Sachin Agarwal: November 2004

Haha, not really.

My cousin called me tonight and said I had to come out to this bar in the Mission. I was packing for Brazil, but he said I had to check it out.

So I went over there and turns out it was a marketing stunt put on by Volvo where you would get a Volvo for a week, go to various marketing presentations, dinners, singles nights out, etc and then ultimately decide to buy the car.

This event was at Lasizo bar in the mission (I'm not sure because they have no sign on the building and they aren't listed anywhere). I showed up and just walked right in as someone was giving Volvo marketing BS. Note: when there is a reception counter to check in, just walk in really fast like you've been inside before.

Turns out it was totally free food and drinks! Rad. It was a group of 25-35 year old good looking professional singles who made 60-100k/year. Definitely the type of people I could see driving a VW or an Audi, but not a Volvo (or a BMW). Volvo was also giving away ipods and powerbooks in a raffle (maybe they are hip and cool now?)

I wonder if these people were actualy convinced by Volvo. It's not like Volvo woke up one day and decided to make good cars again. More likely they just hired a new marketing agency.

On a side note, my cousin works for DigiDesign which is a totally rad company. I met a bunch of his co-workers tonight. They are all awesome people who work on cutting edge, industry leading (Mac) music software that is used for like every CD you buy or movie you watch.

Audion is an mp3 player created by Panic. They just stopped development on it since iTunes is dominating the market.

Audion is a great product and a great story about third party software development. Here is the story told by the creator

My favorite parts:

Audion had custom skins that had alpha channels (transparency). This was in OS 9 before it was natively supported in the operating system (I think Windows will have this in a few years). They had to hack around this by actually looking at what was under their window, compositing their window over an image of the background, and then putting that on screen as an opaque image. Very very cool.

And a quote about Steve Jobs
The guy who we basically owe our entire professional existence to, who basically created the very platform we want to hug, the computers we want to crush into little pure plump pieces of joy?

And a quote about iTunes, which describes the Apple software philosophy and what makes the software so great.
iTunes was, of course, and I'll say this now, brilliant. It single-handedly taught us an entirely new philosophy on software design. Do you really need that Preference that 1% of your users will use? Can you find a better way to design that interface than having each function in a separate window? Can you clean this up, even if it means it's a little less flexible? iTunes blazed the trail for clean, efficient software design for a broad audience, a design philosophy we practice actively today. It was a way to take a complicated digital music collection, and make it easy. Sure, it was limited, but man was it easy.

I HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend Panic's other great product, Transmit. I've been using it for years. If Apple didn't have a site license, I'd pay for it in a second.

There are some companies that are only in it for the money; they don't care about their products or their customers. These are companies like Dell, and Walmart. They will sacrifice quality to save a penny.

The newest company on my shit list is ADT home security. They refused to take responsibility for a false alarm at my parent's house. Sure guys, a burglar set off the alarm 2 seconds after the system reported a technical problem. What a coincidence. Anyone recommend good alternatives?

On the other end, there are companies who provide a great product and great service, sometimes sacrificing profits in order to do what's right. These are companies like Directv, Costco and Trader Joes.

My new favorite is Banana Republic. I just found out they do free alterations on some of their clothes, and pretty cheap alterations on others. I can now buy more of their stuff that didn't fit me before, and although I still think they are expensive, it's not as horrible as before. They also have a great return policy which essential boils down to "if you aren't happy, we'll take it back"

Every since I got back from India last year, I've been thinking about living somewhere else. I loved India so much I really didn't want to come back here. Even though all the things I am really into (computers, cars) are available in this country more than any other, it's like deep down I feel like I would be happier somewhere else. Even my dad is happier in India and sometimes wants to be back there. Now I see why.

Right now Nikhil is reading Bowling Alone which I really want to read, but I already know this country has lost it's communities and people do live more solitary lives than they did before. I saw that after India and it made me sad.

And then there's the recent election. This election was very frustrating for democrats because it was believed that everything was going well this time. More people were voting than ever before, and the preseident had a low rating.

But he still won and that's because most of the people in this country are very religious and very conservative. Most people in this country have values that are completely different than my own. How can I live somewhere that is governed by a set of laws that don't follow my values?

This past weekend I went to the wedding of a family friend at the Westin in San Francisco. It was a beautiful wedding on the top floor of the hotel with an incredible view and a cake in the shape of a standing Taj Mahal (3D).

The marriage was between an Indian couple, but the groom's family was Christian and the bride's was Hindu. They had two cermonies that day. At the Hindu ceremony the groom's family (Christian) refused to throw flower pedals on the couple. They didn't want to participate in the ceremony at all. Then at the reception itself they were crying when the new couple was announced.

I have never this directly seen people who are so intolerant of other cultures. THere have been several mixed marriages in my family and people have always welcomed it with open arms. But this family was trully sad that their son was not marrying a Christian.

SOmetimes my mom is also a little too religious and superstitious (I often find they are the same thing) and she will believe anything the church (temple) tells her, no matter how rediculous it is. It's very scary sometimes.

So where should I move? Where can I go that it more liberal and has stronger communities? Germany has fast cars, great design, very industrial. I think I would like it there :)

Less than 2 weeks to go.

This weekend I painted my wheels white using Duplicolor wheel paint. My wheels were spotted and rusty so now they look much better.

Pictures of the process and the car