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Gays or Lesbians with their own TV Shows

From NYT:

The lengthening list of prominent “out” lesbians on the small screen — Ms. DeGeneres, Ms. Maddow, Suze Orman, Jane Velez-Mitchell, Wanda Sykes

Internet Usage graph for India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and China

Google just added World Bank data to its public data tool. I just did a graph using that to compare the internet usage in India, Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka.

It clearly shows we are lagging behind Pakistan and way behind china and cannot compare with USA which is around 80%. So, I think this issue is an important one and the Indian Govt should do its part to fix this issue.

The $$$ behind Jay Leno's new show

From The Daily Beast:

These days Leno is not having a lot of fun, but he is still in the game. NBC is charging his advertisers an estimated $48,000 per 30-second spot—about a 50 percent discount from what much higher-rated shows such as Law & Order SVU and E.R. were getting last year in the 10 p.m. time slot. Leno—who unlike Letterman has no history of controversy—provides a safe and comfortable environment for advertisers while his show, costing an estimated $500,000 per episode, comes in at a fraction of a typical scripted hour, which can run in the $3 million range. NBC has claimed that by replacing the scripted shows with Leno, among other measures, the network has cut $250 million from its annual expenses.

How to Clear your Browsing History Clean

Clear your browsing history clean. Found this in lifehacker. Pretty cool tip. Here'z a snippet

ipconfig /displaydns

That shows all the DNS servers your machine has communicated with, and, surprise surprise, some of them may not be something you want everyone to see (torrent DNS, etc.)

You can clear this by typing: ipconfig /flushdns

Read the whole post by clicking here

Places I have Visited So Far

A map of all the places I have visited so far in USA:


visited 23 states (46%)
Create your own visited map of The United States or website vertaling duits?

and in India:


visited 6 states (17.1%)
Create your own visited map of India or Best time to visit Wroclaw

Technology Behind Twitter

From Wiki:

The Twitter Web interface uses the Ruby on Rails framework.^[24] From the spring of 2007 until 2008 the actual messages were handled by a Ruby persistent queue server called Starling^[25] but since 2009 this has been gradually replaced with software written in Scala.^[26]

They started shifting from mysql + memcache to Cassandra as a database this year (2010).

The Origins of the Last Name Bachchan

From Amitabh Bachchan, in his own words, on his blog:

Bachchan was my Father’s nom de plume. A pseudonym, a pen name, a fictitious name used when working for a particular social cause. It emanated from his Mother, my Grand Mother, who lovingly called him ‘bachcha’, or child.

Why Do Stocks Go Up and Down

There is always some reason for the stocks to rise and fall. I am always mystified by the surety with which the columnists come up with why the stock fell or rose on a particular day. The following is a collection of reasons with links to the actual articles

• Market Bounces Back as Energy Stocks Rise (8/19/09)
• Indian Stocks Fall on Monsoon, China Concerns (8/19)
• Major U.S. stocks indexes tumbled by the biggest amount in six weeks Monday as investors feared they have been too quick in betting on an economic rebound during the market's five-month rally (8/17)
  
• Stocks retreat as investors worry about consumer spending (8/15)
• U.S. stocks leapt higher Wednesday as investors scooped up bank stocks after a pullback in the sector to start the week (8/12).
  
• U.S. stocks on Tuesday closed lower for a second day, ... with investors cautious one day ahead of the Federal Reserve's policy statement. (8/11)
• US Stocks Edge Lower As Traders Lock In Profits (8/10)
• Stocks slipped Wednesday as investors shied away from big moves ahead of the government's monthly reading on job losses and the unemployment rate, which comes out before the start of trading on Friday (8/5)

ps: this is my 300th post :)

Hyderabad among best cities to do business in India

The Doing Business Project created its first sub national report fully dedicated to India this year. Here are a couple of the reports main findings:

• Doing business is easier in Ludhiana, Hyderabad, and Bhubaneshwar. It is more difficult to start and operate a business in Kochi and Kolkata.
• Cities in India do well on the number of procedures required to register property - on average, only 5 procedures are needed. This performance ranks the average Indian city at 47th out of 181 economies.
• There are a lot of good local practices and cities can learn from each other. If a city in India were to adopt all best practices that already exist in the seven areas covered by the report, it would rank 67th out of 181 economies, improving India’s global ranking by 55 positions.

Cisco's CTO - Padmasree Warrior - Vijayawada

The CTO of Cisco is from Vijayawada, India.
From wiki:

Born and raised in the city of Vijayawada in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, India, Warrior went to school at the Children’s Montessori School and Maris Stella College in Vijayawada

From Max Linxky @ FastCompany:

Let's start with that name, which sounds more suited to a pop star than a chief technology officer. Awesome. Then there's the fact that she was on Obama's short list to be America's CTO. Add that to her 23-year career at Motorola, where she did everything from manage the semiconductor division to lead a 26,000-engineer research and development group with a budget of $3.7 billion. Now she's CTO for Cisco , where she's been handed the simple task of figuring out how the world will communicate over the next few years and ensuring that her company is leading that push.

From Fortune in 2006: One of the 50 most powerful women in Business.

Her twitter page: [link]

Barack Obama in JibJab Video

Try JibJab Sendables® eCards today!

A Very Very Strange Guy - R.G.V

I thought few of the best works of Ram Gopal Varma are the movies in his early days. And of them the best were Shiva, Rangeela, Kaun, Satya, Money.

But, he begs to differ. In his blog, RGV claims this:

9. Can you tell us the three biggest mistakes you made w.r.t your films?
Ans: Shiva, Satya and Rangeela because they have created a benchmark and all the time I get bashed up for not living up to them. Boo hoo hoo!

He says those movies are his biggest mistakes. That makes an iota of sense if you think from a perspective such as.. I don't want to be a great director..I just want to create movies just for my sake..i don't care how they turn out. But, I am pretty sure no body would be willing to produce his movies if it weren't for his "Shiva, Satya and Rangeela".

Dell Inspiron 8600 Wireless Adapter

I reinstalled Windows XP on my 5 year old Dell laptop couple of weeks ago. I was able to get everything running except for the wireless. I had to install various drivers including multiple wireless drivers to finally get it working this morning.

Here is the list of the drivers for Inspiron 8600 [link]

And the driver that worked atlast is this [link]:

• Intel (R) Pro/Wireless 2100 LAN miniPCI Adapter

TODO Checklist before Returning to India

Lifted from here.

Another link with good info here

Long Term Planning

1. I think the time required to plan for r2i is 6 months.
2. If you have a house, sell it first. This is very critical. I made that mistake of thinking that house can be sold fast. I have a house in a very very desirable area, but the housing makret took a downturn which was not expected. So sell the house and rent for short term. This will also allow you to sell things that you want, and also get the money from the house.
3. Decide what stuff you want to take and what you want to sell/donate. That will help you make a decision on whether you want to take a container or partial. Also call some moving companies and get a quote to help you decide.
4. Start consolidating accounts. Close accounts you won't need.
5. Make a list of things that you want to buy and take with you. Look around for deals on these things.
6. Time your move- couple of things to consider

a. A good time to sell the house is spring/summer
b. Admissions in India for kids
c. Weather: If you are moving to a city where the weather is hot, you might want to move in colder months so that the transition is easier.
d. Taxes in US

7. Decide on which city you want to r2i. For some folks, its only one city, but for others it might be a choice. If that is the case, take a trip to India and see which cities you like.
8. Don't worry about job search until 2 months before r2i.

Things do do closer to r2i

Finance Related:

1. Decide on finances. Where will you put the money? Options are in US, in India etc. See the various FAQ’s on the group.
2. Consolidate accounts - financial. Keep a few that you can maintain from India (if you want to leave money in US). Prefer those, which have online facilities.
3. Open a NRE account with banks like Citibank, ICICI for transition funds (that you may need in India immediately)
4. Close credit cards. Good idea to keep one for transition period. Keep either Visa or MasterCard. Try one, which has online facilities to check statements.
5. File for Reimbursement from Flex spending accounts for Day care and medical bills.
6. If you need to encash savings bonds, do them before you leave. Carry the certificates safely with you. Send a photocopy of the bonds with your shipping.
7. Print and carry enough check books for your US checking account. You will find it difficult to order printing and shipping them to you when you need them most.
8. 401K: If you have 401K plans with employer, after you leave job, roll it over to Rollover IRA. The trick here is that you can only do it after you leave your job. So give yourself some time after you quit you job and before you leave.
9. Order 1040/1040NR forms, publications, and instructions from IRS web site and carry them to India. You may need them for reference or to discuss with your CA/FP in India
10. File W8 with financial institutions if you don’t have GC/USC.

Documents Related

1. Get medical Records from Doctors/Dentist etc. Get immunization record for kids. Fill prescriptions/get checkup done.
2. Get your kids school record for the current year. If you are leaving two three months before the school session here, ask them to certify that he/she is eligible for next grade promotion. Remember school session start at least two months earlier in India.
3. Maintain a neat address book, with all the Name, Phone number, e-mail, address information of important people here in USA. Like your tax consultant, Bank etc. This would be especially handy if you need to contact them from India through your friend in USA. Always maintain one paper copy. All these electronic organizers etc always fail when you need them most This may also happen that they want you to remove the batteries due to security reasons.
4. If you have a scanner and CD burner, have important docs, scanned and copied in the CD-R.
5. Carry at least last 3 years of (if you can all) IRS filing and other attachments sent. If there is dispute, you may need them for reference. 6. Get extra Birth Certificates for USC kids.

Other Issues/Things to do:

1. If renting, give notice and plan that.
2. . Book a container/space on the container. Refer to other thread on packing etc.
3. Once you have decided what stuff you are going to take, start packing.
4. A month or so before r2i, start talking to companines about job in India. Have a fixed date of return.
5. Talk with your immediate bosses (whom you trust) for possible reference check. Take them into confidence for future checks on you. Many employer prefer checking your background. Ask the possible mode of contact. This is important.
6. Get a friends/relatives address as a forwarding address for US.
7. Change of address- employer (for W2/last paycheck), utilities, bank, brokerage, etc.
8. Book tickets to India. If on h1b and layoff, company will pay for your ticket.
9. Get PIO Card/Long term visa for US citizen family members. If getting PIO card get it advance, since it might take a month to get it.
10. Sell car(s). Rent a car for the remaining period. Remember that once you sell your car, you don’t have liability coverage. Credit cards will only provide collision coverage. But liability coverage when renting a car. The other option is to keep one car till the end and give it to a friend to sell and send you the money. This way you can save on renting a car.
11. When leaving apt/house, call utilities-Phone, cable, Power, gas, garbage collection, newspaper, water, cell phone, Internet. Close all accounts. Give forwarding address so that they can send last bill or refund payment.
12. Have a local friends/relative address for refund checks, bank statements, last bills etc. Provide them with deposit slips and envelopes to deposit any checks. For any bills, either ask them to pay it (and pay them) or if you have online bill pay then pay through that.
13. Enjoy the move. Its an experience!!!

In India:

1. Inform your bank about your return. Convert NRE account to NRO account. Reduce the balance. It is taxable now. (Even in RNOR)
2. Open a liquid account (it is like MMF) with some big mutual fund company and move your NRE balance there.
3. Continue your FCNR until maturity. As each deposit matures, roll them into RFC fixed deposits.
4. Remember Indian fiscal year is April to March. Find out how to file returns and seek a local CA/FP help for the first year, if you need.
5. Always write checks in Indian Rupees for others. Write $ checks only for deposit in your account. This will be a security for your account also will help in balancing your Indian account and US Accounts.
6. Keep low profile. You don’t need to advertise to every one that you are returned NRI and have left wealth behind. With kidnapping increasing everyday for ransom, your kids are in danger.

In USA:
1. Roll over your 401k to IRA and complete the process before leaving. Allocate the funds of your choice in IRA. Understand the procedure for withdrawal of funds from your IRA account.
2. Have atleast two bank accounts. Too many bank accounts are messy. One bank account may not be enough. Choose atleast one of the big banks - like Citi, BoA who have branches in India.
3. Consider opening a bank account in India in the same bank after return.
4. Close all credit card accounts except one. Keep Visa or Mastercard account - which can be virtually used anywhere. Discontinue AMEX or Discover card. So, earn cash back bonus and other rewards before closing.
5. Open Mutual fund account in India, invest some in bond funds with low maturity period in growth option. After a year when you withdraw this money, you will only pay 10% tax. Also this will offer all the liquidity one need.
6. Avoid carrying cash during the travel back to India. You will have many thoughts running your mind. This will be an additional burden. If you must, take traveller's checks, sign them, and write down the numbers and send it as an email to your self. After cashing them you can always delete your email.
7. Print and carry enough check books for your US checking account. You will find it difficult to order printing and shipping them to you when you need them most.
8. Order 1040/1040NR forms, publications, instructions from IRS web site and carry them to India. You may need them for reference or to discuss with your CA/FP in India.
9. If you have a scanner and CD burner, have important docs, scanned and copied in the CD-R.
10. If you need to encash savings bonds, do them before you leave. Carry the certificates safely with you. Send a photocopy of the bonds with your shipping.
11. Carry atleast last 3 years of ( if you can all ) IRS filing and other attachments sent. If there is dispute, you may need them for reference.
12. Request to Freeze your credit and request credit alert. If there is any credit request in your account, the creditor has to call you to verify before authorization. Also check your credit history regularly. With http://www.annualcreditreport.com, you can get free credit report from all three agencies once in a year free of cost. If you schedule it properly, you can get a free credit report once in 4 months, without paying anything. Serious paranoids can opt for credit monitoring service that may cost about $10 per month.

Mongoose Cricket Bat

Haven't heard of this new kind of cricket bat until today. This cricket bat has a longer handle. Specifically "The Mongoose’s blade is 33% shorter and its handle 43% longer than a conventional bat"

The bat's website is here.

Here are a couple of pics of this bat.

Indian Election Pics in Boston Globe's Big Picture Blog

First, a picture of the gathering for Chiru's campaign speech in Vijayawada, AP. Here'z how the blogger, Alan Taylor, describes this pic:

Fans of Indian movie star-turned-politician Chiranjeevi wave the actor's Praja Rajyam Party flags and listen to him speak during an election campaign in Vijayawada, in the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, Thursday, April 16, 2009. Chiranjeevi, the beloved hero of 149 adventure-romance films, has quickly become a political force since leaving Tollywood, the Telugu-language film industry that he ruled for three decades, to found his own party and contest elections in the key state of Andhra Pradesh. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

Another picture from the same series with Chiru, NTR and Balayya painted on a vehicle. The description reads:

Portraits depicting Indian movie star-turned-politician Chiranjeevi, left and right, are seen painted alongside former Andhra Pradesh state chief minister late N.T. Rama Rao, center, on a cycle rickshaw during an election campaign in Vijayawada, India on Thursday, April 16, 2009. (AP Photo/Aijaz Rahi)

And this with Amitabh, Abhishek, Aish and Jaya after voting..displaying their...hmmm..

List of Sitting Indian MPs Sorted by Age

Youngest sitting Indian MP: Sachin Pilot - 26
Oldest sitting Indian MP: RAMCHANDRA VEERAPPA - 94

STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ)

STS-125 Atlantis Solar Transit (200905120002HQ), originally uploaded by nasa hq photo.

Awesome picture of NASA space shuttle Atlantis with Sun in the background.
Also, using flickr to post to this blog for the first time!

Mirror to Download Apache Ant

I had to go through a dozen mirrors in the Apache Ant download site and still couldn't download the ant binaries. All of them timed out on me. So, I googled for some other mirrors and I found tradebit mirror site and it worked.

Apache, could you please come up with a better system where YOU decide whether the mirror carries the file or had a successful download in the past day or so?

Thanks

2009 NBA Playoffs Bracket

Excellent widget from http://nba.com to follow the NBA Playoffs

You Tube India Channels

Most Viewed Indian You Tube Channels All Time: Click Here

Most Subscribed Indian You Tube Channels: Click Here

Most Viewed Videos - All Time in You Tube India: Click Here

Top Favorited Videos of All Time in You Tube India: Click Here

Who broke Abu Ghraib Story

Answer: Seymour Hersh for The New Yorker

From the Wiki:

In 2004 articles describing the abuse, including pictures showing military personnel abusing prisoners, came to public attention, when a 60 Minutes II news report (April 28) and an article by Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker magazine (posted online on April 30 and published days later in the May 10 issue) reported the story.

If you would like to know a brief Timeline of how the Abu Ghraib Story came out click here.

Madhurai Meenakshi Temple Google Satellite Image

One of the Seven Wonders of India 2009 compiled by NDTV


View Larger Map

Indian Political Parties and their Websites

End of DADT will be greeted by yawns

Frank Rich, NYT Op-Ed columnist predicts this:

When the administration tardily ends “don’t ask, don’t tell,” you can bet that this action, too, will be greeted by more yawns than howls.

I highly doubt it.

Obama - Is he Just Words?

My bro has written this post saying Obama is just words and he doesn't do what he say.

Bipartisan - I'll accept your opinion only if you agree with me.
Transparency - I'll give you the details when you can do nothing about it.
Hope - You can't hope for something if it already happened. (synonyms: Catastrophe)
Lobbyists - Lobbyists minus my friends
Healthy Debate - 'I Won!!'

Too Soon??

My reply to that:

I don't agree totally.

He tried to be bipartisan by giving the tax cuts they wanted, which eventually resulted in ZERO votes. 36 repub senators voted for an alternate bill that is full of tax cuts, which every economist said was an unbelievably irresponsible thing of enormous consequences. So there is no bipartisanship with a group that are so united (ZERO!!) to see you fail. You can't say he didn't try, can you?

The Hope doesn't fix the economy. Hope lifts the confidence of the people. Hope can only take you some distance. I don't think he said I am going to change this country ONLY on HOPE. Hope is a part not the whole.

He did install much stricter rules than any of his predecessors. He should have totally shut off Lobbyists but I don't think there are a whole lot of Lobbyists in his admin.

Healthy debate goes back to bipartisanship. There should at least be an effort from the opposite side. We don't have the total context of 'I Won'. I don't think you would say he is arrogant. You can't have a debate let alone healthy debate with someone who is acting in bad faith. Saying stuff like its a generational theft, its crap and such.

Job losses in the USA recessions in a Graph

Bhupati, Sania Win Australian Open Mixed Doubles

Good Job Guys!!

Amitabh Bacchan's Life

I am fascinated by Amitabh's blog. It gives a rare insight into one of THE most popular person in India's life. He writes at least 1 post a day at the end of the day, filling it mostly with what he did on that particular day and what he might be doing the day after. From what I read he loves his family and misses them constantly because of their/his schedule. He feels elated when his house is full with family and friends. He is friends with Madhavan and Akshay Kumar. Herez a snippet from his post today:

Akshay, of Akshay Kumar, of Singh is Kingh of Chandni Chowk to China, of father to delightful little Aarav, Aarav, that moves with the constant expressive smile that conveys, he has just committed some serious mischief, that Akshay, has called at 5:30 am ! He is in Toronto at 2:30 am !!

‘CCTC is premiering at London, Leicester Square on the 12th, tomorrow night, shall be honored if you could come and join us.’

I tell him I shall.

‘Delighted Sir ! Just don’t bring your brains and thinking cap along !!’, he ends. I give him assurance.

He loves and has enormous respect for his parents. He is very humble. Very diligent. He apologizes if he misses to write one day. Eloquent. Simply a very good read. If you are not following him on his blog, you are missing on something good. Go read it.

Joe Klein's Prediction on Stimulus Package

On Swampland blog:

A fearless prediction: Obama will get his massive stimulus through Congress within a month or so.

John Cole's Prediction about Bush's last presser

From Balloon Juice:

I am betting that the Bush press conference, which is playing live right now, will be a youtube classic in no time, in particular the portion where he answers the question “What did you do wrong” and then debates whether or not his real failing in the Katrina debacle was not landing Air Force One in Baton Rouge.

Also, Jake Tapper is apparently now part of the WH press corps, sitting front row and center (next to Helen Thomas, of all people), so I predict four years of questions about Obama’s smoking habits.

Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, Obama

All the Men Presidents in two pictures. (A word play on All the Presidents Men ;))

Twitter is Over Capacity!!!

Twitter is not able to handle its popularity!! Just got this page when I logged into Twitter.

Robert Reich's Prediction on Economy

From his blog: (bold mine)

As the buyer of last resort, the federal government must respond if that cycle is to be reversed. In my judgment, this will require a stimulus of about 6 and a half percent of gross domestic product, or a total of some $900 billion, spread over two years. That’s my estimate for the shortfall in private demand. But the federal government should stand ready to spend larger sums if necessary to get the economy back on track toward full capacity. The danger is not that the government will do too much; the danger is that it will do too little, too late.

Without such action, I estimate that another 3 million jobs will be lost in 2009, unemployment will rise to 10 percent of the workforce by the end of this year, and under-employment – including people working part-time who would rather be working full time, and those too discouraged even to look for work – will reach 15 percent. Without federal action, next year could be even worse.

Carville's Predictions for 2009

Here are James Carville's predictions for 2009 and beyond.

• Internationally, I believe there will be a peace agreement between Israel and Syria in the next 18 months. 
  
• More Democratic politcal scandals. 

  I firmly believe that there are streaks and that political scandals happen in clusters.

• The combination of the lack of an obvious leader and the general political combustibility of the Republican Party will lead to a dangerous fissure that will plague it until the 2012 election cycle.