Thursday, March 30, 2006

>list games

FALKEN'S MAZE

BLACK JACK

GIN RUMMY

HEARTS

BRIDGE

CHECKERS

CHESS

POKER

FIGHTER COMBAT

GUERRILA ENGAGEMENT

DESERT WARFARE

AIR-TO-GROUND ACTIONS

THEATERWIDE TACTICAL WARFARE

THEATERWIDE BIOTOXIC AND CHEMICAL WARFARE

GLOBAL THERMONUCLEAR WAR

Wednesday, March 29, 2006

Best. GIF. Ever.

Saturday, March 25, 2006

The Final Roster

The film draft is over. Here's what I got:

Action
9.10 Goldfinger
21.10 First Blood

Drama
4.07 Taxi Driver
19.10 Crimes and Misdemeanors

Comedy
13.10 The Graduate
14.07 Ferris Bueller's Day Off

War
8.07 The Dirty Dozen
12.07 Paths of Glory

Sci-Fi/Fantasy
17.10 Scanners
18.07 The Abyss

Kids/Animated
11.10 Fantasia
24.07 Pee Wee's Big Adventure

Horror
10.07 Poltergeist
16.07 A Nightmare on Elm Street

Suspense/Thriller
7.10 Vertigo
15.10 Mulholland Dr.

Western
2.07 The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Chick Flick
23.10 Bring It On

Guilty Pleasure
25.10 Zardoz

Foreign
20.07 The Seventh Seal

Black & White
1.10 Casablanca

Documentary
22.07 Startup.com

Sports Movie
6.07 Hoosiers

Musical
5.10 Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

Kevin Bacon Movie
3.10 Animal House

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

How Not to Spend 25+ Hours

So around 9 AM on Tuesday I realized that calls had started going out alerting members of the Chicago GSB Class of '08 of their admittance. This meant that at any moment I could get a call telling me that I was in. I never got such a call.

After the stressful day at work of waiting for my cell phone to go off (which it did twice, once from my sister and once from the notorious A. Dennis) I worked out and watched a bit of The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which didn't particularly impress me, although it wasn't too bad. I went to bed early, had a dream where I got a phone call from the adcom, awoke early and went jogging in the cold Boston weather to kill time.

About 100 yards away from my place, I realized that it was a bad idea to not have gloves on. I've decided that those that run in the winter (yes, it's technically spring, smartypants) up here are probably more hardcore than I am. I don't think I could stand jogging without my trusty flash mp3 player, so I suppose that's not very hardcore at all.

I got back to my apartment with time to shave, shower, and get ready for work before I would login to see my fate at 9 AM CST. The Chicago online site was so mobbed that it took me over a half hour (including my running next door to grab a breakfast sandwich and a coffee) to login and find that I was...waitlisted.

To quote Jim Carey:

SO I'VE GOT A CHANCE!

Oh well, I'll know by mid-May, I think, whether I got in or not. I like my chances as a candidate, and hope that I got waitlisted as part of Chicago's trying to keep their yield up (had an awkward moment in my interview when I told the interviewer where else I had applied). The only problem is that I'm unsure how much the waitlist will "move." I'm hoping it moves a lot. So all you people out there that got into more than one school (one of which was Chicago), well, you know where I'm going with this.

the bottom line: The wait continues.

Fantasy baseball is soon upon us! I'm drafting next week, AND HAVEN'T EVEN MAPPED OUT MY STRATEGY YET! Slow down. Don't get me wrong. I KNOW my strategy, I just haven't done the research yet. I will explain the strategy later. It involves Z-Scores.

Anyhow, this will be rather time consuming over the next few days, although I'll admit, I've been pre-occupied by a "movie draft" I'm also involved in.

so far my picks are: (round.spot taken in) - Category
1.10 -- Casablanca - B&W
2.07 -- The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - Western
3.10 -- Animal House - Kevin Bacon movie
4.07 -- Taxi Driver - Drama
5.10 -- Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory - Musical
6.07 -- Hoosiers - Sports
7.10 -- Vertigo - Suspense/Thriller
8.07 -- The Dirty Dozen - War
9.10 -- Goldfinger - Action
10.07 -- Poltergeist - Horror
11.10 -- Fantasia - Kids/Animated
12.07 -- Paths of Glory - War
13.10 -- The Graduate - Comedy

I'll update this list as it develops.

Last, if you live near a Reebok or Rockport outlet, enjoy yourself. I do love a good bargain, and could use a pair of black dress shoes, or maybe even black casual shoes.

np: Kanye West - Touch the Sky (I'm quite impressed with this song)

BTW, today someone sent me a video of another someone vomiting. I'm not making this up.

Sunday, March 19, 2006

V for Vendetta

I saw V for Vendetta this weekend and really enjoyed it. I managed to finish reading the book last week, and felt the movie was an accurate adaptation. Minor things were changed, and certain subplots were omitted, but that's necessary when you're not making Kenneth Branaugh's 4+ hour Hamlet.

That being said, I just don't see what all the brouhaha is about how much the movie relates to current events. Sadly, it is apparent that when you describe a fascist state, people immediately think you're presenting an allegory about the Bush administration. V for Vendetta is not an allegory.

I'm no fan of the Bush administration, but the movie pretty faithfully tells the story that was written in 1981. Yes, they modernized the setup to the story, but Alan Moore himself even admitted that his setup was terrible (it initially assumed that England had survived a worldwide nuclear war, in which England wasn't attacked because American missles had been removed from the country).

Speaking of Alan Moore, I found it amusing that the third credit or so at the end of the movie read "Based on a graphic novel illustrated by David Lloyd." I believe Moore once had the quote (paraphrased) "When they make a movie out of your work, they kill your baby. That they ask for your involvement in the movie is effectively them asking if you want to help kill your baby."

I was also amused by John Hurt playing a Big Brother type character, as he plays Winston in the film version of 1984. Ironic casting at its finest.

Anyway, the movie was good. Go see it.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

My 2003 Mazda 6

I have a 2003 Mazda 6i with a little over 50k miles on it. It's the first car that I ever bought, and except for the big turning radius and somewhat lowish gas mileage I can't complain. Well, the CD player is cheap, too, but that's nitpicking. I would buy the same car today (although I would have refinanced through my credit union back when rates were very cheap).

I had heard that having a car was expensive and inconvenient while living in Philadelphia. Fortunately, today I discovered that this wouldn't be an issue for me, and it looks like I will have my Mazda 6 for a while.

I'm hoping that this is all a big blessing in disguise. I sure know that I don't need nearly as many drunken cheesesteaks as I would have consumed in Philly, regardless of how tasty they may be.

the wait continues...

Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Slam of the Day (and it's only 10:30!)

"The New York Post is for people who move their lips while reading People."

--Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com

Zeno's Paradox

As I await the Wharton decision date, I'm reminded of this ancient Greek ditty.

Before we can get somewhere, we must first get halfway there, and before we can get there (the original midpoint) we must first get halfway there, and so on. Since the initial distance we were trying to reach was unspecified, and it could easily be half of yet another distance, Zeno paradoxically concluded that we can't even begin to move anywhere.

Well time is moving towards the Wharton decision date one half at a time, and to me it seems like it's never going to get there. Of course, when discussing the passing of time, it must be recalled that time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Top 10 things I learned from/about Lemmy from his lyrics

10. The only way to feel the noise is when it's good and loud
9. Rock 'n' roll ain't worth the name if it don't make you strut
8. Don't try to run, don't try to scream. Believe Lemmy, The Hammer's gonna smash your dream
7. The Chase is better than the catch
6. Ain't no way out, your momma was right
5. Lemmy leads you to your destiny, Lemmy leads you to your grave
4. If you squeeze Lemmy's lizard, he'll put his snake on you
3. Life's a bitch
2. You win some, lose some, it's all the same to Lemmy
1. Dead Men tell no tales

Friday, March 10, 2006

The Best Worst album of 2005


Life of Agony - Broken Valley

This album plays like a coked up Stone Temple Pilots (a smack band) that's darker and heavier than STP ever was. It's catchy, it's interesting, and there's ALMOST nothing not to like about it.

However, I reccommend that NOBODY buy this CD, since it installs the notorious Sony rootkit onto Windows-based machines. I still can't get it off my machine, and have resolved to re-install Windows to do so (it's been over 2 years anyhow since I installed).

The rootkit sends information about when you listen to the album and such back to a central Sony server and opens up large secuity holes that might be exploited. Sony issued two patches, the first didn't remove the rootkit, but rather removed the program hiding the rootkit's existence. The second leaves the computer open to other security risks. Microsoft's AntiSpyware tool allegedly removes the stuff, but I haven't gotten it to work.

Sony has taken a very unapologetic stance on the entire issue, in essence saying, "Our software was faulty, but our intention to protect our digital rights was necessary and correct." Screw them.

So I encourage you, dear reader, to see Life of Agony live, to STEAL THEIR ALBUM "BROKEN VALLEY" OFF OF THE INTERNET, and to not buy any Sony CDs that are marked that they include "Digital Rights Management," which is a funny name for a trojan horse if you ask me.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

An Example of Why "Genius" Fails at Predicting Markets

This is from David Swensen's incredible book mentioned earlier (his words in italics):

On October 19, 1987, the U.S. stock market, as measured by the S&P 500, declined by 23 percent. The unprecedented decline nearly defies probabilistic description. Based on historical daily volatility, the one-day collapse represented a 25-standard deviation event...

A one-standard deviation event happens one third of the time, two-standard deviation events 1/20th of the time, three-standard deviation events 1% of the time, and so on. Ever hear of Six-Sigma and Jack Welch? That's where all this mumbo-jumbo comes from. Sigma is the Greek letter used to represent standard deviations in statistics. Anyhow, Swensen then throws out this gem to describe how special a 25-standard deviation event is:

Based on a 250-day year, an eight-standard deviation event occurs once every three trillion years. Twenty-five-standard deviation events should not happen.

Wow. So the market is not at all normal (or '80s investors were collossally unlucky), and it seems almost certainly left-sided. (I don't think a 25-sigma uptick could happen as there's no real equivalent of a "positive bank run.")

Top selling US musicians

list

US citizens should be ashamed that they've bought more Aerosmith CDs than Rolling Stones CDs. I have to admit that AC/DC doing better than both is very surprising. Who owns AC/DC albums other than Back in Black and Highway to Hell? 66 million. damn. very metal. Not that AC/DC album ownership is a bad thing, I just don't understand who these people owning all these albums are. George Strait and Alabama on the other hand, I suspect I know exactly who these people are.

Metallica, who my father once described as "insignificant," is apprently one of the 20 least insignificant musical acts, so far as US sales are concerned.

BTW, I hate the RIAA, AS SHOULD EVERYONE.

np: Bad Manners - Lorraine

Belated thoughts on the Oscars

So I was trying to read tonight and get to bed early, but found myself unable to get away from The Aviator (starring Muhammad Ali?) on TV. It got me thinking about last week's Oscars, which I watched at a friend's house amongst other overeducated people who, although we hadn't seen a lot of the movies, didn't let that keep us from having strong opinions. In other words, we did it right (although I'll admit that a lot of the movies seem worth seeing)

thoughts:
  • I didn't particularly like the Three 6 Mafia song, but it was clearly the best of those nominated. Can you even hum any of the others by today? No, because they sucked.
  • that being said...Oscar Count: Martin Scorsese: 0, Three 6 Mafia: 1 So, so, sad. If any of the Best Picture nominees were as good as The Aviator (or even Gangs of New York) I really need to get around to seeing them. I'm not even going to insult everybody by bringing up Scorsese's best films, which never won either. Nevertheless, Kevin Costner is a no talent, ass-clown.
  • A friend predicted days before the show, "Crash will win. It's clearly the worst of the 5 nominees." Remind me to ask my friend about business school.
  • Steven Colbert correctly predicted Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actor and Supporting Actress winners the Thursday before the awards during a comedy sketch on his show. I don't think I'd like to see a comedy sketch about my business school apps.
  • Conservatives seemed more obsessed with the Oscars this year than in years past. Why? Gay sex. If Bill Clinton taught us anything, nothing angers conservatives more than sex. If the 2004 election taught us anything, gay sex angers conservatives more than hetero-sex.
  • If Salma Hayek disappeared off the face of the earth and was replaced in past, present, and future by Penelope Cruz, the world would be better. I'm even willing to look past the whole Tom Cruise thing. I wonder how Ed Norton would take it.
  • I still need to see Hotel Rwanda.
  • Will Snoop Dogg be as cool as he is now when he's Jack Nicholson's age? Cause Jack is still the coolest guy around. He's like a real life Fonzie.
  • Did Matt Dillon just recapture his spot as the most prominent Dillon brother? Kevin Dillon can't catch a break here. Just as Entourage got some acclaim, big bro Matt starts making a future Best Picture. No way he saw that coming with Sandra Bullock in the cast.
  • Have enough of the cast of The Outsiders fallen back down to earth from the fame they had in the 80s to make a sequel to this thing? Just switch Matt Dillon and Tom Cruise's characters (Dally and Soda Pop, respectively). Nobody wants that freak Cruise in the movie anyhow, but who wouldn't wanna see Estevez, Swyaze, Rob Lowe, Dillon, Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, and Diane Lane act out the story of the Greasers 25 years later? Tom Waits can even show up.
  • Philip Seymour Hoffman might be the actor that I'm happiest to see win an Oscar of anyone out there. Maybe now, people will stop calling him the gay guy from Boogie Nights.
  • Thank god the musicals seem to be gone.
  • These awards just don't mean as much anymore since Titanic won.
  • 1994: Forrest Gump beats Pulp Fiction and The Shawshank Redemption...awful, and I like Forrest Gump.
  • Other than Whoopi Goldberg, I don't remember the last time I didn't like the host of the Oscars. The crowd always seems to dislike them, though.
  • Greg Kinnear should receive an honorary Oscar for his work on E's Talk Soup. Tom Petty should present.
  • Don Knots got left out of the death montage. ouch. Do you think Gordon Parks, director of Shaft, who died in the past week makes next year's list? The Academy does tend to favor later-in-the-year events.
  • How many Americans asked themselves, "Wasn't Richard Pryor already dead?" when he was on the montage (closing it)
  • That they always get a hottie to host the engineer's award night has become high comedy on Oscar night. Well done, Rachel McAdams, well done.
  • You win nothing, George Lucas. And this was by far the best of your prequels. Sometimes the world is just.
  • Snub of the night: No Grizzly Man
  • I always find myself wanting to hate George Clooney, but not being able to. He's just likeable in the way that Harrison Ford is and Kevin Costner is not.
  • Of anything nominated, the ones I'm most anxious to see are Munich, Walk the Line, & Good Night, and Good Luck...and King Kong
  • Is anyone else disturbed by the disconnect the media has between Joaquin Phoenix and the legacy of his older brother River Phoenix? I don't think I've ever heard this discussed, nor Joaquin's prominent role in Space Camp as Leaf Phoenix.
  • for the first time I had some kind of cheese-port combination (it was pink) on my friend's homemade bread. This was good stuff.
  • Crash (2004). 2004? wtf?

np: The Franklin Kite demo

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Suddenly, I read a lot

Here's a list of books (complete with subtitles!) I'm reading (noted by *) or have read over the past 6 months or so. I would easily reccommend any of them. Maybe my life of sloth and essay writing (or more accurately, putting off essay writing) had left me with so much free time. Enjoy:

Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart, Won a World Series, and Created a New Blueprint for Winning
I absolutely despise the Red Sox and their fans. This book, however, was edited by a guy that writes a column for the YES Network web page, and was really just using the Red Sox story to sell a book about Sabermetrics and debunk various baseball myths.

Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America
Depressing, but insightful. Count your blessings that you're not in the shoes of the people in this book.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
This book reeks of late 90s dotcom euphoria. It's about Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape, and Healtheon, which afraid of support their rival was getting out of Redmond, bought WebMD. It made me wonder: this guy amassed quite a fortune. What ultimate value to society did his companies provide, and how would you rank the three? In a way, all of them have been both wildly successful, and ultimate commercial failures (OK, the book is still out on Healtheon)

When Genius Failed:The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management

Monkey Business: Swinging Through the Wall Street Jungle
You see I've applied to business schools, and these books strike me as things one should read before heading off to b-school. They both compare favorably to Liar's Poker, which is definitely a good thing.

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
I am not lying when I say that this book has conclusions about pop culture that I had already come to, and others that as soon as I read I wholeheartedly accepted. Klosterman hits the nail on the head on almost everything. He's flat wrong about probability, and I really can't care about Reality TV.

Unconventional Success: A Fundamental Approach to Personal Investment
This is a gem. A seemingly perfect followup to A Random Walk Down Wall Street, it really makes you understand how and why you should invest as he prescribes. When I finally finish it, I'm probably gonna reallocate and rebalance my 401(k).

V for Vendetta
Must finish it before the movie comes out. It looks pretty good, and I'm amused by the irony of John Hurt playing an authority figure in a dystopian movie.

The Roaring Nineties: A New History of the World's Most Prosperous Decade*
Krugman-esque (one of the highest compliments I could dole out).

Thinking Strategically: The Competitive Edge in Business, Politics, and Everyday Life*
I was supposed to read this in college when I took Game Theory. At the time, it was too slow and not detailed enough. Now that I've forgotten most of the Game Theory I know, it's interesting again.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
It's not about economics, it's about thinking. In God We Trust, all others bring data.

Political Numeracy: Mathematical Perspectives on Our Chaotic Constitution
A nerd's book for sure. This is by the guy that wrote Innumeracy, perhaps the ultimate nerd's book.

a few things about this blog:
  • I make links that open new windows. That's the way I like it.
  • you can do so, too. Just add "target="_blank" after you finish putting in the URL and before you close the tag (the "greater than" sign)
  • I'll try to put what music is in the background as I write these. My musical taste is ecclectic.
  • np: Brian Eno: Another Green World album
  • yes, I still call them albums
I realized today that the most clever thing I've said in a while was when I was discussing things worthy of splurging on. Someone said, "Good speakers." I said "Don't waste your money on a new set of speakers, you'll get more mileage from a cheap pair of sneakers." No one laughed.

Monday, March 06, 2006

First Post & Test

...