Saket Vora

Over the past few weeks, I’ve heard the GOP criticize Barack Obama for not having the experience to lead or to be commander-in-chief whereas McCain, with his many years as a senator and distinguished serviceman in the U.S. Navy, has such experience. And so far, the media takes this at face value, as if ‘experience’ is a box meant to be checked or left empty. Take a look back at the key personnel of the George W. Bush’s first term cabinet – it had an enormous number of collective years of ‘experience’ in government/foreign affairs/armed services, yet their handling of foreign policy has proved disastrous and Bush lacks the responsbility to wear the mantle of ‘commander-in-chief’.

‘Experience’ isn’t a binary quality. What is more crucial as we step into the uncertain future is a candidate’s judgment and temperament. These are of course informed by experience – McCain and Obama’s view of the world reflects their own unique journey through it. However:

• Obama was reticent in the complexity and difficulty of a war in Iraq in 2002, warning of sectarian conflict and of an indeterminant struggle. McCain was openly supportive of the war, but later redeemed himself by taking a more principled stand on Abu Ghraib (bull-dozing it to the ground) and the lack of post-war planning. He also was a strong supporter of the ’surge’, which undoubtedly improved the appalling state of insecurity in the Iraqi capital. It is disappointing though, after all that has happened, to see McCain take the hawkish hardline stance on Iraq’s future; after Iraqi leaders and now even the White House have aligned themselves to the resolution framework Barack Obama has been outlining for the past year.
• Obama has long been focused on Afghanistan and Pakistan as places where more attention is needed. The resurgence of the Taliban and Musharraf’s downfall over the past year further underscore this point, and the White House has been playing catch-up.  However, McCain appears stubborn about Iraq, and a continued military prescence there weakens our ability to concentrate on these more critical areas.
• During his admittedly brief U.S. Senate term, Obama served on the Foreign Relations and Veteran Affairs committes, and the subcommittee on European Affairs. He also did significant work investigating nuclear proliferation and controlling the supply on weapons.

Why bring up these points? Enter McCain’s choice Vice President: Palin. Currently a first term Governor of Alaska, Palin was elected to the City Council of Wasilla in 1992, then became Mayor of Wasilla in 1996.

According to a 2005 Census estimate, the population of Wasilla is 8,471.

Ahem. It’s still very early in the media’s reaction to the Palin pick, but after tracking Republican-leaning news sources and pundits, it seems that their response to Palin’s inexperience is to either (a) dodge the question, as Jack Kemp did on a Fox News interview and instead repeat McCain’s credentials, or (b) say that Palin is smart, competent, and a quick learner and gets to learn from the ‘expert’ John McCain. I’m sure Palin is smart (not that I, or much anyone else in the country, is familiar with Palin), but clearly the ’smart, competent, quick learner’ argument could apply to Obama too, right? Earned a scholarship to Harvard, elected President of the Harvard Law Review, formed a political team and led a nation-wide organization that not only beat the combined force of the Clinton establishment but did so while setting new records for fundraising and defining the benchmark for modern grassroots mobilization.

I tend to agree that most people focus on the President than the President + Vice President team, but I personally am more interested in seeing the political team a candidate brings to the executive branch. I don’t like to dwell on it, but McCain is older than Obama and arguably has a medical history that causes more anxiety. Is it appropriate to pick a candidate such as Palin then for second in command?

The GOP must know Palin cannot match up to Biden in many regards, so instead will counter that Biden has had the ‘wrong kind of experience’ during his long tenure in politics — precisely the criticism I personally would wield against McCain and the GOP. But really, Palin cannot match up with Obama either, and the sight of Republican pundits defend her ‘experience’ is downright comical.

You can’t have it both ways.

Last weekend I went up to the City with Terrell for the San Francisco Outside Lands music festival. This is the first time its been put on, and featured a 3-day lineup of good artists. Radiohead of course was a big draw, but there were a lot of other alternative music artists too. I was itching to leave work a bit early, and ultimately left at 4pm. Terrell and I caught the 5 o’ clock train up to the City then hopped on the Muni to Castro station. Tim Goodson, a Park c/o 2002 and now an intellectual property lawyer in SF, was generous to host us for the weekend at his week-old new place on the slopes of Twin Peaks. We chatted for a while then started the 2.5 mile walk to Golden Gate Park. On hindsight, we should have caught a cab. We got to the Radiohead show late, but a ticket snafu at the gates closest to the stage forced us to walk 1.5 miles in the opposite direction of the stage to get to the box office to figure out what was wrong. They admitted they screwed up and gave us complimentary VIP passes for the weekend.

The next day we had breakfast  at Zazie, a wonderful brunch place in Cole Valley. We ate in the flower-lined back porch, and Terrell spotted an “King Nerd” (Terrell’s words) as we were leaving – the guy who created LiveJournal, memcached, etc. Cool! We made it over to the festival later on and saw Kaki King (very cool guitar playing style), Regina Spektor, and then Cake. I got a call from Liz before the Spektor show telling me to turn to my right, then my left. And there she was waving! What a nice way of meeting up after so long.

The Cake show was pretty cool — towards the end the lead singer brought out a tree sapling in a pot and asked if someone could name it. A guy named Arturo correctly shouted out “live oak!” and Cake invited him to the front and gave him the tree, asking him to plant it and send them pictures of it as it grew older. How neat is that.

Terrell and I managed to grab a cab to Castro where we met up with Tim Mowrer. Using his shiny new iPhone, we found a nice hole-in-the-wall sushi place.

We woke up early Sunday morning and made it to the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. Tim Mowrer joined us too and sure enough Krupali, the girl that we ran into in the deli line at Yosemite, arrived too! She had told us about a special Chihuly exhibit that we just had to see. I had never heard of Chihuly the glassblower but was absolutely stunned at the collection.

What mastery of form and of the colors! (Ok, that last image is me having some fun with the new camera) Watch this slideshow for a taste of what the collection offered. Krupali had to go back to LA, so Terrell and Tim and I went and got some lunch at an Indian restaurant. Considering the high prices of the festival, it was well worth it. Tim picked up a ticket and we saw The Stars, Sharon Jones, Broken Social Scene, Andrew Bird, Rodrigo y Gabriela, then finished up with Jack Johnson (”Jack Johnson? I love Jack Johnson!”). Andrew Bird was also pretty neat — a multi-instrumentalist (including violin) he would use looping to build layers of sound. Rodrigo y Gabriela blew me away too, having never heard of them. They are a Mexican born but Dublin based acoustic guitar duo with astonishing skill and a unique percussive style. I finally got to meet up with Nick and Nick (my neuroscience friends and almost-roommates) and their friend Christina for many of these bands.

They were kind to give Terrell and I a ride back home to Palo Alto (the last train from SF leaves at 9pm…lame). Fun weekend!

My big ‘ol project is getting really close to achieving the big milestone. It was nice getting home today early too….at 10:30pm.

I’ll be up in the City from Friday evening through Sunday night for the SF Outside Lands music festival in Golden Gate park. Terrell and I (and hopefully Krupali — get better!) are going up to enjoy it and we know others who will be around the park too. We both have to work Friday, but are trying our hardest to get up there in time for the 8pm Radiohead show. Apparently the band will be the first ones to play at night in Golden Gate Park.

Posting will be limited. You might see some photos go up so watch the photostream in the meantime.

This weekend I’ll be joining Terrell, Krupali, and some other friends at the SF Outside Lands music festival. It’s a three-day festival with a huge lineup of artists — including Radiohead on Friday! Sunday will also be great, with Jack Johnson, Wilco, Rodrigo y Gabriela, etc. Tim Mowrer was kind enough to let Terrell and I crash at his place for the nights.

My summer roommate Adrius left on Saturday, back to New York. He was sad to leave Stanford (which he calls paradise), but I think he’ll be excited to start his PhD in Finance at the prestigious Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Bikiran tipped me off last week to the availability of Sigur Rós tickets for their October 3rd show at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley. I was able to get two tickets, so Nick Steinmetz and I will be headed there in the fall! I can’t wait — I’ve never seen Sigur Rós live and it should be an awesome show. Check out a concert that they did at the MoMA in NYC.

Going to Greg and Kelly’s wedding without a small camera to take photos with was the final straw for me. I bought a Canon Powershot 870IS. By the way, this brings the total number of Canons in my household to five. I chose the 870IS out of the big lineup of Canon pocket cameras for one primary reason: it’s the only one with the 28mm wide angle lens. Also, they got rid of the tiny and frankly useless optical viewfinder to make room for a larger LCD. I’ll post some shots later in the week. I know it appears I’m on a spending spree compared to my usually thrifty habits, but I also picked up a wireless router for my dorm. Having to use wired ethernet if I wanted a secure connection (banking, etc) was getting really old. I’ve now got a 802.11g WPA2 AES with MAC filtering in my apartment, and it’s about time too.

The biggest deadline of my summer at Apple is this Friday…just working hard towards it.

The big day. Greg left early to run around taking care of things while Mark, Chris, and I went down by the pool to work on our evening toasts. We shared what stories we had of Greg and enjoyed the sun. Clarke and Jamie came down a bit later too – I got to see an Amazon Kindle in action too as Jamie was using it to catch up on reading. Greg showed up and after a dip in the pool we all got ready for lunch at Mariner’s Jacks, a club with a good size fleet of boats in front of it in Sarasota. Greg’s family was there too. With our stomachs full with a long lunch, we headed back to the hotel.

Things got more real as the groomsman were given the greenlight to get ready. Of course, what was a twenty minute affair for us was likely 10 times longer for our counterparts on Kelly’s side. Greg had gotten us a lovely Vineyard Vines tie and Rainbow flipflops as gifts, and we were to wear them for the ceremony. I was excited about both – never had either before (though Rainbows are admittedly quite popular on campus). I was a bit worried I couldn’t pull off the pink tie, but Mr. Mulholland gave me his reassurance. Greg was looking particularly sharp in his brown suit; it was tailored perfectly.

Marc, Kelly’s cousin who was also the wedding photographer, came up to the room to take some shots before we headed to the beach. We went down to the beach and did some poses. Mark said that we’d later do a ‘Sopranos’ shot at the reception. Hehe.

Our backup plan of hiding ice-water Camelbaks under our jackets wasn’t needed. The weather was perfect – slight breeze, partly cloudy, the sun an hour or two from setting. The arrangements were already made as we got to the beach and the wedding guests started to arrive. The priest arrived and we took our positions by Greg at the front.

Greg and Chris

John Mulholland and Chris

Mark and Chris

Clarke, me, Mark, and Chris

The ceremony gets underway

As the music started up, the bridemaids walked down the aisle and after much anticipation, we spotted a large white umbrella in the distance. At the start of the carpeted aisle the umbrella came away to reveal Kelly and her father walking hand-in-hand to the dais. Greg shook Mr. Stano’s hand and the priest began the ceremony. After the traditional vows were exchanged, the priest did a small sermon that told of three ‘R’s – romance, respect, and relationship. This was one aspect of the American wedding I hadn’t seen before, but it’s good. I have a feeling that the ‘sermon’ part will likely last several hours for mine…whenever that is. Heh.

Marc started rallying the crowd for the pictures and kept snapping away. We congratulated the families, enjoyed the beach view, and soon started making our way over to the country club where the reception was being held. Greg’s parents drove Chris and myself over. Google Maps delivered some major fail with printed instructions, but my internet enabled telephone helped out. The reception hall was nice – tables with hors d’oeuvres, tables to sit at, a dance floor, and an open door. The dessert table made everyone’s eyes widen. Mark came in and setup a slideshow with a few pictures he was able to touch up in the past hour. The early shots looked excellent – people were quite excited to see the black and white shots in particular. I can’t wait for them to come online.

Kelly’s father took the mic and said a few heartfelt words, then Mark took it and started the toasts. He told an amusing account of how he walked into Greg’s room when they were kids and had just seen the Lion King. There Greg was, singing “I just can’t wait to be king!” We didn’t give the bridesmaids much warning about our toast plans, but they did a great job telling Kelly’s side. I didn’t feel confident enough to do an amusing toast (no surprise, huh?) so I kept it serious. Here it is:

I met Greg days before our freshman year began at NC State, and I had no idea that over the next 4 years he would become my closest friend. We took a dozen classes together, led multiple projects, and made a lasting impact on our school. And Greg always led the way. Greg is that unique individual who is completely at ease whether it’s wearing a clean suit in a research lab, gliding over the water at a regatta, or engaging CEOs in a suit and tie.

Now I knew something was different about Kelly in the way she completely stole Greg’s heart. And who can blame him? Here’s a woman whose extraordinary intellect is matched by her extraordinary beauty, who is so down to earth but has a quiet yet fierce determination to succeed. And of course, she’s the only girl who has the sense of humor that more often than yet can beat Greg at his own game. I cannot think of a better partner for my friend Greg.

They share an intrinsic curiosity for the world and together with their ability to laugh & smile, these will serve them well on their lives’ journey. All of our lives are made richer by knowing them. To Greg and Kelly.

Chris followed up with a toast from the heart that made everyone smile. He’s a great public speaker – I can see how he can run a good crew with Habitat for Humanity. The DJ started up with the music and the dance floor filled up quickly.

Marc took us groomsman aside for our Sopranos shot in the lobby. Time went by fast and we soon were wrapping up. Greg’s parents drove us back to the hotel and we kids hung out at the pool and went swimming late at night. It was neat – there is bioluminescent algae (or something) in the water, so if you wave your arms in the water you can see it glow around you.

We bid goodbye on Sunday as people started to head home. I had lunch with the Mulholland family at St. Armand’s circle. My flight was later in the afternoon, so we hung out at the beach and the pool before it was time.

It was sad to leave…what a tremendous four days. Seeing Greg and Kelly again, spending time with the families, making new friends, enjoying the beach – couldn’t have asked for more! My heartfelt congratulations again to Greg and Kelly.

Last week I had the pleasure of attending the wedding of Greg Mulholland to Kelly Stano. I took the red-eye Wednesday night and landed in sunny warm Sarasota, Florida the next morning. Greg, Kelly, and members of the wedding party were there to pick me up at the airport. It was so good seeing them again – I hadn’t since Greg left for Cambridge last autumn. Also there was Kelly’s younger sister Megan (the Maid of Honor), Kelly’s bridesmaids Amy and Caitlin, Caitlin’s boyfriend Charlie, and another one of Greg’s groomsman Chris. We went have lunch and then to the hotel. The girls rode in one car and the guys in the other, and within the first 10 minutes I knew it was going to be a great weekend – it was a delight getting to know Chris and Charlie. We all got along great.

The hotel was right on the beach. And man was the weather different than California – warm and humid and it actually felt nice. This being my first American wedding, I wasn’t sure what to expect but this was going to be relaxed and everything seemed taken care of. I had definitely over-prepared for this wedding  for this regarding attire, but the other guys spotted me. Greg and Kelly went off to take care of some things, so the rest of us hit the beach. As Chris noted, the water was so warm it was almost not refreshing. We spent a good three hours outside before getting ready for the evening.

Chris went to Norfolk Academy with Greg and then attended UVA to complete an Architecture program (which he intensely disliked by the end of it). He is now working for Habitat for Humanity in Charlottesville through the Americorps. Great guy — we could talk about the challenges he’s facing at Habitat and such but he’s also really fun to hang out with. Charlie recently graduated from App State in geology and is quite serious about it. He’s done field expeditions and enjoys spelunking. He hadn’t really met any of us before but I felt we all got along really well as a group.

I kept asking when Greg’s parents (John and Nancy) and brother (Mark) were going to arrive. We met up with them in the afternoon as they arrived to the hotel. They deserve a special mention  — they are so generous and fun to be with and they make feel like I’m part of the family. I can’t help but smile when I see how the four of them interact. People say my mom must have a hard time dealing with triplets, but I think Mrs. Mulholland deserves the same kind of recognition too!

After checking Mark we headed to downtown Sarasota for Greg’s bachelor party. A nice dinner outside then hit a few bars. Kelly and her girls went to have fondue. We had an excellent time and made it back to the hotel in one piece no problems (thanks to Greg, ironically – or sadly – enough).

The boys made it down to breakfast the next morning and went out as a group to meet some of Greg’s relatives who live in Sarasota. Uncle Herb has a beautiful apartment right by the water and more of Greg’s relatives were there. They remarked at how good of swimmer Mark has become, and Mr. Mulholland wondered about that too: “I kept holding his head under water, but he kept getting loose! After that they learned how to untie the knots too. Smart kids.” Hehe.

We hopped across the bridge for lunch, then back to the hotel to chill for a while before the wedding rehearsal.  It was hot that day, and Chris was dying. We drove down to Siesta Key to a gorgeous white sand beach (quartz!) and met up with Sigrid the wedding planner. Despite us guys goofing off and the brutally hot sun, we made it through without problems. Greg and Mark had the girls staring as they unbuttoned their white shirts halfway down and posed, GQ like, with the shades on. Insufferable, I swear.

After this, it was off to the dinner with the whole group. It felt like we ate the whole day. We got some slurpees beforehand and it lowered Chris’s core body temperature by 15 degrees. He might have died otherwise it seemed. That, of if he didn’t get the see The Dark Knight, which he said in a throaty voice at every possible opportunity. Hehe.

The bridal party sat together for the dinner but two of Greg’s friends from NA did arrive – Clarke and Jamie. I had met Jamie when I was up in College Park two summers ago, and Greg and I played golf with him (he just graduated from Duke). I had heard a lot about Clarke – he’s working for Barclays up in NYC now and went to Princeton. Dinner was nice, with Greg’s father saying a few words about the union of these two great families. The ‘kids’ hung around the pool for a bit after getting back to the hotel, then called it a night.

Tomorrow would be the big day.

(This news broke earlier, but I wanted to pass along my personal congratulations to the Omnisio team for their successful exit)

Omnisio is a web startup that was aided early on by the tech incubator Y-Combinator. All Y-Combinator teams are given gray t-shirts that simply state “Make something people want” when they are selected. Startups that successfully exit are given black t-shirts that say “I made something people want.” Needless to say, these coveted black shirts aren’t easy to come by. I give you the following:

Ryan Junee, Simon Ratner, Julian Frumar at the GooglePlex.

As readers of this blog know, I was extremely fortunate to have Simon Ratner, one of Omnisio’s three co-founders, be my apartment mate for the past year at Stanford. He and his friends (they hail from Australia) conceived the idea for Omnisio and worked over several months to build up the entire site. They were just recently acquired by Google/YouTube for a princely sum.

 Simon is hands down one of the smartest people I’ve ever met — he’s one of those rare people who is technically brilliant but can still talk about practically anything with confidence and insight. He can span the entire spectrum — hardware, firmware, software, web, video, etc. Despite Omnisio nearing launch and being his last semester at Stanford, he took Convex Optimization (widely considered to be one of the hardest classes in the EE department. And he was certaintly the most accomplished chef in the apartment. I had a lot of great times just hanging out with him and talking about…anything. I met Ryan and Julian a few times and they’re great. Maybe its just his Aussie sensibility, but Julian has a way of making you smile and laugh within 10 seconds of him walking into a room. They make a terrific and capable team.

Congratulations again to Simon and the Omnisio team. Can’t wait to see what you guys will do next.

This past week has been a blur so I’m finally getting around to posting updates.

Two weekends ago, I finally made it back to my favorite national park: Yosemite. I was going to go with Jordan but he had to pull out at the last second, and Nader blew off my trip because he wanted to do his own thing. No worries — I still had a fanstastic time. Terrell brought along two friends of his from NC State so I got to meet new people. Tim Mowrer is a Park alum (c/o 2004) and just made it back to the States after spending more than a year in Indonesia on a National Geographic project to capture the very elusive “orang pendek” on camera. He’s up in San Francisco now working at Havok, which codes physics simulation engines for games. I actually met Tim for the first time on Friday night when he took the Caltrain down to crash at my apartment before leaving at 4am Saturday morning for Yosemite. Terrell and his longtime college roommate Jonathan Simpson left Friday afternoon. Jonathan had flown in from College Station, TX just for the weekend.

Tim and I took off at 4am and got to the park right on schedule. I tried calling Terrell so we could find a campsite for the four of us, but no dice. We made our way to Camp 4, the “climber’s camp” and the only one that is first-come first-serve in the Valley itself. Turns out Terrell was waiting in line just 10 people down! The check-in process was agonizing slow (1.5 hours to process 34 people? Seriously?) but we finally got our tent and gear pitched. We swung by the deli before starting our hike, and met a most interesting person while waiting in line: Krupali Tejura. She saw us exchanging business cards and saw we were from the Bay area and that she knew friends at Google. That started a fun conversation and she and her friends ended up joining us for lunch. She finished medical school at Emory and is now a radiation oncologist in southern California. It was pretty cool — we namedropped Radiohead, Alton Brown, and Kiva.org over the course of lunch. Oh, and she really likes Barack Obama. :)

Despite starting much later than we anticipated, we started the Four Mile Trail, which goes up ~3200 feet from the Valley floor all the way to Glacier Point.  On the way to the trailhead though, we spotted a black bear! It was so close to us, and climbed a tree to eat a few apples.

Black bear!

The hike was great, with view of the valley. One fact quickly emerged: there was an undeniable haze throughout the valley. I mused that it was due to the recent fires we’ve had up in northern California. (Little did I know that there were in fact forest fires right near Yosemite Valley, ultimately causing power outages at the lodge on Sunday morning).

A hazy valley

Stopping by a creek along the trail

Jonathan and Tim at a vista point

We made it up to Glacier Point around 5:30 or 6pm, and got to look again at the magnificent Half Dome. There was too much haze/smoke in the air to make the rocks turn purple like they did last year.

Half Dome

A look at the valley behind Half Dome

We thought there would be a shuttle bus back to the Valley, but none came. Our cell phones were out of reception, and a payphone only took calling card (what?!). So we finally figure out there isn’t a bus coming, and we had 1 hour of daylight left. We started heading back down the Four Mile Trail, and got maybe halfway down when we were in pitch black conditions. Fortunately we had two small flashlights with us, and proceeded to slowly make our way down switchbacks and rocky trails with poor visibility. We certainly hadn’t done this before!

We finally stumble back into Camp 4 well after quiet hours, but we were relieved to find the campfire in our site at full flame. A group from SoCal was celebrating a birthday party. We brought our cooler to share some drinks, and they shared some food, and we had a good time chatting and socializing before going to sleep.

The next day Terrell and Jonathan had to leave early to make a plane, but Tim and I decided to check out the Lower Yosemite Falls and Bridalveil Falls and drive up to the Tuolumne Meadows. En route to the falls we came across a rattlesnake.

Tim scouting things at the Falls

Granite cliff faces

The drive to Tuolumne was against shrouded in haze, but the Tenaya alpine lake was quite nice and you could see the backside of Half Dome. Unfortunately, my camera batteries died and didn’t have spares. We were facing a good 5.5 hour drive back to the Bay Area, so we turned back and started to head home.

Last trip’s Tunnel View:

This trip’s Tunnel View:

It was remarkable that we could talk about so many things — Tim’s experiences in Indonesia, photography, cultures, NC State, the Park program, etc. We stopped at a delicious local pizza place and after barely having enough money to cross the Bay Bridge toll after dropping Tim off at Berkeley, I finally rolled into Palo Alto at 1:30am Monday morning. What a great trip!