just had to get it right

It's been a while since writing here...After the hectic round of seminars in Del Mar, we returned to a hectic pace of economics classes. Somehow I got behind in the reading assignments and needed to read two chapters a day last week just to catch up.

The professor is amazing, class time flies by and is really enjoyable. However, accounting is next. Most of my classmates are dreading statistics, but I dread accounting. Corporate accounting is the most mixed-up, fouled nest of screwball numbers I have ever seen. It's no wonder all of these crazy companies got away with bilking their shareholders and customers for so long. It really makes you wonder what other companies are also practicing bird's nest accounting.

A long time ago, a very wise person told me to read corporation's annual reports. Before the Interwebs, one could write a company and request a copy. Now they are posted online, and they seem to fall into one of three categories. First, the semi-honest firms that actually publish reliable information to the best of their knowledge. Second, those that skim over the meaty bits and expend a lot of effort to make their shareholders feel good. The third, and worst, are those companies that don't waste time trying to paint a pretty picture, but instead include so much information that it is nearly impossible to separate the worthless minutia and red herrings from the meaningful, and possibly inaccurate data.

Back to the other reason I've been lax about posting, and a really good one, each of the Executive MBA candidates gets a new Dell notebook, which we received last Saturday. It's taken the best part of a week to get all of the programs set up the way I like (I'm still messing with Outlook's custom settings).

And I'm still trying to decide how to give it a steampunk skin. I may have to invest in some of that printable self-adhesive vinyl. Ohh, though how nice it is to have a portable machine powerful enough to run PhotoShop!

So between loading new programs and tweeking the machine settings, it now feels right. And it is so much more efficient. Maybe that means more time to write. Ciao!