2007

There were 259 posts published in 2007 (this is page 6 of 13).

Red Lentil Dhal

I made some red lentil dhal yesterday, following this recipe from the Vegan Recipe Database. I only had about half the ingredients, so I had to run to the store before cooking it. The spices are expensive (!) but I justified buying them since they're something you buy once and use for many months.

Amazingly, the 1 cup (dry) of red lentil dhal I used contained a whooping 48g of protein! The dhal was so good I ended up finishing half of it last night and the other half for dinner this evening. For those wondering what exactly "dhal" means, the best way I can describe it is by saying it's an Indian soup. You can read more about dhal here.

It took me over an hour to cook, but it was well worth the wait! Theres something enjoyable about sitting down to eat what you put time and effort into preparing. Perhaps I'll start cooking more often.

Sold my Audi A4

I bought the car back in November of 2006 and almost exactly six months later, I decided to sell it. After a month went by with it listed on CraigsList at $5500, I decided to spend some money and list it on AutoTrader. Only a week later, I dropped the price on CragsList and over the next few weeks I continued to drop the price. Finally, I decided to just get rid of it. I dropped the price on CraigsList from $3900 to $2900. I had three email responses within 20 minutes of posting!

I sold the car today for $2750. If I had sold the car for $2750 when I originally put it up for sale, I could have saved $540 in insurance payments. I'm just happy I've sold it.

It's strange how nice it feels to have less stuff. Even my keychain, which I carry with me everywhere, is lighter and takes up less space in my pocket.

Machines providing bad service

I'm three months behind on mortgage payments to IndyMac Bank. It's not that I'm intentionally missing payments, but rather I simply don't have the money. I'm also behind on my other mortgage, with Wilshire Credit Corporation. Wilshire has called me several times over the past month, inquiring about payment. When I explained that I'm having trouble, and asked for an address to send my personal financial statement to, they provided it to me.

IndyMac on the other hand, doesn't have a human call me. No. Instead, they have a machine call me every few days:

"This is IndyMac Bank calling on an important matter. Please call us back at 1-800-781-7399, between the hours of 7:00am and 8:00pm, Eastern Standard Time.".

No repeating of the number, not even a "Thank you"! This morning when they called, I just happened to be near my computer and ran over to it to jot down the number. I promptly called them back, hoping to speak to a person who could give me an address where I could send my personal financial statement.

After the initial annoying menu options, I choose the option to speak to a representative. It then tells me my account information has been located based on my phone number. How is that possible? My caller ID is blocked. I am then asked to enter the last four of my social security number for security purposes. I enter the numbers and am told to wait for the next representative. Then I hear this:

"I'm sorry, we're unable to take your call right now. Please try back later."

And the call drops!

So I wait 15 minutes and call back. This time, I don't even hear the friendly message telling me to call back. This time, after I'm told to hold, the call just drops!

Visual proof Comcast throttles my cable connection!

I saw an article on Digg today about how Comcast is denying rumors that they are throttling BitTorrent traffic. I have my own proof that they are! In the following experiment I used Speakeasy's Speed Test for the speed results.

I've measured my connection speed several times over the past few weeks, so I have a pretty good idea what kind of speeds I should be getting when my connection is idle. Usually I get around 18000 kbps down and 1600 kbps up. For the sake of this experiment, I'll run the test once before I try downloading a torrent:

Speakeasy Speed Test 3

Speakeasy Speed Test 4

OK, the results look normal (fast for $55 a month!). I then browsed to my favorite torrent site, mininova.org, and downloaded a totally legal 50mb torrent using the open-source BitTorrent client Azureus (v2.5.0.4). The download took about 4 minutes.

Downloading a Torrent

After the download finished, I exited Azureus to make sure nothing was seeding, waited 5 minutes, and than ran Speakeasy's Speed Test again:

Speakeasy Speed Test 1

Speakeasy Speed Test 2

Wow, why so slow?! My first thought was that maybe there were a lot of people in my neighborhood downloading stuff through their Comcast connection, but then I remembered that was 2001. Comcast has upgraded their network since then, so I should be getting blazing speeds! Besides, it was only 10 minutes ago that I was getting 4x the download speed and over 25x the upload speed!

I waited another 20 minutes and tried the speed test again. This time the results came back normal (same speed as the first test). To confirm this wasn't just a coincidence, I repeated this experiment half a dozen times. Every single time, my connection speed slowed down considerably after about 4 - 5 minutes of downloading a torrent and returned to normal within 20 - 25 minutes of no BitTorrent traffic.

If Comcast thinks they can get away with throttling BitTorrent traffic, then it won't be long before they start throttling other traffic and even charging extra for it. How many YouTube video's have you watched? Oh, thats an additional $6 on your bill this month.

Forbearance Letter

This is the letter I wrote to Wilshire Credit Corporation's Forbearance Department, regarding my mortgage with them for my Ware ST property. I'm currently two months past due and the interest rate just adjusted from 8.25% to 11.5%. My monthly payment went from $2,450 to $3,000 per month. The property currently brings in about $1600 in rents every month. This letter is apart of an envelope of documents, including a personal financial statement, last two months bank statements for all my bank accounts, last two years tax returns, and W-2's.

I'll be sending a slightly modified version of this same letter to IndyMac Bank, who holds the mortgage for my Bowers ST property.

To Whom It May Concern:

Several years ago I started investing in real estate with the intention of renting multi-family properties for long-term investment. I bought my first property in 2003 (Cumberland RD, my primary residence) at the age of 21. Since this was my first property, I was not experienced with being a landlord and I had to learn a lot on my own. My first tenant, George Demasse, was a good tenant for the first year – but then he started having drug problems and stopped paying his rent entirely. Eventually I went through all the legal processes to have him evicted. In the end, he cost me over $15,000 in lost rent and legal fees.

In 2004 I bought another property (3 family on Bowers ST) which was fully rented. Only 3 months after purchasing the property, all three of the tenants moved out. I was required to spend considerable amounts of time and money cleaning and preparing the units for new tenants. By early December 2004, I had 3 tenants that were ready to move in. Only one week before they were supposed to move in, a water pipe on the third floor froze and flooded both of the units below it. An insurance adjuster came by, and after explaining my situation to him, he told me to get all the work done – he said not to wait and that the insurance company would cover everything. A week later, after spending over $17,000, I received a call from the insurance adjuster telling me my policy doesn’t cover for broken water pipes and that I’m fully responsible for paying the contractors. I spent over a year with the Insurance Complaint Department fighting my case, but they eventually sided with the Insurance Company.

In 2005, I bought my third investment property (4 family on Ware ST) fully rented. A few weeks after purchasing the property, one of the tenants moved out and I needed to spend about $8,000 renovating the unit before it could be rented (it was in bad shape). The following year, another tenant in the same building had drug problems with the police and the building inspector was called in. He demanded I evict the tenant and do not rent that unit until it had been renovated and had an occupancy permit pulled. This required over $10,000 in work. During that winter, I had several other issues with leaky water pipes and a couple of times the water pipes started to freeze. There were many times when I had to leave work in the middle of the day to use a hair dryer on the water pipes; I was afraid they would freeze and cause the damage and expense I experienced in 2004 with Bowers ST. The following summer, the gas company went into the basement to change the gas meters and noticed the two furnaces in the basement were in very bad shape. They refused to turn the gas back on until the gas furnaces were to code. A heating company came by to give me advice on the condition of the furnaces. They told me they were beyond repair and needed to be replaced. So during the fall of 2006 I spent about $12,000 replacing two gas furnaces and having new duct work installed. Since I didn’t want to go through the issues with the water pipes again, I also had the plumber redo all the water pipes in the basement. At this time, one of the units became vacant and I was required to spend and additional $8,500 renovating it (new carpets and kitchen/bathroom floors, three new windows, new kitchen sink & counter, new paint throughout, new bathroom fixtures).

It’s been 10 months since the new furnaces were installed in Ware ST and I still owe the plumber over $4,000. He has threatened to sue me, so I’m making $100 a month payments to him. I’ve already exhausted all the credit on my credit cards to help pay for many of the renovations in the rental units. I was unable to pay my American Express payments for several months and in July I made a couple of payments. Now I’m two months behind again. I’ve also had to sell all the stocks I owned to help cover bills related to the properties.

Over the past few years, being mostly self-employed (I do freelance technical consulting), I’ve struggled to maintain a steady income and maintain the properties at the same time. In April of 2006 I started working part-time at a software startup company in Cambridge, MA called Aerva. It was a very good opportunity, however being a startup, they have had to be very tight with money and have been unable to pay me market rate since I began there. As of July 1st, 2007, I started working at Aerva full time as a W-2 employee.

My tax returns are done by a CPA. I have included the 2005 tax return with this letter. I have filed for an extension for 2006’s tax return, and I have included the extension with this letter.

I have two checking accounts, however I only use the TDBanknorth account. I also have two Savings accounts (INGDirect and ETRADE), however I don’t use either of them (since I don’t have any money to save!). I have included the latest two months statements from all accounts as requested.

I do not have a vehicle in my name, but I use my family’s business vehicle and simply pay for insurance, gas, and maintenance.

Because of the condition many of my rental units are in, I must rent them for a discount. The properties are also not located in desirable locations, so renting them is more difficult. It’s also very difficult to find tenants who will actually pay every month and who won’t destroy the units. The taxes and insurance have increased on all of my properties since I bought them, which has increased my monthly expense. Many vacancies, bad tenants, and expensive property repairs over the past few years have drained me of any backup funding I had saved.

The recent rate adjustment on the Ware ST mortgage with Wilshire has increased my monthly payment by $500. I was already having trouble making payments!

If my monthly payment cannot come down to $1800 a month including tax and insurance ($1300 a month principle and interest), I will be forced to request a discounted payoff and try to sell the property at a huge loss. About a year ago, I attempted to sell the property for $305,000. It wouldn’t move at all and there was very little interest, so after 9 months on the market, I took it off. If this property is listed for $240,000, I believe it would move very quickly. If I do end up having to go the discounted payoff route, I can get you a proposed listing agreement and estimate of closing costs.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to call me directly anytime.

I await your response,

Thank you,
Raam Dev


The human element of directing traffic. Sucks.

I have nothing against police officers. In fact, I applaud them for their service to the community. But when they are given a detail to direct traffic for the increased volume of pedestrians, on an afternoon when the Lowell Spinners is playing at the Edward A. LeLacheur Park, they really need to use a little more of their intelligence.

The reason traffic in big cities doesn't come to a griding halt is because traffic and crosswalk lights control the flow of pedestrians and vehicles. Now imagine what would happen if all the crosswalk lights stopped traffic to let pedestrians cross, as long as there were pedestrians waiting to cross. In other words, pedestrians always had the right of way. It would be impossible to commute with a vehicle!

There I sat, in traffic, watching two police officers direct traffic. Wait, they weren't directing traffic. They were directing pedestrians. The same people walking on foot who I passed 1/2 a mile back were walking by me and allowed to cross the intersection in front of me. There was a 1/4 mile of traffic backed up in either direction. It wasn't like there was a constant flow of people crossing the road either. The police officers would see people about 30 seconds away and let them get to the intersection and cross. Then they would see more pedestrians and the pattern would continue.

Please. Traffic needs to move too. That 300lb person 200ft away from the intersection can wait 30 seconds to let 50 cars go by! 😡

All I can say is thank god humans don't direct traffic in all intersections.

Flush the Damn Urinal

Why do people use the damn urinal without flushing it? I mean seriously, I don't want to be breathing in the raunchy smell of old, richly yellow urine while I'm taking a piss. Its not that difficult to press the little lever on the urinal when you're done shaking off your stuff.

Please, flush the damn urinal! 😡

Tired, Pullups, and Scrambled Tofu

I don't know if its a problem with my diet, not getting enough sleep, too much caffeine, not enough carbohydrates, or a combination of all of the above! Every day I seem to be tired, especially around 8pm or 9pm. But, I can't seem to get myself to sleep that early.

Since I moved to the new apartment, I haven't gotten back into my regular workout program. However, I have been doing lots of chinups and leg raises on the pullup bar with ab loops in my kitchen doorway. I also took my DoorGym out of storage in Lowell and installed it in my bathroom doorway. I have the extension for it that allows for wide grip pullups and it works the shoulders and upper back like nothing else.

I was looking for breakfast ideas earlier today -- something different than my oatmeal with toast -- and came across this post on VeganFitness.net. The recipes blew my mind! My breakfast has never felt so dull! I went food shopping today and thought I bought everything I needed to make scrambled tofu, but I forgot the onions. 🙁

Another leaky Saturday

I received a call Saturday morning, three calls actually, while I was in the shower. They were from an unknown number. Since they didn't leave a message I figured it wasn't important. After I got out of the shower they called a fourth time. This time I picked up. They said the words I dread hearing: "It's raining in the hallway!"

I rushed over to Ware St. Thankfully it wasn't quite as bad as I feared. Part of the drain pipe for the second floor shower had eroded away, leaving a 1/4" hole in the pipe! Because of the old type of drainage system, every time the second floor took a shower the drain pipe filled up with water and some of the water poured out of the little hole.

The drain pipes were the old cast iron type, so simply replacing it was not something I could do easily. I finally decided since the drain pipe never has much water pressure, I could simply clamp some rubber over the hole and that should fix the problem. I went to the hardware store and bought a 1/2" rubber coupling with ring clamps, which looks this:

Rubber Coupling

Since I didn't want to, or rather since I could not, disconnect the drain pipes, I had no way of slipping the coupling over the pipe to cover the hole. So instead, I removed the clamp rings and sliced the coupling down the middle. I had some duct tape in my truck, so I decided to wrap the hole on the pipe with duct tape first, hoping help lower the amount of water pressure exerted on the rubber coupling. I then placed my sliced rubber coupling around the drain pipe and then secured the clamps around it.

I asked the second floor tenants to turn on the shower and let it run for a few minutes. To my relief, no more leaks.

I'm still adjusting… but is that bad?

There are a lot of things to like about my new apartment: I get plenty of fresh air through five big windows, trees and a nice neighborhood outside those windows, real hardwood floors, high 9ft ceilings, and rent is cheap compared to similar units in this area. The past couple of nights I've woken up during the middle of the night for various reasons, which is strange because I'm such a deep sleeper that I rarely wake up for anything. One night I woke up at 3am to the sound of pouring rain. This morning I woke up at 5:30am because the sunlight was shining on my face! These might not sound so strange to you, but for me, they're something new that I need to get used to -- and I love it.

Yesterday while I was in the kitchen cooking dinner, I realized that after having such a positive experience living in a "normal" apartment, I probably won't want to go back to living in a basement or attic ever again. When that thought came to me, I suddenly realized why the rich never feel rich. Once you become accustomed to a certain lifestyle, its difficult to revert to anything less. I can already catch myself wishing I had a two bedroom apartment with more space and rooms that receive more sunlight throughout the day (my apartment only gets a little sunlight before 9am)!

For the past eight years I have lived in either an attic or a basement, where there were no "normal" windows and rarely any good ventilation. But I kept telling myself I didn't need a full size apartment with normal windows, high ceilings, and lots of ventilation. Why live with more than I need when I can save money? Since my reasons were always related to money, I jumped at the opportunity to get a second floor apartment with plenty of light and ventilation, for the same price I was paying in the basement.

(I will now try to justify living on the second floor with what I feel is luxury.) Perhaps there is a basic level of necessity required to live a healthy lifestyle, and maybe natural light and good ventilation are apart of those necessities. Prior to working at Aerva, my office in Lowell had absolutely no windows or ventilation at all. It felt like going to a prison every time I went to work. Then when I started working at Aerva in April 2006, the office I sat in had two huge windows, but still no ventilation (the windows don't open). However, a new sales guy was hired a few months ago and I had to once again work in an office without windows. After getting a taste of having natural light all day, I craved it more than ever. Now with my new apartment, I wake up to a room full of circulating air and plenty of natural light.

OK, perhaps I'm just complaining a lot and perhaps I'm just invigorated by the healthy change. For the first time I took a cold shower this morning after waking up. It felt great! I've never been able to take cold showers because my body remained feeling cold throughout the day. Could that have been a side effect of sleeping in a basement without any sunlight?!

I am more convinced than ever of the basic human need for sunlight and the amazing healthy and positive effects it has on both our body and mind. But I need to be careful not loose sight of the reason I did not live in a "normal" apartment for so many years. The desire of stuff, combined with easiness of lifestyle adjustment, is a powerful and dangerous force that must be kept in constant check. What do we, as a human beings, really need?

Man vs Wild and Survivorman

I wrote this in response to a post in a forum about how Man vs Wild is a hoax. I thought I'd post it here, since my rant of a reply became a lot longer than I anticipated.

The BBC canceled Man vs Wild in Europe. It's still going to play in the US.

The article about it being a hoax has been over played. It's not a hoax. True, the camera team assembled a life raft on the island before filming it to make sure it would actually float and be relatively safe (they floated out into an ocean with sharks, I would have done the same!).

The other thing that was overplayed is that he stayed in a hotel a couple of times while on one of the islands (they never said he stayed in the hotel instead of outside... he probably stayed in a hotel the first day they arrived before going out on the adventure). And even if he stayed in a hotel a few times, WHO CARES? Good for him. He could use a couple of comfortable trips. People love making up things and overplaying news when the details are not clear. Don't believe everything you read!

He states in the beginning of every show that "a camera crew will follow me". Obviously the camera crew has protective gear and tents. Where do you think they sleep when he sleeps in a tiny hole in the ground during a blizzard? Every time he starts a fire, he's using nothing but flint and his knife... even when its raining! I don't see him using matches or a lighter or showing us the fire without showing him lighting it!

The thing about Man vs Wild is that Bear Grylls can take risks that might be necessary in a survival situation, but that he would never do alone simply to get it on video. That's what makes Man vs Wild exciting.

On the other hand, Survivorman is unique in the way that he must carry all his camera equipment with him. Every single camera angle you see he had to setup beforehand. When you see an angle of him crossing a river, you know he had to cross it a second and third time just to get his camera back. It's also unique in the way that you know if something goes wrong, he really is alone (of course, if something went really wrong, you probably wouldn't be watching it on TV -- that's TV Reality).

If he doesn't reach his rendezvous point by the stated time, the crew has to come looking for him. Its very cool to know how alone he really is when you're watching him. But that's not exciting. He can't take great risks and show you cool things that you might need to do in a survival situation. He can't jump into a big pool of quicksand or risk hypothermia by crossing a frozen river, relying only on the pools of volcanic hot water he sees in the distance to keep him alive.

Entertainment is about risk and excitement, which is why Man vs Wild is more popular. Survivorman is more realistic, but who watches TV for realistic things? Anyone who believes a reality show, no matter what kind, is entirely unscripted really needs to get their head out of the dark area its in.

I personally like watching both, because the both have their good points. Man vs Wild is definitely more entertaining and if two new episodes of each were playing at the same time, I'd be watching Man vs Wild.

You can read more about these two shows on Wikipedia: Man vs Wild, Survivorman.

Bear Grylls is no wimp. If you read a little about him I'm sure you'll agree.

Here is the original BBC article I read about the hoax.

Cambridge Apartment Pictures – Part II

As promised, I have uploaded a new gallery containing pictures of my new apartment. This is what $950 a month gets you in Cambridge, Massachusetts (actually, $1100, but I talked the landlord into letting me pay the same rent as the basement).

I love the high ceilings, five big windows, and the fact that I can use my pullup bar to do leg raises without bending my knees! If you're wondering where my bed is... well it's wherever there is enough room on the floor to sleep. 🙂

Moved into new apartment

I'm all moved into my new apartment on the second floor of the same building where I was previously living (in the basement apartment). The new apartment is definitely smaller than I thought, but I'm happy -- I have five huge windows with lots of air and a big green tree right outside the window.

With Sitha's help, we moved everything up three flights of stairs (sixteen stairs total) in about 2 hours. The hardest part was the weight bench and rowing machine, but it's going to take me even more time to get everything unpacked and organized again. I love moving because it helps me see how much JUNK I have and lets me get rid of a lot of it.

I'll have pictures of the new place up tonight or tomorrow.

Making iTerm and naim play nicely

I've started using iTerm as my terminal client on Mac OS X. Previously, I was using the Terminal.app which comes with OS X, but that has its limitations. It also doesn't look as pretty as iTerm does when I'm using naim, the console based messaging client I use to talk on IRC, GoogleTalk, and AIM.

Out of the box, iTerm works really well and there wasn't very much I customized to make it look the way I wanted. I didn't see an option in Terminal to disable bold fonts, however iTerm has that option and it makes naim look much nicer:

Of course, I can't forget to mention one of the best features of iTerm: tabs! Yes, I can have five or six terminal windows open, and they will only take up the space of one window. Detaching a tab is as simple as dragging it away from the main window. OK, back to the point of this post.

When I started using a G4 Mac several months ago, I was using Terminal to access naim. After a lot of digging around on the web, I finally discovered how to map the keys in Terminal so they work as expected to control naim (changing screens, scrolling through the buddies list, etc). I documented my discoveries on the NaimWiki. However, to my disappointment and frustration, iTerm's default key bindings did not work with naim out of the box. I figured it would be as simple as following the steps I followed for Terminal, but that wasn't the case.

There were two problems I needed to solve: Fix the backspace key and the home, end, page up, and page down keys. The backspace key was Yfixed with the help of this blog post. I simply modified the 'delete' key mapping for the iTerm Keyboard Profile I was using and changed the hex code being sent from 7f to 0x08.

I then needed to add new entries for the other keys to work properly. For each of these keys, add a new mapping, select the key, choose 'Send escape sequence' for the action and enter the appropriate sequence:

[1~ (home)
[4~ (end)
[5~ (page up)
[6~ (page down)

That's it! You should now be able to change connections (IRC, AIM, etc) by holding down fn and pressing delete. To scroll through your buddies, or through channels on IRC, simply hold fn and press home or end. To page up and down through the conversation window, use fn and page up or page down.

You can find my addition of this information to the NaimWiki here. If you have your own tips for using iTerm, please let me know!

Minneapolis bridge collapse pictures

I'm sure by now you must have heard about the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. A friend of mine (actually, two of them) was near the scene when it happened. He took a bunch of pictures, which can be seen here.

As my co-worker Raf was saying earlier today, everything will fail some day. That metal grate you're walking over on the sidewalk? It could fail at any moment, causing you to fall 15 feet to the concrete below. Everything has a point of failure. As safe and secure as we feel, everything around us is being held together by a very thin thread.

1369 Coffee House

I never thought the temporary closing of Starbucks near my office would be such a good thing! No, I haven't stopped drinking coffee, but I have been lead to discover the awesomeness that is 1369 Coffee House. Excellent coffee! I've never before had black coffee that tasted so good!