New Car Buying Tips

It's not the easiest thing to do if you want a good deal. Below are few things you might want to do if you are looking for a new car:

1. Find the car you like. Check the reliability, design, etc. of the car from users' and editors' reviews. Some useful websites: Edmunds.com, usnews.com, truecar.com, consumerreports.org, etc.
2. Decide how long you would want to keep the car. To my knowledge, Honda is the most reliable followed by Toyota. European cars are fancier and also expensive to maintain. American cars are generally viewed as less reliable. Honda and Toyota depreciates slowly, but others generally loose their value fast, especially the initial few years.
3. Understand the car pricing schemes. Cars are generally sold below their MSRP value (sticker price). Invoice price is what the dealer pays to the manufacturer for the vehicle. Their might be some hold back money that dealers will get from the invoice price. Generally speaking, if you can get the car for close to invoice price, you got a good deal. You can check the invoice price of a car from some of the previously stated websites. Interestingly, you can find the invoice price for a specific car (VIN number) through some websites (~$15).
4. Get ready to spend good amount of time in the dealership. Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. If you are not sure, you can go back home and get back to them. That's often the best idea even if you are sure that something is a good deal. However, some salesperson might tell you that you would not get the same deal if you leave the dealership. You might get similar deal from neighboring city or not. It's entirely up to you to decide whether the salesperson is really serious about the one time deal.
5. Dealers are often ready to thrown in some goodies to close the deal: few more years of servicing, free car wash, additional discounts. Some will tell you they can either give you good discount or ongoing low interest rate. However, they can combine those two if you negotiate well.
6. Get ready to get a very very low trade-in value. They make good money from vehicles that are traded in. Could be a negotiation point that is often forgotten by buyers.
7. If you would be financing and there is no 0% financing from the dealer, talk to several banks or credit unions and get interest rates. Dealers might find the best interest rate for you, but they might add a percentage and give you the higher interest rate.
8. I barely found anyone recommending to get extended warranties (paint, maintenance, gap, tire, etc.) for a new vehicle. However, the finance guy will almost intimidate you that it might be the worst decision in your life. If you really want to, you might get those when your existing warranty is about to expire (maybe six months before. I would assume it to be slightly expensive, but not too much.
9. Dealers often include some accessories you may not care about such as mud guard, etc. They claim those to be quite expensive, probably few times its actual value. It could be a good negotiation point. Also, make sure if you have those add on such as cargo mat listed for your vehicle, make sure, those are actually there when you leave the dealership.
10. Don't give your numbers, let them give you the best deal. If you can, you might visit several dealers offering the same vehicle and compare their best offers. You can call them back about the best offer they received and see if others can offer better ones.
11. Some believe that going to the dealer late on weekdays might motivate the salesperson to be more flexible. They would love to make one final deal for the day.
12. Unlike popular belief, the dealers do not make much money out of the new car sale. They make more from used car and services department.
13. Good luck!

My Next Mission Impossible: War Against Time

I, Joseph Shrestha, hereby declare a war against time that shall end on July 31, 2017. A victory will change my life, so will a defeat!

Roku TV app for Kantipur TV (Unofficial)

Wondering if you can watch any Nepali TV channel in your Roku device? Here's a new app to watch Kantipur TV in your favorite Roku device for free: https://my.roku.com/account/add?channel=LNTDCL

Consider it a Christmas and new year gift for the Nepali community.

Note: You would need to log in to your free Roku account before you can add the channel. You would not find the app by searching in the Roku store, it's a private channel.

I am not who I was nor who I am right now, but am who I will be and want to be

Think about it: do you want to be satisfied with who you are or take steps to achieve your goals by setting higher standards than ever.

Time to Move: Time for The Change Again

Well, its almost time again: time to move, and time for a change once again. The journey of pursuing career in academia isn't an easy choice - nor is an impossible in any way.

It feels like yesterday that I came to Vegas. Honestly, I didn't even get many chances to do lots of things here. Nevertheless, I have found people born and raised here who have done even less stuffs here than I have already done - a bit of relief for me :). Growing in faith, making new friends, learning from others, getting cultured - I did all of those which mattered much more to me than anything else I can think of right now. Although, I have to say I took only couple of steps compared to miles of distance I wanted to travel.

Nepalese Community in Las Vegas (Nepalese Students’ Association - University of Nevada Las Vegas (NSA - UNLV))

Why I am writing this post

Few months back, I read somewhere that a Nepali guy was about to move to Las Vegas from another state. He was trying to find Nepalese in Las Vegas so that it would be easier to settle down here. I tried Googling for Nepalese Community in Las Vegas and barely found anything useful.

Most people like to hang out with people from same background, same language, and same culture. It probably means slower cultural shock (and not lesser cultural shock).

Anyways, I am writing this post so that Google will return some information when someone searches for Nepalese Community in Las Vegas. It may be noted that there is no organized community of Nepalese residing in Las Vegas besides the organization of students studying at UNLV. But you can find residential Nepalese through those students’ organization.l

How do you begin research? The Literature Review

Don’t be shocked but the research that you will be doing soon in your grad school, or at least the methodology, may be quite different than what you would have expected when you were a prospective grad students applying in number of schools. Imagining yourself surrounded with alien instruments may become reality for physics or other pure science students but not necessarily true for engineering and other students. Doing research does not always involve use of cutting edge technology but always means finding something new, involve analyzing some data, and reaching to some conclusions. A research may be as specific as solving some particular existing problem or somewhat broader. In any case, the research begins with the study of existing papers in the related subject.