Archive for June, 2009
Movies
Posted by Bloggylife in entertainment on June 20, 2009
I’ve been to a movie every week for sometime now. The weather doesn’t help for outdoor activities.
I like animation and Pixar always delivers great ones.
By tying thousands of balloon to his home, 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen sets out to fulfil his lifelong dream to see the wilds of South America. Right after lifting off, however, he learns he isn’t alone on his journey, since Russell, a wilderness explorer 70 years his junior, has inadvertently become a stowaway on the trip.
The story line as an overall, is about postponing your dreams and goals, till one day you realize it might be too late to fulfil them. This is a great movie, that grown ups and kids will enjoy.
IMDB link
I absolutely love both the actors and was excited to go see them work together.
Armed men hijack a New York City subway train, holding the passengers hostage in return for a ransom, and turning an ordinary day’s work for dispatcher Walter Garbe into a face-off with the mastermind behind the crime.
The end was disappointing for me. I thought it’ll end up with a twist, Swordfish style. And I didn’t understand why Walter, Denzel, will choose to risk his life after he fulfilled his task.
As it is always with censored movies, they chopped off foul language! Why they do that, a mystery to me. Overall the movie was good.
IMDB link
If you tell me Sandra Bullock, I say Speed.
A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her Visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada.
It was a light fun movie. But I think they cut off a whole scene. Because within the movie, they refer to a dancing incident which we didn’t see. It was fun, I giggled here and there. If you are in the mood of something light, go see this movie, if you don’t mind it being censored much.
IMDB link
flickr link
Neutrogena Foot Cream
Posted by Bloggylife in beauty on June 19, 2009
My solution to every skin problem is that simple old fashioned Vaseline 
The problem isn’t with buying a product, it is with using it!
As I was walking the aisles of Sultan Center searching for sun protection cream because summer is here and I need some cream other than Vaseline or my face will fire up! I came across Neutrogena products, their face wash always dries up my face, I got a mild blue wash which is nice but I need to moisturize my face after it, a hand cream, and this foot cream that beat up my Vaseline.
Whenever I wear open shoes and go out, I come back with dried cracked up feet. Before going to bed and going out in the morning, I’d apply a small amount. My feet are softer now after about a week of using it. I really recommend it.
My Camera – Canon
Posted by Bloggylife in Gadgets on June 19, 2009
My new Camera that I got off Amazon
I’m still getting the hang of it, I didn’t quite master it yet that’s why I’m not taking loads of pictures.
One major problem I have and I think it’s the essence of photography, is determining the frame of the picture, so my pictures always have something wrong about them. I can’t capture what I truly see.
So you’ll see more of posts with pics 
and I’ll upload to my flickr. I’m just snapping away, and so far most are of my nieces But don’t expect good quality pics just yet!
Check the camera on Amazon link
Grey’s Anatomy – Season 5
Posted by Bloggylife in entertainment on June 19, 2009
This is one of the shows I finished watching, I’ve decided to stop watching it all together, because I got sick of Meredith and Derek on and off relationship.
SPOILER ALERT!
When the show finally started season 5 with placing the two together, I changed my mind and watched it. I’m not going to talk about what went on in the season, but Addision makes an appearance, so Private Practice and Grey’s Anatomy share a common episode plot.
The ending is amazing, what happens is they leave you with the possibility of both George O’Malley and Izzie Stevens being dead. It kind of brings back the scene where Meredith is on the verge of dying because she drowned and sees her mother and some of the people she met and died.
So this is what I’m thinking, that maybe they won’t write off Izzie and George, I’ve higher confidence that Izzie will be back. Because Alex is already messed up and still we don’t know much about him. So Izzie’s death will screw him more.
In this season Cristina finds a man, Dr. Owen, perhaps he’s a bit of a drama queen, but they managed to pull a relationship together. Imagine in the next season, Dr. Preston Burke comes back Wouldn’t that be something! I’m betting on this happening, especially if George dies, then Preston can come back.
He was fired in the first place for making gay remarks about George, and it hasn’t been confirmed whether he is gay or not. MAN UP, if you are gay, so what, I think Preston had more trouble being black.
Anyway, I’ll be watching for season 6.
Gym Diaries
Posted by Bloggylife in personal on June 19, 2009
I’ve been going regularly to the gym for sometime now. This month’s measurement I only lost 1 cm off my biceps! I don’t know what’s the issue with me and my arms, do I swing them around too much too hard!! The only thing that seems to build-up are my biceps.
The instructor decided I need to level up, so she’s pushing me hard, making me work the machines more.
One crazy thing about me, no matter how hard you push me, I’ll just go for it. I can’t help myself, I guess I thrive on challenging myself. I sometimes push myself, to the point where I want to vomit, see where my limits are
If you tell me to do something that seems to be hard, I don’t think if I can do it or not, I’m thinking how many times I can do it.
“OK, do 15 counts, 1, 2, 4, 5″
I’m thinking you missed a number and when she says finish, I reply one more!
Where as if I were all by myself, I push and pull as I please, I don’t really pay attention to what I’m doing.
As I was stretching, the other instructor came over and told me to flatten my legs more.
I’m amazed that they haven’t seen an inflexible person before!
I informed her that I can’t. She looked at me funny and showed me how to do it and I did the best that I could.
“No, you’re doing it wrong, see how I’m doing it”
“well, this is as far as my leg can go, you want to try and straighten my leg yourself”
LOL, my leg just went into a lock down mode! As she was pushing my knees downwards to level my leg.
She had this look on her face, “how come you’re like that” 
“I’ve always been like that”
“Noooo sweetie, I want you to work on that”
It’s easier said than done.
Working out isn’t always fun or something I want to do. But it shapes up my body even if I don’t loose weight. It affects my sleep, if I missed workouts for long times, my body becomes lazy, and I have problems sleeping soundly.
I hope I keep my regular attendance till next month and we’ll see about that flexibility of mine that seems to baffle some
Increase Virtual Hard Disk
Posted by Bloggylife in technology, troubleshooting on June 15, 2009
We’ve started with virtualization, I’ll talk about this beautiful sexy technology some other time. My hands are all over it.
When creating virtual machines, each seems to have it’s own hard disk and partitions, but in fact they all share a single storage to which the virtual server that manages the virtual machines points to.
I got one v-machine with 20 GB of hard disk space and I want to increase it. Through the setting of the machines you can increase the hard disk space. Back to the v-machine, go to computer management -> disk management, you’ll see the newly unallocated space, to partition and format.
I couldn’t extend my single primary partition with the tools available in windows, I think I’ll need third party softwares.
What I did, is clone my v-machine and as I was creating the new settings, increased the C volume space. of course, you’ll need enough space to be able to create this replica machine.
Don’t forget to, tick off the connected box in network settings, if you added a network, because you don’t want conflict issues, when powering on the new machine.
Will test it fully tomorrow, to make sure all is good. Give the same settings, IP, computer name, etc, to the newly created v-machine and shut down the original one. If all goes well after some time, delete the original one to free up some space.
IT Diaries
Posted by Bloggylife in thoughts on June 15, 2009
All the servers are black
Stacked up in multiple racks
They all look the same
Driving me insane!
I go to the one
It’s off, I turn it on
I get a call, “the website is down”
Shit, reverse action, wrong server, DAMN!
I try to bring it back on,
I can’t press that white button, come on
My finger is too big
It’s doesn’t seem to fit!
I need something pointy
Nothing near comes in handy
Don’t freak out
You know what it’s all about
Enough with the sadness
The daily dosage of sweet addictive blackness
Your coffee, still filled up to the top
In that humongous steel mug
Take a break, breathe and sip away
Then definitely you’ll figure out the right way
And off you go, trotting through the rest of the day 
Cont. Deploying Application Packages
Posted by Bloggylife in troubleshooting, windows on June 15, 2009
I’ll share some of the issues we faced along the way, we already deployed WSUS into our network that pushes Microsoft updates according to your GPO settings on the domain level.
I came across another product, Microsoft System Center Essentials (link), which also includes WSUS technology but adds to that updates of third parties software, how cool is that
If you have problems installing the management software from a media, go to Microsoft website and download it from there along with SP1 (link). That solved the first problem I faced.
Upon the configuration, it’ll ask you if you want to automatically create a domain policy, you’ll need administrative privileges and then go ahead search for computers and add manually or in a bulk.
One advice, when choosing the server, take care it has enough hard disk space, for all the software updates and deployment packages it needs to store.
Pushing agents to computers, is through the management console, where you select a computer and provide administrator credentials. You can create package from .exe or .msi files.
You can group computers and approve package installation. For msi packages you can provide installation properties, The executable program that interprets packages and installs products is Msiexec.exe. To see the list of parameters, run this on a command prompt window Msiexec, the below should appear.
On a single domain, you can have only one Microsoft System Center, it’ll give you an error if you try to install another System Center on a network already managed by one.
You can force end computers to communicate with the system center to check for updates or software that needs to be downloaded through running this command on end machines.
wuauclt.exe /detectnow
If indeed there is something to be downloaded, the yellow shield will appear next to the time and date, machines may face problems downloading, check this out:
- Windows update service is running
- All antivirus applications are up to date, because if they are not, they will block such activities. Check if windows defender is installed, that was one of the problems that caused download to fail
After the download is complete and according to your global setting the installation should start, to check the time of installation, check your local windows update settings, which can be access through the control panel or on the domain level settings.
This product offers so much more, details about the machines it managing through their agents, it triggers alerts, and generates reports.
But for now, I was really glad to be able to push third party packages silently to end machines and check the status as successful
References:
Bloodsport
Posted by Bloggylife in entertainment on June 14, 2009
I like action movies, so I came across one of the early films of Jean-Claude Van Damme and downloaded it to watch. I like him as an action actor, his acting skill in this movie is hilarious and his accent, nevertheless, I really did enjoy watching this film.
Frank Daux, trained by a Japanese martial arts teacher. To honour his master, he participates in a secret tournament, the Kumite, where all the best fighters around the world gather to fight.
I couldn’t see it all at once, it wasn’t that painful, the acting was mediocre but the fight scenes were good. I guess we got used to the way movies are executed now and notice the mistakes in old movies.
And who can forget , Bolo Yeung, in any martial arts movie, he always plays the bad guy. He scares the hell out of me, I think if I go up against him, I’ll just play dead ;P
To my surprise at the end of the movie, they say it’s based on the real life of an American, called Frank Daux, but I Googled it and there are mixed stories about the whole plot being legitimate and some claim, it’s fiction and not based on actual life events.
My favorite Jean-Claude Van Damme movies include:
- Universal Solider
- Double Impact
- Double Team
- Time Cop
- Street Fighter
- Knock Off
I’m already downloading some of his oldies, these are the ones I remember. It reminds me of the time, I craved Sylvester Stallone movies (link)
Bloodsport imdb (link)
Deploying Application Packages
Posted by Bloggylife in windows on June 11, 2009
It’s very tricky to automate and silently push and install an application package across a network, especially if it’s not Microsoft.
Windows Installer package (.msi), is for installations on Microsoft windows. You can extract .exe files aimed for Windows platforms to view the .msi
There is a tool from Microsoft, Orca, to edit .msi, it displays properties and their values, it’s quite a headache to modify the values, and if you aren’t familiar with the whole installation procedure and do not know what you are doing, you can cause serious problems that may leave your system in an unstable state and the application not installed properly.
There is always a document explaining what needs to be modified to suit your needs, of course, if it is Microsoft, it’s straight forward, the field to enter the product key, company name, but what about other products, such documentation isn’t always available.
You can guess out the property values but you don’t want to risk it. I found this nice site, that was very helpful AppDeploy.
It’s all about package deployment and software distribution. Huge knowledge base with lots of helpful information categorized, command lines, discussion, under each application package.
One thing I faced and didn’t quite figure a correct way to do it, is sometimes the application installs an add-in onto another application, browser or outlook for example, the installation will fail if those were not closed. You can either issue a command to kill that application process and then run the new application installer or notify the users to shut everything down because new installations will be pushed to them.
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