#5 The Fracking King by James Browning

The novel is a about fracking in USA. The novel protagonist is a high school student who plays scrabble - Winston Crwth. Winston is studying in Hale on Dark scholarship. Hale has given their land for lease to Dark Oil & Gas which uses the same for fracking. The fracking around the school is causing water pollution which is making all the school student and faculty ill. Winston Crwth want to win a scrabble competition, so that she can meet the Governor LaRue. Every scrabble winner gets an opportunity for photo with the Governor. Winston plan is to win the scrabble competition and then meet the Governor to tell him about fracking and lot of other things. The novel is told in first person as Winston Crwth. He goes through his adolescent thought and the book is fun to read.

I really like the way Author has made effort to make things easy to stick in your head. For example: protagonist tells that his name has Winston as in Winston Churchill and Crwth with w as in truth. There are lot of scrabble words and anagrams in the books which makes it a fun read.

#3 Secret letters of the monk who sold his ferrari - Robin Sharma

I have never read the famous book - 'The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari', so I fairly enjoyed this book by Robin Sharma. It is quite possible that both books are pretty much same.

The Jonathan is having a decent job which he does not like but anyway spends a lot of time in it, due to which his relationship with his wife and son is strained. His mother is worried and asks him to talk to his cousin who has now became a monk. His cousin Julian asks him to collects amulets from around the world. Each amulet contains a mantra/learning of the world.

I fairly enjoyed half of the novel where you learn by going around the world, understanding cultures and understanding philosophy. But the other half becomes boring with the same stuff repeated again and again.

Anyway overall a though provoking novel. 

#4 Fade Out - Kayleen Schaefer

This is a small novel which can be read in an hour or two. But this is closest to the idea which is in my head this days (what life you want to live). Jarrett Schaefer (Kayleen's brother) is missing some years after having his first movie "Chapter 27" select for the sundance festival. Kayleen is finally able to find his brother in Mexico living a life as a poor person. The reason he moved from USA to Mexico as it was tough to USA to live as a poor person. The story is told from the way Kayleen seeing things without telling the readers why Jarrett made such a decision (or may be I was not able to figure that out). The writer does not try to preach about life or give any insights. She just tells her story. There is no right or wrong (no prejudice). I just love such stories which make you think without preaching.

The "Chapter 27" trailer can be seen on you tube. It is about John Lennon killer David Chapman. David Chapman had the book 'The Catcher in the Rye' which has only 26 chapter.

I am still intrigued by what happened to Jarrett Schaefer and why he did what he did? 

#2 The Immortals of MELUHA - Amish

Second book of 2019. Being a Hindu living in India, I have been to Shiva so many times. But with no formal study on religion, I have no knowledge how and why we worship Shiva. There are so many small information about Shiva. Like he is called Neelkanth. His wife is Parvati. His adobe is Mansarovar and so on. Amish has written this fiction book which is about Shiva and his life. Really a easy read. He linked history and religion in a fiction which was easy and fun book to read. 

#1 Chai Chai - Biswanath Ghosh

This was my first book of 2019.  I accepted the challenge to read 52 books in 52 weeks. I and author (Biswanath Ghosh) have too many similarities. For starters, we both belong to Kanpur and we both are connected to West Bengal (Biswanath being a Bengali and my wife being born in Kolkata). The similarities do not end here. We both love train travel and love to watch the people around us. I have always been fascinated about small city living and this is what this book is all about. The book speaks about the small cities which grew around major train junctions. The junctions on the north are Jhansi, Mughal Sarai, Itarsi. The junctions on the south are Guntakal, Arakkonam, Jolarpettai and Shoranur.

The book is presented in simple language and makes you aware about India and it's small cities in an interesting way. Author travels by train to multiple places to explore it. He stays there for a day or two, talk to the local and pen down his experiences. He has articulated things in an easy to remember way as well. I was taken back in past remembering the small cities and places there. Author at one time speaks about the snack shop in Mughal Sarai which are attached to the wine shops. I have attended these snack shops multiple times in Ghaziabad. Although, I have stopped drinking alcohol, but I did transported back to my college days.

Author also told interesting and easy-to-remember facts about these small cities. Like itarsi is a combination of two words - ita (rock) and rasi (rope). Jhansi is famous for Rain Laxmi Bai and Dhyanchand. Some rational on why Mughal Sarai have this Sarai suffix. Jhansi is also close to my heart as one of my good friend belongs to Jhansi and I have been to Jhansi and the polytechnic college there.

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tshark diameter example

I love speed and hate slow. I work in an environment where things are just slow. Bandwidth is slow, processor is slow. Yeah even in this technical world, I find myself slow or may be it is just me. Anyway my hatred for slow things, makes me search for alternatives and so learn more things. I found that wireshark has a textual counterpart. You thought wireshark is not slow. Come to my world and try running it over X windows. Anyway, Google has too much information about the tshark, but the only problem is that it is tough to read that information. Here are my few quick examples to read diameter packet captures. In my world, people do not worry about the disk space and time and use this tcpdump command to capture packets:

tcpdump -i any -s 0 -w <myFav.pcap>

I still need to figure out a better way but this works for now.

Once the file is captured, you can view the file with tshark. Here are the tshark commands to view pcap files with diameter dissector (-d). -r is for read and -n for not mapping IPs to hostnames.

tshark -n -r my.pcap -d "tcp.port=3868, diameter"

This command with -R can provide view filters (-R). See only packets for tcp port 3868:

tshark -n -r my.pcap -d "tcp.port=3868,diameter" -R "tcp.port==3868 and diameter.cmd.code==280"

This command shows the diameter command code, h2h, e2e, flags but does not display the AVPs. For Origin-Host AVP in CER, you can use this command.

tshark -n -r my.pcap -d "tcp.port=3868,diameter" -R "tcp.port==3868 and diameter.cmd.code==280" -z diameter,avp,257,Origin-Host

For examples, grep diameter here: http://www.wireshark.org/docs/man-pages/tshark.html

West Coast Trip

Description:

I made a west coast trip with my wife.  The west coast trip covered
Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Francisco.  Our trip was splitted into
three parts.  Part2 was a 6-day tour organized by a travel company
where we were part of a bigger group and were guided by our travel
guide.  Part1 (3-day LV) and Part3 (1- day LA) were self exploration.

Chronological order:

20121118 (Sun) - Reached LV and checked in hotel. Got an upgrade.
20121119 (Mon) - Hotels, Shows and Buffets.
20121120 (Tue) - Hotels, Shows and Buffets.
20121121 (Wed) - Arrival in Las Vegas (We were already in Las Vegas at Flamingo)
20121121 (Wed) - Moved to Startosphere.
20121122 (Thu) - Grand Canyon Visit. Eagle Point, Guanna Point.
20121123 (Fri) - Moved from LV to LA on the bus.
20121124 (Sat) - LA to SanJose
20121125 (Sun) - SanJose to SFO, Stanford, Golden Gate, Twin Peaks,
20121126 (Mon) - Yosemite, SanJose to LA.
20121127 (Tue) - LA, Walk of fame, Wax Museum, Chinese Gruman, Kodak Theatre, Holly wood tour, Holly wood sign.
20121127 (Tue) - Evening flight from LA to LV.
20121128 (Wed) - Back in RDU.

Costs:

Tour cost:
682 for 2 people + 12 $ tip everyday for 2 people. Tour included hotel stay and commute.
Attraction admission fee was not included. Total Cost = 682 + 12 * 6 = 682 + 72 = 754.

Plane Tickets:
LA - RDU  = 340.80 for two people including taxes.
RDU - LV =  241.20 for two people including taxes
Flamingo Hotel Prices: 100 $ for 3 days. Interestingly they gave us an upgrade as well.
LA hotel for a single day (Nov 26) costed us 96 $.

Hotel Addresses:
LV: Flamingo on the strip
LV: Stratosphere on the strip.
HolidayInn: SanJose (provided by tour company)
Hampton Inn: LA (provided by tour company)
LA: Best Western Airport Plaza Inn, 1730 Centinela Avenue, Inglewood, CA 90302

LA experience:

The hotel we stayed was far away from the walk of the fame but there
was a bus.  People scared us that it will take too much time with the
bus, but we were able to reach walk of fame within an hour.  Although
we started early in the morning around 8:00 AM.  Walk of fame address
is "6801 Hollywood Blvd, Hollywood, CA 90028"

LA has two major attractions Universal Studios and Walk of fame. Walk
of fame is street with things around it. Since I have already been to
universals in Orlandao, we opted for walk of fame. We bough the city
pass which covered the most and was value for money.

Free things to do at walk of fame:
* Chiness Gruaman's theatre - this place has hand imprints of hollywood stars like Marlyn Monroe, Arnold and others.
* Near to Chinese Grauman's theatre, they have piano stairs which make music when someone walks on them.
* There is also a shopping complex which was used as a set for some
  movie. Shopping complex has the oscar theatre where the oscar awards
  are given. From the shopping theatre, you can also see the hollywood
  sign.
* There are multiple start signs on the street and you can take a lot of pictures.

Things in the city pass:
* Madam Tussad's wax museum
* Oscar Theatre visit. A person will show you the oscar theatre from inside.
* Walking tour of walk of fame and places around and old chinese theatre.
* Tour of the LA on the open air jeep. They should us beverly hills, rodeo drive and mansion of hollywood stars.

You should buy city pass only if you want to see Madam Tussad's and
want to cover everything in a day.  If I had more time, exploring
beverly hills and rodeo drive on self would be more fun.

San Francisco:

I love this city. But you how the guided tours are, you just spend 5
minutes at a place. If you have time and money, explore on your own.
This was my second trip to SFO. The first trip was with bachelor
friends and was a self exploration. Self exploration was fun.

Our guided tour included these:
* Stanford university - saw Rodin "The Burghers of Calais"
  Not much here except for Rodin sculptures. The Burghers of Calais is
  multiple sculptures of war heros.
* Crooked street, fisherman wharf and cable cars
  This is a nice place to explore on foot. Ghiraddelli is also near
  by. Coit tower is also neary by. We also tried Boudin sour dough
  bread which is nice.
* Boat tour to alcatraz island and  golden gate bridge - nice but like other boat tours.
  You can see Golden Gate bridge from the boat. Also saw the alcatraz
  island from the boat.
* Palace of fine arts - nothing much but nice to click pictures.
* Golden Gate bridge - awesome.
  You can easily spend 2 hours here.
* Saint Mary's Cathederal
  This is nice church and they have those big musical instruments made
  out of pipes.
* Alamo sqare - saw painted ladies.
  There is also a wishing tree at the alamo square.
* Twin peaks - magnificient view from here.
* City Hall - just saw this from outside but was nice.

Las Vegas:

My wife loved this place than any other places where we have been. The
best things about vegas is that if you feel tired you can just go and
take rest at your hotel, so make sure you stay at strip.  Strip also
has a lot of cheap hotels.

Free things to do in LasVegas:
* Bellagio fountain.
* Mirage volcano
* TI pirates show
* Forum shops has two free shows.
* Flamingos at Flamingo.
* Hotels to see - all
** Wynn
** Encore
** Bellagio
** Caesar Palace
** Forum shops. Apple store has free wifi.
** Luxor
** Flamingo
** New York New York
** And lot others.

More paid things to do in LasVegas
* Go on top of Paris Effel tower.
* Go to to the stratosphere top. Entry is free if you are staying at the hotel
* Cars show. Old vintage car. Not much to see here.
* Titanic museum in luxor.
* Crazy rides at Stratosphere
* New York New York roller coaster.

Shows we saw (we bought a 110 $$ coupon using TotalRewards card in
which we can watch multiple shows in 48 hours)
* Divas
* Mac King - magic
* Anthony cools - crazy hypnosis show. We liked it.
* Jubilee
* Juggler show - jeff Civillico.

The show pass included the paris and the cars museum.

If you have the money watch any Cirque show.  We never saw because
never had all the money :). But we did heard a lot about them.  We
will try them next time.

Grand Canyon:

Grand Canyon is awesome. Our travel guide took us to eagle point and
guanna point where we were able to take some breath taking pictures.

Adding number to your list

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