Archive for the ‘just wrong’ Category

It’s been a while eh?

Wednesday, September 30th, 2009

Well it has been a while since I had the time to write a post that is worthy of this wonderful non internet explorer 6.0 compatible website (yeah that’s right screw IE6 and earlier). But anyways since August 24th I have moved into my wonderful apartment in Brooklyn and have started business school.

I get the distinct impression that the Fordham MBA program was put together as an after thought. The entire MBA program is housed on the 6th floor of their Lincoln Center campus, the program is woefully understaffed (evidenced by the complete lack of response to like 60% of my emails), and the dean doesn’t even have an MBA. But that’s neither here nor there. The Professor’s seem to be very good and that’s really what matters.

So the other day I almost started to laugh out loud in class. We were having a discussion about US treasury bonds and how China and Japan combined had bought over 1 trillion dollars of them. But then my professor said something interesting. She said “the risk on US treasury bonds are considered to be zero. If the US is unable to pay they can just settle the debt with more treasury bonds.” I found this to be hilarious. Imagine if I could do that with the credit card companies or you could do that with anyone you borrowed money from. It would be a disaster! But that’s how things work for the US, according to my professor. I don’t know about you but I really hope that never happens. I doubt china would be happy with getting more treasury bonds to settle their debt. Oh well I guess I’ll just start learning Chinese now!

zài jiàn! (that’s goodbye!) peace out folks.

RJ is so embarrassed!

Monday, July 27th, 2009

So remember all my rantings about the iPhone and how the palm pre was better? Well I was somewhat correct and somewhat incorrect. The software on the Palm Pre is WAY better, I mean WAY better. But the iPhone hardware is way better than the Palm Pre. So long story short I now have an iPhone 3G S. Your probably thinking “but you hat iTunes so much! what do you hate more than iTunes?” Well I’ll tell you!

I was willing to deal with my single stuck pixel, I was willing to deal with the short battery life, and I even would have been able to deal with the lack of visual voice mail. But all of these combined with the iffy hardware forced me to go back to the iPhone. Ugh… I am so upset. But what could I do? I heard so many bad things about the hardware! One of my friend’s phones randomly restarts when it is shaken, and half of the people I know who have pre’s have stuck pixels! I just can’t deal with that kind if problematic hardware especially since it is so important that I stay connected.

But now… I am stuck with the iPhone. All I can do is one task at a time, it sucks. It is a pain in the ass. But at least this phone has a respectable battery life and is not extremely sluggish when opening apps and what not.

The Palm Pre was just not ready to be released. The software us complete enough and I would say better than the iPhone’s by leaps and bounds but the hardware I think is more important when you compare the iPhone and Pre. Because the iPhone is still very functional and has complete and good hardware.

So now I am done rationalizing! Peace out ya’ll!!

Oh and by the way this was written on an iPhone 3G S.

RJ on Our Education Costs

Wednesday, July 8th, 2009

As I get closer and closer to starting my MBA program I have started thinking more about costs and loans. I never really thought about this before but it seems that if the costs of attending and the other costs associated with school are increasing at an unsustainable rate.

Every year costs of tuition increase way more than inflation. For example, my girlfriend is going to the Unversity of Washington MBA program in that fall. Last year the direct costs paid to the University for out of state tuition was $32,000 this year the cost has jumped to $35,000. That is an 8.6% increase. Supposedly as a general rule of thumb inflation is about 2-3% per year. So the University of Washington increased the costs of it’s MBA program about 5.6-6.6-% over normal inflation. I would say that this is just because they probably got less funding from the state or some other excuse that deals with the current economical situation that we find ourselves in. But when I went to UCLA for undergrad tuition costs also always increased far more than normal inflation would account for.

It seems to me that if this keeps going for the next 30 years we will have much less educated people in the United States because it just wouldn’t be worth it. Even in state tuitions would become much more expensive and unmanageable especially when you add in the other costs associated with a four year undergraduate degree or even a two year masters degree program.

It is my opinion that education should be heavily subsidized by the government. You can call me socialist, communist, or whatever you want but I think it is retarded that Cuba can have one of the highest amount of doctors per capita in the world and here in the US education is slowly becoming an impossibility for the vast majority of citizens. And Cuba has accomplished this in spite of heavy sanctions from the United States and other countries.

We spend over 40% of our budget on “Defense,” why don’t we spend, lets say, 30% of our budget on defense and then use that extra 10% to put more people in school! I don’t know, that’s just my opinion. I would rather have my tax money put towards educating people than wars that seemingly accomplish nothing. But hey maybe other people feel differently about the current situation. If you think I am an idiot feel free to comment and be as mean as you want to be. I promise I will approve it. 

Anyways back to the real work. later dudes!