Author: Vele (Page 3 of 4)

How do you spell dining heaven in Philadelphia? Oh, yes, the Fountain Restaurant at the Four Seasons Hotel. Yesterday, my wife Roxanne and I finally made the trip to this restaruant whose reputation preceedes it by far. The lunch was not a special occasion, although by the end of this experience you certainly feel that it was indeed a very special occasion. Especially given a student budget, the rarity of this endeavour made it even more special. The experience at the Fountain ranks up there with other notable top restaurants such as Le Bec Fin and Founders, both in Philly, Chanterelle in New York City, and Taillevent in Paris.

While these are all widely recognized as top restaurants, ranked at least 28 on Zagat, with highly refined dining experiences and signature dishes, they all have their own quirks that you could make a ranking depending on the occasion. My top preference is Taillevent in Paris, which I’d put as one of the top restaurants around the world. Not only is the food the best among all of the above restaurants, also confirmed by colleagues who’ve had even more such experiences, the place itself has a very homely atmosphere, with waiters who are very charming, relaxed and put you at ease instantly. The sheer lack of pretention at a place of this caliber is simply unmatched. And coming from France, that says a lot. The owner personally welcomes you and bids you good bye, the tables are separated and cozy enough for you to feel private and romantic, and if you do smoke a cigar, they bring a small table fan that strategically keeps the smoke away from other tables. I personally don’t mind, even prefer sometimes, the smoke of a good cigar, but not everyone does.

Basically, the French in this case know that you come there to enjoy the food and your company, you will spend a ton money, and you don’t need to be reminded of it or made special about it, you just have to enjoy yourself. The place itself prides on experience and it doesn’t need to create artificial exclusivity, something that’s occassionally hard for American restaurants to understand because we all yearn for some recognition of this exclusivity and we only show it with price! But I think this notion is very short-sited when it comes to enjoying the finer things in life.

The relaxed ambience at Taillevent is closest to that of the Fountain, which is why Roxanne and I enjoyed it so much. You simply immerse youselves in conversation and enjoy the food, speaking of which, the pheasant breast was awesome, grilled on top of cranberry risotto and pumpkin puree: delicious! The foie grass was good but not the most impressive of the ones I have had. The least interesting foie grass was the one at Le Bec Fin. While that at Chanterelle and Brasserie 8 1/2 in NYC has been the best so far. Mind you, these are all delicious meals, I’m talking subtleties here.

Chanterelle’s environment was perhaps the least exciting. What made up for the very sterile room (their signature) and pretention from their waiters was simply the untouchable food. Their food was right next to Taillevent in taste and enjoyment. This is the biggest reason to go to Chanterelle: the food!

Now, if you are in Philly looking for a high-end romantic place, you must visit Founders, the restaurant on top of Park Hyatt hotel. It has a very classy atmosphere with views of the city. The dining and service are top notch, and best of all, has live music on weekends with a small dance podium where you can take your significant other for a quick dance between meals. The music is matched to the quality of food and service to make for a truly romantic dining experience. I think Fountain comes in close 2nd in romantic restaurants, while Le Bec Fin a solid 3rd. Le Bec Fin had excellent menu, outstanding service, even if at times the pretention does sneak up on waiters, and very good ambience, although not as cozy or separated as Fountain, but I’d say it’s an excellent place to enjoy group dining, if all of you can afford it, of course!

Comments?

Yes, I do, in fact, just look at my exhaust pipe! My SUV’s exhaust, that is, or my 2002 ML-500 exahust, which at best gets 18mpg, and apparently spews over 350g/km of CO2. Over the course of a year, I’m spewing couple of times the weight of the car in CO2. So, yes, our cars are one of the biggest CO2 polluters, and CO2 is the leading cause of global warming. Why do I care?

Because at Wharton, we can make even mundane, intangible and socially responsible ideas into a good business that makes a profit and does something good. Yes, a class in operations called: Problem solving, design and system improvement, by Prof. Karl Ulrich, is precisely a business in reducing CO2. I’m not talking about your run-o-da-mill b-plan types or cases. This is a real business and I have a few shares in my name. What’s the idea? We help individuals offset the CO2 emissions from their cars by buying carbon dioxide credits on the markets and helping finance energy projects that use renewable sources or reduce CO2 emissions. Simple and yet brilliant. Take it from me, who’s not terribly environmentally conscious, to tell you that yes, a market-based mechanism can reduce CO2, help the environment and have a bigger impact than waiting months in line and paying a premium for a new hybrid vehicle.

Before I go off, you should check out Terrapass.com and if you are a car owner buy yourself a pass and then tell your friends: “My car is a zero emissions vehicle. Look how I did it!” For about $50 per year you can offset the annual carbon dioxide emissions of your car with Terrapass and get the certificate and recognition to prove it. Terrapass turns around and buys CO2 offsets from energy companies that are forced to use renewable sources or reduce actual CO2 emissions in a verifiable way, or we buy them from the carbon offsets market, such as what’s happening on the Chicago Climate Exchange. The beauty here is we don’t have to finance everything, just enough to make the alternative energy projects economically viable for power companies to reduce their CO2 emissions. Since this works worldwide, your car’s impact is offset immediately. Take that you hybrid-lovers! (this in jest, of course, I think hybrids are great and would love to see a sporty suv hybrid that I can afford now)

Any questions?

Well, this happened few weeks ago, but it’s still quite important to note the significance of this event. In one of President Bush’s first foreign policy decision post re-election, he corrected an injustice that’s been done to Macedonians over the years by recognizing Macedonia under its consitutional name: Republic of Macedonia effectively legalizing a practice that’s been increasingly used by State of Department officials. For Macedonians around the world this was a vindication of a decade long pursuit to stamp out injust policies coming from official Greek resistance to us MAcedonians using the name that we have all used forever. The Greek argument basically boiled down to going to a DMV and someone refusing to give you a driver’s licence because their friend had the same name as yours. That’s all!

Greece was caught by total surprise and will continue to push for a reversal or reinforce weak hands. For Greece this will remain an endless battle to preserve something that is completely intangible and self-created only to maintain some sort of non-existent fear of armed Macedonian marching across the border to Greece, pillaging, killing and conquering lands. Oh, boy, the ridiculousness of that. A country with barely 30k draftees attacking Greece, whose entire military strategy has been to fend off an invasion by Turkey, the biggest European army, being part of NATO and posessing modern military hardware with 2.5 years of mandatory military service. Yeah, that’s gonna happen…

For Macedonians, this isn’t just a victory but rather a correction of a long-standing injustice to deny our identity. That’s the bottom line. Nobody in Macedonia cares about Greece or Greeks, much less Alexander the Great. We just want to be left alone and not denied for once. Perhaps other neighbours will get the message now…

The corollary to this is Macedonian-EU relations. Because of the consensus-based politics in Europe, Greece will continue to wield power and prevent any kind of Macedonian entry into EU and/or NATO, primarily because of the name. This is not so much of a problem. The EU hasn’t been kind to new members and it’s new policies will treat the eastern european countries as second class citizens. It’s appetite for new members has reduces drastically. NATO is another issue. The ability to defend ourselves from invastion or regional instability is paramount for Macedonia. NATO’s policy of cooperation has been to dicatate the growth, size and capability of the Macedonian Army even before there are any guarantees of defense, much less guarantees of membership. Now, with Greece a most definite veto on any membership, Macedonia will have to re-examine its relationship with Nato and especially its level of accepting military dicatums. It means Macedonia has to develop a strategy to defend itself through stronger bilateral alliances that maintain the Balkan balance of power. It is this balance, through support of foreign powers, that has held peace on the Balkans for a long time. US is one example. Turkey, which recognized us first as Macedonia, is another example. Being part of a US-based alliance system makes a lot of sense for Macedonia. It also gives Macedonia, a marginal resource on the Balkans, a lot of bargaining power in structuring its alliances and creating its defense and growth systems. IMHO, this is the right strategy to pursue before any EU/NATO accention talks. I doubt the Macedonian gov’t is thinking this far along, unfortunately.

Ah, Mary Kay must be a b-school professor’s favourite video. This video from 60 minutes is so cheesy and funny that you can almost write a book on the gazillion topics embedded in there. So to paraphrase William Shatner: but why!?

We reluctantly watched this in today’s class on Strategic Implementation, thoroughly amused and bored, with memories of last year’s sketch. As part of a core course on managing people at work, one that’s consistenly the least favourite of Wharton MBAs, each team had to perform a sketch on a case revolving employee situations: there were ciscos, and some airlines, and …ok, I forgot, but my learning team was assigned the glory of Mary Kay. So we did this ridiculous sketch on Mary Kay’s recruiting tactics and how they fared in China in the late 90s. Awful…makes me want to puke…

Why bring painful memories? Strat Implementation is one of my favourite class and there’s no need to bring up Mary Kay in there….

What’s cool about Wharton is that I was one of a lucky 30 MBAs chosen to attend a dinner with Adobe’s CEO Bruce Chizen last week. Well, I wasn’t that special, I just won my first lottery that’s part of the Leadership Lecture series at Wharton. The students who coordinate this bring top leaders from the country and overseas to speak on a variety of issues, and also about their leadership. Afterwards, lucky 30 or so get to dine at the Inn at Penn with the person. Selections are random and also, you only have 1 opportunity in your two years at Wharton to attend one of these diners. I was lucky enough to drop my name for the first time and win. Yey!

Bruce spoke with his partly recognizable Brooklyn accent on Adobe’s turnaround since the late 90s and now Adobe’s main push in the enterprise space with their Intelligent Document Business Unit. I’m a long-running Photoshop user and I was quite excited to learn a few things about how they approach the education market, government businesses and especially the enterprise space with the Adobe Policy Server since I worked on a competitive product at Microsoft this past summer. What stood out is the effort that Adobe takes to avoid getting in Microsoft’s path. They are literally obsessed at making sure that Microsoft is ignoring them, but not too much, because they are partners afterall.

Bruce earler told of a very interesting story how he got to Wharton that day: he was stuck on the 41st floor in the elevator of a hotel in Manhattan. He had to climb out of the escape hatch and onto the next elevator to escape after a 2-hour ordeal. Wow…the road to Wharton is treacherous for CEOs. I usually thought it’s the other way around…whew!

I’ll post more on this on the Wharton Tech blog soon,

Finally, a short break to catch a movie with my wife. In fact, we saw two this weekend that we both agree are good ones: Ray and Team America: World Police. You must be wondering how can you put these movies on the same level. My criteria for good movies is simple: the movie delivers an enjoyable performance, especially one where I can empathize with the characters. Ok, so this is a stretch for Team America, but it delivers on the first count. Trust me!

Ray is an awesome movie and Jamie Foxx delivers an Oscar-worthy performance. If you wonder how can a funny comedian, often compared to Jim Carey, deliver this, you are in for a treat! Jamie Foxx shows incredible range in his acting skills to make this movie a complete standout on both of my counts above: it’s enjoyable, even tear jerker at times, and gets you as close as possible to the character. I say as close because there is absolutely no way to truly understand what it’s like to be a blind man. You can begin to comprehend the difficulties and even imagine it, but not quite understand unless you’re blind too. And this is where the movie delivers because it uses clever imagery from Ray’s childhood and upbringing to deliver a complete picture of who was Ray and what it means to be a successful blind musician but not a crippled one. That’s the point made throughout the movie. Ray was a street-smart person who was tough on everyone, especially himself, and never accepted any pity from noone. He was also a humorous smooth-talker that was a magnet for the ladies. This made Jamie Foxx a perfect actor for the role, with his youthful, comedic and smooth demeanor that worked well to show Ray in it’s full glory. Oh, yeah, Jamie Foxx is an accomplished pianist who got Ray Charles’ blessing for the role before Ray passed away. Wow, I sound like a movie critic…go see Ray!

Moving to a more serious stuff, Team America delivers big time. I still burst laughing just by reminiscing some of the scenes as I write this. My favourite one that’s been played on the trailers: “I got two terrorists going down on baka-laka-daka street.” This movie is as funny as anything Matt Stone and Trey Parker have done. Clever and elaborate like any South Park episode, with not so subtle critiques of terrorists, US actions abroad, Hollywood liberals and Government honchos, oh yeah, and sex, plenty of it! There’s an elaborate sex scene with the puppets that will make you laugh so hard you’ll need an ambulance. Oh, yeah, and my favourite song “We need a montage!” from South Park…how funny is that, making fun of your movie in your movie. This is one funny movie, go see it!

I downloaded and installed Google Desktop Search today and it rocks! It took a while to index everything, and I mean everything. My suggestion is to go remove Web History and AOL IM Chats from the indexing, they could take a while. When ready, it runs fast and does an excellent job of searching. I used Lookout before in Outlook, but even though I have My Documents in the index, it rarely finds files. For email, Lookout is excellent and better integrated in Outlook. Google Desktop is great for files, although since there isn’t any cross linking I wonder what’s the page rank alghorhythm.

What I found best about it is that when you search anything from the Google Toolbar for IE, it also displays your local searches on top. Excellent! This takes Microsoft and Apple in for a ride. Switching costs are a big problem here and Google’s only issue so far is that you have to open a browser to search anything on the desktop. Would have preferred a single line or toolbar next to the start button.

Will explore this more, but interested to hear opinions. My wife’s first question: isn’t this kinda invasive? Hm, is google transmitting the files/data that are locally to their servers? hm, just for the paraniod go to gmail is too creepy

What’s the point of Orion Blue Book service: determining the value of used and new equipment for wholesale, private party and barter transactions. From Econ 101, the value of such products is only as good as the most recent trade and market-based transaction. So, in fragmented markets with high transaction costs (finding buyers, inventory, uncertain information, quality issues) the volume is low and the information of actual undisputed trades is unavailable unless someone pays to discover it. That’s why a stock market works so well: it has a lot of volume, it has transparency (each share of equal quality), established transaction method which has lowered transaction costs. On the other end of the spectrum are computer equipment, unique valuables (instruments and antiques) and typically cars. It is hard to ascertain the quality of the equipment, hard to find buyers in 1 place, and hard to complete the transaction with good creditworthy parties. So, Orion Blue Book solved this problem by conducting surveys and compiling this hard to find information in a neat format to help car dealers and other pawn shop owners make sure they are paying less than needed on used stuff. Instead of getting actual transactions, this “blue book” stuff was based on estimates and these 3rd party evaluations. There’s clearly a bias here, but maybe I’m generalizing (or not!) This should have been adequate until about 1998 when eBay started growing.

At this point, eBay has the largest volume of private party transactions of new and used stuff . This means, eBay’s databases (I presume oracle, but god forbid mysql) contain unbeliveable wealth of information on these transactions. Just check out this search on Epson 1280 and find me a used $41 printer. If you take into account only valid transactions, like ones where seller claims X, highest bidder pays Y and doesn’t complain about the validity of X, then X’s value is Y. Aggregating these X’s or products by category (new, refurbished, used), age or a few other attributes, and then showing a simple distribution of cleared valid transactions (high, low, mean and median) along with volume, and even % aggregate positive and negative feedbacks in the transactions you have the most real-time eBay Blue Book service available. And here’s the kicker: this should be free online for us or at least available in a nice shiny book format to be sold to old-school insurance agents and claims adjustors.

In 1 simple move (ok, maybe 3-months work for a good web developer and DBA) eBay has displaced the Orion Blue Book crap value measure with something real that shows actual market transactions and the likelihood that your epson printer is worth what you claim it is.

Am I genius or what? Meg, are you there? We need you here, I’m sure you have someone at ebay working hard on this, but include me in as a volunteer on this project (i have heavy quant modeling skills with ability to create and market something like this, just a plug!). The biggest problem: selling to the insurance people and setting a court prescedent that ebay is true market information to be used as a substitute for the national surveys because it is based on sound economics, and since ebay makes money off sellers transactions, it has no other incentive to mess with prices except to increase overall transaction volume. Making this freely available would be another validation of this model.

Comments?

Again, FedEx Ground insurance and declared value suck. Orion Blue Book sucks because working Epson 1280 can’t be found anywhere for $41 and eBay should close this gap NOW!

Some of you are probably wondering how did FedEx settle the damage they caused to my Epson 1280 photo printer. The title should give you a clue. In fact, I wanted to launch into a tirade of expletives towards FedEx Ground, all rightfully deserved of course, but I want to make this educational in case some of you are wondering: does a “declared value” insure my shippment, of so, how much is FedEx going to pay, how can I make sure the whole world knows FedEx sucks big time, who the fuck is Orion Blue Book and why should we care?

$41.00 that’s the amount on the check from FedEx regarding my claim about FedEx completely destroying a $400 printer. FedEx paid my claim 10cents on the dollar! I’m supposed to bask in their generousity of this “full and final settlement” based on the Orion Freaking Blue Book. That’s right, Orion Blue Book apparently says that my 3-year old used Epson 1280 in excellent working condition, with depreciation is worth $41. In fairness, I couldn’t be happier if this was true, for I’d gladly return the claim check to FedEx and buy a used Epson 1280 for $41, $51, $81 or even $91!!! But first, FedEx and fucking Orion Blue Book have to find me one. Orion Blue Book sucks!

Not that FedEx was so eager to satisfy a loyal customer for 10 years, FedEx actually denied my damage claim pretending I didn’t send “documentation.” After calling them and explaining what all the papers were in the envelope that the “case analyst” had in front of her, she quickly brushed me off “ok, I’ll pay the claim, bye!” Wow, that easy? I wanted to give her all assurances how they were doing the right thing, but she wouldn’t have any of it. Apparently, she had a secret weapon: Orion Blue Book — the biggest scam when it comes to electronic equipment. Oh, and get this: it’s based on National Dealer Surveys! Who buys this stuff? National Dealers and pawn-shops, most likely not ordinary people like me who actually buy and sometimess sell stuff. Just curious how many eBay-ers actually use this garbage?

Vele, where’s the lesson in this? Here it is: when shipping anything with FedEx, ignore the Declared Value field. It’s not insurance, just your own guess of what you think your stuff is worth. The only time this number is used is in the rarest of chances that Orion Blue Book says your shipment is higher value than what you put in the Declared Value and then FedEx pays you Declared Value, which is likely to happen when hell freezes over. Apparently, FedEx doesn’t give a shit about this number as they base every claim off the a) repair cost, b) replacement value, or c) orion blue book value which ever is less!!! If you want true shipping insurance avoid FedEx!!! Most likely you should use UPS as they actually call this insured value, but check with UPS on the phone. I hear the USPS is a little finicky as well. This puts FedEx as target of a class action lawsuit for misleading shippers on the intent and meaning of Declared Value. Imagine, I shipped stuff worth over $4000, and it meant nothing to them, I was misled (yeah, I should have read all pages of their terms of service, but what’s the point of declared value if you aren’t going to pay for it!?), and so are potentially millions of FedEx shoppers claiming declared value on their packages. Don’t use FedEx declared value, and avoid Fedex in the future.

Here are a few links of pissed off customers:
http://www.audioasylum.com/scripts/t.pl?f=vintage&m=66783
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/delivery/fedex_ground_insurance.html
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/delivery/fedex_damage.html
And I love this one!

So, here’s my next lesson: eBay should be in the business of Used Value books! THat’s the theme for my next blog,
For know, let me know if I should go to the trouble of filling a small claims court. All used Epson 1280’s on eBay start at around $150, because they are useful printers in working condition. All refurbished ones start at $250. New ones are around $350-$399. How do you get $41 I don’t know, but I’ll say it again: FedEx sucks and should be sued for misleading customers on shipping insurance and declared value, Orion Blue Book sucks because they are creating value to serve their direct customers: National Dealers and pawn-shops.

On my move back from Seattle, Fedex broke my Epson Stylus Photo 1280 printer. Considering that I shipped 20 packages from Philly to Seattle and back and this was the only damage, that’s not so bad. I am also very lucky to have put a declared value of $400 on this printer. The printer now is completely useless, I filed a claim and I’m hoping Fedex, of whom I’ve been a super loyal customer since 1994, will reimburse me completely.

I was bummed about missing my photo printing mainstay, but I looked at upgrading the printer for the same price or perhaps getting something similar for less. Well, imagine the shock that Epson STILL sells 1280 on their site for $299, after a $100 rebate. A 3-year old printer model, (I paid $469 in early 2001) retails brand new for $299, 63% of its value. I checked ebay and the price is a very similar for newer ones. The rebate is probably an indicator that Epson is readying an R800-like 13″ wide printer. I also looked at the bigger brother 2200, with its pigment inks, and this 2-year old still retails for $699 with a $50-off a best. I love the new R800 with the 8-ink cartride, but it’s an 8″ wide printer and while I don’t do many wide prints, the ones I do are absolutely worth it! So, I need a wide Epson printer and I’m debating getting a 1280 again or upgrading to 2200 (which isn’t a best printer for regular b&w letter printing), or waiting to see if Epson comes through with 13″ R800-like model.

The bigger question here is the lack of depreciation for a 13″ wide photo printer. I was expecting a cheaper printer to be available of similar or better quality especially in the 3 year, but alas there isn’t. While the Canon i9900 is fast, the prints aren’t as durable as those from Epson. My prints from 2001 are still in top shape and I don’t see any fades or color shifts. So, for all the innovation and price declines for the quality in the low end sub-$300 printer markets, Epson 1280 represents a premium printer that does a job well, and there is not real substitute and competition. What’s the market: prosumer photographers, studio, commercial and serious hobbyists. This market buys 1-2 printers every few years to keep up with volume and spends their money on inks. If you had no need for many B&W prints, you could keep the 1280 forever.

Which reminds me of a car: while cars depriciate value rapidly, they are still useful for their main purpose. The 1280 is still useful as a photo printer, has depreciated new better than a car, (unusual for a technology product), and remains a preimum item in its category unmatched by competitors. You wonder why other computer technologies continue to depreciate and not be as useful: applications! As long as there are new tech applications for computers that demand upgrades (digital lifestyle, storage, communication), computer depreciation will be faster and correlated with devaluation in their usefulness. The application of 1280 is simple: quality photographs in 13″ wide format with reasonable longevity to be sold commercially. This application hasn’t changed and probably won’t change. Something that will drive price pressure is competition. If Canon is serious, they’ll jack up the durability of their inks and photo prints and make their printers compete with the 1280 target market. Otherwise, don’t expect massive declines in prices for 13″ wide prosumer photo printers for time to come.