The Shailesh-tival

It was August, 1998. I was about a week and a half from beginning my freshman year of college. Ninad and I went to Redskins training camp for fan appreciation day.

We were sitting in the bleachers at Frostburg St. when one of the Redskins came over and stretched out near the fans. I went over to take a picture.

“What do you know about Illinois,” he asked me, commenting on my Illini hat.

“Oh nothing really, I’m starting school there in a couple of weeks.”

“You know … I went to Illinois,” he said. “What are you studying.”

“Electrical Engineering.”

“Then that’s the place to be.”

The player in question was Scott Turner. He was cut from the team that training camp, but he continued to have a successful career with the San Diego Chargers, and spent another year with the Denver Broncos.

Anyways, as it turns out he’s running for congress in San Diego and FightingIllini.com has an article about him.

He also has his own campaign website, at http://www.turnerforcongress.com/.

Anyways, it’s kind of a pointless story, but I thought it was pretty cool. Especially, since he seemed like a pretty decent guy the one time I met him.

As a sidenote, I tried to take a picture of the Redskins third string quarterback too. Right as I took the picture, an ambulance drove by right behind him and he gave me a little grief for jinxing his career. Later that season, starter Gus Frerotte got injured and that 3rd stringer became the starter.

That third stringer was Trent Green, who started for the Rams for a year, and has started every game for the Chiefs the past 5 seasons. So much for me jinxing him …

I haven’t posted in a while, but here is what is new:

I got a new job in the suburbs of Detroit, MI. I am working for Bose Corporation. I am an audio systems engineer, and what I do is tune sound systems for new cars. This is very similar to the type of work I did in college and grad school, so I am very excited about the opportunity to learn a ton of new things.

My last day at Anheuser-Busch was on 1/20, and my first day at Bose was 1/30. In the middle, I went to Chicago once, and stayed in Champaign for a few days to visit professors and friends.

I have been at my new job for a week and I absolutely love it. I am geniunely amazed by some of the tools that Bose has developed to build new sound systems, and I am very excited to learn even more.

In Wednesday’s Washington Post, Steven Pearlstein writes about how government subsidies are actually causing certain industries to increase prices much faster than the economy as a whole (article available here. Specifically, he cites three industries: housing, higher education and health care.

The problem here is two-fold. Read the rest of this entry →