Wednesday, June 04, 2008

My PC timeline

Keeping with the historical theme of the last post, I decided to list the computers that I have bought over the years in chronological order.

1990 - My parents buy me a MacIIci with a whopping 4 megs of ram.

1993 - I was off to college, which means a new Mac. I hastily purchase a Centris 650 before the first day of classes.

1997 - Upon completing college, I ended up at a software company that was PC centric. Thus, my first PC was a Dell Dimension XPS with a P2, 266 Mhz processor. In actuality, my first PC was an Orange PC card (486 66Mhz) that allowed my Centris 650 to "dual boot" as a PC.

2000 - It was the year 2000, and the possibilities were endless. Thus, I splurged on another Dell, a P3-966 Mhz machine.

2004 - Out of graduate school, but still feeling poor, I decided to build my own PC by taking advantage of several one time deals at Fry's Electronics. In the end, a P4, 2.4 Ghz machine was what I was able to put together for $400.

2007 - The disappointment of upgrading my 2004 box with Vista, results in me switching sides, and I splurge on a MacBook Pro, with a Core Duo Processor running at 2.16 Ghz. I was always a Mac guy, and I am glad to be back.

Monday, June 02, 2008

My Cell Phone Timeline

The 3g iPhone is going to be released real soon now, and I'll be upgrading my phone. My current phone is a Treo 650, which I have owned for nearly 3.5 years. Additionally, I've been a loyal Sprint customer since late 1997, and I'll be switching to evil empire, known as Pacific Bell (er I mean AT&T). So to give proper tribute to Sprint PCS, I am listing the chronology of phones that I have owned over the years.

So why leave Sprint? Well, in a nutshell, they have failed to innovate. Their new phones do not offer much over the treo 650. Additionally, the plans offered by Sprint have been fairly confusing as a myriad of options were offered. Their plans were simplified recently, but plan changes typically require a contract. The iPhone, with ample memory, a large screen, a real browser, and a new type of user interface (touch), really is the next generation of the smartphone, and therefore, my treo 650 will be retired shortly.

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The Purpose of this Blog (none yet)

This blog will chronicle my adventures in TechLand (i.e. silicon valley). I've lived in the San Francisco Bay Area for almost 15 years, and have decided that its time to share my perspective on life here. Hopefully, this blog will help achieve several goals:

1) Document my life in some manner.
2) Resuscitate my deteriorating writing skills
3) Provide some perspective as to what its like to live in Silicon Valley

Wow, what lofty goals. The reality of the situation is that I just want to improve my online presence/reputation so that I can fit in with the rest of Silicon Valley. In fact, my online presence is so poor that I probably could never get another job in the tech industry, despite the fact that I have PhD from Stanford and have a good 10 years experience doing tech related stuff. In fact, a Google search of "Andy Singh" results in a bunch of results that have nothing to do with me. God forbid, most recruiters probably think I am amateur fighter, or a general manager in the Toronto, Canada area.

Well, I better get cracking, and get my web 2.0 rep in order, hopefully, before web 3.0 ...