Winners and losers.

I'm going to argue some semantics. It bothers me that so many advertisements and so much TV footage is speculating over who won/lost or will win/will lose various debates. I find it irritating, mostly because a debate is essentially a congenial argument where both parties do their homework and one person is judged not the winner or loser, but the more knowledgable or better speaker. I guess that's the same thing, isn't it? But I'm all about precision with words, especially based on the blatant lying and more insidious fudging going on on both sides of these debates.

Now for my own predictions. I think that during tonight's debate, Sarah Palin will prove herself the less qualified candidate academically and as a speaker - she doesn't seem to think well on her feet or know enough about the office and the policy to answer questions correctly. But at the same time, sometimes listening to Joe Biden speak makes me want to crawl into a corner and hide. He knows his stuff, but he's a coarse, boorish person sometimes and occasionally says some ridiculously stupid things.

So there.

And in other news (because you care, right??), I accepted the job. My gut reaction is trepidation. I went on a walk last night and made my cough worse, but I wanted to think about why I was feeling the way I was feeling because I've always found that my gut reactions are better predictors of my success at a job than any amount of logic (or money). So I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I like the people there well enough, but none of them truly clicked with me the same way the people who hired me at my former employer did. Also, I've been holding on to the hope - unconscious or otherwise - that they'd come crawling back to me. I need to move on. They're still screwed, but that's now their problem, not mine. Yet another reason I was reluctant was that another recruiter had found a company this side of the state line and wanted to send me on interviews next week. I thought about it and, given that that company is a financial company and may be Wachovia, I asked myself if it was really a good idea to toss my lot in with a company like that given the current state of the economy. I came back with a big, fat no.

So I thought about what I'd like to do about all the above and came up with the following: you don't immediately click with everyone, but that doesn't mean that you won't later or that you won't work well together. They're nice, professional people and my gut reactions to people are usually accurate. So, one bonus. I'd also be doing something where I can see my products and services directly benefiting people much less fortunate than I am. This is also a good move career-wise, as the other job would be just writing while this will be writing, marketing planning, product planning, development and packaging and deployment. Plus, if I hate it, I can go back to writing. But I'll give it a year, see what happens. Ta-dah!