Role
Engineer, founder, and writer
Sid writes about technology, engineering, security, family, and the ideas that connect them.
33 posts
2020 has been a crazy year! You don't need me to tell you that. The pandemic. The movement against civil injustice. The crazy polarizing election cycle. The January 6th 2021 attack on the Capitol. Those are all...
This is my story on how I got COVID-19. And recovered without infecting anyone else in my family. So if I missed your birthday, didn't call, ignored your emails etc. - now you know why! I'm putting this down in a blog...
This is a follow-up to the hardware based SSH keys post , to document the reverse i.e. from hardware SSH keys to file-based SSH keys. File based SSH keys are weaker since they're on your hard drive in the clear but...
April 2020. The ongoing global corona virus pandemic has affected everyone in far too many ways. We're not getting into the broader discussion but kids are now learning remotely over connected devices so today I'll be...
These are my notes (mostly for myself!) on getting SSH authentication through GPG under a variety of Windows 10 environments like native SSH (see c:\windows\system32\openssh\* ), Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and...
This allows you to use the GPG private key on your yubikey (or any OpenPGP security card) on a new workstation. Note that the secret key will continue to live on the card - just as we typically desire. Since we're...
TL;DR : Buy an Alfa from somewhere else. Or don't buy an Alfa. Last year Poonam and I decided to switch things up a bit and look at the Alfa Romeo Guilia instead of the usual BMW route. It was mostly my idea and to be...
I needed additional Olympic weights for my home gym and I saw an amazing local deal by someone trying to get rid of their set. The catch was the weights was neglected and rusted. Functionally, the old weights would...
With the 2018 mid term elections almost here, lets see where California stands so we can make choices that reflect reality and support our people. What's good? Forget the fear mongering, our basics are solid. Like ......
I've been an iOS user ever since I got my first smartphone in 2008, an iPhone 3G. I had paid just $99 for the brand new iPhone, on contract with AT&T. And I was completely blown away. Since then I've skeptically but...
In early 2015 I built an awesome standing desk + treadmill combo. You can read more about that here . Anyway, I got good use out of it but I can't take this to our new office space, so I'm giving the treadmill part of...
There are the steps I took to get Windows 10 on my spare mid-2009 15" Macbook Pro. Why? Because science! And because I like Windows 10 and because Apple stopped OS support on that machine sometime back. But mostly...
I needed to connect my home network to another non-critical IPv6 network, so wanted all the desired devices to be on the (single) public IPv6 network. I've got Time Warner Cable (TWC) at and my setup is as follows:...
So, I was going to relax in my spa the other day when I saw it would trip over and flash "SF" on the control panel. Here is what I did to fix it. SF stands for safety S uction F ailure. It comes up when your hot tub...
I was trying to explain to a friend how a single supernova explosion that happened only once, at a single point in space was observed at four different points in space AND at four different times (50-80 years apart!)....
In recent years, I've been sitting at my desk for over 12 hours a day (and night). That's a lot of time that I am NOT active - a big change from my daily gym routine from earlier. So when I came across a lot of...
I have an older Macbook Pro which I needed to re-purpose for a work project and that needed Windows 8.1. Now attempting to get Windows 8.1 running in BootCamp mode (i.e. dual boot) on an older Macbook Pro isn't for...
So I came across an article today on Inc.com discussing the emotional and mental price of being an Entrepreneur. That got me reflecting on my own situation. Now fortunately for me, it takes a LOT to bring me down and...
Background I've been a long time Apple consumer but recently sold my iPad (1st version, 32GB, WiFi only) which I had bought sometime in mid-2010. It had been a speedy device when I bought it but over the years of...
I recently moved my personal email from Gmail.com to Outlook.com. As most people know, moving email domains is a rather painful process and the last time I did that was about 8-10 years back when I moved from...
If you're interested in why I make the switch, that post is here . This post merely documents the actual steps to move your stuff over. Overall, I'm very happy with the move. Setup a vacation response to announce your...
As a heads up, I think I'll be widening the topics on this blog to include topics which some may consider a bit "out there" or "all over the place". This blog isn't on a specific topic like parenting or science or...
For those that know me - I love performance cars and motorcycles! Whether it's a sports car or a motorcycle or even a speed boat - if it's fast, I've already got an eye on it. It's little wonder that I love my own...
Ever since Poonam and I had our first child, Jei, we've had a few questions related to baby products, baby patterns and other baby stuff. I began this as an email to a friend and then thought I might as well put it in...
So Windows 8 has been out for a few months. I've been using it on my work laptop (a Macbook Pro Retina) since Q3'12 when Microsoft released it to it's MSDN partners. Investamatic is an MSDN, BizSpark and BizsparkPlus...
If you know what a "serializer" is, skip the introduction! Introduction I've decided to also blog about technical issues my engineers and I run into during the developement of Investamatic.com . It's a good way to...
The following is an example of poor customer service and a poor customer experience. As a startup CEO and founder myself, it is my belief that IF the founders or management were aware of this they'd fix it because...
My wife Poonam and I recently had our first child, a son. Baby Jei is about 21 days old now and I've been wanting to jot down my thought about the entire experience. Of course, having a newborn means you hardly have...
UPDATE: Even after 3 years this is still popping up on Google's first page results, so worth mentioning Visual Studio makes this a LOT easier now . Original post below. Warning: This is a highly technical post and...
You may have heard about Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing platform. It's a way to run virtual computers in the cloud and it's changing the way a lot of IT business operate. Virtual machines? In a cloud? Huh? Ok, they...
Many of you might know of Amazon's Elastic Cloud Computing platform. If not, check this article I wrote about it recently. Anyway, I had to migrate an Amazon computer from their Virginia Data center to their new...
I needed a mobile development station in case I needed to jump into code along with my other engineers. I've always preferred creating software on a machine with a large keyboard, a full sized mouse and a large...
I've been wanting to have my own blog for quite some time now, so I'm glad to finally have put one up here. I intend to accumulate my thoughts and questions over here, accumulating then over the years as a digital diary.