Dreamer

DOC, IF INTEREST DO GO UP, WOULD BONDS GO UP TOO or DOWNWARD TREND ?? PLEASE ADVISE >>

With bonds, price is inversely related to interest rates. If interest rates increase, the bond's value go down. If interest rates go decrease, the bond's value go up.

I got an Athlon XP +2400, 256MB SDRAM, Sound Blaster Live, Altec Lansing speakers, GeForce 2 MX 400, Acer CD-RW 8X4X32 drive, Asus DVD-ROM. I am thinking of upgrading to a Pentium 4 3Ghz, Pioneer DVD RW dual layer, Radeon 9600 256mb video card.

 

I'm just curious on what PC systems you guys are currently using. do you plan to upgrade? Please share me your infos and your current PC systems. Thanks 

I think you can still play Doom 3 and Half Life 2 with your system. You do need to upgrade the following items though:

- memory --> bring this up to 512MB

- video card --> buy at least an ATI Radeon 9600XT or an NVIDIA FX5700. I'd suggest going over the top with the video card and buying an NVIDIA GF 6800 non ultra.

Check the HardOCP Doom 3 Hardware guide for some info on how your system will perform. http://www2.hardocp.com/article.html?art=NjQ0

If you're hard up with cash but you still want to upgrade, then head over to tipidpc.com www.tipidpc.com. You buy and sell used PC parts there.

If you're still not happy with your system, then you can explore overclocking it. Too bad you didn't put more info about your motherboard and processor.

Good Day HR posters and residents!

An asian profile regarding which country has the highest labor cost. The Philippines rank 3rd. Singapore being the first. Do you think its a nice fact? maybe? or maybe not? but take a look at the quality output, among the 12 countries being studied our Philippines second, second starting at the bottom. Now that's bad news. How would capital find its way to Philippines if that is the statistics. I think we have to do something about this because everyear we are producing unemployed people at the double or triple digit rate.

I work for a multinational IT services company. Our costs are definitely higher than our closest Indian competitors. To make things worse, they have quality certifications like ISO and Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model.

So how do we compete? We are still trying to form our marketing message but our firm has bought an Indian company to give us a presence there. While our company's revenues have been going on a downward trend, our Indian acquisition has been having an increasing revenue trend.

The Manila office has been trying to get more competitive by getting quality certifications such as ISO and CMM but I think we may be late. Still, it makes us a bit more competititve when going against the Indians.

It is our hope that being an American company that has good relationships with customers will still count. I've been looking at those Indian companies for several years now and they will eat us for lunch if we aren't careful.

With only 3 companies that have CMM certifications in the country, we will be hard pressed to compete with the Indians since they have the most number of CMM Level 5 (the highest level) companies.

On a personal note, I have been trying to take courses and certifications that are globally recognized so that I won't get behind.

As a people, we have to realize that we are competing with the rest of the world. We can't just spend our time enjoying ourselves and having no cares. We have to wake up our leaders especially our politicians that we are wasting our time infighting when we should be looking at our neighbors and competitors.

For a review of the latest cars in the Philippines you can go to this site:

motioncars.com

Motioncars rate the Toyota Camry at 3 stars while they rate the Honda Accord at 5. The other specs are also there. The Accord VTi-L costs PhP 1.22M while the Camry 2.0G costs PhP 1.23M.

I do have my doubts about their ratings sometimes because it doesn't include fuel economy and total cost of ownership.

Ginnie,

Among the Japanese carmakers, I would consider Mitsubishi the worst. Their service is terrible!

hole2NIC,

at least this year lang for you...

Worst things:

- No pay increase for over 3 years. Come to think of it, I feel much worse now because the company was very generous with pay increases before I came kasalanan kasi yon ng dating boss ko!

- 2/3 of the employees are gone due to retrenchment and resignation

- I'm in a dead end. I don't have any career path here.

- The company is practically in a death spiral. The industry has taken quite a pounding these past few years.

Good things:

- Work ends at the office

- I have time to study. Took three weeks off last May to study...

- Internet access (but I have DSL at home...)

- I have a good boss now

I'd like to add

Bad things about being in the Philippines:

- It's so damn hard to find another job

- Politics puts everything on hold. Analysts say that companies might employ more people after the elections.

Sabi nga ng mga friends ko ang tibay ko daw. Sabi ko naman ang baba kasi ng sweldo.

I have a black shirt that has the following captions

- front: Outpatient

- back: Psychiatric Ward

I want to buy a shirt with the two skeletons in various sexual positions :evil:

Research, I suppose.

River,

How is the investment management biz? Can you give me a heads up if you hear of any openings in the industry? Thanks!

I haven't had much time to do pleasure reading anymore. It's just too bad because I love to read.

- Last Book Read: The Concealed Handgun Manual (wanted to carry my piece for personal protection until GMA cancelled all PTCs)

- Last Good Book Read: Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom

- Historical Books: Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose and Hitler Moves East and Scorched Earth by Paul Carrell

- Favorite Sci-Fi Books and Authors: Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (This was an extremely good find at a second hand book store in Galleria. Got it for P25 ), Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein

- Favorite Fantasy Books and Authors: The Twins Trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman , Sandman Comic Books (if it's good enough to win a World Fantasy Award then it should good enough for this list) and Stardust by Neil Gaiman

- Finance Books: A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel and When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein

- My Daily Fair (these aren't books but they form part of what I read most of the time): Inq7.net, economist.com

- Books that I can't seem to finish: The Lord of The Rings by J. Tolkien (I was comatose after the first book. Can't get the effort to read the others), The Children of Midnight by Salman Rushdie (I didn't have the time to read more. Hopefully will get more quality time in)

- My personal reading goal: I want to track down and read all the books that have won both the Hugo and Nebula awards.

I should really cut down on it (bad for my blood pressure)

In the office - black with a satchet of sugar

I don't drink it anywhere else anymore. Just need it to stay awake... Too bad cause I really like the aroma of freshly brewed coffee