Wish I'd thought of that

One of Adam's classmates at Harvard has just had his piece on writing MBA admissions essays published in the Wall Street Journal. Its short but sweet, and as far as I can tell pretty much on the money. Now, maybe its time to tell some of the UK press about this project...

Oh, met some of my classmates for the first time in the pub last night. So far they're all lovely people, which is good as I'm no longer quite so intimidated by them. Today is the Oxford Challenge, a teambuilding game in which we will learn all about Oxford, and get to meet each other some more.

Meet the class of 2002/3 (sort of)

Todays 'set up your network connections' session provided the chance to meet some of the class, but there wasn't much socialising beyond chatting to the folks in the next seat over. I think the real meet and greet is tomorrow. However since then I've been able to browse peoples profiles on the intranet, which made for interesting reading.

This class is packed with talent, experience and skills. I am now genuinely confused as to how I got in. There are folks here who have founded and run successful companies, managed big chunks of enormous companies and well, done stuff. I'd guess about half have some kind of finance background, with the rest being mostly operations or consultants. Nationalities are varied, my work group will include me, an Armenian, an Indian, a Korean, and a few more Europeans, and this global view may turn out to be one of the best things about being here.

Tonight I'm intending to try a dangerous piece of social engineering and fuse two pub crawls into one. Some of the MBA class are meeting for drinks and the college MCR is planning something similar. If I can get everything in the right place at the right time I won't have to make any decisions about which group I should be spending time with ;-)

Laptop armed and ready

This morning was the laptop installation session for anyone with Windows XP Pro, it was also my first chance to meet future MBA classmates. The Laptop stuff was a long process, made longer by the IT managers decision to explain basic networking protocol to us as we went. Still, I now have access to the SBS intranet, network drives and associated stuff.

Sadly none of the IT staff had realised that adding new users to laptops would make it look as if old information had been lost. In my case this meant the unexpected misplacement of my .pst file. For non techies that means my email, calendar and contacts all vanished. Fortunately I'm a technical boy and got it back after fifteen minutes of trawling Google for suggestions. Next I've got to restore IE favourites, wallpaper and desktop shortcuts...

The good news is that the online information is top notch and some sensible thought seems to have gone into designing the networking environment we're using. Some of it may look a little clunky, but it all works and there's plenty of quality information there to get stuck into.

I swear, I didn't ask for one

While checking my network connections I discovered that despite me not ordering one Dell have sent me a laptop with an integrated 10/100 modem, about £100 worth of kit. Of course the rucksack I ordered to carry said laptop around in hasn't arrived, but its nice to be a bit ahead of the game. In the meantime, I've now got a PCI network card that needs a good home...

From the time I spent working with PC manufacturers I'm guessing this is actually 'deliberate' on Dell's part. They probably found themselves with too many laptop chassis and just randomly upgraded a few orders to clear the backlog. It's more common for this to happen with chips, Intel tries to force chip speeds up by manipulating supply to the manufacturers, the result being that your P3 700 may actually have turned into an 800 by the time it's delivered.

The Incredible Optimism of Text Books

"As this book was going to press the Dow had just passed the 9300 mark for the first time, (perhaps it has reached the magical 10000 mark as you are now reading)" from my statistics textbook. In fact its at 7753 as I'm reading, following another week of falls.

There's a definite sense of satisfaction in realising that the people who write textbooks don't know it all. I particularly like the accounting texts which reassure me that companies today are transparent and held accountable by their auditors - any problems with the system are both minor and in hand... Its like reading the smuggest whig history imaginable.

On a completely different note I've bought an orthopaedic back chair, the kind you kneel on. It's got wheels, wheeeeee!

Meeting and greeting / Its not networking now...

Last night was coffee and chocolate in the MCR. Tonight is a trip to Jongleurs comedy cafe, Friday is a pubcrawl... This week I've got clashes with two birthday parties that I'd have wanted to be at, plus numerous informal drinks things some of the MBA class have been arranging. Suffice to say that while classes don't start till the fourteenth I've got plenty to be getting on with.

Oh, and I'm remembering the nice thing about Oxford, you get to hang out with all kinds of people, archaeologists, quantum physicists, egyptologists, chemists, mathematicians, theologians, musicians, historians. I'd forgotten quite how much fun this can be. Now, if only I was a real academic instead of a new breed of cash cow.

Not that I'll have time to talk to my new friends after the fourteenth. A quick view of my calendar reveals 40+ lectures, fifteen assignments, six exams and *a lot* of reading to be got through by mid December, and then its straight into the New Business Development Project. I however have a secret plan - I'm sharing a kitchen with a couple of mathematicians and they've agreed to help with my homework...

Teaching the teachers

There's some good stuff in this article on learning, importantly the stuff which isn't about technology (about half way down). One of my pet projects this year is to try and push Oxford into committing to better training for both students and teachers - or Dons as they're known here.

Reginae erunt nutrices tuae

That, apparently is my new college motto, which according to the website means "queens shall be thy nursing mothers". I found this out having dinner with some of the my fellow MCR students. There's an explanation of this here.

Other stuff I learned, Queens has a fantastic chapel, and the library - which isn't yet open for term, is also a bit special architecturally, and contains a number of rather impressive books - including first edition Shakespeare Folios and that kind of stuff. I also found out that Queens college are the possessors of the oldest drinking horn in active service in the world. I can't find a picture online, but apparently its a massive thing, covered in gold ornamentation and there's some kind of old fashioned drinking game to be gone through on special occasions involving it.

It looks like I'm going to have no shortage of things to do this week, with various comedy nights, and pub crawls planned for me. (Drinking in Oxford pubs, how novel for me...) I've also got one or two textbooks to track down, and yet more reading to get through before things kick off properly on Monday.

Oh, this is the college Tim Berners Lee was at when he studied in Oxford. I knew there was a reason I ended up here.

The Geordie has landed

Well, I've arrived. No time to write a long entry but in short the amount of stuff that fills a small hire car is not enough to fill a largeish room. Of course I still need to reclaim my stereo, PC and CD collection, but there's going to be plenty of space to play with. I can run my very own version of changing rooms in the next two days.... Maybe not.

Time to go and meet few new faces I feel, and I've got to see a man about some software.

Last weekend of rest

Well, off to Oxford tomorrow, but in the mean time I spent the weekend (well Saturday) in the Lake District. The occassion was the annual walking trip undertaken by my Dad's computing department - I've been doing these since I was three, and while I've missed a few recently it was nice to be up in the hills again. Oxford sadly is at the flat end of the country, and while some locals claim that the Cotswolds are just as good they're wrong. The Cotswolds are small, twee little hills that look good on postcards. The Lake District is full of big majestic hills that look best from the top.

So, a day of packing, shopping and arranging looms...