Blog.new(name=“Musings of a Bad Bettor”)

TL;DR: I like to think I know some things about tech, sports, and more so wanted to write about that. Therefore a blog seemed like a good idea. Therefore this. QED.

Those who know me in person know that I’m bad at brevity, which makes me feel right at home here on Medium (I’ll try to include a TL;DR on all posts). Still, despite my excitement for this new venture of quietly talking into the void, blogging can be scary. Perhaps writing this short blurb on why I’m doing this is the best way to gain momentum and convince myself that this is a good venture.

newBlog.why()

As you could probably guess, I’m enamored with the sound of my own voice, and as such you may expect that this isn’t the first time I’ve tried to talk into the void. You’d be right.

I formerly used to host a radio show where I quite literally was talking into the void, spitting waves into the atmosphere for all cars in a 40 mile radius to tune away from. Given that, I suppose you’d say it’s natural for me to jump into something like blogging.

While that’s fair, the jump between these outlets isn’t as natural as you’d think. You see, the best part of the radio show was that it very literally was talking into the void. It’s a medium that is not only fading in prominence, but by its very nature ephemeral. No one really cared what a random DJ on the radio said (besides the FCC if I swore), and there’s not exactly an easy way to go back and listen to what I said on the radio days later, let alone years later. With a blog OTOH, what I write is set in Internet stone and can be referred to years later, which is a scarier thought. Given that I intend to write a lot of analysis/prediction pieces, this will lead to some inevitable misses, hence my username.

newBlog.name.why()

The analysis posts I write will either age incredibly poorly or incredibly well. I fully expect to have a lot of bad predictions and thoughts on here in a few years’ time, and want to be upfront about that.

However, as I only half-jokingly say in my bio, in both baseball and tech, you don’t have to guess right a majority of the time to be valuable. Regardless of if I hit it out of the park or laughably whiff, I hope I can bring an interesting perspective to the discussion. Plus, with practice through these analyses I hope to become a better bettor.

Still, it wouldn’t be the worst thing if my username’s insinuation not to trust my predictions turns out to be a bad bet 😜.

git blame newBlog.blg

I suppose if you’re reading anything I write (especially this introductory post) you’d probably like a better sense of who I am. I have a variety of interests and experiences, broadly including technology, sports, politics, and TV shows. I’ll expect that I’ll mostly talk about the first two in this blog.

I’m probably most qualified to discuss technology, and have done work with robotics, data science, and artificial intelligence. I also generally have product management experience, so anticipate a lot of my analysis/predictions to combine my technological knowledge and my current (albeit constantly evolving) understanding of customer behavior. In the sports world, I am a total homer for my home teams, but also love to opine on debates about skill and stats, particularly in baseball.

Finally, for your LinkedIn stalking pleasure, my real name is <!!REDACTED!!>. About the most nondescript thing I can say here about my ‘credentials’ is that I am a young professional who attended MIT for CS and Math some years ago. I don’t think university name/credentials are the best way to describe me, but it’s the best non-identifying thing I can say that may convince someone to read one of my posts. That being said, I strongly believe that no credential ensures good analysis/predictions so do take everything I write with an open mind, both crediting me for good points and maintaining a grain of salt. More about me can be found on my aforementioned LinkedIn.