Air-mo-SEE-yo

I hate to interrupt the partying all the time (my girl will be so disappointed) but I thought I'd let everyone know that Google Maps has been updated to include hi-res imagery of everyone's favorite Sonoran metropolis. All your favorite landmarks are there: Mundo Divertido, El Burro Feliz, your choice of Sorianas, and (with a lot of scrolling) even the Ford plant. Check it out. I found your old neighborhood but I'll never be able to pick out your respective house.

I'm writing this entry from the Ramada Plaza Hotel in scenic Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, where I'm spending the week managing a training session. It's not as wretched a place as everyone makes it out to be, but my judgement may be clouded by the fact that I've done more drinking this week than I have all year. This town has more bars than people.

On Thursday I head off to Key West, and things look up considerably. In the interim, enjoy the view of Hermosillo.

Pro-net-neutrality, exhibit A

I know just what this blog needs:

I hope so too...

In one of my classes, I heard the story of an automotive company that hung blinking signs between their assembly lines that read, "I love my job". It was a nice way to completely undermine the way that employees view their jobs (whether they liked them or not).

I am reminded of this story every time I log on to my computer on the network, where I am welcomed by this screen:

Educate Me

So, I know it's not as exciting or sexy as Jamie's last post, but I was hoping for some education. There have been commentaries on NPR the last couple of days about net neutrality. I didn't exactly understand the issue and the arguments on both sides sounded good. Help me understand, because I have a feeling that some of you have serious opinions about the issue :) Here are the commentaries on each side:

Anti Net Neutrality

Pro Net Neutrality

p.s. Andrik, Eeyore was not slow. He was a depressed donkey. I should have written about him for that grad school project, but I diagnosed Oscar the Grouch from Sesame Street instead. :)

Ink-a-dink-a-doo

So it seems like everyone else in America went out and got a tattoo when I wasn't looking.

Before I go any further, I will stop and say that yes, I'm aware there are members of the Outside Context family who have tattoos. And I will preface things by saying I'm not referring to that type of tasteful, easily-concealed-when-the-occasion-warrants tattoo.

I'm referring more to big, gaudy tattoos on prominent parts of the body that are not covered up by everyday clothing. Examples:

1.) The cashier at McDonald's, who had "Junior" tattooed on one side of her neck and "Giggle" on the other.
2.) A woman I work with, who regularly wears sandals and has a rather large tattoo of Tinkerbell on the top of her foot. I can't even imagine how badly that must have hurt, although I am briefly reminded of Areli's "I Don't TINK So" t-shirt back in Mexico.
3.) A man at my company who has large free-form tattoos on both of his forearms.

By now you've probably guessed my stance on tattoos, which is that if God wanted us to have ink in our bodies He would have given us an ink-producing organ, like a squid. But I'm curious to know what the rest of the class thinks - have tattoos become mainstream enough that people don't have to cover them anymore? Should I get on the wagon and tattoo myself? What should it say?

Another reason I love wikipedia

This has gotta be one of the best wikipedia pages I've ever seen.

We Built This City

This is a fun little Flash program showing how the world's cities have grown in the last 50 years. Props to Mexico City for showing good hustle, although Lagos gets honorable mention. A special shout-out to Dallas/Fort Worth for making the map as well.

I've never even heard of some of the Indian and Chinese cities - Pune? Ahmadabad? Chittagong? I guess in 50 years they'll be as common as New York, London and Paris, if India's current growth is anything to go by.

Post I wrote last Thursday.

[So, it turns out that the wireless internet access at my hotel in NYC sucks. I wasn't going to post this from my new desk on my first day of work on Friday. So, here you go, only four days late.]

Hello from the Big Manzana.

This was finals week for me and tomorrow I start my internship here.
On Tuesday, we went on a date and saw The Break Up. It was decently funny overall. The funniest part of the movie was that the first five minutes pretty accurately represented Jen and I's relationship for the two years before we got married. The exceptions? I'm not a self-important jerk and Jen doesn't overeact and shares her feelings before boiling over. Best part of the movie? Hands down Jennifer Anniston's blurry bare ass. Second best part of the movie? The idea that a fat, self-involved jerk can get a girl like Jennifer Anniston (talk fast, make'm laugh).

One of the previews was for Accepted. I have to admit that the propaganda actually made me want to see the movie. The fact that some guys start a college where there is no curriculum and the students are the teachers reminded me of this quote from your pal and mine, Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“If the colleges were better, if they really had it, you would need to get the police at the gates to keep order in the inrushing multitude. See in college how we thwart the natural love of learning by leaving the natural method of teaching what each wishes to learn, and insisting that you shall learn what you have no taste or capacity for. The college, which should be a place of delightful labor, is made odious and unhealthy, and the young men are tempted to frivolous amusements to rally their jaded spirits. I would have the studies elective. Scholarship is to be created not by compulsion, but by awakening a pure interest in knowledge.”

How true.

Last night we celebrated two friends' birthdays and basically the end of finals by being loud and obnoxious at the BYOB sushi restaurant sushi X. We then hit Duffy's for $17 all you can drink until 1 AM.

This morning, I was fine. I scrambled to pack and catch my cab. In the cab, my head decided that it wasn't happy with me and began a post-drinking protest the likes of which I haven't seen. Now I'm here, the place I'll call home for at least one night out of each of the next 11 weeks.

People update

My new issue of Northwestern magazine says that our very own, beloved Matt "Hooch" Houchin is now vice president and executive producer of Long Haul Productions and executive producter of two nationally syndicated sports magazine shows, Softball 360° and Sled Head 24/7.

Yeah, that's this guy:


If anyone sees, emails, talks to, or is otherwise in contact with Hooch, please send along a word of congratulations.

Also, do you remember this guy from our wedding?:

Well, Jeff was at our wedding with his wife. About half a year afterwads, they got divorced. It turns out that he is getting married again (second time's a charm) the day after Thanksgiving. That officially makes him the first person I know "our age" to get divorced and be twice married. Notable distinction.

Side note: his first wedding, where I was best man, was also over the Thanksgiving weekend. What's up with the turkey timed wedding planning?

I spoke to his wife-to-be yesterday, and she seems much more lively and less sarcastic than the last one. It's also cool that she even now plays a sorta-mother role to Jeff's little brother. Throw in her two little girls and the family has a neat sitcom-esque quality in its make-up (not that kind of make-up, the other kind).

Sorry to post over Jamie, but...

I'm having a really tough week, and I thought it might help to scream into the keyboard for a sec.

Beside having the stupid f****** bar exam to study for, and the Escape to fear this weekend, my dad had an esophogectamy on Tuesday. Yes, it was scheduled, and yes I knew it was coming, but damn if having a family member in ICU isn't pretty stressful. He's doing great: the surgeon and pathologist think he's now "cancer-free," and they expect he'll be out of the ICU tomorrow, and out of the hospital next Wednesday.

But I'm falling apart at the seams. AGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!

Frankly my dear, I don't give a denim

Tomorrow, for the first time in its 166-year history, my company will have "Jeans Friday."

I'm not happy about this. I fall into the 1% of the working population that apparently doesn't mind getting dressed up for work; if I had my druthers we'd still be wearing formal attire to the office every day (we dropped that policy in 2001, the same time we banned smoking in the building - we were a little late on that one!) I dislike our current "business casual" policy only because it's so vague. Different people have different ideas of what's casual, and the result is that someone's always testing the waters to see what they can get away with.

The only reason I care so much about all of this is because it falls to the HR staff to play Fashion Police. There's nothing more awkward than telling someone they need to go home and change out of their bright pink culottes/pants with "Juicy" written on the rear end/Miller Lite polo shirt (all real examples.)

Getting back to "Jeans Friday," I'm upset because I feel like it's another slide down the slippery slope of unkemptitude (which is not a word, but I'm using it anyhow.) Nevertheless, I will be wearing jeans tomorrow, because I'm nothing if not a team player.

Or a lemming, depending on how you look at it.