Quick Update

So it was my birthday this past weekend. Friday night (my actual b-day) was a great time hanging out with some LFM and Sloan friends. We all went out to a couple of bars and I had Happy Birthday sung to me in 8 languages: English, Spanish, Korean, Chinese, Swedish, Latvian, Hebrew, and Czech. Wow! What an impressive array of languages. Definitely a treat to have everyone sing in their native languages. On Saturday, Alicia and I took a trip to Portland, ME to hang out with my brothers, sister-in-law and niece. My brothers all flew in from Portland, OR and New York City. A good time together and the first time that has happened since Christmas of 2005 so it was a nice reunion.

On other things, I am heading down to San Salvador, El Salvador on Saturday (or so) to spend the first part of next week working on my Integrating the Lean Enterprise with Dell, our client, who is looking for my group to implement lean in their call center so that their El Salvador facility becomes the model call center for all of Dell. Should be a fun and interesting, though stressful, trip. We have been awaiting some documents from Dell so that we can create a great experience for all next week, but as of yet we have not received any of these required documents. Should be a learning experience for us all!

On the class side of things, the amount of work is ridiculous. I guess part of the problem is taking System Dynamics, G-Lab and Lean at the same time in addition to the core. Very overwhelming. I highly suggest taking at least the first two, we'll see about the third. And a note to all potential LFM's: when you sign up for Fall classes at the end of Summer semester and there is a high interest in both G-lab and System Dynamics, sign up for G-lab. Bid all your points on G-lab. System Dynamics is a great class that you all should take, but with the drop out rate of the 2nd year Sloanies who are looking for less work, there will be plenty of seats available for you - I think that 30 - 40 people dropped the class after the third week!

So that is all I have for now. I'll have another update after my trip next week. Tune in again around the 12th or so. More later...