Month: September 2019

While not always the case, often the key to fantasy supremacy is streaming. You find the best matchups 1, maybe 2, weeks in advance and take control of your destiny by plucking waiver wire players who will be successful in those later weeks. You gotta be careful enough to keep players who are going to carry you in the meanwhile. Maybe once in a while it is okay to sacrifice a win, but the best of the streamers have it planned out so they know who to grab in order to win every single round of the playoffs.

I’m planning to be that guy in multiple leagues.

The problem I face in my big money league is a failure to fully understand the point rules. Presently what I do know is how bad the Dolphins and Jets suck. I also am aware there are a handful of other teams that are worth a ton of points in general. My research this week will focus on how to convert that knowledge into wins and how to find the right players to make that happen.

Part of that conversation is an understanding that the bubble will eventually burst for some teams. I know the Ravens are nearing a burst and afterwards people will drop Ravens players. Only the bubble is a temporary construct. In the late season the Ravens players will be back to generating points. That is something I plan to advantage.

Back to the Dolphins I know, for example, that they will play the Patriots in the last week and the Patriots will likely rest people. They will also likely still rely on a tough defense and a ready run game, so I know who to grab there. On the other end of that conversation are the NY Giants who will figure things out by then and, fueled by a new starting QB, have a chance to struggle to relevancy.

These are things I plan to discuss in the coming weeks as I get a better sense of the points and how that will help things play out.

Some Thoughts:

1. Still impatiently awaiting the youth football schedule. There is a real chance these kids get to compete in Florida for a national championship. The only problem on my end is that I do not have the money to go or even send a kid.

Here is a freebie Shadowrun Character:

Call him Cluster.

He thought up the name himself. He was 10 years old and living in Pullyalup Barrens and stealing wi-fi from anyone he could. The people who did have a signal strength couldn’t afford the level of security required to protect it from someone who had half an idea of what they were doing. He knew more than half of what he was doing. The tech stuff came to him regular, the way a man instinctively knows when to stop staring at someone or the way a woman knows how to suss out danger. He had that sort of sense about the matrix. He knew how to get in and out of places from the moment he had the government jack put in. The jack was courtesy of an outreach program. Back then they still had such things and his mom cared enough to do the research and resulting paperwork to get him fitted. Hell, there weren’t more than a handful of kids on the block who even went to classes. Most just ran the streets–trying to fall in with one gang or the other.

Cluster, or Sam as they called him back then, was never outside. He knew he wasn’t made for the streets. His dad had been a soldier–at least that is what his mom said. He never knew the man. He was gone long before Sam came around. Back then his school friends called him sam-wise. They made fun of him everyday, but it was a gentle ribbing built out of friendship and misplaced envy. Sam did good in school. They did good in life. They had sports and tutors and home cooked meals. He had twenty seven miles of elevated train tracks to navigate just to show up nearly on time each morning.

What really bugged him was the dad talk. He was one of two kids that didn’t have a tidy nuclear family. Most of the rest of them had corporate parents. Nothing so glorious as mitsuhama, but corporate nonetheless. He was asian like a lot of them, so the expectations were there.

When they talked about their fathers they spoke in reverent tones with stories driven by success and upward mobility. Hiro’s dad was about to be promoted. Lisa’s dad recently received a commendation and she got to go to the ceremony. Sam wasn’t a part of that world, so he invented a way in. His dad had served overseas and then again in Chicago. He had plenty of commendations. He had a bronze star, but his mom wouldn’t let him touch it because she thought he might break it or something.

He knew enough about matrix searches to learn all he could about the military and about the things his father could have done. He learned, for example, that the army dropped bombs on Chicago during the worst of the threat. He saw the pictures. They seared their way into his psyche. Cluster Bombs.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am still quite pleased with myself for that Monday morning hulk post/pic.
2. The clicks of this computer are extremely satisfying… especially when I can go fast. However, I don’t have a feel enough for it yet to go fast without looking at the keyboard and still making errors.

I am watching a 19 yr old kid run the world’s hardest obstacle course on American Ninja Warrior. The show has an amazing following both here and in Japan (not the American version). It is part of a larger movement that includes the Spartan Race and other obstacle-based situations where people are building their lives around non-traditional sports. I think that this is becoming the very new and very social-media aged version of competition. I thin it aligns with the long rise of E-sports and takes control of the sports industry away from the few and puts it into the hands of the many much like Skating did many many years ago.

Some Thoughts:

1. Yeah, that was it. I’m flat out done with the main post tonight. I need more time to decompress. I haven’t had a lot of time and energy to do much over the last few days because I am getting sick.
2. I am also getting into the routine of the fall semester. It is a lot of busy work but I am happy.
3. Now I have not entirely gotten into the swing of daily writing again. That is the next step.
4. I need to put more focus on the words, yo.

At the start of the week I find myself thinking about fresh starts. Why can’t a Sunday represent a reset? Why can’t we look at this day as a lens into restarting everything good in our lives. Yesterday is past and informs tomorrow, but it doesn’t determine it, nes pas?

I believe that Sunday is not even part of the week per se. It is that space between weeks where you recover and rejuvenate yourself in an effort to be ready for the horror and or the weight of Monday morning.

That is my monday. But the good news is the Mountain rarely crushes me, and I have not died quite yet. Instead I feel more and more ready for such feats because Sunday makes it so.

Some Thoughts:

1. I am starting this at the end so that I have a clear sense of whether or not the glitch is fixed. This way anything that scrolls off the screen is less guess work and more stuff actually working.
2. Bad moments this week in technology. Specifically the moments were about laziness with technology and certain kids of mine being completely unwilling to learn anything new out of perhaps sheer laziness or just never having to move outside of their comfort zone before. This is just a part of the whole parenting paradigm I gotta get used to.
3. You know I am not writing enough when I miss telling stories.
4. Super excited about the upcoming youth football season. This is the first time my tiniest talislegger has had a team around him that can compete at a high level. I can usually count the number of players with talent on one hand with fingers to spare. We start 7 legit players with 3 more behind them that are solid. This of course means we have holes….
5. Turns out the problem with trhe computer is not the computer or the interface but a specific app within wordpress called wp2social auto publish. I don’t even use the thing and it is making my life hard. Be gone, foul app!

I wanted to do a 10 minute story, but last night’s tech issues had me pretty shook. See, I kept having to reload the page in order to get the words to scroll down. Part of the problem, I think, is the new way the layout propagates text boxes. It separates text into a new box after each click on the return button. I like to play with my paragraphs, so it caused me quite the headache yesterday and ate up a fair amount of the time I had on page. I’m going to feed the problem today by talking about it; spending my time up the way I lost it last time but far more willingly. Besides, I’ve noticed that I stumble through tech nightmares a lot faster if I vocalize the problem. In this case the problem is how to maintain a sense of form without applying paragraphs. <about to hit return here so wish me luck>

In other words, no ‘some thoughts section’ and perhaps no text at all past the next six sentences or so. In that time I can tell you what a great time I am having. Beyond a ton of grading I get to go out with my girl, watch the Iowa v. Iowa State game, and even take a nap should time allow. I certainly need the last one, because last night was about getting these younger boys cleaned up. I’m tired and still managing a ton of hopefulness. It is going to be a good day.

I have new tech that I don’t know how to use. I’ve been upgraded to a very shiny and relatively fast macbook that has ultra-responsive glow in the dark keys but lacks the light up decal I’ve become familiar with. The decal is not much of a loss beyond an inability to make the Black Panther’s eyes light up when I open the thing, but the panther is not going to be used this time. I do not know how I plan to decorate the thing, only that I do plan to decorate the thing.

What has me most put off about this new tech is the lack of any ports I am familiar with. Mac has left me with these two oddly shaped ports, which fit only the charger I own. I picked up an adapter to make the thing resemble a computer of my era but that is bulky. Why do they change the ports so often? To make money. It is the same reason there are 8 versions of MLA format alone.

I am trying to get used to how to type on this and it has led to some very satisfying clicking sounds and more errors than I care to recount. Everything will be slower for a while.

Meanwhile I am supposed to be writing, and somehow that is the one thing that got pushed to the back of my plate

He put her on the table at first. It was a place she could be seen; observed in a way that made her more than just a thing but a part of the fabric of things. She was a representation. She’d sit next to the lamp his mother left him in the will, yellow light casting down on her in the pale blue room. He never worried if she fell, because she was too beautiful to fall. Besides, the shag carpet would catch her. Fiber fingers would reach up and stop her fall because she was as much of things as they were.

He didn’t like dolls. He’d always been taught to hate such delicate things, but delicate was what appealed to him. She was so different and so profoundly special and having her reminded him that there could be beautiful things in his world. There could be things that weren’t violent and angry and filthy and full of darkness. She was painted white and glowed faintly in the light. He thought perhaps she was one of those Russian style of dolls with more inside, but he was afraid to open her; too afraid to shake her to find out…

Some Thoughts:

1. This porcelain doll idea came to me the other day in the place of all thoughts (and all porcelain). I don’t know where I am going with any of it or if it is just what it is. It felt like the best thing to do at this moment of today.
2. Because I didn’t have anything else and I did have a moment.
3. Presently my class is listening to JJ Abrams talk about the mystery box where he talks about the soul of things. I am working on a piece that doesn’t have a soul. I think I need to find that before I get to the place where I have a stronger sense of how I want things to turn out there.
4. Maybe it doesn’t entirely matter how I want things to turn out, because stories have a life an energy of their own and they come from a place that is not of me but filtered through me in my voice and my way of interpreting reality. So in the end the story decides how it is meant to end.
5. Sounds a lot like life that way.

less than 24 hours before the start of week two games I find myself in the middle of the pack in two leagues. In the big money league I am in 6th, having defeated my week one opponent but scored an atrociously low number of points. But hey, I won! I was the #2 scorer in the family league and still lost. In fact I was blown out by the #1 scorer and quickly discovered that the league’s algorithmic indicators of success didn’t take into account just how bad some of these NFL teams really are. So now I’m #5 out of 8 in a league where there are 4 players at 1-0. It makes perfect sense. What doesn’t make sense is are the number of injuries accrued in week 1, leaving me to comb the wire.

I drafted fairly well in both leagues. So well in fact that outside of Sammy Watkins I didn’t try to pick anyone up. Caveat–I had to grab Lutz to be my kicker because I had the Colts superstar kicker and a very bad feeling. That feeling proved to be right. He went potty on the field. This tells me that my instincts, a year rested, are still sharp. This also tells me that I cannot drop anyone I have, because I am not sure what else is out there. Well, I can drop Allison (Green Bay) he isn’t doing jack this season. I just haven’t found anyone to replace him with yet. I feel like weeks 3-4 are solid waiver weeks because players start to emerge, creating a sense of opportunity for hungry teams such as mine. Bye weeks also start kicking in, so there’s that.

I’m not ready to call games as I did the last few seasons, but I will make some standard predictions. Miami will suck against NE. The Giants will rebound against a really good Bills D. Oakland and Arizona will both lose hard. Yet somehow that rookie Murray and that Raiders wideout Williams will turn in monster games.

These are the things I think. These are the things I believe. I also believe I will win in both leagues this week. No more scoring 150 and losing by 30.

Long days are often draining but these Tuesdays are often a joy. I have been enjoying the middle of the week, which is a change from normal behavior. Generally speaking T-TH is the rough section, but I’ve made adjustments to the schedule, which allow me to really focus in on the work on those days and as for class, I really have been enjoying that experience on all the days.

The secret is scaling projects. When I have a sense of what is going to happen when then I can generate a schedule around that experience, which allows me to get things done these three days. In truth, that is the best part of my schedule. Everything else is a mess, but I am working on that.

I am also working on the balance issues. I am working on giving time to the areas of importance in my life, though it never seems like I am giving enough energy to the areas that want/need it the most. Often I am maintaining. By maintaining I mean slowly grinding down to an unacceptable level. So, that is not a sustainable plan.

Some Thoughts:

1. Not a ton to say tonight about anything. I started out thinking I would do a character sketch but I haven’t really been feeling character development. This ought to mean that I sit down and do it. I will indeed do just that tomorrow.
2. Big fantasy post tomorrow too. Much to be said about the fantasy league–especially with the first season waiver wire.
3. Yeah, that is about all I have to say in this post.
4. And I still have 3 solid minutes to put down words.
5. So I suppose I will wax philosophical about the strange and interesting world of youtube. The family is talking about the phenomenon nearby. It feels like that has replaced mainstream TV for the 6-18 crowd. Anyone younger is still rocking Peppa Pig.
6. Likewise gaming is big for these kids. That and Tik Tok. The Youtube thing feels like MTVs real world with each person in the situation having their own show. So Big Brother then…
7. Okay, This is really rough. At least it is over.

Watching the Monday night football game I am reminded of how much I love the football season. I love the sport, yes, but the energy associated with football season is powerful. In general I love anything associated with energy. I recognize that in the classroom when assigning fun assignments that get them moving and talking and having fun.

Part of this idea of empathy is that good energy feeds me just as bad does. Garbage in Garbage out, I say. However, with the good energy it is less garbage than it is the rocket fuel I need to succeed. I think this is the idea behind Monsters Inc. Spoiler there, but if you have not seen the film then shame on you. Shame.

There is no shame in feasting on positive energy. There is no shame in being happy and feeling better when others are happy as well. That is why I prefer to put myself in situations where the people around me genuinely embrace joy and I try to cultivate that in myself and in my environment. On the other hands, I am constantly stuck in situations where it is the other way and I find myself crawling deeper into myself and enjoying that long lost little stick figure person inside of me that is always so happy and fills me with such joy.

So the message of tonight is this: Clamp onto the energy around you but make sure it is good energy. Be certain that energy is the kind of stuff that fills you with joy and use that joy as power to bring your heart to its truest potential, which is to cast a light on the world and make this brief existence worthwhile.

I suppose the other side of the message is to avoid the darkness, because it can swallow you whole. Avoid those who live in that dark because often the only thing to bring them joy is to pull you down with them, reminding themselves that they are right to be so dour.

They are not.