It would have been a reasonable New Year’s Resolution … one of many I could have made … to be a little more dependable in writing these blogs. Since the beginning, as any readers who might still remain out there may have noticed, the frequency of these things has, shall we say, waned. From three blogs a week, to two, then to one, then to less than one … I’m ashamed. Of course, the truth is that this is supposed to be a company blog site, and I don’t think anyone else at APPX Software has done much better, y’know?

So, what shall we talk about today? How about a potpourri of topics …

The Gators and Sooners meet this evening for a claim on the national championship, a claim that is sure to be disputed by fans of the Longhorns, Trojans, and Utes. I find it so annoying that defenders of this BCS system claim that a playoff in college football would be too difficult on the players, who would miss class time. As if they don’t now skip classes, get spoonfed academic assistance, take garbage classes, etc. Why is a playoff system OK for basketball players and baseball players and even football players in lower divisions, but not at the top? This has nothing to do with academics, and everything to do with the universities believing that they make more money the way things are right now. Hey, if that’s the goal, I’m OK with it. Just don’t lie about your motivation when everyone knows the truth.

Barack Obama was officially elected president today. In case you missed it, the Senate ratified the results from the Electoral College (do they have a football team?), and in 12 days, we will have a new leader in place, with some new ideas, new energy, new advisors and assistants, and a whole slew of not-so-new problems. I think it would be an amazing thing to win the presidency, quite the ego trip for sure. But there’s no way that I would want that job, would you?

I see that some so-called experts are predicting that gas prices will head up to $4 a gallon again. How many of them predicted that it would drop to $1.50 this year? I’m guessing none. So why should we believe them now? Are these the same experts that predict what the economy will do, where the unemployment rate will be, which way the stock market will turn? It would seem that they should have to show some success rate in the past before we accept what they say for the future.

A new season of Scrubs debuted this week, in its new home - ABC instead of NBC. There can’t be very many similar cases where a prime time show got dropped by one network and picked up by another, without missing a year. Scrubs is the only network show we watch, and we do enjoy its clever plot twists, smart humor, and distinct lack of a laugh track. My thoughts on the new episodes (they aired two, back-to-back, on Tuesday night) is that the new characters seem a little bit too one-dimensional. The new Chief of Medicine is 100% bottom-line conscious, and the patients be damned. And an intern with a poor bedside manner plays that way over the top. But maybe it will grow on me. I still like the show. And I can’t wait to see how they bring the janitor back next week.

Tomorrow begins a weekend orientation session for 76 new outbound Rotary exchange students. I’m very proud of the way our program has grown and expanded, now statewide. The number represents a 50% increase over the current year (economy notwithstanding), which itself was 50% higher than before. So we’re doing quite well numerically. And the students who are spending this year abroad, as well as those who are hosted here in Florida, are also thriving. Let me again urge you, should you be interested, to discover more about these kids at www.ryeflorida.org.

For the sake of Steve and Brenda and all the other Gator fans that I know, let’s hope this is a happy night. Go Gators!

This entry was posted on Thursday, January 8th, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under Al. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.