The TV Buying Dilemma : My Decision Making Process

TV Buying is a nightmare scenario. The number of options that one has not just for technology, sizes, manufacturers and retailers, make decision making very hard. I got past all the initial technology related understanding LCD, Plasma, CRT, Projection and others. I have talked to a sizable number of people who own TVs and each one recommends getting a kind unlike their own. Joseph says,"I bought an LCD TV from Samsung 2 years ago, and some important component went kaputt. Buy Plasma TV!" Nachiket says "My friend bought a Plasma TV. They don't last very long. Don't get Plasma!" So I decided I am going to get an LCD TV, under $1000 in price.

I worked on video processors for the next generation standards, so I know about the latest high resolution DVDs that have come out. Blue Ray DVDs and HD-DVDs both have a resolution of 1920 x 1088 pixels. This is called 1080p or Full HD resolution I think. Also if you watch NBC Nightly News you would know that their broadcasts switched to Full HD from last week. Comcast HD also broadcasts at that resolution. So it seems like all broadcasters are switching to that resolution. If you spend a $1000 on a TV, you better buy something that plays 1080p.

But that as much as I can tell is an impossible proposition. There are no such TVs in the market currently. The cheapest 1080p TV is the Sharp Aquos 32 inch TV from Buy.com or Circuit City. The trouble is that it is over my budget. It costs around $1400. So I think the smart thing to do is to get the cheapest decent TV money can buy, and wait until 1080p TVs are within my budget. That seems like a 20 inch Tube by Philips from Walmart for around $200. I need a good second opinion that my thinking here makes sense. Any takers?

It's raining cats and dogs

There's been a deluge of dogs at work these days. Within a one cube radius of my cube today, there were three dogs. A neighbour I share the aisle with, gets his really cute but old dog called Buttons to work. Then last week a new neighbourette moved in with her Apso. The third dog, a dachshund, is the one in the cube one aisle away, which I share a wall with. As a dog lover, I couldn't be more pleased. Canines are just too cute, and because at least one member of my family always hates them, some pleasures are best enjoyed vicariously.

Buttons has been coming to work for most of last month. Our workplace has a policy of "welcoming obedient pets" and all of these dogs fit the bill. Very rarely does one hear one of the dogs bark, although you do hear them lapping up water, or squealing from boredom. Poor Buttons keeps staring at passers by and I pet her and smile at her everyday. My neighbour gets a walk every few hours. Sitting in a small cube all day is not good for anyone's health and Buttons ensures that her master gets some exercise.

I've heard that Google takes pet friendliness a step further. They actually buy a pet for employees who sit next to each other and want a dog. The company takes care of it, feeds it and drills a hole in the cube walls so that the cuddly creature can visit everyone. The poor human beings stare at code all day. Well if that's what it takes to become Fortune's top company to work for, I say let all employers buy us pets.

Zodiac : A Review

I was utterly and totally scared as I made my way back home last night after 11 pm. I came back home with a person on the phone for moral support, and then quickly turned on all the lights at home and made a quick inspection of every room. The reason was this: An intelligent serial killer once roamed the same Northern California streets that I tread on today. The murders he committed some of the most ghastly crimes in the area. What's more even after 37 years , no one has yet confirmed with certainty the identity of this monster.

No movie house would have dared to make a movie about the Zodiac killer for many years. An accurate depiction of the killer would most likely have spooked Bay Area residents to the hilt... Paramount allowed David Fincher to make such a movie, and I cannot imagine a higher compliment to the movie-makers than my reaction to the movie last night.

**SPOILER WARNING** **ANALYSIS**

So why was the Zodiac Killer never caught? Here is my take on this based on the facts presented by the movie:

- The lack of a motive. The murderer just killed people to taunt police officers.

- Zodiac probably also understood that every case in a different county gets treated by different police authorities. In a less wired world, information sharing between the cops from various counties wasn't efficient and well-coordinated. Some of the Bay Area counties didn't even have fax machines at the time.

- The creation of ciphers. This was merely a distraction. The police would spend a lot of time and energy on trying to solve the ciphers, and really not gain any useful information. This meant they had less time to actually connect the dots.

- Claiming crimes that he didn't commit. This again I believe was a way to waste the police's time.

- Pretense of attack on bus for school children. Terrorizing San Francisco and forcing the police to spend time on checking all buses instead of solving the crime.

I think Zodiac was smarter than most police officials thought. But that intelligence could have been put to better use in other more useful purposes for humanity.

Amche Pune Revisited

Last month I visited Pune again after two and a half years. It is always super to be back home. I had been forewarned about a slew of changes to my old city. Hard to miss are all the new shopping malls. We live on S B Road, so only a blind person would not notice them. The malls are all very fancy, some even fancier than the ones in the US, with much the same merchandise. Pyramid and Benzer on S B Road were my usual hangouts, when I needed to do most of my wedding-gear shopping. (I also got married on this trip to my classmate from COEP, Sai Hingne! : )) Clearly inflation is a huge problem in India today. Nearly everything at these malls is comparable in absolute amounts to clothes one buys in America. Some positive changes that I saw around me were the humongous flyovers, such as the one on University Road. Some positive changes in the making are causing a lot of Punekars a lot of heartburn nevertheless.

The road/traffic situation is easily the biggest problem. While I never tried to plough my way through rush hour traffic, when I did get stuck in places, I was reminded that gridlocks are common in all major metros... I've driven through some in San Francisco and Chicago as well. But what I disliked the most was the lack of fear of the law among educated people too. At every signal, people habitually break the red light. Without cops to extract fines and with the fines now becoming a measly fraction of the average person's paycheck, people have absolutely no regard for traffic rules. City planning is my other major gripe with the city. City officials just keep extending already clogged roads further up-stream, without caring about the fact that traffic is virtually at a stand-still during every rush-hour down-stream. Plans for new complexes in places like Pirangute should only be approved once many alternate ways of getting from there to the heart of the city are created. Pune desperately needs a subway system atleast from Kothrud to Deccan and Laxmi Road Areas.

One other uniquely Pune-sque feature is the excavation of roads at random. In my 4.5 years in the US and other visits to Bombay, Delhi, and other cities, I have never noticed this problem elsewhere. I don't know why people need to replace these huge cement pipes or lay telephone lines again and again. And it doesn't even seem like anyone is in a particular hurry to get the mess sorted out. The mud is left lying around on the street, without anyone working on clearing it up even after 5 pm. I saw a person on a scooter, running into one such obstruction and suffering a very bad fall.

But here is a list of all the positive things I found on my trip: the inexpensive yet stylish clothes from FabIndia, a night's stay at Le Meridian in Pune, (11 on 10 on all counts. Excellent hotel. Highly recommended! Highly overpriced though) and my flights on Jet Airways to Delhi. The Pune airport was a fairly decent experience and a first class flight on Jet Airways nicer still. There were 7 passengers in the cabin and 3 attendents looking after them. Food is excellent, the attendants polite, and flights were on-schedule. Also there were no blackouts all through my stay. Admitted it was winter and electricity requirements were lower, but it felt nice. While there are huge mounds of mud to conquer, there is hope!