USCIS - Change of Address rule

USCIS regulations require aliens to notify the Attorney General in
writing of a change of address within 10 days of the change. USCIS has
confirmed that this requirement applies to all immigrants and
non-immigrants in the U.S. The AR-11 change of address form can be
completed online at the following link:
https://egov.uscis.gov/crisgwi/go?action=coa.

Please note, in addition to the online AR-11 form, you must also update
your address online for each pending application with USCIS.
Instructions can be found at the link above. You do not need to submit
address-changes for approved petitions.

Who is coming to america?

Change network settings in XP

Modifying network configuration on Windows XP

Opinions on some trivial questions

Why do you wish a person "many happy returns of the day" on their birthday?

The happy returns on your birthday refer to solar returns - the moment when the sun returns to the zodiac sign and degree it occupied at your birth. A horoscope is drawn up for the precise moment of your solar return, in order to predict your year ahead - hopefully a happy one!
Jessica Adams, North Sydney

It began as an occult wish, recalling our birth and anticipating the next life: that we shall come back as, say Attila the Hun rather than Attila's horse, or Cleopatra rather than one of her eunuchs.
Paul Roberts, Lake Cathie

You are wishing them that their birthday will "return" again - many times i.e. that they will have a long life.
Amber Jones, Surry Hills

This phrase came into use when people revolved around their families (before the days of confuddling and befusing technological contraptions) and they would, when it came to their birthdays, go home to their families to celebrate with the family. When they said "many happy returns" it meant "We hope you have many more happy days like that returning to your family..."
Cam Wilson, Warrawee


Why, from newborn babyhood onward, do people rub their eyes when they're tired?

From observations of my own two daughters, I think the reason is that as we become tired and as we go to sleep, one of the first signs is our eyes become tired and eyelids start to droop. This makes our eyes a little irritated and it is a natural response to rub them. It also helps us keep awake if we don't want to go to sleep. I know that when my daughters were young, they would fight to the death to stay up and continue playing, continually rubbing their eyes to stay awake.
John Frith, Paddington

Rubbing your eyes causes your heart rate to slow down, preparing your body for sleep. The outer eyes contain the rectus muscles, which are responsible for moving our eyeballs. When you rub your eyes, and apply pressure to these muscles, you also stimulate the vagus nerve that runs along side the rectus muscles. The vagus nerve has many functions, one of which is controlling heart rate.
David Buley, Seaforth

It pressures the rectus muscles in the outer eye, which in turn stimulate the vagus nerve. The nerve causes the heart rate to slow, enabling us to sleep more easily. Unfortunately, grubby knuckles often introduce eye infections in this way.
Paul Roberts, Lake Cathie

What determines if an event will be stored in your short-term or long-term memory?

It depends on how many times you are told it/repeat it. Interestingly, a person with an IQ of 90-110 has to hear something seven times to commit it to long-term memory. Someone with an IQ of 130-140 must hear it three times. And someone with an IQ of 160 or above can remember something after hearing it once. This, of course, leads to the question, does Stephen Hawking remember things before he hears them?
Cam Wilson, Warrawee

The former you really don't care about or signifies no betterment or detriment of the person and the latter has a lasting impact on oneself, hence the brain remembers.
Luke Toland, Burwood

Dunno, but I clearly remember a blouse that a colleague once wore at work when we were only 17. I'm now 63 and sometimes forget where my bathroom is!
Sandy Parkinson, Hilton WA

Long term memories are reinforced repeatedly by experience in a highly systematised data base. Many sensory experiences combine to extract memories through several types of association. Take graveyard. I grew up overlooking one retaining all my ancestors, excavated a few holes there myself and once had a part in Hamlet. Short term memories are briefly processed for a short term need. A young man will remember a girls phone number just as long as it takes him to finish another drink or meet someone sexier.
Paul Roberts, Lake Cathie

This is determined by the time limit applied at trivia nights: usually the recollection of an event becomes vividly stark, the moment the quizmaster closes answers for that particular round.
Bob Dengate, Bathurst

In cricket, why do bowlers bowl from both ends of the wicket? Wouldn't it be better and save time if just the batsmen swapped ends, rather than rearranging the field?

Cricketers change ends to give those fieldsmen who have been standing around doing nothing but getting sunburnt a little exercise and a change of solar aspect. It also helps to even out the pitch stress at the batter's end and the bowling run-up area.
J. Barrie Brown, Gordon

So Warney can bowl into the foot marks.
Simon Goldschmidt, Darlinghurst

If you did that, you might as well play baseball, a game of far less variety, complexity, imagination and subtlety.
Nick Herd, Clovelly

Saving time by batsmen changing ends. A good idea! But it would save even more time if the winner was the captain who called the toss correctly, and then everyone went home without having to be bored rigid by the playing, and worse, the commentators.
David Bishop, Port Macquarie

Oscar Wilde summed up cricket as organised loafing. The whole idea is to waste as much time as possible. It is the perfect antidote to the work ethic and as close as you'll get in sport to looking at a lighted candle chanting Ohm.
Paul Roberts, Lake Cathie

Why the batsmen don't swap? An innovation that cuts ad time is unlikely to make it.
David Ash, Bondi Beach

(a) It helps even out the wear on the turf.

(b) It gives the outfielders something to do to avoid falling asleep.

(c) To ensure that one bowler/player may not always be facing in to the sun (only really relevant outside UK).

(d) Allows for spectators to buy another beer without missing play.

(e) It helps drag out an already long and arduous game

(f) They have always done it that way?
Trevor Doornbos, East Ryde

Essentially, changing ends shares the wear of batting and bowling on the turf and enables the pitch to last longer. It also made for a more challenging game as the batsmen had to adapt to changing wind direction and sun glare while on the changeover, the fielding team could also discuss tactics. Conversely, it also enabled the batsman to get some relief from the bowlers every so often. In the early days of cricket, once a bowler started at one end, he had to only bowl from that end but in 1889 the rules were changed to allow a bowler to change ends as often as he likes in an innings (subject to not bowling two consecutive overs).
David Buley, Seaforth

Can you imagine a game at Old Trafford where Brian Statham didn't hold on to his end?
Bob Dengate, Bathurst

Source: http://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/why-do-you-wish-a-person-many-happy-returns-of-the-day-on-theirbirthday/2005/08/25/1124562965035.html

Cinderalla Man

Watch the movie "Cinderalla Man". It is based on a true story.
This movie shows importance of strong character and determination in life to bounce back. Truly inspiring.

Passwords are like underwear

Why we love cats and dogs...

http://www.pbs.org/

Few useful scripts

Getting directory size in unix
-------------------------------
This little hackish script gets you the exact size of a directory
(recursively) in bytes. It's nothing fancy, we just trick rsync
into telling us and scrub the output.

Script:
-------
#!/bin/bash

DIR=${1?Specify a directory}

[ -d "$DIR" ] || { echo "Not a directory: $DIR" && exit 1; }

# We don't actually copy anything (-n is --dry-run)
rsync -n -r "$DIR" /dev/null/ | tail -n1 | perl -pe 's/.*size is ([0-9]+) .*/$1/'

***************************************************

Grep a class name in a jar
---------------------------
Usage:
-------
$ grepjar EXP JARS...
$ grepjar MyClass myapp.jar

Usable with find.
find ~/.m2/repository/ -name '*.jar' -exec grepjar.sh MyClass {} \;

Or find and xargs
find ~/.m2/repository/ -name '*.jar' | xargs grepjar.sh MyClass

Script:
-------
#!/bin/bash

EXP=${1?must specify a pattern}
shift

for n in "$@"; do
jar tvf "$n" | egrep "$EXP"
[ $? -eq 0 ] && echo "$n"
done

***************************************************

Relative to Absolute file path conversions:
-------------------------------------------
Here is a little perl script that can turn relative file paths into absolute file paths.
Couldn't find a command for it, so this is the next best thing.

put this in a bin directory in your path somewhere
rel2abs

#!/usr/bin/perl
use File::Spec;
foreach (@ARGV) {
push @files, File::Spec->rel2abs($_);
}
print join(" ",@files) . "\n";

then just chmod it

# chmod 755 /usr/local/bin/rel2abs

then run it

# rel2abs ~/././*
/root/anaconda-ks.cfg /root/Desktop /root/install.log /root/install.log.syslog /root/setup.txt

***************************************************
Source: http://docs.codehaus.org/display/ninja/Home

Finding MAC address on Solaris 10

For users with no root permission:
arp host-name

Obama's inaugural address photo

This is a photo taken using a panorama image
capturing device called Gigapan created by
the Carnegie Mellon university and a Canon
G10 camera.

The photographer had to click 220 snaps from
that camera to get this complete view of
Obama's inaugural address. It took a Macbook
Pro around 7hours to process the complete
image.

click here to look at the image.
http://gigapan.org/viewGigapanFullscreen.php

Allow users to do remote login through terminal services

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc781509.aspx

Tip:
To open group policy object editor, you need not add a snap gpedit.msc in Windows Start menu. This is a short cut.

fold it...

If vi editor complains that line is too long, then do the following.
1. Close the file.
2. use fold command as - fold debug.out > debug_fold.out
3. Use debug_fold.out

Configuring Reverse Proxy in few secs.

Sometimes we may have to configure a load balancer in front of bunch of web servers or just one web server to test some problem. Configuring load balancer could take time. A simple way to do this is to configure reverse proxy plugin in a web server or an app server that is already deployed. It takes few seconds to do this.

For ex: If you have Sun Web sever 7.0 configured, it takes few seconds to do this.

Click on Configurations tab and select the configuration.
Click Virtual Servers tab and select the virtual server.
Click Content Handling > Reverse Proxy tab.
Click New Proxy URI button.

Specify values for the following parameters:
URI - The reverse proxy URI
Server URL - Comma separated URLs of the remote server.
If multiple values are given, the server will distribute load among the specified servers.

If you want to simply route all requests to another web server or app server you can say
URI - /
Server URL - http://avatar.red.iplanet.com:80/opensso

Let us say this reverse proxy plugin is configured on http://bull.red.iplanet.com:5555
webserver, with above paramters, any http request to bull.red.iplanet.com:5555 will be routed
to avatar.red.iplanet.com:80 and user accessing bull,red,iplanet.com:80 will never know that
he is indeed accessing avatar.red.iplanet.com:80.

Tweak XP not to show "Recent Documents"

You can tweak XP not to show Recent Documents. This will help with Privacy if computer is shared and with faster reboots.

Open your registry using regedit from start menu --> run.

Create a new DWORD value, or modify the existing value called 'NoRecentDocsHistory'

User key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
System key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]
Value Name: NoRecentDocsHistory
Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)
Data Value: (0 = disable restriction, 1 = enable restriction)

Exit your registry.

Restart for the changes to take effect.

Useful notes on tomcat container

Start Up Tomcat

(3.1) Tomcat can be started by executing the following commands:

$CATALINA_HOME\bin\startup.bat (Windows)

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh (Unix)

(3.2) After startup, the default web applications included with Tomcat will be
available by visiting:

http://localhost:8080/

(3.3) Further information about configuring and running Tomcat can be found in
the documentation included here, as well as on the Tomcat web site:

http://tomcat.apache.org


(4) Shut Down Tomcat

(4.1) Tomcat can be shut down by executing the following command:

$CATALINA_HOME\bin\shutdown (Windows)

$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh (Unix)


==================================================
Advanced Configuration - Multiple Tomcat Instances
==================================================

In many circumstances, it is desirable to have a single copy of a Tomcat
binary distribution shared among multiple users on the same server. To make
this possible, you can pass a "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument when
executing the startup command (see (2)). In this
"-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument, replace $CATALINA_BASE with the
directory that contains the files for your 'personal' Tomcat instance.

When you use this "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument, Tomcat will
calculate all relative references for files in the following directories based
on the value of $CATALINA_BASE instead of $CATALINA_HOME:

* bin - Only setenv.sh (*nix) and setenv.bat (windows)

* conf - Server configuration files (including server.xml)

* logs - Log and output files

* webapps - Automatically loaded web applications

* work - Temporary working directories for web applications

* temp - Directory used by the JVM for temporary files (java.io.tmpdir)

If you do not pass the "-Dcatalina.base=$CATALINA_BASE" argument to the
startup command, $CATALINA_BASE will default to the same value as $CATALINA_HOME,
which means that the same directory is used for all relative path resolutions.


================
Troubleshooting
================

There are only really 3 things likely to go wrong during the stand-alone
Tomcat install:

(1) The most common hiccup is when another web server (or any process for that
matter) has laid claim to port 8080. This is the default HTTP port that
Tomcat attempts to bind to at startup. To change this, open the file:

$CATALINA_HOME/conf/server.xml

and search for '8080'. Change it to a port that isn't in use, and is
greater than 1024, as ports less than or equal to 1024 require superuser
access to bind under UNIX.

Restart Tomcat and you're in business. Be sure that you replace the "8080"
in the URL you're using to access Tomcat. For example, if you change the
port to 1977, you would request the URL http://localhost:1977/ in your browser.

(2) An "out of environment space" error when running the batch files in
Windows 95, 98, or ME operating systems.

Right-click on the STARTUP.BAT and SHUTDOWN.BAT files. Click on
"Properties", then on the "Memory" tab. For the "Initial environment" field,
enter in something like 4096.

After you click apply, Windows will create shortcuts which you can use
to start and stop the container.

Troubleshooting virtual memory

Process Virtual Memory

Source:

http://www.princeton.edu/~unix/Solaris/troubleshoot/vm.html

Each process maps either 2^32 or 2^44 bytes of memory (depending on whether the OS is running in 32 or 64-bit mode). This works out to 4GB or 16TB. Not all of this memory is allocated (used); the virtual memory is used as address space that can be mapped to actual memory resources.

Virtual memory structure for a process can be described as in this diagram:

Kernel While this is part of the address space, it cannot be addressed directly by the process. It must be addressed via system calls.

Stack Used by the program for variables and storage. It grows and shrinks in size depending on what routines are called and what their stack space requirements are. It is normally about 8MB in size.

Shared Libraries Shared libraries are position independent so that they can be shared by all programs that want to use them. One common example is libc.so.

hole This is the address space that is unallocated and unused. It does not tie up physical memory. For most processes, this is the largest portion of the virtual memory for the process.

heap Used for some types of working storage. It is allocated by the malloc function.

BSS Uninitialized variables. These are not part of the executable file and their initial value is set to zeros.

Data Global variables, constants, static variables from the program.

Text Set of instructions from the compiler-generated executable file.

The virtual memory map for a process can be displayed using the pmap command.

Additional information is available on the Processes page.

Extracting .bz2 or .bzip2 files

To extract the file file.bz2, use

bzip2 -d file.bz2


This will an uncompressed file in the current directory called ‘file’ and will delete the original bz2 archive. If you want to keep the original file, add the -k option like

bzip2 -dk file.bz2


A useful option for bzip2 is the -c switch which causes bzip2 to write the uncompressed output to stdout which can easily be redirected to another option. For instance, to search the compressed file file.bz2 for the string tech-recipes, use:

bzip2 -dc file2.bz2 | grep tech-recipes

source:
http://www.tech-recipes.com/rx/1495/extract-a-bz2-or-bzip2-file/


Astrology: Software Engineers! Don't Worry For Lost Job

This is an article from www.greatandhra.com. Look at the funny explanation given by an astrologer :-)

-------------

US Indians are quivering for losing jobs in SW field from quite some days and that is known for all. What astrology said about that? When greatandhra.com approached Hyderabad based veteran astrologer Vakkantham Chandra Mouli enquiring if there is any astrological connection to it, he said:

"No body should worry for losing jobs. It is the destiny that drives ultimately. Many lose jobs and they start up their own business. When there is something better, how can the present jobs sustains with you? It is the individual destiny that decides the fate of various lives but not the market and trend. I heard that software engineers in USA are worried on every Friday as ousting orders are being given at the end of that day. But please don't get dejected. The benefic planets try to give you something big and when you are in inertia to come out of that, those planets pull you out either by destiny or by force. It is the forcibly destiny that can be applied for many now. During the 2001 mishap, many software professionals lost jobs and started up their new businesses and discovered new ways of earning. They rocked up as per their destiny. And now coming to the flip side, when your destiny is to face troubles for a brief time, you are bound to pass through that. Even though the trend is good, you may lose jobs and end up in ordeals if your destiny decides that. Things are moving by individual destinies but not collective.

And taking the Vaastu into considering he said, "The Career place as per Vaastu is north. And for wealth and wealth from woman it is South East. I have been looking into several horoscopes where there is no scope for losing jobs or ending up in troubles but still received ousting orders. When I enquired about North and South-East places in their homes, I understood that they made some mistakes unknowingly. When those mistakes were rectified with small remedies and corrections, things got settled down"

So, Astro Maestro Vakkantham Chandramouli comes up with this study on present condition prevailing for SW professionals in USA.

------------------------

Paruthi Veeran - a movie worth watching for sure

A clip from a madurai slang movie "Paruthi Veeran".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MiOJcA5X9A