tech n money

Digging for Information on RE

2009-03-21T22:57:00.001-07:00

Redfin and Zillows of the world are doing great job. But sometime they just don't have "all" the data you need. Thankfully King county has its database online. And for a government web site its surprisingly easy to find the information. You can search King county Parcel database here.

Now its super easy to pull-up database of my favorite condos: Windwood, Rivertrail & MedowView

Happiness

2009-02-26T01:14:00.001-08:00

I always believed that happiness is constant. Circumstances do not change the level of your happiness in the long run.

Now some serious research agrees with me:)

Dan Gilbert also wrote a book about the things that he's talking about.

In a nutshell, it does not matter if you are one of these

Or these!

Your happiness is going to be same after about an hour the picture was taken.

Don't worry, be happy!

windows Live writer..

2007-11-12T20:50:00.001-08:00

With windows live, Microsoft is getting it. With Windows Iive photo gallery application it took 3 seconds to start uploading pictures to flickr..and 3 seconds to post this blog to blogspot!!

MiraWebware.com!

2007-07-20T23:29:00.000-07:00

I am on paternity leave this month. with my parents being around, it wasnt really a full time job. It gave me some time to work on my long awaited project. I always wanted to write an application for Vista media center. I started my leave from 5th july, and today the application is released!

MiraWorldTv is Vista media center addin that lets you watch thousands of internet TV streams from the comfort of your sofa on VMC.

I was kind of too much in love with this application that decided to take a plunge and register my domain get it hosted by godaddy.com

and now the application is hosted on www.MiraWebWare.com! if you happen to download use it please drop me a line.

searching for files using google.

2007-05-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

If you want to search for files via google, you know just how tough it is and just how many irrelevant results you get.Now do the following: in the google search box, put in the following:-inurl:(htmhtmlphp) intitle:"index of" +"last modified" +"parent directory" +description +size +(wmamp3) "Nirvana"Now just customize the "Nirvana" above with the artist name you are searching for or the song title or maybe the album name.

Here is how i found desert rose..
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=-inurl%3A%28htm%7Chtml%7Cphp%29+intitle%3A%22index+of%22+%2B%22last+modified%22+%2B%22parent+directory%22+%2Bdescription+%2Bsize+%2B%28wma%7Cmp3%29+%22Desert+Rose%22

amazing devnagari editor

2007-04-05T01:41:00.000-07:00

I have always been in lookout for good devnagari editor. with the Unicode support inbuilt for windows these days things have gotten much easier. all we need is good editors that can translate the roman keystrokes into devnagari unicode characters..there are quiet some there, but my favorite is Baraha more that the main application, the utility Baraha direct that comes with it is most impressive. it lives in your system tray and converts your keystrokes from ansi to devnagari!! it also has a shortcut key to translate the text in keyboard into the devnagari.

that makes it piece of cake to write: या जन्मावर या जगन्यावर शतदा प्रेम करावे!
and its most powerful when you impress your buddies by typing in marathi in msn messenger :)

Vista Media Center

2007-04-05T01:21:00.000-07:00

I cant seem to get enough of vista media center. This thing is gettng more and more interesting. with new apps comming up very fast. Hats off to MCE team and Power of platform. And people thought that stupid company named after fruit understands the media best.

Today I downloaded this nice upgrade to TvTonic. This is best for RSS feeds with Video, I bet soon there will be enough RSS video feeds that i wont need any television anymore. Cant wait to see some mainstream TV shows supporting RSS feeds (abc and some other networks already let us watch tv shows..now only if they integrate with RSS).

Big screen headlines is another must have. It lets you view your RSS feeds with Remote on nice media center interface

and finally I am waiting impatiently for aufero to come to life.

writing a novel..

2006-11-25T00:02:00.000-08:00

some very good advice on http://www.steampunk.com/sfch/writing/ckilian/ by Crawford Kilian.
Hoping to put it to use some day :)

Ordered My new machine!!

2006-11-22T22:02:00.000-08:00

This vacation is proving to be very expensive; after ogling at the new dell PCs for last couple days, i finally ended up ordering one!

Its interesting what those "25% off" offers make you do :) Because of that stupid offer I had to think hard picking between 24 inch wide screen monitor v/s regular 19inch lcd. finally i settled for 19 inch one, and saved some $400.

ok, here are the specs:
Intel ® Core™2 Duo Processor E6400 (2.13 GHz)
Genuine Windows® XP Media Center,CD and Single TV tuner,Remote
19 inch Ultrasharp™ 1907FP Digital Flat Panel
2 GB RAM
160 GB HD
256MB ATI Radeon X1300 Pro
16x DVD+/-RW Drive

Total including Tax:1,170.18

Interesting to note; DELL doesnt allow to pick up TV tuner anymore, it comes as a bundle with the OS. too bad :(
cant wait for machine to get shipped, and start running vista!!

Accout overhaul this year.

2006-11-21T23:37:00.000-08:00

Earlier this year, i cleaned up my vanguard account. it was opened on one fine day about 4/5 years back after reading too much on fool.com :) I was soo impressed by the indexing philosophy that I invested all the 16K i had in a vanguard S&P 500 fund. Turned out that i picked the worst timing..the market went south for next 2 years! But i hold on, and continue to invest $500 per month automatically into the same fund. anyways, because of the 2 years of downturn, i barely managed to break even in this account. I still believe in indexing, and index funds, but i dont think i need vanguard anymore. Now that I have more money I am now better off with ETFs. I am quiet happy about this decision; although vanguard is not bad, why do they charge so much for trading fees.

earlier this year, i also consolidated all my investments into my fidelity account. I moved all my holding from ameritrade. it was easy process, but boring. I had to submit a form at fidelity detailing my account number from ameritrade. and then i had to wait for about 10 days for the holding to get transferted. finally had to make that call to fidelity to credit my account with the amount that ameritrade charged for the move. now one problem with ameritrade is I can not log on to the site anymore, so i am not clear about any capital gains/losses incurred there. although i am sure i didnt trade in that account, since being in fidelity..the actual numbers would have been useful. Guess I need to call ameritrade folks sometime. net net this year tax returns are going to be pain. Hopefully next year end will be much easier, with only one investment account to worry about.

Harvesting Capital Losses..

2006-11-21T22:59:00.000-08:00

now that year end is commiing near, i have started thinking about optimizing my capital gains/losses this year to prepare for tax man.

rules are:
net short term gain (STG) = short term gain - short term loss
net long term gain (LTG) = long term gain - long term loss
net gain = STG + LTG.

1) if you have +ve gain in both category; you are taxed per the catetory (STG is considered ordinary income, and LTG is taxed at 15 % (or 10% for poor people :) )

2) if you have -ve gain in both category. you can use upto $3000 of STG to offset the ordinary income..thus saving $1000 in taxes for 33% tax category. you can carry over those rest of the losses to next year.

3) If you have a gain in one category and a loss in another, but have a gain overall, that overall gain will be the same category as the category that had the gain. If you have a loss overall, that overall loss will be the same category as the category that had the loss.

artical about capital losses harvesting on MSN Money.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Taxes/PreparationTips/GotLongTermStockGainsAndLosses.aspx

A paper on harvesting loss strategies:
http://www.economics.pomona.edu/msmith/papers/HarvestLosses.pdf

I will think about my exact stragety this year some other time..Logging off now.

starting a blog

2006-11-21T22:55:00.000-08:00

I have a week off. after spending whole day watching CNBC, and sleeping, I decided to do something new..so decided to start a blog. I am thinking I will write about my passions, movies, investments, and gadgets here.