Credit Cards and Moronity

We are getting credit cards for some people. During the process of which, I realized how little people understand about credit cards. Forget the fine print and hidden charges. On the summary paper the Fee is defined as 2.95% pm and 35.4%annual.
I had explain why it is so. Really- teaching compound interest to a 35 year old brings you to a new low.

Waiters

Waiters are like robots.

Tell them something not in their limited phrasebook and they get stuck.

RIP: T40 Silicon

My favourite and also my first laptop is dying. Well, it has been dying for the past few years but I have blatantly being ignoring the increasing number of signs. I keep covering up the things that have been happening and tried saying "its the best laptop in the world", louder and louder (Maybe someone would have believed it)

First in the series were the crashes- which I fixed by removing a whole lot of programs.
Then my charger always had to be connected at a certain angle- no one knew about this until sparks started coming out from the wire which had been bent at that certain angle too many times.
Vinit, being his gracious self, donated me his charger. My man has been surviving on one charger between his two laptops since then. (My repeated promises of buying another laptop have kept him from getting a new charger)
Third in line was my battery, which has slowly lost its retention power so at this point, my system hibernates immediately if the power code is removed.
And, how can I forget that my 40 GB Hdrive, somehow has reduced my workable space to only 2 GB. So I have to keep deleting files, which is no longer my hobby.
But the clincher came two weeks back- the following keys don't work any longer:
LeftCtrl,5,6,-, Delete, and a few of the F keys.

If you are wondering how I can type the above out, well, on screen keyboards weren't developed only for the handicapped.

I would still have continued in this state if every morning I didn't see the message "Your system has recovered from a serious error".

Maybe I would still not let go. After all, it didn't crash when I worked on it.

Then, one unfortunate day, we had a meeting with our potential finance guy on my laptop. Unfotunately, his favourite sample number was five. Five crore, five employees, five years. Of course, it didn't work. If he mistyped, he couldn't delete. He couldn't copy paste as he tried the left ctrl and not the right one.

Vinit has since made me sit and order a T61- the prices of which are about 60% less in US than in India.


I will always remember T40silicon.

Global Warming Or Food Supply?

Current average food prices in the world have gone up by 50%.

There are two main contributing factors towards it:
1) Increase in demand of bio fuels- made to counter global warming.
2) Several weather related crop failures in US, India, East Europe and of course, Australia- caused by global warming.

Corn crops in areas surrounding US, esp Mexico are being sold to higher paying bio fuel manufacturers creating a shortage for the average man who was simply eating his corn. Also, put in the fact, that farmers who used to traditionally grow wheat are switching over to corn to capitalize on the gains (And no, this switch over is not negating increased demand as it is substantially high)

This has simply increased the food crop prices not only in corn but across a spectrum of eatables.

MAYBE this demand wouldn't have affected us so much if the world as a whole hadn't had a series of droughts and severe weather. But well it did. And it will again.

I haven't researched into biofuels myself; however, a friend who was looking into investing in it found that there isn't a lot of profit related to this venture. Maybe it does in the US where most margins are higher.

Biofuel initiative in India also seems to be catching on fast with multiple companies investing in the land being given away by the government for Jathropa plantations. But after talking to only a handful, I found that these people do not intend to do anything with this land. It is, for them, only an investment to gain control of land which maybe in the distant future become valuable.

Coming back to the topic, biofuels are part of the solution experts have been offering to fight global warming. However, as we see above, biofuels are partly responsible for the same.

So, the question again comes- which is more important Global warming or food supply?

Fine, I know I am being overtly dramatic. But it is something for us to think about, is Biofuel really the best option for us right now?

Hiring Policies

When hiring junior employees, hire those who pursue you.
When hiring senior employees, hire those who you pursue.