Abroad

Tuesday, November 18th, 2008 (Yesterday)

Its been nearly a month since I’ve last written here, and I’m getting pretty bad at this. I really want to keep this going, I’m hoping next semester will be a little lighter in terms of academics and my workload, so we’ll cross our fingers.

Now in the meantime I’ve signed up for a semester abroad this summer in Athens, Crete, and Rome. I’ve never been overseas before, so this will be quite the experience. The trip begins May 23rd and ends June 25th, but I’m planning on flying out a week or so early and staying a couple weeks at the end of the trip to see some other countries. This should be exciting!

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about my major, and what else I should be doing. I’ve decided for now that I’m going to focus on my CIS major, and outside of that just developing a better technical knowledge. I figure that tech knowledge is far more useful than math/economics to me, and will probably end up getting me a better job in the future anyways. I’m also thinking that for my honors thesis I could do some sort of technical analysis. I have a lot of ideas, but I need to get to work before I can really develop any of them.

In addition, I’m uploading this picture here because I really, really like it. This was taken at Grant’s house two weekends ago when I was up visiting him for his birthday.

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Shoulders

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 (4 weeks ago)

Some of you may have noticed in my training schedule that I’ve been getting back into the gym lately. In about 4 weeks I will be going back to my orthopedist for my final evaluation and release from physical therapy and (most of) its limitations.

The routine I’ve been doing bears little resemblance to my old routine. At this point in time I’m focused on developing strength rather than hypertrophy. The exercises have changed a lot as well, less compound movements at this point, more isolation, and no overhead lifts. Shoulder exercises have obviously been completely reworked. The old workout was Millitary Press, Front Rows, Upright Rows, and dumbbell Rear Delt Rows. In order to avoid subluxing my shoudlers anymore the dumbbell exercises are out and are replaced with cable column exercises. Millitary press increases stress on the shoulder joint and the joint capsule, the one I just got repaired. This is due to the compressive forces on the joint being greater than the abductor muscles can overcome to maintain proper joint spacing between the humerus and glenoid fossa. This causes various tendons/ligaments to become impinged and causes some other issues.

Now, if your shoulders are totally cool and you don’t have any other joint issues, Millitary presses really aren’t going to kill you. If you have good form, aren’t dicking around, and get plenty of recover you should be fine. However if you have a predisposition to having shoulder issues (me) you probably shouldn’t do them.

Another issue is martial arts. I theoretically could do Muay Thai again, but since I have a predisposition to having shoulder issues this could create problems for me. I’m not quite sure what to do with that, I’ve got some thinking to do and a few more shoulder evaluations before I’ll decide if I will go back to that.

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Goon Economics

Sunday, October 5th, 2008 (1 months ago)

Being a business student for the last week has been really interesting. With all the recent takeovers or bankruptcies of banks my professors have all been ranting and raving about the economy, the subprime mortgages, and now congress’ bailout attempt.

The whole issue is a very messy, complex issue that we are going to have to drag ourselves out of over the next couple years. In the mean time I’ve found this presentation that describes the subprime mortgage issue in a humorous and simple manner. Its slightly watered down, but it helps people at least understand how everything started.

Subprime Works

Enjoy!

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Get it Faster

Friday, September 26th, 2008 (1 months ago)

I have been incredibly busy these last few weeks, and here are some of the things I’ve been working on. I just got my test results for the three tests I’ve taken this week. I had big tests in economics and accounting, and a quiz in stats. I ended up getting an A, B, and A (respectively), and I imagine after the curve in accounting I’ll have an A there too. Accounting is difficult. In nearly every other class you have some sort of knowledge you can use to start learning the new material. However, I have never been exposed to any sort of accountancy, so everyone has to start from square one. I did well for getting a B on the first test, as the class average for the test was around 65%. Yeouch.

I’m taking my first semi-real CIS class, and I’ve been throughly enjoying it so far. My teacher is a grad student at ASU who has worked in the field long before coming back to school, and as a result I feel like the class has a much more ‘realistic’ approach to the topics, and we always talk about the current industry and their current practices. I’m in a great group for our big project for that class, which is to do a report on a company that has adopted an information sytem of some sort to help them reach their business goals. Our group has chosen ASU’s implementation of RFID gate access cards. Its a topic I find pretty interesting, I hope our project turns out well.

Last weekend I got to take a vacation and headed up to Flagstaff Friday after classes to see Grant. It was a well needed break, while I was there I got to finally see Grant’s new place, BBQ with Cole and Will, and overall just relax for a weekend. We went for an outstanding hike Sunday morning before I left, and the Gallery of Photographs has been updated to reflect such. They’re really nice pictures.

As of recently I’ve been communicating with a friend of my Father’s who works in the IT department of a local consulting firm. He asked me if I’d be interested in coming down and helping them do some computer type work, and I said I’d be thrilled. It will technically be my second job, but honestly I would absolutely love to get to work with some real equiptment in a real company for once. I really hope that things work out here!

And the last little bit of news is about my shoulders. As of 10 days ago, my right shoulder is back to 100%! I’ve got about a month and a half until my left shoulder is normal, and I can finally start hitting the gym hard again, and getting back into some sort of martial art.

Busy busy busy, the hardest thing I’ve found myself having to do recently is say ‘No’. I’ve had to begun delegating more tasks to others, and while I don’t like passing the buck its what I’ve got to do to keep my sanity. Now that I’ve finished 3 of my 4 tests I think things will begin to slow back down, I hope!

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College Textbooks are Expensive: How to get them for Less

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 (2 months ago)

This semester I had 4 books that would have cost me upwards of $100 dollars from the ASU bookstore or other equivalents, and in total I would have spent $491.50 on textbooks there. I did my research and used sites such as AbeBooks.com to help me find my text books for a total of $253.92, giving me back 48% in savings.

One of the tricks publishers play is making “Custom Edition” versions of books designed specifically for your class or school, often considerably marked up from the regular editions. Often times these books only have a different cover and front insert, but the content is the same. This allows them to get a new ISBN number for the book, so when you search for it nothing else comes up. However, oftentimes these books are packaged with other materials such as study guides or answer books. By going to the publisher’s websites (Pearson/Prentice Hall, Cengage, Houghton Mifflin Company, etc) you can look up the supplementary books, and often times they will list the books they are meant to accompany. If your study guide packaged with your “Custom Edition” is listed as a supplement for a non-custom version on the publisher’s website, then the material inside the book is more than likely identical to that of a regular copy.

The same can be said for books that are packaged with an “online code”. If the book includes an online code, they can change the ISBN number again. Sometimes you don’t need this code at all, and can buy the regular book outright. Other times you can go online to the publisher’s website again and buy the code directly from them for less.

The best way to find cheaper books however, is to find an “International Copy”. Books in the United States are expensive because they know that a lot of students are on scholarships, loans, grants and have help from mom and dad. We know that books are expensive, but we keep buying them. Often times these books are published overseas and sold for much, much less than they are sold for in the United States. The best place I have found to search for books like this is AbeBooks.com.

When searching for international copies often times the ISBN and cover will not be the same. The book description will sometimes list the ISBN number of the US equivalent, othertimes it will not, and you will not have a written gaurentee that the book is exactly what you need. The important things to look for are that the Title of the book is the same, the Author(s) are the same, and the language of the book is in English.

It will take some hunting to find your books, but hopefully you can save a lot of your hard earned money!

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