Clearly any time you have to travel you fall behind in a slew a different arenas: work, friends, family, etc… One area that particularly gets to me is my blog reading.

I read something like 40 different blogs on a regular basis. Most of them only post something 2-3 times / week so it’s easy to keep up. But some, like Digg, Engadget, and Gizmodo have hundreds of posts per day. This means that when I get back home (as I just did), my RSS reader ( google reader) has more than 1,000 posts to go through.

The decision I am presented with is: do I a) read them all, b) read some of them, or c) mark them all as read and move on with my life. Option (a) is clearly out of the question. (B) seems appealing, but then I always feel like I’m missing something. (C) is what I usually wind up doing, but then I worry that I will be left out of the loop.

What do you guys do? Is there a strategy for catching up on 100s or 1,000s of posts? Help!?!

As you probably already know, I’m not a big fan of religion. In my mind, blind obedience usually leads to mayhem and oppression. In any case, my “favorite” religion, Catholicism, has just made it that much more apparent that it is still in the dark ages.

Apparently, the Pope recently ruled that any woman who becomes a priest, or any bishop who ordains a woman is to be immediately excommunicated from the church. For religious Catholics, that’s almost worse than death.

Really, what are they thinking? With more and more people leaving religion (and especially Catholicism), is the alienation of an entire gender the right move?

Then again, if the end state is that fewer people become sucked into a mythical dogma which discriminates against 1/2 the people in the world, then maybe this will end well after all.

I actively use three computers: my office computer, my home computer, and my laptop ( ACER Travelmate C300). The firs two I love (as much as one can love a computer) but the third is driving me crazy. I almost exclusively use it when I travel (mostly to conferences) and the damn thing weighs a ton (actually, 6.3 lbs). I bought it thinking that I wouldn’t care about the weight, but after three years and roughly 20 trips later, I am regretting my decision.

So now I’m thinking of upgrading to a new, lighter, laptop. The problem is that I’m on a pretty tight budget.

Here’s what I want:

1. Light (< 3.5 lbs)
2. Small (< 13” display)
3. Powerful enough (needs to run XP, Photoshop, Power Point, and Flash (development) at the same time…without dieing)
4. Built in optical drive (DVD reader…don’t need a burner)
5. VGA out
6. Relatively long batter life (> 3 hours)
7. Inexpensive (< $1,000)

Other than that, I don’t care.

I’m currently looking at the Fujitsu LifeBook S2210, but don’t know if it’s right for me (especially since it is more expensive than I’d like at $1,300 for the base model and the battery life sucks at 2.25 hours).

I prefer new laptops, but something refurbished might not be so bad.

Any and all suggestions are eagerly accepted.

I’m teaching this summer and can’t help but notice that students fall into one of several types. Each type is characterized by a very specific personality and mannerisms. Here are the ones I think are most prevalent:

The Quiet Asian: She (yes yes, it’s always a she) sits in the middle row all the way to one side. She never participates and is always frantically taking notes. Come exam time expect many many emails from her about whether or not X is on the exam.

The I Want to Be Funny But Actually Look Dumb Guy: He (always a he) loves to make poorly timed jokes about the content of the class in an attempt to be the class clown. Unfortunately, the class clown (who I love but usually doesn’t exist in business school) has already made that joke…and did it well. Sorry guy, too little too late.

The I Only Heard One Part of the Question Girl: She (again, usually she, but sometimes he) isn’t really paying attention, but something about what I asked the class resonated with her and she feels the need to contribute. Unfortunately, although I find her ideas about her pet fish interesting, they are only marginally related the US Bottled Water market.

The I’m Smarter Than Everyone Else Here Girl: She (yah yah, stop complaining) feels like her opinion is always right, regardless of what I (the professor) have to say about it. Certainly blue is objectively better than green. I mean who could argue with that? Right.

The Repeat Whatever The Last Person Said Guy: He loves to hear his own voice…especially when answering questions that have already been answered. Somehow he feels that when he says it, it counts, but when the person immediately before him spoke, he was probably just kidding.

The Eye Rolling Expert: He, for whatever reason, has decided to stop working as the head of marketing at some major corporation and return to school. Of course, now he’s in my Intro to Marketing course. Every comment out of my mouth is echoed by an eye roll from him followed by: “well when I was doing it, we did it this way.” Thanks guy, you’re a big help.

The Head-Nodder: This is my favorite person in class (honestly, no sarcasm here). He (usually he, though sometimes she) doesn’t participate much but, without fail, every time I look at him he is nodding his head in agreement. If ever I wanted affirmation that I’m getting my point across, I just look at him. Thanks Head-Nodder!

So who have I missed?

(adapted from Top 10 Reasons to Date an Entrepreneur)

1. Flexible Schedule: Aside from classes, anything goes. Lunch on Tuesday at 2pm? Sure. Dinner on Wednesday at 10pm? Why not! 3 week vacation to Bali? Okay, that’s trickier, but still doable!
2. Good Communication Skills: Classes don’t teach themselves
3. You can tell your friends you’re dating a doctor: Okay, so it’s not doctor in the MD sense, but it still counts!
4. You can go out with your friends and not worry about us: Hours of solitude as grad students means we know how to keep ourselves entertained
5. You can take us out to parties with you: Realize that academic conferences are 15% intellectual and 85% party. We’ve got PLENTY of practice with meeting new folks.
6. You’re on the cutting edge of science: Well maybe just the cutting edge of one small subset of a subset of science, but it still counts.
7. Bullshit Detector: “I swear, my printer broke 2 minutes before that assignment was due!” Yah, I don’t think so.
8. Not afraid to ask for directions: We spend our lives asking questions…this one is easy.
9. We actually care what you have to say: Other opinions count in science.
10. We’ll admit defeat: Scientific progress comes from disproving ideas, not proving them. Show us we’re wrong and we’ll love you for it.