One week in San Jose

You might know that I'm currently in San Jose for an internship. If you
didn't, well, I am in San Jose,California on a summer internship. I'll
be here till August.

Today marks one week of being here. The work is going on fine. I got my
deliverables and plan of work for the period all squared off with my
manager and I even made some small but useful progress on the work on
Friday.

San Jose is cold! Coming in from Texas where it was 85-90 'F (29-32 'C)
to here where the mid day temperature doesn't seem to cross 55 'F (12
'C) this place is cold. One of the first things I did on coming here was
to go buy a blanket. With the new weight and piece restrictions on
flights, I had to leave my perfectly good blanket at home and come here
with a very light collection of stuff for the next 2.5 months.

Phoenix lander on Mars has a twitter page

The mars lander Phoenix which touched down a few days ago on Mars, has
its own Twitter page with updates written in a slightly spooky
first-person voice.

See the page here:
http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix

World's Scariest Model Train Wreck

A reality show about the scourge of wrecked model trains. Watch it if
you dare...

Roof Leak fixed

I forgot to post this before, but the roof leak was fixed last week finally on Thursday (22nd). They came in and sealed the area of the pipe that had the leak with some sort of clamp rather than replacing it. I now have my roof ceiling all back to normal :)
I'll put a picture here sometime.

My name on Mars.

My name is on a DVD that was part of the Phoenix Mission that landed in the Martian Artic regions yesterday (May 25th, 2008) at 23:38 UTC (16:38 PDT).

So how did this happen? Sometime in mid 2006, (June I think it was) the Planetary Society had a web page where you could ask for your name to be added to the list - which I filled up and submitted.

After that, I completely forgot about it, until I got an confirmation email this morning that the disc was on board the Phoenix Lander which touched down yesterday.

The message that I got reads:

As part of The Planetary Society's Messages from Earth program, your name — along with a quarter million others from around the world — is now on the surface of Mars. Landing with you on the disk is Visions of Mars, a treasure trove of literature and art — from classic works by Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury to Orson Welles' radio retelling of "The War of the Worlds" to a special audio recording of Carl Sagan delivering a message to the future."

I searched my archives and found my original certificate too. :) Ask me if you want to see it, or perhaps sometime in the future I'll post an image of it here.

You can find out more about sending your name on future missions by visiting this page: http://planetary.org/special/messages

Roof Leak-2

The roof leak saga continues.
Maintenance came in over the week (on the 14th) to patch the insulation,
they installed new insulation on the pipes, only for it to start leaking
again the next morning.

Because of this, the next morning (on the 15th), Maintenance sent in
someone else to look at the problem. This person found that the problem
was not a failure of insulation on the cooling lines, rather a hot water
line next to it had developed a leak and was dripping out water at
>140F. He cut away some of the insulation, so that the water no longer
flows along the insulation and drips into the room, rather the leak now
flows onto the wall.

He said that at some point over the next few weeks, another crew would
come in and replace the 20ft long hot water pipe.

Net result: My room still looks like the previous picture, with the roof
tiles off. Added change being that we've moved out the computers that
were under the leak, since changing the pipe is going to involve water
splashing around the room.

I'm not sure when they are going to be getting around to fixing it. The
maintenance guy did say that since the semester has just ended, they
were very busy fixing things across campus that had been postponed due
to classes in session.

Banks and Facebook

I received an offer in the mail from a rather well known bank that
offered me a credit card with an added bonus.

If I joined their facebook group, they would credit me bonus 500 points
to their member-reward-program.
/rolleyes

I decided to decline their generous offer.

Why ?

Answers to questions I have received about the recent activity on my blog.

Q. Why the sudden flood of posts?

A. Multiple reasons --
(a) A very good friend of mine (Hi A!) reminded me that blogging is/could be fun.
(b) I remembered and reactivated the ability to post by email.
(c) I got something interesting things that could be posted without
problems.
(d) I have some extra time on my hands to send/make posts.
(e) For fun!

Q. Why all the Linux based posts?

A. I'm playing around with my Linux install, and figured (based on what
I've seen on other sites on the net) that using my blog to keep track of
methods/procedures to fix problems and make things work could be a
viable and potentially useful method. Plus the ability to email posts to
the blog has made it much more accessible.

Q. Does this mean that the blog will now be active/be updated regularly?

A. Unfortunately, No. If point (d) in Q1 (available time) drops, this
blog will be one of the first things to lose attention. I will (and
believe it or not, I do) update this blog when I get the time and
inclination to do so.

Roof Leak in HRBB

Roof Leak, originally uploaded by Suneil.

My office in the department developed a leak in the roof!
Maintenance said that it was a lack of insulation from the AC cooling pipes.

See bucket placed below to catch the drips.

Two days later, the bucket has 2 inches of water in it and no techs to fix said drip.

Bluetooth on Ubuntu Gutsy

If you get the message
"obex://[xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx]" is not a valid location."
when you try to connect to your BlueTooth enabled device using Gutsy,

Run the command:
sudo apt-get install gnome-vfs-obexftp

This should fix it.

(On Ubuntu Gutsy on Dell E1405 with built-in Bluetooth)

Primary Source : https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BluetoothSetup
Secondary Source: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=580347

Car needs a wash

Car needs a wash, originally uploaded by Suneil.

Found this car parked outside my apartment this weekend.

Ubuntu - Dual Monitor support

How to get dual monitor support to work on my laptop on Ubuntu to get
multiple resolutions to work.

To make the second monitor goto the right of the LCD run:

xrandr --output VGA --right-of LVDS --auto

Hardware Setup:
Video Card: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express
Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
Laptop LCD: 1440x900
External Monitor: 1280x1024

Make sure xorg.conf has this:
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS,
943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Modes "1440x900" "1280x1024"
Virtual 2720 1924
EndSubSection
EndSection

xorg.conf is in /etc/X11/

"Thank you" to Nikhil for making this work on my laptop

(This is for Ubuntu 7.10 - the Gutsy Gibbon.)