Random musings about the state of the global economy. And, its future.
Just heard on the news about a free gas card promotion that was sponsored by Verizon Yellow Pages at 25 locations in the US. The first 200 cars to line up at each of these locations received a free $40 gas card today.
People started lining up at around 10 PM last night to be able to receive the free gas money. In an age where people camp out for hours to get hold of a gaming console, why I am not surprised?
I have nothing but praise for Google’s Summer of Code initiative. This has been going on for a few years now. Basically, Google supports various open source projects by giving them a miniscule financial assistance, but paid developers for about two months in the summer. Everyone benefits. The mentors get project recognition and talent; the students get a well paid ($4500 currently) summer job and Google’s seal of approval for their skills.
I wish something like this existed when I was a financially struggling graduate student at a time when the economy was near its worst in the not-so-distant past. That would have saved me from slaving for unappreciative educators in the university system who take pride in misguiding their students with fake promises of an assistantship in the next semester. I could have used those summers, instead, to do what I love doing – write code, and get paid doing it.
Check out this year’s wonderful projects at Google Code.
3 days on site with a company client, and I get asked this question. Not to be taken lightly, yet, with no reason to even consider the offer, seeing that I am happy with my current employment situation, I jokingly asked, ‘Sure, are you willing to offer me twice my current salary?’. The Director asks me about my current salary, but since I am not really even negotiating, I shoot back with ‘How about start with 1000x my current billing rate per year?’. At this point, they realize that I am not an IT consultant for no reason (for novices, the industry standard is paying an employee 1000x their current hourly rate a year; so if someone is billed at $100 an hour, they should be paid $100k a year).
I love my job.
अभी अभी पता चला कि OSX में हिन्दी में लिखना कितना अासान है। यह पूरी एन्ट्री मेरे साधारण कीबोर्ड के द्वारा लिखी गयी है।
इतना अासान होगा कभी सोचा न था!
– सौरभ
Just checked out the Forbes Billionaires list, and 4 out of the top 10 are Indian. Their names:
1. Lakshmi Mittal
2. Mukesh Ambani
3. Anil Ambani
4. KP Singh
Read the list and the article here.
This was the tagline at the bottom of the screen as I was watching CNN. The story was about how middle class people are unable to pay their home mortgages any longer because they were duped by subprime lenders who promised them an affordable home.
Now, this story featured a ‘middle-class’ woman who earned about $43k a year, bought a $710,000 home, and her monthly payments are $7k a month. I am sure I am not the only person who sees the absurdity of the situation. If you buy a $700k home on that salary, you’re not only middle class, but also retarded.
Good thing the Government is using taxpayer money to bail these people out of their housing woes.
The year 2008 is here, finally. Even though a lot of significant things happened in 2007, here’s how I would remember it:
1. India got her first female President.
2. Television got some really great new shows.
3. The US still tried to force-feed its way of life and governance to countries worldwide, only at the cost of national pride, credibility, and the economy.
4. Lots of school shootings, including one in India.
5. The resurgence of Apple Inc. as a dominant force in the computing industry.
6. The year of the iPhone. (This needed special mention)
7. India got some leeway from the insurgency efforts of neighboring Pakistan, who was busy trying to clean its own mess.
8. The job market actually improved a lot.
9. USCIS messed up and people got their GCs in record time for a month.
10. The year it started being really cool to be an Indian.
And then:
1. The year I changed my attitude towards people and ideas.
2. The year I realized I could do anything I wanted.
3. The year that actually made me a whole lot wiser.
4. The year I got rid of the mildew on my friends list.
5. The year I added a tame 19,000 miles to my car’s odometer.
I am sure there’s more I could think of, but this is all my sleep-deprived-shindig-stricken mind could come up with this early Tuesday morning.
Have a Wonderful New Year ’08 !
Check out this article about Google India in Fortune
Money quote – “Those who work at Google speak of a halo effect. Landing a job at Google is said to increase marriage prospects in a culture where title and income are critical to the practice of arranged matchmaking.”
I have come to believe that you’re a smart shopper if the stock price of the company whose products you consistently buy keeps on going up.
Since my move to Apple products, and since the time I bought AAPL stock, it has gone up roughly about 10%. I own a Mac, an iPhone, Airport Extreme and Express, couple iPods, and some Apple software. It is the best operating system I have ever used, and I find Objective C so much better than anything else I have seen, it is amazing. Java and even C# were more than inspired by Objective C.
Similarly, I am a big fan of OS hardware and software virtualization, and most importantly VMWare. The last few months have seen EMC’s stock price skyrocket along with moving towards a spectacular rating by stock analysts.
I use Tide to do my laundry. The PG stock is one of the best performing stocks in NYSE right now.
I think the only stock not doing relatively well (at least in my opinion) for which I am a regular customer is Microsoft. But then, there’s really no competitor to the Xbox 360 right now!
I just realized that I have completely transitioned myself out of using any sort of free email service (Gmail, Hotmail, etc.). One of the lures of free email used to be the cost associated with getting our own domain, along with hosting services, but thanks to mass consumer adoption and services like Google Apps for Domains, that no longer holds true.
If I am scared of spam, I just create a temporary email address on my domain; if I am scared of running out of storage, well, Google provides 2 GB!
Apart from my personal domain, I now use .Mac for almost everything else. It costs a lot, but is more than just an email service.
I wonder if this is going to be an increasing trend as people move away from free email services for personal communication.