J.R. Ewing lives

Just now I went to the supermarket and stopped at a red light behind a BMW X5. The X5's license plate bares a reference to my favorite TV show.

Dave, don't let the door slam you on your way out ...

I liked working at AOL but the thing I hated the most about the company is the arrogance on the part of those in upper management. Employees go to all hands meetings, where executive honchos get up and deliver a giant "pat on the back" speech, enriching all of us with minute details of their personal lives.

David Gang is the most typical example of this type of executives. I still remember the day back in May when he announced his departure from the company. Employee were treated to a seven-paragraph email from him listing all his accomplishments over the past ten years. Today's his last day at the company. It will be interesting to see how long he lasts over at WebMD, I'd be sure to avoid the stock like the plague.

Another cheating scandal at UVA?

This time involving graduate students in the economics department. Apparently a "large fraction" of this past year's class of 30 first year graduate students used the textbook's online answer key to do their homework. If this incident results in a large number of graduate students getting expelled or volunteering to withdraw from the program, it could possibly affect the number of teaching assistants available to teach undergraduate students. Economics is the largest undergraduate major at UVA and the department is already understaffed as it is.

Becoming a total TV addict

This began back in February. After watching the first season of Dallas via DVD from Netflix, I decided to get digital cable so I can catch the other tweleve seasons on Soapnet. Then about a month ago, Soapnet began running Dynasty from the beginning and I added a second hour to my daily afternoon viewing.

Earlier today I called my cable company to cancel the STARZ package because I was sick of paying $5 per month (special intro rate) for five channels that I don't watch. The rep processed the cancellation and informed me that she has a current promo, also $5 per month, for HBO. So I called with the intentions of cancelling five channels that I didn't watch, and ended up walking away with 11 channels of TV that I do watch.

Now you know where my time goes.

Free ice cream this week

Today at Starbucks and Saturday at Cold Stone Creamery. 

Ken Elzinga in the news

A local Charlottesville newsweekly had an interview with one of my favorite professors at UVA. Ken Elzinga teaches intro to microeconomics and an upper level class on antitrust policy. He is regarded as one of the premier economist in the field of antitrust and consulted for Microsoft during its antitrust case.

Ken's (students who have taken his upper level course are allowed to address him by his first name) most unusual talent is as a mystery writer. Him and a fellow economist have written three mystery novels under the pen name Marshall Jevons. These novels feature Henry Spearman, a fictional character who teaches economics at Harvard University. In each novel, Spearman finds himself in the middle of a situation where he uses principles of economics to unravel the mystery.

One thing I won't miss about this area

I have lived in this area for seven years now and this is the one thing I like the least about it, it is the way working professionals identify themselves (and others) by their jobs. Sometimes when I go to meetings, parties, etc. I play a little game where I would introduce myself to someone or a group of people and try to count how many conversations we have before someone asks me the inevitable "so what do you do for a living?" I find this attitude to be quite arrogant. I know a couple of people my age who have nice jobs for big name companies and they never give up the opportunity to brag about their jobs. They gloat about it just so that others would know how successful they (or/and their employers) are. I don't know if this phenomenon is unique to this area, unique to big cities, or nationwide (although I doubt it).

When I was on the plane to Miami on June 17, I read an article in the local major newspaper. It talked about how rising real estate prices have driven a divide in the office between co-workers who own their own homes and those who rent. It quoted a local clinical psychologist who said that "in hard-charging cities such as (city where I live), known for its high-achieving careerists, people traditionally have been very much defined by their jobs." 

It goes to show that some people are just pathetic and need to get a life.

The big dig begins

Since I will be moving soon, this is the right time for me to bust open those closet doors and go through the archive of stuff I have saved from the last seven years. This has made me realize how much of a pack rat I am, a lot of the stuff I came across I have not looked in the almost two years that I have been living in my apartment.

Here are some of the items of note I have come across - 2000 Microsoft Annual Report, 1998-2002 Applied Materials Annual Reports, something I got from orientation at the telecom company titled Equal Employment Opportunity Compliance and Sexual Harassment - Participant's Notebook June 98, a second booklet titled Gaining a Competitive Edge Through Diversity Management, AOL 9.0 Optimized Product Summary, AOL 7.0 Product Summary, AOL Time Warner 2002 Factbook, AOL Time Warner 2002 Social Responsibility Report, AOL Facts 2002, Washingtonian Magazine "Great Places to Work" issue (11/1999), Worth Magazine (10/2002) issue with an article titled "Why You Should Buy AOL Time Warner Now," Money Magazine issue (3/2000) with a cover story titled "How to Invest in the Hottest Market Ever," Time Magazine issue with Thomas Jefferson, the last Time Magazine issue prior to 9/11, and a couple of Time Magazine issues from the most recent Presidential campaign with various candidates on the cover.

I also realized just how many college textbooks I have. I saved textbooks not just from classes I have taken, but also textbooks I have bought for real cheap from yard sales or the bookstore on the Corner at UVA. Even though most of these textbooks are on topics that are covered in the MBA program, I will only keep a small number of them.

Financial cost of being on Darden's wait list

As I had earlier expected, there is a financial cost for not being able to plan my MBA transition ahead of time. I signed up for Kenan-Flagler's pre-MBA workshop on Thursday. Found out over the weekend that because I had missed the June 1 registration deadline (which was advertised prominently on the registration website but not on the brochure they gave me during Accepted Student Weekend in April), I have to pay for my own textbook rather than receive one for "free" as part of the tuition of the course.

What's ironic is that this is the same textbook (which I still have) I used when I took Corporate Finance in college, except we are now 3 editions later. I managed to find a couple of sellers on Amazon who will sell me the latest edition for around $100.

This totally blows.

Praying for a change of heart

For a while now, I had sensed that we were about to reached a turning point in my endeavor to get into Darden. A week ago yesterday, as I was saying goodbye to my buddy and his new wife, I asked him to check his email regularly. The news I received on Friday from my Darden account manager was not encouraging. Then earlier today, a fellow applicant on Darden's wait list reported on Business Week Online that he got an email from his account manager saying there's a high probability wait listed candidates will not be considered.

I have reached the point where I am ready to emotionally "throw in the towel" and accept UNC Kenan-Flagler as my destiny for the next two years. While I am still on the wait list, the preponderence of information available suggests that, barring the unreliability of the information (such as account managers purposely misleading applicants so as to dampen our expectations) or the admissions staff having erred in projecting the number of cancellations they will receive in July (which is unlikely), it is very unlikely for me to get off the wait list. Folks, if you like to watch the news on election night, this is the part where Dan Rather announces "CBS News projects the winner of Virginia's 13 electoral is Joe Schmo."

As I have said before, I would much rather go to Darden than Kenan-Flagler. But as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would say, "you go to the school that accepted you, not the one you wish had accepted you." I have prayed about getting in since July, 2004. Sometime around May, I stopped. I figured if He didn't hear me the first 500 times, praying a couple of more times wasn't going to make a difference. I began to pray instead for peace and guidance. Earlier this evening, I was about to pray for peace and guidance again when I realized something. What I really need the most right now is a change of heart, for God to make Kenan-Flagler my top choice over Darden.

It's hard to explain in words how significant this revelation is. A big part of Christianity is about allowing Christ to change your heart, and I asked him to do this seven yearsago one night at the Tree House. Yet most of the stuff I have prayed for as a Christian involve what I want, what I would like to see happen, and to ask for peace in the event I don't get it. I cannot remember one time I actually asked (I probably have, I just don't remember) for my heart to be changed in the event I don't get something. This has certainly made me think more about the things I will pray for in the future.

Saying "no thanks" to joining the Quixtar Revolution

I was at a bookstore over the weekend, trying to pick up some pointers on how to write well in the autobiographical form. I was standing in the sociology section, checking out a couple of books when a gentleman of Indian descent tried to strike up a conversation with me by asking I was interested in sociology.

I have hung out in bookstores often enough that I pretty much knew what this guy wanted the minute he opened his mouth. Yet I tried to give him the benefit of the doubt by being polite. He told him I was looking at a couple of books that I found interesting, one particular book was written by the father of someone I went to UVA with. He tried, very poorly I must say, at continuing the small talk. He asked what I do and I told him I was starting an MBA at UNC. He finally got the point when he said he works with a couple of people in the I.T. sector and was in the process of helping them set up business opportunities over the Internets.

I then told him I am familiar with Quixtar and am not interested in becoming an independent business owner (IBO). He then countered that he too thought about pursuing an MBA a few years back (I have a theory that everyone that has ever seen the starting salary for Harvard Business School graduates feels qualified to say "I considered an MBA a while back.") and decided against it because "with an MBA, I would still be an employee. I don't want to be an employee, I want to be my own boss." The guy obviously does not understand what an MBA is because if he does, he would know that MBA graduates are capable of (and many do) starting their own businesses. He asked me if I am familiar with the concept of creating different streams of income and I said I have read about it in Rich Dad, Poor Dad. The mention of that title brought a smile to his face, I know from past experiences with these people that they love to quote the books by Robert T. Kiyosaki. Recognizing that he was going through a script they gave him at the training session, I ended the conversation as quickly as I could.

I am very familiar with what he was selling because I have sat in on two presentations by these Quixtar (former name is Amway) folks before. They tell you that they have an alliance with big companies such as Ford, Marriott, IBM, and try to get you to sign on as an IBO so you can sell their products over the Internets and get others to become IBOs as well. Ironically, everytime I encounter these Quixtar folks I am at a bookstore somewhere and am too polite to tell someone to go away.

Feline humor

BuckyFriend: hi cat boy
BuckyFriend: if they make your life movie
BuckyHoo: no
BuckyFriend: they will call it
BuckyFriend: cat man begins
BuckyHoo: no more cats
BuckyHoo: That's pretty funny. Can I mention that on my blog (I won't mention your name)
BuckyFriend: or cat man doooo

Darden not looking good

I called my account manager this afternoon. I told her I signed up for the month long pre-MBA workshop at Kenan-Flagler and that if taken off the wait list, I would definitely go to Darden. But I would also finish the workshop so that I can go to Darden with a better finance background than one I currently have.

She said "it's not likely" that the admissions committee will accept any more students from the wait list. This is because the committee has not received the number of cancellations that would allow for spots for wait listed applicants.

I guess the fact that I am still on the wait list means I still have a shot. But as we go into July and I continue to not hear anything from them, it's beginning to look more likely I will be spending my next two years at UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Better be safe than be sorry

The credit card bill came on Tuesday, nothing out of the ordinary. As I was writing my check, I realized that since I charged this past weekend's trip expenses onto the card, I should mail in an amount that includes those expenses. I would hate to miss next bill's payment deadline because I am at Chapel Hill and then have to incur the huge penalty, not to mention another "ding" against my credit score.

More complaints about AOL Journals

I have written before about my problems with AOL Journals. Lately I have found more issues with it.

First, sometimes it does not save your stuff. I spend 20 minutes typing my post, hit "save" and get a nice blue page telling me there are problems with the system and I am forced to hit a button saying "return to journal" and concede defeat. I tried to get around this by writing my post on Notepad, WordPad, or Microsoft Word, and then copying and pasting it onto the journal. However, this leads to the second problem. As many of you astute readers may have noticed, the fonts are not uniform. This is caused by me copying and pasting from a word processing application into the HTML free space. Third, sometimes when I go to my blog, it shows up in Chinese. I cannot quite explain the third problem, but I will tell you I was so blown away when I saw this that I asked someone else to confirm and he did.

So please forgive the shortcomings, after all, this is AOL. ;)

July 12, 2005 update: It looks like the blog appearing in Chinese was caused by an outage of some kind. Read more about it here.

Cementing my plans for rest of summer

The latest communication I received from Darden, which was received via the web site about a month ago, saids "we regret to inform you we are unable to give you further clarity until late June." It's now late June and I still have not received "further clarity" on this matter. Therefore I am going ahead and making plans for Chapel Hill, but at the same time, make them flexible enough that I can still go to Darden without being screwed out of a lot money.

I got an email Friday from Alta Springs (a rental community that's very popular with Kenan-Flagler students) about an availability, it's a one bedroom with den, 935 square feet, second floor with pool view, and close enough to receive WiFi signal from the business center. All for $905. Unfortunately I was in Miami and did not get the email until the next day when I was at Key West. By the time I called Saturday afternoon, the woman at the rental office (who really should have called my cell phone to let me know) had already given it away to someone else. But earlier this week, another availability opened up, same apartment except no pool view, not as close to the WiFi signal, third floor, and $10 cheaper. I agreed to it and my lease will begin around 8/1. There is a 30-day satisfaction guarantee. This means after 8/1, I have 30 days to break the lease and only pay the pro-rated portion of the month I have lived there.

In addition, I signed up this morning for the pre-MBA workshop. Most business schools have a one to two week pre-MBA workshop for students to brush up on math and business concepts prior to the beginning of the actual MBA program. Kenan-Flagler, however, has two workshops that are each one month long. I did not end my job until 6/15, therefore I was unable to make Analytical Skills Workshop I. But I will be able to attend Analytical Skills Workshop II which begins July 6. They have four classes, microeconomics, financial accounting, statistics, and a class in finance. I am only signing up for the finance class because it is the cheapest one (it's technically called a one half class because the classes are one half as long, and costs one half of what the others cost), and because finance is the area I need the most of brushing up on. I feel that the most important value of this class is not the skills I pick up, but being able to get a head start in meeting my classmates and getting to know the Chapel Hill area. I will most likely sublet or rent a room from someone during the time I am in Chapel Hill for ASW.

Deja vu at South Beach/Key West

I have never been to South Beach or Key West before. Yet this past weekend while driving through various neighborhoods in South Beach and driving to Key West I couldn't help getting a feeling that some of the roads were very familiar.

Then I realized I have seen the South Beach neighborhoods from playing Grand Theft Auto. And the seven mile long bridge that I encountered on my way to Key West was the same bridge from the movie True Lies. Only this time, there was no runaway limo and jet fighters firing missiles to take out the bridge (thank God).

$17.62, baby!

A couple of weeks ago we had an ice cream social in the office for a co-worker who was transferring to another position at our company's web audience group. This was about a week after the end of the latest ESPP period and a bunch of co-workers were engaging in the twice-annual ritual of bragging about how much they got for having sold their ESPP shares. During this exercise in one-upsmanship, I just sat sheepishly in the corner, not saying a word.

What I was too embarassed to admit was that I had yet to sell my shares and that the price had since fallen to a price that was much lower than what my co-workers had sold theirs at. Normally when I receive my shares at the end of an ESPP period, I look at the closing price of our company stock on that last day and set a limit order to sell at about 10 cents higher. This has worked well the last three or four times but on this most recent period, I almost missed the boat.

The stock closed at $17.40 per share on the very last day of the purchase period and I set a limit order to sell at $17.57 or higher. That next trading day, the stock traded between $17.15 and $17.54 and my order was not executed. The stock then drifted lower in the next five trading days and by the time we were having ice cream in the conference room it had fallen below $17. This is the worst thing that can happen to those who hold onto their ESPP shares, the only way to loose money in participating in your company's ESPP plan is if you hold onto your shares and the price drops. I thought about lowering my limit price, or cutting my losses and selling at the high 16s. But I did nothing.

Yesterday morning I saw that the stock had made a nice recovery to around $17.50. I changed my limit price, not by lowering it but by raising it to $17.62. It was executed at around noon yesterday.

My experience with Hertz

I have rented three times from Hertz in the past and have had no problems with them before. One time I was in Chicago for a wedding (hi Joel and Tracey!) and the location at O'Hare International Airport gave me a car with a dirty ash tray. While walking through downtown, I randomly came across another Hertz location, went into complain, and the woman immediately upgraded me to a Kia Amanti.

This past weekend in Miami, however, my experience was mixed. I originally made reservations for a Ford Taurus with SIRIUS Satellite Radio for $27/day for three days, had a "one day free" coupon, and the total came out to around $92. When I picked up my car at the airport, I was told that the coupon was a "three days free" coupon, and I was only going to be charged the taxes and fees for the three day rental. They were also unable to find me a Ford Taurus, and gave me a Ford Five Hundred Limited Edition (with no satellite radio) instead. I didn't complain because the Five Hundred is a much nicer car than the Taurus.

So I was pretty happy, I was going to be driving around Miami and Key West in a Ford Five Hundred and paying only $18 for it. The Five Hundred drives very well, the leather seats were very comfortable, and my car still had the feel and smell of a new car. I drove to South Beach, which has a ton of nice cars before. I have never seen so many Jacquars and the BMW 6 in one place. I was beginning to think I scored myself a pretty nice ride, until the "red light" came on.

I put "red light" in quotes because it technically was not a red light. It was a message on the LED display that normally displays the mileage. The message reads "oil life 4% please change soon." That night on my way to the hotel by the airport, I brought it back to Hertz and did what they call a "transfer exchange." I ended up getting a Taurus with no satellite radio, but with the HertzNeverLost navigation system.

The Taurus performed exactly the way you would expect it to, bland and boring. It's the type of car that gets me from point A to point B, but I would never get excited about getting into a Taurus. While driving back to the airport Monday morning, it was raining and I felt water dripping from the area behind the dashboard onto my left foot (I was wearing my sandals from Thursday). I later opened the glove compartment and saw that the Hertz documentation (when you're driving a rental car, never announce that you're from out of town by putting anything from the rental company in full view of anyone looking through the window) I had stored inside were wet. But the most annoying thing about the Taurus is the seat belt indicator. Some of my co-workers will testify that I don't always wear my seat belt when driving short distances. On the Taurus, unless the driver's seat belt is clicked in, a very intrusive alarm comes on every 60 seconds.

The navigation system was nice to have but caused a bit of confusion. While returning to the Miami International Airport, it told me to take the exit for 874 (Don Shula Expressway) while the highway signs with the airplane logo wanted me to remain on Florida Turnpike. I decided to follow the sign and when the navigation system realized that I did not make the turn, it immediately recalculated a new route. When I got real close to the airport, I again received conflicting information between the navigation system and the signs on the road. But this time, I chose to listen to the navigation system because I realized it was giving me direcitons to the Hertz garage instead of the curb drop off at the airport.

When I returned the Taurus and the attendant printed out my final bill, I saw that Hertz was charging me $50 for having returned my Five Hundred on Friday with the gas tank only three quarters full. I informed the attendant that when I brought the car back on Friday, I was told by that other attendant that I would not be charged for not having a full gas tank. She said that the attendant reports how much gas you have left in the tank, but has no control over waiving the charge for not having a full tank, and what I should have done was to talk to the people at the counter on Friday. I went up to the counter, was greeted by the same very nice woman that gave me the Five Hundred on Friday morning. I explained my case, she said the most she could do was to give me a $50 coupon. I complained again and she called a manager, and raised the value of the coupon offer to $60.

I had to catch a plane and had no time to argue, so I took down names, email addresses, social security numbers (just kidding), and business cards. Before I left, I did ask how I could have been charged $50 for having used one quarter tank of gas, the woman at the counter did not have an answer for me. When I got home, I emailed Toni Ziccardi, Hertz manager for the city of Miami. She got back to me by the afternoon and said I was not going to be charged one dime for the weekend.

Does this mean I still get to keep the $60 coupon? ;)

I received an offer to come back to America Online

They want me to come back. And they want me to come back very badly.

I was home this evening when my landline rang. It was "Tiffany from America Online." She thanked me for having been an AOL member in the past and offered me 60 free hours if I were to agree to reactivating my membership. Curious, I inquired more. She said after the initial 60 free hours, I would default (can "default" ever be used as a verb?) to the $23.95 per month plan. (Does this mean if I only use 30 minutes each day, then I not not have to pay until 120 days later?)  I politely informed her that I already am an AOL member. At this point, she suggested that I go to Keyword Welcome Center and asked whether I am familiar with how AOL Keywords work. She ended the call by giving me an 800 number and asking me to "keep America Online in mind in the future."

Later on this evening I saw a missed call on my cell phone. The number is 800-290-7432. Curious, I called and received a message saying "Hello and thank you for calling America Online. We have a great offer for our former members. To hear more, please stay on the line and speak to one of our representatives." I hung up immediately.

Sunday recap

Sunday was nice and relaxing, a great opportunity for me to work all the alcohol out of my system and for my body to relax after Saturday. I had lunch with someone from the wedding, went back to the hotel pool where we joined the newly married couple for more drinking (I only had water). I then bid goodbye to the happy couple before going on to explore other parts of Key West.

I had my picture taken at the Southermost Point in the United States of America. I continued to explore downtown Key West (near where the Sloppy Joe's Bar was the night before). I bought a magnet with a picture of Sloppy Joe's Bar. A Carnival cruise ship docked that morning and a lot of its passengers were out exploring the island. I then went to the Harry S. Truman Little White House, this was part of a naval base in the late '40s where the President would come to relax, it's his version of the Crawford Ranch. I walked by Jimmy Buffett's Margarittaville and visited the beginning (Mile 0) of Route 1 (see picture above) before getting dinner and retiring into my hotel for the evening.

Mini drinking binge

I set a personal record of sorts on Saturday. I had my first beer at noon during lunch. The drinking continued throughout the rest of the day as we hung out by the hotel pool bar in the afternoon, went to the wedding reception, and then to Sloppy Joe's Bar.

It's not a record for the most amount of alcohol consumed but it's a record for the longest amount of time that has elapsed in one day between the time I took my first and my last drinks.

Historic day for UVA

This probably doesn't mean anything to anyone who is not a UVA grad or is unfamiliar with Charlottesville but the Bodo's Bagels location on the Corner finally opened recently. Bodo's Bagels is a locally owned and operated bagels chain that is popular with students and locals. The owner got the Corner location (right across the street from the heart of the campus) when I was an undergrad at UVA, and placed the "Coming Soon!" sign in the front. That sign stayed in the front for more than seven years later until this past week when the place finally opened.

I guess I will have a place to go for breakfast early Saturday mornings when/if I get into Darden.

Friday/Saturday Recap

This was one awesome vacation. Not sure if the reason was because I was in a celebratory mood for having quit my job or if it was because a good friend of mine got married.

Friday was a bit of a waste. My plane landed at Miami at around noon, during landing, it flew directly over South Beach, giving me a chance to check out the strip from 400 feet in the air. It rained almost the entire time I was at SoBe and at certain times, it poured. I walked around SoBe, checked out the shops, the very pricey restaurants, and the deserted beaches before getting back into my rental car and driving up to Fort Lauderdale. In retrospect, I should have driven straight to Key West that day instead of spending it at SoBe.

Saturday, in comparison, was awesome. I drove out to Key West early in the morning. The scenary was amazing. The picture above was taken by my PDA around 8am off Route 1. Route 1 is the road that begins at Key West and leads into Miami, before winding its way through the Carolinas, up the east coast, and all the way into Massachusettes and Maine.

I arrived, I checked into the Southernmost Hotel and had lunch with the groom-to-be and a couple of his friends. Spent the remainder of the afternoon at the hotel's poolside bar. The awesome wedding was held at 6:30pm by the beach followed by dinner and reception at the Audubon House. Everyone had a good time in spite of the unbelieveably hot weather. After the reception, a bunch of us Wahoos went out to Sloppy Joe's Bar on the corner of Duval and Greene Streets. The name of the band was Arizona and they played two of my favorite songs in a row, Sweet Home Alabama, and Summer of '69. Not a bad way to end a terrific Saturday.

Attention all former co-workers!

Hope you all had a good time at your all-hands this morning at the Marriott. When my plane landed from Miami this morning, it flew directly over the building where I used to work and I got a good look on our beautiful corporate park/campus from 300 feet in the air.

Please don't forget all status reports are due by COB (close of business). ;)

Attractive red head

This is a tip to all the guys that used to sit on my floor in the office, or more approprirately, that still sit on the floor where I used to sit. I normally don't find red heads attractive but there is one that works upstairs in the marketing department that has made me reconsider. Every Friday morning, she has a 10am meeting in the green room, the one near where Real McCoy At Work sits.

So if any of you are bored this morning, feel free to swing by. For some reason, the meeting goes on with the door open and she always sits on the table facing the door.

Staying alive

Since Tuesday night, two other people have reported they got ding'ed off of Darden's wait list (one is someone I have been corresponding with via email and another is a regular who posts on the BW board). Meanwhile, your favorite Darden '07 applicant is still "alive!"

As the Reverend Jesse Jackson likes say at the end of his speeches, "Keep hope alive!  Keep hope alive!" 

I'm leaving on a jet plane ... I don't know when I'll be back again

Actually, I am flying out to Miami tomorrow and be back on Monday. When I used to fly, I would consider parking my car at the company garage for free and then call a cab and to the airport. Depending on the length of your trip,it was much cheaper than long term parking. I guess that option won't be available tomorrow.

I plan on spending Friday at South Beach (SoBe) checking out the sights (no RealMcCoy At Work, I will not be checking out the topless beaches), then Saturday morning I drive to Key West for my buddy's wedding, all Sunday will be spent at Key West, and Monday morning I wake up real early to drive back to Miami International Airport for my flight back.

That WAS the plan, until this evening. I went out to play ultimate frisbee with some people from my fellowship group and even though I played for only 1.5 hours, my legs and feet are hurting pretty bad. I am walking with a limb as well, I guess I will be limbing my way through the airport terminals tomorrow and will be at SoBe as well.

I got a pretty good deal on the rental. The company I work for ... oops did it again, used to work for has some arrangement with Hertz where employees can become a #1 Club Gold member without having to pay the $50 annual fee. I signed up for a Ford Taurus (or equivalent) that costs $27/day (when you rent Friday and return Monday, it counts as three weekend days). Then I saw an offer for #1 Club Gold members where you get a day for free. I even splurged for the SIRIUS Satellite Radio. It will give me something to listen to during the 3 hours drive to and from Key West. The good thing about the radio is that, unlike the Hertz NeverLost navigation system, you are charged a flat fee ($9) instead of a daily fee.

Obviously, since I will be on vacation, I will not be able to update this page as frequently as I normally do. But I will post more when I get back.

Buy a wedding gift for the happy couple

I had a pretty productive morning for someone unemployed, went to FedEx Kinko's where I paid $2 a page to send a fax downt to Chapel Hill, returned my Smart Tag, and bought myself a pair of sandals. I figured since I will be returning to college I should start dressing like a college student again. I could never understand the pricing structure they have at FedEx Kinko's. They charge you $1 per page to send a fax to a local phone number but it's $2 to a long distance number. I can't believe the additional cost of sending a fax long distance justifies doubling the cost .. unless the justification is to make more profits for these bastards.

I see that RealMcCoyAtWork was not too busy working in the office today to blog about the latest article in BW about AOL. So I will post something else instead. I first came across this about a month ago and a friend of mine said "too bad you don't have a blog, otherwise you'd be able to tell the world about it."

It appears that the "runaway bride" has a wedding registry for her wedding, which if you will recall, was cancelled when the bride to be ran away. A lot of the items on the registry remain unpurchased.

Freedom!

I feel the subject line is appropriate for many reasons. I read earlier this week that bloggers in China are forbidden from using the word "freedom" on a subject line. Today is also the first day since June 8, 1998 that I wake up on a weekday morning without a job. This explains why some of you will notice that my morning update is later than usual.

I have not decided what I am going to do today but I have a couple of ideas. I faxed a lease agreement down to Chapel Hill yesterday from the office. It wasn't until later on that I realized that between all the important stuff I was doing yesterday, I had forgotten to sign it. So it looks like a trip to Kinko's is in order.

To those my former co-workers who are reading this from their six feet by eight feet cubicles, I wish you all a good day. I know I will!

Signing off from AOL

The exit interview with HR lasted only 15 minutes. Someone from the Mountainview office gave me an overview of my separation benefits. There were very few surprises. I have the next 90 days for our company stock to rise 300% so I can unload my remaining vested stock options. My flexible spending account will be terminated after today. This means I have until April 15, 2006 to file claims for any expenses incurred up until today. But any further expenses from tomorrow on will not be reimbursed. He then proceeded to ask me my reasons for leaving, where I am going, whether there was anything that could have been done to prevent my departure. When asked how the company can become a better employer, I suggested that we allocate less money on giving employees brochures, trinkets, and T-Shirts and use more of the money on salary. Other than that, I pretty much gave positive reviews for my experience here, I even said I was happy with the salary I was making (which is true).

It was a rough day for me because I am the nostalgic type and have a tendancy to reminisce on days like today. Throughout the whole day, I was keeping a mental track of the the last time I use the bathroom, the last time I used the vending machine. I even made it a point to go to lunch in the cafeteria one last time to check out the attractive women (there is this one really attractive red head that I saw for the first time there today, possibly an intern).

But that's not the strangest thing that I did. Sometime this afternoon, I remembered back to four years ago on the morning of my first day. I called Sara from the lobby of our headquarters to tell her I had arrived. As I was exiting the building for the very last time, I picked up the cell phone and made the call to tell her that I have departed

Into the final stretch

Not too bad for a last morning in the office. I spent the past couple of hours printing some stuff out from the Internet (don't have a printer at home), looking for some folks to say goodbye. The rest of the afternoon will be spent going to the buildings across the street to say goodbye to even more folks, packing up the remaining belongs I have at work, and doing a telephone exit interview with the HR department (which, ironically is in California).

There is this article on Apple's Macintosh site about  product I worked on earlier in the year. After today, I will figure out what my timetable is in terms of relocating down to Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Keeping my home email account

I am waking up, getting dressed, and getting ready to go to work for one last time today. In the past two weeks, some people have suggested that I cancel my home AOL account when I leave for grad school. They point out that I should not pay an additional $15 per month for a service that adds very little value to what I already have.  

I look at the situation differently. I think back to four years ago when I was about to reach my three year anniversary at my first job out of college (the telecom company). I hated my job. Some of my current co-workers complain about their jobs but they don't realize the worst day here is better than the best day at the telecom firm (this may be a mild exaggeration). True this company does not have the best reputation among the business community and the service is anything not stellar. But I couldn't help feeling a sense of loyalty to a company that has fed me for the past four years and made my current life possible.  

Although I am disappointed at the direction that this company has taken in the past couple of years, I am still a believer in what it can do.

Going out of my my mind

Tomorrow is my last day in the office and already the reality of my imminent exit has begun to dawn on me. My cubicle is already half empty, and I have finished removing personal files from my computer. Tom, the boss who hired me four years ago, will not be in the office tomorrow so I made sure to say goodbye to him before I left work today. I have also begun the process of telling acquaintances in the office that I am leaving. When I was about to graduate from UVA seven years ago, I learned to divide people into three categories - friends that I knew I would keep up with, strangers I had nothing to do with, and those that did not belong into either category. These are the acquaintances that you would not go out of your way to socialize with, but if you were to run into them around grounds, at the library, or after class, you wouldn't mind a quick "stop and chat." These acquaintances are the ones I will miss the most.

As though there are not enough things on my mind of late, there may be news coming from Darden sometime this week. A fellow applicant reported on BW B-Schools that the Admissions Committee will meet tomorrow to discuss a timetable for moving students off the wait list. Another wait listed applicant was informed earlier today that his status was changed to "not offered." If this is true, this would be the second time in less than a month that the committee moves students from the wait list into the "rejected" pile. If I get "dinged" (B-School terminology for getting rejected) this week, it will allow me to commit myself fully to Kenan-Flagler. If I don't hear anything, it means I live to fight (and wait) another week.

I am really hoping to get a call from Dawna Clarke tomorrow, it would be the perfect ending to my four-year tenure at this company.

Bitter about traffic

The one thing I will not miss when I leave this area is the nasty traffic congestions we have. It normally takes me about 40 minutes to get home from work, via a 15 mile route that Mapquest claims should only take 22 minutes. The traffic backup last night was the worst I have ever seen, it took me an entire hour.  

The culprit was a two-car pile up on the right lane, which forced motorists on the right lane to divert to the middle lane and created a back-up for miles. This leads me to something that I have often wondered about - the cost to our society of reckless drivers who cause accidents and the lack of an adequate system by which we can efficiently make these drivers pay for the damage they've cost. If I operate my vehicle irresponsibly, there are mechanisms (ie police, courts, insurance company) by which I can be made to pay for the damages done to the owner(s) of the vehicle(s) I have damaged. But what about all the hundreds (and if you're talking about rush hour in a city, maybe thousands) of motorists on the road that end up having to spend an extra half an hour on the road because of the havoc I have caused?  

Hence we have is a breakdown in the marketplace caused by not making drivers completely liable for the harm they cause in traffic accidents. Imagine a guest staying at your house, running up your phone bill with calls to foreign countries and 900 numbers, yet when the bill comes he is only liable for half of the charges. By not making him fully pay for the charges, you are not giving him the proper incentives to keep the cost down. Unfortunately, the situation with traffic is not as easy to solve as simply making the guest pay for the entire phone call. One solution is to use technologies such as GPS devices in vehicles to allow drivers who were delayed to file a claim against drivers who cause accidents.  We can penalize the drivers at fault by having them compensate other drivers at a rate equivalent to the federal minimum wage. However, such a solution raises privacy concerns and may be too cumbersome to implement. Another solution is to raise the cost of auto insurance, which will disproportionately punish bad drivers.  

Or you can do what I do, and move down to Carolina.

Test your economics

I read this in the Wall Street Journal. Eight high school teams from seven states competed in the National Economic Challenge last month, a spelling bee of sorts for economics.  

Here is a sample of the questions:  

1. What word precedes each of the followin gwords to form an economic concept - gain, stock, flight, account, and good?

2. What do the letters GATT stand for?

3. What country is the worlds largest debtor nation?

4. A weaking of a country's currency tends to do what to its net exports?

5. The official reserves of the Federal Reserfve are in the form of what?

6. At income levels above $100,000 are current Social Security payroll taxes proportional or regressive?

7. The "bottom" line for businesses is their profits, while the "top" line is their what?

8. Is inflation more likely to result from an increase in aggregate demand or aggregate supply?   

The answers are below under "Show Recent." 

America Online Strategy Centers on Free Services

I am going to scoop McCoy once again by blogging about an article about our favorite Internet company before he gets a chance to.

An Exclusive: Dave Chapelle sighted in NYC Starbucks!

A world exclusive!  

At noon today, our New York City correspondent, BuckySis, spotted Comedy Central superstar Dave Chapelle in Upper West Side. BuckySis was seated at a Starbucks across the street from the ABC Studios by Lincoln Center, sipping on a mint chocolate chip frappucino. A black man that was sitting next to her got up and exited the establishment with an Asian woman and two children. As the family of four prepared to enter a parked Lexus SUV, one Starbucks employee ran out to give the father a thumbs up while a customer ran out and pointed her cell phone toward the driver's door to quickly snap a picture.  

"I don't care what those news reports say, he's not crazy," reports BuckySis.

Fully vested

Today is my four year anniversary at my current job. It is also an important date in my graduate school planning. I mentioned earlier that when I switch jobs, I always try to make sure I am vested in my 401k because I don't believe in leaving money on the table. I had wanted to take some time off between my job and school and if I had been completely vested earlier, I probably would have left in May or maybe even April. Some people have asked me why I chose to leave on a Wednesday. Well, I decided to leave on the 15th to make it easier for our payroll accounting department.  

Speaking of 401k, I was on the phone with our plan administrator this past week and I asked about the postcard we I got in the mail about future changes in the plan. It looks like the plan administrator is building a bridge program with Merrill Lynch where we can use ML resources for retirement planning. This will also give us many more funds to choose from and, I think this is probably the most dramatic change to date, we willl be able to investment in individual stocks.  

PS: For my co-workers who may be confused as to how I became completely vested after four years, employees that started in 2001 were vested 25% per year over four years where those that started in 2002 or later were vested 20% a year over five. (Suckers!) 

Things will come and things will go

It do not wish to talk about religion or my religious beliefs on this blog. However, when there are things of a religious nature that relate to my life, my decisions or thoughts at the moment, I will include it here.  

I first read this article almost four years ago right after I started my current job. I was so moved by it that I printed it out and saved it in my office. I came across it while I was cleaning out my cubicle earlier today. I read it again and feel that the message, as it applies to me, is more important than ever.  

I was talking to a friend of mine over IM today and he said I have not spent a penny in seven years. It's an exaggeration but his point is well taken. In the years since I have started working, I cannot count the number of times I have felt inadequate about my salary, my investment performance, and my savings rate. I tracked every penny I spent and paid attention to the equities market much more than I should have. It wasn't until two summers ago when I bought my apartment that I began to worry less about money.  I now feel stupid thinking back to all those times when I forfeited the opportunity to call someone because I'd rather wait until after 9pm when the cost of a long distance call was cheaper. If I had to do it all over again, I would have spent less energy worrying about money and more time enjoying what's important in my life.

Same with spending time with family and friends, my social life shut down between August and December because I was so concerned with studying for the GMAT and preparing my applications. Was it worth it? I got a 7x0 on the GMAT and still did not get into Darden (I am saying this with the assumption I will not get off the wait list at Darden). I probably would have ended up with the same results (going to Kenan-Flagler with no merit-based scholarship) if I had spent more time with my friends and gotten 40 points lower.  

My point is that there will always be something you're concerned about or something happening in your life that may seem to be just so important at the time. I am not going to make the decision for you as to how you should go about dealing with it but keep in mind that .... things will come and things will go.

Climbing up the corporate pyramid

This sounds like one of those essays I had to write on my applications but lately I have been contemplating the value of an MBA, why am I getting one, and how will my life and career be different after I have one. I used to think that getting an MBA will allow me to climb higher on the corporate ladder but this past week I have seen evidence to make me feel otherwise.  

At the company where I work, we rolled out a new organzational structure this past spring where all employees are classified on a scale from A through J. The higher up you are within the alphabet, the higher up you on the corporate ladder. Administrative support staff and college interns are at Level J. College hires (except those working in administrative support) start out at Level I.  I am on Level H. Our CEO is on Level A.  

The other day I was talking to my friend who is an MBA intern at my company and she tells me there is a woman on her floor who is a 2004 graduate of the Kellogg School of Management. She pointed out that this woman has an MBA from a top school and yet is on the same level as me. This led me to do some sleuthing on the online employee directory. I know a UVA grad who earned her MBA at the Ross School of Business and she too is a Level H.  

I guess it is safe to assume that if I were to return to my company after two years, I will remain no higher up the food chain than I am currently, which is fine with me as long as they give me that corner office with a window.

Fun with FSA debit card

I went to the eye doctor the other day, had my annual checkup and ordered new glasses. When I was done, I paid for everything with my flexible spending account debit card. I am really going to miss this card when I leave my job. The greatest convenience about it is that you charge all your applicable health care expenses to it and there is no need to forward your saved receipts to the FSA administrator, wait for the refund check, and go to the bank to cash your check.  

But here is the part that I am uncertain about, and some of my co-workers may want to pay attention because this will apply to them too one day. Let's say I set up my FSA to deduct $10 per paycheck and a total of $240 is withheld per year. Let's say that I quit at the end of June, when only $120 has been taken out and that by the end of June I have already spent the entire $240. Obviously since I am no longer working at the company, there will be no paycheck to deduct the extra $120 that I have spent above and beyond what I have already contributed. How will the FSA administrator get back the $120 that it is "in the hole" for?

Programming note

In the past five days I have really enjoyed writing this blog, updating it regularly, and receiving the feedback I have been getting. For the next few weeks I plan on putting myself on a schedule of doing three updates per weekday, one in the morning before I leave work (speaking of work, is it June 15 yet?) for when you folks get into the office, one in the afternoon, and one in the late evening. I have not decided what I will do on the weekend but current the plan is to do one post on Saturday and take Sunday off. I am thinking of making all the Saturday posts center around one common theme.  

Obviously, the schedule will change depending on my access to the Internets and as events warrant. My biggest concern so far has been to limit certain audience groups from reading my blog. I do not want my future classmates to read it because I imgaine I will eventually want to write/gripe about them, about my classes, and the projects we work on. I also don't want anyone related to me to read it. I am not sure how I feel about random strangers reading about my life, so I will be sure I don't leave any information that will allow people to figure out my identity. And I trust that those of you who know me personally will be equally discrete if you decide to post on this blog.

Business school branding

Turning down Yale SOM hasn't been an easy decision, I have taken a lot of heat from my friends and relatives back home who cannot get over the fact that I turned down Yale for the University of North Carolina.  Most people who are not familiar with MBA programs automatically assume that Yale SOM is a top ten program. It is not. U.S. News ranks Yale SOM at 15 and Kenan-Flagler at 21. Business Week, on the other hand, ranks Yale SOM at 22 and Kenan-Flagler at 16.

It's not unusual for business schools to different reputations from their parent universities. This is why many universities will have a separate name for their business schools, they want their business schools to be affiliated with the university, but at the same time, have a brand/identity/reputation that is separate. This works well for a school like the University of Virginia. In the mid '90s, Darden was top ten while the undergraduate program was in the high teens. But for a school like Yale University, it's probably best at this point to continue to have the Yale name prominently featured in the branding for its Yale SOM.

Another reason why schools will have a separate name for its MBA program is money. An alum recently donated $100 million to the University of Michigan and the school agreed to rename the Michigan Business School the Ross School of Business. One of my college professors, also a UVA grad, gave one million dollars in March to UVA but got nothing named after him. One of my lifelong goals is to make a major donation to the University but I will not do this unless they name either a building or the economics department after me. I think there is something very fulfilling about knowing that students will walk around grounds for years saying "meet me after class at (my last name)," "me and my roommate are living at (my last name) next year," or will graduate from the (First Middle Initial Last) Department of Economics.

Turning down Yale SOM

So far this week I have talked about quite possibly matriculating at Kenan-Flagler, being on the wait list at Darden, and having been rejected after having been wait listed at one other school (which I will not identify). I also mentioned on Tuesday that I was accepted at one school other than Kenan-Flalger.

That other school is the Yale School of Management. I had my interview in New Haven in February. It was the best interview I have done throughout this whole process, compared to the worst interview I had, which took place at the school that rejected me this week.  Me and a second year student spent half an hour talking about the advantages of Yale. I mentioned that I am a big fan of behavioral economics and look forward to taking classes with Robert Schiller, the author of Irrational Exuberance. I then talked about a recent Wall Street Journal article which talked about Richard Thaler and Eugene Fama, both economists at the University of Chicago who stand on opposite ends of the behavioral economics debate. She then smiled and said she is familiar with the article because it was discussed in Schiller's class last semester. Needless to say, I walked out of that interview feeling pretty good.

I was wait listed by the school on March 31 and about a month ago it moved me into the accepted column. Several factors made me want to go to Yale - mostly a top notch Ivy League faculty and the Yale name. But the school also has other factors which I am concerned about - mostly its reputation as focusing on students who come from and/or want to go into the non-profit sector. This was exactly how the program was described to me nine years ago when a woman at the company (a non-profit firm) I was interning at left to go to Yale. Sometime ago (around 1997) Yale changed the name of the school from Yale School of Public Management to Yale School of Management and the degree offered went from a Masters in Public Management to a Masters in Business Administration.  But very little else changed over the past nine years. They just announced the installation of Joel M. Podolny as the new dean.  Mr. Podolny is a sociology professor with no experience outside of academia. His only business experience is having taught for eleven years at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Yale has given me until tomorrow to make up my decision but I have already informed the office that I am not interested. I wish this frees up a spot for another student who will benefit more from the program than I will.  

Having said that, I don't want to be counted as a Yale SOM basher. The program certainly has its appeals, especially to those who want to work in the non-profit or government sector. Even if you are planning to work in the private sector, it's still an excellent program and you will learn much from it. I just feel that it represents too much of a risk for me, especially since I am already older than the average MBA student at many programs and I want to make sure I get exactly what I want to get out of my two years.

Kicking and screaming

I don't want to go to UNC.

OK, there, I said it. Actually, I take that back. I do want to go to UNC, I just would much rather go to UVA. But I realize that I shouldn't count my chickens before they hatch and am setting myself up for disappointment if I get my hopes up too high.  

I had lunch earlier with a friend of mine who is an MBA intern at the company I work for. She got into Darden last year (off the wait list) but turned it down for the University of Maryland. She said I really need to start acting as though I am happy about UNC, and she is right.  

Later on in the afternoon, she sent me an IM telling me to "stop sucking on the UVA pacifier." Could that be what I am doing all along, using UVA as a security blanket? I think so. Both schools are known for having happy students. Yet I worry that if I end up hating the program and regretting my decision to go to business school, I'd be much better off at Darden. I rationalize that if I am at Darden, at least I would at UVA. I would be in a place I am familiar with. I could literally walk down the street to talk to my old professors.  

Speaking of old professors, one of them wrote me back last month. He wrote "UNC would be a fine choice. I hope you are not disappointed. The only reason I would favor Darden for you is that you would be nearby for a couple of years." I think he may be right, the major reason I favor Darden is because I want to be in Charlottesville for two years.

Telephone call to Darden

If you're on a school's wait list, you are expected to periodically contact them to let them know you're still interested. You can do this via email, or better yet, with a phone call.

I did the latter earlier. I called my account manager at Darden, whom I met during my class visit/interview in November. Talking to him on the phone is usually a "hit or miss," I have had conversations with him that have yielded useful information (like when he told me in April that my file was recently pulled for review) and I have also had other conversations where he was very evasive (like in mid May when I asked if they were going to pull students off the wait list in May and he said "we may or may not do that.")  

This most recent conversation with him was very interesting. He confirmed the rumors that Darden created a fifth round with a deadline of June 1. This round yielded 11 additional applications and he suspects most of them have low test scores. I then jokingly reminded him of my performance on the GMAT. He also said they met the day before to discuss what to do with students currently on the wait list and decided on a "wait and see" approach to see how many of the students that have already committed to Darden decide to cancel their matriculation. He said he has already received two cancelations since arriving in the office that morning. He said in past years, the incoming class has pretty much been set by mid to late July. So at least now I have a date in my mental calendar for when I would know which school I would end up in one way or the other.  

This past spring I took an accounting class at the UVA Northern Virginia center to show my initiatives in preparing for an MBA and earned an A in the class. Darden sometimes sends out an email to all wait listed applicants asking them to reply if they are still interested. I always reply with an email that ends with "if admitted, I will definitely accept" written in bold. There really isn't much more I can do at this point to improve my chances other than to wait it out.  

A friend of mine who recently graduated from a school similar to Darden thinks my odds at this point are 50%. He said if Darden continued to accept new applications right up until June, that's a bad sign for the school. I personally think my odds are lower, around 15%. According to Business Week, Darden wait listed 455 applicants last year and only 64 were offered admission.

Double anniversary

Because I am the nostalgic type, I tend to remember dates and anniveraries pretty well. A few months ago I sent out an email telling some people that day was the 20th anniversary of my family arriving in America. Someone replied asking "how do you remember these things?"  

Seven years ago today I began my first job out of college at a telecom firm. And four years ago today was my last day at that same company. They have a 401k vesting schedule where employees are vested 100% on their three year anniversary, not a day sooner. Since I don't believe in leaving any money on the table, I purposely worked right up until that day to vest. Tom, the boss who hired me at my current job, made me an offer and was nice enough to wait five out the weeks for me to start. (Thanks Tom!)

Real estate (alleged) bubble about to burst?

I got home and saw this Time Magazine cover sitting in my mailbox. When I see covers like these, I can't help but wonder if real estate prices will plunge before August when I sell my apartment. Then later I went to the gym and saw someone working out. Noticing that he was wearing orange UVA shorts and a UVA basketball shirt, I felt obligated to talk to him. Turns out he's a UVA 2002 grad who works as a real estate agent (I later found out he double majored in psychology and Spanish, which are two disciplines that are not necessarily useless when you work as a realtor). He said prices in my neighborhood over the past 2 years have skyrocketed beyond anyone's wildest dreams.

If that's true, I only hope prices hold out until late August when I close. I am going to need the money for the next two years - and even longer if I decide to do a JD/MBA.

Blue background

Just now I noticed how ironic it is that this blog page has a light blue background, considering that I am going to the University of North Carolina. It was a coincidence, it just turned out that way, I didn't plan it.

Low GPA? Not a problem!

I am going to refrain from talking about politics on this blog because most of you already know my politics. But once in a while when I see something political that relates to the other subjects I write about, I will put it on the blog.

I heard this on Imus earlier, turns out the President actually had an undergraduate GPA at Yale that is slightly higher than that of Senator John F. Kerry. I am sure you've all heard all the partisan Bush bashers talk about how dumb our President is because of his grades. I have always felt it was unfair to judge the President base on his grades, and I will now apply the same standard to Mr. Kerry. However, this is part of a bigger issue I have been dealing with throughout this MBA application process - how does your undergraduate GPA affect your career/educational opportunities in life? My answer is that while having a high GPA will definitely beat out having a low GPA, having a low (or subpar) GPA will not necessarily count you out.

When I decided to apply to Darden, I realized that my GPA was going to be an obstacle. The average GPA for the Class of 2005 at Darden is 3.40 and I am nowhere near that.  I went to an MBA fair (there is a funny story about that, I was leaving the gym at work 5:30pm dressed up in a suit and one of my co-workers walked by just as I walked out of the gym and asked me if I had an interview) where Justin Serrano, General Manager of Kaplan's Admissions Consulting Services spoke. He said "your GMAT is the one part of the application you have the most control over at this point." I decided to take his advice and realized that the only way for me to have a shot at Darden was to come out with a GMAT score that is higher than Darden's average of 678.

To make a long story short, I decided to not apply to Darden unless I was able to get a GMAT score of at least a certain number or higher. I took the GMAT in October, scored 20 points higher than my goal, and applied. I applied to other schools in addition to Darden - I considered one of them my reach school because it has the highest average GMAT/GPA scores. I got into that school (I will reveal the identity of this school on Thursday), thus proving that having a low GPA will not screw youfor the rest of your life. And I am sure the President and the Senator will agree.

AOL's latest gamble

I saw this article on Business Week Online this morning. AOL's latest strategy of giving away content for free and acting more like a regular Internet portal such as Yahoo! is what I have always felt it should have done all along. As Internet users continue to move to broadband, what AOL refers to as "the client" (ie AOL 8.0, AOL 9.0) will become less and less relevant to their everyday use and AOL needs to abandon its "walled garden" strategy and embrace the "always on" environment.

I hope it pays off. I wrote about AOL in one of my Darden essays, saying that I have been a member since 1996 and I am very fond of the service but it's been painful working at AOL over the last three years and having to watch management make decisions that resulted in the eventual withering away of the AOL brand. When I went down to Kenan-Flagler in April for its Accepted Student Weekend, I signed up for different clubs during the activities fair - I noticed that everyone on the sign-up sheets had either a Gmail or Hotmail address and I was the only one with an AOL email address.

In addition to the strategy outlined in the BWO article, there are several products that AOL is working on that cater toward the "always on" audience that I think are pretty cool. But what concerns me is that the creativity factor is no longer at this company. Some of my co-workers were telling me at lunch yesterday that Gmail has several features where you can slightly alter your email address and the email will still go to your mailbox. For example, if you are OneCoolDude@gmail.com, you can add dots anywhere on your email address, One.Cool.Dude@gmail.com for example, and the email will still get to you. Another thing you can do with Gmail is the "plus feature." In the example above, any email sent to OneCoolDude+newsletter@gmail.com will also go to the same mailbox. This is a great feature for if you want to subscribe to mailing lists and you want to track to see whether any organization shares your email address without your approval. As an AOL member, I am still waiting for the day when AOL comes out with the next creative idea that has the "wow" factor.

Expected disappointment

Yesterday I wrote about wanting to get off the wait list at Darden and I also mentioned that one other school had wait listed me, the school that I would only marginally prefer over UNC. One of the reason why I did not discuss that school too much on this blog is because I do not believe my odds of getting off the wait list are that promising.

Earlier this evening when I opened my mailbox, I saw letter from that school’s Office of Admission. I pretty much knew what the news was before I opened it - they have decided to move my status from wait listed to declined. I am disappointed but, as the title of this post implies, I had expected to not get into this school to begin with. In the past couple of years, only a single digit percentage of applicants that landed on its wait list ended up receiving an offer. Ironically I applied to this school for its undergraduate program and was also rejected.

This is the hustle that schools and applicants perform every year in June. Schools constantly update the number of students on its wait list, by both accepting students from the list as well as declining others. The accepted students then have the choice of either declining the offer (at which point the school has to pull yet another student off its wait list) or accepting the offer and canceling his matriculation at another school. That other school may then have to replace that student by pulling another student from its wait list. Already last week Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has begun to welcome wait listed students into its Class of 2007. Since Fuqua has plenty of overlap with Darden, this will no doubt result in students canceling out of Darden’s accepted pile. The good news is that Darden has already come out with a shortened wait list and I am still on it. The only thing I can do at this point is to wait it out.

Brand new identity

I went onto the UNC web directory earlier and saw that I am already listed on there as a graduate student in the Kenan-Flagler program. So I went ahead and registered for an email address, which will serve as an online identity for the next two years at UNC.

 

My email addresses are (lastname)@email.unc.edu and (First.MiddleInitial.Last)@unc.edu. Both will go to the same mailbox but I actually prefer that you continue to email me at the address I currently have since my school email will most likely be clogged with school announcements, club activity emails, and other class related information.

AOL Journals sucks

I totally cannot believe I spent all this time setting up my blog only to find out that AOL only allows those with a ScreenName (either a paid-subscriber ScreenName or a free AIM ScreenName) to leave a comment. This is the reason AOL has the problems it has, AOL's software, systems and services sometimes do not work the way an intuitive user would expect them to work.

Not sure if I will keep blogging on this site or ditch it altogether for something on a "real blog site" such as blogspot. Come to think of it, limiting your ability to comment may actually be a good thing - if you're not brave enough to leave your name (or at least a ScreenName) with your comments, it's probably something not worth reading anyway.

Another thing that sucks is that the link for this blog is case sensitive. The URL ends in the letters "UNC" and all three letters have to be capitalized. Other wise, you will get a "page cannot be found."

"Congratulations! You've been admitted ...."

Wow. Hard to believe it was more than two months ago that I received my acceptance letter from UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School and was invited to be a member of its MBA Class of 2007. In the weeks since, I have attended two local happy hours with fellow accepted students, attended KFBS' Accepted Student Weekend, and just this past Wednesday I gave notice to my boss that I am leaving.

So far, this entire experience has been unreal. When I met with my boss last week and told her I was leaving, I gave her my well rehearsed schpeel about how I arrived at this decision, etc. Still as I was going through the motions of handing in my resignation, I could not believe I was about to quit a job I have had for close to four years.

One reason why this ordeal has been stressful has to do with the fact that while I have submitted my deposit to UNC and am in the process of securing housing at Chapel Hill, I am still on the wait list at two other schools. One school (which I will not identify at this point) I marginally prefer over UNC while the other I tremendously prefer over UNC. The school that I would much rather attend over UNC is UVA's Darden Business School. Darden wait listed me back in January and will continue to move students from the wait list into the "accepted" pile until mid August when classes begin. Judging from where I am on the wait list and from the number of applicants on the list, the odds of me getting an acceptance at this point are not terrific, but at the same time, they are not so low as to be considered insurmountable. I really like Darden's case methodology, I went to UVA undergrad and want to return to my alma mater and become a 'Double Hoo.' I will definitely attend Darden over Kenan-Flagler even if it means having to move from Chapel Hill to Charlottesville at the last minute.

At the same time, I realize I need to get myself mentally adjusted to the idea of going to UNC, hence the title of this blog. Let me wrap up my inaugural post by discussing my thoughts on starting the blog. This blog's primary purpose is to serve as a tool for me to gather, articulate, and record my thoughts as I make the transition in the upcoming months. This blog will also allow others to get updates on how I am doing during the transition process. At the same time, because I am concerned about possibly sharing too much information with others (one co-worker described me as 'secretive') and don't want personal aspects of my life to become other people's "gossiptainment," when appropriate, I will err on the side of keeping some information to myself.

I hope you all enjoy this blog, feel free to give me any feed back!