I like that filling and submitting tax declaration takes only couple of minutes in Estonia, I can do it easily from my computer and I especially like to get taxes back as a result of this procedure.

Skype is becoming really popular over here after Fortune cover page article and one presentation in Strategy course. I hear Skype phone ringing in our school commons area every day and it even happened once in a class (wasn't me). Too bad this technology is not perfect and it did not work this Saturday through the our business school's network complexities.

Finished making movie last week and if it can be put in reasonably small format, I will post it here. The starting size for 5 minute movie was 1.5 GB and I don't have so much space on server. This week comes another finance case competition with some sleepless nights and have to start working with one pharmaceutical company case.

Minolta fans going crazy waiting for digital SLR camera.

Twas the night before PMA, and all through this list
all the whining had subsided, at least for a bit.
The rumors had been flung with not a iota of care
in hopes that Konica Minolta would somehow be "there"

When on a corner of the list there arose such a clatter
I put down the B&H catalog to see what was the matter.
Aways went my fingers across the keyboard in a flash
tearing through emails while sending spam to the trash.

When, what to by wondering eyes should appear
but a miniature PMA report and eight Re:'s, oh dear
some list member, so lively and quick
had already posted his review to be slick.
More rapid than eagles the replies they came,
They whistled, and shouted and called Minolta names,
Where's the built-in IS, this body is lame!
Not enough megapixels, and it's not full frame!
it's all about features and the price is insane!

To Canon we'll go, to the top of the line!
Now dash away! dash away, dash away all!

Danny
(from Minolta Yahoo forum)

... Friends are moving on. Moving up. Are you going nowhere? ...
Ready to write a new life chapter? Now's your chance. In the Navy.

Seeing this text I felt like Village People are back. But in reality I just received a letter from US Navy Recruiting Command that was directly addressed to me. So this is already second letter from military forces sent to me (previous was in the end of September and this invited me to Army National Guard, claiming YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL).

What to do? I feel the need to keep peace and fight terror. I want to help poor Iraqis and Afghans. So the only true choice is to go :)


BTW, Ivan Rybkin is back and this time alive. What is happening in Russia?

Got new pictures up. This time from Washington, DC and mainly showing Ron Brown fellows from South-Eastern Europe. Somehow find myself very seldom on the other side of the camera, but I look the same anyway.

No names on pictures this time. I just point to Enn, who studies Public Administration in Carnegie-Mellon, and Urmas+Kornelius, the first studying Law in Duke and the other is MBA machine in Berkeley. As you might have guessed, first two guys are Estonians and the third is Lithuanian. I know Siim knows Enn.

I messed up this time with camera settings. I hate the terrible flash of digital cameras, so I try to avoid flash or at least undercompensate flash power by 1 stop. Then I also don't like washed out snow and sunny areas caused by image sensor's inability to capture detail in bright areas. Altogether I had heavily underexposed images and I played with Curves setting in Photoshop to compensate. Well, at least the pictures made in bar don't look now like a picture from an average digital camera.

"I know in my heart and my brain that America ain't what's wrong in the world."
DONALD H. RUMSFELD, the defense secretary.

Went to DC last weekend. I must say we had lots of fun there with Ron Brown fellows, mostly people from former Yugoslavia, Albania, Romania and Bulgaria. Nights were short and we had lots of fun, so I just have to wait for next January, when we meet again in Washington.

In Washington we were told that Ron Brown program is going through serious changes during coming years. Probably this year the program size will be cut in half, so only ~20 people will be coming from Eastern Europe. The reason behind is of course Iraq, namely US if focusing its efforts on building democracy in the Middle East. To be honest, I agree with them. Eastern Europe is in a way realatively developed place. I luckily can finish my studies with US money.

In DC we taken to see a weird show called Capitol Steps, which is a very popular political satire show. Basically they sing popular tunes with funny texts and have some non-singing scetches too. I would not go to see such show again in my life because in my mind it belongs to TV, but for once it was nice to see Americans joking about themselves. Some examples of the lirty dies/dirty lies jokes:
Yabble-doo has a QI in the dingle sigits.
He couldn't frick pants on a wap of the murld.
But did he heel it in his fart?
Or a song God bless my S.U.V. (Though I live alone the car I own can seat a 103)

It was good to see, how there is serious satire made of stupidity of Bush, like his not knowing where countries are and his english language (he really says nukular instead of nuklear). One scetch was about Bush choosing next country to attack and one type of target were states where Gore won in previous elections.

I managed to see also Liis Kallikorm (or actually Prikk) with her husband Kristjan and we had some very good time. I got to know Ott Miidla (from my parallel class of MHG) is somewhere in Atlanta. I also saw the inside of Estonian embassy, where renovations is just about to be finished after the terrible fire couple of years ago. Can I sometimes visit their sauna? I hope so. Estonian embassy in Riga had a very nice one.

That's it.

Super Bowl
Well, some time has passed now of this years Super Bowl, the final game of football season. I must say I am happy that I finally understand this game (I was not trying hard before). But what is most important of this crazy event is that it is the most watched TV show in the US and it has the highest priced TV ad fees, this year $2.3 million for 30 seconds. The ad breaks are longer than usually and the halftime break is 30 minutes instead of usual 15 minutes. As you see, entertainment is built around game and game is of secondary importance.

Because the advertisements are very expensive, companies put a lot of effort in those ads and in hayday of internet small startups spent a huge share of their fortune on a single ad to get their message to the masses. As a result people are happy to watch these ads (and make sandwiches during game) and later there is lot of discussion. Anyway, this year the ads were rather boring, except perhaps for some Bud ads.

But the hit of this year happens to be a breast of Janet Jackson, what Justen Timberlake exposed during halftime show after singing "I'll get you naked by the end of this song". I was really indifferent when it happened, but Americans get really excited. Their problem seems to be that many children were watching the show. Of course the CBS TV channel claims it was an accident and I have heard that it was Janet's personal idea and CBS accuses MTV, who created halftime show. Now NBA is worried that similar problem might arise during upcoming NBA all-star game and they are planning to change an artist or at least a song.

There was one more accident. One naked person ran on the stadium the TV camera turned away and commentators did not even mention it. Cameras showed just one football player who was smiling seeing this show.