Disclosure:  I worked at SolarCity from July 2010 until December 2014 and still hold and am long $SCTY (or $TSLA in the future)

Let me start by saying as a $SCTY shareholder I'm not thrilled about the price I'm getting ($25 or so) but ultimately I think it will be better for the world in the long run and I hope the Tesla-SolarCity merger goes through.  I also don't think I could give as good of a bullish case on the merger as Jigar Shah just did.

It is the belief of most of the major decision makers involved that these ideas could be mutually beneficial when packaged together.  That combined with (IMO) the deep discount SCTY can be bought for right now, the decision was better to make sooner rather than later.  Elon has said that it's easier to create a single product and that's true, but David Crane's analysis that SC needs a reboot and couldn't survive this reboot in the public market is probably also true.  

So let's look at an optimist's view on the combined final product:

I think I've read that SolarCity will take on the Tesla name, I only assume as the Tesla Energy (TE) brand.  There should immediately be sales installations at Tesla stores in the states SC currently operates in, hopefully accompanied by an initial boost in leases/loans/sales in those areas as this is business as usual for SC/TE once the sale is made.  

TE needs to stop with the pushy door to door tactics that made the leases popular and instead rely on referrals and word of mouth sales.  Think of how many ads you saw Tesla run for their Model 3 launch that saw 400,000+ pre-orders (mine included)... oh wait, you didn't.  We've already seen evidence that solar is contagious and SC's referral business has been a success.  An emphasis on distributing the work needed to acquiring new customers to others (thoughts on that shared here) should drastically reduce the cost of marketing and sales overhead, a painful but necessary step to rein in costs.

SC as a company created a TON of jobs but some jobs inevitably become unnecessary when the organization becomes more efficient.  SC's operations department has become a machine when they're stocked full of scheduled jobs but during seasonal down times they become another unnecessary cost.  Their operations department is a huge success story in the field of construction management, the efficient gains they've made are remarkable but are getting harder to come by.  

What I'd like to see TE do is the same thing they did with their sales & marketing streamlining and distribute the work of their operations department.  You decentralize your installation work.  You'd be bolstering the independent contractor installer network by distributing not only your workers but also your knowledge by creating an industry-wide standard of installation excellence.  This will be hard for Elon and SC management to agree to as they like to have their finger on the quality from top to bottom and it may seem like you're losing that high standard of installation quality.  However it is simply being transferred via your industry-leading training and certification program to locally-owned and operated installation companies.  

Publicly it would look like TE is getting rid of A LOT of SC construction jobs and officially they are but overall those jobs are still being filled by the independent installers that are installing up to your standard (and even inspection) but are locally-owned and operated.  So you're actually creating a lot of small business owners, something that is always well-received.

Behind the scenes, I'd expect the Tesla and SC HR departments to see which roles are now duplicated, which are necessary independently, and which are mutually beneficial.  Then you decrease the positions that are duplicated and increase the mutually beneficial ones.  I think these are the main synergies Elon and Co. talked about initially.  I expect their battery and solar panel gigafactories to learn from each other and both benefit as well.

By distributing a lot of SC's work (both in creating the sale and installing the solar panels) they can streamline their costs and become more profitable.  Elon's always been a huge proponent of economies of scale and I think you can still have this with a distributed sales and installation force by controlling the standards instead of the workforce.  You'd lose a couple process efficiency points in the process but you gain that and more by not having to control everything.

I believe such changes can be beneficial to a combined company and I'm hopeful for the Tesla and SolarCity merger to finally go through, as it seems like it has been a long time coming.

Like I've mentioned previously, ultimately I'm in KC because this was the recommendation of the algorithm Teach For America uses to determine placements.  That much is out of my hands.  But how KC was rated in my top 5 placement preferences was a conscious decision.  This is that story, 4chan style for simplicity.

>Be me

>March 2015

>Looking for jobs while finishing up my Master's

>Denver hasn't provided any good hits

>My other top 2 choices Austin and Raleigh haven't provided any good hits

>Need to decide where else I'd look for jobs

>Read U.S. News Best Places to Live 2015 article on web

>See how they ranked them based off stats

>Decide to make my own personalized rankings

>Copy down the stats for 25 cities I wouldn't be opposed to

>Stats like median income, high tech job %, and job growth go into the Job category

>Because I want to find somewhere with good jobs

>Stats like cost of living and median home price go into the Cost category

>Because I want to find somewhere that isn't too expensive

>Stats like % that graduated high school, college, and graduate programs go into the Education category

>Because I don't want to be surrounded by too many idiots

>Rank each category from most desirable to least and award more points to higher rankings

>Remove any cities that have too many unreasonably hot or cold days

>Remove any cities that are not on this list of best places to find love

>Rank cities now based on a (40% Job) + (40% Cost) + (20% Education) weighted point average

>Kansas City comes in 3rd behind Raleigh and Austin and above other cities I was intrigued by like Dallas, Charlotte, Nashville, etc.

>Go "huh, KC?" and just throw it in my top 5 placement preferences

>End up in KC

Most people think of KC as a "flyover city" that you would literally fly over and not even think about.  And in some ways, it is:  it's the closest city to the geographical center of the continental U.S. (aka it's in the middle of the map) and there's nothing distinguishable about its landscape.  But I've grown to love KC and I'm happy to live here as it has an up and coming vibe, has a great sense of community, and because the people are amazing.

The city data without my personalizations can be found here if you're interested

I can't let go of an old favorite past time of mine:  the NFL mock draft.  The picks I feel most confident in are Darron Lee to ATL, Ryan Kelly to IND and Mackensie Alexander to PIT.  I could also see Washington trading up for Zeke Elliot with New Orleans to get ahead of Miami.

//Update:  3/26/16

I've been thinking recently that the solar companies have to know that they can't compete against the utilities in all of these fights concurrently (http://www.wsj.com/articles/solar-panel-installers-face-clouded-future-1458926502).  They can't be reactive against goliaths, they need to be proactive in the fight as any David should be.  The solar companies and their supporters need to get the American people to vote on a comprehensive, objective study of the impacts of distributed solar on the grid.  This will bring attention to the nation-wide issue (not just on the state level) and hold both sides accountable in the eyes of Americans.  If it is found that distributed solar will hurt other users of the grid, the solar side should pay more.  If it comes out that it won't hurt the other electricity users and only the utility will lose profit, these state level fights should cease.  There is risk for the solar companies to initiate this fight but I think the national exposure (and publicity) and potential rewards (these state-level, utility-backed current fights) warrant the big swing at the plate.

___________________________

2/18/16

(Disclosure: I worked at SolarCity from 2010-14. I am still a shareholder. I am long SCTY)

Here are some thoughts I have on the future of the solar industry:

1.  Like Elon Musk has said before, solar will become the energy plurality in our lifetime, likely in the next 20-30 years.  We will still get plenty of energy from fossil fuels and nuclear but solar, both distributed and utility-scale, just makes too much sense to not win out over a long period of time.  Whether it's shorter than 20 years or longer than 30 is dependent on policy decisions but it's inevitable in the long run.  I for one would love to see it happen sooner since we could be saving 10+ years worth of not burning fossil fuels for those GWh.

2.  Think about the above point in terms of future value created for the industry.  Huge.  I think we'll see the solar industry to consolidate even more in the near future as economies of scale begin to act exponentially.  The big players will get bigger, there will be new market entrances from big companies in similar industries and more mom-and-pop operations will close shop.

3.  The cost of customer acquisition will be what separates the industry leaders from the rest of the pack.  Installation costs have come down and will level off but acquisition costs could get exponentially lower.  The biggest drop in costs will be because of the industry becoming more popular and accepted and will benefit the industry as a whole.  And the biggest brands will benefit the most from the name recognition.  Another way to drastically reduce costs is to democratize the sales process and let the customers do most of the work instead of internal sales teams.  Google's Project Sunroof is part of this process, as is SolarCity's Ambassador program.  I've already mentioned my thoughts on that : )

4.  Since almost all companies in a free market hate to lose money and investor-owned utilities (IOUs) stand to lose A LOT of future revenue from distributed solar, I'd expect their attacks on distributed solar to only increase in the future.  At the same time, they will trumpet every new solar plant they build.  The road will only get tougher in the near future for solar (think Big Tobacco type doubt created about the effect of distributed solar on the almighty yet purposely obfuscated "grid", as referenced here) but they're not at the big boss yet in the game.

5.  I think one positive that the pro-solar camp can take away from their fight with IOUs is that they're getting a lot of positive, cheap advertising. Solar is getting some love thrown around about it by the media and everybody from liberal tree-huggers to conservatives and libertarians.  Yeah there's doubt surrounding the solar industry right now (the constant fights with IOU-backed state regulators) but these fights will only last so long.  Pretty soon, it's going to be clear that distributed solar is actually helping the grid and these fights will almost disappear.  When the general public gets behind the logic and accepts distributed solar as not just an option but the no-brainer option then the universal love will be self-reinforcing.

6.  I hope SolarCity holds out and doesn't get gobbled up/run out. The Rives seem to be in it for the long haul, as does Chairman Musk. The company has and will make mistakes and has been given a lot of cushion since they're literally creating new processes as they go. Given their work thus far in building it and the long-term view of the market, the Rives should get the chance to turn it around in the near future. However, I can see investors getting impatient in the next year or two and voicing their opinion.  So a change at the top to a more proven, established CEO is possible.  I think there's enough smart people at SolarCity (and a big enough first-mover advantage) that they will figure it out, become more efficient, and prosper. 

7.  Even the most modest forecasts for the solar industry have it making up at least 10% of the electricity market that makes hundreds of billions of dollars each year in revenue. I don't expect them to hold a 34% market share forever, but even a part of that share is worth much, much more than the ~$2 billion SCTY market cap right now.  If the stock price is supposed to value a company on present and future value, I believe SCTY is very undervalued at it's current price.  That's mostly why I'm long SCTY, that and beginning to consider future company efficiency and industry-wide, mature-market gains.

One of the people I most admire in the world is Elon Musk and a really cool thing about him is the insane focus he's had for most of his whole adult life:

"In the case of Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity, and PayPal... it really stemmed from when I was in college and trying to think: what would affect the future most likely in a positive way?" Musk said. "So the three areas I was quite sure would be positive were sustainable energy, the internet, and making life multi-planetary."

Originally found this via the song above but reading the speech is actually better.  By Mary Schmich of the Chicago Tribune:

Ladies and gentlemen of the class of '98: Wear sunscreen. 

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it. The long-term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience. I will dispense this advice now. 

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 years, you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked. You are not as fat as you imagine. 

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind, the kind that blind side you at 4 PM on some idle Tuesday. 

Do one thing every day that scares you. 

Sing. 

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts. Don't put up with people who are reckless with yours. 

Floss. 

Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself. 

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how. 

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements. 

Stretch. 

Don't feel guilty if you don't know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn't know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don't. 

Get plenty of calcium. 

Be kind to your knees. You'll miss them when they're gone. 

Maybe you'll marry, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have children, maybe you won't. Maybe you'll divorce at 40, maybe you'll dance the funky chicken on your 75th wedding anniversary. Whatever you do, don't congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either. Your choices are half chance. So are everybody else's. 

Enjoy your body. Use it every way you can. Don't be afraid of it or of what other people think of it. It's the greatest instrument you'll ever own. 

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. 

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them. 

Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly. 

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. 

Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. 

Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle, because the older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young. 

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard. 

Live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. 

Travel. 

Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders. 

Respect your elders. 

Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either one might run out. 

Don't mess too much with your hair or by the time you're 40 it will look 85. 

Be careful whose advice you buy, but be patient with those who supply it. Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth. 

But trust me on the sunscreen.

From this excellent blog post from the always great Priceonomics blog, it actually followed up this equally great post ranking each city by proportion of race.  

To me, even though it's a late entrant, this is probably my favorite data visualization of 2014, for two reasons:  it succeeds in its primary purpose of showing which cities are more diverse (those with relatively equal bar lengths by race) and you can also clearly see just how much MORE diverse some cities are than others.  So not only could you guess with the numerical value of each percentage but you also get a feeling for the intensity of the diversity as well. 

Born and raised a Miami Hurricane football fan, I'll be the first to admit my opinion is biased when it comes to them.  I'll always see the promise in whatever team we field and will never enter a season without a sense of hope.  But for the past couple years, that optimism has been tempered pretty early in the season each year; no matter how good I think they'll be, they seem to disappoint more often than not when it comes to big games.  

For other teams it is easy to say that the other team was just simply better than you but for us that's not the case.  Usually our individual talent level on matchups exceeds the opponent's but we still seem to be worse off collectively (and are usually proven this on the field).  This points to a simple conclusion:  either we are being out-coached or we are being out-schemed, or possibly both.  Maybe it's not that simple.

The best coaches fit their scheme to their talent; you work with the tools you are given, or another way to look at it is you only worry about what you can control.  But it seems that even though Al Golden has done some really remarkable things in his time at Miami (among them, guiding us through the NCAA mess, re-establishing community relationships, instilling a sense of accountability, etc.) he could improve when it comes to fitting his scheme to his talent.  Golden and our defensive coordinator, Mark D'Onofrio, have coached together since Virginia and Temple and even played together at Penn State, so the defense Miami runs is as much Golden's as it is coach D's.  But I believe in order for Golden to ultimately survive successfully at Miami he needs to adapt from what he has always run and switch to a scheme that maximizes the strengths of what is readily available to him (in terms of local talent) and simplifies things to allow playmakers to make plays.  And I wholeheartedly believe that this defense is a version of the 4-2-5 defense that Gary Patterson has made famous over at TCU.

"So what exactly is the 4-2-5 Defense?"

Put simply, there are 4 down linemen, only 2 linebackers, 2 cornerbacks and 3 safetys.  This differs from the typical 4-3 defense in that it replaces a lineback with a smaller, faster safety (Miami has run a 4-3/3-4 hybrid since Golden has arrived).  You would think that with this replacement that you would be easier to run on but actually this is one of the strengths of the defense; the interior is meant to force runners horizontally so that these faster replacements can run them down.  Also, they're normally able to line up with 8 men in the box to deter the offense from running and able to adapt to multiple WR substitutions without having to switch up your base defense too much. 

Coach Patterson has been fairly open throughout the years in the philosophy of his defense, but the two things he has stressed throughout is that his defense is built to maximize their speed and to be able to defend multiple different fronts from a simple base.  Instead of trying to wait for you to get this connection in how this is similar to Miami's past history, I'll let Ian Boyd from SBNation summarize it in his 4-2-5 primer:

The TCU 4-2-5 defense is descended from Jimmy Johnson's 4-3 over defense. It carries many of the same principles, including the positioning of the ends. Out wide, the ends are safe to attack upfield and are not confronted with the possibility of being pinned between a tight end-offensive tackle double team. If the ball gets wide of them, it's going to take the runner going horizontal for such a long time that the secondary will have time to arrive.

The area between the offensive tackles belongs to the defensive tackles, who also tend to align fairly wide. Unless there's a stunt called, after the snap the interior gaps will be the responsibility of the DTs and linebackers. They're looking to either make a tackle or spill the ball outside.

In this instance, the penetration is too quick. The runner can't bounce outside, so the run-support defensive backs converge in on the ball with leverage, in case the first wave misses the tackles.

Since these six players in the defensive front are always responsible for the six interior gaps, they can play it straightforward, as they do in the clip above. Or they can move around and switch up which of the six is responsible for each gap.

All this allows the Frogs to be instinctive and aggressive in how they respond to different formations, personnel groupings, or schemes from the offense. No matter what, the same defensive players will be performing more or less the same roles, attacking the offense from the same angles, dealing with similar offensive strategies.

So they're allowing their fast defenders to attack horizontally where they can use their speed to make up ground and allowing them to also play instinctively (and thus aggressively) by making it as simple as possible.  That sounds like something Miami could possibly benefit from.

"Yeah but does it actually work?"

It's fairly well known that Gary Patterson's defenses have been among the top in all of college football, so I know I'm not breaking any earth-shattering stats.  But compared to Miami's defensive stats, TCU puts us to shame.  Below is the summary for each of the last 7 seasons (including this one without yesterday's games) comparing Miami's defensive stats to TCU's.  I've conditionally formatted each year to visually identify the better team in green. (These are per game averages, all stats are from Sports-Reference.com's college football stats here)

As you can see, TCU was better than Miami in most of the defensive comparisons (SRS is an overall ranking, with a higher score being better).  In Miami's best year compared to TCU (2011), we were better than them in 7 of 19 categories, still less than half.  Below is the picture for the average of each category for each school:

Yeah, so any doubt is now likely removed.  Anybody in their right mind would rather take TCU's defense over Miami's over the last 7 seasons.

"Ok, but TCU's players must be very different from Miami's right?"

If you've ever read any other blog post that asks rhetorical questions to itself, you already know this answer.  This is the point that gives me the most hope in a Miami version of TCU's 4-2-5 defense:  our defenders are more alike than not.  In fact, the type of players that TCU covets are exactly the type that is famous for being prevalent in the South Florida area;  they are typically smaller and faster athletes that rely more on instinct than training.  These are the type of athletes that every team covets and Miami has a much greater chance of convincing the best ones to stick around than other teams.  

Basically I'm a saying, and what has been proven on a different level, is that I view roster building as a crapshoot overall, so to increase your chances of fielding a good defense, you should emphasize skills in which you have the best chance of getting quality athletes.  The great Miami defenses of old and those from a decade ago were built to emphasize their speed and instincts, and less on the size and play-reading of today's 4-3/3-4 hybrid.  Or as Ian Boyd says best again:

In true Miami 4-3 defense fashion, the Frogs are looking to put as much speed on the field as possible. They adhere to a "shrink the field" philosophy of finding personnel. They recruit with the main purpose of locating speedy athletes with potential, rather than finished products with years of experience at a particular position.

At defensive tackle, they prize players with the lateral quickness. They want a big guy who can stunt and work his way across an offensive lineman's face in order to control that space from end to end.

The other positions often feature players spun down from other roles. 

Let's look at comparisons of the average size of each position since 2008 from TCU and Miami players that also were recruited from Dade, Broward or Palm Beach counties (height's are in inches and weight in pounds and TCU is in purple, Miami is in orange that looks yellowish here):

So if you dig into these comparisons, you start to see common themes.  Both TCU and Miami's defenders are normally underweight compared to the Draft Mockable positional averages of draft prospects (yes I know that the median draft prospect is likely bigger than the average size, but the average size takes into account prospects that were under- and oversized and honestly it's the easiest overall average I could find).  Both TCU and Miami defenders are particularly undersized on the defensive line and linebackers.  So it doesn't seem smart in either case to try and build your defense around size and strength when the recruits you have in your own backyard are smaller and quicker.

For the best example, just think of Miami's local LB's since 1999:  Nate Webster, Dan Morgan, Jonathan Vilma, Jon Beason, Tavares Gooden, Daryl Sharpton, Sean Spence and now Denzel Perryman.  Most were generally smaller than average but made up for it with speed and instincts.

"Well Miami's defense could never be as good as TCU's"

While we likely couldn't get as good of a teacher as Gary Patterson to bring his defense to Miami, we could likely get a former defensive coordinator of his who has worked closely and learned from him to bring over the scheme.  So even though the quality of teaching won't be as good, we could likely make up the difference by getting better athletes and recruits than TCU from right in our backyard.  

Below is the overall difference in BCS final standings and the recruiting rankings from the last 5 seasons from Regressing:

TCU has outplayed Miami even though Miami has recruited much better overall.  Actually TCU had the 8th best record of outplaying their recruiting rankings on the field, Miami was 105th since they actually underperformed versus their recruiting rankings.  Out of 120 teams.  

"So what exactly are you trying to say?"

Clearly something has to change.  Miami is underperforming on defense compared to how it should be based on its talent level.  This has been blamed on players not executing on their responsibilities for the past 4 years but some of the blame has to fall on the coaching.  And in this case, I'm blaming it on the scheme for not putting the players in the best position possible for them to play up to their abilities.  

What I'm saying is that Al Golden should adapt from a defense he has taught for many years for one that best utilizes the traits that are typical of the players it recruits.  Unfortunately this adaptation will force him to part with his friend and coworker for over a decade in Mark D'Onofrio.  It's not that he isn't capable of changing schemes but we would need to bring expertise in.  In doing so, we can possibly become an even better defense than the great TCU defenses of late.  And return to our roots of playing aggressive and with speed.

Lastly, I'll leave you with another Boyd quote, this one from his shrink the field link above (and here for those too lazy to scroll up), tell me who else who could field this type of defense besides TCU:

1). Shrink the field

Some teams build their teams by simply trying to get the fastest team possible on the field and relying on team speed to attack opponents, rally to the ball, and essentially shrink the field so no offensive player finds a match-up advantage or leverage to operate in for more than a small window of time before the defense converges on him.

Gary Patterson's TCU Horned Frogs are a perfect example of this approach as they rely on 4-2-5 base personnel that has at least five defensive backs, including three safeties, on the field at all times. They'll also play speed at cornerback that can run deep with vertical routes.

Even in their fronts the Horned Frogs target linebackers who can change direction and run in underneath coverage, defensive ends who are aligned wide and are often athletes bulked up and deployed to terrorize the edge, and even defensive tackles who have the lateral quickness to stunt and play blocks outside-in.

In all of their tactics, TCU is looking to handle opponents by playing speed everywhere and racing to where they think the ball will be, and then where ever the ball actually goes.

The 4-3 Over defense popularized by the Jimmy Johnson Miami Hurricanes really launched this tactic into the modern era, the Gary Patterson 4-2-5 TCU defense is largely a modern take on it.

While professional football might never get the Moneyball-type benefit that baseball has, I still think there are undervalued "situationalists" in the NFL that teams could exploit to their advantage.  This simply means someone that could excel in a certain underrated skill that adds value to a team, similar to how on-base percentage has for MLB teams.

One of those situationalists is the kickoff responsibility.  To state the obvious, kickoffs are necessary in football to start either half or after scores; they're usually exciting and filled with hope for the receiving team but also violent and dangerous, both to the player's health and to the team kicking off.  So it'd be great for a team kicking off to limit the number of chances that you give the other team to return one for a touchdown or to get a great starting position as well as limiting the amount of number of chances for someone on your team to get injured trying to cover the kickoff.  Thus why touchbacks are so important to NFL football.

I love the accessibility and usability of PFF stats, so I wanted to get some data behind the value of having someone on your roster that had a strong leg on kickoffs and got more touchbacks.  Below is a scatter plot of NFL kickers that played 8 or more games in the 2013 season, with their PFF kickoff value (the higher the value, the better the kicker was at kickoffs) on the Y axis and the average distance of their kicks in yards on the X axis (PFF doesn't clarify if this includes touchbacks or not).

The linear trendline describes the overall picture, namely that the farther a kickoff is, the better the kicker is at kickoffs.  This shouldn't be a surprise.  The R-squared value of the trendline is the "fit" of the trendline for the points, so a higher R-squared value means the trendline better describes the data.

Below is a graph of the kickers PFF kickoff value on the Y axis versus the average starting yard line of the other team on the X axis.

This trendline shows that, generally, the lower the average starting position of the other team the better the kicker is at kickoffs.  However, this also has to do with how well the kicker's team is at covering kicks.  That's why it makes sense that the average starting yard line trendline's R-squared value is lower than the average distance's trendline, because how far a kicker kicks if more of an indicator of how good that kicker is at kickoffs than the average starting yard line, since the latter isn't fully under the kicker's control like the first.

Now let's see how touchbacks affect how good a kicker is at kickoffs.  Below is a graph of the kicker's PFF kickoff value on the Y axis versus the percentage of their kickoffs that were returned (assuming a kicker with a higher percentage of touchbacks would have a lower percentage of their kicks returned).

This trendline's R-squared value is much higher than the previous two other characteristics we looked at, meaning that the lower the percentage of kickoffs that were returned is a better indicator of a better kicker on kickoffs than the kicker's average kickoff distance or starting position of the other team.

All of the above should be pretty obvious to most followers of the sport, but it's good to have some data behind assumptions.  So now let's look at what was referenced in the title, the case of Chip Kelly and Eagles recently picking rookie Cody Parkey over veteran Alex Henery as their kicker heading into the season.  The first obvious reason is he was cheaper, as a rookie makes much less, meaning the Eagles had more money to spend elsewhere.  But let's move beyond that.

Chip likes to think out of the box when it comes to how he runs his team and so the Eagles trading a backup RB to the Colts for a rookie kicker to battle the entrenched veteran, something most teams wouldn't do, is another example of this type of thinking.  But Chip and the coaching staff obviously thought there was a chance they can improve their roster, so they brought in competition.  

Undoubtedly the most important quality a NFL kicker has to have is making field goals, so for the Eagles to pick Parkey over Henery they likely are at least equal when it comes to that.  But I believe a large part of Chip choosing Parkey has to do with his prowess on kickoffs compared to Henery.  Parkey led the NCAA in the number of touchbacks last year, hitting roughly 70% of his kicks for touchbacks.  Henery only kicked about 40% of his kicks for touchbacks last year.  Granted the footballs they were using were different in shape, both college and NFL kickers kick off from the same yard line so Parkey can be considered a much better kickoff kicker than Henery, touchback-wise.  

Assuming the Eagles have about the same number of kickoffs this coming season as Henery did last year (100 or so), switching to Parkey would result in about 30 more touchbacks than Henery!  That's 30 less chances for the other team's returner to take one to the house and 30 less chances for one of your players to get hurt trying to tackle the returner.  That is a huge advantage to the Eagles for switching out their kickoff kicker.  Assuming both are comparable field goals kickers (this is a big assumption, I'm not downplaying it), Parkey would likely add much more value to the Eagles than Henery would have.  This decision was another reason Chip Kelly is a great coach.

Now if a team already had a kicker who was excellent at field goals, but struggled on kickoffs, I could see a team keeping a kickoff-specialist on the 53-man roster in addition to that kicker as opposed to a 3rd string LB or TE.  I hope to prove this in a later analysis.

I'm only doing one fantasy league this year so I'm putting a lot of thought into it and going for broke rather than joining a bunch of leagues and playing around with roster combinations.  I follow a bunch of very smart football analysts on Twitter, so I absorb a lot of their predictions and opinions throughout the year without paying too much attention to it and subsequently benefit from it come only once per year, fantasy football draft day.

I'm in a 10-person league so there's talented players at every position but the guys I play with are knowledgeable as well so I don't feel too far ahead.  But I likely see more overall opinions from varied sources than them.

This year I wanted to try something new since we just added the PPR element to our league (something I was a BIG fan of).  So I went for broke and applied the zero RB strategy talked about on Rotoviz with a focus on big, physical pass catchers that saw a lot of targets.  I also wanted to guarantee that I would end up with at least 3 WR1-caliber players for their respective teams.  Overall I think I did very well, I got potentially 5 WR1s, a potential top 4 QB, the undisputed top TE and a couple of RBs with upside.

One note:  Obviously hindsight is 20/20 and I see things I could've done differently, but in too many years past I've been burned by picking a stud RB top 3 (CJ0.5K, Muscle Hampster, etc) so this year I traded out of the 2nd pick for the 7th overall and got to switch my 13th rounder for his 6th, so overall I think it was a win for me.  But yes I passed on Jamaal Charles and AP.

1st Round

I went with a past classmate in Jimmy Graham to open up my draft.  He's the #1 option on arguably the best passing offense in the NFL and he represents real value at the TE position, even though it's early for one.

2nd-5th Rounds

This is where I solidified my passing game within the first 5 rounds, which I hope will pay dividends with the 0.5 PPR element this year.  I got Alshon Jeffery, Jordy Nelson and Andre Johnson for my main WRs.  I was happy with Alshon and Jordy alone, but to get someone who is one of my favorite players and is a target magnet in 'Dre was icing on the cake.  

Originally I wanted to wait and grab a QB later but when I saw Stafford available in the 5th round, I knew I couldn't pass up his upside.  Barring injury, he'll put up top 3-5 numbers easily.

6th-7th Rounds

I guess I have to take a couple of RBs right?  I chose Gerhart and Tate as my lead backs.  Yes they're sub-standard on paper to most starting fantasy team's RBs but I think they're both safe options and RB1 options for their respective teams.  But I did give up PPR points for my RBs, which I tried to shore up later on.

8th-10th Rounds

This is where I got my key backups.  Torrey Smith is a frequent pick of mine because of his potential.  Plus he should see a lot more targets this year in the new offense.  

Nick Foles was a value pick and arguably my most important backup pick.  Yes I reached early for a fantasy backup QB but the last thing I want to see is my fantasy season derailed because of a QB injury. Plus you never know how Foles or the Eagles offense will progress.

Bernard Pierce was a gamble pick but I believe Ray Rice is on the outs, physically and roster-wise.  He's too unstable so I'm picking his backup.

11th-16th Rounds

Here are my other backups/special teamers:

I couldn't pass up the potential, even slight, value of Josh Gordon in the 11th round.  Even if he only plays a half a season, he might be a valuable trade asset or sub.  Also, if he's suspended for the year, I can just drop him Week 1 and pick up the unknown WR that impresses.

Darren Sproles was another high-upside pick because you don't know how Chip Kelly is going to utilize him.

Dan Bailey is a K.

Ladarius Green was a high upside pick as well although I don't know how he lasted this long.  Could be the steal of the draft if he's a trade asset by Week 9.

This was my "Oh shit it's the last 2 rounds, I gotta get a DEF and D player" moment.  So I went with Lavonte David because he's a stud and the NYJ defense, solely because they play Oakland Week 1.

Ballgame.

This is a little remix of a graph from an earlier post, I thought the graph was more informative flipped with the higher pick closer to the top and smoothed out.  The X axis is the month the mock draft was made and the Y axis is the average pick the player is mocked.

Another thing I find fascinating is fractals, particularly those that occur naturally in the world.  For those that don't know much about fractals, let me save you the effort of typing it into Google.  

While mostly associated with the Mandelbrot set, they're actually found all over the world in nature.  From river networks to crystal formations to trees to snowflakes, fractals are all around us.  Also technically coastlines are fractals as well.  Here are some cool pics from http://paulbourke.net/fractals/googleearth/ and Google

Just a recent collection

Raury - Cigarette Song (Snakehips Remix)

Cathedrals - Ooo Aaa

Royal* - Royal's Theme

Phantogram - Fall in Love (RATKING Falling Off Remix)

Tensnake & Jacques Lu Cont - Feel of Love (Kaytranada Remix)

I spent the first 22 years of my life in the great state of Florida.  One day I might return for good too (the smart money is when I'm retired and can find some land inland that will be beachfront property in 40 years with the rising sea levels).  But likely not anytime soon.

A lot of people in Florida are amazed that solar energy is bigger in places like Massachusetts or Oregon where the sun doesn't shine as often or as intense (insolation is as much of a part of the amount of energy you get as the amount of time it's sunny) as it does in the "Sunshine State".  They think solar is something that is far off in the future because they don't see it as popular in the state where it should rightfully be.  

While there are some realistic reasons why solar is not as popular in sunny Florida as it is in sunny California or Arizona (such as hurricane winds making the structural supports a bit more difficult than normal or the amount of intermittent cloud coverage making power fluctuations more frequent), the real reason is because the local Southeast power companies making the battle EXTREMELY uphill for solar.  They are in the legislators back pockets and wield A LOT of monetary "power" (the other kind).  

They won't be able to fight off common sense forever but they'll do a good job of putting the state well behind the curve when it comes to solar adoption.  Here is a quote from a SolarCity spokesperson in a recent article about the subject:

"We get all kinds of inquiries every day" from the South, said Will Craven, spokesman for SolarCity. "People there want to be our customers."

Florida, in particular, is known as the "sleeping giant" of his industry, Craven said. "It has a ton of sunshine, a ton of rooftops," he said. "But there is no rooftop solar industry in Florida."

In the south, utilities are fighting very hard to prevent solar, all the while maintaining the public image that they want it and are doing everything in the public's best interests, not their own profits.  I'll end on this note from the same article:

Officials at Dominion Virginia Power say they are moving as aggressively as they can to promote solar in a heavily regulated, fiscally conservative state reluctant to subsidize homeowners who go green.

Nearly two years ago, the company launched a pilot program that mimics the SolarCity and Sunrun models for leasing solar equipment to businesses. So far, two systems have been installed.

"It might sound small," said Dianne Corsello, manager of customer solutions at Dominion, but she says regulators want to see evidence that such programs will not create unreasonable costs for the utility.

"We are studying the impacts and assessing the benefits to our grid," she said. "It is providing an opportunity to get data."

Solar installation firms scoff at such utility programs. Sunrun Vice President Bryan Miller calls the Dominion rooftop effort "a make-believe program" designed for public relations, not to entice customers to install panels.

I haven't hidden my love of distributed generation.  There's something great about seeing a clear vision for the future and knowing that, while it may take some time, society's progress towards this vision is inevitable.  As one of my high school football coaches liked to say to us when we were enjoying the last few moments of cold air conditioning before going out into the sweltering Florida heat, "Get your asses off that bench, there's no point in delaying the inevitable."

That's one of the best things about being in the solar industry.  It doesn't matter how much money big oil/gas throws at ads that make solar advocates look like radicals, you simply cannot stop something that makes sense economically and environmentally.  People are starting to come around and it will only intensify in the future.

As distributed generation evolves, it's only logical that the future of the utility industry is in localized power management.  It happened with computing, it happened with cell phones, it's going to happen with your electricity.  Getting your power from one, big, central source that is very far away will become as outdated as landline telephones.  Houses are going to be generating their own electricity, storing it to use later and sharing it with their close neighbors when there is excess (and get paid of course).  You won't need to worry about the power going off for the entire city because a squirrel chomped on a power line 200 miles away anymore.

In one of my favorite TED talks, Steven Strogatz talks about how we and other animals naturally sync (not the Bluetooth kind of way).  In it, he has mesmerizing footage of swarms of birds beautifully moving through the sky together.  They look like they're being orchestrated by a single maestro or even central nervous system.  But they're not; there's no one leader or director, each bird moves independently but in unison as a group.  He says swarms only have 3 simple rules:

1.  They can sense what's around them

2.  They like to form lines (be ordered)

"If you believe in it hard enough, you make imaginary a reality."

For some people, when they see the word "remix" next to a song's name, they automatically dismiss it.  For me, it's the opposite.  I think remixes, when done properly, can add a great deal to an already great song.  Sometimes it just enhances the original, sometimes it completely creates a different song.  Here are two examples of remixes completely changing already great songs and, in my opinion, creating better versions.

And...

That's a SEO-approved headline if I've ever seen one.

Thought it'd be good to share a research project I did about 8 months ago for my Data Analysis class.  Maybe someone else can duplicate it in another industry and benefit from it.  The basic instructions for the project were to use exploratory data analysis to gain a business insight; it was an introductory class for business professionals so it didn't involve very heavy lifting but it was challenging nonetheless.  Well since I concurrently was working (and still am) for SolarCity, I thought it'd be good to incorporate it because there might be benefits that emerge throughout the process.  Of course, I won't disclose any business information.

My goal was to pick a regional warehouse and be able to find the most "attractive" areas in which we should focus our sales efforts on.  First I picked the smallest area that the US Census gave open data for (which was the zip code) and found the top 50 zip codes that we have current customers in.  My theory was that our future customers would more likely be similar to our current customers than not, so I decided to focus my data analysis on describing our current customer base.  The US Census will give you a shitload of data, as long as you painstakingly gather it in little chunks.  So that's what I spent most of my time on.

Below is an example of the finished product of collecting the data individually and organizing all of it.  I'd say this took about 2/3 of the total project time:

First I just played around with a portion of the data, to make sure it made sense before proceeding.  To do so, I did a X-Y scatterplot of each Census data column against the total count of customers in each category; thus a positive correlation would mean you would expect more customers in a zip code the higher it is in that certain Census variable.  I only used the relative percent of some of the Census data columns, since this would paint a better picture than total numbers for certain ones.  Below is an example of linear regressions of some, with neutral, positive and negative correlations:

This yielded some interesting patterns.  I wanted to further analyze it and divided each variable (column of a particular statistic from the Census) into similar groupings.  Yes I added some personal bias to this analysis, but rarely was it hard for me to pick a particular grouping for each variable, so I'm confident I didn't inject too much bias.  Below are the groupings of the categories of different Census data:

Then I found the correlations by grouping, this was particularly interesting to see what had the highest positive and negative indicators of more customers.  Below is the graph by grouping:

I just started reading "Empires of Light:  Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the World" by Jill Jonnes and I'm already enthralled in it.  Although she can be superfluous at times (and so was using that word), she paints an exciting story about the battle a century and a half ago to bring electricity to the masses.

We all know the ending (Tesla/Westinghouse and AC power won out, even though it was more dangerous because it could travel long distances more efficiently) but that's what makes it so interesting.  Solar is going through a similar battle right now, and it is on the Edison and DC side (solar panels produce DC energy, and right now that has to be converted back to AC power to power things in your home -- hysterically it is actually converted back to DC power to power a lot of electronics) but updated to today's technology.  He was an advocate of a distributed system of power generators; unfortunately due to the technology of the time there had to be a toxic, noisy generation station every couple city blocks.  But in today's time, that is just the same exact thing as quiet, clean energy producing solar panels on your home's roof.  They don't put off any toxic fumes, they don't make any sound, all they do is just sit on top of a small area on your roof that was previously just occupied by dirt buildup and bird shit.

Anyways, I'm sure this won't be the only post I write about solar and the "War of Currents", but it hit home when I just read about Edison's inspiration for his invention of the lightbulb.  Jonnes writes, after Edison had just been introduced to arc lights:

"Then Edison rushed back to quiet, bucolic Menlo Park, his research workshop in backwater New Jersey, to throw himself into creating a better and more practical electric light.  He worked feverishly, thrilled at the possibilities of this new field."

"It was all before me.  I saw the thing had not gone so far but that I had a chance.  I saw that what had been done had never been made practically useful.  The intense light had not been subdivided so that it could be brought into private houses."

"Edison always liked to go after 'big things.'"

The man who came up with the best arc light system might well make a fortune stealing away even that 10 perfect of the gas lighting business -- that of streetlights.  But the man who could subdivide the light -- to take it indoors and tame it into a gentle glow -- and power it with a dynamo, he would be the true Promethean, the blazing electrical pioneer, the hailed benefactor of humankind (and wealthy to boot).

Obscure title yes but it'll do for right now.  

Often we go through life wanting to do a lot of things:  we want to be successful in school and our careers, we want to have a loving family, we want to maintain our health and exercise, we want to give back to our communities/religion, etc.  But rarely do we have time for all of them on a consistent basis.  All along, we also have a lot of ideas of different ways we think the world can improve but again lack time and the resources to fulfill the execution needed to bring said ideas to life.

Sometimes we tell these ideas to others to seek external support; sometimes we keep them a secret because we're scared of external judgment.  But for every idea we don't let be known, there exists the possibility that the world never got to benefit from a possible "missed connection" of mutually beneficial or associated other ideas.  

I've never been shy about sharing my thoughts if I think they can help improve things in any way.  Often this information has already been brought up and discussed or dismissed but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be shared.  You either show that you are on the same page as those who you are presenting the topics to or you show that you need to learn more about the topic.  But that shouldn't deter you from potentially sparking another person's interest to continue where you left off.  It's a pretty high risk, low reward process as long as you have vetted the idea internally as well as externally with trusted friends.

So that's why my first idea after introducing my introduction to them is for someone to create said idea-curation-then-creation website; someplace that builds off of the positive purpose behind message boards and serves as a melting pot of associated ideas with simple UI and transparent philosophy.  After allowing for ideas to be connected, the best solutions will bubble to the top through Reddit-esque upvotes/downvotes then a representative can be chosen and the project can be paid for through crowdfunding.

That's got to be a net positive for the world.

I've been using this music streaming service called Hype Machine for a little over 5 years now and my account and all the songs I've hearted ("liked") over the years is easily one of my top 5 online possessions.  It's become a daily part of my life; the process discovering new music throughout the week is enhanced by always having one place where everything can be found.  This is going to make me sound dated to any other hypem users (cue the old grandpa voice) but I remember when top songs on their popular page only had a couple hundred likes, now their #1 songs (such as the Odesza remix of Zhu's "Faded" mentioned below) routinely have 5,000+ likes.

It's free to join and they're not very obtrusive.  You "pay" by having ads pop up all the time when you open your page as well as some tricky border ads; annoying but again, it's totally free, so it's worth it to me.  I'm sure they also get some revenue from referring people to buy concert tickets on songkick.com (which I've done many times over the years).

Soon they'll have an official Android app and it'll only increase my use of the site I'm sure.  They are pretty aware of their product niche but are always rolling out new features with an eye towards the future.  One reason why I originally liked them is because their popular page had a shelf life of 3 days so it always kept recent hot songs coming through.  Recently they rolled out the ability to create "lists" of different styles/energies of music, they are "Up", "Down" and "Weird".  I'm still figuring out the feel of each but this is brilliant on both the customer's and the company's ends; I get to have a quick way to play a similarly styled playlist and Hype Machine gets users to crowdsource genre-definition of all their songs.  Once again the wisdom of the crowds will prove to be very useful.

Check it out particularly if you enjoy electronic/techno/EDM/whatever you call it and indie, as those are primarily the genres I see represented.  I suggest when you begin to regularly use it that you curate a followed list of some blogs that you see playing the specific type of music you enjoy at the moment.  If the blog's new song isn't exactly your flavor, a lot of times there will be another song in the post that you will like.  

I've heard a lot of good music recently but this one really stands out.  Partly due to timing as it's the beginning of summer, it's mostly good because it retains just enough of the original to bring back memories of summers long ago.  That and everything it adds is perfectly placed.  Would make a great song choice if you happen to be cruising down A1A in the bright Miami sun, just saying.

Baby Bash - Suga Suga (Royal Refix)

I was introduced to Dan Ariely when I picked up his book "Predictably Irrational" a couple years back.  I know it wasn't anytime recently because: A.) It's a physical book, not a wireless download & B.) The sticker on the back says it's from Borders.  Anyways, it was one of my first behavioral psychology reads and really sparked by fascination with the subject.  

It's always an exciting discovery when you find something that you quickly become obsessed with.  Learning how and more importantly why we (or at least Westerners that participate in most of the studies) think and act quickly became addictive.  I still find myself buying some of the intriguing and popular new releases even though most of them just recycle the same knowledge, and cite the same studies, but applied to a different scenario.  This isn't rational but it's still something I continue to do.

Back to Dan, he has a great blog that he frequently updates with real world examples of these behavioral psychology principles by taking reader's questions and trying to explain their thinking.  A recent post of his included this wonderful response:

Dear Dan,

Early in my career, I wrote a massive Excel macro for the large bank where I worked. The macro (a set of automated commands) would take a data dump and turn it into a beautiful report. It took about two minutes to run, with an hourglass showing that it was working away. The output was very useful, but everyone complained that it was too slow.

One way to speed up a macro is to make it run in the background, invisibly, with just the hourglass left on-screen. I had done this from the start, but just for fun, I flipped the setting so that people using the macro could see it do its thing. It was like watching a video on fast forward: The macro sliced the data, changed colors, made headers and so on. The only problem: It took about three times as long to finish.

Once I made this change, however, everyone was dazzled by how fast and wonderful the algorithm was. Do you have a rational explanation for this reversal?

—Mike

I’m not sure I have a rational explanation, but I have a logical one. What you describe so nicely is a combination of two forces. First, when we are just waiting aimlessly, we feel that time is being wasted, and we feel worse about its passage. Second, when we feel that someone is working for us, particularly if they are working hard, we feel much better about waiting (and about paying them for their effort). Interestingly, this joy at having someone work hard for us holds true not just of people but of computer algorithms, too.

The life lesson should be clear: Work extra hard at describing how hard you work to those around you.

I love it, so logical and true.  The bold part at the end is my emphasis on the underlying principle; it's partly sad that this is the main point of his answer but it's 100% true.  Many people and services should take his advice if they wish to increase their customer satisfaction levels.

I was scrolling through the Miami Herald's Sports page and a blog on FIU football by David J. Neal caught my eye.  Initially I noticed it because the second half of the title of the post said "Coaching $$$ in Black & White".  I didn't know if Neal was using "Black & White" metaphorically or literally; whether he was talking about the blatant nepotism on FIU's staff or if there was a pay disparity between black and white head coaches.  I assumed he meant literally because he capitalized Black and White, likely referring to the skin colors.  So I decided to look up their bios and compare them.

Here is the table of coaches I compared, it's most of the main assistants for the 2013 and 2014 seasons:

I couldn't find public salary info on their special teams coach from 2013 on the Florida Has a Right to Know Mr. Neal mentioned in his post so he was omitted.  I also left the head coach Ron Turner off the list because his salary would've skewed the averages.  The salaries were average for what info I could find over the last 2 seasons.  The disclaimer with this quick analysis is that the sample size is pretty small so we can't know any conclusions for sure.  But from the numbers we do have sure show an inflated salary if you are either white and/or related to the head coach or one of the coordinators, particularly if you fulfill both categories.

Here is the table of salary info by skin color.  The higher numbers in each column are considered "better" so they're highlighted in green (BTW how many promotions has Excel's "Conditional Formatting" gotten people over the years?  Has to be in the thousands):

It's pretty clear that while the black assistant coaches have 25% more years coaching experience (15.3 vs. 12.2), they are paid 13% less ($101,250 vs. $116,916) in salary.  Also white assistant coaches get more than DOUBLE ($20,046 vs. $9,076) the salary per year of coaching experience and make 1.7 times ($29,537 vs. $17,444) in salary per year of college coaching experience.  Those facts are pretty hard to ignore.  So what I assumed Mr. Neal was referring to, that white assistant coaches at FIU under Ron Turner make more than black assistant coaches, does indeed look to be true.

Here are some really fancy pictures in case you prefer that medium:

Ron Turner's brief but rocky tenure as FIU head football coach has also been controversial in that some people accuse them of favoring hiring direct relatives for assistant jobs and paying them more than people that aren't related to the top coaches.  Both Ron Turner and his offensive coordinator Steve Shankweiler have sons that are prominent assistant coaches.  And both of these sons share something in common when you break down their salaries as well.

Here is a table showing the same numbers as before, but broken down by if when you were a direct relative (in this case a son) hired as an assistant coach at FIU:

Again, it's pretty clear that there is some favoritism going on here.  If you were hired on as an assistant coach and you were NOT a direct relative, even though you had 3 times the coaching experience (12 vs. 4), you were expected to make only 8% more than if you were a relative ($107,722 vs. $99,500).  Even worse, if you were a direct relative, you make 2.7 times the salary per year of coaching experience ($34,166 vs. $12,595)  and make 3.7 times the salary per year of college coaching experience ($62,100 vs. $16,779).  Insane!  How is this allowed to happen?

Again, here are those numbers in graphical form:

Something is fishy at FIU, that's for sure.

//Edited to fix wording

In case the professional artwork above isn't clear, I turned the Spotify logo into a sad face with three frowns.  I'm so original.

I'm not one to usually whine and bitch publicly but a recent customer service process I had to deal with was particularly horrendous so I think it deserves to be known.  Ideally, someone at Spotify can review the case as a whole, rather than separate support staff members viewing it individually.  Hopefully it's viewed as constructive criticism and they improve their current processes towards the goal of providing a much better customer service experience.  Spotify likely concentrates on supporting current customers, but also helping people that aren't active customers who could potentially even be prospective customers should also be high on their priority list.

I noticed that someone had used my credit card number to open two Spotify accounts about a month ago.  After disputing the charges with the bank (which was extremely easy to do by comparison), I went to contact Spotify to let them know about these fraudulent charges so someone wasn't continuing to get free music and bandwidth that they could use on a rightful paying customer.  You'd think this would be something that they would care about and want to fix immediately.

So I did what any person in the 21st century would do, I went to their website to find a customer service phone number or email address I could contact to speak with someone and get this handled in 10-15 minutes.

Only problem is there isn't a number or email address clearly listed.  Keep in mind that Spotify wants to be a world class corporation, some recent numbers I've heard are that they're currently valued around $5 billion and have 40 million customers, of which 10 million and paying customers.  Pretty impressive growth for a company that fills the a role once dominated by free services (replacing empty silence with music, as in the radio) and now which has many different competitors offering up similar services for similar prices.  You'd think that one way they would want to stand out from the different options would be excellent customer service.

Once again, no clear answer as to how I'm supposed to talk to someone about this.  There is a reference to their customer support Twitter handle though, @SpotifyCares, hence the title of this post.  It just sucks that instead of having a private conversation with somebody about my problem, I have to broadcast it across the entire internet (since the entire internet is my 56 followers).  Plus what I don't get is that you'd think a company would want to keep this private as well but, once again, you're wrong.

Don't be fooled by highlighted link for a contact form, you have to be an existing Spotify customer or sign up for an account to contact them.  I guess this is going public and that is how we're forced to handle things.  My apologies to the 56 people who quickly scrolled past my tweets during this whole ordeal.

Here we learn that there is indeed no phone number to call to talk to a human being.  Think about that for a second, a company supposedly worth $5 billion and has 10 million people that pay them every month does not currently offer telephone support.  I mean I get running lean and optimizing your resource's time is important, but sometimes the most efficient way is talking.  For both parties involved, the customer and the provider.  

Even worse, the link they sent me to use to contact them instead of by phone was the same one that REQUIRES you to have a Spotify account.  And if you're not a current customer, well damn, you're shit out of luck, you have to sign up.  I think it was at this point in the "What the fuck?!?" stage of the the whole process that I reached peak frustration levels.  

Out of principle and because it's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of, signing up to hopefully quickly solve this problem was out of the question for me.  They have my email, they can contact me to fix this.  I think I still had a sliver of hope they would do the right thing and make this as easy as possible for the customer at this point.

Nope.

It was at this point that a friend chimed in, equally confused and surprised that a company that wants to portray themselves as a world class organization is failing at the basic of customer support.  See, one other person knows about this shitty scenario, this is going viral! [Insert internet sarcasm emoticon] Only after tagging their Twitter handle again and making up the completely unoriginal hashtag #spotifydoesntcare did they reach out again.  Unfortunately, it was via Twitter again and they followed me and wanted me to send them a DM to give them my email address to have someone contact me.  Meaning they didn't even read my earlier tweet giving my email address.

Again as a reminder in this point of the bitching to remind everyone that this could've been solved in 5-10 minutes of talking.  I just like pointing that out.

Following this is another Twitter exchange in public view instead of privately.

Finally a fucking link to a contact form! Maybe that is their plan all along, to make a prospective customer so frustrated that after 3 days from initiating communication you're provided with a way to accomplish a really simple goal and you're very happy.  They make you hate them before answering your first question. 

I don't know if "V" and "Z" ever talk to each other, but I'm going to do all of their jobs for them by posting the link to this hidden contact form that for some unknown reason wasn't clearly marked on their website.

https://www.spotify.com/us/about-us/contact/contact-spotify-account/

So they email me back, meaning finally I can have a "private" (Hi CIA!) conversation.  Ahhhhh, only thing is the email just says that they received my contact form.  Well hopefully they get their shit in order and figure this all out.  I mean, there's no way that this will continue to drag on, right? 

Yep.

Two more days go by with no answer, so my politeness is wearing thin but I reach out via Twitter again to get their attention.  "T" tells me she just assigned my case to someone, something "V" or "Z" should've done 5 days ago.  What the "F"!

Finally it looks like someone is giving me actionable items to get the ball rolling.  "J" is by far my favorite customer support rep thus far in the process.  Another problem arises as getting this BAC number from the bank isn't very easy either, but is handled in 15-20 minutes.

I guess "C" isn't too bad of a support rep either, he probably would be number 1 in my book but it took him 6 days to get back to me. So I'll put him in a tie for first.  Again I want to point out that this could've been solved in 5-10 minutes of talking.  At this point in the story we're 12 days into the process.

What the fuck "C" I thought we were boys??? My name is in every email, just look at it when you're referencing a prospective customer.  Fine, you're definitely not tied for first anymore in the "Spotify Customer Support Staff" rankings.  But finally this horrible, horrible customer service experience is resolved.  

I don't think I need to remind anyone of how long it should've taken to fix this problem in my eyes, but in the end it took over 14 days.  I hope someone at Spotify reads this and sees how bad they look and fixes their support system.  I mean I was never really considering signing up for a Spotify account but I for sure will never consider it in the future.  And maybe the 3-4 people that read this post will second guess it themselves.

One thing I also will post a bunch, besides talk about football or solar, is music.  Particularly electronic music.  I used to post over at loudmusicallday.com with some friends but that kind of died off and I discover too much good music to not share.

Below are some good covers I've found recently:

Thief - Cry Me a River

Cassie Steele - Sex and Candy

Animal-Music - Mr. Brightside

Digging a little deeper into aggregated mock drafts, the great resource Walter Football has a very comprehensive mock draft database.  They have gone through the trouble of tabulating the top 5 picks of each mock in one big table.  That table looked something like this:

So I quickly tabulated the top 5 results from the mock draft database, only looked at mocks in 2014 and graphed their evolution over the last 4 months of the 2014 NFL Draft process.  This ended up being 428 mocks for each pick in the top 5 from what is likely the largest mock draft database on the web.  The graph is "Month" on the X axis, January through May and "Average pick" on the Y axis for some of the top prospects.  So Jadeveon Clowney having an average close to 1 in May means, wait for it, that the "consensus" pick he would be selected was #1.

With this graph it is easy to visualize the consensus order of each prospect over time.  Some interesting insights I'd love to know more about:

• Did mock drafters become more comfortable with Clowney to the Texans over time or is that a reflection of just what they were hearing?
• What is responsible for the separation between Blake Bortles and Clowney starting in March?  They're pretty close and then Clowney clearly separates himself from Bortles and the pack to be the clear #1 pick.  Combine or pro day?
• Did the Jake Matthews get worse in March or did people only realize then that Glen Robinson was a better OT?
• Who was ultimately responsible for leading the Johnny Manziel hype train? The media, the fans or was it all smokescreens from teams?

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity" - Seneca

So I quickly compared how my simple prediction fared against the 2014 mocks I collected and I will add the comparison numbers and rankings onto this post later today.  But I think it turned out pretty well, I believe by comparing the predicted and mocked picks to the actual selection order, I had an R-square value of 0.57 and the highest mock I looked at was Mayock's who had a R-square of 0.55.

What I find particularly impressive about this prediction is how simple it was -- all it looked at was a Top 100 composite ranking, height, weight, arm length and average mock draft position.  It  outperformed all the expert's mock accuracy and I didn't spend months working on it and I had no inside knowledge, I just aggregated what others were hearing and thought.

To review, my selection prediction for the 2013 Draft had a R-square value of 0.61 and the next highest was Todd McShay at 0.5.  My selection prediction for the 2014 Draft had a R-square value of 0.57 and the next highest of the ones I looked at was Mike Mayock at 0.55.  I could have looked at more mocks to be more comprehensive, some mocks might have performed higher than those that were looked at but if they were included in the dataset, the prediction would have improved as well.

Below is the predicted order based off of the following variables: