No, this isn't what I had for lunch, although it looks awfully good to me. It's the only picture I could find on the Ruth's Chris site that wasn't actually of one of the restaurants. I've eaten at the one in NYC, which I think is every bit as good as Morton's in Chicago, but with smaller portions, so that I don't have to ask for a doggy bag for the remaining half pound of my filet mignon. The image actually represents "fresh meat."

Our new hire started today. Meilin's Chinese, and will probably always have a bit of an accent. She got her bachelors from some university in Beijing, but has masters degrees from Johns Hopkins, and Iowa State, I think (it's definately not University of Iowa, where my dad got his engineering degree). Very bright woman, in her 20s, who actually did some teaching while she was at Johns Hopkins, from which we hired her. She's got an apartment in Jersey City that she managed to find on Craigslist, but her husband is still in Baltimore for the time being.

We'll be getting her up to speed this week on using our proprietary software. She already knows how to use SPSS and SAS. I really only know how to use SPSS manually without programming it to do anything; we mostly use it as a can-opener for converting flat data files into other formats. Fortunately she knows a bit about SQL as well, although she's not an expert in it. We currently only have Access as part of MS Office 2003, but our Utah office has phased out the use of Access there, and has basically told us "get up to speed on SQL, or else." Our network admin was supposed to install MySQL on Meilin's, Gary's, and my machines today, but never got around to it. I'm not against learning to use new database software, but as it is, I'm barely proficient with using Access, so we could use her knowledge.

Meilin and I phoned in a lunch special order at a Thai place on University Pl. They said 15 minutes, which they normally say, so we gave it 15 minutes, then walked over there to pick up our order, and had to wait half an hour once we got there. The restaurant was packed as usual with NYU students, but they were short staffed with some of their employees taking the day off to attend the immigration rally and parade at Union Square, just a few blocks up the street. You can bet that the staff that did show up for work were all immigrants, too. Our food was delicious as always. Meilin loved her Pad Thai.

As far as I'm concerned, the rally/protest/march didn't affect my day very much. The Hispanic guy at my train station newsstand was there, although the NY Post never got delivered, so I had to buy one in Hoboken. Lunch took longer than usual to make it out of the kitchen, but the restaurant was open, and we got our food. I armed Meilin with restaurant menus and told her which places I thought were the best around (Yummy House and Tina on 3rd Ave. for Chinese, Village Mingala for Burmese, L'Annan for Vietnamese, and several places on 6th St. between 1st and 2nd Aves. for Indian--it's called Indian Row for a reason).

The only thing the immigration protest march down Broadway did was hold me up a little crossing the street to get over to the 9th St. PATH station at 6th Ave., so I could get back to the Hoboken train station and catch my evening rush commuter train. Our block had been cordoned off with yellow police tape, but it was easy enough to duck under it, and dash through the stream of people. One young girl who was marching with the others almost plowed into me, but we thankfully avoided a collision. I would have felt really bad if she had bounced off me and landed on the asphalt. The march actually drew a small crowd of people who were outside taking a butt break to watch it go by, but the funniest thing I think is that were probably more immigrants watching the march and not taking part than there were U.S. citizens.

You can bet the ones not participating are legal immigrants, as is Meilin. She thought it was a bit silly, because all her paperwork's in order, and she's only been in the U.S. for about three or four years. The thought of an illegal immigrant wanting what amounts to full citizenship rights was amusing to her. I'm sure it was to Luciana as well (she's Brazilian), who works in another department, but just passed her citizenship test a few weeks ago. Nobody wants immigration shut down; I think most us just want it to be on the up and up and fully legal after following the procedures that others have done.

But people getting up in arms about congress proposing to make illegal immigration a felony instead of a misdemeanor strikes me as odd. You're not a citizen, so you have no voting rights. Taking away a right to vote that you don't have by making it a felony if convicted is sort of irrelevant. I've worked with Poles, Russians, Chinese, a Swede, and a Dane, all of whom were legal, and if they really intended to stay here, followed the proper procedures with green cards, work permits, and sometimes even applying for citizenship. None of them insisted that we speak their language; they all learned English as fast as they could. In fact, Meilin was an English major in China, so she already had a head start when she moved to the U.S. No legal immigrant I've ever worked with questioned the need to learn English. Granted they are all white collar workers, and English is still the lingua franca in the world of business, but Vadmin never groused that I only knew a few words of Russian, and Arkadiusz never complained that I didn't know Polish.

Anyway, enough. I've gone on far too long already, and probably bored you to death by now.