Phatpat.com

To get back from interviewing in Syracuse, I:

• Took the hotel Shuttle to Syracuse Airport
• Flew to La Guardia in New York
• Walked off the plane, and 20 minutes later, back down the same gate
• Hopped on the same (or visually the same) airplane to head to Baltimore
• Ran for about a mile and a half through the airport
• Caught the bus (barely!) to Greenbelt
• Took the Metro to College Park (just 1 stop)
• Took the UMD Shuttle to Stamp Student Union
• Walked home

and I live to see another interview. It was a good little trip. By my count, I have three more interviews after Thanksgiving and then I'm done.

The X Prize guys (remember the spaceship contest?) are now in the business of revolutionary contests. In addition to cool things like the Automotive X Prize and a moon lander challenge, they are having a contest to come up with ideas for future contests. Basically you create a youtube video about your "crazy green idea", they select the top 3, and users vote on the best. The winner gets $25,000. Long story short, me and 2 or 3 other engineering grad students are trying to put together a video for this by Friday. We are all engineers (grad students, even better) and I am probably the one with the most creative experience.  We have a really good idea, but it looks like my somewhat lacking iMovie skills may be tested. I'll post a link to it when we get a final product. No spoilers while the contest is still running, sorry!

[Crazy Green Idea Contest]

Update: Here's our entry http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHT1OXpsxOY

Wednesday morning I have my first interview, hopefully of many to come. It's with a company I'm pretty excited about, Pace Global Energy Services. They do work for utilities, energy companies, gas companies, industrial companies, and energy developers. It's a consulting job. I think I'd like it because they work on a lot of very large systems analyses. They try to build a comprehensive picture of what natural gas will do in the next year, or whether or not a wind farm will succeed. They even developed an "innovative carbon management platform" to help utilities and their customers track greenhouse gas emissions.

I have to figure out what to wear, run through my resume, make sure I remember all my stories, brush up on my interests, and learn what Pace is doing nowadays. It would probably also be good to come up with some questions.

On the 20th I did an "urban adventure game" of sorts, sponsored by High Trek Adventure, a la Amazing Race, sort of. Clara and I donned our Northwestern Cycling long-sleeved jerseys and put on numbers on them sideways, like we were in a bike race.

When we checked-in Saturday morning they gave us an envelope saying "Do not open" which we promptly opened at noon, sparking a race of maybe 100 people down busy DC streets to the location listed on the sheet. We were one of the first groups there, and picked up a sheet of 10 clues, 9 of which we had to do. We got a day pass on the train system, and checked off the clues as fast as we could. They varied from the easy (Find the hall on GW's campus that these three have in common: A US Secretary of State, NFL's all-time reception leader, & a San Francisco treat) to the slightly more obscure (Find the country or state at the WWII memorial that is referred to in this haiku "Discovered by Spain, Palm tree and proa on flag, can't vote for Prez"). We had to find the location and take a picture of ourselves there. First one back to base camp at U-street won. It was more running than we expected, and the winners were definitely competitive runners.

Afterwards there was a little "party" at the Ulah Bistro, which consisted of a room to ourselves and a 10% discount on food. And we got a "swag bag" consisting of a t-shirt, water bottle, and a few flyers. Definitely the lamest swag bag I've ever gotten. Regardless, it was fun. We also got free ice cream at one of the locations. Can't argue with that!

[Pictures]

"But I can tell you, sustainability is boring. It is just the
minimum. Like when you were asked: ”How is your relationship with your
girlfriend?” What do you say? Sustainable? I’d say: “I am so sorry for
you.” Design is the complete opposite of sustainability. We would still
live on trees if we were sustainable. Sustainability just keeps the
same things over and over again. Instead we should celebrate being
human beings and our creativity, which is far more important than
sustainability.

So believe me, we are not too many people on this planet. If you
take the total weight of the planet’s ants on one hand and the total
weight of human beings on the other, you’ll see that the ants’ weight
is four times higher. It is not only the number, but ants weigh out
human beings. Further they have a much shorter life span than we have.
And because they work much harder physically than we do, the calorie
consumption of ants equals about 30 billion people. It is clearly not
about the fact that we are too many. Ants don’t produce waste. They
don’t need to minimize waste. They produce nutrients. Again it is a
design question."

-Michael Braungart in Abitare

I'm looking for a job, and quotes like this are the fuel I need to keep looking hard.

A couple months ago somebody at the University of Maryland decided it would be a good idea to send an advertisement for on-campus parking to all 24,000 students registered for Fall classes, and put their social security number on the label, just for good measure. More likely everyone's SSN was in one big database, and the wrong form field was used, but that's how these things happen.

They realized this pretty fast, and offered everyone affected a year of a credit monitoring service. I figured I might as well sign up, because I couldn't remember if I got the flier or not. I would have thrown it out immediately. I set up the account online, but I had to make a phone call to verify my identity, or so they say. I called them, and the first thing they asked for was my SSN. Lame. But I caved pretty fast. Then they asked me a lot of other personal info, and finally made me verify a couple items on my credit report. I don't have much credit, so I didn't know what was there. They said, essentially, out of luck buddy, come back later.

Last week I figured I might as well request a free credit report and see if anybody's been doing some tinkering with my financial wellbeing, other than the stock market. It was, somewhat comically, very easy. Name, birthday, social security number, you're good to go. Got my credit report. Nothing exciting.

Today I thought, maybe I can use that information to sign up with the monitoring service. Yep, no problem. Called the number, gave them my social security number, pulled a couple items off of the credit report, and they emailed me my password and I'm good to go. Slightly disconcerting. My attitude is essentially, once your information is out there, in any database, it's fair game. Keep your info private. Don't trust people to use it responsibly. The less who have it, the better.

My good ole' computer bag, a Timbuk2 commute, lasted me a full 5 years.  I sent it in earlier to have the liner replaced, but they didn't deem it worthy. I have a brand-new Commute on the way.

They've undergone a complete redesign, and have moved more mainstream, away from the fixie-riding messenger style to the latte-sipping mac-loving style. So be it. They're bags are now made in China, rather than San Francisco. We'll see how long this one lasts!

[Timbuk2]