Category: VAULT Information

College Football

Ever year I talk my wife’s ear off about College Football.  Not that anyone who knows me didn’t already assumes I talk my wife’s ear off.  One of the re-occurring topics that I cover every single year with her is “my favorite College Football uniforms.”  So here is my top 10 list.

  1. Penn State – Home uniform (blue and white.)  Clean, simple, and easily the best looking team on the field when they are at home.  Penn State is the gold standard of College Football uniforms.  Wannabe look-alike: Georgia Southern.
  2. Notre Dame – Home uniform (blue and gold.) Maybe I like dark blue but seriously, how can you not love a uniform that needs no logo on it’s helmet and has actual gold mixed into the color.  Wannabe look-alike: Notre Dame… in green.
  3. Oklahoma – Home uniforms (Crimson and Cream.) Oh common, you knew this was coming.  The simple logo, the striking colors, and the lack of unnecessary shoulder or helmet stripes.  Classic, simple, and gorgeous! Wannabe look-alike: Alabama.  OK, maybe it should be Alabama withe OU the wannabe, but this is MY list and OU crimson is waaaaaay better than boring old Alabama crimson.  Plus I have ALWAYS hated the number on the helmet thing!
  4. Michigan – Home uniform (maze and blue.)  The winged helmet is classic and the colors are bold without being annoying.  Wannabe look-alike: Delaware.
  5. Auburn – Home uniforms ( orange and blue.) If you have to have tons of stripes on your uniform, you would be hard pressed to do it as well as Auburn.  I love these colors together.  The simple logo helps their cause as well. Wannabe look-alike: Illinois.
  6. Army – Special events home uniforms (black and camo!)  Seriously, have you seen these uniforms?  They are amazing!  I mean, do you really want to play football against a team that looks like they could pull out AR-15’s right after the game.  I would give a wannabe but I can’t think of anyone, anywhere, that look like them.
  7. Texas – Home uniforms (burnt orange and white.) It is really really hard to pull off looking good in orange.  Texas is the only team that I know of that can do it. Wannabe look-alike: Tennessee.
  8. Navy –  Home uniforms (blue and gold.) Solid color helmets really do wonders for a uniform.  Navy is basically another one of those “classic” uniforms.  I really love blue and gold for football.
  9. USC – Away uniforms (cardinal, gold, and white) I hate USC, but I have to admit that they look dang good.  One of the few teams that looks better away than at home, the white adds something to the color scheme for me.  Good looking logo as well.  But I still hate them!  Wannabe look-alike: Minnesota.
  10. Georgia Southern – Yes, I know I just complained about the numbers on the helmets, but Georgia Southern does it in BLUE!

And Just because they probably need to be smacked.  Here are a few of the worst.

  1. Oregon
  2. Air Force
  3. Boise State
  4. Rhodes Island

God has given us a girl

Rachel Ellen was, joyously, welcomed into the world at 12:35am this morning. She weights 8 lbs 8 ounces. Both mother and baby are doing wonderfully! I have posted some pictures of Rachel taken just minutes after she was born.  The page is password protected so if you don’t know the password, just email me.

Thanks everyone for your prayers and support. God continues to be truely bless us.

The way things were

For the last six months or so almost every post on Vault has been a daily collection of micro-posts from my Twitter account.  Twitter is a micro-blogging utility that allows me to send 140 character posts to everyone who subscribes to me.  Think of it as broadcast text messaging.  While it has been a wonderful tool for quick brain dumps of information; it is worthless as a meaningful medium for presenting ideas.  Twitter is particularly useful when I am not in front of a computer because every smart phone in existence has a client for it.

Because of the limited usefulness of my tweets (what Twitter calls individual posts,)  I am changing the configuration to only post summaries weekly.  This should reduce the clutter on Vault.  Of course this will only really help if I increase the number of honest-to-god blog posts.

In other news, my wife and I are getting ready for the birth of our third child.  We are expecting sometime in the next couple weeks.  Work has been been amazingly good but causes me to be busier than I have ever been (partly explaining the lack of blog posts.)  The two weeks at home for the birth will be a welcome rest… or not.

On a side note let me post this link our Host Monster referral page.  I have always felt strongly about putting advertising on my private blog but HostMonster.com has been such a great web hosting service for us that I regularly recommend them to friends/family.  But because I have never posted the link I continually forget to use the referral (Vault gets $50 credit every time someone registers a domain through it) or I have trouble finding the referral when I do remember.  Now I can find it easily via the Vault search function.

To Dare Mighty Things

“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.”

–Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sunday I ran the Tulsa Route 66 Half Marathon.  This particular distance is a huge milestone for me as it is tied for the longest distance I have ever run.  My Junior year of college I took a marathon training class where our final was the Derby Days Half Marathon.  It’s like everything before this was getting me back to “where I was” and everything after this Sunday is new.

Here was my training schedule for the half marathon:

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Week 1 Run 3 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 3 Miles Run 5 Miles
Week 2 Run 3 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 3 Miles Run 6 Miles
Week 3 Run 3 Miles Run 5 Miles Run 3 Miles Run 8 Miles
Week 4 Run 3 Miles Run 5 Miles Run 3 Miles Run 10 Miles
Week 5 Run 4 Miles Run 5 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 11 Miles
Week 6 Run 4 Miles Run 6 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 12 Miles
Week 7 Run 4 Miles Run 5 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 9 Miles
Week 8 Run 4 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 4 Miles Run 8 Miles
Week 9 Run 3 Miles Run 3 Miles Walk 2 Miles Half Marathon

The Tulsa Route 66 Half Marathon was a wonderful event with the exception of the food tent and the beer shortage.  Instead of putting out dozens of church tables with post-run fruits, sweets, and carbs; they funneled all the zombified runners into a food tent that was basically designed to accommodate a  church picnic and NOT 3000 energy starved sweat factories.  The tent had two lines (unmarked of course), one for post-run food and one for pizza & hamburgers.  For those who don’t know pizza after 13.1 miles sounds about as good as eating your own sock.  It took me over 45 minutes to get into the tent and , by that time, I was more than happy to eat my own sock.  Finally, after getting out of the tent, we were informed that there was no beer left for the runners.

If you want my run information you can check out my stats page, look at the overall half marathon finishers stats page, or see a picture of me on the website.

The race felt pretty good.  It was cold at the beginning but by mile three I was warmed up.  The last mile I started cramping because I hadn’t use the bathroom in a couple hours (hydration is good, over-hydration… not so much.)  There were only a few hills and they were at the very end of the race.

My workout distances were well space and I really didn’t suffer from any injuries.  A new pair of shoes helped significantly with my bruised tendon but I am glad I got them a month ago because it took my calves a couple weeks to get used to the new shoes.  I have realized that I need to do some kind of race every couple months because I had a noticeable motivation problem after about 7-8 weeks.  I expect my next “goal‘ to be 21-22 weeks out, so it will be really important to stay motivated.

I May have forgotten to mention

“The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.”

–Sam Levenson

My beautiful wife and I will be having another child in early March. Thankfully all my previous children look like her and with God’s grace this child will be so fortunate. We are in the process of picking names, so if anyone has some suggestions (especially for boys names) feel free to post a comment.

I am Catholic and as such live by the rule of “whoever dies with the most kids win.”   So far, I am off to a good start!

Refrain therefore awhile

Fortune does not change men, it unmasks them.

–Suzanne Necker

I am in the process of updating the image galleries to use the new WordPress Media Manager instead of the local scripts I used before. While testing out the functionality I added some new family pictures.  They require a user account to access (for obvious privicy reasons) but you can register by clicking on the link on the right.

So far I have converted the Jeep and desktop image galleryies.  Also, I have added lots more quotes from an old list I found on my home computer.  Check out all of my images by clicking on “Images” on the right-hand side under VAULT STUFF.

Improved by death

I have updated VAULT to WorlPress 2.5. Additionally I have added a quotes widget to the sidebar and a page that has a (nearly) complete list of the quotes I have posted. This new functionality is a product of the Quotes Collection plug in.  Now that I have a tool to manage adding quotes, it looks like this blog may become nothing more than a repository for posting links unless I actually add some unique content on occasion.

Corrupting good manners.

2007 was the worst year I have had for keeping this blog regularly updated.  It was not from lack of intention but a product of over stimulation.  Writing has become a luxury I haven’t had time for since starting work at Cobb.  One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on this.

This blog is the closest thing to a diary I have had, and I find myself a little disconnected without posting.  Links, updates, comments, and complaints I have had with myself disappear because of a lack of documentation. So, while this is not a big post; hopefully it will be a start… or rather a re-start.

I have also updated the wine list; adding, appropriately for the date, a couple bottles of sparkling white wine and a really awful Riesling.  I have started a scotch list, but don’t have enough to post just yet.  Thankfully a friend has remedied this problem and we will post that when I have had a chance to review those bottles.