I half-ass stuff all the time. If I put my whole ass into things, my potential to accomplish great things increases exponentially.

Via (sharingtime.info)

Opportunities are easier to make up than losses.

“we are losing money on every sale, but we will make it up in volume.”

This point is quite apt for the majority of net ventures. Amazon did it, but I am not so sure if the current crop of web ventures can succeed similarly. Amazon sells real stuff while the newbies sell advertising space that no one knows how to effectively monetize, yet.

When you get all you want and you struggle for pelf,

and the world makes you king for a day,

then go to the mirror and look at yourself

and see what that man has to say.

For it isn’t your mother, your father or wife

whose judgment upon you must pass,

but the man, whose verdict counts most in your life

is the one staring back from the glass.

He’s the fellow to please,

never mind all the rest.

For he’s with you right to the end,

and you’ve passed your most difficult test

if the man in the glass is your friend.

You may be like Jack Horner and “chisel” a plum,

And think you’re a wonderful guy,

But the man in the glass says you’re only a bum

If you can’t look him straight in the eye.

You can fool the whole world,

down the highway of years,

and take pats on the back as you pass.

But your final reward will be heartache and tears

if you’ve cheated the man in the glass.

                                                                                                                    – Dale Wimbrow 

President Faust, members of the Harvard Corporation and the Board of Overseers, members of the faculty, proud parents, and, above all, graduates:

The first thing I would like to say is thank you. Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honor, but the weeks of fear and nausea I’ve experienced at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and fool myself into believing I am at the world’s best-educated Harry Potter convention.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

You see? If all you remember in years to come is the “gay wizard” joke, I’ve still come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step toward personal improvement.

Actually, I have wracked my mind and heart for what I ought to say to you today. I have asked myself what I wish I had known at my own graduation, and what important lessons I have learned in the 21 years that has expired between that day and this.

I have come up with two answers. On this wonderful day when we are gathered together to celebrate your academic success, I have decided to talk to you about the benefits of failure. And as you stand on the threshold of what is sometimes called “real life,” I want to extol the crucial importance of imagination.

These might seem quixotic or paradoxical choices, but please bear with me.

Looking back at the 21-year-old that I was at graduation, is a slightly uncomfortable experience for the 42-year-old that she has become. Half my lifetime ago, I was striking an uneasy balance between the ambition I had for myself, and what those closest to me expected of me.

I was convinced that the only thing I wanted to do, ever, was to write novels. However, my parents, both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing personal quirk that could never pay a mortgage, or secure a pension.

They had hoped that I would take a vocational degree; I wanted to study English Literature. A compromise was reached that in retrospect satisfied nobody, and I went up to study Modern Languages. Hardly had my parents’ car rounded the corner at the end of the road than I ditched German and scuttled off down the Classics corridor.

I cannot remember telling my parents that I was studying Classics; they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard put to name one less useful than Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys to an executive bathroom.

I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I cannot criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor, and I quite agree with them that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticized only by fools.

What I feared most for myself at your age was not poverty, but failure.

At your age, in spite of a distinct lack of motivation at university, where I had spent far too long in the coffee bar writing stories, and far too little time at lectures, I had a knack for passing examinations, and that, for years, had been the measure of success in my life and that of my peers.

I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted and well-educated, you have never known hardship or heartbreak. Talent and intelligence never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the Fates, and I do not for a moment suppose that everyone here has enjoyed an existence of unruffled privilege and contentment.

However, the fact that you are graduating from Harvard suggests that you are not very well-acquainted with failure. You might be driven by a fear of failure quite as much as a desire for success. Indeed, your conception of failure might not be too far from the average person’s idea of success, so high have you already flown academically.

Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was jobless, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless. The fears my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard, I was the biggest failure I knew.

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure is fun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there was going to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy tale resolution. I had no idea how far the tunnel extended, and for a long time, any light at the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all–in which case, you fail by default.

Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations. Failure taught me things about myself that I could have learned no other way. I discovered that I had a strong will, and more discipline than I had suspected; I also found out that I had friends whose value was truly above rubies.

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more to me than any qualification I ever earned.

Given a time machine or a Time Turner, I would tell my 21-year-old self that personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a check-list of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two. Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone’s total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.

You might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterward, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilizes thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors.

I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

What is more, those who choose not to empathize may enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it, through our own apathy.

One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.

But how much more are you, Harvard graduates of 2008, likely to touch other people’s lives? Your intelligence, your capacity for hard work, the education you have earned and received, give you unique status, and unique responsibilities. Even your nationality sets you apart. The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.

If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped transform for the better. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.

I am nearly finished. I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for prime minister.

So today, I can wish you nothing better than similar friendships. And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor, in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom:

As is a tale, so is life: Not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.

I wish you all very good lives.

Thank you very much.

“If things do not turn out as we wish, we should wish for them as they turn out.”

-Aristotle

Isaac Asimov once wrote, “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.” So, when brutes resort to violence, it is usually their last choice, but upon habit, it turns in to their only reflex to any stimuli.

= a real chance to make lots of money

<via>

http://adsenseseoguide.com/

</a >

“If there was no luck involved then it wouldn’t be called gambling, It would be called “Lose all your money.”” – HDTRAN

Makes sense, Doesn’t it?

Come to think of it..

Ari Balogh, speaking at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, elaborated a bit on the idea. “We don’t think of social as a destination,” Mr. Balogh said. “We think of social as a dimension.”

I am not so sure if the current casual net usage habits will remain in the present form or format for very long, considering the certain paradigm shift and impact from rapid mobile device adoption, and the oncoming dominance Vs. Desktops and Laptops. Just the way in which people chucked land lines for wireless, the day when mobile devices completely replace the desktops may not be that far off .This will also undoubtedly change the way we consume and use the net in fundamental ways. This will resultantly lead to the emergence of a lot of new companies that will eventually challenge the current online biggies, globally, through innovation in core products and services we already use.

Interesting comments on the related news article at NYTimes.

“It’s probably one of the most frightening aspects of the changes we undergo as we age,” said Nancy Ceridwyn, director of educational initiatives at the American Society on Aging. “Our memories are who we are. And if we lose our memories we lose that groundedness of who we are.” <via>NY Times</via>

I think keeping a thorough journal log goes a long way in dealing with anxiety related to memory. If you don’t care who reads it, make it open and public – like in a blog.

We must avoid problems which befall large corporations, while we create and introduce technologies which large corporations cannot match.

— Masaru Ibuka, founder of Sony, in 1946. Via Sony History

I don’t make movies to make money—I make money to make movies.

— Walt Disney

<via>

Jakob Lodwick

</a>

You must clarify your goals, gain knowledge through spaced repetition, preserve health, work steadily, minimize stress, refuse interruption, and never resist sleep when tired.

This should lead to radically improved intelligence and creativity. The only cost: turning your back on every convention of social life.

<via>

Want to Remember Everything You’ll Ever Learn?

</via>

Change involves carrying out an activity against the habit of life.

— F. M. Alexander

If you have been rejected many times in your life, then one more
rejection isn’t going to make much difference. If you’re rejected,
don’t automatically assume it’s your fault. The other person may
have several reasons for not doing what you are asking her to do:
none of it may have anything to do with you. Perhaps the person
is busy or not feeling well or genuinely not interested in spending
time with you. Rejections are part of everyday life. Don’t let them
bother you. Keep reaching out to others. When you begin to
receive positive responses then you are on the right track. It’s all a
matter of numbers. Count the positive responses and forget about
the rejections.

- RadioHead

Very apt for online world too, as mentioned in SEO Book.

 I never stopped trying to become qualified for the job

- Darwin Smith, ex-CEO of Kimberly-Clark

Can’t is the worst word that’s written or spoken;
Doing more harm here than slander and lies;
On it is many a strong spirit broken,
And with it many a good purpose dies.
It springs from the lips of the thoughtless each morning
And robs us of courage we need through the day:
It rings in our ears like a timely-sent warning
And laughs when we falter and fall by the way.

Can’t is the father of feeble endeavor,
The parent of terror and half-hearted work;
It weakens the efforts of artisans clever,
And makes of the toiler an indolent shirk.
It poisons the soul of the man with a vision,
It stifles in infancy many a plan;
It greets honest toiling with open derision
And mocks at the hopes and the dreams of a man.

Can’t is a word none should speak without blushing;
To utter it should be a symbol of shame;
Ambition and courage it daily is crushing;
It blights a man’s purpose and shortens his aim.
Despise it with all of your hatred of error;
Refuse it the lodgment it seeks in your brain;
Arm against it as a creature of terror,
And all that you dream of you some day shall gain.

Can’t is the word that is foe to ambition,
An enemy ambushed to shatter your will;
Its prey is forever the man with a mission
And bows but to courage and patience and skill.
Hate it, with hatred that’s deep and undying,
For once it is welcomed ’twill break any man;
Whatever the goal you are seeking, keep trying
And answer this demon by saying: “I can.”

- Edgar A. Guest

Be an action man..only then you will come alive

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910

“…the man who really counts in the world is the doer, not the mere critic-the man who actually does the work, even if roughly and imperfectly, not the man who only talks or writes about how it ought to be done.” (1891)

“Criticism is necessary and useful; it is often indispensable; but it can never take the place of action, or be even a poor substitute for it. The function of the mere critic is of very subordinate usefulness. It is the doer of deeds who actually counts in the battle for life, and not the man who looks on and says how the fight ought to be fought, without himself sharing the stress and the danger.” (1894)

- Theodore Roosevelt

“ This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one: the being a force of nature instead of a feverish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch that I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to a future generation. ”

- George Bernard Shaw

via Julia’s Dad

I recently read “Warren Buffet Speaks,” a less dense book cataloging the words of wisdom from Warren Buffet. In a section of the book, talking about the ppl that don’t hold Mr.Buffet in high reverence, Micheal Lewis, the author of Liar’s Poker – one of my favorite books, states “The reason [Buffett] is so rich is simply that random games produce big winners”.

Value investing in its pure form, as postulated by Benjamin Graham and perfected by his pupil — Warren Buffet, basically focuses on significnatly lowering or altogether eliminating the randomness/volatility/risk of their expected/desired returns.

Though I agree with Mr. Lewis’s statement that “Random Games Produces Big Winners,” I have to say that it doesn’t apply to Mr. Buffet as there isn’t nothing random about his style of investing, or the games he has chosen to play. He is a prudent investor driven by values, common sense, and unfoolish greed.

Unfoolish is not a valid word, but that shouldn’t prevent it from making sense.

Read this paper to delve deeper.

Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett’s business partner, once said,

“The safest way to get what you want is to deserve what you want.”

This in my opinion applies to just about everything, especially relationships and investing.

If you don’t take advantage of yourself, someone else will.

- Jakob Lodwick.

This simple statement summarizes why ppl should work for themselves, and not at a desk owned by somebody else. Jakob is a serial entrepreneur who is currently doing, and has done, cool stuff on the net. His blog is mostly brilliant.

In Benjamin Graham’s Value Investing Bible – The Intelligent Investor – the following is the opening quote:

“Through chances various, through all vicissitudes, we make our way….”

- Aeneid

Vicissitudes: continual or successive changes of circumstances, often for the worse.

“we are all hostages of

The mystery of our soul.”

“vse zalozhniki zagadki

Svoei zhe sobstvennoi dushi.”

(I. Lisnianskaya)

Its about time..as elections get closer, we should get used to this kind of BS. In this video, a former limo driver claims to have given Obama a BJ. Obama also did Cocaine and Crack with him, so claims this dude. YouTube makes it very easy for any psycho to post a video and get noticed. Why else would this guy with his ludicrous claims get 580,000 views. Who thinks that Hillary and Billy are behind this Not Me.

Box.net is an online storage system that enables users to share, store, and access files of any type from anywhere. They have a blog post highlighting the six top reasons to work there. One of them is being able to read TechCrunch in the bathroom.

TechCrunch mentioned it on their blog, and I bet this will get them a lot more job applicants for sure. This is also bound to go viral and generate more buzz and link love for Box.net. Folks..this is how you get attention on the web.

Tech Crunch reports that a French startup has developed a cool new product while merrily collecting their 18-month unemployment checks. It is ironic that I actually get a peek into the pathetic rules that govern the French, while I was reading about a innovative French Startup.

In the world we have come to accept, getting laid off is not a good thing. But it is not quite the same in France; there an employee can get laid off and actually collect a 80% check of his payroll from the government. I wonder who is actually paying for the extended happy times of these unemployed workers. I understand that there would be some criteria for qualifying for this perk. But it is still a big problem for any company or entrepreneur trying to hire employees and grow in France.

I don’t envy the unemployed French or the guys/gals that made the best out of their not so bad situation, but I pity the companies and people paying taxes to the French government. What a total waste. I guess this explains why France is constantly and consistently topping the has-been nations.

I am amazed that France actually has a place on G8. I am not sure if the whole G-8 is going to be any relevant in the next decade as the new raging economies emerge to claim their spots on the global stage.

I rarely like the human stories told by CNN. Today, I read two contrasting stories and amazingly, I liked them both. At the same time, they are about a rare class among humans – Millionaires with a B – Billionaires.

One is about a really rich old guy on the verge of going broke and bankrupt. The other one is about another rich guy who made it from humble beginnings.

The rich guy going broke is Harry Macklowe. And the rich guy who made it big is actually the richest guy in the world at this time – Carlos Slim.

Lesson learned: When you are too greedy, make sure you have a clear and unassuming head over your shoulders. Also, be good at math. In the end, its all about big numbers and not bigger balls.

I don’t care much for paper valuations, but Carlos Slim’s story is still very impressive and inspiring. I like the fact that he was a math teacher, and don’t like the fact that he doesn’t do as much charity as other filthy rich people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. We all know very well that Mexico can use some of his loot. On that same note, I think Bill Gates is more than making up for all the blue screens of death on our PCs with his generous and far reaching charity work tackling the real and difficult problems of the world.

I wasted my not so valuable time on this crappy movie tonight. Give this move a skip. Just because this movie has a lot of funny actors, don’t think that you will have fun watching this pointless movie.

In short the story is about a loser who loses his GF to another loser. The former loser buddies up with a bunch of unfunny old timers to get his love back. Enough said about Wendell Baker and his non-story. This movie made about $49,000 at the box office in its entire theatrical run. I wish I knew that awesome stat ahead of time, as it would have saved my buck-fifty.

Ever since the debut of DVD vending machines at WAWA stores, the number of crappy movies I have seen is staggering. Gotta not go to WAWA.

While I was surfing for info, I noticed that USA.GOV has a perfect Google PageRank of 10. This is probably one of a select few sites to have a perfect PageRank Score.

So, if you want to get a high PageRank, start building links from USA.GOV and the sites it links to. You can follow this for your specific niche SEO needs. All you have to do is find the sites with high PageRank in your field and start building links from that site and the sites that it links to.

Who cares right? Did that ever stop the useless news from reaching our ears and eyeballs?

I got an exclusive scoop from MTV Head of Programming that the French President and his (n)th wife Carla Bruni have agreed to do a reality TV show for the channel. Mr. Sarkozy agreed that the current programs on French TV are very old school, so he plans to spice up the tellyboxes everywhere with his groundbreaking foray into reality television. He also acknowledged that he is a reality TV addict who regularly follows all the surreal crap shown on MTV and its sister channels.

He also plans to get in the best shape of his life by the time the cameras roll. He is currently working with Gerard Depardieu’s (The Fat French Guy In The Movie, Green Card) trainer to assist him with his training. The upcoming show will also feature a heart rendering flashback about the period in his past when he struggled to overcome his Napoleon(short man) complex.

Mr. Sarkozy also plans to work in both Hollywood and Bollywood movies, when given the right script and a hot female co-star. If his reality TV becomes a global hit, he also plans to take an early retirement from French presidency and pursue his life long itch for showmanship full-time.

My short impressions of the candidates running to be US president:

• John McCain – Grumpy Old Man From The Wild West.
• Mitt Romney – Snake Oil Salesman
• Ron Paul – Less Grumpy Old Man From Hicksville
• Mike Huckabee – Red Necks and Apocalyptists Heart This Baptist
• Barack Obama – Does He Ever Stop Saying “Change”?
• Hillary Clinton – A Woman Who Should have Been A Broadway Star

What you think?

Cesar is extremely hyper, but in a good way. He makes any visitor to the house feel very welcome.

I took this picture on my blackberry.

I have been collecting good domains for the past several years. I usually buy them at 1&1 or GoDaddy. 1&1 used to be very cheap for buying all the Top Level Domains (TLDs). Their prices went up by a $1 as Verisign increased the wholesale price for the registrars by that amount. To register a .com at 1&1, it costs about $6.99. Godaddy charges about the same. These are great bargains considering that Network Solutions still charges $35.00 to register a damn domain name. I guess some companies never change with times, competition, or reality. When it comes to good domain name registrars, 1&1 and GoDaddy are the industry leaders in price, service, and features. Don’t fall for cheap sale offers from run of the mill domain registrars out there. Believe me, there are too many of them and it is not always easy to separate the good from the bad. RegisterFly was one such company that is thankfully not in business anymore.

I prefer to use 1&1 for my domain name registrations and renewals because they don’t charge extra for keeping my identity private. They give you the option to keep your domain registration information private. You can turn this privacy feature On or Off without much effort. Their domain management dashboard makes it easy to manage this feature at any time before and after the registration process. GoDaddy, on the other hand, charges extra for this privacy feature, and in my opinion, it’s a total waste of your hard earned dollars to pay for this feature with any registrar. GoDaddy also makes it complicated to manage your privacy feature because they require you to create a new domain proxy account for each individual domain name separately. Lately, they have a solution to consolidate all the privacy accounts with them into one account. The new process still needs you to tackle a few unnecessary steps that add no real value, except complexity. If you don’t plan to keep your registration info private, then Godaddy is a good choice too.

Godaddy has great customer service and most of their domain reps know what you are talking about. You can always save more by searching for coupon codes on the web before registering or ordering domain name services with GoDaddy. Also, subscribe for their special offers e-mailing list. The domain cancellation/non-renewal process with 1&1 is a little complicated and very confusing. I initially suspected them of trying to play games, but upon following their abnormal process, I am convinced that their cancellation process was just poorly conceived. When you run into issues with 1&1 with their cancellation process, just be patient and follow the instructions, and you will figure it out. One feature I really like about 1&1 is the their billing process. They don’t charge your credit card every time you register a new domain name. They consolidate your registrations for a given month and then bill/charge you once per month. This removes clutter on your credit card statements and also helps you keep your domain registration bills together. This billing feature is especially useful for bulk domainers and companies.

Always keep your domain name registration account separate from your hosting accounts. Don’t make the mistake of tying your domain names with a web hosting plan, as you will run into unforeseen issues. I had some expensive lessons over the years because I overlooked the issues that come with keeping domain registration and hosting together.

Daniel Day-Lewis gave it his all in the bland role of Mr.Plainview in There Will Be Blood. There isn’t much of a story to talk about. This movie mainly circles around Oil drilling in early 20th century along with a half-cooked plot diversion about early evangelical christians . The movie seriously lacks any coherent characters and just like the protagonist’s name, it’s very plain, bland, and boring. The climax scene is a true stinker. PTA never made pretentious movies before this one. His movies were coherent and super-layered, but this one is truly an exception. The title of this movie should seriously be, “There Will Be Boredom”. If you want to see decent acting, you can watch it. But, I seriously recommend that you wait for the DVD. If you haven’t seen the Coen Brothers’ latest movie, “No County For Old Men“, please go see it ASAP. You can thank me later. That movie was extraordinary with a story, screenplay, and action that will blow your mind. I am not exaggerating one bit. I think it is the best movie of 2007, and it may very likely be the best movie of this decade.

It seems to me that most of the people who comment at the gazillion sites scattered on the net never bother to actually see the movies they are commenting about. I notice a huge herd mentality among the users of the endless web2.0 sites. Most of them seem to comment just for the fucking sake of doing it. Ignoranuses with their half-assed understanding of Google and its PageRank, always seem to be motivated to write some junk with their site link thrown in somewhere for sure. And, when you have professionals employed for $4/hr by hype creating machines(Marketing Companies) polluting the web, the best way to not be influenced is to pay no mind to the ever present generic/useless comments on most sites . I know I will, at least, from now onwards.

I actually did it. This is my first one way ticket to India. Continental has a non-stop flight to Mumbai and then I will be flying with Kingfisher to Hyderabad. I am excited for making this permanent move from US to India after living here for the last 10 years. I will surely miss Philadelphia. I have way too many things to wrap up.

A few days back, I got a new digital camera from Amazon. It’s a Panasonic Lumix 6X optical zoom 7.2 Mega Pixels. The camera is very sturdy and compact. I will be leaving Philly soon. Before I head out from her for good in May, I would like to capture all the places and the people I’ll be leaving behind.  I just took the first picture..looks yummy. I will write a detailed review once I test it’s features.