5/12 done! My fifth quarter (start of second year) at UC Davis’ Bay Area Working Professional MBA Program

I’ve been neglecting this latest school update for too long!

In December I finished the two classes I was taking in the Fall 2009 quarter: Marketing Strategies and Negotiation in Organizations. Both were excellent courses I highly recommend, lets dig into the details.

MGB 248: Marketing Strategies with Olivier Rubel

Official course description: Covers strategic marketing decisions, those that have a long-term impact on the organization and are difficult and costly to reverse. These include selecting product markets and customers; developing and communicating main benefit propositions for the chosen customers, including product features, quality, services; and developing competitive and cooperative strategies to successfully market products and services. The focus will be on the entire decision-making process, which starts by collecting and analyzing information about the external and internal environment of the organization.

The real course description: Strategy analysis from a quantitative perspective. Entry/exit, innovation, diffusion. Lots of game theory and “what would the competitors do if you do this?”

The professor: Olivier is refreshingly blunt and to the point. He cares about the students and how they learn, and if that means interrupting someone who has been talking for too long, he’ll do it. He is obviously passionate about the subject matter, and there were a few times in class he delivered some serious breakthroughs – pulling together concepts we’ve been learning all along into specific teachable moments.

The course: The course was numerically based – awesome when compared to all the other ’soft’ marketing courses – and some classmates found it difficult. I really enjoyed taking a math-based approach to marketing efforts. The two cases we did were very interesting and the in-class discussion was extensive. There was a team project component that was interesting, but seemed like it was ‘tacked on’ to the course.

Marketing strategies was a lot of work. The readings alone measured more than an inch think, and when coupled with the textbook and the cases it was a lot to digest. The amount of material we were required to have read for each class was sometimes a little overwhelming.

The grade: I got an A+. I give the instructor and the class an A+. Highly recommended.

MGB 246: Negotiation in Organizations with Barry Miller

Official course description: This course is designed to help students develop the ability to effectively negotiate in a competitive business environment. It focuses on negotiation skill-building in the areas of individual conflict management, team management, performance appraisal, corporate impression management and inter-organizational project management. The course will be taught largely through in-class simulations to provide an opportunity for experiential learning. The simulations will also allow students to develop a personal style of negotiation by discovering what works best for them in different situations.

The real course description: Analysis of negotiation skills. Negotiation exercises. A lot of insightful journal-keeping and analysis of personal negotiation events.

The professor: Barry has a warm personality and was generally a passive observer of our exercises. Much of his feedback was about the grammatical content of the journals we kept, and I felt like I would have liked a little more thorough examination of negotiation strategies. While we dissected several negotiations and examined the individual components, weighted the value attributed to them by each party, and discussed the cases, we were not as thorough as I would have liked.

I was hoping that the negotiation exercises we did in class would have had more post-exercise analysis applied to them. I think it would have been valuable to identify the tactics that worked, and to figure out how to overcome some of the stumbling blocks that some groups found themselves trapped by.

The grade: I got an A. I give Barry and the class an A-.

Winter 2010:

While December should have been super relaxing, Sara and I spent our free time buying a house. We actually were in escrow on two properties at the same time, and through sheer determination and some excellent negotiation, we got the house we wanted at a fantastic price. I’m happy to report that I even negotiated a price reduction from Bank of America on a bank-owned property! No one believed it was possible, but maybe Barry’s Negotiation course was better than I thought. I should give it an “A” instead.

In the Winter 2010 quarter I’ll be taking an Executive Leadership Seminar course and a class on Technology Competition and Strategy.

My first hunting expedition at Cow Mountain, Northern California

My friend Brad and I spent a few hours crawling around Cow Mountain hunting wild pigs. We were very unsuccessful, but it was an awesome experience.

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I should take a step back: I’ve never hunted before. When Sara and I sailed down to Mexico on our sailing adventure, I didn’t even know how to fish! It wasn’t until our lame first attempts let a nice looking tuna escape that I really got serious. I spent all night reading about how to fish, and the very next day the war was on. We got pretty damn good at catching tuna and had some amazing meals.

But I’ve never hunted before. I never really had the opportunity and I wasn’t sure it was something I wanted to do. Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about sustainability. Sara’s taking a leadership course with the Leadership Institute for Ecology and Economy that’s very interesting, and my own classwork through UC Davis was giving me a reason for personal introspection. After thinking a lot about how we interact with our environment and what type of skills I’d like to have, I came to the conclusion that I want to be more involved in what I eat.

I know how to cook, sure, but I want to know where it comes from. I want to learn how to grow veggies. I think it would be cool to understand fermentation and curing and the seasonality of foods. Sounds silly, but do you know when onions are in season? I don’t. It was this kind of thinking that brought me to the conclusion that you should only eat something you can imagine killing.

Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t suddenly break out in blood-lust. It all started with cheese. My friend and cow-orker Jeff Meyer and I were talking about making cheese. I came very close to buying a cheese press before Sara talked me out of it with stories about how bad cheese smells when you’re making it. Okay, another thing I want to learn how to make is beer. Sara talked me out of that one too, although she loves beer as much as I do. Maybe she was afraid of how awesome homemade beer would be and how we would be drunk all the time and forget to go to work. Ok, fine, then I’m going to kill a pig. Sara was all over it! Proscuitto, bacon, pork loin, sausages, oh yeah, it was on.

I bought a rifle. I’ve never owned a gun before, but what the hell, it seems like something you should do if you’re going to try to hunt a wild boar. Harsh words and even a sharp stick won’t get you very far against a 200lb animal with tucks and teeth. I bought a Savage Arms bolt-action rifle chambered in .308 and a 3-9x scope.

I took the 5-hour California Hunter’s Safety Course online and in a four-hour followup class. I read pig hunting stories and browsed all the interwebs I could. Did you know wild pigs are a menace to society? Seriously! California has classified them as an invasive species that need to be terminated with extreme prejudice. The state even publishes a guide on how to find and take them.

Brad, a friend from work, was also interested in pig hunting, so we studied and talked to hunters and read stories on the interweb and read books and planned and planned and planned. We were totally ready to go hunting. We loaded up on accessories: binoculars, ammunition, knives, shooting glasses, hearing protection. Sara bought me a pair of “Elk Stalkers” for my birthday, awesome hiking/hunting boots. The boots were one of the best parts: sooo comfortable, totally waterproof, and a pleasure to hike in. Yes, I have an awesome wife.

We picked up my rifle from the gun shop (Markells, highly recommended) at 9AM the day after the required 10-day waiting period. We went straight to North Cow Mountain, a BLM region that’s open to hiking, camping, and hunting. They have both a shooting range and thousands of acres of land where pigs are rumoured to live.

Hunting on public BLM land is free. Unfortunately pigs are smart animals and when exposed to hunting pressure they very quickly figure out their lives are better if they stay away from BLM land. Everyone has been telling us that hunting public lands is a losing proposition, but guides and private landowners are looking for $350+ per person per day! That’s an expensive hobby! We decided to try Cow Mountain anyway.

Sara, Mike, and his son Ryan came with us to the shooting range. It was a lot of fun! Sara shot her first gun, Brad’s .22 Ruger, but liked Mike’s Cal-tech .223 much more. Ryan turned out to be awesome with the shotgun while shooting skeet. I dialed in the rifle and felt okay: without trying too hard I was shooting within a 6″ target at 100 yards, which is about the size of a wild pig’s kill zone. Not great, but given how poorly the rifle was boar-sighted (ahahaha, a little shooter/hunter humour there!) I was happy.

Sara, Mike, and Ryan headed back to town after shooting. Brad and I went out into the brush to try to find a pig.

We hiked trails and walked through the woods. We followed a stream and got trapped in some chaparral brush. When I mean trapped, I mean that we could see the path we wanted to get to about 10 feet away from us, but it took us almost half an hour to move that short distance. We climbed, crawled, pushed, and fought our way through, ending up covered in scratches and thoroughly discouraged.

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We saw no signs of pigs. The only signs we saw were of pot growers: black irrigation pipe running through the brush. This made us very apprehensive, but it’s not yet pot-growing season and the human evidence (bullet riddled beer cans) were all rusted and old. Plus we were armed to the teeth ourselves.

It was probably really good that we didn’t see a pig. We brought coolers and knives and gloves and some rope, but no practical knowledge or instruction manual. I had previously skimmed through a YouTube video showing how to skin a boar, skipping over the grisly parts (which was most of the video). Brad hadn’t done any better, but at least he was confident he wasn’t going to throw up while skinning an animal. I think it’s fair to say that we would have figured it out, but it wouldn’t have been pretty.

We headed home. Disappointed but exhilarated.

We bought a house!!!

Sara and I closed escrow on 1948 Belmont Ct. in Santa Rosa. Our first house!

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It’s a beautiful ‘Santa Rosa-chic’ bungalow. Built in 1940 with the master bed + bath extension added in 1978. Concrete perimeter with real 2×10″ joists. The joists actually measure 2×10″! Solid 3/4″ oak hardwood floors, plaster and laff walls, and surprisingly large rooms.

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It’s been a wet winter, but I guess warm enough that the trees and flowers are confused.

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Our dining room with new paint job.

Biking King Ridge Road in beautiful Sonoma County

Three weeks ago I missed riding in Levi Leipheimer’s Gran Fondo because I had stupid class. I mean, I like class, especially Negotiations, but it sure does get in the way of having a life.

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So Mike Ferrara, a friend from work who did the Gran Fondo but didn’t finish due to a broken chain, and I rode King Ridge Road.

We didn’t do the 100+ mile loop from Santa Rosa, we drove out to Duncans Mills and saved ourselves 40 miles of boring flat stuff. We started early.

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5000ft of elevation in 50 miles, two whopper hills and a bunch of rolly stuff. We chose the right direction to do the ride: some of the downhills were pretty close to straight down.

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I tried to convince Mike that we should turn around and ride it again backwards, but he’s a gigantic wuss and a bit of a realist.

Here’s the loop. It was truly an amazing ride. Incredible views, no traffic (except for hwy 1 and 116), and two nice climbs. Apparently Levi himself rides this several times a week.


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Here’s the elevation map from Mike’s computer:

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Some other stats:
Exercise duration: 4:10:24.5
Exercise distance: 49.3 mi
Average speed: 11.8 mph
Maximum speed: 41.8 mph
Minimum temperature: 48 F
Average temperature: 61 F
Maximum temperature: 73 F
Minimum altitude: 45 ft
Average altitude: 805 ft
Maximum altitude: 1705 ft
Ascent: 4700 ft

Descending towards Highway 1 was amazing. The coast was beautiful and unseasonably warm. You can see little pockets of salt-water mist over the rocky coves.

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Click here for the photo gallery.

Sitch Family Thanksgiving in Ottawa

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The Sitch clan returned to Ottawa for a long weekend Thanksgiving at home. Ben + Allison drove up from Toronto, Joe flew in from Calgary (H couldn’t attend, bummer), and Sara and I flew in from SF. Ottawa’s miserable summer broke for this one glorious weekend.

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The trip was perfect: morning 10k runs, a Gatineau leaf-viewing expedition, several hundred hands of bridge, Kettleman’s bagels, a home-made turkey dinner, some incredible wine, NY steaks over a wood charcoal BBQ, and a miserable game of risk. Note to Sara and Ben: the box calls it “The Game of World Domination”, not “The Game of Global Compromise (After Will is Dominated)”.

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Click here for the photo gallery.