After a fair bit of futzing around on my part, the Daily Travails store (powered by Amazon) is now online. For those of you who followed me from the MT blog, this is the new version of the "Reading material, etc." page. (The old version is still available here.)
Happy holidays, everyone!
What is your favorite board game?
Submitted by I'm Unique.
This has to be a tie between Captain Park's Imaginary Polar Expedition and Deadwood.
Sosnik, Dowd and Fournier, Applebee's America
Kevin B. Connolly, Buying and Selling Volatility
Barton Biggs, Hedgehogging
Books I've read in the past two months (since it's been that long since I last posted and I'm sure you've been wanting to know...)
John Battelle, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture
Great insights into how the business of search marketing evolved, from the founder of The Industry Standard. Having lived (and worked) through the early days of the Web and search, I found this book a pretty good read.
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail: Why The Future of Business Is Selling Less of More
Intriguing ideas about the true shape of demand curves, market niches, and the future of mass media. (Well, more than just mass media, but I found that particular aspect particularly interesting.)
George S. Day, Market-Driven Strategy: Processes For Creating Value
David Aaker, Developing Business Strategies, 6e
Corsi and Smith, Black Gold Stranglehold
Linus Torvalds (with David Diamond), Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary
Lyle Estill, Biodiesel Power
Uldrich and Newberry, The Next Big Thing Is Really Small
Nanotechnology and its intersection with business strategy.
Marilyn Powell, Ice Cream: The Delicious History
History of ice cream as seen through literature and other written sources. If you're into books and like ice cream, this one's right up your alley.
And I really need to get a copy of this one for my reference library (although it's good to see that the library in Foster City had a copy available for me to borrow temporarily):
Benjamin Graham, The Intelligent Investor
... and the GSB made it to #1 in their rankings this year. Sweet. :-)
I'm sure there are a lot of people in Hyde Park smiling this weekend.
C. and I have arrived in the Bay Area, and I have started working. I can't really talk much about work, so please don't ask me about it here.
After having some really good dim sum in Foster City, we spent yesterday afternoon in the East Bay, revisiting our old stomping grounds and figuring out what's still there, what's new, and what's no longer around. We also picked up some supplies that we need for the hotel room, which C. is now calling the "cave room". We stopped in at the Scharffen Berger Chocolate Factory in Berkeley to check out the factory store and enjoy the intense chocolate aroma, and had dinner at the Genova Delicatessen on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland.
After that, we took BART into San Francisco to hang out with some of the interns from the GSB who are here in the Bay Area for the summer, and are getting ready to wrap up their internships. The ones I got to talk with sounded like they all found their internships worthwhile, and were all excited about returning to Chicago as second-year students. I also got to meet some people whom I hadn't met before, and who share several of my interests, so it was definitely a good night.
As I've said in the past, sometimes it's the small victories that help keep us sane.
The books are off the shelves, and I've taken down one set of them (the shelves, that is). Packing continues apace, and tomorrow I go to seek out maps to use to continue planning the route of our trip back to California.
Today I read The Apple Way, which is an interesting quick read -- management maxims as seen through the lens of the history of Apple Computer. It can be annoyingly simplifying at times, and gloss over details to get to a glib maxim, but the rest of it made sense to me, which made it worthwhile reading before I packed the last box of books. :)
As for a not-so-small victory, it appears that my friend Sorebrek has been admitted to the GSB off the summer waitlist! It couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy, in my book -- certainly not this late in the game. It was also great to meet up with him again over the last couple of days as he came to Chicago to look for housing. He seems to have found accomodations which meet his needs, which I can definitely attest is very important.
I'd like to take a moment to welcome those of you who followed my experiences through school over the last two years, and who have followed my breadcrumb trail over here to Vox. I'm hoping to get more invites allocated to me soon so I can invite you over here. If you'd like to leave a comment and don't have a Vox account yet, you can leave a comment via the most recent entry on the other blog, and I'll get it. Or you can Gmail me. (If you don't already know how to email me, I have confidence that you're smart enought to figure out the address.)
I'm ancient enough to remember a series of commercials by Pacific Telesis (before they were assimilated into the company that became the "new at&t") with the tagline "Telesis: progress, intelligently planned". I remember that I liked those, although I can't remember their content now other than one talking about the future and what ISDN services would bring. (ISDN! That's how old these were!)
Anyway: I had a phone interview today that was a follow-on to one on Friday. This is looking promising. I can't really say more than that just yet, but I have a good feeling about it.
I've packed our old TiVo, which I haven't used in two years because it's not equipped for a network connection (we don't have a landline here at the apartment, and it needs a new hard drive anyway -- I'll have to order one from Weaknees when we get there). It's going in a box to SoCal tomorrow. I've also assembled a set of cables for the car (iPod car kit, car chargers for our mobile phones, car mounting kit for the Sirius receiver, etc...) that I'm moving down there tomorrow.
Anyway, I thought that this was progress, albeit of a different sort, and not so intelligently planned or directed.
