MBET Blog
Thursday, July 29, 2004
So this is re-pimped from Gizmodo, but it's just too cool. Who doesn't want their kids' playground to look like the Alien Queen's Lair? We need more innovative design out there. Heck, even sho wme something ugly - at least it's not the same old thing.
Posted by Hello
Wednesday, July 28, 2004
Konrad's MBET Blog
So my good friend Konrad has started his own MBET Blog. Well, post-MBET blog really. (And let me try to self-googlize via a link the the original MBET Blog). Konrad should give a different perspective than me since he came straight out of undergrad at Brock (i.e. not Waterloo). So check it out.
So my good friend Konrad has started his own MBET Blog. Well, post-MBET blog really. (And let me try to self-googlize via a link the the original MBET Blog). Konrad should give a different perspective than me since he came straight out of undergrad at Brock (i.e. not Waterloo). So check it out.
Last. Class. Ever.
So today we had our last class ever. It was the 603/604 presentations. It's good to be done. Well, done minus the three papers I still have to write and the three exams. Apologies to the internet for the lack of posts but I've been so preoccupied that I just haven't thought of a single thing to say.
On the job front I have a contract for a three-month position that will lead (hopefully) to a full-time job. The company is Opalis, a small, established company that recently got $8M in VC funding to take things to the next level. I have to get a specific product module out the door. It's exciting and kind of scary. The other good news is that due to the $13,333 in tuition I paid this year I won't have to pay any tax this year. Yay.
I didn't really want to have a contract to begin with but I think it will work out for the best... I have an interview at another company for product marketing for a J2EE app server and that may go somewhere. A wireless game publishing company in Toronto also has just posted an opening for a Producer so I'm going to apply to that. So if in the next three months I get another offer I may have some good choices.
So, it's been fun. Good luck to the MBET class of 2005!
So today we had our last class ever. It was the 603/604 presentations. It's good to be done. Well, done minus the three papers I still have to write and the three exams. Apologies to the internet for the lack of posts but I've been so preoccupied that I just haven't thought of a single thing to say.
On the job front I have a contract for a three-month position that will lead (hopefully) to a full-time job. The company is Opalis, a small, established company that recently got $8M in VC funding to take things to the next level. I have to get a specific product module out the door. It's exciting and kind of scary. The other good news is that due to the $13,333 in tuition I paid this year I won't have to pay any tax this year. Yay.
I didn't really want to have a contract to begin with but I think it will work out for the best... I have an interview at another company for product marketing for a J2EE app server and that may go somewhere. A wireless game publishing company in Toronto also has just posted an opening for a Producer so I'm going to apply to that. So if in the next three months I get another offer I may have some good choices.
So, it's been fun. Good luck to the MBET class of 2005!
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
Brand Autopsy: Welcome to McDonald's, may WE take your order?
This is truly incredible... this McDonald's owner outsourced his drive-through order taking to a call center. Not in India, but nevertheless, this is pretty funny. Funny because it's so brilliant.
This is truly incredible... this McDonald's owner outsourced his drive-through order taking to a call center. Not in India, but nevertheless, this is pretty funny. Funny because it's so brilliant.
Monday, July 19, 2004
Thursday, July 15, 2004
eDreaming
So we saw e-Dreams today. The followup is that the two founders of Kozmo ended up going back to b-school. So if these two dot-bomb survivors can go back to school I guess it's OK that I did too.
Plus the CEO founder (Joe Park) put on some weight in the follow-up segment. At least I missed that part. (Not to pick on the guy but he shows the weight in his face like one friend of mine... it all goes straight to his face.)
Kozmo.com raised something like $280M of capital before they burned out. Incredible. I hope Joe learns something at Harvard. Good luck Joe.
So we saw e-Dreams today. The followup is that the two founders of Kozmo ended up going back to b-school. So if these two dot-bomb survivors can go back to school I guess it's OK that I did too.
Plus the CEO founder (Joe Park) put on some weight in the follow-up segment. At least I missed that part. (Not to pick on the guy but he shows the weight in his face like one friend of mine... it all goes straight to his face.)
Kozmo.com raised something like $280M of capital before they burned out. Incredible. I hope Joe learns something at Harvard. Good luck Joe.
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Stuff
So the exam for accoutning went well. I did it in about an hour and a quarter and it was fairly straightforward. ABC, ABM, BSC & strategy map stuff. Exactly what we covered in class.
One thing I've been meaning to mention is extra-curricular stuff we've done this year. We had an ultimate firsbee team this summer which was lots of fun and considering none of us had ever played before our 2-2-1 record is pretty good. Ultimate club also runs twice a week and I may very well go to it today. Personally, I've also been swimming a lot and I took up running this term. I'm probably in the best shape I've been in for years. Even just the extra walking or biking back and forth to school helps versus the grind of commuting and sitting at a desk all day.
To all you future MBET students I heartily encourage you to form another ultimate team next year and go forth to beat our record. There will be an extra tem of you, so it should be easy.
So the exam for accoutning went well. I did it in about an hour and a quarter and it was fairly straightforward. ABC, ABM, BSC & strategy map stuff. Exactly what we covered in class.
One thing I've been meaning to mention is extra-curricular stuff we've done this year. We had an ultimate firsbee team this summer which was lots of fun and considering none of us had ever played before our 2-2-1 record is pretty good. Ultimate club also runs twice a week and I may very well go to it today. Personally, I've also been swimming a lot and I took up running this term. I'm probably in the best shape I've been in for years. Even just the extra walking or biking back and forth to school helps versus the grind of commuting and sitting at a desk all day.
To all you future MBET students I heartily encourage you to form another ultimate team next year and go forth to beat our record. There will be an extra tem of you, so it should be easy.
Monday, July 12, 2004
Nothing in Particular
So we've got the final accoutning exam tomorrow morning. We're watching Norma Rae for business skills class. I missed seeing Glengarry Glen Ross last week. Business movies - yay. Things are almost done here - I hope I get a job soon.
So we've got the final accoutning exam tomorrow morning. We're watching Norma Rae for business skills class. I missed seeing Glengarry Glen Ross last week. Business movies - yay. Things are almost done here - I hope I get a job soon.
Monday, July 05, 2004
JavaOne Wrap-Up
So, another JavaOne come and gone. It was a good show although I must admit I went to fewer sessions than I meant to. I spent a lot of time catching up with friends, trying to network to find a job (although I don't want to move to the Valley, so it wasn't really all that useful) and an excessive amount of time trying to scam useful free stuff off the show floor. T-shirts are pretty boring but there were more electronic gadgets being given away than usual this year. Shockingly, most went to people who worked at honest-to-god companies that actually buy things and very few freebies went to other exhibitors or people like me who had vague sounding job titles and no Furtune 500 company on their badge.
Actually, what's shocking is that anyone who wasn't an actual customer got anything from these giveaways.
Anyway, the sessions I went to were good. JDK 1.5 is very cool and if you've been following the new features you know what I mean. I went to a talk on Groovy and it totally rocked my world. What an awesome scripting tool. Apparently it's built into the Geronimo EJB container so you can telnet in and query the live EJBs by hand. Plus is has a lot of fun scripting-type features like dynamic typing, mixed type arrays, maps and closures.
Someone asked about JSF... I didn't go to any JSF sessions although I must say that we at KL Group had the idea for a similar product many, many years ago. The trouble is that it didn't seem like a viable commercial product. It probably still isn't, but it is cool as a core technology. Unless that person was asking about a different JSF. There are just too many different dynamic page-generation technologies for me to keep track of and it doesn't interest me much so I haven't really followed it. It certainly can't be worse than the hard-to-handle JSP approach.
For those care, this year's JavaOne was better than last year's and apparently still the largest developer show in the world, but still what I'd call pretty slow. Java technology isn't changing much in the center. New APIs and tools are always popping up - I went to a session on Hibernate (which also taked about OJB) - but the central stuff is pretty stable. I'll probably be comparing JavaOne to JavaOne 1999 in perpetuity which will always make it come up short. Anyway, it was a good show and if you're really into Java you should go at least once in your life. Plus you can never lose going to San Francisco.
So, another JavaOne come and gone. It was a good show although I must admit I went to fewer sessions than I meant to. I spent a lot of time catching up with friends, trying to network to find a job (although I don't want to move to the Valley, so it wasn't really all that useful) and an excessive amount of time trying to scam useful free stuff off the show floor. T-shirts are pretty boring but there were more electronic gadgets being given away than usual this year. Shockingly, most went to people who worked at honest-to-god companies that actually buy things and very few freebies went to other exhibitors or people like me who had vague sounding job titles and no Furtune 500 company on their badge.
Actually, what's shocking is that anyone who wasn't an actual customer got anything from these giveaways.
Anyway, the sessions I went to were good. JDK 1.5 is very cool and if you've been following the new features you know what I mean. I went to a talk on Groovy and it totally rocked my world. What an awesome scripting tool. Apparently it's built into the Geronimo EJB container so you can telnet in and query the live EJBs by hand. Plus is has a lot of fun scripting-type features like dynamic typing, mixed type arrays, maps and closures.
Someone asked about JSF... I didn't go to any JSF sessions although I must say that we at KL Group had the idea for a similar product many, many years ago. The trouble is that it didn't seem like a viable commercial product. It probably still isn't, but it is cool as a core technology. Unless that person was asking about a different JSF. There are just too many different dynamic page-generation technologies for me to keep track of and it doesn't interest me much so I haven't really followed it. It certainly can't be worse than the hard-to-handle JSP approach.
For those care, this year's JavaOne was better than last year's and apparently still the largest developer show in the world, but still what I'd call pretty slow. Java technology isn't changing much in the center. New APIs and tools are always popping up - I went to a session on Hibernate (which also taked about OJB) - but the central stuff is pretty stable. I'll probably be comparing JavaOne to JavaOne 1999 in perpetuity which will always make it come up short. Anyway, it was a good show and if you're really into Java you should go at least once in your life. Plus you can never lose going to San Francisco.
