Buy Home

Couple of data pointers while buying home.

1. Ultimately after purchasing home, will you, your spouce and family members be HAPPY. Have this as the key guidance during the entire purchase process.
2. I wouldn't recommend not even putting a 5% down payment.
3. Buying agent and selling agent take 3% each. So, asking for 94% of the asking/listing price is not irrelevant. - Or if this property is not your dream home, you SHOULD ask for less than 94% of the asking price.
4. Try to by pass the agents - for example, in new homes, try to deal with the seller directly.
5. Loans (First Mortgage and second Home Equity Line of Credit) are again products and YOU ARE the customer. So, don't hesitate to look for bargain and negotiations.
6. Don't ever buy more than your means. It is no win scenario gamble - especially if this is your first home where you plan on living.
7. Buying home on the last few days of making offer / contract is purely 'mind game'. Numbers are just numbers. Stay focused on the final target and see what makes you HAPPY.
8. Buying home is like buying a stock. It goes up and down. Some one thinks they want to sfel because there are other uses for that money - while the buyer thinks his money will do better in this stock.
9. When you are in the market, the prices are set also by the personal feelings of the buyers/sellers currently in the market. If you feel better about venturing, go for it. If not, stay back.
10. Make sure the reccuring income is relatively stable - not much change/impact negatively.
11. Have some reserve on purchase of home. You might need incidental expenses.
    

synergy software - multi computer

Do you have multiple computer and you are changing keyboard/mouse to view them? Here is the relief from Open Source software Synergy Synergy works on cross platform.

In one of my earlier projects, we have a developer write a program for Windows and named it 'pauli' (girl friend's name?). I recall the developer telling that this causes security threat - not sure if this is still existing in Synergy.

Hey, cross platform? Not a problem!! I am using this program on windows and Mac OS and it works well. From the tar ball, Linux seems to be supported as well.

Possible waterfalls trip Aug 2007

Here is the list of waterfalls that might be interesting for us for the Aug 3, 2007 week end trip.

1. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca_webber.html
2. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca_loves.html
3. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca-bowman-lake-falls.html
4. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca-faucherie-lake-falls.html
5. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca_lakeclementine.html
6. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca_paradise.html
7. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca_devil.html
8. http://www.waterfallswest.com/ca-bear-river-falls.html

Parameters that xxxx had in mind for this short listing

1. Closer to home - with in couple of hours of driving.
2. Waterfalls must be beautiful.
3. multiple Waterfalls clustered in small region
4. Better than Uvas Canyon waterfalls
5. Waterfalls in it’s best (/optimal) beuty during July/Aug time
6. Ease of reaching by car
7. Not much effort in hiking from the car to get a good view point to view the falls
8. At-least one swimming hole (webber is a possibility)
9. If there are other interesting view points on the way or neighboring place – that’s extra.

Other resources to search for waterfalls:

1. http://www.waterfallswest.com/region_ca.html
2. http://www.world-waterfalls.com/database.php?s=T&t=G&category=stateprov&search=California&orderby=name
3. Well…. http://www.google.com/

A possible plan for this trip:

1. drive on Friday 8/1 evening to Truckee, CA (221 miles/3 hours 37 minutes) or Auburn, CA (155 miles/2 hours 34 minutes) or in between these 2 cities
2. Halt at Auburn or Truckee.
3. Start out seeing couple of waterfalls
4. Get back to hotel on Saturday Night
5. Packup on Sunday morning – visit more places
6. Return home on Sunday evening

Alternate LOONG day trip possibility (in this order)

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salmon_Creek_Falls
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limekiln_Falls
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur - couple of them
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Molera_Falls

xxxx picture on Mossbrae Falls was on wikipedia’s california:portal from Jan 30^th to April 24^th 2007. Why not one of us capture the great picture to share….

hypoteneous

ஒடிய நீளன்தனை ஒரெட்டு கூரக்கி
கூரதில் ஒன்டை தள்ளி குன்ட்ரதின் பதியை சேர்தல்
நீடிய கருனம் தனே.

Cool LAMP Modules

CentOS Linux
Apache
PHP
MySQL
GeoIP from MaxMind is GPL
PEAR - PHP Extension and Application Repository
JSON - JavaScript Object Notation
PHP Shared memory: http://pear.php.net/package/System_SharedMemory
import contact list from webmail services http://svetlozar.net
SugarCRM - Customer Relationship Management
Drupal - Content Management Service

file upload sites

DropSend.com, MediaMax, YouSendIt.com and SendThisFile.com
MegaUpload
RapidShare
Amazon S3
send6.com
mailbigfile.com
yousendit.com
LeapFILE
FlyUpload - Khalid Shaikh

testing interview questions

How do you test an office stapler!!
How do you debug a broken stapler!!

Bring a stapler to the in-person interview and have the candidate provide test cases. No one approach/answer is correct. Look for thought process. First make sure the candidate understands an office stapler and it's general features (or else it might not be productive discussion).

What skills are required for your position

Flexible
Networking protocol
Qwik to learn
absorb
Not Afraid
Solid BackGround
Solid team work
cross team communication

network computing -> enterprise computing

In the 90s and 2000s, there is so much dependency on networking that it has churned out lots of skilled professionals in this domain. These professional move in to other similar domains and reuse nomenclatures used in the networking domains. Example: the enterprise security companies seems to have significant influence from networking. Or, may be the networking brought in lots of hassles along with it's benefits. So, the networking experts recognized the trouble and started working on it's solutions. Borrowed word
PM: Performance Management (monitoring)
FM: Fault Management

prs - Performance, Reliability & Scalability

Looks like companies are recognizing the need to do the right thing to get more reliable juice on the existing hardware/software. Business community has started putting money where the mouth is. Check out the trend in job req in early Jan 2007 for these terminologies and yo will notice that there are job titles with one or more of these words in both Dev and QA organizations. Also, some of the big troubles bubbling up most likely due to these factors - read RIM service down or Intuit servers going down during it's peak load.

IP aliasing

IP aliasing is the process of adding more than one IP address to a network interface. With this, one node on a network can have multiple connections to a network, each serving a different purpose.

howto

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 up
/sbin/ifconfig eth0 172.16.3.1
/sbin/ifconfig eth0:0 172.16.3.10
/sbin/ifconfig eth0:1 172.16.3.100

MySQL tables - file extension

File Purpose
tbl_name.frm Definition (format) file
tbl_name.MYD Data file
tbl_name.MYI Index file

ssh - with no password

The technical terminology sees to be "public key authentication".
ssh - with no password requires the file ~/.ssh/authorized_keys contain the public key of the client stored in the ssh server.

~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub - contains the public key of the client

$ chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh
$ chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Why India for outsourcing

1. Indian S/W folks read/write/speak/understand English
2. Unlike Romania, India has a larger pool of talent and also the engineering institutes churn out more engineers each year. In Romania, if large enterprise like Cisco (Already done) goes and recruits 500 s/w professionals, smaller companies will not get any one...
3. Weather in India is favorable as compared to many countries (No snow in most places - year round)
4. India is a nice place to visit (for ages!! haha. It is considered a place to visit if possible)
5. With more NRI returning, the Indians at large now understand the expectations from international companies.

interview questions

* What types of projects (academic or otherwise) have inspired you in the past?
* What are some self-directed missions that may have influenced your career direction?
* How does our company fit into your vision?
* What are some things that excite and motivate you?
* Describe a time you had to work with someone you didn't like.
* Tell me about a time when you had to stick by a decision you had made, even though it made you very unpopular.
* How would you handle a boss you suspected of performing unethical actions?
* Would you describe yourself as an innovative person? Give us an example of something particularly innovative that you have done that made a difference in the workplace.
* What was the last time you were late with a project?
* Putting you on the spot: How do you feel this interview is going?

language dependancy of good tools

Expect: tcl/tk
Watir: Ruby/WET

There are not many good reasons to nail these good/powerful tools to specific languages and restrict it's wide spread usage. On the other hand, nailing them to language gives the marketing muscle to tag on to existing bandwagon. Both products (Ruby/Watir - Expect/tcl) get cross promotion benefits. From a person who don't know both, it is additional thing to learn - instead of reusing sh and perl...