2008 Gadget Recap

I am not a big gadget lover. At least that is what I used to think of myself. But my friends think otherwise. Sometimes I even get few calls from friend's friends who want me to give a piece of advice on how a particular camcorder model works. While admitting I never bought a camcorder in my life till recently, I still do lot of research skimming through 100s of forum posts, reviews, blogs and suggest few best picks for them to choose. May be I am more curious of the specs of a piece of hardware than using that in real life. Coming to this post, I want to list the gear I purchased this year 2008 to see if I qualify to become one.

Lenovo S10 Netbook - This I should say I did not buy for myself. But I gifted this to my mummy. She wanted a light weight notebook and nothing seemed better than this. With 1 GB RAM, 1.6 GHz processor, I found it really sufficient for my everyday usage.

Canon HG-20 Like I said earlier, I do not have a camcorder (I dont want to consider my Casio Exilim which shoots some average video). My wife insisted that I should buy one. I found this Canon model has the best price-feature-convenience ratio amongst the consumer HD models. And it did not disappoint me. My only complaint about this model is video editing. All the three laptops I own cannot even open a 5 minute video shot at 24 MBPS - thanks to AVCHD.

iphone 3G I already blogged about this purchase. It is one product I found very useful, be it twitterrifc or Amazon or my banking app, working on iphone is a breeze. With it's superb Exchange ActiveSync, I could access all my work and personal email in one standard interface.

I also bought a new rucksack KATA DR-467 that will help me carry my SLR along with my laptop whereever I go. While I find my iphone 3G good for cool casual pictures, nothing like a Digital SLR with it's large lens and larger sensor. This Kata was available for 59$ instead of regular 79$ and free 2 day shipping by air. I could not resist the deal. It is superb quality bag and built like a tank. Interestingly, Kata has some roots in the same lab/group that developed millitary gear for special units.

This year is much better than last year where I went to but a HDMI cable and came home with a laptop and DVD player or 2004 when I went to Tampa Bay Downs, saw a Nikon D70S from my photographer friend Whillemina and ended up ordering myself. And dont even get started on my Panasonic HDTV 26" purchase in 2005, the same amount if I pay now, I will get a 42". (Is Moore's law applicable for HDTVs..I think so).

Coming into 2009, I do have some purchases planned. I want to upgrade my TV to a 50" HDTV. I also wish to get a home theater. May be Santa will listen to this.

My Movie - The Motorcycle Diaries

First, the movie is a straight forward one. No heroism, no guns, no SFX, no thread fights, no sex. It is a bland yet brilliantly honest presentation of life of Ernesto "Che" Guevara during his early 20s. The film itself is an adaptation of the book with the same name. Che goes on an motorbike tour with his friend, Alberto. The locales are original, the San Pablo leper colony scene is also wonderful. The farewell speech at the leper colony is a bit political. It is an interesting movie. I recommend it as it is more humanist than communist movie. Well I dont know what Che's soul might be feeling, if it knows that his photo is doing millions of dollars business....err evil capitalist businesses ;-)

Thanks APTECH

When I look back in my career, there are certain decisions which I felt were bad after I took in short outlook, but they proved to be great in long run.

This story goes back to 1994, when I did not get a seat in Engineering (BE/BTech). Well if you know the charged atmosphere in 1994, it seemed to be a bad bad thing. Then one of my good friends Sameer told me that he is writing an aptitude test at APTECH, Nellore and that they will waive the fees based on what we score. We both promptly wrote the exam and got 50% discount in fees. After 50% discount also the fee is quite high - around 15,000 Rs. But we both were charmed by tie clad instructors, OHP class rooms, clean AC Lab (of course running MS-DOS 5). There used to be 3 hours per week classroom instruction and unlimited lab. We used lab extensively, often playing computer games. Then I got a chance to meet Vijay, one brilliant chap who introduced me to C Language. We both bought "Let Us C" by Yashwant Kanetkar. We did overnight reading of the entire book and within next week, we purchased "Pointers in C". Then Vijay infected me with another series of books including TSR (Terminate and Stay Resident)programs. That made me a mini hacker in Aptech, and was almost kicked out of the institute when I put a TSR in the autoexec.bat and it never allowed to boot. For all the pranks I played, I had terrible guilt. I was not thinking of any career.

After that I got a bit serious and joined JNTU College of Engineering, Anantapur for MCA(Master of Computer Applications) degree. It is big college with huge buildings and very scarce manpower. We are again forced to do our first practical lab exam on paper. Imagine the plight. But there again APTECH helped me. I continued the left out course from APTECH Nellore at APTECH Anantapur. There I could use lab until we got our Windows NT lab at our college (by Sem 4). Aptech Anantapur was less glamorous and instructors are just passed out engineering grads, waiting to enter IT industry. Almost everyone who can spell software used to get H1B for Y2K those days.

With that background when I joined IT industry in 1999, I found every single thing I studied helpful. Be it my MCA project at Syntel or the architecture I had to create. I dont claim it to be cutting edge design, but the fundamentals I learned about computers in 1994 were helping me do things fast. It was like a smooth ride to open any technology be it J2EE/ EJB or Threading or working as fill-in DBA in Informix, there seemed to be nothing that I found difficult.

Thanks Aptech and thanks Daddy and Mummy for paying such exuberant fees for the financial difficulties you had. It is never a waste of money.

I am not sure how Aptech or other institutes are doing these days.

My dad joined blogosphere

It needed a little pursuance and around 15 minutes of explaining terms and creating the Blogger account, my Daddy finally decided to blog. For an avid reader of different books and a classic movie freak, I am eager to follow his blogs.

And thanks to Sukumar's appa for the motivation.

Check this out http://nellorian.blogspot.com/

Big UAT coming up

We created a new and pretty portal for one of our clients. What is unique about this is it is all about social networking. Employees of my client can use this site to blog, subscribe to RSS feeds, add friends to their network, personalize their home page etc. After gruel system testing, we will launch it into UAT mode next week. Pre UAT tasks include SSO enabling, Search integration with Endeca and bunch of configuration changes to the JVM settings. Performance testing is pending and that scares me a lot. But our team is confident that they will benchmark before release. I already increased heap size and also made GC parallel to use the two CPU cores.

Next release include enabling wikis, streaming server integration etc. Third step (in 2009) is retiring the old system and migrating the whole data from old system to new system.

Quite thrilled.

Truth and Love, once an year

Executive Compensation

I think if the executive compensation (variable component like bonuses and stock option exercising is spread over long term (around 4 years rather than annual), there may be incentive for these people to think strategically and not gamble with investments. But well..I dont know if free market economy champions agree to such things.

Money is somewhere

Who benefited from Sub-prime Mortgage Crisis? Whatever way I think, it seemed the biggest beneficiaries are realtors, mortgage brokers, builders and building industry? They must have got their cut long back? (and might have lost if they had pumped all their income into the market again).

Home owners - Lost their fortune. Their equity sometimes became negative.
Primary lenders - sold off their loans to secondary lenders. (but may have enough sub-prime mortgages in hand that needs to be disposed off)
Secondary lenders - Sitting on those loans which are getting foreclosed. Nobody will be ready to buy white elephants.
Innovative banking firms - who convert everything from baby puke to old mans worn out shirt into securities and traded them enthusiastically.
AIG like firms - invested in such securities
Shareholders- having positions in such firms
Bond holders - based on the company bonds of such companies
Retirement Investments like 401(k) - who invested in instruments having exposure to such companies and worse mortgage based securities themselves.

So, what is lost is a dream I think. Somewhere money is safe. Our optimism about the growth of money is shattered. Well isn't that not recession?

Black Monday

It happened as expected. After a querter of uncertainty, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. What it means is that their assets are less valued than their liabilities and that they will not get fresh infusion of funding from its creditors(other Wall Street Banks). Now the next steps will be Court appointing an examiner, credit board, filing of all assets and liabilities and plan for reorganization etc. None of the really bring back a historical Wall Street firm. Too bad..

The other news is Meryl Lynch being bought over by BoA. Two major investment banks out of the Wall Street landscape over 1 week end. That is preceeded by Freddie and Fannie merger, and a quarter back Bear Sterns buyout. This is definitely a very crucial time for American (and also global) financial markets.

There will be important lessons that can be learnt from any event. If I predict correct, for this sub-prime mortogage crisis, it could be "Never be too greedy".

On the side note, one friend of mine told last monday that he bought Fannie Mae stock for 2K $ the Friday before the merger weekend. Another friend of friend bought 2.5 K $ worth of LB stock on last Friday. This is nothing but financial stupidity. During such hard year when market is unpredictable, when even pros are scared to trade, what made these amateurs go and buy such stock is greed. Dont fall for it. It is not worth it.

Format Wars

Very interesting read about current wars DC versus AC. I wonder how people will feel about Betamax versus VHS or HDDVD vesus Blueray format wars 100 years from now.

My iphone 3g story

I went to window shopping iPhone and ended up buying one. First I used it for 10 minutes. I felt it very userfriendly compared to my T-Mobile Dash. It's internet browsing experience on wi-fi is second to none. 3-g speed on AT&T is OK. YouTube videos are great. I also found App Store with 100s of free apps very cool. When I called T-Mobile to check if my wife's contract is over, they told that even I am outside contract. Amusing..Then I found that that day is the last day of the current billing cycle. I would call it divine intervention (LOL). I went into store again and encountered a smart orange tshirt clad, what Apple calls 'genius'. He seemed to know all about Apple products and very less about ATT plans which Apple mandates to sell. I bought the iphone and the whole process of credit checking, number porting, and credit card swipe is all done in less than 10 minutes. It was thoroughly professional. No waste of time anywhere. The Geniuses in apple store carry a handy POS terminal  connected over wi-fi with them and come to the customers. Not like in other stores.  Then the genius asked me if I am interested in Apple Care Protection plan (70$) and other accessories like phone case, protection skin(30$ and above) etc which I denied. Then he brought the iphone from inside. The funny thing is the way he held the iphone. I wish I handled my new born son so carefully. With the light in the eyes he gave it to me and encouraged me to ---guess - access internet. Yes, not to make a call. That is where the core strength of iphone lies it seems. I made a call and I found there is a strange echo. I did not like it much. Went to ATT store in the same mall and added my wife to my iphone family plan. This process is also seamless. I played it since last 3 weeks, also used it at NYC, JFK, Subway station, Penn Station etc...I found that the reception is excellent compared to my T-mobile. Though I pay 20$ per month more than what I pay T-mobile, I think it is worth every $.

Coming to features, I will cover push email, web browsing, internet access, ipod, iTunes, you Tube and App Store

Onething I liked in Windows Mobile 6 which I miss in iphone is Exchange GAL.  Usually I do need to get some of my colleagues contact details while I am on the road. Windows Mobile Exchange access used to fetch me addresses from Company Address book. With iphone I get at most my Exchange contacts. It is certainly limiting. Calendar sync is also not as elegant as in WM6.

Web browsing is a treat. I get 3G almost every place I go in Tampa and New York and browsing is fast.  If I check in any hotel, I see wifi. So I am connected. It is a wonderful device in that aspect.

Only thing I miss is tethering iphone to use its 3G with my laptop. ATT seems to be blocking this which is a shame. We already pay for the internet..what if we use that in emergency to check email?

ipod is decent. Not a replacement for your 30GB gadget. But a wonderful alternative. if you organize your music into playlists and shuffle them often with latest ones, I think you can always carry fresh music as well as your favoirites.  It is much better than WM 6's handicapped Windows Media Player Mobile. If only Apple gives a way to insert a MicroSD card, no need to buy an ipod. But Apple knows that and hence they prevent that. Also they may be thinking in cloud terms and keep content away rather than in the device.

iTunes is good. I think I like this version than the big monolith in the laptop for its ease of use and singular nature.

You Tube is a killer app. Wonderful clarity and excellent streaming speed on both 3G and Wifi. 

App Store is another killer app. What a brilliant design? UI is clean, buying an app is a cake walk. Download of app and visual progress bar on the app being downloaded and installed is a testimony of Apple's UI poweress.

I downloaded Twitterrific, CheckPlease, Facebook, Linkedin, Wordpress, Googlr, Wikipanion, Currency, Units, IMPlus and Pandora. All the applications are well designed. 

My complaint - 2 weeks of usage..and none major. Perhaps security because when the users type password, each letter briefly highlights in magnified mode. I always felt that someone is watching my iphone and can read my entire password within few feet away in the line of sight. Creepy...

Otherwise...it is a good gadget...I am a happy iphone user.

What is the hype around Google Chrome

Yes it is an important milestone for Google. For a company that makes almost all it's revenue out of Web naturally wants to build a web browser. I liked the reason why they started this project. Being a Google fan, I liked the clean L&F as well as making the tab, a first class entity.

But what is it for the Internet as a whole? Did this release really revolutionalize the Web? It is making an already existing product even better. Firefox did that already before bogged down by the heaviness of the plugins and memory leaks. Firefox 3 is better. IE is improving. Safari is cool. And Opera etc are having their own share however little it might be. But the whole blogosphere is gaga over this release which seems odd. Now it seems to justify all the mileage iphone got. Well I will also blog about my new iphone..that is a separate post.

Wildlife and Conservation Photographic Expedition

One of the things I always wanted to do is a photography workshop. First I thought of trying Ken Rockwell's Rt 66 Tour. I almost booked for 2008 tour but my wife's situation did not allow that.

I came across Kalyan Varma's, a wildlife photographer's site through Indira's blog. He also conducts this workshop. Though bio-diversity is better in USA in large national parks, I might participate in India rather than at USA since in India forests disappear faster than in USA . Apart from that I love Western Ghats. So, my next India trip should include this Wildlife and Conservation Photographic Expedition.

Smile at the problems

I just came across this wonderful story of Naresh Karutura, who has an amazing attitude and smile that is inspiring. Despite the poverty and losing his legs in an accident (due to lack of proper treatment), he went to study B.Tech (CS) at IITM and joined Google Labs.

Naresh may be physically handicapped, but in his heart and mind, he has two strong legs that will take him wherever he wants to go in his life.

All the best Naresh.

Dr. Manmohan Singh won No-Confidence Vote

Who says that he is not a politician??? He is as good (or as bad) as anyone out there. Next election, he should pick a good constituency in Punjab and become a LS Member

JFK Airtrain

Just a tribute to this cool service. I wish all indian airports are as connected to their respective cities as JFK is. I usually fly into JFK even though La Guardia is closer to midtown.
From the gate to air train - 8 minutes walk
Wait for Airtrain - 5 minutes average
Airtrain ride to Jamaica Station - 12 minutes
Jamaica Station to Subway station - 6 minutes
Subway Train E to 50th Street 8th Ave - 40 minutes

A little over 1 hr 15 mins and 7$ total fare, I can be in my client office. I love it..

Homem do Ano, O (2003)

I watched this movie on Sundance Channel today. It is an interesting crime movie with a macbethian style. The casting is brilliant so is the music and editing. I did not like the underage sex. If you enjoyed Cidade De Deus (City Of God) and Godfather series or Tarenteno movies then this may appeal to your taste.

Discount Baby Products

2 weeks back my wife delivered a baby boy. So far so good. After the initial euphoria is over, I just did some number crunching... Boy.. babies are expensive.
Diapers - they like to wet them. Sometimes, as frequently as 3 in an hour.
Formula - a fine dining restaurant equivalent
Furniture - cribs, swings, bouncers, sheets, socks....everything costs more than you think they should cost
Doctor visits - they need it more than I thought. And did I mention anything about cord blood cryo storage. Let us not even go there
Toys - my son looks at nature and doesnt pay attention even to the most expensive one. But since we want to give the best, we spent quite some. Once he grows a bit big, then I see this bucket one of the biggest.
Education - If your state has no good public schools, then you are talking of 15 Grand or more..per year
Travel gear - car seat, stroller, booster seat...

What amazes me is almost every item under the sun has discounts these days. But even on Amazon, I dont see any discount price for any baby product. Even if it is there it is less than 1% average. Is it a syndicate/ racket?

But my son's smile at me in a playful mood...it is priceless

Why I like Rhapsody?

Few days back I saw a teaser deal from Rhapsody music service by Real Networks. A $9.99 value of downloads free for first 100K new registrants on their eShop. I promptly did that and started learning about their service. It is a cool site which doesn't slap DRM on the users. We can move our songs in the ubiquitous MP3 format, to any number of devices.  In the iTunes Store, we can preview any song for just 30 seconds. But on Rhapsody, we can listen to full song which is really good. The best part of the composition on any song could be after first 30 seconds for many songs. Check other features here

Aamir - the movie, FARC - the fools

Last evening I watched the movie Aamir. While the story seemed familiar, I liked Rajeev Khanelwal's performance. He emoted very well in a controlled manner. I thought the climax was a bit draggy. The big villain seemed to be prompting the hero to become a noble person. If that fellow has so much network to cause havoc, I dont understand why he cant get someone to plan the bomb. He doesnt need an NRI doctor for that IMO. The movie has good technical values and honest story telling. A must watch if you like movies like Bhopal Express, Satya etc

Last week mainstream media is full of praise for Columbian Armed forces for ending the 5 year hostage drama in a bloodless fashion. First I thought that this would make a good Bollywood movie. But wait, isn't the movie Drohikaal (or the Telugu/ Tamil movie Drohi the same story!!)

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/americas/07/03/hostage.drama/index.html

Interesting....

Millinials - The Whiz Kids of Indian IT Industry

I accidentally came across a bit older Gartner podcast interviewing Van Baker, VP (Research) Media Advisory Services about Millinials, the Generation Y population group. Some interesting details about them is in this wikipedia link.

I am very impressed because I got an opportunity to come across such groups in my job on day to day basis. Being in an IT services company with Global Delivery Model, our offshore team consists of three primary Persona - Old Age Managers, Mid-level Tech Leads and Gen Y developers.

My observation (highly generalized. There are many exceptions IMO)

Old Age Managers - This group is primarily TCS products (being a leading consulting services company since 1980s it can boast of producing many IT leaders in Indian IT Industry). They are well disciplined, may have strong hands-on experience (often 4/5 years) on IBM, DEC/ HP platforms. They are very process oriented and people skills are high and personal integrity unmatched.

Mid-level Tech leads - Most of them are web 1.0 folks. Strong ambition with average execution speed. Speed is the key here. Often uses institutional contacts to grow. Good PR skills and team players. Most of them still struggle to use iPods. Cannot understand dual boot OS means. Started accessing Internet during late 90s just for 1 hour on a small computer set aside. They think browsing is waste of time.

Gen Y developers - This I feel are closest to Millinials demographic. By the time they are in 10th grade/ 11th Grade, IT industry started booming. They would have decided that they will enter IT as engineers during that stage itself. Would use Orkut, Blog often, SMS a lot, would have got the internet connectivity from their 1st year BE itself. Very aggressive group. Usually confident.

The success of any company is channeling this energy into the right direction and setting the goals clear for this group. They will do wonders.

Dont kill'em

I heard of an incident which made me deeply saddened and frustrated over the state of social affairs in India.

The girl has two baby girls. Her husband wants to go for another pregnancy for the having a 'boy'. Before 3rd month they went for ultrasound scanning. They found that the baby is boy. Everything is great. Right!!!.

No... It is not. If it is not a boy their Plan-B is to go for an abortion!!! Here we are not talking about some village crowd. They are educated high caste town dwelling folks.

First that bastard(or bitch) OB/GYN doctor should not have revealed the sex of the fetus. It is illegal in our f**ing country. Like all great paper laws this is violated. Instead of giving in writing they tell orally. I also heard that many scanning centers run by money minded radiologists reveal sex for a good sum.

Second, these educated moron parents should be ashamed of their plan B. Whether they executed or not, they plotted a first degree murder.

Could not sleep for few hours... Next day I am OK. Like all old news...it is a stale news and I am adjusted well to the fact that in India (and world) value of life is nothing. It is another freaking nightmare I went through...

Is there anything I can do!! Please tell me!!!

Eat at your will

Usually I keep away from blogging political stuff. But the comment made by President Bush made me blog this.

Before i came US, my diet used to be
Breakfast - 2 idlies in Hotel Krishna Prasad Udipi on Mount Road, Chennai
Lunch - Company subsidized lunch. Still I could never manage to eat more than 2 uthappams (yes that used to be served as lunch)/ 2 chapathis, 1/2 cup rice with rasam, little porial, curds and pickle.
Snack - 1 samosa/ Kachori and tea
Dinner - 3 rotis with sabji. Salt Lassi or just water

Now after coming to USA, if I calculate what I eat - 40% of it is processed.
Breakfast - Cereal (mother of all processed foods) and Soy milk (what the heck is that)
Lunch - Every possible vegetarian item in the world. No limits. Lavish portions. Half of the times eating out.
Snack - Coffee all day long(Starbucks coffee cup seemed to be extension of my hand), doughnuts, cakes, leftovers from meeting rooms, birthday party foods, baby shower punch, Diet Coke, bottled water
Dinner - Good portioned food always end with some Gatorade or some junk juice.

Somehow struggling to keep weight in control( you can never count the number of times I blame myself about my food habits when I am doing the squats at fitness center)

The bottom line is USA is number 1 food waster and number 1 resource waster. While I dont know whether we can believe in sweeping assumptions like bio-fuels are causing food scarcity or not, food consumption in India can never reach to the obscene levels of US and other developed countries. So, start reforms from home front and make everyone realize the value of any product food or electronics or anything that needs energy to produce.

This also applies to Indian Republic. Most of the urban populace are now thinking it is fashionable to live like Americans. You could not be more wrong. If you can learn anything from American lifestyle, it should be how not to waste. At least American population is small and they have a vast country. With heavy subsidy, by next year, I will not be surprised if there is American long grain rice every corner of the world. But Indian state can never withstand the thrist of a billion Indians who want to live like Americans.

And coming to President Bush's comment. Why do you guys care what he says? Even in USA not many are paying much attention to him. Why should you all give so much mileage to Mr. Tough Guy. Leave the poor chap. He will fade into history after Jan 2009.

One phone number forever

One of my friends referred me to a service called GrandCentral
You can reserve a phone number and it will be your phone number forever. Once registered, if anybody calls on that number ALL phones you registered with that will get a simul-ring. I found it very useful.

Apart from all the great features of this service, what I am impressed about most is it's superb account management page. It is a treat to see everything visually clear and crisp. One of the best usable websites I used.

I found that this company is acquired by Google back in July 2007.

Twitter

This is an amazing story of how powerful the social networking is and how social communities help in real life.

On the side note, I would like to warn that privacy is a never ending debate. I see orkut for sure is abused by many folks. The scrap messages range from sharing phone numbers, addresses to much more personal details. Some even proposing, dating on scraps. Either the implications are not well thought of or they are careless.

I am also not sure how much net educated are parents. I hope that these social networking sites publish some articles on child safety etc for creating awareness to parents. Ideally teachers also should play a major role in this.

BTW, I twitter at https://twitter.com/vamc Welcome to my friends

The Marine and the Nub

Last night, while returning from New York at the Tampa International Airport, I noticed few ABC Action News reporter along with camera crew outside the airport luggage belts. Then I saw a short guy come out of the door and I thought he is the celebrity. But surprisingly the cameras were aimed down towards a dog. I thought this is crazy. When I asked the reporter who that guy is, she gave me a dont-you-know-anything look and told he is the US Marine who saved Nub. My mind went numb. First I thought Nub is a person saved by the Marine. Then when I saw news crew focusing on the dog, I thought K-9 sends dogs to Marine Corps and that dog is the marine.

When I came home and googled, I found that the dog is a stray dog in Iraq. Marine Maj. Brian Dennis who hails from our area saved it from abuse at Iraq and reunited at USA. It is a touchy story with a pet angle. I also read that they are planning to make a move. (what a metaphor!!! Hail Hollywood). But really a noble act by this Marine.

Check out my Guestbook!

uuuuuuuuuuuuuubuntu

I struggled trying to use Vista on my new Sony Vaio NR110E. When do these stupid companies learn that every user doesnt use all that preloaded software? It made my laptop slow. So slow that I took a decision to install Ubuntu with Dual boot on Vista.

Everything started great.
1) I shrinked the drive space on Vista.
2) Downloaded and burned Ubuntu 7.10
3) Installed Ubuntu
4) Started the OS
5) Next logical step - tried to connect to wireless lan. No luck.
Struggled but in vain. Will post next if I am able to crack the Da Vinci Code.

Edited on Mar 7, 2008: After 3 hours of battle, I could make wi-fi work using the same steps I tried day before yesterday. I am posting this using the WIFI itself. Hurray....

First I tried the steps as in this post. It did not work.
Then switched strategy and used the instructions as in here

My first impressions - Ubuntu is great. I am now really feeling the speed of my 2GB RAM. With Vista, I dont know what it did, always applications were slow. Why do Sony preinstall Quickbooks and Corel Draw on a laptop? Are they crazy!!! Like these two there are 100 different software which I never use in my life all preloaded.

Mourning the name change

One thing that infuriated me these days is change of my district name - Nellore as "Sriramulu District". Who the heck is this Sri Ramulu? Why should my district name changed to his name. What if his ancestors are born here? Idiotic governments run by morons like YSR doesnt have any useful business to do or what? Why cant he change Kadapa district name to Sriramulu District .

Why is this sycophancy to get votes of Arya-Vysya community. They are fine with a majority of that community in businesses and trade. They have very good self support with many charities run by the communities wealthy.. I have great respect for that community. Almost all my friends are from that community. But why change the name!!! God save Andhra Pradesh from these morons.

Dont mistake me. I respect Potti Sriramulu. Nothing matches his selflessness and act of courage to give one's life for the cause he believed in. Please erect statues, include his biography in curriculam, understand that great man and also importantly follow his principles. Not just a silly symbolic move like name change.

Toyota, Be my Valentine....

I may be mistaken for a Republican if you just read the title. Please read on to get the complete context.

Usually our cars give few miles less than EPA mileage because we do not always drive in ideal conditions. Recently I drove to Key West on Overseas Highway (US 1). When I casually checked the mileage, I went for a shock. My Toyota Camry Hybrid gave 47.3 miles per gallon (20.11 KM Per Liter) all the time running AC but with an average speed of 40 miles per hour due to traffic. It is a very good gas mileage I believe. Toyota is one of the few companies that got their hybrid strategy right. If they could bring their price levels a little bit low, they can really claim to reduce the green house emissions significantly.

Amudirta Grandhachintaamani

Inspired by my friend Archana's blog post about her grandfather, I too wanted to share some legacy I am proud about.

Few months back my father had sent a new paper article on an old literary journal called "Amudirta Grandhachintaamani". In the 19th century, like in many languages, Telugu literature also had many revolutionary changes. New forms of poetry and prose evolved. This journal used to play a prominent role by acting as a primary media for all telugu literature, by publishing great articles of critics there by contributed to the development of Telugu literature.

And the news I came to know is that my great great grandfather, Late Poondla Ramakrishnayya, was the founder and publisher of this journal. He took great pains to run this journal just out of passion (it must have limited subscription base thus may not be a big commercial success). Poondla Ramakrishnayya garu started this at the age of 23 and ran uninterrupted until he died. I read that this venture was supported by his friends like Ulligondam Ramachandra Rao, Rojukurti Venkata Krishna Rao etc. I am very proud of this legacy and feel humbled by his greatness.

All I know about him was an old photograph of him which I doubt is still there at our ancestral home in Nellore. The only similarity between him and myself is jaw bone. Yes, we have the famous and unique "Poondla Jaw" that runs in our family.

Infy - New Models

S. Gopalakrishnan, Infosys CEO announced about a new pricing model
for it's services. It is nothing new in the IT industry though it could be first to be offered as a service offering by Infosys. I would be interested in how that could be adapted by the clients.
Conventionally, the custom business software applications we developed as considered as IP of the clients. They drive the business requirements, develop key algorithms etc. How would the per user licensing be sold to the clients? The model is nevertheless very interesting. It is a blend of Software Development and BPO.

Immigration Voice fights for Green Card Admin Reforms

Immigration Voice, Florida Chapter, wishes you Happy New Year Wishes to you and your beloved families. Another year started with great hopes in all fronts. And that Green Card dreams seems to be sour grapes. But Immigration Voice is using all means at its disposal to make things better.

If you are not already a member of Florida State Chapter of Immigration Voice, please take 5 minutes to become one http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FL_Immigration_Voice/

Action Item
This year begins with a massive campaign for making administrative reforms for those in AOS. Please write letters to your lawmakers as in the following thread http://immigrationvoice.org/forum/showthread.php?t=16506

This takes perhaps 10 minutes but will create all necessary impact. Every letter counts. Your spouse perspective could be different from yours. Please encourage him/ her to write separate letter.

What these admin reforms mean to us? Pl read on...

1) No Green Card Number Unused - This means if there are any numbers unused for that year, one person from our community loses a chance. That member and his family will be competing for next years number. This has to be avoided and ALL numbers as mandated by the congress should be used that year.

2) Revise the administrative definition of "same or similar". This is the provision that will make you move up in your career utilizing your full potential. I know cases where some folks remained as senior programmers for more than 4 years before he got the GC. When he got the Green Card, within 3 months he became Senior Manager. He lost around $150,000 in bonus and salary alone due to the wait time. And so many opportunities to grow were lost. Broadening the definition should be a boon for so many of us.

3) Allow filing of Adjustment of Status (Form I-485) when a visa number is not available. This reform will benefit the entire EB category to get all interim benefits like EAD, AP etc, allow H4 spouses to work, allow job mobility using AC21(rules apply) etc.

4) Multi Year AP and EAD - Again eliminates a hassle of renewing every year, getting Driving Licenses in some states will become very easy.

5) Allow visa revalidation in the United States, and reinstate premium processing of Immigrant Petitions - Very helpful for EB based GC applicants.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us or put a question on http://immigrationvoice.org forum. Many friends from the Legal Immigration community will be there to help you.

IV Florida Chapter
voiceofimmigrants at gmail.com
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FL_Immigration_Voice/