Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar

For the past year or so I’ve been following a podcast of a lecture series here at Stanford called Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. They have had a bunch of great speakers from a number of fields involving entrepreneurs. In fact, this series is part of the reason I applied. I knew that when I got to campus I was going to try to find this series, it turns out it’s a single unit seminar class. So I signed up.

Yesterday when I went to the info session with a nearly full house, I took an empty seat near the front. I talked to my neighbor a bit before it the program started. Afterwards I introduced myself, when he said his name was Ed, I guessed his last name. It turns out we both went to the same high school, separated by 4 years. The only times our paths crossed there was at a math competition. So it’s funny to meet again here, by chance. Plus when I was in Chile this summer, I met his roommate from college on the ski lift, who is also a student here. It’s a small world.

You can find out more about the lecture series and podcast here:
http://etl.stanford.edu/

Here’s another view from along Highway 50. There were several sections completely lined with sunflowers like these.

US 50, Lonliest Highway

To get from Florida to California my dad and I had to cross several mountain ranges, the great plains, and a very big desert. The part I looked forward to and enjoyed the most was Highway 50 across Nevada. After hearing about it for a long time, it was great to finally pass through. A magazine, I think it was Life, ran a story about this road a long time ago calling it the “Lonliest Highway”. Since then, it’s gotten a little more popular, but not much. We had several long stretches with along no cares. This pictures shows how long and straight some sections are. The great distances between exits, at one point more than 50 miles, makes for an interesting road.

Back to school

Last night was my first night in my new apartment at Stanford. After 6 months of traveling, it’s good to know I’m going to be here a while. It also feels good to be back in a university after a two years in the real world.

Coming from a small school to a big one there’s a lot to learn. I’ve got a week to adjust to this new environment before starting classes. It turns out there’s a lot of special things to learn about parking, printing, dining, the libraries, et cetera. Plus I met two bike related people, one cyclist and one motorcyclist.

There are permit requirements everywhere on campus, so I started the process of signing up my car. I’m still trying to figure out the story with bikes, meeting two cyclists is a good start.

To make sure that everyone is reasonable when printing, printing is $.10/page. At CC where anyone could print whatever s/he wanted, people literally printed whole books. I’m sure this small charge keeps printing in check.

CC had two choices for dining and they were adjacent. Here there’s a bunch of dining halls, restaurants, coffee shops, and eating establishments undiscovered. I’m glad my appetite’s big.

Today I checked out my first few books from 8 million volume collection mainly to see if my card worked. The ones I picked up are on web programming with Google Maps and I get to keep them until January (unless someone recalls them).