We took our own family photos again this year and we used that for the front of the card. On the back, I realized that we can fill it with pictures so it was fun to dig through all of those and pic some for a collage. Merry Christmas!
We have had an Amazon Echo in our kitchen/living room area for the last three years. It’s used almost exclusively for playing music from Spotify and setting timers, but over the past months it has become more and more insistent on giving us ads and tips after completing a command. My family starts laughing every time it says “By the way, did you know” because I immediately yell “ALEXA! STOP!” There are settings you can change to make this less frequent and I’ve changed them all long ago but it’s still super annoying. I finally had enough and I pulled the plug. I used the Amazon trade in program and got $30 back for it.
I ordered a Google Nest Audio on sale and happily swapped it in for the Echo. It’s pretty similar functionally, but so far there are no annoying “by the way” style comments. Maybe they’ll come some day, but beyond that, there are a few reasons why I prefer the Google device to the Amazon device:
I’ve had a Google Mini out in the garage workshop for a couple years and I’m happy to have another one in the house, but mostly I’m happy to not hear “By the way” anymore.
The post is a little bit late this week because everyone in the NFL has COVID! (And apparently it has spread up north too.) The oddity of watching a Tuesday afternoon football game apparently threw our league into another dimension because remember how last week I was wondering how anyone would beat Logan and Tyler in the playoffs? If you add their scores together this week, they would only beat last place Chelsea by 1.91 points! They both bombed hard. Will they recover next week for the playoffs?
Speaking of which, I screwed up when I set the fantasy schedule this year. Normally we do our playoffs on Week 15 and 16 so that if playoff teams are resting their players in Week 17, it doesn’t affect us. Oops. I guess that’s just part of the league this year. Next year we’ll go back to the 15/16 playoffs.
Also of note, Logan’s loss also means that the 8 game winning streak is still the high bar for this league.
So with that, our playoff bracket is set. Here are the seeds:
Despite almost setting the record for the lowest score of the season, Logan has enough momentum to stay in the top power ranking spot.
On to the weekly awards…
| This Week | This Season | All Time | |
| Highest Team Score | Chelsea had 134.87 | Tyler had 176.03 (Week 14) | Luke had 202.63 (2019) |
| Lowest Team Score | Logan had 62.99 | Andy had 60.86 (Week 9) | Andy had 41.29 (2015) |
| Biggest Blowout | Chelsea beat Tyler by 61.08 | Chelsea beat Andy by 77.04 (Week 3) | Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010) |
| Closest Win | Luke won by 13.89 | Logan beat Ben by 0.92 (Week 10) | Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018) |
| Longest Active Winning Streak | Nick has a 3 game winning streak | Logan has an 8 game winning streak (Week 14) | Micah (2011), Ben (2015), and Logan (2021) had 8 game winning streaks |
| Longest Active Losing Streak | Tim has a 3 game losing streak | Chelsea had a 5 game losing streak (Week 9) and Nick had a 5 game losing streak. (Week 12) | Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011) |
| Highest Scoring Player | Tyler Huntley had 39.90 as a free agent. | Jonathan Taylor had 51.90 for Nick (Week 11) | Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015) |
| Lowest winning score | Nick won with 106.52 | Andy won with 89.80 (Week 8) | Tim beat Jim with 79.34 (2015) |
| Highest losing score | Tim lost with 102.26 | Logan lost with 143.14 (Week 6) | Tim lost to Luke with 169.11 (2019) |
Maybe I take grocery bills too seriously, but in 2021 I have cut our bill by 13%. That does not include any savings from having a club card, buying store brand items, or catching the right sales. Here’s how I approach it:
Cheap? Frugal? Thrifty? Miserly? However this strikes you, I think the biggest draw for me is turning a chore into a game. It doesn’t take much extra time and I can calculate my “score” at the end of the year. It’s the same reason why I always try to sort my list into order that I walk through the aisles at the store: it keeps me entertained.
We still have one more week in the regular season to play but our first week of the playoffs is already locked. Here’s what we’ll see in week 16:
Logan and Tyler looked dominant this week. They both toppled the season high school record with Tyler putting up 176.03. Tyler has been up and down like the rest of us, but Logan’s total season score is 11% higher than the next highest total (me.)
Chelsea almost came away with her third win of the year but one of her players tested positive for COVID early Monday afternoon and there’s not much you can do to recover from that as a fantasy manager. Good news for Nick. Bad news for Chelsea.
The other news from this week is that Logan has tied the all time record for winning streaks. In week 15 he’ll face off against Nick to see if the can keep the streak alive.
There are some changes in the power rankings but Logan has been on top since week 7 and he stays there again this week.
On to the weekly awards…
| This Week | This Season | All Time | |
| Highest Team Score | Tyler had 176.03 | Was: Andy had 167.86 (Week 6) | Luke had 202.63 (2019) |
| Lowest Team Score | Andy had 81.24 | Andy had 60.86 (Week 9) | Andy had 41.29 (2015) |
| Biggest Blowout | Tyler beat Tim by 56.36 | Chelsea beat Andy by 77.04 (Week 3) | Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010) |
| Closest Win | Nick beat Chelsea by 2.62 | Logan beat Ben by 0.92 (Week 10) | Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018) |
| Longest Active Winning Streak | Logan has an 8 game winning streak | Was: Logan has a 7 game winning streak (Week 13) | Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks |
| Longest Active Losing Streak | Chelsea has a 4 game losing streak | Chelsea had a 5 game losing streak (Week 9) and Nick had a 5 game losing streak. (Week 12) | Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011) |
| Highest Scoring Player | Josh Allen had 39.22 for Chelsea | Jonathan Taylor had 51.90 for Nick (Week 11) | Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015) |
| Lowest winning score | Nick won with 110.24 | Andy won with 89.80 (Week 8) | Tim beat Jim with 79.34 (2015) |
| Highest losing score | Luke lost with 121.42 | Logan lost with 143.14 (Week 6) | Tim lost to Luke with 169.11 (2019) |
We play quite a bit of Uno and Phase 10 in our house, but just like when I was growing up, the boxes for those games are barely holding together. I thought it would be an interesting project to try and build boxes to hold the cards, and it would be a good way to use up some scrap wood too.
My first attempt used a method that I learned about from Steve Ramsey, though I’m sure he didn’t invent it. With some careful router work, you can end up with a lid that perfectly fits onto the box. The corners were 45 degree miters while the top and the bottom fit on with some rabbets. The router cuts technically worked ok, and one of them was sufficiently snug, but the other one was way too loose. There’s a very fine line between not fitting and too lose. Since the lids flopped off and I didn’t feel satisfied, I finished the boxes with spray lacquer and gave them to Elijah.
I wanted to try again, but instead of just remaking the same thing, this time I decided to make box joints. And instead of having the top and bottom overlap the sides, I set them into dadoes in the does so they’d be flush. The lid didn’t get glued in and was able to slide out the shorter front piece. That plan worked better and those box joints are really solid, but I still had fit issues. One lid fit very well and I got too cocky on the second one and sanded just a hair too long. It was good enough to use though. I thought it would be fun to put the logo into the top of the boxes and I tried making a paint mask with the Cricut as well as using a mask for a Scorch pen, but the paint didn’t look great and the heat for the Scorch pen ended up warping the wood. In the end, I used the laser cutter at work to engrave the logo on the top of the boxes, and they got finished with boiled linseed oil.
Is it overkill? Of course! But I enjoyed making all four and learned lessons that will help the next time I make a box… and a lot of woodworking is a variation on making a box.
While I was making this, I counted our Uno cards and we were missing quite a few so I ordered a new set on Amazon. The day after I wrapped up this project, the cards arrived… in a nice tin case.
With Tim’s loss to Nick this week, the top playoff spots are officially locked. Thank you to everyone for keeping full rosters even if you’re not going to make the playoffs! Logan and Tyler looked strong and hold the top two seeds while Andy and I faltered in 3rd and 4th. Logan is also one game away from tying the league record for winning streaks. Let’s see if Nick can stop him next week.
Logan continues his stranglehold on the power rankings:
On to the weekly awards…
| This Week | This Season | All Time | |
| Highest Team Score | Logan had 145.88 | Andy had 167.86 (Week 6) | Luke had 202.63 (2019) |
| Lowest Team Score | Ben had 95.26 | Andy had 60.86 (Week 9) | Andy had 41.29 (2015) |
| Biggest Blowout | Logan beat Andy by 46.20 | Chelsea beat Andy by 77.04 (Week 3) | Luke beat Andy by 113.02 (2010) |
| Closest Win | Luke beat Chelsea by 5.40 | Logan beat Ben by 0.92 (Week 10) | Tyler beat Nick by 0.01 (2018) |
| Longest Active Winning Streak | Logan has a 7 game winning streak | Was: Logan had a 6 game winning streak (Week 12) | Micah (2011) and Ben (2015) had 8 game winning streaks |
| Longest Active Losing Streak | Chelsea has a 3 game losing streak | Chelsea had a 5 game losing streak (Week 9) and Nick had a 5 game losing streak. (Week 12) | Kyle had a 14 game losing streak (2011) |
| Highest Scoring Player | Tom Brady had 36.62 for Logan | Jonathan Taylor had 51.90 for Nick (Week 11) | Drew Brees had 60.54 on Tim’s bench (2015) |
| Lowest winning score | Nick won with 122.46 | Andy won with 89.80 (Week 8) | Tim beat Jim with 79.34 (2015) |
| Highest losing score | Chelsea lost with 124.53 | Logan lost with 143.14 (Week 6) | Tim lost to Luke with 169.11 (2019) |
Happy Tesla Tuesday!
One of the features we really enjoy on our Escape are the driver memory buttons. We both drive the car fairly often and we are very different sizes. Hitting the memory button automatically adjusts the side mirrors and the seat. Since we use it so often, I’m very excited for driver profiles in a Tesla. When you get in, you select your profile and it will not only store the mirror and seat position but also the steering wheel position and countless other things like mirror auto fold, cruise follow distance, acceleration mode, steering mode (comfort/normal/sport), stopping mode (creep/roll/hold), seat heat, walk away door locks, navigation settings, temperature, air vent direction, and much more. Now these settings are also getting synced up to the cloud so even if you rent a Tesla, you can apply all your profile settings!
If you’ve been reading this site for a while, you know that one of my criteria whenever I buy a new gadget is whether or not it has an API that I can connect to. I want to have access to all my data! Today I have apps running that collect weights from our digital scale, temperatures and runtime from our thermostat, runtimes from our irrigation controller, the list of beers I’ve tried, how much water our house uses by the minute, how much power we use by the day, and a few other things. I used to log every trip we took in our cars too before the service that I was using died. So when I looked into an API for Tesla, I got excited.
Tesla doesn’t officially offer an API but there’s obviously one available since you connect to the car with your phone. There are a few popular services which let you use that API to get nearly endless amounts of data from your car. I’ll probably end up using TeslaMate but TeslaFi is an option if you don’t want to host it yourself. These services pull down all the data from the API and store it for you to generate even more charts than what the Tesla gives you by default. This YouTube video demos the capabilities early in the video and then goes into information about setting it up. He demos it in the browser inside the car but you could view the info from anywhere. Imagine having a log of everywhere you drove, how much energy you used on each trip, and details like how long the seat heaters were used on each trip.
Pretty much everything in a Tesla is connected into the computer. Even opening the glove box requires a button press on the screen. At first that might seem unnecessary, but when you go that route, it opens up a ton of new capabilities. For example, now you can set up a pin code that must be entered to open your glove box. Or instead of just having a button to retract your mirrors, because it’s hooked into that central computer, you can tell the Tesla to automatically fold your mirrors in or out as you approach or leave your home. The same is true for your garage door opener (if you add the Homelink accessory.) There’s a pedestrian warning speaker on the outside of the car, but you can play Spotify music through it while you’re washing the car. And since all of this stuff is controlled by a computer, you can do a lot of these things from the app on your phone too.
The phone isn’t just for running the app though. It can also serve as the key to get into your car. It connects to your car via Bluetooth as you walk up, unlocks the car, and lets you start driving. Just put your foot on the brake to “start” the car and you’re off! It takes “keyless entry” to a new level. There isn’t even a key! (There’s also a card you can keep in your wallet as a backup or you can even purchase a fob if you really want one.)
So yes, some of the scenarios are silly, but I love the open world of possibilities. Instead of trying to predict every button or feature that needs to be added, everything gets plugged into the central computer. If users want some new integration between components, it can be added in software and blasted out to everyone’s car automatically.
Every year since Tyla and I started dating, we’ve gotten a new ornament as a memory of the year gone by. It has been admittedly more difficult to keep that going the last couple years what with the pandemic and all, but we’re still chugging along. This year we picked up an ornament when we went whale watching.
You can see our past ornaments in these posts: 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2008-2010
Merry Christmas
THE BIRTH OF JESUS
1 In those days Caesar Augustus issued a decree that a census should be taken of the entire Roman world. 2 (This was the first census that took place while Quirinius was governor of Syria.) 3 And everyone went to their own town to register.
4 So Joseph also went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. 5 He went there to register with Mary, who was pledged to be married to him and was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, 7 and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them.
8 And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. 9 An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 But the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. 11 Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord. 12 This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.”
13 Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
15 When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.”
16 So they hurried off and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby, who was lying in the manger. 17 When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, 18 and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. 19 But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart. 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.