Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

November 14, 2007

Sandeep’s visit to Delhi

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 5:23 PM

Sandeep was in town the past two days and I had a great time roaming the city with him. He flew in from Bhopal on the 12th, he was supposed to land at 10:30 pm but the flight got delayed by about 1/2 an hour so I waited by the car in front of the airport and Vinit went in to receive him. Once he came out (finally…) we drove home and got there at almost 12:15 am. After which he crashed and I stayed up for work.

The next day we slept till late and woke up at a little past 1:30pm. After lunch Surabhi and me left with him to meet another friend of his (Jyoti) in Green park. Once we picked her up we went to Dilli Haat and roamed around over there for a bit. Then we drove to India Gate and walked around over there for a little while till Vinit joined us. After which we drove to see the Rasthpati Bhawan (President’s place) and the Parliament. Took some nice pics. By then it was getting late so we dropped Jyoti off and went and had dinner in the Habitat center. The food was really good and resonabaly priced. After dinner we drove back home and I had to get back to work.

Today I did not want to get out of bed. I was that sleepy. Then I took a shower and we managed to leave the house by 11:30 am. We then drove to see the Akshardham temple which is quite near our house. Its a huge place and they have some amazing carving in there. Unfortunately they don’t allow camera’s on the premises so we didn’t get any photos. 🙁

So after seeing the temple (which didn’t take that long) we drove to Connaught Place (Now called Rajiv Chowk) and had our brunch at Narula’s where Ravi and Sonia also joined us. I was meeting Sonia after more than a year so it was fun catching up with her. Then since they had a prior appointment they had to head out after the lunch and the rest of us took the Delhi Metro to Karol Bagh.

The Metro is fantastic. Its a very well maintained system and it is very convenient. I can’t wait till the station near our house gets completed, then I can get to any part of delhi without driving. Right now I have to drive to Connaught Place (CP) or Pragati maidan and then take the metro from there.

In Karol Bagh we picked up Sandeep’s bus tickets to Ludhiana and then came back to CP to pick up the car. We then had some pastries at Wengers and a Milk shake at this shop right next to it. (can’t remember its name). As usual it tasted great. After feeding ourselves we drove down to Lal Quila in old Delhi and went in for the Light and Sound show. It was pretty boring so we left after about 15 mins into the show. Then we went to Haldiram’s for Dinner and then dropped off Sandeep at the bus stop to wait for his bus and then we drove back.

Now I am tired but can’t sleep. But my brain is not working because I am so tired so I guess I will do some light reading and then crash.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 11, 2007

Celebrated Bhaiya Dooj today

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 2:51 PM

Today was a long and fun day. Had to get up early in the morning at 9 am (for me its early. ’cause I usually goto bed at 6 am and wake up at ~2 – 3 pm) to go pick up Vinit and Surabhi who were flying in from Bangalore. Got there on time but had to wait outside the Airport for almost an hour till they came out because their luggage took forever to come out.

Then drove to my cousin Rakhi Didi’s place for Bhaiya dooj. She cooked a great meal for us: Rajma, Aloo Gobhi, Aloo Matar, Rice and Raita followed by Guabjamuns. By the time we were finished I was stuffed and felt too sleepy to move so we just lazed around for a while

Didi and Subhi did the tika and then we pushed off. I also wanted to go meet my other cousin Ritika but apparently you aren’t supposed to goto your unmarried sister’s house for Bhaiya dooj, though they can come to your place. I guess I will be seeing them next week.

After I got home I got a message from Tarini that she was in Noida and we should meet up for coffee so we drove to the Spice mall and had a good long chat over coffee. It had been a while since we had last met so we had a lot of catching up to do. Then she pushed off to Gurgoan and I came home.

Now I am tired but can’t sleep. So I guess I will read for a little while and then crash. Reading this great series by Kevin J Anderson called the Saga of the Seven Suns. Its a set of 7 books (6 have been published so far) and I am half way through the second book. Its an interesting read, basically its a since fiction novel with a space opera theme. Check it out if you like military science fiction.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 9, 2007

Wishing everyone a Happy Diwali

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 5:13 PM

Wishing all the visitors of the Blog/site a Very Happy and Prosperous Diwali and a Happy New year (according to the Hindu calendar).

I have uploaded the photos I took of my Diwali celebrations in the Photogallery -> Events/Parties -> Diwali Celebrations (2007)

(I have to figure out a way to directly link to a section in the new Photogallery. It used to be so easy in the old layout…)

This is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 8, 2007

Festivals and me

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 11:46 AM

It felt really odd yesterday when I described Diwali as being a Hindu festival. I know it is a Hindu festival but in India everyone celebrates it. So I usually describe it as an Indian festival. When we were kids we would take any excuse to have fun/get presents so we celebrated most festivals.

Every year we would go to the Air Force mess to celebrate Christmas where we would sing Christmas songs and then go pick up Santa Claus who would land in a helicopter. (Being an Air force brat was fun 🙂 ). For Eid we would prepare Kheer and go visit friends and embrace each other. Once I moved to the US we would celebrate Thanksgiving every year along with Easter. There are a lot of festivals which I celebrated that aren’t technically ‘our’ festivals. (different religion, different country etc) but my personal philosophy about it is that festivals are supposed to spread good cheer and good will. So I celebrate all of them. 🙂 At least all the ones that I can remember. 😉

Today is Choti Diwali and in south India they celebrate Diwali today. So a lot of firecrackers are being burst today. But tomorrow is the main Diwali and there are going to be a lot more crackers tomorrow. Its going to be hard to think with all the crackers being burst. I am going to sit on the roof and enjoy the view with my parents. Don’t think I will burst any because its not fun bursting crackers alone.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

November 7, 2007

Diwali preparations

Filed under: My Life — Suramya @ 5:08 PM

The hindu festival of Diwali is coming up on the 9th and this time I will be celebrating it at home with my parents after 8 years. So its a pretty big deal. Secondly its the first Diwali we are celebrating in the new house so its another reason that this years its a big deal. (Update: Nov 8th 2007: Ok, it is the first Diwali After the house was completed. Surabhi celebrated the first Diwali in the house.)

Diwali is also known as the festival of lights so I spent the most of yesterday evening and today evening hanging electric lights around the house. It was a big task, so far we (me and dad) have put up 17 strings (not sure what to call them, In US they are known as Christmas Lights, in Hindi they are called Bijli ki ladi). Still have another 10 to go for tomorrow. This one will be the interesting one as its on the highest part of the roof and one of us will have to climb up and hammer all the nails over there for the lights. Then comes the wiring. This time we decided that since this is our permanent house we will measure out the appropriate lengths of wire and make a permanent setup that can we put up easily next year. Thats whats taking most of the time. Well that and the hammering of nails.

While me and dad were busy putting up the lights mom was busy cleaning the house and shopping. (More cleaning than shopping).

Tomorrow is Choti Diwali, so we will be performing a small Puja in the evening and then on the 9th we will have a full puja and will be lighting up the Diya’s and candles. I am not bursting any crackers this year as usual because somehow they have lost the charm. If my cousins and/or friends were around I would probably change my mind and spend hours with crackers. I remember when we were kids we would start purchasing crackers and planning the order that we would burst them months in advance. Those were the days. Man I miss them…

This year we will just go to the roof and watch the fireworks display as the rest of Noida celebrates Diwali. We will probably be having our dinner on the roof itself. Should be fun.

Oh those of you who are wondering what Diwali is all about, here’s a brief summary: Diwali is a major Hindu festival. Known as the Festival of Lights, it symbolizes the victory of good over evil, and lamps are lit as a sign of celebration and hope for mankind. Diwali also marks the beginning of a new financial year. Households and businesses begin new accounting in new ledgers, which are often decorated with images of Lakshmi. The goddess of fortune, she is the main deity honored during Diwali.

More information on Diwali is available at the following sites:

http://www.dgreetings.com/gifts-to-india/diwali-gifts/tradition-of-diwali-lights.html
Wikipedia entry for Diwali
Diwalifestival.org

Well, wishing you all a very Happy and prosperous Diwali. (In advance. Not sure if I will be blogging on Diwali day itself).

Take care,
Suramya

November 2, 2007

How to disable the ‘Run As’ option in Windows

Filed under: Computer Security,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 12:13 PM

In Windows 2000 the ‘Run As’ option was introduced, the premise was that you would login as a regular user and if you needed to run a particular program as a different user or an administrator you would use it. Basically it duplicated the su functionality from the Unix/Linux world.

Now if for some reason you want to disable this feature, follow these steps:

For standalone Windows XP machines in a workgroup environment, you can disable Run As by hacking the Registry. Simply use Regedit.exe to locate the following key on each machine:

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer

Then create a new DWORD value named HideRunAsVerb and assign it a value of 1.

In a domain environment, you can disable RunAs using the Software Restriction Policies feature of Group Policy. To do this, open the appropriate GPO in the Group Policy Object Editor and locate the following node in the console tree:

Computer Configuration/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Software Restriction Policies

Right-click on this node and select New Software Restriction Policies, then right-click on Additional Rules and select New Path Rule. Now type the path to runas.exe and make sure the policy is set to disallowed.

If you prefer to apply this policy to specific users instead of computers, use a GPO linked to an OU where the user accounts reside and configuring Software Restriction Policies using User Configuration instead of Computer Configuration, such as:

User Configuration/Windows Settings/Security Settings/Software Restriction Policies

Source: Disabling the RunAs command

More detailed version: Disable RunAs

– Suramya

Identify what files are being used by a given process/TCP connection

Filed under: Computer Security,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:54 AM

In linux if you want to know what files are being used, all you have to do is run the lsof command which shows a list of all open files and the processes that opened them. So if you want to figure out what program is using that insane amount of RAM you can run lsof and grep by the process ID to find it.

In windows however there is no such command so we have to use alternative methods. If you are trying to identify a TCP connection you can try running “netstat -bv” (Without the quotes). It will give you the executable behind process, something like:

TCP fury:2433 imap.perfora.net:imap ESTABLISHED 2724
C:\WINDOWS\system32\mswsock.dll
C:\WINDOWS\system32\WS2_32.dll
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\nspr4.dll
C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\thunderbird.exe
C:\WINDOWS\system32\kernel32.dll
[thunderbird.exe]

For Windows XP and 2000 systems you can also download Fport, which is a free tool that will show you what programs on your system are opening which ports.

Hope this helps.

– Suramya

October 30, 2007

Posted the Rafting pics in the Photogallery

Filed under: Website Updates — Suramya @ 6:37 PM

Posted the Rafting trip pictures in the Photogallery. Photos -> Trips -> Rafting Trip (Oct 2007)

– Suramya

October 29, 2007

Went for a rafting Trip this weekend

Filed under: My Life,Travel/Trips — Suramya @ 10:59 PM

This weekend was great fun, I went for a Rafting trip to Rishikesh. It was a rather sudden trip, I had known about it for a little while but wasn’t thinking about going for it because of work and stuff. On Thursday morning I found out that I would be free over the weekend so my Dad suggested that I should go for the trip (I had mentioned it to him earlier in the week). So at about 8 am I emailed Mitali who was the organizer for the trip and asked if there were places available, she said yes and after a couple of phone calls I had confirmed my place at the camp.

Then I booked my train tickets so that I could reach Haridwar at the same time as the rest of the group. We left Delhi at 11:15 pm on Friday and I had a nice journey just chatting with some of the other passengers. I did manage to sleep for about an hour but not much more than that. We got to Haridwar at 4 am and there I got to meet everyone else in the group for the first time. We then got on the car that had been rented for us and drove down to the camp which took almost 2 hours. It was a nice bumpy journey as they are widening the roads over there in the area. The route we took was a very scenic one and the moon light made everything appear to be magical.

We got to the camp at about 6am and after meeting the camp director Ajay everyone decided to take a quick nap before breakfast. I couldn’t sleep so I walked around the camp just enjoying the peace and quite. The sun rose at ~6:45 am after which the mist was burnt away and I could see the valley in its whole glory.


The Camp
The Camp

Camp in the Morning
The Campsite just after the sun rose

After a few hours the rest of the group woke up and we had breakfast (the food was great). We headed off into the water at about 10 am for rafting. The water was extremely cold (~10 Deg C If I remember it correctly) which made swimming in it a lot more interesting and fun. We went through a couple of class 3 rapids and even body surfed through a few rapids which was fun.


Getting ready for Rafting
Getting ready for Rafting

We rafted about 10 kms down the river and called it a day. We left the raft over there at the beach and drove back to the camp. Once we got back we had lunch (every one was starving by the time we got back) and then spent a few hours just lazing around the camp. After Tea Advait (I hope I have the spelling correct) and I played a little Beach Vollyball. After the sun set we lazed around the campfire and talked about everything under the sun from astrology to politics.


Me, Mitali and Chirag in the water with Sanjay


Advait, Tom, Mitali, Chirag and Me at the end of the first day of Rafting

The next day we drove down to the beach where we had left the raft the previous day and rafted down to Rishikesh (~18 kms). This time we went through a few class 4 rapids in addition to the class 3 rapids. The water felt a bit less cold than the day before which could be because the day was clear and the sun was very bright.



Advait, Tom, Me, Mitali and Chirag in the raft

There was a place on the way where you could jump in the water for a rock 6 mtrs above the water. Only Chirag and me had the courage to jump and it was a lot of fun. It didn’t look that high from the river but when you saw it from up there it felt a lot higher.

After we arrived at Rishikesh we spent a few hours over there sightseeing. We had lunch at the famous Choti wala restaurant where all of us had the Royal thali which had about 6 different vegetables and other assorted foods. Then we walked around for a little while and then drove back to camp.



Lunch at Choti Wala’s

Back at the camp we lazed around a bit more, then Advait, Chirag, Navraj and me played a game of badminton. Then we had Tea and soon after the campfire was lit again and we spent a few hours talking and having fun.

The next day we left the camp at 8 am (had gotten up at 6 am) because our train was at 10:30 am. We got there about 1/2 an hour early so we walked about a bit in Haridwar and had tea. Tom was spending the next few days in Haridwar so there were only four of us who were coming back to Delhi. Ajay mama had some work at Delhi so he also was taking the same train to Delhi. Ajay and me had tickets in the AC 3 tier while Mitali, Chirag and Advait had tickets in the AC 2 tier. However they had originally booked tickets for 5 people but two of them had dropped out at the last minute so the two of us just switched seats and we all traveled together to Delhi. The train was supposed to be in Delhi at 2:30 pm but it got there at 4 pm. Mitali and Advait had a flight to Bombay at 6 pm so they had to rush to the airport.

I drove back home with Mom and dad and spent the next few hours resting. Over all the trip was awesome and I had a great time. Special thanks to Mitali for organizing the trip and inviting me.

Took a lot of photos (~160) so will be posting some of them in the photogallery within the next few days. Will keep you posted.

Well this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

October 25, 2007

“Waiting for God” is a good show

Filed under: My Thoughts — Suramya @ 2:03 PM

The net connection was down the past two days so I caught up on some of the shows I wanted to watch and found this Gem. It is a British comedy that ran from 1990 to 1994. Its based in an old people home where Diana Trent and Tom Ballard are the major characters. Diana is an old “spinster’ (in her words) who complains about everything and makes the life of the manager of the old folks home very difficult with her sarcastic comments where as Tom is a kind person who is always cheerful and spends most of his time dreaming about adventures.

Together the both of them form an unlikely friendship and they constantly wreak havoc amongst the younger staff and management in the home. In one of the episodes the take off for a ride in Diana’s niece’s Farari and send the whole home in a panic while they are trying to locate them.

Much of the humour is derived from how the elderly are expected to behave in their old age and how many of the residents don’t want to settle down and Diana’s sarcastic comments which usually go something like the following:

Jane (One of the staff): What a beautiful day it is…
Diana: Its been raining for 5 hours straight… Whats so beautiful about that?

Or

Tom is talking about God to Diana
Diana: Whenever you talk about God why do you look at the tree tops? Is God a squirrel that lives on the top of the tree?

I like comedies like this where there is no slapstick humor (movies like American Pie) or stupidity so I usually can’t watch more than 10 mins of the so called comedy shows that are currently on TV. No one can be that dumb. Other Comedy shows which I liked are Mind your language, Yes Prime Minister, Jaban Sambhal ke (Hindi version of Mind your language), I Dream of Jeannie and similar shows…

Anyways if you get the chance do watch the show. You might like it. More information on the show is available at the show’s Wikipedia page.

– Suramya

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