Month: November 2001

Closure on a class

My last Finance II case writeup was completed today. This is a fairly big deal. I was dealing with a pretty big Black Dog last spring when I first tried to take Finance II, and facing incredibly complicated cases with lots of computation, no road map, and no teammates was about to send me right into the frozen Charles. I dropped it and decided to take it again this fall. It’s just about bearable this time, in spite of the fact that I’ve fatally screwed up just about every case so far.

The irony of course is that I had to finish the last case on my own, and so completely missed the instructions that I had to value the company using the APV method rather than WACC.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “Rebecca Sylvester” by Gastr Del Sol on Upgrade & Afterlife. What a weird, wonderful song by a weird, wonderful band. I think the great thing for me about this band (unfortunately defunct) is the way David Grubbs’ lyrical melodies seem so comfortable with the weird sounds that Jim O’Rourke wraps around them. Besides, how can you dislike a song that ends, “Why did the sharks watch him drown?” … I owe Tyler a big debt of gratitude for introducing me to the band (even if he did freak me out when he told me, “Their songs sound like the noise inside my head when it’s quiet”).

Requiem for the CoffeeCam

I spoke too quickly about web cams yesterday. I just saw that the Coffee Pot Web Cam has gone permanently offline (since August, apparently). I’m so sad! Where else can I get free images of coffee over the Internet? How will I know when it’s time to hop a plane to Cambridge to make new coffee?

Seriously, I remember seeing the coffee pot in early 1994 and thinking, that’s seriously cool. It was the first time that I got a real clue about the power of the Web to allow people to share things across wide geographic distances–in a more meaningful way than files on an FTP server, words on Usenet newsgroups, or nodes on a Gopher directory. In some small way, the coffee pot image server is probably responsible for my publishing on the web. I think a small moment of silence is in order.

Convergence isn’t always pretty

Alison’s PantsCam: The best WebCam since the first one. This is why you want to keep Java programmers occupied, otherwise you get useful apps like this: “A client-side Java applet automatically refreshes the images of Alison’s pants and provides a simple chat interface for site visitors to discuss recent PantsCam developments.” I’m still scarred by the sentence before that: “The entire assembly is strapped to Alison’s belt and the camera is inserted in her pants, providing the entire world a constant live video feed of her underwear.”

Those Crazy Archbishops

Great quotation, courtesy of Friday’s A Word A Day: “As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls.” -Matt Cartmill, anthropology professor and author (1943- )

Thought y’all’d appreciate that. 🙂 Not much else today, hence the news vs. a story. Busy busy work day. Have a good one!

more…

Morning update

It’s a humid 60° here in Boston. I love fall. I was all excited for a freezing November and it’s only gotten down below 40° one week. Wah wah wah.

Three weeks left to go in the semester. I’m not going to sleep a lot for a while. But I do have some nifty music that the E-52s will be performing shortly. We’re going to larn us some hol’day stuff if it kills us, hyuh!

Back again, Mac again

I was tempted to call this entry “Epi-blog.” Boy, I really needed the break from blogging. My blog-puns were starting to scare even me.

Great trip to New Jersey and Lisa’s folks, great turkey, great time with family. I spent a good amount of time on my mother in law’s iMac upgrading and installing software. She’s now running 9.2.1 and Netscape 6.2, as well as proper Norton stuff. I failed in a larger area, though. I had donated my old SCSI scanner to her along with a SCSI to FireWire converter in hopes we could get it up and running. Unfortunately, somewhere in one of the moves it made between Virginia and New Jersey, the scanner stopped working. If it had been successful, I would have been able to point to my mother-in-law’s web page. We were going to hook her up with iTools and put some family photos up. Oh well, there’s always next time.

(B)Logout

So this is a notice. I don’t expect to update the blog until Sunday or Monday. We’re going to be driving tomorrow and eating a lot of turkey and stuff on Thursday. Happy Thanksgiving, all!

Six Web Services Predictions: Going Out on a Limb

I’m making six predictions about the web services space. Highlights: tighter margins for Accenture and OEMs, no room yet for pure-play billing providers, and ongoing developer interest in projects like XML-RPC but little measurable market share. Your comments are welcome–I’m just putting a finger in the wind and making some guesses that are as yet not backed up by ironclad research.

Now playing

Currently playing song: “Ain’t That A Groove” by James Brown on Star Time (Disc 2) The Hardest Working Man In Show Business. Ow! I just gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta gotta know!!! Boy, it makes working on finance cases much harder. 🙂

No Respect

Just got an atta-boy and a pat on the shoulder by the Vice President for my work during this crunch period. He said that I’ve been doing better than my manager, in front of my manager. That’s fine, but next time give me my props in cash money, dog. Where’s the love?

Recommendations?

Me again. 🙂 I have a good friend who will be stuck in London over Thanksgiving for a job interview. It’s been a while since I’ve been, and the only places I can remember for him to eat well on a budget are Belgo and RK Stanley. Anyone out there with more clue than me want to provide suggestions? I’ll forward them to him–the suggestions must be in by tonight for me to be able to email them to him before his flight leaves tomorrow.