A reminder that greed is still good

Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal had a full page ad on page D5 promoting the 20th anniversary DVD edition of the movie Wall Street. I first saw this movie in college but it didn’t have much of an impact on me. It wasn’t until after I graduated from UVA that I watched it on more occasions and it has since become one of my favorite movies. Although I disagree with producer Oliver Stone’s liberal portrayal of capitalism (ie Gordon Gecko telling Bud Fox that capitalismis a “zero sum game”), I love the movie for the lessons it teaches about life and often (here, here, and here) quote from it on this blog.

I went out to Best Buy earlier today and not only bought the DVD but also the special engraved business card holder ($15 and $5 respectively, the latter is free with the purchase of the former). Next week I will try to buy a couple more business card holders because they make great graduation gifts.

Earlier this year I heard that Michael Douglas is working on the script of a sequel. Twenty years later, it’s good to know that the profit motive still continues to motivate people to do good things – proofing once again that his character got it right when he said that "greed is good."

24 resurrects Tony Almeda

The New York Post reports that, as speculated earlier on this blog, the character Tony Almeda will be returning to Season 7 of 24 in January. It looks like the writers decided to scrap the storyline about Jack in Africa but instead will center the beginning of Season 7 around Jack Bauer being tried in a Washington DC court for his past actions.

"Despite being left for dead in the CTU infirmary, executive producer Howard Gordon pointed out "since there was no silent clock at the conclusion of his last appearance - the '24' tribute to major character's demise - we always kept this as a possibility.""

Hopefully bringing back Almeda will also resurrect the excitement of the TV series.

Don’t ticket me bro!

By now many of you have seen or heard about the video of the University of Florida student getting tasered by overly aggressive campus police officers while trying to shout asinine questions to Senator John Kerry. I had my own experience yesterday with the UNC Department of Public Safety.

 

I had a morning meeting with someone at Kenan-Flagler about revamping the school’s alumni web offerings. This person arranged for me to receive a one-day parking pass at the Kenan-McColl visitors lot and I made darn sure that the pass was properly displayed on the dashboard with the date visible before I left the vehicle. When I returned later, I was shocked to see a parking ticket attacked to my windshield wiper blade. The citation stated that I parked at a reserved spot (my spot was not different than any of the others) and the comments section reads “Student Display Vis Pmt.”

 

Perhaps the officer saw a student parking permit hanging from my mirror and concluded that I am a student and was therefore unqualified to park on the visitor’s lot. Now if Officer #210 had the IQ representative of a college graduate (notice I didn’t say “if the officer had gone to college”) and/or had bothered to put down his doughnut and look carefully, he would have realized it was an expired “BD” permit from the last school year.

 

There is not a snowball’s chance in hades that I am going to pay the $50 fine. But if I were to make good on my promise to run for President of the United States, then all bets are off.

Getting linked in

Before I came to business school, I had a LinkedIn account but rarely used it. But over the past two years, I have grown to become quite a prodigious user of the professional networking site. Last night I attended a networking event called LinkedIn Live held at the office of a local public relations firm.

 

The evening was quite productive. I ran into a current second year at Kenan-Flagler, two Kenan-Flagler alums (one whom I have met before and the other who offered to help connect me to possible job contacts), a couple of recruiters, and someone from the company I interned at last summer. I was not surprised to run into so many people I already know because as one recruiter said last night, "Raleigh is the biggest small city."

 

Because the event was organized by the communications director of the email marketing firm that I have been interviewing with, there were many people there last night from that firm. This gave me the chance to meet more potential co-workers and one particular vice president whom I will almost definitely interview with on my next company visit. But it was not without a bit of awkwardness. At one point I spotted a guy hovering around and I decided to be jovial and bring him into the conversation. I quickly regretted it when he said "oh yea I see you work for (name of firm). I am interested in your product manager position."

 

That was one introduction I did not want to be a part of.

Doing my best

Greetings from Charlottesville, Virginia where tomorrow me and a couple of college buddies will do some tailgating before heading over to watch UVA (hopefully) defeat Duke in the first home football game of the season.

I had yet another phone interview yesterday with the email marketing company that I have been interviewing with. It went well. We talked about the projects I worked on during my professional experience. The only part that was uncomfortable was toward the end when he asked why I did not go back to the company where I did my summer internship. It was awkward because I didn’t want to say anything bad about another company in the same industry that was also located in the local area. Sensing my discomfort, my interviewer said that he only was asking to see how I function in different environments and not because he wanted to exchange gossip about different people in different companies. Later this month I will be interviewing with this company again, it will be my fourth interview with the company and my second interview at the company. My interviewer told me I can dress more casually this time.

When I checked in at my hotel earlier, I saw a lot of Duke paraphernalia in the lobby and realized that the Duke football team was staying here as well. I think it would be horrible if someone were to go out into the hallway tonight at around 3am, pull the fire alarm, and force everyone to vacate their rooms. Just horrible.

We’re still in business

My sincerest apology to my readers for having gone dark (Jack Bauer lingo) for nearly two weeks. The 12 day hiatus is probably the longest I have ever gone without checking in and I have no plans of repeating it.

 

A week ago this past Friday, I had a phone interview with a company in DC that runs a health care content website. The interview went well and toward the end I was asked to give a salary range. I have never been asked that question before and immediately gave the standard “I am more interested in finding the right match and the correct opportunity than looking for a particular salary range.”

 

I should have stopped right there.

 

But instead I went ahead and said “but for the class that graduated a year ahead of me (Class of 2006), the median salary was $91,000.” The rest of the phone conversation didn’t last very long. It sounded as though the interviewer couldn’t get off the phone fast enough. He ended by wishing me luck, the very same “good luck” that I had heard many times from my interviewers.

 

The next time I am asked a potentially “deal breaker” question, I need to be more tactful about my answer. That same week I had a second round office visit with an email marketing company in Durham. The week ended with the interviewer emailing me an official job application. Under the space for salary, I wrote “negotiable.” I have another phone interview with that company tomorrow.