benj

Part 3 - Covers the different financial markets and investment avenues.

part-3.ppt

Part 2 - Covers the Income Statement, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement

BA422 - Part 2

De La Salle University just reported its first case of H1N1 flu (formerly known as swine flu) and they have declared no classes until June 15, 2009. Hopefully the people who have had direct contact with the exchange student positive for H1N1 will self impose a quarantine on themselves. Technically the break is not for students to go out and enjoy themselves but rather for them to distances themselves so as not to possibly infect more people.

Anyway, here’s a nice booklet from the UN detailing the H1N1 virus…

h1n1-flu-booklet_2009-05-01_final.pdf

Part 1 : Covers the different kinds of business organizations

BA 422 - Part 1

I was able to catch a quick glimpse of Conan O’Brien’s first apperance as host of The Tonight Show and I must say that I’m utterly disappointed. I’ve never been a fan of Conan but last night’s show takes the cake. Instead of a flowing monologue he did a stupid skit by skit comedy routine. In fact the first laugh I got was when the guest Will Ferrell was already talking, and he himself made some (sarcastic) remarks about Conan taking over the show.

I admit that I have quite a sophisticated sense of humor, but Leno always made me laugh. From his continuous monologue, to the timeless bits such as Headlines and Jaywalking, everything from the previous Tonight Show seemed to work perfectly. Now we’re left with a guy trying hard to make people laugh and trying hard to fill the shoes of an iconic comedian who has hosted the show for 17 years. One of the things I absolutely hate about Conan’s routine is how there’s always a lot of silent moments (because the audience didn’t find the jokes funny) and when this would happen, Conan would do little actions that just seem to make it worse. Granted even Leno regularly has jokes that flop, but he has a way of turning things around and making the audience enjoy even the worst of jokes.

I was still young when Leno took over Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show, and I’m sure he did encounter some problems during the first few months, but Conan just doesn’t seem right for the job. To top it all off, we have Max Weinberg and Andy Richter replacing the dynamic tandem of Kevin Eubanks and John Melendez.

I guess the only saving grace for Conan would be if they made Triumph the insult dog a more regular character. Otherwise I’m crossing my fingers and hoping Jack TV lines up the Jay Leno Show come September.

General Motors has finally filed for bankruptcy yesterday. They’re looking at getting out of it in 60-90 days, which is unrealistic in my book seeing as how GM is a much more complicated case compared to Chrysler. So the years of shoddy workmanship and their refusal to listen to the needs of the market has finally caught up with them. They say that GM will come out of this as a leaner and more efficient company. But if they still somehow cling to the same ideals they have in the past, then I think we can expect them to stay unprofitable for a significant number of years to come.

One minor good thing that comes out of this though is that you can get GM halo cars such as the Corvette for a very low price nowadays. If only I had the money…

This website has a pretty good coverage of Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholders’ meeting that happened in Omaha Nebraska this past weekend:

http://www.cnbc.com/id/30557253

Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger made several points that are too much to summarize in one post. But I am relieved to hear them still bullish about Wells Fargo, WFC stock was up 23% yesterday.

In the latest news gripping the I.T. industry, Oracle has just agreed to buy Sun Microsystems for $7.4 Billion. The board of both companies has already agreed to the deal in principle, and it should be finalized within the next few months barring any antitrust problems.

This is exciting news indeed, most especially for end users familiar with both companies. Sun Microsystems is the owner of the widely used Java programming language, and the thought of better (and easier) integration with Oracle’s database systems should be something to look forward to. Aside from that, what’s really grabbing my interest is that fact that Sun Microsystems also owns MySQL, arguably the most popular database system used in web based applications. It’s the database system I use in developing web applications and it has certainly stood the test of time, data, and traffic. I’m curious to see just how Oracle can improve upon the current MySQL architecture, maybe we will start seeing more and more Oracle features in MySQL?

It should be interesting to see any product developments that might happen over the next few months and years. My only regret was not getting hold of Sun Microsystems stock before when IBM backed off from purchasing the company. The stock jumped 30% yesterday and should increase few more percentage points.

Muji is a Japanese retail company that sells a wide variety of household and office goods. Their main emphasis in terms of design is minimalism. That means Muji products look extremely plain, but that is what actually sets them apart. I first came across their store a few years ago in Langham Place in Mongkok HK. I wasn’t able to look at their office supplies then but was able to buy a nice polka dotted polo shirt. A few years later I went to their store in a mall near Knutsford Terrace HK. That was when I bought a large amount of supplies for my own use.

One of the things that grabbed my attention was this transparent cased marker. How cool is this?

Here are some notebooks and pad papers I bought in Muji’s Taipei store in New York New York mall

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I was giving a lecture on File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and web hosting last Saturday when I recalled something about Google’s Data Center.

Basically, Google handles its own hosting for its website as well as its internal requirements. The link below containts some tidbits about Google’s Data Center.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-10209580-92.html

Interestingly, Google builds its own server architecture instead of just buying servers from IBM, HP, etc. (if your market cap is in the hundreds of billions of dollars, you can do this easily). The article doesn’t point out how many servers there are but it does say that each server container has 1,160 servers with each data center having many containers. So I guess it’s safe to say that Google has at least 15,000 servers? That’s a lot of computing power, but with the complexity of Google’s search algorithm, the large number of daily visitors, as well as hundreds of applications for their internal use, I would think that all this computing power is really necessary.