Christmas in India

October 25, 2005 | Filed under Business School (General), Travel by Kurt

I’m taking the Wharton GIP to India over winter break this year. It’s meetings on business issues 8-5 (e.g., touring companies with alums or meeting politicians) and sightseeing on evenings and weekends. I’m excited about it; I’ll miss being in the states but it’s a very temporal opportunity to get a very nicely structured tour with local connections.

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Gadget update

October 21, 2005 | Filed under Gadgets & Technology by Kurt

Newish stuff that I can recommend from experience:

  • Nokia 6820. A smallish phone that syncs with MS Outlook and offers a flip-out qwerty keyboard for note taking/SMS/calendar entries. Doesn’t offer the full keyboard and web browsing of a Blackberry or Treo but is much cheaper and smaller (I sync with infrared so no data plan required). Key benefit: I don’t have to carry a Palm Pilot any more.
  • Laptop hardcase from Tom Binh. I got the “Monolith” model because I wanted to be able to throw my T43 (14.1″) into a backback or suitcase without having it knocked around. One issue I’ve had in the past with softside cases is that if my bag gets overfilled the laptop ends up getting squeezed and I get little nicks on the plastic LCD screen where it rubs against the keyboard keys. The Monolith is a little pricey (I’ve heard there is a cheaper option now from REI/Victorinox) but nice for peace of mind.
  • Foldershare. Since I’m splitting my work between a desktop and laptop it’s hard to keep versions of files in sync across machines. This is a great product that runs in the background and makes all the synchronization happen seamlessly. If you upgrade to the paid version ($50/year) you can sync up to 500 folders and get access to your files remotely from any web browser as long as one of your machines is online (which could be a security concern). An important side benefit is that now if my desktop gets toasted or my laptop is stolen all of my most recent files will be backed up automatically on the other machine; this alone is probably worth $50/year to me.
  • 4info. Send a text message to 4info to get a quick reply with sports scores (send “cal score”), restaurant locations (send “lupe torilla 77027″) etc. Very nice when you’re out and about wanting to head to a restaurant but can’t remember exactly where it is.
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    Loan-to-value ratios

    October 17, 2005 | Filed under Economics, Real Estate by Kurt

    This chart surprised me a little at first – who’d have thought Texas had 4 times California’s rate of mortgages at >90% of value? Isn’t it a little scary that 1/3 of Texas “homeowners” have less than a 10% equity stake in their house – note that this is first mortgages only, no HELOCs or second mortgages are included in the data, meaning this is optimistic if anything.

    Read the article from the Dallas fed here. The short story is, all sorts of strange things happen to normal ratios during high rates of housing price growth (i.e., >90% LTV ratios are rare in California because people are adding equity so rapidly through price growth). Although the data is interesting, I’m not sure the article really adds much information as to what will happen when growth slows or reverses…this is the billion dollar question.

    This chart is a logical extension:

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    Rugby

    October 12, 2005 | Filed under Business School (Wharton), Photo by Kurt

    Wharton hosted an MBA rugby tournament last weekend; this is one of my shots that was picked up by the Wharton Journal. Lots of guys were limping around on Monday….


    Canon 20d, 70-200/2.8L @170/2.8 1/2000 and cropped

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    October 1, 2005 | Filed under Business School (Wharton), Nonpublic by Kurt

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