The flags at UW were at half mast today to commemorate the late Professor Dufournaud today, our jolly stats prof. I captured this picture on my way to the lab today.

Even the flags seem gloomy.

I remember the times back in ENVS 278, when I’d be consistently late for class, because it was at 8:30 am 10:00 am (Update: it wasn’t as early as I thought)— if I wasn’t mistaken— it’s a shame I didn’t have the liberty to take Multivariate Statistics. It seemed like all of you— and there was many of you— had a blast in the class. I remember how rather energetic he would be even though it was super-early. I also remember his chicken-scratch overhead stats notes. I also remember cramming math late at night for the midterm and final— never a good idea— and ended up with a poor mark— but I was asking for it.

Because of Dufournaud, I will never forget ANOVA: Analysis of Variance. Hehe, it will be forever in my head.

I still remember MSN-ing Tiff, because I didn’t get something— and where we discussed how Anova Lee would be a good name for my future daughter.

To make it even worse, one of my beloved marketing group members, who I love dearly, was involved in an ATV accident when she was vacationing with her husband and child in Mexico this past Reading Week. I received a call from her husband today informing me of the situation and that she will not be attending classes for the rest of the term— I was completely awestruck. She’s currently in the hospital being treated for several broken bones. Luckily, the family managed to get back to Canada in one piece.

I’m really going to miss her.

I think it’s the most unfortunate to encounter these accidents on vacation away from home. I cannot even begin to imagine how it would have been like to have to seek medical attention in some place foreign— especially when there is a cultural and language barrier. It is one thing to be in a foreign place, but in addition having to deal with these life-threatening situations must be unconceivably terrifying.

Going back to Professor Dufournaud, I understand that he was taking a year off oveseas to develop an Urban Planning program at United Arab Emirates University (UAEU). It undoubtedly must be frightening to undergo something this tragic away from familiar soil.

Back to marketing, if you have a minute to procrastinate, I’ve uploaded our marketing presentation video that we put together several weeks ago on psychological pricing.

Download here [RAR: WMV, 9.6 MB]

Take a look, and tell me what you think. It is purposely done “amateurish” to give it more of a humourous spin. My apologies to the choppiness of the video, the WindowsMedia compressor is very poor. And btw, this is not the video I’ve been working on all this week— that’s another project. ;)

The file is RAR’ed, so you will have to decompress it. Unfortunately, I cannot put it in hyperdot, because I hog webspace than I should be— and Sympatico limits to 10 MB, so it’s perfect.

Our marketing group will never be the same. :(

Comment me if you’d you cannot read RAR files (…and shame on you, if you don’t)