Ford shares....

This will go down as another badluck moment for me....I did buy 1000 shares of Ford for $2.08, but I made my mistake while buying on IStockManager (iPhone App for TDAmeritrade). It was my first purchase and it went to my IRA account.
I called the support and they gave me few free trades so that I can move them to correct account. Wow, I thought. I did sell the Ford for 25cents profit the next day , but didn't buy immediately in the correct account (soon after I sold, it dropped again). Big mistake, now it's close to $6....
When it started dropping last week, I expected the drop to continue for some time - another big mistake....oh wel.....

Great song and lyrics (Telugu)

Hyderabad real estate

Well, I am following Hyderabad real estate for the last two years. I am following it too closely (ha ha) these days, hoping to catch the bottom and buy an apartment in (or around) gachibowli (it's the area in Hyderabad where most of the IT companies are concentrated).

I don't want to go into the details of trends, ups and downs etc....but one thing I want to share is that - the builders are becoming more and more cunning. They are resorting to tricks which some times are laughable and other times - quite frankly you can say 'genious'. Some of the tricks are -
1. Giving a discount of 10 - 20%. Hey, the prices are down by as much as 30 - 40%, don't fool around still.....

2. Reduce the Per SFT price, but they catch you in some other place - See the examples:
Mantri celestia - You get match box size apartment, it's not even luxury - it's going to look like governement quarters. And get this, you get only 65% of the area - rest is common area. Go and do the math and decide if the price is right or not.

3. Catch you on extras - You pay for club membership, pay extra for additional car parkings, water , electricity etc.... costing any where between 4 to 7 lakhs. YOu may get a discount on the per SFT price, you still pay all these amounts - which quickly til the balance. You might ask - well these prices are there even before - but think, are they inline with market and value?
You are paying 1 lakh for water connection? If there are 1000 apartments, then all toghether they get 10 crores for water connection? For small to medium builders (so called standalone apartments), you don't pay any thing - how they are providing water connection?
Same goes for electricity......

4. You pay upfront, not depending on the progress - basically you are giving them interest free (which is hard to get these days from banks, even if you want to pay interest). So, they take money from you - sit on it for few months/years and then start the construction. In the mean time, you'll pay bank interest.... Once they start the construciton, they hike the prices saying - "see we started construction".

Ads...especially picture and flash ads

This is in my mind for long time...Whenever I see the ads on any page, I always wonder, who are the people clicking them. 99% (or 99.99%) of them are so dumb - that brings a question - are there that many people who are dumb to click on an ad (and even more dumb to purchase some thing of that link?).
Even on google.com, when I am searching for some product, I always hesitate to click the ads (Unless the links are from major sites like amazon.com, ebay.com). Why? I know that these ads are there because they paid huge bucks to google. More over, when I click on it they are going to pay google even more (as much as 10 - 15$ per CLICK!). How can I expect a good deal from such companies - see I am shopping on internet expecting a good deal. I am sure I can't get a good deal from thise sites who spent such big money on getting placement high on google search results.
While we are on the subject, I think every one should visit these sites for all you purchase needs -
monoprice.com - Any cable/adaptor/accessories/small electronics. HDMI cables are only couple of bucks.

amazon.com - First check this site before buying any where - Make sure you are buying from amazon.com (and not their partners) - as amazon.com has free shipping for >$25 items and others don't. Also, usually the prices by amazon.com are usually less.

Read reviews on any product - Just type the product name and search for reviews. You need to be careful in deciding which are biased and which are not.

Enough of my jibberish - I think the only use of me writing this blog is that I am testing my typing speed.

Get the prescription medications for less

As most of you know walmart, target and wegmans offer most prescriptions at $4 per month.
However, most don't know that costco offers more prescriptions and they are very cheap most of the time.
Even if you have insurance, there is a very good chance that you'll end up paying less by directly buying at costco, than applying co-insurance (which is $10 - $20). This is true especially when you buy for 2/3 months supply.
When I see people going to CVS/walgreens, I can only pity them - some them I know are Social security/medicare etc.. and they can't easily afford medications. Still, they go there only - I think it's because they are not aware of the better options (prescriptions means CVS/Walgreens - that's what every one thinks).
More over, you don't need costco membership to use pharmacy - That's right, you can just say - I am going to pharmacy and they let you go.

Cheap domestic and internation VOIP calls from iPhone

I have an iPhone 3G (Like millions of others....) and I found a way to make cheap domestic/international calss. It required jailbroken phones and is fairly easy to do.
First get a SIP compatible VOIP account (I used actionvoip.com, but there are many). Subscribe and fund it with some money.
Get Fringe (it's from official App Store) or there are many others like TruPhone. There are few apps in Cydia (jailbroken app store) also.
Then you configure the SIP account. So far it is straightforward. However,Fringe and any other official VIOP client only allows VIOP calls over WiFi.
For this, we can install "ViopOver3G"from Cydia. It simply tricks any application to think that it's on WiFi!. By default, it tricks iTunes and Fringe (Since these are two obvious application, first one to download big podcasts and Fringe for Voip Calls).
You are all set - I can make any call any where....

What's on Obama's mind

Well, a new post after a loooong time. I changed jobs, a lot happened in between and I decided to start writing more often. Thought it's a public blog, it's just a way for me to express my feeling, write what I think and some times just 'document' some useful info....both related to work and life.

I've been trying to analyze the actions/reactions of President Obama (before and after he got elected). I am supported him (thought I can't vote) just because I thought he is better alternative (especially after McCain chose "Palin" :-).

Well, back to the topic - what I don't get is, is he acting like he promised during campaign? Or he is too overwhelmed and just following what his team (I mean his White house team) who are old timers (as you know most of them are from Clinton era) are saying.

Some of his actions are contradicting to what he said during campaign. For example, he said his policies will be made public and he'll sign a bill only after it is debated in public. He signed second stimulus plan with the same rush that George Bush did.

And today, he posed a tough stance against auto makers, ousted GM CEO etc.... What about Wall street? He gave billions of dollars, all *without* pre conditions and no questions asked.

What I didn't like is, his comment on Tonight's show couple of weeks back - when Jay Leno asked him, "What happened to all the money given to the banks". He explained in detail (which is not what you expect in Tonight's show) that they took the money and used it to raise the capital (basically they are keeping it with them). Then he went to say that they are going to start a new program to 'buy toxic assets' in the hope that they can now start lending. What is the guarantee?

I think every rational person is going to ask this question - "Why this preferential treatment for wall street?". I think it's because every congressmen and senate memeber is worried about their savings, their friends and the millions of dollars of future income.
That's al......