Seahawks! Two excellent defensive games in a row with enough offense to win. I’ll take it. The road doesn’t get any easier but these last two wins were critical and they now control their own destiny. This weekend they will be on the road in Philly. I’ve been making big points off the Philly defense this season so we’ll see how the “meh” Seahawks offense stacks up.
In our league, we had another very high-scoring week. Tim has locked in a playoff spot, but everything else is up for grabs. You couldn’t script this final week much better. There are four teams who basically can win and make it into the playoffs but are in jeopardy if they lose and none of them play against each other. Every game in our league is critical for determining the playoffs! Austin, Jim, Logan and I all still have a pretty equal chance to grab the final three spots. Since none of us play each other, there are a lot of possibilities. Here’s how it works out:
- Ben – Win and I’m in. Lose and I need one of the other guys to lose OR I need to have more total points than one of them (unlikely but possible)
- Austin, Jim and Logan – If only two of these guys win, those two will make it. If all three win, one of them needs me to lose so they all make it if they have more points than me. Everyone except Logan is pretty much a lock for winning the total points tiebreaker.
Austin and Jim look pretty good because of their high point totals. The last playoff spot is definitely up for grabs between Logan and me, and I have a slight edge since I don’t need the tiebreaker if I win this week. But then again, I have a much tougher game ahead of me than Logan does. It’s too close to call… just the way I like it!
The power rankings keep Austin on top while Jim and I swapped places between second and fifth. This aligns with what I’ve been saying for weeks: watch out for Austin. He started slow but since week 5 he has been averaging more than 10 points more than anyone else in the league! This week he could have had over 180 points if he started his optimal roster.
- Austin (–)
- Ben (
3) - Logan (–)
- Tim (–)
Now on to the weekly awards.
- Highest Team Score
- This Week: I had 149.41
- Season: In week 10, Tim had 184.06
- All-Time: In 2013, Tim had 195.50
- Lowest Team Score
- This Week: Jim had 95.37
- Season: In Week 3, Luke had 55.04
- All-Time: In 2011, Luke had 47.01
- Biggest Blowout
- This Week: I beat Dad by 39.57 on his birthday. How’s that for a present?
- Season: In week 8, Austin beat Dad by 103.48
- All-Time: In 2010, Luke beat Andy by 113.02
- Closest Win
- This Week: Austin beat Andy by 19.12
- Season: In Week 2, Austin beat Ben by 1.7
- All-Time: In 2012, Jim beat Ben by 0.12
- Highest Scoring Player
- This Week: Ryan Fitzpatrick had 51.32 as a free agent! He’s only owned in 8% of Yahoo fantasy leagues.
- Season: In Week 8, Ben Roethlisberger had 56.78 for Dad
- All-Time: In 2013, Peyton Manning scored 60.28 for Andy
- Longest Winning Streaks:
- Active: Ben has a 5 game winning streak.
- Season: Jim, Tim and Ben had a 5 game winning streak
- All-Time: In 2011, Micah had an 8 game winning streak
- Longest Losing Streaks:
- Active: Andy has a 3 game losing streaks
- Season: Dad, Andy and Luke had 4 game losing streaks
- All-Time: In 2011, Kyle had a 14 game losing streak
This is a personal blog and it’s almost entirely a hobby so it makes sense that I never ask for donations or show banner ads. That being said, it’s not free. I added an Amazon.com link to the right hand side of the page. If you are planning to buy something at Amazon, consider clicking 
I wrote previously about my 
Verizon still hasn’t released an update for the HTC 8x to push it to Windows Phone 8.1 that came out earlier this summer. The latest promise was October but that obviously still hasn’t happened. The Microsoft Band only works with 8.1 and above (and Android and iOS too) so I decided to take the plunge and manually update my phone. It’s not supported, voids your warranty, etc so do this at your own risk. I chose to update my phone but didn’t touch Tyla’s. Thankfully it has worked ok. This was my first real experience with with 8.1 so here are my thoughts after a couple weeks:
Thanksgiving seems like a good time to give an update on our Little Man who isn’t so little anymore. Elijah is now 17 months old. When he’s awake, he’s jabbering almost non-stop. We can’t understand 99% of what he’s saying but that doesn’t deter him. We can pick out a few words like woof, car, quack, daddy, etc. His best one is probably “thank you.” He’s really gotten the hang of this and even says it at the appropriate times. For example, if you take him to the grocery store, he says thank you every time the bagger puts a bag in our cart.
The Seahawks defense finally looked good for a solid 60 minutes. And look what happened… a victory against a tough opponent! The secondary is back and healthy and it’s a good start to a grueling end to their season. Just making the playoffs is going to take some luck so let’s start with that goal and see where they go.
3) 
I came home the other night and found out that I had a dead hard drive on my main file server. D’oh! That machine carries every one of our photos since we got a digital camera and a ton of the print photos from early in our childhood. It’s irreplaceable!
I’m proud to say that I was part of the first fan-funded television show in history! Many of you know Zane Lamprey from previous shows like Three Sheets and Drinking Made Easy. He travels around the world, learns local drinking customs and has a good time doing it. I previously wrote about his Kickstarter to fund a new TV show. His plan was to put in a bunch of his own money, raise money from fans, and then produce a TV show that he would market to networks. It was an easier sales pitch because their cost to produce the content was $0.
This was the first year of the new NASCAR playoff scheduling system. Every car still races in every race, but towards the end of the season, they start knocking people out of contention for the championship. In the last race, points are reset for the top four drivers and whoever finishes the best, wins.
More Power!
I have some very generous friends. For the front yard project, Tim and Brent loaned me their tractor, Don loaned me his Chevy 2500 diesel truck, and my neighbor Randy loaned me his dual axle dump trailer. We ran all that equipment very hard on the first Saturday of the front yard project. We moved 50-60 yards of sod and dirt in 14 loads. Each load was at least an hour round trip to a spot where Tim’s friend let us dump it for free (saving us $1500-2000!) The only catch was that getting up to the dump spot required powering straight up an extremely straight driveway towing 5-6 tons. We had to put the truck in 4 low just to make it up the hill, and man, you should have heard that diesel screaming up the hill! It was nothing that the truck couldn’t handle, but it was pretty impressive.
On the final run, Tim stuck his phone out the window to record it. Of course the video doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. The hill looks way steeper in person. Before you watch it, picture that you’re driving $50-60K worth of somebody else’s equipment on somebody else’s property and if you slide back down the hill you’re going straight through somebody else’s house into the river. No pressure.