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Josh Knox

Just Joshin' #130 (Texas)

Published about 1 year ago • 5 min read

1 Family Photo:
Texas Travel

I went to Texas this week.

​Summit NA, the big conference for Microsoft Business Applications, was in San Antonio this year.

As a Microsoft Business Applications consultant, these conferences are an opportunity to learn new product features and understand where the product development is going. They're also a fun chance to catch up with people you've worked with over the years but who now work at other companies due to the nature of mergers, acquisitions, divestures, and job offers. It's LinkedIn, IRL, but for my specific industry niche.

The conference accepted one of my session submissions, so on Tuesday I gave a presentation on "Treating ERP Implementations as Serious Data Projects". It was a banger. At least, it was a banger within the subset of conference attendees who like to talk about data migration, data warehouses, data pipelines and data strategies at 8am. A privileged niche within a niche.

Also, as some people in our company were already attending the conference in San Antonio, we decided that was a good reason for everyone in our company to come to San Antonio so we could co-work together. This week was the first time in the history of Cooptimize that all five of us have been together in the same room. Being in-person with the people I see on my computer screen every week felt really special.

Despite what Charles Barkley may tell you, San Antonio is a wonderful city. We are great food, moseyed along the Riverwalk, and even went up the Tower of the Americas. Tower of the Americas was my first experience eating at a spinney restaurant on top of a tall tower [notes: good for the view, not great for the food, Texas is quite flat, it's only the floor that spins(!)].

It's been an exciting and eventful week. But as the kids get older the travel gets harder.

I'm typing this into my phone on the plane home so I can hit send when we land. I miss the boys and almost cried this week when we talked on FaceTime as they told me about their days and asked me about my trip.

I can't wait to be at home and in-person with Calvin and Lawrence and Luana.

1 Dad Joke:
Texas Bar

A 3-legged dog walks into a Texas saloon and says:

*image by Dad[AI]Base​

Highlights:
Texas Scenes

​The Crane Wife by CJ Hauser​

I went to Texas to study the whooping crane because I was researching a novel. In my novel there were biologists doing field research about birds and I had no idea what field research actually looked like and so the scientists in my novel draft did things like shuffle around great stacks of papers and frown.
...
The first thing Jeff said was, “We’ll head back to camp, but I hope you don’t mind we run by the liquor store first.” I felt more optimistic about my suitability for science.

​The ‘Friday Night Lights’ Guide to Winning Every Close Football Game You Play by Rodger Sherman​

During his five-year stint as a high school football coach in West Texas (as depicted in the documentary series Friday Night Lights — trust us, it’s a documentary), Coach Taylor dealt with a nearly constant string of obstacles: Star quarterback Jason Street was paralyzed; the coach took a job at Texas Methodist only to return to Dillon midway through a season; the town of Dillon was abruptly rezoned into two school districts, prompting the birth of an entirely new school and football team; just two seasons after that redistricting, Dillon was contracted into a single district again. Perhaps most difficult of all, Taylor was perpetually beset by the presence of his daughter Julie Taylor — a truly awful daughter, a hell-daughter, maybe the worst daughter in the history of daughters. Still, Coach Taylor won two state championships (one in his first year as a head coach, one in his second season at newly founded East Dillon) and nearly won a third.
​
Coach Taylor’s combined record at Dillon and East Dillon over the five seasons of the show is 41–11 (.788). Impressive, but not mind-blowing. Now let’s examine how the Panthers and Lions fared in close games.
​
Of the games in which the final scores were shown during the series, 30 were decided by seven points or fewer. Coach Taylor’s teams went 25–5 (.833) in those contests. Even more incredible, 16 games were decided by three points or fewer. Coach Taylor’s teams won 15 of them (.938).
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There are only two explanations for Coach Taylor’s remarkable close-game success: either his team was the fictitious creation of a group of Hollywood screenwriters who had a vested interest in his team winning games in a variety of improbable ways, or Coach Taylor has uncovered a number of truths that the rest of the football world has yet to learn. Since that first explanation sounds unrealistic, I decided to study Coach Taylor’s tactics in crunch time.
...
​
In high school football, there’s a huge talent gap between the best players and the worst — and Coach Taylor relentlessly exploited that. This is convenient because his best players are also handsome with fascinating personal lives. We’re blessed that Coach Taylor decided to keep giving them the ball.

​How Austin Became The No Gi BJJ Capital Of The World by William Watts​

Austin, Texas is the best place in the world to train no gi jiujitsu. In 2024 a homegrown talent was half of the best no gi match ever at CJI, another took home jiujitsu’s first ever million dollar prize, and two other Austin athletes took home ADCC gold medals. This is a stark contrast from a decade ago when Austin sent zero athletes to compete at the 2013 ADCC World Championships.​
​
If you think this is a weird development you’re right. No one could have predicted a podcaster’s business ventures and a world altering pandemic would turn the live music capital of the world into the best place to learn how to break someone’s leg. But it did and I was here for all of it and I’m going to tell you what went down.

​There are not 13,099 Illegal Immigrant Murders Roaming Free on American Streets by Alex Nowrasteh​

The first untrue claim about the data is that the 13,099 non-detained migrants convicted of homicide are free to roam the United States. That is not true. Migrants incarcerated for homicide are considered “non-detained” by ICE when they are in state or federal prisons. When ICE uses the term “non-detained,” they mean not currently detained by ICE. In other words, the migrant murderers included in the letter are overwhelmingly in prison serving their sentences. After they serve their sentences, the government transfers them onto ICE’s docket for removal from the United States.
...
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​Texas has the best criminal conviction data by immigration status. Illegal immigrants in Texas are about 7.1 percent of the population, but they accounted for just 5 percent of all homicide convictions in 2022.
...
In other words, the ICE data confirm that illegal immigrants account for a smaller share of convicted murderers than their share of the population would suggest.

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iamJoshKnox Highlight:
Texas Bling

Community Summit is a trade show. One of the most important parts of trade shows is company swag. Being in Texas, I thought it would be funny if we made custom company belt buckles. A joke turned into an RFP, an RFP turned into a quote, and through the magic of online commerce, international manufacturing, and shipping that turned into a real product for clipping my belt around my waist.

Would you like to use my company's logo as part of a system to help keep your pants up? Through the magic of minimum order quantities there's a possibility you can do that too.

Get in touch.

Want to Chat?

Grab some time on my calendar and share a story:

​Let's Chat!​

Book some time even if you don't know what you want to talk about:
​https://calendly.com/iamjoshknox​

Until next week,
​iamJoshKnox​​

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Josh Knox

Hi! I am Josh Knox. Read more of me here: 👇

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