Category: MBA

We interrupt your regularly scheduled blogging…

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I have nothing important to say, other than to report that I am basking in the fleeting euphoria of having hit the ‘submit’ button on my term paper tonight. I am not particularly proud of it, but I feel good that was able to get it done under some ugly time contraints…and with 72 hours to spare, no less.

I now have 3 nights of reading, followed by a night off, followed by three nights of working on my very last assignment MBA ever, then a visit from KG, then a 5-day trip, then a holiday, then four nights of finishing off the last assignment, then three days to read the final preparatory cases, then three days of nothing (!) followed by my last intensive & exam ever…at which point I am done. And if it seems depressing that I have every day allocated like that, believe me when I say it’s even worse from this side. I’ve been living like this since June 20, and it’s going to last until the middle of September.

But then…oh ho ho, look out, general populace. You are not ready for the kind of shenanigans I will get up to with free time on my hands. It’ll be like Cat Thunderdome up in here.

[tags]mba[/tags]

"Godfather can't tell the general we don't do windows."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Today was a good day. I finished writing my paper (just needs a final read-through and a second set of eyes), took care of some other little things, got a little work done and managed to keep the place in order while Nellie tried to sleep off a cold that’s knocked the wind out of her. Even got some school shit taken care of that I didn’t plan to complete until tomorrow night, so I’m a little ahead of schedule.

33 days left. Not done yet, but I can see the finish line.

.:.

We watched the second episode of the new HBO series Generation Kill tonight. It’s good so far, kind of what I think Band of Brothers would have been like if it were about a different generation and a different war. Still, there’s a lot that’s similar: logistical problems, incompetent officers, and so on…and that makes for good TV. But like my friend Stephen said, I’ll watch anything made by David Simon and/or Ed Burns now.

[tags]mba, generation kill[/tags]

What I've learned about this term paper

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment
  1. I’m really, really interested in this topic. This creates a paradox, since I’m incredibly uninterested in spending time writing about it.
  2. The Mogwai soundtrack to Zidane, A 21st Century Portrait (imdb) is great work music.
  3. I’m so glad I bought an Aeron chair last year. As it is my ass is sore; I can’t imagine sitting in my crappy old chair for 20 hours this past weekend.
  4. It will be very, very applicable to my company, not that it’ll make much of a difference. Not that that will stop me from sending it around to a thousand people.
  5. I would rather poke myself in the eye with a live hummingbird than spend another night working on it.

[tags]mba, term paper[/tags]

Three weeks of mornings

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Now that I am in full scramble mode to write my final term paper, I have resigned myself to the likelihood that I will not have an evening off* until Jul 24, the evening it’s due. Last night we had a drink and dinner at the Auld Spot with CBGB and got caught up on baby Liam’s feats of strength, and then came home to tie off some small errands.

This morning we had brunch at Toba with my friend Joe and his girlfriend, then grabbed some pretzels, cheese & strawberries from St. Lawrence Market north and visited the Vu condominium sales centre. We’re not looking to move any time soon, just wondering what’s out there in the neighbourhood. Already we feel like we want more space.

Anyway, it occurred to me that the only leisure time I’ll have in the month of July will likely happen before noon on Saturdays and Sundays…so I enjoyed the hell out of this one.

* except the two Summerlicious dinners next week. And the FC game two weeks from today.

[tags]auld spot, toba, vu condominiums, toronto fc[/tags]

Best! 16 days! Ever!

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I didn’t just finish my assignment tonight, I proof-read it & submitted it, and then I finished the work I was supposed to do tomorrow night. That means I can spend the next five days relaxing and dealing with any office complications. And packing, I guess.

Then…10 days in BC and a couple of days to recover after we get back. No more schoolishness until July 3rd. Dammit, I’m gonna enjoy this.

Speaking of BC, here’s the plan:

Our travel plan

[tags]mba, british columbia[/tags]

"Wow, that's…really warm."

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I spent yesterday eating great food and enjoying even better company. First, squeezed into a solid 10-4 block of meetings, was lunch with William Azaroff. I had only spoken to William through his blog, Facebook, Twitter and over the phone once or twice, so it was nice to finally meet him in person. We had lunch on the garden patio at Fieramosca, and I could’ve happily stayed to chat and bask in the wonderful weather (and food!) for much longer than the two hours we spent there. Hopefully we’ll get a chance to catch up again in a couple of weeks when I’m in Vancouver; I guess it depends on how married I am to my hotel bed after six days of hiking.

After work T-Bone had some people over for a barbeque. I was concerned about the weather — thunderstorms were forecast for the evening — but sunshine carried the day and the rain held off until after everyone had finished their rather sumptuous feast…and then it really came down. I lost count of how many shrimp I ate. Other highlights of the evening: free shots of Carlsberg at the pre-bbq LCBO run; PC being, um, doused by his 2-year-old son; Nellie and I dominating at SceneIt?. We were pretty tired though, so even though we got home shortly after midnight it wasn’t long before we both crashed.

Today’s been…well, honestly, today’s been an exercise in avoiding the inevitable: a paper that’s due Monday. Here’s hoping I can kick my own ass into gear.

[tags]william azaroff, fieramosca, carlsberg, sceneit[/tags]

In which my vocabulary returns to the 80s. Rad.

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Awesome: Stephen Colbert’s plundering of the Hockey Night In Canada theme song.

Awesome: Bigger sidewalks on Bloor. (Less awesome: lack of bike lanes)

Awesome: watching Portugal play football. Since I cheer for no particular team I just like watching skill, so the game today was like watching a group of painters at work.

Awesome: the weather. Perfect. An ideal June day.

Awesome: being 95% done.

[tags]stephen colbert, bloor street, portugal, euro 2008, toronto weather[/tags]

I realized two minutes later that it was "balcon"

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

The warm (and by warm I mean screaming hot) weather has made for a very fun 18 hours. After leaving work yesterday I arrived home to a barbeque in progress with Nellie and CBGB. We made veggie burgers and drank (among others) Bavarian Weissbier and took solace in the cool breeze on our balcony. Sometimes that breeze was almost too much; at one point it blew some Tostitos out of the bowl and sent them skittering across the balcony. After our guests left we cleaned up (barely) and watched Battlestar Galactica. Getting! So! Good!

Nellie had to get up early for a hair appointment, so I used the morning to clean up (read: recycle the beer bottles), catch up on my news addiction, run some errands, buy more of that weissbier and take some pictures of all the puppies down the street at Woofstock.

Playing with dogs is good for the soul, even if my cats did look at me askance when I got home. Now I’ve finished off the list of little things that I need to get done before settling in for a long afternoon of MBA and Euro. Life could certainly be worse.

[tags]weihenstephaner hefeweissbier, battlestar galactica, woofstock, euro 2008[/tags]

Currently…

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

reading: The Angel Riots by Ibi Kaslik and Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach by Charles Hill and Gareth Jones. Eye Weekly and Now Magazine every Thursday. Toronto Life once a month.

listening to: Saul Williams by Saul Williams, though any minute now I’ll move on to Death Cab For Cutie‘s Narrow Stairs or Visiter by The Dodos.

watching: almost nothing. I’m paying only marginal attention to sports (go Pens! go Celts!), The Office and 30 Rock are done for the season and The Shield hasn’t started yet. All that’s on right now is Battlestar Galactica, and even that’s on 2-week hiatus.

scanning: 190 news feeds, averaging about 509 articles per day. Of course, these are only my personal-interest feeds; I have just as many work feeds. I mainly skim the headlines here, and pay attention to maybe 50, flagging 5-10 to read later.

browsing: 6-7 websites per day. I rarely have a need to visit particular websites now (see ‘scanning’, above) but a few are applications (e.g., Google Analytics) or snapshots (e.g., the weather) that don’t work in an RSS channel. There’s also Bruce MacKinnon’s editorial cartoon every day which, despite my best efforts, I cannot wrangle into a Yahoo Pipe. Again, this is personal-interest only; there’re other work sites.

running: 3-4 times per week, 3 miles at a time. On a treadmill. Half flat, half slight incline.

eating: penne with sundried tomato pesto. Well…an hour ago, anyway.

looking forward to: our rockies/BC trip in June; Euro 2008; visiting Nova Scotia twice in August, once to visit with family and once to wrap up the MBA.

wondering: why the hell I started writing this blog post in the first place.

[tags]angel riots, ibi kaslik, toronto life, saul williams, death cab for cutie, narrow stairs, dodos, visiter,  google reader, bruce mackinnon, yahoo pipes, euro 2008[/tags]

I can has inspiration?

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I have to pick a topic for my term paper. We’ve been told to do this early, so all the good ones aren’t gone, but my brain still thinks it’s in the grace period between courses where it can shut off and concentrate on naught but NBA playoffs and snickerdoodles. Maybe y’all can help? Here’s the direction the prof gave us:

Any topic in the area of strategic leadership and change is potentially acceptable for the paper. I suggest you pick a topic: (1) of personal interest and whose mastery is likely to make a positive difference to your career; (2) for which academic research material is accessible in reasonable quantity (perhaps through our library); and (3) narrow enough to be do-able within imposed time and space limitations. Acceptable topics include, but are not limited to:

  • alternative cost leadership (or differentiation) approaches and their performance implications in your industry;
  • alternative customer-centric strategies and their implications for your company’s performance;
  • personnel diversity, organisation strategy, and organisation performance;
  • reward systems, behaviours, and organisation performance;
  • dimensions and performance implications of the your company’s organisation culture;
  • why and how your company should become a better learning organisation;
  • alternative large-scale change strategies and their implications for your company.

Any ideas? The only one I’ve had so far involved distilling and bottling my monstrous apathy and releasing it into the water supply of our competitors, but the ROI on that…not good.

[tags]mba, term paper, strategy[/tags]