Finally, WSJ has an article on the usefulness of IMing in the office. Traditionally companies shy away from this type of communication because of the fear of distraction, but I can tell you from personal experience that IMing with coworkers definitely increases productivity. Anyway, here’s the article:
Well, I’m now a US citizen 
I can’t tell you how relieved I am it’s all over. To some that may sound strange. Rather than being excited about my new citizenship, I’m more excited that the process is over. Well, if you’ve had a green card for 11 years and then your naturalization process has been hampered at almost every scheduling for an appointment because either a letter doesn’t get sent out in time or it’s an impossible time to show up anyway, you too would be happy!
There are some great things about having US citizenship, in addition to belonging to the US. One of them is, of course, travel. No more visas! Well, ok, some visas. Know that trip to Tijuana everyone keeps talkin’ about? Well, sign me up, ’cause I can now leave and come back!
For me, another great benefit of being a citizen is that I now have an official “you can stay here as long as you like” invitation. Why is that so important to me you ask? Well, I’ve lived in the US since fall of 1998. Though I love living here and feel like this is my home, I’ve always felt like I need to prove why I deserve to live here. It’s not that anyone or anything has ever made me feel this way, it’s just a feeling of being an “outsider.”
Truth be told, whenever I see someone in law enforcement, I immediately get this i’m-guilty-until-proven-innocent feeling. I know it sounds crazy. I guess it’s some irrational fear that you can get locked up or deported for any old reason, or not having control over what happens to you. I’m sure others may have a fear-of-authority, but being a visitor to a country makes it worse. I’ve joked to family and friends like “hahAA! You can’t deport me anymore!”, but I’m really hoping that when I receive my US passport next week I’ll no longer feel this ‘deportaphobia’ anymore.
Well, I didn’t mean to write so much about me worrying about getting deported. But, I don’t think I’ve ever put this phobia of mine down in words, so that feels good. I’d be interested to know if you’ve ever felt afraid of a law enforcement officer, immigrations official, etc.
I meant to post about our recent trip to Breckenridge, but I’ve gotta talk about this. Microsoft isn’t the slow technology giant it once was and this a perfect example of some of the research they’re bringing to the public. Photosynth can take collections of photos (of, say, like a famous landmark) and map the photos out in 3D space for you. The best part is the interface is smoothly animated and intuitive. Check it out:
If you’re using Firefox, you may get a “installing” page and not much else. This is because you have to allow labs.live.com to be a trusted publisher that you can install software from. There should be a yellow bar near the top of the page, telling you that the software was blocked. Click on the button on the right, and put labs.live.com in the “Allow” list. Then refresh the page.
Most people really care about how their driver’s license photo looks. They stress and try really hard to have a good picture. You can just see everyone in line, sort of tense ’cause they don’t want a bad photo. Yet with all that effort, the picture comes out horrible anyway.
But what happens when you go into the DMV trying to take a bad picture? Hilarity ensues.
Part 1:
Part 2:
If you didn’t find that pants-wettingly funny, you’re not drinking the lmaonade.
Hello all my readers! So I know that the two of you have been desperately missing updates on this crazy blog, so here it is! Well, 2006 was a big year. We moved to California, had half my face paralyzed for a while, and even bought a house/learned about debt! But enough of the small stuff, I’m going to tell you about new years up in Big Bear. You see, our friend Adriana,
has a cabin,
and we all drove up to spend New Year’s in the closest thing California has to a winter. On the first day, everyone went snowboarding. Not the kind to be left behind, Ashley and I decided to go as well, borrowing extra snowboarding gear from almost everyone in the cabin.
This was our first time snowboarding. Nevertheless, I’ve decided that snowboard is too easy of a sport. It lacks technique and it’s just not fast enough. So, I decided to invent my own sport, faceboarding.
You heard me, faceboarding is it. Why use an expensive, questionably-colored snowboard (a snowplank, if you will) when you can go downhill on your face like I do?
You may be wondering if I have any pictures of faceboarding, and sadly, I don’t. No camera is capable of capturing the speed of a faceboarder like me. Just imagine an skydiver, but put that skydiver face down on a slope. That’s pretty much how you faceboard.
You’ll be hearing more about faceboarding as this year rolls along. We have a trip to Colorado and a trip to Mammoth mountain planned. Stay tuned!
Oh, and Happy New Year!
Ipods and other digital music players are great, because they bring your music collection to the digital age. But they’ll never kill radio, as some people suggest. Why? Because people, like me, are lazy.
We want others to tell us what’s new or what’s good, so don’t have to always make mixes and playlists or constantly fiddle with our music players to find a good song. I would rather listen to a station that plays the kind of genre I like and have them decide what makes a good mix. That’s where radio comes in. However traditional radio has always been ad-infested and too mainstream, sticking to the 80-20 rule like white on rice.
Things are starting to change, though. Services like XM and Sirius have been great, and one could call them the next logical step in the evolution of radio. You can now listen to niche stations that would have never made it to traditional “mainstream” broadcast, thereby starting to break the 80-20 rule. However, the 80-20 hasn’t been eliminated, it’s been merely shifted down to individual stations. Go find the 80’s radio station, and you’ll find that the station will still play the more “popular” 80’s tracks.
What if you controlled exactly what kind of music you wanted to listen to? Internet radio, which used to just be like satellite radio, is starting to harness the social part of the net. Free services like Pandora and Last.fm let you provide artists or songs you like and they will compile a personalized playlist just for you, by analyzing the characteristics of your preferred music and by what other people with similar tastes are listening to. On Last.fm, you can even mark other users as friends and it’ll keep track of what they are listening to! It just doesn’t get any better than that, people. Go check them out:
