And Now You Know

The last week has been crazy and I'm currently blogging from a well appointed hotel room in Washington, DC. The first round of the GW Case Competition was today, the final rounds are tomorrow, and I'll be returning to Waco late Sunday night.

Until then, wish us luck and if you get the chance, vote for Baylor's mascot here. As the below e-mail states:

"Baylor's mascot, Bruiser, has made it to the top 16 mascots in the nation, so now it's down the wire. One of my friends, Jenny King, is one of the 'humans' behind the Baylor Bear, so please take a minute to click on the link below and vote for Bruiser. So far, we are winning against West Virginia's mascot, the Mountaineer, but that could change! Every vote counts!"

So there you have it. Our mascot's name is Bruiser, he is sometimes a she named Jenny King, and you learn something new everyday.

Stereotyping SOBs

Based off the accompanying photo of our cheerleaders, multiple sports blogs around the internet (specialists in pictures of young women) have jumped on the bandwagon of describing Baylor girls as something less than attractive.

This is patently untrue. As a part-time scientist with a full-time bounty of youthful hormones, I personally conducted extensive research around campus, Scruff's, and Facebook, compiled the results, and benchmarked them against my days at Pepperdine.

Overall my study showed that Baylor girls are very attractive until they say things like, "I'll kill myself if I'm not engaged by the time I'm 23."

And scientifically speaking, this picture and its implications are easily explained away using the law of large numbers, multicollinearity and the existence of Photoshop. (Hint: skip the low hanging fruit and search for the nose picker in back.)

[thanks to an attractive, Post-PC ladies man for the tip].

Totally Free On-Demand Television

Understanding people like you have been looking for a way to watch The Office and Arrested Development from places like class, the networks have come up with Hulu.com.

It's an amazing, totally free site that has on-demand seasons of shows (and movies) with very limited commercial interruptions. It will probably change the way you watch television.

The above video is the most recent episode of Family Guy. Enjoy.

Swanburg Talks Pretty to Others

This year's MBA Big XII Case Competition was hosted by Kansas and sponsored by Garmin. On Friday morning the teams listened to an hour presentation from the CFO, asked some questions and then had 24 hours to prepare a presentation with analysis and recommendations for the Q3 roll out of the Nuvifone. (video here).

If you're the kind of person that cares about results, Oklahoma State won, Nebraska came in second, Baylor didn't come in third and the panel of executives and academic judges decided to award me the trophy for top presenter. They either liked my style or confused me with a guy that didn't call their brand "unsexy."

Hoisted by Her Own Petard

While I was Spring Breaking at Sea Pines, my mother was a few hours away at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta. As you can see from the pictures, one of us had a better time.

Here is her hotel, the view from her room, and a scene on the street outside.

BLS Student Felt Slighted, Cops Intervene

Waco local / MBA enthusiast / new best friend, Jud, sent me this link from the WacoTrib in an e-mail that read, "Swanny, those law school kids are a different crowd."

Since I can't do much to improve off Ms. Erin Quinn's intrepid reporting, I'll simply reprint the highlights - sans names and Facebook pictures - and note that people are innocent until proven guilty and Chicago was in no way involved.

POLICE REPORT: Baylor law student charged with brandishing handgun at bar

A 22-year-old Baylor University law student was arrested early Friday morning after Waco police say he revealed a handgun outside of a campus-area bar to one of its employees.

Waco police officer Steve Anderson said [student] had been kicked out of Scruffy Murphy’s, 1226 Speight Ave., around 11 p.m. Thursday. At about 2:30 a.m., after the bar was closed, [student] returned to the bar, Anderson said. A Scruffy’s employee told him the bar was closed, and [student] said he was returning to see a man he had a dispute with in the parking lot after [student] was kicked out earlier, Anderson said.

As he walked away from the bar, police said [student] revealed to the employee a handgun tucked in his waistband. He was arrested a short time later, police said.

On second thought, only way to improve on the article is to remove a few instances of the word "said" and add a line that reads, "Upon being arrested, [student] kept yelling, "Woo!!! Spring Break '08!!!!"

Spring Break '08

Spring breaking like a more sophisticated, responsible version of myself, I'll be in Hilton Head at the famed Sea Pines Resort until Thursday and Kansas City for the Big XII Case Competition after that. Enjoy break, do something sophomoric, and try not to get arrested.

Jon's Swans Mean Nothing

Two weeks ago during donut hour, Prof. Communication recommended we get shirts to support the men's basketball team in their final game against A&M. "If we have 25 people," she said, "we can get the shirts customized for the MBA program."

Long story short, we had enough people, the shirts got customized, and to my surprise, there was no mention of MBA . . . simply: "Mark's Bears Mean Business." And if that wasn't a healthy enough dose of awkward, the below picture was taken to immortalize the event.

On the brighter side, something about a 6'6" version of Prof. Strategy makes the whole thing worth while.

Ask and You Shall Receive

Nothing makes me happier than school-wide e-mails like the one reprinted in part below:

"Thank you so much for your valuable feedback at our luncheon last week. Your comments are valuable to us as we refine and improve our program! Below are suggestions from you that we are addressing:

1) More ping pong balls! (top priority, guys!). Adriene will be ordering more ping pong balls

2) A holder for ping pong balls: Adriene will be ordering a holder for the grad lounge

Points 3, 4, and 5 go on to talk about things like adding printers, computers, and sound proofing but really, after steps one and two nothing else matters.