It suddenly popped into my mind that I needed to buy a storage drawer from an office supply store. I’m moving soon and will be using hanging folders in one of these drawers to organize my papers.
I sat at an intersection I knew fairly well, one about 20 minutes from my apartment, but I had never taken a right at that intersection. I had never gone south, and I really had no idea what stores were located on that section of the street.
Then, I had a brilliant insight.
The intersection is in the midst of quite a popular shopping area—everything from shoe stores to Nordstrom to Panera—and I’d never seen an office supply store in the area. I decided to take a leap of faith: Office Depot, Office Max, Staples, et al. must have a store in this area, it must be south, and I must never have seen it before. I mean, these office supply stores are all over the place, right? They would be crazy not to have one in this area.
So I changed lanes, hung a right, and kept my eyes open.
Yep. Half a block, on the right. Office Depot, she’s a-singin’ to me. Am I a bloodhound for chain stores? Oh, yeah baby. I can smell those toner catridges a block away.
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I went to church today—first time in a while—and it felt good to be there. Felt good to be in that place, felt especially good to see some folks I haven’t seen in years.
One of those people is a new freshman at Northwestern. I offered him my phone number and the usual helping hand, since it sounded like his first week at NU was not so hot. I asked him why, and it sounded like he wasn’t clicking with the people. After a bit of talking, he seemed to pinpoint the same issue I had at Northwestern, albeit phrased in an intriguing way.
“No one here seems like they’re interested in improving themselves,” he told me.
For him, that was the key difference between New Church people/Academy kids and Northwestern kids. I guess he’s feeling the same letdown I felt at the beginning of my freshman year. Well, I hope I can help him along, because there are fun and good times to be had at NU—it just takes a bit of adjusting. (Adjusting I’m afraid I never really did.)
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I haven’t felt particularly inspired to write lately. Not sure why. I don’t know how many regular readers I have, or whether you’re annoyed that I’m not writing, or whether you didn’t notice.
Anyway, I figured that this would be a good time for you to give me a kick in the ass. Go ahead, post a comment.
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After working in the corporate world now for a couple of years, I have a new appreciation for the skill of running a meeting well. It’s not a matter of getting a few people together, sitting at the head of the table, saying, “So, what do we do?” and waiting for the solution to appear. A productive meeting is usually the result of preparation and an effective introduction.
(more…)
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Thanks to a user comment, I know that Yahoo agrees with me (and every other sports television viewer with a modicum of taste) about Tim McCarver.
See for yourself.
Oh, and while we’re on the topic of horrible announcers: this Colts-Ravens game on ESPN Sunday Night Football is causing me physical pain. If Mike Patrick slobbered over Ray Lewis any more, they’d need a marriage license. Paul Maguire sounds like he belongs on Mancow in the Mornings. Joe Theismann continues to erode his legacy with every passing week.
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I guess instant messaging security, secure IM, and all that jazz is big business these days. Well, at least a few tech companies (and AOL) seem to think so.
Over the last couple of years, I’ve tried a few things, since I like the idea of my chat being secure. SILC was an option, but it’s a completely separate service and protocol, and frankly, that’s impractical.
Enter Off-the-Record (OTR). It’s open source, GNU GPL and GNU LGPL, and it works with a variety of messaging services. Their web page sucks, which leads me to believe that it might not be very popular, but who knows? I use it with gaim and configure it such that the other person doesn’t have to be using OTR, but if he/she is, our conversation will be secure.
And of course, best of all, it’s free, which isn’t always the case with secure instant messaging.
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Chicago traffic is really bad. Folks think Boston’s is bad, but according to a ten year longitudinal study, Chicago’s traffic is third worst in the country, trailing only LA’s and NYC’s.
To combat this menace to (modern) society, try the Web. Or, more specifically, historical stats on Chicago traffic. This site is awesome; it allows the moderately mathematically minded to anticipate the true length of a trip far better than Google Maps or Mapquest can. (In fact, if they were smart, those mapping services would take advantage of this wealth of data and allow users to input a time of day associated with their trip as well as a route.)
For real-time Chicago traffic reports, see the Gary-Chicago-Milwaukee Corridor traffic report page or traffic.com’s Chicago traffic report.
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