MegaTrond

Engagement Luncheon

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Thu, 24 May 2007 14:35:00 +0000

On Sunday, our friends Meghan and Anthony threw Lauren and me a wonderful engagement luncheon at Tapeo in Boston. We had such a wonderful time celebrating with our friends here and are sad that we won't have any of them with us in San Francisco.

Master Lauren

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Mon, 21 May 2007 02:03:00 +0000

On Tuesday, Lauren officially collected her Master's degree from Columbia Teacher's College. She worked so hard for the past two years and has become an amazing teacher. Her students from the High School for Dual-Language and Asian Studies already adore her and seem to be sad that I'm stealing her away to California. Check out the pictures, they're great.

If she's this beautiful as a graduate, just imagine what she'll look like as a bride!

MIT Sloan Disorientation

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sun, 20 May 2007 23:40:00 +0000

On the last week of classes at MIT Sloan, the student senate runs an event known as "Disorientation." Essentially, its the opposite of orientation; giving you a quick refresher on what you should have learned in business school (such as industrial economics) followed by a final reminder of what you actually learned at business school (how to optimize the line for beer).

Click on the picture to see the whole set on Flickr...

Food Tasting at Bear Trek

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sat, 05 May 2007 15:13:00 +0000

This past Saturday, Lauren, her parents and I went to the White Plains Renaissance for the food tasting for our wedding. Going on at the hotel was an annual event to celebrate alternative lifestyles weekend - Bear Trek. It was quite a juxtaposition of expectations -- two pairs of couples tasting food for a wedding set against a backdrop of hairy gay men celebrating their lifestyle. I didn't really know what a Bear was, but apparently its a subset of tastes for gay men.

Anyway, the food was amazing and the menu is going to be unbelievable. We will announce the menu on our Wedding Website.

Potela Panorama

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Thu, 03 May 2007 06:14:00 +0000

For those who are interested in experiencing exactly how stunning it was up at the Potela Palace in Lhasa, I've put together a panorama from a set of 7 photos I took while up there. It was an amazing view of an amazing place:

The Potela Palace and Lhasa, Tibet

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 02 May 2007 17:41:00 +0000

Next in my series of photos from India, Nepal and Tibet is a set of pictures taken on our second day in Lhasa, Tibet. In these, we have some great shots from the Drepung Monastery and the Potela Palace. There is another set coming of where we actually go into the Potela, but these are pretty fun pictures none-the-less.

Many of the photos in these set are taken using a lens that I rented before my trip from Lens Pro To Go. I had never before thought about renting a lens for my digital camera before, but after the amazing experience offered by LensProToGo, I'll definitely be doing it whenever I need something to extend my camera kit.

Checkout the best digital camera lens rental place on the web:

Wisdom of Jack Welch

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Thu, 12 Apr 2007 16:17:00 +0000

Today, Jack Welsh is speaking here at MIT. I'm live blogging some of the nuggets of wisdom:

* The trend in environmentalism is a HUGE opportunity for capitalism. If I were a CEO today, I wouldn't even have a choice about embracing this trend. Regardless of whether it's true or not, the perception is driving consumers and must be capitalized on.

* China is a huge market, growing at 8%. The US is an enormous market growing at 3%. I'd bet on the US keeping up that growth trend. We have an incredible entrepreneurial environment driven by a free market and a powerful educational system. We need, though, to keep letting the smart people that come here to MIT in with the Visas that they need.

* The worst manager is a kind manager. "I'm too kind to tell them what I think about them." That's not good enough.

* The nice thing about a baseball team is that the statistics are up there all day. Everyone has an opinion about how everyone is doing. In the business world, the stats are less obvious but the objective is the same. Your goal is to build the best team and you need to identify the best and eliminate the worst. They have to know where they stand at all times so that when you have to let them go, they know exactly why.

* The problem of firing is this. When you fire someone, there are 2 cycles. When you release someone you're relieved, but they are pissed! They linger around the office during their severance period and become a leper. Its your obligation to treat them as well as possible AFTER you fire them, because they are going out there and will become customers or whistle blowers. You would rather have customers.

* The secret to management is this: rigorous appraisal systems and loads of training. Constantly reinforce their education with successful leaders. Candor is the most important thing we develop. Its the only way to let everyone where they stand.

* Giving rewards with intrinsic value but not great pay is a losing proposition. This is what private equity has going for it right now. Its interesting non-bureaucratic work that has great pay straight away. The compensation is outrageous, a starting Harvard MBA going into Private Equity last year made $289k. That's unbelievable money. Its causing a brain-drain for the modern American corporation.

Would you consider an offer to join us as Dean here at MIT Sloan?
* My ability to be the dean of a school where tenure exists is non-existent. My 20-30-10 just wouldn't work here.

If you were CEO of GM from 1981 till now, how would the American Auto Industry be different?
* In hindsight, its easy. Letting the UAW run your business is not good business. The job banks are outrageous, people literally show up to do nothing. This is killing the business. Would I have been smart enough to take on labor and change this? I don't know, it would be pompous to say I would but I'd like to think I would have taken them on.

* You can guarantee a 100% correlation between a union election and a horses ass.

You believe in a lot of the skills that are gained through military leadership. Do you believe that America would benefit from some type of military service requirement?
* The question started out so well, but I'm not going to tough the last part. I think doing something like that would tear this country apart. I was at West Point yesterday, though, and its an incredible environment. Applications are at the highest point ever and the students are amazing.

How would you influence people who don't like you and don't want to work for you?
* I suggest that generally spend as little time with them as possible. Why would you want to spend time with someone who doesn't like you. With these people you have a talk with them and if they don't buy onto the program and move forward with the business, shoot them. You will not have everyone liking you, so long as they are buying into the program and moving forward its okay. If they are a resistor, you can't have that -- you need to have people on the same page buying in and moving forward.

What is your take on work-life balance? Is there such a thing?
* The problem with that work is "balance." The word is choices, and you make them. You in the end make choices, and you live with them. Its not a company's job to make your choice or to make the choice easy for you. I respect all the choices you make, but no company is working to make your balance; they're dealing with your choices. If firms can't attract people with intrinsic value and pay packages, then they have other problems.

* Without face time, you're dead. If your not in the trenches, if your not there when they need you, when it comes time for the promotion, you're not going to get it. You're looking for the people who are going to be there with the team, because they get results. You think a manager is going to promote the telecommuter who they haven't seen in 12 years? Come on, quit kidding yourself with this crap.

Long day in Kathmandu

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 14:50:00 +0000

My first day in Kathmandu started with the Everest flight and continued with a string of sightseeing that included an amazing Hindu funeral temple, several Buddhist temples throughout the city, a tour of a small town on the outskirts of Kathmandu and sunset at the Monkey Temple.

I took hundreds of pictures on this first day and started to fear that the 10GB of memory cards wouldn't be enough to get me through the remainder of the trip. Click on the picture of the sunset to go to my Flicker set from the day.

Everest and the Himalayas

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 21:06:00 +0000

So, after a hiatus from blogging and civilization in general, I'm back and ready to show off some crazy pictures that I took while on my wild sojourn through India, Nepal and Tibet.

On my first day in Nepal (which was shortened by a day because of yet another Jet Blue fiasco) we spent the morning on a Himalayan sightseeing flight that featured spectacular views of Annaperna and Everest. We flew on Yeti Airlines, which unlike Jet Blue took off in plenty of time even though its working with the air traffic control system of a third-world nation.

The flight was an amazing hour of scenic mountains, foothills and aerial views of Kathmandu. Check out my Flickr set from the morning to see all of the pictures:

Myers-Briggs says I'm an ENTJ

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 17:27:00 +0000

In a rehash of a test we did coming into MIT Sloan last year, we're using the Myers-Briggs type indicator to determine the mix of personalities on our team for my Product Development class this semester. The outcome is pretty interesting in much the same way that on occasion your horoscope is dead on for a given day. The test claims that I'm an ENTJ, which amounts to a description of how my personality falls along four axis.

On the first axis, which measures Extraverts vs. Introverts, I fall squarely as an extrovert. Not surprising, really. I think you can see the distinction when you see the types of things that I typically blog about -- its pretty interesting actually. Wikipedia provides a description of this axis as:

The terms Introvert and Extravert (normally spelled 'extrovert' outside of the Myers-Briggs context) are referred to as attitudes and show how a person orients and receives their energy. In the extraverted attitude the energy flow is outward, and the preferred focus is on other people and things, whereas in the introverted attitude the energy flow is inward, and the preferred focus is on one's own thoughts, ideas and impressions.

On the second axis measuring Sensing vs. Intuition, I'm strongly along the Intuition axis (denoted by the 'N'). This mostly makes sense, as I tend to have a reasonable ability to come up with rational hypotheses and tend to look toward the future when I build plans and actions. Wikipedia:

Sensing and Intuition are the perceiving functions. These are the nonrational functions, as a person does not necessarily have control over receiving data, but only how to process it once they have it. Sensing people tend to focus on the present and on concrete information gained from their senses. Sensing prefers to receive data primarily from the five senses. Intuitives tend to focus on the future, with a view toward patterns and possibilities. These people prefer to receive data from the subconscious, or seeing relationships via insights.

The third axis, I clearly fall along the thinking dimension. According to the Wikipedia entry:

Thinking people tend to base their decisions on logic "true or false, if-then" connections and on objective analysis of cause and effect. Feeling people tend to base their decisions primarily on values and on subjective evaluation of person centered concerns.

No question that its the right dimension for me -- I would tender a bet that most programmers fall along this dimension at some level. Knowing this about myself is important in group settings for a number of reasons. First, I focus on results rather than feelings. For better or worse, I think this allows me to evaluate people based on actual actions rather than on emotional responses. Second, it exposes something that I need to focus on when I start my new job managing people. It will be important for me to put some extra thought into the "subjective people-centric" aspects of decisions before I make them.

The last axis is that between Judging and Perceiving. On this dimension I fall on the Judging side, which means that I really prefer an organized life. In other words, I'm anal -- no shock there. Wikipedia again:

Judging and Perceiving reveals the specific attitudes of the functions. J or P records which of the strongest of the judging functions or perceiving functions is outwardly displayed. People who prefer judging tend to like a planned and organized approach to life and prefer to have things settled. People who prefer Perceiving tend to like a flexible and spontaneous approach to life and prefer to keep their options open. (The terminology may be misleading for some—the term "Judging" does not imply "judgmental", and "Perceiving" does not imply "perceptive".)
In J-types, the preferred judging function (T or F) is extraverted (displayed in the outer world). J-types tend to prefer a step-by-step (left brain: parts to whole) approach to life, relying on external rules and procedures, and preferring quick closure. The preferred perceiving function (S or N) is introverted.

The combination is where it starts to get really interesting, because apparently I'm a pretty rare bird. Of the sixteen possible combinations of types, ENTJ is the least common showing up in merely 1.8% of the population. The type is often referred to as "Entrepreneur" in Socionics circles because it is a combination of traits highly corellated to those found in successful entrepreneurs. Also "ENTJ is sometimes considered to be the ideal type in business - for example MBA students who take the MBTI are expected to test as ENTJ," which I think is cool.

The official descriptive summary of an ENTJ, and I suppose a basic warning about who I apparently am, is:

Frank, decisive, leaders in activities. Usually good in anything that requires reasoning and intelligent talk, such as public speaking. Are usually well-informed and enjoy adding to their fund of knowledge. May sometimes appear more positive and confident than their experience in an area warrants.

Check out the Jung Personality Test at Similar Minds to see what you are.

Adobe Lightroom 1.0, mostly great

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Thu, 01 Mar 2007 14:56:00 +0000

After outgrowing Apple's iPhoto for my digital darkroom and photo storage needs, I started a search for an alternative option. First, I tried using Aperture by Apple, but apparently the video card on my Powerbook wasn't enough to handle the program. Seemed silly to limit the software to users of super high-end systems, but whatever -- Aperture gets awful reviews anyway.

Finally, I tried out the beta of Lightroom and have been really impressed. It does a great job working with both RAW and JPEG formatted pictures, including an intelligent system for allowing me to revert back to the "negative" version of an image from before I changed it. The system uses "sidecars" for the changes rather than actually holding two complete versions of most pictures as does iPhoto. The organization system makes sense and allows for several different schemes for keeping track of photos. I can tag them, rate them, sort them and even adjust the EXIF data through a well thought out interface.

Overall, I rate Lightroom highly and serve notice to Apple that they need to seriously improve iPhoto if they hope to keep up with Adobe.

Globix is dead, long live Globix

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 23:30:00 +0000

After selling off the final pieces of the hosting portion of their business, my former employer, Globix is dead. In reality, some small parts of the company probably still remain, but only in its reincarnated form as NEON. NEON is the name of the company that Globix merged with in the spring of my final year with the company. Over time, the hosting side of the business continued its atrophy and started to shed members of the management team that helped revive the company after its short run-in with bankruptcy court. Three who I worked closely with toward the end seem to have moved on nicely:

Peter Stevenson went on his merry way.

Jamie Holcombe has moved on to the Universal Service Administration.

Dan Ephraim is taking the world of business research by storm at Tier 1 Research.

In all, Globix was an interesting learning experience for me and I'm somewhat sad to see it go -- though really not too surprised. At one point the company had a strong position to do nicely in the Internet services world, but in the end it just took too long to execute decisions that could have made the difference. It could make for an interesting case study, maybe...

Savannah Celebration

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 05:01:00 +0000

This past Sunday, Lauren and I visited Savannah to celebrate the marriage of our friends Laura and Seth Tobin. The ceremony was beautiful and we had a wonderful time. Definitely check out the wedding photographs that I took. Even though they can never do justice to the event, they capture some of the moments we all enjoyed.

Miami Inked

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 02:55:00 +0000

On our final day in Florida, Chris, Yuri, Tagen, Topher and I drove up to Miami's South Beach to celebrate with all of the Superbowl XLI revelers. While there we saw flocks of wandering NFL players, every gold-digger in North America, a handful of 'A' and 'B-list' celebrities and thousands of Colts and Bears fans.

The highlight of the trip for Chris was finally getting the tattoo that he had been planning for some time. So, when we rolled into Miami Ink and they were able to fit him in right away it was on. He had the design all ready to go, all he had to do was print it out and the process was underway.

It looked like it was really painful, but Chris was able to force the tears to come out through his skin rather than his eyes and avoid looking like a wimp. Very cool to see, not so sure I'd be up for taking a turn though...

SCUBA-DO

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 15:56:00 +0000

After a week of diving in a wide variety of conditions and locations, I'm an officially PADI certified Advanced Open Water SCUBA Diver. On my final dive, we penetrated the wreck of the Spiegel Grove which was absolutely exhilarating and at the same time terrifying. Inside the ship, with nothing more than a guide line and a flashlight to lead our way, it was completely black with a creepy ghost-ship feeling accentuated by the sound of every breath through my regulator. I can't wait to try it again!

Swimming with dolphins

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 03:05:00 +0000

The dolphin training swim was definitely one of the best parts of our trip to Key Largo. As soon as we got in the water, every one of us immediately turned into a third grade girl. The transition was immediate and complete and no one was spared -- the pictures don't lie.

Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 19:58:00 +0000

This week I became an officially certified PADI Scuba Diver. The trip has been amazing and I've so far been on 5 different dives while here. A soon as I got certified, I began working towards my advanced certification -- which allows me to safely visit more diverse undersea locations. So far its been an amazing trip and I've seen some incredible things.

On the first day, as part of one of my certification dives, I got to see the Christ of the Deep statue, which was sunk here in 1965.

After that dive, we went to dive off of the wreckage of the Benwood, which was absolutely amazing. The water was super clear and the number of fish we could see was just astounding.

This morning, we had the opportunity to see the Spiegel Grove. It sits in nearly 100 feet of water, so we brought an extra SCUBA instructor along to make sure everything went smoothly. The wreck looked like ancient ruins from our own time, its really amazing how quickly being underwater erodes a perfectly good ship.

The rest of the trip will feature a bunch more dives and a chance to swim with dolphins. I'll absolutely post some pictures of that!

Where is your "Global Warming" now Mr. Gore?

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 04:31:00 +0000

Winter has arrived with a vengeance this week in Boston, making our decision to move to sunny (err-foggy) San Francisco feel even better. Sitting inside feeling the draft sneaking in through every tiny crevasse in my apparently leaky apartment has me dreaming of the mild winters and chilly summers of the Bay Area. All I can say is that Mark Twain was definitely WRONG:

The coldest winter I ever experienced was a summer in San Francisco.
- Mark Twain

Raving About the Food at Google

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 24 Jan 2007 21:02:00 +0000

Photo by Brett Lider

The Washington Post is running an excellent article today about the food available at Google. After visiting this weekend, I can say without a doubt that choosing what to eat every day will become pretty difficult for me. On Friday I had freshly prepared steak enchaladas, a salad, a few raspberry-chocolate brownies and a specially made for google icecream sandwich.

That evening, one of my future co-workers shared his secret to not overeating while at Google:

I tell myself that I don't need to keep eating, because there is going to be more amazing food again tomorrow.

Hopefully I'm able to put his advice to work and can manage a reasonable diet around there, because I'd really like to avoid the Google 15.

Welcome to Google

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:09:00 +0000

This past weekend, Lauren and I traveled to San Francisco for the Google sell weekend. They put us up in a swanky hotel, took us out to fancy restaurants and showed us what a good time life can be in the bay area. All in all, it was an impressive display and far more than I needed to be convinced to join the company. I'm excited to announce that upon graduation I will be joining Google as a manager in the Online Sales and Operations Group.

My precise team is yet to be defined, and will likely remain that way until shortly before I start, but none-the-less I am looking forward to working with the team of people that run this organization. Everyone that I've met has been fabulous, the people who will presumably be working for me are super smart and the organization is growing with ambition. I think its a great place to cut my teeth as a manager. More as I know it...

Megatrond Relaunch

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 04:16:00 +0000

Welcome to the new and improved MegaTrond.com. Over the past few weeks, I've taken a hiatus from posting to focus on getting the site to where I want it to be. I started by moving to a new webhost and moved on to changing the look. The older green look is out in favor of a more visually neutral graytone. Additionally, I've added several cool new features that I'm really excited about. Most exciting is the addition of a photoblog. You can see it at the top right of the main section. The photo linked is the most recent post in the photoblog and links to the main photo section -- check it out!

That's all for now, look forward to a more detailed update including source code that I'll be releasing under the Creative Commons license.

Breaking news in the Appleton Post-Crescent

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 21:40:00 +0000

This past Sunday the 68,532 subscribers to the Appleton Post-Crescent received notification of our upcoming nuptials. We join many other happy couples in the Northeast Wisconsin area in making similar announcements.

We thought that it was funny that the form we filled out for the paper had no place for us to provide the details of the various degrees (college, graduate, etc.) we hold. Luckily, it had a place to list our "technical schools" and the church where we would be married. As a result, Lauren wrote the announcement word-for-word to avoid any mix-ups:

Lauren Schwartz, New York, NY, and Trond Wuellner, Cambridge, MA, plan to wed July 21, 2007 at The Renaissance Hotel, White Plains, NY. Rabbi Stephen A. Klein will perform the ceremony. The bride-to-be is the daughter of Jane and Joel Schwartz, Scarsdale, New York. The groom’s parents, James and Guri Wuellner of Menasha, are announcing the engagement. Lauren is completing her Masters degree in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages at Columbia University in New York. Trond is completing his MBA at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Both the bride and groom-to-be graduated from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.

MIT Sloan Fall Golf Classic

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 03:13:00 +0000

Boy, is this trophy going to look good on my desk! Our team of 4 marginally decent duffers took the prize within the handicapped competition for the best round on Sunday within the 2006 Fall "Open Container" Open. Big shout-out to my awesome teammates:

Anthony "Sergio" Garcia
Heidi "Birdie Maniac" Zak
Adrian "Comes up" Bignami

First place, definitely better than any of us expected. I want to make sure to save a special thank you for the gnomes that kept catching the balls that I hit into the woods and chucking them back into the fairway -- seriously, we would never have won without your generous "bounces."

Blogger Backrub from Nietzche

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 03:01:00 +0000

There are few things better than seeing your name up in lights on your favorite blog for little more than passing along a funny cartoon. Well, today when my habitual brain took my mouse and clicked onto Robert Lalasz' "Nietzsche or Nitschke?" blog, there it was -- a big 'ole shout-out to Trond. As a Packer fan, there isn't a lot to get excited about these days (except when the Jets lose, right Joel?) so I am forced to take pleasure in the little things.

Go Pack.

About Time the Pack Sacked Ahmad

noreply@blogger.com (Trond) — Wed, 04 Oct 2006 02:55:00 +0000

After another abyssmal performance at the cornerback position, the Packers finally cut Ahmad Carroll. This is the best news that could possibly come out of yet another humiliating Monday Night loss for the Packers. This is a player who consistently was flagged for stupid penalties, couldn't cover a hobbled Randy Moss (leading to the infamous moon) and was responsible for more points for opposing offenses than can even be counted.

Good riddance!