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.
DIY Dent Removal
We were carrying a box through the garage and accidentally dropped one on the Subaru. Bummer! It’s not a huge deal on an 8 year old car with lots of other dents and scratches, but since I’m hoping to trade it in some day, I thought it would be nice to try and fix it, but I wasn’t willing to pay a shop to do it.
Some quick searching around online revealed that most of the “as seen on TV” dent remover kits are really just hot glue and some pressure. So I headed to the garage, chopped a spare 3/4” dowel rod into a few short pieces, and ran a screw through them to give me something to grip.
I started with an old dent on the passenger side door made someone’s by an errant golf shot. I cleaned the area, hot glued the dowel to the car and then waited about 5 minutes. When I pulled on it, it came off very quickly leaving most of the glue on the car. So I heated up the glue on the car with a heat gun and added a little fresh hot glue too. I waited five more minutes and this second attempt stuck MUCH better. The dowel eventually popped off under my pulling but not before removing most of the dent. It was enough success to try it on the front fender.
The same process repeated itself with the first attempt pulling off too easily. The second attempt stuck so well that I decided I’d gotten it as good as I could get it and the dowel never popped off. I was concerned about pulling any harder on the sheet metal because it was starting to pull up from the headlight area and I didn’t want to break anything. After using the heat gun to melt the glue and get the dowel off, I used the heat gun and Goo Gone to remove the rest of the hot glue.
The pictures might not show it perfectly, but it greatly reduced the size of the dent. It’s FAR from perfect. There’s still a dent though it’s probably 70-80% smaller and there are still scratches in the paint, but it’s good enough now that I’m going to leave it alone.
If I had a nicer vehicle, I wouldn’t try this, but for an older beater, why not?