Friday, September 28, 2007

mish mash

friday. trying to get work done early and enjoy the weekend before having to head out to missouri for all of next week. at least i'll get to eat penn station a couple of times.

first, i wanted to plug my friend mark's blog. section mate from the big h and a great guy. he's spending a year working for his company's shanghai office. anyway, check it out here: http://yearofthepigshanghai.blogspot.com/

tonight we're headed to visit my mom's family. we've been trying to see them every 7-10 days or so. i could never have believed that i would get to spend so much time with my grandmother again. i grew up with her living with us (now she lives with my mom's older sister, who is in baltimore). it is wonderful, and my cousin has two pretty adorable little girls. the oldest one keeps challenging me to hide and seek, and i keep explaining to her that i grew up playing in this house, and that i can hide in spots she doesn't even know about it. dr. w thinks i should take it easy on a four year old, but hey, i like to play to win.

good article in today's ny times magazine about college admissions. last sunday i spent the afternoon plugging emory at a high school admissions event. i was really involved in this stuff as an undergrad (i ran the tour guide program), and did a bunch of events in the years after graduating. however, i had not attended one of these events in awhile, and it was a bit shocking.

first, i had not quite realized how much more competitive the emory admissions process had become. the applicant pool has roughly doubled since i applied (which was about 12 years ago). wow. the accept rate has fallen from about 45% to 32%.

second, this was an amazingly savvy group of students and parents. now, i didn't exactly fall of the turnip truck, either, even back in my day. my parents and i trekked around the country, dutifully clutching our us news school rankings while doing the admissions circuit.

however, i generally asked questions about campus life, choosing a major, maybe even internship opportunity. last sunday, while speaking to parents, i actually had this conversation:


parent: 'so what do you do today?'
me: 'i work at a healthcare technology company.'
parent: 'that's great! our daughter wants to be a cfo at a bio-tech company someday. she really likes combining finance and healthcare.'
me: 'wow. that is amazingly specific. your daughter has more career direction than i do. perhaps she can counsel me?'


i'm not kidding. what 17 year old knows what industry she wants, much less what position? not ceo, not coo, not even 'i want to work i bio tech,' but cfo, specifically.

likewise, the admissions face has become way more sophisticated. one of my good friends (and fraternity brothers) is now an admission dean, and he is very good at delivering the message. the slides are smooth, the campus looks great, and the audience drips with the thought of going there.

the only gripe that i have is that the brochures paint a picture of uber-diversity that strains the limits of credibility. front and center is a picture of about 10 african american, one asian, and one latino student with their arms around each other. from
emory's admissions page, about 8% of the undergrad population is african-american, 4% is latino, and 24% is asian (this includes indians). now, if this picture was in the context of other student pictures, it could be reasonable. but it is not presented that way! additionally, they show one professor: a black female. there are very few female professors, and even fewer tenured ones (this is based on having attended emory and my wife having received her ph d there). and black females professors? a minority in a minority. again, i'm glad that the picture is there. it is just not representative. however, i should note that there is certainly a school of thought (in fact, one i often advocate) that emphasizes we ought to not reduce people to their racial or ethnic identity (see the season premier of the office for a great clip on it). so is it really important that that the professor in the picture is a black female? or is it more important that she has a doctorate in history and finds it rewarding to teaching undergraduates? these brochures though, are not designed to that deep.

my point here, is that students might get a very different picture, based on the brochure. i know, i know, they should visit campus, etc. and as a minority, i do think emory does a good job with getting a racially diverse class (like its peer institutions, however, not a socio-economically diverse class). i just think the brochure should be realistic. what's realistic? i think a picture of 6 jewish guys from new jersey would be a start! in all seriousness, the brochure should just put things in the right context.

it's interesting to note that while college admissions in the middle of a boom, it won't last. we are in the middle of a demographic explosion that is expected to subside in about five years. additionally, the students are generally applying to more schools. this has been fueled, of course, by a general hysteria, but also enabled by the popularity of the common application, which lets students complete a single initial application and send it to my many colleges. a normal range when i applied was to apply to 5 - 10 schools. every school required a different application. save for some outlier students, there simply wasn't time to write more than 10 quality applications. with the common application, competitive students routinely apply to 20 schools.

Thursday, September 27, 2007

champs

last night my soccer team won the season championship. it was particularly gratifying, as we faced a team that we tied earlier in the season--they really took it to us. however, last night, we hung pretty tough in the first half, and then pulled away in the second. also felt good to put some goals in the net, including an upper 90 shot (keep in mind that this was indoor soccer, so scoring is much more frequent).

after the game i was so wired from winning that i couldn't sleep, and had to eat and then watch tv until 12:30.

it feels good to win.

Monday, September 24, 2007

tokyo one

greetings from dallas. dr. wintermute asked me last night if there was an monday i was planning on not getting on a flight. i promised her that there was. as soon as i said it, i remembered that i have a trip next monday, too. uggh.

thankfully, this is just one of those down and back trips. be home tomorrow.

hit a cool spot in richardson called tokyo one. not high end sushi by any means, but lots of good variety, some nice creativity, and the red bean ice cream is great. i know. weird. but good.

Friday, September 21, 2007

no pics for awhile

i loving living near the northeast, if for no other reason, the public transportation. last friday, we headed up to philly to see mpg and ms. mpg. made the train by two minutes, literally, as our cab never showed up to take us to the train station. fifteen minutes past the pick up time, i call the cab company. i'm put on hold forever, so i hang up and try again. now they tell me that the cab will be there in a few minutes. ten more minutes go by. no cab. i call the cab company. this time, the cab is stuck in traffic. i am freaking pissed at this point. i ask the agent, "when were you planning on telling me that my cab was going to be 30 minutes late?" she says that she is telling me right now. the fact is, i never would have known what was happening if i had not been so persistent in calling them.

so we ditch the cab and drive to the metro station. we can't find any non-metered parking the deck. thankfully, it turns out that the meters don't need to be fed during the weekend. however, dr. wintermute doesn't get back until monday afternoon. shitballz. at this point, if we don't leave the car, we don't make the train, and there's a domino effect to our weekend. the risk turns out to be a smart gamble, as the car is still there when dr. comes back monday morning.

mad dash to the metro. it is now 5:50. our train for philly leaves at 6:10. fourteen minutes from silver spring to union station. sprint into the amtrack platform.

we're on the train at 6:08. whew.

hang out in philly, which is a lot of fun. watch the sox blow a six run lead to yanks. uggh. it's always great to hang out with mpg and his lady. they're my closest cousins (and i have a lot of close cousins on my dad's sides). dr. w and i spent a lot of time with them during the boston years, and have taken a bunch of trips (including key west and arizona). now it's great to be a two hour train ride away.

spend the weekend in ny, hanging with fam, catch a good slice of roma pizza at my old stomping grounds on the upper east. we also stop by my old place and then head to alphabet city. great meal, thanks to my cousin's recommendation. by the way, what is up with nyc restaurants demanding cash only? i ran into several places with that policy. also hit moma. i've never been a big art museum person, but this one was a lot of fun. they had some very iconic works, including 'starry night' and warhol's soup cans.

sunday was the wedding in tribeca. trevesie, one of my closest friends from the big h and all around drinking buddy (i like to think of him as lando to my luke skywalker) was getting married. it was a big h fest--probably 20 or so folks from my class. best of all, nobf and dr. nobf were there. they just had a munchkin, who was staying with dr. nobf's parents in nj. some pretty good toasts, though i think citations of las vegas strippers and how trevesie lost his virginity at boarding school made him sweat a bit. dr. w whispered that she was glad that my brother's toast did not include any of those things. i replied that since i was saving myself for marriage, she would have had nothing to worry about. anyway, the wedding itself was on the rooftop with some amazing scenery.

i don't have any pics to share, though, because i left my camera in the cab. ugghh.

anyway, flew to atlanta on monday; dr. w heads back on the train to dc. moe and i hit metalsome monday. highlights includes war pigs, sex type thing, and pantera's walk.

a few days in atlanta with the six sigma enigma and his family (who are nice enough to let me board with them whenever i'm in atlanta). now back in dc.

tonight, heading out in cleveland park with the chief and chief chick.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

did i mention axe-throwing?


did i mention axe-throwing at the renaissance festival? here's dr. wintermute (and chief chick in the background) winding up.

numero duo

congrats to momma cass! numero duo showed up yesterday. the general lee now has a baby sister!

check out my flicker site--i'm sure they'll have pics up soon!

Monday, September 10, 2007

first day

on the train to NJ. i love that we have a new office there. much easier than jetting to atlanta when i need to be in an office. and the train is so much easier to navigate, and i can be online the whole way.

great weekend with j-town and the cheese. hit awesometown, grilled out, talked about how sweet superbad is. they also picked out a little rescue doggie to adopt. pending the application process, they'll be back in a few weeks to pick her up and bring her home.

today was dr. wintermute's first day on the new gig. compared with her job in soflo, it's already great, because, "it doesn't smell like urine."

Friday, September 07, 2007

almost there...almost there...stay on target

the house is finally coming together, thanks largely to dr. w's efforts. she has been hauling ass. j-town and the cheese are coming to visit us this weekend, which is a great motivator. and by that i mean we were putting together the guest bed at 10:30 last night. meanwhile, i'm wrestling with our moving company, who broke our guest bed in the move, and are now cheaping out in cutting us a check to replace it.

should have some pics from medieval times soon. did i mention that the carnie games include axe throwing, knife throwing, and chinese star throwing?