Saket Vora

I can hear you all groaning now. Not another blog! Isn’t he longwinded already?

Insta-Pundit is where I’m directing comments about politics and election 2008.

With all the crazy things going on the past two weeks with the financial meltdown, the bailout plan, Sarah Palin in a tailspin, and the debate, I just had to take some of the interesting discussions I’ve been having in instant messengers and emails and shift them into a more cohesive form.

This was strictly impulsive. No idea what this will turn into. Will likely be sort of a glorified ’share this article’ as we do in Google Reader, except I’ll be able to add more of my own commentary. One nice thing is that I’d love for friends and other people to post their own thoughts, stories, articles, etc. My buddy Mike is already contributing.

Just let me know if you want a login and I’ll hook you up. A free for all kind of posting and comments. Let’s make it fun.

So yeah. Probably just another redundant political blog to follow this election 2008. Oh well.

Met up with my friend Jimmy for a long lunch, with Nader. We took EE 214 together. Jimmy has taken almost every EE course (Stanford undergrad too, now a coterm) and does well in all of them. He spent the last two summers working at Intel doing hardcore design work in their processor division. Really sharp guy. Swung by the Stanford Activities Fair where all the student orgs were out representing their groups. I signed up with Ultimate frisbee, the archery group (there was a girl holding a sweet looking compound bow), Stanford VC Club, the Scandinavian Culture club (they were amused to hear Nader and I mangle some Swedish, but surprised that I knew about their crayfish festival), the ACLU chapter, and a group dedicated to projects for the developing world (they had Water Conference t-shirts on).

We also spotted a Star Wars Jabba the Hut-style sand skiff, so naturally we gave chase:

Met up with my friend Lei, and we got dinner at the CoHo before dropping by a nearby apartment in Rains to watch the debate (100 inch HD projector…sweet). Obama did well, we had a good time watching it. Best line:Obama: I worked to make a ‘Google for government’
Guy in the apartment: McCain doesn’t even know what that means!

After the debate there was one huge party that ultimately formed. I hung out at Michael’s place (fellow iPod SW intern who lives across from me) and met his friends and helped cook some dinner, then went back to my apartment where Charles and Gene were throwing a party with their respective departments invited (international policy studies and literature, respectively). As you can imagine, the makeup of this party differed from the usual Stanford get together (for the better of course). Simon also had made it down too! I had a great time meeting all these new faces and amazed at how there were close to 30 people in our apartment (more people than ever). Upon hearing the good fortunes of our apartment and the appearance of a keg outdoors, pretty soon all four parties going on in our quad joined as one. I snapped a photo, but it doesn’t do it justice.

The next morning I got up early and met up the Nicks…actually, now they are going by Nick major and Nick minor. They were organizing a 10 mile day hike at the nearby El Corte de Madera Creek open space preserve, located in the foothills behind Stanford. We had some neuro people, two chemists, and one chemical engineer and his girlfriend who is working with the fundraising and foundation group at Stanford.

An interesting sandstone formation called Tifoni:

A mid-hike lunch:

Vista point:

The entourage shot:

After dinner, I went with a Rains group to see Bottle Shock, a film ‘about’ the famous 1976 Judgement of Paris in which in a blind taste test, French wine critics voted Californian wines over French wines. I thought it might be neat, but it turned out to be a terribly made film. Cliched, bad screenplay that doesn’t setup anything up and cuts from story arch to arch, and incredibly for a film all about how California wines beat French wines — a disappointing lack of expository or time spent on actually describing the wineyard, viticulture, the wine industry, tasting, etc.

Anyway — after the Farmer’s Market tomorrow morning I’ll be hitting the books (finally).

Due to my procrastination, this post is just now being written. First week of classes has come to an end, and I think it’ll be a good quarter.

Nader was a champ and despite me waiving him off any need to pick me up in the morning from SFO, he came anyway and brought some falafel for brunch too. Didn’t have class for a few hours still, so I unpacked and then headed to the transportation office to pick up my new parking pass — the one on my car had been expired for almost a month but I never got a ticket! Went to my only MW class – Intro to MEMS. Greeted a sizable contingent of the ‘Brown Brigade’, the tight knit group of Indian students who have had a lot of classes together. I guess I’m an honorary member or something. I actually fell asleep in class.

On Tuesday I checked out the packed room for the newly offered ‘iPhone Application Class’ in the CS dept. It’s actually taught by two Apple engineers, but they were sharp and knew how to teach. I left early to get to my corporate finance class (or ‘Finance for Non-MBAs’ taught at the GSB. The professor seems quite good. When explaining the structure of the financial markets, she had to interject with “well, apart from last week” on several occasions. I hopped over to the Main Quad for Hindi class and ran into Amit – sweet, he’s taking this too! We decided to come back for the later section and had a coffee at the newly opened Coho (coffee house, i dunno, that’s just what they do here).

Wednesday morning I got to meet Ben Abrams, someone that Naman met at a retreat a few weeks ago and someone who knows Andrew, Brent, and even my friend Donny! He did his undergrad at Duke and a Master’s at NC State in transportation systems, with a focus project in rapid bus transit. He got an opportunity to join the The Wesley Group as a venture analyst, and took it. Great guy — worked on the Full Belly project and the Millenium Village initiative while at Duke and is a big Obama supporter. Notice a trend? I love meeting people like this!

After E240, upon biking over to the bookstore, I ran into Siddharth (my lab partner in EE 414) and Sudeep (my teammate in Strategy class). Sudeep was at DHL in Ft. Lauderdale using his decision analysis and optimization skills to help rework DHL’s entire continental distribution scheme, and Siddharth got to spend the summer getting chummy with Dr. Lee (i’m quite jealous). Then Pratik (teammate and friend from entrepreneural finance) strolled by and we all went to the bookstore for coffee and a long chat. Funny how you intend on doing ‘work’ then this happens. I certainly don’t mind.

At 7 there was a Stanford Democrats / Stanford for Obama meeting. Obviously tilted undergrad, but the room was packed. I came away very impressed with the level of organization and focus this chapter has — they know the focus is on absentee ballots for students from swing states, they are organizing trips every single weekend to Nevada for voter registration drives (I’ll be going one weekend), they are coordinating with organizers to defeat Prop 4 and Prop 8, etc. An alum of the Stanford Democrats who started off as a dorm organizer has fundraised about $150,000 to support student efforts (all trips are covered) and another donor offered a whole floor of a building off University Ave and the highway for a Stanford field office. These people aren’t playing around.

Last week was spent back in the Triangle visiting family and friends after finishing up work at Apple on Monday. I had wanted to take a walk around the building and say goodbye and thanks to everyone, but had back to back meetings and ended up rushing out the door to get to the airport.

It was good to be back home though — how could I not with Mom’s delicious food. Being home also gave me a chance to catch up with friends. Mike came over a few times and we watched the NC State vs ECU game (GREAT game, we won in overtime!). I visited Greg and Kelly at their home and we walked over to the Village Brewery (the have a nice house in a wonderful location!)

I also took a day to swing by NC State. One of mentors, Dr. Bilbro, invited me to speak to his class so I did and went by the lab for the Engineering Entrepreneurs Program and got to see what Pavak, Hersh, and their group was up to. The program exploded this year and there isn’t enough space for everyone in the old lab. Jordan (Price) and I headed up to main campus where we walked up to Mitch’s Tavern to meet Jordan (O’Mara) for lunch. We chatted about politics, as we like to do a lot. Ben was with the crew team and their Million Meter Row in the brickyard so I got to see him before heading back to Centennial to talk with Dr. Miller about what’s NC State have for the future – some neat stuff planned!

I took one night to venture downtown with Mike and Sachi to see the new convention  center and we stopped by the Flying Saucer while down there. Dad and I went over to Circuit City to scope out a new HDTV to replace the projection we’ve had for the past 8 years…I think this Thanksgiving is the time!

I was also glued to CNBC while home, watching in earnest at the meltdown of the US financial  system. Lovely.

It felt too soon, but soon it was Sunday and I had to head back to the left coast. One more bit of business – after a brunch Mom dropped me off at the UNC School of Public Health to meet up with the WaterPLUS crew. Boy it was great to see Win, Joel, Kari, Will, and Naman again. We attended to tough issues like stock allocation (”no Kari, I think you need more…really, we all think you need more…no, we’re not going to take ‘no’ for an answer…you’re getting more” and Win piping up “take some away from me!”) and the plan for the upcoming year. Alas, my time was soon up and off I went to the airport.

The trip home? Yeah…let’s just say I ended up spending 4 hours in a hotel outside Dulles airport and got to San Francisco 12 hours later than expected. It involves jet fuel gushing where it shouldn’t. How exotic!

Well, by now I’m sure you all have seen what I’ve been working on this summer — the new iPods!

Specifically the iPod Nano.  Hope you guys like it. On launch day (this past Tuesday) the team went over to a nearby building with a large atrium. Our team sat together, and they all turned their heads at me when Steve Jobs walked over to his desk to start the Nano live demo. All I could think as I watched was put it down, put it down, put it down. Finally Steve put the Nano down and I let out a deep breath.

The hardware team went out to lunch afterward then headed up to Burlingame for an afternoon of go-karting.

This speedway is definitely geared towards adults — we weren’t the only company team there. We had a huge group — the whole hardware team and a lot of the firmware and engineering program managers. We were so big that we had to run in four different heats, and then later the top finishers of each heat got to do a time trial race. This would be a good time to mention the new iPod hardware intern – Dustin from Waterloo. I’ve been helping him get up to speed, and he’s pretty lucky to start this week of all weeks. He placed 2nd in our heat, right behind Joseph. Jose, who worked on the new Touch, absolutely blew everyone away both in his heat and all the rest. There’s a nice hairpin turn in front of the lounge window, and for all twenty laps Jose executed that turn perfectly. Everyone in the lounge marveled at it.

I’m proud to say that the hardware team took the top 4 positions in the champions round, Dustin took 1st with Jose only 0.01 behind him (Cavic-style, no?) Joseph drove us back to Cupertino and we promptly headed to the iPod beer bash held at Mariani (there would be a company wide iPod beer bash on Friday). Yeah, it was a good day.

New roommates! Charles arrived last weekend from George Washington University with his brother to help out. After two years at the Department of Justice, Charles is doing a three year program in International Policy Studies with a focus in international security and cooperation. Big Obama supporter and follows politics — I’m happy he’s here. The other roommate got in today, Anson from Princeton. He’s in applied physics and spent ten weeks this summer over at CERN supporting the ATLAS experiment for the LHC (yay acronyms). Exciting times for his field! He might be doing particle or astro physics here at Stanford.

The bike shop is full up till October, so my bike tuneup will  have to wait. Last day of work will be Monday, I’ll be sad to leave. And after much too long, I’ll get to see Mom and Dad and Sachi come Tuesday morning.

That’s what it’s feeling like at work. Apple has publicly given word to the press about an iPod-centric event occurring next Tuesday, September 9th. There will be be a mini-crush time in the couple of days leading up to it, though.

Been feeling a bit sick since last Thursday; I think work and the weekend SF trip caught up with me. On Saturday I gave a campus tour to Dan Chang, one of my housemates and fellow REU fellows at the University of Maryland during the summer of 2006. Dan was a rising junior at Princeton in EE at the time, and now he’ll be doing a Master’s at Stanford in EE. He arrived this weekend and we had dinner on California Ave.

The next morning I was down there too for the Farmer’s Market. I met Terrell and his fiance Kelly there — they were going to be leaving Palo Alto for North Carolina that morning. The day before they were at a jeweler in Oakland making their own wedding bands. Yeah. Pretty awesome. We took in the sights and sounds, enjoyed nutella crêpes, bought apples from my favorite vendor (Prevedelli Farms), and watched the Obama woman run their voter registration table.

We saw about half a dozen people register to vote. Later I met Jonathan and Kamal for a long lunch and we caught up with the new semester and our experiences at Apple and Rambus.

I stopped in at work for a few hours on Monday to prep a Tuesday morning delivery, then spent the rest of the evening at Luke and Dora’s  cottage for a cookout. Food, drink, and company were all great. We saw Nola, their 4 month old black cat, as well as the neighbor’s cat who took a liking to Gene.

Just a great weekend to be outside. I’ve spent tonight quietly…reading the NY Times Magazine lengthy articles on power struggles between Shiites in Iraq, Rush Limbaugh, and the warring doctrines inside John McCain. Yesterday I had read an in-depth look at the motivations and ideas that inform Barack Obama’s economic policy, which if you had to use a label might be a “University of Chicago Democrat”. I also read through a recent tax policy analysis of Obama’s and McCain’s tax plan prepared by the Urban Institute and the Brookings Institution.

You know me, dear readers. I go wild at night.