Fly Away, Little One. Be Free!

It's been a good couple of days:

• Yesterday, we just got a very good sized check from the IRS (we'd let some things slide when the Unknown Son was sick, and finally got things straightened out a few months ago.
• about a half-hour ago, I submitted a paper to a journal (not a top-tier one, but a decent one). It's been about 4 years since we started it. So now, it's off my desk.
• I just got an email that my new 43-inch flat-panel TV is available for pickup from Best Buy.
  

All in all, a nice way to close out the year. Now I just have to get the TV set up in time to watch the Lesnar/Overeem MMA fight on Friday.

The Semester Goes Out Not With a Bang, But With a Whimper

I was just commenting to the Unknown Wife how this semester was ending going so well compared to previous ones - my student managed investment fund presentation was done a day earlier than usual, my principles class was ahead of schedule, and my exams were at the beginning of exam period rather than near the end.

I should have known - never say things like that. Even in jest.

It angers Academia - the patron goddess of all professors (also known as "she who makes professors' work go pear-shaped at the worst possible time")

So, what happens? I was cutting and pasting items from the grades spreadsheet for my principles class (it has four components, all on separate tabs of the worksheet). Somehow, I not only deleted the grades for all three exams, I copied the sheet to a file name that overwrote the backup (I always save the spreadsheet to a new file name after each update). After searching for over an hour, I finally found an email backup copy I'd made that had everything but the final exam grades.

The morals of the story:

1. Make multiple backups of your grading spreadsheet (and anything else of critical importance) every time you change it.
2. Never, ever say "things are going well this semester". It angers Academia (and she is a vindictive "rhymes with witch").
   

On a more pleasant note, a couple of bright spots this week:

1. looks like I'll have a paper submitted within a couple of days. It won't get looked at by the journal editor for a couple of weeks due to the holiday, but it'll be off my desk. Since (as my coauthor says) "if we don't submit this one soon, we'd better start saving for its college education", that's a good feeling.
2. A coauthor informed me that she had a revise and resubmit that requires her to do some tests that she could do herself, but would rather outsource. Since I can easily do it with a week's work or so, she asked me to be a coauthor. So, for a bit of work, it looks like I will likely have another hit.
3. We've been making do at the Unknown Household with a seven-year old TV (an old cathode-ray model). We just got our new TV stand (a very nice corner model) and will shortly be getting a new 46 inch flat panel model. Ah, the Kingdom of Thingdom has a new subject.
   

In any event, here's wishing a Merry Christmas (or whatever else you choose to celebrate this time of year) to all my readers (all three of them).

It's finally feeling like Christmas in the Unknown Household - we've got Christmas songs playing on the radio, Winnie the Pooh (the Unknown Son's (a.k.a. Knucklehead's) recent fascination) on TV, and I'm in the middle of making up a quadruple batch of pumpkin soup on the stove A double batch will be for our neighborhood party tonight and another is for the big family get-together at our place on Christmas Day. So the place sounds and smells like Christmas.







mythe Goddess made me save my grade spreadsheet to the wrong name

Random Thoughts

It's been a busy month or so since FMA, so I've been out of touch blog-wise, So her are a few snippets:

• We're now in the final throes of the semester (only two weeks left once the students get back from Thanksgiving), and they just had their second exam in my principles class). So, I had about 1000 pages of grading to do (I don't do scan-tron graded exams). But they did extremely well, so I feel good about it. Now all I have left to cover is CAPM and WACC, so I'm right on schedule.
  

• I've been experimenting with online web-conferencing software as an enhancement to my classes. We use a really clunky system called Sakai, which has limited web-conferencing capabilities (only 15 or so concurrent users). So I and another faculty who's also a techie have been looking into using a commercial vendor that will allow us to do deliver online instruction (and review sessions) for 50-100 students at a time. I figure that this (along with my pre-recorded videos) could be the backbone for a fairly thorough and well-done online class.

• The little guy is talking up a storm, and is a riot to be around. He loves to get a running start and then do a running headbutt. Unfortunately, he's at just the right height that he hits his dad in a very sensitive area. But it was pretty funny at Thanksgiving when he caught his uncle unawares. It probably didn't help that I distracted him at just the right moment. when he wasn't. Not nice, I know. But funny
  

• Trying to get a paper out this weekend, another one in the following week, and a third one over December break. And then I'll do the usual scramble to get a new piece together for the FMA deadline in January.

Finally, I came across a pretty good quote (by Aristophanes) that will probably make it onto my door: “Youth ages, immaturity is outgrown, ignorance can be educated, and drunkenness sobered, but stupid lasts forever.”

Gotta get to bed. Later.

Toilet Training the Unknown Baby Boy

This post is further proof that child rearing rots your brain. I'm actually posting on a finance blog about toilet training my kid. Ah well, it give me a break from madly working on the paper I'm trying to finish for the FMA deadline - I already sent one, but this one is insurance.

The Unknown Baby Boy (a.k.a. "Knucklehead") isn't toilet trained yet. He turns 2 in late March, so we're in no rush - if we make it to the warm weather, we'll probably use the time-honored approach of letting him run around outside with no pants on (yes, trees will be involved, and let the neighbors beware).

It's a time-honored tradition for guys to make a game out of their "liquidity management" (hey - it's a finance blog, so I have to at least make a pun in that direction. Some people advocate using little targets for the little guy when training (he can;t write cursive yet, so that's out...). But Sega has taken it to a whole other level. They've come out with game (called "Toylets") that's currently in selected locations in Tokyo where you can play video games by peeing in a urinal. Here's a short article:

In the early ’90s, Sega held 65% of the US video game console market, had millions of fans, and was considered one of the premier creators of modern gaming entertainment. Today, they are helping you play with your pee. The Japan branch of the multinational company recently announced that they are testing their Toylets male urinal video game at select locations around Tokyo. Toylets uses a pressure sensor located on the back of the urinal to measure the strength and location of your urine stream. A small LCD screen above the urinal allows you to play several simple video games including a simulator for erasing graffiti and a variation on a sumo wrestling match. At the end of a game, the screen displays advertisements.

... the four types of video games on the Toylets include:

“Mannekin Pis”: a simple measurement of the urine produced.
“Graffiti Eraser”: where you move your urine back and forth to remove paint
“The North Wind and Her”: a game where you play the wind, trying to blow a girl’s skirt up. The stronger you pee, the stronger the wind blows.
“Milk from Nose”: A variation on sumo wrestling, where you try to knock the other player out of the ring using the strength of your urine flow (shown as milk spraying from your nose). The record of your pee is saved and used as the opponent for the next player. So the game is sort of multiplayer. Toylets even lets you save information onto a USB drive! I fear the MMORPG that will arise from this.

Read the whole thing here.

To quote George Takei, Oh my!

I need some metal floss. Now back to work.

Merry Christmas To All

A Merry Christmas to all. It was off to visit my family last night. Now, it's off to the Unknown Wife's Family for the day. Luckily, they're each only about 80 miles away - gotta love living close enough that I can plan on biking to each this summer.

Unknown Daughter liked her presents (some clothes, a rock polishing kit, some games for her DS, etc...). The Unknown Baby Boy (now upgraded to the Unknown Toddler) seemed to like his presents, but being 21 months old, he probably will get as much out of playing with the boxes and paper as he will out of the presents).

As for Unknown Wife and I, we'll buy a big screen TV after the new year as our present. Yeah, that's right - "our" present.

In any event, here's hoping you all enjoy the day, and be careful on the roads - it's a surprisingly dangerous day for driving.

Dax Locke And an Early Christmas

I was listening to the radio on the way home from my office the other day and heard the story of Dax Locke, a 13 month-old child diagnosed with terminal Leukemia. Since it was unlikely he'd make it to Christmas (it was in early autumn), his family started putting up the tree and the lights. Then the neighbors followed suit, and then the whole town.

For obvious reasons, it stuck with me. So, I tracked it down and found this YouTube video by Matthew West. Caution - it will most likely bring tears to your eyes, so be warned.



And if you're looking for a place to contribute to, this would be a good one. So open your checkbooks and spread a little cheer.

Happy Thanksgiving

It looks like Unknown University is all but deserted the day before Thanksgiving. I finally decided to quit swimming against the tide, and canceled classes for today (I usually only get about 30% attendance on the day before Thanksgiving in the best of times, so it's no big loss).

Instead, I told the students that I'd put up a video with the lectures for the week on Risk and Return. Once it's done, I'll post a link here. I'm pretty happy with it - it runs the gamut of topics from the calculations for standard deviation, covariance, expected returns, etc... to Markowitz Portfolio Theory and the Capital Market Line to the CAPM and the Security Market Line.

Although I don't use all this material in my intro class, I expect to use it in my investments class this spring. So, this should allow me to go a bit faster and cover more material there.

Unfortunately, I have to wait another hour before the video software is done rendering the final version and I can go home. Then it's off the the Unknown In-Laws house tomorrow for turkey overload and football.

Here's wishing you all a Happy and safe Thanksgiving

Stess Tests and Shaved Wookies

Just had a stress test (there was a minor irregularity in an EKG at my recent physical). I'd been putting in a lot of seat time (on the bike) at the gym up until about 3 weeks ago when some other problems had me stopping altogether, so I wasn't too worried. But my doc ordered the test just to be sure.

Unfortunately, they shave parts of the chest to make sure that the leads for the EKG have good contacts. And I am, shall we say, a bit on the hirsute side (kind of like saying Ed "Too Tall" Jones is too tall). So I came home with a few patches missing.

I took the clippers to the rest, and now I have nubs. TMI, for sure. But I'm all about the sharing.

I now have more sympathy for my wife.

Another Crazy Couple of Days

It's been a busy few days. On Saturday, Unknown Son and I took part in his Cub Scout troop's annual popcorn sale outside a local supermarket.

I gave him a little coaching on the way over (i.e. make sure you ask everyone that comes out, look them in the eye, don;t take the first "no" without asking again, and so on). The kid absolutely hung the moon. He sold about 50% more than the other two kids that were there, and the grownups standing around really got a kick out of watching him. It's hard to say no to a determined, charming, and extremely cute 9-year old (of course, I'm completely unbiased).

Sunday was mostly used for prepping for my week's classes (I teach MBAs on Monday evenings, and other classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays). Unfortunately, U.S. started getting a fever Sunday night. We took him into the oncology clinic Monday morning (he had a regular appointment set up anyway), and they sent us home, feeling that it was likely a virus of some kind (no evidence of anything on his scans, and no signs of a bacterial infection). But, by the time I got out of class at 9:00, his fever was spiking to 103.

The doctor didn't seem to feel like he needed to come back in (it's about a 30 mile drive), so we gave him Tylenol, Motrin, and a cool bath, and his fever eventually broke around 1:00 in the morning.

So, I guess I start the week sleep deprived. What else is new.

ed: I had previously written that Unknown Son was 19. That's only in his ability to argue. Chronologically, he's only 9.

Last Minute Fun With The CFA Exam

T'was the night before the CFA exam, and of course the Unknown Son starts complaining loudly of severe stomach pains. Of course, this ended all possibility of any last-minute reviewing. He started vomiting repeatedly, and ended up sleeping in our bed with the Unknown Wife, and I went to the guest bedroom (no way I'd get to sleep with a sick kid in the bed).

I got up early the next morning and went to the exam. Just before heading in, I called home to find out that unknown Son was on his way to the hospital. He was admitted in the morning after tests revealed elevated liver enzymes, which typically indicates some kind of viral thingy in the liver.

Despite concerns in the back of my mind about Unknown Son, the morning session of the exam went surprisingly well - or at least I thought so. The afternoon session, on the other hand, was a different story. The best way to describe it is "They didn't call, they didn't send flowers, and they didn't respect me in the morning." So, I have no clue if I made it over the hump or not.

Ah well, done is done. I headed home, changed, and went to the hospital to relieve U.W. and sleep overnight in Unknown Son's room. At least, I slept from 12 until about 6 - he was more interested in reading me sections of his latest book selection (Diary of A Wimpy Kid). His liver results were more normal today, so he got discharged this afternoon, with follow-up tests for later in the week.

With this behind me, I'm eager to put the books down and get back to research tomorrow. For tonight, it's SLEEP (I already took at two-hour nap this afternoon, and should get a good 10-12 hours in).

A Mister Mom Weekend

The Unknown Wife has flown the coop for a Girl's Weekend in Chicago. She left Friday to meet up with four of the friends - she's kept in touch with them since we left the the small college town we lived in back when I was just out of grad school.

The last two days the Unknown Kids and I have been biking, watching cartoons, and eating ice cream. Tomorrow, it's the annual Memorial Day parade and the zoo, followed by a quick trip to the airport to pick up Mom.


Somewhere in there, I even got some CFA studying done.

Boys Day and Night

The Unknown Daughter is going for a sleepover tonight at her cousin's house (about 80 milkes away in an adjoining state). So, Unknown Wife is using the opportunity to take an overnight herself at her sister's house (she lives near where the sleepover is, and this'll save an additional trip).

That means Unknown Son and I temporarily have the house to ourselves. He gets to watch Pink Panther Cartoons most of the day (he got the 6 Disk complete set for Christmas) while I spend my time going over material for CFA level 2. I teach in a prep program starting in about four weeks, and I'm taking the exam myself this June (assuming I passed level 1), so it's a good opportunity to get a bit ahead.

He's been having intermittent fevers (on one day, off the next) for the last couple of weeks. We know he had pneumonia, and is almost done with his antibiotics. But maybe he caught another virus. Either way, he's content to sit around and watch classic cartoons.

I'll probably watch some too.

Plus, this means I get to watch the buildup tonight to tomorrow night's big UFC fight between Hughes and St. Pierre.

Head Wounds Are Always Bleeders

Growing up in a family of boys, you quickly learn that any cut above the neck (no matter how small) bleeds far out of proportion to the seriousness of the injury. After all, there're a lot of blood vessels in the skin in the face and head. Yesterday, Unknown Son and Unknown Daughter found out too.

Since it snowed two days ago, he went sliding with the neighborhood kids, and promptly slipped on an icy patch - right into a classic face plant. So, Unknown Daughter comes running in, and when I look out the bedroom window, I see U.S. lying on the snow on his back with a large red spot staining the snow beside him and several kids standing over him with worried looks.

I ran out with a handful of paper towels (rule #1 - always swab the blood away to see how bad it really is before panicking). Luckily, it was only a bloody nose. So, I picked up U.S. and carried him back to the house (he could walk, but if you can't get carried when you're covered in blood, you can't get caried any time), and we watched Tom and Jerry for a while. Bloody noses DO go better with slapstick old-school cartoons.

He was extremley impressed a few hours later when he pulled a huge clotted bloody booger from his nose. Of course, he just HAD to show it to Unknown Wife and Unknown Daughter - he is a boy child, after all.

More snow today - just spent an hour shoveling it off the driveway and drove to Dunkin Donuts for the traditional Unknown Household Snow Day Breakfast: powdered sugar for the kids and chocolate covered for She Who Must Be Obeyed. As for me, I'm not picky as long as I have coffee to wash it down with.

Winter wonder Land - feh.

More Good News On the Cancer Front

As I've mentioned previously, the Unknown Son was diagnosed with neuroblastoma shortly after his 4th birthday. He was successfully treated at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City, and Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We believe he went into remission about 3 1/2 years ago (see this previous post for more details, and an explanation why we can't say exactly when). But, since there was still one spot on his leg that showed up faintly on the scans , we continued to go to back to CHOP for quarterly checkups. We were fairly sure that it was a ganglioneuroma rather than active cancer, but we still had to play it safe.

We just got back from the latest checkup. This time around, U.S. had his first totally clean scan. So, we can be a lot more confident now that he's in remission.

Nice to get an early Christmas present, eh?

Happy Thanksgiving

We're off to the Unknown Wife's sister-in-law's house for the family get together - it's great finally being close enough to spend the holidays with family without having to drive 300 miles.

I should emerge from my turkey and football-induced stupor tomorrow. Until then, here's wishing a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

I Made It Through The Week!

I survived the week. And everything went well:

• My trip to my former school went well - my student successfully defended her proposal, and won't have to do much more empirical work to finish her dissertation. She does, however, have to do a better job of fleshing out her literature review, hypothesis development, and discussion of results.
• The class I taught on SAS programming was well received - the students were pretty engaged, asked a lot of questions, and seemed to get a lot out of the material.
• My coauthor and I did a lot of work on our paper.
• I survived the CFA class - it's the same modules I taught last year, so there was minimal prep.
• My graduate assistant is working on the project I assigned (the one he was trying to duck earlier). He seems to have actually made some progress.
• My students blew off class again today. So, those who showed up got another bonus. And in addition, they actually got to see the problem set that's due on Wednesday. And since there's no class on Monday, those that were absent pretty much gave themselves an auto-screwing.
  

And last but not least, I just got another revise-and-resubmit from a journal today. Now it's off to the Unknown Wife's Homecoming at her former school. We're spending a couple of days with a college friend of hers and touring the Big City on the way back.

A Crazy Week Ahead

It's yet another week where I've bitten off more than I should have:

• I taught my regular classes yesterday (Monday). After my last class I met with my grad assistant to give him his first assignment for the semester. I'm starting a project on the effect of dividends on firm risk, and he's putting together the initial data set. So, I spent an hour with him going over the steps needed to be done, the layout of the CRSP data files, and a few SAS tips he might need to know (or research further). Right after that, another grad student stopped by with some "simple" questions on how SAS handles date variables (ironically, some of the same stuff I'd just gone over with grad student #1). One hour later, I finished with him and left to meet Unknown Family at Unknown Son's new dojo (karate school) for his first "group" class. He looked pretty sharp in his new gi (the uniform). But it was all I could do to keep from laughing as he repeatedly spaced out in class and started posing in front of the mirror (I think he's still more excited about the idea of learning Karate than he is about the actual learning itself). He's also completely smitten with the 12 year-old brown belt who was helping out with the class (I guess he didn't realize that it's always dangerous to go after older women who can kick your butt).
  
• Once home, Unknown Wife went off to a parent's meeting for Unknown Daughter's Girl Scout troop while Unknown Son and I wrestled with his homework. After Unknown Wife got back and we got the kids to sleep, I ended up writing SAS code until midnight to put together a small data set for a short tutorial I'm giving to doctoral students at my former school (more on that in a minute)
• Today I take the train to the nearby big city for the day. I'll spend the day in the library at a large research university gathering data (they have resources we don't, but graciously allow access to nearby faculty), and then teach a CFA prep class in the evening. After all this is done, I'll end up back at the Unknown House at around 11.
• Wednesday, I teach classes until about 2, and then immediately rush to the airport for a short (1 hour) plane ride back to my old haunts. After landing, I'll work until the wee hours Wednesday night on a paper with a colleague (I'm staying at her family's place).
• Thursday morning, I attend the dissertation proposal defense of one of my former students (I sit on her committee, and the colleague mentioned previously is her dissertation chair). Then in the afternoon, I give a two-hour tutorialto the grad students at the same school on basic SAS procedures used often in financial/accounting research .
  
• After that, it's back on the plane and back to the Unknown Household for a few hours sleep.
  
• Friday, it's back in the classroom, followed by a meeting with my grad assistant to check on his progress (he's tried to weasel out of a previous assignment, s0 this time he gets tight controls put on him - after all, if a corporate finance guy doesn't understand agency problems, he doesn't understand much).
  

Somehow, in the midst of all this I have to put up slides for the following week's classes and put together a problem set for my investments class (they have an exam next week, and I always give a pretty tough problem set the week prior to the exam as a form of "enforced" practice). And then there are the matters of the revise and resubmit that's sitting on my desk and the new project that my coauthors are breathing down my neck on.

But griping aside, I'll get it all done somehow. Even with all this, academia is still the best job in the world. I should know - I've had a number of "real" jobs, and there's no comparison.

A Good Day, and A Good Ride

This was a good day - I went into the office around 11:00, finished a paper to send to a conference and then finished my PowerPoint slides for the next week's classes.

Then I went on a 22 mile bike ride. It was a bit windy, but other than that,conditions were just about perfect for a long ride - mostly flat terrain with just enough gently rolling hills to make it interesting, and a temperature of 64 degrees. It was so nice that I actually ended up holding a faster pace for the 22 mile ride than I usually do for my 16 mile course. I even passed one of my students on the road. I wonder how he felt getting smoked by a teacher more than twice his age?

Hey - I may be carrying about 15 extra pounds, but my legs and cardio are both in pretty good shape. O.K - enough bragging...

Now, it's time to read a bit to the Unknown Son before bed (Unknown Daughter is at a friend's house). The kids just watched Lemony Snicketts, so now he's reading the books (he just got the first two from the library). I particularly like them because they use some pretty complicated words, but follow them with an explanation in an aside). So, they're great not just for the story itself but also for feeding the lad's inner nerd.

Posting Will Be Light

Posting has been light for the last few days (and probably will be for the next few) because of a death in the family. One of my nephews (my younger sister's son) passed away this last week. He was diagnosed at age 4 with neuroblastoma, a relatively rare form of childhood cancer (there are only a couple hundred cases a year in the U.S.). He went into remission after a year or so, but the cancer recurred about 2 1/2 years ago. He put up an amazing fight, but unfortunately, there is no known cure for recurrent neuroblastoma.

So, we will be at the wake and funeral for the next couple of days. Please keep my sister's family in your prayers as they go through this terrible time.

A Waterlogged Family Weekend

T'was a good weekend at the Unknown Household. Saturday, the Unknown Wife and I celebrated our 17th anniversary. It's kind of humbling to realize that our friend's daughter (who just graduated high school) wasn't born until about a month after our wedding.

Sunday we went to a nearby place that has a small hill for skiing & snowboarding during the winter. But during the summer, they have a water slide that's about 5 stories high (built onto the side of the hill) with some great twists and turns. Our kids must have gone down it about 25 times. Since walking up the hill got to be a bit much for the Unknown Wife and I after about the 15th time, we mostly waited at the bottom near the pool and enjoyed the sights and sounds of the kids coming down. We could always tell when it was our daughtergoing down the slide, because her screams made a nice Doppler effect as she got closer.

By this morning, I still had about half the water in my sinuses, and a nice sunburn on the top of my head (it seems like the "ground cover" has gotten a bit sparse). But at least my legs felt o.k - all that biking I've been doing this summer seems to have been good for something.