How we change..

8 years back: Pack a week early to go from Kanpur to Lucknow (77 miles)
5 years back: Start shopping a month before travelling from Kanpur to Bangalore (945 miles)
2 years back: Pack a day early to go from Syracuse to Boston (261 miles)
1.3 years ago: From Bangalore to Goa(267 miles).. friends shouting: "dude pack lets go."

Now: Leaving for India tomorrow morning (8000+ miles).. and am writing this blog.. god bless me..

US Economy crisis explained..

Found this presentation that explains the economy crisis in a clear jargonless format... enjoy:

Subprime Primer

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: subprime mortgages)

PS: View it in full screen.. better that way

Another car related stupidity..

Yes.. I know.. another car related post.. but bear with me.

This morning I stepped out only to find one of the car tires flat.. well no worries I said, I have road side assistance; called the number to change the flat ( cuz I paid for it!!).

A guy in a large trailer/truck (the kind that carry 3-4 cars on their back) came and changed the tire with a smallish spare tire.. when leaving he told me that the tire was not flat, was infact fine but looked like that because it was parked so close to the curb .. Duh!!

I was so embarrassed to ask him to change it back again and I had no idea how to change it. Asked my room mate for help again who showed me where the jack was stashed in my car ( I sound like a retard :( ), showed me how to use it and the way to screw the tire etc (for even torque distribution). After huffing and panting and sweating profusely on a windy evening.. I changed the tire back.

What a pathetic misadventure on a weekend!! On the bright side, I did discover a nail in the wheel and that I had banged my wheels on the curb so badly that I would need to get them checked... damn.

Car hack..

As all of you know (if you read the earlier post), that my car has a Bose audio system. It sounds really awesome with 7 speaker surround sound and 9 subwoofers and/or pods (the term am not sure of but my car geek friends refers to.. sort of the refers to the speaker design that moves back and forth alot, so if you are standing close to it, you get a different feedback for the beats.. these pods are fixed next to my legrest, so the whole experience is pretty rad when you are driving).. ofcourse, I'm no audiophile.. the only speakers I ever purchased were the cheap Rs300 speakers in India, so my perception of the sound quality might be skewed.

Ok.. back on track. The only thing that this audio system lacked was an auxillary input to which I could plug in my mp3 player to (which is NOT an iPod). I went to the dealer and  was told that it would cost me $700 to replace the sound system, of course he had to bear with my loud WTF sigh.. there was no way on earth I was gonna do that. Next I went to some random car-audio store and asked him for a relatively inexpensive solution, and he showed me some gizmo for about $140 that interfaced directly with iPod, but did expose an auxillary-in.. but I didn't wanna pay for an iPod interface that I would never use, so I searched around for a simpler/similar solution.

Now fm transmitters were totally out of question, I had tried them and the sound quality sucked. Using that on the bose system was like tying a gold chain to a monkey. I noticed that there were tape/MD drive buttons and slots on the dash, but no tape drive, which led me to believe that there would be way to directly hook up a mod chip to that interface and get clean unadulterated music directly from my mp3 player (which is creative zen sleek iPhoto.. i know, it's relatively unknown, but it was the only mp3 player in my budget with a fm reciever in it). I googled "tape/md drive auxillary input mazda6", and voila! found Mazda6 forums where people were discussing exactly the same issues, and I discovered AuxMod in one of the archives, which was exactly what I needed.

Needless to say, I ordered it (but was definitely vary about the shady site), got it in a week by UPS, wrapped in torn magazine pages! Well, at $60, I wasn't exactly expecting a well wrapped manual with funky CDs that I would just toss into the trash. Next roadblock was installing it, the car-audio mechanics were charging about $200 for installation (I checked at two differnt places and they both gave me similar quotes.. another classic WTF moments), so I decided to install it myself (against the advice from all my friends/roommate and the ridicule by the car-audio mechanic who gave me a "yeah right" look ). My housemate let me borrow his tool set for my little adventure.

Had to rip open the cup holder, the gear interface, the glove compartment and the whole dash to reach the damn radio. Took me 4 friggin hours to install it and route the auxillary cable inside the armrest. After battling through some unmodular interfaces, weird sockets, mind numbingly complex plugs and being almost starved, dehydrated and exhausted to the point of unconsiousness, I pulled it off. This was one hack, not for the faint hearted.

It worked like a charm and was a totally rewarding experience. Finally.. took a long cold shower, took her out for a spin and treated myself with some bhel-puri and jal-jeera at Lucky Dhaba :)

got Wheels!!

Zoom Zoom Zoom..., originally uploaded by SridharV.

So after mulling over for over 2 years, I finally got a car. Its a 2004 Mazda 6i, with TRS, ABS, sunroof, spoilers, sports suspension, 6 cd changer, bose surround sound system etc etc (these are not included in the base model).

I won't go gaga over the specs, I know as much about cars as my grandma knows about computers. There were plenty of reasons why I waited so long to buy a car (or for some ppl out there.. too early). I never needed it in India or in NY.. but the public transport in CA sucks (for the lack of a better word). Being a geek/nerd and all, having a car was never a priority on my list.. but waiting for random ppl to reply to my car pool pleas on meetup groups was getting unbearable, plus I was missing some serious action in the Linux community as I was always too lazy to make it to the meetups using public transport... Also I was hopelessly dependent on my friends for the "mandatory" weekend outing (not that I'm complaining.. but sometimes I just used to go to get out of the house.. and do mindbogglingly boring stuff).

Now comes the question of choosing the particular car, the model etc etc. Why did I go for it? As I said earlier, I know zilch about cars, so the main things I was looking in a car were:
- Is it trendy and kewl :P
- Does it give a decent gas mileage.
- Is it sporty enough
- Its not toyota/honda
Let me explain the last point first. Toyota/Hondas are one of the best cars available in the US. Infact I came to US dreaming of getting a Honda Civic someday (just because I cleared few rounds of NFS with it :P) . Even my analysis factoring the depreciation rate, fuel efficiency, rate of fuel increase, total cost of ownership, resale value etc rated them the highest of the lot... but ever other person in US drives a friggin Toyota or Honda, and I would rather not get a car than get those cars (yeah.. call me a non-conformist if you will).

Now American cars were out (ford, chrysler, chevrolet etc).. they are supposed to be marginally better than trash cans, Italian cars were way outside my budget (ferrari, bugati etc), Korean cars were just too crappy and simple for my taste, and I was not ready for a German car yet (although I came really close to buying a BMW).. they are infamous for their maintenance cost. Indian cars in US are too expensive too (little known fact.. Jaguar is now an Indian car :)). That left only Japanese cars..

Toyota/Hondas were out of consideration (I did consider Prius for the eco-friendly factor.. but dropped it later for its shitty shape and a puny 76hp engine).. this left Acura, Lexus, Nissan and Mazda. I test drove Acura RSX and really liked it.. but was not getting a good deal on them.. and frankly the dashboard looked like an oven counter with all those gaudy knobs. Next car I considered was a 2008 Nissan Altima Coupe.. I was hell bent of buying one.. but the insurance was taking a toll on me ( who knew that new drivers with almost new black coupes are statistically predisposed to be in an accident).

I spend the better part of two days haggling/bargaining the price of that Nissan, called about 10 friends, called my dad.. and finally decided that I should not go for it.. the exasperated and frustrated dealer showed me and asked me to test drive this Mazda 6i.. and in an instant I knew that it was to be my first car. It fit snugly into my budget, had sporty looks with power to match, had decent fuel efficiency and I really felt good driving it.. finalized the deal and paper work the same day and got the car+insurance the next day.

In retrospect, I might have paid a bit more than the car was worth, but you have to understand my condition.. I had been staring at code since 8 am that day, left work at 6 pm and was haggling with the dealer for over 4 hours. At that point I had lost all the care.. yes.. I know I should have gone the next day.. but no point now.. the deed is done. And believe me, you possibly cant get a really good bargains from a person who has been trained to not give you good bargains and is in business for over 20 years.

Bottomline, I love the car.. it's everything I needed in the car.. panache, power and style (and decent fuel efficiency).. so next time you are in the Bay area and need a ride, give me a call.. (no..I'm not starting a cab service :)