Tees, T-Shirts, Tshirts

Ever wanted a cool designer t-shirt, but didn’t want to shell out mucho dinerio ($$$$) for it.. check out Threadless at http://www.threadless.com/.

It is a Chicago based company, that seems to act as a collection spot for artists. I like the web site layout and the features. They also seem to be using flickr to store all their customers “in-action” shots. Very novel and clever way to use the web to your advantage :)..

The Beast

I finally got off my lazy ^%$$ and cleaned up my baby. Here is the

beast

and it’s

heart

Some quick facts about this beast

Engine:

* Type: 1795cc liquid-cooled 52-degree V-twin
* Displacement: 1795cc
* Bore and Stroke: 101.0mm x 112.0mm
* Fuel System: Programmed Fuel Injection (PGM-FI) with automatic choke
* Compression Ratio: 9.0:1
* MPG: NA

Drivetrain:

* Transmission: Five-speed
* Final Drive: Shaft

Brakes:

* Front: Dual 296mm discs with LBS three-piston calipers
* Rear: Single 316mm disc with LBS twin-piston caliper

Suspension:

* Front: 45mm inverted fork; 5.1-inch axle travel
* Rear: Dual shocks with five-position spring-preload adjustability; 3.9-inch travel

Wheels and Tires:

* Front: 130/70R-18 radial tire
* Rear: 180/70R-16 radial tire

Dimensions:

* Length: NA
* Seat Height: 27.3 in.
* Rake and Trail: 32.48 degrees / 5.7 inches
* Wheelbase: 67.6 in.
* Weight: 714 lbs. dry
* Fuel Capacity: 4.8 gals.

Just for comparision, this guy’s engine is more powerful than a Toyota Carolla (by 1 cc 🙂 ). Thats a lot of power sitting between your legs :). All I can say is that this guy is not for the faint hearted.

Hailstrom in Chicago

I have been in the Chicago area for ~6 years now and have never seen a hailstrom. Last week, on Thursday (5/17), I came home early and was caught up in a hailstrom. I was able to grab my camera and capture some quick shots of the strom from my backyard

Dr.Dhireesha!!!

My sister graduated with her Ph.D in Electrical engineering this Saturday. I flew to San Antonio to attend the graduation and it was a blast. We had tons of Mexican food and I got meet a bunch of nice folks. I think my sister will be really sad when she has to leave all her good friends in San Antonio and move to Rochester, NY to start teaching over there. She was the first student (and woman) to get a Ph.D from the school of engineering at the University of Texas, San Antonio. It was very cool to see her on stage and get a standing ovation from all the people who came to the graduation ceremony. Way to go sis!! :). We are very proud of you. Here are some links with more pictures

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kudithipudi/tags/graduation/
http://www.sillymunky.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=dhireesha

VMWare on Ubuntu

Quick post (more to come later on) on how to install/configure VMWare Server on Ubuntu

1) Install Ubuntu in “server” config
2) Install X-Windows on Ubuntu by using
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop
3) install smbmount/mount to access windows shares
sudo apt-get install smbfs
NOTE : To map a windows share.. try the following
sudo mount -t smbfs -o username=WINDOWS_USERNAME,password=WINDOWS_PASSWORD //WINDOWS_SERVER_NAME/c$ /tmp/FOLDER_TO_MOUNT
4) Install make by
sudo apt-get install make
5) To install a smp capable kernel,
a.Search for smp kernel images by using
sudo apt-cache search smp
b. Install the appropriate smp kernel from the list. In my case, it was
sudo apt-get install linux-amd64-k8-smp
6) Install 3.4 version of GCC so that VMWare can compile the kernel modules
a. sudo apt-get install build-essential
b. Install the kernerl headers for your kernel. To do this, first get the Kernel version by
sudo uname -r
I got “2.6.12-10-amd64-k8-smp”
then get the kernel headers by
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-‘kernel version’, in my case, it would be
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.12-10-amd64-k8-smp
c. Install 3.4 version of GCC by
sudo apt-get install gcc-3.4
d. Install the right g++ version by
sudo apt-get install g++-3.4
7) Install xinetd
sudo apt-get install xinetd

IP Address confusion and DHCP

Ran into a good case of Network troubleshooting today. We use the private 192.168.0.0/16 address range at work. All of a sudden, we had users calling us from a particular floor stating that they cannot access network resources. Here’s how the team solved the issue

1) Physical connectivity – Is the cable plugged into the workstation? Is there a green light on the NIC?
2) DNS Lookup – Open a command prompt and do a look up on a server in the network. In this case, one of our file servers. Users say that they are getting a “server inaccessible” error. Hmm.. Alright, so we have physical connectivity, but don’t have DNS resolution. Since the rest of the user population didn’t have any DNS resolution issues, the team dug deeper
3) IP Address Details – Open a command prompt and type in “ipconfig”. This showed that the affected users were getting a “172.16.0.x” address. This range does not exist in our user network segment. So looks like we have users getting an unqualified network. Since all users are configured to get their IP addresses through DHCP, the culprit might be DHCP.
4) DHCP Server : The Issue – Open a command prompt and type in “ipconfig /all”. This showed the following

Aha.. looks like there is a rouge DHCP server in our network. The team checked the LAN room on the floor and found the culprit server. Looks like the server was installed in it’s default state where it acted as a DHCP server.

Lesson learnt : DHCP broadcasts sent by the client are addressed by servers in the same broadcast (Layer 2) domain before being routed to other DHCP servers (IP Helper Addresses).

Windows : Explore running processes

One of the Windows server at work started running high on CPU for the last few days.. On checking the task manager, I could only see that “services.exe” was using ~30% of CPU. services.exe is part of the core Windows operating system and manages the starting and stopping of the services. To further investigate, what process was using the CPU, I lauched Sysinternals Process Explorer and voila!!, here’s what I see

Looks like the CPU utilization of the services that the services.exe starts show up under it. There are a bunch of other cool utilities at SysInternals that any Windows admin would find useful.