My current totem pole

A friend of mine, who also happens to be the Assistant Dean of the College of Engineering, brought this cartoon from www.phdcomics.com to my attention on facebook the other day.

The main thing that’s surprising to me is not that Football coaches make over a million dollars, but rather the gross overestimate of Grad Student salaries.  If I made $17,784 right now, I’d be living a lavish life of Qdoba, Spotted Cow, and Tostitos hint of lime chips, instead of El Monterey frozen burritos, PBR, and “badger” chips.  Nonetheless, the graph got me curious.  Here’s my current totem poll at UW-Madison (from the WSJ UW-Madison Salary Database):

• $91,870 – my band director (who I’ve learned more from than most of my professors)
• $103,000 – my supervisor
• $141,707 – my supervisor’s supervisor
• $164,933 – my department chair
• $244,525 – college of engineering dean
• $400,000 – Brett Bielema (bachelor’s degree in marketing)
• $600,000 – Barry Alvarez

Why Charter sucks and the last week in August was one of the best of my life

Friday, August 28 was truly a momentous day which I will forever remember for accomplishing one of my life’s greatest feats.  I’m actually not talking about finishing UW Marching Band Reg Week – which is the most physically demanding tryout week I have ever had to endure (much harder in fact than varsity football two-a-days).  I was happy that the days of six hour rehearsals and conditioning in the middle of August were over and regular rehearsal schedules would begin.  My much greater accomplishment, however, was managing to free myself of Madison’s own axis of evil, the Fourth Reich - Charter Communications.  Here are my own opinions why Charter is a terrible company and as I found, I’m evidently not alone.

1. Calling their customer service requires reading minds better than even Miss Cleo is capable.  Figuring out what I needed to say to their automated voice recognition software to actually talk to a human being took me 15 minutes.
2. I received junk mail about the charter bundle seven days a week – sometimes more than one letter a day – because Charter never removed past customers from my college address.  On more than one occasion I even threw away a bill because I thought it was more junk mail.  A company that knows anything about marketing should realize that convincing college students that they need a Landline would be an incredible accomplishment.
3. Figuring out what all of the charges, sub-charges, and sub-sub-charges on a bill actually mean is more confusing than computer science.  I had no idea what I was actually paying for and costs continually increased from month to month without Charter informing me.  Disputing these charges requires an hour long phone call (see #1) or threatening to switch to Direct TV.
4. Question: How hard is it to remove someone from an account?  Answer: Three phone calls and an eventual “required” trip to an actual Charter office.  This is something that should be easily done over the phone or the interweb.  Instead, we were told by two Charter employees that all I had to do was call and provide my SSN.  When I did that, the customer service “expert” told me that “no one would have told me that it was possible over the phone” and “sir, I’ve been working for Charter for 14 years, I think I know how to remove someone from an account.”  I think the only thing worse than being a Charter customer would probably be working 14 miserable years for the company…

What if I lived my life like Charter runs their business?

• When people owe me money, provide them with a list of chargeable sub-items which they do not understand.  For example, if I bought someone a beer at a bar, I would probably charge them for an intoxication fee, a money handling fee, a non-local beer fee (if it was an Anheuser Busch product), a pint glass renters fee, hangover insurance, and even a falangy fee (made up).
• Schedule appointments with people stating that I will arrive between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM.
• Constantly tell people how much money they could be saving if they bought two things that they don’t need and one that they actually do.
• Perform with mediocrity at both work and school, treat others as if they are indebted to me for the mediocre work, and then when I’m asked about it, provide people with a recording stating that my work isn’t actually mediocre.

Truthfully, I don’t believe Charter will be around long and hopefully filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on March 28, 2009 will speed up the process.  Much like AOL in the 90s, who once owned a large share of the internet market (cancelling an account with AOL literally took four hours – I remember doing it because my Dad didn’t have time), new players will come along, providing better customer service and a better product.  For example, AT&T has started providing cable and internet in Madison at a cheaper rate and seems like a much better option.

You know what really grinds my e-mail gears?

Today I received an e-mail that was both flagged with a high importance red exclamation point and requested that I send a read receipt.  However, it turns out that the e-mail was neither “highly important” nor required urgent reading.  There are definitely a lot of e-mail manners that are violated on the interweb everyday.  Here are just a few that bother me (in what I believe to be order of severity).

Violation 8:  Assuming the person goes by a shortened name
Maybe I’m partial to this because everyone assumes that my name is “Matt” no matter how much I try to use Matthew – especially in a professional setting.  However, I try to stick to what’s listed in a digital signature unless someone offers a less formal name at the end of their message.

Violation 7: Using “Hey” in the salutation line
This one is largely personal preference, and was something that I had never thought about until I did a co-op with GE Healthcare.  The reality of starting an e-mail with “Hey ____,” is that it’s very informal.  When I e-mail my brother or someone who I go to the Karaoke Kidd at one in the morning with, it’s probably ok.  For anyone else in a professional setting, especially a superior, it’s probably inappropriate.

Violation 6:  E-mailing a co-worker sitting next door
My dad always told me growing up to never do something over the phone which can be done just as easily (and probably more effectively) in person.  I believe this is also true about my own ”e-mail generation.”  I don’t want to work in an office where face-to-face conversations are a thing of the past and when I have entire work days of only staring at my computer monitor, I’m much more fatigued than after a day of meetings with human interaction.  Receiving an e-mail from someone who sits 10 feet away asking me a yes or no question is just ridiculous.

Violation 5: Replying without my original message thread
I send and receive a lot of e-mails every day (sometimes during the school year as many as 150) and I have four different e-mail accounts IMAPed to my MS Outlook program.  Therefore, when I receive an e-mail response without my original message or an action item that I need to take care of with no thread history to provide background, it’s confusing and can be very time consuming for me to figure out what the person is talking about.

Violation 4: Accidental “Reply to all”
Check out the following thread, compliments of my classmate Scott:

—–Original Message—–
From: “Scott”
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 7:48 PM
To: “Matthew”
Subject: Re: RE: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity

I apparently sent this to the whole IE undergrad

—– Original Message —–
From: “Matthew”
Date: Wednesday, March 4, 2009 2:09 pm
Subject: RE: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity
To: “Scott”

Scott,
Did you intend to send this to me?
-Matthew

—–Original Message—–
From: “Scott”
Sent: Wednesday, March 04, 2009 12:08 PM
To: “Raj”
Cc: ieundergrad@engr.wisc.edu; “Roger”
Subject: Re: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity

I have a play I need to go to for acting at 730 and can work whenever that ends.

—– Original Message —–
From: “Raj”
Date: Tuesday, March 3, 2009 7:46 pm
Subject: ISyE undergrad funding and valuable practical/project experience opportunity
To: ieundergrad@engr.wisc.edu
Cc: “Raj”, “Roger”

ISyE Undergrad Student Assistants

Starting Summer 2009 and subsequent semesters (15 – 20 hours per week)

[etc…]

Oops…  Although, I appreciated that my friend Scott wanted to let me know that he was going to a play that night, I’m sure the rest of my department’s undergraduate mailing list wasn’t as interested.  The professor, “Raj” (who happens to be my boss) he was e-mailing about the job offer and ”Roger” (who happens to be my supervisor) were probably just as disinterested.

Violation 3: Angry e-mails
Tone is never portrayed well in an e-mail and in my experience sending someone an e-mail while in a heated mood almost always does more damage than good (especially in destroying future communication barriers and trust).  Using an e-mail in which caps lock is used to ”yell” at someone is also insulting.  My biggest problem with this, however, is that a co-worker wouldn’t have the decency to talk to me face-to-face about a conflict, but rather finds it necessary to e-mail you and rub it in by copying a few of your co-workers or supervisors.  This is also known as ”copying up” and one of the most ridiculous experiences I had with it came after I missed a church music rehearsal and the director decided to reprimand me with an e-mail in which our parish priest was copied.

Violation 2: Unnecessary flagging with “high importance”
An e-mail which is flagged as “highly important” (the red exclamation point) gets subconsciously sifted to my “highly unimportant” e-mail folder.  E-mail importance is in the eye of the beholder and I’ll decide which messages in my inbox make the list.

Violation 1: Read receipts
To me the single most insulting e-mail habit is sending a read receipt with a message and it causes me to instantly lose interest (or maybe respect for the sender) for whatever the e-mail was about.  To me, this informs the recipient, “I don’t think you’re responsible enough to respond to my e-mail in a timely manner so I’m going to make you feel guilty and let me know how soon you’ll take care of the issue.”  This is especially annoying when you are a part time research assistant and you check e-mail at all hours of the day.  This option can also be turned off (at the risk of your untrustworthy coworkers thinking you never read their e-mails).  The only thing worse than an e-mail with a read receipt is one that contains both a read receipt and a “high importance” flag.

…and please don’t send facebook messages which contain any importance whatsoever, unless it has to do with going to the Karaoke Kidd…

Doing my part

Just so we’re clear, I became incredibly green tonight while drinking franzia.  Yes Franzia.  It turns out that Franzia is conveniently created with three of the biggest environmental buzz terms out there – “Less CO2 emissions,” “Less packaging waste,” and even a “smaller carbon footprint.”  I’m not sure what “Less wine waste” means, but they do that too.  That’s what happens when you drink franzia in a cup, instead of directly out of the sack I suppose.

Franzia going green

UW-Madison Socio-Academic Campus Zones

After ballroom dance class today, I was on my way back to the Engineering campus and ran into my roommate, Lee, who asked, “what are you doing over here?” – a very valid question actually, since I haven’t been required to go to the east side of campus for a legitimate, academic reason since sophomore year. He, although an engineer himself, was actually on his way back from Art History. The truth is, the non-engineering areas of campus do have a completely different disposition and when I venture to the east for either choir or ballroom dance, it’s like visiting an unexplored, foreign world. Without further adieu, I am proud to present my most recent result of procrastinating both work and school – The UW-Madison Socio-Academic Map: My take on how our campus actually breaks down.

Figure 1 - UW-Madison Socio-Academic Map

Nerd-Land:  Home of the College of Engineering, Computer Sciences, and Wendt Library, Nerd-Land is the dwelling place of some of the most socially inept students on campus.  In traversing the halls of Engineering, one might witness 10 people surrounding a single game of chess, an intense conversation comparing notes on respective W.O.W. (World of Warcraft) characters, or even over hear numerous jokes about μ (“mu” – the coefficient of both static and kinetic friction), all in only a few minutes.  Spend too much time in Nerd-Land and your standards for the opposite sex will drop dramatically (until an eye opening journey to the east brings you back to your senses)

Nerd-Limbo:  I believe students who spend much of their day in the orange zone to be in Nerd-Limbo – still interested in a practical, technical education but capable of holding a conversation about something other than what they got on yesterday’s Thermo Exam.  The hard sciences (not meaning difficult, but the opposite of soft), such as Physics, Chemistry, Biochem, Genetics, and also Math and Stats* find their home in Nerd-Limbo.  People who are regulars in this area of campus may even have interests that lie outside of academics.
*Grainger Hall (School of Business) appears in purple above because it is considered an overlap of the orange and blue zones.

Liberal Arts-Ville:  Venture too far to the east and your existing schemas of what is a normal classroom environment will be greatly challenged.  Students studying Social Sciences,‡ Music, Dance, Languages, and also all of the students on College Life who represent the entire demographic of our student body so well, attend class here (as needed).  College Library also falls within this zone.  Expected attire in Liberal Arts-Ville requires that all students “try” before class (sweat pants strongly discouraged).  As a result, this is where many of the campus’ best looking people, who seem to only emerge nocturnally at the bars on Friday and Saturday, spend their weekdays.
‡The location of the Psychology building seems to be an anomaly, surrounded by both Nerd-Limbo and Nerd-Land.

Places I only go to drink beer:  A couple times a week I migrate from my familiar world to another familiar world (think Oregon Trail, except no one has ever died of dysentery out at the bars).  Unfortunately, since I live on Lathrop St. (lower left corner of the above map), traveling from my classes and/or house requires navigating through unfamiliar territory, which is commonly avoided via taking cabs.

Coastie-Island:  Also known as “frat row,” Langdon Street is as unfamiliar to me as the internet is to my Grandma.  Hundreds of girls wearing gaucho pants, ugg boots, north faces, and huge sunglasses (regardless of the weather or current sun intensity) and guys with fohawks, popped collars, and probably tribal armband tattoos dwell in this region.§♦
§Coastie Island slightly overlaps with the Places I only go to drink beer only because of the less than ideal location of the State Sider Apartments.
♦The recently constructed Lucky Apartments, located in between Liberal Arts-Ville and Places I only go to drink beer is an unfortunate contradiction of my Socio-Academic Theory.

Disclaimer:  This post is merely satire.  There are clearly exceptions to the immense stereotypes that I cast here. I realize that very hard working and motivated people exist in all academic areas of campus.

The worst movie in the history of the world

My roommate recently mentioned that he believed Nicolas Cage to be the worst actor in Hollywood.  I do loathe both National Treasures, Ghost Rider (lowered my IQ), Gone in 60 Seconds (further fueled my hatred of any movie involving a combination of the words “fast” and/or “furious”), and “Knowing” looks worse than listening to an entire Nickelback album (on the plus side though, he’s currently filming The Sorcerers’ Apprentice, which I can only hope stars Mickey Mouse).  However, in my opinion it doesn’t get much worse than Keanu Reeves – The Matrix is only the beginning of his turd mountains.  One must also consider Hardball (“I’m blown away by your ability to show up…” – ?), Speed, and who could forget the debacle that was Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventures.  Add Tom Cruise, Forbes magazine’s world’s most powerful celebrity in 2006/avid Alien believer, but disbeliever of the field of psychiatry/recovering dyslexic (via Scientology), and you’ve probably got the worst movie anyone has ever seen in their entire life.  Throw all three of these guys in a museum, sinking ship, or alternate universe that exists only in computer programs, and I would say that you’ve got the formula for the least productive hour and a half of anyone’s life to date.

Jokes on you, America!

Could have really used some color photography back then...

When we received Lady Liberty from the French in 1886 to represent our “friendship established during the American Revolution,” it was a great international gesture… sort of.  It dawned on me recently, however, that from about 1886-1906 it was a beautiful bronze color until it turned to its (arguably) unattractive shade of green.  So, was france really thinking we’ll give this ticking attrocity to the US and in about 20 years they’ll really feel stupid?  Maybe we should have seen our current poor relations with the french coming.  I’m going to go eat some freedom fries…

Even Michael Jordan got cut from his high school team

I always hated hearing “you know even Michael Jordan got caught from his high school basketball team,” as if it put into perspective any major disappointment in life.   Making this statement even more irrelevant is that Jordan was cut his sophomore year from Varsity.  However, last week while watching Best Damn Sport Show’s 100 Most Unbelievable Sports Moments, they had another MJ tidbit that really surprised me.  One of their unbelievable moments was Sam Bowie being selected number two overall in the 1984 NBA Draft and then they showed a montage of Jordan highlights.  After checking it out, the beginning of the draft went a little something like this:

1984 NBA Draft

1	Hakeem Olajuwon (C)	Nigeria	Houston Rockets	Houston
2	Sam Bowie (C)	United States	Portland Trail Blazers	Kentucky
3	Michael Jordan (SG)	United States	Chicago Bulls	North Carolina

Also drafted that year were Charles Barkley, Kevin Willis, John Stockton, etc.  I can understand an NBA team misjudging Hakeem Olajuwon’s talent as slightly better then Jordan’s right out of college, this can be difficult.  However, Sam Bowie was never even an all star and in a pick up game I’d much rather have any of the people mentioned above.  Until now, I thought the Bucks drafting Robert “Tractor” Traylor over Dirk Nowitzki (and Paul Pierce) was a huge deal.  According to Sport Illustrated, Sam Bowie was the worst draft selection in the history of the NBA.  Personally, I would have much rather been told “at least you didn’t draft Sam Bowie” when something bad happened growing up, instead of “even Michael Jordan got cut from his High School Basketball team.”

A few Jordan videos that I used to love growing up:

McRib is back, but where did it go?

As I wake up very disoriented from a White Trash Party last night, I find myself mulling over the mystery that is the McDonald’s McRib. Every year, around the same time that Brett Favre begins to contemplate retiring, triumphantly returning to training camp, and then retiring again, McDonald’s announces seemingly the most significant press release in fast food history – McRib is back! However, every year this raises two questions in my mind. “Where the hell did it go?” and secondly, “Who gives a shit?” There may be people out there that get excited about a fake meet sandwich once again being available for a limited time, but I don’t know any of them. McDonald’s ad campaign for next football season should be something along the lines of “McRib is back for the 20th football season in a row and it will be available until the public once again realizes in a few weeks that this isn’t even a big deal. At which time the McRib will quietly disappear until next football season.” I bet the original ad campaign for McRib included “McRib is back” before it was even discontinued.

Climbing the ladder

During our road trip to Colorado this summer the conversation pretty much covered the bases of everything from The Office, to disgusting things that we had only heard about but never tried, and even dating.  One thing that Jake brought up was Ladder Theory (the website is way more elaborate than I expected).  It’s pretty freaking hilarious though and surprisingly accurate…for the most part.  The guy who came up with it must either really hate women or is unemployed with a lot of free time.
The basic concept is that girls have two different social ladders for which they classify guys that they meet.  On one ladder they place guys that they are solely interested in being friends with and on the other ladder they place guys who they’re actually interested in.  Then it claims that unlike women, guys have only one ladder and they place every girl they ever meet on the same ladder.  For example, if a guy meets a girl and finds her uglier than Michael Jackson in a dress, she would be pretty much at the bottom and a girl who is able to turn heads in a gay bar would probably be close to the top.  I found the funniest diagrams to be the one to the right, showing how if a guy tries to jump from the friendship ladder to the real ladder he either successfully reaches the real ladder (which is very rare) or he ruins everything and falls into the relationship abyss, from which there is no turning back.  Hilarious.
Some of my favorite quotes from the website were:

• “There are some interests you can show in a woman that will help you to f* her: a healthy interest in destroying her self-esteem and in f*ing her friends more than her seem to work wonders. Note that the following topics of disinterest have been field tested and shown conclusively not to work: Unix, literature, poetry, international politics, and sodomy.”
• “problems can be avoided by declaring as soon as possible to a girl that you will not be friends under any circumstances…”
• “A lot of people have asked about the significant others of friends and if they are special cases of the Ladder. They are not. These are not your friends. These are virtual friends.”
• “A note for guys: if your friends girl offers you a piece you should hit that shit, because he shouldn’t be laying up with no ho. Ideally you should tape it also, because most guys will believe the person they’re f*ing.”
• It also listed a great quote from Dave Chappelle: “A woman’s test is material. A man’s test is a woman…if a man could f* in a cardboard box, he wouldn’t buy a house.”

There’s also an article about Ladder Theory on Wikipedia.  I guess you could say it’s kind of a big deal (except the article lacks any real citations).