Road trips!

Road trip 1: Tonight, for the first time in about three years, I went running (outdoors and everything!). I’ve been doing various cardio exercises–ridin’ the bike, the crazy elliptical thing–for a few years, but I hadn’t gone for a run in a while. It was actually pretty relaxing and wasn’t as tough as I anticipated. I went about 3.3 miles in 30 minutes (nine-minute miles). That ain’t great and it ain’t awful. On the up-side, I did have to run a bit of a hill, so I’ll tell myself that slowed me down a bit.

Road trip 2: Tomorrow night, I’m heading to Atlanta to watch the Gators in the SEC Championship game. When I was a student, we pretty much expected to play for the SEC Title and we were always hoping to get into the National Championship game. Nowadays, playing for the SEC Title is a big deal and I want to be there if we win it. Also, it’s a pretty good excuse to go hang with my friends in Atlanta (I haven’t been since last Christmas). So, I’m leaving right after work tomorrow and I should get there around 10:00 tomorrow night. I’ll be heading back on Sunday afternoon.

Road trip 3: In honor of all the road-tripping, I picked up Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (audio book). I figure it’s just a bonus that Beatniks likely weren’t opposed to partaking of the acid from time to time (of course, that’s speculation based entirely on some stereotype I have for reasons I can’t recall).

Turning over a new leaf

I’ve been posting on my blog for almost five years, and I’m probably the only person who consistently reads what I write. While it’s always been true that my primary audience is myself (more specifically, it’s my future self; Marty?), I know that there are a few others who sometimes read it. Over the past few months, a few of those readers have mentioned that they liked what I wrote before the poker posts infested the place, but that they’ve been pretty bored since then.

My friends’ subtle reminders have reminded me that I should take more time to get my thoughts down, so I can refer to them later. Of course, I enjoy all things poker, so I don’t anticipate I’ll be abandoning the poker posts, but I hope to begin supplementing the blog with some more substantive posts more reflective of my life and thoughts. So, I’m going to start trying to post something meaningful at least bi-weekly (I almost wrote “weekly”, but that seemed a little too ambitious since I’m extremely lazy). I have no idea what I’ll write about, but I’m hoping inspiration will strike at least a couple times a month.

I’ll start working up my first post this week. I think I’m going to write about two financial philosophies I discussed with some friends last night. I’ve also got an almost-finished post I wrote a while back after I finished reading The Prince.

We’ll see how long this lasts.

Crazy week

About a month ago, I moved out here to work for a small software company. I no longer work for that software company… because we were acquired by a larger, public company. At first, I was a little nervous since I’m the new guy and the new guy is typically the first to go if there’s any kind of reduction in force. But, as I thought it over and spoke with my boss, I realized that I don’t have anything to worry about. First of all, the acquisition has been in the works for a few months, so they would’ve had to incur the cost of hiring me, moving me, etc., all while knowing they could let me go. Obviously, that wouldn’t make very much business sense and since I know the people I work for have a lot of business sense (they did just sell their company for a nice chunk of change, after all), I had to figure they wouldn’t make such a costly mistake. Also, a good friend of mine approached me about working there–I didn’t pursue the company so much as the company pursued me–and I couldn’t see my friend leading me to move out here, only to be canned a month later.

So, after a lot of thought and several excellent meals on my new company’s dime, I’m pretty sure I’m good to go. Really, the best thing is that I know have more career options since I now work for an 800-person company rather than a 40-person company. Before, the only vertical potential was basically my boss’ job, and I don’t think he’s going anywhere for a while. Now, there are several places I can go within the company, and I can probably get there relatively quickly since the company is growing very rapidly.

Florida Football winning, but battling silliness

It’s true that we’ve had some close wins against mediocre teams, and we’ve had some close wins against great teams. Our only loss was a close one to a good Auburn team on the road. I haven’t seen the strength of schedule numbers recently, but I’m guessing our schedule is one of the most difficult. So what I really don’t get is why USC is already being anointed as the one-loss team bound for the National Title game. They lost to an unranked Oregon State and they’ve only beaten two teams who were ranked at the time they played. True, if they win out, they will have played a pretty tough schedule, but they still don’t have to play a conference championship game, and they certainly won’t be playing any Top 5 teams in the next few weeks.

We’ve beaten two ranked teams (one Top 10) and our only loss is to a ranked team. We’ll also likely meet a Top 5 Arkansas in the SEC Championship Game. Another thing to consider is that the quality of opponent in the SEC is just better than that of the PAC-10. We’re a stronger conference, but because our teams play defense, we’re being called weak.

I just needed to get that off my chest. If we win out and don’t play for the title, I think we should offer to switch conferences with USC, Texas or some other “big” team for a season. That would be interesting.

Florida Football limping, sputtering to wins

Well, it’s been several weeks since I posted (I guess I’ll need to be more intentional with finding time to post), and the Auburn game remains our only loss. Our wins haven’t been impressive, but they have been wins, and we’re in the driver’s seat. Although a bye might be nice next week, I think it’s good that we’ll have a tune-up game against Western Carolina. We need to work on our offense and hopefully find some kind of rhythm. Our defense and special teams seem to be just fine. Actually, that’s a pretty big under statement… our defense and special teams are pretty awesome. They’re really the only reason we’ve won games since they just don’t allow other teams to put any points on the board.

I’m pretty tired so it’s time to wrap this up. We’re winning games and possibly en route to a National Championship appearance (thanks to some pretty big upsets today). I’ll take it.