Dennis Gorelik's Journal

7:36pm: Balancing California Budget
Can you balance California's budget (it has $24 billion deficit)?
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-statebudget-fl-2,0,6957202.htmlstory

I balanced it and even made $2.9B surplus.

I would spend this surplus on lowering income state taxes.

In order to balance the budget I had to cut stuff heavily and increase taxes on gas, alcohol, and tobacco.

I didn't have to borrow from future years budget though.

What would you do?

7:23pm: Your political compass


Economic Left/Right: 4.50
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -4.26

3:32pm: Stolen bycicle
My bike mysteriously disappeared yesterday.
I "parked" it under a tree between our office building and state police station:
See the tree in the middle of that map.

Unfortunately I forgot to lock it to the tree that day, and now my bike is gone...

9:45pm: Google Street View car doesn't fit well under low bridge
Google Street View car in front of the low bridge

Move forward, but don't try to fix map image -- just keep moving :-)

12:47pm: Google lays off 200
Changes to our sales and marketing organizations

today we have informed Googlers that we plan to reduce the number of roles within our sales and marketing organizations by just under 200 globally.

I hope that would bring GOOG price down (currently it's ~$349/share).
Disclosure: few days ago I bought GOOG PUT options (.GGDPF).

6:25am: I bought NOK for $8.60 yesterday (2009-03-06).

4:07pm: Google Street View
Wow, Google Streets really expanded pretty far!

Here's the view to my previous apartment complex and my previous office -- NFS in Kalispell, MT.


Here are two apple-trees near my current office in Frankfort, KY (yammy!).

Heritage Subdivision where I live.

A townhouse in Memphis, TN where I lived in 2004.

An apartment complex in Jacksonville, FL where I lived in 2004.

4:07pm: Ideas are cheap
Steve Pavlina wrote about his experience with Juice Feasting:

Instead of getting a boost of action, I’ve been getting a boost of creative ideas and insights. However, I really don’t need that right now. I’ve never had a shortage of ideas. I have an overabundance of great ideas already — for new articles, projects, books, etc. So getting a boost in this area is absolute overkill for me.

That's another proof, that the ideas are cheap.
I think that abundance of ideas is caused by abundance of information in general.

So, if ideas are cheap -- then what's important?
I think it's the ability to recognize good ideas, put multiple obvious ideas together, and make them work.
Actual working products matter.
That requires somebody pushing forward product implementation.

10:49pm: On the streets of my home city (Chelyabinsk)

4:39pm: I got a Green Card
Finally my I-485 application is approved. That means that in a few days I will receive US Permanent Resident plastic card ("Green Card").
Green Card allows me to work for any employer in the US or work for nobody and still stay legally in the country.

It took a little bit over 4 years to complete Green Card process (and over 5 years since I came to the US).

Update [2008 November 10]: I received Green Card itself (pretty fast).
It came with several tips about how to settle down in the US.
Clearly the tips are for newcomers (find a place to live, find a school, find English class, find a job etc.). I went through all that settling down many years ago...

10:11pm: My first weeks in the US
Take a visual tour of the place where I lived 5+ years ago in Cincinnati

Right now it doesn't look appealing to me, but back then (summer 2003) it was all new and exciting -- my first weeks in the US.

It was just few minutes walk to the University of Cincinnati, which was nice.

11:47am: US Elections
US Presidential and Congress/Senate elections would happen in a few days (November 4 2008).

What would happen
Most likely Obama would win.
It seems Democrats would gain couple more seats in Senate and 10-20 more seats in Congress.

What would I like to happen
- Presidential election:
I'd like to see Obama elected. The reason -- the war in Iraq and other terrible spendings by Republican administration went way too far. Republican administration is too corrupt at this point and needs to take a pause to clean itself.
If McCain is elected (which is, fortunately, unlikely) -- Republican administration will get spoiled even more, and that's not good.

- Parliamentary elections:
In ideal world I wouldn't like to see Libertarians in the Senate and Congress.
But in the real world it's not about to happen anyway.
So, I would like to see Republicans in the Senate/Congress.
The reason -- Republicans would limit Obama's spendings, and Obama would limit Republican Parliament's spendings.
When government is busy fighting with itself then economy is booming. Here's nice quote from 4 years ago (2004):
http://www.lewrockwell.com/latulippe/latulippe33.html

The two parties essentially represent opposing, rapacious gangs who fight at election time for the right to pillage the taxpayers. The worst thing that can happen is if one gang gains undisputed control of the entire apparatus. If this occurs, the victorious gang gorges itself on America’s wallets like hyenas at a zebra carcass. When Clinton was Emperor and the Republicans controlled Congress, they fought so much that hardly anything got done and relatively few new spending programs were enacted. As a result, the deficit shrank and a small surplus arose (though this surplus was largely illusory due to accounting gimmicks).

But when Bush II came to town, the Republicans went on a spending bender. Even discounting the war on terror, non-security spending has mushroomed. Bush failed to veto a single bill, apparently agreeing with every spending outlay sent his way. Consequently, our deficit has exploded and our nation is plunging towards bankruptcy.

Unfortunately this time gridlock won't happen, and Democrats would control Presidential and Legislative branches for at least couple of years. I hope that would change in 2010 parliamentary elections.

4:51pm: The world according to Americans

4:01pm: How sleazy banks made me pay their bad debt
US Government took $700B of bad debts from private banks.



That's $2333 for every inhabitant of the US (300M population).
My household impact is $11667 (for 5 people).

8:40pm: Writer's Block: The Things We Carry
Cell phone and keys.

12:52pm: Москва глазами русского американца
Автор утверждает, что даже с очень хорошей зарплатой в России жить плохо.
Москва глазами русского американца

7:04pm: Happy Birthday!
Real meaning of "Happy Birthday"
:-)

2:16pm: How much your blog is worth
Find out how much your blog worth at
business-opportunities.biz

My blogs and other web sites worth $0 so far.
:-)

But some of my livejournal friends worth something:
hobober: $2,822.70
olegvolk: $18,629.82
azbukivedi: $36,130.56
mozgovaya: $55,324.92


And some more fun:
www.microsoft.com: $53,452,340.82
www.google.com: $0 (Zero!). Probably because they are not for sale anyway :-)
www.yahoo.com: $453,597,728.28
www.msn.com: $612,297,825.84

7:46pm: River IQ test game
River IQ game
To start the game -- click on the big blue circle on the right.

The Rules are in Taiwaneese(?), so here's English translation:
=======
1. Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
2. The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence
3. The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father's presence
4. The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not
there
5. Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft
6. To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
7. To move the people click on them.
8. To move the raft click on the pole on the opposite side of the river.
=======

It took me ~10 minutes to figure out how to handle the task.
10 minutes is fast. I'd say average time is 30 minutes, and many cannot solve this puzzle at all.

I was able to solve it in 10 minutes only because long time ago I got familiar with similar "Wolf, goat, cabbage" river puzzle.

How long did it take to solve it? - Leave your comment!

5:44pm: Guess your Zodiac sign (Guess your Horoscope sign)
If you believe in horoscopes – here’s the ultimate test for you: try to identify your own zodiac sign in 12 texts below.
I replaced signs' names with abbreviations, so you would have no distractions :-)

Go ahead, and tell me, what abbreviation corresponds to your sign.

-------------------------

BBB is said to have a feminine nature, and is therefore more reactive in its energy expression. BBB is goal-oriented, and channels energy into strategic planning to attain long-term results. BBB's goals tend to be practical and related to material interests.
( Read more... )

-------------------------

I think you have ~1 in 12 chance to guess your sign right :-)

Try anyway - I'll let you know what zodiac sign you consider as "yours".

Please, don't cheat.

12:21am: Fishy game
Want to fish?

11:50pm: Desine your own slide slope
Line rider

Look what's possible at YouTube

9:00am: Positive proof of global warning

9:44am: Moscow is the most expensive city to live in the world
I wonder how long would Moscow retain this title... Probably as long as oil cost over $70/barrel...

Moscow surpasses Tokyo as world's priciest city
Recent property boom pushes Russian capital to top spot

8:10pm: How Microsoft might redesign the Apple iPod packaging
A box with a couple pictures and a few words?
Microsoft can do better:
Microsoft redesigns iPod packaging
That's hilarious!
:-)