Shanghai Asian Manor or Shanghai Cafe, both off Mott street are great. Shanghai Cafe is more popular and can get really crowded. Shanghai Manor is a bit more pricey.

asf

Build a $2500 Mac Pro for $900 using these hackintosh instructions. It's a really powerful machine. Might be overkill for you.

It's hard to know what's helpful to you without knowing your level of technical ability. There are libraries for reading / writing excel files like this: http://www.python-excel.org/ IronSpread is a vba alternative http://gigaom.com/2012/06/08/another-reason-you-should-lean-to-code-python-for-excel/ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4085052

Cognac or equivalent consumable never disappoints.

Light weight CRM that sits inside your Gmail. It's really easy to use, flexible, and stays out of your way.

The best sushi place I've been to in NYC, and you need reservations. Near Grand Central. If you're on a budget, you can pretty much have the omakase for cheaper with a combo and a few chef recommendations.

This has become the standard dev machine. If I were to buy a new laptop today, it'd either be macbook air or new macbook pro if you have extra cash.

it's a decent ftp + development tool for OS X

it is worth the hit to your master cleanse.