Douglas A. Smith

New RSS Feed

2008-12-23T14:11:00.002-05:00

If you are following this blog via RSS, please update your feed URL to the following...

http://feeds.feedburner.com/dascentralblog

The migration away from Blogger.com isn't going to be quite as seamless as I'd hoped.

Fantasy Football in a Nutshell

2008-11-07T16:10:00.003-05:00

Bill Simmons just posted the following analysis of Fantasy Football...

My big epiphany: Really, the fantasy football season isn't fun. Winning is OK; losing is agonizing. You constantly feel awful about your choices and your bad luck; it's the only exercise that causes arguments with friends you normally never would argue with; and you spend roughly a kazillion hours managing your team for the 10 percent chance that you might win your league. There's just not a ton of upside. It's almost like smoking cigarettes -- it started out with good intentions, and it's something to do, and it can be fun in the right moments, but ultimately, there are an inordinate amount of moments when you find yourself leaning out a window in 20-degree weather to puff out a quick cig as your nose gets frostbitten, or bumming a cig from a group of horrible girls and then feeling obligated to talk to them, or waking up in the morning and coughing up your right lung. Really, it's more harm than fun. And yet, we continue to do it. And love it. This entire paragraph made me want to smoke.

I couldn't agree more. My Monday mornings over the past few years have been so depressing after a weekend loss that I deemed this year my year of FFL Zen. I refuse to let bad luck (and I've had my fair share) ruin my ability to enjoy the sport. But doesn't that say something if it takes a concerted effort to maintain my zen?

Like he said though, I still love it.

Why I Don't Bet on Sports

2008-10-28T17:28:00.003-05:00

Let's take a quick look at how my Redskins season prediction is going...

Prediction: 6-10

Through Week 8: Uh, 6-2!!!!

Never would have predicted this kind of performance. I like to think of myself as being objective when it comes to the Redskins but it's possible I'm just pessimistic.

On top of that, not that I have any way of proving this but I mentally predicted Rays in 6 games over the Phillies in the World Series. That prediction isn't doing so hot right now either.

Headed to Thailand

2008-10-28T17:07:00.003-05:00

A little earlier this year, my buddy Jeff sent me an email on something of a whim asking if I wanted to join him on a trip to either Spain or Thailand. I've done a ton of travelling over the past couple of years but mostly between DC, NYC and Austin. Aside from two trips to Canada that don't really count, I haven't been outside of the country in just over 10 years.

Since I've been to Spain before, I decided to take the plunge and suggested to Jeff that we make our way to Thailand. He booked the tickets last week and has us taking off on December 26th for two weeks in Thailand followed by one more in Vietnam before returning home on January 16th. It took a little arm twisting on Jeff's part but I'm really looking forward to my first extended, non-Habitat for Humanity vacation in 6 years.

I owe Jeff a great deal of thanks for making all of the travel arrangements up until this point. He's quite the amatuer photographer as well so in addition to my own sub-amatuer efforts, I hope to come back with some amazing photos of the experience.

A Returning Spree

2008-10-07T21:02:00.004-05:00

You've been on a shopping spree before, right? I think we all have. You come home from the mall or clothing/sporting goods/[insert hobby of choice] store and have spent a little more than you wanted to going in. To be honest, I haven't been too frugal over the past couple of months.

Well, I've recently started saving up for a big trip happening later this year and since I keep good track of my receipts, decided maybe I should take back a few items that I know I don't really need. Total returning spree savings... about $300.

I guess I'm not helping the economy much but at least I feel a little more fiscally responsible.

Redskins 2008 Season Prediction

2008-09-19T07:59:00.002-05:00

It's not really fair of me to put out a season prediction two weeks into the regular season but you'll have to trust me when I say that I've had these numbers in my head since before the season started.

As always, my buddy Steve has a much more optimistic view of the Redskins chances. He's going with 9-7. I say 6-10. They're young... they're talented... but I don't have enough faith in the coaching staff to believe they'll be able to put it all together on a consistent basis.

Two things stand out to me that indicate, in a sick way, Daniel Snyder has purposefully set the team up to fail a bit this year. First, the search for a head coach during the offseason was an embarrassment as they passed over several quality choices (e.g. Greg Williams) for a QB coach with no head coaching experience. And second, they made no splash in the offseason free agent market. While they have been lauded for this, it goes against everything Snyder seems to believe in. It's not his style.

Why sabotage the team? To make a run at Bill Cowher after this season is over. It's easier to dump Zorn after a sub-.500 season than it is if they go deep into the playoffs.

Last year's prediction: 7-9

2007 Actual Result: 9-7

Life Without Internet... That's Crazy Talk

2008-08-29T10:01:00.006-05:00

The Internet has become such a huge part of my life over the past 10 years. Working in the industry and having computer related hobbies means that a great deal of my time is spent online. Today I came across an interesting paragraph in a project kickoff doc while at work...

Generally speaking, there are many site visitors who still do not have Internet connectivity from their stores or homes. With this, there are also many site visitors who are new to using the Internet to conduct business and have viewed the process of accessing the [site] to be time consuming and/or overly complex.

While this doesn't necessarily surprise me to read, I still am somewhat blown away by the fact that people live their lives without a daily, if not hourly, need to access email, blogs, amazon.com, eBay, Facebook, etc.

Although that lifestyle may be seem very foreign to me, I think I'm a little jealous of it at times. As I slowly return from my self-proclaimed "Summer Vacation", I can very much appreciate the time spent away from the "noise" of the Internet. Twitter, I don't miss you at all.

Gmail, You Know Me So Well

2008-08-21T07:54:00.003-05:00

Uh, how and why did this ad get placed at the top of the page for me?

NFL Picks 2008

2008-08-19T09:41:00.001-05:00

It's that time of year again. The 2008 NFL season starts in just over two weeks.

If you're looking for a low stakes, low key pick 'em pool, head on over to NFL Picks and sign on up.

SMP in Photos

2008-06-20T23:42:00.003-05:00

While in New Orleans, we will be uploading photos of our work throughout the week. I've setup a Flickr collection for the photos. Check back soon to get a look at what we're up to.

SMP 2008 - Flickr Photo Collection

But before I go... SMP 2008

2008-06-19T08:41:00.003-05:00

Summer Mission Project (a.k.a. my annual Habitat for Humanity trip) is next week so before I take my little Internet "summer vacation", I may have one or two posts before I go since I like sharing this info. (Selfish in someway, yes?)

This year we are headed to New Orleans. As you can imagine, they are still in the process of recovering from hurricane Katrina and while much progress has been made, a ton of work remains to be completed. Our trip planning committee has talked about making this our destination for the past two years but it has taken this long for most locations to switch over from "clean-up" mode to "build" mode and lift some of the "18 and over" age restrictions. (We take youth as young as 16.) We fly out of National on Saturday morning at 8:30am (5am wake-up, ugh.) and return next Saturday, the 28th.

Work will take place in the St. Bernard Parish located just southeast of New Orleans (below the Lower Ninth). For more background on where we will be, check out this page on the Habitat for Humanity site.

btw, I may have just broken my own personal record for parenthesis used in a blog post.

Summer Vacation

2008-06-16T09:01:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I really love all of the opportunities the Internet gives me to interact with my friends and family without exerting too much effort. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr all allow me to communicate with a number of people that I don't get to see or speak to directly all that often.

However sometimes all of the information generated by those wonderful tools overwhelms me. Lately, the noise has become a little too loud and I need a bit of a break. I'm considering it a summer vacation of sorts. So for the next month or two, no blog posts, no twitter and significantly reduced Facebook/Flickr time.

If you'd like to catch up with me, let's do it the old fashioned way... via email.

Redesign

2008-06-09T18:10:00.002-05:00

After three years, dascentral.com has been redesigned! Woo-hoo!

The transfer to a new hosting provider is complete and I finally found time to take the advice I give clients nearly every day by installing a content management system. (Drupal) Not that there is a ton of content to manage here but small tweaks are still much easier to make via a CMS then by firing up an FTP application.

Note that this blog is still managed via blogger.com so that skin hasn't changed but hopefully I'll find some time to import my posts soon.

Saturday at the Lake House

2008-05-27T08:27:00.002-05:00

No TV.

No newspaper.

No cell phone.

No email.

No blogs.

No twitter.

No RSS.

No Facebook, MySpace or Linked In.

Just friends and some bocce ball... awesome.

Relay for Life

2008-05-15T22:12:00.002-05:00

This past November I lost a very close, personal friend, Judy O’Hara, to breast cancer. I met Judy through one of my best friends from college about 10 years ago and grew to know her very well through many a church activity. We sat together at church nearly every Sunday and attended several Habitat for Humanity trips. She was one of those super-warm and caring people that made you feel like you were the most important person in the room. Even when the cancer diagnosis was not good, every question of “How are you doing?” was immediately followed by “I’m fine. How are you?”. She served the dual role of siding expert and trip mom on our Habitat trips, always having an ointment, band-aid or hug for anyone in need.

During the weekend of May 31st, I will be participating in the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life in an effort to honor cancer survivors, pay tribute to lives lost and raise money to help fight the disease. From 2pm on Saturday until 8am Sunday morning, at least one member of our six-person team, dubbed “Judy’s Angels”, will be walking the track at South Lakes High School in Reston, VA. In the process we hope to have some fun, share some laughs, and most importantly, honor & remember Judy.

Our team’s goal is to raise $1000 which puts my personal goal at about $170. Knowing that I have already hit up many a friend and co-worker this year for donations for the 30 Hour Famine, I hesitate to ask again for additional money. As I say ever year for the Famine, I am sure you all have other very important causes worthy of your financial support.

However, if you feel moved to donate, we would love the support. (Donations are tax-deductible.) Unlike World Vision, the American Cancer Society accepts online donations!

To make a donation online, visit my personal donation page.

To make a donation via check, make the check payable to “American Cancer Society” and mail to the following address: 124 Park St SE, Vienna, VA 22180

Thanks so much for your support.

Here’s a pic of Judy at her daughter’s wedding in July 2006 as well as a little more about her courtesy of the Washington Post.

3 Minutes...

2008-04-30T18:52:00.003-05:00

...is how long it takes me to get out of DC from my new job in Georgetown. Tack on another 12 min drive through VA and I'm home in 15 mins. Makes my commute so much less of a hassle.

With my company looking for new office space elsewhere in the city, it will be interesting to see where we end up and what my commute looks like at that point.

Would I consider moving into DC if it puts me back in the 40 min ballpark? Yeah, I think I would.

Nationals Park

2008-04-28T09:25:00.002-05:00

About two weeks ago, I had the fortune of catching my first baseball game at the new Nationals baseball stadium with a friend of mine that I hadn’t seen in a while. While we usually catch up over sushi, a new low sodium diet for her had us headed to the park for beer and hot dogs. Not a bad substitute.

I was always pleasantly surprised at how nice a baseball stadium RFK turned out to be but it simply can’t compare to the new one. So many more food options (Five Guys, Ben’s Chili Bowl, Boardwalk Fries), plenty of bathrooms, amazing scoreboard and as the cliché goes, not a bad seat in the house. For the extremely budget-conscious baseball fans, they even have $5 standing room only spots out in center field.

Between catching up with my friend and taking in all the new park had to offer, I barely had time to notice the Marlins scoring seven runs in the fifth to help send the Nationals to their 6th loss in a row. Too bad we have such a nice stadium and such a bad baseball team right now. Definitely still worth a visit when you get the chance.

A few pics from the evening…

The S&M Club

2008-04-26T18:55:00.002-05:00

I have a few friends of mine who have started up their own S&M club. Now, to drag your mind out of the gutter, S&M in this instance stands for “Steak & Mojitos”. Once a month these two couples select a steak house in DC and head out for an evening of fine dining. While the main purpose of the club is to spend some quality time together, there is a serious edge to the gatherings as each restaurant is graded in several different categories. A very sophisticated (and still secret) algorithm is applied to their individual rankings and used to compute an overall restaurant score. Prior to this past weekend, Charlie Palmer’s steak house was the lone restaurant visited by this crew and received a 73.9 rating. (Decimal points in the rating? Yes… told you it was sophisticated.)

Not wanting to invite myself into the club, but knowing that I a) enjoy these people’s company and b) enjoy a nice steak dinner from time to time, I half-jokingly offered my services as a guest reviewer to which they actually agreed. Woo-hoo! So this past Saturday, we met up at the Capital Grille for the official second meeting of the S&M club.

I won’t bore you with the intricate details of the meal and the evening but a few quick thoughts along the lines of the categories used to rank the establishment…

Appetizers – Excellent calamari. Clam Chowder soup was also quite good.
Steak – When I’m at a nice restaurant, I always allow myself to get suckered in to the surf and turf… two petite filets with lobster. ($50, yikes!) Not amazing but still good. Meat was ordered medium rare and they delivered. No more or less taste then your standard filet.
Mojitos – n/a… I went the way of a vodka martini.
Sides – Very good mashed potatoes & cream spinach.
Dessert – Meh. Probably my fault. I passed up Crème Brule for fruit.
Atmosphere – A little noisy. A larger table for our party of five would have been nice.
Service – While we had a very pleasant and polite waiter, service was a little slow. It took us quite a while to even get in an order of appetizers.
Bathrooms – Very clean but an odd rumbling (broken fan? steak thieves tunneling in?) from behind one of the walls made for an annoyingly noisy experience.

I believe the final rating came in at a 71.9… a shade below Charlie Palmer’s. There are talks of an S&M website/blog. I’ll be sure to share the address if that comes to fruition.

2008 30 Hour Famine Recap

2008-04-18T08:30:00.004-05:00

I did a very poor job of promoting the 30 Hour Famine on my blog this year but wanted to at least share the results.

For those of you unfamiliar with the famine, a quick overview... World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to among other things, fighting hunger around the world. Every year they organize the "30 Hour Famine" where people vow to go without food for 30 hours in order to raise money to combat this issue. For the past five years, I have participated along with the junior & senior high school kids from our youth fellowship group at church.

The numbers around this issue always shock me...

Every 3 seconds someone dies from starvation.
$1 can feed a child for a day.

My personal goal in past years has been to raise enough money to sponsor a child for an entire year... that's $360. I've found a few very generous and reliable sponsors over the years so rather than taking it easy, I decided to step it up and shoot for $720 this go around.

As the famine weekend approached, so did some nasty winter weather. Since our youth group kids all go to Fairfax county public schools, church sponsored activities follow their schedule. More or less if school is out, church is out. As bad luck would have it, the ice storm hit on Friday and FCP schools were canceled causing us to cancel the actual event.

While I'll admit I was a little excited to suddenly have a free weekend, I did not feel good about raising money and then not doing the famine. So rather than carry this guilt through the weekend I decided to do the famine my own. Let me tell you... not fun when you're doing this by yourself although I have to admit I did take a few more naps than I do when I'm with the kids.

So without further ado, the final total of monies raised...

My Total: $1,100
Group Total: $5,400

Simply awesome. Thanks to everyone who donated! With so many other causes worthy of your time & attention, I truly appreciate the support.

The Return of Foos

2008-03-27T13:29:00.003-05:00

At my last job, I had the pleasure of working with some really great people and had some really great times. One of the highlights was the year my staff gave me a miniature foosball game for Boss's Day. At the time I didn't even know that was an actual "holiday" but the fact that they would pool a couple bucks in my honor was quite flattering.

Now at a new job where you'll find soccer balls, scooters and light sabers throughout the office, I felt the foos would fit right in. Didn't take long for my new co-workers to find it. Good times...

Great Commercial - Spy Hunter

2008-03-26T08:17:00.001-05:00

Never thought I would be a huge fan of a Pontiac commercial but Spy Hunter was one of my favorite arcade games growing up. Naturally I think this one is pretty awesome...

NCAA Tourney - Surviving the Weekend

2008-03-24T08:57:00.003-05:00

Last Thursday night I was listening to a sports radio talk show on my way back from the gym where the hosts were (of course) discussing their brackets, what had transpired during the day's games and what they expected to happen on Friday. During their (somewhat uninspired) conversation, one of the hosts made this comment on the tourney and making picks in an office pool...

You can't win your pool during the first two days of the tournament but you can certainly lose it.

It's a bit of a cliché but entirely apropos. In fact, I think you could apply that line of reasoning to the first weekend of the tourney rather than just the first two days.

Coming out of this weekend, I sit in 7th place (out of 68) with a legitimate chance to win my own pool. I need the following to happen...

Stanford to upset Texas
Wisconsin to win the Midwest region
UNC & UCLA to make the final
UNC to win it all

That may not sound like the easiest road to victory, and anything could happen but I am certainly in better shape than probably 75% of the other participants.

Filling Out Your Brackets

2008-03-21T08:16:00.002-05:00

We now sit one day into the 2008 March Madness tourney. Most people will tell you that when filling out your brackets, you have to pick some upsets. Not picking upsets is a) boring and b) bound to cost you some winners at some point. In fact, the last time I went ultra-conservative with a first round featuring ZERO upsets (again, very boring), I got burned.

I don't expect people to put George Mason in the Final Four again but when looking at any game between the 8-9 matchup and the 5-12 matchup, you've got to pick a few.

So what happens on day one of the tourney? Two upsets.

Boring... and now I'm in 39th place.

A Commitment to Blogging

2008-03-10T22:11:00.003-05:00

A week or two ago a friend of mine bookmarked a page on the web that listed 13 blog clichés. Although I didn't agree with every item on the list, there was one that stuck out to me...

If you haven't posted anything new to your blog in a while, don't waste our time with apologies. Just write! The best apology is new and improved content. Maybe with a wee bit more consistency this time, though.

I couldn't agree more. So taking this into consideration, I'm not going to apologize for posting a mere two times since September 2007. However I am going to set a goal of posting at least twice a month from now on.

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Now playing: Dave Matthews Band - Grace is Gone

New for 2008... A new hosting provider

2008-01-08T22:08:00.000-05:00

I'm not a fan of making New Years resolutions. I'm not against resolutions per se, but I do not enjoy being forced into making them. However the new year does typically afford me time away from work and an opportunity to catch up on all of those errands, to dos and life maintenance tasks that I never get to when work is in full swing.

That being said, I finally took the plunge and ordered my own virtual private server at Westhost. My web hosting needs have simply become too complex for the shared Windows account that I've used for the past 8 years... I need the flexibility and control of my own virtual server. Combine that with the $10/month special they have going on right now and I could not wait any longer.

It's possible the URL of this blog may change a bit but I'll shoot to leave the RSS feed in place. If all goes well, you will be none the wiser of any changes.

Happy New Year!