Someone I know recently bought a brand new IBM ThinkPad. Barely 4 days down the line, he (and me) experienced one of the most horrific experiences of our lives. It takes a lot of guts on my part to tell you that the Thinkpad was infested by fire ants. Yes, you got that right…fire ants…red ants…call them what you like. They are there inside the laptop, and they are surely feasting on something. You start typing and they just appear from under the keyboard. Its like a horror movie!!!

Found this Google Groups post that confirmed that this was atleast possible. But to actually happen, and that too to us is too much to handle.

The permanent solution??? I doubt if anyone knows. And I just wish someone does. Will post a real “lifelike” picture of this ASAP. In the meanwhile, this should be enough to give you the creeps.

PROTECT YOUR LAPTOPS EVERYONE!!!

There’s a new kid (actually its already been around for a while) on the block. Its called ODF. Short for OpenDocument format. Forget MS Word, and MS Excel. Micorosft is in for a lot of competition (and trouble in terms of lower sales) now. MS Office’s days are numbered. Microsoft’s next release of MS Office should ideally look to provide complete support for this new format…or else…

To tell you more about it…here’s CNN’s article.

Be ready for an “open” world. A world where every document can be read by every software and every software can read every document. Thats the power of ODF. And thats the power of open standards. So necessary today. And reality tomorrow.

An excellent resource for all possible methods of concatenating strings on different databases.

Concatenating Strings

Both Oracle and DB2 support the concatenation operator “||” (the double pipe), while SQL Server only supports the plus sign “+”. So remember to convert all the “||” to “+” when migrating stuff from Oracle or DB2 to SQL Server.

Controlling robots through brain waves sounds futuristic? Well its already here. Honda thinks they can make the keyboard and mouse totally obsolete. Do you? I think they have a pretty good chance at it. Take a peek into the future.

Parliamentarians or not…I am sure they DONT realize how big a damage such a high proportion of reservations can do to this country’s future. Read this interview of Arjun Singh.

I just hope this doesnt really come true…

Manmohan Singh to Bush – We are sending Indians to the moon next year.
Bush – Wow! How Many?
Manmohan Singh - 100
25 - OBC
25 - SC
20 - ST
5 - Handicapped
5 - Sports Persons
5 - Terrorist Affected
5 - Kashmiri Migrants
9 - Politicians
and if possible
1 – Astronnaut

Go ahead guys…dont let this be the end of equality in this country!!! Express your views and concerns here.

Here’s another resource for those of you interested in Vedic Astrology. I will…will…WILL read it as soon as I can.

http://www.srath.com/lectures/lectures.htm

Ask you dad and mom. Did they invest for the real long term? Like 10-15 years? I am sure they will have specific answers. Do you??

Everything today is about making a quick buck. Everyone wants a few million in the bank in a few months. Dont you? Dont I? I know I do. I know you do. But thats not the point. The point is every “scheme” to earn quick dividends is a high risk “scheme”. And whoever thought that investing when the Sensex was at 11000 was a great idea since there was only one way it could move in the coming months was actually quite naive and stupid. No one was talking about selling. Everyone wanted to buy buy and buy.

Guess what. The balloon burst. Just as it had burst at the time of Harshad Mehta. When the sensex falls, it falls like a pack of cards. More than a 1000 points in just 2 days is no joke. Now everyone’s talking about selling selling and selling. Quick bucks are already a lost cause for those who started investing at 11000. The only concern is to get as much of the original capital back as possible. So what do the “quick bucks” people do now? Sell Sell and Sell of couse. Creating a greater panic in the markets and disturbing the overall sentiment as well. But they have already burnt their fingers, havent they? The learning? NEVER TRY TO TIME THE MARKET. Remember you are a drop in the ocean. The ocean can easily move a drop. But a single drop cannot move the ocean. Hell…even a million drops cant move the ocean.

Invest small amounts each month. And stop looking at the business page or watching NDTV Profit everyday. It doesnt help, trust me. Compunding and Time are the biggest factors to grow your money. Slow and steady wins the race. Remember the tortoise?

The whole point of this post was to make you read this. Me and my big mouth!!!