I don’t usually blog about anything personal, but it’s high time I put Hurricane Ike into the annals of this blog. We got the day off early today, we don’t have to go tomorrow, and Ike’s supposed to drop bombs Friday night/Saturday morning.

A lot of people get bent out of shape over hurricanes, but not me and my roommates. We’re riding it out here in Houston, for all of my friends who are reading this. We’re expecting a lot of rain, some flooding—the usual. When Not Hurricane Allison came in a few years ago, 3- to 4-feet of rain got dropped all up on our street and almost to the doorways. I know this because I had a solid convo with our new neighbor Brandon who’s a cool dude whose son goes to LSU who lived in the house next door during the storm. He’s already bolted, but I’m not that type of person.

Being from Houston, I’m used to Hurricane scares. We get them every year, at least two or three times a year. For all of you non-Houstonians, we have digital signs over our freeways that are controlled by our city Metro. For the past two months, if there’s not a wreck, they read: “Storm is forming. Fill up your tanks.” Whether or not there’s a storm forming, or even if it’s remotely headed this way, we’re constantly prepared to deal with a hurricane.

Preparedness be gone. This Ike thing is the real deal. Unless something drastic happens, we’re gonna get it. When I went to work this morning, Ike was slated to drop rain all over somewhere between Corpus and Houston. But now? BAM. Directly over Houston. In fact, so direct, go look at a map and it’s going to land to the east of Houston and to the west of Galveston. And for people like you Ben Cochran who’s in North Carolina, that’s not a big distance.

So here we go! Let’s hope this thing doesn’t get too out of control. But I will make one guarantee: If this hurricane is legit, you can guarantee my brother and I will be in swimsuits screwing around outside. But only in the daylight. Because as the joke goes: It’s not how fast the wind is blowing, but what it’s blowing.

This post has something to do with: David's Personal Life

John McCain’s acceptance speech

Update: Welcome readers from the Houston Chronicle! Thanks so much for checking out my post. Feel free to check out the rest of the blog if you’ve got a spare second.

I’m not the biggest fan of politics. I want to get that out of the way before I get into the meat of this post. You’ll never see me parading around with a candidate’s sticker on my car. But now that I’m on Twitter, I’ve found that 95% of the people on there also use it to push their political beliefs, using it as a veritable candidate’s bumper sticker.* I’ve read a lot of 140 character statements about how much Sarah Palin sucks and McCain is lifting elements of his speeches and how Republicans this and that and blah blah blah… MOST of this was going on during McCain and Obama’s nomination acceptance speeches. It was like reading live micro-blogging.

Barack Obama’s accceptance speech

Keeping that in mind, today I was getting back up-to-date with some old Tweets, and found this one from my CEO, Ed Schipul: “Words missing for both parties.’Economy, privacy, jobs, balanced budget, peace, health care, pension bankruptcy, etc…’”

What are we actually talking about?

His point is clear: What are the candidates really trying to sell us in these speeches? Ed wants to know about Obama’s plans for a balanced budget, about McCain’s plan to lower healthcare costs, etc. But what he heard was lofty, dream talk. Not a whole lot of actionable items.

So: Is a nomination speech supposed to be dedicated to actionable items? To telling the nation their plans if elected president? If so, why are there only democratic delegates invited to the DNC and Republicans to the RNC? Is the speech supposed to to merely be an acceptance speech similar to that of a hall-of-famer being inducted? Or, quite obviously, there is still work to be done, so do they treat it as a chance to politik to the whole nation?

Analyzing a speech the graphic way

Whatever way you view it, they still addressed the nation with their speeches the way they felt needed to be done. Now this post is not dedicated to campaigning for either side. I’m not here to offer any of my own political insight at all. However, what I do think is interesting is analyzing the content of the two candidate’s speeches to see what they really talked about, and not just what a democrat “heard” McCain say, or what a conservative “heard” Obama say.

Check out the Wordles of both candidates speeches. Wordles take the content of a grouping of text (like a speech or an RSS feed) and give the most popular word larger font and weight. It’s a simple visualization to help a graphically oriented person literally see what they were talking about.

Some notes about the speeches (in hopefully an entirely non-partisan manner):

• If anyone ever thought McCain was mudslinging Obama, they’d apparently be wrong. Obama certainly called out McCain more than the other way around. Note how large McCain’s name is on Obama’s Wordle. Even “John” is pretty large.
• McCain is obviously playing towards the nebulous ‘American’. “Americans” is huge, “country” is massive. And knowing he comes from a military background, he’s playing that up in his speech: “fight” for our country, “fought,” “war,” “government”… all very blue-collar, conservative words.
• Check out Obama’s most emphasized word: Promise. It’s exactly what he’s been selling most Americans: a promise, a dream. It’s the way he’s branded himself and it seems to be working. I’m not saying he’s a liar at all, but when candidates build their platform on promises BEFORE being elected, there’s an awful lot to live up to. (”Read my lips…”)
• Interesting note also there: “Change” is not as big as I would have expected it to be on Obama’s. It’s his big thing. “New country” is pretty large up there, though.

Anyway, it’s pretty cool to see what they’re actually talking about in their speeches. So even if you didn’t listen to both speeches from start to finish, you can still get a pretty good idea of what they’re trying to pitch.

* I have to say I’m OK with this; it’s a micro-blogging site, that’s what it’s supposed to be used for, share your ideas freely. After all, I opted in to following you. It’s not like your barraging me and I didn’t want you to.

This post has something to do with: David's Personal Life

Today marks the start of the NFL season, so I figure it’s time for some solid predictions. I want to note that these aren’t supposed to be funny-ha-ha or specifically designed to elicit a response. These are truly what I believe will happen in the upcoming season.

Ten (Not so/Maybe) Bold Predictions

If you’re feeling up to it, make this a truth or lies: In the comments section, number these statements and put whether it’s truth or lies and a quick reason why.

1. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady will start every game of the regular season.
2. Brett Favre will win 10 games with the New York Jets.
3. The Houston Texans will not make the playoffs.
4. Mario Williams will have more than 15 sacks.
5. The Cleveland Browns will win less than 10 games this season.
6. Jacksonville beats New England in the AFC Championship game to go to the Super Bowl.
7. LaDainian Tomlinson will take back the number one fantasy football player spot from Tom Brady or Randy Moss.
8. The AFC South will be the hardest division in football. The NFC East is second.
9. Vince Young will for the first time in his career throw more TDs than INTs.
10. T.J. Houshmandzadeh is the new man in town: He’ll catch more TDs than Chad Ocho Cinco this year.

Divisional Standings Predictions

The division standings come playoff time (follow the link to see my full ‘08-’09 NFL standings predictions):

AFC South

1. Jacksonville Jaguars
2. Indianapolis Colts
3. Houston Texans
4. Tennessee Titans

Keep reading NFL season predictions

This post has something to do with: Football & Texans

There had been rumors that Colorado was coming strong this season with a fairly innovative jersey. Crazy jerseys have been done before in the NCAA (usually by Oregon), but Colorado usually runs a fairly typical route.

But when my brother and I were watching the game last night, we took immediate notice of something that looked like road tread on the shoulders. I thought it was just a black-on-black type treatment with one of the blacks not being registration black (meaning one would be a little lighter than the other). But as it turns out, the lighter color is caused by little white raised resin balls close together in a shape.

I don’t think I like it. What I do like is the suggestion my brother gave: Maybe they’re there so the players can grab at their shoulders and get their hands a little stickier to better catch or handle the ball. Is that true? I don’t know. I feel like it may be illegal. But if it IS true, I’m going to go ahead and say that’s a pretty good move. It makes it less aesthetic and more pragmatic.

P.S.— I have to go on record as saying that although the popular opinion is to hate Oregon uniforms (and especially their black-on-black stuff), I love it.

This post has something to do with: Football & Uniforms