Wednesday, March 30, 2005

What to do, what to say? Today blogger was down for most of the morning so by the time it came back up I had already done most of my errands and work planned for the day and had little left to post about. Looking forward to Irish tonight, especially since I can feel some bad kareokee boiling up inside me (stay tuned for an "Extreme" lyrics post soon!).

Things have been going extremely well lately, like a dream really or at least a very long vacation. Hitting all the "mind, body and soul" sections of my life pretty hard. Love the independent research and learning that I finally have time to do while working on my thesis, training for hockey and my half marathon goals are churning along, and I've been out every night for the past 2 weeks with something on the agenda. Life I don't think gets any better than this!

My passion for travel is also soon to be satiated as we'll be having a big announcement about this semesters MBA getaway weekend VERY soon, my plans to revisit Russia while the big man Grizonator is around look like they're going to pan out and I've finally got another surprise week/end fly away date idea in the works. Factor in the DEL and OHL hockey playoffs, German Bundesliga and World Cup qualifying (Irish pub just got Premiere! Yahh!) and everything looks AW-Right!

For the record, Irish tonight, Stuttgart Friday, roadie to Baden-Baden Sunday. Everyone's invited so gimme a buzz if you want to join in the festivities!

My buddy "Canada Mountie Moose" from the Toronto airport, standing guard over Canada's finest brew and liqour labels for the last 4 years :-)



Rainy day, great for websurfing:

SportsNet is having a competition to find the best sports bar in Canada and the Ottawa bar "Local Hero's" has made the top 4!! Go to their website and vote for the best sports bar in Canada!!

A neat site that you can type in your name (or any other name) and see the relative popularity over time.

An interesting statistical analysis of the best NBA players according to the numbers, and a blog from a player who is statistically insignificant.

Top 10 American adventure vacations, Fast Company's top 25 jobs of 2005, and New Scientists 13 biggest things that do not make sense. Yeah I like lists ;-)

Tuesday, March 29, 2005

I was browsing through my feeds and found this post over at "The Vision Thing" on the definition of innovation and the problems associated with its literal definition. I've reposted my comments here:


Actually the problem you have is with your original definition of
"innovation". Innovation is not as you write "a new development or
invention" rather it is "a new development or invention PLUS
commercialization". This is why invention is necessary for innovation but
not sufficient; hence in your example with adding the potholes, this would not
be defined as "innovation" even in the most literal of senses because there
isn't an element of commercialization to that "invention" of adding the
potholes.

It is probably also important to note the
definition of the "commercialization" aspect of innovation as something that
generates value, which is not necessarily immediately economically measurable
(as with the case of process innovations etc which cannot always be directly
quantified but which still qualify as innovations).

Additionally,
when a company copies something that others in the industry are already doing
but which the company itself has not previously done, this is NOT innovation
(nor is it "internal innovation"). The reason for this is quite simply
that there is no element of invention in this process (remember innovation =
invention + commercialization). For arguments sake it could be
theoretically possible to have two companies developing an identical process
simultaneously and hence both be innovating, however I'm sure that if there
wasn't some slight differences between the two inventions (making both
innovations unique) then the occurrence of such an event would be rather rare
making the point on externally copy cat vs. internally innovative relatively
mute.

In closing you can see by using the correct definition for
innovation we can see that "tossing out any number of “ideas” regardless of
relevance or effectiveness" is not innovation by your standards nor in the
literal sense of the word (no element of commercialization or value added in
that process).

Hope this helps clarify.



What are your thoughts on the issue? Innovation is definatly a term that is over- and improperly used all the time in business. It's a shame since it's so important to the long term viability and survival of firms.
An open letter to the commisioner of the NHL Mr. Gary Bettman:

Do not give away Ottawa's chance at hosting the Draft by doing a crappy conference call in its place when the season resumes. You'll have screwed Ottawa fans again.

Too little too late since TSN is reporting that it will be cancelled.

Update: It was.

Monday, March 28, 2005

A quick thank you to my "secret Easter Bunny" who left me an Easter gift in my fridge yesturday. I think I'm finally hot on the trail of who it was and thought I'd drop a cool "spelled by flickr picture" thank you:

ThSt\nscrabble kPink SCronulla beach warning

A great surprise today to be sure!
Some more pics from the Schwabish Hall roadie, thanks to Thiery who got these in, especially some from inside that cool cafe we found:





And from the restaurant, some Stiffel drinkers in training:





A great Japanese proverb I saw on "Everyone Is Crazy":

"Fall down 7 times, stand up 8"

Coincidently this also applies to a heavy night of Stiffel drinking ;-)

Sunday, March 27, 2005

Happy Easter everyone!

Today is full out recovery mode day after a hard core couple of nights. Friday German came into town and we systematically demolished 2 meters of beer at the brewery pub and then hit irish for a couple staff pints. By the time we had finished talking about travel plans to Canada we headed on over to the pizza place for what is fast becoming a traditional 5:30AM plain pizza... extra sauce ;-)

Rock on. Wake up Saturday morning to a phone call "we're going to Schabish Hall, I'll be there to pick you up in 5". Shower, shit, shave. Beers made the 2 hour drive a breeze and the 30 minute tour of the city (including stops by "the pissing stairs" and "German puke zone") was surprisingly brief.



We ended up at a cafe by which time round 2 of the beers and chocolate had started to kick in. Very shick cafe place I must add.



We then headed over to a traditional German type restaurant with killer roastbraden und spetzle and of course had to break out the Stiffle! Jenny (probably aided in her strategicly dangerous position next to three hard core boozers) was a Stiffle killer, demolishing both with ease:

Before


During


After (look at that rosy glow!)


After most of the gang headed back to Pforzheim I decided to check out the new Schultz Cafe in downtown Stuttgart. That place is smokin' and will definatly warrent a return trip! Kudos to GP for the find.

Finally it was time to rock home on the last train out of town which convieniently arrives in Pforzheim at 1AM, just in time to catch a quick pint at Irish to cap the two day bender. Of course one pint turned into 2, which turned into 3 which...

And I'd also just like to say congradulations to Stephan and Iste on their new nuptuals ;-)
(insider)

Well a great weekend had by all, tonight we're BBQ'ing on 6th floor Kepler (for the view of the city) with some wine to be sure, cum one cum all!


Links from a rainy Sunday Easter Afternoon:

Maybe German's DO have a scence of humour :-)

Do you have a sick mind?

Some wise words on recruiting for a position, an MBA or work experience, which holds more value?

Friday, March 25, 2005

Easter is fast approaching us, and I wanna get this in early since I'll be gone to the other side of the pond for the holiday... so for lack of something more witty or sarcastic to say, Happy Easter everyone!



Update: Are you going to have turkey for Easter? This is hilarious, a turkey attacking a police officer. The second clip with the turkey chasing the cop is priceless.

When geeks have too much time on their hands.

Wow, this is unbelieveable!

Thursday, March 24, 2005

Great day, too bad the sun couldn't hold off the rain eh! Tonight I'm going to hit Princenbar for a beer to kick off the long weekend, cum one cum all. The heavy drinking is actually going to start tomorrow though, starting around 8pm we're going to hit the "meter beer place" for some good traditional German eats and homebrew and then probably end up at Irish. Don't waste your weekend, meet us there! ;-)



Some links for the rain:

This is cool, the illusion of a transparent computer screen. I wonder how long until this becomes a reality, although I doubt it would make you more productive.

Man-made white water rafting and trails, looks HUGE.

I love concept pics, here's a site with some visions of what Moskow was going to be (from way back in the past).

Um... German's can be weird too.

Wednesday, March 23, 2005

So it was with utter shock that I learned about the new "mall" built in downtown Pforzheim that had just opened up last week. I never even realized it was being built all last year and now all of a sudden it was open. At least I didn't have any anticipation waiting for it to open. The sun was attempting to hold off the rain so we decided to go downtown, get some errands done and then check out the mall.

First impressions are that I realize now why I didn't notice it being built, it's at the other end of the walking area where I rarely go, it's alot smaller than what I would consider a "mall" (I had seen it being built but just thought it was going to be another box store) and finally it was in a location that had been under construction since my arrival hence nothing new to notice.

Anyways the mall was packed (don't these people have jobs to go to??) and was pleasently surprising. The best part of the whole endevour was the discovery that Subway will be arriving in less than a month!! This saves countless late night train rides to Karlsruhe to get a decent meal but probably also means a severe blow to the pocketbook is on its way ;-)

Anyone who's going to be around this weekend for Easter (little or no family plans), gimme a buzz. There's a bunch of us that are going to hit the town Friday night, Saturday we're getting a road hockey game going and we're still thinking up some good stuff for Thursday, Saturday and Sunday nights. For those of you going away for the weekend have a great one!

The hockey pics from last week's event are still trickling in:



Some links from an afternoon on the net:

Peter got this one in, good for a chuckle for guys, good for more for girls ;-)

Some great advise: love what you do.

Taking the dis "penis face" to a whole new level.

Coke Zero, no calories = no taste? I sure know that diet Coke is nowhere near as good as classic!

Every country in the EU must follow the strict laws that govern over the territory... except when its Germany, France or Italy or when another country is trying to do something legally available to them under the law that these three don't like. A great basis for partnership.

What drugs does to white man dancers.

A possible first peek at a possible Google OS?

Average vacation days broken down by country. Now you know why I want to get a job in Germany ;-)

Tuesday, March 22, 2005

Signs that Ross is actually starting to get old:

1 - Starts hiking. Worse, starts hiking and takes photo's, shows those photo's to everyone thereby destroying any chance of deniability.

2 - Loses enough motor control without any defensive presure during a hockey game to mangle face.

3 - Got kicked off the Bahn on the way to Stuttgart because the controller didn't believe that I was still a student travelling under a students pass.

4 - Woke up at 6AM yesturday. Actually got up to start some nonconsequential work instead of rolling over back to sleep. Weird.

5 - On a date last night and George Micheal "Papa Was A Rolling Stone" comes on the TV in the background, not only do I start gigging to the sweet sound of an 90's classic like a looney, but here's how the preceeding conversation went:

Girl: "Oh is this a new song?"

Ross: Stares blank eyed phlabergasted...

Girl: "Who sings this?"

Ross: "Um... this is George Michael and this song is one of the biggest songs of the early 90's, haven't you heard this before?"

Girl: Pause.

Ross: "Faith, I Want Your Sex, Father Figure... you know these ones right?"

Girl: "Who's George Michael?"

Ross: Stares blankly off into space as he realizes that he has somehow turned the corner on being cutting edge party young to somehow being just old.

A moment of silence please... ;-)



On a related note, I think it's long time to increase the entrance minimum age to Club Ross.

Monday, March 21, 2005

This is hilarious, the new Wembley stadium has an unnamed bridge that they are throwing a contest to the people to vote for a new name. So what is happening and how can you get involved? Well the German's are sending around a chain mail to everyone to have the bridge named after the German player who scored the last goal in the old stadium to beat England 1-0. So go participate in the mockery of the English soccer hoolagin and vote for "Dietmar Hamann Bridge" as the new name... hilarious!



Update: Looks like the British have caught on and taken down the sign-up page :-(
Yesturday turned out alot better then it initially looked. The clouds stayed away, we all got together for some road hockey and watching "Sideways" again was even funnier than the first time, although we did have to overcum some technical and audio problems ;-)

On Friday we had a successfull ice hockey night with no injuries to report, so how is it that road hockey gets a casulty? Answer, Ross + pavement = faceplant. It was a thing of beauty :-) Besides a couple cuts and a bruised ego everything's A-OK.

Sunday, March 20, 2005

A great commercial. Simple and effective.
What a crappy looking day outside, even so it's not making working on this PHD submission any easier, especially now that I'm getting SQL errors on their online page. Great. At least we've got movie night tonight (5pm at the uni, "Sideways" is this weeks show) which should reduce the manotony of the day.

And the hockey pics are starting to trickle in, thanks to Marta for getting a bunch in, and for the record I'm smiling here because of the beer, not whatever your dirty minds might be thinking! (what a brutal "trick" camera pic this one is!):

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Thanks to everyone that came out to hockey last night, good times had by all. I'll have pics posted sometime this week (if you've got some please send them in for posting). Looks like that was the last ice hockey of the season, although we'll be starting up the road hockey next Sunday. As for this weekend, tomorrow we're BBQ'ing and watching the Oscar nominated movie "Sideways", trust me it's good. Cum one, cum all :-)

Bumming around the net:

Remember Nintendo? Our parents never let us have one until the Super Nintendo came out so the better part of 3 years of my childhood I spent drooling watching my friends play Mario and whatever else at their house. Well it all cums full circle, now you can get computer emulators like this with every Nintendo game known. This is going to cut into thesis time :-)

Looks like G8 Technologies (where I bought my Azio MP3 player) is finally defuct. Serves them right for selling me that piece of crap. Azio MP3 players are a piece of shit! These guys screwed me with a crappy player that only worked for a few months and over a year of high blood presure trying to get customer support to fix the problem. DO NOT BUY AN AZIO MP3 PLAYER!!! Screw you Azio!!

I highly recommend HJSplit to break up files and then re-assemble them later (like if you need a movie to break into two USB memory sticks or whatever). Free and great. If you're looking to clean up your browser/computer, this is a great parasite check. If you want to check the speed of your internet connection (and compare it to others), check out this site.

Why do they call it "the loo" in Britain? Some theories. Room 100??

A great article from the "New Yorker" on the relationship between labour and capital in the knowledge economy. Why did I like it so much? Well their parallels to the current NHL labour dispute didn't hurt :-)

Would you pay $30 a year to read EuroRoss? Would you read EuroRoss if I paid YOU $30 a year? :-) What about a Rosie O'Donnell's blog? :-)

I'm all for horsing around, but should the leader of the free world be doing this?

A restaurant where you pay what you think the meal was worth, interesting idea. Here's a new restaurant in Frankfurt that has techno music and is a little funky. Open till 6AM on weekends!

A review of Peter Drucker's "Innovation and Entrepreneurship".

Crossing the Canada-US boder (driving)? Check out the wait times, looks pretty good today.

Next year I still hope to go to Easter Island and Antarctica:



Of course by going to Germany I'll miss our annual Grand Bend roadie on May 24... that sux. At least there's alot of other places I'll be bumming around Europe this summer :-)

The most regulated and rule-oriented country in the world (Germany) just got worse. Great.

It's Saturday afternoon, it's time for a beer... :-)

Friday, March 18, 2005

Oh hockey, how much do I miss thee...

At least there's European hockey going on. Here's a site that lists the DEL (German Professional Hockey League) champions from present day back to 1912. My team is the Berlin IceBears (Berliner SC), who have unfortuneatly not won since 1976, but they did have some dynasties back in the day, including the first 3 league championships! They signed Oleg Kolzig to a contract about a month a go and have been making a very strong push for first lately. Go IceBears!! If you're interested in staying abreast on DEL hockey check out their main website or this site with informative posts on the state of German prospects (once in a while). Of course you can always just focus on the fights :-)

A great analysis article on why there's no European "Superleague" which could compete with the NHL.

With no NHL hockey this year it's made me even hungrier for the World Championships in Austria this year (April 30 - May 15) which should have a bunch of NHL players in it. Go Canada Go!!

Some people say hockey is a brutal sport, for sure, it's for "real" men ;-) But I'd certainly rather get bodychecked senseless than play a game of basketball! (thanks uselessjunk.com)



See you all at the rink tonight!! :-)

Monday, March 14, 2005

Today I'm kinda hung up somewhere with alot of time and a wi-fi laptop so I thought I'd start going through some links I've been saving up... well what started as casual browsing has turned into a full blown Spring cleaning project. I've taken the jump to an RSS newsreader as I realize I can no longer follow all my links faithfully. I chose Newsgator Online (their new free introductory offer) originally because I wanted to work out of Outlook, but when I realized that functionality would cost money I got sold on their new free online version which would also let me follow my links while on the move from any internet access point. After spending the past couple hours getting half my subscriptions on the feed I soon realized why I haven't been able to keep up with my blog monitoring...


1455 posts to read?? And only half my links have been subscribed to so far!?!? Ok it's all starting to make sence where all my free time has been leaching to. Ok it's actually up over 1550 since going through this post but whatever, the feeder will significatly improve my scanning time instead of having to individually click on each bookmark so it'll be worth it in the end (hopefully!).

I'm also almost all the way through e-mails from my 2 weeks hiatus, not bad since I've gotten to most of them within 2 weeks. If you haven't recieved a reply from one of your mails it's either because:

1 - There was a problem and I never recieved your e-mail, just resend it cursing Microsoft.
2 - I don't like you. ;-)

Ok, so having said all that be prepared for a MONSTER link posting soon as I start clearing up all my old "to do" links off my desktop. In the spirit of my geekyness today I'll leave you with this link post:

How nerdy are you? I got a "Mid-Level Nerd" (72%). Good thing this test wasn't "How geeky are you"... I would have broke the machine ;-) Talk about geeky-cool, Engadget's review of the Sony PSP (Play Station Portable). Drool...

Sunday, March 13, 2005

As I was going through some unsorted pics I came across this one from an off-trail hike the other day. This pic is about the time that I realized that every direction looked the same, dense foilage. I figured that if I couldn't stumble my way out that this pic would be the last photo my family would see of me. Scary. :-)

Saturday, March 12, 2005

I've been submerging myself in school related projects this week in advance of my internship back in Germany. Some links to pass on...

An interview with the founder of "Craig's List" which recently sold 25% of the company to eBay. I like his focus on customer service, it's what makes or breaks a company:

"Q: So you answer the e-mails to Craigslist personally?

A: Generally speaking, yes. I get ready for the day and head over to Reverie (Coffee Cafe in San Francisco's Cole Valley neighborhood) and have a latte, and I read the paper. Quite honestly, I actually do read The Chronicle. After coffee, I do more customer service at our Inner Sunset office. On my way, I'll usually have lunch. Then I'll do more customer service there. Then typically, I'll go home and do more customer service. Maybe I'll go out for something like tonight -- a forum at the Commonwealth Club at the San Francisco Writers' Grotto. I'll do that and come home and do more customer service."

An innovative way to solve overtime shifting, a market based approach.

For the Star Trek geeks out there, the "Ferengi Rules of Acquisition".

An inside look at the Apple iPod scrollwheel.

I don't agree with Michael Rennie's quote: "Organizations don’t change, people do". I think business leaders can radically shape an organisation's culture and affect the productivity and actions of its employees. Otherwise the key to restructuring an organisation would be to fire everyone who does not act as you wish and replace them. Although I'm a big fan of bringing in your own management team and key personel when you have to overhaul an organisation, I certainly don't think it's in the best interest of the company to replace everyone who currently is not performing (for whatever reason) to the company's expectations. His point also neglects the issues of resource allocation, vision/mission and training efforts.

Mark Cuban, dot-com billionaire, on having the business "edge". I agree with everything he has to say in this post. Here's another interesting article on the changing business environment. Good ideas but too short.

Fan of the O.C.? Fan of Racheal Bilson? :-)

Ever wonder what the hell all those weird english words mean? Maybe the Urban Dictionary can help you out.

Secret caverns underneath Paris, very spooky cool.

A mug that you can write on with chalk. Cool idea.

Some good insights into customer service by the "Slacker Manager".

Hacker breaks into Harvard MBA admissions computer, people log in to see if they've been admitted, hacker gets caught, people who looked get rejected. Ouch.

Losers... remixed losers...

Certainly you are correct... and I just added her autobiography to my Amazon Wishlist :-)

Inspirational weight loss, but what got me is his new marathon goals, I've gotta get on that soon...

A German supermarket on the cutting edge, using fingerprints to pay for your shopping. Interesting, but I'm not sure how good I feel about the local supermarket having access to my biometric information.

It looks like France has a great Paris Olympics 2012 bid going.

An interesting post, scroll down to the second half as I believe that online collaborative learning is going to be the wave of the future and is something I'd like to indulge in during my PHD studies. Whether EuroRoss has a part in that only time will tell.

Someday - and that day may never come - I'll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept these links as a gift on my daughter's wedding day.

Thursday, March 10, 2005

When you loose someone you care about deeply it's a long road to recovery...

Wednesday, March 09, 2005

There's a new low budget movie out in North America called "Sideways" about two guys going on a wine tasting tour in northern California for the guys last bachelor weekend before getting married. It's a surprisingly great movie with alot of good insights into the lives of middle aged men and women. There's some terrific emotional scenes but the best part is about 20 minutes in at their first wine tasting. So the one guy is a total wine conasor trying to teach the other (who is your typical beer and potatos kinda guy) how to taste a wine. The whole exchange is hilarious, and I don't want to give away the punchline, so instead I'll post one of the wine tasters side comments when he's asked how he likes the wine:

Beer Guy: "So how'd you like this one Miles?"

Wine Guy Miles: "Usually they start you on wines with learning disabilities, but this one is pretty damn good."

Obviously I can't do it justice, but trust me that's hilarious!

Anyways, if you're into a casual movie heavily focused on character development that tells a great story with a splash of humour, you can't go wrong with "Sideways". I give it a "good enough to pay 10 bucks at the theatre" on my 3 point rating scale (worth going to theatre, rental only, do not watch).

Good job.

Monday, March 07, 2005

Just got this e-mail from our housing director:

"We are sending this email out to inform you of a security concern. We have had thefts take place in the residence halls during the day time. Door handles are being giggled to see if they are open. We have a description of two possible suspects. They are well dressed caucasian females."

Two well dressed causasian females... um... let's just say my door is unlocked and wide open with a line of dollar bills like a trail of bread crums ;-)
Well the secret's out of the bag so I might as well post it. I'll be rocking back to Pforzheim for my thesis studies this summer! I was able to line up a company close to Pforzheim so you'll all be stuck with this drunkin bastard at Irish once again!

Ok more deets to post later but for now make sure you sign up for Hockey Night in Pforzheim! This will be our 4th installment and it plans to be the best yet. All the old timers are cuming back, Aussie's driving down from Grenoble, Karlsruhe's going to try and impress his (now fiance) girlfriend with some smooth passing and gracelike skating, the Russian mafia of course will be in attendance, no word yet on the American or German contingents but I'm sure word will work it's way around :-)

Hockey Deets: I don't fly in until that day so be sure to contact Maria with cash and confirmation of enrollement.

When - Friday March 18th, 9:30 PM (21:30 for you Europeans)
Where - Pforzheim Arena, same place.
What - 12 euros, two more than last time because I can no longer to subsidize you fuckers ;-)
How - Skates, Ice fee, Stick use all included, bring knee pads/helmets/skates and sticks if ya got em.

See yall there! I should be extremely jet lagged and running on 26 hours with no sleep so all you assholes who've been waiting to get a solid bodycheck in on me should have a very good opportunity that night! It's going to be great seeing the old gang again, Irish pub afterwards promises to be one of my crazyest nights yet (and probably one of the worst for my liver!).

Prost everyone!

Sunday, March 06, 2005

After a long night of partying I can't seem to get to sleep?? What's up with my sleeping patterns lately anyways? Can't sleep when I want to and die for a nap when I can't... must be the excercise, doesn't agree with my finely tuned drinking machine of a body ;-) At least it was a great night out...

Bummin' around the net with a heavy mind and heart:

Scoble with a good non-technical post on getting a good rental car. I'm sure there's some traveling salesmen with some good tips out there! Scoble again, on viral marketing. Speaking of viral, here you can get cool viral mini-movies and ads online... lots of good time wasting time there ;-)

The new killer ad-campaign, beeming your message into space!

For my Toronto-ites who are big fans of "Lowest of the Low", you can get a copy of a live recording with some new stuff on it.

Bleh... I think I'll go hit the tube...

Saturday, March 05, 2005

Just finished a lazy Saturday afternoon watching a movie: "The Life Aquadic with Steve Zissou". Two words: absolutely terrible. So disappointing because I love Bill Murray. Not even a rental, I can't believe I suffered through to watch it until the end. Blah.

At least this made me laugh afterwards: (Aiste got this one in) skiiers with imagination, time and stupiditiy.
I refuse to acknowledge that with a VFB Stuttart loss and a Hamburg win that Hamburg will not only be ahead of VFB in the standings, but will be in the last UEFA cup spot. Shit, I guess I just did :-(

Cum on VFB! Get back into form! (although Hilderbrand's been amazing all year).



At least Bochum is going to be relegated this year, one step closer to their rightfull place in the Regionaliga. :-)

Friday, March 04, 2005

People always ask me how it's going here in Utah because of all the mormans. It's cool, certainly there's less partying, but the worst is the toned down MTV videos :-)

Of course there's other ways to relieve our stress :-) Looks like these NASA scientists could use a little pick me up after this screw-up, a classic example of geeks screwing something simple up, guess we're all human after all eh ;-)

Heath gets a HBBG (Heard Before But Great) in:

"Before you criticize someone you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way, when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes."
Saw this quote in one of my venture capital books and thought it was worth posting:

"The degree of influence a board can have over the direction of a company is diluted unless it has a balence of management, independent industry experts and financial investors."

On an unrelated and grossly under-professional note, I've noticed that eating onions gives me bad breath and gas. Shout out to the ladies ;-)

Thursday, March 03, 2005

Watched "Supersize Me" last night, the documentary about a guy who eats McDonalds food fro every meal for a whole month. It looks at the health problems associated with high sugar, high fat diets and takes a shot at the fast food industry and it's lobbyers. To be honest I was hoping for more since I had heard so much about the movie before, but as often the case with high expectations can cum a letdown.

The best part of the whole movie was the comments from his girlfriend: (paraphrased)

"The saturated fats are inmpeading the bloodflow to his penis, he's having a hard time getting it up... (pause) he does, totally, it's still good"

Later in the movie he's joking around about how crazy he is for doing this experiment and shouts to her in the kitchen. Her responce without even looking up from what she was doing was "yeah you're crazy alright" with a total non-chalantness that made my gut hurt from the laughter.

One thing the movie does is make you want to get up and get exercising and eating properly right away. The gastric surgury shots are totally disgusting as well as how he looks as he's eating the McD's after the like 20th day. I remember some good times in Germany when I was hitting McD's almost every night just to get some food with some flavour from back home in my system, I think it was totally fucking me up too. Interesting thing is that while overseas I crave going to McD's instead of eating foreign food, but while at home I'd never even think about going there and it even kinda repulses me when I see one. Weird.

So all in all I'd give the film an "average" rating. As we used to say "it's a rental" which means it's ok to shell out 3 bucks for the film on a boring Sunday night with the gang but not worth shelling the 10 bucks (well now theatres routinely charge $14 or more, but you get the point) to go to the theatre. Of course there's always the two other extremes like "Son of the Mask" that are totally not watchable or "Swingers" which are MUST buys.

Wednesday, March 02, 2005

Sometimes good things happen to good people... sometimes good things also happen to guys like me ;-) Yesturday was an awsome day. Nothing's set in stone, but things are starting to line up like domino's, I just hope they'll all fall in the right place soon enough. We'll see, anyways one of those great encouraging days where it's hard to keep a smile off your face :-)

I finally decided that it's soon time to go through my link folder. There's like 100 links I've saved for future reading but have never gotten to and it just keeps growing and growing, now it's a monster! Here's some of the things I've been looking at today:

A great write-up of the beginnings and IPO offering days at Google.

Gates comments about the validity of the US high school system are probably long overdue.

Can blogging change traditional journalism channels? Possibly. Can it be big? Possibly 2.

This guy has too much time on his hands, hacking the iPod. Pure genius though.

Wedding rings made from the bone cells of your partner. Interestingly cool.

The Microsoft "nuggets" are a great idea, but I wish they pertained to simpler functionality of popular products (like Office). I know there's other avenues to learn that type of information, but the nugget idea likens itself to my inherent lazyness :-)

I can't wait for World Cup 2006 in Germany. Good luck to everyone who signed up for the lottery for tickets! If you haven't yet signed up, I was wrong since you can do so until March 31st, not February 28th as I had originally thought. Like I said, even if you don't want tickets you should sign up for the draft as if you win you'll get a clean $1000 from me for the right to buy those tickets!

I saw this link and this pic and thought of you Nadine (trust me folks she's laughing right now, nothing sadisdic going on here!):



Update: This link with video's of taser use as well, hope you enjoy!
Update 2: Also this link, roadkill gummies? It must be Nadine link day today ;-)
(Note: Dan at WA if you're reading this please forward to Nadine as I've lost her e-mail, thanks!)

This is funny, I love sarcastic activism crack-backs. Another instance of using statistics to prove anything.

Aspiring writter? Get your work listed on Amazon by getting an ISBN number.

An interesting blog post on "Why bandwidth should scare Microsoft".

Ok, the full story is here, but basically this female airpilot got half her plane pumped with lead at the beginning of the Iraq war and was still able to land safely. As Paris Hilton would say "that's so hot"!!


It's worth saying again, that's hot!

Tuesday, March 01, 2005

This is hilarious! The "Ladder Theory", man I gotta say that some of that shit sure rings true, take this quote for example: "looks were influenced by factor's other than just phyical attraction. For example, a guy who is a complete asshole to a woman seems to somehow look better to them."

This is so true, and for all you girls that say "I just want some guy to treat me right blah blah blah" I'll show that same girl going for some fucking loser that treats the mud he wipes off his shoes better. Simple, nice guys finish last.

This rule somehow takes a backseat for about 10 years, somewhere about the time that the girls have finished whoreing themselves out during high school and university they start to feel used and get desperate for stability. Motherly instincts and the homornal drive for children also has something to do with it. They then start to notice that nice guy that treated them nice all those years, of course by then he's usually been snapped up by someone else. Anyways this lasts until the boon of having engagements, weddings, children etc starts to wear off and then they revert to their original selves, now much older mind you, which is why they've now morphed into a cougar (if you don't know what a cougar is then just go with any decent looking 20-something guy to Sammy's on a Friday night, watch and learn) or a hormonal 40 something wife.

Moving along, how about this quote: "There are some interests you can show in a woman that will help you to fuck her: a healthy interest in destroying her self-esteem and in fucking her friends more than her seem to work wonders"... hilarious but sadistically kinda true in a way.

On further analysis, the Ladder Theory is alot like my own theory devised in my late high school years, there are 3 type of women in the eyes of a man:

1. Fuckable
2. Fuckable when Drunk
3. Not Fuckable

Every girl falls into one of these catagories. So true, there are three ways (according to the article) "whereby a guy and a girl can be friends:

1. The guy is gay
2. The guy does not find you attractive.
3. The guy already has a woman much higher than you on the ladder"

Girls love to deny this fact but in reality those girls are either clueless to the realities of the world, or know it's true and are playing innocent.

Now I'm not trying to say that all the fault lies on the female side, far from it actually. I'm sure the majority of the blame surely lies in a male's stereotypical superficial desires of a woman, but that's for another post ;-)

For a real laugh check out their glossary of terms. Jokers.