Shailesh’s Ergodic Life

Note: Someone just pointed out to me that my proposal actually violates NCAA rules.  The NCAA rule for holding a conference championship game is that the conference must be split into 2 divisions of at least 6 teams apiece where all teams will play each other within  each division.  This make my proposal a moot point, but I’m leaving it up as an interesting idea nonetheless.  Here is the actual NCAA rule:

Rule 17.9.5.2 Annual Exemptions. [FBS/FCS] The maximum number of football contests shall exclude the following:

(c) Twelve-Member Conference Championship Game. [FBS/FCS] A conference championship game between division champions of a member conference of 12 or more institutions that is divided into two divisions (of six or more institutions each), each of which conducts round-robin, regular-season competition among the members of that division;

With Nebraska moving to the Big Ten next year, there is a lot of talk about how to restructure the league to add a championship game. The controversy around all of this revolves around the Ohio State – Michigan rivalry. There are a lot of great rivalries in the Big Ten, but that one has pretty much defined its football history, and any sort of proposal will likely impair the historic importance of this regular season match-up.

Most of the divisional proposals follow two general ideas:

1) Keep Michigan and Ohio State in the same division: This option allows the two schools to pretty much maintain their rivalry and the weekend on which its played. The downside is that this division is likely to be much stronger than the opposing division. This is bad for the other four teams in that division and its bad for the Big Ten, who will end up with a few anti-climactic championship games.

2) Put Michigan and Ohio State in seperate divisions: An Ohio State – Michigan rematch in the conference championship game would be epic, but I’m not sure its something the schools would want to go through. This option might also cause ‘The Game’ to be moved from its traditional November date to early to mid October. The league would do this to reduce the impact of teams playing back-to-back games with the same opponent.

There is one more caveat to this plan, and I’m surprised it hasn’t been addressed anywhere else. Putting the two schools in different divisions will force the league to create one ‘dedicated’ opponent from the opposite division. This means each school would play the 5 teams in its division, its dedicated opponent and then rotate the remaining two conference games amongst the 5 teams in the opposite division. Teams would literally go years without playing each other — this hurts conference identity. To the Big Ten’s credit the league reportedly plans to go to 9 conference games as soon as possible, which will alleviate this problem almost completely.

I’m not a big fan of the division system to begin with. Splitting teams into divisions creates three problems. The first is addressed above, where teams in opposite divisions get relatively few opportunities to play each other. The second is that it hurts the conference brand. How often do you hear people talking about the strength of the Big XII south, as opposed to that of the whole conference? Splitting a conference into divisions really just creates two mini-conferences.

The final reason is that creating arbitrary conferences can lead to anti-climactic championships. In 2008, Texas, Texas Tech and Oklahoma all finished with 7-1 conference records, but being in the same division, only one had the opportunity to play Missouri in the conference championship. 4 of the 6 teams in the Big XII south were ranked ahead of Mizzou. Oklahoma eventually played and beat them, 62-21.

When the ACC expanded to twelve teams, they essentially hand picked the divisional alignment to guarantee a Miami – Florida State match-up — which has yet to happen. The romantic notion of a stadium split down the middle with people wearing Maize and Scarlett is very nice, but in the modern era of college football, its not enough to drive a decision like this. Ohio State was uncharacteristically bad during much of the late 90s. Michigan’s recent struggles are almost epic. For that reason, I offer the following solution:

1. Keep the two guaranteed opponents as-is. Amend it only so that Nebraska gets guaranteed games against Iowa and Wisconsin. Remove Iowa and Wisconsin’s guaranteed game to compensate.
2. Play a regular 8- (or 9-) game conference schedule.
3. Play 1 versus 2 in the championship. A lot of times this *WILL* be Ohio State versus Michigan. But sometimes it won’t. And if its not, it’ll be some other team(s) that deserve it that season.

I know the arguments against this. The NFL doesn’t work this way and despite some incredible lopsided conferences in recent past (the AFC recently, the NFC in the 80s/90s), its hasn’t hurt the aura of the Super Bowl. No offense — but the Big Ten championship isn’t the Super Bowl. Plus having 16-teams conferences largely mitigates the chances of a truly horrible match-up. You don’t want to use a model like this in the league that is historically known for its disparity (remember the Big 2 and the Little 8?).

I went through the last ten years of Big Ten play, and here is what the match-ups would’ve been for a championship determined this way:

• 2000: Michigan, Purdue and Northwestern each finished 6-2 in Big Ten play. Since Michigan lost to both other schools, the championship would pit Purdue against Northwestern.
• 2001: 7-1 Illinois would attempt to get revenge on their only loss of the season, against 6-2 Michigan.
• 2002: Ohio State and Iowa each finished 8-0 in Big Ten play, but didn’t play each other. The would finally meet in the Big Ten championship game
• 2003: 7-1 Michigan would rematch 6-2 Ohio State in a chance for OSU to get revenge on the previous week’s loss in Ann Arbor.
• 2004: 7-1 Iowa gets an opportunity to avenge their only loss against 7-1 Michigan.
• 2005: 7-1 Ohio State plays 7-1 Penn State
• 2006: 8-0 Ohio State plays 7-1 Michigan, whose only loss came just the week before against the Buckeyes. A Michigan win puts them back in the National Title hunt.
• 2007: 7-1 Ohio State plays 6-2 Michigan. A Michigan win would knock Ohio State out of the National Championship picture.
• 2008: 7-1 Penn State battles 7-1 Ohio State.
• 2009: 7-1 Ohio State faces 6-2 Iowa

Overall, these are all match-ups I’d like to watch, and they’re all better than the Oklahoma-Mizzou game in 2008.

“Where are you from?”

I was getting my hair cut at SuperCuts on Saturday when the nice Syrian lady cutting my hair innocuously asked me that question. It’s one I often hear, and yet it’s surprisingly difficult to answer.

If you don’t know what I mean, consider the context. I was born in Maryland, I’m most recently from Michigan and currently live in the Chicago suburbs. When, I’m traveling, I think that ‘Chicago’ is a sufficient answer to get to the meat of what the other person wants to know. When I’m not traveling, though, the question is a little bit different. I don’t think any of the three answers above are sufficient for what the other person wants to know. Now, throw in the fact that most white people getting a haircut don’t typically get asked where they are from (barring a thick accent), and I think you get the true gist why I’m being asked that question.

Before I get anyone upset, this isn’t a rant about people’s racial attitudes –I’ve been asked this question many times and it’s always been purely out of curiosity. In fact, I take the question as something as a compliment because a) the other person is genuinely interested in my heritage; and b) it’s a conversation starter. I once spent an entire haircut (I know … what’s up with haircuts?) listening to an Iraqi woman tell me about growing up in Baghdad. On another occasion, a townie in a bar in Hazel Park, Michigan, had me translate a few nicknames his coworker had for their boss. (For the record, their boss was not a very popular guy).

Even though I’m not offended by the question, it’s always a little bit awkward trying to answer it. I could go with Washington DC, Detroit or Chicago, but then you create the awkward situation where the other person is trying to politely force the question while I’m not even that offended by what they really want to ask.

They really want to know where my parents lived before they came to the US (i.e.: my ethnicity), but they are typically too afraid to ask. But how do I answer the question “Where are you from?” by talking about your parents?

I had a friend (also of Indian descent) who has lived all over the world (and the United States), and he used to have fun with the question just to get on people’s nerves:

Innocent Asker: “Where are you from?”
Friend: “Washington DC”
IA: “No … I mean before that.”
F: “San Diego”
IA: “No that’s not what I mean”
F: “Arizona? Cincinnati? Taiwan? Dallas?”
IA: “No where were you born?”
F: “Maryland”
IA: “No where are your parents from?”
F: “India”

Sadly, I’m getting to the point where I could start playing this game too …

For the record, I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’ve prepared a canned answer to the question, just to avoid frustrating my conversation-mate: “I was born in Maryland, but my parents moved here from India.” This answers the question they asked, and gives them the actual response they were looking for.

But maybe, just maybe, I should answer with this: “Well I currently live in the Chicago suburbs, but prior to that I lived in Detroit and Champaign, IL for some time, with shorter stints in Saint Louis, and Austin, Texas, although I was born and lived in the Washington DC suburbs in Maryland through high school, which is where my parents moved to after they came here from India, except for the year my Dad lived in Ohio.”

That wouldn’t confuse anybody.

I’ve been bad about finishing this series because of the sheer workload at Kellogg, but its almost completely appropriate for me to write this post today. I am now one quarter into my Kellogg experience and the obvious question is, “What’s your plan?”

I’m somewhat proud to admit that I purposefully came into Kellogg not having a clear plan of what I wanted to do. As an undergrad, I was the complete opposite, and I ended up realizing that I took certain classes way before I was mature enough to appreciate the material. I did well in my classes, but I could’ve gotten so much more out of them.

So I purposely entered Kellogg with a general idea of my life’s plans, but in general, I’ve picked activities on whims and personal passions. I know I love technology, so I got involved with the hi-tech club and I think I’d love to end up in a strategy / product management role at a high-tech company. I’ve always secretly dreamed of building the next great hearing aid, so I’m trying to keep medical devices as an option. Finally, I’m a little bit geographically sensitive. I definitely want to stay in the midwest or move back east, so I’m trying to look at industries that have geographic freedom (consulting comes to mind).

In my application essays, I also talked about wanting to have more of a social impact in my life (everyone does). But I really took it to heart and I ended up volunteering as a tutor in the Chicago Communities in Schools program, and I joined the Educational Consulting Initiative, which works with Chicago Public Schools to help their operational issues. Finally, yes, I am going to Zambia in March, where I will be a part of Northwestern University’s Global Health Initiative (a program focused on helping African countries diagnose AIDS more quickly).

Ultimately, there are many choices in coursework and so many different career paths at Kellogg, but the access to great experiences is what really makes this place special.

Now back to my usual blogging.

This is the second part of my three-part series on some recent changes in my life.

After my first post, I think most people’s follow-up question is very obvious. I moved to Detroit for my dream job and I ultimately fell in love with the place where I lived, so it seems incredible counter-intuitive to suddenly want to leave after 3.5 years, so I think its begs the question: Why did I choose to leave?

I always knew in the back of my mind that I might want to do an MBA one day, and as the summer of 2008 rolled around, I also started to realize that I was at the right time of my life and career to start looking at the option. There were really two distinct things I wanted out of my MBA:

First, I wanted to be be more of a generalist in my field. At Bose, I was something of a specialist. Yes, I worked with a number of customers, and with tons of different functions, but ultimately, a systems engineer’s biggest value was his the ability to tune audio in cars. I will say that Bose is really good about realizing this and giving systems engineers the freedom to pursue interesting projects, but on the same token, if there is a particularly drab project that needs an extra engineer, there are only a handful of people that can fill in. Ultimately I felt like an MBA was the only way to give myself a more generalist area of expertise

Second, I also wanted an avenue to get more involved with my community. Going back to my post about Detroit, one thing that really struck me was how much people in southeast Michigan really love southeast Michigan. I never participated in a lot of community work, but I kept an eye on a number of grass-roots non-profits that operated within the area. One that struck in particular was a group called the Detroit Blight Busters, who sole mission was to organize and clean up blight in the streets of Detroit. One of my friends from Toastmasters, was the founder of a group called LandChoices, a group that promotes responsible use of land in building new subdivisions.

Even though I haven’t given a lot back to the community, I’m a very strong believer in people looking out for their own communities (I guess that makes me a hypocrite). Already at Kellogg, I’ve gotten involved with a school tutoring program with one of the worse-off areas of the city, and I’m hoping to go to Zambia to work with AIDS patients as part of the Global Health Initiative.

I haven’t found the case for which I’m really passionate just yet, but when I do, I want to be able to contribute all that I can. I think Kellogg has some unique opportunities to raise my exposure to the real issues in the world, and until I find my true passion, I can at least help others’ contribute to theirs.

As I realized that I really wanted an MBA, a few realizations jumped out at me. The only major part-time program that was local to me was at the University of Michigan, and enrolling would involved surviving a hellish evening commute, curtailing my work travel, and possibly trading away certain opportunities at Bose, because they might involve moving to Boston. Second, at 28, if I really wanted to do an MBA, I realized that it wasn’t worth 2 years of my life just to get any MBA, so I only applied to very highly-ranked schools. (Some of you know my rants about school rankings, so I guess that makes me a twofold-hypocrite). I picked four schools that I really liked and after learning about the schools, I secretly really hoped that either Michigan or Northwestern would work out for me. Ultimately Northwestern did, and that’s how I ended up at the Kellogg School of Management.

I’ve had some pretty major life changes recently and I wanted to reflect before I wrote about them. That’s why this blog has been inactive for the past three months. But now that the reflection is over, I’ve turned my thoughts into a three-part series — today will be part 1.

So what’s happened? In March, I was accepted to the MMM program at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Kellogg has a top-notch MBA program, so taking the opportunity was a no-brainer, but it also meant I’d be leaving Detroit; a city I’ve grown to love.

So let’s start at the basics: an outsider’s thoughts on Detroit.

When I tell my classmates that I moved to Chicago from Detroit, I usually get the follow-up question, “So what’s Detroit really like?”

I think most of you know about Detroit’s problems and if you dont, Time Magazine is about to make sure you do. Instead I want to talk about my personal experience living in the Detroit suburbs.

Detroit has a unique culture to it that you can only really experience if you meet somebody who really loves the city. I think that’s what made my experience so incredibly positive. I met a lot of people who genuinely loved their hometown and that let me experience some of the more special parts of the city. When I found out I was leaving, I actually made a list of things I still wanted to see, and went on a six-month mission to do it all (I didn’t). What really shocked me was that there were many things my Detroit-native friends had never even seen — and they were just as excited to see them with me.

My biggest disappointment about Detroit is that the racial politics of the city are so bad that a lot of Detroit suburbanites have no idea about parts of their their native city. I remember one weekend this summer when I went to see the Heidelberg Project and Eastern Market with my friends Stacey and Michele. On Monday morning I was sharing my weekend stories with a coworker who’d spent almost all his life in Detroit. Sadly, he’d never been to either and didn’t even seem interested in what I was telling him. There is a very palpable tension between residents of the city and residents of the suburbs, and the two sides pretty much fall on racial lines. Many suburbanites remain very skeptical and almost above anything in the city (except three of the four pro sports teams), and city residents remain incredibly mistrustful of suburbanites. Sadly, Detroit’s politicians play off this this to remain in power.

Despite all of this, I really met some great people in southeast Michigan and I think that is my biggest attachment to the area. Not long after I found out I was leaving, I ran into a casual acquaintance who not only already knew I was leaving, but seemed genuinely sad about my departure and even made it a point to spend time with me in my last week there. It seemed like no matter where I went in and around southeast Michigan, I met a lot of really friendly people.

I won’t lie that when I moved to Michigan in 2006, I had a very different image of life in southeast Michigan, and I couldn’t be more wrong.

I guess there are a few conclusions I can make from my Detroit experience: A) There are unique things to find in every city you’ll live in — go find them; B) Ultimately it’s people you get attached to, not cities; C) If the economy allows for it, I’ll move back in a heartbeat.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock or taping a season of Survivor, I’m sure you’re well aware that last Thursday, the world lost quite possibly the most famous musical entertainer ever — Michael Jackson.

I’m sure somebody will comment about the quality of his music and name some other acts that were much better, but I will go out on a limb and say there was not a single person who was a bigger international celebrity than Michael Jackson.

But this isn’t a blog entry about his music, his level of fame, or what did or didn’t happen in the Neverland ranch. This is a blog entry about the ensuing media coverage.

In the past weeks, I’ve found every person who barely knew him give their take about his private life. I’ve seen “never before seen private pictures of the Jackson family.” I’ve heard various experts give their take on what concoction of prescription drugs he may have been on. (Geez, wait for the autopsy!)

I won’t beat around the bush. I think our obsession with celebrities is ridiculous. When I bring things like this us, someone is usually quick to rebut with an argument similar to this: Boo-hoo! I make millions of dollars a year and I have to have a few people with cameras follow me around.

I guess my argument isn’t that I necessarily feel bad for the celebrities. Its more a question of “Why do you care about them so much?” How meaningless is your life, that you are this obsessed with Angelina’s new baby, or Britney’s latest antics, or whether Lindsay Lohan is secretly a lesbian?

A few years ago, the likes of TMZ and Perez Hilton gave us a front-row seat into watching Britney Spears devolve into some serious problems triggered by her bipolar condition. Some of us went off the deep end with our sympathy, like this person. Some of us, like me, probably felt a little bad for her, but were mostly indifferent. Some of us took some happiness in seeing a teen pop princess finally, “get hers.”

I guess this blog entry is aimed at that last group. How meaningless and empty is your life that you actually get pleasure out of seeing the suffering of some random person? If you really think Britney and Michael and Paris make a mockery of people with real talent, then you should just stop paying attention to them and they’ll go away. But then you’d have to obsess about your own unhappy life.

If you started college in the 90s then you surely remember the old UNIX email accounts the university gave you. You’d login to your server with telnet and use pine to check your email, and it was all text-based.

If you were also part of a tiny secret society, you also dutifully updated your ‘.plan’ file. The ‘.plan’ file was a text file in your main directory where you’d add a personal message and maybe even a message for a few of your friends. You’d also check your friends’ ‘.plan’ files with the ‘finger’ command. For instance, my email address was ingale@students.uiuc.edu, so another person could potentially read my ‘.plan’ file by typing ‘finger ingale’.

(You can read more about the ‘.plan’ file here.)

A sample ‘.plan’ file might look like this:

Man, what a crazy weekend. At least the Redskins won on Sunday!

jkorb: Thanks for the email. I’ll check it out!

klong: I know! I have no idea what he was thinking. Someone’s got a lot of explaining to do.

Aside from the obvious jokes about fingering each other, the ‘.plan’ files also let us keep in touch and meet new people. I could see a new person’s email address referenced in a ‘.plan’ file and start reading their ‘.plan’ file too.

By my last year of grad school, the dream was all but over. The University removed the old UNIX accounts and switched everybody over to a webmail system, and we could no longer check each other’s ‘.plan’ files.

But a new hope emerged. In the summer of 2004, I created my facebook account. Back then it was limited solely to connect with people at your own university. Eventually it expanded so that I could connect with people from other universities and ultimately, with anybody who created an account.

A few years later Facebook added the ability to update one’s status and let others comment on it. Suddenly, the ‘.plan’ culture from years ago and alive and stronger than ever.

I’m going to spend this blog entry complaining about something that’s really been bothering me lately. Go to a bar or a restaurant on a typical Friday night and you’ll notice a new trend that’s starting to take hold. You’ll see groups of people sitting together, but each buried in their own mobile devices. Here’s a list of things they’re doing:

- Texting all of their friends who aren’t there to tell them how much “fun” they’re having
- Updating their facebook status so all their acquaintances know how much “fun” their having
- Taking way too many pictures to document all the “fun” their having.

To be even more fair, I’ll even openly admit that I’ve been the very person I’m complaining about and I usually wake up the next morning wondering why the evening sucked so much in hindsight.

Its really quite depressing. People will sit at their table and spend more time talking to people who aren’t there than they will with the people who are sitting right across from them. Just to be fair, I was out last night, and here was the extent of my conversations with friends I wasn’t out with:

- Trevor texted me to tell me he was drinking with a guy who knew me. I told him to say hi for me.
- Tom texted me to show me his seats at the White Sox game and asked me if I wanted to come to Chicago in July to see the Sox and the Orioles. I told him to have a good time and passed on the O’s series.
- I checked the Orioles score. They weren’t playing until later.

Just think, it was only ten years or so ago that people had to go out to bars and actually had to bear the brunt of enjoying the company of the people they were out with.

So here’s my challenge to you: Keep the mobile device in your pocket/purse, and try to enjoy the company of the people you’re out with. Start trying to live your life, and stop trying to document how awesome it is.

If you want to spend your evening texting somebody who is not around, do yourself and me a favor, and just stay in. Its much cheaper.

I wish I could take credit for the originality of this, but I’ve read a number of blog entries and internet articles that have made me realize what bugs me so much about this trend. I’m going to share a few links below to (hopefully) talk some sense into you:

David Wygant’s Dating Blog has a take on the subject: http://www.davidwygant.com/blog/stop-texting-a-friend-who-isnt-there/

Ted.com has a podcast on the topic.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/renny_gleeson_on_antisocial_phone_tricks.html

The Onion has a humorous take on the phenomenon:
http://www.theonion.com/content/video/police_slog_through_40_000

Yesterday I tuned my TV to CBC to watch the Red Wings game since I don’t get the Versus network. It turns out the game wasn’t on, but this post isn’t about that.

I hadn’t bothered to change the channel since last night, so I watched the Windsor, Canada news while I cleaned my apartment this evening. Anyways, they had a story about the swine flu but what really impressed me was the end of the story. When they cut back to the anchor, she finished the story with this (I’m paraphrasing):

“Just to keep things in perspective for our viewers, there are over 9000 Canadian deaths each year from other types of the flu.”

For a second I was really impressed. Then I remembered that I was watching Canadian TV.

After every Toastmaster’s meeting we all head to 220’s, which is probably the most low-key bar in Birmingham, MI.  For any non-Michigander readers, let me translate:  It’s still way nicer than most of the bars where I would typically spend my time.

Anyways, around 10:30 tonight, we were getting ready to leave and the only people left from our group were Jeff, Ralph, Stuart, Sheila and myself.  Jeff was telling us about the recent division contest, when I got distracted and started staring and some guy chugging a beer just over Jeff’s left shoulder.  I’m not 100% sure about what originally caught my attention, but it dawned on me quickly when the guy finished chugging the beer, picked up all of the dishes on the table, and took them to the kitchen.

Let me clarify: One of the servers at 220’s was apparently having a rough night and was gettin’ his drink on with a half-finished beer that belonged to a departed customer.  I had just seen this happen with my own eyes, but I was having trouble believing myself.  I turned to Sheila, on my right and I asked her if she’d just seen what I saw and she replied that she had.  Then I started laughing hysterically.

Jeff is one of the best storytellers I know and as a speaker, he can pretty much phase out any distraction you give him.  Even he stopped talking when I started laughing, though, because he thought I was laughing at him.

I had to explain the story to everyone at that point, and luckily Sheila had also seen the whole thing.  This was good because otherwise, I seriously would’ve thought that I’d imagined the whole thing.

And to think, if we’d left just five minutes earlier like we’d been trying, we would’ve missed the whole spectacle.