Monday, July 28, 2008
Oh no! Not Crocs and Heelys!
Recently I signed up for Dr. Housing Bubble's posts to be emailed to me. They're great and I feel like I'm learning about housing and economics in general. His post today was Part XVI in Lessons from the Great Depression: Items that Sold in the Credit Bubble. Before the Great Depression it was crossword puzzle books and before "whatever we're going to call what we're in the midst of right now", Crocs and Heelys were selling like hotcakes! Crocs publicly traded stock actually sold for $75/share! I hope to Mother Earth you sold at that price because today it's back down to $4.95 for CROX. Yikes. Also Heelys (those shoes with the wheels that the kids love) went from a high of almost $39 to $4.50 for a share of HLYS. I have really enjoyed his post, this one wasn't terrible but the one that gave me chills was this post on IndyMac's bank foreclosure. Gyah! I was shocked. That post is not for the faint of heart.
Okay, off to work so I can graduate and then wade out into this failing economy of ours. I wonder if Europe is hiring?
Okay, off to work so I can graduate and then wade out into this failing economy of ours. I wonder if Europe is hiring?
Labels: educating consumers, Europe, injustice
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Pukeatronic!
- Amy Wang, Futurama
I had a good meeting with the boss, and that coupled with me giving him my first chapter next week should propel me well into the new semester and get me the hell out of here by May. J scared the shit out of me yesterday when she mentioned that I needed to find a job and somewhere for our family to live in the coming year. I've been saying the job search starts in December for so long I had quite forgotten that it was, in fact, December.
So where to look? We had a speaker last week from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. It was a very good talk and I was made aware of the existence of that particular Max Planck Institute. I don't believe I have yet regaled you with stories from Seth's EuroTrip '99 but I worked at a different Max Planck Institute during that summer. Gorgeous facilities and a nearly limitless budget courtesy of the German government, it's THE place to do research in Germany if not all of Western Europe. So obviously I will be applying there. Hopefully my particular areas of research will catch the eye of the advisor I would like to work for over there. Then we would just have to start learning German and looking into what it would take for us to take the cats with us.
Back on this side of the pond, I'll probably look around Orlando, Birmingham, the Pacific Northwest and maybe even the Northeast some too. We have ties to the first two cities and the other areas, neither one of us have lived there before and it would be an exciting adventure. Sorry Midwest, we're not really considering you, well, Colorado is on the list and maybe Montana but those aren't really Midwestern states. Of course, you will be the first to know when something goes down and I still see myself blogging in the future, so no worries there.
Everyone knows that 3rd world countries aren't the greatest. But J found a particular aspect of that knowledge particularly troubling recently. J just assumed that mail would arrive to any part of the world expeditiously but little did she know, that is not always the case. Once while living in the Dominican Republic, our family was astounded when we received a letter through the Dominican Postal Service from a friend in NYC that arrived in 3 days time. Un-freakin'-believable. Normally we didn't rely on the local postal service at all, instead paying for a mail service based out of Ft. Lauderdale that flew mail to a couple different places in the Caribbean.
We asked my parents if we could send them some Christmas presents through the mail and my father informed us that it usually takes 2 weeks to 3 months and that they might have to pay some taxes to customs to actually receive it. They suggested donating a toy to Toys for Tots, or keeping them when they come back in May for my graduation.
I'll start Seth's EuroTrip saga in the next few days. It'll be nice to write for pleasure instead of science writing for work. Hitler just invaded Poland in "Destined to Witness."
I had a good meeting with the boss, and that coupled with me giving him my first chapter next week should propel me well into the new semester and get me the hell out of here by May. J scared the shit out of me yesterday when she mentioned that I needed to find a job and somewhere for our family to live in the coming year. I've been saying the job search starts in December for so long I had quite forgotten that it was, in fact, December.
So where to look? We had a speaker last week from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. It was a very good talk and I was made aware of the existence of that particular Max Planck Institute. I don't believe I have yet regaled you with stories from Seth's EuroTrip '99 but I worked at a different Max Planck Institute during that summer. Gorgeous facilities and a nearly limitless budget courtesy of the German government, it's THE place to do research in Germany if not all of Western Europe. So obviously I will be applying there. Hopefully my particular areas of research will catch the eye of the advisor I would like to work for over there. Then we would just have to start learning German and looking into what it would take for us to take the cats with us.
Back on this side of the pond, I'll probably look around Orlando, Birmingham, the Pacific Northwest and maybe even the Northeast some too. We have ties to the first two cities and the other areas, neither one of us have lived there before and it would be an exciting adventure. Sorry Midwest, we're not really considering you, well, Colorado is on the list and maybe Montana but those aren't really Midwestern states. Of course, you will be the first to know when something goes down and I still see myself blogging in the future, so no worries there.
Everyone knows that 3rd world countries aren't the greatest. But J found a particular aspect of that knowledge particularly troubling recently. J just assumed that mail would arrive to any part of the world expeditiously but little did she know, that is not always the case. Once while living in the Dominican Republic, our family was astounded when we received a letter through the Dominican Postal Service from a friend in NYC that arrived in 3 days time. Un-freakin'-believable. Normally we didn't rely on the local postal service at all, instead paying for a mail service based out of Ft. Lauderdale that flew mail to a couple different places in the Caribbean.
We asked my parents if we could send them some Christmas presents through the mail and my father informed us that it usually takes 2 weeks to 3 months and that they might have to pay some taxes to customs to actually receive it. They suggested donating a toy to Toys for Tots, or keeping them when they come back in May for my graduation.
I'll start Seth's EuroTrip saga in the next few days. It'll be nice to write for pleasure instead of science writing for work. Hitler just invaded Poland in "Destined to Witness."
Labels: book, Europe, J, job search
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Black God rules!
- Bart Simpson, from the chicken pox Simpsons episode, they're looking for Dr. Hibbard in the First A.M.E. Church of Springfield and it's distinctly more lively than Rev. Lovejoy's service.
The Clemson Sports Car Club website has been down for almost 2 weeks now. Hopefully it will be back up soon but if not, I'll see our webmaster at the autocross in Columbia this weekend and see what's up.
We resubscribed to The Week magazine and am now slightly more up to date with worldy goings on. Apparently the "president" of Syria was reelected to a 2nd 7 year term. Out of 12 million Syrians, 11 million voted and he "won" with a resounding 97%. Right.
I've been thinking about Europe recently. My friend Tom went just a few months ago. Supposedly he has a blog for it that he's been working on but being the anal perfectionist he is, he's been working on it a long time and I still haven't seen it. Also there is a Summer Undergrad Research Project participant (SURP) from Germany who is really cool and reminded me how much I liked Germany, the people and their accents. Then I was watching "Dream Car Garage" and they took an '06 Corvette Z06 up to 185 mph on the autobahn, all without fear of a ticket. Crazy.
I performed research in Mainz, Germany (about 15 min. outside of Frankfurt by train) for 2 months the summer before my senior year of undergrad aka the summer of 2000. So many awesome memories and experiences from that trip. Got to see the last solar eclipse of the 20th century, got drunk and smoked hash in a hostel in Paris, laid on the beach in Nice, Musee D'Orsay in Paris, Neuschwanstein in Fussen near Munich, Milan, the leaning tower of Pisa, Firenze (Florence in Italian). Great memories and I want to take J there and make some new ones. All in good time I suppose. Nope, just checked, no recounting of any Europe stories.
If I had more time (if someone paid me to blog or was independently wealthy) I would get a negative scanner, convert all my Europics to digital and then upload them and have lovely pictures to accompany the posts, but I won't. I do want to go through all the pictures and enlarge some and just generally organize my picture bag.
The Clemson Sports Car Club website has been down for almost 2 weeks now. Hopefully it will be back up soon but if not, I'll see our webmaster at the autocross in Columbia this weekend and see what's up.
We resubscribed to The Week magazine and am now slightly more up to date with worldy goings on. Apparently the "president" of Syria was reelected to a 2nd 7 year term. Out of 12 million Syrians, 11 million voted and he "won" with a resounding 97%. Right.
I've been thinking about Europe recently. My friend Tom went just a few months ago. Supposedly he has a blog for it that he's been working on but being the anal perfectionist he is, he's been working on it a long time and I still haven't seen it. Also there is a Summer Undergrad Research Project participant (SURP) from Germany who is really cool and reminded me how much I liked Germany, the people and their accents. Then I was watching "Dream Car Garage" and they took an '06 Corvette Z06 up to 185 mph on the autobahn, all without fear of a ticket. Crazy.
I performed research in Mainz, Germany (about 15 min. outside of Frankfurt by train) for 2 months the summer before my senior year of undergrad aka the summer of 2000. So many awesome memories and experiences from that trip. Got to see the last solar eclipse of the 20th century, got drunk and smoked hash in a hostel in Paris, laid on the beach in Nice, Musee D'Orsay in Paris, Neuschwanstein in Fussen near Munich, Milan, the leaning tower of Pisa, Firenze (Florence in Italian). Great memories and I want to take J there and make some new ones. All in good time I suppose. Nope, just checked, no recounting of any Europe stories.
If I had more time (if someone paid me to blog or was independently wealthy) I would get a negative scanner, convert all my Europics to digital and then upload them and have lovely pictures to accompany the posts, but I won't. I do want to go through all the pictures and enlarge some and just generally organize my picture bag.
Labels: Europe, Germany, The Simpsons
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