May you find the peace that surpasses all understanding this holiday season!
Monday, December 25, 2006
Wednesday, December 20, 2006
Person of the Year
TIME magazine's Person of the Year is none other than .... you. That's right. You. And those clever people at TIME even used a reflective mirror on the cover so you can see a warped vision of yourself on the screen. The idea is that it's not Carlyle's "Great Man" theory that holds true today in creating history. It's the common citizen that is influencing journalism, our perception of the world, and creating ripples that are felt on the other side of the globe -- all thanks to the Internet. If you haven't read the section, you should.
Interestingly enough, after I read through the TIME piece this morning, I remembered that I needed to hop online to activate the vacation stop on my Washington Post delivery. While I was cruising through the site to find the membership section, I came across an Internet dialogue called "On Faith," moderated by Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meachem and Post journalist Sally Quinn. The moderators post a question to its online panelists, who type up responses that, in turn, are responded to by everyday citizens. What's so intriguing to me is how the "normal" people respond -- their posts made me think and they made me weep, not only for the 5th grade English teachers who would be heartbroken by the appalling grammar, but for the rationality and tolerance that this country is supposed to exemplify.
As a person of faith, I like to think of myself as both spiritual and intellectual. I believe that I'm called to be smart about my faith, to understand it, to question it and to recognize that I won't know all the answers. Not in this life, at least. Sure, I know that not everyone will accept my faith or even respect it. But, isn't this supposed to be the country where that's allowed? Here's a sample response from a person named Rob, who responded to a panelist's thought on faith: "So faith is a gift, not the result of intellectual persuasion, or practiced debate. How each of us answers the question put to Peter determines our relationship with the God, now and into eternity. This is real faith. This is the real meaning of Christmas." Rob's response is below, in all its grammatical glory:
Rob says:
A gift huh?
From whom?
Faith is for weak minded fearful children of mind.
It's not a gift, it's a curse.
Truth is beauty, not the supposed King of Kings.
Son of God. Please. There is no God, grow up.
The concept of Jesus is an ongoing fraud perpertrated by the half weak upon the fully weak.
The idea of having faith at all just means that the underlying premise os false.
When the truth is clearly agaisnt you, it's time to roll out the lies, faith being the #1 wool pulling device. Fools.
Tuesday, December 19, 2006
The First Semester Wrap Up
Well, Gang, we did it.
We survived our first semester of business school.
We learned about linear regression and we spent the first month regressing to our undergrad drinking days.
We spent the next month working our way out of the pile of work, case studies, and papers that accumulated while we were drinking.
Over the semester, we bonded with each other ... and with The Duck. Who knew it'd become our home away from home? We even managed to perform an inter-breakout room wave.
We picked up each other's habits and idiosyncracies, suffered together through the artic tundra known as Room 151, and scoffed at the itty bitty undergrads running around underfoot.
In The G Unit, we busted our butts for Big Jim, soaked up Gandalf's wisdom, valiently tried to keep up with Doctor Deb, untangled our brains after classes with Pair O'meter, and kept straight faces (most of the time) during the Ramrod lectures.
We succeeded in proving we're better than...oops, I mean, as good as, The Elders.
But more than anything else, I'd like to think that we "learned each other something." I've rarely encountered a group of people who have so impressed, entertained, inspired and humbled me. We're figuring out together that life, learning, and friendships are more important than books, grades and GPA. There's something precious about the short time we'll have together in school -- and the fleeting speed with which the semester's end arrived has made it abundantly clear. We'll talk quite a bit, I'm sure, about what we would have done differently over these past four months, but I hope we also focus on what we will do to squeeze the most out of the time we have left. I am quite certain that this group of 100 people will make big things happen for this program in the next year and big changes happen in the world beyond. What a privilege it is to know such amazing colleagues and friends.
As Cervantes said, "Tell me thy company and I will tell thee what thou art." If his words are true, then I am glad to call myself part of this Gang.
We survived our first semester of business school.
We learned about linear regression and we spent the first month regressing to our undergrad drinking days.
We spent the next month working our way out of the pile of work, case studies, and papers that accumulated while we were drinking.
Over the semester, we bonded with each other ... and with The Duck. Who knew it'd become our home away from home? We even managed to perform an inter-breakout room wave.
We picked up each other's habits and idiosyncracies, suffered together through the artic tundra known as Room 151, and scoffed at the itty bitty undergrads running around underfoot.
In The G Unit, we busted our butts for Big Jim, soaked up Gandalf's wisdom, valiently tried to keep up with Doctor Deb, untangled our brains after classes with Pair O'meter, and kept straight faces (most of the time) during the Ramrod lectures.
We succeeded in proving we're better than...oops, I mean, as good as, The Elders.
But more than anything else, I'd like to think that we "learned each other something." I've rarely encountered a group of people who have so impressed, entertained, inspired and humbled me. We're figuring out together that life, learning, and friendships are more important than books, grades and GPA. There's something precious about the short time we'll have together in school -- and the fleeting speed with which the semester's end arrived has made it abundantly clear. We'll talk quite a bit, I'm sure, about what we would have done differently over these past four months, but I hope we also focus on what we will do to squeeze the most out of the time we have left. I am quite certain that this group of 100 people will make big things happen for this program in the next year and big changes happen in the world beyond. What a privilege it is to know such amazing colleagues and friends.
As Cervantes said, "Tell me thy company and I will tell thee what thou art." If his words are true, then I am glad to call myself part of this Gang.
Sunday, December 17, 2006
Almost there ....
Three exams, one presentation and two papers down.
One more exam to go.
And I'm a redhead again.
Not bad for a week's work.
One more exam to go.
And I'm a redhead again.
Not bad for a week's work.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Waffle, anyone?
There have been a certain choices in my life that I regard as both wonderful risks and terrible mistakes. Usually, I can accept those past choices for what they were, and keep them as that -- in the past. I learn, I move on. It's just what I do.
But what happens when one of those choices unexpectedly resurfaces in the present? Do you regard it more as a risk or a mistake? It's one thing to look back and see the benefits and drawbacks as they were ... but it's another thing to live with that dichotomy in the present. After all, if the choice was a mistake, you either try to fix it now or you separate yourself from it, right? And if it was a worthwhile risk, you might have another go. At the very least, you tolerate its presence in your current life.
Of course, you can always choose to do nothing. Or stall. Which is what I think I'm doing .... Hooray for indecision!
But what happens when one of those choices unexpectedly resurfaces in the present? Do you regard it more as a risk or a mistake? It's one thing to look back and see the benefits and drawbacks as they were ... but it's another thing to live with that dichotomy in the present. After all, if the choice was a mistake, you either try to fix it now or you separate yourself from it, right? And if it was a worthwhile risk, you might have another go. At the very least, you tolerate its presence in your current life.
Of course, you can always choose to do nothing. Or stall. Which is what I think I'm doing .... Hooray for indecision!
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
Hell Week
I'm definitely in the midst of finals week hell. Good news is that I'm done with the Econ research paper, the take-home statistics exam, and the accounting presentation. Bad news is that I still have the big marketing presentation and paper, the accounting paper, an accounting final exam, a human dynamics final exam and the econ final exam.
All in the next week.
So don't expect to see too many blogging entries over the next seven days. To tide you over, here are the long awaited car photos (read the full story). I went to get the car washed on Sunday but couldn't find the cheapo $9 drive-thru wash, so I had to go to the fancy $16 wash. The good news is at least they hand dried the car, vaccumed it and armoral'd the dash. The funny news is that the gigantic SUV that entered the tunnel just before my car and made it all the way through the wash before the four burly men finished scrubbing the yellow bird doo-doo off my car. I should have timed them but I gotta say it took at least 10 minutes for them to scrub my car down. I ate an entire Trader Joe's burrito in the time it took them to scrub.
And there was still residue when it was all done.
Them's some nasty fowl life.
All in the next week.
So don't expect to see too many blogging entries over the next seven days. To tide you over, here are the long awaited car photos (read the full story). I went to get the car washed on Sunday but couldn't find the cheapo $9 drive-thru wash, so I had to go to the fancy $16 wash. The good news is at least they hand dried the car, vaccumed it and armoral'd the dash. The funny news is that the gigantic SUV that entered the tunnel just before my car and made it all the way through the wash before the four burly men finished scrubbing the yellow bird doo-doo off my car. I should have timed them but I gotta say it took at least 10 minutes for them to scrub my car down. I ate an entire Trader Joe's burrito in the time it took them to scrub.
And there was still residue when it was all done.
Them's some nasty fowl life.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Sometimes you just need to hump a table
I just spent 12 straight hours at The Duck. And I spent 10 hours there yesterday.
Honestly, that's just inhumane, cruel and debasing punishment. Big projects in econ, accounting and stats are still looming over our heads and it's not a pretty sight. It's no wonder, then, that a small group of Gang members became intoxicated yesterday during and after the MBA Holiday Party and started to dance all up on the chairs and tables in the first floor breakout room (which, by the way, has large windows that allow everyone to see everything). The dancing turned a little raunchy towards the end, so it's probably a good thing that the buzz started to wear off. I do believe some Gang members are under the influence again at The Duck tonight. Shoot, I'm even drinking by myself at home, while attempting to finish up a marketing plan. Priorities, you know.
Continuing in the ever-flowing vein of procrastination, I went to MyHeritage.com (thanks, Peach!) to find my celebrity lookalike. Evidently, the site was created to help determine your geneology but then devolved (as so many things do) into a celeb lookalike generator. You upload your photo, it runs some fancy analysis and bam! It spits out your spitting celeb image. Sort of.
The first photo I uploaded gave me Chelsea Clinton as my lookalike. Um. Well. At least it was post-makeover. The second photo I used gave me Shirley Temple. I must be one odd-looking bird. At long last, the third photo gave me Lisa Ling with a 78% match. Now, that seems much more reasonable. Lisa was followed by Aung San Suu Kyi, Camile Velasco (who?), Michelle Kwan and Ellen DeGeneres.
So, in other words, I look just like a lesbian actress/talkshow host with a Nobel Prize, under house arrest, who falls on her ass while attempting a triple axel. Who knew?
Honestly, that's just inhumane, cruel and debasing punishment. Big projects in econ, accounting and stats are still looming over our heads and it's not a pretty sight. It's no wonder, then, that a small group of Gang members became intoxicated yesterday during and after the MBA Holiday Party and started to dance all up on the chairs and tables in the first floor breakout room (which, by the way, has large windows that allow everyone to see everything). The dancing turned a little raunchy towards the end, so it's probably a good thing that the buzz started to wear off. I do believe some Gang members are under the influence again at The Duck tonight. Shoot, I'm even drinking by myself at home, while attempting to finish up a marketing plan. Priorities, you know.
Continuing in the ever-flowing vein of procrastination, I went to MyHeritage.com (thanks, Peach!) to find my celebrity lookalike. Evidently, the site was created to help determine your geneology but then devolved (as so many things do) into a celeb lookalike generator. You upload your photo, it runs some fancy analysis and bam! It spits out your spitting celeb image. Sort of.
The first photo I uploaded gave me Chelsea Clinton as my lookalike. Um. Well. At least it was post-makeover. The second photo I used gave me Shirley Temple. I must be one odd-looking bird. At long last, the third photo gave me Lisa Ling with a 78% match. Now, that seems much more reasonable. Lisa was followed by Aung San Suu Kyi, Camile Velasco (who?), Michelle Kwan and Ellen DeGeneres.
So, in other words, I look just like a lesbian actress/talkshow host with a Nobel Prize, under house arrest, who falls on her ass while attempting a triple axel. Who knew?
Friday, December 08, 2006
Pro/Con Analysis of WMATA
I love public transportation. I do. I love that there's a whole system of trains and buses that can transport me from Point A to Point B. I love that I don't have to pay for parking or fight for meters. I love that I can meet random people and watch random people on the train. I love that I can read through the first section of The Post on my ride to school. I love that signs tell me how long until the next train comes.
On the other hand, here's why I hate the D.C. Metro. It doesn't have a flat rate and you get charged differently depending on where you're going and when you're going there. The escalators and elevators only work about 80% of the time. It stops running at midnight during the week and 3am on the weekends. Random voices keep telling me "see it, say it." (WTF? Is anyone really going to "kindly ask" someone else "is that your bag?") And, most of all, it uses my hard earned loan money to pay for dumbass videos like this one.
On the other hand, here's why I hate the D.C. Metro. It doesn't have a flat rate and you get charged differently depending on where you're going and when you're going there. The escalators and elevators only work about 80% of the time. It stops running at midnight during the week and 3am on the weekends. Random voices keep telling me "see it, say it." (WTF? Is anyone really going to "kindly ask" someone else "is that your bag?") And, most of all, it uses my hard earned loan money to pay for dumbass videos like this one.
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
The Big Bang
Something exploded on my car last night. I was running late this morning (the story of my life) and had to drive to school, but when I saw my car, I literally stopped in my tracks. I've never done that before. If I had been holding a glass, I would have dropped it and it would have shattered spectacularly, just like they do in the movies. I stared, agog and aghast. It looked like a demented Jackson Pollock had released pent-up artist angst and rage on my car with a bucket of piss-yellow paint. (**Warning: fowl language approaching. I don't normally use it in the blog but, really, no other words can be employed in this particular instance)
I apprehensively approached the vehicle, unsure of what to do exactly. At first I thought that some of the neighborhood kids had enjoyed a fling with a paint gun or two. But then, upon closer inspection, the small, splattered, bright yellow blobs appeared to be bird poop. A lot of it. A LOT. My car was covered in piss-yellow bird shit. "Surely not," was my next thought. "What kind of birds shit in technicolor?" Evidently, the same birds that drink the water that makes a D.C. fish have both male and female organs. Or maybe they were drinking the dayglo. I couldn't even fathom what else that stuff could be. All I knew was that a liter of yellow bird shit had been loosed upon my car.
I looked to the car in front of mine. Clean as a whistle. I looked to the car on the other side. It shimmered back at me. I looked at all the cars all along the street. THEY WERE ALL CLEAN. How is it that I managed to park my car under the one tree that an entire flock of yellow-shitting birds decided to camp in for that one night? I have parked in this same spot countless times before. This has never happened.
Never, ever in my entire life have I ever been embarrassed to be seen driving a car. I had to drive my yellow-shit-covered car into the District in stagnant traffic that refused to move more than five feet a minute. I started to surmise that my newly decorated vehicle was causing part of the traffic. For the duration of the drive, I ran my wipers and wiper fluid and could not, for the life of me, pry that shit off the windshield. And then I had to park the car on a very public road. As I scrambled for quarters to feed the meter, I saw a student walk towards me, stare, walk away and look back, staring some more. I wondered if he knew me and I just didn't recognize him ... and then I realized with that sinking feeling that he had been staring at MY CAR.
The worst part is that I can't even take it to the carwash until Friday, which allows for plenty of time for that shit to cement itself to my car. Or, given the state of the Potomac's waters, time for that shit to eat its way through the metal.
You have to see it to believe it. Watch for pictures tomorrow.
UPDATE: Pictures available
I apprehensively approached the vehicle, unsure of what to do exactly. At first I thought that some of the neighborhood kids had enjoyed a fling with a paint gun or two. But then, upon closer inspection, the small, splattered, bright yellow blobs appeared to be bird poop. A lot of it. A LOT. My car was covered in piss-yellow bird shit. "Surely not," was my next thought. "What kind of birds shit in technicolor?" Evidently, the same birds that drink the water that makes a D.C. fish have both male and female organs. Or maybe they were drinking the dayglo. I couldn't even fathom what else that stuff could be. All I knew was that a liter of yellow bird shit had been loosed upon my car.
I looked to the car in front of mine. Clean as a whistle. I looked to the car on the other side. It shimmered back at me. I looked at all the cars all along the street. THEY WERE ALL CLEAN. How is it that I managed to park my car under the one tree that an entire flock of yellow-shitting birds decided to camp in for that one night? I have parked in this same spot countless times before. This has never happened.
Never, ever in my entire life have I ever been embarrassed to be seen driving a car. I had to drive my yellow-shit-covered car into the District in stagnant traffic that refused to move more than five feet a minute. I started to surmise that my newly decorated vehicle was causing part of the traffic. For the duration of the drive, I ran my wipers and wiper fluid and could not, for the life of me, pry that shit off the windshield. And then I had to park the car on a very public road. As I scrambled for quarters to feed the meter, I saw a student walk towards me, stare, walk away and look back, staring some more. I wondered if he knew me and I just didn't recognize him ... and then I realized with that sinking feeling that he had been staring at MY CAR.
The worst part is that I can't even take it to the carwash until Friday, which allows for plenty of time for that shit to cement itself to my car. Or, given the state of the Potomac's waters, time for that shit to eat its way through the metal.
You have to see it to believe it. Watch for pictures tomorrow.
UPDATE: Pictures available
US Citizenship Test Questions
Sample questions from the U.S. citizenship test (posted by ABC). How did you do? I got 7 of 9.
More on the new test here.
More on the new test here.
Monday, December 04, 2006
Pandora
I have this habit of not realizing that I'm singing out loud. I used to do it when I waited tables. I did it while in my cubicle at Big Red. And I busted out with "What's love got to do with it, got to do with it" today while studying for statistics. Not that there's any love lost between the Gang of 100 and chi squared tests. I spent nearly six hours studying statistics today. ew.But while I was studying, at least I had the soundtrack of life in the background, provided by Pandora. It's fabulous -- you tell Pandora what artists or songs you like, and it sets up a radio station that plays similar music, based on a rather complicated project called the Music Genome. It even will tell you why a certain song is playing, e.g. minor key tonality, horn section, dominant vocals. Pretty cool stuff.
Way cooler than statistics.
Friday, December 01, 2006
Choices and a lonely road
Perhaps it's the two glasses of wine, or perhaps it's just the events of the day but I'm about to wax philosophical.
The Gang of 100 was supposed to have a workshop today on "total integrity management." That's just a fancy business-school way of saying ethics. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling mishap and we got kicked out of the auditorium and our speaker held a quick, 10-minute session with us in the hallway of the Duck. (Which, by the way, was a sauna today. You'd think they could figure out the temperature control in a $50 million building). Anyway, the speaker is a professor at the school and teaches what sounds like a pretty amazing business ethics class. He was a little quirky, which means he'll probably be a fantastic professor, and did a great job promoting the class.
Afterwards, I was chatting with some Gang members about the class and about ethics in general. The conversation was intriguing -- I was somewhat surprised at the different values, attitudes and codes towards ethics that we all held. What I thought of as so clearly black and white was a grey area for someone else. For example, what if you run your own company and you need to make payroll so your employees can take care of their families and you can do it by making a decision that lies in your ethical grey area. What do you do?
I'm not saying I can perfectly answer that question for everyone but I found one answer in a rather unexpected place when I got home tonight. My roommate, her fiance and I watched the most recent Harry Potter movie -- you know, the one with the Tri-Wizard competition and the fabulous, ultimate middle school hellishness of finding a date to the dance. Anyway, at the end of the movie, Dumbledore and Harry are talking and Dumbledore, in all his wisdom, says to Harry, "Difficult times lie ahead. And you'll have to choose between what is right ... and what it easy."
That's often what it comes down to, isn't it? The decision that we suspect we should make ... and the decision that is just more convenient, that doesn't require extra work, that doesn't force us to face that squirmy place of admitting failure or standing alone. What a paradox. How come the right decision frequently is the toughest? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't integrity be easy? What a fallen world we must live in. Maybe one day, we'll find some sort of redemption for the craziness we've build around us.
If not in this world, perhaps in the next.
The Gang of 100 was supposed to have a workshop today on "total integrity management." That's just a fancy business-school way of saying ethics. Unfortunately, there was a scheduling mishap and we got kicked out of the auditorium and our speaker held a quick, 10-minute session with us in the hallway of the Duck. (Which, by the way, was a sauna today. You'd think they could figure out the temperature control in a $50 million building). Anyway, the speaker is a professor at the school and teaches what sounds like a pretty amazing business ethics class. He was a little quirky, which means he'll probably be a fantastic professor, and did a great job promoting the class.
Afterwards, I was chatting with some Gang members about the class and about ethics in general. The conversation was intriguing -- I was somewhat surprised at the different values, attitudes and codes towards ethics that we all held. What I thought of as so clearly black and white was a grey area for someone else. For example, what if you run your own company and you need to make payroll so your employees can take care of their families and you can do it by making a decision that lies in your ethical grey area. What do you do?
I'm not saying I can perfectly answer that question for everyone but I found one answer in a rather unexpected place when I got home tonight. My roommate, her fiance and I watched the most recent Harry Potter movie -- you know, the one with the Tri-Wizard competition and the fabulous, ultimate middle school hellishness of finding a date to the dance. Anyway, at the end of the movie, Dumbledore and Harry are talking and Dumbledore, in all his wisdom, says to Harry, "Difficult times lie ahead. And you'll have to choose between what is right ... and what it easy."
That's often what it comes down to, isn't it? The decision that we suspect we should make ... and the decision that is just more convenient, that doesn't require extra work, that doesn't force us to face that squirmy place of admitting failure or standing alone. What a paradox. How come the right decision frequently is the toughest? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Shouldn't integrity be easy? What a fallen world we must live in. Maybe one day, we'll find some sort of redemption for the craziness we've build around us.
If not in this world, perhaps in the next.
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