Last trip to Kamakura/Odaiba Onsen

The weekend before I left I took a final trip to Kamakura. We took a different root than I had in the past, starting in Enoshima and ending in Kita-Kamakura before heading to the onsen in Odaiba. Here are some pictures...

Surfing on a beautiful January morning



















This dog was having a blast chasing his ball into the surf.















Anne and I clowning around















Lots of hawks in Kamakura















Daibutsu















I had to act quickly to get this shot, so it's not the best. This little guy was humming from flower to flower pretty quickly.















Lots of Buddhas at Hase-Dera















Like I said, LOTS of Buddhas!















Rooftops as Hase Dera


























A Buddha at Hase Dera


























Bamboo at Hase Dera


























Tsurugaoka Hachimangu















I thought both of these were great.















Monks

Insomnia

Can't sleep. The same thing hit me in Asia after I'd been there a few months.

One month back in the U.S. and here we go again.

Class in less than six hours and I'm wide awake.

Dell "Service" Part II

So I receive this:















in the mail. After contacting customer service, they claim this was the hard drive.

Now I don't know an awful lot about computers. Probably more than the average person, but not as much as someone who works in IT, etc. But I know that is not a hard drive or anything even close to it.

Apparently I know more about laptop hard drives than Dell's outsourced Indian customer service reps do.

The saga continues.

Dell "service"

As I mentioned here a while back, my laptop died the last week I was in Japan. I just sent it off to service and received it back less than a week later. Nice turnaround.

It seems that there were three problems. A fan was not working, a heat sink was defective, and the hard drive is dead. And probably the first led to the second led to the third, but whatever.

Instead of a functioning computer, I get a letter stating that the fan and heat sink were fixed, but they did not have any hard drives in stock and would be shipping it to me separately. At which point I should install it myself.

The problem, as I'm sure you see, is that I don't have the first damned idea how to remove/install a hard drive from a laptop.

And since they shipped it back so quickly, I'm guessing that the hard drive that is "on order" is not going to be arriving at my place any time soon.

Thanks for next-to-nothing, Dell. Apparently Michael Dell's recent reclamation of the CEO spot hasn't led to any meaningful improvement in their customer service, though this was one of the stated reasons for his return.

The CAPM is dead! Long Live the CAPM!

Interesting writeup in the CrossingWallStreet blog about an FT piece on the CAPM and how it is, in reality, a horrible predictor of stock prices.

I particularly like the comparison of the CAPM to Monty Python's Dead Parrot sketch. Also the reference to the CAPM as "completely redundant asset pricing."

It's always nice to hear that part of your very expensive education is being invalidated before you even graduate!

I'm going hi-tech....

Just added a little widget from one of my favorite websites, meebo.com.

Meebo allows you to uninstall all of the various IM programs from your computer and consolidate them all on one list via there service. It's simple and easy to use and I highly recommend it.

They also offer a chatroom feature for you blog/website, so I'm going to try it out and see how it works.

If it says I'm online, drop me a line and say hello!