I was testing earlier. As part of installing my standard set of tools, I tried to install Wireshark (open source network capture tool), and ran into an error due to the UAC security settings. Essentially, Windows was blocking the install of WinPcap (network capture driver). I solved it by enabling compatibility mode on the install executable. Here are the steps to install Wireshark on Windows 7.

  • Download the install file from http://www.wireshark.org/download.html
  • Right click on the install file (I happened to download the 64 bit install) and click on properties
  • In the properties window, click on the compatibility tab and change the option for “Run this program in compatibility mode for” to “Windows Vista (Service Pack 2)” and click on OK. Here’s a screenshot for reference

  • Right click on the install and click on “Run as Administrator”
  • Make sure you choose the option to install the NPF as a service during the install prompts. This will allow all users on the machine to use Wireshark without admin privileges.

P.S : WinPCap is apparently going to come out with a new version soon that is compatible with Windows 7.

July 17, 2009 by HOWTO Networking Uncategorized Windows 18

HOW TO : Convert mpg files to flv format using ffmpeg

For my documentation. Here is the command line parameters, I used to convert a video file in mpg format to flv (flash video) format using ffmped (open source format converter)

ffmpeg -i Original_Video.mpg -deinterlace -ar 44100 -r 25 -qmin 3 -qmax 6 Converted_Video.flv

I will post details on where to get software and such, when I have time :).

July 9, 2009 by HOWTO Technology Uncategorized 0