It's snowing
Yes, I know, I've been neglecting my blog here. Here's a brief update on what's been happening in my life since September.
October, of course, is racing season at Keeneland. As usual, we had a steady stream of friends and family come visit to wager on the ponies. Keeneland started publishing its race meet statistics online, and I created a database to analyze them. Sounds geeky, and it is. I also won my first Superfecta with the trends I identified, so I'm geeky all the way to the teller window. The trends, by the way, were quite surprising. You want to bet on horses that have run a race within the past 4-6 weeks at a distance that is within 1 furlong of today's race. You want the last race to be on an all-weather surface or on the turf, and horses that start in the #3 starting position do well at Keeneland. Certain jockeys also do better with certain lengths of race and some are better at helping a horse transition between different surfaces.
October also marked another month of working from home for me. These past few months I've been working on a project that involves moving a client's computers into HP data centers. This client has computers currently at data centers in Dublin, Sacramento CA, Calgary, Pune India, Tuscon AZ, and a bunch of other locations I can't remember. Rather than flying around to all these places, I get to setup conference calls between the people in those places and the guys who are putting together the plan for how to orchestrate the actual "move" of computers. This task is as tedious and boring as you might imagine, with the added nuisance of dealing with people in 5 time zones ranging from 10.5 hours ahead of me to 3 hours behind me.
HP, my employer, bought 3-Com corporation in November, and closed the legal transaction of absorbing EDS Americas employees (including myself) into HP. They re-named the business unit to HP Enterprise Services (it was formerly called the Technical Solutions Group - whatever that meant). After working for HP for over a year now, I am happy to report that it is indeed a considerable improvement over the old EDS days. The culture at HP is much more performance oriented and fast paced, both of which I like. Now that they own EDS and 3-Com, they're also about the most well rounded technology firm in the world. We sell computers, printers, servers, monitors, networking equipment, tons of software, and pretty much any kind of service associated with information technology.
In other news, I studied for the GMAT, took it, did better than I had hoped, applied to Indiana University and was accepted. I start my MBA at the Kelley school of business in February, and I'm very excited. If anyone reading this has $50,000 they'd like to donate to the cause, call me.
We hosted Thanksgiving in November. This was a good time, and it's always fun when we can get both sides of the family together. We were able to do this for the Lexington Fest-of-Ales back in September as well. Over 40 breweries were represented, and the event was a huge success. I am certain they will bring it back next year. 2010 will be a big year for Kentucky, since we'll be the first place outside of Europe to hose the World Equestrian Games. I'm excited about this because it means lots of French people will come to Lexington and have no choice but to speak English. There will also be a big music festival at Churchill Downs next summer similar to the Jazz Fest they put on in New Orleans (same organizers).
More political rants coming shortly.
October, of course, is racing season at Keeneland. As usual, we had a steady stream of friends and family come visit to wager on the ponies. Keeneland started publishing its race meet statistics online, and I created a database to analyze them. Sounds geeky, and it is. I also won my first Superfecta with the trends I identified, so I'm geeky all the way to the teller window. The trends, by the way, were quite surprising. You want to bet on horses that have run a race within the past 4-6 weeks at a distance that is within 1 furlong of today's race. You want the last race to be on an all-weather surface or on the turf, and horses that start in the #3 starting position do well at Keeneland. Certain jockeys also do better with certain lengths of race and some are better at helping a horse transition between different surfaces.
October also marked another month of working from home for me. These past few months I've been working on a project that involves moving a client's computers into HP data centers. This client has computers currently at data centers in Dublin, Sacramento CA, Calgary, Pune India, Tuscon AZ, and a bunch of other locations I can't remember. Rather than flying around to all these places, I get to setup conference calls between the people in those places and the guys who are putting together the plan for how to orchestrate the actual "move" of computers. This task is as tedious and boring as you might imagine, with the added nuisance of dealing with people in 5 time zones ranging from 10.5 hours ahead of me to 3 hours behind me.
HP, my employer, bought 3-Com corporation in November, and closed the legal transaction of absorbing EDS Americas employees (including myself) into HP. They re-named the business unit to HP Enterprise Services (it was formerly called the Technical Solutions Group - whatever that meant). After working for HP for over a year now, I am happy to report that it is indeed a considerable improvement over the old EDS days. The culture at HP is much more performance oriented and fast paced, both of which I like. Now that they own EDS and 3-Com, they're also about the most well rounded technology firm in the world. We sell computers, printers, servers, monitors, networking equipment, tons of software, and pretty much any kind of service associated with information technology.
In other news, I studied for the GMAT, took it, did better than I had hoped, applied to Indiana University and was accepted. I start my MBA at the Kelley school of business in February, and I'm very excited. If anyone reading this has $50,000 they'd like to donate to the cause, call me.
We hosted Thanksgiving in November. This was a good time, and it's always fun when we can get both sides of the family together. We were able to do this for the Lexington Fest-of-Ales back in September as well. Over 40 breweries were represented, and the event was a huge success. I am certain they will bring it back next year. 2010 will be a big year for Kentucky, since we'll be the first place outside of Europe to hose the World Equestrian Games. I'm excited about this because it means lots of French people will come to Lexington and have no choice but to speak English. There will also be a big music festival at Churchill Downs next summer similar to the Jazz Fest they put on in New Orleans (same organizers).
More political rants coming shortly.
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