My new Kindle

By Conor | June 25th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

Liz bought me a Kindle for Father’s Day. (A Kindle, for the proudly uninitiated, is an electronic reading device.) It is a marvelous gift, especially for somebody who takes the subway every day. I tried it out for the first time today, taking it from my bag and pressing a button and Shazam! (Or Kapow! for those who do not speak Turkish.) My book appears, magically, at the page where I left off.

It was at that moment, on the subway, that I noticed for the first time that not only did nobody else have a Kindle, but I had never seen anybody with a Kindle on the subway. (Strange, because Amazon makes you feel like you’re the last person on Earth to be reading off mutilated, processed rainforest wood that potentially held the cure for cancer but we’ll now never know because you had to find out what happens when Shopoholic Ties the Knot.)

I also noticed people openly staring not just at it, but at me for having it (I suppose they’d already read all the in-train advertisements for celebrity podiatrists.) Holding that thin, white case, I suddenly felt like I had been beamed there from the future to spy on 2009 Earthlings, trying to act all casual in my silver neoprene unitard while standing on a Segway, and trying to fit in by breezily and loudly mentioning, in Artoo Detoo beeps and boops, that I looked forward to reading my Jonathan Grisham novel.

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The Lives of Others

By Conor | June 24th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

I got an invitation to take a Facebook quiz yesterday that asked “What Chinese City are You?” I remember thinking, what are my options? Because I know Bejing and Shanghai. Am I one of those?

I don’t know if I can take these quizzes anymore, because frankly I don’t need Facebook to tell me What Decade I Am or Which TV Movie Lawyer I am or Who My Celebrity Boyfriend is or How Well I Know TV’s Matthew Perry. Nor do I want anybody to send me a Rhubarb plant and I do not wish to send a Rhubarb plant back to you. I don’t know the person Facebook tells me I should be friends with, and I don’t know most of the people who send me event invitations.

Yet there is something about Facebook that we all love, and I think it is because it gives us a peak into the lives of others without having to actually engage. It’s why Twitter is so popular, I suppose, even though the very idea of signing up for Twitter, at this moment, makes me want to climb a tree and refuse come down, kicking at the fireman who is trying to grab hold of my leg until they have to taser me down. (“OMG – just saw man get tasered out of a tree!! NYC is sooo cray-zeeeeeee!!”)

I do use Facebook, and I can assure you I am the first to click on any news story that contains “Paris Hilton” and “tweets about fall in toilet.” But I also know that I live without those sites, like those folks in Iran.

What I cannot live without, I have to tell you and I am ashamed to admit, is “Daisy of Love.”

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Public Profile

By Conor | June 10th, 2009 | 3 Comments »

We write about what we know, and at the moment, I know a lot about three month old babies. Or at least I know more than I did three months ago.

I realize that there are a lot of people out there, girl people, who really like babies. For me, there was little to get excited about until I had one of my own. To wit, this is a direct quote from a blog entry of mine from January 2006:
[New parents] believe that when they meet a friend, there is nothing more important in this world than relating the fact that their child pointed at a bush for the first time. The friend could be standing in the path of a speeding dump truck, the driver could be waving madly that he has no brakes, but that parent will still have to squeeze in the fact that Baby “ate-almost-an-entire-bowl-of-peas-this-morning-LOOK OUT!”

I am now that guy.

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First Born Son

By Conor | May 31st, 2009 | 4 Comments »

Liz and I have a son. His name is Finn; he is wonderful. We are madly in love with him. I am using the term “madly in love” here as a way of showing the lengths I am willing to go to illustrate how much I care for this child.

In any other circumstances, you see, the term “madly in love” is, for me, utterly unusable. In the past when I have heard parents use it to describe their feelings for their newborns I would, if I was feeling generous, merely roll my eyes. That’s because it always reminds me of a kind of dramatic proclamation that goes beyond the reasonable. “Madly in love?” Really? You will find the phrase in Jane Austin adaptations where Kate Winslet (who else plays these roles?) will burst into her mother’s bedroom in a flowing nightgown and cry, in an English accent, “I met him last night at the Wickersham’s Ball, Mother! His name is Philip and we are madly in love! We marry Friday week!”

We are not madly in love like that. But we are crazy about this boy and we love him to death. I’m going to tell you more about him now.
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Big News

By Conor | December 29th, 2008 | 13 Comments »

I believe my last blog entry was mid-September. I can (and will) blame the delay on business school and how incredibly busy it is. I can count on one closed fist the number of free days I had in the past three months. Liz and I had dinner together just about every night, but otherwise our time together was severely limited, which, by any measure, is totally lame.

We are making up for lost time this Christmas break, mostly with me following her around the house and talking to her and nudging her while she is working on her laptop so she can’t type. In short, I have become a twin of our yellow lab, Emma, with the glaring difference that one of us chooses not to wake the entire household by slurping loudly from the toilet at 2 a.m. (You don’t know thirst until you’ve leapt from your bed and dived open-mouthed into the bosom of the toilet to drink its sweet, sweet nectar.)
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Conor’s rejected campaign slogans for VP of the First Year Class

By Conor | September 14th, 2008 | 7 Comments »

Scorp elections have arrived!

Scorp is the NYU Stern government student body - though the name itself, Scorp, tends to conjure up images of a super-villain.

One imagines Wesley Snipes, in that breathy, tax-evading voice of his, grunting “Scorp… I knew you’d show your undead face around here sooner or later…” and Scorp, who would have some kind of javelin-sized piercing through his lip, would say something unoriginal (“Say your prayers to that ridiculous God of yours, Blaaaade!”) and then throw something pointy at Wesley Snipes.

But that’s not what NYU Stern Scorp is. And I should know. I’m running for VP of the First Year Class and it’s pretty much a prerequisite that I understand that Scorp is in fact Stern’s Student Government and not an undead vampire.
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Self-Assessment Tests and How to Fool Them (and in the process, yourself)

By Conor | September 5th, 2008 | 3 Comments »

As first year students at NYU Stern, we have a course called Teams and Leaders. It is not graded. I believe it is mandatory for all students, meaning nobody placed out of it by virtue of being a kick-ass teammate in their previous employment.

Now, let me say that I think the concept of Teams and Leaders is a good one. It pervades virtually every field that we will find ourselves working in, unless you’re going into a uniquely individualistic position, like Junior Vice President for Swimming the English Channel or that monkey that we launched into space.

And I am sure that we are learning a lot. But it is a different kind of learning, where we are learning about ourselves and life. Which makes it sound like a yoga class, but far more practical (yoga people, don’t even start with me). In fact, I think it may turn out to be one of the more valuable things we do this semester.
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Pre-Term Ends (you may now use the restroom)

By Conor | August 31st, 2008 | No Comments »

Pre-term ended on Thursday, and the mood at Stern during the final gathering in Shimmel Auditorium was jubilant.

Thinking about it now, there was not a whole lot of reason for jubilance. One could even argue such jubilation was, let’s say, slightly irrational. (Three sentences, three iterations of the word jubilant. I’m on fire.) However, because I was amongst the throngs who were jubilantly (that’s four) celebrating, it looks like I am going to have to take a long look at the man in the mirror and come up with an answer/change my ways.

As I see it, there are a few interpretations for the mood.
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Pre-term is kind of like an iceberg…

By Conor | August 26th, 2008 | No Comments »

We are just days away from the end of NYU Stern Pre-Term, and I gotta tell you, it is pretty much a blur at this point. The day is mostly constructed of various presentations. These presentations have, in my opinion, gotten more practical as the days have gone on. Interestingly, however, there may not be a direct correlation between the utility of the presentation and class attendance to these presentations.

Now, I may be speaking out of turn here, but if you ask me, which you didn’t, the secret to ensuring that people show up to these presentations is making them – and I quote – “optional.”
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Pre-term: On cultural differences and four cheese sauce

By Conor | August 21st, 2008 | No Comments »

On the first day of Pre-Term for Stern, we gathered, 400+ of the new class of 2010, in an auditorium named after somebody named Schimmel. Or Kimmel. Both people apparently donated enough to have auditoriums named after them, and I’m pretty sure I am not the only one to confuse them. I’ll tell you this: if I’m ever thinking about dropping a few million to dedicate a new wing on a b-school, I’m sure as hell not doing it if people are going to confuse my wing with that school’s already existing Quonor Drennan Wing.

It was great to see the Class of 2010 in full force. Everybody seemed pretty psyched to be there, there were endless introductions, and those who had met once before were likely meeting for the first time in a venue that did not have “$3 Boilermakers” chalked on a blackboard outside.
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