Category: MBA

Ow! Yawn. Hooray!

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

I’m very excited, Internet. I finished my latest assignment this afternoon and, while I’m sure I’ll have to fix a few problem following my review in a few minutes, that’s it for me for the MBA for a little while. OK, only eleven days, but still…I’m looking forward to not reading finance for a week and a half like you can’t believe. Should give me time to finish up some shopping and knock off a few other niggling tasks.

.:.

Last night was my company’s year-end party, so we had some folks over for a pre-event drink or two, then had mingling & dinner & such just a few blocks away, and then back here for another drink or two. T-Bone somehow managed to get home even though standing seemed a struggle, and I somehow managed to knock over a pepper mill which knocked a martini glass off the counter which sent glass shards flying in all directions. Oy. In my haste to extract a cat from the glass minefield and clean it all up I got a piece stuck in my foot. I couldn’t reach it so I had to sleep (not very well, mind you) with it stuck there until Nellie woke up enough to pry it out with some tweezers. On the plus side I managed to clear some room in the liquor cabinet by finishing off the lingering drops of two different bottles of scotch: a 10-year-old Macallan fine oak and a 10-year-old Bruichladdich. So yeah, a fun night. Looking forward to next year.

[tags]walkin’ on, walkin’ on broken glass[/tags]

To be fair, everything looks like twaddle under an electron microscope

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I’ve been too busy to blog (or think) much lately, so no sparkling insight or stunning revelations from me right now. Sorry.

.:.

I am shocked — shocked and appalled — that those Q-Ray bracelets I’ve been seeing in late-night infomercials for years are completely worthless. Wendy Mesley, why do you hate America?

.:.

One lesser-known blog I like to read is Laura Bogomolny’s. She’s a former writer at Canadian Business magazine who’s now doing her MBA at Columbia, and occasionally writes about her classes, the program, life in New York, etc. Today she wrote about a negotiation exercise she did side-by-side with law students:

When the law students were asked if it looked like fun to be the business person in the negotiation, over half of the law students raised their hands. When the business school students were asked if it looked like fun to be the lawyer, not a single hand went up.

OK, I’m not shocked by that one.

.:.

The musical inbox is piling up again. The more recent additions:

  • Annuals . Be He Me
  • Jealous Girlfriends . Comfortably, Uncomfortable
  • Puscifer . V Is For Vagina
  • Robert Plant & Alison Krauss . Raising Sand
  • Sigur Ros . Hvarf-Heim
  • Sigur Ros . Svarf
  • Various Artists (Stereogum) . Drive XV
  • Weakerthans . Reunion Tour
  • Yeasayer . All Hour Cymbals

I need to find a way to listen to this stuff. My job doesn’t really allow me time to listen to music at my desk anymore.

[tags]q-ray, cbc, wendy mesley, laura bogomolny, columbia university, mba, jealous girlfriends, puscifer, sigur ros, weakerthans, naysayer[/tags]

Dan Dickinson's Day Off

Dan DickinsonLeave a comment

Yes, just like Ferris Bueller, except I wasn’t pursued around the city by a sex offender.

Around 2:00 yesterday afternoon I got the best news I could possibly have received: my class got an extension on our assignment. I had my weekend back! Oh, frabjous day! Calloo! Callay!

After plowing through a bunch of work and a last-minute crisis (deftly handled by T-Bone and, in a supporting role, myself) I arrived half an hour late to meet Nellie and CBGB at beerbistro. A glass of Stiegl Pils and some frites later I put the Blackberry away and settled into the weekend. I had butternut squash ravioli with sliced plums (delicious!) paired with a Brooklyn Brown Ale (ditto!) and a piece of chocolate swirl cheesecake for dessert. We all called it an early night after that; it was a long-ass day and we had plans for the early morning.

Today’s been both productive and relaxing; it’s like found time for me, so I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. We got up early and hit St. Lawrence Market for some pastries, seafood, tofu and vegetables, then grabbed ingredients for dinner at the Dominion on the way home. We sucked back the pastries while we watched Friday Night Lights and The Office on the PVR. Next leg of the trip was to walk up to Henry’s and collect some prints we’d ordered online. We’re planning to put some of our pictures on our walls, so we got some B&W prints from recent trips.

After dropping those back at home we struck out for MEC to buy me a jacket, stopping at Chapters on the way back and then grabbing lunch (all-day breakfast, in truth) at
Over Easy. On the way home we bought some picture frames for some of the afore-mentioned pictures and picked up dry cleaning. Back out we went to the {shudder} Eaton Centre, grabbing some more picture frames and a very nifty little charging station at Pottery Barn before escaping the mall as rapidly as possible. One last stop at The Bay for towels and our credit cards were begging for mercy.

Home again we gave the place a much-needed clean and then turned to neglected email accounts and feed readers. Tonight we’re laying low, enjoying the pardon (ok, reprieve) and looking forward to tomorrow.

.:.

Good luck, Atlantic Canada. Hold on tight.

[tags]ferris bueller, beerbistro, st. lawrence market, friday night lights, the office, over easy, eaton centre, pottery barn, hurricane noel[/tags]

Is it spring yet? How 'bout now? How 'bout now?

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January’s gonna be a big month for me, TV-wise. Two of the best shows on the air — The Wire and Battlestar Galactica — start their final seasons.

.:.

Tonight was a welcome break from schoolwork…a night off to just relax, watch hockey and not think about school. It’s short-lived, though: I have an assignment due Monday which I’ve not started yet, so the next five days will be spent in a finance textbook.

.:.

I’m enjoying Brijit, a handy new service that summarizes recent magazine content in 100 words or less, and assigns a rating (though they they arrive at their ratings I’m not sure).

.:.

Because we can’t help ourselves and we can’t wait to go back (and also because some things require booking way in advance) we’ve already begun planning our Rockies trip in the spring. I bought a book about the interior of BC the other day; I think, after a few days in Yoho (hiking the Lake O’Hara region again) we’re going to drive to Whistler, and then on to Vancouver. I want to go NOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!

[tags]the wire, battlestar galactica, brijit, rockies, yoho, lake ohara, whistler, vancouver[/tags]

And a bucket of my finest diet pepsi on ice

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I am the hold steady:

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 222
  • Weight this week: 222

Break-even’s about as good as I could have hoped for last week. Time was hard to come by and I spent a couple days at the IFL, which never helps. It should get a little better now, though, because…

.:.

I finished my paper today! Well, just about. Still have to proof it and throw SW’s revised references in at the end, but I believe we’re pretty much done. To celebrate I went downstairs and ran three miles. To keep the good times running tonight I may just watch a movie and fall asleep on the couch. Woot.

.:.

Last night’s Canadiens game was another good ‘un. Well, kinda; Montreal jumped out to a three-goal lead early in the game but let the Penguins back in it, finally allowing the tying goal with two minutes left. No joy in overtime, so it went to a shootout…16 shooters later someone finally scored, and thankfully it was Montreal. That was the first time in a few games they played a tight one…it was hard on the nerves. I’ve come to like the blowouts.

.:.

Robert Ouellette wrote a column today in Reading Toronto entitled Why I Am Cancelling My Globe And Mail Subscription And Why You Should Too*. I agree with that sentiment; I canceled my subscription long ago, partly for the reasons Mr. Ouellette describes (environmental concerns, lack of compelling content, abundance of ads and increasingly pro-war editorials) and partly in protest over their decision to charge paper subscribers to access online content.

Interesting side note: the asterisk in the article’s title points to a confession by Mr. Ouellette in which he states that he may be biased against the Globe because he occasionally writes an architecture column for the National Post. While his first three objections would apply to most any newspaper subscription, I should think that his objection to “fear-driven ‘dogs of war’ [having] their way in the paper’s editorial room” would sour him completely on the Post.

[tags]fatblogging, mba, reading toronto, robert ouellette, globe and mail, national post[/tags]

Another lost weekend

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That was a pretty cool work thing I attended yesterday and today. Got to put faces to names, laugh my fool ass off and even get a little inspired. Hopefully that enthusiasm carries over into the weekend so I can get this infernal paper finished off.

I’m off to locate some dinner with Nellie. We’re both pretty wiped so it won’t be much of a night…or much of a weekend, obviously. Argghhhhjjgorijeg.

I know, I know…suck it up, princess.

Hey…300 days left!!

[tags]mba[/tags]

"Giuseppe!"

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That was how my barber answered the phone today, as if he were four years old and his best friend had just run into his yard. He might just be the happiest guy I know. Here’s the typical conversation when I sit down in the chair:

Ralph: “So, how’s it going?”

Dan: “Pretty good, Ralph. How’re you doing?”

Ralph: “Ay, life is beautiful, my friend. As long as we’re here and we’re healthy, what else can you ask? #3 on top and #2 on the sides, right?”

Whether it’s Ralph or his buddy Nick who cuts my hair, I’ve never left there without a smile on my face. It’s a big reason I keep going back, really. It’s not like it takes a lot of hard-to-find expertise to cut my hair.

.:.

It’s a sad state of affairs when gay Dumbledore and a fainting Marie Osmond occupy the top of the news pile. One gets the feeling that if the Californian wildfires weren’t so ferocious we’d be discussing proper dancing hydration or wizard-cruising. For fuck’s sake, people, one of them’s fictional and the other might as well be.

.:.

The Dooney’s Cafe website has a great review of Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine. I’m not making much headway on the book; I keep getting distracted by MBAishness.

[tags]barbers, dumbledore, marie osmond, california wildfires, naomi klein, the shock doctrine, dooney’s[/tags]

I'm not sure I even care to be that disinterested right now, to be honest

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Despite my recent inability to spend more than an hour doing school work, I have decided that today will be the ne plus ultra of schoolwork days. The ne plus ultra, I tell you. I am well-rested (I slept until 11 yesterday and 9 today), well-fed (just got back from breakfast at Over Easy), well-stocked (did grocery shopping after breakfast) and well-prepared (have two computers at the ready). I have no excuse not to get a lot done today except for sheer, unadulterated disinterest.

Don’t put it past me.

.:.

I know this headline shouldn’t make me laugh — it’s really quite tragic — but I couldn’t help myself. From the Globe and Mail:

Indian Official Dies In Wild Monkey Attack

If you’re gonna go, go while defending yourself from an army of wild monkeys.

.:.

  • Original weight: 233
  • Weight last week: 223
  • Weight this week: 222

Looks like I managed to correct last week’s blip.

[tags]mba, over easy, wild monkey attack, fatblogging[/tags]

21.622% left to go

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Sunrise was a fun color this morning, as you can see. That’s one thing about this place…I’ve seen more sunrises in the past six months than in my previous ten years in Toronto.

.:.

Want to see the history of the world’s major religions played out in 90 seconds? It’s impressive to see Christianity linger quietly in western Europe for the better part of 2,000 years, then a big jump, then whammo…world domination.

.:.

I have 311 days left in my MBA. This is problematic. I have no energy or patience left. I find I can devote, at most, an hour at a time to it without losing interest. At this point I’m majoring in apathy.

Really, I just have to push through the next fifteen days. After that I can downshift a little, and after my course in January I’m just coasting into the summer.

[tags]toronto, sunrise, world religion, mba, apathy[/tags]

"I'm with the band!"

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I’ve uploaded some of my favourite France pictures to Flickr. Here’s the slideshow. Nellie deserves all the credit; I have no eye for photography.

I also uploaded a video to YouTube. I’d had a bit to drink and decided it was a good idea to sit down at the drums for the first time in fifteen years. The guitarist was nice enough to humour me with a bass track, but I still sound quite rubbish. The shrieking you hear on the video is Nellie, who’d never seen or heard me play the drums. I sold my kit for tuition money the summer I met her.

.:.

I passed my most recent course. The marks went up today and I actually did a little better than I expected. I’m usually crap at multiple choice exams but I did ok this time around, and my other marks were good enough. Whew.

Three to go.

.:.

We chilled this afternoon by watching a light little film, Imagine Me & You (imdb | rotten tomatoes). The first half of the movie was so cute it hurt my teeth; the second half turned into a rather standard romantic comedy, but it was still kind of goofy and charming. Stunning female leads and a sapphic storyline didn’t hurt either.

.:.

Newsy bits:

  • December’s Spice Girls show in London sold out in 38 seconds, proving once and for all that drunk women with poor taste are quite adept at clicking a mouse.
  • John McCain has gone from embarrassing to…well, more embarrassing.
  • Did you miss out on the auction for Mogwai drummer Martin Bulloch’s old pacemaker? Well, fear not; you have another chance. Marty seems to replace these a lot. Next time he should get one with an audible beep; he’d never need another metronome or click track. Most Mogwai songs are around 80 bpm anyway…
  • Radiohead’s latest album pricing — where they let fans decide how much they’ll pay to download it — has gotten the attention of The Economist. George’s worlds are colliding!!

[tags]france, imagine me and you, spice girls, john mccain, mogwai, martin bulloch, pacemaker, radiohead, the economist[/tags]