Fantasy Football

Some of my friends over at the Audiobuzzed Podcast have had a Fantasy Football League for a couple years and this year I have joined them. While I may have participated in a few football pools in the past (to amazing failure) I have never participated in a Fantasy Football League before. I have never been someone that pays much attention to statistics in football. Every time I would try to use the numbers to predict the winner of a game it never worked out. I did far better either picking alphabetically or based on the match-up of the mascots.

I'm actually excited about football season this year now. When I was a kid I loved to watch the 49er's play every week. It was the height of the Joe Montana years and the start of the Steve Young years. How could you not love to watch the amazing action? But then with coaches retiring, quitting, or getting fired every few years and the whole question of ownership of the team happening, the team went in to a deep downward spiral. They soon could not win. Random street gangs would tease the players and play keep away with the team ball. Sad times had fallen on San Francisco and I just lost interest. I'd still watch a game every now and again. When I got an HDTV I watched a lot more football because it was so cool to be able to see blades of grass on the field.

I'm excited to see how this season goes now. Since I have players from so many teams I think I will be watching a lot of football just to see how they do. Do I need to bench a player? Do I have any players on my team that I think might be terrorist sleeper agents? When exactly do dragons, orcs, gnomes, and elves come into this? So far its a lot more Football than Fantasy.

Well if you have any tips for what I should watch out for, let me know. I need to go read these scouting reports on my players. Wow, this guy pays way too much for his cell phone, but his girlfriend is cute. I wonder what the wife thinks about her.

{Originally posted to bizarreramblings.wordpress.com on September 7, 2010}

The Internet Amazes Even Me Sometimes

I want to say congratulations to Mur Lafferty and her "little book that could" Playing For Keeps. She managed to get her book to the #16 place on Amazon.com today in its first day of release. If the #15 book wasn't about Barak Obama who knows how high it might have gone.

The most interesting thing about this is that I would guess that most of the people that bought the book already knew the story. Mur first released PFK as a free podcast novel and then as a free PDF file. She did have it available from a print on demand publisher, but now its available from Amazon and other booksellers. It could end up in airport giftshops (well only if the world is that lucky).

I came late to the show. I have had the podcast waiting for me to listen to for a while. As usual though life has gotten in the way and I have just left it sitting. Over the last couple days though I have had time to read the PDF. I read the whole thing in basically 2 sittings. I just could not put it down.

Thank you Internet for making Playing For Keeps a huge success.