Saket Vora

Last Friday, Donny bounded off the train in Palo Alto and I finally got to see him after nearly 2 years! I could tell he was excited to be in the Bay Area — one of the first thing he told me was that he was surprised at how big it was. Nearly two hours to go from Berkeley to Palo Alto! Donny had spent the last day and a half in Berkeley visiting the school during its civil engineering department’s open house. Berkeley is one of the schools that accepted Donny for graduate school, along with MIT, Georgia Tech, University of Texas @ Austin, and Purdue. He had visited Georgia Tech and Texas earlier, and Berkeley definitely offered something new.

We had a bit to eat at the Coupa Cafe then headed down to SJC to pick Mike up. Mike was arriving early for the Game Developer’s Conference taking place next week at Moscone West in San Francisco. This would be I think Mike’s 4th GDC. We headed back up 101 towards the Googleplex!  Ben, an ‘02 Park, invited me over and it was an opportune time for Donny to catch up with his old friend Ed from New Jersey, who was at Stanford for his M.S. before joining Google just a week ago. I had visited the Googleplex during the EEP trip in ‘07, but it’s always such a neat place to visit.

After the three of us got back to the Farm, we went out on a walking tour of campus. This gave us plenty of time to talk and catch up , and Amit joined us too.

We did a long circuit through the campus, swinging by the coffee shop at the Clark Center where fellow Park classmate Mary stopped by too.

By this point, it was too late to make a trip up to SF, and our plans to do a sunset Big Dish hike were thwarted by early closing times. So we did the next best thing: head over to the Old Pro for drinks and March Madness college basketball. And what madness it was – two OT games! We hit up an Indian restaurant down the street for a quick but filling meal afterward.

Donny was leaving at 8am from SFO the next day, so we called it an early night. This was a little tough with a raging party going on in the courtyard outside. Mike and I continued to talk until 2:30 or 3. Groggily, we drove up to SFO and bid goodbye. After getting some more shut-eye, we headed to Prolific Oven for a late lunch, coffee, and to get some work done. A return to Old Pro was in order to catch the afternoon basketball game, but alas no upsets.

In the evening we synced up with Amit for a late dinner at Tofu House, a Korean restaurant in Palo Alto. It’s kinda sad, but even though i’ve known Mike since 10th grade of high school, I can’t say I’ve ever had a real Korean meal before. And man I’ve been missing out!

See the title? That’s why I’d rather be at Stanford instead of any other prestigious school in the northeast. It’s because when you walk out of a final exam that mercilessly annhilates you, you step into the shining sun, feel its warmth, chat with your friends, and you realize that life isn’t so bad after all.

No amount of studying could have helped for that ‘thermodynamical accounting’ class that is labeled as a fuel cell course. It’s over though.

And my bracket is busted already. But you know, tomorrow I get to see two of my best friends, so I’m all smiles.

Grid Integration of Renewables finished Monday afternoon — it was more or less straightforward with a few twists, but I think I did fine.

That afternoon I did a phone interview with 42U — a company out in Boulder, CO for a role of energy efficiency research analyst/consultant. What really impresses me is how seriously this company takes social responsibility - they truly walk the walk when it comes to being responsible citizens and why tackling the energy crisis is so important — all the way from the CEO on down. And plus, their careers page has an Office spoof done by the employees. Hehe, gotta love the style.

Tuesday night was Energy Efficiency in Buildings, which went fine. Open book, open notes meant people were taking their time making sure things were correct. Again, a few twists but not too bad. What really made it interesting was what happened 10 minutes before the final started. I was nearing the end of my bike ride and turning into the sand lot where all the bicycle stands outside Bldg. 200 were when back wheel suddenly disagreed vehemently with me applying the brake during a slight turn. The bike skidded out beneath me and I took a dive forward. Hands were alright, but my jeans were ripped at the right knee and quarter-sized part of the knee was open and bleeding. FUN! Walking past the girl on her cell phone who saw it happen 20 feet away but didn’t do or say anything to me, I cleaned it up in the bathroom as best I could and then took the final.

2.5 hours later I’m back home and made a late dinner. Outside, some grad students from across the courtyard were bowling on the sidewalk. Yes, with a 10lb bowling ball and 10 real pins. One of them had the large wooden picnic tables on its side serving as a backstop. It was nuts. Even from across the courtyard in my far back room, it sounded just like a bowling alley….never a dull moment.  Amit came over to talk about the BUILD judging he did that night (more on that later) and we talked about the NCAA bracket and lamented one more about the sorry state of NC State sports. There’s always next year.

Last up is my fuel cell exam on Thursday, which is guaranteed to be awful.

Naman was town this past weekend and it was so nice having him here. He was in true vacation mode — brought a bit of work but mostly it was just to take a break from medical school. He stayed over at Nader’s place which was helpful cause it helped him get a better handle of what Nader was up to and how he was doing.

The flight got in late and we ended up just picking up some snacks at the grocery store and eating a bit at home before taking an evening stroll around campus. Walking and talking. Saturday morning he went down to San Jose to see his uncle while I finished up a short report, picked some spring courses, and baked some apple pie from scratch (it was Pie Day! 3/14!) before heading over to Menlo Park to have dinner with the Williards and Eltings (ie, Matt and Mary). I’ve said this before but I can’t help but say it again — they are so nice and generous. It never ceases to amaze me. It was great catching up with Grant and seeing what he’s up to, and of course Mrs. Williard’s jaw-dropping cooking. Every meal is like a gourmet experience! I humbly offered my pie and it actually turned out to be quite good. I just picked the simplest recipe on the internet….and for once in my life timed the baking perfectly. I mixed and matched my apple filling, opting for braeburn, granny smith, and a golden delicious. The from-scratch crust helped too.

I swung by Nader and Naman in the evening and we planned an early morning hike up to the Big Dish but when I called them at 8:30am  they were already finished. Miscommunication on the timing. Anyway, we strolled through the farmer’s market enjoying the samples, coffee, and fresh samosas before spending a few hours doing work at the Old Union. Naman and I then drove up to San Francisco to meet up with our friend Andrew. Since there were friends visiting the area, he invited folks to his place for some tea, snacks, and dinner. What a delightful evening — their apartment just off Twin Peaks and Noe Valley is cozy with clean white walls, richly diverse bookshelves, naturally lit, and when we entered had strains of Sigur Ros wafting throughout. Andrew had some fresh bread in the oven — the chemical deliberate nature of it appeals to him — we discussed banana bread and cooking as a creative outlet. Andrew had a friend from Duke who is currently studying IP law at Columbia, Anjan (whom I met earlier — former McKinsey colleague who is currently writing a book), as well as Zan from Andrew’s time at Google.

It’s one of those long meandering conversations that you feel tired but good from — like a satisfying run…only mentally. If that makes any sense. I’ll stop with the analogy here.

Naman headed off on the red eye Monday night. Let’s see if I can return the favor and drop in on him while he’s out near Bhutan this summer on the frontlines of the fight against malaria.

UPDATE: When this was first posted, I didn’t stress what a help my teammate Ljubi has been. Without his dedication and work ethic, our film for Hindi would have never been made. Ljubi worked on editing this video for 24 hours straight with no sleep, then went back to the video room with Amit and I after our screening and stayed another few hours before finally going home. He’s the one who also supplied the great cameras we used. A big tip of the hat to him.

It’s been a while. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday was particularly fun. Did the Hindi final exam on Tuesday night, wrapped up  short filming segment for the movie, then spent the night writing my report for grid integration. It went well - got a good result. On Wednesday night I met with the social-e team to figure out which teams advance to the 2nd round…it was a tough 3 hour session.

Check out the semi-finalists here.

I met up with Ljubi and Amit who were in the ‘video cave’ working on the Hindi film. Got there around 9:30pm and left at 5:30am. Ljubi had already been at it for 12+ hours. My solar home teammates came over at 10am and we finished our passive solar home project, report, and turned it in. I had a great time working with them.

I jetted over back to the video cave and we hit the ‘render’ button at 5pm…hoping it’d finish in time for class. We got a version of of the movie halfway through class, but it was 320×240 square. Ugh. We shot this nearly 1080i resolution! We showed it anyway and the response was great. After class Amit, Ljubi, and I went back to the video cave to continue making fixes. Amit and I left at 2:30am.

We want to fix some more things before hitting ‘render’ for the last time. We are having difficulty on two key aspects: a) audio cleaning. We have wind noise, airplane noise, etc in several scenes. I’m not comfortable operating in the audio space as I am in the video space, so it’s going to be a challenge to clean that out; and b) determining which export setting will give us what we want. This is an absolute nightmare. We have source footage in one format. We have our Final Cut Pro project settings to be a certain video format, pixel aspect ratio, etc. And we have the various outfile file formats, compression settings, etc to choose when we render the video. We just want the output to appear HD widescreen, but so many times it comes out as a square image when we open in Quicktime. Understanding this video file format mess is something I’ve struggled with before, but now it’s exacerbated because I’m working with HD footage for the first time…intended to be shown widescreen. If anyone has any pointers or people I can talk to, please let me know.

Apologies for the mini-rant, but this explains why you won’t see an upload for another 3 weeks. I want to get a HD high quality version and upload that to Vimeo so you can enjoy this in HD.

Naman is arriving in the ‘Yay Area’ tonight! I’m having dinner with the Williards and Eltings tomorrow night, and then maybe a potluck dinner with Naman, Andrew, and others up in SF.

I should probably find some time to study for finals in between all that….yeah.

After getting shorted an hour of sleep due to daylight savings, I woke up on little sleep to meet with nearly the whole Hindi class (7 others) to begin filming our project. We first shot at the Schwab center (the MBA residence..it was admit weekend…now those guys have sweet gigs, wow), and then in the woods next to Lake Lagunita. It took the whole day…started at 10am and wrapped at 6pm. Instead of sitting behind a desk all weekend, I got to be outside which was great. Went afterward for a drink at Mihir’s place and discovered he’s a beer connoisseur – he has 80+ different kinds of beer in his apartment! It was a nice day – making our hindi class friendships even stronger.

3.5 more days…

Thursday, 3/5 - Hindi imperatives quiz
Friday, 3/6 - CEE 176 homework due (haven’t started)
Friday, 3/6 - EE293B homework due (1/10th complete)
Saturday, 3/7 - Hindi film script must be final (haven’t started)
Sunday, 3/8 - Hindi film principal photography
Sunday, 3/8 - Social E-Challenge 2nd round planning meeting (long)
Monday, 3/9 - End of 1st round judging, compile results, announce teams
Tuesday, 3/10 - Hindi Final Exam, end of filming
Wednesday, 3/11 - CEE 272 HW4 & Report due (haven’t started)
Thursday, 3/12 - CEE 176 solar home physical model (1/4” = 1 ft, scale, haven’t started), Sketchup model (90% done), and formal report  due (haven’t started)
Thursday, 3/12 - Hindi Film due

Game on.

Readers know I’m kind of a dork when it comes to email. I’ve got some things I look for in a mail client, primarily the ability to access emails offline, because I want access to email when I don’t have an internet connection. I know, I’ve got the minority  view on this because internet connections are becoming ever more ubiquitous. Old habits die hard. This demand has knocked out GMail for quite some time, and for a while I did not like GMail’s web interface. But I grudgingly grew to acknowledge the utility of its ‘conversation’ view.

Back to being a dork – I spent some time searching around for alternative solutions. I tried Outlook 2007 and that was a disaster. I came across an IBM Research project called Remail which explored a new way of interacting with email. They even built a prototype it appears, but did not release it.

I then discovered two things – how to hack a ‘conversation view’ in thunderbird and a way of showing ‘Thread Arcs’ to help visualization conversations. Typically ‘thread view’ only shows messages in your inbox – thus you can’t review the messages you’ve sent without searching your Sent mail folder. But there’s an option to ‘place a copy in the folder of the message you are replying to’, which when used with threading can fake a conversation view.

Alexander Hubmann made a Thunderbird plugin called ThreadVis which enables Thread Arcs. Check out some examples below:

As you can see, it shows the time between messages, the way people reply to messages, etc. The colors are coded for various people involved (red is for me), the brightness is related to how immediate the messages are. What’s also nice is that you can click on the nodes and go to that message in question. Kinda neat, I’m gonna give this a try.

Haven’t posted much recently.

Give me until the weekend and I’ll give ya something. A lot going on.

5:41am and I’m going to bed.

Today marks the end of my father’s continuous employment with IBM and then Lenovo.

My father started working at IBM back in 1969, when the company logo looked like the one shown above. With his Master’s in EE from NC State, he started off in IBM’s printers division, doing stress tests and later moving into competitive analysis. My father would stay with IBM for the next 35 years, keeping things fresh my moving around to different parts of the company. He did stints in Q&A, strategy, manufacturing of the R/S 6000 mainframes, supply chain, and finally e-commerce. Over his career he moved around, doing a 1.5 year assignment in Bublingen, Germany right after getting married (can you imagine the change that faced my mom as she goes from Mumbai to Germany back in 1972?). He served his time in upstate New York in Endicott, Charlotte (where they had us), Austin, and finally Raleigh. Other possibilities, not realized, included moving to Lexington, KY when Lexmark spun off, or a recen 18 month assignment in Dublin, Ireland.

Friends know I bring up my dad a lot, and its because I learned a lot from him about business, the IT and computer industry, the challenges facing enterprise businesses and e-commerce. He has also spoken quite candidly about the choices he’s faced in his career, ones that would have helped his career but would not be true to his character (those he chose not to pursue).

The last bit of change occurred a few years ago, when Lenovo bought up IBM’s PC Division and my dad went over with his e-commerce team. Despite this coming late in his career, the challenges were new and Lenovo was doing some really ambitious work and dad’s team helped achieve some major milestones.

What’s in store now? He’s going back to India for a bit to see family, then….we’ll see. Maybe his golf game will see an improvement, maybe he’ll do some consulting work, maybe he’ll do some teaching. One thing is for sure though: it’s gonna drive my mom crazy. :)

Thanks for everything, Dad. I don’t think anything I do in my life will come close to matching the journey you made from a small town in central India to where our family is now.

Being sick sucks. It came on Monday and I’m still not out of the woods….good timing too because this week a lot of action is taking place on the Social E-Challenge side of things. Over a hundred teams submitted executive summaries, so now Yin Yin and I (with help from Silvia and Roxna) are hard a work categorizing the startups, verifying eligibility, assigning them to judges, and then contacting the judges. We need to do this quickly in order to allow the judges to have more time.

Homework picking back up after the midterm lull. My rear tire went flat on Tuesday so couldn’t ride it around…will pick it up this afternoon before Hindi. At least it seems the rain has stopped….for now. This area really needs rain though.