savageinfidel

It's been a good couple of days: Yesterday, we just got a very good sized check from the IRS (we'd let some things slide when the Unknown Son was sick, and finally got things straightened out a few months ago. about a half-hour ago, I submitted a paper to a journal (not a top-tier one, but a decent one). It's been about 4 years since we started it. So now, it's off my desk. I just got an email that my new 43-inch flat-panel TV is available for pickup from Best Buy. All in all, a nice way to close out the year. Now I just have to get the TV set up in time to watch the Lesnar/Overeem MMA fight on Friday.

I was just commenting to the Unknown Wife how this semester was ending going so well compared to previous ones - my student managed investment fund presentation was done a day earlier than usual, my principles class was ahead of schedule, and my exams were at the beginning of exam period rather than near the end. I should have known - never say things like that. Even in jest. It angers Academia - the patron goddess of all professors (also known as "she who makes professors' work go pear-shaped at the worst possible time") So, what happens? I was cutting and pasting items from the grades spreadsheet for my principles class (it has four components, all on separate tabs of the worksheet). Somehow, I not only deleted the grades for all three exams, I copied the sheet to a file name that overwrote the backup (I always save the spreadsheet to a new file name after each update). After searching for over an hour, I finally found an email backup copy I'd made that had ev...

It's been a busy month or so since FMA , so I've been out of touch blog-wise, So her are a few snippets: We're now in the final throes of the semester (only two weeks left once the students get back from Thanksgiving), and they just had their second exam in my principles class). So, I had about 1000 pages of grading to do (I don't do scan-tron graded exams). But they did extremely well, so I feel good about it. Now all I have left to cover is CAPM and WACC , so I'm right on schedule. I've been experimenting with online web-conferencing software as an enhancement to my classes. We use a really clunky system called Sakai, which has limited web-conferencing capabilities (only 15 or so concurrent users). So I and another faculty who's also a techie have been looking into using a commercial vendor that will allow us to do deliver online instruction (and review sessions) for 50-100 students at a time. I figure that this (along with my pre -recorded video...

This post is further proof that child rearing rots your brain. I'm actually posting on a finance blog about toilet training my kid. Ah well, it give me a break from madly working on the paper I'm trying to finish for the FMA deadline - I already sent one, but this one is insurance. The Unknown Baby Boy (a.k.a. "Knucklehead") isn't toilet trained yet. He turns 2 in late March, so we're in no rush - if we make it to the warm weather, we'll probably use the time-honored approach of letting him run around outside with no pants on (yes, trees will be involved, and let the neighbors beware). It's a time-honored tradition for guys to make a game out of their "liquidity management" (hey - it's a finance blog, so I have to at least make a pun in that direction. Some people advocate using little targets for the little guy when training (he can;t write cursive yet, so that's out...). But Sega has taken it to a whole other level. They...

A Merry Christmas to all. It was off to visit my family last night. Now, it's off to the Unknown Wife's Family for the day. Luckily, they're each only about 80 miles away - gotta love living close enough that I can plan on biking to each this summer. Unknown Daughter liked her presents (some clothes, a rock polishing kit, some games for her DS, etc...). The Unknown Baby Boy (now upgraded to the Unknown Toddler) seemed to like his presents, but being 21 months old, he probably will get as much out of playing with the boxes and paper as he will out of the presents). As for Unknown Wife and I, we'll buy a big screen TV after the new year as our present. Yeah, that's right - "our" present. In any event, here's hoping you all enjoy the day, and be careful on the roads - it's a surprisingly dangerous day for driving.

I was listening to the radio on the way home from my office the other day and heard the story of Dax Locke, a 13 month-old child diagnosed with terminal Leukemia. Since it was unlikely he'd make it to Christmas (it was in early autumn), his family started putting up the tree and the lights. Then the neighbors followed suit, and then the whole town. For obvious reasons, it stuck with me. So, I tracked it down and found this YouTube video by Matthew West. Caution - it will most likely bring tears to your eyes, so be warned. And if you're looking for a place to contribute to, this would be a good one. So open your checkbooks and spread a little cheer.

It looks like Unknown University is all but deserted the day before Thanksgiving. I finally decided to quit swimming against the tide, and canceled classes for today (I usually only get about 30% attendance on the day before Thanksgiving in the best of times, so it's no big loss). Instead, I told the students that I'd put up a video with the lectures for the week on Risk and Return. Once it's done, I'll post a link here. I'm pretty happy with it - it runs the gamut of topics from the calculations for standard deviation, covariance, expected returns, etc... to Markowitz Portfolio Theory and the Capital Market Line to the CAPM and the Security Market Line. Although I don't use all this material in my intro class, I expect to use it in my investments class this spring. So, this should allow me to go a bit faster and cover more material there. Unfortunately, I have to wait another hour before the video software is done rendering the final version and I can ...

Just had a stress test (there was a minor irregularity in an EKG at my recent physical). I'd been putting in a lot of seat time (on the bike) at the gym up until about 3 weeks ago when some other problems had me stopping altogether, so I wasn't too worried. But my doc ordered the test just to be sure. Unfortunately, they shave parts of the chest to make sure that the leads for the EKG have good contacts. And I am, shall we say, a bit on the hirsute side (kind of like saying Ed "Too Tall" Jones is too tall). So I came home with a few patches missing. I took the clippers to the rest, and now I have nubs. TMI, for sure. But I'm all about the sharing. I now have more sympathy for my wife.