Needs Vs Wants

The things we have to have are “needs” such as food, cloths, winter coats, a warm cozy home, transportation etc. Basically we can’t live without “some things” are “needy things”. In other side “Wants” are we can live without it such as video games, designer jeans, branded value cars etc.

Other things to consider when trying to figure out a need vs. a want:

Will this item help me get ready faster? Maybe a new electric shaving machine that works better will help you to office on time, and electric toothbrush also.

I need a new sweater for winter, but is it necessary for me to have the designer version that costs $50.00 more than another brand -– even though both will keep me warm? what about quality? if I buy a sweater for $25 which is not that quality as $33, then I need $33 one.

I need a car to get to office, but do I need a 500 HP speeds and DVD player with navigation? in other hand I need a car for my big family with DVD for my kids and navigation for better driving and some power also required.

So based on each one’s context “Want” can become “Need”. It is depends on each one’s money goals and able to spend on “Needs”

Patriots : Festival of Football.

Tomorrow it is going to be fireworks and history going to write again, after Patriots beats Giants at New York. Yes, It is almost "walking in park" for unbeaten Patriots to beat Giants team. So I'm looking forward to celebrate victory rather than watching game. This game is too hyped so we are going to watch this match in 3 channels. Tomorrow whatever channel we change during peak time going to see Tom Brady and Randy Moss faces in screen. Tom need 2 more touchdown to set record and Moss needs one more catch to set another record. We are going to see 3 records tomorrow. I believe this is first time in any team sports to break this many records. Way to go Patriots!!!

Cool website for finding cool tools and web sites.

Good site for finding new web sites and emerging tools.
http://www.makeuseof.com

Memorable Photos.

I bought my first digital camera in 2004, Canon's brand new model Power Shot Pro 8.0 MP. Still I'm thinking none of the latest model beats it's quality.

Here are some memorable snaps, I clicked thru my high tech camera.

Villa Olivia Ski Resort

Had lot of fun today in Villa Olivia Ski Resort,Bartlett. Very good place for kids and who want to learn ski. There snow tubing is great and my 3 and half enjoyed a lot.

Great Professionalism by ABC 7 Chicago Newscast

As always today @ 10.00PM, I switched on ABC 7 news to find local happening, Weather, and Sports updates. I’m watching this news since I moved to Chicago. Ravi is news anchor today. He is just started talking with onsite reporter about today’s wind damage, we heard a big bang sound and Ravi was shocked and screamed. We had no clue what went wrong. After that, we updated by Ravi that a mini van banged into ABC 7 studio glass doors, just 15 feet away from Ravi. But he was bounced back very quickly and started usual news cast. As per first reports, the driver of mini van intentionally did this act. If that is true, this is most in-sense act by a possible drunken driver. Please don’t drink and drive. Don’t spoil other’s holiday celebrations.

American Foot Ball a training of Life

When I had arrived USA as first generations emigrate from India in the year 2000, I have no idea what American football was. I had seen this sports this in ESPN Indian channel couple of times and thought it is an intense, bloody game like euro rugby. But after started working in Silicon Valley, I was amazed by watching people talking about these sports in office every Monday morning and foot ball flying above my head in cubicle. I noticed that some of my team mates were upbeat from Sep first week to Feb 1st week until super bowl. This all compel me to watch this sports and my first complete football match was 2002 super bowl between Patriots Vs Rams. After Patriots won the match, I decided to watch all Patriots match and my favorite hero from that match is Adam Vinatieri because of his last minute kicking goal. Since then I continue watching football, and I learned following lessons from it which is very helpful for real life.

1. You should take risks on early part of your life. Most of the play selection in 1st and 2nd Quarters is pass play (risk selection prone to interceptions). If you score more in first half you would be better off in second half.
2. Especially last half of your life doesn’t take risks. Most of the play selection in 3rd and 4th Quarters is running play very safe and good game to pass time.
3. Always look for backup plan (Plan B) for every situations/decisions. This is very true after seeing each team’s depth chart.
4. Thrust others and give them plenty of chance to overcome there obstacles. QB throwing ball to wide receivers, even though they drop ball first couple of times. After they established correct chemistry, QB can throw ball in air, believing that his thrust worthy wide receiver will catch it at any cost.

More to come……

Budget, Plan and Buy.

It is always good to plan before buying big ticket items such as TV (Plasma/LCD), Car, Game Console, Furtuniture, Sofa, Bed set etc. Budget and Planning are cohesive; if you plan more your will buy good stuff with everybody’s blessing (wife, kids, in-laws etc).
Soon after marriage, I took my wife to buy a tv.My budget was $200.00 and I didn’t had any plan which tv to buy. My wife liked Sony model, because she was familiar with only that brand name from India and she wanted that. But I was looking for low end models to fit in my budget. My wife asked me to buy it. I said my budget won’t allow us to buy it, we can buy Daewoo TV model same size as Sony and I argued that we would get $ 100 as mail in rebate. She got angry and whisked away from the shop and sat in the car. So we didn’t buy anything that day. There after. I’m using formula (Plan, Budget and Buy) that first I go for good brand and news.com reviews and then we would narrow one or two models.Finally after debate about pros and cons of the narrowed model, we both will decided on one.Later when I decided to buy a PC , I chose the same formula. For desktop buying experience, I narrow HP or Dell model. Second factor is budget, based on current budget Dell is 100% within my range, but not HP. But drawback for Dell is they don’t have good customer support so I have decided to stick with HP. For the increased budget, I decided to wait one more month for Stock dividends pay back and some interest amount. And used that for the increased budget and we happily bought our current HP desktop with printers. The 10% premium I’m paying for HP was good decision since 2 times I had an issue with CPU cooler buy HP customer support fixed it within a week. I planned to buy Plasma TV 18 months ago, I spent 3 months of researching, 2 months of capital raise, and finally bought Panansonic after 6 months of planning and budgeting. Next planning is for Blueray ,wife didn’t approve it since she thinks it’s still very expensive and early for it.

Women Spend Nearly 9 Years Shopping.

According to a recent study by GE Money, the average woman spends 399 hours and 46 minutes shopping each year. That adds up to nearly three years of retail therapy over one's lifetime. Total hour per year is 8790 - 400(for shopping) we have 8390 for other activity the main one is sleeping at 8 hours per day then total time for sleeping is 2920, and we need to work to fuel shopping including commute I'm guessing 10 hours per work day 2300. Self care, body wash and make-up we need 4 hours per day that itself 1460. So our final number is 6680. Oops I forgot to add cooking and dine out 2 hour per day. Final number is 6680+730=7410 So we have free time to spend with family is 980.We are spending only 11% of our time with kids and family. Is this the way life should be?

Social Engineering.

Most articles I’ve read on the topic of social engineering begin with some sort of definition like “the art and science of getting people to comply to your wishes” (Bernz 2), “an outside hacker’s use of psychological tricks on legitimate users of a computer system, in order to obtain information he needs to gain access to the system” (Palumbo), or “getting needed information (for example, a password) from a person rather than breaking into a system” (Berg). The one thing that everyone seems to agree upon is that social engineering is generally a hacker’s clever manipulation of the natural human tendency to trust. Here trust is leading to hack our identity. So we have to not trust anybody at all. I think we need to exercise common sense to separate good people and “Social Engineering (SE)” minded people. If somebody crosses red line with in 2-3 meetings by asking questions like birth date, mother’s maiden name, he or she is SE minded people. But we are all human being, tend to make mistakes. The better way to protect ourselves is to use tools to monitor our wealth by using software Quicken(sync with your bank accounts and credit card accounts daily), enrolling some inexpensive credit monitoring service or at least checking credit history once a year(hey..It is free now).

Real Estate burst or natural phenomenon.

The way of life should be includes homeownership. Homeownership is each individual’s dream and must have one. But the current trend thinks me twice to make home buying decision. The matter of fact is already 69% American household are homeowners so we have 31% potential buyers out there to join this American dream. But last week I did read an article in Chicago Tribune that 38 Million American living insecure food intake range, which means, 38 Million American living very low income and they are a generation away to join homeownership club. If you subtract this 38 Million people from potential buyer list then we have only 20% of potential buyers.The future house market will be driven by upgrades, like town home owner moves into single family house and single family house owner will move into some bigger house. So on and so forth…..Here now real winner is whoever already sold house at higher prices in last year peak.

Don't enjoy at success time

Every human will be success at some time of there life span. Some lucky ones will be success for all the time in there life span. It is law of nature; we deserve that and all we need to do is be at right place at right time. Once you reached success, don’t settle down and start dropping balls. Ordinary people try to enjoy the success time overwhelmingly hence they would end up struggling later. We have to plan for future while we enjoying success at same time.
If Microsoft didn’t plan for XBOX or ZUNE while they are enjoying tremendous success with windows operating system, they won’t be now number two in gaming console market or MP3 player in North America.
If Google didn’t plan for Google earth while they are enjoying exponential success with search engine, we won’t get mega glorious software of century Google earth in our desktop.
Somebody can argue that they are doing business so they have plan new products to stay in market. But there are lot of corporation in America and even all over World failed because they were enjoyed too much success but not planning for future products. Classic example would be GM, FORD.
You can compare corporation life with human life very easily, because corporation also has same life cycle of human. Born (Start-up), Teen age (Mid-size), Adult (Corporation). One difference is nobody will buy or merge with other human but corporations can merge or acquired by other corporation.