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Since Scott posted about joining Facebook recently, I figured I’d link this article. Basically, it’s a study that says Facebook users tend not to do as well in school. Admittedly, the researcher herself admits that it might be some other third variable, but there is definitely a correlation.
Joystiq linked to and gave a bit of commentary on this piece by George Will. The whole editorial is a weak, elitist tirade against denim, of all things. Honestly, I feel a bit bad about potentially wasting anybody’s time by contributing to his readership. Perhaps that’s all he’s going for; I hear newspapers around the country are failing, but based on drivel like this, I’m starting to think it has more to do with “Pulitzer Prize-winning” authorship like this than anything else.
The crux of his argument seems to be that denim was created for poor, dirty laborers, and our uncivilized society has idiotically adopted it as our primary fabric. He attributes it to a “thou shalt not dress better than society’s most slovenly” mentality, simultaneously revealing that he believes denim-wearers are unclean and–of course–that he’s superior (who didn’t see that coming?).
He goes on to bemoan this “misuse of freedom” (oh yeah, denim is far more damaging to society than the KKK), all the while revealing his jealousy of people more successful (“Silicon Valley billionaires are rebels without causes beyond poses, wearing jeans when introducing new products”), who have more fun (“Seventy-five percent of American ‘gamers’ . . . are allowed to vote”), and of apparent inferior intelligence (“children and their childish parents become undifferentiated audiences for juvenilized movies”). Boohoo.
Personally, I wear jeans because they’re comfortable, not as some fashion statement. It seems that Will puts more thought into what I wear than I do, which he might argue is the root of his discontent. In reality, I do like wearing suits, but there’s at least two problems with wearing one all the time: 1) I don’t feel like sweating in my office all day, and 2) frankly it devalues the few times in my life that I do dress up.
It reminds me of an early episode of House (yeah, George, I watch TV. Fuck you.) in which House doesn’t hire a female doctor, because it’s apparent she’s more concerned with her looks than with being comfortable. Assumedly, Will would prefer the opposite: that we all dress uncomfortably to create false facades of importance and self worth. He calls wearing denim “the carefully calculated costume of people eager to communicate indifference to appearances”. I call his editorial a carefully calculated attack on lower castes.
After all, his argument isn’t that, as a society, we’ve outgrown denim. No, it’s that denim is meant for laborers and bums, and everybody else should have better taste–everybody else should dress their stature. I suspect he would have loved to live in the middle ages. Back then, everybody knew their place. You had royalty, and you had peasants. And they most certainly didn’t dress alike.
BBC News had an interesting article about a month ago that basically said the more religious a person is, the less likely they are to “pull the plug” when they’re terminally ill. I think that statistic becomes a little more interesting when you try to reason why that is.
Honestly, I would have expected it to be the other way around–my first thought would have been that people with strong religious beliefs would be more willing to accept death, with the knowledge that an afterlife is awaiting them. Apparently that’s not the case, though, and I’m curious if anybody has thoughts on why that might be. I have a couple guesses myself, but I won’t get into them unless somebody’s interested in the comments.
As I mentioned before, I’ve been rolling through an embracing the winter series up here in D-town. I’ll be honest. It’s keeping me sane. Last weekend was my birthday weekend, and it was also MLK day on Monday. I love getting a 3 day weekend every year on my birthday. It pretty much rocks the house. For my 3 day weekend, I headed over to Chicago and then on to Madison for some skiing with Al. That meant about 5 hours in my car after work on Friday and then another 2.5 on Sat morning in the backseat of another car with 2 other dudes. And you know what? It was absolutely, 100%, totally worth it. It was hands down the best weekend of skiing in my life. Mostly, because I only fell about 3-4x per day. Moved up to doing a decent job on the black diamond as well. I was proud of the progress.
Moving on to last Tuesday, I went out for a belated birthday dinner. I went to a Brazilian steakhouse called Gaucho’s here in Northville. The fifteen cuts of the all you can eat meat are so delicious you just can’t stop eating. It’s pretty much the best meal you can ever have. My favorite meat was the Parmesan encrusted pork tenderloin, and I don’t even like pork that much.
My sister came up to visit on Wednesday and just left this afternoon. I had a pretty good time with her here. We went to see The Killers on Thursday night. I hadn’t been to a concert in several years, and I had forgotten how cool the atmosphere is. The Killers are probably one of my favorite bands as well, so it was pretty sweet.
Saturday night, we headed down to Ann Arbor to see a stand-up comic. He was pretty good, though I’d never heard of him. The star of the evening was the Ethiopian food though. It was my second all you can eat meal of the week, though this one was much, much healthier. They bring out a bunch of entrees and some bread-like stuff. You use the bread-like stuff to scoop up the entrees. Pretty sweet.
Yesterday was tobogganing. I thought it was going to be like sledding, but it was more like a slide, covered with ice. They put the toboggan on the slide, you jump on, they kick you off, and blam, you fly down the hill at 30mph. It’s pretty fun.
On Saturday, I played this game called Whirlyball with my outdoors group. It wasn’t outdoors though. It is played on bumper cars, 5 on 5. Each person has a scoop, and the object of the game is to get the ball in the goal. I just did a terrible job of explaining that so here’s a picture:
It snowed all day too. I was out running errands after Whirlyball, and every time I went to my car, there was a good inch of snow on it. So I decided to take advantage of it. I went snowshoeing on Sunday afternoon. In hindsight, there really wasn’t enough snow to justify the snowshoes. Although, if there were more of it, it would have been crazy hard. So I guess it’s a bit of a paradox. The snowshoes really didn’t keep on top of the snow all that well. I sunk about 80% into the the 8 inches. I did go through some drifts though, and the seemed pretty helpful there. They sunk in a lot, but they kept the snow out of your shoes, making the walk bearable.
On a side note, I think one of the keys to happiness is taking advantage of what the area has to offer. That’s why I’ve kicked off my Embrace the Winter series. So far, I’ve done cross country skiing, downhill skiing, and now snowshoeing. I still really want to go snowmobiling, and a guy at work today made a list of other stuff I need to try. It included ice fishing, pond hockey, and dog sledding. I think I’d rather be waterboared than go ice fishing, but dog sledding peaked my interest a bit.
In other news, I was utterly shocked that the Cardinals upset the Panthers last weekend. I guess it’s a bit redundant to say that though as pretty much everyone feels that way. I’m jumping on the Cardinals bandwagon now though. Like most people, I like a good underdog story, even if they are division rivals of the Rams.
Last year we only had a single day of snow, and it was limited to about an inch, maybe two. Personally, I really liked it. I don’t care for either temperate extreme, and obviously snow means cold.
This year, on the other hand, we’ve already gotten probably about a foot, and even though I didn’t think I would, I’ve gotta say I’ve enjoyed it. It just does something to add to the season, and it’s been fun seeing Athena mess around in it for the first time.
Anyway, there’s definitely a lesson to be learned from driving around in the snow here: people who aren’t used to driving in the snow don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. The ratio of SUVs to cars on the road has at least tripled, and I’ve seen more chains on tires than I’ve ever seen in my life. That doesn’t stop them from driving 10mph though. Oh no, you could almost walk faster than most of these bums drive.
Let’s not forget the morons who just slam on the gas when their tires slip. “Well, if a little gas doesn’t work, I’m sure flooring it will!” Wish us luck…
We here in Detroit got bombarded last night and this morning with snow. We got around 10”. It was coming down during rush hour, so I decided to work for home. Incidentally, it’s also my last day before Christmas vacation. Hurray! I’m off for the next two weeks straight. Booyakasha.
The snow day was an eventful one. First of all, Bush finally announced that he is giving an auto bailout. That’s a huge relief for me, personally. It essentially means I get to keep my job. I was honestly pretty worried about that for the last month or so.
So I’m sitting there on my couch in the afternoon, getting a little work done. I’m on my last task for the year, and feeling pretty good. And then, the power cuts out. How annoying. I take it in stride though. Nothing can ruin this most awesome of days. I’m feeling a little stir crazy anyway, and the snow has stopped. So I decide to go out and catch a movie. There were 3 trucks from the energy company there at the apartments so I figured I’d be ok.
The parking lot at my apartment was plowed, and they do a pretty good job keeping the roads clear so I figure I’m ok. The road right in front of my apartment was clear, but then I pulled out on 8 mile into massive ruts of snow. I did actually make it to the movie theater ok, though I almost got stuck trying to turn left into the theater.
But I digress. I ended up watching the new Will Smith movie, Seven Pounds. I can’t tell you whether it’s any good or not though. In the middle of the movie, they had to evacuate the theater. Apparently, a snow plow hit a gas line. I can tell you that I was very engrossed in the movie. I definitely want to see the end of it to find out what happens.
I got home, and the power was still out. There was a sign saying that it would be back on by midnight. I’m a little worried at this point because it’s cold. The heat obviously doesn’t work without electricity. I started trying to find a place to stay for the night because I didn’t want to freeze. Plus, it was like 6 o’clock and I had nothing to do until bedtime. Talk about boredom. As soon as I got a friend on the phone, though, the electricity kicked back on. I finished up my work, and now I’m on Christmas break until January 4th. Can’t beat that.
It’s weird here. In the summer it doesn’t start getting dark until sometime around 9pm. But now it starts getting dark around 4pm. Now, certainly I understand that the days are shorter in winter and that daylight savings plays a role, but still… I don’t ever remember living somewhere else that hard such a huge range in its days’ lengths.
It rained all weekend here in Northville, MI. My apartment has a small stream next to it, which I really enjoy. This weekend, not so much….
Sorry for the crappy quality. My phone doesn’t take the best pictures.
Last weekend, I went on my biggest meetup yet. I went to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan with the camping and outdoors group. I have to be honest, I was pretty scared about going on a trip of that magnitude with a bunch of people I didn’t know, but I figured it was pretty similar to going diving or on a day tour or something.
I left after work Friday, carpooling with two people I met that afternoon. We stopped off in this cool little restaurant on the way up called Iva’s Chicken Dinners in Sterling Michigan. It was hillbilly classy, and I liked it a lot. It was nice to take in some culture on the trip.
We got to the cabin around 1am after getting lost a few times. One of the guys in the group had opened up his family cabin for us to stay it. It was a pretty nice place, though it didn’t have electricity and the toilet didn’t flush. I met all of the people I would spending the weekend with at that time, and I was way too tired to make much conversation. I was also pretty nervous too.
Saturday we went to Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore on Lake Superior. We hiked for a bit and went to the beach. Then, we took a boat ride to see the pictured rocks. Afterward, we went to this local restaurant called the Bear Trap to sample the local specialty, the pasty. Unfortunately, they were sold out. I ate one on Monday morning, though, so it’s ok.
Sunday was pretty much a lazy day. We chilled around the cabin and the river it was on, and took a brief trip to a fresh water spring which had crystal clear water. Then, we had a nice campfire in the evening.
Monday was just driving back home. Michigan opens the bridge between the UP and the lower part of the state on Labor day for people to walk across it. My car decided to go on home, but a few people from the group did the walk. I never did understand the novelty of walking across a bridge, but whatever.
The highlight of the weekend was easily the people I was with. They were an incredibly interesting and diverse bunch. I really enjoy meeting people outside the usual circle of engineers at GM.
When I moved here, I knew that making friends would be tough so I tried to look at the problem as an adventure. I would honestly say that it is a bigger challenge for me than learning to live in a foreign country. I have come to appreciate other people a lot more in this journey, though. I have found that almost everyone I meet has something interesting to say, and it is fun “exploring” them in conversation to learn more about their lives. I think I have also become much more sociable as well, but much of that change happened in Prague and Bangkok.
I still haven’t made a lot of friends here, but I am enjoying the process of finding them a lot more now.
I had some company up in Michigan last week. My sister was visiting during her vacation between finishing school and starting work. It was certainly nice to have someone to hang out with every night after work. I could probably get used to that.
We didn’t do too much exciting stuff except for eat out a lot. The highlight of that was probably The Melting Pot, which is a fondue restaurant. I had been wanting to go, and it’s not exactly the type of place you can go with the guys from work. We ended up going the night she got her test results as a celebration dinner. The cheese and the chocolate course were fairly new to me, but the main course seemed like a combination of a Korean BBQ and a hot pot. All of the food was delicious though.
On Saturday, we hit up the Woodward Dream Cruise, which is kind of a big classic car show. People cruise down this main road in Detroit, and there are little fairs all along the way. I was overwhelmed by the sheer number of classic cars there. It was very cool.
We also went over to Canada for a bit because it’s always nice to visit other countries. Windsor, the city just on the other side of the border, is a pretty boring place, unfortunately. They have a nice park down by the river though, and we just hung out there for a while.
The customs guard on the way back was the rudest I have ever encountered in my life, which I feel is saying a lot. This man was incensed by the very thought that we would want to visit Canada for the afternoon just to see it. He just couldn’t understand why we would want to go there just to hang out. Maybe he was trying to scare us into admitting we had crossed the border to pick up a stash of illegal prescription drugs. Maybe his wife decided she didn’t want to take his crap any more, and she left him that morning. Maybe he had to pee, and his break wasn’t for another hour. Maybe he was just a monster douche bag. All I know is, I never want to go across that border again.
Yesterday, I went to a meetup for the Detroit International Social club. This meetup was as good as the first one was bad. I was blown away by how enjoyable that experience was.
12 people showed up to this Indian restaurant for dinner. We were there for about 2.5 hours, and the conversation never really lagged for this entire time. The food at this place was really good as well. Most of the people that sat near me had never been to one of these events before, and no one really seemed to know each other. That probably helped in allowing me to join in the conversation because there wasn’t a set, core group of people. And it was so nice to talk about something besides engineering for a night.
I would say the biggest downside to this group is that they only meet every other week. The lack of a core group could get old after a while as well because it sounds like a different set of people show up ever time. Still, I’m really excited that this went so well. I will definitely go back to their next event.
Al came over to Motown last weekend to visit me. I’d have to say that I had a good time. It was nice having a visitor to hang out with.
On Friday night, we decided to go downtown to check out the awesomeness that is Detroit. I actually hadn’t been there since I was an intern 2 years ago so it was a bit of an experience for me as well. I printed off directions for the drive down there. We were to take I-96 to I-75, then get on I-375 before getting off downtown. We got to the exit for I-75 only to find that it no longer exists. They have completely closed I-96 and I-75 for a mile long stretch near the Canada border.
This would not have been such a big deal if they had bothered to properly guide us with detour signs. We were to take I-75 north, but when we got off the I-96, there were only signs for I-75 south to the left and forward. Al’s new GPS unit instructed us to detour through Canada, which just wasn’t an option as neither of us had our passports. I had to pull a u-turn right in front of the toll booths for the bridge to Canada. People weren’t too happy with me.
There was a guy standing there directing traffic or something. He gave us directions out of there, and Al’s GPS carried us the rest of the way. It was a nice little Friday night adventure.
As of Wednesday, I was officially here in Washington working for a year. In celebration of that (and getting my $600 tax rebate), I decided it was time to finally get some living room furniture. Futon mattress, you’re just not cutting it anymore.
Megan and I headed down south of here to a place called Mor: Furniture For Less. Get it? It’s like you’re getting more furniture for less money. Where do they come up with this stuff? That’s what I wanna know. Anyway, it turns out the place is literally across the street from IKEA, which surprised us a bit. But, honestly, once we got inside, I realized the two stores target different audiences.
I was almost disappointed that we ended up finding something we liked enough to buy at Mor, because what that really meant is that Megan has never experienced an IKEA. Even if you never end up buying anything from there, it’s still worth checking out at least once–in sheer size, it puts the average store to shame.
Anyway, we went ahead and bought a set consisting of a sofa, a love seat, a chair, and an ottoman. Overall, it was a pretty good deal at $1400, especially considering we got no interest financing until 2012. You can’t beat $35/month payments. 
My girlfriend and I decided to keep our relationship secret for quite a while. For me, I hate dealing with all the gossipy, stupid conversations like, “Ohhhhhh, you like
About a month in, things were going pretty smoothly, and it didn’t matter too much to either of us if people found out. Her boss found out that she had a new boyfriend, but she wouldn’t tell him who. He wanted to meet this man so he promised to buy lunch for her, me, and the other girls in the finance department. I agreed to this. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time.
As it happens, her boss won the lottery, and he wanted to use this money to purchase the lunch. Once again, it didn’t seem like a big deal. One of the girls from the HR department begged her way into the trip as well. So the girlfriend and the HR girl pick me up, and we head off to the restaurant.
When we walk into the restaurant, we are all equally shocked to find that her boss had invited a whole bunch of extra people. In addition to the finance department and the HR girl, he had also brought along another member of upper management and about half a dozen TTs. Two of these TTs taught with me regularly. Of these people, 1 girl from finance and the HR girl were the only people that knew I was the new boyfriend. I think most of the people there didn’t even realize that my new girlfriend was bringing a date to this lunch. Did I mention I was the only white person there, and more importantly, the only one who didn’t speak Thai? I think you can guess the language of the conversation.
To say that I drew attention is a bit of an understatement. The TTs spent most of the meal trying not to stare. I actually caught one of my regulars staring at me, completely slack-jawed. I never actually had someone stare at me with her jaw on the floor, and I’ll be honest, it was a bit disconcerting. My regular TTs did little to help me out. I was expecting one of them to throw me a life line and start up a conversation. Not so much.
To make matters worse for me, I never really became comfortable dining in a formal Thai setting. The rules are essentially the same, but I obsess over these things more than I really should. I spent a lot of meal worrying that I about etiquette.
I later confronted my TTs about their lack of conversation during the meal. They claimed that they were too shocked to speak. All four of my TTs ganged up on me the day after, and we had the aforementioned dreaded gossipy conversation. It wasn’t actually that bad since we’d already been dating for a month. So on the upside, I manage to avoid that awkwardness.