Alright, here we are right smack in the middle of first quarter exam week. As I speak, it's three down and two more to go. I've drank so much coffee this week that my skin is turning to kind of a mocha hue and my body emits the odour of Starbucks French Roast - its quite pleasant really. My blood is now estimated by doctors to actually contain 33% coffee - I'm blowing way over the legal limit. At least it will all be over soon, and many festivities are planned for Friday night. Everybody is psyched to celebrate the successful completion of our first quarter.

As you might have noticed, my blog is now equipped to handle digital images. This is due to Blogger's recent partnership with Google. In the past the fine folks at Blogger, who host this and thousands of other fine blogs, was bandwidth constrained. They offered "Blogger Pro" which allowed you to put pics on your blog, but charged for the service. The plain vanilla Blogger was free but you weren't allowed to eat up their bandwidth by posting images. Now Google has partnered with Blogger, in part because they believe blogs are good for the web (due to all the linking going on) - ergo good for their business model. As you probably know, Google has bandwidth coming out of their ass. So, Bingo - Blogger with images is now free. Big props to Google on that one.

So I thought I'd take the opportunity to post some images from Rotman and the U of T:



Rotman from the outside



Inside Rotman (The Atrium)


The Rotman Trading Lab


The Great Hall at Hart House
A favorite place of mine to study - but they don't have the wireless network in there yet.

By the way, we didn't get a winner in my obscure pop culture referencing challenge from a couple weeks back. The correct answer was Ed Whalen and Stampede Wrestling. Y'all are going to have to do a lot better than that in the future.

Update on the Queen's Park debacle: the squirrel gangs have taken to patrolling the park on bicycles - this situation is gonna get worse before it gets better.

The squirrels have taken over Queen's Park. I repeat - the squirrels are in firm control of Queen's park. I walk through there today and the head squirrel got all "Warriors" on me. He said "I can let you walk through, put you got to take off your colours. If you walk through as a civilian, we got no problem - otherwise I'm gonna have to come down on you."

First quarter exams start next week here at Rotman, five exams in five days, and there's a lot of pressure. In a nutshell it breaks down like this: when the investment banks come to recruit at Rotman the first thing they want to see is your transcript. Mediocre grades = no i-banking job. We're being graded on a curve of course, and everybody here is just as smart and as motivated as I am.

OK Rotman, as Costanza would say: "you want to get nuts... let's get nuts!"

A couple of pop-culture related observations today: I see that the song "Pictures of You" by the Cure is now being used to sell HP's digital photography. Now I can finally truly appreciate what the hippies were complaining about when Nike bought the rights to "Revolution". Now its my music that's being used in the soulless, Captialistic pursuit of profits. It's not that I object so much to Robert Smith cashing in like that - it just makes me feel old.

Tony Pierce has a good blog entry today about what it's like to be a Cubs fan (not dissimiliar to rooting for the Canucks sometimes) and the most hated man in Chicago today.

Still no correct answer from last week's quiz. Anyone? DJDwayne?

Lastly, a little more blog begging (blegging?). Thanks to everyone who was generous enough to chip in on my behalf to the Toronto United Way for the CN Tower Stair Climb. It's much easier to do it online, however, than to send me money in the mail. The Stair Climb is October 24th, so there's still plenty of time to make a donation if you're so inclined.

Guess who's back. Back again TAML's back. Tell a friend.

I've created a monster, cuz nobody wants to see Donald no more they want TAML I'm chopped liver. Well, if you want TAML, then this is what I'll give ya. A little bit of blog mixed with some hard liquor.

It's been a couple of weeks since I posted - its about time. Nothing like a little late night blogging and a Bombay and Tonic to loosen up the brain after a long evening with my Corporate Finance textbook. Now, I don't want to turn this blog into a my weekly bitch session about how much work I have to do, but dammit, I've been busier than white trash at a WalMart.

Jim and Cathy and Cathy's brother Chris were here staying with me for a couple nights at the Rotman Financial Research and Trading Lab - Eastern Annex. They were in town for a wedding, and I managed to squeeze in one night of booziness with them at The Madison. Jim thought the place looked like Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizzardry inside - he's funny.

I'm also busy organizing a Rotman team in the CN Tower Stair Climb to raise money for the United Way. I'll be climbing the 1776 steps to the top of the world's tallest building - I call it Grouse Grind Toronto sytle. I sent an e-mail to some of you to beg for sponsorship flowage. If you didn't get one click here to sponsor me. Thanks in advance to everyone who flows the United Way some badly needed money.

In the meantime and in between time* I'll be here in Toronto awaiting the arrival of The Shamrock Princess.

*leave a comment if you know this Canadian pop culture reference. I need the name of the announcer and the show he was on (no googling allowed). The first one with the right answer will receive an official TAML t-shirt.