Karl Allen - Ramblings of whatever comes to mind

Kilrogg's Late Night Raiders

2010-10-13T18:46:00.002-04:00

My latest obsession is World of Warcraft. This post is pretty much just a placeholder to provide a link to the guild's group page on Facebook. Members of the guild can go to this link and join the group.

Click here or copy and paste this link:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_160489657308065&ap=1

New content coming soon

2010-02-26T13:39:00.002-05:00

Lately I have become very interested in sustainable agriculture and food issues in general. I am adamantly opposed to GMO seeds, big agribusiness companies ruining our food supply, and most processed foods.

Some of the things I wholeheartedly support are raw milk, farmer's markets and organic foods.

So soon I will start writing about this type of content and sharing my views on the issues as I see them.

Stay tuned.....

My opinion on the Palm Pre

2009-06-07T22:30:00.001-04:00

On Saturday, June 6th, Palm and Sprint released the Palm Pre. I’ve been waiting for this phone ever since it was announced at CES in January so I was pretty anxious to finally get my hands on it. So in this post I just want to give my thoughts about the Pre so far.

First off, I’ve been using the Palm Treo 755p for the last 2 years. Before that I used the Treo 700. So I’m somewhat familiar with Palm and was hoping the Pre would be able to live up to the hype.

Bottom line up front, this phone is awesome. Granted, it has its flaws but for version 1 of a phone (and a new OS to boot) it is amazing. Ok, now for a few things that I would like to see added or changed (I’ve been keeping a list as a memo on my phone):

1. The first thing I had was that the keys were not backlit because during the day you can’t tell at all. So I was very pleasantly surprised tonight when I opened my phone in the dark and saw that they are indeed backlit. So my first issue was fixed already :)

2. The only sounds that are able to be changed by the user are the ringtones. You cannot change any of the system sounds to include notifications, alarms and text messaging alerts. This is kind of a big deal to me because the text msg alert is just a brief beep and I usually end up missing it unless it’s relatively quiet where I’m at. So I would like to be able to change that sound to something more likely to catch my attention.

3. Along the same lines, the speaker is rather quiet. So ring tones, alerts, etc… are hard to hear.

4. It would be nice to have some kind of reminder for missed calls/messages. Granted there is a notification at the bottom but it doesn’t make any noise or vibrate or anything. So unless you turn on the screen you won’t see it. Perhaps this will be addressed by third party software because Butler accomplished this on the Palm OS.

5. When you are typing a text message there is no counter to keep track of how many characters you are typing. This is a big deal since text messages only allow 160 characters and Twitter only allows 140. So whenever I send a message to Twitter via text I never know if I went over the character limit.

6. Battery life leaves something to be desired. Today my battery only lasted maybe 7 hours with only moderate use. But I was roaming for about 2 hours so maybe this affected things. I’m hoping for a third party extended battery soon. Or maybe a firmware update will address this. And remember, even the iPhone had horrible battery life when it was first released.

7. The last thing on my list has also been fixed already. When I was roaming today I could not connect to any data network. So I thought maybe the Pre couldn’t roam for data. This would be a huge issue because the Pre loses a heck of a lot of functionality if it can’t connect to a network. But in the phone preferences there is a place to enable data roaming (it is disabled by default apparently).

I also wanted to cover a few apps. The app store is very nice and quite functional. I think once it is populated with more apps it will be top of the line. I think it’s just as nice if not nicer than the app store for the iPhone/iPod Touch. I only have a few apps so far but this is what I think of them:

Where – I think this app has potential but I couldn’t get it to work right. Today when I was in Charleston, SC it could never figure out where I was. It would just continue to search for my location. I tried to enter my location manually but I couldn’t get it to stop searching. So I just closed it and gave up.

Google Maps – Wow. This app is almost perfect. Very nice the way it finds me wherever I am and puts a little blue dot on my location. Easy to update my location and find things near me. I can search for something in the box at the top of the screen and Google Maps will find it and show me where it is and how to get there. My only issue was that sometimes if I left the app open and was doing other things, when I came back to the app it didn’t seem to want to update my location. But if I closed it and opened it back up it worked fine.

Pandora – Works just like you would expect. Almost identical to the web experience and other great app.

Tweed – This is a Twitter app. It does the job but it’s not as nice as Twitteriffic for the iPhone. But it is very useable until something else comes along.

Sprint Navigation – Works just like your portable GPS for your car. I’ve never used it before but it looks great on the Pre. Gives turn by turn directions via voice and even allows you to call in your destination so you don’t have to enter it by hand if you’re driving.

So that’s my opinion on the Pre so far. All the other nitty gritty info can be found on a plethora of other blogs so if you’re interested search through those (I highly recommend www.precentral.net). Even though I’ve only listed the bad things and the things I’d like to see changed, the list of good things greatly outweighs the bad. And 99% of the issues I have can be fixed with a firmware upgrade and/or third party program. So I fully expect this phone will only get better over time. I think Palm hit a home run with this one. Great job!

Twitter

2009-05-07T23:38:00.002-04:00

Just wanted to mention that you can find me on Twitter as AllenKP. I am pretty late to the Twitter bandwagon but I have resisted for awhile because I never saw the reason for it. When my kids asked what it was I told them it was kind of like a website with just Facebook updates :) But really, I can see the value to certain people. If used properly it can give very interesting insights.

Anyway, can't promise how interesting my updates will be but if you want to follow me now you can. Oh, and for now anyway you can't find me by searching for me (a glitch in the system that has been going on for the past 8 weeks apparently). So to follow me just go to my profile page (www.twitter.com/AllenKP) and then click the follow button.

DONE!!

2009-05-02T00:09:00.003-04:00

Well it's been awhile since I've updated my blog but I just thought it would be appropriate to let everyone know that I took my last exam today and I am officially done with grad school. We have the hooding ceremony on Thursday, May 7th and then everything is done. Then I'll spend the next 60 days or so on leave while we move to Illinois and then I go to Alabama for an Army school for a few months.

So from now on I'll use this blog to talk about whatever happens to be on my mind :)

Pictures!

2008-03-28T03:42:00.003-04:00

Sorry I haven't updated this in awhile but things have been hectic around here lately. Seems like I've been gone every weekend and then busy with school during the week. But I just wanted to let everyone know that even if I don't update the blog like I want, I still upload pictures from wherever I go. For instance if you click on the link on the right, you will see pictures from my trip to Spain, Gibraltar, and Budapest, Hungary (and a few from Germany in that set as well). And I just finished uploading a set of pictures from southern Morocco which I think are amazing. We had a long weekend so Kara and I took a train to Marrakesh, then a bus down to Agadir (on the coast) and back up through the Atlas mountains to Imlil. If nothing else, check out the pictures from Imlil. This is a town in the Atlas Mountains of Morocco at about 6000 feet (1800 meters). It seemed really strange to be in Morocco and surrounded by snow capped mountains.

Anyway, enjoy the pictures and I'll have more in a few days because I'm going to the Sahara desert to see the dunes later today and I'll be there all weekend.

Exploring the Friouato Caves

2008-02-16T17:59:00.020-05:00

Today (Saturday, Feb 16th) was a fun, muddy, tiring day. Five of us (myself, Hannah, Dustin, Jeff and Kyle) decided to go to Taza and check out the Friouato Caves (info about the caves can be found here).

We began the day at 8:00am by hiring a grand taxi. Now I had never taken a grand taxi before but I've heard about them and I knew they were more expensive and could hold up to six people. So I figured this would be some kind of SUV or van or something. Needless to say, I was surprised when a late 70's model Mercedes sedan pulled up to take us to Taza. In the U.S., we would say this car would hold five people. But in Morocco it holds seven. Two passengers share the front seat and four cram into the back. Luckily there were only five of us so Kyle and Jeff got cozy in the front while Hannah, Dustin and I were in the back. Here is a picture of the car and our driver, who, by the way, was very nice and I'd highly recommend him to anyone that needs a grand taxi. :)

The trip to Taza was fairly uneventful but it was amusing the way our driver didn't really know how to get to the caves. Once we got to Taza we would drive for a few blocks then pull up beside someone and ask for directions. Then we would drive a few more blocks and repeat the process all over again. We did this probably eight times until we finally got out of town.

Once outside of Taza the scenery was quite nice. Here are a couple of pictures of the scenery along the way and then a group photo of all us.

One thing I'd like to point out for future reference is that Hannah is wearing a nice white wool coat and as usual, carrying her white purse.

We arrived at the cave and paid 200 dirham (roughly $25) for a guide to show us through the caves. We walked through a small opening in the side of the mountain and then walked down 550 stairs to the bottom.

It was a pretty quick trip down and the bottom opened up into a rather large cavern. Here is the view from the bottom looking up.

And that is where the easy stuff pretty much ended. So far it had been a rather nice walk in the park going down stairs with railings and just enjoying the incredible view. Then the guide disappeared down a tiny hole in the ground expecting us to follow. And of course, being the uninitiated spelunkers that we were about to become, we blindly followed him into the hole. And speaking of blindly....you might notice in some of the pictures that there are power cables and lights on the walls for part of the way. However, these lights were never turned on so the only lights we had were the flashlights we brought with us. And Tina, in case you're reading this, my $50 flashlight was worth every penny today (Tina is my wife by the way, the same wife who thought I had lost my mind for spending $50 on a crazy flashlight...but I do like my gadgets).

The view from inside the cave was spectacular. Many of the walls were wet with calcite deposits dripping and forming on the sides of the walls.

In the beginning it was very nice. Lots of wide open caverns, fairly dry on the ground and easy walking. The stalactites were many and varied. Not only the kind you see on TV but many odd shaped ones as well. Quite a few of the formations actually looked more like a blanket of wavy rock hanging from the ceiling.

But then the easy part was over. Instead of smooth dry surfaces to walk on, we got smooth, wet, muddy rock. And we were literally climbing up and down slopes to continue on the trail. In quite a few places a simple misstep would have you falling 10 or 15 feet straight down onto nice hard rock. And one spot was a 50 foot drop-off (16 meters according to our guide) but that had a rail in front of it to keep people from falling in. Here is a picture of Kyle climbing down a slope being helped by our guide.

But this part of the trail was no joke. It was very steep, very muddy and very slippery. The climb up was equally hard and if you were to slip it would be a pretty bad trip down.

Now we were at the end of the tour and it was time to turn around and head back. I don't have quite as many pictures from the return trip because a) it looked almost exactly like it did going out, only backwards, and b) I was very muddy and didn't want to get my camera any dirtier than it already was. And speaking of muddy, here is Hannah at the half-way point. By this time we were all so muddy it didn't really matter anymore. It's a little hard to see but the bottom half of her coat was no longer white :)

Nothing terribly exciting happened on the way back except I kept hitting my head on the low-hanging ceilings (and was bleeding from the forehead by this time), Kyle took a wrong step and stepped into a big pool of water and I nearly fell into one of those 10 foot crevices. Luckily when I reached out into the darkness to keep myself from falling there was a rock there that I was able to grab onto.

And no trip to the caves would be complete without bats. These were the only ones we saw; thankfully they didn't wake up and bite us and turn us into vampires or anything.

Then finally, three hours after we started, we were back out into the large cavern. It was then that it dawned on us that those same 550 stairs that we so easy to go down also went up. Here are a few pictures of the stairs. Two of them are pretty much the same shot, only one is zoomed in but I couldn't decide which one I liked better so I am including both. And yes, I know they look remarkably like the same stairs I posted at the beginning of the blog but after hiking and climbing for three hours they looked much more daunting :)

Once out of the caves were were filthy and muddy but the taxi driver just laughed and said no problem as we climbed back in the taxi. We stopped part way down the mountain to take one more set of pictures. This is a view of the city of Taza and then another group photo, this one being the "after" picture.

And what better way to end this story than by showing a picture of the part of us that got the dirtiest :)

If you want to see the rest of the pictures from this trip, and ones that are larger in size, click on the link to the right to go to my photo albums.

Pancakes and lemon.....who knew?!

2008-02-05T15:06:00.000-05:00

First of all, happy pancake day! Now a little background.

Yesterday I was pouring over my studies like I always do (and I use the word "always" very loosely here) when out of the blue Hannah messaged me on Skype (ok, yes we live in the same building but we are lazy and talk on Skype) and exclaimed, "OMG, it's pancake day tomorrow!!!". I wasn't terribly alarmed because I know she gets excited over the strangest things sometimes but curiosity got the best of me so I had to find out what she was talking about. So I asked her what in the world she was talking about. She said, "you know, Shrove Tuesday!". Hmmm....this wasn't helping any and by now I was convinced she had probably drank too much tea and it had gone to her head. But she persisted with this line of conversation so I had to check with my friend Google to figure this one out.

Well imagine my surprise when I found out there really is such a holiday (in case you're curious, click here). Apparently in the U.K. they celebrate the day before lent by eating pancakes. That doesn't sound too bad; I'm always up for some good pancakes. The only problem was it is hard to find good maple syrup in Morocco so I didn't have anything to put on them. After explaining this dilemma to Hannah she told me in that rather matter-of-factly tone of voice that of course you put lemon and sugar on the pancake, not syrup. I was a little appalled because nobody puts lemon on a perfectly good pancake. That sounds absolutely disgusting (or minging, if I may use British slang).

But now back to today. We looked up the recipe, which is fairly simple and planned our pancake day party to start at 6pm sharp. Unfortunately only two other people wanted in on the festivities but that just meant there were more for us. We mixed up the flour, eggs, salt and milk then started cooking. And here are some pictures of Hannah flipping the pancake without using the spatula:

As you can see from the pictures, these weren't big fluffy pancakes like I'm used to, these were very thin pancakes, more like crepes. But now came the moment of truth. We put the pancakes on a plate, then squeezed the juice out of the lemon onto the pancake and followed that with sugar. I rolled mine up and doubtfully took my first bite. Pardieu! This was one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted! I would never have thought of adding lemon juice and sugar to a pancake but now I don't know if I'll be able to eat it any other way.

I'm becoming more and more convinced that the British kept all their good secrets and holidays from us in retaliation for leaving but this is one I'll take back with great joy. So thanks Hannah, future generations of the Allen family will be thanking you for pancake day....and lemons!

A devastating revelation

2008-02-03T13:42:00.000-05:00

Friday was a tragic day for me. If you recall from my previous post, I enjoy going to the market and talking to the chicken guy because he seems to understand my Arabic and by some miraculous feat of language I'm able to converse with him. Plus he sells good chicken and it's a lot cheaper than beef.

On Friday Hannah and I went to the market to get some chicken and a few other things. Hannah, whose Arabic is slightly better than mine (and by slightly I mean light years) ordered first. But the chicken guy didn't use the same meat as when I order. So being the nice guy that I am, and not wanting Hannah to get the wrong stuff, I told her that she'd better ask and make sure she is getting the good chicken. They talk for a minute, then Hannah turns to me and politely (she's British so she knows no other way) tells me that in fact, the other "chicken" is actually turkey. I knew that she must be mistaken but remembering a lesson I learned many years ago (you know, the one that says women are never wrong), I asked her to check again because surely it was chicken I've been eating for the past month. So she asks him again, this time in French. Then she looks at me with that sly grin on her face and informs me that indeed, it is turkey that I've been eating.

I wasn't sure how to take the news because all this time I've been calling him the chicken guy. Now what was I going to do? It just didn't seem right to call him the turkey guy. So after ordering my "chicken" (it's still hard to think of it as turkey) I asked him one more question....

The chicken guy is now known as Mohammad.

Learning Arabic

2008-01-31T18:39:00.000-05:00

It's a rather interesting experience to try and learn Arabic in Morocco. To understand why, you must first understand that all Arabic is not the same. There is Media Arabic (called Modern Standard Arabic or Fus-Ha), there is classic Arabic for religious and literary stuff and then there are numerous dialects, called Dareeja. Confused? Good, because so am I.

Essentially I am here learning a language that most people can read, most can understand, but nobody speaks. The closest analogy I can think of is if you imagined someone coming up to you in the US and speaking in Biblical or Shakespearian English. So I'm learning FusHa but everyone here speaks Dareeja and/or French. And while some words are similar, many are not. For example, the word 'crazy' is "maazshnoon" in FusHa but "aHmak" in Dareeja.

But luckily the people here are very nice and most are willing to help you learn new words and can usually understand what I'm saying in FusHa. After three weeks I've learned the alphabet but my vocabulary is still very limited. So it's kind of fun because it's usually just like a big game of charades for me over here. Except for one place. There is a market nearby with a lot of fruit/vegetable and meat vendors where you can get pretty much everything you need. But my favorite is the chicken guy. He is one of the nicest people I've met over here and for some reason I have mad Arabic skills when I'm at his shop. It started one day when I was waiting in line and there was a young child in front of me with his mother. I had just learned a new phrase a couple days ago but had yet found a place to use it. The phrase is "Tbaark Allah" which basically just means may God protect you/him/her and is usually used for precious things and babies. So I practiced it a few times in my head then turned to the mother and said "Tbaark Allah" and you would have thought I had recited half the Koran. I guess they weren't used to seeing bald headed westerners speaking Arabic. Unfortunately this was pretty much all I knew how to say. But between that and my hello and thank you (which I had also just practiced) they thought I could speak Arabic very well. haha....if only they knew. But it paid off because every time I go there he smiles and says some things in Arabic to which I usually reply with whatever I can think of off the top of my head.

So my goal is that by the time I leave here I'd like to be able to say something other than hello and nisf kilo dajezj (1/2 kilo of chicken). In sha Allah.

Moroccan Honey

2008-01-26T09:28:00.000-05:00

Not much going on today but it is a beautiful day so we thought we would set out for the Medina in search of honey. I read an article in the New York Times a while ago about a honey dealer that was supposed to be quite good (you can read the article here).

And just for the record, in case anyone reads this and decides to try and find it, the directions in the NYT article were a little off. But it is still very easy to find. Just take a taxi to Bab Boujlod and enter from there. Once you enter the Medina, take the first left then your first right and you will be on Talaa Kbira. You will go past some rather interesting shops on this street. The first section has a lot of butchers where you can get meat and see some interesting things. For instance, we passed by one shop that had a camel head hanging right out front.

Keep going down Talaa Kbira until you get to Ain Zliten square on your left. Then 50 to 100 meters past that on your left will be an archway that leads to Fondouk Kaat Smen and the first honey dealer you come to is the one mentioned in the article.

Once there he let us sample some of the varieties of honey he had available. In the back room there were blue vats of honey that we were able to try. We tried lavender, orange, rosemary, fig and eucalyptus honey but my favorite was lavender.

Then getting the honey was fairly simple, but perhaps a bit unsanitary. The shop owner just took a pan, scooped it out of the vat, wiped the pan off with his hand, then poured it into a container for weighing.

As you can see, Kara was pretty happy about getting her honey :)

And that's about it. It was very easy to find and was a pretty quick trip. Oh, and the honey is delicious too.

Big Brother Maroc

2008-01-07T15:27:00.000-05:00

I must admit that I totally feel like I'm on Big Brother living here. I live in a building with 11 other students. There are 6 males and 6 females. We all share the same kitchen and a common living area. The only thing we are missing is the token gay guy and a hot tub in the back. Right now we are all a big happy family where everyone gets along and helps each other out. For instance tonight I was waiting for Nolen to finish washing his dishes so I could wash mine but he went ahead and washed mine for me. Then Kara steamed some artichoke and was eating that while Kyle and I were helping her out (sort of....she really likes her artichoke so we didn't get too much...lol). So this is just like the first few days of any season of Big Brother. I'm just waiting to see what happens over the next couple of months. But since we don't get to vote anyone out of the house and we actually get to leave and go do things I think it will turn out just fine. It's really a lot of fun but almost uncanny....I keep looking around for the CBS cameras everywhere.

Morocco

2008-01-06T18:13:00.000-05:00

Well, I made it to Morocco and so far it has been fairly interesting and fun. I posted a link on the right side of this blog where I will post all my pictures over the next 7 months. I really need to get to bed since I have class in the morning but I wanted to share a couple of random thoughts about my first 2 days in country.

1. It is a lot colder here than I thought it would be. I have no idea what the temperature is outside but according the various web sites it gets down to the lower 40's to upper 30's at night and up into the 60's during the day. Granted that doesn't sound cold but the buildings over here aren't insulated and don't have heaters. Now ALIF (the Arabic Language Institute in Fez) does have heaters in the rooms where I am staying but they are small radiators and are just kind of warm, not hot. And they don't do much to warm up the rooms. So at night it gets pretty chilly in here.

2. Shopping carts. OMG, how are you supposed to steer these things? We went to a supermarket today to pick up some food and other things so we got a cart. But these carts are more like hovercrafts because all 4 wheels turn independently of each other. So you can go straight, sideways, diagonal, whatever you want (or don't want in our case). Then to top that off the floors were slick so steering was next to impossible after the cart got heavier. It was quite comical and frustrating at the same time.

3. Moroccans definitely have a sweet tooth. When you order coffee it's not quite like we have in the States. I think it is just espresso and then they add steamed milk to your cup after they bring it to your table. But then they also give you a ton of sugar to put into it. When I was on the train there was a guy who ordered a coffee and it couldn't have been more than 4oz of coffee but he added this giant packet a sugar and then drank it. Then you can order this mint tea which is apparently quite popular here. I must admit that it is quite good though. It comes in a scalding hot teapot with crushed mint in the pot. You open this thing up and that's all you can see. But it's very sweet and very good.

4. I haven't met very many Moroccans yet but the people here in the dorms (called the Villa) are all very nice. There are only maybe 10 of us here but I think it will be a fun 6 or 7 months with this group.

That's all for now. Hopefully my next post will be more organized and coherent after I get some sleep :)

Books!

2007-12-08T23:59:00.000-05:00

One thing that business school has done for me is it has rekindled my love for books. I used to read a lot but I guess as I got older I got busy with life, family and work so reading got pushed back to something that I rarely did. But now that I am as busy as I've ever been I am reading a lot more.

I also discovered some non-traditional ways to read as well. First, since I spend about two hours every day in my car driving to school and back, I use that time to listen to books from Audible. If you spend a lot of time in your car I highly recommend you check them out. For about $15 I get one book per month.

The second thing I recently discovered is Amazon's Kindle. In case you haven't heard of it, it is a new ebook reader and in my opinion is the best thing since sliced bread. I love being able to read the Wall Street Journal while laying on the couch and being able to read a book whenever and wherever I want. Feel free to ask me any questions about it but I'll tell you I think it is going to be a hit. It sold out within 5 hours of being released (luckily I placed my order within that time frame) and is currently on back order. But really, I can't recommend the Kindle enough. It is worth every penny!

So here is a list of books that I have read since July 2007, the books I'm reading now, and books I plan to read within the next couple of months (although that list is subject to change as books interest me). Two of the books were for class (The World is Flat and The Goal) but they were both excellent books so I'm including them here. The rest were just for fun.

Books I've read:

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman
Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt and Jeff Cox
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins
The Age of Turbulence by Alan Greenspan (this is a great book!)

Books I'm reading right now:

Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel

Books I plan on reading in the very near future: (with the exception of the first one which I have in hard copy, I have samples of these books on my Kindle)

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator by Edwin Lefevre
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court by Jeffrey Toobin
A Term at the Fed: An Insider's View by Laurence H. Meyer
When Genius Failed: The Rise and Fall of Long-Term Capital Management by Roger Lowenstein
In an Uncertain World: Tough Choices from Wall Street to Washington by Robert Rubin
The Secrets of Economic Indicators by Bernard Baumohl
The Accidental Investment Banker: Inside the Decade That Transformed Wall Street by Jonathan Knee
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith

A new look

2007-12-06T21:58:00.000-05:00

Well in less than a month I'll leave for Morocco with Nolen and David. David and I decided that we didn't want to tell anyone that we are military officers (for operational security reasons). David is going to grow his hair out but I've tried that once and I look terrible with long hair. So I've taken the other route and shaved my head and grew a goatee. It's certainly a different look for me but I like it. And one unexpected side effect is that my kid's friends think I look even more intimidating than before. Since I have two teenage girls at home that's not a bad thing :)

So true....

2007-11-29T13:51:00.000-05:00

Nothing I can say to add to this :) Click on the comic to view the full size (and readable) version.

A bad decision

2007-09-20T20:22:00.000-04:00

Tonight I did probably one of the stupidest, and certainly one of the more dangerous things I've done in a long time. I drove home. Lately I've been extremely busy with school and I have probably gotten maybe 8 hours of sleep in the past 48 hours. Last night I was up until about 1am working on a paper that was due today. Then I got up at 5am so I could get to school early enough to practice the presentation. Needless to say I was exhausted today. And we had a reception from 5-7pm so I knew it was going to be a long day.

The reception ended around 7:15 and I wasn't feeling too bad. But I should have known better. I live about an hour and 15 minutes away from school and that drive can get very monotonous, especially after dark. About 30 minutes into the drive I knew I was in trouble. I couldn't find anything on the radio worth listening too and none of my CD's sounded interesting either. At that point I should have called someone so I could carry on a conversation, pulled over to take a nap, I don't know, but I should have done something. But I'm a guy, and I don't like to ask for help; I like to think I can do it all on my own. But tonight that was just a dumb idea. I probably fell asleep at least 5 times while doing 80mph down the Interstate then 3 or 4 more times driving 60mph on the road that takes me into Aiken. Luckily it was only for a second or two and I woke up each time before I got too far off the side of the road.

I guess the moral of the story is that pride can be a dangerous thing. I should have never attempted that ride home, at least not without a plan in case I got tired. But instead of admitting that I needed help and couldn't do it on my own I put my life at risk and anyone else that might have been around me had I gone off the road. I have three months of school left before I go to Morocco and 2 1/2 hours in my car every day. The saddest part is that I can't promise I won't do this again but hopefully the next time I am this tired I will remember this night and make a better decision.

Another day in the life....

2007-09-14T21:44:00.001-04:00

First of all, as a precursor to this story, understand that grad school is probably the most time consuming thing I have done to date. I am busier now than I was as a company commander in the Army. I don't know if it's just because I've been out of school for awhile or what but I have to work very hard to stay on top of my schoolwork and not get behind. Essentially I have no life right now outside of school, I come home from school and study until it's time for bed. But luckily there are a few people at school that keep me on track and help me to understand things (they know who they are I think....lol).

So anyway, tonight Tina and I got into a little argument because I am not going to Sara's soccer game this Sunday in Atlanta (I have two group project meetings on Sunday and an exam on Tuesday) and because I spend every night studying. School is definitely taking its toll on our family life and can be hard to deal with at times but as always, we will survive :) Apparently Sara and Morgan heard us arguing and naturally didn't like it but for some reason Sara was more upset than we were. I think she wanted to get out of the house so she asked (told) us to take her to the football game. But it was already 9pm and supposed to rain so we told her no.

So what ensued was a "conversation" we had after we told her she couldn't go to the game. She didn't want me filming her while she was mad so she was trying to get my phone from me. Sorry for the blurriness but I was trying to hold my phone at arms length so she couldn't get it. She eventually cheered up....but life is rough when you're 15.

It's good to be the king

2007-08-20T17:20:00.000-04:00

Today we started a new class called International Management which focuses on the management of the multinational corporation. Since this was the first day we didn't cover a whole lot in class but instead spent some time covering course objectives and introducing ourselves and our backgrounds to show the wide diversity of people and experiences we have in the class.

Then we had an afternoon session which was rather interesting. We met at 1:30 to undertake a cultural simulation. We divided the class into two groups, the Alpha's and the Beta's. The object of this simulation was for each group to have a completely different "culture" and then observe how we interact and see if we could figure out the other culture (however, we didn't know this until the end). I'll try not to give away too many details of the game because I don't want to ruin it for future classes.

I was in the Alpha group and our culture was a very social or relational culture. We liked to touch each other (which wasn't always necessarily as fun as it sounds) and valued the relationships we forged more than the results of the "game" we played. One rather interesting twist was that the Alpha's have a patriarch. This person was chosen at the beginning and was usually the oldest male in the group. So that just happened to be me. My job was to protect and oversee the group, and especially the women of our group. As you can see, this part of the job wasn't so bad :)

Then we played a game. We each had three cards (although one of them was a bad card) and we would shuffle them then reveal them. To be honest, I don't really know how the rule worked about who "won" the chips because as the patriarch, I automatically won every time. Again, not such a bad deal. So all we did was hang out with each other and play this game.

We sent small delegations to the Beta group so we could try and understand what they were all about. When our people came back we would all gather around and listen to them tell what they learned (or didn't learn).

And I must admit we really made the most of this game. Amit even came up with an Alpha song and Nolen performed the Alpha dance for the group.

In the end it was a lot of fun and I think we pretty much figured out the Beta group. We saved our best analytical minds for last as evidenced by this picture of Ryan (AKA Blur) briefing the group while John (who was our Alpha bouncer) stood guard.

Until next time....

Financial Accounting final tomorrow!

2007-08-16T21:13:00.001-04:00

Thank goodness the accounting final is tomorrow! That has been one of the harder classes for me this summer because I have absolutely no accounting background at all. I know how to balance my checkbook (although knowledge is different from actually doing it sometimes) but that's about it.

But conceptually it was a very interesting class. I liked learning how to read financial statements and understanding the plethora of information a company reveals in those statements. For instance, one thing that I still find intriguing is Coca Cola. Two months ago if you had asked me what their primary business was, I would say that obviously it is producing coke products. But in actuality they essentially a syrup producer. They produce the syrup but the bottling companies are the ones that mix and distribute the final product. For some reason I found that kind of information fascinating.

Another thing I got out of this class is the relativity of money. We would read statements and see companies throwing around millions or billions of dollars. Companies would make multi-million dollar decisions and refer to them matter-of-factly. Then on the other hand, some weeks I struggle to come up with the $35 it takes to fill up my gas tank every 3 days (it is 55 miles, one-way, to school so I spend a lot on gas). It's all a matter of perspective I guess.

So I like the ideas and concepts we learned in this class. But the t-accounts still mess me up, still not sure I am doing the journal entries correctly, and I can live without doing things like determining the amount at which investments are reported on the balance sheet and the amount of investment income recognized by the investor on the income statement.

Alright, break time is over....back to studying because I have the final, which is 50% of our grade, in 23.5 hours :)

Oh, and by the way, in case anyone was wondering it is still hot as heck out here. Today at 3:00 the temperature in Aiken was 105 degrees with a heat index of 117. But luckily it's supposed to cool off tomorrow and only get up to 102 :)

Heat!

2007-08-10T22:07:00.000-04:00

Ok, maybe my sarcasm didn't come across very well in my last post because obviously someone didn't get that I was actually tired of this heat and was hoping it would cool off! According to the news tonight we tied the all time high at 108 degrees and at 3:30 the heat index was 122 degrees! It was up to 108.9 here at the house; that is just too dang hot.

Why I love South Carolina so much

2007-08-09T21:29:00.001-04:00

You really gotta love this place. It has been over 100 degrees every day this week. Here it is 9:30 at night, the temperature is 93 degrees with a dewpoint of 78 degrees (putting the heat index somewhere around 100).

Here is a picture of the thermometer in my car at about 3:00 this afternoon driving home from Columbia.

Then another of the thermometer at my house (which is in the shade) at 4:30. The temp is in the upper left corner and the dewpoint is in the upper right corner.

If only it could be just a little bit hotter!

Global Entrepreneurship

2007-08-08T22:13:00.000-04:00

Well first of all, I haven't written lately not because things have been slow but rather because it has been non-stop for the past couple of weeks. Seems like every week we either have a test, a paper or some project that is due. For example we have a 3-5 page paper that is due this Friday, two projects that are due next Wednesday then our final exam in Financial Accounting next Friday (which nobody is looking forward to). Then on top of that for me, the foreign exchange student that we are hosting is flying in Friday morning so I'm sure that will keep me busy this weekend.

So yesterday we starting an interesting class called Global Entrepreneurship. It is a little bit different so far but quite fun. We don't have an exam in the class but rather we have to come up with a business plan and the winning plan will get $500. And of course we are encouraged to actually implement our plan which makes it all that much more interesting. And on the first day of class our instructor divided us into groups of four and gave each group a lottery ticket. The drawing is tonight and if we win we'll have to split it a few different ways so we'd "only" end up with around $10 million before taxes. I think I could live with that :)

Today in class we started out by playing a game. Our instructor took out some money and placed one denomination on each tier of tables. It went from $5 at the lowest tier, then $10, $20, $50 and $100 at the top. He then placed a coffee can on a table at the front of the room. Three teams were chosen (from the teams we we placed in yesterday) and each team member was given a quarter. The object of the game was then that each team member would stand at the tier which held the amount of money he/she wanted to win. If they could throw the quarter in the coffee can from that level they could keep the money (or maybe had to split it with their team, I'm not sure on that one). So all you had to do was determine how much money you wanted and weigh that against how good you thought you were at beer pong (to put it in terms everyone can understand....lol).

It was actually pretty fun. I didn't get pictures of everyone but here are a few. Jason and Somil tried for $50 and $20 respectively but both missed.

Stephanie tried from the $10 level but even with standing on the table she still missed :)

But the best one was probably John. Standing at somewhere around 6'10 tall he simply stood at the lowest tier, reached over and dropped his quarter in the can.

In the end I think somewhere around $30-40 was won; looking forward to seeing what happens next time. But for now, back to Financial Accounting and Decision Analysis :(

Power napping

2007-07-25T08:38:00.000-04:00

I am a huge advocate of the 20-30 minute power nap. However I think the timing of it is important too. I was studying accounting last and decided I needed a nap. So I took a 30 minute nap at about 7pm. Good idea? Not so much. I was very refreshed but the problem was I was still wide awake at 1am last night when I finally forced myself to go to bed. So I'm pretty tired this morning and not doing a very good job of concentrating (as evidenced by the fact I'm typing this instead of paying attention in DA....). Oh well :) Here is a great page about naps:

http://www.mensjournal.com/healthFitness/0601/napping_power.html

How Long Is A Good Nap?
THE NANO-NAP: 10 to 20 seconds Sleep studies haven't yet concluded whether there are benefits to these brief intervals, like when you nod off on someone's shoulder on the train.
THE MICRO-NAP: two to five minutes Shown to be surprisingly effective at shedding sleepiness.
THE MINI-NAP: five to 20 minutes Increases alertness, stamina, motor learning, and motor performance.
THE ORIGINAL POWER NAP: 20 minutesIncludes the benefits of the micro and the mini, but additionally improves muscle memory and clears the brain of useless built-up information, which helps with long-term memory (remembering facts, events, and names).
THE LAZY MAN'S NAP: 50 to 90 minutesIncludes slow-wave plus REM sleep; good for improving perceptual processing; also when the system is flooded with human growth hormone, great for repairing bones and muscles.

Time Management (or lack thereof)

2007-07-24T17:33:00.001-04:00

Ok, I think I've determined that my time management skills are severely lacking. Or maybe it's just my prioritization (according to my spell checker I made that word up....cool) skills.

Sometimes this program gets a little overwhelming and frustrating and I don't know where to even start studying. The Financial Accounting class is probably the worst one for me because it is so fast paced that you just can't afford to slow down. I need one of those golden watch things that stop time so I can stop and catch my breath! We had our first quiz today in accounting and I think I did okay (my definition of okay being that I know I got at least a 30% on the quiz....lol) but there came a point in my studying that I just had to stop studying for the quiz and read the next chapter (which I didn't complete) so I wouldn't be too far behind.

And now I'm studying for the Globalization quiz on Friday and trying to figure out how to study for the Decision Analysis class. And that reminds me, I think one of the things that drives me crazy in this program is that I would really like to have clear cut learning objectives, assignments and deadlines. I like everything to be laid out in front of me so I can just check them off as I go. But I don't feel like that is happening so I get frustrated and sometimes end up doing nothing because of it (not a recommended technique by the way).

My game plan is to somehow incorporate some extra reading. I would like to read and implement the ideas in David Allen's "Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity". I have started that book a couple of times but never gotten past the first chapter because something else always comes up. But I have read very good reviews about this book and at this point I'm willing to try just about anything. On a similar note, if anyone has any recommendations for books on effective study habits please let me know. I've got to find a better method because the one I'm using right now isn't cutting it.

MBA commercial

2007-07-18T16:23:00.000-04:00

In case you haven't seen it, this is the Fed-Ex commercial Jane was talking about in the GCMO class today.

No more going in the backyard!

2007-07-17T22:53:00.000-04:00

Just a quick update to let everyone know that the GAPP (Generally Accepted Peeing Principles) are now back in effect since we got our toilet and sink installed tonight (see my first post if you don't know what I'm talking about). Of course now it's almost 11pm and I still haven't started my Decision Analysis homework but sometimes ya just gotta set priorities....

Isn't this just a debate?

2007-07-17T12:38:00.000-04:00

Well today was interesting for a variety of reasons. First of all, as usual I was operating on about 5 hours of sleep which this time I attribute to the evilness of Yahoo. If you've ever read The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People you'll remember that Stephen Covey talks about how things are important, urgent, or some combination of the two. Well for me, email and IM's are both urgent and important and must be answered immediately. So even though I had every intention of reading as soon as I got home I ended up chatting with friends on Yahoo until about 9:30 when I finally just had to let Tina take over so I could get my reading done. I started reading the Shell Global Scenarios and when I woke up about 20 minutes later I was disappointed to find that I was still at the same place I was when I fell asleep.

Anyway, the most interesting class today was the Globalization class. That one is usually fun anyway because we just debate each other and I really like to debate alternate point of views. So I decided to take a stand and state that I felt morals were a universal concept and should apply everywhere and in every situation. And wow, did that get some people fired up! Now in my defense what I was trying to say was that I felt my morals applied universally in every situation that I am involved in, but it was much more fun to let people get riled up over the whole universal piece so I didn't bring that up. I'll admit that I tend to be an instigator sometimes but it's all in fun :)

The class debate was fun too as some people really get into it. Of course, as expected, Philippe opened with a speech that sounded as if he had prepared it days ago with the help of his researchers. Always hard to follow him because he does it quite well. But it wasn't long before people started to really fight for their point of view. Caroline was in the farmer group and at one point I thought she was about to come over the desk (ok, not really but she was pretty fired up!) I'm not sure if we settled anything but it was fun to see everyone argue their point of view.

Ok, enough for now...I need to go read tonight's homework because I'm going to attempt to install the toilet in the downstairs bathroom tonight so people don't have to go outside :)

Here we go!

2007-07-16T17:39:00.000-04:00

For my first real post I just wanted to write a little about my intent of this blog. I enjoy writing about my experiences and do write another blog but it is not really geared towards this audience and probably not appropriate for all ages so I'm starting this one to share my experiences as I work towards my IMBA. I doubt I will be able to match the comedic genius of Philippe and his postings on Facebook but I'll try.

So I hope everyone enjoys this and I'll do my best to keep it interesting and entertaining, but most of all, true to life.

A day in the life....

2007-07-16T17:37:00.000-04:00

I'm kind of cheating on this one because I wrote it yesterday and posted it to the Yahoo group we have for our class. But I'm going to copy and paste it here for my first post :)

For those of you that think there is too much going on and can't study let me just tell you about a day in the life of the Allen household...

I was peacefully going about studying accounting and printing off exercises when the doorbell rang. I open the door to see a woman I've never seen before and one of my 14 year old daughter's friends. The woman proceeds to tell me about how this girl apparently belongs here (at this point I have no idea what she is talking about) and how she had stayed out until 3am with her son. But the girl (Tricia is her name) won't tell the woman where she lives so she is bringing her back to our house since Tricia was supposed to be spending the night (a story Tricia had completely made up to avoid getting in trouble I assume). Too much drama for me so I pass this one off to my wife and daughter.

So now back to studying. Then maybe 30 minutes later I hear Tina (my wife) yelling at one of my son's friends because he had decided that since we are remodeling the downstairs bathroom and there is no toilet in there that he would just go outside and pee in the backyard. Now I know some of you are thinking, "and....?" but it's a generally accepted rule that once you are past the age of 2 and not drunk that it is not okay to pee in the yard. But whatever, Tina seems to have this one handled too. So this time I decide to go outside on the porch and sit in the rocking chair and read my accounting book since it is quieter out there.

I manage to finish chapter 3 (okay, so I'm a little behind....) when I hear arguing coming from the living room. I go inside to find out what is going on and find my 16 year old son (also named Karl) is arguing with Tina about why he can or can't pee outside. After all, he shouldn't have to go all the way upstairs, and if the dog can pee outside why can't he? Not one to get into arguments about things like this I simply told everyone in the room (which consisted of 6 teenagers) that peeing outside was unacceptable. They would use one of the upstairs bathrooms...end of conversation.

But when you are 16 everyone is against you and somehow the conversation conveyed that message to Karl. He got mad and said he was leaving. He starts looking for the keys to the van so he could leave while I stand there and tell him that he is not going anywhere. He is not listening and finds the keys so by this time I have to get
in his face. Not something I like to do (as a red usual and blue needs) but he left me with no choice. So we are standing there in the hallway face to face as I stare him down and essentially dare him to try and get past me. He finally throws the keys down, hits the refrigerator door, kicks some boxes and storms outside managing to
shatter the glass in the storm door in the process. So now I have a house in chaos, broken glass all over the foyer and porch, and my son walking off down the street.

Then maybe an hour later, still trying to deal with the previous situation, Tina and my youngest daughter are moving a china hutch but Morgan doesn't realize the top and bottom of the hutch are not attached. So she is pushing on the hutch and manages to push it off the base so all the vases and various pieces of china that I picked up
in Korea slide off and land on the floor in a whole bunch of tiny little pieces. Oh, and somehow a little while later Morgan managed to break off one of our kitchen cabinet doors.

And all that happened before 2:00pm. Now back to accounting....