Now This is Just Creepy

I think I found the answer to the whole ancient egyptian / alien contact / Michael Jackson triangle. Check out this picture I ran across and tell me you're not creeped out a little =)

Bill's Back!

Hey everybody,

I'm back in C-ville and loving it. Nothing much new to report, but I did finally download the pictures from the Galveston Aquarium onto my laptop and I thought I'd share them with the world. The first one on the right is obviously your favorite two people chillin' out by the ocean... the Gulf of Mexico counts right?

This next one is a shark apparently taking a nap at the bottom of the tank. I thought that sharks had to keep moving in order to breath, apparently this one didn't get the memo. Maybe it acts like a rock... until it STRIKES! Ooooh, scary.

This picture, of course, was my idea. We were sitting in the IMAX theater waiting for 3-D SHARKS to come on, and I just couldn't resist.

This is the Galveston Aquarium. Yes, it's a big glass pyramid. Yippee.

Bill out.

Bill's New Rock Band

So, I'm forming a new rock band. Actually, this has been an idea that another Darden student and I have had since we met at the beginning of last year. Unfortunately, things such as school and life got in the way. However, we're determined to get one of the ground by the time we graduate. I haven't been able to come up with a great name yet, but my ideas so far are "Darden Graduate School of Rock" (sure to be shot down at some point by the administration) or "Capitalist Pigs". I'm sure we could do worse in any case.

The songs we're going to play are probably a little off the wall, at least when put together. Did I mention the other Darden student is from Argentina? My only other experience with the musical taste of South Americans was seeing "Deep Purple" (think Smoke on the Water) spraypainted on a wall (in the color purple no less) and seeing about three thousand Iron Maiden t-shirts (I'm not kidding). So here are some of the ones we're thinking about, in no particular order:

• Should I Stay or Should I Go - The Clash
• Dancing With Myself - Billy Idol (One guess who picked this one)
• Pride and Joy - Stevie Ray Vaughan (If you need to guess who picked this one, I'd like to meet you sometime)
• Only Rock'n'Roll - The Rolling Stones
• Boys Don't Cry - The Cure (I think we have too many "The" bands on this list...)
• Tush - ZZ Top (I think I'll grow a beard just for this song)
• Crossroads - Cream

Well, you get the idea, and I'm tired so I'm going to sleep.

bill out

Three Weeks and Counting

I would like to announce my triumphant return to Charlottesville in about three weeks. I'm going to have my last day on August 1 (Friday). Alisa is coming out on Wednesday for another week (after five days straight of twelve hour shifts) but may be comatose by the time she gets here. So right now I'm trying to figure out if I've gotten all my financial aid straightened out. So much fun... really it is. So here's my first quarter schedule:

• Management Decision Models (lots of Excel and statistical regressions)
• Leadership Learning Lab (for club presidents on how to get people to do things when you have no actual authority)
• Valuation of Corporations (Using spreadsheets and wild guesses to figure out how much a company is worth... I'm not kidding about the wild guesses part)
• Corporate Financing (All 31 flavors of stocks and bonds)
• General Management and Operations Consulting (I have no idea... but it looked like fun)

So there you go. I'm actually excited to get back to school. I feel like I have so much more to learn. Wish me luck!

bill out

Blogger's block?

So it's hard to keep writing on a blog, mainly because you run out of ideas for things to write about... or you just forget. Anyhow, I've been trying to come up with some ideas, so here goes:
The weather in Houston usually has one speed... HOT! Maybe, I'm exaggerating a little, but most of the time the sun is shining and it's over 90 degrees with high humidity. Some of you might be turned off by this, but I really don't mind unless I'm outside, which isn't a lot. I'd eagerly exchange snow and ice in the winter for hot and humid in the summer, but that's just me.

However, recently I've come to learn that weather in Houston actually has two speeds, HOT and MONSOON. The other day we were going into some dive bar for lunch with my coworkers. Some English guy who is working in Geneva, Switzerland was over here for a week and we were giving him a sendoff. When I say dive bar, I mean it's a shack with the insulation not covered in the roof and big holes in the plastic picnic tablecloths. The food was nice and greasy, and I felt a little sick afterwards, but I guess that's a small price to pay for local color. Anyhow, I digress.

So when we walk into this place, the weather would be most aptly described as quintessential HOT. The sun was bright and I don't remember a cloud in the sky. Literally, five minutes after being there, I here thunder that sounds like it's about five feet away. I mean loud enough to shake the shack... I looked outside and it was a torrential downpour with lightning and the whole shebang. Awesome, right? So we have lunch, which included sweet potato fries... which is a whole 'nother blog post. By the time we get back to the office and I look out the window... the weather has gone straight back to HOT... seriously, the weather here is schizo.

This has now happened at least three or four times since I've been here, including right now, but never as dramatically as the lunchtime typhoon... you gotta love Texas.

Bill out.

White or Red, Nowhere in Between

Hey all,
I've been a little busy with Alisa here, but now that I'm here by myself again, I have time to BLOG!!! Oh yeah...

While Alisa was here, we went all over Houston and ate twice our bodyweight at every meal... at least I did. There is actually a really good Vietnamese restaurant right down the street from where I'm staying, it's called Vietopia and I highly recommend the stirfried noodles... even the tofu was good. And I HATE tofu. Also on the "Must Try" list is Pappasito's. The waiters come out and make guacamole right next to your table... it's fantastic. I have to say that guacamole has most likely become my favorite green food (previous leader... mint chocolate chip ice cream... now brocolli is a distant third).

We also went to the Schlitterbahn, where we rode the lazy river and hit some awesome waterslides. After being there for a few hours, even with a thick layer of SPF 40, I still turned a pinkish / reddish shade. Gotta love those Dutch / German genes, it's white or red with nowhere in between.

I also came away with a few lessons learned from the waterpark. #1. If you're really, really fat... wear a t-shirt... PLEASE! #2. Don't get a tattoo... they look stupid... all of them... I'm serious. I especially dislike the "patchwork" style of tattooing. It's like these guys say to themselves one day, "I totally want a Garfield tattoo... yeah that's totally sweet." Then the next week they're like, "I think I'll get a skull with snakes coming out of the eyeholes!!! Yeah!" Then they get a Batman logo, and the grim reaper, and a pufferfish, and JEM (truly outrageous). There's no theme! You can't have a naked lady tat next to your MOM tat... it just doesn't make SENSE (and people might want to date your mom)! But I digress. #3. Teenagers annoy me. If I'm ever in danger of having teenagers, I'm sending them to boarding school in Switzerland at age 12. Why Switzerland you ask? Chocolate and liederhosen, 'nuff said.

Anywho, hope everyone's having a blast this Summer.

Bill out.

Alone No More!

Well, still alone for the moment, but Alisa will be coming to Houston on Wednesday! I'm not sure what we're going to do here yet, but I hear that the Zoo is nice... and hot. The world's best waterpark (The Schlitterbahn) is nearby, but also really, really hot in Galveston. So until I have pictures from our adventures, here's a few from my fun job.

The first one is the "Trading Floor". It's actually just a bunch of rows of computers in a big room. I sit on the end.






This is the view from the "patio" on my building. Can you see the smoke rising from the trees since they spontaneously combusted due to the intense heat? Okay, maybe not yet, but by August, I'm pretty sure it will happen.












Finally, this is actually the building I work in. I love the "stairstep" design of the outside. It's super duper awesome.

Bill out.

News Flash! Houston is Hot!

In other news, water is wet! Actually, it's not the heat that gets you, it's the humidity. I know that's as cliched as it gets, but I've found it to be true. I walk outside in the morning (around 7:30 to 8 am) and my sunglasses instantly fog over. It's like a sauna out there and it's still May... if I survive until August, I'll send word.

Bill out.

Bill + Golf = Bad

So a funny thing happened the other day at the driving range. As almost everyone knows, I've golfed approximately one time in my life. I decided that I needed to at least learn to lose at golf with dignity before I graduated from MBA school. Thus, I bought a used driver and went to my local driving range. Everything was going swimmingly, well, I was actually hitting the ball on a regular basis and I hadn't hurt myself yet, so things were going as well as could be expected...

About halfway through my bucket of balls something strange happened. As I swung the club, I noticed the ball going right... and the head of my club going left. I mean waaaaaaaay left. In fact, I think the club head went approximately 50 yards to the left (much further than the actual ball). I looked down at my broken club shaft, muttered some choice words, and stormed back to my car. Thus proving the equation Bill + Golf = Hilarity

Bill out.

"I'll Take Freaky Words That Begin With 'C', Alex"

As I may have mentioned earlier, energy trading really has its own language. I've only begun to learn the lingo, but my two favorite phrases so far have got to be "Contango" (when a oil futures are more expensive than current prices) and also the "Crack Box" (too complicated to try to explain between these parentheses). A close third has got to be "Backwardation", which is the opposite of Contango... and no, I'm not sure if George W. made that word up, along with "Decider" and "Strategery".

Bill out.

T. Boone and the Gang

As we watched T. Boone Pickens prognosticate on CNBC about $150 oil today, I told Bob's joke about "Oklahoma State University, a subsidiary of BP Capital" and it killed. Score one for the Bobster. Anyhow, another day another few dollars. They mentioned that I might be sent to Wichita for some intern meeting, but somehow I feel like I'd be "the old guy" which is only one step away from being "that old, creepy guy". Hrmmmm...

Did I mention that there's a guy that graduated in Chem Engineering from BYU and he sits right behind me at work. I think he was actually my TA once, but we can't prove it. It's a small world after all... oh it's a small, small world.

Oh, and this is a picture of Maddie boom curled up on her bed. Isn't she adorable!?!?!?!!

One Day Down...

Hello again,
I just finished my first day at work at Koch today... and I'm a little dizzy. It's hard to realize how much you don't know about something... until today happens. Petroleum and trading are worlds unto themselves with their own jargon and acronyms. I'm learning the finer points of the differences between Brent and WTI (the two benchmark types of crude oil) and how to make good arbitrage trades based on timing. Okay, so I really didn't learn any of that... but hopefully I will, and soon.

Bill out.

First Inaugural Issue!

Having been inspired by the hijinx and hilarity that is Becky's Flippin' Sweet blog, I've decided to do one of my own. Mostly however, I'm stuck in Houston by myself and I'm ridiculously bored! Also, I took some fun pictures and want a way to show them to people without mass e-mailing the entire world. So without further ado... here you go!

First is Maddie with her spiffy new shave cut for summer.



This may be my favorite picture I've ever taken of Alisa. We were at the relay for life with her co-workers and I made her put on this hat. I didn't even have to say "LOOK MAD!!!" Love you hun!







Finally, here's a picture of Pedro and the Rooser getting ready to ride their motorbikes in Stillwater. I would get a motorcycle, but Alisa has scared me with vivid descriptions of the massive head trauma patients she takes care of at work...

So that's it for now, I'm sure I'll be back tomorrow with another exciting installment.