I needed to turn an image into an .ico (icon) format and did not have access to any image editing software.

for online editing of images : pixlr.com is pretty handy.
for image file format conversion I came across this site which seems to work:
converthub.com

Not sure about the source (often misattributed to Nelson Mandela):

“Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate, our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us, it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

One of the things I really dislike is the idea of buying a new car. Scratch that, I just really dislike dealing with car salesmen because with the exception of one or two, you are surely going to get suckered, you just don’t know how much and most likely you will never find out. It’s different from buying anything else in my opinion (even a house) as it can be researched a lot easier and you can arm yourself with all the needed information before going into a store.

With cars there are just too many unknowns that you simply cannot find out (for mortal people at least) before starting the process, hence that uneasy feeling of “wonder where I rank in the list of people this guy suckered” feeling just won’t go away. The car industry would sure benefit from more transparency as I don’t mind dealerships making a living/profit as long as I am paying very similar to what the other 20 people who bought the same car and that just is not the case.

Anyways, we needed a car for the next many years that we can use as the kids grow up, so we decided to go with a mini-van (which is another post by itself) and Honda Odyssey seemed the natural choice. Next came the buying part. We decided to not trade-in to give the sales person one less parameter they can milk more profit from. This is the story of how we tried our best to minimize the risk of overpaying for the car.

In short, it came down to the following steps (we happened to get our car right towards the tail end of this year’s model and in fact only teen nr of odysseys of the model we wanted remained in our vicinity as one dealer looked it up):

1. Know the EXACT car you want, brand, model, down to options, exterior and interior colors.
2. Find out how much the MSRP price & invoice price (e.g. from truecar.com), how much the holdback is (usually 2 or 3%) and if there are (marketing) incentives offered to dealers/consumer by the manufacturer (typical ahead of next year’s model to get rid of last inventory of the current year)
3. Calculate what price you should be paying based on this info e.g. invoice price minus holdback minus incentives (this is as far as you can get with arming yoruself with the info)
4. Get a list of quotes from internet (e.g. from InvoiceDealers, Cars.com, Yahoo!Autos, Autos.com, Edmunds.com, MyRide.com and CarsDirect)
5. Get a list of all dealers within a readius of X miles from your house (ie as far as you are comfortable to drive to get the car if you get a good deal) from yellowpages.com
6. Start calling the farthest one.
7. Important! Ask for the fleet manager or internet sales (fleet manager is someone who is on a fixed salary vs sales people that get commission based on how much they sell)
8. Tell the person you are looking to buy a car today (don’t lie if you are not planing on this) and are calling a few places to get the best price and go in and close the deal. Then ask them what they can offer if they have the car in stock.  If they are savvy they will ask what price you currently have and you can share the lowest price you have and ask if they can beat it. Here is where it gets tricky. When I did this, a lot of them would just say thats a good deal, you should order it from the internet then. Don’t waste time and move on to the next one as if you want to wait, you can always order it from the internet site.
9. Make sure to confirm that this is the *bottom* line price (usually including everything but tax) as otherwise you will be surprised how much other fees they will try and insert in there. Some will refuse to give a bottom line price over the phone saying you will use it to call the next guy for a lower price. Again, don’t waste time, you started by telling him/her you are looking to buy a car today and if he is not trying to work a deal, chances of getting a good deal from this person are next to none.
10. If they do, ask to call back, call the next dealership closer to you and repeat the process until you get the price closest in step 3.
11. Go and buy the car!

Common comment from sales person : I am giving you the car at invoice and not making any money. Well, they may have paid the price of invoice to manifacturer yes, but then they get different rebates and holdback, so in reality that is not how much they paid. Example: if you buy a watch for $20 and you get a mail-in rebate for $8, your invoice was $20 yes, but you actually paid only $12.

How did we do? After buying the car, it turned out one of the parents whose kids are in the same age group as our daughter and we have seen each other a few times works at a dealership and when I told him about the price we paid for the car, he said he would look into it and told us later that we got a really good deal, as good as it pretty much can get for this area.

and here is a very comprehensive site about buying a new car.

A few video’s that once again reminds us about the amazing things we humans are capable of, and while some of these can’t be achieved through hard work, most become apparent only after hard work and perseverance.

Do you have other videos to share?

The concept of microblogging has been around for a while and is championed (based on userbase?) by Twitter. I for one don’t seem to get why and at the risk of making an ignorant statement like these,  I find micro-blogging in its current form (with exception of a handful scenarios) frivolous and useless. The main argument I hear about it is that twitter (or similar services) are the real-time web and unless Google or others move towards that, you will be losing the game by serving the users content that is not super fresh and real time. I can see that being the case eventually and maybe the current form is just a stop-gap to figure out how to get us there and just maybe that is why Facebook is so obsessed with turning into twitter to the degree that it changes the site to even look like twitter. And then you have Google to some degree drooling over Facebook and certain aspects of its model and Microsoft trying to catch up with Google. We have a full ecosystem right there with these four guys.
Here is a good video summarizing my sentiments on tweeting (thanks to Karina):

PS. I do have a twitter account (curiosity) but I think I have logged into it maybe twice in the last 6 months.

It baffles me how low the Iranian goverment is willing to sink to continue their violation of human rights. For years, they have persecuted Baha’is of Iran, imprisoned and executed them on the same old and lame charges of espionage for Israel. Why? because Baha’is believe in the same God as Islam, want to achieve world peace and because we have our Holy places in Israel, like every other religion of the past.

The UN and rest of the world has passed resolutions one after the other and this has been a thorn in the side of the Iranian goverment that they can’t just continue do as they please.

And here is the goverment’s latest shameless play: they arrest seven of the Baha’is, imprison them and charge them for espionage. After this, the Noble prize winner and human rights activist Shirin Ebadi declares that she will represent the Baha’is and stand up for their human rights. The government then charges Ms. Ebadi with tax evasion and once imprisoned, this is then followed by formally charging these imprisoned Baha’is for espionage.

Further the timing of these events certainly are interesting. In the light of president Obama studying what to do about the relations with Iran, I personally find the timing of these event very interesting and cunning from Iran’s side. Why? because as mentioned violating the rights of Baha’is has been a thorn on the Iranian goverment’s side and now is their chance to see if they can get away with it with the new US president. I.e. is President Obama willing to prioritize this down in favor of starting a dialouge with Iran and instead focus on other matters that also are in contention with US (e.g. nuclear energy development).

Whether this is all one big consipirasy theory or not remains to be seen over time, but one thing is and continues to be clear. Iranian goverment is ready to sink as low as it takes to continue their shameless persecusion of Baha’is.