Тинькофф. Он такой же как все.

Вчера поддался соблазну и прочитал книжку Олега Тинькова "Я такой как все".

Читал в электронном варианте, но наврядли ощущения бы изменились.  За полдня.

Несмотря на то что многие считаю Тинькова и Чичваркина представителями одного "движения" в бизнесе и вообще, по мировосприятию, книжа "Чичваркин Е...гений" мне оставила гораздо больше эмоций.  

Да, что-то общее просматривается, но все равно кажется они совсем разные.  По-крайней мере книга о Чичваркине понравилась.  Книга Олега Тинькова оставила с ощущением того, что и пиарнулся, и понтанулся, а закончил словами "А чо я, я ничо.  Сижу, никого не трогаю, примус починяю..."

Много "дырок", недосказанности, с одной стороны миллионы туда-сюда, с другой стороны кредит не получить.  Если верить книжке, то снимаю шляпу, находчивость и безшабашность Олега вызывает внимание.  Однако, не уходит ощущение, что все так, но не совсем так.  Умение разогнать всех бандитов Питера силой воли и взглядом изподлобья - тоже хорошо, однако насколько Я помню 90-ые, хотя был еще пацаном, кроме авторитетной братвы с понятием, были просто беспредельщики.  А там - умеешь ты на фене ботать или нет - не всегда успеешь обсудить.  

Прочитать рекоммендую.  Во-первых, много времени не займет, а во-вторых, с такой книгой лучше сложить свое мнение, чем верить чужому.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Review of the Rework

I just finished reading Rework http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307463745/?tag=iwhite-20 by two co-founders of so-popular-nowadays 37signals company.

Well, the book had its own auditory before it even appeared.  That's a crowd of news.yc.  Quite a crowd, I should say, so it would be stupid not to monetize (sorry, not to make money :) from them.  And that what they did.

I don't feel like discuss the ideas of the book.  But "forget everything what they taught you and do the opposite" wasn't the main idea (as considered by some reviewers).  Authors just restated the same ideas they were idolizing before and put them all together.

More the strategy book, rather than a guide.  However, the guide is still coming.  (I guess.)

Few notes: 

1. Starting a business on the side while keeping your day job can provide all the cash flow you need.
2. You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that?  You still don't know what you do next.
3. Working more doesn't mean you care more or get more done.  It just means you work more.
4. A business without a path to profit isn't a business, it's a hobby.
5. And what really matters is how to actually get customers and make money.
6. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.

It's a good book.  Go for it, if you hadn't yet.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Review of the alibaba story

I just finished reading the alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma... http://www.amazon.com/dp/006167219X/?tag=iwhite-20

That was a nice book.  It didn't keep me all that hooked about what happens next, but I blame editor for that.  Organization is not that good, especially, keeping in mind that there was quite a story to tell.  Anyways, it's a good book.

One point to take from the book: there are markets that can't get owned by foreigners.  There is such a thing as mentality, that is a tough competitor for the theory, no matter how good is it.  Sometimes you have to live the life of those whom you're working with, and whom you're selling to, to become a leader.  You can hire the best minds, however, not having the same mentality will drive you wrong way (or will make you slower than others).  

An extra point: there is often a huge sales force behind a thing that gives a first impression as a social platform.  

Once nice quote: "Ten years ago, I applied to come to Harvard. I applied three times and was rejected three times. You all didn't even look at my application, I believe - you just turned me down!"

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Put a real book on the top of your MacBook

BookBook is a one-of-a-kind, hardback leather case designed exclusively for MacBook and MacBook Pro. Available in Classic Black or Vibrant Red, BookBook brings three levels of security to your prized Mac. First, the hardback cover and spine provide solid protection from the rigors of the road. Second, the vintage book design disguises MacBook for superior security. And third, the stylish case protects you from being like everyone else because BookBook is totally original, just like you.

via twelvesouth.com

Awesome.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book

via shop.smashingmagazine.com

I've just finished this book. Well, my impression is mixed. This is a solid product from the reputable resource, however, I didn't find much for myself in it. It was a worthwhile reading though.

It's sold exclusively by the Smashing Magazine, and I had a chance to get it with 20% discount and free shipping my pre-ordering. It's a little bit on expensive side now ($29.90 plus shipping costs), but the print is great. (However, because of the format, I wasn't feeling comfortable reading it -- to tight and small.)

If you're in the Web business, and, especially, designing stuff, make sure to take a look at it.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Amazon Associates Bookmarklet

Amazon Associates Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet to convert any Amazon product page into a page 'tagged' with your Amazon Associates ID

Amazon Associates Bookmarklet v1.1

To use this bookmarklet, follow these steps:

1. Drag the above link to your browser's toolbar.
2. Edit the JavaScript to reflect your Amazon Associates ID (i.e., change "justinblanton-20" to your ID).
3. Click the bookmarklet while you are on any Amazon product page.
4. Wait for the page to refresh and then, depending on your intended use, either do nothing or copy/paste the URI that's now in the address bar.

I've tested this only on Firefox and Safari, but it should work with most any web browser.

via justinblanton.com

*Disclaimer*: I love Amazon. And I have Amazon Associates account that gives me a chance to send people to Amazon thru my referral links and get paid. I usually generate about 10 bucks in 6 months, so this is more like fun rather than a business. :)

Anyways, after getting tired of Firefox slowness on my Mac laptop and moving to Safari, I found that I missing the Amazon Affiliates plugin more than I thought I would. Even after Amazon has added a site bar on the top of the page, it still needs too much of clicks and keystrokes.

So I thought that I would do a quick bookmarklet to make a proper affiliates link for Amazon pages. However, Googling first, I found this link and it was working fine.

With one little issue - the link was still too long. Well, it's much shorter than what Amazon gives to me, but still long. So I tweaked the Javascript code a little bit to make it produce a better links:

Was:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0015T963C/iwhite-20/ref=nosim/

Now:

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/?tag=iwhite-20

You can probably do well without URL shortener now.

Here is the code:

javascript:aid='iwhite-20';asin='';if(document.getElementById('ASIN')){asin=document.getElementById('ASIN').value;document.location='http://www.amazon.com/dp/'+asin+'/\?tag='+aid}else{alert('I\'m%20sorry,%20but%20an%20ASIN%20can\'t%20be%20found.%20Please%20make%20sure%20you\'re%20on%20an%20individual%20product%20page.')}

Sorry if it doesn't read well - I don't know all the tricks of Posterous' bookmarklet, yet, too. :) Enjoy.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book!

Wow, my copy of The Smashing Book is just arrived. It is much smaller than it looks, but hopefully, this doesn't change the content. :)

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book

The book has 300 pages in all, full of practical and useful knowledge for designers and Web developers. It contains 10 chapters and is printed in full color. The book is a paperback and is 8.27 × 5.5 inches (21 × 14 cm).

The book is available exclusively from Smashing Magazine and nowhere else. This first and only Smashing Book looks at Web design rules of thumb, color theory, usability guidelines, user interface design, best coding and optimization practices, as well as typography, marketing, branding and exclusive insights from top designers across the globe.

It was written by Jacob Gube (SixRevisions), Dmitry Fadeev (UsabilityPost), Chris Spooner (Spoongraphics), Darius A Monsef IV (COLOURlovers.com), Alessandro Cattaneo (with co-editing by Jon Tan), Steven Snell (VandelayDesign), David Leggett (UXBooth), Andrew Maier (UXBooth), Kayla Knight (regular writer on SM), Yves Peters (Typographica.org), René Schmidt (system administrator of our servers) and the Smashing Magazine editorial team, Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz.

via shop.smashingmagazine.com

While I can hardly wait for my copy of The Smashing Book to arrive, I was unpleasantly surprised that the shipping time is 30-40 days. Damn. I'd never call this *free shipping* if I'd knew. But I'm hoping for the best and that the book is worth it.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Getting back on the track

It looks like I got off the track last month.  Almost no blog posts, only passive Twitter streaming, sounds like nobody is here.  

Well, not the real truth is here though.  I was quite busy with some stuff.  Adium has broken support for Twitter now, I don't know why, but yesterday's fresh snapshot and build couldn't authenticate me still.  So probably this explains my only passive reading list there, but no active tweets, other that occasional mobile shouts.

My blog was keeping silence mostly because this is the way it is.  It looks like my blogging activity is mainly sinusoid, or something similar to a sine wave with very relatively slow ups, sharp peaks and quick drops.  Maybe it's because I don't blog much about my day job anymore, I'm doing a lot of tech stuff that is pretty custom tailored and I don't feel like sharing it (probably because of too tiny or lack of auditory for this posts at all), and my product management ventures didn't reach those stages when I'd start seeing a lot of value there to share with others.

But I'll put my wheels back on.

Whatever, but life is going on.  I had a chance to attend Percona's new one-day training in San Francisco, which was about Developing High Performance, Scalable Applications.  That was a pioneering one, but very good. It was a training course aimed at developers building applications with MySQL, and while I'm not 100% hands-on developer anymore these day, I do build applications with MySQL.  The training covered the topics on how to optimize queries, common design mistakes in MySQL, case-studies on how to solve various theorhetical application problem and  briefly on architecture decisions that should be made in applications.  I'm pretty happy with what I spent a day for.

I also read the Deploying Rails Applications book and almost done with Designing Social Interfaces.  I liked them both, and I can probably suggest both of them, so let me put some stress on what I didn't like instead:

Deploying Rails Applications:

1. It's a very great overview of the things around, but feels like too much of them.  Getting a better idea of what to apply and when with a good structure would probably do a better job here.
2. It's a little bit light and hard at the same time, probably the wrong mix of content.
3. If you do have an administration skills, you probably find the book more like, "okay, okay, got it, okay, cool - I'm done with it, what's next?".
4. I hate to repeat myself, but once again, it felt to me that too much stuff that probably doesn't need to be mixed together.
5. I still recommend it.

Designing Social Interfaces:

1. While I'm supposed to say bad things, I still want to say I really liked the book.  It's probably not the rocket science, but it's very good.
2. I felt like the author(s) got bored in the middle of the book, so did I, but it looks like he's recovering closer to the end of it (and so do I). :)
3. Too much of Yahoo, and particularly Flickr.  I love Flickr, but too much of cliches from it.
4. The books if pretty decent and I highly recommend it.  I still have few chapters to finish, but they'd probably not make it worse.

So basically that's it and see you around...

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

"Tough" questions from GMAT 800

I saw a number of positive reviews for the sample questions from the Kaplan GMAT 800 book (now Kaplan GMAT Advanced).  Not a problem, just got a copy for myself, and went through it.

To avoid confusion, I completed only Critical Reasoning part of it.  However, making in average 75% of correct answers (1 mistake in every 4 questions set), I got some serious doubts about extraordinary type of questions there.  

They are good, but not much more.  

On the other note, format of the book is really weird.  I don't like it.  I believe the willingness to do a guidebook drove them to such a style, but it doesn't help at all.  I'd prefer something closer to a "classic" approach, when I clearly have a set of questions to work through, and the answers to clearly state correct answer, but not looking for it in the several blocks of explanations.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Must-know idioms for GMAT

The following GMAT idioms list is based upon official GMAT sentence correction questions that the test-makers publicly released.

Practice these idioms using our proprietary sentence correction questions.

GMAT Idiom	Book1	Question2	Answer Page3
Official Guide for GMAT Review (12th Edition)
x is more than y	12th Edition	4	686
unlike x, y	12th Edition	20	694
in contrast with x, y	12th Edition	20	694
in contrast to x, y	12th Edition	20	694
estimate to be	12th Edition	27	698
the same to x as to y	12th Edition	32	700
depends on whether x	12th Edition	34	701
so x that y	12th Edition	37	702
targeted ... at	12th Edition	40	704
rivalry between x and y	12th Edition	44	706
expended on	12th Edition	46	707
the ability ... to	12th Edition	51	710
x is to y what w is to z	12th Edition	58	714
amount of x	12th Edition	74	722
attributes x to y	12th Edition	79	724
not just because of x, but because of y	12th Edition	83	726
distinctions between x and y	12th Edition	96	733
either x or y	12th Edition	109	740
to consider x y	12th Edition	117	745
less successful than	12th Edition	123	748
so x that y	12th Edition	124	748
x is dated at z years old	12th Edition	140	756
Official Guide for GMAT Review (11th Edition)
x is more than y	11th Edition	2	662
in contrast with x, y	11th Edition	16	669
estimated to be	11th Edition	21	671
in danger of	11th Edition	27	673
seem + infinitive	11th Edition	29	674
as much as	11th Edition	30	674
to credit x with	11th Edition	31	674
as many ... as	11th Edition	37	676
between x and y	11th Edition	40	678
require x to do y	11th Edition	53	684
restrictions on x	11th Edition	54	685
not only x ... but also y	11th Edition	55	685
there is no doubt that	11th Edition	58	686
as a means to	11th Edition	60	688
attribute x to y	11th Edition	67	691
as many as	11th Edition	76	695
used x as y	11th Edition	79	696
not x, but rather y	11th Edition	87	700
order x to be y	11th Edition	92	702
just as x, so y	11th Edition	99	706
distinguish between x and y	11th Edition	107	710
both x and y	11th Edition	112	713
so x that y	11th Edition	118	716
Official Guide for GMAT Verbal Review
not...but	Verbal Review	4	256
the rising cost	Verbal Review	8	258
range from x to y	Verbal Review	9	258
except for + noun	Verbal Review	13	260
between x and y	Verbal Review	14	260
to mistake x for y	Verbal Review	17	261
to think of x as y	Verbal Review	20	262
with the aim of + (verb)ing	Verbal Review	25	264
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	46	274
prohibit x from doing y	Verbal Review	48	275
more x than y	Verbal Review	50	276
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	52	277
so x that y	Verbal Review	58	280
not x, but rather y	Verbal Review	60	281
not only ... but also	Verbal Review	66	284
in order to x	Verbal Review	69	285
as x as	Verbal Review	75	288
worried about	Verbal Review	81	291
either x or y	Verbal Review	84	292
better served by x than by y	Verbal Review	89	295
ordered x to do y	Verbal Review	90	295
both x and y	Verbal Review	93	297
x rose almost as fast as y	Verbal Review	94	297
between x and y	Verbal Review	95	298
more x than y	Verbal Review	98	299
x rather than y	Verbal Review	99	300
isolated from	Verbal Review	106	300
not only x ... but also y	Verbal Review	108	304
as a result of	Verbal Review	113	307

This GMAT idioms list is available in PDF format.

via platinumgmat.com

For those who are too cheap to buy himself or herself a copy of Manhattan GMAT "Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide", here is the list of the most popular GMAT idioms that are likely already known by native speakers, and must be memorized by non-native speakers (like I am).

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/iwhite-20

For those who do own a book, take a look at chapter 9, page 142. I am not sure I would be able to memorize all that, but at least I have one more useful guide to refer to.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction must-have book

There is one book that is absolutely must have for you to do well on Sentence Correction part of GMAT.

That's a "Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide" by Manhattan GMAT.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/prokhorenkous-20

They do not have any either sample GMAT questions or a bunch of tests to try yourself on. But they did their best to cover a lot of potential tricks taken by GMAT creators to find your gaps in English. I'm really surprised and really excited about going through this. I just came to Chapter 4 and I have already learned a bunch of stuff. This is so great.

However, I do miss the sample GMAT questions. The books sends me to Official Guide and this is sorta lame. Been there, done that.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Must read books and resources

Books/Blogs for Startups

Must Read Books
Strategy Books for Startups
New Product Introduction Methodologies
“Marketing as Strategy” Books
“War as Strategy” Books
Marketing Communications Books
Sales
Startup Nuts & Bolts
Manufacturing
Product Design
Culture/Human Resources
Venture Capital
History
Must Read Blogs

via steveblank.com

One of the best lists of books and resources from Silicon Valley legend Steve Blank.

The only thing that could be better is to accompany this list with the list from the Lean Startup Circle discussion here:

http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/browse_thread/thread/56ed7bdf2b4450e

For my personal taste, I'm really interested in the Clara Shih's "The Facebook Era":

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0137152221/iwhite-20

I didn't read it yet, but heard a lot of very positive thoughts about. I'm planning to add it to my reading list shortly.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

My progress with EZ basic math

While I didn't spend a decent time with the book, the results so far so good. Out of almost 200 questions, I've yellow-marked 4 or 5 solutions, even scoring the 100% correct answers. Those solutions were a little bit easier way comparing to what I chose.

This is quite a nice number to see, however, I was expecting for something more challenging. It's easy to be a smart guy when you're facing very basic problems, isn't it? :) I'm starting to think that getting a basic math workbook was not so good idea. I should start from advanced one. However, I'm not going to drop out now, and I'm going to complete it.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

EZ Basic Math for GMAT

Well, I'm pissed of.  

EZ Solutions - Test Prep Series - Math Practice - Basic Workbook - GMAT 

First of all, this title sucks.  How do you imaging me telling a friend about this book when it has some many words inside?  Do they all make sense?  Doubt so.

I've read so many positives reviews about EZ books for GMAT.  Speaking about this specific book it was like 7 five-stars and 1 one-star.  None of the did mention that the basic book is so freakin' basic.

I've went through almost a hundred of questions so far, and none of them are challenging.  They are basic.  But I'll keep going.  Hopefully, this book will undercover some hidden gem and it will make me happier about the twenty I spent.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction freaks me out

Out of 113 question I'm scoring barely 60% correctly. This is a total crash. I'm wasted.

Is it supposed to be that tough? I guess it's not tough for the most of natives, but what about not-native ones, like me? I don't have an academic experience in US.

While my math score is running high 80% - low 90%, and both Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections don't fall down the high 70% (what does, frankly speaking, suck too), Sentence Correction is a disaster.

I do have the 4th edition of Kaplan's Sentence Correction already. I heard a lot of positives about this book and hopefully it's suitable for non-native speakers, like I am. I'll do my best to spend the most quality time on it, to make sure I can improve my score and get to at least 80%'s. I'll let you know how it works out.

Okay, now I'm planning to get back to EZ solutions set of two math workbooks. While I think it's getting easier to me, I still want to make sure that I can get a solid 90%'s percentage on sample questions, so these two books might help me.

The rest is Sentence Correction one (ouch!) and that's it. I'm planning to run a few full-time sample tests and schedule a date.

See you soon.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Reading for GMAT

I definitely acknowledge that I need to read more to improve my verbal GMAT, in particular, the Reading Comprehension section.

I do have a long list of books to read. Typically, they are non-fiction books, business related or bios. My current one is Stealing MySpace. It's pretty entertaining I should say.

However, I normally cannot read more then 40-50 pages without being interrupted. With ~350 pages total, it will take me a week to get the book done and this is pretty poor progress. While such amount of reading is comfortable for me, I feel that I need to at least double it.

How much do you read?

Some more GMAT scores

While I didn't expect to, I was able to complete the verbal section of GMAT exam in about 60-70 minutes. I believe on exam you are given 75 minutes for 41 questions. So I was pretty much close, however, I'm not sure if it's okay for the exam -- the level of distraction and just emotional pressure is going to be higher.

The numbers were bad. While I'm hunting for low 700's for exam, I just scored low 600's now (according to Kaplan's spreadsheet). Once again, I missed the whole block of questions, consecutive, also in the middle of the test. I'm starting to think that it happens whenever I'm loosing the focus, but recover later on. I need to think more about that.

I'm afraid to think that I'll need more then a month to get my scores to a better level. I don't feel solid on some of the questions, and I know I need to do better. (Well, I'm almost sure I can.)

I found a lot of people struggling to improve by 100 points score with less then 4 weeks timeframe and fail. Well, some people still believe it's possible if you'll study 4-6 hours a day, but lets make it real -- it's not gonna happen even if you'll take a leave from a day job. You just can't do this unless you're going nuts about making 100 points improvement within such short period of time. (Besides, some people believe that all these "books" scores of 600+ can end up pretty close to 700 on a real exam and vice-verse. You never know.)

Anyway, I can't do 4 hours a day on GMAT. The best I can is 2-2.5 hours with an extra hour or 1.5 for reading books. I can't read too much fiction stuff that is recommended in GMAT Club forums, but I do love business books.

So this is my plan. And well, I'm not planning to schedule a test yet, so I don't have any time limits so far. Whenever I'll feel confident with verbal & quantitative parts, I want to write at least 15-20 essays on AWA (AI & AA). This will take me about a week or so. Only after that I'm going to run for the test.

On the other note, I really don't understand people who went to GMAT and got 720-740 and then still came back for a higher score (and often fail). While with the most schools you can suggest which score to consider, I really can't get the reasons -- why did you waste your time and hunt for something more then 720? GMAT is not the only, and, frankly speaking, not the most important piece. Whatever men.

Well, I guess that's all for now. Not much happening around there. I recently got Stealing MySpace book on my Kindle. I didn't have a chance to read it, but heard a lot of positive feedback about the book.

I'm almost there to close a deal with one of the gyms around (month to month, don't even dare to think I'm going to sign a contract :). I think it's going to be 24 hour fitness, even if I don't like it. We'll see.

Smashing Magazine

Немного старая новость, но взгляд упал на receipt от Smashing Magazine и решил написать.

Есть такой удивительно интересный ресурс как Smashing Magazine. Не будучи сам дизайнером, если бы точнее -- довольно далек от этого -- все равно мой интерес к UI и UX постоянно подпитываю вниманием к подобным ресурсам.

И вот, Smashing Magazine, решил издать первую книгу, я бы назвал ее более как сборник полезных правил при подходе к дизайну.

Книги самой пока нет, и ожидается в сентрябре, однако уже можно сейчас сделать pre-order заплатив на 20% дешевле ожидаемой цены тут.

Мне кажется это довольно небольшая цена за книгу с подобным наполнением.

Себе уже купил.

Few insights of new Kaplan's GMAT

Well, I just started it, but already can give you some insights on it.

First of all, the first yellow pages' instructions, which ask you to register your online companion -- they don't work. I mean, it looks like they have recently released the new 2010 edition of the book (huh, few words about that a little bit later on), so serial numbers of 2009 edition doesn't work. Nice.

I went ahead and contacted their Customer Support for the issue. The response came within 3-4 hours, I should say it was rather quick for such type of an issue. ;) However, they have asked me to:

1. manually create an account at their system with all fields mandatory in their profile (yep, to trash me with their deals and ads)
2. an ISBN of the book I'm referring to (huh, don't you know the ISBNs of your own books?)
3. give them an exact spelling of the name of the book (doh, can't you lookup the ISBN?!)

I should say it's pretty mixed experience. No explanation was given, as well as it looks like they're pretty lazy -- my original request had all information (full book name, ISBN and even a serial number of the book!), but the username on their system; they replied to that message asking for this information again. Feels a lot like "yeah, we know we have to support it, but we hate that so much".

In about an hour or so they have activated my account with service available for 6 months, until Jan 28, 2010. I will have to take a look on what is actually it, so it makes such a hassle to get it on. :)

The next thing, is how the material is presented in the book. I like it. It reads better and covers more interesting points (keep in mind that I'm talking just about the intro piece of it). However, they provide a percentile for GMAT scores, which mean that as much people as ..% have scored this score or less on exam. Well, less then that makes sense, but as much as does not (for me). Whatever.

I found one confusing piece of it here. I remember reading one of the books that says that GMAT takers are limited with scratch paper so you need to learn to use it wisely. Kaplan's book says that we can ask for a new set of scratch paper and it's a good idea to do this over the break. What is more correct?

I liked the part of using the part of your scratch paper for drawing a grid and using it when you eliminate answers. Sounds pretty useful. For many people, like myself, it's easy to scratch out something while you thinking, and actually get the rid of consider some answers.

Well, getting closer to GMAT checklist actually confused me a little bit. All the links in there are having 2006 in them, like mba.com/mba/TaketheGMAT/Tools/2006TestCenterList, 2006CountryCodeList, 2006AppointmentScheduleForm, etc. Is the book really so outdated even that it dated 2009 (huh, guess so!) ?