Sphere Magnet Creations

I recently bought a set of 6mm spheres magnets (their 3mm counterparts are commercially known as "Buckyballs") and they are SO fun to play with. You can make an infinite number of different shapes and even mechanical wonders (I'll post soon about the Infinite Loop I invented!) and simply moving the magnets around in your hands is pretty awesome.

In addition to the many shapes already out there, I started to document molecular-like structures. They are quite challenging to make (I haven't been able to do some of them a second time!), but the resulting structures are sturdy and awesome looking. Click the image below to see my Sphere Magnet Creations!

Why you should use Google Docs instead of attachments for email forwards

I personally find email forwards quite annoying. They clutter your inbox with stuff you probably don't want and they most often than not expose your email address to a bunch of strangers (unless of course, the sender uses the BCC field). Besides, who wants all that pressure of having to resend it to all your contacts or you'll have 7 years of bad luck? Certainly not me.

Amazingly, people still find an uncanny need to exercise their right to spam. And I must confess than even I find myself doing it every once in a while. But when I do, I follow certain practices that make it less annoying and more useful:

• Do it very sporadically. If your readers really want to receive a weekly email on the latest funny videos, they can always subscribe to a mailing list, where they have control. The only way to control a trigger-happy spammer is to use filters, and no one wants to resort to filtering friends.
• Please, OH PLEASE, use Blind Carbon Copy. There are only a few cases when the BCC field is a must, and email forwards are definitely one of those. If you don't use BCC (and just paste a long list of emails in the TO or CC fields), you immediately expose your recipients addresses to spammers, hackers and crackers all over the world.
• And, something I discovered recently (and the topic of this post), use Google Docs instead of attaching files to the email. Why? I'm so glad you asked...

In addition to the obvious advantages of using Google Docs (such as real-time collaboration, online backup, universal access, etc), there is one final one that makes a compelling point when used for email forwards. To explain this final advantage, I must first elaborate a bit on what happens when you attach a file to an email.

You start with a file sitting on your computer (which you got from somewhere else, but lets assume you created it, for the sake of this example). You decide it is so awesome, you must share it with your family and friends, or maybe even the world (if you are tech savvy, this should immediately suggest collaboration, and hence, Google Docs, but read on anyhow). So, you write a short message, add all your recipients' addresses (in the BCC field!) and attach your file.

The first thing that happens is that your file is uploaded to your email provider server (be it Gmail, Yahoo Mail or your corporate email server), so that's copy number 2 of the original file. Then, when you click Send, a new copy of the file is created for each recipient (lets say you sent it to 30 people) and sent over to their email provider, to be stored there until it is retrieved. So, we already have 32 copies of the same file, sitting at various places around the World Wide Web.

But that's not all. When your recipients actually read the message and retrieve the file to view it, yet another copy is made, this time to download the file to the recipient's computer and open it to view it. Assuming all your recipients want to see what you sent, that means another 30 copies of the same file! We've already created 62 redundant copies of the file, and this has just begun. Every time one of your recipients believes what you sent is worth forwarding along, the process continues, creating copies of the same file over and over again. Once this begins, there's no stopping the storage waste chain reaction.

You may think its harmless, but how many people's desktops (and computers in general) are absolutely cluttered with downloaded files they received as attachments? So, on top of the monetary cost, there is also the waste of time cleaning up the mess all those downloaded files cause. And I haven't even touched the security issues (the file may be infected with a harmful virus which you are helping propagate!).

If instead of attaching the file (which, seriously, is so 1997) you opt to embrace cloud computing and upload your file to Google Docs, the story is very different. You only make ONE copy of the file, which is stored in Google's servers for anyone you share it with to see. Think of it as sending a link to YouTube instead of actually attaching the video as part of the message.

You can also do much more if you use Google Docs instead of attaching the file. Say you want to get names together for some poll. If you tell people to add their name to the message and resend, you never have the full list of names (think about it). Instead, you can create a public doc and tell people to add their name to that document, and THEN you have a full list of names (plus, you may do this very elegantly with Google Forms!).

I could keep rambling on all the advantages of using Google Docs and different things you can do with it, but I'm veering off track already. The point I wanted to make was that Google Docs is a much better alternative to sending attached files in general, but its kind of hard to not get carried away with all the other advantages it gives!

Update: As a smart reader pointed out, you cannot send blind invitations directly from Google Docs. You can, however, get the link to share (from the Share button) and paste that into a regular email, which you can then send with BCC. Of course, your document must be public for this to work, but only the people who know the URL will be able to see the document.

Twitter overloaded with claims of Michael Jackson's Death

Just minutes after Michael Jackson, the king of Pop, was announced to be rushed to the hospital after a serious heart attack, Tweets with the term "Michael Jackson" flooded the popular social network. Within half an hour, these messages comprised 22% of all the traffic on Twitter, the highest peak most of us have seen for any given trend. Obviously, the huge and sudden load increase has crippled the Twitter servers, since the "Try again later" message is being frequently displayed at the Twitter homepage.

I'm pretty sure some Tweeting record is about to be broken.

Update: The Michael Jackson trend peaked at 22.61%, 3 hours after it started. This makes the "Breaking News!" banner in the TV, 9 hours later, seem completely pointless and stale.

Is Andrés Missing In Action?

If you have been following my blog, you probably have noticed that it has been kind of slow lately. This does not mean that I have ran out of ideas or that my enthusiasm is melting away, rather, this is merely a result of me selling my computer.

Since every engineer at Google gets a desktop and a laptop, I decided to sell my 1st Gen MacBook Pro. It was about time to renew it anyway. So, I have joined the ranks of the computer-less. Luckily, I have access to my wife's laptop, but most of that time is used for wedding, honey moon or other time-critical issues.

So, I apologize to my faithful readers if they have been waiting for my next story. I already have a few drafts I want to finish, and I promise I'll work on them as soon as I get my Google laptop and have some spare time.

In the mean time, if you would like to stay up-to-date on the happenings of my life, you can subscribe to my Twitter feed. I tweet frequently, as I can do it from my iPhone.

Gotta go. My wife wants her computer back.

Gimping out my Facebook profile pic

I love this picture my wife took in our first visit to the Googleplex. Still, it bothered me that the bottom of the sign showed some pretty visible wear and tear. So, what to do? I simply downloaded the latest version of Gimp, played around with the Clone Stamp a bit, and below is the result.

Google Docs it is!

Just came back from a very nice tour of the Googleplex and my recruiter broke the news to me: I'll be working in the Google Docs team! I'm very excited to be working on a product I use (and love) so much. I already have a few improvements in mind...

First visit to the Googleplex!

Yesterday, my wife and me visited the Googleplex for the first time. I'm still not an official employee (my start date is 04/20), but we still managed to walk around and take some pics. Click the image below to see them!

The "mobile post" label

As I started to publish more and more posts from my iPhone, I realized that I wanted to keep track of which these were. So, I've created the "mobile post" label, with which I'll mark any post I publish from my phone.

The "Googley" Way

It's awesome how Google has become not only a verb now, but also an attitude.

All the tourist guides and books in the Google corporate housing have this label:

Be Googley...
Leave This For The Next Guest.
Thanks!

I guess we should all be a little Googley.

Humans and our fight against nature

Every life form on the planet affects its surroundings. Birds pick up twigs to form nests; ants dig the earth to build incredible underground cities; orangutans make trails between trees after walking them for years. And humans are no different. We transform our environment to fit our needs. We build roads and buildings, we turn forests into crops, we make huge underground dumpsters. The difference between us and the rest of the living organisms is that our impact on the environment is harmful. Any other life form's impact of its surroundings can be tracked down to benefit other organisms or even the environment itself. And nature is so well designed that whenever someone is taking a little bit too much of the pie, she gives them a slap in the hand. But again, in this sense, we are different. Or are we?

To understand this concept, we can turn to the most perfectly balanced ecosystem in the planet: the rain forest. Rain forests abide to this balance rule so well that, ironically, they are the most fragile and easiest to destroy by someone who doesn't play by the rules. Namely, us. In the rain forest, no single organism may overpower another. Resources are carefully managed so each may have their place in the sun, but no one may stay there more than what's necessary. This is done in several forms, from competition between species to some pretty fascinating techniques. My favorite is one that I like to call "natural pest control". For every insect in the rain forest, there's a specific and targeted parasite that flourishes when its "assigned" insect is getting out of hand. The parasite is deadly and highly contagious. Ants are so familiar with theirs, that when a fellow ant shows early symptoms, they quarantine it far away from the colony, and let it die where it will hopefully not infect anyone else. This parasite is so well designed, that during the last stages of the infected ant's life, it disorients it and makes it climb as high as possible and tightly grip the tree (or whatever it ended up climbing) with its jaws. The ant dies and its body remains clamped high above the ground. Why? Because shortly after the carrier dies, the parasite grows outwards like an alien plant from a horror movie and then releases its spores into the air. The higher the release, the wider the contaminated area. Smart, huh?

So as soon as an insect starts to thrive a little bit too much for comfort, its parasite arrives to control its population and let the rest of the insects live without this insect affecting them. This is that "fragile balance" we hear about all the time, since we're screwing with it big time. If Mother Nature does not let a single species dominate to protect the rest of them, regardless of whether they are ants or apes, imagine the kind of damage we inflict when we wipe out countless acres of rain forest everyday.

I believe our actions will not go unnoticed. If there is a "natural pest control" for humans, we're asking for it. Or maybe it is already in effect, yet we have managed to overcome it. Since the beginning of our history, we have always relied on tools and technology to fight against nature's power. Cold? Wear a fur. Threatened? Build weapons. Hungry? Grab a Snickers. And this is because without all our clever inventions, we are doomed. We don't have powerful fangs, warm fur or killer stingers. Hell, set a human against a few insects (bees, for example), and we are no match.

So, using our precious tools, we manage to survive. That is, until Mother Nature gets tired of our stubbornness and comes up with a pest control so effective that no human invention may fight it. Don't get me wrong. I'm a Software Engineer and I'm all for technology and science. But we must come to terms with our exploitation of this planet and learn how to live in it without destroying everything else in our path.

This post was inspired by the "Jungles" episode of the Planet Earth documentary series, which I HIGHLY recommend! ... but the one narrated by David Attenborough, unless you want an Aliens feeling to it :-p

Wearing in my new Google-sponsored Visa

So after about 3 hours of my departure by bus from Monterrey, I arrived at the border and got ready to enter the US with my brand new visa. I knew beforehand that the officers at the border are way pickier than the ones at the airports (I guess they deal with tougher crowd), but this guy really made me sweat it.

When I gave him my passport opened on my spankin' new visa, he looked at it skeptically, then looked back at me and said, "So... You've got your documents?" I wasn't expecting that at all. "Um...", I hesitated. "Sure... What do you need?" So he asked: "What do you have?" "Crap", I thought. I had given most of the documents to my wife so she wouldn't have any problems, and I wasn't expecting to have to show anything at the border. I fumbled in my bag and said "I have the offer letter..." and handed it to him.

He read it carefully and started asking typical questions about the job, which then led to "So, you've got a degree in Computer Science or something...", and I proudly replied "Yup", but then "You have your title with you to prove that?" Jay-sus... My title?? I never travel with it, precisely because it has no validity for the US government. That's what the cedula is for, and I handed it to him, but this bozo said "you really need your title. I can't look at this little card and know you have a degree".

So then I started to get a bit frustrated. He obviously had not seen a cedula before, so I explained that I had to get that because my title has no validity for them, and that in all my travels as a TN, they've never asked to see my title. "Well, they have not been doing their jobs right" Son of a... "Does this say your degree?" he asked while holding my cedula up as if it was a Blockbuster membership. "Yes... Right there... Ingeniería en Tecnologías Computacionales. That is Bachelor in Engineering in Computer Science" and then he said "My spanish is not very good, so I can't verify that" Argh! I just stared at him in disbelief and said, trying to keep my temper "The title is a huge and priceless document. I never travel with it and the cedula has always been what proves my degree to CBP officers..." He seemed to notice my frustration and honesty, because he just said "Give me a minute" and he took the cedula and walked away.

A few minutes later, he walked back and said "Seems like I was wrong" and I couldn't help but exclaim "Good!" He said "You've already shown your title at the consulate..." Finally. "Right! They've already verified all this" Duh. That's what the visa is. Rookie. So then we were getting somewhere. He entered my info in the computer, took my picture, but as he was about to stamp my passport, he hesitated and said "Lemme just verify something..." and walked off again.

When he came back, he sighed and said "Bad news". "What?", I asked, trying to hide my nervousness. "My boss uses Yahoo. So you're screwed." I let out a relieved laugh and then he just told me to pay the $6 fee and I was good to go. Ka-ching, stamp, success.

PS. I'm currently about 150 miles from Houston and decided to try out the posting-via-email feature in Blogger. Let's see how it goes.

The Geekiest Marriage Proposal Ever

After thinking for days and brainstorming with my friends about how to pop the question, I finally came up with an idea I was pleased with. It was something she would never see coming, it was very "our type of thing" and it was the biggest proof of love I could do: mess up my Mac for her.

I rearranged the keys of my Mac Book Pro (blacking out most of them) to write:

L O R E ,
   T  Q U I 3 R E Z
     C A S A R
           K 0 N M 1 G o ?

Which is spanish for "Lore, will you marry me?" -- with a few encodings to make up for missing keys.

Read the whole photo-story on this flickr album.

Armed robbery in plain sunlight

It's scary how insecure Monterrey (and Mexico, in general) is becoming.

Yesterday, my fiancee and me were walking from our car to a local print shop, when we noticed that the clerk was signaling us to hurry. We thought he was about to close or something (which seemed odd, since it was about 2:oo pm), but when we got there, he locked the door behind us and said "there's a robbery next door!"

It was then that we noticed that the shop was full of other scared looking customers, and a girl in the corner that was crying inconsolably, yelling "he put the gun to my face!". Seems like the thugs had just left, because about a minute later, another young woman came to the shop with her hands tied. We helped her free her hands, then she said that there was someone else tied back in her shop, so I offered to go with her (everyone else seemed to frightened to do anything).

I told my fiancee to wait there and I grabbed a cutter and went next door, where indeed there was a man on the floor, with his feet and hands tied behind his back. I asked him if he was alright, and he said he was, so I cut his bindings and went back to my fiancee, but then realized that the police had not arrived yet. Thus, I went outside (everyone was still panicked inside the print shop) and started to look for a police officer (the street was very busy, so I would see one eventually).

Sure enough, a few minutes later a police car casually passed by, but when he noticed that I was signaling him to stop, he u-turned and rolled his window down, so I yelled "there has just been a robbery here!" Now I had his attention. He turned on his turrets and started to ask for backup and in a few minutes there were no less than 5 police cars and officers all over the place, asking everyone the same questions and talking on their radios like they meant business.

After listening to everyone's stories, seems like the man I freed was the clerk in the shop and two thugs came in on a truck with guns, tied him up and started loading merchandise. Coincidentally, the shop owner (the young woman that would come to the print shop later) arrived at her business and started demanding answers as to why they were taking the merchandise, to which the robbers declared "the man inside told us". When she went inside, she found herself staring down the barrel of a gun, was tied and thrown in the back with her clerk tied there. The other girl (the one that was crying inside the print shop when we got there), went inside by mistake, looking for her sister (who was in the print shop next door), but the robbers tied her too in case she noticed the robbery and stole her purse while she was there.

In the end they left with the purses of both women, merchandise from the shop and the SUV the owner of the shop came in. The odd thing is that it was a marble stone store, so they loaded their truck with huge, heavy marble tables and figures. Seems to me that it would've been way easier to steal a BMW in a stop light. But that's just me.

I really hope things get better in my home country, because stories like this (and even worse ones) are only getting more and more common to hear.

Google search, meet Random Thoughts

Exactly a week after I submitted my blog to Google's index, it got crawled. This means that Random Thoughts is now part of every Google search, and entering the right query (like ornelas random thoughts or zen bound ornelas) will land you here.

Here are some examples of advanced queries, as suggested by the Google Webmaster Tools:

• site:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Indexed pages
  
• link:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Pages that link to this blog
• cache:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Current cache
  
• info:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Information Google has about this blog
  
• related:randomthoughtsao.blogspot.com: Pages that are similar
  

iPhone App Review: Zen Bound™

Every month or so, I get all excited about a new iPhone app and really get hooked on it. Remember I said that I tend to over express what I like? Well, here I'll do that with said iPhone Apps. This month: Zen Bound™.

Zen Bound™ is a pretty unique game. You could be tempted to say it is a Puzzle game, but it's not really about solving puzzles. It is more of a, well, Zen game. With beautiful graphics and innovative gameplay (which finally makes good use of the iPhone's capabilities), you twist and turn wooden figures to wrap (or better said, bound) them with a rope. As the rope touches the figure, it paints the area it is wrapping. The object of the game is to wrap the figures trying to cover as much area as possible before the rope runs out. Yet it is not about doing it quickly. The only metric is the percentage covered, so you can take your time, backtrack, and make tiny adjustments without any pressure.

Another great quality of this game it that it features an amazing soundtrack. The music blends beautifully with the whole mood of the game, and the creators are so proud of it, that they let their customers download all 11 tracks for free ("Secret Exit" link in the main menu of the game).

In short, Zen Bound™ is a great game with amazing attention to detail and quality, and one of the first to really make good use of the accelerometer and touch screen. It's not a simple port from another console. It was designed for the iPhone. In any other device or console, it simply wouldn't work.

• Graphics: Beautiful lighting effects and renders... 9/10
  
• Sound: Appropriate sound effects and amazing music... 10/10
  
• Gameplay: Incredible rope physics with intuitive controls... 9/10
• Originality: Unique concept born for the iPhone... 10/10
• Overall score: 95

Zen Bound™ site
iTunes store

Birth of a Noogler

Yesterday was my last day working as a Junior Software Developer at PROS.
And I learned that quitting your first job is literally easier said that done. Luckily, I was leaving for my dream job, so I stood firm whenever it got tough. And what is my dream job? Working as a Software Engineer in Test at Google. The funny thing is: I just recently found out it was my dream job. I've always wanted to work at Google, but it took me a year working somewhere else to realize what I really wanted to do once I got there. Perhaps I should start from the beginning...

It was a bright, sunny morning on June 9th, 1984 when... Maybe not that far back. Lets fast forward 22 years...

As I was coursing the 7nth semester of my Computer Science Bachelor (a year and a half before graduating), I decided to apply for a job at Appian, who visited my university to recruit young minds. After an exciting recruiting process (hey, it was my first), I accepted an offer as Technology Associate (whatever that means) starting right after I graduated: January 2008.

It was all good (and indeed, it felt awesome to have a job already more than a year prior to graduating), until a year later, a fateful day in September of 2007. A friend of mine who was also "hired" by Appian called me and let me in some grave news: Appian was doing a company-wide layoff and, of course, we were included. Sure enough, shortly after I received an email (and then a call) from them, confirming my dread:

Dear Arturo,

I regret to inform you that a significant reorganization at Appian has resulted in a number of positions being eliminated. As a result of this, Appian must withdraw its offer of employment to you made on September 26, 2006.

When the VP called me to apologize, I remember asking for the reason of this "reorganization" and he simply replied "We misjudged the growth of the market". As crushed as I was, this tragic event led to two very positive results: The first, and immediate, was that I was being compensated for the trouble; the second, a year later, was that this would land me in Google.

My Appian recruiter, in an attempt (and quite successful) to help us out, starting distributing our resumes with all her contacts. At the same time, I became very active in our university's employment fair, which luckily enough started a week after I was laid off. And thus began the most intense job hunt I'll probably ever do. I interviewed with more than 15 companies, in Monterrey and the U.S., and was thrilled to get a lot of positive response.

In the midst of it all, a recruiter from Google contacted me, inviting me to interview for the position of Software Engineer in Test. My resume had landed on the hands of an ex-Appian employee, who was working at Google at the time. I thought to myself "well, I'm not really that into testing, I'm more of the developer type, but what the hell... it's Google!". So I had the preliminary phone screen, in which I did very well. They contacted me shortly afterward to invite me to some on-site interviews, and that was quite the experience. I happened to go in a Google College Day, so I was interviewed along with dozens of other students, which made the whole interviewing process feel quite industrialized. After some introductory activities, each of us was led to a small room, where we were about to be plummeted with the most challenging interview questions you've ever experienced. A small table, two chairs and a whiteboard. Every 45 minutes or so, a new interviewer would come in with a laptop to frantically take notes while you would try not to look too dumb and solve the given problem at the same time. Their laptops always had that privacy protector thingy, so their screens appeared to be turned off.

The interviews were over and I headed back home with quite an uneasy feeling. I kept thinking: "What have I learned all these years of studying if I could barely answer some of their questions?" And sure enough, a few days later I got a call from my recruiter saying that they didn't find a suitable match for me. Thanks for your time, here is a watch and some peanuts.

I really wanted to work at Google, and I wasn't about to give up, but the intense beating I took during the interviews made me decide to get prepared for at least 3 years before trying that again. So I took the job at PROS and locked my desire to work for Google in my "Do not open until 2011" box.

Now, I don't know (or care) if you believe in the Law of Attraction, but I'm going to tell the story as it developed, and you make your own conclusions.

After almost a year of happily working for PROS (I really was happy, enough to turn down a bunch of invitations from other companies), last Christmas, my brother and his wife gave each of us in the family a piggy bank, in the air of saving some money for a family trip. The relevance to this story is that they decorated each pig with something unique about the person they were giving it to. In my pig, my brother wrote "Güera" (his nickname for me), with the font and colors of the Google logo:

I tend to be over expressive of the things that I really like (as everyone who knows me for more than 5 minutes finds out), so it was easy for him to see Google as something I like so much as to draw it on my pig.

Suddenly, the box where I had locked my desire to work at Google sprung open and loaded my RAM with those feelings again (I warned you I see the mind as a computer).

To rub it in, my sister then gave us each a nice-yet-blank card, for us to write our goals for 2009 and not loose sight of them. The first thing I thought of writing (after my wedding, of course, but that's for another post) was "I want to work at Google". Still, I left it blank.

Like a textbook Law of Attraction story, two weeks later I received the following email:

Hi Arturo!

I am a recruiter at Google and I would like to speak with you about your candidacy with us.

You had interviewed with us in the past , at which time we may not have had a suitable position. I'd like to speak with you about some new developments and a possible career opportunity with us. Please let me know if you are interested in speaking with me.

It would also be great if you could send me an updated resume.

Please call or email me back at your earliest convenience.

Have a great day!

And indeed, a great day it was. I got as excited as the first time they contacted me and was thrilled to have a second chance. I got out the card my sister had given me and wrote with big letters "This year, I want to work at Google".

This time, I wanted to Ace the interviews, so I got into some hardcore studying/practicing the three weeks leading up to the interviews. Another big difference this time around was that I had "customized" interviews. Before, they just got 4 Googlers that were available that day; but now, my recruiter hand picked three people that matched my interests and skills, so I had a much better chance of shinning.

On February 3rd, I was to be interviewed by phone. I felt like I couldn't do better in the first interview, in the second I stumbled a bit but pulled it off, and in the third I did good. So overall, I was very satisfied.

After a grueling waiting period, on February 26, I got a call from my recruiter with the good news: I was being offered the position of Software Engineer in Test at the Googleplex. Remember I said I just recently found out it was my dream job? It turns out that after working for a year, I've realized that what I'm most passionate about is Testing. I most enjoy my job when doing Test Driven Development or adding Unit Test coverage to legacy code. So, I fit the profile for this position much better today than I did the first time I was interviewed. When I asked one of the interviewers "What would be my responsabilities as a Software Engineer in Test?", I was thrilled to find out that everything he said, I loved, and I actually already did on my own at my current job!

And so, all these events lead to me quitting PROS and having the time to start my own blog, while I wait for the Visa documents to arrive in the mail. All because of a small company in Washington D.C. that decided to fire me before I began working with them. It's funny how life makes the most out of crappy situations.

It's "Andrés", not "Andreas"

I've always had trouble with my name. I was born "Arturo Andrés", and went by "Arturo" all my life (except, of course, when my mom middle named me when I did something bad) until I moved to Monterrey. I starting to meet a lot of new people there and when introduced I would say "Arturo Ornelas". The matching o's at the end of my first name and beginning of my last name made people say "sorry?" most of the time. To make matters worse, my last name is not common at all.

So, I evolved to saying "Arturo Andrés Ornelas", to include my middle name and hopefully solve the o's issue. But this was an issue of its own. People always asked afterward "so... how do people call you: Arturo or Andrés?".

This led me to simplify future introductions by saying "My name is Andrés Ornelas". There. It clearly distinguishes from my last name and people know to start calling me "Andrés". Some people seem to love to stick an "a" in my name and call me "Andreas", but that is easily corrected by saying "It's 'Andrés', as in 'undress'". Nobody forgets that. (And it would've been a great pick-up line back in the day, hehe)

Of course, this resulted in yet ANOTHER issue, but this one I can live with. My family, and everyone who met me before 2004, know me as "Arturo". But no biggie. They've learned to deal with it. For the really close and bright people, like my future wife, they can actually switch between "Arturo" and "Andrés" depending on the crowd.

Oh, wait... for my Wedding, will the priest call me "Arturo" or "Andrés"? Crap.

Update: The priest did call me "Andrés", which felt better. Still, several guests thought for a minute that they were at the wrong wedding XD

Welcome

According to The Long Tail, for any product or service, no matter how niche it may be, there is at least one person that is interested in it. Marketing always has tried to segment people into manageable groups, categorizing them with a set of common traits. But in reality, no two people are alike. We may share a few interests, but the complexity of individuality makes it practically impossible for people to be into the same set of things. Even the same person, at different times, has contrasting likes and dislikes!

What is my point, you might ask? My point is that, by picking random notes from my mind bowl (see blog description above), I intend to appeal and be of interest to at least one person out there, if even for a single entry in this blog. You may not find here a plethora of articles that you find interesting altogether, but maybe, along the way, you encounter something that might make you learn, reflect, or even change the way you think.

And if none of that happens, at least you will have a glimpse into my life which, I may be biased, but I find very interesting.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy: Random Thoughts, by Andres Ornelas