Travis: Well it looks like I was a week early in my prediction that Tech would show up and play ball. I had a feeling it would happen in Norman, but I’ll take being wrong about that as long as they keep playing like they did Saturday. And I saw some saying that this will be the moment we look back on as the day the “Wells’ Culture,” took over in Lubbock. While I’m not ready to go that far, I am giddy about what we saw. I’m sure OSU has to shoulder some blame as they looked like they thought they’d just show up and roll Tech, and that’s not what happened at all. This Saturday will be important to see if the culture is sustainable. I sure hope it is.

What do you think? Was Saturday an anomaly or a sign of real, positive, sustainable change in Lubbock? (You know I wrote an entire book about de ja vu and how nothing ever changes)

Seth: So I’m like you, I don’t want to overreact the other way too much. It was a really nice win, and to win at home against a ranked opponent is something that hasn’t happened in a really long time (I’m not sure how long it’s been, but I think it’s been a while). Personally, I think that the idea that the personality of the coach and the team is something that takes a year or so to take hold, if it takes hold at all. And of course winning makes the process go a bit faster and speeds up the process. So I’m super happy about the win, it looked terrific, but I think the next step is for Wells & Co. as well as the team to do this on the road. Baylor has much improved, they’re undefeated for goodness sakes, and if the team takes a step forward (not necessarily a win) then I’ll start to feel better.

I think once we start to see a consistent effort, then we’ll feel better about where the program is going.

So how’s Claire doing and how’d surgery go?

Travis: Her surgery went well. Her doctor is the Spurs doctor and he’s also done surgeries for Jace Amaro, many UT players, etc., so I’m confident that she was in good hands. What’s strange is her left knee will be stronger than her right knee when it’s all said and done because of the advances they’ve made in the procedure. I don’t think I was fully prepared for the aftermath as she was in so much pain all weekend and just moving slightly hurt her. But she’s tough as nails and was vigilant in her exercises and stretching on Saturday and Sunday. She spent the weekend at home and I took her back to her dorm room on Monday morning and she went to class. Tough. As. Nails. She spends a couple hours a day with the trainer and he told her yesterday (Tuesday) that she’d made significant progress since Monday. She absolutely eats that up and will strive to make progress every day until she’s back. She’ll be on a stationary bike next Friday and will be able to get back on the court doing light shooting by New Years. Having a schedule really helps her (and me) as she can work toward smaller goals in pursuit of the big one.

So it’s been a couple of years since your miraculous self-diagnosis of being lactose intolerant. I wanted to follow-up with you on that and see how much better life has been since you weaned yourself off of cow milk. Is it like heaven?

Seth: So I still drink milk, but I drink lacto-milk and I regularly travel with Lactaid so that if I do have dairy I pop a couple of those and there’s no problem. And that’s the funny thing about self-diagnosis, right, which is I think I’ve got this figured out, but there’s always part of the that’s not totally sure. I can say that I don’t have the stomach problems that I’ve had before.

I’ve got two stories to tell you (totally unrelated to being lactose intolerant). So I was at Bucee’s, which is where I normally fill up real early in the morning on my way to work. I’m actually filling up, and a guy drives up next to me, rolls down his window and asks if I could spare any change to help him with some gas. He was driving an Explorer, it was nicer than my vehicle. I told him that I didn’t have any cash, which was a true statement, and I could help him. He then said, “No bro, I just need for you to fill me up with your card.” I told him that his fill-up wasn’t in my weekly budget. Obviously that wasn’t the best comeback, but we’ve now moved on from people asking for a couple of bucks, to just asking if I could fill them up with my card. Was that the proper response?

And we’re coming up on 8 years. Yes, 8 years on Thursday is Fitsum’s Gotcha Day. That’s 8 years that he’s been ours and the Gotcha Days are one of my favorite days ever. I can’t even remember what I was doing 8 years ago other than trying to figure out how to be a parent with a 1 1/2 old kiddo that couldn’t understand me. Good times!

Travis: Your lactose-intolerance self-diagnosis is still one of the feel good stories of all time.

So, two things about the guy asking for gas money: if he asked for spare change first, he can’t expect you to swipe your card and fill him up. That should be in the gas money manual somewhere, like you have to follow the rules. Secondly, it reminds me of a time several years ago where I was filling up and this guy walked up and asked me for eight dollars. Looking back on it now I realize that guy was a genius. You’re kinda immediately on the defensive in that situation and it’s naturally a bit tense. You know how hard it is for the person to ask and you, as the target, are on guard because you don’t really know how it’s all gonna go down. So, the fact that he asked for such a specific amount immediately threw me off guard because, I mean, it’s not like it was five bucks or ten bucks. The dude asked me specifically for eight bucks. And it’s not like he gave me a long story about his car being broke down or how he just needed to feed his kids, it was a simple, direct request. He asked if I would give him eight bucks. So of course I gave it to him. I mean, he obviously needed eight bucks.

And I can’t believe it’s already been 8 years… I remember we were in a rent house waiting for our new house to be completed and I was trying to help out with VTM while you were gone. The Rangers were in the playoffs and would eventually make the World Series. Cash wasn’t born yet and Cade was only two. Claire was in fifth grade. Wow, it’s just so amazing how quickly time flies. Congrats on another year!

So what are your thoughts on passwords? I’m freaking sick of them. It’s like we have a million passwords and it doesn’t even matter, if a hacker wants to hack, he’s gonna hack, no matter how clever you are with your password. I say, as a society, we just go commando and forget all the passwords. Open everything up. Nothing is secure. You won’t steal my stuff because you know I’m gonna come right back atcha and steal your stuff. Plus, it would free up about 80% of our mind space because we wouldn’t be walking around all the time trying to remember the password to check our voice mail or to get gas before someone comes along and asks for eight bucks. With all that free mind space we’d cure cancer and have flying cars in no time. It makes perfect sense in theory. What are your thoughts on that as a lawyer and a reasonable man?

Seth: LOL. You totally asked the wrong dude about passwords. Because I’m always worried about passwords for work, I looked around for how to do passwords, and I finally stumbled across this dice-word list The idea is that you roll a die 5 times, get some random number, look up that number (control + f) write down the corresponding word, and then do that 2 more times so that you’ve got a phrase that you can somewhat remember. There’s also this idea that doing essentially a string of 15 random numbers that correspond with a random word seems to work. So that’s how I do passwords, with a die and a list of words. Totally what you expected, I’m sure.

We’ve got Baylor this week, they’re 5-0 and at home, and I’m sure that they’re thinking that they’re headed to a double-digit win. I hope you’re refining your thought process on predicting Texas Tech wins and losses.

Travis: This morning the guys in my super-secret Mensa text chain were discussing the difference between Baylor and OSU, primarily that OSU runs a man defense in the secondary and Baylor runs a zone. There was a lot of concern that that fact would make Duffy’s job more difficult this week, so that’s definitely something to consider. And I guess Brewer has been banged up a bit but just got cleared to play so that might be something to watch. It’s not as if Baylor is going to have some massive home-field advantage because I don’t think their stadium is very big. I don’t know man, if the defense can play like they did last week and Duffy does a good job of managing the offense and gets off some big runs and a few big passes we might just have a shot.

The weather in Texas looks like it’s finally gonna break so the fact that it won’t be 175 degrees on the field at 4pm will certainly help. Who knows? Somebody has to win, might as well be us.

Seth: Yeah, offensive coordinator David Yost mentioned the man-defense vs. zone-defense in his weekly media scrum, so the good news is that there’s an acknowledgement of the differences in the defense by the guy who will be calling plays. That’s somewhat comforting in that maybe the team is already gearing to figuring out how to attack the defense, which I thought the team did a really nice job of last week. And the back-up quarterback has his own set of issues that is problematic in that he’s a really big kid (6-3/220) who can absolutely fly (i.e. run) so that would be something completely different for the defense to get ready to defend.

I too am super excited we’re no longer stuck in the 90’s and I think that we just need to consider September a summer month at this point.