Venu Anuganti Blog

Yesterday evening (08/27/2007) I brought the brand new 2008 Mercedes Benz C300 sports sedan from Smythe European Benz Dealer. I was waiting for this model since few months as this is a brand new third-generation C-class body style which replaces the existing second-generation C230, C280 and C320 models.I just brought the base model (Steel Gray Metallic with Black interior) with the following options: Automatic Transmission Premium-II package I also wanted a ipod integration kit, which might be installed in later stage as Mercedes is still working on the support. The only package that was missing is the multimedia packagewith navigation and 450 watt harman/kardon 12 speakers. But to get this package, I have to wait for another 2-months.

I was tossing between Lexus 2007 IS250 and this model since couple months as IS250 has extra features like nice sound system, touch based navigation, backup camera, ventilated leather seats for almost 2K less than the C300. But anyway finally opted for Mercedes over Lexus.

Finally I also own an iPhone now. I ordered this on Aug 22nd and has the phone in my hand by 24th morning 10AM with the default free shipping. Good and fast shipping service from Apple. I used to think Dell used to ship the products asap if they are in stock, and looks like apple is also doing in the same way.

I enabled it using iTunes with another 2-year contract with Cingular with extra 20$ for the unlimited data plan. The phone is real surprise to me in terms of features…very good design and break through technology and most importantly its user friendly.

I thought the following could have been a nice to have features in iPhone as I felt lacking of them is becoming hard to keep the iPhone as the replacement to the other phones (I used to have Cingular PDA 8125 and Blackberry 8700C):

Features that I really liked in iPhone: 

• Light weight and cool UI interface
• Easy navigation to most of the features like stocks, weather, maps
• Safari browser with zoom in and out using two fingers
• Screen scrolling using fingers
• Phone and iTunes together
• Video clarity is too good (especially when playing ipod videos or you-tube)
• builtin Camera photo resolution and its clarity
• Yahoo! mail interface without the need of pop interface

Features that are needed in iPhone for common use:

• Copy and Paste functionality 
• Built in AIM for Yahoo, AOL and MSN
• Improve in the sound quality of the incoming voice, its very hard at times to hear other party and looks like other do not have any problem in hearing
• The home button is not that sensitive in the unit that I got, some times I needed hard press.
•  I noticed the safari browser often crashes and it immediately goes to home screen and you lost what you visiting. Could have been nice if they had a nice auto recovery of the last visited links
• After I place a call, I never able to go back and end the call, automatically the screen is locked by that time.
• Lack of flash support in the Safari is really a pain as we can not use all websites
• Easy way to configuration to support the keyboard with both numbers and letters in one-dial pad.
• Call Log history should have been with some more basic features like distinguishing incoming and outgoing calls along with the total time spent on each call
• Separate TODO list or gadget
• Safari setting to have the default home page (good that they provided a way to toggle between the Google and Yahoo search engine)
• Speaker volume is pretty much limited, it should have been bit more louder
• Maps feature should had a way to change from default Google to Yahoo and/or Map quest as Google maps often gives wrong routes.
• Lack of remote connectivity tools like a shell or terminal, ssh, putty, VNC viewer and a remote RDP client
• Maps is not  fully features (at least should had a way to re-route or finding a alternative way)
• Way to integrate web-based exchange e-mails
• Bulitin RSS reader could have been a great addition
• Could have been nice if ipod had its own Album section instead of going to more and then selecting the albums.

Overall its really a cool toy to play and it mostly suites for day to day software engineers life.

Finally I also filled my I-1485 for Green card on 08/15/2007 just before a day as 17th is the last day to receive the application. I was bit lucked out in this case as my new PERM though Yahoo! got approved on 08/14/2007 evening at 5.00 PM and immediately before 24-hours I filled my I-1485 (Employment Authorization Document (EAD), Advance Parole, adjustment of status along with my new I-140 under EB2).

Earlier I had my I-140 through my previous company and Yahoo! re-filled my PERM immediately to capture the priority date and now am also one of the thousands of  folks waiting for the receipt. Badly as I also do not have the visa stamped in my passport; that means I can not travel outside of the USA until I get the EAD…Not sure what is this travel logic…..

Thanks to Bernadette Vergara from Yahoo! immigration team who made this happen along with Petra Bloom, Clifford Chin and Sarah Tinati from USABal.

As I had two Macbook Pro’s with the same identical configuration (one personal and another one from company that I got it couple of weeks back); so I decided to sell my personal one and after posting the ad in craigslist for a resonable price..I had more than 10 people in the queue to buy it. Man, the apple is going nowhere, thanks for its hype…So, sold to someone who came first.

Now, its again time for shopping for another laptop, but this time I will be opting for PC based one as I already have another Macbook pro. Most probably will consider Dell Vostro 1400 if not some other closer models with the following set of configuration as I again will use VMWare on top of the system to run Linux:

• Light weight
• Core 2 duo/quad with decent clock speed
• 1 GB RAM (I already have 1 GB extra RAM, so it will be 2GB in total)
• 1440×900 is a min resolution
• Must be < 1500$

If you have any other recommendation, please drop me a note.

For the long weekend (May 26-28) we decided in the last minute to make it to Los Vegas. Nothing was in our way due to last minute decision as we couldn’t get a nice hotel nor a decent car rental rates.

I took Toyota Sienna (8 seat capacity) from Avis as we were totally 7-people. We all left here around 12.00 PM on Friday and after 4 hour drive, took a break for 7 hours in Tehachapi by taking a room and headed back to Vegas and reached at 3.20 PM. It took us totally 7.30 hrs.

So, the rest of the day from 6.00 PM to 1.00 PM we spent in Los Vegas Strip by visiting the Mandalay bay, Luxor, Excalibur, Bellagio and ceasors palace.

Los vegas strip:

Next day morning we visited Hoover dam which is 30 miles away from Strip and after that whole day again we spent in rest of the casinos like Circus circus, treasure island, the venetian, the mirage, Paris and then headed back to room. Third day we directy headed to Grand Canyon south rim and from there we came directly to home. The drive from Grand Canyon to home took ~11hrs and the whole trip was ~1725 miles.

Hoover dam and Grand Canyon:

Overall the trip was very good even though it was un-planned; other than the speed ticket in Arizona while heading to grand canyon for driving at 92m/hr, everything else went in our way.

Today I ordered Apple 15″ Macbook Pro which costed me ~2100$ as I went ahead with Apple Employee Purchase Program (EPP), which gave me extra 15% off of the original price. Last week I brought Dell Lattitude D820 and it arrived in 3 days and noticed few things are not working out of box, so I have to return it back immediately and opted for a Mac. As this is my first ever Mac movement; and need to figure out a way to explore all of the features that Mac offers.

For sure I need to either use BootCamp or Parallels to have my Windows Vista running on the mac, so that I can run Visual Studio from Vista. Also, am bit surprised to see that MacBook pro 15″ is not offering 7200 RPM disk instead am getting only 5600 RPM; and only 17″ one does offer 100GB disk which has 7200 RPM; thats a bad deal;

When I got the order tracking information, noticed that the Mac is actually shipped from SHANGHAI, China instead of from USA….hhh…