Sachin Agarwal: February 2007

Finally, here's an update on what I've been up to recently.

Work has been busy, but good.

I'm reading American Autobahn which is a book arguing for increased speed limits in the US. There's little correlation between speed and deaths on the road. More importantly, Germany has been able to successfully have no speed limits on the autobahn. This is attributed to safer cars and better drivers. It's all about being responsible on the road. Wouldn't you give up being able to use your cell phone on the road for a higher speed limit? I can't believe people are still allowed to talk on the phone in some states.

I started working on a little CS project on the side. It's a Blackjack Simulator. It simulates a real casino (a shoe of cards, shuffling, dealing, etc). The dealer plays as a dealer should. Then you define your player and how you want it to play. You don't play the game hand by hand but let the simulator run for hundreds or thousands of hands and you see what the outcome is (in terms of money). I am doing this to test the following:

1. Basic Strategy. If you bet constantly and play by the book, you should end up with slightly less money than you started with (casino has 1-2% advantage)
2. Changes to basic strategy. How does it affect the outcome
3. Random betting
4. Counting cards
5. Counting cards and making mistakes.
6. Counting cards, making mistakes, but always err on the safe side (this could still be bad)
7. Number of players at the table
8. Number of decks in the shoe
9. Deck penetration. When does the dealer decide to reshuffle?
10. Dealer hit vs stay on soft 17
11. Team play

I can make minor changes to the game and see how it affects how much money I make. I'm hoping to have something running in a week or so, and then have it completely done in a month (i only work on it a couple hours per week). Hopefully by the time I go to Vegas in April I'll know exactly what to do. I'll probably make this program available for free (and open source) when it's done.

Some New York recommendations:
* Shebeen. I've mentioned it before. Great bar in Soho
* The Back Room in the Lower East Side. My new favorite bar. It's owned by Tim Robbins and totally secret. It's pretty hard to find. Music is great and it's not super crowded.

Tonight we're going to Degustation for dinner. I've wanted to go there for a while.

I was back in California a couple weeks ago for work. Some highlights/notes:

* Great to see all my friends and coworkers. I miss everyone!
* I miss driving my Miata. Nick Hsu was in Cupertino and drove it around also. He loved it. It made his list of cars to own in the future.
* I was quickly reminded of the costs involved with driving. Most people think of gas, but I think the cost and hassle of repairs and maintainance is a bigger deal. *sigh*
* Traffic sucks. Why can't people drive faster? Or at least get out of my way.
* Thank you Valentine 1. Totally saved my ass on the drive to and from San Luis Obispo
* Spent lots of time at a casino near Santa Barbara with my dad
* Went to Costco. I miss Costco
* Went to Trader Joes. I miss Trader Joes. There is one in Union Square but I rarely go. I should
* I don't think NY people are rude (which is the stereotype). But I do find people in SLO extremely friendly
* Ate lots of avocados (Baja Fresh!)
* Test drove the new BMW 335i (twin turbo 3 liter!) Didn't feel much faster than my BMW, but the suspension was perfect.
* Weekly Tuesday night dinner at Emily's (thanks!)
* SF Wednesdays, bigger and better than ever
* Thursday Los Gatos Brewery with some Phi Psis (I love Los Gatos)
* Friday wii party
* Spent all of Saturday in Berkeley with Avi, Karen, Nik, and Becca. Berkeley is awesome
* Rained the second half of the week. booo!
* Had to cancel my hiking plans for Big Basin because of the rain

Some people who live in New York are excited to leave the city and get off the island once in a while. I'm generally not itching to leave Manhattan, but when I do it is nice to go somewhere quiet, clean, and spacious.

Being in San Francisco is always tough because I end up making giant lists of what I like about San Francisco and New York and I wonder if I can move back. It's really going to be a hard choice. Being in San Francisco is great, but coming back to New York is a shock every time. It's like "oh wow. this is a real city. I missed you, New York." Those "I love New York" tshirts are no joke.

Vista has been all over the news recently, and as I expected most reviews are not favorable. The conclusion seems to be that Vista is a good upgrade for those in need of a new machine, but it's not worth the money or hassle to upgrade.

Arstechnica had an blurb about how 75% of Vista reviews mention OS X. Most reviews point out that the look and feel of Vista is a complete rip of OS X, and most of the bundled applications like those for photos and movies have been on the Mac for years and are much more advanced.

The review at The Register is particularly harsh

So, there's our first look at Vista. It does benefit from a lot of good ideas, many of them Apple's, of course, but good nevertheless. It simply doesn't work very well, unfortunately. There are serious problems with execution; it's not polished; it's not ready. It should not be on the market, and certainly not for the outrageous prices being charged. Don't buy it, at least until after the first service pack is out. Don't pay to be a beta tester

In this interview on CNN, Bill Gates gets very nervous when asked if Vista was going after the Mac OS look.

Not surprisingly, Vista sales are not doing well. Steve Ballmer is blaming piracy for the low sales. Yeah, that'll make the share holders feel better about Microsoft. All this and Leopard hasn't even hit the market (or potentially new versions of iLife and iWork).

A couple weeks ago Best Buy had large inserts promoting the Vista launch, discounting new PCs and offering other promotions. Now that the buzz has died down, looks like they are actually promoting the switch to Mac! Ars had another article about how Macs hold their resale value. Macs are more expensive than crappy Dells (though only a little more expensive than comparably quality machines like Thinkpads).

Finally, a new iPod video ripper has just been released. MediaFork seems like a simple way to go from DVD to iPod. There aren't a lot of settings to mess with, just insert your DVD and hit go.

I random stumbled upon the wikipedia page for Mark Cuban as I was reading the current news about the Viacom/Gootube copyright issues that are going on now (I already knew who Mark Cuban was).

This was interesting:

Cuban's first step in the business world occurred at age 12, when he sold garbage bags in quantities of 100 for $6

I was thinking about what my first steps in the business world were. My friends know I'm always scheming to find new deals and make extra cash wherever I can. Credit card arbitrage is my speciality. So where did this all start? Two big ones that come to mind.

1. When I was around 12 I delivered newspapers for The Daily Breeze. I probably made $50-60 per month for about an hour of work per day. Where I really made money was by signing up new customers. For each new account, which cost a person $10, I made $50. So I would cold call people from the phone book and offer them the paper for free for a month. I borrowed money from my parents to pay the $10 up front, then made back $50 later. I never signed anyone up in my own neighborhood because I didn't actually want to delivery additional newspapers :)

2. At Stanford I took advantage of some good discounts at the Stanford bookstore and made a little cash on ebay. I had so much fun doing this. For about 3 weeks I was working 10-15 hours per day. Good times.

Al just told me he's going to throw his Treo in the trash and asked if I wanted it. I'm going to take it and put it on ebay. I'll give him 10% of the proceeds.

Check out the "San Francisco + Manhattan" map on this page. That would seriously be the greatest thing ever. I would probably move to the West Village to be closer to the 280 though. And having to go cross town to get from San Francisco to Berkeley would be a bitch.

But otherwise, this would solve so many of my problems :)

Gary and I went to Aureole for lunch. I do not recommend this place. Service was terrible, food was ok. It's too bad because I loved the location in Las Vegas (especially since they have a 10,000 bottle, 42 foot tall tower of wine).

On Wednesday we had a big group for Mercer Kitchen. It's one of my favorite New York restaurants. I highly recommend the steamed shrimp salad with avocado.

On Thursday I went to Chanterelle for lunch. This was another tough reservation to get. The restaurant, food, and service were all perfect. The restaurant week lunch even included coffee so it was my cheapest restaurant week meal.