Experiences and Thoughts Galore

I took the Pilot's seat!

2011-11-04T16:27:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday @ the San Carlos private airport, I wasin a small PIPER airplane and for a change instead of being a passenger, I was the pilot! Yep, I really flew a plane for an hour along the pacific coast over Half Moon Bay into San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge and bay bridge then into Oakland back to San Carlos airport. It was an amazing experience and as an added bonus I also got to see the sun set into the pacific ocean from 1500 ft. Definitely the best sunset I have ever seen!

I highly recommend an introductory flying lesson to everyone.

Is AOL making a comeback?

2011-02-08T14:12:00.001-08:00

AOL always has been in the news for the past several years, mostly for the wrong reasons. Everyone knows that they were one of the pioneers of the Internet space and one wrong move (their merger with Time Warner) cost them their future. Are they making a very strong comeback?

Their recent acquisitions of TechCrunch and Huffington Post are clear signs that AOL is making major changes to the business modela and are transforming themselves into a media company. I strongly believe that this is a great move and they are making the right strategic moves.

I recently saw the below sign pop up across my office. Will you be interested in taking up a gig with AOL?

Awesome San Francisco

2011-02-03T13:25:00.001-08:00

Experience san francisco through these pictures.

Blogger app on Android

2011-02-03T13:15:00.001-08:00

Google officially launched the blogger app for Android today. It makes it so much easier to write posts or post pictures into your blog now. The irony of that blogger (a google powered blogging platform) has had an iOS based app all this while it did not have an app on the android market.

I am publishing this post using blogger for android already seem to be liking it. Its simple and easy to use, has the ability to post pictures and links etc. The cool part is that out also lets you post your location using its location sending ability.

You can download the app from the Android Market.

Smartphone War

2010-08-24T22:55:00.000-07:00

There has been exodus of new smartphones over the last 6 months. And it is no surprise that every major phone maker (even non phone makers like Dell, HP etc.) are competing for a share in this exploding user segment. The processors are more powerful than ever and by next year these phones will be giving netbooks a run for their money.

The latest high end smartphones released in the last couple of months are

1. iPhone 4
2. HTC Aria
3. Samsung Captivate
4. HTC Evo
5. Droid X
6. HTC Incredible
7. Blackberry Torch

There are a lot more out there which I have not mentioned above given how big the list is. A smartphone has become a requirement these days given the availability of data (read knowledge) and technology. One is left behind in this mad race if they are not upto date with the latest news, happenings, releases, events etc. This is truly a technological revolution!

Seven Nation Army

2010-04-25T22:04:00.000-07:00

Its been ages since I have posted anything on my blog, not that nothing interesting is happening in my life, but just that I have been very busy with lots of things happening. Anyways, this post is about the song "Seven Nation Army" by the band White Stripes. I really love this song and was looking it up on youtube. Surprisingly I found a number of bands have performed this song! I am posting youtube the links to all the different bands that have performed this song. Will keep adding more as I find them. ENJOY!

White Stripes

Audioslave

Alice Russell (pretty bad)

Punk Division

Kate Nash

Ibiza Voice feat. Gee Moore

Paul Van Dyk

The Dynamics

WOW...looks like this list is never ending and I can go ahead and start a seperate blog just for this song! I am not surprised given what an amazing song the white stripes composed.

Google toolbar error

2009-12-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

It is pretty surprising to see google products erring in their tasks. I recently had written about google maps showing a turn into the woods and now the problem is from the google toolbar. I had and have great confidence in the google products and thus such silly errors are amusing!

I have google toolbar installed and find it to be a really useful add on to my browser (Firefox). I was reading a technical article from MSDN (Microsoft Developer Network) and suddenly google toolbar displays a message saying that the page is in Italian and if I would like to translate it into English! I was confused and then looked around the page to actually confirm it was in English. Strange!!

India remembers 26/11

2009-11-26T03:45:00.000-08:00

Its been one year since India witnessed one of the worst terrorist attacks in Mumbai. It was a tragic day for every Indian across the world. India has constantly been a target for the terrorists who have been trying to create chaos in India. But I am extremely happy to say that they have managed to bring about more unity within us than ever. Today every Indian is remembering the attack and paying their tributes to the brave people who laid down their lives.

It is really heartening to see how every Indian is holding a place in their heart for the victims of such attacks. There are various events organized across India to join hands against terrorism and fight as one against terrorism. Many companies are donating a part of their revenue earned today to the Indian police force to better equip themselves against such attacks in the future. I truly consider this a realization of their social responsibilities and a good move to help make the society a better place.

The only thing which is really shocking is that the captured terrorist is still in jail and hasn't been punished. What is there to investigate and argue about for 1 year? Wasn't he captured alive from the scene of crime holding an AK-47? Wasn't his face captured in CCTVs everywhere? A recent Times of India report states that India has spent Rs.31 Crore (310 million) to safeguard kasab ajmal and keep him in jail. Why the hell isn't he hanged already? Or should he be publicly humiliated and the close relatives of the victims allowed to stone him to death....hmm, not a bad idea! I strongly state that no human consideration should be given to such people. Stone them or shoot them to death in public.

I pay my tribute to the brave people who lost their lives and lets hope there are no more such attacks.

Dell wasting advertising money?

2009-09-24T20:15:00.000-07:00

It cost quite a bit of money to appear in the sponsored links advertising section on google and imaging the link is broken!! You see dell.com selling the XBox 360 appearing in the sponsored links section when you search for "xbox 360 elite deals" and when you click on the link, it displays a "Sorry, link no longer available". This is pretty lame on dell's part to continue advertising for these keywords even after after they have stopped selling the product or after they have moved the click thru link.

Or is it that google is not efficient in utilizing advertiser's money? Dell might have re trafficked the campaign but the google ad server is yet to see the changes. In either case, this is just ridiculous!

Barbie Car

2009-08-24T21:22:00.000-07:00

It is no surprise that girls like pink and would love to have all their things in pink. A pink dress, pink phone, pink shoes etc...but how crazy can it get? A pink car?? yeah...quite possible! Which car do you think would suit the girly image in pink, a beetle? I seriously cant think of any other car which someone would even think of painting it pink and not look stupid.

But look what I found parked in a nearby shopping complex...

WOAH!! It's a BMW 7 Series in PINK...!! And to add to that, the number plate read something really associated with the color too....any guesses? Some super rich girl gone a little crazy...

Jana Gana Mana

2009-08-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

Jana Gana Mana is the Indian national anthem and every indian should sing it proudly. Not only should one sing it but also know what it means.

In devnagari script, the national anthem goes as follows,

जन गण मन अधिनायक जय हे
भारत भाग्य विधाता
पंजाब सिंध गुजरात मराठा
द्राविड उत्कल वंग
विंध्य हिमाचल यमुना गंगा
उच्छल जलधि तरंग
तव शुभ नामे जागे
तव शुभ आशिष मागे
गाहे तव जयगाथा
जन गण मंगल दायक जय हे
भारत भाग्य विधाता
जय हे, जय हे, जय हे
जय जय जय जय हे!

Its translation in english is,

O! Dispenser of India's destiny, thou art the ruler of the minds of all people[8]
Thy name rouses the hearts of Punjab, Sindh, Gujarat, the Maratha country,
in the Dravida, Utkala and Bengal;
It echoes in the hills of the Vindhyas and Himalayas,
it mingles in the rhapsodies of the pure waters of Yamuna and Ganga
They chant only thy name.
They seek only thy auspicious blessings.
They sing only the glory of thy victory.
The salvation of all people waits in thy hands,
O! Dispenser of India's destiny, thou art the ruler of the minds of all people
Victory to thee, Victory to thee, Victory to thee,
Victory, Victory, Victory, Victory to thee!

Go out and sing it loud and clear!! Jai Hind!!

Proud to be Indian!

2009-08-15T00:34:00.001-07:00

Happy Independence Day to all the Indians around the globe...Its been 62 years since we achieved our freedom and this day for sure is a proud one! It was a real tough struggle to get our freedom after being ruled by the british for more than 400 years, SUCKERS!! This is a day when every Indian ought to look back and see the progress that the country has made from day 1.

Personally I feel that very proud of my country and the achievements of my fellow country men. We have made amazing progress in a very short time and we will continue to make progress in the future. There are many who can just find defects with the country and do not see what we have achieved in the short period of time. I would never consider myself or rather never considered myself a big patriot, but I realized the love for my country only after i started living in a different country. We have garnered so much respect around the world and its just amazing!

All I would like to say to my fellow Indians is that keep your head high and say our loud, I am proud to be an INDIAN!!

JAI HIND!

Another twitter Outage

2009-08-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

I just tried to login to twitter and looks like it is facing another outage. Only a few days back, it was hit by a denial of service attack. As soon as I saw this, i was thinking of immediately posting it and checking how many others have already seen it. But, where do i post it to immediately spread the word and where do i check if other people had the same problem!! That's how powerful twitter has become. I did love tweeting but the importance of the service and the speed with which you could get news is just astonishing.

Previously I would have thought of blogging about it right away, but it would probably be hours or even days before someone would could read my post and drop a comment maybe. We have to wait for the Google or yahoo spiders to crawl and index these pages and there is also the factor of this post appearing on the top in search results. If not barely anyone would be reading the post. Where as with twitter you could get people's opinion on things in a matter of seconds of something happening.

Twitter is truly revolutionary!!

Dumb products

2009-08-02T14:30:00.001-07:00

I wanna start posting about really useless products that companies come out with. The first one i am gonna post is really dumb! I cant even imagine a company coming out with such crap and go about marketing it..

Can you even guess what this product is?? I tried showing one of my friends this screenshot i took while watching a video on Hulu and he could not even get close. Ok, this is a recession punching bag, aimed at people who have lost their jobs or have been affected by recession. The ad is almost 30 secs long and keeps talking about how this is an effective way to beat the recession. Yeah, punch the crap out the bag!! Such times should really be a motivation to companies to come out with some really cool products and not such dumb crap! Why cant companies hire atleast a few smart people to do the thinking or atleast not accept such ridiculous ideas?

Tele Marketing

2009-07-28T15:55:00.000-07:00

I totally hate it when random people give me a call and try to sell random things which i have absolutely no interest in. And today after a long time, I got a call from a telemarketer in India (not at all surprising, is it?). This call did not make me angry at all but in fact brought a smile to my face! I in fact talked to him for almost 10 mins.

The caller was from a company called GlobalHello, a VoIP calling card company. He started talking to me in Hindi as soon as I picked the call explaining about their cheap rates to call India. My first question to him was how he found my number?? And he was being very frank and told me that these companies had 2 ways to find out numbers and they preferred the second option which was to search a database on popular Indian names. He said since my name is pretty common in India, he found my number when he searched on my name. Now I am surprised as to which directory has my mobile number listed...this is totally unknown to me! He then went off explaining the benefits i would reap being their customer and how cheap calling has really become. Though he did not sound like a seasoned professional tele marketer, there was this innocence in his voice which made me continue talking. I generally dont talk to tele marketers for more than a few seconds.

In the end, before finishing the call, i asked him where in India was he calling from? He told me that he was calling from Delhi and lives there too. I responded saying that i used to live in Noida, which is a city in the National Capital Region (NCR includes Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad). He then immediately told me that he knows those areas very well as his office cab passes through noida everyday. This kind of conversation was very different from the usual marketing calls.

p.s. I have learned a good lesson, unless you are really interested in buying their product, dont even spend a minute talking to these people. They start stalking you once they feel you might be interested. This guy has already called me 6 times in the past 24 hrs. And now when i finally answered his call and told him that i am not interested right now, but might consider this in future, he went off about how he has to achieve his targets and how $11 is not a very big amount for me. No boy, you are not supposed to decide that!

Time....

2009-07-19T18:29:00.000-07:00

I was just looking at my call logs today and was shocked to learn that I have spent 8 days (192 Hrs) talking on the phone in the last 8 months....WOAH!! Thats 1 day every month just talking on the phone. Making a rough calculation, I spend 7 hrs sleeping everyday (~ 9 days/month) and 9 - 10 hrs working ( ~9 days/mnth). If I take a standard month to be 30 days, 19 days (9 + 9 + 1) is lost totally unrelated to myself. All i have left for developing my skills and enjoying myself is 11 days (~ 37%).

I feel that one should dedicate a lot more time for oneself. There are a lot of things which are included in this time and each of it is important. Things like cooking, eating, personal hygiene, physical fitness, laundry, social interaction, self development, knowledge improvement and the list just goes on, all have to fit into this 37% time that I get. Now I wonder, will that extra 1 day a month which I spend on the phone make a huge difference to the other huge list of activities that I need to be spending more time on? YES. 24 hours of the month speaking on the phone (personal calls only) is a little too much.

p.s. The 24 hrs a month is only the time spent SPEAKING. This absolutely does not include all the other fun activities I indulge in using my iPhone. I seriously don't want keep a track of that!

Google to launch Chrome OS

2009-07-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Google announced today that it will be launching the chrome OS very soon. It was very exciting to read the post. The content of the post is

"It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve.

Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work.

Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google.

We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet.

We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer."

Beware Microsoft...I guess you have some tough competition here.

iPhone OS 3.0

2009-06-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

The latest and the most powerful mobile OS (Apple advertised it this way) was released today. Apple did a pretty poor job of managing the server load as everyone who tried to upgrade their phone OS faced some problem or the other. I tried several times to install it but kept getting the error message saying that the iPhone activation server could not be reached due to the overwhelming traffic. I am big apple fan but this was a huge let down.

I finally managed to install the OS today evening and I should say that its great! The cut/copy/paste feature works great and I am super impressed by the search feature. Emails have their own search and there is a generic search for the entire phone. The one huge feature I was looking forward to was the turn bu turn directions in the maps and that was a huge let down. I was expecting voice command directing you as u drive but I dont think that option has been included. I am still exploring the other new features and till now, I am just loving it!

Bing Travel is Cheaper than Kayak

2009-06-10T20:09:00.000-07:00

I have been super impressed by bing right from the time it came out. The whole look and feel of bing is impressive. I always keep checking for airfares to different places on all the airline fare aggregator sites and Kayak has been my favorite till now. When i was comparing bing travel and kayak a few days back, both the sites gave me the same results. But today when I checked for fares from San Francisco to Hyderabad (India) in November, bing gave me tickets for almost $80 less.

Kayak --> SFO - HYD (Round trip) - Cheapest : 1328 (Nov 7 to Nov 30)
Bing Travel --> SFO - HYD (Round trip) - Cheapest : 1251 (Nov 7 to Nov 30)

I am super impressed! Bing on...

Google Ads for Bing.com

2009-06-09T18:29:00.000-07:00

What an irony!! Google Ads are advertising www.bing.com, its competitor. It may be argued that the site displaying the ads had nothing to do with google, but the fact remains that the Ad Server used to display this ad belongs to google and the campaign has been registered with google.

iPhone 3GS

2009-06-08T13:05:00.000-07:00

Apple has finally broken the silence and the day that many people across the world have been waiting for has come!! Apple has announced the launch of the new iPhone 3GS, the S indicating Speed.

The new features in the iPhone 3GS are

1. Apps open 2x faster.
2. Browsing is 2.9x faster.
3. View attachments 3.6x faster.
4. The camera has been upgraded to 3MP with Autofocus and white balance.
5. Tap to focus and balance exposure.
6. New video recording capability. 30 fps VGA with audio. auto focus, white balance
7. New compass app. Tap maps to orient map to the direction you are facing

The 3GS has 16GB and 32Gb versions in black and white for $199 and $299 respectively. The 8GB iPhone 3G will be sold for $99 (damn it!!). I just wish i could have waited for a few more months (like 6)...

Pandora internet radio

2009-06-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

I have had the pandora radio application on my iPhone for a long time now, but never really used it a lot. Today i woke up in the morning and felt like listening to some different music than I what usually listen to. Pandora was the first thing that came to my mind and boy, does it play some beautiful songs!! The application is really impressive and i heard some really amazing which I have never heard before.

One of the most impressive songs I heard among them was "Have you ever seen the rain?" by Creedence Clearwater Revival, a band from the early 60's late 70's. I am super impressed and pandora is surely one of my favorite iPhone apps.

Another amazing feature of the app is that I can view the detailed description of the artist and the song when a song is playing, bookmark the song etc. Real cool app..!

Audi R8 - Dream Machine

2009-06-01T21:43:00.000-07:00

I spotted an Audi R8 in Burlingame the other day. This monster is a real dream machine.

New Microsoft Search Engine - www.bing.com

2009-05-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is trying real hard to take a share of the internet search space. They pushed all limits to try take over yahoo and become a competitor to google, but since that failed, they have no other choice except to build their own search engine and try to do something different. Thats bing.com for you!!

I took a preview of the new website which is going to be launched on June 1, 2009 and it looks cool. They have been really smart in focusing on just major categories namely travel, local search, shopping etc. instead of trying to beat google across all the segments. I am super excited to use bing.

Google has been my only search engine till date, but if bing proves itself, that might change!! Watch out google, MS is BACK!!

Backstreet Boys

2009-05-20T20:57:00.000-07:00

All of a sudden I end up on a video of Backstreet Boys on youtube!! Wow...I really used to enjoy their music almost 10 years ago and then things changed. Backstreet boys and all the boy bands started sounding so stupid and totally moved out of it.

Now when I think back, I realize pretty much everyone has a similar story to tell. All of us were so into these boybands and they were really famous then. I listen to a few of their songs now and it sounds so different, it does not sound stupid but kind of brings back memories of those old days. The music channels used to play these songs so much back then that everyone started to love them. We could say people evolve and change but I still love the old pink floyd and metallica. Not that the music which is old stops sounding good and I used to like the songs by these bands even back then. They still sound so good!!

Getting back to backstreet boys kinda music...NAH, I dont think so!!

Angels and Demons - Disappointing

2009-05-18T00:44:00.000-07:00

The movie Angels and Demons is a very sad and disappointing attempt by the director Ron Howard at remaking the best selling book of the same name by Dan Brown. The director missed out the whole point of the book and I would say even the very essence of the book.

The movie has changed a lot of roles in the book and has missed out on several aspects. The movie starts off with showing how anti matter is made instead of starting with the murder of the CERN scientist ( which i thought gave a great start to the book). The director has taken no effort to explain any of the components of the book which forms the spine. He does not even clearly explain what is anti matter and why is it actually dangerous which would have made the audience more engrossed as to why the small canister which keeps blinking and shows a battery indication is so dangerous.

None of the sculptures on the "Path of Illumination" have been explained even a little removing the significance of the path entirely from the movie. It is shown that Robert Langdon is a born genius and infers everything within a few minutes of reaching a place. The movie is a pure commercial thriller which makes the hero invincible. One thing that I really enjoyed in the book was looking at the ambigrams and admiring their artistry. None of the ambigrams were shown for more than a few seconds and were given absolutely no importance.

All the above could be excused as cuts required to keep the movie short but one thing I will NOT accept in the movie is it not explaining the very purpose the camerlengo does all this. He has been shown as the villain who is crazy about power is greedy after the papal office which is not the truth. This flaw cannot be excused!!

Overall the movie is a total let down for the book fans. I recommend not even taking the effort to watch it. For those who have not read the book, its watchable.

Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent!!

2009-04-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

100 million views in 9 days on YouTube!!! That kind of performance requires some extraordinary talent. And this 47 year old lady from a village in England has plenty of it. She gave a stunning performance in the first round of the Britain's got talent 2009.

It amazes me as to how such an extremely talented singer was in the dark and unknown to the world for 47 long years. I was a never a big fan of these shows where people with aspirations are mocked at and the best out of the lot get to sign a professional contract with a big brand. But SUSAN BOYLE is a rare find!! I am now totally for such shows where atleast one gem can be found in a few years.

Susan Boyle - Britain's Got Talent!

Google Maps Error

2009-04-09T13:50:00.001-07:00

Not very often do you see Google making mistakes (atleast with the data they display on websites). I spotted one such rare incident.

Here Google Maps shows you the way into the woods!! This is when u search for the way from Redmond, WA to Victoria, BC, Canada.

Happiness

2009-04-03T21:19:00.000-07:00

I haven’t written in a long time and am in real mood to write today. Straight from the HEART (yea I am listening to Bryan Adams)!! I was just checking my friends pictures on a social networking site (you guessed it right people, I am an Indian! What would I be checking? ) and probably for the first time noticing how different people can be….everyone has their own unique way of living and they are happy doing that. I am realizing how different everyone can be and enjoy things that u can’t even dream of doing while enjoying yourself.

Some people are happy taking a trip with their friends to a local pond and spending their whole day there where as some people are happy just sitting at home and talking to people over the phone. I can’t even dream of spending a whole day doing these things and being happy (not that I don’t do these things)!! Sometimes I look at pictures people (my friends) take while doing these things and post it on the social networking website expressing their utter enjoyment while doing these things. Are they happy? Yes they are!! Are they losers because they don’t know what they can be doing to know real fun? I really can’t blame anyone coz people would probably consider what I do while I am enjoying myself to be a utter waste of time.

So what’s the moral of the above story?? Do what you really enjoy and hang out with the people who share your same thoughts and feelings else you would be having a very bad time coz you would consider all the people you hang with utter losers!! I mebbe stuck in such a situation….am I? Good question!!

Credit Card Companies Balance Transfer SCAM

2009-03-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

Have you recently received lots of offers from credit card companies and banks offering you a 0% APR on balance transfers for a year? Have you wondered how a bank can ever make money by giving you free loans? The answer is very simple, you are being cheated!! You will be given a 0% APR balance transfer for sure, and you can be happy and pay nothing extra only and ONLY if you do not use the card for anything else except balance transfers for that period.

So here is how it goes, lets assume you transfer $1000 to another credit card X from your new card Y. First of all you will be charged a balance transfer fee which comes to around $30 and this is charged as soon as you make the transfer. Then assume you made purchases with card Y for another $1000 and you feel that you can pay this back in the next 3 months and then just pay the minimums and slowly finish off the $1000 you used in balance transfer. After 3 months you have dutifully paid off the $1000 you used in purchases and the interest that has been added which is another $80. Then at the end of the 4th month, you should not charged interest because you are under the 0% APR scheme but they still have charged you another $20 in interest and the reason for this is that all the money you have been paying for the past 3 months has been used to fill the balance transfer amount and the credit you used for purchases is exactly as it is and gathering more interest.

You have in all paid an extra $140 (40 + 80 + 20) in the last 4 months for nothing!! You got NO extra time to pay off your dues but in fact were charged an extra $40 as transfer fees. So is the balance transfer thing really something you should consider using? It is a decent choice if you have a huge amount in dues and do not plan to use the new card for purchases. But again it is not the best choice. The money you plan to save in not paying the interest for the other cards is being paid as balance transfer fees to the new card.

I mailed CHASE BANK USA regarding the same and the following is their reply.

"We appreciate your patience and apologize for the delay in
responding to your inquiry.

In most instances, payments are applied to balances with a
lower Annual Percentage Rate (APR) before balances with a
higher APR. Unpaid finance charges and fees associated
with each balance type are generally paid first. We then
allocate any remaining payment amount to the principal
balances beginning with lower-APR balances and ending with
higher-APR balances. Payments are generally applied last
to standard cash advance balances.

When a payment is received, it is applied to the previous
cycle's balance before current cycle charges in the
following manner, but it is not limited to this order:

1. All account fees.
2. Promotional balance finance charges.
3. Promotional principal balances (Promotional balances
are generally paid from lowest APR to highest APR.
Promotional balances at the same APR will generally be
paid oldest to newest.).
4. Any remaining finance charges and any debt deferment
program fees (i.e. Payment Protector).
5. Any merchandise balance at the standard APR, paying the
oldest balance first.
6. Any non-promotional cash advance balances.

At this time, we do not have the option of applying
payments to a specific balance on request.

If a payment is greater than the balance, the excess will
be recognized as a credit balance. It will then be
applied as a payment toward future transactions or
refunded to you."

Well written!! But useless....the balance transfer option is nothing but a HUGE SCAM!!

Phone of the future - Pomegranate

2009-03-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

What are the features that you think you can have in a phone?? GPS, Internet, EMail, MP3 etc. All these things are electronic and nothing really helps you physically, do they? So what should the phone of the future be?

The answer is here, the POMEGRANATE NS08..!! This phone has the capabilities to brew coffee for you when u are really in need of one (yes, its not a joke!! the phone actually brews coffeee), shave when you are in a hurry (are u kidding? can i shave using my phone). And even better it works as a harmonica as well (surely not a bad way to loosen up a hectic day).

I would surely want to lay my hands on one of these soon. Looking at this, is the iPhone or any smart phone in the market now even close...no way!! But some of the things that come to my mind are do I want my phone to be full of hair, shaving foam, water etc.?? If the designers could think of a way to address this, I am in for standing in line a whole night to get my hands on this...BTW when is this phone coming out? Check out their website Pomogranate Phone.

Also watch this video to check out the capabilities of this phone with your own eyes.

The Ultimate Travel Experience

2009-02-23T22:52:00.000-08:00

TO

Traveling by road from London to Sydney.

This is a trip I really want to take in the next few years. This will be the ultimate travel experience. Thanks to my brother who told me about people taking such trips by land from London to Sydney. He told me that he knew a few people who drove their Range Rover all the way from London to Sydney. I was astounded when I heard that YES people do actually DRIVE all the way! They travel through 20 countries and 3 continents taking well over 3 months to cover the distance. I am just wondering if this is my goal in the coming few years. Undoubtedly YES!!

I have always loved traveling and this will be an experience I will never forget and will boast about forever. This trip covers many countries in Europe like France, Germany, Czech Republic, etc. and a lot of countries in Asia like Iran, Pakistan, India, Nepal, Thailand, Burma etc. One can witness a drastic change in cultures, terrains, people and literally everything one can imagine being different across the world.

For all the people whom I have got excited by this post, If you dont want to drive, how about taking a bus all the way? YES, one bus all the way from London to Sydney. It cost almost 4000 GBP and takes 13 weeks to reach sydney. Check out www.oz-bus.com

If I can ever take this trip, it will be a dream come true!

Another interesting company which offers these tours and more. Exploratory Overland Expeditions

Flooded with thoughts

2009-02-23T21:57:00.000-08:00

A thousand questions have crossed my mind in the past hour!! It all started off with a small thought about why am I feeling unhappy or am I feeling unhappy? I am flooded with questions which have no correct answers or rather I don’t know the answers. The strange part is that all these questions relate to me. Who will be able to provide me with the answers if I am unable to answer them myself?

Thinking about one of the questions, what is more important to a person? Money, fame, family & friends, satisfaction or something else? The perfect answer would be a combination of all the above in the right proportions. Wouldn’t it be perfect if anyone had it exactly that way? Finding the right balance between all these is the toughest part or even the impossible part.

And why the fu** cant people live their own lives and let other live as they wish? I am sure this will never happen but this there is no harm dreaming of it at least.

The incessant rambling can go on with my thinking about this and all the other questions running through my mind. Before it starts flooding, it’s better to stop here.

Google - Spreading the Word

2009-02-13T16:09:00.000-08:00

Google can truly be called the champion of the internet because of its continuing contribution to the online world. They not only made the internet penetrable but they are now also physically spreading the word.

They are going about the rural areas in India speaking about the advantages of the internet and actually demonstrating it to the people. They are aboard a bus called the 'Google's Internet Bus' which is enabled with the internet.

Launched just last week, Google's Internet Bus aims to educate Indian people about what the Internet is and how it can benefit them in multiple ways. To do that, the customized, Internet-enabled vehicle is bringing the online experience to where people live, visiting several towns and cities across India's Tamil Nadu region with demonstrations of the Internet's uses in Education, Information, communication and entertainment. Content is provided both in English and in Tamil to familiarize people with services including search, email, social networking, online maps and others. Since beginning in Chennai, the bus has already travelled to Vellore, Krishnagiri, Salem, Erode and Pollachi; on Saturday, it will arrive in Coimbatore. Twelve cities will follow before the effort wraps up in mid-March; in the meantime, photos, videos and updates are available on the project's website.

The Internet Bus initiative is part of Google's overall strategy of "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible and useful," the company says—its efforts have also included localizing and translating multiple Google applications. Prasad Ram, head of R&D for Google India, explains: "We are passionate about empowering users with information, and the Internet democratizes access to information. With this initiative we want to take the power of this medium to people who will really benefit from it. We believe that if we can get people to experience the Internet even briefly they will find the means to go back again."

What am i passionate about - 2

2009-02-11T20:36:00.000-08:00

One thing that I realized recently is "You don't know you if you enjoy doing something unless you actually DO IT".

Many people are looking around for ways to find what they are actually passionate about or rather ways to find the same. Thanks to Google Analytics I could find out that the maximum number of people who read my blog reached here searching for what they were passionate about. One of my posts about how I was seeking to find out what I was passionate about and how certain situations forced me to think deeper about what i really loved doing.

I am really happy to say that I am thoroughly enjoying the work that I am doing right now and now realize that being satisfied with your work is one of the major factors in life. I have been doing various things of late and certain things i thoiught I would never enjoy are turning out to be one of my most enjoyable past times. Try out various things and you will surely find out what interests you and what not. There is no harm in trying out something once that you just feel you wont enjoy. Try out everything now or you will regret it later.

Still the question remains, What am I passionate about? There is no answer to that as yet. I can say i like doing a lot of things and I get myself totally involved in all those activities. I am sure if I continue treading this path, sooner or later I will realize my true passion.

Thai version of the Ramayana

2009-02-01T19:52:00.001-08:00

A recent visit to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco opened up a lot of facts I never knew about Indian Mythology. The most important of them is the fact that the story of Lord Rama, Ramayana has its own version in Thailand with all the characters having a Thai name.

The Ramayana is called as "Rammakian" and the Thai names of the characters are

Rama - Phra Ram
Sita - Nang Sida
Lakshmana - Phra Lak
Bharata - Phra Phrot
Shatrughna - Phra Satrut
Dasaratha - Thotsarot
Vibhishana - Phiphek

There is a cabinet with scenes of the Thai version of Ramayana in display at the museum. This cabinet was recovered from Thailand and is estimated to be from the early 1800s. There are many artifacts of Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese and Korean history in the museum. It is very interesting for those who are very interested in the historical pieces from these nations or those who know a bit about it.

Go! Go! Break Steady : XBox

2009-01-30T20:20:00.000-08:00

Check out this video

Fannie Mae Logic Bomb by an Indian

2009-01-29T16:02:00.001-08:00

A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage
finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000
servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and
shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week, prosecutors say.

Unix engineer Rajendrasinh Babubha Makwana, 35, was indicted
(.pdf) Tuesday in federal court in Maryland on a single count of
computer sabotage for allegedly writing and planting the malicious code
on Oct. 24, the day he was fired from his job. The malware had been set
to detonate at 9:00 a.m. on Jan. 31, but was instead discovered by
another engineer five days after it was planted, according to court
records.

Makwana, an Indian national, was an employee of technology consulting firm OmniTech, but he worked full time on-site at Fannie Mae's massive data center in Urbana, Maryland, for three years.

On the afternoon of Oct. 24, he was told he was being fired because
of a scripting error he'd made earlier in the month, but he was allowed
to work through the end of the day, according to an FBI affidavit
(.pdf) in the case. "Despite Makwana's termination, Makwana's computer
access was not immediately terminated," wrote FBI agent Jessica Nye.

Five days later, another Unix engineer at the data center discoveredthe malicious code hidden inside a legitimate script that ran automatically every morning at 9:00 a.m. Had it not been found, the FBI says the code would have executed a series of other scripts designed to block the company's monitoring system, disable access to the server on which it was running, then systematically wipe out all 4,000 Fannie Mae servers, overwriting all their data with zeroes.

"This would also destroy the backup software of the servers making
the restoration of data more difficult because new operating systems
would have to be installed on all servers before any restoration could
begin," wrote Nye.

As a final measure, the logic bomb would have powered off the servers.The trigger code was hidden at the end of the legitimate program,separated by a page of blank lines. Logs showed that Makwana had logged onto the server on which the logic bomb was created in his final hours on the job.

Makwana is free on a $100,000 signature bond. His lawyer didn't immediately return a phone call Thursday.

Source : www.wired.com

Metallica Live @ Oakland , 20th December 2008

2008-12-21T23:45:00.001-08:00

I actually saw Metallica perform live in Oakland, CA on the 20th of December 2008. What an experience!!! This will be an experience I will never forget…a dream come true!

The show was opened by a small band called Sword, who did a very ok performance, nothing commendable. They were followed by Lamb of God which is a good band and they gave an enjoyable performance. But I could not actually enjoy the both of them because I was actually there for METALLICA!! Who would ever wanna listen to any other band when the gods of rock were supposed to be playing next? The excitement inside me was building and I could no longer control my excitement. The sounds engineers were setting up the stage for a long time and the crowd started cheering loudly all of a sudden. Naaah, it was not metallica, they were cheering for no reason.

And then it went dark, almost 9:15 pm, I was waiting from 7 pm. It was pitch dark, and the music started playing, loud and crystal clear (great job by the sound engineers), undoubtedly it was from the makers of that music, which was METALLICA! They were playing a number from their new album, “Death Magnetic”. We still could not see them but the stage was illuminated with laser lights which made beautiful patterns around them. The music was just mind blowing and there was no need to see them play, the sound of live music was enough to give me that satisfaction. And then when the song ended, a flash of the light from the stage showed James Hetfield! That was it!! That was the moment I had been waiting for, to see Metallica perform live!! Then the lights came on and I could see them all.

The show was just mind blowing as I was expecting it. They performed exactly they way everyone was expecting them to, to the limit!! They played all the best songs from Kill em All to the latest Death Magnetic. They played a lot of songs from death magnetic including “All Nightmare Long”, “Cyanide”, “ The Day that Never Comes”, “End of the Line” etc. And they covered most of their classics like “Enter Sandman”, “Sad but True”, “Nothing else Matters”, “ One” etc.

Their complete playlist in order of performance :

That Was Just Your Life
The End Of The Line
Creeping Death
For Whom The Bell Tolls
One
Broken, Beat And Scarred
Cyanide
Sad But True
The Unforgiven
All Nightmare Long
The Day That Never Comes
Master Of Puppets
Blackened
Nothing Else Matters
Enter Sandman
---------
Last Caress
Whiplash
Seek and Destroy

The floor crowd went crazy with having mosh pits and the air was filled with the smell of cigarettes and weed. The atmosphere was electric and one of the best I have experienced. No way could I have missed this for anything else!!

Can you spend $350 billion in 77 days?

2008-12-19T14:51:00.001-08:00

A very interesting question, can you spend $350 billion in 77 days? And the Bush administration has done that successfully. The US treasury was richer by $350 billion (all tax payer money) just 77 days ago till a bill was passed to bail out the troubled financial institutions. Ford and Chrylser have received the last remaining money left in the $350 billion available immediately from the allotted $700 billion. The treasury has

sent checks totaling $168 billion in varying amounts to 116 banks;
committed another $82 billion to capitalize more banks;
bought $40 billion in preferred shares of American International Group (AIG, Fortune 500) so the troubled insurer could pay off an earlier loan from the Federal Reserve;
committed $20 billion to back any losses that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York might incur in a new program to lend money to owners of securities backed by credit card debt, student loans, auto loans and small business loans;
committed to invest $20 billion in Citigroup on top of $25 billion the bank had already received;
committed $5 billion as a loan loss backstop to Citigroup;
agreed to loan $13.4 billion to GM and Chrysler to get them through the next few months.

If you are Indian, this would bring to your mind an old movie by Naseeruddin Shah where he takes up a challenge of spending a lot of money in a limited amount of time. The movie was very entertaining and there were many conditions that were set upon him to make the spending very tough. The same concept was again used in a Rajinikanth starrer "Arunachalam" where he spends Rs. 300 crore (3 billion rupees) in 30 days. Now the bush administration has done the best of the three :-)

Increase Gas Taxes?? You kiddding me?

2008-12-19T13:36:00.001-08:00

People are having fun with the gas prices hitting rock bottom and the author here wants the government to increase the taxes to ridiculously high amounts so that people start going green!! Gimme a break! Going green is undoubtedly important, but cant you flex your brain enough to lure more people into going green? Cant the automakers come out with attractive automobiles which use alternate fuel? These are the ways of leading people into going green and not coming up with such ridiculous ideas of increasing taxes.

The author writes that the government will have more money to build better roads if the taxes are increased, but what purpose will better roads serve when the number of cars on the roads decrease because of the high costs? Europe has done that and it has worked, but Europe has done a lot more better things like their health care. Why dont we learn how to do things like that rather than copying some stupid idea which hurts its people more than helping them. This is more like threatening people to go green rather than leading them into it.

Check out the complete article here

Bin Laden on facebook??

2008-12-18T15:48:00.000-08:00

I recently read this article in a very popular online magazine about the online extremists planning to invade facebook. They have already had their success in raiding popular websites like youtube and various blogs. A very interesting picture is attached below. The screenshot of Osama Bin Laden's facebook profile (this was made by someone for fun, but the news of the extremism on the internet is real).

What is the solution to all this?? When are these islamic extremists gonna stop? Or rather when are we gonna stop them? Too many questions with no answers.

The Interstate Highway System, 1939-1991

2008-12-18T14:56:00.001-08:00

This article explains the process which gave birth to one of the greatest highway system in the world. The author very neatly describes about the hurdles the project went through and who all played a major role in its final success.

A plan for constructing a highway system with over 41,000 miles of roads around 70 years back is astounding. Today the IHS has more than 47,000 miles of roads all across the United States of America. It connects pretty much every nook and corner of the country. The roads are very well maintained and in spectacular condition. The highway system is one of the major reasons for the development of the US economy and has been a boon for America.

Adding a personal touch to this, i totally enjoy driving on the IHS and cant imagine a smooth life without these. I would not have been able to travel over 2000 miles in a span of 3 days and see so many wonderful places far away.

read more | digg story

Group Video

2008-12-10T23:15:00.000-08:00

I just realized that my group from college did not have anything up on YouTube...!! So here comes the first video for my group from me...

We had so much fun in college!!

12 Steps to destroy Pakistan's Economy

2008-12-09T10:09:00.001-08:00

A professor of finance from IIM Bangalore, writes a brilliant article which outline 12 steps to destroy the economy of pakistan and hence ensuring world peace. He describes why an unstable pakistani economy is important to reduce terrorism across the world.

read more | digg story

Slumdog Millionaire

2008-12-08T18:18:00.001-08:00

Slumdog Millionaire is one of the best movies I have watched. The movie is the tale of a young slumdog Jamal Malik, who is on the most coveted TV show ‘Who wants to be a millionaire?’ or rather the Indian version of it, ‘ Kaun Banega Crorepati?’. The movie starts off with showing Jamal in the hot seat just one question away from winning the highest prize of 2 crore rupees or 20 million rupees. Then the movie alternates between the Jamal in prison being interrogated by a police officer and bits from his past. The movie is beautifully shot and is very engrossing.

Jamal is taken into custody due to suspicion that he cheated his way to the top. The show organizer is not convinced that a slumdog like Jamal will know all the answers to the questions being asked in the show. The police officer plays the tape of the show and asks Jamal about how he knew every answer. Jamal narrates incidents in his life which was the reason for him knowing answers to all the questions. All the incidents are totally believable and do not create any doubts in the minds of the audience. The flow of the movie is flawless and the director has made no mistake.

There are dialogues in Hindi (national language of India) in between which adds the touch of reality to the movie. It is a must watch for anyone and I would say it is the strongest contender India to the Oscars from India till date. The child actors have delivered stunning performances and the director has been successful in bringing out the right emotions in them.

I would rate this movie a 10/10. I strongly recommend that everyone MUST watch this movie.

Apple: Ads don't Lie, but you're a fool if you believe them.

2008-12-03T15:18:00.001-08:00

Is Apple cheating the people on purpose or are the people really as dumb as apple claim them to be? The statement by apple’s legal team that people are stupid to believe in their ads is not befitting a company of that stature and standards. I am a huge fan of apple but even I cannot be supporting such a statement by the company.

I think that in the USA, most of the law suits against people or corporations are generally for very stupid reasons. A person experienced mental agony because a teeth whitening toothpaste did not give the expected results??? Seriously, cut the crap!! Similarly a person has filed a lawsuit because the iPhone 3G is not fast as they advertise it to be. The right to file a law suit has been given to the public because the major corporations should not be exploiting them, but the people are exploiting this privilege to make money.

Coming back to the point, what apple said is totally wrong and they should take back their statements or come out with a public apology. Not that this will stop me from buying their products!! 

Apple doesn't want you to believe what it says, even though the company claims it's not lying.

read more | digg story

Zion National Park, Utah

2008-12-01T20:51:00.001-08:00

Utah is very beautiful state in mid western part of the US. It is filled with mountains and a major part of it remains untouched by urbanization. My first stop was Zion National Park located at the south western tip of Utah. It is around 4 hours drive from Las Vegas, NV. The route I-15 is very beautiful and scenic once you enter Utah. The landscape totally changes and is filled with very beautiful mountains on both sides. The drive is fast, scenic and smooth. Zion is very beautiful with its snow covered canyons and the mountains carved by the force of water and changing weather.

It was raining heavily in Zion the day I visited and hence I was not able to explore the park completely. There were a good number of treks which looked very beautiful in the pictures at the visitor center. I was not able to witness them myself because of the pouring rain. I drove around the park and took one trek to a narrow gorge in the middle of the park. There were many small waterfalls because of the rain which made the park even more beautiful. This was all at the lower level of the park. I was not very happy because rain had played spoilt sport with all my plans.

Then I drove to the higher levels of the park and my perspective of Zion totally changed. It was a completely different world up there. The soft rocky mountains had carvings all over them and this was all due to changing weather conditions and had absolutely no human element associated with it. Undoubtedly nature is the best sculptor. There was a huge tunnel which had small windows in between to get a view of the mountains. It looked extremely beautiful. It started to snow when I reached the top of the mountain and this added to the overall beauty.

Overall Zion is a good place to visit and has lots of activities. The only factor to be kept in mind is the weather there. Also there is only a very small town near the park and only a few hotels. All the restaurants close early and hence make sure you get something to eat before its too late.

Will the financial crisis get even worse??

2008-11-18T16:42:00.000-08:00

I recently read an article on MarketWatch where the author has given 30 reasons why the current financial crisis will be worse than the Great Depression. It sounds pretty logical to me. The article is as follows

Every day there is more breaking news, proof Wall Street's greed is already back to "business as usual" and in denial, grabbing more and more from the new "Bailouts-R-Us" bonanza of free taxpayer cash and credits, like two-year-olds in a toy store at Christmas -- anything to boost earnings, profits and stock prices, and keep those bonuses and salaries flowing, anything to blow a new bubble.
Scan these 30 "leading indicators." Each problem has one or more possible solutions, but lacks unified political support. Time's running out. We're already at the edge. Add up the trillions in debt: Any collective solution will only compound our problems, because the cumulative debt will overwhelm us, make matters worse:

1. America's credit rating may soon be downgraded below AAA
2. Fed refusal to disclose $2 trillion loans, now the new "shadow banking system"
3. Congress has no oversight of $700 billion, and Paulson's Wall Street Trojan Horse
4. King Henry Paulson flip-flops on plan to buy toxic bank assets, confusing markets
5. Goldman, Morgan lost tens of billions, but planning over $13 billion in bonuses this year
6. AIG bails big banks out of $150 billion in credit swaps, protects shareholders before taxpayers
7. American Express joins Goldman, Morgan as bank holding firms, looking for Fed money
8. Treasury sneaks corporate tax credits into bailout giveaway, shifts costs to states
9. State revenues down, taxes and debt up; hiring, spending, borrowing add even more debt
10. State, municipal, corporate pensions lost hundreds of billions on derivative swaps
11. Hedge funds: 610 in 1990, almost 10,000 now. Returns down 15%, liquidations up
12. Consumer debt way up, now at $2.5 trillion; next area for credit meltdowns
13. Fed also plans to provide billions to $3.6 trillion money-market fund industry
14. Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are bleeding cash, want to tap taxpayer dollars
15. Washington manipulating data: War not $600 billion but estimates actually $3 trillion
16. Hidden costs of $700 billion bailout are likely $5 trillion; plus $1 trillion Street write-offs
17. Commodities down, resource exporters and currencies dropping, triggering a global meltdown
18. Big three automakers near bankruptcy; unions, workers, retirees will suffer
19. Corporate bond market, both junk and top-rated, slumps more than 25%
20. Retailers bankrupt: Circuit City, Sharper Image, Mervyns; mall sales in free fall
21. Unemployment heading toward 8% plus; more 1930's photos of soup lines
22. Government policy is dictated by 42,000 myopic, highly paid, greedy lobbyists
23. China's sees GDP growth drop, crates $586 billion stimulus; deflation is now global, hitting even Dubai
24. Despite global recession, U.S. trade deficit continues, now at $650 billion
25. The 800-pound gorillas: Social Security, Medicare with $60 trillion in unfunded liabilities
26. Now 46 million uninsured as medical, drug costs explode
27. New-New Deal: U.S. planning billions for infrastructure, adding to unsustainable debt
28. Outgoing leaders handicapping new administration with huge liabilities
29. The "antitaxes" message is a new bubble, a new version of the American
dream offering a free lunch, no sacrifices, exposing us to more false promises

Will the next meltdown, the third of the 21st Century, trigger a second Great Depression? Or will the 2007-08 crisis simply morph into a painful extension of today's mess to 2011 and beyond, with no new bull market, no economic recovery as our new president hopes?

Perhaps some of the first 29 problems may be solved separately, but collectively, after building on a failed ideology, they spell disaster. So listen closely to "leading indicator" No. 30:
At a recent Reuters Global Finance Summit former Goldman Sachs chairman John Whitehead was interviewed. He was also Ronald Reagan's Deputy Secretary of State and a former chairman of the N.Y. Fed. He says America's problems will take years and will burn trillions.

He sees "nothing but large increases in the deficit ... I think it would be worse than the depression. ... Before I go to sleep at night, I wonder if tomorrow is the day Moody's and S&P will announce a downgrade of U.S. government bonds." It'll get worse because "the public is not prepared to increase taxes. Both parties were for reducing taxes, reducing income to government, and both parties favored a number of new programs, all very costly and all done by the government."
Reuters concludes: "Whitehead said he is speaking out on this topic because he is concerned no lawmakers are against these new spending programs and none will stand up and call for higher taxes. 'I just want to get people thinking about this, and to realize this is a road to disaster,' said Whitehead. 'I've always been a positive person and optimistic, but I don't see a solution here.'"
We see the Great Depression 2. Why? Wall Street's self-interested greed. They are their own worst enemy ... and America's too

My new iPhone

2008-11-13T22:25:00.000-08:00

I got the new iPhone 3G last week!! My old contract with AT&T ended last week and the first thing i could think of doin after it ended was to get an iPhone. The device is fascinating and people who dont own it may say various things about it being just too fancy and not worth the money. I am totally fascinated by it. It has got so many cool features and is surely worth the money and more.

I have always been a big fan of apple products and the next thing i am going to purchase from the Apple stable is a Mac. I have been a Windows user all my life and havent explored the mac yet. But being a very proud owner of a 3rd generation iPod and an iPhone 3G, i am sure that MAC will be as good as these products.

This post is no review for the iPhone but just expressing my excitement on getting one. BTW the applications i currently have are Shazam (got it first), IM Lite, OneConnect, AroundMe, SayWho, Fring, Bloomberg, Pandora, NowPlaying and UrbanSpoon. If anyone knows any more real cool applications do let me know. Let us spread the word.

New Finance Terms

2008-10-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

New terms after the financial meltdown. Very interesting!

CEO --Chief Embezzlement Officer.

CFO-- Corporate Fraud Officer.

BULL MARKET -- A random market movement causing an investor to mistake himself for a financial genius.

BEAR MARKET -- A 6 to 18 month period when the kids get no allowance, the wife gets no jewelry.

VALUE INVESTING -- The art of buying low and selling lower.

P/E RATIO -- The percentage of investors wetting their pants as the market keeps crashing.

BROKER -- What my broker has made me.

STANDARD & POOR -- Your life in a nutshell.

STOCK ANALYST -- Idiot who just downgraded your stock.

STOCK SPLIT -- When your ex-wife and her lawyer split your assets equally between themselves.

FINANCIAL PLANNER -- A guy whose phone has been disconnected.

MARKET CORRECTION -- The day after you buy stocks.

CASH FLOW-- The movement your money makes as it disappears down the toilet.

YAHOO -- What you yell after selling it to some poor sucker for $240 per share.

WINDOWS -- What you jump out of when you're the sucker who bought Yahoo @ $240 per share.

INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR -- Past year investor who's now locked up in a nuthouse.

PROFIT -- An archaic word no longer in use.

Sonu Nigam mimicing Anu Malik

2008-10-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

This video is wonderful! This is an episode of Indian Idol where sonu nigam comes as the guest judge. The contestant Emon Chatterjee is a very good mimicry artist and he mimics Anu Malik the best. I love look on Anu Malik's face when emon is mimicing him and the whole crowd applauds. Emon is kind of scared initially to do this but when everyone encourages him to do so he goes ahead and does it beutifully.

The best part of the show is when sonu mimics Anu Malik...its like hearing anu himself. I like the look on anu malik's face. He is such a jerk!!

Funny USPS statement

2008-10-10T18:03:00.000-07:00

I just received a letter in my postbox and when i opened it, I found out that it was a mail forwarding confirmation for my friend who moved out. It stated its regular content and the end of the mail was what caught my eye.

It read " If you do not understand english or have difficulty understanding this letter, take it to your nearest post office." How do they expect someone who does not know english to understand that?? What was the purpose of including such a statement in the letter? I did not expect an organization of the magnitude of United States Postal Service (USPS) to make such a blunder. I am sure many other people have observed it and have wondered why such a statement was included.

Study Says Closing Roads Might Cut Congestion. Huh?

2008-10-09T23:45:00.001-07:00

A very interesting study by 2 researchers from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and one from Santa Fe University has come up with a solution for reducing the traffic congestion in cities, CLOSE ROADS!! Sounds very wierd at first but when u read about their solution its not totally false, in fact why not?? Their paper is titled "The Price of Anarchy in Transportation Networks: Efficiency and Optimality Control"

Its an interesting study made by the researchers, but I have had this thinking for a long time. I havent been able to come up with a proof nor did I investigate and study this stuff for long. I have always had this concept of satisfaction in the means of cutting in on availability. A person is very satisfied as long as they do not have too many other options to explore. This is exactly what the researchers have concluded but not in terms of satisfaction but traffic congestion. Cut the number of available options to the commuters and the traffic on the regular roads will be more organized.This might not be the best method of looking at things and solving problems but this surely is one way to look at it. Many may argue that cutting the options available is not the right way to do things as the whole science of evolution is about finding more efficient and alternate ways or this is how humans evolved as the supreme being.

October 17, 2008

2008-10-08T20:41:00.000-07:00

Whats so special about this date?? I figure if you have ended up on this page and are reading this article, you surely would have heard the new rumor on the internet.

"Coming October 17, 2008 the sun will rise continuously for 36 hrs (1.5 days). During this time the American countries will be dark for 1.5 days. It will convert 3 days into 2 big days. It will happen once in 2400 yrs. We're very lucky to see this. Forward it to all friends."

This forward really made me curious and i saw that people have already blogged about this. Many have tried to come up with reasons why this can happen and some as to why this can't. This is one of the many interesting forwards/offline messages that I have received. I am happy that the people who have started this rumor at least took the effort to come up with one which makes some people think. The others are just plain stupid and a look at them can confirm their falsity.

BTW my addition to this. When did the sun ever stop rising or when did the sun ever stop moving?? The sun moves in its own orbit and the first statement sounds so utterly stupid when you give it a second thought. And it sure would be interesting to be in the dark for 36 hrs. May be this can be the concept of Manoj Knight Shyamalan's next movie and he can call it "The darkness"

Miracle at St.Anna Review

2008-10-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

I recently watched the new movie ‘The Miracle at St.Anna’. It’s a very mediocre movie. The miracle in the movie was not evident and it still puzzles me as to what was the miracle in the movie. I was expecting a drama but it turned out to be a war movie. The movie starts with a postal clerk shooting a man at his window. He is arrested and he does not speak to anyone except to a journalist. This part in the movie makes no sense again as the journalist does not say anything special and this is everything you can expect a cop to say to him. The only factor which might have provoked him to speak is the publicity that the case can get and open his door to freedom.

Then the movie goes into the past when the murderer and his friends are fighting in the World War II. The man who is shot dead is the traitor and there is no personal conflict anywhere which provokes this man to shoot him dead almost 30 years later. The movie is not boring per se but it does not have anything very interesting and does not give the feel good factor after the movie ends. Overall a very average movie and its 2h40m long. So it can be avoided.

Metallica is Back!! Death Magnetic is a return to force

2008-09-26T19:56:00.001-07:00

Metallica is back with their nw album after 5 long years! It seems like ever since metallica came up with a new album but the wait is sure worth it. The songs are fast and represent the original metallica of the 80's. Rolling Stone has given a very good review for the album.

Rolling Stone reviews Metallica's new album..."Death Magnetic is the musical equivalent of Russia's invasion of Georgia — a sudden act of aggression from a sleeping giant."

My personal favorite is "The Unforgiven III".

Crater Lake

2008-09-11T15:25:00.000-07:00

Ever experienced deep blue water surrounded by mountains? This is one of the most beautiful views one can experience. Crater Lake is in the state of Oregon, USA. It was 7.5 hrs by road from Santa Clara, CA. The initial part of the journey was very uninteresting as we took the same roads we have taken on various other trips. After more than 6 hrs of driving, we reached a place called Klamath Falls in Oregon. This was the nearest city on the way to Crater Lake. It was a Saturday night and I was expecting a very happening downtown. When we entered downtown, it was totally dead. I could not spot a single person on the road anywhere. All the restaurants were closed and finding a place for dinner became a tough task. After a lot of searching we reached a Mexican restaurant which was open. We went inside and guess what; we were the only people in the big place. There was loud music playing from the attached bar and when we took a peak inside, there were a couple of people at the bar enjoying their drink. This was a different kind of experience.

We woke up the next day and started out to Crater Lake. It was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever taken. The road was totally deserted and surrounded by fields with cows grazing. The fields were lush green, and lots of cows and horses were grazing. Then the road ran through the forest and became even more beautiful. After about an hours drive, we entered the Crater Lake national park. After a little more driving, we got a view of the lake. I have never seen such deep blue water. The beauty of the lake and its surroundings was striking. The wind was really chilly and was enhancing the experience of the place. Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States and the fifth deepest in the world.

There was a road which ran through the rim of the lake and provided many different views of the lake. There were also plenty of trekking tracks which gave one an enhanced view of the lake and a good trekking experience. We decided on taking two tracks, one which climbed to an observatory and another which went down to the lake. The first one was less strenuous and gave a very beautiful view of the lake and its surrounding mountains. It was called the Watchman Trail. The next trail was a lot longer and very strenuous. It went all the way down to the deep blue water. The track got more exciting as we were nearing the water. The water was very cold and all our plans of swimming were spoilt. We spent some time there and started our climb back. This was very strenuous due to the steep climb and long trail. We came back to our car very tired and exhausted, but the trek was worth the effort. We completed the drive through the rim of the lake and headed back home.

This place is a must visit for a nature lover.

Disappointing Banking System

2008-09-03T12:46:00.000-07:00

Though USA is a developed country, the banking system here is not as impressive and user friendly as the banking system in India (a developing country). The online banking facilities here are no where near to the features that Indian banks offer. ICICI started the online banking trend in India and they are the leaders in the industry. Literally everything can be done online sitting at home but you also have the option of going to the bank to get things done.

I recently walked into a Bank of America branch in Santa Clara, CA. I wanted to enquire about an auto loan and get it processed if it looked fine. I went to a customer service representative and asked her about the auto loan. She said that the bank does give auto loans but she does not know anything about them and none of the branches will know anything about the loans!!! I was like wow, this is amazing. The branches deal only with housing loans and they cannot help you with anything else. She gave me the website (as if I could not figure it out) and asked me to go home and check the website to get the details. She said I could try to get more information through the phone but she wasn’t sure of that too. She dialed a few numbers and finally got me thru to a representative, and guess what….I got the exact same reply!! The lady over the phone gave me the exact same details (the website and instructions to navigate thru it). You can get an auto loan only online and no where else!!

This is status of the banking system in the US. I am really disappointed with the banking facilities offered by Bank of America. I feel the smaller banks are better and have much better service.

Craving for Malai Kofta

2008-08-19T10:13:00.001-07:00

Yesterday night all of a sudden I started craving for Malai Kofta. One of my friends had come home and we decided to eat outside. Suddenly all I could think of was Malai Kofta and rumali roti. We were planning to go to a small restaurant (more of a dhaba) in Sunnyvale, California which was not very expensive called Rajjot Sweets. But since they have a fixed menu and the chances of getting malai kofta was less, we decided against it and started considering options where we could get malai kofta. In the process we considered many restaurants like Zafran in Santa Clara, Saravana Bhavan in Sunnyvale and many more in the area. We suddenly decided to go to a place called Taj India but on the way everyone changed their mind and we headed to Amber India. All of us were really hungry when we reached there but guess what, they did not have Malai kofta. Grrrr….i was not going to eat in a place where there they don’t serve malai kofta. So we went further to Mountain View downtown where there is an Indian restaurant called Temptations. And finally I saw it in the menu card and my happiness was unbound. But sadly they did not have rumali roti so I had to settle for garlic naan.

When the food was brought to the table, I was extremely happy and started to eat immediately. The food was really tasty and I thoroughly enjoyed my meal. The next part was not the best but, the bill. The place turned out to be pretty expensive and the bill amount was enormous. But my craving for malai kofta was satisfied. This is the best part about living in the bay area, plenty of Indian food options.

First Indian Olympic Gold (Individual)

2008-08-15T14:24:00.000-07:00

I had recently written about an Indian who had brought India shame. But this Indian has made us all proud by winning the Olympic Gold Medal, which has eluded India for a long time. Shooter Abhinav Bindra became the first Indian to win an individual Olympic gold. He has made India proud.

Spirit of Freedom

2008-08-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

Today is the 61^st Indian Independence Day. This is a day when every Indian should feel proud for what we have achieved in such a short span. Each and every Indian should remember the blood shed by our freedom fighters for the freedom we are enjoying today. This does not mean that we forget them the entire year and just recognize their efforts on this single day, but given the busy schedule and lack of time of this generation at least this one day should be celebrated.

India has made tremendous progress in the last 61 years. The biggest wealth is its people, who have created a name for themselves everywhere in every field. Many may still complain about India and compare it with other developed nations, but they should realize that India has achieved this in a very short span of 61 years where as the US has had freedom for over 200 years now.

I feel that most of being born free in a democratic country like India, we don’t really appreciate the freedom that we enjoy. Looking at countries like Israel where everyone who turns 18 is forced to join the army and serve a period of 3-5 years, shouldn’t we be extremely happy with how our country treats us? We have the freedom to become what we want and do what we wish. This is freedom in the true sense. Survival and Freedom should not be mixed with each other.

I am extremely proud to be an INDIAN. Quoting a very old saying – “Never ask what your country did for you, ask what you did for your country? “

JAI HIND.

My first "Sports Car" drive

2008-08-07T00:13:00.000-07:00

I just drove a sports car for the first time in my life! A Ford Mustang!! I am left speechless by the experience. Real car enthusiasts would not be very happy looking at my previous statement because the mustang is the cheapest sports car and many don’t even consider it as one. The first time I saw a mustang was in the auto expo at New Delhi two years ago and I was awestruck. I was dreaming to drive it one day and today is a dream come true. I generally drive very safe and am not too fast. But the adrenaline rush in me today made me go full throttle at the change of every signal.

One hopes to never get stuck in a signal while driving. But today I was thinking otherwise. The speed limit on the nearby road is 50mph and I feel that was the perfect road to enjoy the ride. I stopped at every signal and accelerated to the limit at the sight of the green light. The pleasure was immense and experience unmatched. The sound of the engine was so damn cool!! This surely is a ride I will remember.

I am just wondering, if a mustang could give me so much happiness, what a corvette will do to me (I am pissing off the enthusiasts again)!! I would love to drive a Lamborghini or a Ferrari, but too much dreaming is not good either.

Luxury in the Air

2008-08-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

Air travel was once everyone’s fantasy. Now people have gotten over it and it has become more of a necessity. But companies never stop innovating and attracting the people towards air travel; by reducing the fares, offering extra facilities or now making it luxurious. The new Airbus A-380 has made this possible for the airlines. The new Air Emirates flight from Dubai to New York has all the facilities of a luxury 5 Star hotel. It offers facilities like a Hot Shower, bar, 23 inch screen with a 1000 channels, etc. The shower has been limited to 5 minutes per person to the limited water storage capacity of the plane. And guess what, the interiors of the business suite have wood and brass finishing….woah!! Is there anything more that one would want in terms of luxury? But all this comes with its own price tag attached to it. A round trip ticket by first class from Dubai to New York will set you back by $14,000 and by First class by $9000.

But don’t worry looking at the prices; the economy class ticket costs only $1500. But what facilities does one get for this price? Nothing new but for the extra plush seats and 500 channel TV. And the best part is that there are cameras attached near the fuselage and below the nose of the aircraft which allow the passengers to view the scenery below during flight. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to watch the screen while flying over New York during night? It would give the most beautiful view of the city. I am looking forward to fly on a A-380. It sounds really fascinating!

The World's Sexiest Car Is Even Hotter Topless

2008-08-02T01:49:00.001-07:00

The Bugatti Veyron is among the most exclusive cars in the world, a 1,000-horsepower super exotic owned by fewer than 150 people. Every one of them is about to be upstaged by the drop-dead gorgeous roadster Bugatti will unveil later this month at the Pebble Beach Concours.

read more digg story

If nothing changes, Nothing Changes!!

2008-08-02T00:43:00.000-07:00

Management people have their unique power to captivate the audience with their style of speaking. I attended a lecture by the EVP of Innovation and Technology for IBM, Mr.Nick Donofrio. He is retiring after 44 years in IBM, that’s a real long time for anyone to stick to a single company. The speech was very interesting and I was very impressed by his attitude and style. The stage presence and attention commanded by a senior management person and a technical person is very different and the difference is evident.

Many parts of his speech were very inspiring and he maintained the flow very well with his examples from real life. One part of his speech was really inspiring; he was mentioning about why changes are required in life. He said “If nothing changes, Nothing Changes!” Constant change is required in life always, and unless you keep changing with the times life will stagnate and will lose the enthusiasm.

Remember “If nothing changes, Nothing Changes!”

iPhone Magick has begun! Watch out!

2008-07-30T16:52:00.001-07:00

Apple just gave the developers a new lease of life. Now all the tech savvy people and hardcore programmers have started riding the CoolApp bandwagon. This is just beginning...keep watching out for the innovative minds coming out with a lot more cool stuff for the iPhone. With cool new apps that act as dynos and increment clocks, auto enthusiasts with iphones have plenty of new fun to be had.

read more | digg story

New Harley-Davidson Museum Is Heaven for Hells Angels

2008-07-29T17:16:00.001-07:00

The Harley-Davidson is more than a two-wheeled miscreant-hauler; it's one of America's most important indigenous technologies. The 45-degree V-twin engine has remained remarkably unchanged since it was introduced in 1909. Now the Harley has its own museum, which opened on July 12 in Milwaukee, the bike's birthplace. Inside the steel-framed compound

read more digg story

Meaning

2008-07-25T14:38:00.000-07:00

I just found a beautiful explanation for my name "Sandeep".
Sandeep means something that shines or glows. It is derived from a verb in Sanskrit meaning sam + deep which means to shine.

The name Sandeep is derived from the Sanskrit words "Sana" meaning old/eternal and "deep" meaning light. Thus sana deep when pronounced together with the help of a sandhi forms sandeep which means the old or eternal light. This meaning is also carried through in the western Indian language of Gujarati, where "San" means good and "Deep" means light or flame.

There is confusion around the word "Deep", where some think it means, nose. However logical proof of "Deep" meaning light can be found in word Diwali (the Hindu festival of lights). Diwali is the English pronunciation of the word, the actual spelling is "Deepavali" which is literally translated from Sanskrit to mean, the festival of light. [ Taken from wikipedia]

Feeling older and wiser!

2008-07-25T13:42:00.001-07:00

I turn a year older today :-)

You might wonder whats so new about that? everyone turns older every year..!! I was kinda disappointed that I getting older but now all of a sudden it feels so good to be older. I have so much left to do in life...and as i get older, i should be getting nearer to my goals (in a way i am, a lil slowly though). So lemme sign off wishing myself a very happy birthday and a successful year ahead! :-) This is kinda weird, but who cares!!

Redefining "Speed Limit"

2008-07-17T17:20:00.000-07:00

Let me give you the HOT news first! I gave my driving test (behind the wheel) for a license in California, US and guess what….I flunked! I followed the instructions carefully and was very careful to keep watch of the speed limits. I followed all the rules that a safe driver is expected to follow, use indicators well in advance, check the blind spot before turning or changing lanes etc. I was pretty confident that I did very well and I got back to the DMV office and parked the car. The inspector started his comments and told me that I did well and followed all the rules except for the speed limits. He told me that I was too slow and he had to take off points for that. The he told me that “the speed limits are the posted speed and not the maximum speed!” I was totally dumbfounded by this statement. What if I own an antique car which cannot do 65mph (75mph if I am driving in Arizona)? Am I not allowed to use the freeway at all..? That’s ridiculous. And then I asked him if I passed the test? He gave me a surprised look and told me that I FAILED! Wow…I failed for driving slower than the posted speed limit. I was doing a 20-21mph when the speed limit was 25mph. No wonder the cops here have so much catching to do!!

Make sure you remember, NEVER drive below the posted speed limit. Always drive FAST! FAST Driving is SAFE Driving :-)

10 Magazine covers that shook the world!

2008-07-14T17:12:00.001-07:00

These magazine covers are truly radical and took the whole world by surprise and shock. The creative thinking of the media sometimes is really surprising. Here are the top 10 magazine covers which completely.

Top 10 Magazine covers which shook the world.

iPhone games will rule!

2008-07-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

The reasons why the iPhone games will rule in the future over the existing gaming consoles are the super processor power, three axis accelerometer etc. The full article can be accessed here.

Indian brings shame in the corporate world

2008-07-12T17:55:00.000-07:00

Indians are establishing themselves as global leaders but some of them who are supposed to act as role models to fellow Indians are taking the wrong path. The recent case of the VP of HP is another black mark to the Indian community. Atul Malhotra, recently pleaded guilty of Trade Secret Theft at a court in Santa Barbara. He was the Director of the printers division in IBM Global Services and then went on to become VP of HP. He had requested very confidential sales information before he resigned and then after joining HP passed on this information to 2 other Sr.VPs. Atul Malhotra faces a maximum 10 year prison term. This should serve as a lesson to other Indians or anyone for that matter who wish to make money in the wrong way.

The full article can be accessed here.

Good articles on Steve Jobs

2008-07-10T14:59:00.003-07:00

I have always been fascinated by Steve Jobs. I admire his management skills and the way he goes about things. He is the CEO i look up to and i would say he is my Role Model. There are a number of articles which speak good and bad about him. I have picked a few which i feel really speaks about the person he is. And one article has the famous "quotes" by him. My favorite quote is

"It is hard to think that a $2 billion company with 4,300-plus people couldn't compete with six people in blue jeans."
-- On Apple's lawsuit following his resignation to form NeXT

The few articles i like which have come out in recent times are

Steve Jobs best quotes

How Apple got everything right by doing everything wrong!

Why is Steve Jobs the best CEO?

The Power of Steve Jobs

I will keep updating this with other good articles on him.

The Sin City

2008-07-08T19:00:00.007-07:00

Rightly named as the Sin City, Las Vegas is the city which has provisions for you to engage in all the seven deadly sins. Such a beautiful city in the midst of a desert is a symbol of man’s creativity and dominance over the world. The city’s main attraction is “The Strip” or actually Las Vegas Blvd. This is the road where all the main casinos and attractions of the city are. The state of Nevada has made this place a major tourist attraction by making gambling legal and hence being home to the world’s best casinos. The very fact that these things are illegal in most of the states and countries makes this place so different where all these activities are part of the day to day life.

Casinos are the lifeline of this city and after looking at most of them, I was completely awestruck. Each casino has its own unique design which no other casino or building has and is most of them are influenced by famous cities around the world. The designers of these buildings have managed to replicate the feel of the actual city within the limited space that they had. The famous casinos are the Venetian, Caesar’s Castle, Paris, New York etc. The name itself indicates which city is the inspiration for their design and interiors. I haven’t been to Europe but being inside these casinos gives the actual feel of being in that city. It’s a complete different world inside these casinos where in you are not aware of what’s happening outside the casino.

The Venetian gave a complete feel of Venice with its small canals running inside and gondolas giving the visitors a tour of the casino. The Caesar’s castle was in the shape of the famous colosseum and the inside had statues of roman gods and warriors. There were many small shops which sold a variety of things (very expensive) and gave the feel of a completely different city. On similar lines, the Paris casino has the Eiffel Tower and the New York casino has the Statue of Liberty. When you look at the strip from outside, you are in Vegas where as when you go inside a casino you are in a totally different city. These designs draw the visitors inside them and eventually lead them to the casino where the actual business takes place.

Walking down the strip in the night is a totally different experience altogether. The entire street is filled with lights and there are a lot of people on the streets. Every casino has popular shows for the public and each show is very unique. The Bellajio has the famous fountain show, Treasure Island has its pirate musical which they call the Sirens Show and many more. The street is buzzing with activity till late in the night. Though New York is called the city that never sleeps, Vegas does not fall too far behind. In fact the casinos are buzzing with activity all through the night. Walking along the Strip in the night is an experience by itself.

I could not resist gambling and I was totally drawn into it. I made a lot of money of the first day and lost all the money within the next hour. The next day I was more careful and gambled with caution. I stopped when I started losing the money I earned and cashed it. It was a very good gambling experience as I earned back the money that I lost the previous day too and some profit too. Vegas surely tops on my tourist spot list!

Top 10 worst airplanes ever built!

2008-07-08T17:11:00.003-07:00

We have heard of the famous airplanes making history. But here is a tribute to great efforts in the aviation industry which never took off or miserably failed.

Worst Aircrafts Ever Built

The Dumb CEO theory

2008-07-01T17:36:00.003-07:00

This article is very interesting in describing how the current generation of CEOs and the future generations to come are getting dumber. I dont completely agree with Carl Icahn's view. Check out the complete article here.

A shot at Gambling!

2008-05-28T23:43:00.000-07:00

The Memorial Day weekend was celebrated in style. Now that I moved to California, my trips have shifted to the west coast. We planned to do a lot of things over the weekend like go to a beach and spend a whole day, then go camping and come back home by Sunday and do some studying (LOL). Rain played spoil sport and I will blame it all on the rain that I could not do some studying over the weekend. It was raining in all the beaches and hence we could not implement this plan. Suddenly out of nowhere someone suggested we go to Reno, Nevada. It sounded really fascinating and it was just 4 hrs away from San Jose. We picked up Rama from the airport, dropped his luggage at home and left for Reno at around 5 pm on Saturday. The drive was really amazing as we were driving through mountains and it was really beautiful. There were snow covered mountains in between for a while and it was wonderful to see snow covered peaks in the summer.

We reached Reno by around 9:15 pm and went straight to the casino. That’s what Nevada is famous for, GAMBLING!! It was so exciting to go into a casino for the first time; I have only seen them in movies before. My first shot at gambling were the slot machines. The bet was 1 cent and that’s what gave me the courage to go ahead and play. Not to mention that I lost the dollar that I put in, but we went downstairs after that and saw all the tables where poker, blackjack, roulette and dice were being played. The stakes got higher downstairs. The minimum bets in most of the tables were $10 and it was $5 at the roulette table. So by now u must have guesses what my next target was….of course the roulette table. My friends and I did not know how to even play and we stood there watching the other gamble. Eventually we asked a lady how to play and she gave us the rules. Then we made up a strategy to make some money (wtf....we are all engineers really good at math!!) and 3 of us decided to gamble. We put in $5 each and played it all in the roulette. Imagine what, we won $35 in the very first go and the number which won us the money was one of the 5 numbers I chose. I was on top of the world and deicide that we had a very good chance of winning more money. We saved $25 and put in the remaining 25 and guess what, we lost the whole thing in one go! So we came back to our senses and cashed the token worth $25.

Gambling is addictive!! There is no doubt to that. We did not stop with it and went back to the roulette table and thought of a different strategy. We played slowly and took the least risk. After an hour of gambling, we had $62 with us after an investment of $15. That was a great achievement for us amateur gamblers!! The evening was well spent and we had earned the money we spent on gas for the trip. After resting at the hotel, we left for Lake Tahoe which is one of the most beautiful lakes in the west coast. It was a very beautiful drive up the mountains. You must be wondering why climb mountains to get to a lake?? Because the lake was 6225 ft. above sea level and in the midst of snow covered mountains. It suddenly started snowing heavily when we reached an altitude of 8000 ft. It was the end of May and summer has already started, but it was snowing there. We played a little again in the snow (after spending more than 4 mnths in the snow at buffalo). We reached the lake and it was just mind blowing, very beautiful. The mountains were all around it and the sun was shining on it. The weekend was very well spent. One more place explored. We could not take pictures during the trip because we left the memory card of the camera in out laptops back home ( I know its real dumb!!)

Adrion Dacks

2008-05-16T09:57:00.002-07:00

The trip was a wonderful experience in manny aspects. Vaibhav, Nandan and me were on the road continuosly for 48 hrs and then we attended our convocation. After the convocation, we started our trip to Adrion Dacks, a wonderful place with a lot of natural beauty in the norther part of New York. The trip started at around 10 pm and the place was around 4 hrs away. We got pulled over by the cops for the first time almost 3 hrs into the trip. There was no problem with them as we had everything right. Then we reached our hotel pretty late at around 3 am. We all were so tired that we did not care about the view outside and other stuff.

We woke up to a warm and wonderful morning with us staring straight at the lake outside the room. It was amazing and we had never imagined it would be so beautiful. So the day started off very well (probably the best morning in my stay in the US) and we made our plans for the day over breakfast. A steaming cup of coffee and a sandwich started our day. Our first plan for the day was trekking at Mt.Joe. It was a 2972 ft high mountain and was a tough trek.

We reached the base of the mountain and started the trek. We had two options with us, take the short trail(very steep) or the long trail(not so steep). We chose the tougher one - the short trail. It was way too tough than we had imagined and to make matters worse, we carried no water with us and were wearing very heavy clothing!! After making several stops we finally managed to reach the summit. It was beautiful up there and was really worth all the effort. To make it easy on our knees, we took the long trail back to the base.

The next trek was near a waterfall. Before this we stopped at a very beautiful pond called chapel pond. Then the trek to the waterfall and its top was also a very nice experience. By the end of the day we were really tired and had to drive back to syracuse.

Adrion dacks is a very huge place with amazing natural beauty. Located in the northern part of New York, its home to a number of wild animals. The bears are the most famous there. This place has over 3500 bears and has the largest bear population in the US. You can spot deers running around as you drive. This surely was one of the most beautiful places i have been to.

You can check out my pics below

AdrionDacks

Welcome Back!

2008-05-15T07:52:00.002-07:00

Its been a long time since i have written something here. I have been keeping busy with the end semester work like projects, exams n all. But i have done my fair share of travelling this semester. A trip to Toronto, Canada (the link to the pics have been posted too), Pittsburg, Washington DC, Cleveland and the latest one to AdrionDacks. All these places were a different experience. I would share the details in a different post for each of the trips.

Toronto was an amazing experience because i was visiting a different country altogether. This is the second country i have been to (excluding india) and was a very thrilling experience. I dont want the list to stop here and would make an effort to add as many countries as possible. Travelling is my passion and i feel that the exposure and knowledge gained by going to different places is unique and cannot be gathered from anywhere else. My advice to everyone is TRAVEL as much as you can.

2008-03-15T13:50:00.002-07:00

Check out my toronto trip pics at

Toronto

Snowfall

2008-01-23T20:11:00.003-08:00

I had been warned and even scared by people about the severity of the buffalo winter before I came here. In a way I was looking forward to such cold climates and was excited about having snow around for almost 4-5 months. The first snowfall almost 3 mnths back was very beautiful to look at and the first time we had a heavy snowfall, we were bouncing in the snow and snowballing everywhere unable to contain the excitement when the locals here were just going about their work like a very normal day. No wonder because they have been seeing this all their lives. Almost 3 months into the winter, I don’t feel like walking in the snow leave alone jumping around and playing in it. But the snowfall is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

The calm and the beauty of the falling flakes of snow amaze me. I love to take a walk (heavily clad in warm clothing of course) in the snowfall. All surroundings are covered in a white blanket and everything you see is covered in white. I still remember my final semester in college when I and my friends were so adamant on seeing snow that we took a trip to shimla in the winter. In the evening when all the locals were telling us that there is very good probability of the first snowfall of the season that evening, it got us all excited, but eventually let us down. This made our resolve to see snow even stronger and cancelling all our plans in shimla, we set out to a place called narkhanda were there was heavy snowfall the previous night. The 4 hour drive from shimla to narkhanda was getting exciting by the minute. When we first spotted snow along the slopes the feeling was nothing less than ecstasy. We enjoyed the whole afternoon snowballing and skiing. It was time to leave by then. Since then I have been dreaming of staying in a place which has heavy snowfall and is covered in snow for a few months. This is a dream come true.

Dream

2008-01-11T19:38:00.000-08:00

I have a great liking towards Kerala which keeps growing by the day. Wherever I have lived and how much ever fun I have had, I always want to go back to my place and have a peaceful and silent life there. Sometimes I get the feeling that this kind of life is suitable to have a vacation but the very thought of the place and the feeling that I get when I think of the place is not describable. This gives me the confidence that some day I would surely want to settle down there.

The land of literacy, temples, greenery and the beautiful Malayalam language is what describes the land in full. I have seen quite a bit of it but still want to see more and in fact want to stay there for a long period of time. I keep havin dreams all the time...this is the latest one!!

My new IPOD

2008-01-08T16:51:00.000-08:00

I got my new silver colored IPod nano today....man...i just love it!! its got amazing new feature like search, photos, videos etc. I am totally in love with it now...my life has just got a little peppier and happier after the boring vacation that i spent in buffalo...

i love the cover display feature...i gotta go now...listen to my new IPod...

What am i passionate about?

2007-12-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

My views in life have changed a lot after coming to the US. Have I grown mature or is it just a temporary change of view is not clear. Meeting a lot of new people who are extremely different from the ones I have met my entire life might be the cause for the change in me. I was speaking to this colleague of mine who is probably the weirdest kind even in America. He tells the same thing too but his way of living is what makes him happy and that’s why he does that. What is different about the people here are that they do things which make them happy and pursue their interests with vigor. There surely is the other kind too. When I started thinking, what is the passion that would make me honestly happy if I pursue it, I could not find an answer as I really don’t know what I am passionate about. I feel this is the case with almost everyone I know who are from India. We pursue what can give us a successful career and can earn us loads of money. Is that the passion in us?

How many of us have heard someone tell us that their ambition in life is to become a teacher or a counselor or an artist? Here when you ask people what they want to do after their bachelors degree, they come out with so many professions which are passionate to them like being a teacher or a counselor. In India these are the people who wanted to be something else but ended up in that position because they have no other choice. Almost everyone wants to become an engineer, doctor or a pilot, not because this is their sincere passion but because these are the jobs which can make u rich. One interesting incident happened one day at work. I was talking to another colleague and he was asking me about where I am from and what course am I doing and stuff. When I told him that I am from India and doing my masters in engineering, he immediately asked me if all Indians were so passionate about engineering. I frankly had no honest answer and he saved me by saying that it is a good field to choose because it gets you rich. He then told me about another Indian whom he knew. He was telling me how crazy people can get. The guy he knew was doing his masters in electrical engineering and he was bent upon doing an MBA after graduating. My colleague was shocked as to how a person can shift to another major after spending 6 years of his life in working on one. That truly is the case.

I just wish that I find out what is that I am really passionate about very soon. Even though I will not be able to pursue it if I ever found out it was not engineering, I am just too curious to know what it is and how different my life would have been had I pursued it.

American Gangster

2007-12-10T20:27:00.001-08:00

It’s a wonderful movie and has cast has the best names in the business-Denzel Washington and Russel Crowe. I would have watched the movie just for the star cast…The movie is about an Afro-American drug dealer Frank Lucas (Denzel) who starts off as an assistant to an Italian mafia family member. After the death of the guy he works for, he realizes the amount of money he could make in the drug business. The film goes smoothly showing how he obtains the drugs in the coffins of dead American soldiers from Thailand. That’s the beginning of Blue Magic (that’s what he calls the coke packets), the cheapest n best stuff in the market.

Russel Crowe plays a detective who is after the drug lords. He finds out about Denzel Washington and goes after him. The movie is based on a real life story. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and never got bored in the 2 hrs, a very good relief from the daily work. Now that my final exams are on, I should rather be sittin and studying. Bye bye….

Complicated Name

2007-12-03T20:25:00.000-08:00

An Indian guy named "Anantharaman Subbaraman" arrived at the New York airport and ended up waiting for his visa for about 2 hours for the authorities to call his name. He got fed up and went to them and asked why they haven't called his name yet.

They said that they have been calling him for the last 2 hours as * * * * * * "Anotherman Superman"

The Big Apple

2007-11-30T12:24:00.000-08:00

Imagine standing in a place where every building at a visible radius is a sky scraper and you literally have to look up vertically to see the top of these buildings…think that’s not possible? Then the place you have to visit is the Big Apple or New York City. The drive from buffalo to NYC took us around 6 hrs and the excitement was building all along. We could spot the sky scrapers from a long distance and the excitement peaked. Yes, we were in New York City. The city of dreams as many would like to call it. NYC is the combination of 5 islands namely Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten. Manhattan is the hub of financial activities and is the island where the famous world trade centre once stood.

We headed to Times Square as soon as we reached NYC. The nickname “The city that never sleeps” is perfectly true and we could witness it. We reached the place around midnight and it was as crowded as any Indian market would be in its peak time and the beauty of the place is unmatchable. The area gets its name from the famous New York daily “New York Times” which has its office in one of the sky scrapers there. The place was highly illuminated with hoardings and banners. The NASDAQ office, Madame Tussads, JVC Studios etc. all have their presence in this area. Walking along the roads there by itself was an amazing experience. By the time we finished walking and were feeling a little tired, it was almost 3am. The crowd never subsided and I could make out the time only by looking at my watch. There was no other way one could make out how much time they have spent walking the streets and getting drawn into the beauty.

The next day we started off with visiting the site where the world trade center once stood. By just looking at the area of land on which it stood, we could figure out how immense a structure it was. A new building called “Freedom Towers” and a memorial for the people who lost their lives is being constructed there. The freedom tower is supposed to be the tallest building in the world when it opens in 2011. Then we saw the American Stock Exchange and many other buildings in the area. The amazing part was that wherever you were in Manhattan, the Empire State Building was visible. The funny thing about the place is that even though the building you want to go is visible, one has to take the subway trains to reach them as they really would not be in walking distance. The buildings are so high that they could be seen from a long distance. We then walked to Battery Park, from where we could board the ferry to view the Statue of Liberty. The line was so long that we decided against taking the ferry and enjoyed the view of the lady from the park.

The Brooklyn Bridge is another major attraction that any tourist should not miss. The bridge is a masterpiece with its breathtaking view of river Hudson. This bridge connects the islands of Manhattan and Brooklyn. We walked across Wall St., Broadway etc. and finally came to the famous empire state building. The view was exhilarating with the building illuminated. But the thing I can never forget is the view of the Manhattan skyline in the night. It’s one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen. Watching the beauty of the skyscrapers in the night is an experience in itself.

Thinking Different

2007-11-14T23:00:00.000-08:00

Freakonomics is a nice book by a leading economist called Steven Levitt. This book describes the use of economics to find answers to various questions in the real world which cannot otherwise be answered and even if answered is not very convincing. I read this book a couple of months back and was very impressed by the authors thinking and use of economics in the real world scenario. I don’t have much knowledge of economics but am pretty sure that it has never been used for such purposes or at least I have never heard of anything. The book is very impressive and convincing in relating the strangest possible things to each other like a school teacher and sumo wrestlers, legalized abortion and crime rates etc.

I was very excited to hear the author speak as a part of the Distinguished Speaker Series in my university (University at Buffalo). He was a very polished speaker who knew very well to keep the audience engaged with his humor and stage presence. He started off with a small story about a man called John Yeutter who worked in the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) as an accountant. John’s duty was to scan the tax forms to find out people who were cheating. He was very curious about the strange names that many children had like ‘Single’ etc. When the number kept growing he proposed to his seniors that a column could be added to the tax form where the social security numbers of the children have to be mentioned. His managers thought about it and came to a conclusion that it was not necessary. US were facing a huge deficit in those days and something had to be done. When he again came up with the suggestions to his managers, they implemented the idea and because of this the country was earning almost 2 billion dollars a year. All the fake children vanished and he funnily mentioned it as almost 7 million children disappeared in a single year. The author’s family was also a part of this and he lost a brother and sister in the same year. His point was that by looking at things differently, answers to many of our questions can be found.

He then went on to speak of a part from his book where he writes about the gangs in Chicago and their crack business. He described how one of his co authors became a part of the street gangs in the process of studying them. That person was doing his doctorate and having fun with the gang at the same time. The entire speech was pretty much based on this part of the book. His latest research about prostitution and applying economics to it sounded very interesting. He came up with a lot of shocking facts that have surfaced from his research. One of this is that the number of police officers sleeping with a prostitute on duty in a single day is more than the number of people they arrest on the same day. The call girls are being exploited by the on duty police men. Another interesting comparison he made based on this research was the kind of activities the people visiting these prostitutes expect to do these days compared to the early 20s. The number of call girls is pretty much the same but the acts they are expected to do are very different. These days only the weirdest things are expected compared to conventional sex during the earlier days. He says this is because of the increasing pre marital sex among the people. The people are able to satisfy their normal desires with their partner at a much earlier age and hence the only ones going to the prostitutes are the kinky kind. One interesting fact that i observed from his speech was that both the gang leader and the prostitute were college graduates working in huge corporations who left their job for a "prosperous career path"!! Tha local gang leader was making around 100,000$/year and the call girl was making a whooping 250,000$/year by just working for around 10 hrs a week.

Then he spoke about a particular experiment that his colleague, a Nobel laureate conducted as a part of his study of human nature. It involved many groups of 2 people in which one acted as a dictator and the other as a normal person. The dictator was given 20$ and the other person 10$ initially. The dictator can give the other person up to 10$.By the results of this experiment it was learnt that people are not so bad, they did give out a little money. There was only around 10% who gave nothing. Then the rules were changed a little bit as to the dictator can give up to 10$ or if he wants can take away a dollar. The results were quite different compared to the previous one. Many people did not give any money nor did they take away any. Now around 60% gave away nothing and around 10% took away a dollar from the other person. The rules were altered even further and now both the dictator and the other person were given 10$ each. The dictator could take away or give as much money as he wanted. The results were shocking! The 10% who gave nothing or took away the one dollar, snatched the entire 10 dollars and around 60% took something. His conclusion from this experiment was that people act according to the pressure on them. When they were supposed to give money, most of them thought as to what amount if given away would not make them look cheap in the eyes of the person conducting the experiment. When they could take away money, they thought in a similar fashion. The way people come up with such experiments and derive valid results from them is what fascinates me.

The point he was emphasizing through his research is that we need not think really out of the box to find solutions to many problems, but we just need to think about what we see every day. The speech was really wonderful and very enjoyable. Not a single minute during entire 90 minutes was boring. This surely has encouraged me to look at things with a different perspective rather than the same conventional manner. If there is data to support your thoughts, even better!

KERALA - Paradise

2007-11-10T17:50:00.000-08:00

Gods Own Country - any person with a taste for Indian travel can relate this phrase to Kerala. Kerala, the land of the backwaters, coconut trees, its greenery and of course its literacy rate, is worth every praise showered on it by the travelers from across the globe. Being a keralite, I hadn’t realized the beauty of the state till a few days back when I travelled the most acclaimed tourist spots. I have never really been so much in sync with nature and its beauty until I visited munnar, thekkady, alleppy and kalady. It’s the perfect getaway for a week of absolute relaxation and rejuvenation. It’s the perfect way to destress and relax. My trip started off with munnar, kodaikanal, thekkady, a day in the house boat at alleppy and ending it with kalady.

We took the road from coimbatore to munnar. The 5 hr ride slowly builds up the excitement which reaches its pinnacle when the tea gardens start appearing. The road from coimbatore to munnar passes through the chinnar wild life sanctuary which is the home to many wild animals like deers, elephants, tigers, boars etc. One can spot deers and elephants on the way and an occasional lucky traveler can lay his eyes on a wandering tiger. The tamil nadu-kerala border is in between the sanctuary and the road starts winding and climbing up slowly once u enter kerala. It’s a feast for the eyes for those who are very interested in plants and birds. One can spot many varieties of plants and birds along the road. Having a driver who has spent most of his life in these places really helps as he is as good a guide and he recites his old experiences and identifies the plants and birds for you. You encounter a number of waterfalls on the way and in summers these are reduced to a mere trickle or in some cases even barren rocks. So the ideal time to get the best out of the trip would be once the rainy season ends i.e. september to february. After around 3.5 hrs into the journey one can witness the beauty of the tea gardens. This continues till munnar and beyond. The road is extremely beautiful running between the tea gardens. It looks like a green blanket covering the hills. The tea cultivators have done an extremely good job in making use of every inch of cultivable land and maintaining it in a very fantastic manner. The beauty of these tea gardens if from the way they are cut and maintained giving it the blanket look. There are a number of trees which bear lovely flowers among the gardens further enhancing their beauty. It’s a treat to watch these in full bloom, luckily which I could experience.

Munnar is a very small town whose local population consists of the tea factory employees and these days the guides and other people in the tourism industry. Munnar has been a popular tourist destination only for the past decade and its USP is the tea cultivation. One can never get tired of watching endless tea estates everywhere in and around the place. The very informative driver was an added advantage as he was providing us with loads of details about the place, how everything began, how things are changing etc. Munnar was discovered by the britishers in early 1800s for their want of cooler climatic conditions. They started growing tea in these areas which doubled this place as a holiday destination as well as an economic bonus. The majestic bungalows in the midst of the vast tea estates are where the british officers had their fun. I absolutely admire their taste in life. Coming back to the travel details, reached the resort late in the afternoon. I started to get the feel of an ideal holiday beginning. The serene skies and the green surroundings were mesmerizing. Breathing the fresh unpolluted air and watching the never ending line of stars in the night sky has kind of become a distant dream for the city dwellers. There are various places in and around munnar which would excite any traveler. The matupatty dam is an hour drive from the town and satisfies what a regular tourist is looking for. Speed boating, a good view of the hills surrounding the water body and an occasional sighting of wild elephants. When you travel further down the same road a very beautiful photo point has been created. The tea gardens are so beautifully maintained with the backdrop of a barren mountain with tall tress in regular intervals adding to the entire picture.

Help the poor

2007-03-19T01:30:00.000-07:00

Do visit this link and help the needy. All u need to do is register for the free newsletter and UNICEF will donate $5 to the fund. The link is

http://friends.unicefusa.org/r/655289242744102aa29c

An attempt to be better

2007-03-09T02:43:00.000-08:00

This is NOT my first attempt at blogging. Are you tickling ur gray cells as to where have u read my blog, dont try too hard as very few would who knew something like that even existed would have even bothered to read it. I in fact had posted 2 articles in my blog and when I read them for the second time after a few days I realised that they were pathetic and were just written at that moment for the sake of writing something. This time its much more sincere and there are a few things I would like to write about. This is what has made me come back to blogging, something I was not going to tread again. one main reason that I was never fascinated by blogging was the amount of patience one needs to write a genuine article and the kind of thoughts that should occur to pen down stuff about certain topics. Another main reason that I did not start blogging much earlier was my inability to come up with a very catchy name for the blog page which I felt was very important.If u are thinking that I have finally come up with something like that then u are mistaken. while writing this I havent even thought of what name the page is gonna have. What strikes me at the instant I create my own page and post this article there would be the name.

Me and Pallav had a serious debate as to what exactly does one write blogs for? My point was that one writes for their happiness and this I feel is a forum for expressing ones thoughts without the fear of the society and various other factors. He was of the opinion that a blog should be really attractive and written such that a large number of people should feel happy when they read the blog. His opinion was that one should write stuff that appeals to a larger audience and which they feel they can associate with. My idea of an audience was that once u write something that u genuinely feel, the audience will come on their own and u need not go looking for them. The blogging community is so huge that u can find hundreds of opinions similar to yours and when they read the way u feel about something, they can associate with u and that serves the entire purpose. A blog should be more of a reflection of your thoughts and ways rather than being just an attractive show piece.

There are so many interesting things happening in my life that I thought I can write about them. When I was desperately trying to write a few articles a year ago for my unsuccessful blog, I could actually come up with nothing so interesting. But till a few days back when I had no ideas of having my own blog page, many thoughts were flowing in and I could start thinking of interesting things I could actually write about. So now starts my journey into the blogging community. I really hope to come out with a lot of articles. I really hope this interest and patience continues.

Now when I am again thinking of a name for my blog I am getting new ideas. I feel that the name of the page should reflect the thinking and the attitude of the author. I am just rambling on and on and on. I am not sure when this confusion is gonna end!!