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)
May 29, 2009
motivation, school, career
I'm struggling with motivation today. Despite what my parents may think, vis-a-vis my brothers and I, I am not magically immune to laziness whereas they had to be cattle-prodded along to not end up failing out of grade school. Frankly, they just yelled at me more.
That is challenging, because in Real Life, there's a lot less yelling and a lot more a) doing what you want and b) silent, passive-aggressive judging. Nobody at work is going to say "hey maybe you should classify those bugs for the next project and send them off to India instead of writing a blog entry," they're just going to save it up for my next performance review and note that I'm "capable of getting things done" rather than "gets things done."
Anyway, that's where I'm at today. It's rainy in New England and I'm doing my weekly work-from-home day, hanging out with Labatt. I've got a Financial Statement Analysis paper due on Tuesday and a ton of reading to do, which may or may not get started today.
So there's a bi-polar distribution in academics with one pole being the very analytical, quantitative, "math-y" subjects, and the other being the very creative, qualitative, "English-y" subjects. On one end, obviously, is pure mathematics, and the other is probably English, or creative writing, or something like that...it's interesting that the more quantitative side of the distribution is also more concrete, whereas it's hard to tell what's more qualitative: art, literature, dramatics, etc.
At any rate, this makes sense, given a left-brain/right-brain view of the world, and fits neatly with my core elementary school subjects of English, social studies, science and math. I was best at English, then social studies, then science, then math, which made sense because the amount of qualitative insight decreases while quantitative analysis increases as you go down the list.
Biz school is very much the same, which brings us to the reason I mention it, which is that Financial Statement Analysis is fairly quantitative, and therefore, hard. Now, I should qualify that by saying that I think the first few classes are necessarily more quantitative because they're a review/refresher of basic accounting principles, which I haven't really used in a couple of years. I think as we go, the class is going to be much more of, "here's a footnote, what do you think it means and can you back it up with some basic equations?" But for right now, it's a fire hose of information.
But I do understand better the pitfalls of securitization, which is what caused the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, and I feel a little better in terms of understanding the real ramifications of accounting games on the annual report and how that can impact public (investor) perception of companies. Frankly, it makes me think that, unless you're Warren Buffett, just go ahead and buy an index fund. You're better off than trying to beat the market.
Unless you have insider information, in which case, enjoy jail!
School is going well, then, and work is going well, and I'm doing just fine with everything I'm doing. That said, I'm going through increasing anxiety of the "what should I do with my life?" variety, which is predicated on a) graduating in one year and b) noting on my LinkedIn account that I've been at this job exactly as long as I was at my first job. No, I'm not jumping ship; that would not make any sense given the present economy and my role in this job and various other reasons. I'm just "noodgy".
I think that what I want to be professionally is a Business Analyst. From Wikipedia: "A business analyst or "BA" is responsible for analyzing the business needs of clients to help identify business problems and propose solutions." So, a professional troubleshooter, which is what I do now, minus the actual software coding work, and plus a little more strategic input. I don't see myself hanging up my text editor anytime in the immediate future, but who knows.
Posted by Mark at 12:43 PM | Comments (2)
May 20, 2009
school, graduation, vacation
Life has been unusually hectic lately and a reminder that one of these years, I need to learn to deal with stress in a positive manner.
School started up again this week and I'm looking at a really intense six weeks of analyzing 10-Ks and balance sheets for Financial Statement Analysis. Did you know that personal income tax and household finances are usually calculated on a cash basis, rather than an accrual basis, which is why you don't have a complicated balance sheet in your checkbook? Now you do! Learning is fun!
I like the finance classes because they teach me a whole lot of stuff I never knew or considered. They are also extremely overwhelming, because I have such a tenuous grasp of the subject matter, and almost no prior experience. Let's just hope that the textbook comes in the mail soon or I'm going to be even further behind.
We went to Robin's graduation this past weekend. She's got her Master's in Education. I'm jealous that she's done. One more year!
We're planning our Napa/Sonoma wine trip for this August and I think we've found a solid place to stay for a reasonable price in Napa. We still have plenty of details to work out--we might take a balloon ride in addition to a couple of wine tours!--but the flight is booked and the hotel is the next step. With a lot of friends thinking of starting families, this summer might be the last gasp for big vacations. We're not quite there yet, but if we want to do a group trip, this is it.
Posted by Mark at 04:35 PM | Comments (0)