So since I'm about to become an intricate part of Silicon Valley, I figured that reading George Orwell's 1984 was an absolute must. Surprisingly, I have never had to read it for class and the only real knowledge I had of it was Apple's version of it for the Macintosh.
As a read, it really was not that captivating. Orwell's style of writing and his general tone put me sleep (with the exception of the last 100 pages) more often than it kept me awake. However, his overall message and the significance that this novel unquestionably had on a generation did not go unnoticed. He spoke of very powerful concepts and, even though it wasn't the most entertaining at times, he did so eloquently.
RecommendedSo I've been meaning to write this post for some time now, I just have not been able to embed the very neat virtual tour that UMich has on its website. Regardless...
It really is a shame that I'll be long gone before I get to see the completed Michigan Business School. The new 270,000-square-foot structure that costs over $145 million comes equipped with brand new rooms, equipment, and a Ross-exclusive fitness center - all very exciting even though I think the building itself is somewhat ugly. It will not be completed until the Fall of 2008, so I didn't miss it as closely as the class behind me will.
So yesterday curiosity forced me to take a look at Barack Obama's website after hearing so much about how the 2008 Presidential candidates are utilizing the Internet to reach out to the people. In all honestly, I was really impressed with all of the content that he had posted and how easy it was to navigate through everything. Even more, I was somewhat surprised by all of the Web 2.0 utilities that he was using to reach out effectively to the Internet audience.
However, after taking a look at some of the other Presidential candidates' websites, I realized that everybody is touting the exact same features, just with different names:
Whoever is running these sites is obviously Web 2.0 savvy (hitting on all of the big fads: blogs, videos, and RSS/Feed support). While I don't think the Internet will truly revolutionize politics until voting can be done electronically and remotely, this is a good step.
Wow. So today I was informed that our 2007 Team Photo is finally up on the mgoblue website and it turns out it was a disaster! I think that the best way to describe how it turned out is to quote Evan Fox at the end of practice today:
"Okay, who thought it was a good idea to take our team picture and edit it in photoshop so that we all look like we have down syndrome."
He couldn't be closer to the truth. While I don't think I look that bad (mainly because of the zoom and picture quality), a lot of guys have morphed faces and distorted heads. For an athletic program built largely on prestige and image...... derf!
The inevitable has happened. Two days ago the Housing Department of the University of Michigan decided that they were going to replace all of the furniture in Markley Hall (which makes up ~50% of AALofting's business) with building block furniture and will also replace 1/3 of the furniture in Bursley Hall (~30%) with it as well. All of these upgrades will be done this summer and ready by the Fall of 2007 effectively annihilating the lofting demand here in Ann Arbor.
Over the past two weeks Bretlan and I had spoke with multiple potential buyers and were pretty close to finalizing a very lucrative deal. However, in light of this new information, it looks like we will be S.O.L. (shit out of luck)
The U's move to replace all of the furniture in the residence halls with modular furniture is not something that caught Bretlan nor I by surprise. Their timing, on the other hand, did. We figured that there was at least 5 years left of solid lofting before the Ann Arbor demand dried up; the maintenance staff for all of the residence halls hated the current building-block furniture. Unfortunately, for us, they found a new style that the students and the maintenance staff love. Crap.
It looks like I won't have quite as much planning to do this summer as I thought I would now that our volume has been cut by 60+%. And it looks like I'm not going to make some fat cash on a relatively easy buyout. Nuts.
You may or may not have noticed, but I recently gave my blog a face-lift by switching to Google's new version of Blogger. This has allowed me to use a dynamic archive tree (making it easier to look through or for my old posts) and use some of Blogger's page creation tools that make it easy for non-tech savvy people to create blogs.
You may see where I'm getting at with this; if any of you are interested in hosting a private blog (so that only the rest of the family can see it), you are more than welcome to do it through my site. For instance, Rachel's could be "www.rachel.matthewbancrofthudson.com". I can have an unlimited number of sub-domains on my hosting service, so it will not be a burden on me. But what's more attractive is that you can manage your blog entirely online through Blogger.
It is really quite simple to get started. If you're interested, let me know and I'll help you set it up.
The past week or so has been pretty uneventful. Beginning last Friday, our landlord hired a company to remove some trees in our backyard so that we can convert it into a parking lot. While it was only supposed to take a day to complete, they ran a little behind and had to push some of the work back until today. And of course, today it's snowing so they might not come. So now I have a huge pile of wood chips in my backyard and our trailer parked in the front yard.
What's more is that on Friday Bretlan and I found a street spot for the trailer. However, on Friday night some pinprick came along, pulled the trailer out of the spot and into the street. He then parked his car in our spot! I was ready to throw a rock through this asshole's windshield, but instead we decided to call the police and have them come out and tow the car.
Unfortunately the police officer told us that unless we saw the perpetrator pulling the trailer into the street (which we didn't since it was late at night), he couldn't tow them or give them a ticket since it wouldn't hold up in court. So instead, he gave us a free pass to illegally park the trailer in our front yard until the tree guys were finished.
Outside of this little incident, nothing really exciting has happened.
So for the first time ever I wrote an article for Wikipedia officially making me a Wikipedian. I have now joined the millions of community editors and billions of community users in this truly remarkable Internet phenomenon.
"What was my article about?" you might ask. Well, in my efforts to explain the Internet and some of its tools to Mr. Blechman, Jared Blechman's dad who recently asked me for some help in understanding Internet marketing, I needed to have a definition of an Urchin Tracker readily available. So I found one and made it accessible on Wikipedia. All I had to do was become a member (took approximately 2 minutes), and then post the article (another 30 seconds). Voilà!
However, even more amusing was that within 2 minutes of posting an editor for the Wikipedia community protested my article for relevance and thoroughness. I quickly voiced my objection to his protest and now a Wikipedia administrator will have to read through our case and make a decision. Unbelievably amazing.
So Bretlan and I had a multi-hour discussion yesterday about what my plans are with lofting
and here's what we decided:
I've already put out a couple of feelers to see who is interested in buying AA Lofting and have received a couple of very interested responses. So we'll just have to wait and see how this all works out.
It is amazing how little I am doing academically this semester. I mean, I only have 6 hours of class a week (so I go to one class a day for 4 days) and have little or no homework. Yesterday and the day before I watched 8 hours of the West Wing between my class and practice and managed to accomplish nothing. Talk about productivity.
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of things that I could be doing (personal website work, lofting, etc.), I'm just not in the mood. At some point I'll crack down and start doing some work, but I don't think that's gonna happen this week.
I started reading George Orwell's 1984 last week; it's not a bad read. I'm only about 100 pages into it, but it sure does read faster than a lot of the non-fiction books I've churned through in the last couple months. I figure that since this is such a prominent book in Silicon Valley I should familarize myself with it.
On the Silicon Valley topic, I recently got the names of Michigan MBA's that are headed to Google after graduation and one of them keeps a public blog (www.wheresnate.com). There isn't really much to it, I just thought it was interesting that he was choosing between Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo for his full-time employment.
After a long 11 days, we are finally back in Ann Arbor. We had a very early flight out of Florida (for college students, that means before noon) and we arrived back home a little before 1.
Traveling is always and ordeal. Moving around almost 50 people and their 100+ bags can be tiresome and stressful not only for the players, but for the staff as well. Surprisingly, nobody misplaced a bag and none of the freshmen got lost (Goldberg being the top candidate and Lawrence, a junior, as a close second). This is largely attributable to the hard work of Jeff Hess and Coach Paul who over the years have shown nothing but unbridled enthusiasm for this program, its players, and its alumni.
SBT '07 (Spring Business Trip) is officially over and many of us are now focused on getting our feet back on the ground and catching up with all of the school work that we did not do while we were on break. We have the next few days of practice off only to start up again on Wednesday.
Boy, it looks like all of the hard work and dedication that I applied to my studies is finally going to pay off. As the rest of my peers and I prepare for graduation which is only a mere 2 months away, we have one last event that has gained all of our attention; BBA formal is in a few weeks.
In what looks to be a new BBA tradition, we have nominated a class King, Queen, and Jester; yours truly is on the ballot. This was just sent out a few hours ago:
Formal will take place on Thursday March 29th at Kensington Court.
More details will be provided soon on bus pick uptimes. The nominees are in
for King, Queen, and Court Jester. In some categories two people may have
been nominated for either King or Jester. Also, a tie existed in
some categories.
Now the results…
The Nominees for King:
Anthony Addessi
Scott Gaynor
Matt Hudson
Adam Widener
The Nominees for Queen:
Jodi Hochberger
Anne Warehime
Kara Wasson
The Nominees for Court Jester:
Eric Arai
Matt Hudson
Luke Xiao
Voting will take place at formal. If you have any questions, please
contact the formal committee.
Every year hundreds of lacrosse teams at multiple levels use their spring break to fit in a couple of away games. As a matter of fact, this is not an uncommon practice for all spring sports. Coincidentally, this year U of M's softball team happened to be in the Jacksonville area playing in a tournament during our final days here.
In the spirit of Michigan athletics, we arranged an evening at a local restaurant with the ladies on Thursday night and attended their Jacksonville University game on Friday night. While the similarities between our two sports are far and few, the commonalities amongst our players are well pronounced.
Our dinner on Thursday night started off the same way any 7th grade dance would. The boys and girls came in separately; the boys arriving first and establishing themselves around the room in every-other chair, while the girls arrived in small bunches giggling amongst themselves as they scoured the room for familiar faces and made quick decisions about which boys would be least offensive. (Unfortunatly that meant that Favorite, Donnell, and Rose sat by themselves)
After the initial moment of awkwardness, the rest of the night went by unfettered. Both teams shared stories and gossiped about their players (Ein in particular) and enjoyed a well-deserved meal after a long and eventful week.
On Friday night the women's softball team came out in true maize and blue fashion and crushed Jacksonville University in just 5 innings as we cheered them on in the light rain. At the end of the game both teams participated in a rendition of Hail to the Victors that would have sent chills down the spin of any Michigan alum. Even though we were almost 1000 miles away from Ann Arbor, I don't think that any of us felt far away from the Michigan difference.
Unlike our Florida game earlier in the week, the 24 hours leading into the FSU contest had a much more pronounced sense of normalcy to them. After getting a few days of rest, a solid pre-game meal, and plenty of water (and in Ein's case, a little too much water - even at 19 years old) we came out firing tonight against FSU. With the first 10 minutes littered with man-up (power-play) opportunities, we built a quick 4-0 lead and were flying around like we always should be.
Even better, we had perfect conditions for the game. The air was slightly crisp, still, and filled with the electricity inherent to games underneath the lights. FSU had a vocal student section and our dedicated parents were out in force to create an exciting and energetic crowd.
However, at points throughout the game we were missing something vital to a good lacrosse game; execution. Just like the Florida game there was a ridiculously high number of ground balls; this time at 75 (both teams). Afterwords, none of us were adequately satisfied with our performance. But just like in the Florida game, there were numerous things that we can be proud of and build off of. While it is obvious that guys like Kaufman and Hammitt had career nights, our offense was moving the ball well and getting through our sets with little difficulty. We earned plenty of good looks and that's always the more difficult thing to improve. Moreover, our defense showed us streaks of what they are capable of and several players established themselves as contenders for a starting role.
For the first time in the four years I've been at Michigan, this the first year we've gone undefeated through our Spring Break. While our schedule is a little more back-loaded this year, a team's success on the road is what determines how well they do overall. Accordingly, we plan to take the next few days to practice on grass fields to gain some experience for the games down the road.
The whole point of this book is that mass collaboration is going to change everything. The advent of the Internet and the ability to connect people easily and cheaply will help spur innovation in business, science, and even politics. While I consider all of these points to be true, they are just a rewritten form of Friedman's points in The World is Flat. Tapscott gave a couple new examples, but nothing original and no new theories.
I found this book hard to get through since there wasn't anything groundbreaking and instead of captivating the reader with detailed examples, it seemed like he was dictating to us what was right or wrong and not letting us make our own decision. The book reads like a manual to embracing collaboration; I didn't expect that. I was hoping for insightful case studies.
