Yikes!

I'm sure you're all sick of this already, but I can't get enough of this video!

Read more!

I wanna be a rockstar

In case you haven't heard it, this song explains it all...



The stations I listen to in Vegas (Mix 94.1) and LA (Star 98.7) both play this song, albeit different versions. In Vegas they play the version in the video, complete with all the censoring. In LA I get to hear the whole version, which includes the words drugs, drug dealers, ass, a**hole, and pills. You'd think Sin City would play the uncensored version. By the way, I've never understood why ass isn't usually censored, but a**hole is...

Read more!

Quote of the night

Me, last night before taking a swig from a 40 of Magnum Malt Liquor:

"I'm the designated driver!"

Read more!

Mike Barclay

I was saddened to wake up Friday to an email from the dean of the Simon School at the University of Rochester (where I got my MBA). The email was spreading the news that Mike Barclay, a finance professor at the school since 1985, had died in a plane crash on Thursday. He and a friend were traveling to Canada for a fishing trip aboard a seaplane when it went down outside of Rochester.

He was a hugely respected academic, but I knew him primarily as the professor of the intro finance course for the MBA program. If you look at MBA programs, most of the intro classes are taught by junior faculty, much like my accounting, statistics, marketing, and strategy classes. The senior faculty tend to save themselves for the advanced classes. One of my friends once asked Barclay why he taught the intro course instead of something more challenging and his response was "to make sure it's taught right." I always found that impressive.

Equally impressive was the amount of time he devoted to students, something that is also rare among senior faculty. The Rochester Democrat & Chronicle had the following quote in their article about Barclay.

Mr. Barclay always set aside time to talk to students after class "and frequently there was a parade of students following him to his office after class was over," said Clifford W. Smith Jr., a Simon School professor who worked with Mr. Barclay.

"And Mike didn't leave until the last question was answered."

I was one of those students following him on more than one occasion.

My thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and family.

Read more!

Posting like a madman

Once again, I've been negligent and haven't posted in a while. Maybe I've been spending too much time thinking about the girl from the last post. And yes, there is a specific girl and a specific situation, but things are progressing somewhat normally... but it doesn't change my confusion.

Right now I'm sitting in an airport in Washington DC (more on that in a later post) with nothing to do. I took a shuttle, which picks you up more than three hours before your flight just so you don't miss the plane. So now I've got a couple hours to kill.

What better way to pass the time than by typing up several posts for the blog! Unfortunately, I'm using Word to type them up and will have to post them later, probably all at once. I could log in here at the airport, but I'd have to pay for access, which explains my use of Word.

I wish they wouldn't charge so much for wireless access. They're going after the business traveler that doesn't care about cost. That person can pay the $8 and get reimbursed by the company. I'm not getting reimbursed and don't have an $8 desire to check my empty inbox. I just think that if they priced it lower, a lot more people would use it and the increased volume would more than make up for the price difference. But I assume they've run the numbers and don't think there are enough people like me.

What that all means is that you'll have to wait until I'm home to read this and the rest of my posts... there are six in total (including this one and my "wrap up" post).

Read more!

Range Rover Experience

A few weekends ago I escaped LA and drove up to the Bay Area. The friend I was staying with lived in Palo Alto, which meant I spent most of my time in the South Bay and didn't really do any of the usual tourist stuff (aside from see the Golden Gate Bridge). I got a tour of Stanford, ate one of the best burritos ever, and hung out with my friends.

Our one excursion into the city was Saturday night to a dive bar where it's still legal to smoke inside. Apparently, California's anti-smoking law is designed to specifically protect employees and is actually written for places that have employees. A few bars in San Francisco (and I'm sure throughout other parts of California) have found a loophole... don't have employees! Instead, make everyone that "works" at the bar an owner. If everybody's an owner, there are no employees and the law doesn't apply. I had forgotten what it was like to sit in a bar with smokers...

The highlight of the weekend was Sunday, when my friends and I drove up to the Sonoma area to take part in the Range Rover Experience and do some wine tasting. Range Rover has these weekends throughout the country where they set up off-road courses and then invite people to come for an off-road test drive. The event is hosted at somebody's giant house where you start. You head out to the course in your Range Rover with a driving expert who instructs you on how to make your way through the whole thing. They have you going up and down steep hills at about 45 degree angles and climb over huge rocks and go through giant ruts which have you at 45 degree angles sideways. It was absolutely awesome. After the hour-long drive, you head back to the house for a whole catered event with a cooking demonstrations. We made "beggar's purses" from crepes.


The most impressive part is that it is an absolutely soft sell. They believe that Range Rovers sell themselves and you'll want one after you drive it. While this may be true for most people, I think it had the opposite effect on me. After the whole thing, I realized I would never be driving on anything like they had us on. Since I never go off-roading, I think it would be a giant waste of money to buy one. I don't necessarily need a Range Rover to be stuck in traffic!

Next, we headed over to the Napa wine country. Our first stop was a super-expensive winery - Opus One - where they charge $25 per taste. Unbelievable. Since I can't tell the difference between $200 wine and a wine-in-a-box (maybe a slight exaggeration, but not by much), I decided to pass. Afterwards, we headed over to Robert Mondavi. One of my friends had a membership card which got us access to a special tasting room with higher-end wines and unlimited tasting. That was some good wine. (I guess I do know the difference.) After a couple hours in the tasting room, I left with a little buzz. By the time we were done with Mondavi, everything was closed except for Peju, the after-hours club of the tasting rooms. The wine there wasn't overly exciting, but our middle-aged white tasting guy rapped as he told us about the wines. The rapping wasn't good, but it made the girls in my group laugh. Apparently they were feeling the Mondavi buzz.

On the way back I made my stop at the Golden Gate Bridge to take some pictures. I've got to do a little sightseeing. I drove back to LA the following day, which is a spectacularly boring drive. The only "highlight" of the drive is a giant ranch filled with hundreds if not thousands of cows. It has the horrific smell to match, giving you the jolt you need to wake up halfway through the drive.

Read more!

Don't be afraid of the A/C

Here's a news story I found amusing (but tragic - don't try this at home)...

There was a guy in China that was too cheap to turn on the A/C. He would sit at his computer, sweating away in the heat, unwilling to spend the money for cool air. Naturally, he worried about his computer. As you know, they can get hot and if the room is hot they get even hotter.

What's a guy to do??? He decided to cool off his computer by removing the casing. If air can circulate easily, the computer should get cooler. Sounds like a good plan... except for the sweaty legs. Turns out sweat conducts electricity and when his wet thigh touched the circuitry of the computer he was electrocuted and died.

Moral of the story: Don't be afraid of air conditioning. It's your friend.

Read more!

Obligatory Dodger post

What's a flurry of posts without any mention of the Dodgers and baseball? So here is my obligatory Dodger post...

The trading deadline went by quietly for the Dodgers, which made me very excited. The only move was getting a middle reliever (Scott Proctor) for a guy they didn't need and shouldn't have acquired last year (Wilson Betemit). I was scared to death that some of the young players of the future like James Loney or Matt Kemp or Chad Billingsley would be traded for a player that wouldn't make much of a difference this year. So I'm happy that nothing happened. It would've been torture to watch James Loney become an all-star for someone else (a la former Dodger prospect Paul Konerko with the White Sox).

The past couple weeks have been rough for the Dodgers. They've gone from two games in first place to third. Not good. It's been a combination of injuries and a tired pitching staff and an overall lack of clutch hitting. Hopefully they'll turn this funk around soon and win the NL West like they should. I don't want to start looking towards 2008 just yet...

Finally, I need to mention Bar-roids Bonds and 755. Last night he tied Hank Aaron for most Major League homers ever. During the week he was in LA playing the Dodgers and a lot was made about whether Dodger fans would boo Bonds or cheer the record. Frankly, I would've booed. I understand the record is/was hallowed, but Bonds isn't... He cheated. He doesn't deserve it. I'll cheer when Alex Rodriguez hits 755 and then even louder when he passes Bonds.

Read more!

AMA 2007

I just got done with the 2007 American Marketing Association conference in Washington DC, where I got to serve as a discussant for one of the sessions. Basically, people present their research at these conferences. The presentations are grouped into sessions of three speakers per session based on the research topics. Each session gets a "chair" to run the session and a "discussant" to lead the discussion afterwards.

A few months ago, I was asked if I would be willing to do this by a professor friend of mine that was in charge of one of the session tracks. So I came to DC and did my thing. I was a little nervous heading into it since I didn't know what was expected of me. I had read the papers - all three were about branding issues - but felt a little intimidated when I sat in on a couple other sessions and heard the discussants speak for 10-15 minutes each.

I talked to some other people and was told to keep it much shorter and lead a discussion. That was the plan of action I decided on. I think it went well. I ended up speaking for only a minute or two, briefly summarizing the papers and tying them together. Then I led a spirited discussion session that consisted of a grand total of one question. And then I was done.

I don't know what else I should have done. But now the actual experience is only a brief memory of the twenty people in the room and the two or three of you that will actually read this. It will live on in a different form on my resume, where it will become something I did as an overachieving PhD student entering his second year. It's pretty rare to be a discussant this early in a career - other discussants were either professors or at least further along in their studies.

Read more!

Now boarding

That's all for today... my flight is about to board. I think I'm caught up on most of what I can remember wanting to post. I'm sure there's more, but I've forgotten most of the "I should write about that" topics.

Side note: Since blogger posts the most recent posts on top, this is the first one I will have actually posted even though I'm actually writing it last...

Read more!