Swain Ski Resort

I went skiing in Swain, NY today. My Garmin didn't have it in the POI database and it didn't know that County Route 24 is also called Main Street in Swain, so it took me a few extra minutes to get moving. The forecasted high was only 14 degrees, but it turned out to be alright since the wind wasn't blowing. The snow was good--no ice. I went with one of my classmates from my MBA program. He gave me several pointers that really helped me ski better. This makes two ski trips so far this winter. I went to Greek Peek just before Christmas.

Digital Photo Frame

I bought a Hannspree SD7021 7" digital photo frame from TigerDirect for my grandmother for Christmas. I'm satisfied with it. The images look slightly pixelated when you're real close to it, but when you sit back 2 feet it looks fine. I used Picasa to crop the images to 16:9 format and resize them to 720 pixels before saving them to an SD memory card. This ensured that they filled the screen. I also had to change one setting on the frame so it would fit images to the screen. Otherwise black bands appeared. This frame does have an accelerometer so if you rotate it 90 degrees the image reorients. I also downloaded some of my sister's wedding photos from Flickr and they look great on this frame too. One thing that confuses me is that the box says the resolution is 480x234, but the troubleshooting guide in the manual suggests resizing images to 720x400 to correct black bands.

MBA Graduation

After 15 months of hard work, I finished the EMBA program at RIT! My goal was to change the way I think and I certainly achieved that. I'm happy to be done, but I'll miss my classmates. I'm really grateful for the trip to China too. Shanghai was amazing.

August Update

I completed orientation for my EMBA program this past week. It's off to a great start. I met my classmates and my new 4-person team that I'll work with for the next 15 months. I just finished drafting my first paper for Microeconomics. I wrote a report on the market price of silicon, which was more interesting to me than I would have thought.

I bought a Sansa e200 MP3 player from Amazon. I wanted to listen to MP3s in the car during the 1.5 hr commute to school every other week. It also has a voice recorder so I can record lectures. I also like the fact it has an FM radio so I can listen to the TVs at the gym that are hooked up to FM transmitters so people on the treadmills can hear the audio if they tune to the right station. I know everybody is crazy about iPods, but I feel like I'm getting more needs met for less $$ with this player.

Today I volunteered at the VA hospital in Bath. The West Point Society of the Finger Lakes served food at a picnic there for the veterans. Everybody felt pretty good about it. I'd do it again.

Big Scrabble Score

During a game of Scrabble tonight, I made the word RESIZED, which cleared my rack, landed on a triple word score, and also made the word SUNDER off the S. 110 points!

Taiwan Trip

I went to Taiwan on business for a week. I visited Taichung and Taipei. It was hot. I tried karaoke with some other people from my company while in Taichung. In Taipei, I went to a nightclub called Luxy, which was awesome. It has bartenders that breathe fire and staged girl fights every Thursday. For sightseeing, I went to the tallest building in the world (Taipei 101), a night market, and the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall. Overall, I enjoyed the trip and would like to go back. The people were really friendly and a lot of them spoke English.

Mike's visit

Two weeks ago my friend Mike visited. We served in Iraq together. He is currently attending a school for his new career field in the Army: Simulations. His blog has a reference to this visit too. It was definitely cool to catch up with him.