One measure of how bad economy is by observing how people are behaving. I live in an apartment complex. It has several trash cans. Earlier i used to see that typically poor people (they are carrying a shopping cart, and wearing shabby clothes) came to pickup the bottles and other recyclable items from the trash cans. I guess they use to sell it at recycle centers. But lately i see a different trend. I see people coming in cars to pick those bottles. And these are relatively good looking cars. So it makes me wonder what has changed. Is the recycling that profitable these days or simply people are anyhow struggling to survive.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Is recession ending??
Lately some good news is coming out. Hong Kong has shown signs of economic growth. Recent news from Japan also indicates that maybe world is finally coming out of danger. For the past couple of months stocks everywhere also has gone up. But i don't really believe that stock fluctuation can be a reliable metric of change.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Friday, August 14, 2009
Latest from Opportunity
It is simply fascinating how advance and exciting work the space engineers are doing. Today i got this picture taken by Opportunity rover from Mars. This one is taken on July 18, 2009. It is simply amazing to know that Opportunity was launched on Mars on Jan 25, 2004 and since then it has been sending us pictures. Hats off to all the persons involved in this project. More details can be found out here.
Monday, August 10, 2009
Bihar Samaj Picnic 2009
Yesterday we had a very fun time at Picnic in Lake Elizabeth Park. We played lots of games had good food and interacted with many people.Link to other pics.
Sunday, August 9, 2009
Saturday, August 8, 2009
Friday, August 7, 2009
Book Reading : "Snowball"
First time i heard the name "Warren Buffet" was from my friend Trilok Agrawal (aka TK from ITBHU days). He was then studying management at IIT Kharagpur and was planning to come to US to somehow meet him. So he was telling me he is coming to meet him, and my question to him was who is this fellow? TK was shocked to find that i don't know him despite having been in US for couple of years now. Anyways his plan didn't materialize and this was my way of knowing about him.
After that i did little bit of research on Warren and found out that he is a person who has become rich by investing in stocks. Then from here and there i got tits and bits of information about him. Mostly by chatting with my friends.
Last year i got to know that a book has been written on his life and i got curious to read about this book. I looked up on internet and its price was not in my reach. So i reserved it in Fremont library. I was surprised to find that i am 46th person waiting for this book. Eventually after about 5 months i got the email that this book is available for me. That has been my highest wait time for any book from library.
Wow this book is amazingly thick. 838 pages to be exact. If i were not that interested and curious by so many people wanting to read this book, i would have never thought about reading such thick book.
Anyways i started it, and believe me it is very interesting from the very first page. I have been reading it page by page during weekends and night time during weekdays. So far i have been able to reach the section where Warren has already built a good set of partnership and is working with Charlie Munger. And it is about 25 % of the book. Alas library gives you only 3 weeks to read a book, and my time is up. I have to return it tomorrow as it is already on hold. I will recommend this book to everyone, and i am going to put it on request as soon as i return it.
After that i did little bit of research on Warren and found out that he is a person who has become rich by investing in stocks. Then from here and there i got tits and bits of information about him. Mostly by chatting with my friends.
Last year i got to know that a book has been written on his life and i got curious to read about this book. I looked up on internet and its price was not in my reach. So i reserved it in Fremont library. I was surprised to find that i am 46th person waiting for this book. Eventually after about 5 months i got the email that this book is available for me. That has been my highest wait time for any book from library.
Wow this book is amazingly thick. 838 pages to be exact. If i were not that interested and curious by so many people wanting to read this book, i would have never thought about reading such thick book.
Anyways i started it, and believe me it is very interesting from the very first page. I have been reading it page by page during weekends and night time during weekdays. So far i have been able to reach the section where Warren has already built a good set of partnership and is working with Charlie Munger. And it is about 25 % of the book. Alas library gives you only 3 weeks to read a book, and my time is up. I have to return it tomorrow as it is already on hold. I will recommend this book to everyone, and i am going to put it on request as soon as i return it.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
Good news from Kolkata
Just now read this good news. Looks like government in India is getting serious on pollution issues. It is really a great news for people in India and planet earth in general. By imposing ban on very old commercial vehicles, i am sure it will improve air quality. But at the same time it will also help in preventing so many auto related accidents. I think government should also impose smog test rules on all the vehicles.
My new dell laptop - bad and miserable.
Couple of months ago, i bought a new dell laptop. It is Inspiron 1500 series. I had bought last laptop from dell too. That was in 2004. It was also an Inspiron machine. I have been very happy with its performance. Even now it is serving all my purpose of checking emails. I do some programming on it too. For this laptop i never had to talk to dell technical support guys once. I was so happy with its performance that i recommended it to my younger brother and my brother in law in India.
Now coming back to my new laptop. With totally satisfied from my past experience, i bought this one with cool features. It has integrated bluetooth, in built webcam, 500 GB hard disk, 4 GB RAM, dual core machine. I have bought 1 year at home service warranty too. To make my wife happy i even paid little extra money to get it in red color. Boy lookwise it looks great. But that is where i stop praising it. Looks like Dell is going very easy on the performance testing of its machine.
In the past 3 months i had to call dell tech support many times. First time microphone stopped working. Second time somehow the place where we insert power supply became loose. If anyone had tried to convince the support guys that it is not your fault that it is not working, i totally feel their pain. And everytime they try to sell me the extended warranty. As if they have built the faulty machine for purpose, just to squeeze my money.
Now the machine freezes very frequently and both me and my wife are trying to regain our energy to talk to the tech support.
I am not going to recommend any one again about dell anymore.
Now coming back to my new laptop. With totally satisfied from my past experience, i bought this one with cool features. It has integrated bluetooth, in built webcam, 500 GB hard disk, 4 GB RAM, dual core machine. I have bought 1 year at home service warranty too. To make my wife happy i even paid little extra money to get it in red color. Boy lookwise it looks great. But that is where i stop praising it. Looks like Dell is going very easy on the performance testing of its machine.
In the past 3 months i had to call dell tech support many times. First time microphone stopped working. Second time somehow the place where we insert power supply became loose. If anyone had tried to convince the support guys that it is not your fault that it is not working, i totally feel their pain. And everytime they try to sell me the extended warranty. As if they have built the faulty machine for purpose, just to squeeze my money.
Now the machine freezes very frequently and both me and my wife are trying to regain our energy to talk to the tech support.
I am not going to recommend any one again about dell anymore.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
Indian Budget 2009 and Stimulus for print media
Source : http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/4744252.cms
It is surprising to see that government is providing stimulus to print media. The question is why? What general good it will bring to us? Print media is failing everywhere. The news they provide is already outdated. New generation is less and less dependent on them for information. Failure of print media is not only limited to India, it is happening everywhere. If they cannot sustain themselves, let them reorganize themselves or fail. It is not tax payers duty to save them.
It is surprising to see that government is providing stimulus to print media. The question is why? What general good it will bring to us? Print media is failing everywhere. The news they provide is already outdated. New generation is less and less dependent on them for information. Failure of print media is not only limited to India, it is happening everywhere. If they cannot sustain themselves, let them reorganize themselves or fail. It is not tax payers duty to save them.
Friday, June 19, 2009
Blackberry Experience
Lately i have been involved in working on a J2ME application which runs on sprint network. This application was built for a Motorola handset and i was asked to make some feature enhancements. So far so good. I have delivered the build and everyone is happy.
Now i have been asked to port this application to a blackberry device and here come the worries. This phone has OS of version 4.6.1
1) File handling issues.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=java_dev&message.id=40896#M40896
The way files are organized in blackberry is quite different that other J2ME handset. It took me a while to figure out where can i look at the file created by the application. I was using /home/user as the URL. It seemed to work fine on the emulator as in the application i was able to see that i have been successful in writing to a file and from other part of the application i was able to read the content. But on the device it was throwing Security Exception.
It took me 3-4 days and countless google search to realize that you need to sign the .cod file using blackberry signature tool before it is usable at the device. So if someone who is new at blackberry and trying out file handling don't forget to sign it.
Now to look at the file you have created. Click on the option button from main menu. Now select folder "media". Selection option button again and pick "explore". Now you will see "DeviceMemory". Inside device memory there is "home" and inside "home" you will see "user" folder. You see it is not so easy to find this directory.
2) HTTP Connection issue.
In this application i post some data to a server (php page) and then read the data returned by the server. It works perfectly fine on the emulator and motorola handset. So there must be something special needs to be done at blackberry. If you have solved it please drop a note. I have posted it at blackberry forum too.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=java_dev&thread.id=43155
Now i have been asked to port this application to a blackberry device and here come the worries. This phone has OS of version 4.6.1
1) File handling issues.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=java_dev&message.id=40896#M40896
The way files are organized in blackberry is quite different that other J2ME handset. It took me a while to figure out where can i look at the file created by the application. I was using /home/user as the URL. It seemed to work fine on the emulator as in the application i was able to see that i have been successful in writing to a file and from other part of the application i was able to read the content. But on the device it was throwing Security Exception.
It took me 3-4 days and countless google search to realize that you need to sign the .cod file using blackberry signature tool before it is usable at the device. So if someone who is new at blackberry and trying out file handling don't forget to sign it.
Now to look at the file you have created. Click on the option button from main menu. Now select folder "media". Selection option button again and pick "explore". Now you will see "DeviceMemory". Inside device memory there is "home" and inside "home" you will see "user" folder. You see it is not so easy to find this directory.
2) HTTP Connection issue.
In this application i post some data to a server (php page) and then read the data returned by the server. It works perfectly fine on the emulator and motorola handset. So there must be something special needs to be done at blackberry. If you have solved it please drop a note. I have posted it at blackberry forum too.
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=java_dev&thread.id=43155
Monday, June 8, 2009
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
Kindle DX
Today Amazon announced the launch of Kindle DX. It makes me happy to know that now it has support for pdf documents. But one thing it still annoys me is why do amazon require us to send the documents to them. Why can't we simply upload it using USB, when it is rechargeable using USB. At $489 it is out of my budget anyways. So i guess i will have to wait for some other device which is cheap and satisfies my complain. Sony are you listening??
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Labors of life
These are the days I struggled.
The freedom only brought pain and trouble.
These shoes are worn to the sole.
This hard work has mean, i gave it all.
These are the times that i got tough.
I wanted to go back home, i had enough.
---------------
PS: I have borrowed this poem from Yaser (A high school student from Fremont)
The freedom only brought pain and trouble.
These shoes are worn to the sole.
This hard work has mean, i gave it all.
These are the times that i got tough.
I wanted to go back home, i had enough.
---------------
PS: I have borrowed this poem from Yaser (A high school student from Fremont)
Monday, March 2, 2009
Good lines from movie
There are moments which mark your life. Moments when you realize nothing will ever be the same and time is divided into two parts. Before this and after this. Sometimes you can feel such a moment coming. That's the test. Oh so i tell myself. I tell myself, at times like that, strong people keep moving anyway. No matter what they are going to find.
Denzel Washington (Fallen)
Denzel Washington (Fallen)
Monday, February 23, 2009
Oscar 2009
I am a movie fan. Well a little movie addict. So to watch Oscar ceremony is a something which should be done. Further this year it was special because there were high hopes of A R Rehman will win the prestigious award.
I don't have a cable connection so i rely on my indoor antenna to get the tv reception. The ceremony was on Channel ABC and it took me some positioning and tuning to get the channel in a decent state. I am sure Anshu (my wife) will not be happy when she notices that the antenna is still lying on the chair, instead of its position on the top of tv :-)
Anyways the award ceremony began. I was ready with netflix website to order the dvds of movies which i haven't seen in theater. I did add a few movies. Most of them were already in the queue. Meanwhile i was also busy in setting my gmail status to the whatever current event happening at oscar (as if all the people in world are looking at my status message to find the exclusive news of oscar). The proud moment came when "Smile Pinki" won the award. I immediately pinged few friends and emailed some more to let them know about it (sorry guys i was high !!!). And then when AR Rahman got two awards it was just awesome. Me, my wife and my mother in law all were very excited. With our cumulative excitement even my 5 month old son got excited. And thus it ended. Now admitting my guilt, i haven't seen Slumdog yet and plan to do that as soon as it is released in DVD.
I don't have a cable connection so i rely on my indoor antenna to get the tv reception. The ceremony was on Channel ABC and it took me some positioning and tuning to get the channel in a decent state. I am sure Anshu (my wife) will not be happy when she notices that the antenna is still lying on the chair, instead of its position on the top of tv :-)
Anyways the award ceremony began. I was ready with netflix website to order the dvds of movies which i haven't seen in theater. I did add a few movies. Most of them were already in the queue. Meanwhile i was also busy in setting my gmail status to the whatever current event happening at oscar (as if all the people in world are looking at my status message to find the exclusive news of oscar). The proud moment came when "Smile Pinki" won the award. I immediately pinged few friends and emailed some more to let them know about it (sorry guys i was high !!!). And then when AR Rahman got two awards it was just awesome. Me, my wife and my mother in law all were very excited. With our cumulative excitement even my 5 month old son got excited. And thus it ended. Now admitting my guilt, i haven't seen Slumdog yet and plan to do that as soon as it is released in DVD.
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Life in Saudi Arabia
The following text is copied from an article in The Economist.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made the most thorough reshuffle of his government since assuming the throne in 2005. He promoted reformers, sacked reactionaries and appointed his first-ever female minister, for women’s education. But women are still not allowed to drive a car.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia made the most thorough reshuffle of his government since assuming the throne in 2005. He promoted reformers, sacked reactionaries and appointed his first-ever female minister, for women’s education. But women are still not allowed to drive a car.
Monday, February 16, 2009
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