Hal Stern's thoughts on sports, work, technology, food, and life in New Jersey
From the category archives:
Our daughter Elana has started her gap year in Israel. She’s blogging her adventures. Combined with Skype, phone calls, and updates from the program on Facebook, give us a great view into what’s going on 6,000 miles away.
Echoing the “Anatevka” scene (“You’re going to America? I have a cousin in Chicago”) that closes Fiddler [...]
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Now on the way home from Ole Miss, via Memphis and Houston. It was a great trip from the work perspective, giving me a chance to talk to Ole Miss business and computer science students about directions in software, privacy, security and trust, and how their work will shape user experiences in the next [...]
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Oxford, Mississippi, that is. Home of Ole Miss, and the location of the ACM Southeast Conference, the longest-running regional ACM conference. Should be a fun trip, kicking off with a meeting with the Ole Miss supercomputer center team. In planning our logistics, one theme kept popping up: where were we going [...]
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Back into something resembling a chronological sequence: blogging from the front row of the ITC Window hotel meeting room, where we’ll host the Bengaluru employee Town Hall later this morning. I arrived in Bengaluru after a semi-redeye that left Johannesburg and deposited me into Mumbai airport a few minutes after midnight. [...]
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It’s so rare for me to have an “off day” while traveling on business that I’m remarkably lazy about preparing an itinerary. My usual plan includes: find some entertainment in a local casino and/or Hard Rock Cafe, if they exist (I’m a creature of habit); look for local Jewish historical culture (I’ve been [...]
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Despite my luggage trailing me by twelve hours, the Johannesburg leg of the trip got off to a good start. My hotel was adjacent to a casino, and where there’s a casino there’s usually a men’s clothing store amidst other shopping adventures. Sure enough, I arrived at the door of a popular South [...]
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Logistics for the 2nd leg of this trip required that I leave Mexico City about half a day after arriving, although that was enough time for me to exhaust my (primarily food oriented) Spanish vocabulary. I believe I ordered fish tacos and hot peppers for lunch; sadly I can’t phrase the gradations [...]
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For the past 15 years, I’ve driven into New York City the same way: up the New Jersey Turnpike, off at Exit 16E, a stop and go skip-hop from the Turnpike tolls through the Route 3, US 1 & 9 and southbound ramp merge, and then through the Lincoln Tunnel. I park in [...]
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Five thoroughly marginal tips for flying cross-country on a regular basis:
1. Pack an extra t-shirt in your carry-on. Several times, I’ve been thankful that I had a clean, dry shirt to swap out for one that was covered in coffee, soda, or something worse (only once, but it was really vile). If [...]
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Spent a vacation weekend in Montreal (and honestly, truly did no any work for four days, including blogging, reading email, or even texting friends from work). A work de-emphasis didn’t stop me from thinking about architecture and sustainability, however, and those thoughts were front and center as I toured the Basilica de Notre [...]
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