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Note: That is not my cake, but it would be awesome if it was.

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes on facebook, text messages, phone calls, etc.  So far my birthday has been pretty uneventful.  I spent the first part of the day looking around for a new license plate bracket for my car since the last one fell off.  Then I got bored with that and did about the only thing you can do with only a golf cart around here, I went to play golf.

I was pretty happy with how I played considering that I can’t remember seriously playing in the last almost 2 years.  The first couple holes were rough, and I started getting pretty tired after 9 holes, but it was fun.  I got paired up with an older guy who was very patient with my sucking and had some good stories about living in across the country.  Thankfully he also had his own cart because I had to bail on the 15th hole when the blisters on my feet were just too much to handle anymore.

I’m heading up to Atlanta in a little bit here, and a bunch of people are getting together.  Apparently Melinda just took her big test, so there will plenty of celebrating going on.  Mike, you better not flake out this time.

I just can’t quit you.

The drive back across country was no good at all.  Thankfully I was able to make it in just over 48 hours so I made a lot better time coming home.  I’m not sure what’s next for me, but I’ll be looking at jobs and grad school stuff over the next couple days and weeks.  What I’d like to do is some short term consulting stuff and then try to get in a position to start up grad school next fall.

That would probably mean I would be going back for business school.  However, if I decide to go back for some kind of IE masters then I might go back earlier since having a work history isn’t necessary.

Yeah, so…I guess that LA move didn’t work out so well.   Oops.

I’ll leave the negatives aside here, as pretty much everyone should be able to figure those out by themselves.  Instead, I’ll try to focus on the positives of this situation.

1) Got to experience a new LA lifestyle for about 3 weeks, kinda like a really long vacation.
2) Drove across the country seeing a bunch of stuff I’ve never seen before.
3) REALLY nice weather.
4) Pretty much no barriers to what I can do now.  No qualms with moving anywhere I can afford and no job to stop me.

4 is the most interesting part.  I’m actively considering a lot of option for where to move to now, but I don’t think staying in LA is one of them.  A few places that interest me are San Diego, Seattle, maybe Portland or Denver, and lower down the list Austin and Vegas (God help me).  Each have their pluses and minuses, but after living in this for a little bit now, nice weather is definitely key.  SD and Seattle are probably the top 2 non-Atlanta choices.  The Bay Area would be a nice option too, but it’s way too expensive.

Obviously Atlanta is always the leading option because everyone I know is back there.  However, the idea of driving back across the country (alone this time) sounds like hell.  And I can’t sell the car and fly home b/c the car isn’t paid off and is in my mom’s name.  Silly laws.

So, suggestions?

I’ve spent a lot of time lately compiling historical data on NFL point spread results so that I can play around with the information and look for trends. Well, I was just about finished with all of the information for all 32 teams from the 1985-1986 season through present day when I found out that the source I was using was considered…less than 100% reliable. Gah.

So, now I have a new source, a better source hopefully, and a source that formats its data in a completely different way than the first one. Amazing. Well, at least I’ll have something else to do tomorrow other than wait for the cable guy.

To try and get angry at something else instead I’m going to attempt updating to the latest edition of WordPress. Last time this was an utter failure and I’m still not sure how I got the blog back. Hopefully this go around is better.

Wish me luck.

That’s right, two book reviews.  There’s not much more to do than read or watch DVDs when you don’t have any kind of television service for a week.

Moneyball (buy here)

This book is a few years old, and talks about how the Oakland A’s front office used statistics to find undervalued players.  I’ve made it pretty clear that I’m a huge stat nerd myself, so I found all of this stuff incredibly interesting.  The idea that baseball is such an inefficient market that you can construct a team on $40 million that regularly competes with a team costing $150 million is amazing.

If you like baseball, statistics, or even just want to get a new outlook on business, I think this is a great book.

A Year in the Merde (buy here)

This book’s been on my page for a long ass time.  I started reading it, never really got attached to any characters and let it sit on the shelf.  Well, after season 3 of The Wire, every DVD I could stomach watching again, and mind-numbing boredom I decided to give the book another try.

It’s nothing spectacular, but it is a much better read than I gave it credit for originally.  I wouldn’t go into it expecting any deep musings on life though.  Also, I wouldn’t recommend reading it unless you have a strong to quite strong grasp on French.  There is a good bit of it used throughout the book, and only parts are explained well in English.  Sure, you could read the book and understand 95% of it, but I think it would lose some of the charm it does manage.

My next book is going to be Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs by Chuck Klosterman on Jen’s recommendation.  As I don’t have a job or friends with nothing to do during the week I’ll probably plow through this one fairly quickly.