Step 1) In the Airport

As normal, proceed with checking your bags and passing through security and walk casually to your gate for departure. When boarding ensues this is when you wait till 75% of passengers have boarded and then you make your move to board the plane. You must also have atleast two objects in your hand.
As your walking to find your seat, for every center row that has three empty seats, place an object of yours in one of the seats. Usually, I’ll throw my jacket over the seat for the first set I see, then my briefcase on the second set, and finally I occupy the third.

Step 2) Doubt

I know, I know, you’re probably thinking that “What if someone is sitting where you left your jacket or briefcase?” Well, that’s the genius of probability! If 25% of the passengers are left to board the plane, you currently occupy 3 rows of 3 seats, and the gate closes in less than 10 minutes, then your certainty of success is roughly 92%.

For example, Let’s say someone after you gets on the plane and notices your jacket on their seat. This is when you act oblivious to the situation and allow them to innocently remove your jacket and place it on the seat next to them. This is success #1.

Step 3) Success

Now, for every plan you must have redundancy for backup, and as you have probably already noticed, your briefcase has provided this. Success #2.

Then, another passenger enters the plane and occupies the row you are currently standing in, so you kindly walk to the row your briefcase is occupying.. and the airplane door closes. Success #3!
Now that your laying down in a row of three empty seats you can top it off with some ear plugs and a pillow for a First Class Fakegrade across the Atlantic.

Join us for the biggest bash this year as we celebrate some pretty cool people! The honorees of the night think you are pretty cool too, and would love nothing more than for you to join us at this send-off/birthday bash!

Happy Birthday to…

Steven “Shamelessness” Bassett (February 20)

Brian “Platty” Platt (February 28)

Tiffany “Ballcock” Morrison (March 3)

Natasha “Fun-loving, American Hating Commie” Lingurovska (March

This is also Jordan “Italian Cowboy” Randall’s last weekend in Austin before going back to Italy for 2 years, so let’s send him off in style.

We will kick the wild night off at 6:30pm with some fish-fry dinning, birthday cake eating, and pre-downtown drinking at Jordan’s house. There will be plenty of food and beer, but feel free to bring other festive beverages and food of your liking.

After eating and pre-drinking, and maybe a little Happy Birthday song and dance, we will head downtown to be at Maggie Mae’s on 6th by 10:30pm for some drunken debauchery and good times for all. We hope you’ll join us for both the festivities, but if you want to meet up downtown for a shot or two, thats cool too!

And as always, the more the merrier, so bring anyone that likes to have a good time. We hope to see you all there!

Woah… talk about a long and eventful week! Lets just start with my flight from Atlanta to Milano. Like most people, I was unable to sleep on this 8 hour flight so I some pretty serious jet lag. Fortunately, I found three Bulgarian girls who also couldn’t sleep. They were on there way home from selling books door to door in Tennessee. (Strange)

Once I picked up my three enormous bags from baggage claim I was off to the trains. I went to the ticket clerk (who knew I was American before I made it to the front of the line) It was probably my boots and belt buckle that gave it away. (Don’t laugh Todd)

Then I got on the train for a 40 minute ride to downtown Milano. During this ride I sat across from Clara, a fashion consultant for a company I can’t pronounce. She gave me some heads up on where to shop for clothes because boots and big belt buckles aren’t “IN” over here. Haha

I arrived at NI Italy around 10:30 AM where I was greeted by Franchesca, our man lobby receptionist. This is where I waited for Massimiliano (Massi) who took me on a tour of the office. He is the HR assistant for practically everyone and is also a systems engineer. We have nearly 60 strong at NI Italy and I tried to meet them all on the first day.

After the meet and greet, Massi took me shopping at the local grociery store, and if it wasn’t for Massi, I would still be in there trying to find the milk. Initially I was trying to ask where the milk was by saying words like “Milk”, “Meelk”, and “Leche”. This is when they took me to the cooking section. So then I tried to explain in words what it looked like, “Blanco”, “Roundo” and then we ended up in the white wine section. By this time Massi found me surrounded by 4 or 5 workers playing charades while I acted out milk. (by the way, milk is latte) duh!

Then Massi showed me how to get to the apartment which is approximately a 20 minute walk from the office. The apartment has 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, and a nice sized kitchen. Two other NI employees are staying here also, Jaime, from Spain, and Egor, I’m not sure. So Massi dropped me off and I took a nap till dinner. (jet lag)

This is about the time Jaime got home from work and he took me to a phenomenal restaurant downtown Milano next to the Duomo. (corner of Alzaia Navigtio Grande and Viale Gorizia)  This is probably the best pizza I have ever had. It even tops Mangia and Conan’s. So for all of you who have been to Conan’s with me; Lamb chops, Stevo, Berto, Missy, .. you know how much I like Conan’s! We ended up getting home around 12:30/1 am after walking around the piazza de Duomo window shopping.