Apple wifi problems

This is for people who actually use macbooks as part of their daily lives.....the macbook rocks no denying that but its quite a funny operating system. Everything is like 'buttoned up' if u get what i mean. Well off late my wifi was absolutely slow it took like ages to load any page so much so that my cdma internet connection was way faster than my wifi. Called up apple they werent great help claiming that they werent liable to give my phone support since my laptop was past warranty period damn! I had no idea on what to do. Did some googling (ofcourse who else to turn to but good old google) still no concrete answers so i said that this is insane cant get one damn answer. I thot as well sleep.............i really needed to check email so thought i'll switch to Linux and have it checked (the wifi on linux was real fast) so switched to linux and was checking my mail it was normal i was like whats wrong with mac OS.....i was playing with /etc/resolv.conf and then it hit me i had configured the DNS on my linux box and mac OS was automatically getting its dns settings.....bingo!! that should be the problem rebooted to my mac OS. Checked my internet settings there it said that DNS was my internet router and not my wifi router (Dl-524) so it had two dns addresses (192.x.x.x and 192.x.x.x) the first address was my internet router which cannot be pinged from any of my hosts and the wifi router was second so thats why the bloody internet was slow ......the first dns address timed out and the wifi router's dns which was working fine started working aah so thats why it was so slow...... ok now have to change the order in which mac would recognize the dns servers. Unfortuantely for me mac wouldnt allow me to edit resolv.conf claiming it was read-only and the dns settings in system preferences were greyed out.....this is because of a little known feature of dhcp which gives advice on which dns servers to use. Its just ADVICE!! but the mac had made it default there is actually no known ways to overrride this....frustrating!! So i figured the other way to change this is to tweek the router to give itself as the dns server ....opened the router configuration and changed the dns settings and voila! had high speed internet on my macbook too!!

My Life with Linux on the Mac!

Well another post when am bored....non-tech guys please stay away u wont understand anything. I have a Macbook for the past year and a half  it works pretty well (thank god or nature) depending wether your a believer or no. Its an Intel C2D 2.16 ghz  1 GB DDR2 RAM 160 gigs of hard drive space not too bad. It runs Mac OS X 10.5.4 ( Leopard u fool!) well a few days back I wanted to install linux on the macbook to c what it can do. I started off by installing FC 9 which i downloaded off the internet. Installation went smooth could successfully dual boot OS X and FC 9. Played around with it for a while installing the drivers can prove cumbersome the macbook chipsets are closely guarded secrets as though they deal with the armed forces of a nation. Googling helped locate the chipset make. Had to get reverse engineered drivers for linux most of the builds never worked but hey after some R&D managed to get the wifi, sound, the webcam working fine. A few days passed and i ordered a RHEL CD for myself since i found fedora a little boring to use. Inserted the Leopard CD and deleted the Linux partition ( for installing RHEL) got it deleted and went on to partition the drive again using diskutil so as to create space for my RHEL installation it simply wouldn't partition the drive giving some mundane error saying that it wasnt one single partition. Then I figured that the swap space didnt get deleted. I was cursing myself damn! i had about 1 gig of swap space. No matter what I did the swap space wouldnt go. So I figured that I'd have to delete my mac os  fully and then reinstall it something which is quite boring coz it requires backing up of data and all the bull crap that goes along with it. Googled again  found little or nothing that could be of use. Then I figured if i can somehow use a terminal i could delete the partition using the parted utility that comes with Linux. Downloaded  Gparted from the web burnt it on a disc and voila the swap space just went in a jiffy!! no need to reformat the Mac partition rebooted into OS X. Used diskutil again and created the 'single' partition required by OS X again created a 15 gig partition for my linux. Downloaded rEfit for the dual booting rebooting using the linux cd installed it and there u go works like a charm. For queries do ask and I will give you the procedure exactly 

A Sunday to remember- The Grand Canyon Trip

The story is quite long so where shall I start ok….I’ll start from the very beginning. It was Saturday a very close friend of mine Venky gives me a call saying he is in AZ. I was both surprised and happy so I asked him what plans for the weekend he said he wanted to see Grand Canyon. I said I haven’t seen it personally so lets go. He and Gayatri picked me up at 21:00 AZ time from my place. First we went to his place (I was to sleep over at their place) we were to leave the next morning.

Well we all got up at around 7 am and freshened up had breakfast and decided to drive down. We left at 9 am for a memorable trip to the Grand Canyon. Fueled the car up and then off we went. We selected the North Rim to go …….its the wilder part of the canyon. While driving Venky was really speeding it was a 65 mph hour zone and he was going well over 80 the cop stopped us and we got a ticket that was bad though. We drove and reached mid way to the Grand Canyon and stopped for lunch. It was 12:00 hours Gayatri did some shopping at the store attached to the restaurant some collectibles and stuff. We again started driving heading towards the Grand Canyon we were all wondering why haven’t we reached yet. The GPS was still telling us to go straight……….at that time we figured its not so long and the GPS was wrong (we came to know later that it was right!). Gayatri and me were telling Venky to stop and we’ll click photos here itself but Venky was too determined to stop and he said that we’ll reach there no matter what!! Finally we reached the Grand Canyon at 5.30 in the evening we were all a lil tired(esp Venky poor guy was driving all the time) but full of excitement started taking snaps like typical desis (ofcourse to upload on Orkut or facebook lol)

Then we saw on the tourist guide that there is a sunset point about 15 miles from there we decided to go there on the way the car’s fuel gauge started beeping (low fuel) it was already 19:00 hours and was getting dark. The nearest fuel station was around 45 miles away and our Detroit gas-guzzler would go another 25 if we were cautious. So we decided to head back to the Grand Canyon Lodge to get some fuel. After having dinner and stuff we managed to get some fuel. We started driving back I slept off on the seat and later got up and took over the wheel from Venky and reached home at 5 in the morning. We were all tired and exhausted but a memorable trip over all.

Moral of the trip:

Always do some good research.
Never trust ur GPS
Look at the brighter side of things

An unofficial guide to the US

Well am in the country where everyone wants to be. The United States of America or USA or the US or Uncle Sam for some ppl. Well I like the place really a nice place to be in. People are nice and friendly, very open minded and blah blah but well the one major problem I face is food! the food out here sux! I got sick of mcdonald's in one day and of pizza hut the second. Indian food is too hard to make and too expensive to eat like everyday. Life is hectic I get up at 5.30 for class at 7 and study stuff that is so important that life and death depend on it. Nah! am not studying medicine but to be a pilot! I wonder what attracts people to the United States may be its the green backs or the US dollar the currency in which people want to earn in. Trust me guys those of you coming here or planning to dont expect it to be a joy ride. Trust me you'll feel your going to get laid with the most beautiful woman on the earth but it will be a bed of thorns in which you cant even lie down let alone having sex! hehe. But yeah you'll have a good time just mind your business and dont get too close to anyone. Party once a week thats a compulsory thing........do what you love once a week could be anything................ that kinda keeps you going. Remember one thing dont open your wallet in front of anybody you could be looted nicely!! esp blonde chics. Try to stay in a nice area else you could get hurt!! lol am not kidding. The US you see in the movies, the books and the papers all exist either in fiction or in a place like NYC. The real America is where I stay small town with a few crazy people here and there. Even then this can be considered a city........I once went to see the real Arizona with a friend of mine we went to a place called Buckeye oh gawd that was a real village!!! Miles of endless farm land and no tall buildings at all !!! the tallest building i saw there was prolly the Ford dealership lol. The place was so damn sad I wonder how people stay there. The other day i just got a little curious of Buckeye and searched it on wikipedia this is the link : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckeye%2C_Arizona go and have a look. You'll be surprised.
Remember guys when your coming here be prepared for surprises.....I wasnt. You might like it for the first week or at the most the second week and then you'll feel like going home and trust me dont coz once u kinda get set here and get used to the culture you'll love it!. The other thing is when you come here you'll change and that too for the good you'll look at the world from its own eyes and not yours. You'll learn about most of the world's cultures here you get to meet different people some nice and some not so nice. You'll learn the ways of the world and how good it can be to you and how nasty it can become. You wont be the stuckup a*****e you were and will learn to compromise. Well what more can I say this has been my experience it has changed me and well what I feel for the good. I think I'll stop screwing your mind now ........I know I have bored you guys a lot but read it coz you'll write the very same thing sometime from now and Welcome to America.!!

Peace

Hidden Users in Windows!!

I know I know!!! this is a very old topic to discuss about but still i would like to write about it. Was rummaging through old topics which i had on my machine and thought would pen something down about this . Any code found on this topic is borrowed and not my own creation if the owner is viewing this i apologize and that it is used only for educational/non-commercial purposes and i dont believe in piracy of software/code. So anyway getting back to the topic, we all know about the 'user and groups' facility in windows xp it works out as a major disadvantage in terms of security of the system and strictly speaking i would like this facility removed out of windows all together. This occurs when the users are created using the netuseradd function these users never appear on the control panel under the user accounts submenu. Users and even System administrators expect the users to be displayed at the control panel. This poses a security hazard since a user could quietly add a user and keep the account hidden from the security admins etc which can lead to stolen data problems etc. For all those unfortunate souls who are using a windows xp home edition and dont have direct access to the local users and groups in the administrative tools-> computer management use the following command :

C:\net user

at the command prompt (this is for all the code monkeys who dont know where to type) it will display all the users on the system. Then delete all the users who you feel are unwanted and have to go. The command for deleteing the users i will leave it on you guys since it is simple enough to be thought of ;). For the code monkeys i am sure they will google or something and find out. Ok now to the main part ........a guy from a particular security group has written this peice of code which i am reposting here it is in C++ which is quite easy to understand :

#include
#include
int main(){
USER_INFO_1 ui;
DWORD dwLevel = 1;
DWORD dwError = 0;
LPWSTR name = L"hidden";
LPWSTR pass = L"hidden";
ui.usri1_name = name;
ui.usri1_password = pass;
ui.usri1_priv = USER_PRIV_USER;
ui.usri1_home_dir = NULL;
ui.usri1_comment = NULL;
ui.usri1_flags = UF_SCRIPT;
ui.usri1_script_path = NULL;
NetUserAdd(NULL, dwLevel, (LPBYTE)&ui,
&dwError);
return 0;
}

This code can be easily understood by code monkeys too !! so do give ur final analysis of this topic and any futher peice of code which u guys mite want.

Blind driving

Ok the rain gods finally showed up in Mumbai in Style. I guess before every rainy season the god's give Mumbai the heaviest of rains which leads to an eventual flooding. The best case was 26/07/2005 ofcourse that was way above the normal about 944 mm of rainfall. Ok neway getting back to the topic I had a bright idea of going to Hiranandani Powai and have a coffee there at Cafe Mocha! Well dont ask me why but I simply love their coffee compared to CCD or Barrista or anywhere. So at 17:00 hours 3 of us drove down to Powai to enjoy our cuppa. We sat there and were enjoying our Cuppa when Kartik's phone rang. His folks told that its raining heavily in our area and we should get going. But we still lazed around because there was no rain in Powai. After about 15 mins it started raining cats and dogs. We thought let the rain subdue and then we will leave for home because my car's breaks were v.bad and the wipers were also totally gone. After a while it did appear that the rain aint going to subdue for a while atleast and we decided to leave for home. Somehow we managed to reach the car totally drenched. Initially I thought the car is not going start considering some water logging had been there fortunately the car started. The drive back home was a literally blind driving. The car's wipers werent that effective and 2 the breaks. Fortunately there was very little traffic and hence we had hopes that we would reach home soon. I couldnt see anything and was relying on my own judgement and instinct. We were soaked wet still the AC was on to prevent fog on the windscreen. We saw many cars stuck on the way I prayed my car doesnt coz its bonnet was also jammed. We were troubled by panic phone calls from home telling us to be careful etc etc. However once the i reached home I just crashed into the bed was too tired as such one thing it taught me. The best fun is to drive at night with heavy rainfall the excitement remains unparalleled.

First Post

Ok this is my first post on a blog which i intend to maintain i.e. atleast to try and post every alternate day. My first blog was a total disaster which i deleted hehe!!.......neway so here i am sitting on my IBM R51 NQ2 typing the very first post of this blog. College is over.........nothing to do chatting the whole day. Well on other news i head to Australia next month!! for my masters supposedly!! neway this blog I am going to maintain and thats a promise. You will find a lot of crap from me every alternate day! So enjoy my blog and keep posting comments.