I’m back from Chicaaago, and had a great time in a great city.
Fortunately I stayed with friends, so didn’t have to pay for housing. The whole trip was pretty cheap considering I stayed for 5 nights and was constantly out & about.
$300 plane flight
$350 spending.
5 days Total = $650
This was actually way under budget, yet I didn’t hold back on any expenses while there.
Now I must meet my goals for the next few months, and I’ll take another trip.
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Some Random Observations:
- Flying with ear plugs makes plane flights so much more pleasant.
- I give Chicago two thumbs up.
- My Treo 700w actually came in handy.
- Favorite picture during the trip:
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On Tuesday I saw/met Kevin Rollins the CEO of Dell at a speech he gave at UT. He was brought in to speak about ethics by a Mormon organization. He’s Mormon himself, so he also talked about how his upbringing has helped him bring strong business ethics into the company.
He originally started out as a consultant for Dell in 1993, but then soon was escalated to regional manager, then overseer of North American operations, then CEO. His speech was mainly geared towards how ethics is a strong virtue at Dell. Of course I’ve never heard a CEO say otherwise about their company!
His last words of advice were:
–Work hard now, because you can’t redo it later.
—Don’t have regrets.
–Dream Big.
Pretty standard stuff, but important nonetheless.
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I just finished my taxes, and I filed independently for the first time. I used TurboTax, and it was relatively painless. For 2006 I’ve been keeping excellent financial records, so next tax season should be a cinch…I’m actually looking forward to it!
Also, I’ve had experience with the homeless before in my bottled water experiment, but next week I’m doing a “homeless experiment” where I’ll actually be homeless for a few days to see what I can learn. I’m not sure how it’ll go, but that’s why I’m doing it!