Hodge-podge

Quite the interesting collection today, starting with new species discoveries and exploration of our past.

I heard on the radio today that Christopher Columbus's crew is no longer blamed for bringing syphilis back to Europe. Awesome, except that I didn't know we blamed them in the first place? Apparently Columbus wasn't without haters.


The assassin bug's methods of killing spiders is being researched. Apparently the bug has learned how to use vibrations in the web with his feelers to mimic that of small prey caught in the web. I've included a picture of this little champion who has defied the spider and actively hunts them for his main food supply.


Also, a new species of monkey was discovered in Myanmar. Scientists hope that they can talk people out of hunting them because they apparently have a very small population. Funny enough, we talked about species conservation in the class that I am TAing this past week and the question was posed, "Would you like to have to breed with your relatives in order to save your species or would you rather just live out and die?". Frankly, that's a toughy, but hopefully we've discovered this species in time to help it stand a chance. I read something like a new species is discovered every 3 days in the Amazon? Incredible.

Indonesia continues to get pounded as the death toll comes in from the tsunami that occurred at nearly the same time as the volcanic eruption (in different places obviously). They are in definite need of help. It seems like they never get enough warning for those tsunamis.

Gorbachev had a lot of interesting things to say in his interview with the BBC. If you read one thing in this blog, check out this article.

Finally, from the entertainment district. Kaitlin was telling me last night that even for people to visit the Hobbiton grounds in New Zealand, they must pay $70. I can't believe that people would even pay near that price but she says it's always busy. Well, that's not bound to end anytime soon as the Hobbit will for sure be filmed there over the next two years.

USEF Stallion Magazine (duplicate post)

USEF is publishing a stallion-oriented magazine edition and to get people started on advertising within their magazine, they used this ad? Honestly the idea of a sire type magazine for horses isn't something new and is a valuable help to those who are doing a lot of shopping for their breeding program. Yet, how do you expect them to take you seriously or for the advertisers to take you seriously with an ad like this? Of course, if you are interested then contact advertising at the USEF.

If you haven't recently, check out the things I've put up on my ag blog and follow the links. You won't be disappointed. I'm also in need of followers for both so if you are reading this often, just select the "follow this blog" button in the right hand corner of the blog and follow the instructions to receive updates and save you the time of clicking.

Randoms

For your entertainment and education today. I use the word entertainment lightly since many of these aren't really funny.

Paul, the Octopus that called the winners of the World Cup games has died. This octopus lived quite the celebrity lifestyle and even had an agent.

A volcano erupted in Indonesia very early this morning. It's tragic to read about the sorrow and panic that these people suffered, but I have to wonder, if you read the article where the guy says the mountain grumbled all night, why were these people still there? It's like so many other volcano accidents. The people around it when it goes off are either too ignorant of the obvious warning signs or too curious about the seismic activity.

Another woman is convicted of giving birth to babies and killing them, then saving their bodies in coolers and hiding them in her house. Are you kidding me? And the most interesting charge she's accused of: abuse-of-corpse. I didn't even know that was a charge but there is definitely something very wrong with a woman who saves the bodies of her live-born babies after killing them.

Props to Ford Motor Company as their profits continue to rise, without even getting bailed out like Chrysler. Henry would be proud of you and so is the guy who just drove his pickup truck for 1,000,000 miles.

And finally, remember. Your cat can really take a tough time during Halloween. Use the tips to keep life safe and happy for your cat as you celebrate ghoulishness.

I'm off for now. Tornado warnings are blaring as this storm cell whips past.

Randoms

To entertain you on the randomness of my mind, I'll take you through these as I read them this morning. I'm trying to lift my brain out of the dump after I ran out of time on another biochem quiz.

My igoogle today thought it was top priority to tell me about a nuclear submarine running aground in Scotland. Oddly enough, the HMS Astute's crew didn't seem to realize they were in shallow water. If you scroll down to the first video you can listen to some entertaining Scottish accent as the guy describes what "ee's seein' outsigh 'is 'ouse".


I figured I'd be putting together a blog this morning so I signed in and scrolled my Dashboard. Unfortunately nobody else seemed determined to waste their time last night so I was short on blogs to read and switched to recommended blogs of the day. That's when I stumbled upon this delicious looking apple cake recipe. I don't even like cake but this looks like the texture won't be similar and I think I could eat this for dessert and breakfast on the following day.

Facebook was also empty and boring. Pretty much the only posts were about people's night out last night and since I already heard enough gossip about people's nights out last night in biochem this morning I was pretty burned out on it. Instead I scrolled through BBC news and read all about how the French snuck in and broke the protest at one of the refineries because they were all shut down at this point. It's inconceivable to me that all these people are complaining about having to work a couple of extra years. And then the guy goes on to talk about this being a democracy and it's failing. Well, I don't know the last time France really looked like a democracy. Don't fool yourselves folks. And who ever heard about fairness towards strikers. Honestly, you're trying to put a country on its knees, who's got a right to talk about fairness here?

Then I noticed a soccer section and the World Cup in me flared up for just a minute. Ireland isn't the only place people get killed over soccer, I guess they had some issues in Italy this past week with overzealous fans. It makes the Crew sound even more boring than they already seem. And all over a 0-0 draw? It's Liverpool for goodness sakes people, not like a Man Utd at Barcelona.

I had some more controversial news as well, but it's best you read for yourself about how the US is spending their deficit to try and buy out their friends overseas.

Shame on Del Monte...

...for lying to me about how many servings of fruit your fruit naturals provide. 1 cup of 100% juice is a serving of fruit. 1 cup of fresh fruit is also a serving of fruit. But you can't convince me that in 1 cup of plastic you have featured both a cup of 100% juice and a cup of fruit. I'm not stupid and I know it's impossible to fit 2 cups into the same container, especially when a liquid cup is 8 oz., and this container is only 7! The nutrition facts clearly indicate on the back that there are 2 servings of fruit in the container but the food pyramid argues otherwise. I totally wouldn't have even noticed but I was bored and reading the back of the container and initially surprised that they would list 2 servings in an individually packed container.

For the record, these are really good though. I highly recommend buying them.

Christine O'Donnell

This woman has gathered a lot of attention in the candidates races, everything from Wolf Blitzer on CNN to Stephen Colbert on his report, mostly for this ad. For example (and entertainment), check out this SNL parody. And for the record, I can see where people found those accusations worth digging up.

However, it was what she said in the Youtube video that I saw today which shocked me the most. I absolutely agreed with her standing on allowing schools to teach whatever theory of the origins of life that they want, holding that a religious belief being represented in school is not the same as being forced down a kid's throat. Maybe a little more explanation of multiple theories would lead children to be better informed and equipped for the questions that they will encounter in the future. In my opinion this is not a violation of separation of church and state, but O'Donnell hadn't thought that far. She apparently didn't even know that there was an amendment about separation of church and state. Either that or she got too caught up in the debate. (Watch this video for the first half, you can ditch it after that).

Traffic

Would someone like to explain to me how I can spend 20 minutes going a mile on 23 S, and then traffic suddenly breaks and I miraculously make it onto OSU main campus in just 10 more minutes? It's unbelievable to me how much time I wasted just getting onto the highway which then was ironically not stop and go traffic for the first time in a couple of weeks. I think more people ought to be forced into remedial driving courses so that they can learn again how to follow signs, keep respectful distances and go in the right directions. If they do these things then it will work out way better than the current Columbus driving standard. We can't teach people to be courteous but we can at least teach them how to pretend to be intelligent during their commute.

BBC compilation

The news today is a pretty wild assortment on my Mozilla BBC feed. Everything from French oil blockades to prisoners in Iran who will be tried for espionage after they allegedly crossed the border whilst hiking in Iraq. Why were they hiking in Iraq in the first place? It's amazing how much comes up in a week that I never would hear about on my local news or CNN.

Drug war news in Mexico continue with the capture of the largest stash of marijuana yet confiscated in Mexico. Again I uphold that if we just legalized and then taxed it, prohibiting its use in vehicles or on the job, the capitalist market in the US would solve this problem on its own.

Also, there is a gene identified that allegedly contributes to faster drunkenness. My bet is that they found it in Asia, but what's more important is that they think it could be a possible preventative drug in the future to help people react badly to alcohol and thus prevent alcoholism. Crazy stuff and I think it's kinda like Scotland's proposed ban on smoking in cars. Isn't enough, enough? To me, a ban on smoking in cars would be a serious breach of freedom of choice but I also don't live in Scotland. I do think that's something we're headed to as we try to socialize medicine. Socialized medicine will turn our medical treatment into a kind of technology warranty. If you don't take care of things in proper order and let specific people help you then the warranty or in this case your medical coverage is void. We can't expect to be allowed to make our own choices if socialized medicine comes to pass because people will be furious about being taxed to pay for someone else's poor life choices.

All for now, I'm headed off to lunch.

ODA Civil Penalties for Welfare Violations (duplicate post)

The Ohio Livestock Care Standards Board met and finished the released draft of their proposed civil penalties for livestock neglect and abuse. I read through the draft and am impressed by the timeliness of this released document as well as the increased stringency of the proposed fines and punishment. Hopefully these proposed penalties will be enough to deter those farmers who potentially would give a bad name to the rest of farmers doing a good job of caring for their animals in Ohio.

Rough morning

Thank God for Mom answering her phone this morning. If she hadn't my bad morning would've gotten so much worse. Mom was my only option for a ride down to campus at 7 this morning so that I could attempt to make it to the biochem exam that I have been studying all week for. Despite being 15 minutes late for the exam, I was able to finish as well as I could and then get back to the grad office to sort out what to do with my car.

I haven't heard yet the exact damage on Mabel, but I do know from Mom when the tow truck arrived that the left tie-rod was entirely broken. For those of you who remember my nightmarish driving conditions this past winter through 2 major winter storms, it's a good guess that the main damage to the car occurred the night I was sliding and correcting for ice as I flew backwards down the highway after a spin-out. I'm just glad that I was able to make it home last night and that this morning I wasn't left stranded somewhere besides the comfort of home. Thanks Mom for picking me up!

Grad Life

I thought I'd talk a bit about my life in the grad office. I know it's probably not my best choice to blog out my frustrations where the people I'm frustrated with can read them, unless of course what I say in print I would be willing to say to their face.

Basically, there a few people I think are really great people, and I like them a lot. Then there are definitely 2 people I can't stand at this point. Kill this morning was a combination of those as well. It's frustrating to be treated like a child and yelled at by a professional peer when I didn't do anything wrong. This is beyond a simple misunderstanding because it was treated as more than that. Approach a person with animosity and don't expect them to be your friend long. Approach someone who bailed your project out all summer long and you're not likely to get a smile out of me again unless you trip and fall on your face. And to top that one out, I was doing exactly what every other better-trained worker than myself had been doing and continued doing after you tried to be an ass and make and example of me.

This frustration also goes toward the person who thought they needed to call and interrogate me last night about their assumption that turned out to be falsely based on greed and poor life choices. It was cool when you were trying to be adult and address your concerns and rectify your misunderstandings. But when you turned it into a session of asking the same question multiple times and trash-talking other people who used to appear important to you, it was way out of hand. Move on, get over yourself and try to find meaningful relationships among the ones who still treat you with respect, such as what I've tried to show you.

On that happy note. I've gotta head out to work and study for Biochem. If you want a happier blog entry, go to the one immediately chronologically prior to this.

Go State!

No more needs said, but watch this. :) If you are a Michigan fan, there is no pick me up in this blog entry. If you're Mike Hart... well, I can't really tell you what to do.

Yeo Valley Farms

Props to these guys for their unique way of communicating their care for their animals.

Study break

In case you wondered if I am taking graduate school seriously yet, you would be happy to know that I have done nothing with my spare time tonight except study. I'm blogging right now just to freshen my mind and wake up before I go to reading 20 pages of biochem. Of course, this will have to change because I have a few thank yous to send out, a zucchini that desperately needs shredded before Amanda revokes its residency privileges and some salivettes to return to school, but I decided that I really needed to focus on this stuff tonight to get a better start on the Friday midterm. I am a strict non-believer in rote memorization as the primary source of education and understanding of materials, but I don't get a choice so it's back to work I go. I can say that this is one of the more reputable wikipedia pages I've dealt with in the recent past.

Ron Paul...

... has a tendency to make himself sound like a moron sometimes, but I still appreciate his point of view. I have no intention of letting this place become a country that always is coming up with new ways to tell me about how I should live my life. Seriously, raw milk? If people want to buy that, then why can't we just make sure they are warned about what they will be taking in? If you want rules, then go back over the ocean where we came from before.

Michigan State Spartans

I don't even need to say anything to tell you that I am thoroughly excited about my Spartans being up to #13 in the National polls. It was probably more thrilling to get the text updates amidst a mixed crowd at the wedding in Gull Lake. We have won every important game this year. It's not to say that I wouldn't love to see MSU in the Rose Bowl this year, but I set the same standards every year and they have met them. Way to go guys!

Speaking of the wedding, it was very strange to be away from Amanda and at a wedding by myself. Fortunately for me I wasn't actually by myself but instead went with Mom and Katherine for a good old family-style roadtrip. I think I'm going to working off the Combo's and wedding meal all week but I enjoyed going up there and the area around the lake was absolutely gorgeous. Congratulations to Elizabeth and Shawn and you two couldn't have had a better day for a wedding.

We stopped to see a market heifer on the way up to the wedding and that has gotten the cattle sale bug in me. Hopefully Jacob will be able to find what he is looking for and we will be able to help him do his best in the projects for next year. Every year we are close and it'd be nice to win the steer show while it is still competitive. Andy's blog featured this song this week and so I just thought I would include it here. It's just a small part of my background music today as I try to get caught up and back into gear for another week of school. My first biochem exam is this Friday and I'm nervous to be taking a test again; I'm out of practice.

Guayaberas?

For those of you who didn't know that a guayabera was a white linen, long-sleeved shirt, you can tell me that so I don't think I'm the only ignorant person on the face of the planet. I had no idea what it was but I soon will never forget because it is now the official dress garment of the Cuban government. Whoever heard of a law where you had to wear certain clothes?

Just sitting

This morning we had harvest for 30 pigs here on campus. While this overlapped with my 11 am class that I would've been occupied by otherwise, it also took up a lot of my morning considering that we started at 6.00 am this morning. I like getting up early in the morning and my time working odd hours with Marcus was amazing. But what you have to do in that case is find a time for a warm afternoon catnap. What I don't like is the long day without any kind of rest. My new plan for this afternoon was to take a nap, but my position as a TA in a 2.30 recitation won out and I will be headed to the class shortly. If any of you expect to find me this evening, you will find me back here at Animal Sciences helping host the Fayette County 4-H group as they come in for a carcass show regarding the animals they had us harvest on Tuesday.

Speaking of 2 harvests in the same week I am sharply reminded of something my dad said a couple of years ago. I often have these sudden and short-lived urges to work out and build up my muscles. Exercise in the form of walking, running, basketball and biking are things that I have no trouble picking up at any time or getting into the habit of doing. However, in the case of actual muscle building, I usually don't last a week. Well, a couple of years ago Dad made the comment that some of the strongest people arre those that work in a slaughter facility or as butchers. He claimed this was because of the workload and how it was also built around a week so that different muscle exercise was performed each day.

Now that I am aching all over from the second harvest in a week, I am realizing just how right he was. The work that we do, even when I'm only moving carcasses down the rail (pushing or pulling weight) is very taxing and I am not in the kind of shape that I should be in to do this twice in a week. Tuesday was difficult, but the repeat on Thursday has pushed my muscles to a point where they complain to me when I try to drink a bottle of water. This is hard work, and good work. When I was asked today by one of the grad students today if this was what I thought I'd be doing in my Masters program, I said "Yes." I am learning new things every day and starting to fit into the work so that I don't feel uncomfortably out of place every day now. It's good to be challenged again, both physically and mentally.

Although my commentary on the following links will be limited, they are totally worth the viewing. Check them out and have a great day!

First off, if you know anything about Google maps, you've probably tried creeping on your house and seeing what you were doing when they took the image for their website. If you haven't, just take my word for it that they are real photos and I can even tell when they update them because the model or position of cars will change at our house. Well, apparently in Brazil, the images were banned after this happened.


Hungary continues to pollute the earth, even as we're still trying to sort out who we really are going to get away with scapegoating for the BP spill.

Finally, in case you haven't heard it often enough in recent news, here's the Daily Show's take on the non-witch GOP candidate.

I love Pandora radio and my ACDC channel has been one of the best choices I've made regarding my homework and project productivity.

Reds Playoffs

I'm off to be busy and productive, but I wanted to just put a little shout out the Reds today. Congratulations to you, and I am with many Ohioans who will be cheering you on. I'm not a fairweather Reds fan. No, I'd probably not call myself a Reds fan at all, but I'm very excited that they have been able to get this far and it would mean a lot for a major Ohio team other than the Buckeyes and the Crew to do something great in their respective sports league. No offense Buckeyes, but you're always great, and nobody takes the Crew seriously.

I will be watching tonight, just as I was when you clenched the playoff berth.

News update

Just to make sure that you've gotten all of the headlines from today, I'll start off with a really classy entry. I'm not trying to make light of a serious situation here, but when people talk about being burned by the mud flowing through their house, wouldn't you figure they'd wonder why they lived there? I'm just shocked by the chemical spill in Hungary and the chain of command isn't expected to take any of the blame for it. Apparently they aren't as lawsuit-crazy there as we are, otherwise they'd be blaming someone for it already.



Next, I can't imagine why you would want to admit that your government trained Pashmir militants, but apparently that's what Der Spiegel was told. Another interesting topic addressed in the interview was former Pakastani president Musharraf's use of facebook and his effort to raise money for his people after the flood. Interesting interview.

On a lighter note, an author's glasses were stolen and then a helicopter used to chase down the suspect who held such glasses ransom for 100.000 pounds. Isn't that a ridiculously high price for the glasses? I would've just made the guy look like a fool by buying a new pair. Just me, though.

Duplicate Post (Commenting)

Occasionally, I post something worth duplicating onto another blog. This would be one instance and to spare you the extra click, you can read today's agblog entry here...


In my opinion, it is commenting on other people's work and ideas that both challenges and strengthens their positions and arguments. Additionally it is through these challenges that other people are led to make up their own minds about critical issues in the world around us. This leads to a two-fold point on commenting on blogs.

Firstly, it is absolutely vital to comment only with true facts. Too many times there are extremists on either side of the issue who let their feelings get the better of them and then they end up just spouting off a bunch of over-exaggerations which serve only to promote greater intellectual chaos among the new faces to a debate. This is not helpful and can often be even worse than the obvious falsities promoted by extremists in their blogs to start with. If you can't make a point with sure facts and strong arguments, then please don't waste my time by moving your mouth or typing a lot.

Secondly, censored comments have a good ideal at their origin. However, if you over-censor comments such as the Making Hay blog does, then it destroys the point of your article in the first place, that is, if you were actually interested in debate. However, both Wayne Pacelle and Gene Baur have proven time and again that they are not truly interested in debate. It seems that they would rather force their opinion down the throats of intelligent people by first mis-educating the masses about the "truths" that they would like to share about animal agriculture. Is there truth to what they say? Sure, there is some truth to what they say, but not enough.

There must always be truth to something that people will believe, but in a radical rights movement such as theirs, misleading information will propagate their position much quicker and easier than debating facts. The facts would lead too many people to be moderates, thus causing too many people to be willing to work things out between groups. Instead, Pacelle, Baur, and their colleagues use their propaganda to trick people into a much faster ideological movement. The thing about movements is that they run out of time and energy. If you can't find something new to lie about, then you will finally run out of steam. What's amazing is how good HSUS and their groupies have been about coming up with misinformation to keep their groups on the move.

This is where I get back to my second point on commenting. If you have to go to the effort to block my IP address from even loading up the comment option on your blog, doesn't that mean you're scared to discuss the issue with me? It was bad enough when you deleted my comments during the censoring phase, but now you've cut straight to the greater efficiency and stopped me from being able to even submit my comments in the first place.

It's a shame that you're scared of people seeing the other side of an issue. People are smart enough to think for themselves; you don't need to be doing that for them. What's even more shameful is your blatant fear of my comments which have been posted here in my blogs for people to see since they would never be published on your blog. There is no foul language or hate for your organization proposed in my comments; I've even bordered on over-conciliation at times. Yet, you continue to dodge the obviously less-experienced and thus poorer equipped debater of the two of us.

If you're too scared to speak up for what you "believe in", then you'd better find a new cause to support.

Boise State falls to #4

It took a lot of debate for my headline today, but out of all the top 25 NCAA rankings shake-ups from this weekend, I think that one is the biggest. I'm not going to lie, it's more irritating to me to have Kellen Moore as a Heisman candidate than it is for his team to be so overrated, but if you look at the only 2 teams of rank they've beaten and their track records, BSU just isn't that impressive. Sure, they might have a great team, but they need to schedule more difficult games or get into a better conference if they really want to be taken seriously. They perform a thriller every week against their opponents, but I want to see them perform a thriller against a good team.

The same goes for the Buckeyes, but I still hold that Tressel is limiting the team for now. I'm not going to be as open in my criticism of Tressel though. He is a great coach who knows exactly what he's doing. I can't blame him for conservative play call in the Illinois game this weekend. If I had Pryor making mistakes and getting hurt, I'd probably go to my guaranteed win too. Was it pretty? Of course it wasn't pretty but it got the job done and in a game where your star is struggling, you can't wow everyone; you just need to escape with the win and have an educational experience.

And then there's the Spartans. Going into their away rivalry at U of M, I will be breaking out Spartan green all this week as we prepare for a #17 at #18 match-up. Even more difficult for me will be the Baumgart wedding as I sit there and miss the big game. No amount of dvr will be able to compensate for the internal agony I will suffer. Now's the day when I wish for a smart phone to watch the game under the table, almost.

On a totally different note. The weather has taken a turn for the cold today and I am finally able to break out all of my favorite cool weather clothes. Living in Michigan has prepared me well for this time of year.

Finally, if anyone is interested in this new type of dating, we are more than willing to host you in our garden.

Why I love the Columbus Zoo

Amanda and I went to the Columbus Zoo on Saturday. I had previously planned with Mom to go with her, Amanda, and Jacob for my birthday and after calling Mom to tell her about how awesome the new polar bear exhibit was I realized that in all the hullabaloo that surrounded this week's crazy schedule, I had totally forgotten to figure out the zoo time with Mom. Instead, Amanda and I went alone (Dear Mom, we are still going, and once again I'm sorry I forgot.). This in itself was also good because as a newly married couple we are very short on alone time. Between her job and our school, we haven't gotten much time to do all the things we thought we'd get to do once we were married like weekends in or evening walks to enjoy the sunset. Instead we've been just taking each day at a time and supporting each other through what we call "life".

We didn't spend a whole lot of time at the zoo due to the necessity of getting back to see the Buckeyes pull off the victory over Illinois in what is always a conference struggle for OSU and then Liz, Chris and Jeremy came over to see the Spartans pull off a great and unexpected win vs. Wisconsin. I can't even believe that MSU is now 5-0, and it happened the first year that I wasn't there as a student.

As you'll be able to see from a few pictures I'm putting at the end of this blog, the new polar bear exhibit consists of a much more natural-appearing habitat for the animals. The brown bears are moved into this exhibit with a more expansive pen and a waterfall into a fish pond. The polar bear exhibit is similar but with a fun new twist. Visitors can go underwater and watch the polar bears as they swim around. Very few visits to the zoo can rival Amanda and I standing underneath the water exhibit, looking up at the polar bear swimming over us. I'm posting the picture and definitely plan to enter it in next year's county fair. I absolutely love it, and witnessing the beauty of God's creation is exactly why I love the Columbus Zoo. Thanks Amanda for going with me this Saturday! :)

Whale breathalyzer...

This will be brief because we're headed off to the zoo. When we get back I'll upload fun pictures of the new polar bear exhibit and such, but we have to beat the rain, so we're headed out shortly.

First, a picture from Kansas State this week as a huge T-storm front moved in on their game. The storm fronts out there are so phenomenal.

Secondly, the week in pictures link at weather.com. Pretty crazy pictures this week of all the rain in NC.

Lastly, this guy made a breathalyzer for whales. And yes, it really is that fantastic.

No homework and Fantasy Football

I know this sounds crazy, but I don't have any homework to do this weekend. Don't be fooled, this doesn't mean I don't have homework; it just means that I've spent the week working hard (mostly) and so I am ahead in my reading and all my homework so that I have nothing to do this weekend except spend time with Amanda watching OSU and MSU (and NCState) as they enter serious conference play.

Speaking of Amanda, she's sleeping here beside me right now. Yeah, welcome to the typical Friday night in married life. She's been up since 5 am, yet I have not, so I'm spending the time blogging while she's catching the z's that I already got in the early morning hours before my biochem quiz. And to be totally honest, I love the married life. Everyone's always asking me how it is, and believe me, it's not perfect but I wouldn't have it any other way. This is real life and after all those dating relationships where I tried to "play" married and failed out, I finally feel like this all just fits together. Good thing too since this is the real deal, eh? We just have a really good understanding of how we function together and although every day brings something new, there is nothing we can't face together. I think she's fantastic.


My picture of the day is from the flooding along the east coast of the US. Scrolling through some of the pictures can have quite an effect on you. Keep these people in your prayers along with those in C. America as they struggle to deal with too much of a good thing right now.

The original reason that I planned to blog tonight was about Fantasy Football. Guys, if you do this stuff you're way better than me and you'll probably laugh at how terrible I am. Girls, this whole thing's really not that big of a deal and if I knew anything about football it wouldn't take much time at all to underachieve as poorly as I have this year. Then again, that statement holds true for 2 years now. At least this year I remembered I had a team and I've logged in 3 out of 4 weeks so far to update my players and move players around. My biggest mistake of the year was to draft Brett Favre. I should've known better; Dani always hated him so much, but I had it set on auto-pick and when I got back at the end of the weekend I felt pretty good about having such a legendary star so I kept him. Worst mistake of my year thus far, that's for sure. Luckily I picked up Mike Nugent and Michael Vick who somehow got dropped by someone else (somebody who probably already kicked my pants off in a match) and so my team shows signs of recovery for the rest of the season. Let's see if I can turn 0-2-1 (0 wins, 2 losses, 1 tie) into a 0.500 season.

For those of you who haven't played Fantasy Football before, I just want to give you the short breakdown on how this all works. First, you'll have a team administrator. If you haven't played before, this isn't likely to be you. Instead you'll probably receive an invite from someone who more than likely heard at work that you were the easy person to screw into last place in a fake football league. Your story might differ some from that but mine isn't far off the mark. Once you sign into an account after creating the account you'll have to look at the rule. It's not too hard to find any of this stuff, but for me understanding the rules and points systems was a little too difficult. Skip the points scoring and just remember that the better players will get you more points. Your points are based on their performance each week and you'll be matched up against someone else. Whoever scores the most points wins so you want good players.

You might be saying, "Sure, that's great. I'd love to find good players but I don't know how to find them." My rule of thumb is to let it auto-pick based on preferences I set for positions. I choose for it to pick a certain position first on my turn (best available) and the computer system will figure out my best option for me. If you're stuck and have to do a live draft, just do a little scouting from last year for a spreadsheet on leaders among the NFL for each position. It's a good bet that if they were good last year, they'll be worth thinking about this year.

Once you have your team you'll be able to shuffle players around each week from the extras you have on the bench to the ones that you have starting. Each week you need to consider if any of your players have a bye (where they won't be playing to earn you any points) or if they are injured or if they are likely to have a good game or a bad game that week. Don't over-analyze this. In truth, your big know-it-all football friends probably just watch more ESPN than you do and don't know anything about the game either except what they've heard from someone else. If you don't have a sports geek to give you the inside scoop then just either go with what you can read about in a short summary article online (EPSN's Fantasy even tells you their predictions) or go with your gut feeling. Most importantly, if you have any pride, then don't do this, but if you're in it for the fun then just go for exactly that. As long as you're having fun, then who cares if half your team hasn't scored all summer? Heck, one of my guys wasn't even starting and I still had him in the lineup even though he obviously wasn't helping me out any.

I hope this gave you a brief explanation of what seems to occupy everyone's time during the week. Next time they tell you you oughta join them, think twice before you say yes. Otherwise you end up like me - fighting for dear life to survive in a league where I don't stand a chance. Good luck and have a nice night!