from surfing to working

5:45 AM sunrise in maui

rode the red eye direct from honululu. thanks to tylenol pm i am well snoozed and actually making it through the day. first day of work tomorrow. yesterday i was living the dream, surfing (well, mostly falling off my surfboard) and enjoying mai tai's in kauai. tomorrow my life of leisure ends (haven't really had a job since may of 2003). i'm back to corporate monkey boy. at least i'm not a consultant anymore.

i've got almost 400 pics to share and lots of great travelogue stories. will try to post at least one story and series of pics a day.

in the meantime, here's a beautful shot of the sunrise that we took from atop the crater in maui. as you will see in the upcoming posts, i mostly shot scenery--you won't have to puke over 299 pics of me and katie hugging each other in front of palm trees.

15 days in paradise

honeymoon time. 15 days in paradise. we're doing 5 in maui and 10 in kaui (split between the north and south end of the island). thanks to everyone who made recommendations

will have lots of great pics when i get back. no, i'm not bringing my laptop to upload pics in real time. will actually unplug for 15 days. ok, if i happen to run across a connection in a cafe i might blog a bit. but don't hold your breath.

works starts the day after i get back.

maui at sunset

congrats, liz

congrats to one of my best friends from freshman year, who offically finished her graduate program on tuesday (she marched in the spring commencement).

liz adams (according to a google image search)

she got an MA in International Development Studies from george washington university's Elliott School of International Affairs.

i'm not sure what you do with a degree like that, but i think it has to do with providing clean water for the developing world and promoting democracy in shanty towns in latin america.

caboose

jackie's start-up

i'm headed to a phat shindig tonight at my friend jackie's. she recently started her own business on the side, called caboose. the plan is to develop a fashion and accessory business; she currently focuses on bags. she's selling them direct to consumers via the web site: http://www.cabooseinc.com/

i know less than the pope about women's fashion, much less bags, but caboose seems to be on to something good. they've been ringing up sales and creating a lot of customer satisfaction. caboose's selling point is a refreshing lack of pretension--fun, functional, unique bags for weekends, the gym, etc.

the market for this is huge. not surprisingly, there are a lot competitors out there (i did some market research for jackie); and good number of women who do it as a side business; some of them are pretty successful.

will be interesting to see how it develops. if caboose can secure some distribution in well-positioned boutiques, it could drive a lot of sales. the margins are nice (although i'm sure the boutiques will take a huge chunk of that away). tonight's party is designed to create some buzz and collect some feedback on what women look for in a bag...and what they'd like to see.

freshly minted

it's official (well, ok, it's been official for four weeks now): i'm a freshly minted holder of an mba from the big h.

ready to send a parcel anywhere

click here to see some pics of me and the fam on commencement day.

the h ceremony is pretty cool. my favorite part was where the mayor of cambridge (or watertown, i can't remember) marked the beginning of the exercise. he not only sounded, but looked EXACTLY like mayor quimby from the simpsons. it was uncanny.

"i now pronounce these commencement exercises open"

first set of wedding pics

thanks to marco, who has a great eye for detail and great skills with the camera (and probably with a bowstaff as well) i've got a great set of wedding pics.

i'm still organizing them (he got almost 150 pics!)...but here are pics from the ceremony: click here

as i get more pics in (as well as those from the professional photographer) i'll post them here.

daily zeitgeist

in yet another amazing innovative piece of code, flickr enables me to have my pics flash through on the sidebar of this page. i just posted the code. you'll see pics mostly from my flickr and some from kenny's (and anyone else i add as a flickr contact in the future.

slideshow

fuckface made the bomb-ass slide show for our rehearsal dinner.

click here to download the slideshow (it's 68MB, so you better have a fast connection).

you'll need quicktime 7 (get it here). note that it's in beta mode. it continually crashed my laptop, but that's mainly b/c my laptop is 3 yrs. old and has 512 MB of RAM. kenny's has 1GB of RAM and he had no problem.

alternatively, if you just want to see the pictures from the slideshow:
katie's family pics: click here
sahil's family pics: click here

i love flickr!

rate hike

the Fed raised interest rates for the 9th time this year. today is july 1st, the deadeline for consolidating student loans to lock in the current low rate. the rate for for staffod loans is taking an enormous leap for 2.77% to 4.7%. for the typical student who may have debt from undergrad and grad school, this has HUGE implications.

amazingly, schools have done a piss poor job of educating their students about how to manage their finances. i have close friends in several different graduate programs and their administrators/faculty told them zip. if a university is going to saddle their students with tens of thousands of dollars of debt, the least they can do is offer some support to manage that debt.

a few classmates of mine found this situation unbelievable as well. they started a company called Graduate Leverage that travels to campuses to infom students how to manage their debt, explain how interest rates and repayment terms work, and how to take advantage of loan consolidation. note: the company is for-profit and sells the students on consolidating with them.

check out their flash presentation by clicking here. it's really well done and succicnt.