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June 20, 2009
paper, NYC, other
Just hanging out on a Saturday...working on a paper, procrastinating with the power of the Internet. Kara's Mum is in town, helping us clean and organize the house, as she does, and which I very much appreciate. I unexpectedly put together a garbage bag of clothes to donate. Looks like I'll be making a dropoff at Goodwill later this week. I honestly thought I had nothing that could go, but I was surprised to find my drawers full of a number of T-shirts and even shoes that I never even realized I still had.
We were in NYC last weekend visiting Wu; had a great time in Chinatown. Tried Bubble Tea: interesting, but not really recommended; you can simulate the experience by chopping gummi-bears into pieces the size of airsoft pellets, then putting them into Kool-aid and drinking the whole thing via a wide straw. I discovered a bar where you can get Yuengling in quarts; this practice is shockingly not widespread. Also, bought a pair of flip-flops that have bottle-openers in the soles. This is only because the pair with the flasks in the heels didn't come in my size. And I finally got a pair of those Adidas massage sandals that every soccer jock had in high school. I was really missing out.
It was a great weekend and much love to Wu for letting us crash at her place, and for playing tour guide. Oh, I forgot: I got a sweet hat. I'll post a pic at some point.
Work is keeping me busy, and the transition to a new boss has had its challenges, but I'm keeping up with it. Between school and work, neither Kara nor I are spending a lot of hours at home, but only another week or so and then my real summer will begin. On the downside, that means I have a paper due on Thursday and a final the week after that.
My Snap Circuits kit came in the mail and I'm loving playing around with it. I would have killed for one of those Radio Shack DIY electronics kits when I was a kid, and this is my chance to finally get a handle on how the circuits within the devices I use everyday actually function. Well, in a simplistic fashion...it's a kit intended for audiences 8-108, so the descriptions of the projects leave out some of the detail of how/why things connect and work the way they do, but that's just another chance for me to experiment. It's only battery-operated, so no chance of shocking myself, though I've heard you can heat up the batteries to the point of them popping out of the holder if you create a short circuit. It'll be a neat thing to keep in the closet for kids to play with someday, once I do everything I can do with it.
Games-wise, I'm finishing Mario & Luigi: Partners in Crime for the DS, and I've got a copy of dungeon-crawler throwback The Dark Spire in the batter's circle. Now that The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion is on Steam, I might grab a copy of that later this summer, and I still haven't finished Psychonauts.
Oh, and I brought the guitar out for an impromptu singalong the other weekend...I need to work on my Tom Petty for a Vermont trip with some friends on the second weekend in July. Thanks to Bennett for letting me borrow his Ovation.
Posted by Mark at 04:17 PM | Comments (0)
June 05, 2009
couch, analysis, career
It's late and I should be sleeping but I'm surfing while Kara naps on the couch. In the event of a fight, the loser has to sleep in the bed. It's a really comfy couch.
This Financial Statement Analysis class is crushing my skull. The prof, who is visiting from BC, decided the other day that she would hold off on derivatives in order to make sure we covered bonds and liabilities in detail, and prep for the mid-term on Tuesday. I sent her an email thanking her, indicating that, in convos with some classmates, I'm not in the minority for thinking that the volume of information is like sucking a fire hose through a cocktail straw...in space.
She concurred...I asked her a quick question about the exam at the end of class, and she thanked me for my email. It's her feeling that BU really shouldn't be offering this as a compressed-schedule summer course, where a normal 14-week class ends up being 12 classes in 6 weeks. It's just too much for a technical class.
But like all finance classes, I like having the information. In some ways, I wish that high school math showed some more practical applications, where you could really look at a balance sheet, run some numbers, and arrive at a conclusion that could make/save you some money. It's like trig, or writing, or anything, really...you need to cover the basics before you can really apply it, I get it. But it's 2009; we have the attention spans of gnats. And I'm haunted by that guy in my senior year broadcasting class who spent his whole life wanting to be a sportscaster, and got his chance, and really, really sucked at it. Do you have to wait until you've devoted your whole life to something to realize that it's not for you? What's crueler: an early culling, or having your dream snatched out of your hands? And people wonder why I'm a moral relativist.
Work is progressing. I'm getting good stuff done. I did join the International Institute for Business Analysis, which is possibly the first time I've joined a professional organization. I'm figuring out career goals which include me staying put at my present employer for as long as they'll have me, and trying to find a way to make my long-term desire to be in a more strategic role fit with the need for somebody to manage web development. I think I can make that happen.
Posted by Mark at 01:00 AM | Comments (0)