I don’t blog about it often, but I enjoy myself some good football.

Growing up, my Mom always watched the Dallas Cowboys and I never really got into it. Yelling at a television was just weird, and I didn’t really understand the rules well enough to care who won or lost.

But then I attended Texas A&M University and my whole perspective on the sport changed. Texas A&M is not a place where you can easily ignore the football team. It is Texas, afterall, where football is almost a religion.

For anyone who’s a fan of college football like myself, this first week of the year marks the week of bowl games leading up to the BCS National Championship game.

I brought in the bowl season watching the Aggies lose to Penn State (how do you beat someone who was around when football was invented?).

I then watched Oklahoma embarass themselves against an under-rated West Virginia team.

What’s up next? Kansas versus Virginia Tech.

Notice a pattern? All three games include a Big 12 team, the conference in which A&M is a part.

A couple of years ago, the University of Texas played for the National Championship against #1 ranked USC. I invited a couple of friends over (literally) and my Aggie friend was rooting for USC the entire way.

Afterall, her time at Texas A&M had taught her that UT was bad. They are the arch-rival of the Texas Aggies, and we should always want them to lose – always.

But I disagree with her, and this arrives at my point — Concentric Loyalty.

I have a levels of loyalty which let me easily determine who my favorite team is for any given game. It’s moderately complex, but perfectly navigable. With over 120+ teams to sift through, it’s absolutely imperative that one have such a system.

The way I see it, any team close to Texas A&M should always win unless they’re playing Texas A&M. Why you ask?

Let’s take the scenario where Texas A&M loses to Team A. I then root for Team A in any match-ups. If Team A wins, then that means they’re a good team and it’s not so bad that Texas A&M lost to them.

In the reverse, let’s say Texas A&M wins against Team A. I still root for Team A to win, because if Team A wins, then A&M must have beaten a pretty good team. See how that works?

Basically, I follow this simple concentric set of rules:

• Texas A&M
• Texas teams
• Big 12 South
• Big 12
• Any team that has played anyone in the Big 12 that A&M has played

It gets complicated there at the end. It’s not always obvious which team is the one to root for in a given match-up, and it requires some real Kevin Bacon style work to figure it out sometimes. It’s not always direct. Perhaps Team A beat Team B who beat Team C who played A&M.

Likewise, there are inevitable match-ups that conflict with my concentric rings of loyalty. What do I do when Texas Tech plays UT? They’re both Texas teams and they’re both in the Big 12 South!

In such cases, the tie-breaker usually depends on the season. More often than not, I’ll root for the underdog in the match-up when I need to decide between two teams that live in the same ring of loyalty.

And then there are strange exceptions. One of those exceptions is Virginia Tech. Because I now live in Virginia, and Virginia Tech shares so much in common with Texas A&M, I tend to root for them in any match-up that doesn’t directly affect the Aggies.

That makes the next match-up between Kansas and VA Tech quite interesting.

So there you have it. A strange look into the concentric loyalty that is my college football fandom. Just one more thing for you to read that you don’t care about brought to you by Lykaon.com.

Blogs are interesting things. You get one person reading, and then their friend starts reading and then theirs.

Until eventually you have people reading your blog that are distantly related to you through some friend of a friend.

And over time, you build up this tiny little blog community of people you don’t necessarily know in real life, yet you read about them every single day as they post up their thoughts, interests and desires. You learn their quirks, their sense of humor and their level of intelligence.

All without ever seeing their face or hearing their voice.

But sometimes this virtual world collides with the real world and you meet someone in real life that you’ve only known through your blogosphere (yes, I’m ashamed that I just typed that word).

This happened to me last week when I went to Dave’s house to play some games.

I arrived and lo and behold, Davey showed up a few minutes later.

Yes, the Davey of Peter, Puck and Mxy.

The Davey who posts impossible music quizzes that just make me scratch my head.

The Davey who comments on my blog when no one else will.

That Davey.

It’s good to meet those virtual people and put a face to a name. It’s also good to find out that said people aren’t freaks, and that they’re pretty cool.

So, I was pointed to this site and got this result:

I suck. How ’bout you?

Lykaon’s Lair is now officially moved to its new home at Media Temple.

Previously, my sites were all hosted at Dreamhost.

Dreamhost wasn’t completely bad. They were extremely easy to use and were pretty good about holding my hand through whatever I wanted to do.

Unfortunately, the reliability of their servers left something to be desired. They were down a lot, and slow almost all of the time.

That was fine and dandy for my own little personal blog that no one reads, but when we launched Strahotski.com it was clear that we’d need something with a little more beef.

I tried a 1&1 Virtual Private Server first. It was clear that such a solution required far too much oversight.

It wasn’t just managing a website anymore — it was managing a linux server. I’m sure I would have been capable given the time, but it just isn’t worth the effort.

Plus 1&1 Customer Support is really bad. I would have a hard time recommending 1&1 for this reason alone.

I asked for my server to be re-imaged. I was told it was going to take one hour. Two days later, no re-image.

I sent an email to customer support and no word for 3 days. So, I just cancelled entirely. I don’t have time to wait for them everytime I have a problem.

On the upside, 1&1 did pro-rate the amount of time I had used and refunded me most of my monthly fee for the VPS. That’s worth something.

Then a friend recommended Media Temple on hype alone. He hadn’t used it, but the grid technology sounded intriguing and their marketing was much more appealing than their competitors.

So I signed up and immediately fell in love. The interfaces are so nice, and they let you have slightly more control over things than Dreamhost did. It feels like a natural progression from the cheapo hosting that is Dreamhost.

I’ve had two customer service issues so far (both my own fault), and they’ve been extremely quick to respond and never got confused about the requests.

The end result seems to be a much faster load time on both Strahotski.com and Lykaon’s Lair. That alone would be worth the move, but I also get good customer service and a more usable interface to control things with.

Only time will tell on overall reliability but so far it seems better. I reserve the right to change my mind, but as of right now I’d definitely recommend Media Temple for your hosting needs. It’s one step up from Shared hosting without the hassle of a VPS.

Most people would probably call me lazy. I try to maximize the use of my time so that I’m left with an inordinate amount of ‘free’ time at the end. I call it efficient. Meh, whatever.

Anyway, lately I have certainly not had a lot of free time. Aside from work being extremely busy I’ve undertaken the task of becoming the #1 fansite for Yvonne Strahovski.

That’s coming along pretty well, but there’s a lot more to it than one may think. Taking screen captures alone can take hours.

Then there’s the concern over whether our current hosting solution is fast enough. It doesn’t feel fast enough to me. Despite that, we’re growing at over 100 visits per day and have been since Saturday.

But I’m really proud of it so far and I hope that I can keep up the stamina necessary to maintain it for the long term.

Then there’s this blog which I have an obligation to maintain. I learned early on that if I don’t blog often, I might as well not blog at all. People easily forget.

Then there’s pesky real life. My 10-year high school reunion is this weekend. I’m a little nervous about that since I wasn’t exactly Mr. Popular back in high school. Trepidation aside, it should be a fun time.

Oh and we can’t forget the fact that good friend of mine is getting married in two weeks and I’m reading during the ceremony. Not really a lot of prep goes into that, but I worry about everything. (For the record, that’s not to say that I’m not happy to do it).

And the yard. Oh the yard needed mowing for a good three weeks before I finally got around to it yesterday. I really have no excuse other than too many other things to occupy my time. I should have done it sooner. It’s a miracle the HOA hasn’t nagged us about it yet.

And as always, there’s Warcraft. I’ve certainly not been the obsessed raider that I was in the past, but I do still want to maintain my identity on Horde-side Eredar. Unfortunately, it’s taken more of a backseat than anything during this busy time.

Veteran’s Day weekend will bring me a four day weekend with nothing planned. That’s the light at the end of the tunnel at this point.

Okay, I know this post wasn’t exactly exciting but my Mom wants me to write more stuff about me on my Blog because that’s why she reads it. Now she can be happy in knowing that I’m really busy and (aside from the fact that I’m lazy) that’s why I don’t call her more often.

:)