Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Late nights and early mornings

Have you ever used google calendar? Microsoft exchange calendar? How
about macs iCal? I hadn't either before I arrived at haas. I now
have so much on my plate that I have 6 calendars in these 3 formats
all synced together and sending me email and text message Alerts when
I have something due. It's a gift when I get to bed before 1 and a
blessing when I get to sleep past 7.

So those who know me well should laugh at this pic knowing where all
the black cans went. Good news is that I am down to only one can of
diesel fuel a day. But I am concerned with the frequency cocacola
stocks this machine.

Thursday, September 25, 2008

Top of the world

Was able to get in 1.5 hours on the mountain bike today. Kanye has a
new song on iTunes. Glover is still hairy. Buckles better put me
above wick on his list of blog friends or else.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

10000

A couple notable results. First, I managed to finish the entire micro-econ mid term. It was a bitch (sorry mom). I know I didnt come close to getting everything right, probably even manage somewhere in the high 60% to low 70% range. Now, those that know me well will say that I am understating my effort. Truth is, this is serious business and the information (tons of it) is really complex and complicated. I am concerned that the stardard normal bell curve might not overcome my inability to produce correct answers. Or the normal distribution will find me firmly planted in the A range. Thank God for curves!

Second, 10000+ blog hits. I dont know if this means that annie gives me 100 hits a day for 100 days or if people are actually coming here to read what I have to say. I know that I have let some people down by not posting much about riding lately. I'll change that. But this semester has found me completely reorganizing my time commitments. Much like last fall, I'm just unable to give my bike enough time. Thats not stopping me from finding my first CX bike. Any suggestions? And yes I need something thats technologically advanced.

Lastly, I leave you with the below. While it is true that I will be at school today from 8 am to midnight:30, its not all business. The social events here are taken seriously. And we have a very well written, comical social chair. I give you his words below:

SOCIALalert


Events

This Week
9/23 – Tuesday Night at the Graduate: Nostalgia…for an evening
9/25 – Bar of the Week: Jupiter (Pre-BOW DEMC Happy Hour at Beckett’s)
9/27 – The Second Coming of the LAHBA BBQ!

Save the Date
10/12 – Scratch-n-SniffTV Annual Pig Roast
10/17 – End of Fall A Celebration (Party)
10/24 – October Consumption Function Thrown by Q@Haas

Administrationality
Online Social Calendar


This week’s monologue is brought to you by Jessica Johnston. Every so often, Haasies engage in a sadomasochistic event called the Beermile. Basically this event consists of running 4 ¼-mile laps around a track, chugging a bear before each lap. Last night, said event occurred in honor of the 30th b-day of Haas ’08 grad Ken Wallace. Believe it or not, there’s actually a website to track results. Stay tuned for future events…

Top 5 finishers of the 2008-2009 Beermile pre-season kick-off event!

Name
Time
Sex
Age
Beer
Notes
1.
Adam "The Champ" Brink
7:30.0
M
Tecate and Guiness, from can
Shirtless
2.
Ken "Birthday Boy" Wallace
7:32.0
M
30
Bud, from can
Shirtless
3.
Jessica “Token Female” Johnston
7:52.0
F
Coors, from a can
First Female
4.
Dave "Pumpkin" Fiore
8:02.0
M
Guiness, from can
Sprocket widget caused some problems
5.
Ben BiddleBen "Renaissance Man" Biddle
9:48.0
M
Coors, from a can
Would have been 3rd if he didn't puke...2min penalty

Tuesday 9/23 – Tuesday Night at the Graduate: Nostalgia…for a night
9:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.
The Graduate
6202 Claremont Ave, at Claremont and College

With the ushering in of the new MBAA last year, I made a controversial move and changed the main Tuesday night event from the Graduate…which is technically in Oakland, to the Bear’s Lair, which is technically on freakin’ campus. The aftermath amongst the class of 2008 was something like the 2000 Florida election results, and after a semester of neglect, they all continued going to the Graduate out of what I can only imagine was blood boiling spite. You can witness the extent of their malice in this epic C4C auction item video: (link).

But let’s be honest now – while the Graduate offers free popcorn, a full bar, and excellent deals on PBR, actually eating the stale, heavily molested roasted maize makes you realize that you get what you pay for, and it’s location near the Mexican boarder requires two Donkeys’, an airplane ride, and a team of Sherpas to get you there. Not to mention their juke box doesn’t have Journey on it…a non-starter for our class. On the plus side, however, we used to get to play my favorite game – DUI roulette – on the 45 hour trek home every Tuesday.

Well…umm…it’s amazing how opinions can evolve with a change of address. So tonight we return to an old standby for a night of nostalgia, and homage to Paul DeRemer’s beard (Haas ’08).

Old Map to the Graduate






(DeRemer) Prodigal Sons Return


Back to the top

Thursday 9/25 – BOW: Jupiter (Pre-BOW DMEC Happy Hour at Beckett’s)
9:00 p.m. – 2 a.m.
2181 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley

If you happened to forget your passport and couldn’t make the boarder crossing to get to TNAG, you are not forgotten. This week we keep BOW in Berkeley before a very important exodus to SF next Thursday. This event is highly convenient for all of you coming over from the DMEC happy hour at Beckett’s.

Crap – I’ve officially hit the point in writing the social alert when I don’t care if the post is funny…or interesting.

Friday, September 19, 2008

Too tired

By the end of my hell day, I was out of juice. But I am never so out
of juice that I can't throw out a good phillip Ryan Jonson -male
model- impersonation!!!!!! Sorry pal, but you should have never told
any one about that.

Congrats to gener on the new addition!

First grad school exam tomorrow. Anyone have a good explanation for
covariance vs Chebychov's rule?

Very studious

This morning started at 7. I was outside the school reading my
business case fir organizational behavior. I was dressed in
California business casual because I had a company briefing later in
the day. Cisco is a great company and I could see myself there!

3 classes, a company lecture, and a speaker series equaled 10.5 hours
of sitting today. I am totally drained.

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Road rash

This is why you should shave. I wake up 4 times a night because every
time I bend my knee, I am pulling on flesh! I can only imagine the
pain if I had hair!

Shave your legs glover!

Sunday, September 14, 2008

San Francisco Twilight


Yesterday was a nice break from the all day/no riding business school. I woke up somewhat late and went to the season opening Cal Cycling Love-In. I wasnt really excited about the name of this event, but it turned out to be pretty fun. There were probably 60 cyclists there riding 2-4 hours. There were groups of roadies and dirt searchers. I rode with the mtn bikers and had a lot of fun. I am really looking forward to the season of collegiate mtn bike racing. I dont know if I will be training at all, but I will race a couple times and hopefully qualify for nationals.

Interesting story. On the road ride, one of our guys stopped to help this old duffer with a flat tire in marin country just north of San Fran. Turns out the old guy was robin williams on his fully custom sycip with super campy record. The guy didnt even know how to change his own tire! Of course like a good poor college student should, our cal cyclist asked robin williams to donate to the cal cycling team. We'll see how that one pans out.



This is the start line at the SF Twilight crit. You can easily see Richmond Pro Cycling's Craig Dotson in the front row. Further to the right is the Time contingent with Mike Stoops and Eric Barlevav. It was really cool to see these east coast local pros do a great job and represent in the race.


Jeff Buckles of RPC talking to Ryan Mele about 4 rows deep at the start. The course was set up pretty awesome in that there was a long drag slight uphill before a 90 degree turn to the start/finish. The downhill corner was super fast (at least 40mph) and a rock racing guy hurled himself into the hay bails in the middle of the race. The entire crowd (couple thousand) all made the "ooooohhhhhh" crowd noise on queue. He checked his body for blood, jumped up, and got back in the race. It was a ton of fun.




I went over to the city with eric (a classmate) and enjoyed my time. He and I walked around the city after the race waiting for RPC to wash themselves. What a great town. For the 1st time in my life, I am not surrounded by the navy and its disproportionate male/female ratio. Went out with buckles, craig, ryan, and their friend chad. I went to get every a drink and jbuck brushed me off. Buckles is a crazy bitch and I love him for it. He is tatooed from head to toe, has the most intense stare I have ever seen, and has never had a drink in his life! He's comitted to riding and I respect that! Let this be a lesson to all you young ones! You'll be faster if you dont drink. End of story.

Oh, I finally got my 2nd fork back from Pacific Bikes and cervelo. It took 4 weeks. And I am happy I scored my slc-sl before they added a bunch of weight and called the bike the S3.

3 mid-terms this week, a paper due, and 2 problem sets. Love it.

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Didnt Work


My attempt to email the funniest email I have received was a miserable failure. So I leave you with the above. While I dont agree with this gentleman's sexual preference, I think this is a pretty funny ad. Seriously, how can doogie howser ever take himself too seriously? Old spice? Wow!

I'll prob be working for old spice in 20 months. Wish me luck. Two years and $150,000 later, I will be attempting to convince you to wear more odor deterrent. I love this stuff.

Fwd: Green Alert- Only YOU Can Prevent Environmental Degredation!

This is without question the most entertaining email I have received from my haas email account!



Begin forwarded message:

 

                                                                                                        

Greenalert

 

 

 

Go Green Events!

 

9/12 – September Consumption Function Sponsored by McKinsey

 

Quite a few of you may have seen this email last year, but it's new to the class of 2010, so you're going to have to suffer through this awful color font one more time.

 

If you didn't read this the first time, you should really pay attention because throwing your perfectly biodegradable cups into a normal bin will may get you banished from the city of Berkeley.

……………………………………………………………………………………………..

 

Listen up everyone! We're going green here at Haas, and I 'm not talking about the color you turn after you eat a super burrito from FIFO.  I'm talking about good ol' environmental responsibility.

 

It's time to get out your hemp Cal gear, take public transportation to Haas, and learn what goes where when you're done consuming and functioning at Friday's event.

 

Like your 7th grade sex-ed teacher, I'm not going to teach you the best way to be green at Friday's CF, but I am gonna make an effort to teach you the rough basics. And with the abundance of Net Impacters willing to pounce on anyone violating greenialtiy, the consequences of not reading this email may be worse than an STD. So pay attention!

 

 

857572489_sustainability05.thumbnail.jpg

Actually, it's not that difficult

 

Step 1: Knowing what you're working with.

 

planetofapes.jpgThings that biodegrade. Things that don't biodegrade.

 

Your food? It biodegrades. Your plastic coke bottle? It will be here long after monkeys have come back to rule the earth again, which I hope is a really long time from now (or super soon, so I don't have to repay back my loans).

 

Paper? It biodegrades. Noticing a theme yet? Things that come from the earth seem to go back to it naturally well enough.  Your napkins, sugarcane-based paper plates, paper towels, cardboard boxes, etc - they all biodegrade.

 

Aluminum cans? No. These are for crushing against your forehead while yelling "extreme!" They can be recycled, i.e., turned into other things that don't biodegrade,  but not composted.

biocompostablesmd9371.JPG

Bioplastics? YES! They come from corn-based something or other that smart people have figured out how to turn into plastic-likeness, but are still biodegradable. Is this blowing your mind like when McDonald's introduced the McGriddle? Mine too. How do you know a bioplastic cup when you see one? It's got a label like the one on the right. Use those same reading skills that you use to filter out junk mail, like the Social Alert, to differentiate.

 

Believe it or not, we've been buying bioplastic cups and utensils for use at CF's since the beginning of the yearwhich brings me to my next point…

 

Step 2: Knowing where to put it

 

Trust me when I say that this matters so often in life.

 

At the consumption function, you put your biodegradables in one of the massive green compost bins. They look like normal trash bins, but are green. They are not recycle bins!

 

Also, we even use biodegradable bioplastic trash bags so everything composts nicely. They'll be labeled.

 

Please put your plastic, aluminum, and glass bottles in the recycle bins. These are not the big green compost bins.

 

And…if I see any of you putting biodegradables into the normal trash bins or non-biodegradables into the compost bins, I'm gonna make you sing karaoke in front of the entire school or maybe just give you a really nasty stink eye from across the courtyard.

 

 

 

bin2.jpg

This is indeed some form of trash can

 

Step 3: Never be caught without it - your own Cup!

 

We can avoid some of this hassle by having everyone bring their own cup. We'll waste less of your MBAA $$ on bioplastic beer cups (they're actually, really cheap), be more environmentally responsible, and BYOC comes with a super awesome side benefit:

 

THEY HOLD MORE BEER! That you haven't figured this out yet makes me question the GMAT numbers Pete Johnson touted during O-Week. This is a solid strategy for a number of reasons:

-      You get to control scarce resources

-      You minimize transaction costs

-      It's like Freudian brand management

-      It's intimidating to other beer-seeking players

 

112207625_d36323e455_m.jpg

It does matter

 

Gore_Al.jpgAl Gore approves of this message. (Well…not really, but I'm sure if he read it he could find something in here that wasn't completely offensive.)

 

 

Got an event you want promoted?  Send it to justin_parker@mba.berkeley.edu, and if it's appropriate for the whole school I'll send it out.  If you have any feedback, please use the link to the MBAA suggestion box: http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/mba/student/feedback-suggestions.html

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Crazy

Well, you feel like there are places on the world where you might have
a good idea of what you'll see. I thought I had a good idea about
what I would see here: tree sitters, street people, tons of students.
I never thought I would see this site! I think I am going to sell my
car and just live in this thing. It will even drive in this upside
down town.

Monday, September 8, 2008

Fitchburg



This is a photo of the fitchburg crit. Fitness is a great thing--when you have it. My fitness has left the building.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Student card tricks

This is actually prettycool. The student section is directed to hold
up different color cards to make different pics for the opposite side
of the stadium. Fun and entertaining.

After the card displaying, the 5000 students would just toss their
cards in the air making for a graduation like celebration. This was
cool, except for when the cards came back down. The cards would
strike you on the head, in the FACE, or someplace else where you
wouldn't want to be struck with a sharp edged flying object.

Cal wins 1st game

I am sitting through a 7 company investment banking seminar. I am
learning, but these people are not the most exciting in the world.

Anyway, this is a pic from the student section last Saturday. It was
a ton of fun. Looking forward to attending more games, but am happy
that we don't have a home game foe a couple weeks. I really need to
spend this weekend studying. Lucky me. I am loving this mess though.

Thanks to dani for overnighting me my 3T fork! I spent 20 mins
installing it last night. I feel much more confident now. Another
crit this Sunday morning. Love it.

Monday, September 1, 2008

Should be studyin'!

Without question there is something wrong with me. I managed to procrastinate mostly all weekend not doing much of anything. I enjoyed Ryan's b-day on Friday, the Cal-Mich State game on Sat, organizing myself on Sunday, and then racing today. Here it is 920 pm and I am just sitting down to work slash post on the blog. Serious problems I have.

But I love it.

Here's a good pic of the new team kit. Wow. California baby! Emma, met Dave (owner of Vanderkitten) and set up right near his tent. I introduced myself and he is super stoked you are on board. He claimed he had never seen anyone with your enthusiasm. Keep up the good work. For those of you who may have heard of her, Liz Hatch crashed out of a pretty serious Pro Women's field. She was pretty pissed but I told her that her crash was awesome and she should pride herself on the scarring. She was nice enough and happy to have someone give her encouraging words.


Start Banner


Typical J-dub style, attacking on lap 2 baby! Didnt stick by the way.


The race was a success in that I didnt crash and still was easily top 20. There were 100 crazy 3s racing this race. I felt horrible the first 10 laps but settled down for the last 15. Not too bad for only 4 rides in the last month. Hernia surgery didnt take away all my fitness. I cant wait to come back into form later in October. I this stuff!

Pretty nice view of the bay bridge.


A more famous bridge.


Rad video of the finish. You can pick me out on the far side in the teens. Thanks to stefan (my roomate) for coming over to the city and photoing/filming. Both he and eric came over just to watch. I was pretty impressed since neither of them ride. So I took them to outback and used Mary's (my sponsor mom) $50 outback gift card on our meal. I like, very nice.




Oh yeah, the 1,2 race was a Pro 1,2 with Rock, BMC, Bissell, Health Net boys all in attendence. I am not excited about catting up to a 2 on the West Coast. There was a Garmin Chipotle boy on the front absolutely drilling it the first 10 laps. It was single file 120 riders long! Crazy. There is a fella on the Cal team (Lucas Binder) who is a 2 having never raced anything other than collegiate racing. He has an SLC-SL and 2 mins before his start, his fork broke in 2 pieces and he was left laying on the ground still hanging onto his handlebars. I guess the Wolf SL recall is legit. I am seriously cheating death each time I ride my bike. Dani-HELP! Luckily lucas didnt get hurt at 3 mph.