Car Names

Why is it that there are no car names that contain the number "1,000,000" ?

There's the Hummer H2, the Audi A3, the Smart fourtwo, the BMW M5, the Pontiac G6, the Mazda RX-8, the Saab 9-5, the Infinity G37, the Mayback 62, the Volvo C70, the Ford F150, the Chrysler 300C, the Nissan 350Z, the Ford Five Hundred, the Mercedes Benz S600, the Ferrari 612, the Porsche 911, the Dodge Ram 3500, and the Mazda B4000. But there's no 1,000,000!

Ok, I know what you're thinking, the 'Infinity' is even more than a million right? Yes, but I'm talking about model names here, not car company names.

So if you own a car company, and your trying to decide what to call your next model, you know what to do, right?

Random stuff

I now have only 7 weeks left until graduation. Yikes! And I found out that our commencement speaker will be Barack Obama, so that’s kind of cool. It’s not every day you have a sitting president speak at your graduation.

I still haven’t found a job. The place where I’m working as an intern has instituted a hiring freeze until June, so I’m now looking elsewhere more aggressively. I recently applied for marketing positions with Fender, Gibson, and Yamaha. I’m not holding my breath but any of those would be super cool. Fender is based here, so that would be extra convenient.

I volunteered at Laela’s Kindergarten last Friday. Mostly I just helped kids write in their ‘Journals’ and do some counting worksheets. I had very little interaction with Laela because she doesn’t really need any help with school work.

I recently purchased Scrabble for my phone. I have been playing Scrabble on my phone (or Palm PDA) for years and years, but lately I couldn’t get any of my pirated versions to work so I finally broke down and paid for it. I play against the computer/phone on the hardest setting and I still win about 75% of the time. I think it’s programmed to just play the highest possible scoring word for each turn, but sometimes it’s not as strategic as a human. I’ve got 4 versions of ‘physical’ Scrabble at home, but it’s not always easy to find people to play with. Anyway, if any of you humans want to play Scrabble with me on facebook, just let me know.

I’ve been trying to learn new songs on the piano recently. The three I’ve worked on most recently are “You’re Beautiful” by James Blunt, the “Gummi Bears” theme song, and “Hello” by Lionel Ritchie. I do enjoy playing songs I already know, but learning new ones is so much fun. Luckily for my family we have a Yamaha Clavinova that sounds as good as an acoustic piano, but can be played with headphones.

This evening we’re planning on watching Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Laela and Ivy have been excited about that for several days now.

We have a hummingbird feeder in the back yard, and there are apparently some hungry hummingbirds out there because that thing empties out super fast. I’ve been trying to get a good picture of one of them, but they seem to be able to smell the camera coming. They don’t mind when the kids bang on the window and call to them, but if I sneak up quietly with the camera in my hand, they’re gone right away.

Have I mentioned that I love living in Arizona?

Netflix, Star Wars, etc.

We periodically rent movies from either Blockbuster or iTunes, and recently we decided to try a couple of other alternatives.

First we tried 'Redbox.' There's a Redbox dispenser at a gas station nearby, so I went over and looked through the menu. It wasn't much better than iTunes as far as selection, but it was somewhat of a novelty. We rented The Rocker starring Dwight from The Office. It was a mostly unfunny knockoff of School of Rock that might have worked if the music the kids were playing wasn't awful! Skip that one.

So then the other day I finally decided to sign up for Netflix. I've been meaning to do so for several months, but because the web-based viewing option relies on Microsoft's Silverlight player, it doesn't work on G5-based Macs or in Linux. But right now I'm using Windows for compatibility reasons at school, so Netflix was go (just like the 'Fit is go' in the commercials).

We got the 'one movie' plan which is like 9 bucks a month. There are about 10,000 movies one can watch online, and then about 100,000 that you can get in the mail.

The first movie we got online was Man on Wire which won the Oscar for Best Documentary this year. It was about a totally crazy French dude that spent 6 years planning for a covert tight rope walk between the WTC towers back in the 70s. This guys was all undercover and everything, taking pictures and movies, and building models. Anyway, great movie, very entertaining.

The next movie we watched online was Ratatouille. I enjoyed it and the kids did too. I think the moral was that even the most thinly-disguised impostors can find success through collaboration with common vermin.



Then we decided to get a movie in the mail. So after consulting Laela and Ivy we settled on Star Wars, Episode 4, A New Hope. I remember watching the Star Wars on Video in about 1980 at age 3 for the first time, so I thought it was sufficiently appropriate for my 3 and 5 year old daughters. Laela was concerned that there was often little justification for the killing in the movie, but she really liked the big hairy ape. She couldn't figure out how he kept getting on the spaceship though! Ivy was admittedly only marginally interested as we watched, but she did take in most of it. Laela, of course, knows most of the back story through past casual conversations; so she was asking about Darth Vader's history quite a bit. She was also especially interested in the good guy/bad guy status of each and every character. I also thought that it was funny and odd that she didn't realize that it was fictional until about 20 minutes in (after the large space battle and the droids walking around on Tatooine ). Laela still wants to see the other 5 movies, so I'd say it was a success.

Then the other day we watched an old collection of Bugs Bunny & Roadrunner cartoons. The kids loved it, but I felt that I had outgrown some of the nuances that had made it more funny when I was 5.

Another cool thing that Netflix does is that it allows you to 'rate' any movies you have previously seen, and then with those ratings it compiles lists of recommended movies for you. So it takes a lot of the effort out of trying to decide what to see next. I used to spend like an hour at Blockbuster, so this is welcome feature. You can also browse by genre, age category, release dates, etc. Honestly the 'watch instantly' selection does leave something to be desired, but I suspect this is largely due to licensing issues on the part of the movies studios. Hopefully that situation will improve in the future.

I still have a $15 iTunes gift card, so I'm afraid that I haven't settled on Netflix, but I would recommend it to anyone who watches 3 or more movies per month, and who can't be bothered to drive for 5 minutes to Blockbuster. :)

2 months to go!

I only have 2 months left until I graduate with my MBA. If you'd have asked me a few years ago if I'd ever get an MBA, I would have laughed at you. My undergrad degree was in Psychology. I also took a lot of classes in Logic and Philosophy, as well as Linguistics. At the time I really had no idea what I'd end doing with a Psychology degree.

I occasionally mused about pursuing further education and eventually becoming a Psychology professor. But my interest in that diminished significantly as I neared graduation. I also toyed with the idea of becoming a Lawyer. My dad is a lawyer and until quite recently he'd always suggested that being a lawyer was no fun. So in retrospect, I'm glad that didn't pan out.

I also thought about Architecture. I loved architectural drafting back in high school. After I graduated I went back and took an Architecture class at the University of Calgary. For whatever reason though, that also didn't work out.

I worked for about 4 years after college, and as I saw how different companies operated and how incompetent some people in executive positions could be, I began to gain a rudimentary interest in business. Taking the GMAT (test required for entrance to an MBA program) had been on my to do list for quite some time.

As my dissatisfaction at work increased I finally got to the point where I was sufficiently motivated to start an earnest attempt to get into business school. I began by making a list of about 100 schools that I would consider applying to. Over a period of several months I narrowed this list down until I only had about 8. The schools I left on my list were:

• University of Victoria
• University of British Columbia
• University of Calgary
• University of Alberta
• University of Toronto
• Cornell University
• University of Arizona
• Arizona State University

These schools all had different application deadlines and so I finished them in the order they were due. The first two that had to be completed were Cornell and ASU. I had mostly completed the applications for the other 6 schools, but I hadn't submitted any of them yet when I received an invitation to interview at ASU. I was given the option to do an in-person interview in Tempe, AZ, or to do a video-chat interview from wherever I was at the time. I chose to go to Arizona so that I could see the campus and get a feel for what the school was like. I really enjoyed the interview and the campus tour, but I continued preparing my other applications while I waited to hear from ASU.

During this time I also got a denial letter from Cornell, which was disappointing, but not unexpected. Then I got accepted to ASU. I was thrilled about it. So much so that I dropped all my other outstanding applications. So it ended up that I applied to two schools and got accepted at one of them, Since then most people I've talked to have said that I would have been crazy to want to go to Cornell. It's a great school, but apparently Ithica, NY is a miserable place to live for most of the year.

So after the most intense (by far) two years of my life I find myself here about to graduate. I've got only two classes left to finish in the next 8 weeks. Now I have to move on to another stage of life. I am certainly not ruling out further education, but in the immediate future I must find a job. Not just any old job either. I have to find the kind of job that will allow me to pay off excessive student loans! I'm currently working for a medical device company as an intern, but I'm not 100% sure that there will be a permanent position for me there. There is also the complication that I'm not an American, which generally scares off most potential employers.

Anyway, I didn't say it was an interesting story. Ha ha ha.