After reading Ilana's blog entry on her nerd test, I have decided to take one myself.

Oh my gosh... I am nerdy. I scored exactly 87, same as Ilana. The result of the test indicated that I am "High-Level Nerd. You are definitely MIT material, apply now!!!" Indeed.

11/14/2005 11:53:34 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [6]

Personal

Here is another rant on the Mac. On Windows, when you drag a folder onto the top of a folder with the same name, the system will recursively merge the content of both folders. On the Mac, you replace the entire folder when you do the same operation. This really pisses me off big time because I lost a bunch of important data. Sometimes I wonder the wisdom of switching to Mac.

11/13/2005 11:55:47 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [5]

Mac

Lately, the trendy Boston South End has been my favorite place to hang out and dine. On Friday night, I went out for a nice dinner with Michelle at Tremont 647 in the South End. One of the highlights of going Tremont 647 is to sample their unorthodox menu items. However, I found myself craving for steak that night and ordered something ordinary: the ribeye steak done medium rare. The steak was good although not out-of-this-world as I would expect for the price I paid. Overall, the dinning experience was positive and would recommend this place. However, I wished we hadn't sat that close to the smoky kitchen as our clothes smell like grilled steak when we left the restaurant. Afterwards, we stopped by at the Garden of Eden for more wine, coffee, and pastries. I tried their homemade Mogador cake, which consists of layers of chocolate mousse and genoise, toppled with a layer of raspberry glaze. The cake was great. I am drooling for more pastries already... I will go back to this place for more sinful indulgence.

11/12/2005 11:21:00 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [2]

Food

On Thursday night, I went to the Middlesex Lounge to check it out. I have heard that this place is extremely popular with MIT graduate students, especially those who are living at the Sidney-Pacific dormitory. This place is definitely larger than the Enormous Room, 2 blocks down the street. The DJ spins good trippy house music. The Middlesex Lounge reminded me of some of the chic lounges and dance clubs that I had visited in Europe and judging from the crowd that night, I have to say that most people there are indeed from Europe.

11/12/2005 11:20:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [3]

Social

My mac is driving me crazy these days. I am quickly realizing the limitation of a mac; yep, I still think that they are overrated. Anyway, my latest complaint is that I can't read attachments in emails that were sent from Microsoft Outlook. Apparently, all file attachments sent by Outlook are encapsulated into a single attachment file called winmail.dat and there's no native support on Mac OS X to read this file. Thankfully, after a quick google on this issue, I found this program called TNEF's Enough, which opens the winmail.dat file and extracts the embedded files.

11/9/2005 7:40:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [1]

Mac

I heard this on the radio earlier today: always sprinkle grated cheese before adding sauce to the pasta. This tip makes perfect sense, the warmth from both the pasta and sauce melts the grated cheese, and consequently blends it into the sauce more effectively.

11/9/2005 6:11:17 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [4]

Food

I have been listening the following music albums, which I acquired last week:

1. American Idiot by Green Day
   I have never given a 5-star rating (like that in iTunes and iPod) to every song in an album until I listened to this album. Yes, it is that good and deservingly so - after all it did win the Grammy Award for the Best Rock Album in 2005. In this album, Green Day has demonstrated significant music refinement and maturity while still maintaining the raw style that we hear in Dookie. But what I really like about this album is Green Day's forays into rock operas in grand punk style with a thoughtful theme on today's social woes in America. Wikipedia has a great article on the interpretation of the album's story. This is a great rock album, I highly recommend it.
2. Demon Days by Gorillaz
   Ever since I heard that iPod commercial featuring the song Feel Good Inc. by Gorillaz, I have been wanting to get my hands on the actual music CD. I am not disappointed with this CD.
3. Franz Ferdinand by Franz Ferdinand
   The first time I heard of Franz Ferdinand was from the Sony PSP commercial that featured the band's signature rock anthem, Take me Out. I won't call the music album groundbreaking; but being a sucker for post-punk revival music, I consider this album a must-have in my iPod.
4. Live at Stubb's by Matisyahu
   This album features a rabbi look alike singing Reggae - an odd combination but Matisyahu is quite an accomplished Reggae artist. I find this album refreshing since I don't get to hear a lot new Reggae materials these days. The song "King without a Crown" is a masterpiece.
5. Bridging the Gap by the Black Eyed Peas
   I have only listen to this album once so far but I like what I am hearing.
6. X&Y by Coldplay
   My least favorite Coldplay album. It is not that is bad but the earlier Coldplay albums are a lot better.

11/8/2005 12:26:10 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [1]

Music

Wow... women really like men who dress well. Case in point... I went out with a group of friends, which included a significant number of women, last friday to the Burren at Davis Square for a few pints. That night, I was wearing a tan suede leather blazer/jacket with a green t-shirt - a polished look of tan leather paired with an apathetic green t-shirt. The women were raving about how nice I dressed that night. The comments from them were very positive and, I have to admit, ego-boosting as well. The truth is that I bought the leather blazer from the Garment District for $5 and probably after friday a great investment. But I will definitely keep this in mind: always dress to look your best.

11/7/2005 5:14:03 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [1]

Social

What happen when you get Western celebrities to appear in Japanese commercials? It is often hilarious because they are often acting foolish. Sometimes, they seem so out of place that the commercials look simply weird. I have just found this website that is dedicated to Western celebrities moonlighting in Japanese commercials. Perhaps it is of no surprise that one of the funniest commercial that I have seen is one by Arnold Schwarzenegger. You will get a got chuckle from these 2 video clips:

1. Schwarzenegger on energy drink, Booye 1
2. Schwarzenegger on energy drink, Booye 2 (even funnier)

Let me know if there's any other noteworthy clips that worth laughing at.

11/4/2005 11:48:51 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [4]

Humor

To prep up MIT students who are interested in participating the upcoming business plan competitions at MIT - the $1k competition in the fall and the $50k competition in the spring - the $50k organizing team arranged for a class on business executive summary writing earlier tonight. Our guest speaker was Ian Carver from Price Waterhouse Coopers who has significant experience in advising startups. Without going into too much details, Carver said that the following are the things that every VC is looking:

1. Addressable Target Market
2. Market Validation
3. Competition
4. Revenue Model
5. Management Team
6. Go to Market Strategy
7. Funding Requirements

11/3/2005 9:25:29 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [0]

Entrepreneurship

Yesterday, we had Prof. Don Lessard as guest speaker in our System Project Management (SPM) class. He spoke about managing risks in projects at all levels, from 1-person to large-scale enterprise-level. He mentioned the following story to illustrate a point in his lecture:

Two guys are out in the woods hiking. Suddenly, a bear started chasing them. The first guy took his pair of sneakers out of his backpack and started putting them on. The second guy asked: "What are you doing? You can't outrun a bear." The first guy, at this point, said, "I don't have to outrun the bear. I only have to outrun you."

Prof. Lessard said that the point he was trying to make with his story is this: In a competitive business context, you just have to "outrun" the other competitor. To do so, we have to create value, but value brings risk. Don't try to minimize risk because you won't get any value from it. Instead learn to manage risk. I like that advice.

11/2/2005 9:58:43 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [1]

Business

Happy Halloween everybody... So far, my day today revolves not around ghosts and goblins but rather the wonderful world of telecommunication. Lately, I have grown really bored in the class Introduction to Technology and Policy. I really need a lecture that has value and will prop up interest for that class. Well, my prayers were answered with Sharon Gillett - a TPP 95 grad - as the guest speaker in today's Intro to Tech & Policy. She was extremely engaging and her talk was very interactive. As an Electrical Engineer and someone who has been involved in IT for many years, I thought I knew everything about the telecommunication industry. I was pleasantly surprised to learn something new today, particularly how regulated the telecommunication (and broadband) industry is and the implications of a few landmark legislations that were passed for this industry.

I am currently working on a case study on Iridium - a satellite-based telephony company that went bankrupt in 1999, a year after the launch of its service. Surprisingly, the more I read about the case and doing research on the company, the more I like this case study. It is a classical case of a company possessing great innovations but in the end made some really bad business decisions and failed spectacularly. Also, for those who are currently taking Prof. Richard de Neufville's class on Real Options (aka ESD.71), the Iridium case presents a real life example where management should have defined a set of objective goals (rather than one that is based on experience and observations) and evaluates the project or long-term investment opportunities as real options.

10/31/2005 11:28:47 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)

Comments [1]

School