Shopping and searching deals online

There are thousand ways to spend money and shopping by finding the best deals would be ideal who really want to buy something and boost the economy (while it will be very small contribution ) but what the heck!!!

I usually use few shopping sites like

Deals2Buy

eDealInfo

TechBargains

1saleaday

Woot

SlickDeals

I recently came across Dealsshoppie and found it interesting.

• It has very clean user interface and items are categorized which makes it finding items little simpler.
• It provides review link next to item.

I found it lacking the following, considering a website in web 2.0 era

• If reviews shows rank beside the item itself it will prompt users to read the reviews
• A blog to communicate with the users. In addition it can have a post about deal which is really deal comparing to other websites

Above points can be easily ignored as this site is still in infancy but they seem to be in the process of adding more (r)etailers to their database. I hope to see it competing with other biggies in next few months and will definitely keep an eye on it.

Steve Jobs finally stepping down from CEO position

Steve Jobs Apple's CEO is finally stepping down from CEO position. He is taking Leave of Absence (LoA) till June 2009.

In his absence Tim Cook will be taking over and will be responsible for day to day job.

Apple stock's AAPL trading halted in after hours today and market is speculating an opening price around $75.00

Noel

Noel - Merry Christmas

This weekend we went to Vasona Lake County Park to see Christmas lights i.e. Fantasy of Lights located in Los Gatos in bay area. Following are the few images and many of these had animation associated with it

1) Volcano
2) Dinosaur Den
3) Santa shoots the hoops
4) Skating bear
5) Tunnel of lights
6) Penguins at play
7) Happy the fisherman
8) Santa sled and 3 reindeer
9) Pirate ship and cannon
10)Booming cannon

It is very pleasing to look red and white colors everywhere including logos in web haven i.e. Google



and Meebo

Health Care System - Kaiser Permanente (Redwood City Doctor) Sucks!!

I am not going to talk about ever existing health care system problems which are faced by someone or the other. We all know the existing problem about not following open health care system in USA. Today I will scribe about the height of materialistic doctors who practice in USA pretending to treat PATIENTS.

Recently I had scheduled my annual medical check up visit with my primary physician (pp) (now former) Doctor named S******* G***** K*** MD at Kaiser Permanente Redwood City bay area.

In last two years I have visited this hospital twice and this was my first annual medical checkup with my PP.

My appointment was at 9:30 AM and I reached there at 9:28 AM, I was called inside at 9:37 AM and after initial checkup by the nurse I went to my PP's room at 9:41 AM. There comes my former doctor and as usual introduction and how are you doing stuff. She was unable to start her system, so she said i will jot down things on paper and will enter this data later. After few questions and doing some examination

She: Okay we are done. I have other appointment now. We can't talk about anything else now.

Me: Today I have appointment and I am supposed to discuss all the problems with you.

She: You were scheduled for 20 minutes. Each visit is 20 minutes and I have already spoken with you for that long.

Me: I was never told that this appointments are of 20 minutes. And you have not listened to all my problems and have not provided any solution.

She: No I can't do this I have other appointment. You can come at some other time.

Me: Oh c'mon you can't do like this.

She: Okay I will try to accommodate you sometime at 12:00 noon or in the afternoon.

Me: Look Doctor, as you have your work, I do have mine and I have to go to work as well( "mein vaella baitha hoon na :("). Today I have scheduled this appointment and I would like to get examined and diagnosed completely.

She: Okay give me a minute and let me check out whether my other patient is already in or not. I will come back in one minute.

She comes back in 3 minutes and with a shameless smile

She: oh that patient is not here yet now tell me about your problem.

Me: Good for me.

And then I discussed some other stuff with her. Before leaving i told her

Me: Next time onwards I won't be interested in answering questions like "how am i, what do I do etc." and won't be interested in knowing "how are you and so on". I am concerned about my health and that's why I schedule my appointment with you.

I didn't like my experience with Dr. K***i and that's why she is now my former doctor. She is not at all professional and highly materialistic. Oh give me a break, being a doctor you first responsibility is to look and take care of your existing patient and then start thinking about your next patient (who is not in yet). Earning more money is not an issue here but how you treat your patients and how you deal with them is shameful.

So I presume the system is like this --> more patients you serve in a day more money you will earn. Money drives the way they treat their patients. Further Doctor's like her cribs about medical practices in India/US. I like doctors in India, I have never heard in 23 years from any of my doctor that they are done and have to look at other patients.

Similarly my friend who have visited this hospital they got the same answer for 5 times

"I can't say what is wrong" --> How did they get MD's degree?
"Please take ibuprofen for this" --> for all problem solution is the same

Health Care System Sucks Big Time!!
Rating for Kaiser Permanente's Doctor K***i = 0 (negative also works for me)

Sigh!!!!

Google started monetizing Google Finance

Google has started looking for ways to monetize it's other products apart from ubiquitous search product.

Now we can see advertisements in Google Finance .



Well it's a good strategy for Google to start making money from other products apart from search, at the same time it raises question about the slow down in advertisement revenue. They have started displaying advertisement from this week and this is after approximately 2-3 years of it's launch.

After few months we might see banner ads and side advertisements in Google Finance as we do in Yahoo Finance .

I am waiting to see they doing the same in other products (Google docs, GOOG-411 and so on).

What's wrong with the most liberal state of USA - Proposition 8 CA passed

Yesterday was a big day in the history of United States of America when Mr. Barack Obama was elected as a 44th president. Congratulations to him and Democratic Party and all his supporters.

It was equally disappointing day for group of people GLGays and Lesbians in California as proposition 8 passed. Proposition 8 bans the marriage between same sex couple. Here is the break down of the votes based on number of categories i.e. sex, age, income, race, education, ideology and so on. When i discussed this with my wife, she said atleast 20% of the voters must not have understood the proposition i.e. this proposition will ban same sex marriage {so you have to be fair to this group of people and vote No i.e. against this proposition}.

This is big blow to gays and lesbians as it is completely against the principle of fairness in this very democratic country. This proposition is stripping gay couples from their right to marry i.e. let them live the way they want. These group of people should be allowed to make their own choice i.e. no one should dictate to whom they should get married. This is purely wrong done by the voters of California.

If things like this are allowed that day is not far when a new proposition will be passed to ban marriage between different races!!

Come on Californians FIGHT for it and be fair to everyone.

My vote - Election 2008, CA Propositions

We should have a new bill in USA congress for allowing immigrants (H, B, L, K, J and so on) to vote virtually over the net(if not physically). Well immigrants are subject to taxation (Federal, State, Social and Medicare) which is same as citizens so not voting power. That will be ideal Democracy. I can go over this for hours but the point of this post is to vote for the election (no matter if it is not counted)

John MacCain ===> No
Barrack Obama ===> Yes

When the whole US is concentrating on United States presidential election 2008, California state has it's State Election 2008

There will be twelve propositions too on the ballot paper. With the same clause as above and being Californian I am voting here.

Proposition 1A Yes

Proposition 2 Yes

Proposition 3 Yes

Proposition 4 No

Proposition 5 Yes

Proposition 6 Yes

Proposition 7 Yes

Proposition 8 No

Proposition 9 No

Proposition 10 Yes

Proposition 11 Yes

Proposition 12 No

Let see how my voting fairs in this year's election.

Delhi Blasts - Movie "A Wednesday" and "Mumbai Meri Jaan"

September 13th 2008 - A very dark and bloody red day in Indian history. This weekend was very dreadful for people in India and particularly those living in metropolis. There were five blasts in the crowded area of New Delhi and it took lives of 40+ innocent people and injured more than 100+ people.

This completed the mission "BAD" i.e. Bangalore, Ahmadabad and Delhi for the terrorist organization i.e. Indian mujahideen
This year India has witnessed 3-4 blasts and must have killed more than 500 people. Indian mujahideen took the responsibility for these blasts in Delhi.

How can India (Indian Government) not do anything to these kind of organizations, when they are openly sending an email "In the name of GOD and blah blah"....and claiming responsibility?

I have seen couple of Bollywood movies recently

1) Mumbai Meri Jaan - Very nice movie and amazing acting by the starcast (Kay Kay, Paresh Rawal, Mahadhavan, Soha Ali Khan).



This movie is about Mumbai Blasts of 2006 i.e. all these blasts happened in the metro train (local trains) in Mumbai. This movie has depicted the fear which is constantly there in people's mind after the blast, how news media use it to increase their TRP, how people started making fake calls about bombs everywhere and shown anger by extremists towards any religion.

I would highly recommend to watch this movie.

2) A Wednesday - Awesome movie. A must watch movie. This movie is about how someone can stand against terrorism and show to government (specially police department) that even common man can deal with this terrorism.



This movie has two very good actors from Bollywood Industry. Naseeruddin Shah and Anupam Kher have given best of their performance in this movie. This movie revolves around releasing 4 very dangerous terrorist. This movie tried to convey an awakening message to common man in India and at the same time conveyed the power of common man to terrorist organization.

Both the above mentioned movies gives a glimpse of new Indian Cinema. New directors are coming out with realistic scripts and they are starring these great actors to show real picture about life after terrorist act in India.

India has population of 1.2 billion and people go out quite often and most do during weekend. This terrorist organizations are successful in creating this terror and constant fear in common man's life when they go out to watch movie, sight seeing, mall, grocery or just to do some shopping. This is what they want? Why kill innocent people? People behind this kind of attack should be punished and it should be lesson for any other organization who are conspiring anything like this anywhere.

It will take few months before this fear goes away from people's life in India.
In no time we might watch a movie called "Delhi Meri Jaan" or "A Saturday"

Cheapest VOIP calls to India

I have tried different calling cards/VOIP providers in last few years and following is the list of cheapest VOIP providers for calling to landline/mobile in India.

Company	Landline (USD)*	Mobile (USD)*
SMSDiscount	0.043	0.043
CallEasy	0.034	0.034
VoipRaider	0.042	0.048
Intervoip	0.038	0.038
Nonoh	0.051	0.051
Freecall	0.026	0.026
Webcalldirect	0.034	0.051

Note (*) ==> Rates are including VAT (Most of these companies are betamax companies and based in Europe where customers have to pay VAT)

All of these companies have web based interface to make calls from browsers. All of them have local access number (so that we can call locally which is free for us and we can use our mobile minutes if no local call facility available)

If you come to know about other VOIP providers please leave that in the comment below and I will add it.

Hope this helps!!

Update: Added couple of new VOIP service provider and as of today FreeCall is the best considering rates.

Double data type in Java and C++

In Java when we parse double value we will be able to parse values in the range 1.79E308 to -1.79E308. If we try to parse double value beyond this range we get infinity.

To parse any value beyond this range in Java we can use BigDecimal data type.

So to handle values beyond the above mentioned range use BigDecimal data type.

Well in most of the real life scenarios it's hypothetical to go beyond this range but QA (quality assurance)people will test your code for this.

In C++ we don't have BigDecimal data type, so it's a limitation of C++ to parse values beyond this range. Either you can throw exception or log an information about the support provided by your software or document the same.

Other way to handle this is to parse input value as String with some checks (decimal, grouping, no alphabets, only digits etc) and returning it as string. [This is possible when you don't have to do further calculation using this value in C++ but have java component on the other side to calculation]

How lending industry works!! Reasons for 2008 subprime crisis !! Mortgage rates going up

Fed is meeting next week and street is speculating quarter point cut. In spite of cut in interest ruts mortgage rates are going up. (30 year fixed is shooting more than 6%)

When I was researching about investments by banks and some hedge fund came across this excellent cartoon

Understand Subprime Crisis


Few reasons why mortgage is going up:

1) Investors are not that much inclined to Mortgage Backed Securities (CDO's) and are fleeing away from it.

2) Lenders are more cautious to whom they are lending. No more zero down.

3) Lenders are trying to leverage this situation by overcharging new home buyers and trying to offset their losses in subprime.

General consensus is such that, housing market will go down further, so wait for some more time before plunging into it.

One month new (its not old) wedding day!!

“one month new wedding day” sounds little odd but much better but who cares!! (atleast we don’t period) This is a right time to add some more stuff to our wedding site.

Its been a month from my wedding day. Married life is fun and going great (Thats what people are asking me now a days).

Anu (my lovely wife) has uploaded our wedding album. There were more than 700 pics and we have selected some of them and have categorized it into three galleries i.e. Sangeet Sandhya, Wedding Ceremony and Wedding Reception.

Dipesh And Anubha Wedding Album

In coming weeks we will post videos where we have danced on different tunes.

Enjoy!!

You are all invited!!

Well this is not a beta (or alpha) invite for my company or some other web 2.0 product company, this is an invite for my Wedding which is on 9th March 2008.

So I am introducing a new member here (well many of friends know her), please welcome Anubha (Anu) Bhardwaj and visit our wedding website www.dipeshkhakhkhar.com/wedding to know more about us.

I wasn't able to write for the last few months as I was completely busy talking with my love and sweetheart and planning our wedding.

I have plenty of good stuff to write which I will write after I come back from India.

Till then enjoy!!

Increasing My H-List

Hate is very strong word and I hardly use in my day to day life and rarely bring it into practice.

My Hate List (H-List) is not at all very big. Till now there was only one entry and that was encompassing all the direct marketing people from companies like m-way, QuickStar or PoleStar and so on. The hate their money making strategy and eventually them who deploy that to milk some money. These direct marketers will accost you anywhere for example Safeway, Walmart, Fry's and so on and ask you some stupid questions like (I think I have seen you before were you in Stanford, USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Which shampoo should I buy, ohh that earring looks really great on you ...) and me and friends look at them and just grin and say "Thanks but no thanks". So their strategy is to initiate some talk and get your number and then harass you by luring you to make money and they talk all BS like they are doing great business and every week they get a paycheck of $ 3K and so on. Once they get your number they will harass you for many days till the time you warn them. They are top on my H-List and its shame on them to use such a tactic to get customers for their so called business. Further in bay area most of these are Indians and I hate to see them doing this when I know all of them are well educated and have a good job.

So till now these guys were in my H-List but last weekend when I went to hang out with my friend to one of the school pub in Palo Alto. I was eating something and my friends were drinking. My friends finished one pitcher and then they order two more glasses of beer. So all of a sudden one big American guy came and sat beside me and asked me "Can I have that french fry?" I grinned and looked at him and told him "NO". I shook my head again and said "NO" again and then I thought lets give him a fry who cares. Then he started introducing himself and talking about some BS and I gauged that he is trying to sell something to me, so I asked instantly to him "Now pay for my friends beer" and this guy tells bartender to get 2 more beers for my friends and I got up and told him charge all these beers to him (the one which my friends ordered previously). That guy was all okay with it and then I started showing interest in what he was trying to sell to me. This dude was Stanford graduate (double economic major) and was joining Ameriprise from Nov, 7 2007 and he was about to start their as financial consultant.

I asked this guy few questions that I invest in ETF, MF and Stocks and this guy was not knowing what does ETF stands for and then I thought I did nothing wrong in fetching some beers from him for my friends. Finally after few minutes of goals in life and how to achieve that and all that BS, he asked me my number and I gave him wrong number and pseudo name. So in my H-List i have entered one more entry i.e. Financial Consultants like him who don't have any ethics of business and go down to such an extent to make money.

Previously i was sorry to see only Indians (IITians and well educated with good job in hand) doing this but now seeing Americans are in the same boat, I concluded that its a genre of people who have no ethics how to earn money, not civilized enough to enter into anyone's privacy in public and pushing their business model onto them.

I hate to increase my H-List but can't help when I encounter people like these.But this time may be it was a bummer for that guy as I gauged his intentions and fooled (my friend had a good time though) him for few beers. Sometime people like to learn it hard way.

Hillary says "I am JOYFUL"

I was going through some vidoes and found this video where Republican candidate Hillary Clinton's laughs at almost everything :)

Check this out.



Enjoy!!

Homeless people are Fashion Conscious!!

I went to city (San Francisco) on Saturday night along with my friends (two of them) and parked my car on the street.

I didn't notice what my friends wore (they wore winter jackets on top of shirt and tee-shirt) that night and both of them left their jacket in the back seat (no one likes to pay for coat check-in). I found a free street parking and I was totally unaware that I am keeping these stuff in the back seat of my car and my car is in area where plenty of homeless people live in the city.

When I returned to the place where I have parked my car after partying, I went to the driver's side to check my phone (i forgot my phone in the car) and i said "Thank God" its there. From the other side my friend tells me "Dude somebody broke the window glass of your car and they have stolen my jacket". I was like Oh #$%& !!

Then I looked there and there was one jacket lying there and all the glass on the rear seat. One of my buddy says, "It was my Xpress winter Jacket" and I was like "were u guys wearing jacket and you left it in car"...The other friend's jacket was real cheap one (from Walmart i guess). So the thief took only the Xpress jacket and nothing else from my car (there was GPS, cell phone, CD Player and another jacket).

Well to put in in light way he/she was very fashion conscious :) and took only the quality stuff by which he won't be tracked (cell phone and GPS can be tracked) and must have thought that by selling that jacket he/she will get some money. Or because winter is starting and he/she genuinely needs winter clothing.

I think, if someone would have asked me or warned me he/she needs winter clothing, i would have happily given my spare sweaters and jackets (which are good and i don't use it). But the world is not that straight and people like easy means to do.

So now the quarter glass of my car is broken and today i went to inquire about the estimate to fix it. And to my surprise I found that glass will cost only $35 but the labor for that is $190 (which is ridiculous). This was from Toyota Service Center. Now I will have to find some better place to fix this (I will post solution after fixing it).
javascript:void(0)
Publish Post

Election and Pledges

I was reading about the Caucus round 2 in New Hampshire and here is the small snippet from the radio ad about Tax Pledge by Mitt Romney (A republican candidate)-

"When I’m president, for every middle class American, the new tax rate on your interest, dividends, and capital gains will be absolutely zero."

Do we see this happening anytime in future? This seems to be too good to be true and one can infer very easily practically analyzing it that this is total BS!!

Few days back i had a discussion with my friend about paying taxes (eventually in 401K) and she was completely against paying taxes. Some false promises like above can definitely make some people (like my friend ) happy.

Books - Sales and Marketting and Business Life

I would like to read the following two books

• Selling the wheel


• How Starbucks Saved My Life
  

First one is about sales and marketing and second one is about the life of a laid off employee at the age of 60 who joins starbucks and works there.

Books on sales and marketing fall into two categories:

1. Books that tell you the right way to do sales and marketing.

2. Books that tell you lots of good ways to do sales and marketing and how to choose the right approach for your particular situation.

Selling the Wheel is an example of the latter.

About "How Starbucks Saved My Life" i heard good things.

My review after I am done with these books.

Important Message!!

I found this interesting picture



from this site http://m3.bestpicever.com/piles/?s=shopliftdrug

This pictures reminds me of many people whom I have met in my life.

Free Live Cricket - India vs Australia

Watch 2nd ODI (One day International) between India and Australia live from Kochi India for free

http://www.rifa4u.net/HTML/Cricket/sop.html

Download SOPCast and then user IE and you will be all set.
Enjoy!!