New Mission: Increased mastery of Excel

That is my new mission for the summer. One of the projects I'm working on will require more Excel/VB skills than I currently possess, so in addition to working on my Japanese I'm going to start teaching myself the skills I need to really exceed my boss' expectations on this project.

I've been told by a friend who is a Visual Basic deity that what I want to do is not terribly difficult.

We're about to find out.

The perfect arbitrage opportunity?

I just saw a post on this blog about how bookmakers in England have the English listed as a favorite to win their match against Portugal despite a distinct lack of success against Portugal on the English part.

When I saw that, I was wondering if one could find a bookmaker in Portugal (or perhaps Brazil) that had the Portuguese listed as a favorite.

If so an arbitrage oppurtunity exists. In England you'd bet on Portugal to win (getting underdog odds) and in Portugal/Brazil you'd bet on England to win (also getting underdog odds.)

No matter what happens, you'd end up ahead so long as you can get slightly better than 1-1.

It would be worth looking into if I could speak Portuguese.

3/31/06: Beacon Hill Pub

I dug these photos up off of my cell phone, I had forgotten they were even there...





Marco and Imani








Two French exchange students, Sayeed and Guillaume









Sarah and Ras (I think that's his name)







Nissa, Aileen, Andreas








Laurie (facing picture) and others








(Jannis and others)








Guillaume, Aileen and others

Fluff-a-Nutter

Only in the realm of politics does a sandwich spread occupy valuable time on the legislative agenda and as a result, the news as well.

For those of you not from America, the sandwich spread is called Fluff. Most traditionally you use it to make a Fluff-a-nutter sandwich. Here is a description I snipped from the web:

Fluff-a-nutter:

Peanut butter and marshmellow fluff. Marshmellow Fluff is a regional New England delicacy. It's a very sticky white cream, usually just called Fluff. It has the consistency of a big vat of melted marshmellows. I like fluff and strawberry jam, but the traditional application is with Peanut butter. You only get one pass at applying it to the bread (because it's extremely sticky) and you certainly don't dip the knife in anything else once it's been in the fluff jar.

Why do I mention this? It seems that state representative Jarrett Barrios was outraged because his child was served a Fluff-a-nutter at school for lunch. His response? Introduce legislation to banned the use of marshmellow fluff in public schools. He's a politician, so he probably never considered making a healthy lunch for his child to take to school. That would require both intelligence and effort and apparantly Barrios isn't big on the intelligence part.

He sums it up thus:

"A Fluff sandwich as the main course of a nutritious lunch just doesn't fly in 2006. It seems a little silly to have an amendment on Fluff, but it's called for by the silliness of schools offering this as a healthy alternative in the first place."

Blogger Mike Margolis countered:

"Barrios is wrong though, it isn't a little silly to have an amendment on Fluff, it's beyond silly."

Why?

• An occasional fluff-a-nutter at school isn't going to hurt anyone
• The company that makes the stuff is a family owned business based in my hometown (Lynn.) Do you think maybe the local politicians up there might put up a fight on this insanely stupid legislation?
• Barrios has now actually wasted legislative time on a debate about marshmellows. I repeat, marshmellows.

In Barrios' defense he hails from Cambridge, which might top Berkeley, CA as the most liberal city in the country. So he likely has an intrinsic need to save people from themselves when they obviously can't make a sane decision (like not eating Fluff) on their own.

Even better, he proclaimed himself a libertarian on the radio. He might want to give himself a refresher on the definition of the word.

And the funny thing is that that sandwich really isn't that bad. Peanut butter is high in protein, healthy fats and cholesterol reducing agents. The Fluff is straight sugar but you don't use that much in making the sandwich. Use wheat bread and you have two out of three healthy ingredients, which I'd guess is a far better healthy/unhealthy ratio than the majority of American kids get.

One of the many, many things that simply make you shake your head at the rampant stupidity of your fellow human beings.

Look how close my friend Dave came to winning a prize

My friend Dave was playing one of those crane games where you pay $0.50 and move the crane around. It drops and if it picks up what you target and leaves it in the bin, you win it. This bear did not want to leave it's home:

It's killing him

Koh Tao

A friend sent me a picture of Sairee-Mango Bay from when he was there a few years ago.
















Can I leave tomorrow?

Farm Fresh Veggies....

Pam and I paid $600 to The Food Project to buy a summer CSA share. This entitles us to fresh vegetables every week until mid-October. Veggies vary throughout the summer.

This is what we got this week:

Strawberries. So juicy we're probably going to have to eat them by tomorrow










Snap peas, baby bok choy and salad mix.













Red leaf lettuce and escarole. The escarole will go into a soup with some white beans










Kohlrabi, radishes and japanese turnips










Garlic snapes, which are the green part of the garlic plant. Slightly garlicy flavor.











The volume we've been getting has been growing every week. With all the rain we've received somethings have done well while others have been delayed a few weeks.

We are also growing some tomatoes and jalapenos here in the backyard as well as some herbs. I'll get some pics up of those soon.

Goldman Sachs knows how to treat a summer intern....

One of my good friends (who I'll be meeting up with on the beach in Thailand) is working for Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong this summer. They arranged and are paying for his housing. Here's a peek....













































Not too shabby, as they say.

Clustrmaps....

Some of you might have noticed a small map on the right side of my blog. This is a free service called Clustrmaps that I think is one of the cooler toys available to bloggers. It tracks the locations of people around the world who have visited the blog. I'm going to take great joy in traveling around Southeast Asia and adding blips to my Clustrmap.

I know from looking at the map that people have visited here and not left a comment. Please do so. I have many, many classmates from around the world and have talked to many of them about their homelands. I'm always curious to learn about the similarities and differences of various cultures.

Now I have to create some content interesting enough to generate more hits :)

USA-Italy

Yes, I'm one of the few Americans who truly enjoy soccer (as we call it.) I started playing when I was twelve and played recreationally until I tore my ACL playing volleyball in 1992. I never fully finished the rehab due to insurance issues so my left leg is still slightly weaker than my right so I don't trust the knee to stand up to the rigors of soccer. That and I weigh a lot more now than I did then.

Well anyways I watched the US-Italy match today while helping a friend of mine move. As long as I played, I have never seen three players sent off with red cards. While Pope's was probably justified and the Italian player's card most definitely one, I don't see how you send off Mastroeni, who didn't even have a yellow at that point. As one of the U.S. commentators (and a former World Cup team member) said, "players decide matches but referees can ruin them." I agree fully. The referee fundamentally changed the course of the game in the favor of the Italians. And it turns out he has been cited before by FIFA for "inconsistencies." I somehow think we won't see this guy again.

All that said I was very happy with how the U.S. played. They were aggressive and controlled the course of play for the first 20 minutes or so until the Italian goal. After that they maintained their poise and continued to pressure the Italians and got an own goal for their efforts.

We essentially played the second half short handed and IMO played very well, counterattacked fairly strategically and held off the Italians for a point. Given Ghana's victory, that is exactly what the U.S. needed.

Now we have to whip Ghana and hope the Italians show up against the Czechs and that both teams don't simply play for a tie (which I think is very likely.)

More practice with the new camera....

I caught some squirrels messing around near my herb garden (the bastards) and since they didn't appear interested in eating anything, I grabbed my camera and snapped some pictures.

I was stupid and left it on full auto, so for my trouble I got several shots with perfectly exposed background grass and blurry squirrels, but I did manage to capture one good shot.

Here is the little bugger....

Update on my dilemma....

My wife's mom heard about the party and insisted that I go. Hence wife's protests were essentially vetoed by my mother-in-law.

Pictures to follow!

Fluffy now down to eight lives....

My landlord was our yesterday trimming the hedges. Apparantly the noise and the sight of him so entranced our cat, Fluffy that she was temporarily unaware of her immediate surroundings. She has a little perch near a window where she likes to sit and sleep and keep an eye on the squirrels and birds and things.

She was totally focused on the landlord that when I came in to pet her she did not hear or see my approach. When I touched her she jumped straight up in the air and landed 180 degrees from where she started. I quickly calmed her down but she had to go hide under the bed for a while to get her bearings back.

Given that she's a life-long housecat I don't think she's had any other serious scares in her life, so we'll assume she's down to eight lives now.

This is a picture of Fluffy in her window nest:

We have a winner!

I have received an offer to work at Lewtan Technologies this summer. They are a software firm that designs products to help investment banks and other institutions manage their asset backed securities.

While I've worked in financial services before, I do not have a lot of exposure to this part of the business so I'm really looking forward to learning the ins and outs of the job. I've already been given some idea of the projects I will be working on, so I'll take some time this weekend to read up and learn about the business as much as possible so I can jump in right away.

I've enjoyed a month of doing nothing (except look for work) and now I'm ready to dive in and get going. I should be starting some time next week, it is just a matter of getting a workstation set up for me.

I hope to be able to work right up until the time I leave for Asia. It would be great to bank as much money as possible to help pay for the trip. Once we get there we figure we can live very comfortably on $30/day. That includes travel, food, housing, sightseeing, etc. Not too shabby.

On the job front...

I'm waiting to hear back from a few people for summer internships. I'm very interested in working at a boutique investment bank I interviewed with this week. I'm hoping to hear from them this week.

I had another interview last week for which I've received an offer, but I'm going to turn it down. I don't feel like it will really teach me anything or offer me any opportunities going forward. So it's time to roll the bones.

Now is when I really wish I'd taken fewer classes this spring, but it was a calculated risk that came very close to paying off early (with a gig at Merrill Lynch.)

Now I wait.

The horns of a dilemma

My sister-in-law is graduating from high school on Monday night. Normally this would not be in an issue. However, one of my classmate's firms is opening a new restaurant that night and having a huge bash. Not only will it be fun, but there will be a lot of Boston big-wigs there and the networking opportunity would be fantastic.

Plus it will be a HUGE bash.

Of course, my SIL is in Rhode Island, about an hour away from downtown Boston. It is theoretically possible that I could go to the graduation then leave immediately to return to Boston and catch the last hour or so of the party. However, the risk then becomes that I disappoint my SIL and the family, which is not worth the gain.

This is one of those situations where I wish I was the X-man who could split himself into multiple bodies.