It is end of the year and is time to review the list of domains we own. Spent a few minutes today reviewing the twelve domains we own currently. We will let two of the domains expire in the next couple of months. I am going to transfer ownership of four domains to my previous employer. That should leave us with six domains for our work and family activities.
I was checking some whois data this morning and the whois service responded that the query limit has exceeded from my IP. The IP address quoted is 128.121.xx.xx. I almost ignored it, but later realized that the IP is not among the familiar web proxies that either me or my service provider uses. So I thought it might be due to a MIM attack. Curiously, I fired off a traceroute to that IP and surprised to find that the IP is of the whois service I used. Here is the (edited) log.
bash-3.00$ /usr/sbin/traceroute 128.121.xx.xx
traceroute to 128.121.xx.xx (128.121.xx.xx), 30 hops max, 40 byte packets
1 192.168.xx.xx (192.168.xx.xx) 0.753 ms 0.680 ms 0.560 ms
2 59.93.xx.xx (59.93.xx.xx) 13.854 ms 10.931 ms 11.750 ms
3 218.248.xx.xx (218.248.xx.xx) 27.348 ms 26.016 ms 26.512 ms
4 218.248.xx.xx (218.248.xx.xx) 26.609 ms 27.149 ms 28.772 ms
5 202.54.xx.xx (202.54.xx.xx) 57.882 ms 56.397 ms 58.348 ms
6 59.163.xx.xx.static.xx.xx.xx (59.163.xx.xx) 321.756 ms 323.790 ms 324.200 ms
7 if-1-2.core2.PDI-PaloAlto.xx.xx (64.86.xx.xx) 288.233 ms 288.030 ms 288.150 ms
8 if-5-0.core2.SQN-SanJose.xx.xx (64.86.xx.xx) 423.789 ms 288.990 ms 404.931 ms
9 if-5-0-0.core4.SQN-SanJose.xx.xx (66.198.xx.xx) 288.133 ms 287.520 ms 286.458 ms
10 ix-5-1-1.core4.SQN-SanJose.xx.xx (216.6.xx.xx) 314.275 ms 314.397 ms 314.642 ms
11 ae-0.r20.snjsca04.us.bb.xx.xx.xx (129.250.xx.xx) 316.360 ms 317.265 ms 315.969 ms
12 * xe-1-3.r02.mlpsca01.us.bb.xx.xx.xx (129.xx.xx.xx) 435.289 ms 315.773 ms
13 ae-0.r00.mlpsca01.us.wh.xx.xx (129.250.xx.xx) 314.953 ms 316.602 ms 316.526 ms
14 ge-0-1.a0441a.mlpsca01.us.wh.xx.xx (128.121.xx.xx) 314.410 ms 313.703 ms 313.022 ms
15 xx.xx (128.121.xx.xx) 315.390 ms 316.097 ms 315.946 ms
bash-3.00$
So the who is service took the request on its own behalf and validated for query limit. A classic loopback bug!
BTW, the above log shows the route through its San Jose based data center, but the first log I got (which I didn’t save) gave the route through its New York data center. So the web service might be load balanced to multiple locations, where one of the servers might be running the service with this loopback bug. That explains the recent correct behavior of the service.
In general, in a virtualized data center scenario, reproducing a problem using synthetic transactions (never mind if this sounds greek and latin) is impractical. Timestamp based log analysis might yield better results.
This year we are so busy in our trips and travel that we let Christmas go uneventful. A few days before Christmas, Spurthi and Sriya decorated the tree as a pass time. Surya is simply uninterested in those proceedings.
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Currently I am using Firefox 3 Beta 2 for leisure surfing. I downloaded it to one of the CentOS boxes and created a separate user ID for using it. All regular mail checks, uploads etc. still happen through Firefox 2 on OpenSolaris. Firefox 3 is an impressive next version and I am sure I am going to switch over once the formal release is out. Most of the pages render better on firefox 3 and it appears to be faster and sleeker. In about 10 hours of usage, it crashed once (don’t expect anything better during beta) when I have about 30 tabs loaded and lots of slow sites being visited.
Full report on the checked out functionality in about a week.
I grew in the village Poolapalli, the place of my maternal grand parents. Every year, people in our families (all descendants of the last 5-6 generations there) meet there during Sankranthi (Andhra festival in the middle of January). It is typically a big get together of a couple of hundred people. Until few years ago, the activities during this get together are mostly for men and we extended those to family centric events in the last couple of years. This year, we have a bigger plan to make it a 3 day event for about 200-300 people, with lot of activities for families. I am also leading an evening project to collect all the names and phone numbers and make it a local directory. So far I collected the details of about 500 people and their relationship to the village is documented.
If you are a descendant of Cherukuri/Gottumukkala clan of Poolapalli, then please inform me your details. Send me your details by email.
If you are traveling to US after Jan 1 2008, there are new norms for Lithium (ion and metal) batteries, either spare on installed in devices. Your laptop batteries, cell phone batteries and rechargeable camera batteries may come under this category. Don’t pack spare lithium batteries in your checked in baggage.
Taking batteries installed in normal consumer products may not be an issue at all. Too many spare batteries may cause trouble.
Here are some pics:
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| KompallyModelHouse |
Checkout Glogster. It is interesting. Here is my first glog that is flat, bland and as tasteless as an inevitable “hello world” program in any programming language .
Once the planned movie is canceled, we headed to Kompally village for lunch. Rohit, my brother’s son, joined us along with Sekar’s family. We went to Magna food court on Kompally highway, which is close to RK’s place. RK’s family accompanied us for lunch. Once we had lunch, all of us (except RK) went to Splendid Aparna’s model house. This time I took my camera to shoot some pics, but I ran out of batteries very soon. I managed to cover all the rooms. I may upload the pictures later in the weekend.
We went to RK’s place in the evening and kids spent some time playing there. We headed home by 6.45pm and reached home by 7.30pm for dinner.
The planned viewing of Taare Zamin Par is canceled due to closure of the theater this morning. A local politician and MLA expired unexpectedly yesterday and most of the businesses in central Hyderabad observed a closure today. We went all the way to the theater to know that the movie is canceled. BTW, EasyMovies refunded the full amount (including service charges.) I had to collect the money at the internet kiosk I used to book the tickets.
The kids are a little disappointed and we may watch the movie next weekend.