DarqByte

Some people know that I used to co-own a business. It was called Dambert Lush, it was an electronics e-commerce website. My friend Damian Sheets and I owned it. It never really took off, and a lot of the reason for that was that we had no money to start it. Aside from the fact that electronics e-commerce websites are extremely plentiful, we just didn’t have the advertising money to get the name of DL out there. It was running for over a year but we shut it down because we couldn’t ever get it rolling well. I re-bought the domain recently and have it pointed to DarqFlare Enterprises.

Anyway, I bring this up because my MBA courses relate to starting a business. I mean, one of the reasons I’m getting an MBA is because I eventually want to start a successful business and work for myself. That’s a theme I’m sure you’ve seen pop up here on my blog time and time again. I want to work for myself, that’s my ultimate career goal. Even if it’s working hard, I want to work for myself. As I’ve said before, right now my ideal job is working on OMGN for a living.

In any case, my accounting class’ textbook has actually made me more aware that I want to start a business again. There are examples all over that book of people starting businesses, and they’re obviously always in reference to accounting systems to ensure that money is kept track of appropriately. Some of these businesses have been started with very low funds, albeit more funds than Damian and I had to start DL. But it all just reminds me of where I want to be and where I’m at now.

The start-up funds aspect of businesses is what’s staring me in the face right now. To start many businesses, you need to have seed money. There are many types of businesses, but the two that have been covered so far in more detail in the text are service-based businesses and inventory-bases businesses.

Service-based companies basically accept money to provide a service. There’s no inventory costs really and the start-up cost for a business like this is pretty low. Hell, this is a kind of business I could likely start without any funds, but the problem here is that the income from the business wouldn’t be high enough to cover my family’s expenses. Yet another limitation on me right now.

Inventory-based companies typically have to purchase merchandise then sell it back to other companies or consumers to make a profit. There’s a considerably higher amount of money involved in getting these types of businesses off of the ground since they’ve got to get inventory and a place to put it. This was what Dambert Lush was, but since we were a dropshipper, we didn’t have to hold inventory. Still, our marginal profits were really low and there weren’t enough of them. No advertising, remember?

Anyway, all of this introspection on starting a business and going into the accounting of businesses this semester has really told me that, yeah, starting a business is hard work, is more of a crapshoot than it should be and that you’re very likely to fail many times before getting it right. I’m alright with that and I’d be even more alright with that if I wasn’t married. See, I’d be much more inclined to take risks since it would just be me that I’m impacting. But I’m not. I have Laura to think about and the potential for having a family in the future.

A lot of Web 2.0 companies have started with guys living in their parents’ houses. Many of these people starting these new successful companies were single when they started them. They had relatively low costs of living and a lot of time to burn. I don’t fit the bill at all. Now I’m not blaming Laura or using her as a crutch here, I’m just being realistic. I’d have a much better opportunity and chance of success if I were single, didn’t own a home or any pets and had craploads of expendable time to put towards a big project that won’t make me any money for years.

However, I’m not in that situation. So I have to wait. Wait until Laura and I have more money stowed away for me to start a business with. Wait until we have fewer monetary obligations than we do now (i.e. vehicle payments and student loans). And if we have kids, then that’ll impact the likelihood of my starting a new venture. I’m just trying to figure out if it’s ever going to be a viable thing, me starting a business.

As I’ve said before, really the biggest thing keeping me from working on OMGN full time is the fact that I have to go out and earn a living. If I could pipe all of that time towards the site, I have no doubt it would grow and get bigger and better in stature as time went on. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. All of the responsibilities and obligations I’ve built into my life make it impossible to spend the kind of time and effort required to build OMGN into what I want it to be. Sure, you can say “work on it a little each day and it will grow!” but it won’t ever grow enough. Sites like OMGN require constant updating, which isn’t something I can do and it isn’t something I can expect people to do on my behalf for free or very, very damn cheap either. It’s just not feasible.

So here I am, wondering if I’ll really ever be able to start a business anytime soon. Sure, when I’m in my 40s sometime we’ll probably be in a much better financial position to take a risk like that. But let’s say for example I’m 48 then. I imagine by then we likely won’t have big money-draining kids with us by then, or at least we’ll be charging them enough in rent to make up the difference (haha). I’ll be 48 with about 25 years generated in my 401k and plenty of time in Laura’s IRA. Other financial retirement accounts will likely have money for us then as well. At the end of my 40s, would I rather just bide my time until I can retire, which may be very soon in my 50s, or put a bunch of money towards a business that may jeopardize my family’s financial well-being?

I may need to adjust my priorities. I do like my life as it is now. I love my wife, I’m enjoying my pursuit of higher education and I know I’m fucking good at my job. Sure, I want to move up there as well, that’s another shorter-term goal I have for my career. But maybe this whole starting a business thing just isn’t in the cards. Maybe I should just look at my life, adjust my priorities and be happy. But then again, that’s not my style now, is it? I’m a bit like Laura in this regard. I want bigger and better things for my family, for my career and for me. I want to achieve things and leave my mark on this world. I don’t want to settle, I don’t want to sit stagnant and watch other talented people in the world shape this world. I want to take my place with those people. I just hope I can reconcile my desires for grandeur with reality.

My inaugural MBA semester is over. I took one final last week in Stats because Organizational Behavior did not require a final unless you wanted to take it. Today, I got my grades.

Aced, bitches! I aced both classes! Boo-yah!

I am very happy with this result. I went into this degree with the intention of doing as good as I possibly could. I want to continue my trend of increasing my GPA at each new higher level of learning. My unweighted high school GPA was 3.4 (weighted, it was over 4). My undergraduate GPA was 3.56. And now I’m starting off my graduate GPA with a stunning 4.0!

Granted, it’s only two courses. It might be more of an achievement if I was taking a full load of four courses. The mitigating factors here are that I’m also working full time and I’m married. I want to actually spend time with my wife. That, and since it’s graduate-level courses, I want to really be able to apply my time and thought towards the course material. This is stuff I really want to learn.

So I’m tooting my own horn here, and rightfully so! I don’t do it often enough. Well here you go, the reasons why I absolutely rock right now!

1. I had a 2 1/2 year gap between undergraduate and graduate courses. Significant layoff, and I still performed! Time off an be a killer because the longer you’re in school, the more of a rhythm you get into.
2. My graduate degree isn’t in the same field as my undergraduate degree, let alone my current job.
3. The Stats course is basically the filter course for the MBA program. It knocks people out that are unworthy.

And I friggin’ aced them both! Hell yeah! Obviously I’d love to aim for a 4.0 GPA after I’m done and get my degree, but I’ll settle for better than a 3.56. Honestly, I’ll settle for getting the degree regardless of the GPA, but as a personal challenge to myself, I want to get a 4.0.

So it’s the end of the year, and you know what that means! Yes, it means final exams at the end of my first MBA semester and self evaluations at work!

Food Poisoning

Unfortunately, it also means I got food poisoning… Not that it happens every year around this time. The last time this happened, Laura was either a Copy Editor or the News Editor for The Rebel Yell back when we were both in our undergrad studies at UNLV. That time was really awful, this one was just as bad.

To be truly honest, I’m not sure 100% that it was indeed food poisoning, just as back then I’m not sure what it was either. All I know is that I couldn’t keep any food or water down for very long and there were times (specifically, when I wasn’t keeping said food or water down) that I felt I was going to die. Not the most remarkable experience ever. Thus, I had to stay home from work yesterday, which I didn’t want to do, but hey… Not much I could do about it. I was pretty incapacitated.

Hell, I even considered playing some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 that Laura got for me as a just-because surprise gift (She rocks! Love her!), but I couldn’t focus or concentrate enough to even do that. So I just laid on the couch, intermittently sleeping and “watching” TV and trying to eat and failing.

Today, though, I’m mostly back to normal. Still don’t feel quite right, but I can eat & drink and operate like a regular human being again. I anticipate tomorrow being 100% again.

Final Exams

So enough about food poisoning! Let’s address final exams. Rather, final exam. Just one this time around.

My Organizational Behavior class was structured with an optional final. This means that if you ended up with a decent grade, you shouldn’t take the final simply because if you do worse on the final than the grade you had going into it, you could seriously damage your grade. Thus, I checked my grade. Yeah, with that big beaming A staring me in the face, I’m not taking the final. Boo-yah!

So I only have one final then, and that’s Stats. Ugh. Not the class I want to be taking a final in. I’ve been doing alright in there and I have a shot at an A, it seems, but my group project needs to be pretty solid and I need to get roughly a C or so on the final to get the A. I think I can do it, and I really want to. I’m aiming to have the best grades of my educational career in the MBA program. So far I’ve accomplished bettering my grades at every level, having gotten a 3.4 (unweighted) in high school and a 3.56 in undergrad. If I can better that getting my MBA, then you could say I get better with age.

Self Evaluation

So it’s the end of the year and self evaluations are floating around work. That doesn’t really make me the happiest man on the planet, as I get to sift through an entire year’s worth of work to figure out what I’ve done well, what I haven’t and to note any accomplishments. That, and I’m not particularly good at being assertive and promoting myself very well.

These are things I’ve been working on improving in myself lately, with some mixed success. I figure this self evaluation will be one of my first opportunities to be more assertive and sell myself better within the company. I still haven’t moved up and I want to, so this is a prime opportunity to voice that.

I’m also never really sure how to rate myself. I never have been, really. Like when asked what my level of experience is with different technologies, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, Java, etc. I never know what to say beyond Intermediate. I want to say Expert, but when I say Expert, I take that as meaning I’m leaps and bounds better than your average programmer with those skills and technologies. When I say I’m an expert at something, I intend to convey that I’m THE FUCKING MAN.

Indeed, that feeds into my assertiveness and self promotion. I really should give myself more credit than I usually do. I know that I’m an integral, vital part of my department here at work and that a lot of the stability here is due to me (and my tremendous boss Randy Kochis, to be sure).

I do feel that since I’ve got such an effective boss that I’m a bit overshadowed and get pigeonholed too easily. I just feel that it’s difficult to really shine in my department here at work because Randy is so good at what he does and can take on more and more responsibilities easily. He’s actually one of the people I’m trying to model some of my career after, not a bad example if I do say so myself.

So yeah, my whole point here is that self evaluations are around again and I just hope I don’t over- or under-value myself too much this year. The first year I did these I undervalued myself pretty badly when compared to my superiors’ evaluations of me, and last year I overvalued myself just slightly…

Maybe I’m just destined to be a code monkey the rest of my life??

So I figured I’d give you a progress report on me in the MBA program as well as some other stuff. This’ll be relatively brief as I don’t have long to write.

I’m taking two classes, as I’ve mentioned before, stats and organizational behavior. Stats is pretty blah for me. I’m somewhat interested in the subject material, but the instructor is really tough to learn from. I don’t think his teaching style works too well for me, and a lot of other students in the class feel the same way. Nonetheless, I think I’ve currently got a high B in there, so as long as I can at least maintain momentum, I’ll pass. But I want an A, dammit.

I’ve been writing numerous case studies and doing group projects and craploads of reading for organizational behavior too. I actually forgot to print and bring the one due today with me, so I have to book it home to print it and bring it back to UNLV with me. Garr. But I’m enjoying the class nonetheless.

Finally, my meeting with the Career Services office ended up with them suggesting to me to work on OMGN for an hour a day. And I’ve been trying pretty hard to keep working on it. I posted my first review up on the site in a long time and I’ve been working on and off on the new database structure and codebase. I’m hoping to have it deployed sometime next summer, heh. It’s gonna take some time.

Well, gotta go!

Finally, my long-awaited post about my adventures in the UNLV MBA program! Well, really, I’ve only completed one actual week of courses, but there’s so much more to talk about involving this program. Hopefully I’ll keep this shorter than 2,000 words.

Prep

So obviously I had to prepare for the program. I won’t go too far back into the history of my taking the GMAT and applying for the program. I’ve already talked about that. I never really came out and said it but yes, UNLV accepted me to the program.

I met with some officials for t he program and they suggested I consider doing the joint MBA/Masters MIS program. Since I considered at one point to pursue a Masters in MIS, I’ve taken it into consideration. Right now I decided to go for an MIS emphasis, but should I decide to increase the number of courses I’m taking per semester, I’ll probably move up to the joint program.

I decided to do most of my prep work such as getting a parking pass and books during the orientation week they had for us. Basically, the last week of summer before classes started saw us hitting campus Monday through Thursday from 5:30pm to 8:30pm to become oriented. Haha. Friday was a food & drink mixer at Bahama Breeze (yummy jerk chicken there).

Orientation

I began prepping for orientation before I even got there. They required business casual dress for all five days of orientation, and unfortunately, I didn’t have a week’s worth. I never have to dress up for work, so dressing business casual for an entire week would have seen me wearing the same pair of pants all five days and very likely having to re-wear a shirt or two. I don’t know how many shirts I had.

So that Monday I ran to the outlet mall near work during my lunch break and grabbed two more pairs of pants. Now I had three (or so I thought, I’ll touch on that later).

Since I get off of work at 4pm and orientation didn’t start until 5:30pm, I decided to hit up the bookstore and see what books I needed to get. Since they were pretty cheap, when compared to how much collegiate books can cost, I bought them on the spot. I also looked at backpacks because I needed a new one. Didn’t buy one, though.

The first day of orientation was really a true orientation. We got to meet many of the people involved with the program, including the coordinators of the joint degree programs. We got a couple presentations on how to get the most out of the MBA program and got to meet a lot of our fellow MBA students.

So Tuesday rolls around… I went and bought three nice shirts during my lunch break again. Now I finally had enough clothes to wrap up the whole week. I even went with a couple lighter-colored shirts as I’m starting to want some diversity.

I ran by parking services before Tuesday’s proceedings to buy a $3 plastic placard to hang from my rear-view mirror to put the parking pass on. Hurrah.

Tuesday saw a presentation on, well, presenting. The presenter was in the College of Education and he was giving us tips and ideas on how to be better in front of crowds and audiences because managers typically have to make presentations. We eventually divided into groups and mock presented to each other. The groups then decided on whom to send in front of the entire audience to present theirs. I nearly had to go for mine, but my group-mate Chris ended up going after I defeated him in Rochambeau. I rarely lose at that game.

Before the collection of students on Wednesday, I ran into the Student Union and got a couple things done, such as re-setting up my computer systems logon and I got my new RebelCard in. Saw Sean Conolly in there as well, which was nice to see him again.

I also swung by the bookstore again and got my backpack. Well, it’s not a backpack but a side bag. I like it better that way.

Wednesday saw us in the first of two full days of team building, led by Stoney Alder, whom teaches the Organizational Behavior (OB) class I’m currently in. The day was marked with different team-building exercises and discussions, but at the end we played the prisoner’s dilemma game. Basically, the game is built on the trust between the two sides. If they trust each other well enough then both will do well together. If they don’t trust each other, both can get screwed. It’s much like the ending of The Dark Knight where the Joker tries to get one of the two boats to blow up the other.

Ultimately, my group was turned into two teams and we actually trusted each other, ending up with the best score out of all of the groups and earning extra credit points for the OB class. I was the leader for one of the teams. Made me feel good.

On Thursday I just wrapped up a couple things before orientation, but nothing big. Stoney was leading things again and this time we had an exercise where we were all executives of a multi-national corporation who were figuring out who to hire for a new peer position in a new location. Each of us know part but not all of the requirements for the new position, and we had to combine all of our knowledge to rule out candidates for the position that didn’t fit the bill.

I should point out that yet again, I was the group leader… Interesting. But we came to our consensus and all of the groups listed who their candidate was to hire. We were in the minority, actually, on who we picked. Stoney started going the other way saying that the other main candidate the groups chose would be hired, but I decided to stick up for my team because we were dead certain we were right.

After explaining how we ruled out the other candidate, Stoney asked one of the teams that chose the other candidate “How did you miss this?” Man am I happy I spoke up.

Friday was the mixer at Bahama Breeze. I didn’t have anything to do before-hand so I just surfed the web at work before heading there. It was fun, but nothing noteworthy to report.

Classes

So I started classes a week ago. I have classes on Monday and Wednesdays from 5:30pm to 8:15pm after work. My first class is Statistical Methods (SM), my second is OB. They’re interesting, but require a decent amount of work. Besides some menial things, I didn’t really have any homework to do. On Wednesday before classes, I ran by the bookstore to get an expandable folder for papers as well as a notepad for notes. I also grabbed an organizer from the Student Union (free!) so I could keep track of all of the crap I had to do.

Oh, I should mention that my courses are all reading ahead required. So rather than reading after the topic is discussed in class, we’re to read beforehand. It makes more sense this way, actually.

So at that point, I finally had everything I needed to actually take classes. Books, notepad, expanding folder, bookbag… Well, save for a piece of software my statistics class needs me to get, but I’m wrapping that up early this week.

For the weekend, I definitely had the first chapter’s homework to do for SM. It wasn’t hard, really, it just required a lot of flipping back and forth in the book and my notes to figure out what to graph, etc. For OB, I had to write up an example of a bad management situation I was in and explain what pitfalls there were, if any.

Of course, I also had to do all this reading ahead for the class discussions, which I’ve already done…

My weekend was filled with busy stuff for my classes. We have to do case reviews for my OB class and the first one potentially due is this Wednesday. I decided to write up my rough draft over the weekend and send it in to Stoney, assuming he’s still willing to do a look-over on it before I finally do turn it in. So I’m trying to stay ahead on the larger projects by getting some of them done early or at least rough drafted early.

We also have a semester project in SM to explain, using statistics, some issue. I think my partner and I are going to try to get a good head start on that going here in the near future as well.

All in all, I think I’ve got a good start going. I’m being much more responsible on my graduate level courses than I was on my undergraduate. I’m doing all of my assigned reading ahead of time, and I’m also doing multiple reads on separate days/times so I can try to really absorb all of the material. And I’m going to try to leverage my classmates for studying and proofreading of my papers so ensure I’m doing what I can to get passing grades.

Busy, but I think I’ll be alright. Having next Monday off will be nice, that’s for sure. I’ll try to keep any future MBA updates a bit less detailed than this, which ended up being… 1585 words long. Wow.

Alright, so in a previous post I mentioned that I was getting things together to apply for the MBA program at UNLV. For an update on that, basically they have all of my materials and will have a decision and information to me early next week. My GMAT scores have been calculated, but I don’t know yet what they are. Unofficially I got a 660 out of 800.

When I took a practice exam at home a few days before the actual exam, before studying, I got a 590. UNLV requires a 560 as a minimum for acceptance, as well as a bachelor’s degree in any field of study and a 3.0 or better on said undergraduate degree. Well, I unofficially scored 100 points better than their minimum on the GMAT and my undergraduate GPA was 3.56, well above their minimum. Combine that with my undergraduate degree being from UNLV and such, I think I’m a shoo-in to get in at UNLV.

But after I got that unofficial 660, I wondered where that ranked me in with the world. I decided to go see what the top 10 business schools were and what they accepted for scores on the GMAT. My 660 didn’t fare too badly.

Someone I know on Twitter, Jessica Mullen, said that her official score jumped way up from her unofficial, so if I jump 40 or so, then I’m in a really good range… Like, say, in range of MIT Sloan.

See, I’ve always had a semi-obsession with MIT. Back when my family and I discovered that I had some mathematically-based talent, I always thought that MIT and CalTech were totally awesome. Unfortunately, I never pursued either of them while I was in high school. I basically just said “Oh, I’ll go to UNLV” and left it at that. I still somewhat regret having never tried for either of them. CalTech sent me a lot of information about themselves too…

So now I could be within range of attending the 5th-best business school in the country. Yes, I know that link I sent to you listed it as 6th, but I’ve seen it as 5th just about everywhere else. So what do I do? I apply.

I’ve decided to apply to MIT Sloan before their application deadline in October. Right now they’re accepting applications for the start of courses in August 2010. So I’d have a long wait anyway. It’s a $250 application and I figure, since I’m sore over having never applied for any top schools for my undergraduate, I’ll give my choice school a shot for graduate.

Sure, if I get in I’ll have taken four courses at UNLV that won’t transfer. But that won’t matter. A degree from MIT Sloan is practically like gold. I could get a job anywhere. It would pay well. That’s part of the reason I’m even applying. The logistics of attending would be insane; Laura and I would be highly stressed both mentally and financially for the two years I’d be working for my degree. But the payoff would be so worth it.

That’s all assuming I’d be accepted. But I’ll apply. And if I make it in, I’m only one of 350 people that are accepted per year. Wow.

Update

It’s official, I got a 660. Good stuff! 83rd percentile!

Wait… NBA? No no… MBA!

Those of you that have known me awhile know that I never intended on ending my educational career with just a bachelor’s degree. I’ve always been planning on going for at least a Masters in Computer Science.

Hopefully starting this fall, I’ll be back at the UNLV campus for a Masters… In Business Administration. Yes, you read that right. Not Computer Science. Not Management Information Systems. Business Administration.

My financial advisor recommended for me to get the ball rolling this fall on a masters because my work will reimburse me 50% of course expenses up to $1000 per year if approved and I pass the course. I’ve spoken with HR here and it’s very likely that pursuing a Masters degree will qualify.

Like I said, I originally intended to pursue a Masters in CS. But my former coworker Jordan helped me to see I’m not cut out for that. I love programming and software development, don’t get me wrong. Computer Science is still a very interesting subject for me. But he was really good at the theory. He could use his mathematical background really well in applying high-level CS theories to his programming. While I could learn and understand everything he did, I was never near as good at being able to generate that kind of stuff.

It hit me that maybe I’m not really cut out for high-level CS. I started considering a Masters in Management Information Systems instead because it provides some of the business side logic to information technology. That ended quickly however, because three different people whose opinions I respect all suggested to go the MBA route instead, saying that the MIS won’t help me near as much.

Thus, I decided to go the MBA route. I’m in the process of getting my application materials together and am hoping that I can get things together in time to start officially this fall. I have to take the GMAT and I know I’m going to need to study for that, and I’ve got to get two recommendations ASAP as well. But I think I can cut it. I have a good GPA that will help out and I’m usually pretty good at taking tests, so… We’ll see.

Thus begins another chapter in my life. Pursuing an MBA while working as a software engineer. Should be interesting!