Travel: Atlanta and Houston

I've always had a pretty strong touch of wanderlust. That's why I left Rochester for New Orleans for college, and took a trip across the Atlantic to study abroad in Madrid. Since graduating, I started working at Tulane full-time and am about 1/2way through a free (mostly) MBA. It's obviously a great opportunity, but it's meant two things: my travel time is limited, and I didn't leave New Orleans after graduation. I like Nola a lot- I really do, but at my age, I want to move every few years and experience new places, new cultures, and new cities, I guess at the expense of laying down roots.

In the meantime, my appetite for travel has had to come in small trips here and there. Because of non-stop MBA classes, and the difficulty of getting approved vacation, I've been taking advantage within the Gulf/South region to visit cities on 3-day weekends, places I can drive to easily.

In the last 6 months, I've visited Boston, Atlanta, the Florida panhandle, and Houston/Gulf Texas- on the to-do list is Memphis (6 hours), Nashville (8), the Smokies (10), Birmingham (6), Mobile (3, driven through many times), Austin (7), and maybe Dallas/Little Rock. (8-9)

Atlanta and Houston were pretty similar in a lot of ways. They're both clearly "new" cities (compared to the Northeast), and done according to conservative politics, which means less density, more suburbs. Both have massive suburbs stretching out endlessly, which leads to some pretty nightmarish traffic situations. Houston has an enormous amount of freeways circling and crossing the city, and yet, there was still decent traffic on a Sunday afternoon. Atlanta had a pretty similar setup (one giant interstate circling the city, a few branching in) but less highways. But still a lot of traffic.

I didn't spend much time at all within Houston itself- I was visiting my friend down near the Gulf, but I wasn't impressed with either city. I like relatively dense cities, which generally means there's good public transportation and it's a walkable city. In both cities, the downtown area was pretty spread apart, which made walking difficult and while both cities had a "subway" system, neither seemed terribly comprehensive and thus, I didn't use them. In Atlanta in particular, MARTA seems more about taking people from the suburbs into the city, not getting them around the city. (Which could be very useful to alleviate traffic) Neither downtown area seemed particularly compelling to visit. Walking around different districts didn't seem very interesting either.

Driving into Houston was interesting. The sprawl surrounding the city stretched almost to Beaumount, near the Texas-Louisiana border. There's the saying "everything is bigger in Texas" and I don't know I perceived it as such due to a successful PR campaign implanted in my head, or because it was reality, but it did seem true. While Houston is still in the hot/humid Gulf region, driving towards it you get into some open plains, having left the bayou. It seemed wide open, expansive. The city of Houston was the same way- the buildings were a bit spread out, but with the green trees covering the city, Houston was a group of skyscrapers rising out of a forested area.

I was down an hour south of Houston for most of Easter weekend, and we went to the beach. It was very Texan, no rules and regulations. That was pretty neat, because it meant you could drive a truck on the beach and pull up to the shore, but that same attitude also meant the beach was disappointing covered in garbage.

There were certainly some neat things about Atlanta- I was staying at a friends place at Georgia Tech, which is in midtown Atlanta. (I think) It was interesting how you could walk 2-3 blocks from his place and be standing by skyscrapers, but go a different direction and you'd be near some suburban-looking homes. There were some neat bars and restaurants around the area, but none seemed unique to other cities. I did really enjoy hiking up Stone Mountain- it's odd that there's a bald mountain close to the city, seemingly rising up out of nowhere, but it did offer some really neat views. It did seem to suffer from a bit of over-commercialization, what with the chair lift (to avoid a 10 minute hike!) and all the amusement park events below.

A friend of mine from Houston once said "Houston is where no one wants to live, but everyone ends up." There's no doubt Houston and Atalanta are economic powerhouses- both are home to a ton of Fortune 500 companies. They've got business-friendly environments, great infrastructure (lots of highways, both have intercontinental airports) and extensive suburbs for middle/upper managers with families. But neither seemed to be terribly interesting cities to live as a young adult. I'm sure there are redeeming qualities, but probably not enough for me to outweigh the negatives. I'd revisit both, but to see my friends- not out of any desire to see the city again.

One Hospital

I was talking to a guy I knew in high school about 3 months ago when I was back home, he told me he was going to med school at the University of Rochester. It then occurred to me how much of a focal point Strong Memorial Hospital (UofR's hospital) has been in my life. I was born there, as well as two of my sisters. I had knee surgery there, underwent cancer treatment, as did my sister, who ended up dying in that hospital. (though she was born in Chicago)

As much as I've always actually wanted to work in a hospital, I think it'd be hard to work there, it'd really wear you down.

American sports v. European Soccer

As many of those reading this will know, I'm a bit of a European soccer nut. And by "bit" I mean, I follow all of one team's games, blog about it, tweet about it, yadayadayada. European soccer is in the off season right now, and the whole controversy of Lebron James choosing Miami struck me as really funny. There was all this controversy about it, and it brought up all these thoughts in my head about things I don't like about American sports.

#1- The first is this overwhelming idea of equality. There's the draft, collective bargaining agreements, salary caps, all sorts of things to supposedly level the playing field. My first problem with this is when the hell are sports supposed to be about equality? And that's one thing about the Lebron->Miami trade I don't understand, everyone is moaning about how they are building the strongest team. So? Some players have said Lebron will now never be remembered as one of the greatest players because he chose not to carry Cleveland on his back, and I don't follow NBA at all, but he made a choice of some championship trophies over personal glory. in some ways..you can say it's unselfish. (particularly that he's giving up money to do it)

But there's this idea of equality, that just to me, doesn't fit in sports which seems like the most primal "survival of the fittest" battles left in society today. We give medals to the best athletes in the Olympics, but try and maintain parity in the leagues. It doesn't make sense. Is it more interesting than one team buying the league? Maybe, but as European soccer can tell you, "buying" the league doesn't always work. The Galacticos era of Real Madrid (in which they spent ludricrous amounts of money on the best players in the world) is largely regarded as a sporting failure, a marketing triumph no doubt, but otherwise a failure. Last summer, they spent a massive sum of 250million euros (most clubs spent net 30-40million per summer) on players like Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka, etc. And they won nothing last year. Barcelona won the Spanish league, Sevilla won the Spanish Kings Cup (a sort of year round playoffs tournament), an Italian club won the premier European competition, and Atletico Madrid, their bitter city rivals, won the secondary European competition.

And as any LA Clippers or Oakland Raiders fans will tell you, the whole parity thing in America doesn't always work.

#2- League structure, involving promotion/relegation and no playoffs. First, the playoffs. As I'll discuss later, it seems to me more of an entertainment thing than sporting competition. It ensures plenty of drama, but is the best team the one that has a mediocre record in the 6 month season, then goes hot for 6 weeks? I personally don't like it. I like the European way better, in all your games, you play each team twice, whoever finishes the end of the season with the most points wins the league, and are deserved champions. It rewards teams for a season-long performance, not just the ending.

Promotion and relegation are a favorite of mine. In European soccer, if you suck badly enough, you get sent down a division below, to essentially a minor league. And so it continues, all the way to amateur levels. It makes for more of a meritocracy, again, equality be damned, and makes the end of seasons more interesting. In America, there's sort of a perverse incentive for teams to do poorly if they are already bad, in that if they lose their last few games, they'll get a better draft pick and a better player. I'm not saying teams throw the game, but I definitely have seen some 3-10 NFL teams phoning in the last 3 games, going through the motions. In the European model, the worst teams fight like hell at the end, to avoid relegation which usually isn't decided until the last week or two of the season. If they get relegated, they lose a lot of money via sponsorships, TV rights, etc...and a lot of players don't want to play in the 2nd/3rd division and so they leave. Lot of incentive for those players (who might have bonuses tied to avoiding relegation) to fight hard at the end. And you do. Teams like Cagliari and Fulham in 07-08 were seemingly doomed to drop down to the 2nd division, only to fight like hell and defying all logic and expert opinion, magically remain in the top flight. Plenty of drama there, for sure.

Another difference in the more "hyper-capitalism" environment of Europe is trades. There are multiple leagues, and have been court rulings. There's no "restricted/unrestricted free agents" once your contract expires, you can sign with whoever you freaking like. And if you want to go to a different club, the other club pays cash. (typically, although players as makeweight does happen occasionally) You're not tied to a country or a league.

#3- American sports is mostly entertainment. There's less passion, worse fan support, and the market is saturated.

Bill Simmons, a writer for ESPN and non-soccer fan, put it excellently this way. While writing about his browsing of various English Premier League teams:

You know how Red makes the comment that, after a life spent in Shawshank, he can't even squeeze a drop of pee without asking for permission first? I feel like that's happening to us. American sports have been ravaged by TV timeouts, ticket price hikes and Jumbotrons that pretty much order fans how to act. Just look at what happened in the NBA playoffs. Miami fans were urged to wear all white like a bunch of outpatients from a psych ward; the Detroit announcer screamed, "Let's give it up!" and "Lemme HEAR YOU!" as the crowd responded like a bunch of trained seals; Clippers fans weren't able to stand and cheer after an outrageous Shaun Livingston dunk in the Denver series because disco music was blaring at deafening levels. And it's not just basketball. During Angels games in baseball, the crowd waits to make noise until a monkey appears on the scoreboard. You can't attend an NHL game without hearing the opening to "Welcome to the Jungle" 90 times. Even our NFL games have slipped -- you cheer when the players run out, cheer on third downs, cheer on scores and sit the rest of the time. It's a crying shame.

Not to pull a Madonna on you, but European soccer stands out because of the superhuman energy of its fans -- the chants and songs, the nonstop cheering, the utter jubilation whenever anything good happens, how the games seem to double as life-or-death experiences -- and I can't help but wonder if that same trait has been sucked out of our own sports for reasons beyond our control. And no, that same energy hasn't completely disappeared; you can see a similar energy on display at Fenway, Yankee Stadium, Lambeau, MSG (if the Knicks and/or Rangers are good, a big "if" these days) and any other city with enough history and passion to override the evils of the Jumbotron Era. Still, these are aberrations. By pricing out most of the common fans and overwhelming the ones who remained, professional sports leagues in this country made a conscious decision: We'd rather hear artificially created noise than genuine noise. That's the biggest problem with sports in America right now. And there's no real way to solve it.

Quite right. American sports have been franchised to a point that in many cases, it's in search of entertainment for your dollars, and you cheer for the franchise. But what is a franchise? In America's corporatist league structure, it changes. If the fans suck, the team moves. Indiana Colts used to be the Baltimore Colts. DC Nationals were the Montreal Expos for some time, and the Buffalo Bills will probably be leaving as soon as their owner dies, simply because Buffalo isn't a big enough market.

I know every team in America has the city/region name starting, but it's a bit different in Europe where teams are simply named after the city/region, and FC/AC/CF. (Football Club in 3 languages) Each team is very attached and/or tied to the city they are located in. In Italy, only 2 teams don't bear their cities name, Juventus and Sampdoria, though both have an emblem of the city on their crest. (Juventus has a bull, the symbol of Turin, and Sampdoria has the image of a famous sailor) Think of all the big names you might have heard of- Manchester United, Real Madrid, Chelsea (the area of London it's in), Barcelona, etc.

And with that commitment to the city comes a more loyal fan base. In Europe, there is no draft, each team has their own youth teams that come through the ranks and eventually, if good enough, can play with the senior squad. In America, there are farm systems, but that doesn't really impress me. A friend of mine, a big fan of the Red Sox once proudly mentioned that this pitcher people were talking about came through the farm team. "Is he from Boston?" I responded. He said no. "Has he ever lived in Boston before this?" "I don't think so," he responded. So what real commitment does he have to Boston? Only the tie through the team that showed some kind of faith in him. In European soccer, it's different. Sure, not every player plays for his home team, there's plenty of movement around. But it makes it that much more special. Take Manchester United- The captain and alternate are both born and bred in Manchester, and have since played for the team for 15+ years. Milan just said farewell last summer to Paolo Maldini, born in Milan, and not even including the time spent in the youth system ended up spending 24 seasons wearing red-and-black. In Rome, there's "er Pupone" the local dialect for the Big Child, the captain Francesco Totti who was born local, and spent his entire career at the club. There's a deeper sense of tradition between the club and city, but you can generalize that among people in Europe in general, we Americans are much more fluid in our "hometowns" and perhaps our sports system reflects that.

It's a stark difference, and quite ironic. In the more equal quasi-socialistic European continent, they practice a form of ultracapitalism. Few regulations, large amounts of freedom for clubs and players. Whereas here in America, where we abhor the idea of collectivism, our sports are ultrasocialized. Less equality, and maximum power to the league over its teams and players.

I've said plenty for now, just some thoughts for American sports fans to consider.

Thoughts on the iPad

So I started working at my first "real job" where I spend 40 hours a week wondering when I can leave and go do something fun. (Not anytime soon, since it takes 6+ weeks to process my first paycheck) Seriously though, it's not a bad job, it's basically the same one I've been doing the last 3 years as a student, just formalized full-time now, with a decent salary and nice benefits. It's just slow in the summer and ultimately, not a field I want to be in for long. The cool thing about working in IT though is all the toys you get, and one of them being the iPad. So I decided to review it a bit. All biases on the table out front- I don't particularly care for Apple, I own a Netbook running Ubuntu as well as an Android phone.

In general, it's a nice toy and it's relatively enjoyable to use...I just see it about as necessary as a panini maker. Nice to have, but not really something you should be breaking the bank for. My model (16gb, Wifi) costs $500. There is one that costs $830, for 64gb and 3G, not to mention the data plan. It doesn't feel particularly ergonomic either, it feels a little too thin to feel comfortable, or maybe too thick. Somewhere awkwardly in between.

Ultimately, my problem with the iPad is pretty much every problem I have with Apple. It costs far too much, and in their anal pursuit (that should get this blog some interesting Google searches) of style, greatly hinders the product. They charge $100 to double the memory available, a bit ludicrous considering a 16gb flash drive costs $45, and that's flash memory...not the traditional hard drive that is inside of the iPad. You can't buy hard drives that small anymore. And if you think any space constraint issues could be resolved by, say, plugging in that 16gb flash drive or a larger external hard drive, you're wrong. There are no USB ports, which completely rules it out of being a on-the-go troubleshooting device that one of the Associate Directors of IT uses it as. It's a bit surprising that such a large device is so constrained on physical inputs, I can fully understand why an iPhone shouldn't have a USB port, but the iPad is a computer, not a phone, and it should. Instead, you need to go out and buy a dozen new adapters for any kind of connection you want. That's probably the fundamental problem with it, as my brother said, Apple should have made a small (and cheap) Macbook, not a big iPod. Example- why doesn't it have say an onboard camera? My netbook does, and this whole new FaceTime thing that is in iPhone 4 (which is a neat idea, I agree) completely misses what could be a solid market, the iPad users. I'd rather set an iPad up and get a decent display of my friend than hold my phone up and look at a tiny resolution the whole time. (Why I don't watch movies on my phone)

Other problems- well, I'm not a big fan of iOS. Lack of multitasking (which is somewhat being resolved in iOS4) is a major pain in the butt, for someone accustomed to Android software, it's annoying as heck. I'll be listening to Pandora or something and want to go look something up on the web. But I can't. Likewise, when I was downloading a large game via a 3rd-party app store (jailbroke it immediately) I couldn't navigate away, or else it would cancel the download. So for 2 hours or so, it just sat there. Maddening. Speaking of comparisons with Android, I find Apple's obsession with the one-button very annoying. Like USB ports, I could maybe see rationale for the iPhone. But the iPad has plenty of space! One button to bring you back to the home screen is annoying. On Android, there's 4: Go back, menu, home, and search. I don't use the 4th a lot, but I use the other 3 plenty. (if you hold home down, it brings up your 6 most recently used apps. So simple, yet so useful) No widescreen. No flash, of course. Stuck with the App store unless you jailbreak it like me, and let me tell you, there's a huge difference between the App Store and Android Market. In that, if I actually had an iPhone and paid for all the apps, I'd be broke. They are much more expensive, and there are very few free ones. I'm not opposed to paying for stuff and have bought a dozen or so Android apps, but looking through the App store just made me cringe at the prices. Oh, and then of course there's the fact that you're dealing with Apple's walled garden.

A few people in my department who love it say "I love not lugging my laptop around! The iPad is brilliant!" They have never heard of netbooks, evidently. I would love the iPad too if I was used to lugging around a 7.5lbs 15.5" honker with a 2-hour battery life. Android would be better than iOS, but fundamentally I don't compare it to my phone, I compare it to my netbook. Which is what Steve Jobs wants us to do, as he said netbooks are just cheap crappy laptops. Things my netbook has/can do that the iPad can't- USB ports, front facing camera, physical keyboard, VGA out, open system, (mine came preinstalled with a crappy Linux distro, replaced it with Ubuntu netbook edition and have been very satisfied) play Flash videos, 1/2 the price with more memory....it kind of goes on. And it only weighs 1/2 a pound more. For me, the three dealbreakers are no multitasking, no USB ports, and no physical keyboard. I use my netbook for troubleshooting, which involves opening Chrome, browsing the web looking for solutions, and/or downloading files and copying them over. iPad can't do that. I'm a huge fan of the physical keyboard, I have a Motorola Droid which has a slide out one, and while brief typing (text messages, etc) is manageable on a virtual keyboard, I'd never want to use it to type anything more than 140 characters. Ditto for the iPad.

I've trashed the iPad enough, so I'll mention things I do like about it. It's fast, it is very snappy. The screen is excellent. The Wifi card is fairly strong, my Droid's wifi component occasionally craps out or has a weak connection. There are things it's good for, like reading news articles or browsing the web casually. (as long as the site doesn't have Flash, occasionally) The battery life is excellent, I can leave it running for 3 days without a charge, it seems to definitely get the reported 10-11 hours of screen time, and it doesn't suck much battery when it's running with the screen off. Though reading articles and browsing web pages is nice on it, I wouldn't want to use it to read books, the backlight would annoy me after a while, the Kindle's e-Ink feels much more natural.

So it's a nice little toy to have sitting around the house if you want to look something up, or browse the web a bit while sitting on the couch. I don't bring it to work, I have my netbook here instead. Whenever I have to return it, I won't be running out and buying one. People should look at netbooks more...but I've already written a brief ode to them in the past.

Algorithm Fail

Golf Scores as an Economic Indicator

I was golfing with a few friends yesterday, and out of nowhere a great idea for an Economic paper struck my mind. (Or at least I think a great idea) It popped up from a comment from my friend, who remarked something to the tune of "I always end up playing well by the end of golf, but play so rarely that I start from scratch the next time I play." I think certainly golf is a sport where practice makes perfect, and thankfully for this exercise, individual players have a benchmark score. Not like soccer, where its a team sport, or tennis, where you're comparing yourself to another player. It also helps that golf is very much an elitist/business game.

So here was my line of thought- This thought kind of ran through my mind yesterday, so it's far from refined. Golf is a business sport, one with benchmark scores for players. It also (and here is investigation point #1) seems to be more of a business luxury, I would expect that business golf games get slashed when company performance is doing poorly, or when the economy is in recession, much like business trips and bonuses do. (I acknowledge that golf is a tremendously popular way to get business done, such as for sales reps, but I imagine that it'd still decline significantly as company starts cutting expenses)

So the idea is to get some sort of metric for the golf season of mid-level business people, from say April->October. It'd have to be a large enough survey of course, and you'd have to get a similar type of person as a focus. I think low-level business people would be less than ideal, since they probably don't golf much anyways, and top-level execs probably golf independently of company performance. So if you culled a large amount of data from mid-level businessmen over a large period of times, would it reflect the economic cycles? Would their golf scores in October in 2009 be worse than in 2005? It'd be incredibly hard to come up with any kind of quantitative analysis, but I wonder what the data would say.

The Curse of Mornings