Dude, Where's My Blog?

Removing all Hyperlinks in MS Word 2010

2013-04-28T19:17:00.000-04:00

Found this neat keyboard shortcut for MS Word 2010 today:

Remove all hyperlinks in a document by highlighting all of the text and hitting:

CTRL + Shift + F9

In MS Office 2010, it removes the hyperlink and changes the text to the normal color. In older versions, the text may still be blue. To change it, just keep the text highlighted and change the font color like you normally would.

Condolences and Gun Control arguments

2012-12-14T22:09:00.003-05:00

My heart goes out to those who have passed and those who are suffering in Newtown, Connecticut.

I've heard many people from the NRA state that "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." That's true. Guns are just tools, like a hammer, a knife, or a car.

While people can kill other people using these tools, that doesn't make all tools equal.

A hammer can be used to hit a nail, or to hit a person. It was created though to hit a nail.
A knife can be used to cut a fruit, or to to cut a person. It's normal use though, is to cut food.
A car can be used to drive from A to B, or to drive into a person or into another car. It was created as a mode of transportation, and that is it's normal use.

A gun can be used for killing animals for fun/sport, or for killing people.

It's a tool for killing. You can't build a house with a gun. You can't cut an apple to feed your baby with a gun. You can't drive from A to B with a gun.

A gun is for killing. Nothing else.

Having a gun for "defense" means that you want to defend yourself by killing someone else. If someone ever broke into a gun owner's house, the chances are high that he'll get shot "center mass," and be leaving in a body bag.

A gun is for killing.

And the prime use is for killing other people.

Should all guns be banned? Probably not, but something definitely needs to be done.

This is why I love CMU...

2012-11-14T19:48:00.001-05:00

...more and more each day...

Random thoughts - Best Beginnings

2012-11-11T22:58:00.000-05:00

While going through the daily motions today, I remembered two of my all-time favorite opening sequences:

Gandalf's Fall (at the beginning of the Two Towers)

and

Nightcrawler, taking out everyone (from X-Men 2)

I guess I like movies like that where I know the characters before hand and how bad-a** they are (and will be), and I don't get too disappointed (especially when there's a good director involved)!

What opening sequences dropped your jaw when you first saw it?

IGSA Diwali Show

2012-11-09T23:06:00.002-05:00

Just came back from the IGSA Diwali show with my wife and thoroughly enjoyed it!

Pretty much everything was, as the emcee put it, "fantastic!"

The highlights of the show were Ramya whenever she sang; Tejasvi and Harpreet playing the Sitar and Tabla; Prem, Paul, and Dipen playing some groovy guitar/bass/drums (especially Socha Hai from Rock On); and Hari (Masters in Robotics) moon-walking across the stage, and pretty much making me feel like an un-coordinated blob.
I also thought the Sanskrit skit was well done (from what I understood == very little).

All in all, I'm glad that my wife got to see a live show, see lots of Indians (and white people enjoying Indian things), and eat some decent food from Mint.

Thanks Pallavi, very much for the tickets! Hope you feel better!

Updates

2012-11-09T00:30:00.000-05:00

Dear Blog,
I apologize for the neglect as of late. After GMAT prep late last year, I was busy with B-School applications (Dec 2011 - March 2012), Coursera/Udacity courses (Nov 2011 - May 2012), Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) Tepper School of Business admission process (April - July 2012), Basecamp (Aug 2012), Mini 1 (late Aug - Oct 2012), the Organizational Leadership Club (OLC) and the Carnegie Bosch Institute (CBI) Case Competition, the AT Kearney Case Competition, DDI Manager Ready Leadership Assessment, and the Business and Technology Club Trek to New York and Seattle (late Oct 2012).
The classes I've taken so far: Management Presentations, Financial and Managerial Accounting I, Probability and Statistics, Corporate Strategy, and Managerial Economics.

Now I'm head deep in Mini 2, summer internship recruiting preparation for consulting (networking, behavioral prep, and case prep), admission to the dual MBA/Masters of Software Engineering (MSE) program between Tepper and the School of Computer Science (SCS), and spending time with my pregnant wife (who's due around December 2nd, 2012).
The current classes are: Marketing Management, Interpersonal Communications, Optimization, Finance I, and Managing Teams and People. This is the second week of classes and we've already got midterms next week!

Still have lots of work to do, but I'm thankful to everyone who helped thus far, from all my supervisors and team-mates who wrote Letters of Recommendations, to friends and family who reviewed my application, to the wonderful admissions team, staff, and faculty at Tepper for allowing me to participate and for teaching me so much, to my fellow 1st year classmates, our 2nd years, and our alums (who will be hiring us soon), and finally, and most importantly, to my wife, Nishu - without you, your support, and motivation, none of this would be possible.

I'll try to update more frequently - either through here, G+, or Twitter, as I find interesting stuff in my research of companies, reading through news, studying for the MBA, studying for the MSE, and preparing for the new addition!
By the way, the baby registry is http://bitly.com/RDLcnv, and more options are http://amzn.to/TuWdG5 and http://amex.co/olCzBA

Oh, and thanks, Blog for sticking around, and not deleting yourself.

New Pages to check out!

2012-07-19T10:22:00.000-04:00

I've created some Pages, which you can find at the top of the site. Check them out and let me know what you think!

Soon, I'll create some tutorials about how to create these specific types of pages:

pulling +1's from Google Plus
pulling shared activities from Google Plus
pulling comments/questions/answers on different Stack Exchange sites
including the You Might Also Like (YMAL) section below each blog post

Student loans are one thing when you're alive...

2012-04-21T15:46:00.001-04:00

Change.org|How to Start a Petition

Udacity thoughts

2012-04-20T14:46:00.004-04:00

I often wonder if I'm the only person who thinks Undercity everytime I see or visit Udacity.

FCGDAEB & EGBDF

2012-03-30T15:05:00.000-04:00

How did you memorize the notes on sheet music and the circle of fifths?

I'm sure we've all heard "Every Good Boy Does Fine" in music class, but there are two that I've used for forever, and oddly enough, they can't be found here or here...

For learning Staff Notation, the mnemonic that I use is:
"Elvis Got Big Dirty Feet" for the lines and FACE for the spaces.

And for the Circle of Fifths, I use:
"Fat Chicks Get Drunk At Every Bar"

:-)

(P.S. For the Bass Clef, I just use "Got Big Dirty Feet Always" for the lines and ACEG (pronounced ace-gee) for the spaces).

Which do you use? If you've never learned of these before, do you think these are catchy, and how likely are you to use them?

Shutting down the Musings...

2012-03-22T10:17:00.002-04:00

I'm not very good at keeping blogs updated, especially two of them!

I have used the blogger import/export feature to merge "Musings of a Madman" into "Dude, Where's My Blog."

If you have any objections or reasons why I should really keep them separate, please let me know (I guess the in comment section is a good place) -- otherwise I will be deleting Musings and posting everything to Dude.

Thanks!

Getting to the meat of 'Forever' stocks...or not.

2012-03-22T09:53:00.000-04:00

After doing a Google search to find out which stocks are good to buy and hold, I came across this scammy type site. The page loads and the video starts playing once it's buffered. The premise is that if you listen for just a few minutes, the guy will tell you the list of the 10 "Forever" stocks that you should get a hold of. He never actually names any of them though...

I couldn't wait to see if he was going to actually say the stock names, so I tried fast forwarding through it...but the controls were disabled. Talk about cheap tricks...

Time to bypass those controls:

In Google Chrome, I popped open the element inspector and found the player element by right clicking close to the video and choosing "Inspect Element." If you right click on the video, it shows the flash context menu which doesn't have that option.

I dug deeper into the html structure to find the flash player object. The inspector steered me in the right direction with the light blue background and object element tag displayed on the page when you hover over an element in the inspector.

After finding the object I expanded it to see what was going on.

I noticed that the object contained a parameter named flashvars which itself had a parameter named "controlbar.position" which was set to "none." I figured we didn't need this so I deleted it.

I then noticed another object called "wmode" set to "opaque." I assumed this is what was hiding the borders of the player, so deleted this as well.

After deleting the wmode parameter, the borders of the player displayed along with the slider control at the bottom. I was then able to see what a huge scam the page was -- the video was 51 minutes and 59 seconds long. I sure hope no one actually got suckered into listening to this drivel for so long...

I skipped through the video to see if any parts mentioned any of the stock names. Sure enough it doesn't. And once you get past a certain point in the video, a "Join Me Now" button appears leading to this site.

After all is told, this is a pure scam and I hope whoever reads this will be able to save some time if you ever encounter something like this in the future. At first it might take some trial and error to figure out which parts to edit/delete, but it shouldn't be too bad. If you encounter anything different, or have anything to add to this (such as parameters to look out for), please add a comment!

Don't post your "Adult Film" Name online!! Here's why...

2011-12-29T22:59:00.000-05:00

I was just reading through some older blog posts in Google Reader and came across this GFI post.
It immediately reminded me of this xkcd comic.

Basically, your adult film name (AFN) is comprised of two parts:
First Name = your Pet's name
Last Name = the street you live on

So, for example, in the xkcd comic, the girl's AFN is Mister Rogers.

The post explains that it was big on Tumbler and Twitter for people to reblog/retweet the message with their AFN, which should definitely be avoided!

Why?

Because in many sites' password recovery feature, those are two of the pre-canned questions that users can select as their "secret question:"

What is the name of your first pet.
What street did you grow up on?

From Naked Security in 2009

Even if you like to create your own security questions, sometimes there is no option to do so and you must answer one of these questions.

So, don't go around posting these answers for the world to see!

Thanks for noticing me...

2011-12-21T17:40:00.000-05:00

I drove to work this morning,

having a plate-full of cupcakes to share,

with the team.

On the way there, I saw a sign-holding man,

waving at the cars, trucks, and vans,

that pass by everyday.

On his sign, says "Help!

Homeless, Hungry, and Looking for Work."

We had spoken before this day, as well,

when I had stopped to fill up at Shell,

on the corner.

I had given him a few,

dollars and coins.

He expressed his thanks,

smiled, and waved me on.

Today I, pulled into Shell,

not for gas, but to share a treat,

I waved to him from across the street,

As he approached, I held out the sweets,

Which was met by a smile and a warm-filled greet.

"Aw, cupcakes," he exclaimed!

After his thanks, and a shake of the hand,

His smile halfway melted,

A bit of sorrow was there, I had felt it;

He looked very genuine and real,

And said, "Thanks for noticing me."

Tony & Rishi Acoustic Cover: The Offspring - Gone Away

2011-12-17T20:42:00.000-05:00

Here's my first upload from SoundCloud:
T&R - Gone Away Acoustic by dudewheysmehsound

Enjoy!

Android Phones for $.01 on Amazon for Black Friday weekend? -- Not really...

2011-11-26T17:58:00.000-05:00

I just read on LinkedIn that Amazon is currently selling all non-iPhones for one cent until Monday and was thinking, "Wow! Now I can upgrade my wife to a smart phone!"

Not really...
Checking the deal's page, the deal only applies to new contracts or new lines added to an existing plan, not for upgrades.

Sucks for us, but if you're reading this and were thinking of switching to a new non-iPhone, here's a decent incentive (I know a 2-year contract and a free phone is a sham, but if you were thinking of doing it anyway, you will have saved money upfront on the phone with this).

iPod Returns

2011-11-10T13:02:00.000-05:00

This morning, totally by accident, we found my old 1GB iPod Nano under the passenger seat of my Dad's car.
I've been looking for it for months now and had consigned it as being lost.

WOOOT!!

Just charged it back up. With 194 Songs near and dear to my heart, which one to play first?!

CHOP SUEY!

Free Online Image to PDF converter

2011-11-09T22:07:00.000-05:00

Currently working on college applications and needed to convert a screen shot of my transcript in the PNG format to the PDF format.

A quick Google search led me to this site: Neevia Technologies -- Docupub.

Very quick, simple, and straightforward process:

Chose the output format (PDF), default compatibility, No rotation, and 300 resolution (default).
Chose the input file (after verifying that PNG's are acceptable with the handy "Supported File Formats" link).
Clicked the "Upload & Convert" button.

When it finished, got a link to the finished PDF file. Clicked on it, it opened in the browser, and then saved it to the hard drive (using the built-in Chrom PDF saving options in the bottom right).

Simple and fast. Immediately bookmarked the site (you can see the yellow star in the first screenshot) and will definitely use it again in the future!

Dirty Spaceman

2011-10-08T19:51:00.000-04:00

Tonight I'm leaving
Though I'm bleeding
Now you know me as Dirty Spaceman, yeah
Tonight I'm leaving
Got that spaceman head and
Now I'm leaving (now I'm leaving)

Angel Mouth ate my Jedi Jello
Now she feels the burn (now she feels the burn)
And I'm feeling extra angry
I-I-I I'm the Dirty Spaceman
(Yeah, yeah, sometimes I'm pretty)

Best lyrics ever...

R.I.P. Steve Jobs

2011-10-05T21:58:00.000-04:00

Some things were good,
Some things were bad,
Mostly on the up and up,
Your passing makes us sad.

You were the guiding star for those at Infinity Loop,
Your standards never did stoop,
You will now guide from above,
In that we all trust and love.

Haters will troll,
Fanboys -- extoll,
Forever peace be upon you and your soul.

I for one will always Stay Hungry and Stay Foolish because of you.

Many thanks for all that you've done.

Rest In Peace,
Icon, Mentor, Genius, Legend.

Star Wars Viewing Order

2011-10-05T14:15:00.000-04:00

While reading through this question and the answers, I decided that if and when the time comes, I'd make the kids watch the movies in the following order:
4 (Hope), 5 (Empire), 1 (Phantom), 2 (Clones), 3 (Sith), 6 (Jedi)

Double Edge Films -- 2 great shorts

2011-09-27T12:27:00.000-04:00

Here are two amazing short films by Double Edge Films. They definitely need more views, especially Uncle Jack! Check them out, like them, and favorite them!!

SPIN

Uncle Jack

Enjoy!

Song 2 - stuck

2011-09-24T22:48:00.000-04:00

Just watched Freddie rocking out...

Now I will have Song 2 in my head whilst I sleep!

JMeter -- Process Setup 06 -- Explaining Build File 01

2011-09-23T12:55:00.000-04:00

This is part six of our setup. Part five can be found here: http://dudewheysmehblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/jmeter-process-setup-05-editing.html

If you've been following along, you'll know by now that the heart of this process lies in the Ant build.xml file. Here is the one which you can use / tweak for your purposes: https://docs.google.com/leaf?id=0Byis5NEZXwweZmQ1YjA4NjctYTgwNi00ZTU1LWExMjMtMDA3ODI1Yzg4ZjIz&hl=en_US

If you have any doubts about anything, please read through the Ant Manual.

We start off with a huge commented out section with basic information about where the instructions I followed were from http://www.programmerplanet.org/pages/projects/jmeter-ant-task.php. It also goes on to say that we should execute the commands from an Admin command prompt if possible. Then we have directions on how to run a script and a checklist of things that we should make sure of before running a test.
Please read through this and understand how to call Ant properly.

Project

the name of the project.
the default target to start from (if we don't specify a target from the command line)

the default we specify is the target named "build"

the base directory where this file is located.

Taskdefs

These are the tasks which we are extending Ant with.

Jmeter

name is jmeter
classname is given -- no need to change

AntContrib

resources is given -- no need to change

Antelope If Task

name is if
classname is given -- no need to change
classpath is where the antelopetask-3.2.10.jar is located -- if you have this in a different location, please specify it here.

Set timestamp & base properties

Current Timestamp is captured and stored in 3 variables, time, timeFull, and timeIntl. Each of them have a different format.
3 properties are set.

file = *

if file is not set when calling Ant, it will default to all the files in base directory -- all of them will be run. Note: Not specifying a file usually results in transformation failing. I haven't gotten a workaround in place for this to work correctly.

folder = ""

if no folder is set when calling Ant, it will be blank

extra.properties is loaded.

all of the parameters/properties set in the extra.properties file is loaded and populated in the build.

Targets - these are the main containers for the various actions we want performed: start/stop Perfmon, starting Jmeter, doing a transformation, compiling the mail, sending the mail, etc.. You can read the descriptions for each target in the build.xml file.

I'll explain a few flows now, and hopefully by the end you'll understand be able to apply to understand the rest of them. For each of the following examples, the hypothetical test script name is BCTest.jmx which is located in the scripts/BC folder.

All this script does is navigate to the BCRich http://www.bcrich.com/shape/beast/guitars-and-bass/3 -- one thread, one second rampup time, and 1 iteration.
Make sure that in extra.properties, remote = false (because we're running this off of the local machine).

Open the command prompt (Win+R) > cmd, enter.
Navigate to the jmeter/bin folder:
cd C:\jakarta-jmeter-2.4\bin
Execute the Ant command:
ant -Dfile="BCTest" -Dfolder="BC" -Dproject="BC Project"

-Dfile tells ant that the variable file = "BCTest".
BCTest is located in the folder "BC" (which is what -Dfolder states).
When we save the results and report, we want it saved in the Project folder named "BC Project" with a space.

We should get a success message:
We will see the "BC Project" folder created under both the reports and results folder, each of them containing a file corresponding to this run:

So lets dig into the build.xml file to see exactly what just happened.

Firstly since we didn't specify to Ant which target to use, it used the build target by default (look above to the Project section). If we wanted to specify a target, we'd use the argument -t targetName.
So the build target is calling 2 other targets -- firstly it is calling jmeterStart and then transformationOld.
Let's look under jmeterStart to see what is going on:

First the timestamp is being captured and output to certain files in the var folder for use later.
Next, we have an echo of the inputs.
Next we have the jmeter section, which has the following:

jmeter's bin location
where the result will be saved (results\projectName\Testfilename_time.jtl)
whether to run remotely or not (pulled from extra.properties)
which file will be run (located in the scripts folder, under the subfolder "folderName" and including the file we specified (BCTest.jmx)

Next, we have another timestamp being captured and output to certain files in the var folder for use later.

Under transformationOld, we only have the XSLT instructions:

The input file (which was the .JTL log file from JMeter).
The output file (which is the .HTML file which gets generated).
Which XSL file to use for the transformation (which is found in the reportXSLs folder). For this run, the uncommented xslFilename from the extra.properties is used (jmeter-results-detail-report_21).
Whether to overwrite the report file (if for some reason there is one with the same name present) -- which is set to true (otherwise, if that case did happen, the build would fail).

This flow is almost exactly like that of the original ant run we did in Process Setup 03.

In Process Setup 07, we will go more in depth with other parts of the build.xml file.

Part seven has not yet been completed.

Bettas living in peace! Yay! Fishtank update.

2011-09-22T21:38:00.000-04:00

Disclaimer:

I know people are quick to comment and say that it is cruel to put multiple of these fish together in the same tank. In the rest of that breath though, they would, hypocritically, curse me and condemn me to hell (which is ironically pretty cruel in and of itself).

If what I described above is an accurate description of yourself, then piss off.

Anyway, we have two tanks set up next to each other. One is a 20 gallon (which I got new from the store) and one is a 10 gallon (which I got from a work friend). We had one nice blue betta in the big tank. Since we had the second tank, we figured we could get a second betta. They are really great fish!

Bad news though. The filter on the 10 gallon tank just seemed to die a week back. We tried taking it apart to see if we could fix it, but no dice.

The water in the tank started getting really nasty, so we moved all the fish from the 10 gallon to the 20 gallon, except the blue betta -- since we were scared to mix the two males. We love these fish and don't want them to hurt each other.

After doing a partial water change on both the tanks this past weekend, I decided to try an experiment. Since we'd be home for the whole evening, we could keep an eye on the fish to make sure they don't hurt each other.

I put the blue betta in the tank with the other fishes -- right now, there must be about 40+ fishes in there -- dozens of Mollies, 2 Cory catfish, 1 Pleco, and the 2 Bettas.

The bettas have not fought with each other at all. I guess they're so used to the other fish that their aggressiveness has vanished. Both are really complacent.

The blue one just sits in the corner all day. While he was in the 10 gallon tank, he would position himself against the filter so he wouldn't be moved by the water flow. He's just really lazy.

The red one is more inquisitive, and is constantly swimming around checking stuff out.

They swim by each other all the time -- never have we seen them flare up!

The other fish are more aggressive, than these guys -- that's for damned sure. One of the white mollies has a gash in his check. One of the black female mollies had some kind of white scar on the top of her head. I've seen a few of the small mollies tailing the bettas and sucking / nipping at them!

Here are some pics of them!

And yes, I'll take better pictures later. Just wanted to put this up to show that Bettas can be together without harming each other!