sam tingleff: April 2004 Archives

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April 28, 2004

Gainful employment

I've accepted a summer internship at SightSpeed, a small internet videoconferencing company that BR Ventures has invested in. It's a great company and I'm excited about working there.

This means I'll be in Berkeley, CA from May 31st till August 6th (and need housing!). I'm looking forward to the California summer.

Breean points out that the summer here (Ithaca) will be ten times better. It will - cause she'll be here.

Some free advice for those posting on community housing sites like craigslist:

As a general rule, more info is better than less
For sublets, indicate the dates the room is available
Internet access is important - if it's available, say so
For shared housing, tell me who else will be living there

Posted by sam at 07:00 AM | Comments (3)

April 26, 2004

Free ice cream

The annual Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day is tomorrow. Not only do you get a free scoop, but this year you can register to vote right inside the store.

Too bad there's no B & J's near us.

Posted by sam at 11:39 AM | Comments (0)

April 23, 2004

Global Social Venture Competition

A Johnson team won the SROI category in the 2004 Global Social Venture Competition. Congratulations! Here's the concept:

Distributed Generation Technologies (DGT) is focused on commercializing innovative energy technologies for distributed generation. The company is commercializing a new anaerobic digestion reactor, developed at Cornell University, which converts organic waste into highly pure and compressed biogas (i.e., methane fuel) without additional equipment or energy input.

The resulting biogas can be utilized as a transportation fuel (compressed natural gas) and/or paired with a fuel cell or other device for stationary generation. The company expects to commercialize larger-scale equipment in the wastewater, agriculture, and food processing markets initially, while working toward mass market “appliances” for residential applications in developed and developing economies.

Mom, dad, you might want to look at their ppt. Interesting stuff.

Posted by sam at 04:04 PM | Comments (3)

April 22, 2004

More on college admissions

As Wealthy Fill Top Colleges, New Efforts to Level the Field: "More members of this year's freshman class at the University of Michigan have parents making at least $200,000 a year than have parents making less than the national median of about $53,000, according to a survey of Michigan students."

The admissions argument over the last few years has been framed around race but as this article indicates family economics are probably far more meaningful.

Posted by sam at 09:10 AM | Comments (0)

April 21, 2004

Unpaid internships

With interns, you get what you pay for [from Mefi]:

For-profit businesses can't pay less than minimum wage, but labor laws allow exceptions -- if the job is for the educational benefit of the student, and -- the kicker, according to Birmingham, Ala.-based labor lawyer John Richard Carrigan -- if the employer derives no immediate benefit from the intern's work.

I sent letters to several California politicians about this a few years ago after a particularly boring summer as an "intern" at a PR firm. It was paid, but only a token amount and far below minimum wage. I knew I was worth more than that and felt used and abused.

But the politicians didn't get it. Feinstein's flaks sent me a form letter about (unpaid) internship opportunities in her office. As did the rest of them.

Posted by sam at 08:08 PM | Comments (0)

April 19, 2004

Antiwater

Scientists Create "Water" That Isn't Wet [from 0xDECAFBAD]: "The chemical has all the firefighting properties of water, yet it will not cause the damage to items that is usually associated with water."

Posted by sam at 02:23 PM | Comments (0)

McDonald's

McDonald's CEO Dead, COO Takes Helm: "McDonald's Corp. Chairman and Chief Executive Jim Cantalupo died of an apparent heart attack on Monday in Florida and the company named Chief Operating Officer Charlie Bell to replace him as CEO."

Is this type of risk reflected in the stock price? You have to assume that: 1) company officers are largely older men; and 2) their diets are perhaps not ideal from a nutritional standpoint . So there may be a succession issue at Mickey D's - executives in their prime happen to be prime candidates for heart attacks. I wonder if this is taken into account by long range planners at the company.

Posted by sam at 11:13 AM | Comments (3)

April 18, 2004

Destination Johnson...

Was this weekend. Every year Johnson invites all the MBA admits to Ithaca for one weekend. They stay with a current student, go to panel discussions and (endless) info sessions and we try to pretend that students here have a good time. Breean was a real trooper about it.

We hosted someone from California who's been travelling in Turkey and Nepal recently and will be in India this summer. Naturally both of us liked him. When he first arrived he said he was undecided on coming to Johnson - not the school so much as b-school in general. By Saturday afternoon his tune had changed, for the worse. He said he's even more committed to the school but would rather wait another one or two years.

He assured us that this was not my fault at all but I can't help feel responsible.

Posted by sam at 12:05 PM | Comments (0)

The Apprentice loser

Kwame won, bill lost: "Think about it, run a construction project or live like a celeb and choose from a ton of options." Can't say that I disagree - Kwame was probably three steps ahead of everybody but Amy throughout the ordeal. But I don't think he lost on purpose.

Posted by sam at 08:49 AM | Comments (0)

April 17, 2004

College admissions

From the NYT, How I Spent Summer Vacation: At Getting-Into-College Camp

No campfires. No hiking. Just hours a day of essay writing, SAT preparation, counseling, mock admission interviews and a potpourri of workshops and college visits, all intended to give high school students an edge on the admission process.

What a waste of time. This arms race of admissions is reaching ridiculous proportions and something needs to be done.

Posted by sam at 03:52 PM | Comments (0)

April 16, 2004

The Apprentice ends

My girl Amy lost and Bill won. Oh well, at least the HBS guy lost.

Wasn't the winner supposed to land a job as president of one of Trump's companies? The NYT says Bill will oversee "a 90-story building project in Chicago." I don't know about you but that's definitely not my "dream job of a lifetime." And it doesn't sound like president of anything.

We won't be watching next season. Too many contestants were so obviously also-rans that it took too long to get down to the tough decisions. I hope next time they choose contestants based on ability to deliver rather than look good in a skirt or cause controversy.

The show did bring home a point for me though. You never really know how someone will behave on the job without obverving them in real-world situations. People with the best resumes, references and interview skills could turn out to be another Omarosa. The traditional interview-hiring process is broken and I wonder if there's an opportunity to provide a better model.

Posted by sam at 09:18 AM | Comments (2)

April 15, 2004

Abby Cohen

I saw Abby Cohen speak today as part of Johnson's ongoing 20th anniversary celebration. She's Chair of the Investment Policy Committee for Goldman Sachs and today she made a pretty convincing argument that the economic rebound is well on its way but remains hampered by governmental policy throughout the world.

My complaint with so many speakers of her stature is that they can speak for hours without saying anything meaningful. Politicians and CEOs are great at this. But I was extremely impressed both with what she had to see and how she said it.

Posted by sam at 06:20 PM | Comments (2)

April 13, 2004

Gotta love politics

California Senator Liz Figueroa wants to ~~bane~~ ban Google's Gmail. Gimme a frickin' break. Is this really the best use of Ms. Figueroa's time? Is this the most pressing issue on her plate? No, it's a cheap shot at free publicity.

You don't like the privacy terms? Don't use the service.

Oh no! The spelling police strike again!

Posted by sam at 07:58 PM | Comments (1)

April 11, 2004

More from Wal-Mart news

Wal-Mart driven out of town by Californian people power: residents of Inglewood said thanks, but no thanks to Wal-Mart. This after the company tried to sidestep city officials (also against it) by going directly to the ~~ballet~~ ballot.

Posted by sam at 05:14 PM | Comments (3)

Happy birthday Chris!

Wish I could be there to keep you out of trouble.

Posted by sam at 01:50 PM | Comments (1)

April 10, 2004

For my parents...

We went to the farmer's market today for the first time since last fall. It seems too early in the year for most fruits and veggies but a few winter greens were available.

I split a burrito with Breean, ate some ribs and an apple cider donut. Mmmmmm. I'm glad to have the farmer's market again.

Posted by sam at 11:10 AM | Comments (4)

April 09, 2004

Rankings

Johnson moved up two spots in this year's US News & World Report annual ranking of b-schools. We're up to 14, from 16 the past three years. Good news!

There's lots of talk about gaining a consistent top-10 ranking, but it's going to be difficult for us. Some study (don't remember) showed that size of the school and number of alumni correlates pretty strongly with ranking. Tuck and Haas are obvious exceptions at 8 and 9 with sizes similar to Johnson, but others ahead of us are larger and better-located.

Meanwhile, the rich get richer: Harvard and Wharton won't provide access to students for the Business Week 2004 report.

Posted by sam at 05:00 PM | Comments (2)

April 07, 2004

Google's secret sauce

The Secret Source of Google's Power:

Google is a company that has built a single very large, custom computer. It's running their own cluster operating system. They make their big computer even bigger and faster each month, while lowering the cost of CPU cycles. It's looking more like a general purpose platform than a cluster optimized for a single application.

While competitors are targeting the individual applications Google has deployed, Google is building a massive, general purpose computing platform for web-scale programming.

This computer is running the world's top search engine, a social networking service, a shopping price comparison engine, a new email service, and a local search/yellow pages engine. What will they do next with the world's biggest computer and most advanced operating system?

Posted by sam at 09:32 AM | Comments (0)

April 04, 2004

No kidding

Option Pie: Overeating is a Health Hazard: "A new and comprehensive study shows that increases in executive pay, on average, do not translate into shareholder gains."

Posted by sam at 09:09 AM | Comments (0)

April 03, 2004

More on employment

LLC Formation and Employment: "LLC's are being formed at record numbers nationwide. Since small businesses drive the employment numbers and the economy, this should portend a robust recovery for the United States in the next year."

Posted by sam at 06:10 PM | Comments (0)

Actresses (again)

Salon.com: "The Prince and Me": "Not even this fluffy Cinderella retread can keep Julia Stiles from seeming utterly believable."

Breean, if salon can appreciate the vast artistic talents of Ms. Stiles maybe you could give her a break too.

Posted by sam at 09:28 AM | Comments (2)

April 02, 2004

Job growth

Spectacular Job numbers not an April's Fool Joke: "U.S. employers in March hired workers at the fastest clip in four years, offering the brightest sign yet for the struggling labor market. Nonfarm business payrolls grew by 308,000 jobs last month, faster than at any time since April of 2000."

Posted by sam at 12:42 PM | Comments (0)

April 01, 2004

The Apprentice

Breean's pick Troy was fired. As Trump said, it came down to a guy with a high school diploma who's shown real leadership and a Harvard MBA who's been elected team leader three times and never shown much of anything (no surprise there!). I was surprised when Trump chose to keep the Harvard guy.

Two people get fired next week. And our favorite Omarosa will come back.

Posted by sam at 10:00 PM | Comments (2)

Google mail

Google Drops an E-Mail Bomb. Free web-based email with 1GB of storage (that's a lot) and google search capabilities on your inbox. Nobody seems to know if it's a joke or not but BWeek doesn't think so because of Google's plans to go public.

Google will add unobtrusive text ads targeting the content of e-mail. For example, if a Gmail user receives a message about the NCAA basketball finals, then Google will put a hoops- or sports-related ad into the e-mail. Those ads, wagers Google President Larry Page, will more than pay for the cost of giving users so much space.

I've used a searchable mail program for a while now and I can attest that it is tremendously useful.