Road Trip

Sports Illustrated has been dumbing down its content for quite a while now, and The Pop Culture Grid is one of its latest forays into People the Magazine territory. I don't mind the PCG too much because it's quick and to the point, unlike the puff pieces they run about various athlete's workout programs and interviews with B-list celebrities who happen to enjoy sports. This week's grid asks four athletes where they'd like to go on road trip. Two of the four listed places that, as of SI's printing, are not accessible by car from the continental United States. Kara Lawson of the WNBA's Monarchs listed Capetown, South Africa as her ideal road trip destination. Perhaps she envisions flying to Johannesburg first, the grid doesn't really allow for any elaboration. I would advise anyone to avoid getting into a car with White Sox slugger Jim Thome, whose idea of a good road trip is packing up the car and driving to Hawai'i.

Lost Angeles

In honor of the net's newest mp3 blog, brought to you by an old friend, I thought I'd share a relatively recent discovery of mine in the realm of online digital music. Ladies and gentlemen, it's The Hollywood Squaretet. If you like avant garde jazz and punk rock, which you most certainly don't, you'll love the Squaretet. Seriously though, I've only heard the two songs they have available on their site, Lost Angeles and Welcome to the F.U. Lounge, but it's some pretty interesting stuff. It's loud, abrasive, angry, and funny. Bonus points if you catch the reference to the Rolling Stone's "Heartbreaker" at the end of "Lost Angeles".

Death of a Salesman

I don't know if I'm cut out for a job in sales. When I was a kid, my parent's would usually participate in our neighborhood's annual garage sale. One year I was minding the store on a particularly slow afternoon when I decided that the best way to drum up business was to offer all shoppers free cups of water. I proclaimed this sweet deal with a homemade sign and went inside to fetch a pitcher of water and some cups, but it didn't manage to drum up any new business. Did I mention that it was raining at the time?

I was reminded of this today when I went to my local Stop & Shop and noticed a table near the checkout with a bunch of used books on it. Since I'm a sucker for used books, I took a closer look and saw that it was part of a promotion. Anyone who bought two raffle tickets to benefit a local children's cancer charity got a free book. Now I didn't look at every book on the table, but the stuff that I saw was pretty bottom-shelf material. I didn't see any microwave oven user's manuals or Garfield books, but it really looked like they asked all of the employees to bring in any books they had at home that they didn't want anymore. Free water, anyone?

Outside Providence

Michelle's parents were in town this past weekend (our first visitors in Rhode Island). Unfortunately, it was pouring rain the entire time, so we weren't able to do a lot of the things that we had planned. We wound up spending most of our time in the car and indoors in Providence. I like to write about travel, and while we didn't travel away from home this weekend, we've only lived here for a little more than a month so in some ways, visiting Providence was sort of like a vacation.

We kicked off the weekend on Friday night with dinner at Andino's on Federal Hill, Providence's Italian neighborhood. I hadn't been to Federal Hill since we moved here and the only place I had been to on Federal Hill was an Indian restaurant, so I wasn't really sure what to expect. Andino's turned out to be a pretty old-school Italian restaurant (what some might call a red-checkered-tablecloth Italian restaurant). Maybe I'm being a little bit too harsh, but my experience wasn't the greatest. We had a 7pm reservation and were running a little bit late, so I dropped Michelle and her parents off at the restaurant and went to find parking. When I made it to the restaurant, the first thing the hostess said to me was "it's at least a 45 minute wait." No greeting or even an inquiry as to whether or not I already had a reservation. The service was disappointing the entire evening and the atmosphere was a bit lacking as well. The food wasn't bad, but I'm pretty sure you can do a lot better somewhere else on Federal Hill.

The rain managed to let up for a little while on Saturday. We headed back to Providence and took a stroll around the Brown University campus. We've driven past different parts of the Brown campus several times since moving here, but this was the first time we have explored it on foot. We broke for lunch on Thayer Street, then went downtown and took a stroll through the Waterplace Park and the Riverwalk. We pretty much had downtown Providence to ourselves, which was somewhat disappointing, but not too surprising given the weather. I'm not sure how lively downtown Providence is on a typical Saturday afternoon when the weather is decent. It sounds like they have a lot of festivals downtown during the summer, so it sounds like it could be a happening place.

After the park, we headed over to the RISD Museum. The museum definitely lives up to its reputation. It's not a huge museum, but the breadth and quality of the artwork on display is quite impressive for a museum of its size. Unfortunately, a number of exhibits were closed. Of course, we'll have plenty of chances to go back and visit when they re-open for a very reasonable $8 cover charge or during their monthly free exhibitions.

I though that the RISD Museum provided excellent background information and context for most of the items they had on display. I always try to maintain a balance between observing art and reading about it when I visit a museum. It's tempting to just read the descriptions and give the artwork a cursory glance when you're at a museum that provides you with a lot of good information, but it's a chance I'm willing to take. I had one of my worst art appreciation experiences ever at the Isabella Stuart Gardener Museum in Boston, which deliberately eschews any information or context about the art on display. I think the best approach is to really key in on the pieces that captivates your interest and read about or just buzz by the stuff that you aren't really into.

We had tentatively planned to go to Newport on Sunday, but the weather was even worse than it had been on Saturday, so we decided to stick around Providence again. We did a driving tour of downtown and the east side, which probably wasn't much of a tour, seeing as we don't know our way around town all that well. We then headed over to the Providence Place Mall, one of the jewels of Providence's rejuvenated downtown. Putting a big mall in the center of a city may seem kind of strange or even grotesque, but I kind of like the idea. Providence is too small to support a blocks-long retail district downtown, so it's either a mall or nothing. They got a lot of things right with the Providence Place Mall, including a row of shops and restaurants accessible at street level and an architectural style that fits into the downtown landscape about as well as a mall could hope to. That being said, the parking situation was completely insane. Once we entered the parking garage from the street, it took at least five minutes to get to the take a ticket machine. Getting out took at least 20 minutes. It didn't appear that any of the ticket booths were out-of-service, so I'm guessing that it's that bad on most rainy weekends.

Destination Unknown

The Economist weighed in (subscription required) on Syracuse's DestiNY USA shopping and entertainment complex this week. Needless to say, they aren't exactly bullish on its prospects. They more or less echo the sentiments that I have already expressed on this blog. The project still appears to be a longshot, and even if it ever gets off the ground, it's not going to magically solve all of Syracuse's economic woes. As an added bonus, the print edition has a nice photo of Clinton Square under an almost eerie purple-colored sky. On newstands now.

Syracuse Destiny USA

Weigh In

I just got my new Rhode Island driver's license in the mail. It's the first driver's license I've ever had that has my weight printed on it. Perhaps it's part of a statewide attempt to shame people into losing weight.

Maple Leaf Rag

This is a cautionary tale about the consequences of wearing sports apparel for teams that you do not follow or support. My good friend Greg Wu gave me a nice Toronto Maple Leafs "throwback" t-shirt a few years ago. When I wear the shirt out in public, I often get comments from people who see the shirt and assume that I am a Maple Leafs fan. It happened to me twice today at the grocery store. The first encounter was with an employee who told me about a co-worker who loves the Maple Leafs so much that he flew to Toronto a couple times this past season to watch them play. The second encounter was with the aforementioned employee himself. I finally had to fess up and tell him that I wasn't actually a Maple Leafs fan after he started asking me my opinion of some of the personel moves that the Leafs made this season, about which I knew absolutely nothing.

These kinds of interactions make sense. There probably aren't too many die hard Leafs fans anywhere in the States, so when people see someone who they think shares their allegiance, they want to acknowledge it. Two interactions that I still don't quite understand are a cabbie who once asked me if I played for the Maple Leafs when I wore the shirt and some fans at a Kansas City Royals game who called MDS (who was wearing a Detroit Red Wings shirt at the time) and me out for wearing hockey t-shirts to a baseball game.

Swass

Between the NHL and NBA playoffs and the NFL draft, I've been watching more sports programming than usual as of late. Because of this, I've seen that commercial for Heineken Light about a million times. The first time I saw it, I instantly recognized the song as a very bad rip-off of the old Sir Mix-A-Lot tune "Swass". I'm not much of a music downloader, so I can't offer a link to the song, but check your favorite legal or illegal download sites if you're curious. The lyrics are available here. According to the Urban Dictionary, swass either means super cool or sweaty ass (or perhaps both, depending on context and usage).

Tags: Heineken Swass

You Shot Who in the What Now?

This week's AV Club has a handy guide for anyone out there who is not annoying enough on their own and needs more obscure Simpsons quotes to insert into daily conversation. I have been accused excessive Simpsons quoting many times, so I have some pretty strong views on what constitutes a good Simpsons quote. The AV Club has picked out some good ones. Personally, the only quotes from their list that I ever use are: "I was saying 'Boo-urns", "Crisitunity!", "You shot who in the what now?", and, of course, the timeless "Worst. Episode. Ever." Some of my other favorites that weren't listed in this piece are:

Quote: "Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter"
Episode: "Mountain of Madness" (2/2/97)
Context: Homer's response after Bart launches into a diatribe against teamwork, sharing, helping, and tolerance.
Real-Life uses: Any time you see somebody broadcasting strange and frightening viewpoints. Of course, if you think this person really is a nutjob, it's best not to let them hear you, lest they add you to their mailing list.

Quote: "But I did a good job... a good job"
Episode: "Homer at the Bat" (2/20/92)
Context: Mr. Burns is upbraiding the hypnotist that he hired for his softball team for making Roger Clemens think he's a chicken. The hypnotist pulls out his watch and utters this quote to convince Mr. Burns that he actually did a good job.
Real-Life uses: Whenever you mess up, you can mimic the hypnotist's soothing voice to try and cover up your mistake.

Quote: "One highway, zero city"
Episode: "The Bart Wants What It Wants" (5/18/99)
Context: Rainer Wolfcastle speaks this memorable line when Homer asks him what kind of gas mileage his gigantic SUV gets.
Real-Life uses: A good way to describe any gas guzzler. Bonus points for saying it with a German accent.

Quote: "Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice"
Episode: "Lisa's Wedding" (3/26/95)
Context: This episode shows a look into the future (2010), where Marge is upset with the state of the Fox television network.
Real-Life uses: Any time you need to bemoan the state of network television programming.

Quote: "The nye Mets are my favorite squadron"
Episode: "Much Apu About Nothing" (5/5/96)
Context: With an anti-illegal immigrant fervor spreading across Springfield, Apu tries to blend in by feigning an interest in Major League Baseball.
Real-Life uses: A humorous way to declare your ignorance in a certain area, especially sports.

Quote: "It's my first day"
Episode: "Simpson Tide" (3/29/98)
Context: After using this excuse for his latest screw-up at work, then using it again after Mr. Burns learns that it was not Homer's first day and demands to know why he thought he could get away with lying to him, Homer loses his job and joins the Naval Reserve, where he uses the same excuse yet again after nearly causing an international incident on the high seas.
Real-Life uses: A way to absolve yourself of any and all responsibility no matter how badly you've just screwed up.

Tags: Simpsons

On the Rhode

When I started this blog, I hoped that it would be a good way to keep friends and well-wishers up-to-date on the latest goings on in my life. I have attracted more readers than I thought I would, but I haven't been very good at keeping anyone up-to-date. Keeping that in mind, I'm happy to announce to that we bid adieu to Syracuse about three weeks ago for the biggest little state in the union, Rhode Island. This was the fourth time I've moved across state lines since graduating from college, so I guess this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise. Syracuse was never my favorite place to call home and in some ways, I knew that we were going to be leaving there sooner rather than later.

It's not too difficult to find people who are ready to bad mouth Syracuse. On at least three or four occasions over the past three years, I have met people who, upon learning that I lived in Syracuse, proceeded to tell me how much they loathe the 'Cuse. I don't consider myself a master of social etiquette, but I try to avoid openly insulting someone's hometown upon meeting them, no matter how much I might dislike it.

Sadly, a lot of what people dislike about Syracuse is true. Like most once vibrant cities that are down on their luck, Syracuse is trying to reinvent itself. There seems to be a real effort to help improve the relationship between the university and the city and if that continues in earnest, I'm sure it will pay some dividends. Without the university, Syracuse really would be the hellhole that people claim it already is. So while Syracuse may get a bit of a make-over, it will probably never be the hip and vibrant city that it claims it wants to be. Even in its glory days, I doubt it was all that exciting of a place. Still, in my opinion, there are no boring cities, only boring people. My grandparents spent most of their lives in Terre Haute, Indiana and probably lived a more stimulating life than some people who live in the middle of great international cities.

Not to kick Syracuse while it's down, but I have to say that the weather there is really awful. I've spent most of my life in so-called bad weather areas, but Syracuse is only place where the weather really bothered me. According to the National Oceanograhic and Atmospheric Administration, the average annual chance of precipitation in Syracuse is 46.6% and the average percentage of available sunlight is 44.6%. Statistically speaking, you have a better chance of seeing the sun and staying dry in Seattle and Portland than in Syracuse. On top of that, you've got a mean annual snowfall of 110 inches to deal with.

While our careers are ultimately what pulled us away from Syracuse, the general malaise that permeates life in Central New York was a strong contributing factor. In Syracuse, it is impossible to ignore the signs of decay and decline. Even if you look beyond the vacant buildings and empty freeways, there is a strong undercurrent of negativity and resignation flowing through almost all public discourse. It's difficult to enjoy life in a place that everyone is trying to figure out how to get away from.

Best Job Ever

I subscribed to Money magazine not because I thought it was a great publication, but because they offered me a one-year subscription for $10 and threw in a bonus one-year subscription to Business 2.0. I figured that I could easily get $10 of value out of that proposition, so I accepted. This month's issue of Money ranks the top 50 jobs in America, and as it turns out, I've got the best job. Actually, that's not entirely true, as I am unemployed right now. When I start my new job in a week or two, I will once again be employed in America's top profession (drum roll, please)... software engineering.

I don't know if I entirely agree with their methodology. For one, the person they singled out as having the number one best job in America is the director of technology at Electronic Arts. I don't know anyone who works at EA, but I have found that most video game companies have a reputation for being relatively bad places to work. Still, I'm glad that they didn't join the chorus of media types who have been proclaiming that software engineering jobs are all going to India, China, and other low-cost areas of the world. Outsourcing is real, of course, but there is still plenty of good work left for talented software engineers in the US and I can't see that situation changing any time in the foreseeable future.

Me and My Shadow

MDS pointed me to Kevin Smith's blog yesterday. Be sure to read his nine-part series about Jason Mewes (Jay of Jay and Silent Bob fame) and his struggle with and victory over drug addiction, entitled "Me and My Shadow". It's a great piece of writing. I read all nine parts consecutively yesterday afternoon.

Fish Story

If you have enjoyed a nice sushi dinner recently, you may have the Rev. Sun Myung Moon to thank for your delicious meal. According to this story, which ran in the Chicago Tribune yesterday and was also featured on the public radio program Marketplace, True World Group, a vertically integrated fresh seafood wholesaler, was founded by Moon and is closely affiliated with his Unification Church. As the article states, True World supplies most of the estimated 9000 sushi restaurants in the US and funnels a portion of its profits to Moon's Unification Church.

Tags: Sushi Sun Myung Moon

Help Wanted

I'm back in the job market, and I have learned a few things that may be somewhat useful and/or interesting to other job seekers out there. These things only apply in situations where you are receiving a lot of unsolicited job leads from various staffing agencies and recruiters who find your resume on any of the big job searching web sites. These recruiters abound in the high-tech world, I'm not so sure how common they are in other industries. Some recruiters have good leads, but most of them are trying to fill pretty undesirable jobs, IMHO. A good way to figure out who they are working for without having to call them back is to take the company description out of the e-mail they sent and search for a key phrase from that description in Google. Generally, they just cut and paste the company description from the company website, which Google has almost certainly indexed, so you can figure out if its a company you are interested in or not pretty easily.

The other thing that I have learned is that a lot of these staffing and recruiting companies have outsourced some of their work to India. I've gotten numerous phone calls from people who spoke barely intelligible English about six-month contact development positions in Iowa that utilize technologies and skills that appear nowhere on my resume or online job profile. I guess with the money that these companies have saved by outsourcing their work to a C-list Indian call center, they can afford to have someone call every job seeker in their database about every position that comes across their desk regardless of their qualifications, location, or experience.

Still, I think that job searching technology is improving. I'm a big fan of Simply Hired, which is a job search engine that searches all of the major job search engines and corporate websites and aggregates the results for you. It has the most extensive search filtering capabilities of any job search engine I have seen.

Tags: Job Search

School Days

I was filling out a job application that asked for the mailing address of my high school. To my surprise, my Google search turned up a Wikipedia entry for my high school. Any estimate on how much longer until Wikipedia has cataloged every piece of information known to man?

Country Bumpkins

I can't believe that this story didn't get more coverage in Syracuse. Last week, New York gubernatorial candidate Elliot Spitzer gave a speech in Manhattan where he compared upstate New York to Appalachia. I don't think that Spitzer was trying to insult upstate New York (or Appalachia, for that matter) as some of his opponents have suggested, though I disagree with his analogy. I agree that upstate New York is in pretty bad economic shape, but it is facing the same problems that plague almost all of the rust belt. It's more of an urban poverty/blight issue, whereas Appalachia's problems have more to due with crushing rural poverty.

Tags: New York State Appalachia Elliot Spitzer

Get Physical

I was flipping through an inflight magazine last month when I came across an ad for ROM - The 4-Minute Cross Trainer. I tend to be skeptical of anything that I see advertised in an inflight magazine, so when I saw an ad for a machine that looks like a torture device that promises a full-body workout in only four minutes and can be yours for the low, low price of $14,615, I thought that I had stumbled upon a satirical inflight magazine that was planted in my seatpocket by the editors of The Onion. The ROM is apparently legit, and there are even ROM gyms opening up that allow regular folks to experience this amazing workout without having to shell out 15 grand.

As this article points out, the four minute workout claim is misleading. It's a four minute upper-body workout, four minutes of rest, and a four minute lower-body workout. Maybe the ROM really is a 60 minute workout compressed into 12 minutes, I'm not really in a position to judge. Their low-quality website doesn't really inspire much confidence, and the endless barrage of high-pressure sales tactics only makes matters worse. If these two things weren't damning enough, the magazine ad included a testimonial from Tony Robbins, who owns three ROMs and keeps one at his home, one at his vacation home in Fiji, and brings the other one with him wherever he travels. Yikes.

Tags: ROM Exercise

Facts about Corned Beef

1. Corned beef was my favorite food for a number of years. My Mom made corned beef on my birthday (per my request) at least once between my sixth and eighth birthdays.
2. For much longer than I care to admit, I thought that corned beef was pork. I assumed that any pinkish colored meat came from a pig, even if it was called 'beef'.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Expectations for Demographics

A number of pundits have been using demographic data to map out the end of liberalism in America. For whatever reason, conservative pundits love to point out that Seattle has 45% more dogs than children. Since Seattle is a liberal place, this can only mean that liberals and their dogs will die out faster than they can reproduce, and voila!, permanent conservative majority, right? I'm no demographer and I have no data to back up my claims, but maybe the reason Seattle is approaching a 2:1 dog-to-kid ratio is because it's so damn expensive that families can't afford to live there anymore. Then again, according to this dataset, you're more likely to be a conservative if you like dogs, so maybe Seattle is actually the most conservative city in the US. Maybe I'm right, maybe the conservative pundits are right, the point is that cherry-picking demographic data that supports your pet thesis (no pun intended) and then extrapolating it out 20-30 years into the future is idiotic, which is exactly the point that Kevin Drum makes today.

It's probably true that religious conservatives are reproducing faster than their liberal counterparts. I'm even willing to concede that most of these kids will maintain a good chunk of their religious upbringing well into adulthood. What we cannot possibly know right now is how politics, religion, and culture will change in the future. After all, prior to the 1960s, the northeast was the power base of the Republican party and the south voted Democrat. Some people have their political affiliations imprinted on their minds at a young age and never deviate. For everyone else, the issues of the day influence their voting patterns.

Even if the important social and political issues remain the same, which is highly unlikely, the next generation of liberal and conservative politicians will have different attitudes and approaches than their predecessors. My gut feeling is that the post-boomer generation of political leaders are going to reject a lot of the culture war issues. They weren't there to take sides, so it will be much easier for both sides to cut their loses and stop arguing about the 1960s.

Tags: Demographics

A Tale of Two States

There seems to be a lot of resentment towards New York City up here in Central New York. I'm not sure that I understand all of it, but this article really illustrates the cognitive dissonance that exists between these two very different regions of the same state. The article addresses a bill that is going through the New York State legislature that would force all non-agricultural and manufacturing companies doing business in the state with 100 or more employees to provide health insurance to all full-time workers. This is similar to a bill that was recently passed in Maryland that critics agree was a thinly disguised jab at Wal Mart. By lowering the bar to 100 employees, the New York legislation is less symbolic but potentially, more far-reaching.

What does this have to do with the disconnect between NYC and upstate? I think this quote, from Alex Navarro of the Working Families party, says it all

...retailers such as Wal-Mart and Victoria's Secret have no choice but to remain in the market.

This may be the case in NYC, where any retail or media company that wishes to be relevant needs to have some sort of physical presence. The same is not true for update New York. NYC can get away with assessing extortionate taxes from anyone wishing to do business within its borders, since so many companies have no choice but to be there. When these policies get applied to New York state as a whole, upstate loses out since it offers most of the disadvantages of doing business in New York with virtually none of the benefits.

I'm all for sensible approaches to increasing accessing to health care, but I think that linking health care even more tightly to employment is a bad idea. I doubt that this bill would even do much to increase health coverage for service-sector employees, since I'm sure most companies would find ways to reclassify their full-time workers as part-time workers or independent contractors in order to avoid having to pay for health benefits. That's if they decide not to leave the state altogether.

Tags: New York State Health Insurance