Hey Short Timer...

Was heard by my ears this morning as I walked into the cafeteria. I wonder what motivates people to say such a thing? Jealousy? A sense of betrayal? Disgust that "short timers" are no longer part of the "in" crowd? Or worse, that "short timers" symbolize one saying that what the "in" crowd does isn't good enough?

Or maybe it's nothing at all. For the first time since beginning my career at my current company - the workload has actually started to dwindle, and I am able to focus on the important stuff.

Funny thing - I'm more productive than ever before.

16 Working days left

So I have only 16 days left of work. I am willing to stretch this to 21 because I believe that it would be beneficial for both my company and me (financially for me - one week's of work is a month of rent in school). I don't know what will happen. I gave notice two weeks ago and my boss has basically just ignored my notice thus far. He's made no announcement, and apparently isn't doing anything to try to backfill me. I have reminded him - so we'll see what happens. I'm still working on some important stuff at work, and I believe I can get a good start on it all, but the extra work might really help too. Either way, I'm getting excited about my career switch!

A nice benefit

As I type this with my entire lower jaw numb from the needle of a prosthodontist I must say that while I may bitch from time to time about the corporate job and its lack of positives, there definitely are a few things to be grateful for. One of these things is dental insurance as part of a compensation package.

Rest assured, I am taking advantage of this benefit before I head off to school. I was probably en route to needing root canals on several front teeth, perhaps while in b-school, because of some excessive wear. In fact, I had my front teeth filled once, long ago, but that didn't work at all.

So, as a necessary evil to prevent further tooth decay / damage I am getting some work done that will prevent such damage. It's about 3k worth of work that my insurance has squeezed down to $1650 due to the "in-network" status of the prothsodontist. What's more is that my share is only $552 of the work.

So, it's 500 bucks worth of fillings and resins today, or $5k of root canals and crowns in the future.

Needless to say, my face is numb today...

My Patience Tested

What a week. The higher powers that be decided to really test my patience in the past week. From one of my posts on my market blog, you can see it was a tough one. Combine that with another trade that went awry, and you have the tip of the iceburg. Work was a struggle this week with the inner-politicking getting rigoldamndiculous.

I also volunteered to deliver some of our team t-shirts to a friend, meeting her halfway. Who knew I'd drive right into one of the bazillion Milwaukee fireworks shows? What shoulda been a 25 minute ride turned into 100 minutes. During that ride, I also managed to find an intersection with a stuck stoplight. Note that you only know that a stoplight is stuck, if you're on the wrong side of it (the stopped side).

I managed to get a couple of hours of sleep this week, too, capped off by my 8.5 hr nap last night. That put my sleep total at a huge 20 hrs this week! The lack of sleep basically made everything that much worse - though it still really is all relative.

On a good note, the refinancing of my car was easy, my softball game was a victory, and we won both of our hockey games to boot. So not all was bad.

Giving Notice

I treated it as a fairly informal little discussion. But, I must say, I was actually nervous. I've never actually quit a job before, really, or at least not a job of consequence. For me, there's always been an end in sight that everyone knew about before my positions started. Not this time.

Top that with my boss having just returned from a difficult family-based emergency trip, it made it a little nerve-wracking. But, from a professional standpoint it had to be done. I'm giving 5 weeks notice, so that the team can hopefully find a replacement.

I basically told him my plans and why. And then he went on to talk a little bit about his idea of perhaps going to Kellogg's Executive MBA program and I mentioned that I had helped my former roomie get into the Part-Time program at Kellogg. So, we talked a bit and he said that he'd be calling for my help.

Now we've got some things to discuss - workload planning and shifting for the summer.

It's been a good learning experience, the last 5 years but now it's on to bigger things. Business is business and sometimes you just have to move on and take a risk because you know it's right. Ask Mark Cuban, in what is a good, motivational blog post.

Blogs in your inbox!

I'm slow. I know it. I admit it. For someone who has a computer engineering degree, you'd think I would know everything that's going on with computers. But, it just ain't so.

Today, I figured out the Mozilla's Thunderbird email reader can grab blog feeds. This is awesome, I have to say. Then, I do nothing but just launch my email every day, and whalaa - I can see what others are writing. Some of y'all, like Kevin and MargaritaLuvr, are still blogging almost daily! Keep it up!

I'm it, huh?

It appears as though I've been "book tagged". Keven, a fellow soon-to-be Badger (Go Bucky!) let me know of this in one of his comments. If I had been tagged in another blog, I wouldn't know. I'm awfully busy trying to find a place to live in Madtown these days...plus hockey and softball started up!

But, I am a loyal blogger. I will post the last 5 books I have read. Before I get to that, you should know that I am NOT an avid reader. In fact, I cannot tell you what the last fiction book I read was, but I can tell you it was for an undergrad assignment. Those of you who either know me, or read this or my other blog know what I'm all about and these books won't surprise you (except for maybe the first).

1) BEING PERFECT, by Anna Quindlen
This book was given to my girlfriend by her mother and I read it in the car on the 3 hr drive home. The book's premise is simple: Don't try to be perfect, be you. It's a quick, 20 or 30 minute read and a good pause in life.

2) HOW TO MAKE MONEY IN STOCKS, by William J. O'Niel
The owner's manual for Investor's Business Daily. The book is so data driven that it's incredible, and, I gotta tell you is my bible for investing. This was not the first time I've read this book.

3) HIGH PROBABILITY TRADING, by Marcel Link
This is a great book about trading, not necessarily investing. Link provides great snippets about things he's done wrong, which might be the most important point of the book. However, he also uses the best visuals I've seen in a trading book, and really shows the value of multiple time frames. His "greedy bastard" phrase, though not unique, has found its way into my vocabularly in what not to be as a portfolio manager and part-time trader.

4) THE NEW MARKET WIZARDS, by Jack Schwager
This book actually is what my username is based on! I must admit, that I haven't actually finished all of the interviews in this book, but I'm close. How can you not love a book that, in its first sentence, attacks Eugene Fama's Efficient Market Theory?

5) TRADING IN THE ZONE, by Mark Douglass
This book is not necessarily about trading, per se - or at least it isn't once you finish it. The book is more about psychological forces and barriers that we put on ourselves. Mr. Douglass intends for the book to discuss how the mind works in the trading realm, but what he actually describes goes above and beyond trading. He describes how your brain can put barriers on what you can accomplish and why you do some of the things you do. Anyone can benefit from this very unique book.

There you have it. I'm focused, can you tell? I believe that I have about 30 books in the house. Half of them were gifts that I have no intention of reading. The rest are investing books that I bought.

I think everyone else has been tagged thus far, so I'm out on that (and I have to go hopefully quarterback my football team to victory during my last game with the team in 75 minutes).

Tunnel Vision

As I was walking up the stairs at work the other day, one of the guys who has been at my company for ~20 years made the comment that "the world was coming down around us."

He was referring to the chaos around the office. We are re-organizing everyone's cubicles. It's supposed to be a productivity enhancement. I'm not so sure, but...eh, whatever. There's construction going on all over the place and it's a mess.

The point is that the world is NOT coming down. Yet, he makes a comment that it is. Look, there's soooo much more than what's going on in our little 3,000 employee campus. Believe me, there are. We have Genentech, ImClone, Pfizer, etc. trying to create cancer-fighting drugs. There's a huge turnaround project in Iraq that has a long, long way to go. We might actually be starting to see the end of our oil supply sometime in the next 100 years.

Why do people get caught up in the notion that everything going on in their life is the world? People seem to think that the CEO of our sector of the company is some god. People wouldn't even recognize him in a supermarket.

Sometimes, there's just a bigger picture out there, people...