Don't travel to Indonesia

If the threat of being bombed by a terrorist or drowned in a tsunami wasn't enough to sway your choice of travel destinations away from Indonesia, the possibility of getting 20 years in jail for flying on an airplane just might...

Schapelle Corby, a young Australian female was just sentenced to major jailtime in a third world country for a crime she said she didn't committ. She was found with about 4 keys of weed in her bag upon landing in Indonesia and their lovely third world legal system brushed aside all of the defenses evidence. This evidence included an investigation of Australian baggage handlers putting cocaine into people's bags, inconsistencies with her statement (notably they saying that she admitted guilt with her blaming the translation). Hopefully she'll be allowed to serve her time in Australia; I'd rather die than rot in a jail cell in that part of the world...

Thankfully in this part of the world we are entitled to a trial by jury, not a three judge panel that is probably on everyone's payroll.

I urge anyone reading this to not travel to Indonesia and if you have recently sent any aid checks destined for that hellhole, consider cancelling them. Hopefully the Australian will pull back their aid (even though everyone knows they won't). Since they seem to be proud of their primitive legal system, we all should have let the tsunami set them further back into the stoneage.

On the road

Technology sure is wonderful! I'm writing this using the free Wi-Fi at PIT. As far as I know the only airport to provide this service without a fee unlike the bastards at MSP and others. I'm on my way to Chicago-Midway flying Southwest (for the first time). The good news was the ticket was only $40 with tax.

As I wrote about earlier, the TSA banned lighters in all baggage. Here's a method I've heard of people using that **may** work at getting lighters through security. Put two of them well hidden in your bag, if they detect it they will only probably see one of them. You give them that lighter and the idiots won't re-scan your bag, so you'll have one at your destination. Not that I'd ever try doing this... Or you could just bring 2 books of matches, which is totally legal.

Episode 3

Saw the new Star Wars flick tonight, the Revenge of the Sith. Not a bad movie by any means, except by that core bit of cinema we call acting. Special effects galore, a do-able transition between the prequel universe and the "original" universe, and the makings of Darth Vader. I must say that the Dark Side of the force looks cool, if it existed I'd no doubt be a master of it, screw those pussy Jedis, they all die anyway. Sorry if that spoiled it for any of you, but if you've seen the first three (oops, I mean the last three) episodes, you already know what's going to happen in this one. There's been a lot of talk on how violent this movie is. That may be true compared to the rest of the saga, but hacking up robots just doesn't seem violent to me; must be all the TV. I recommend this movie to anyone who has ever seen a Star Wars movie. It's definitely not as good as The Empire Strikes Back (my favorite), A New Hope, but might edge out Return of the Jedi.

When Magazines Kill

It seems that Newsweek is in a bit of trouble. The news magazine had a snippet in its May 9th issue describing the desecration of the Quran at GITMO. While I see nothing wrong with flushing the Quran, or any other religious text down the toilet (I actually support the practice as part of a greater "War on Stupidity") it seems that some Muslims disagreed and decided to riot and kill each other in Afghanistan.

Now Newsweek says it fucked up and that it can't confirm that what it printed was the truth.

I think that Newsweek's credibility is about to go in the same direction as Dan Rather's, although at least he never got anyone killed. I can't remember another instance of a news source publishing a false story directly contributing to deaths, but I'm sure that's happened before. Until we hear more about this, I'll stick with Time.

An Alum At Last

Yesterday, May 15 was CMU's graduation and I was one of the many receiving my Bachelor's Degree. There were two different ceremonies, a graduation for the entire university and the diploma ceremony for my school (Tepper School of Business). They were both filled with speeches. Some were good, some went on too long, and others were odd. As with any graduation it was pretty boring. It hasn't really hit me that's it all over, but I've said some good-byes to friends and that's not easy. I've met a lot of good people here who I hope to keep as friends for the rest of my life, though I'm sure I'll lose touch with some. I don't really have anything planned for this week until the latter part, but more on that later...

A few of my friends remain here for a while, so I will have some people to hang out with. Of course, Kenzie will also be here which is the best part.

What a relief!!!

I had a lot of trouble sleeping this past night, nervous about the grades that would be visible in the morning. Nervous because whether I graduated with honors depended on a class whose grade was unknown to me, but could have been very bad. I was able to find out my grade about 90 minutes early by checking a system that updated before the main one for viewing grades. That class didn't end up with an A, but it was good enough to leave with with a 3.52 QPA overall, guaranteeing the honors! If I had gotten 1 B instead of an A during the entire time I was at CMU, I would have had a 3.494, losing the honors. I'm so relieved now!!! Tired too, so I'll take a nap.

CMU VI

I moved off campus junior year, to 300 craft avenue in south oakland. Rooming with my good friend Carlos. I love living off campus... I don't like being in the CMU environment 24/7 and there's also privacy and no bedroom sharing. The downside was I skipped more classes. Sure I have a bus pass, but who wants to use that when you have a car. Cars and CMU don't get along too well though, parking is at least 50 cents per hour, you have to make sure you have tons of quarters for the meters, and it can take up to 45 minutes to find a spot. The classes junior year were slightly more challenging but I actually felt like I was learning business which was a good thing. I also ended my relationship with CMU solutions, a business club I helped start up (but that's a whole other story). Junior year ended and I stayed here all summer, unable to find an internship.

Freedom Loses

An $82 billion dollar war spending bill was approved unanimously in the senate today. It contains the Real-ID act which kills our civil liberties. Soon enough we could find ourselves going through a checkpoint between, say, Ohio and Michigan and be asked "can I see your papers please."

This sucks.

CMU V

The last two posts on CMU didn't really follow the first two, but this one does...

Sophomore year was a pretty good year, I lived off campus at the run-down Cathedral Mansion apartments at an apartment rented through campus housing. The first half wasn't very memorable.

In January I finally brought my car here which helped a lot. I could finally go places, explore the city, and easily buy groceries. Got my first parking ticket within a few days too!!! In the second semester I had more "real" business classes which I was glad to finally begin taking since that is my major. They were alright. Business Communications caused a lot of headaches and Organizational Behavior had a lot of group projects.

The best part of sophomore year was at the end when I met the love of my life, Kenzie! I met her near the end of the semester but it was pretty obvious that we really liked each other so I made plans to stay in Pittsburgh for the summer. I took an ethics class which was interesting, but not really useful. The summer was relaxing and some of my good friends were also here. About two weeks before school started again Kenzie and I took our first vacation together to Niagara Falls. It was really fun and there are lots of good memories from it.

Next entry: Junior year.

CMU IV

More about my time at CMU:

One thing I will not miss one bit are final exams. The end of all 8 semesters (which includes this one), has always been filled with dread, sleeplessness, nervousness, and after the final a feeling of being fucked.

Finals can seriously change your grade... Thankfully I think at the worst they've only dropped me by 1 letter grade but that has happened several times. The other bad thing about them is that they all take place over a period of two weeks (max) and sometimes you'll have 2 of them in one day. Studying in advance isn't always an option with final projects and other things due the week before. Trying to learn an entire semester's worth of information in 48 hours is an acquired skill, but a necessary one to get by in school. And you have to do that over and over again until the last final is done and you sleep for 12 hours straight. My worst experience ever was a year ago when I woke up 10 minutes after a final had started and had to rush to school nervous as hell. Thankfully it was an easy class and I ended up getting an A, but at the time it was just awful. So, after this last one I can say GOOD BYE FINALS for good!

I should qualify the above by stating that I'm a pretty good test taker, always have been (whether it involves the strategy of multiple choice or the bullshitting of free response), and I don't really dislike tests, I just hate the whole finals experience.

1 Left

This past week wasn't very fun, especially Thursday and Friday. Thursday was all about preparing for Friday and Friday was a group paper and two finals. I had finished my part of the group paper on Monday and I couldn't really help the guys out with it too much Thursday night. I felt bad about that, but I tried to write more than my share to compensate.

The two finals were rough, especially since I wasn't able to prepare well for either. The first was at 8:30am, Corporate Financial Reporting. I knew how to do most of the stuff but wasn't very confident. There was also a problem worth 14% of the test that I had no idea how to solve. I had meant to study the specific principle involved but somehow skipped it. I felt like a dumbass when I saw that one on the test...Later in the afternoon came Decision Analysis. The good news was that the types of problems in that final were the same concepts I spent a whole semester learning. The bad news was that these were harder than anything I had ever seen and I had no idea how to do 2 of them, though I wrote some bullshit down (there were about 8 problems total so not too bad...especially if they curve).

My Futures & Swaps final was about 9 days ago on Friday. I ended up getting a 69 on the final and a B overall in the class. CMU business classes are so great for curves!!! That final was hard, but that class had confused me all semester so I'm happy with the B.

So that only leaves Electoral Systems, an interesting niche class, on Monday at 8:30am. Unlike all the other finals, this one is cumulative so I'm going to be spending the next 24 hours (minus sleep) going over a large amount of concepts. The best takeaway concept I learned in that class is that given enough control and intelligence, it is possible to design and election system that will allow you to somewhat control the outcome. This concept especially holds true when setting an agenda, which the Speaker of the House does in Congress. I don't need a very high grade on that final for a B, but I'm hoping for an A. This class was definitely the most interesting I had all semester so I want to at least show that I mastered the concepts...

Capitalism: New Russian Style

Despite Russia recently being designated as a country with no free-press and democracy being beaten down in subtle ways by Mr. Putin, capitalism is alive and well when it comes to government officials.

This article recently came to my attention and it even has a Pittsburgh connection! It seems that the former Russian Minister of Atomic Energy along with his American associate may have bilked several countries out of $9 M USD. Many shell corporations and international bank accounts were used to divert the money in more ways than a Swiss banker could come up with, although they claim that the money was sent abroad due to a distrust of the Russian banking system. In all fairness, that may be true, since during the early 90s there was rampant distrust of domestic money markets. What makes this look especially bad for the two is that the money was to be used to help increase security at Russian nuclear sites. You can bet the USA will try to fuck these guys as hard as it is legally allowed to (and then more). It will be interesting to see what happens in this case, but I hope for these guys' sake that they have a hell of a defense team.

Problems in Detroit

Growing up in Detroit, it shouldn't be a surprise that I have a good knowledge and family ties to the auto industry. Unlike most, these ties were mostly on the sales and consulting side, not with one of the specific manufacturers. My father has worked in dealerships for over 30 years in about every position and now is primarily a consultant. All this has rubbed off on me somewhat so I felt like writing about an interesting story I read in Businessweek. The link to that story is here, and I highly recommend anyone interested in the auto industry or business read it.

It seems that GM is about to fall apart. This is the company that has been #1 for over 70 years, which is practically unheard of in any industry. They used to be based in Flint, Michigan the location of the famous sit-down strike where the UAW was born. They left Flint, pretty much wrecked the town, but that's another story that Michael Moore made a movie on (which was pretty good, by the way).

GMs problems stem from mismanagement. Working class American's love to blame foreign competition (in the 80s many Toyota dealerships were vandalized and a Chinese man was murdered because a group of auto workers believed he was Japanese). I looked for links to these stories and was unable to find any, but it happened about 20 years ago and shows how protective people can be about American cars. People blame the Japanese because they succeeded where they Americans failed to. They just ran their business a lot better, producing higher quality cars at equal or lower cost and were quicker to introduce newer technologies.

GM seems to have an identity crisis; the company doesn't have a clear image as to what they produce. While Toyota stresses quality and fuel economy, Honda both of those plus great engines, BMW brings style and performance (though mediocre quality), GM's lineup is variable in quality (Cadillacs being great with the others average at best), cheaply made in some respects, poorly designed in others, with a mid-range price. With the exception of the new Cadillacs (which are pretty stylish and perform well while maintaining high quality), none of GMs lineup really appeals to me. I guess the original Hummer does, but its cheaper siblings seem to have too much plastic for the price. Their models overlap too with trucks produced by Chevy and GMC, midrange cars made by Saturn, Chevrolet, Saab, Pontiac, and Buick. Redundancies reduce the amount of research money that can be spent per vehicle, something that Honda and Toyota figured out early on that GM really needs to do.

These main factors hamper GMs ability to outsell their competitors, even with pickup trucks, since Ford is generally recognized as having the most rugged. Nissan and Honda also pose a threat in this area and I believe that their market share will soon increase, especially with Honda's Ridgeline which looks really cool even though I don't really care for pickups.

GM also has some problems with labor it seems. I personally don't like unions too much since they go against a free market. When you are paying people wages above the market average and bound by contracts stipulating how many of them must be employed at any given time, your options are greatly limited. The UAW was useful at first because workers were treated a lot differently 50 years ago. These days it just takes a cut of workers paychecks and makes life harder for GM. If the UAW's contacts help GM go bankrupt, will the workers benefit? I think not.

This is just my take on the situation with what I know from various news sources. I advise anyone who wants some details to read the article mentioned above.

Lastly, if the CEO from GM ever reads this, here's a vaccine that still might help GM: Kill Saab, Buick, and Pontiac. Pontiac has some new models that if improved might be able to integrate with Chevy or Saturn. See how the other brands fare for 3 years and combine more if necessary. Give the UAW hell. When the contract comes up for renewal, consider starting some nonunion plants. Toyota does it here in the USA. Work is work whether it is union or not. It will take time for some people to learn this, but those in the labor business will eventually shut up, and in the meantime you might just save the company.

If the CEO doesn't do things like I mentioned above, I have a feeling GM will either go bankrupt or get split up into a lot of small pieces. Neither is very attractive.

And today there was another update, Kirk Kerkorian, the rich guy who owns casinos, was once Chrysler's largest shareholder, and is currently suing Daimler Chrysler is considering doubling his stake in GM whereby he would own over 8% of the company. Richard Steinberg was quoted by Reuters as saying, "The vultures are now flying over the carcass."

Sleeping

As with many of my friends, my sleep schedule has become really fucked up this week. As you probably read about in my previous posts, I pulled an all-nighter Monday night, staying up until Tuesday afternoon. I woke up in the early evening (on Tuesday), did some more work and went to bed around 3am on Wednesday. Looks like I'm starting another all nighter now, studying for one of 2 finals I have on Friday. I may end up staying up all night tomorrow (Thursday) studying for the final that is at 830am Friday. Then I can sleep Friday afternoon until my other final at 530pm, which I am studying for now (as well as writing a paper for the same class). I think its even more strange that I am planning my days like this, but during finals shit like this is definitely not the exception.

To all my friends at CMU: Good luck on your remaining finals!

To my friends at other schools: You're probably done by now, have a good graduation or summer break!

Runaway Bride

If you've been watching the news lately you've without a doubt seen the story about the woman who went missing several days before her wedding, causing hundreds of people to go searching for her and most presuming she was dead until it turned out she just ran away.

She was found in New Mexico and told the police and FBI that she had been kidnapped. Soon after she admitted she had just gotten cold feet and took off. They are now considering charging her with false reporting and/or making her pay an estimated $100,000 for the search.

While the charges might just stick, I think that the fine is dubious at best. The search was called off before she was even found, and she didn't commit any crimes until she lied to the police. If she had been found and said she had just taken some time off and not made up any stories, she would definitely avoid ALL penalties. Just my opinion on the subject, personally, I think either she's nuts or her fiance is a real asshole.