The next new toy....

I'm looking at buying a new digital camera either before I go to Japan or immediately after getting there. So far there are two contenders. One because it is fairly small and has a decent optical zoom and the other because it has a great optical zoon (but is not a pocket camera.)

First off is the Nikon Caplio R4.

The R4 is essentially the R3 with one more megapixel of clarity.

Next is the Kodak Easyshare Z612.

Not a pocket cam, tripod mountable (I'm bringing one with me to Japan) and a great optical zoom. I'm leaning in this direction, although the convenience of a pocket cam would be nice. I definitely want to put my hands on both of these cameras and try them out before I buy one. And in any case I will not be buying one until very soon before the trip. Might as well get a few months of price depreciation on them.

The home stretch

Only two more weeks of school before finals are upon us. They will likely be very hectic.

I made some progress on the previously posted list that will help but this week and next will be a tremendous flurry of activity and will probably involve very little sleep. I only have two actual finals, which is nice, though they are in Corporate Finance and Accounting and will require quite a bit of study. Both classes are fairly straightforward, however, so I don't think they will present much of a problem.

We have a marketing project that is not due until May, but there is a possibility we will be called on this Wednesday to present our ideas so Tuesday will be spent doing prepwork and figuring out who will do what parts of the presentation.

Our final in Ops Management is a take home to do be done by our group. While the class is not my strongest suit, by group is tremendous and we work very well together so I think we will do well on that.

And of course the job search continues. I should be hearing back from Virtua this week. A "yes" would be a huge load off my shoulders and would give me a position that I believe I would actually enjoy.

I managed to play quite a bit of poker over break and did pretty well. I played in a few tournaments today on Party Poker and had very little luck. When you go all in, flop a straight, and then lose to a runner flush you know that it just was not your day. All told I think I played well and made very few mistakes. Granted I really couldn't make many mistakes because for the most part my cards were horrid. Generally speaking I win at least 10% of the hands I play (PP keeps the stats) and today I was at around half of that. But such is life.

I played in a tourney today where the grand prize is an Escalade, and they are running another tournament in a few weeks (conveniently after finals.) All you need to do is place in the top 250 in a qualifier and you're in. Doing so was painfully easy. So we'll give the Caddy (or more likely its cash equivalent) another go in a little while and hopefully some cards will fall my way.

I played in a few cash games as well and am up about $50 to date. The quality of play on PP is generally not good and if you're patient you can take advantage of that.

Well, back to CorpFin homework and the small, very tasty glass of Azul reposada tequila I'm enjoying. Hopefully it will help lull me to sleep in a few hours.

Things to do over break

Since Brandeis is a school based on the Jewish tradition, all of our breaks are on Jewish holidays. This meant that from last Thursday (Passover started at sundown on Wednesday) until next Monday we have no class. For all of you who are members of the tribe I hope you holiday was a joyous family celebration. Many of your fellow Sons of Abraham such as myself celebrated Easter this past weekend as well.

I haven't done much the last few days. We went to Pam's parent's house for Easter dinner. I also was told I have a few birthday presents in the mail. One is a Jabra Bluetooth headset for my Treo and the other is a surprise. I can't wait to get them both!

Unfortunately I have plenty of schoolwork to do over the break. I'm making a list here of the schoolwork and other items that need doing to make sure I get to them all.

1. Do prep work for International Financial Management case. I have not spent as much time on this class as I should have and our group grades on some of these cases has not been up to snuff. Time for that to change. Professor Bulan is an excellent teacher and I feel like I'm underperforming in a class that I really enjoy.
   
2. Do LOTS of prep work for the semester-end Marketing project. Our team, like many others, has kind of let this slide. This week is makeup time. We need to do demographic research as well as figure out positioning, distribution, price points, etc.
   
3. Spend at least two hours a day working on finding my summer internship. I had a great interview last week that I think will lead to an offer, but I am not going to stop contacting people and applying for new positions until I land something that I will truly enjoy.
4. Spend at least an hour a day studying Japanese. I need to memorize the kana, as many words as possible and I need to seriously review sentence structures so that I'm up to speed for the Level II class I start on the 29th.
5. Work out. I had been going to the gym at least three times a week before last week. I just bought a set of cross trainers today and spend a few hours in the gym. I will be doing something athletic every day during break. I really need to get myself back in shape. I've decided I'm going to drastically change my diet by focusing on eating more protein and less carbs. I've had a lot of success with this in the past so I'm going to give it a go. It is not Atkins, I love bread, pasta and rice far too much to give them up, but they will be moderated a bit.
6. Work on Financial Modeling case. My team is very strong and we have a solid A in the course and we all want to keep this going. We work very well together. We all have slightly different strengths and are not afraid to challenge each other's ideas. This leads to all of us learning a lot more than we would alone.
7. Work on my accounting project. This is not mandatory but I believe that a few hours a day can result in a good paper that will help my final grade. We simply have to do a paper either on a firm or on an accounting issue. If I do an issue, it will be how corporations account for options. I haven't decided what firm I will do, though I have a few options in mind.
8. Get a haircut. This one should be easy :)
9. Get the TV room rearranged and the surround sound completely hooked up. We re-arrange our living room for winter because the best spot for the couch covers up the heater. Now that the cold weather is past, we've moved it back. This means that the TV is currently in a less than ideal position. FWIW our TV is an RCA Scenium DLP. Can't wait for the HD Box to arrive.
   
10. Call cable company and set up time to deliver HD box.
    
11. Work on my application to Waseda (the school I'm attending in Tokyo)
    
12. Finish up our thank you notes from the wedding. I know we have a year but we're cutting it too close.
    

In a complete fluke, several of us went to the Red Sox game Thursday night. Matt got the company seats, which are very nice indeed. He said we will probably get them quite often this summer but obviously not for top notch opponents. I have no problem with that.

Here are some pictures I took there. I'll be adding more when Yozo gets his pictures downloaded from his ultra top secret, credit card slim Sony 5.9 MP camera that is only available in Japan because they keep the best stuff for themselves.

Oh, have I mentioned I'm buying a new camera in Tokyo?

Pictures, pictures and more pictures!

Pam and I just got a Smugmug site to hold all of our photos. I actually got the idea from Mark and Jie's blog. Seems like a very good deal, only about $30 a year for unlimited storage. It will be great for uploading our existing photos as well as the several thousand I plan to take in Japan next fall.

There are many, many pictures on the site already and more to come.

Happy Birthday to me!

Yes, it's my birthday. I celebrated by taking my last midterm (Marketing.) Open book, open note and fairly easy at that.

My wife, parent and aunts went to Greenfield's Churrascaria in Brighton for some all-you-can-eat meat. Good times.

Not quite as upscale as Plataforma in New York, but pretty good just the same.

I have a softball game tonight in the highly competitive (sarcasm) Brandeis intramural league. I don't think our team is all that good, but we'll have a few drinks and have some fun. We have class until Wednesday when Passover begins and then we have off until two Mondays later. I plan to do some catching up for my classes and do a LOT of work for my Japanese class. I really want to know hirigana and katakana by the end of this class. Both will make my time in Japan much easier since it will allow to read a lot of the signs (especially the names of subway stations)

I also need to make a big push to memorize the basics like days of the week, numbers, months, etc. I will have much more time to study Japanese this summer and I'm really looking forward to it.

I have an interview tomorrow for a summer internship at Virtua Research, a small equity research shop in Boston. It would certainly be nice to at least get an offer in the bag!