Archive for January 26th, 2009

by the pond

Originally uploaded by kaiyen

This is one of those photos where my own opinion was undermined by peer pressure. Of course I have a preference for my own photos – they are my “creations” and I take pride in them. But sometimes I take a photo of which I am really proud, yet no one notices and I begin to question myself.

This particular image got almost no notice on flickr, and no comments. It still hasn’t been viewed by many people (26 as of this writing) and I lost confidence in it.

Well, the fact is that I’m very proud of this photo. The shallow depth of field isolates the foreground reeds (are they reeds? no idea. the are long tall bits of “nature”). The colors reflected on the pond are really what I wanted, from the blues to the greens and the cloud. And the background, with the “land” appearing again, really works, I think.

This is another image taken while hiking – this time in Colera County Park. This pond is right at the entrance and is great for photos, in black and white, too.

Pfizer lines up biggest bank deal since March, tapping U.S. aid – MarketWatch

The article sums up the importance of this deal pretty well, but it’s nice to see that the paranoia about liquidity is a bit less intense for the right customer (though no, you and I are not the “right” customer just yet), and that TARP has had a positive impact for at least some lenders.  After all, when that paranoia is at the point where even the commercial paper market is compromised, how can one start thinking about lending for purposes of buying out other companies? 

The whole TARP thing is even more intriguing since many banks rejected for fear that customers would lose confidence in a bank if it accepted this “bailout” aid. 

At a glance

• Workload:  Light
• Teaching Style:  Guest lectures, some interactive sessions
• Interest in students: Unclear
• Relevance to outside world: High

Overall Professor Rating: 3-4 (hard to tell due to so many guest lecturers)

Overall Course Rating: 4 (but them guest lecturers are good!)

IDIS 612 is an interesting course.  It’s basically all guest lecturers, but they are good ones, as Professor Walsh knows a LOT of people in some seriously powerful positions.  I recommend the course to anyone wanting to take a qualitative and, in all honesty, easy course while taking another, much harder one in the same quarter.  You get a lot out of it, while not beating yourself up with two difficult courses.

The Review

This is the latest of my reviews on the professors I’ve had while an MBA student at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business. There are lots of sites out there that provide feedback and rates – ratemyprofessor is the most notable. The SantaClaraMBA Yahoo group also has a big database of comments and lots of additional information in its message archive. That database can be a bit hard to wade through, and the comments are short and often just link to other threads, which are themselves pretty short and superficial. Only here can I write as much as I want 

I review professors from a variety of perspectives.  First, I explain the context(s) under which I took the class.  Time of year, time of day, etc.  Then I talk about the quality of the class and the professor, and finally about the professor as a person.  After all, we are trying to learn about our interactions with people, so knowing that side of a teacher is critical, too.  So these would be interactions outside the classroom, etc.  I also just write whatever it is that I think is relevant or will be helpful to others.  That is my overall goal.

This review goes way back to Fall 2008, so just last quarter.  It’s a bit later than I had hoped to do, as is obviously the one for IDIS 696 Social Benefit Entrepreneurship, which I also took last quarter and will write in the next few days.

The facts

I took IDIS 612 in Fall 2008, Mondays and Wednesdays, 5:45-7 (this is the new first slot in Leavey’s 2-course-per-night schedule).  Professor Walsh is an adjunct with significant ties to Silicon Valley and a number of high-ranking executives, from start-up CEO’s to marketing presidents at large companies.  

Them’s the facts (slim as they are). Now read on for the review.
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PhotoPhlow is this great chatroom/flickr integration that makes use of the latter’s API to allow users to not just chat, but search through various parts of flickr – my photostream, all of flickr, a particular theme, etc – and share them with the group.

PhotoPhlow appeared with a big bang, with a group of users surging forward, then slowing a bit, then surging again as it gained popularity.

However, while usage is still high, it seems (there are always a decent number of people in at least the main room, and one of my groups is pretty busy), the developers have kind of let things just…sit there for some time now.  For instance, lots of people stay logged in all day long, even though they are not there.  Now, many don’t bother to put their status as “away” which is just rude unto itself, but even if one does that, the listing of people in a PhotoPhlow room doesn’t indicate that.  So you might think there are 5 people in a group room (5 is a pretty decent number), only 1 person might be there.  Not much chance for conversation.

Anyway.  Great idea, great implementation, but it’s just…”there” now.  Sitting there.  Doing nothing.  Kind of sad.  Stagnation sucks.

If you want an invite to use it, by the way, let me know and I’ll send one to you.  I think I have a few left.

Helpful travel tips – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com

Not exactly what you’d expect from the blog of a noble-prize winning* Economist but, hey, it’s useful.

*I’m sorry, I mean a winner of the Sveriges Riksbanks Prize in Economics Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.