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Finaly. Done and over with. Maybe in 10 years or so, I'll go back to school to get some sort of PhD. I remember dreading going back to school. I must say now, gruelling as it was, I've had a fair share of fun and met some amazinly smart people along the way. I have taken 16 classes overall nd now I am going to list them all here and try to remember what I learned from them. Executive Success Skills - this was a pure presentation and writing course, learning how to speak in front of people and assessing personal writing skills. One thing I remember is that I could be a heartless bastard. We've had a bad news presentation, and the topic was a faulty crib that killed a child. I was selected as the "CEO" of the company producing cribs. Someone asked a question of me how can the business continue when a child was killed, and I said something along the lines of "It's a horrible tragedy, but business is business." I have also converted half of the class in...

Wow, has it been that long? Today is my last class. I may have to write a post about school just one more time.

The last class has begun. It's called Strategic Management. There is not a lot to learn, it's more of the Capstone course. Throughout the 10 session we'll be simulating a sports shoe manufacturing company in a role of the CEO. And then I am gonig to be done.

I am close to finishing up with the Operation Management class. We've been running a factory simulation for the last week. There are not a lot of knobs and buttons to push but enough for us to make couple of mistake and end up in the last place. The toughest part was to comup with a good forecasting model. Even though the product was promised to mature after a certain amount of time, the simulation never did, and we've run out of capacity, loosing a bunch of revenue. As far as Excel goes, we had a nice spreadsheet going and created couple of model, unfortunately none of them helped. I don't how how to make a nice forecasting model.

The 6 Year Old is not the only one going back to school. My class, Operations Management has already started. I have two weeks of on-line self study and the first in-class meeting is next Tuesday. I am already behind in my studies due to general life not letting me have a single moment to take a breath. I have a book report due in two weeks. The book is called "Goal" by Eli Goldbratt. It's an interesting business read if you are into that sort of thing.

I have been deliquent in my posts and I have no reason. I've been lazy and busy at the same time. Yes, I can pull that off. Memorial day weekend we went to Keylime Cove in Gurnee. Very fun place to go with the kids. Huge indoor waterpark for all the swimming fun. My favorite is lazy river. I think I would partake in any activity that had the word lazy in it. I have a final paper and a presentation left in this class. I haven't written a lot about school lately, but this term was crazy. We've had conflicts with scheduling due to a serious illness of one of our instructors. It completely knocked me off the rail. I got to do some things much later than is usually permitted by my procrastinating schedule. Result? I am burning rubber this time around. The class is called Leading Organizational change. It's an extremely fun and interesting class. But the subject matter is extremely abstract and requires a lot of soul digging and mind bending. That's all for now folks. I h...

I must be getting old. Yesterday evening after the final Marketing presentation we went to a pub and I had a single pint of Kilkenny (awesome ale from the Guiness people). Overslept today, after a single pint. Sad. As I watched an episode of Chuck online the final shot was that of Eiffel Tower in the window, showing that the characters must be in Paris. Here's my beef with it(why do I have beef with it?). The shot was shown as if the floor the heroes were on is above Eiffel Tower. The shot contained New Paris in the background of the tower. There is nothing on the other other side Elysian Fields avenue that is that tall. Anyways if I am wrong let me know. We have two books for the next class: Jim Collin's From Good To great, which is supposed to a staple for businesses, like Jack Welch's book, and a book called Survival Guide in Corporate Culture. We'll see.

I don't have time for anything these days. I've procrastinated enough that I have to finish a paper, a third of another paper, and a presentation all before next Tuesday. I hate going into the overdrive modes, but I don't think I have much choice now.

I actually enjoy this class. The material is fairly intersting although a bit outdated. The cases that we have to work with are from early 2000s. Our group's project is a social networking website that allows high school athletes to advance themselves further in their favorite sport. The difficult thing about being an exclusevly online "business" is that standard marketing channels do not apply. we really have no goods distribution it's all virtual. Here is the logo that I've designed. We are almost at the end, and I have two cases to finish plus the group presentation. They are actually going put us in front of a panel of proffession judges, to give us hell about our project.

I am posting now once a week. Why? I don't know. Part of it is lazyness, part of it, is that I am very busy with school and work. I am taking marketing right now, and workload is horrendous. The team project requires us preparing and giving a presentation every week. The topic we selected to Market is an idea I got from an episode of SharkTank. It's a combination of linkedin and facebook for varsity sports. I think the idea is pretty cool and interesting. However, there is a lot of material to cover and a lot of number fudgeting. Why don't we have Creative Accounting as a standart course for the MBA's?

I have been super busy with work and school these couple of weeks. I think the Innovation and Risk class has wrung me out more than any other (that includes Accounting and Finance). The paper is done. For some stupid reason I did not ask for help on the budgets from people who are close to me and know a lot of stuff about budgeting and feasibility until almost the last moment. I think my brain was fried or something. The only thing that is left is the Disruptive innovation presentation. What my team and I decided to do is to create an online service for aspiring movie makers, basically trying to change the way that independent films are made and distributed. If it ever comes to anything remember, you heard it here first. Oh, yeah. Lots already has been written about this years Superbowl. One thing to mention is that I really really wanted to see Favre against Manning. Two super QBs. I have nothing agains Brees, he's having a season of a lifetime, and what he did for Saints is simpl...

I am writing this partially because the Innovation class deals with fairly abstract notions (the best kind) and I need to get my mind around it. All of the innovations fall into two categories: Sustaining and Disruptive. What places them in the these categories is not the idea itself but rather how it's being used. Sustaining innovations have a single purpose. They make things more, better, cheaper faster. Disruptive innovations are characterized by several very important criterea: - They have to be addressed to an uderserved or unserved public. - The have to create a brand new market niche. - They do not fit on the sustaining S-curve* The best example of Disruptive innovation is the iPhone. If Apple positioned the iPhone just as a call phone it would be sustainable innovation. All it did was create a possible better phone, an expensive one. What Apple did correct as they sold it as a brand new mobile computing platoform, allowing for the app content. The Apps content is the key ...

I have started this blog initially to share my experiences as an MBA student. I have realized that the last post about school was more than two months ago. The reason for that was that the class was boring. Seriously, I thought I could learn something new about IT Management. Nothing. All of the topics were familiar to me, and I could hold up discussions without even reading the material. I will see what the grade is going to be, but it certainly will have very little to do with the material, and more with how I wrote my papers. This new class is promising to be very interesting. The instructor is an accomplished entrepreneur and a Harvard Business School graduate, whatever that means. In a single session he completely destroyed our comprehension of business strategies, a class we have taken only a year ago. He has also put a dent in our believe that "betas" are the most important things when evaluating investment risks. He also wrote a book: Create Marketplace Disruption I H...

The school has started. We've already had our first session. Sort of. See, the course that I am taking is fully online. It's called Strategic Use of Inofrmation Technology. In theory this is a very important course for me. Problem with taking an online course is that it's a lot more work. Besides the readings and the assignements, you have to constantly check updates in the emails and discussion boards.

Finance is a difficult class. There are lots of formulas, ambiguous terminology and a general sense of "why in the name of all that is good and decent do I ever need to know the Valuation of equity is". The class is almost over, we are doing our Financial analysis on PepsiCo now, as a final project. My take on it is to invest, BUT DO NOT! I repeat DO NOT use this as any kind of investing advice, this is strictly my own take, and I am not gonig to follow through on it. There was a time, in the pre-DotCom boom, where I invested in the blue chip companies. I owned Netscape, AOL, CISCO, and couple of other companies. When the DotCom crashed, I made it out with a dedcent profit that allowed me and my wife to finance a purchase of our condo. I haven't played or invested since. Now that I am taking the class, and have a better understanding of finance, and creative accounting, my feelings regarding of investing in the stock market are reinforced. Here's what I think, if anyo...

We are back home. I can't do more than 7 days of doing nothing. I am hardwired to move around. We said our goodbuys to the gulf today, with the throwing of pennies into the water. Old Russian tradition you know. Tomorrow I have to go back to work, and finish up with the Quiz for Finance class.

After watching The Bucket List : There is a scene in a movie where a little girl comes up to Jack Nicholson and smiles. My thought, you have to be a pretty brave kid to do what she did. Mr. Nicholson is a scary son of a bitch in that movie. Kudos to the girl. After watching another cop show : Why is it that cop-show writers feel that the correct way to finish a case is having a perp admit the guilt in the interrogation room. What is the message behind that? Do they not trust us to figure out the guilty party by the "evidence" the investigation amasses? Work related : for those classic ASP developers. Server 2003 does not like you to have an epmty global.asa file. It will throw a HTTP 500 Error, without an explanation. Better to not have a global.asa at all. School related : Financial Management or Managerial Finance class has started. The good thing is that sessions two and three are online course. Finally couple of Tuesdays where I don't have to go to school, but learn ...

The Spain presentation went rather well yesterday. The class is not over yet, however. I have a take home final exam that I need to finish before Friday. After that it's to the wonderful world of Managerial Finance or Financial Management, which is looking to be a heavy-load class. Oh, how I want the summer!

I am tired. The final project for Macro was a lot of work. The unfortunate side effect now is that I hate Spain! Spain is supposed to be a beautiful country, full of history and rich traditions. NO! All I know about Spain now is GDP, Inflation rates, Budget deficits and whole plethora of finanancial and economic data that I don't really care for. The result is that Economy in Spain SUCKS! Big Time! I don't even want to go there right now. Macroconomics, thanks for nothing! Sickening. Good bye!

There is an article in the Tribune that our professor has asked us to read prior the next class. Ivory Tower of Power The article states that there is a "Chicago" goverment installed right now. It also hints at the Clinton administration as being the "Yale" government. So, is there such a thing as a "City" goverment. Harvard goverment, Yale goverment, Cornell government, UCLA goverment? University of Phoenix Goverment? Can these qualifications be accurate in predicting what kind of goverment we will have?