Acceptance

Yesterday was quite a big day at work. Having been at the firm for not quite a year, the role to which I was initially hired has been drastically morphed and adapted. I would say it has been in a good way. Not only am I still doing all the data analysis for the trading models, but I'm also doing many other things that really excite me. Over the year I've done statistical analysis on trading ideas, performed the actual trading of a model and provided other services to the different areas of the firm. It has been a whirlwind 12 months to say the very least. I've been greatly challenged, learned a lot and also accomplished a lot. But yesterday was a small milestone for me personally.

I've spent the last six weeks working with a new data set. One of my typical
duties is to evaluate any new data that is either requested or proposed to us by outside vendors. I've been working with a particular company that has been chasing us for months to evaluate their data. I was simply told, take a look at the data and see if there is anything useful in it. After spending some time with the data at a base level, I decided that the data does have some interesting notions and thought I would explore what possibilities it might contain.
So I began testing different data points within the set to see if we could produce trades that could generate a decent return for the firm. This process started weeks ago and culminated with the submission of a proposal yesterday afternoon. After discussing my findings with others, it was determined that today I would begin paper trading the model idea while we established the specifics of putting it into production. That means my trading idea was accepted. We are headed towards live trading with my idea. What a rush.

The End of The World as We Know it!

And I Don't Feel so Good About it!!

OK, so I went to the target in Colleyville tonight. For those of you that don't know, Colleyville is a very affluent suburb that is next door to Bedford. I look up and there is a kid, probably 12 or so who looks odd to me. It took me a second to figure out what was wrong. Homeboy had a bad bleach blonde hairdo, but that wasn't what set him apart. He was wearing a freaking Member's Only jacket. I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. No way I thought. But yup. There it was.

Then I went huh. He was wearing some really bad acid washed jeans that were rolled up just the right way. Yikes! You know the way. We folded them when we rolled them so that they would make the jeans snug around the ankle and not come undone. What a fashion nightmare that part of my childhood was!

But then he topped off the entire ensemble in a way I couldn't have imagined. You remember the first generation Air Jordans that were red, black and white? You know the ones that everyone wanted. Well he didn't have those on. He had the really bad walmart knock-off version that none of us would ever wear because they were so hideous. Yep. They were on his feet. I couldn't believe it. I should have asked his mother if I could take his picture. I just couldn't do it with a straight face. But this just proves that fashion is idiotic and the end of the world is nigh.

Disappointments

So many thoughts have run through my head in the last two days. So many experiences. It all culminated in a real kick in the stomach this morning. I can't verbalize all that is running around in there. I wish I knew how to put all of this down and record it. Maybe I can over the next couple of days.

I'm going to look at a couple of houses tomorrow. Hopefully I will like one of them and can do something about it. I really want to get out of this apartment. The neighbors are killing me. One of the places I'm looking at tomorrow is a block from St Timothy. That would be fantastic if it's a good fit for me.

I should go to bed. I hope I can sleep tonight.

The Shoe

Horseshoe Park is a pretty small, inconsequential park located in the fair burg of Grapevine. It sits on the south side of the lake and has neighborhoods around it. From the street, it is fairly unimpressive. A lot of folks don't even know where it is, much less use it. But to me, it is a little gem.

You see, it has a rat maze of trails that run through it. This rat maze has been carved over time and can be very confusing to the uninformed. You need a guide the first time you go and try to navigate the system and make any sense of it, and this is the reason so many don't appreciate it or use it. Over time, you learn a way to create some excellent flow through the twists, turns, options and obstacles. There are some of us who have used it so much, that we have developed loops and laps out of the confluence of trails. I have ridden there more times than I care to count. Because of this knowledge and lack of use, I go to the shoe to escape the world. The shoe is about a fifteen minute drive from the house and always loves me back when I use and abuse her.

Tonight was one of those nights. This week at work has been a monster. I have logged long days filled with stress and deadlines. I was down and exhausted when I left the office today, but knew I had to ride a bike somewhere. I went back and forth on the drive home from downtown what I was going to do. I felt the need to be alone and didn't feel like riding the road in the dark. So I loaded up the Racer-X and headed to my old friend the shoe. She was as happy to see me as I was to see her.

I rode through the trees, made the turns, cleared the obstacles and even took the time to stop and look at the lake at one point. I was saddened to see how low the water level is in Lake Grapevine, but know that the bad weather is on the way, which will hopefully help. I stopped and talked to folks I met on the trail and just got away from everything. I forgot I was in the middle of the city, that I had work to do tonight or that there was any myriad of problems. I was just a boy riding his bike in the dirt and having a ball. I jumped, I climbed, I rode over rocks. Ahhhh, that's why I ride mountain bikes. I get to be a dirty boy and never feel bad about it!

Doctors

In my 33, almost 34 years of life I have been to many doctors. My number of doctors seen is probably even larger than most because of my heart problems. Having had a pacemaker for the last 13 years has meant that I have had to regularly see cardiologists. As a parent, I have been to several doctors visits over the last seven years which generally are no big deal. With all of these vists, they become second nature and are not really ever that big of a deal. That all changed today.

Jacqueline had to go see a cardiologist today. This was a follow-up visit to her fainting spell last month. Today, the doctor was looking at a most precious little girl who I happen to think hung the moon. You see, when the heart patient's off-spring faints, its cause for action. They are trying to make sure that she didn't inherit the electrical issue that has plagued dear old dad all these years. Today, I had no control over what was going on, it was something I feel responsible for since it is my genetics and I watched my daughter actually tremble in fear. Not a great combination. My insides were in absolute knots even though I knew every step the doctor was going to take because they have been taken on me throughout the years.

When the doctors were trying to determine what exactly was wrong with me many years ago, I was oblivious as to just how serious the issues were and my parents never let me see what was going inside. I had to assume that same role today. I had to be the one that she looked at and not tell that I was nervous wreck. I had to reassure her that things were going to be fine. She knows that Daddy has a pacemaker, but really doesn't grasp all that that entails. She was afraid that she was going to go home with one. That broke my heart.

Fortunately, the doctors did not find anything immediately obviously wrong. The bad news is that this is the same path that was travelled by myself so many years ago. It took the doctors 12 years before they were able to diagnose the problem. Fortunately, this time around, the doctors have some ideas of potential problems because of my history. Hopefully that helps. I just know that I want her to live the healthly life she desrves. God help me face this as well as my parents did twenty some odd years ago.