Today I start my news diet. Trying to keep up with the US, Spanish, New York, global, and tech news on the 25-hour-cycle has become too exhausting. Despite feeling like an ostrich burying my head in the sand, I will try to ignore the news 6-days per week and spend …

Product managers have a few different jobs depending on the organization we're working with, but inevitably we find ourselves doing a lot of organizing and a lot of communicating. In the course of my career I've been through all kinds of product interviews - they almost all follow a common pattern …

Acaparcador - alguien que ocupa mas que un estacionamiento

I don't know if it's because I'm trained to think this way - but I carry with me the idea that adding description of a word or concept should lead to a sharper picture. More complicated concepts frequently require refinement to accurately define them. When I'm trying to describe a concept …

If witches and wizards made Bitcoin - it might look something like this:

Imagine a simple leather journal with a small red gem embedded in the cover. All of the pages except the last one are full - columns of hard-to-understand runes and numbers stretch from edge to edge. You notice thirty-two …

I fell completely in love with my neighbor 4 years ago today. Unfortunately we were only neighbors for three hours... just enough time to fly from Athens to Zurich.

In fact, we almost missed each other – I had left my passport in my hostel and spent a nail-biting 40 minutes …

Thinking is really hard. After a long day of work and then expending energy maintaining relationships, my body, and my home - I don't always have much left to do the research necessary to form sensible, well-informed opinions about topics that I feel are important.

Health-care, police violence, taxation, welfare, immigration …

Madrid’s got a similar structure to my former home, but the boroughs of New York are quite a bit larger than Madrid’s districts (there are only 5 vs. the 21 districts). Each of the Districts are broken up into Wards which are roughly equivalent to the various neighborhoods …

With a plan to head to LA for a wedding the timing seemed perfect: 3 weeks before I leave, I get to pick up my NIE. Unfortunately, during the educational previous visit my birth-date was entered incorrectly, an oversight that was only discovered by the woman who checked my passport …

Finally, Elena and I made it back to the immigration police station, payment in hand; went through the relaxed security system; and were ushered directly towards one of the seated workers. Sitting down across from her, Elena explained the situation and handed over my paperwork (in blazingly fast Spanish). “You …

Because the Visa is officially only valid for 90 days from the date you stated as the entry-date to Spain - the last step to legally residing in Spain for a year is getting your DNI (your Spanish SSN - technically assigned on your Visa) and your NIE (national identity-card).

Once you …

Here’s a good route to follow... our process wasn’t so efficient... Comically, if you ask for directions to the DNI office, even the police will only point you vaguely in the direction of this odd building. It felt like everyone was a bit embarrassed or confused by the …

Here's how much money doctors actually make - it’s a catchy headline, but it summarizes a single article and then passes it off as research...

I don’t mean to pick on Business Insider in particular, but this is a great example of the kind of journalism that I’ve …

Subway stops and plazas have been the most-used landmarks when I’ve asked for directions and one of the most important plazas in my neighborhood is Legazpi (also the name of the neighborhood centered around the plaza). It’s named for the Spanish explorer and politician who made Manilla the …

Another painless part of immigrating was getting my proof of residency or Padron. I (well, Elena really) made an appointment at our local municipal police station. In our neighborhood, Arganzuela, the local police are conveniently located a short walk through Madrid Rio from our house. We took a number when …

I spent quite a bit of time playing with Nebo and have enjoyed the experience. The controls aren’t quite as precise or intuitive as I’d like ideally, but it’s a huge step towards making my note-taking a purely digital experience. I think that the value I get …

Moving to Spain was mostly painless. After living in a small bedroom in Manhattan and leaving all communal property with my roommates - I managed the whole move with just four bags. Elena checked one bag for me and I carried two large backpacks and a single messenger bag - I get …

Spanish fried rice. Arroz con espinaca, chorizo​, queso semi-curado, maíz, ajo, huevo, aceite de sésamo, y salsa de soja.

I find that when I’m trying to remember things I automatically add patterns as a mnemonic overlay. E.g., when I’m trying to remember a phone number I will frequently attach a pattern I noticed in the digits (e.g., it’s mostly the primes in a row …

Understanding Probability and Statistics is core to being an active and effective member of society. Many concepts are counter-intuitive and don’t really click until we’ve heard a few different explanations, proofs, or visualizations. Seeing Theory offers some readily available and free visualizations of a fundamental concepts.

It’s …

Submissions were pretty painless, I had an appointment to submit my papers and the consulate office in New York wasn’t completely full - it took about 45 minutes including re-filling out two forms that I’d filled incorrectly between arriving and heading out.

One point that I hadn’t considered …

Getting a triple-stamped criminal record from the NY State was an adventure in convoluted bureaucracy.

This was a comically long process that took around 7 hours of activity spanning a month or so. First I had to get the NYS police to send me a criminal background check - apparently this …

Un vestido que algo falta es una falda

A useful trick for remembering gender:

El Problema es una palabra masculina y otra palabras que terminan con "-ma" son excepciones de la regla de palabras que terminan con "-a" "poema, dilema"

La Solucion es lo contrario de este y es una palabra feminina, como otras palabras que terminan con …

After more than a decade being spoiled by Manhattan’s highly organized and sensibly gridded streets, I’m trying to find my way around Madrid, my new home. Some long-time Madrileños have suggested a locations to orient my understanding of the city:

1. The neighborhoods here are as distinct in style …

There are many papers and details to put together for the visa, but in general, you’re trying to show that you’re not a criminal and that you’re not going to be a drain on the Spanish economy. Specifically, it ends up being relatively easy with a couple …

The visa process is a bit confusing and if you’re not working for a company that’s sponsoring your visa (and presumably leaning on their legal team to deal with the paperwork) there are a few different routes available. In all cases the process looks something like this:

1. Choose …

I moved to Spain in December 2016 and there were a few hurdles and details that I would have overlooked without substantial help from knowledgeable and Spanish-speaking people. Over the next few posts, I’ll talk about my experience of getting a Spanish Visa in the U.S. and figuring …

More grocery stores should move to a non-gameable queuing system. It seems that there is no agreement on the best setup as the stores I see in New York have wildly different systems. E.g.:

• My neighborhood supermarket has 8 registers with their own lines, 1 of them is express …