Tag Archives: 2008

End of Tax Season 2008…

Posted by toalakan-web on February 12, 2009 None comments

Generally I procrastinate filing the tax every year but this year I filed it too early considering my standard.

Although I’m not getting much in federal and paying some to CA :( tax its the free e-file feature, sudden interest to file my tax and get the return before federal govt goes bankrupt  ;)   that motivated me to file early.

Thanks to FreeTaxUSA.Com for providing free federal tax return using the coupon code ‘FEDFREE‘.

People say California is on the verge of going bankrupt but still they made to provide this free e-file tool called CalFile which is pretty good. Instead of free e-file California can just remove the state tax itself :twisted: , I wish……..

Both the free e-file option are basic  and it should be good for most of my single friends in H1b or in F1 OPT.

Free aaah Kudutha ……. :lol:

How did my blog perform in 2008?

Posted by toalakan-web on January 5, 2009 1 comments

Well here are the statistics that I got from Google Analytics for my blogs during the period July 9 2008 to December 31 2008.

I’m actually surprised and happy after going through the statistics and thank you for taking 2 minutes off your precious time to read my blog and listen to my podcast.

This year I would like to extend my visitor base from my family/friends to common users which would be a tough task to do but will it give it a shot.

Well the next goal would be to get my name added to Google Suggest.

Please do leave your comments especially when my posts are bad.

Visitor Statistics

  • Total no of visits – 1232
  • Total page views – 2743
  • Pages/Visit - 2.23
  • Avg. Time spent on site – 2 minutes 5 seconds
  • Total no of Unique visitors – 856
  • Blogs visited from 45 different countries (PDF Report). The top 5 countries  and the no of visits associated with them.
    1. USA – 651
    2. India – 295
    3. Germany – 51
    4. Austria – 35
    5. Canada – 33
  • Highest no of Unique visitors : 23 on Dec 18 2008. Not a day with out a unique visitor.
  • Browser Statistics:The Top 3 browsers with their visits
    1. Internet Explorer-577 (46.83%). People please use anything other than IE :) .
    2. Firefox-529(42.94%)
    3. Chrome- 52 (4.22%)

Top 5 Content and their no of pageviews:

  1. Root – 487
  2. Yahoo Power user – 131
  3. Thanksgiving trip 2008 – 83
  4. Kathal mannan – 76
  5. Raman Andalum Ravanan Andalum Ennaku oru Kavalai Illai – 65

My Podcast Statistics:My Podcast Statistics

Adiós 2008 and Plans for 2009

Posted by toalakan-web on January 1, 2009 1 comments

Adiós 2008 and welcome 2009.

Well 2008 year had its good/bad in its usual way for me. Well I can split the last year in to 3 periods

  • Jan – April 2008 was a good one with me settling @ my job and finally getting over my debts back in India. Not much of activity going on here except I learned Adobe Spry.
  • May – Aug 2008 was the slow period or the bad to me since I gained a lot of weight around 10 pounds which was basically since I lost a lot of sleep during this time. I learned Coldbox during this period so its not that bad.
  • September – December 2008 was the best period since I had a lot of things to do like the trip to grand canyon,joined ESRI as a full time employee,posted lot of my podcast, won a Adobe web premium suite and got myself a new home back in India.

I pretty much expect the same kind of cycle in 2009 as well with less no of bad days. I don’t have any big plans for 2009 but here are some that I believe I could achieve in the next 365 days.

  1. Lose that 10 pounds that I gained last year. I have already started working on it and lost 3 7 pounds in a month so I expect to lose that 10 by end of April 2009. Its slow but works for me.
  2. Get my parents to USA one that has been failing for the last 2 years.
  3. Jump into Adobe Flex.
  4. Talk/read less about the srilankan ethnic issue which I was doing a lot during 2008. Its just too dragging and I have strong appetite to read about it so I’m planning to reduce that appetite.
  5. Increase my blogs viewers base and posts more on tech rather than on politics. It would be hard since 2009 is a election year in India.

Lets see how much I can do in this year.

I will release my blogs stats for 2009 by this weekend.

Thanksgiving trip 2008

Posted by toalakan-web on December 2, 2008 None comments

This year we all met back @ my place and visited grand canyon, Las vegas and Los angeles for the thanksgiving. Every where we went we were asked about the Mumbai massacre and I’m not even in a mood to write more. Here are he pictures.

Grand Canyon 2008

Posted by toalakan-web on September 2, 2008 None comments

Lots of people have described about Grand Canyon and there is no use explaining it again. You have to see it your self to know what is so grand about the Canyon. Its mind blowing and took few minutes for my brain to accept that there could be something so big and grandeur. Here are some pictures that I took @ Grand canyon.

Unfortunately the whether was bad and we hadn’t planned our trip properly so we ended spending the whole Sunday on deciding where to go. Then finally by mid night we decided to hit Vegas on way to Redlands.

Although this was my first trip to Vegas I wasn’t excited enough to visit places so we started to Redlands around early morning.

Obviously if it was me I wouldn’t have gone to Grand canyon for the Labour day Weekend( too lazy). Thanks to Sharief and Raj for dragging me in to the trip,driving all the way long and importantly keeping up with my back seat driving( one more i should work on).

If you do have time and willing to walk around a lot then please visit Grand Canyon. I will if I get a chance or sure.

Still tired of all the walks..

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