random musings...

We have had an exceptional 2008, so many changes, both positives and negatives including Obama’s successful campaign to White house, Capitalism’s usual constructive destruction (Lehman’s brother and other banks’s collapse), painful job losses, melting housing market, government’s bail outs, Mumbai’s terror attack and finally Madoff’s fraud. Good news is none of the above was caused by natural force, all are by human. Our greediness caused all this, and some extra-ordinary human required to clean up this mess. For me, personally 2008 was great year learned some new things and found some new friends. As an acme of 2008, my dad’s kidney transplantation is scheduled on Dec 28 th 2008. Looking forward, 2009 will be another ebullient year as usual for all of us. Normally the year after recession will be excellent for growth, with the combination of new administration and rock bottom oil price, i’m imagining a paroxysm growth. Again Happy Holidays and Happy New Year 2009, af

Again it is the time of year, we are thinking about our usual New Year resolutions. For me, last 15 years my favorite resolution was to quit smoking but this year there is no need for that because i already quit. But i was addicted to web 2.0 world so my next year resolutions are   200 hits per day for my blog  http://ibloggergeek.blogspot. com  and 200 more posts. 20 subscribers to my YouTube not yet created music channel. 50 followers for my twitters and to follow 50 people. Create 2 best tools for social networking sites. One was already work in progress ( http://www.tamilscrap.com ). Loose weight by at least 1%, that is, from 210 lbs to 208 lbs Buy a home in Naperville as soon as possible, after the real estate mess subside. Spend more time with family at least productive 30 hours per week. Visit yellow stone with family (this was my trickle down one from 2008) Teach Ram how to play baseball or football in summer. Teach Meha how to ride bike and how to beat her brother.

Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is facing an uphill task to clear his name from FBI charges. He is booked under almost all possible corruption charges. He is classic example of "Power Corrupts" and transforming "superior from inferior". He was from a working class neighborhood from Chicago north side. His father and mother both worked very hard to raise him and his elder brother. Based on his childhood history, he was a straight A student. He worked hard himself to stay in college, he even worked as dishwasher. After he was arrested by Feds, rumors twirl around Chicagoland and local media that he is a gambling addict, or drugs or some high level illegal activities, that’s why he needed more and more money. But the truth is he has enormous debt to pay back for his houses, campaign legal debts etc. As per one report his debt is almost $1.5 Million. Surprisingly, here Illinois is most tolerate state of corruption, because 6 of the ex governors from Illinois are in jail o

Many technology pundits predicated that Rich Internet Application (RIA) is the product of this year 2008, but it was not taking off this year as expected. I think this is because of tough economic conditions and most of traditional companies were delayed to start new projects. But there are several web 2.0, mainly content based sites are using RIA. The results are awesome and definitely RIA going to rule internet in coming years. Just see a full expressive, rich content site  http://www.scrapblog.com/ , this site was developed by using Adobe Flex RIA technology. Excellent don’t they? Another one is  http://dsc.discovery.com/guides/discovery-earth-live/discovery-earth-live.html?dcitc=w99-502-ah-1051 , just roll over mouse to GM ad on right side of the screen and see what happens? This all can be done only in RIA. EBay’s desktop application was a huge success and it was downloaded more than 1 million times just after 5 months of initial release.  http://ebayinkblog.com/2008/07/17/ebay-de

Again today morning flashing headline was 533,000 jobs vanished in November month alone. And the revised job report for September, October also very deep. As soon as flash news showed in CNBC , as usual some of us pressed panic button and affected with negative emotions. This event is not new to us, we are experiencing this since 2007 summer. As I said before, don’t jump into conclusions by reading headlines. Yes, we are in trouble right now, and all government’s engine started fire to resolve it. Patience will prevail.    Even though employers cut job for last one year, unemployment rate was holding up between 5% - 7%, I agree that anything above 5% is not good for developed nation like U.S, but because most of the people left job market to find an alternatives, some left for long vacation to explore the world. A piece of advise is this is good time to go back to school and enhance our skills.   Here are the points I have here to justify that we are not in deep recession as media hypi

It looks like people are really spending money freely, and malls are again packed with foot traffic. Are we hyping about this recession? I think say last 6-8 years we have a tendency to hype negative news, especially after Sep 11, 2001, I think now also we are hyping about this recession. As per  comscore , this year cyber Monday was second heaviest sales on record. May be NBER come back probably on December 2009 to declare that we are not in recession since December 2008, because it took one year to find out that we are at recession since December 2007.    As of Stock market, it is going up and down like bi-polar disorder, with in minute’s changes from south to north. But clearly unemployment rate is soaring(mainly construction, manufacturing, finance) and house price is keep on plummeting, since both of these affecting people directly plus usual media’s negative hype, we are feeling more recession pain than reality. Sometimes I feel that this is the way it should be, we have to have

Kanye West’s fourth album released on November 24, 2008, my initial reaction was “wow…excellent”. For first time Kanye West tried with pop, yes this is his first pop not hip-hop. First time Kanye West tried something different style of songs, auto tune and new instruments. I like Kanye West because of his depth of wordplay, rhythm, hi-pitch vocal and trying always something new and most importantly, typical artist’s fearless outspoken, well tamed bloated ego. This album was obviously out of his heartbreak after his mom’s accidental death and his relation breakdown with his longtime fiancee, and increased media scrutiny after his Graduation album’s huge success. He didn’t want to go with his usual rap because he said that he can’t do rap with broken heart. 808 is Hawaii’s area code because most of the songs were recorded at Hawaii but Kanye West suggests that 808 is the new tribal supposed to invoke emotions drum used for this album’s songs and he named this album well before Hawaii’s d