The midterm that I just completed was one of the most difficult exams I’ve ever taken.  I feel ill.

One can judge the difficulty of an exam by the number of people who leave before the allotted time is up.  Nobody left early.

We had just finished the meeting. Two hours of discussion, done. A handful of action items for each of the four of us, assigned. The meeting wasn’t unproductive, nor was it acrimonious, but we were all tired by the end. Suddenly, that all changed.

Our meeting was in the d.school: a large, open, stimulating place, similar in many respects to something at ideo. The odd meeting hour meant we had the place and all of the fun stuff in it to ourselves. The key to our rejuvenation was in the corner: a big pile of toys.

Nerf darts are fun! We each grabbed a Nerf gun, a target vest, and plenty of Nerf darts. Weapons loaded, we formed teams and began chasing each other around the vast d.school space. Darts and laughter filled the air. It was great!

When I have a company, each employee is going to be issued a Nerf weapons. It will be like 1999, but with profits!

For some unknown reason, it seems that mothers are more apt than young guys to notice dirty bathrooms. My mom just about fell over when she first saw one of the bathrooms at the Pike house when I moved there. My sister and I had to hold her back to prevent her from cleaning it. Sure, it was a little dirty, but none of us living there seemed to notice.

I must admit that the past few years have seen me grow a bit more attentive to the state of the bathroom, but I think my mother’s standards are still higher than mine.

Therefore, I propose a test for evaluating bathroom cleanliness: Ask oneself, “What would Mother think?”

Three unrelated thoughts:

• Ever notice how things that have been imported list their countries of origin? I’m eating some nuts right now, and the list of ingredients states that the cashews came from “Africa, India, Brazil, and Vietnam.” Since when is “Africa” a country?
• Many MBA students really do walk around with their collars “popped.” Who would have thought?
• I’m trying to come up with an idea for a venture for a class, and I can’t seem to get “It’s All Been Done” out of my head.

One of the great misconceptions people seem to have about banks is that the money you deposit is still “your” money. No, that money is now the bank’s asset, and the account holders are essentially creditors </hand-waving>. That provides flexibility, but it can also lead to massive problems when things go bad.

In the largest US bank failure in 14 years, internet banking pioneer NetBank filed for bankruptcy protection last Friday. As a result, the Office of Thrift Supervision and the FDIC closed NetBank, and ING acquired NetBank’s deposit accounts.

I am (or at least was) a NetBank account holder, but I had less than $100,000 deposited, so my full account value was insured. Others won’t be so lucky. The 1,500 people with more than $100,000 in their accounts will become creditors to the bank’s receivership.

I have known about NetBank’s souring finances for a while, yet I kept my NetBank account loaded with a non-trivial (for me) amount of cash. Why? Did I feel invulnerable? Was it supreme faith in the FDIC? Maybe a little of both.

The actual failure has snapped me back to my senses, and even though I didn’t get burned this time, you can be sure that I will be more proactive the next time around.