Intel Commercial

Funniest commercial ever!!

Wallingford Drug Bust

Wow, some drama in my former neighborhood!! This is the house that my roommates and I lived in last year. (We moved out last July). The chair that's propping the door open was there when we lived there. If you have time, at least watch the first minute of this video so you can see the victim and the attorney. It's pretty funny.

Home invasion turned drug raid

Job Update

This morning I finally finished my McKinsey application. Glad to have that over with! I really don't like the questions about teamwork. I am not a very confrontational person so I don't have any good, dramatic stories of how I overcame adversity in a team situation.

Thinking back over my life and trying to think of a time where I had a [exposition - conflict - climax - resolution] sequence in a group setting, and not being able to think of one, made me sad. What have I been doing for 28 years? How do I have no useful skills outside of writing Perl and assembly?

I ended up using a story about a group project where my group mates didn't hold up their end of the bargain and we got screwed. I know it's bad to use negative stories for these things, but hey, at least I can say there were some lessons learned. If the negativity of that story prevents me from getting the job, then.... oh well.

Now, I have also found another job that I would like (and yet, am not exactly qualified for). To check it out, click here and then click on "Junior Statistical Analyst".

Lessons of Unemployment

As I mentioned earlier, being unemployed has been fun so far. I have all this time to ponder interesting and new questions, such as:

How clean can I keep the house now that I have "all the time in the world"? (Ans. not very - although I am gradually organizing the storage shed so that's good.)

How can I not spend an hour a day on the phone so that I don't run out of minutes in 3 weeks? (Ans. not sure yet)

Do I really have to get dressed? (Ans. not usually)

Just to be clear though, so as not to confuse myself with someone who is unemployed in a bad way, a more accurate term for me right now might be "kept woman". I mean, I am living with my fiance in a Seattle high-rise, so I can't really complain too much.

I'm telling you ladies. All you have to do is go get a master's degree in electrical engineering, find a nice guy, and help him edit his thesis. Easy!

In other news, for those who actually care what I'm doing with my life (mom) I applied for an engineering job with the IRS last night. Job description is here.

Random Songs

I heard a (kind of lame) remake of "Kiss the Girl" from the Little Mermaid recently. Although it was lame, it made me smile cause I hadn't heard that song in SOOOOOOO long.

Songs from the Little Mermaid are timeless classics, really. One time we went to the Crescent and saw someone sing this song at kareoke:



Does it not make you want to get up and do a little dance?

Ahhh, Unemployment

I am now in my second day of what I call my "official" unemployment. You might be thinking to yourself that I've been... oh, how shall we say, not working for the past 2 months? Well, that is true, but now I'm not traveling anymore. I'm home, hanging out, and loving it!

I am on facebook, eating lunch with friends, doing laundry, cooking dinner, getting yelled at by construction workers. Ok just one construction worker. He was mad because I walked on a closed sidewalk. Apparently I somehow didn't notice the big signs and cones that were blocking the sidewalk. All I gotta say is... clearly they weren't blocking it enough, cause I don't remember having to step over anything.

Ok I'm doing a couple 'productive' things too - looking at jobs and working on my website. And guess what happened yesterday, on my first day of unemployment?

I got an email from the Seattle Language Academy asking if I would like to join their 'task force', which will be lead by an experienced business consultant. They need some help trying to make ends meet during this economic crisis, and since I had donated some money to them, I got this email. I am going to go to the meeting tomorrow - because I can! Whee!!

Lending Club Update #7

I checked out Lending Club's stats page and guess I do have really bad luck. Apparently out of all of their loans only 2 have been charged off. And both of those happen to be in my portfolio. Figures.

Here's my latest stats for anyone who cares:

Number of loans: 41
Paid off early: 4
Charged off: 2
Defaulted: 1
Over 30 days late: 3

One new thing on their site is that they will calculate your annualized rate of return. Not sure if/how they take the late loans into account, but according to their metric my return is 7.81%. I find this rate unlikely to continue into the future as over 7% of my loans are either defaulted or charged off, but I guess we'll see.

Tam, I Miss You!!!

Two days ago I got an email from the coordinator at WAYRA, the Spanish school I attended in Tamarindo. She asked if I would mind being contacted by some prospective students who wanted references. I replied to her email in Spanish, but at the end I wrote (in English) something like "I hope you could understand my Spanish", since I'm sure there were plenty of errors in it.

She wrote back "si el español esta bien pero necesitas mas practica", which roughly translates as your Spanish is kind of 'meh'. She also said it was so great that I had lots of fun at WAYRA and hopes I come back and see more rodeos and dance cumbia and salsa. (Yeah she actually saw me attempt to dance at the Baile del Polvo, heh.)

Keep your fingers crossed that I a) start playing the lottery and b) win, so that I can go back to Tam and WAYRA and get my Spanish to somewhere above 'meh'.

Carrizozo, NM

Two days ago I was in Carrizozo, NM which is an adorable town. I stopped in Roy's and had a delicious old-fashioned chocolate malt. Mmmmmmm good.

This newspaper page was hanging in the bathroom... can anyone explain to me what a 'sad' iron is? And I love how they are like, "now with asbestos, yay!" ROFL.

Worst. Merger. Ever.

Who Saved Who...

America West and US Airways merged in September 2005. At this time, US Airways was in Chapter 11 and very close to being liquidated.

The US Airways pilots would have all lost their jobs if their airline had gone into Chapter 7.

At the time of the merger, US Airways had over 1700 pilots on furlough (i.e. they had been laid off). They had not hired a new pilot in 17 years. America West was growing and had just hired a new pilot within the last 3 months.

As of today, all of the furloughed US Airways pilots have been recalled and almost 200 of the America West pilots have been furloughed.

Possible Reasons Why US Airways was in Ch. 11...

While they were in bankruptcy, the US Airways pilots agreed to a large (around 50%) pay cut. After this pay cut, their salary was almost equal to the salary of the America West pilots.

US Airways procedure dictates that they have all three engines running at all times. America West planes use only 1 engine for the majority of their taxi, saving fuel and lowering their operating costs.

Seniority Controversy...

The US Airways pilots wanted to use date-of-hire as the basis for the merged seniority list (including for the furloughed pilots), which would put almost 80% of the America West pilots at the bottom of the list. The America West pilots wanted to use a percentage method, where if you were in the top 1% of your old company you would be in the top 1% of the new company.

The US Airways and American West pilots could not agree on a method and their unions (two different chapters of ALPA) agreed to go to binding arbitration.

The arbiter (George Nicolau) came up with a hybrid method which awarded the top 517 slots for US Airways pilots and then blended the remaining pilots.

Rather than accepting the results of arbitration ("Nicolau award") as ALPA had agreed to do, the US Airways pilots formed a new union, which they call USAPA.

What's New in Tucson

For those of you who used to live in Tucson (you know who you are), I thought I'd quickly share my impressions after my quick visit there last week.

A couple small things -

There is a new golf course visible from I-10 near Cortaro (and lots of new houses too, of course).

The Post lofts are finally being built downtown and seem to be done or almost done. There are also some extremely cute houses being built on Congress just west of I-10.

And a couple big things -

The Lost Barrio, or should I say Lost Barrio, is not Lost anymore. There are signs everywhere directing you to it.

104.1 is now called 104.1 The Truth. It's a news radio channel now, not a 'normal' light rock station. And by news I mean ullllltra right wing news. Of course I happened to be listening on the day that Chrysler went into Chapter 11, so the radio show hosts were quite worked up. Apparently the USA is getting pretty fascist now. I don't know enough about fascism to really dispute this... do car companies beg their governments for handouts in fascist states?

And as a nice counterpart to this new station, there is now a publication called Tucson Green Times.

Anyway, the ECE building at U of A was the same, Plush was the same, the Avi's Avo sandwich at Beyond Bread is the same, and Bentley's still makes an amazing milkshake. The Old Pueblo is still adorable.

Amy the Travel Writer

While I was in Costa Rica, my mom sent me a link to a craigslist job ad for a travel website called Trazzler. I finally got around to checking it out once I got home, and it seems pretty cool. I have written two stories so far (no, not as a paid travel writer). You can see my profile with links to my two stories here. My story about Dick's already has one fan - yay!