Just a quickie on the most recent news coming from my employer. No, it wasn't that big of a shock. As far as work goes, it's pretty much business as usual, though we are of course a bit distracted. As far as what is going to happen, I'll hopefully know more by the end of the week.
Oh, thanks to ABC news by the way for saving me the trouble of spending 15 minutes Photoshopping that image.
Ok, it's from October '07 but I just saw it recently. Pretty brilliant, compare to the opening titles of Monsters Inc (or the end titles of the Incredibles) or Catch Me if you Can. Or see some of the real deal.
There are lots of ways to have an identity crisis. Maybe you moved somewhere far away from home at an early age. Maybe you grew up with parents who did. Maybe you had no exact home.
Worse yet, maybe there's a very funny blog that points out lots of the stuff you like and attributes those likes to every other white person out there! The net effect is to make you feel self-conscious: maybe that sandwich could be a few bucks cheaper. Maybe you listen to "Black on Both Sides" a little too much. Stop looking to pass and take a shot already.
Sure, not all white people are represented in this blog, whose target caucasian tends to waver somewhere between the realms of intellectual liberal yuppiedom and fratty trendy cluelessness. You won't find line dancing, Fox News, or golf in this blog. But the writing is hilarious, and if you can't laugh at yourself, you could be missing the joke of the century.
I arrived at my car this morning to find this on the windshield:
This means that at some point between the hours of 11pm and 7am,
a very dedicated soul with only a stack of post-its and a pen proceeded to launch a one-man campaign blitz on the streets of Ukrainian Village. Either that, or the Obama campaign is really stingy with their grass-roots ad funding.
Thanks to Jenn for pointing me to everyblock, where you can look up everything from crime stats to restaurant inspections to filming locations for your neighborhood (if you're in Chicago, NYC, or SF). For instance, I found it amusing that the posh Green Zebra restaurant had more inspection violations (nothing regarding the food, mind you, which is excellent) than the BP/Amoco station near my apartment. Also interesting is that some sketchy drug and theft stuff is going on a block north of me.
I thought the explanation in this newsletter was an insightful, accurate description of what went wrong at Motorola. Not sure if it's interesting reading for outsiders, but good lessons learned for those of you running your own multi-billion dollar mobile device businesses.
More announcements keep pouring in, and uncertainty keeps rising. It's actually a pretty unnerving time right now work-wise.
I started work here in early August, our stock was at about 23. After our most recent bad news, it's right around 10. I guess I can't say too much about it, other than it's gotten to the point where friends and family see it on the news and ask me about it. It's not unlike a bad storm coming through Chicago and people seeing it on the Weather Channel, calling me to make sure I wasn't frozen, drowned, or electrocuted.
As a researcher, all you can really do is keep working and see what kinds of reorgs, cuts, and budget tightening happen. Things are reasonably stable in my department, and since it's all largely beyond my control anyway, there's no real point in worrying about it.
Cynical, sure, but what do you expect, it's a clip from The Wire.
After all the press around "The Wire", I was looking forward to watching it. Sadly, the season 1 disc that arrived from Netflix today is scratched. Two runs through my Skip Dr. and it's still unwatchable. The brief half-second bursts I get to see of it in between freezes seem very compelling and edgy, though.
