This is my test post to my blog using my new Jott account. I’m speaking into my cellphone right now and hopefully it transcribes this and puts it on my blog.

Powered by Jott

General | 5 Comments »

I don’t like to use my blog as a journal but maybe by posting this I can make a difference in the world. If only one person stops doing these things I will feel less bad about this post.

Tips for better driving (feel free to add more in the comments section):

1) When approaching a red light, it’s annoying when the person in another lane in front of you changes lanes just to get a better position for when the light turns green. Especially when it forces me to stop short. Stay in your own lane.

2) It’s annoying when people don’t use courtesy and “keep right except to pass”. If you’re driving in the fast lane and you’re not passing anyone, that’s usually a good time to move over and let people pass you.

3) If you drive on a road in which the rightmost lane is used for parallel parking most hours, but is open to traffic 4 hours out of the day, don’t expect the other drivers to let you merge at the last second because you choose to drive in the parking lane and your path is blocked by a parked car (the same applies to roads with dedicated right-hand turn lanes at intersections - there’s a reason all the traffic is backed up in all the lanes except the right one).

4) If you’re first in line at a red left-hand-turn light, you have the responsibility to proceed well within 3 seconds of the light turning green. Furthermore, everyone in the line should adhere to Matt’s “nuts-to-butts” rule so that people behind you don’t get screwed out of making it through the light.

5) Unless you live in some remote area where actual city/state-maintained roads are hard to come by, you don’t need a 3/6/9/12 inch lift kit on your truck. Everyone else thinks you’re stupid if you have a truck that requires a step ladder to enter. Especially if you live in a city with 10 million people in it and your truck’s tires never touch dirt.

General | 6 Comments »

Sometimes milestones are a time when you just kind of look back and reflect on what you’ve accomplished (or failed to accomplish). Or sometimes they are times to wipe the slate clean and start anew. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking both ways lately - obviously my blog is not the appropriate venue to discuss the specifics… but I came across an article in my hometown newspaper that made me engage in a little more extrospection and focus on some other things surrounding my 30 years of wandering the earth. Now I’m not claiming this is on par with a star appearing in the sky above Jerusalem, but I just thought it was cool that my birth coincided with a giant storm…

some excerpts…

Northern Michigan is no stranger to snow and harsh temperatures, but a storm that swept through the area 30 years ago remains one for the record books. January 1978 brought a blizzard that surged with such force, snow completely buried cars, trapped farm animals in fields and caused the governor to declare a state of emergency.

“You couldn’t see any roads. They were all obliterated, they were all white,” [a resident] said, adding he could only make out some barns, silos and trees poking through the blanket of snow. “It was the worst one in recent times and I think anybody that was around would verify that”

Winds reached 50 to 70 miles per hour, creating drifts as high as 50 feet. “There were lots of times you’d be riding snowmobiles right atop cars.”

The storm may have caused more work for some, but it also shut businesses and schools, and left many snowed-in residents with time to relax and enjoy nature’s marvel.

[ via Traverse City Record Eagle ]

General | 5 Comments »

For those of you paying close attention to business school rankings, Marshall was chosen to have the top graduate business program for entrepreneurs in 2007.  In addition USC was found to have the third best part time MBA program in the country.

I don’t make too much of rankings, but it doesn’t hurt to be in the top.

b-school | 1 Comment »

I’m not sure how I was actually surviving on the 1gb of ram my iMac came with for this long. But I finally upgraded to the max 3gb and I’m happy to say it was 1) easier than brushing my teeth, and 2) noticeably better.

Gone are the days of trying to figure out what kind of ram you need, digging through manuals or even pulling your current ram to see. I guess computers to me have become more of a daily-use tool rather than a hobby so I easily forget the specs of my computers. Crucial has this nifty tool that you download and run, and in turn it tells you what kind of ram you have, what the maximums for your system are, and displays your purchase choices. Makes it pretty easy to buy from them…

Due to dual channel somethingorother I now have two 512mb sticks of ram that may or may not go on ebay, depending on what the going price for such a thing is. I didn’t take the time to dig through the interwebs to see what kind of performance hit I’m taking by using a 1gb stick and a 2gb stick instead of two matching sticks. I figured if the iMac will only make use of 3gb then I would just buy 3gb… whatever.

So now parallels has a whole 1024mb to itself and it no longer runs like fulkerson in a half marathon. Hooray.

tech | 4 Comments »