Blog Announcements!

Now that the college year is starting back up, you are probably going to notice some changes around the 'ol blog.  I figured I should take a moment to explain (I don't recall if I have said all or parts of this already or not).  Anyhow, as many of you probably know by now, I'm a college math teacher.  I usually refer to myself as a "teacher" rather than "professor" (at least online) because I don't mean to make people think that I have my Ph.D.  In fact, I don't.  That, however, will hopefully be changing soon.

This year, I am going to be teaching a three-quarter load at my institution where I've been for the past 3.5 years AND I am going to be a full-time graduate student pursuing my Ph.D.  That might sound like a lot (and I think it is), but it gets worse...

You see, currently I live about an hour away from the college I work out.  The university where I'm about to begin my own classes is about an hour and half away from my house in the opposite direction.  There are bound to be days where I have to be at both schools - so I'll have approximately a 258 mile (5 hour) round trip on those days.  That's five hours out of the day where I can't do anything but drive...

I will, of course, have plenty of my own grading and lessons to complete - plus I'm assuming quite a bit of homework for my own schooling.  Thus, the blog is bound to suffer.

Here's what I can promise.  There will most likely be no more days of 4-5 posts in a single day.  I do hope, however, to have daily posts...but that will also probably drop off as the semester progresses.  I won't, however, completely neglect the blog, I just might be a bit more of an absentee blogger than maybe I have been the past few years (and especially over the summer)!

So, what does that mean to you?  A few things really.

#1:  I still hope to continue trading.  If it weren't for the trading, I would have given up blogging a long time ago.

#2:  I am debating about putting an end to the Complete Set Giveaway Contest and award all the prizes (except the complete Ginter set w/ short prints because I never did get to finish the Diamond Parallel set).  I have a few envelopes with some diamond cards in them that are waiting for me to scan and place in my binder, but I'm still well short of approaching the complete set.  Furthermore, people have virtually stopped offering Diamond cards which leads me to believe that most people have moved on from Series 1 and 2 Topps to other sets (Bowman, Ginter, Lineage, who knows).  And, if I stop the contest now, I will be able to mail off the prizes before the semester gets underway (which will mean one less thing for me to do later in the fall).  If you happen to still have a pile of Diamond parallels that you've been meaning to send my way, you better let me know ASAP so that they get counted in the contest!

#3:  I just implemented the new blog layout (want a tour of it?).  As I've mentioned throughout the summer, the new layout is something that I've been tinkering with off and on for the last couple of months.  I think it's finally ready, or at least ready enough, to become my new blog format.

I guess those are the big things right now.  I will say that I have a bunch of what I think will be pretty cool ideas for my blog - unfortunately, some of them are going to take a bit of time to get ready so who knows when I'll actually get them put together and posted.

No matter, I will still be around (albeit a bit less than normal).  I'm also hoping to have more posts of substance now that I'm about to become more educated.  We'll see about that one.