At any rate, I took an extreme approach to this season and kept five players (the maximum alllowed) for $186 (also, the maximum possible). Because I still needed to draft the other 14 players on my roster (19 total less the 5 I kept), I needed to have a minimum remaining budget of $14. My team from last season ended up loaded with very expensive but elite talent, and I decided to be a bit bold and simply keep as much of it as I could. My thinking is that I want as many of the best guys as possible, and then I would just fill out the rest of my team with whatever was left over.

My five keepers were: Frank Gore, Steven Jackson, Tom Brady, Wes Welker, and Kevin Kolb.

I actually really like the plan… most everyone else in our league, not so much. At any rate, the draft was boring for me, but ultimately pretty successful. Because my maximum bid was also the minimum bid, I basically had to wait around until the end of the auction and hope to sneak a few players through. When it was all said and done I was pretty happy with my team. Predictably, our league quickly voted mine as the “worst team after the auction.”

Whatever.

The question mark for my team was clearly Wes Welker. Last year he put up insanely good numbers… right up until he tore both his ACL and MCL during the final game of the regular season. During the off-season he had total reconstructive surgery on both his knee and his shoulder and by all human estimation was supposed to miss at least half of this season too. Then, for reasons that nobody on Earth can explain, he showed up to preseason looking basically healthy. He isn’t 100%, but for someone who should barely be able to walk he is now universally believed to be ready for the season opener. Still, there are a lot of question marks surrounding Welker. His recovery is pretty much the fastest in medical history so there isn’t a lot of precedent for what is taking place. Will he be ok? Will he re-injure himself? Nobody knows. I was willing to take that risk, though.

In the days following the draft I was approached by Vince, one of the dude’s in our league. He made a bunch of dumb trade offers, but after repeatedly turning him down I eventually made him a counter offer of my own: Wes Welker for both Steve Smith (Panthers) and Percy Harvin (Vikings).

Minnesota’s #1 receiver, Sidney Rice, had surprise surgery yesterday and will miss most of the season, meaning that Percy Harvin suddenly becomes Brett Favre’s new primary receiving weapon. I sent the trade offer to Vince with some hope that he might not have been following the news and would quickly accept the trade as a no-brainer. Sadly, he did not.

Now that Percy is the #1 in Minnesota, you want a peice?

Ugh. Alright, well let the games begin.

I get ragged on a lot by other people in my leagues because I am a maniac when it comes to making roster moves. For me, the real fun in fantasy sports is in making trades and scavenging for free agents. I like the strategy and analysis so much more than watching the actual games. Really, the games are merely a way to keep score on how my analysis has been. On Sundays I spend most of my time watching gamecasts on my laptop, even though the actual game is in bright HD on the television right in front of me. I look down FAR more than I look up. The game is incidental to the strategy.

While I am well known for making roster moves I have also developed a notorious reputation for having “delusional” and “ridiculously over-inflated” valuations of the players on my team. I am generally thought to be extremely difficult to trade with, but oddly… I also usually end up making the most trades. The process is fun for me because depending on who I am trying to work a deal with I usually need to take a different approach. The case with Vince was a bit interesting because it was probably the only time that I have ever been able to simply convince the other person to switch to my line of thinking.

What follows is the email exchange following his initial refusal of my offer.

Vince:
I don’t see why everyone undervalues harvin so much. He was the #14 WR last year in our league. He gets catches, they run the ball with him and he returns punts and kicks which we get points for.

Now with rice out I probably wouldn’t give you him and Steve smith for welker, welker isn’t that valuable.

Harvin only is at $7 and smith is at $19. Both easily keepable for next year, where welker is on the questionable side at $35.

At this point I’d probably do smith/driver (only $10, with the best QB throwing to him) or harvin/driver. But there is too much keeper (and current) value in smith and harvin to give them both up.

Holler back.

Me:
no thanks to smith/driver.

If you want a breakdown of my point of view, then I’ll give it to you. Fair warning: most people don’t appreciate it when I do this sort of thing. It’s only my opinion, though, so don’t take it too personally.

Wes Welker
——————-
Last season he finished as the # 7 overall player, and # 2 WR, despite missing three full games (he got hurt after one play in week 17). With the games missed he averaged 18.8 points per game, and the difference between him and Andre Johnson (who started all 16 games) at the end of the season was only 18 points (less than one game). If you remove the three games which he was hurt Welker averaged 22.9 points per game, second best of all players in the entire league behind only Chris Johnson (and clearly ahead of Andre Johnson’s 19.9, and Moss/Austin’s 18.1). He obviously had major surgery, but according to everyone everywhere he looks great and is fully expected to start in Week 1. Even if he isn’t up to top form for a few weeks after that, look at the numbers he put up last season when he wasn’t even on the field for three games. Plus, Tom Brady is now a full season removed from his own knee surgery, Randy Moss is entering a contract year, and the Patriots are one of the most pass-happy teams in the league. If he hadn’t been hurt, Welker would have been a clear first round pick and no-doubt top-5 WR with our league’s rules. I’d have had a raging boner all off-season to have had him at $35. Honestly, I’m a little frustrated with all the noobs who think that $35 is so questionable. If you are completely terrified of any risk, then yeah… 35 is too much I guess. Of course, Sidney Rice didn’t have reconstructive surgery and now he’s worthless for the year, so it isn’t as if you can predict anything anyways. I mean, you paid $42 for Calvin Johnson this year, and last season he finished as the #23 wideout : 103 points (8 ppg) less than Welker despite missing even fewer games than Wes (Megatron is a whole other story though). Welker’s upside is as the #1 WR (or even overall player) in the league, and barring injury I see his downside as no worse than a strong WR2. And I think it goes without saying that I’m not intimidated by injury risk.

Steve Smith
——————
Steve Smith is good, but he isn’t the stud he used to be. Last season he finished as the #22 WR, and #57 overall player. He only missed one game, but finished the season with 95 less points than Welker: a full 50% worse than Wes for the season. His PPG finished at 12.8 (or 13.6 accounting for week 17), literally a full replacement-level player less than Welker. I could have started Welker and then given you Smith plus a whole extra roster flex slot, and I’d still have come out ahead. Then Steve Smith went and broke his arm… twice. This season he returns to be the # 1 WR on a team that has no #2 or #3 and is on perhaps the most run-heavy offense in the league. Oh, plus he has rookie Matt Moore throwing to him, which is arguably better than Delhomme but not at all arguably close to Brady. While Welker is a major red-zone target on an extremely pass friendly offense, Smith is the deep threat on a team that runs more than just about everyone else. For me, his upside is limited while his potential downside is significant. He could still end up being really good, but it’s not at all a guarantee (or, in my mind, probable).

Percy Harvin
——————-
I like him, and tried to trade you for him last season. Getting to play full-time is an obvious improvement. The only real knocks on him is having an injured old man as his QB and the frustration of him being a game-time decision every week due to his migraines. I owned him in my redraft league last year so we both know how that goes. He’s good, but not elite. I value him as about on the level of Steve Smith now. Solid WR2 with some upside but legitimate risk.

Donald Driver
——————-
At best he is the third or fourth option on his team. He’s a WR3/4 without much upside… you can have him.

Anyways, the 2010 season hasn’t even started yet so I am not at all concerned about value going into 2011. There’s no way to know what is going to happen between now and then, and I am not going to make my team worse this year for some random opinion (yours, or even mine) about who will or won’t be good value in the future. It doesn’t matter to me at all. I kept $186 worth of players, so clearly value isn’t a high priority for me at the moment.

Vince’s next email to me was an official offer of Welker for Smith and Harvin.

Most of what I wrote to him was true, and halfway through the email I had basically talked myself out of doing the trade too. In the end I think that I came out ahead in the deal, but it was fairly close. Welker could be the league’s top receiver, but the odds are that he is merely good instead of great. Both Smith and Harvin have a decent chance at being top-10 receivers in our league this season, and both will be much cheaper than Welker in 2011. Anything can happen during the actual season of course, but for the moment at least, my team is better today than it was yesterday.

Twenty one days down; sixty nine days to go.

I have been keeping pretty busy at work lately, spending my past two weeks working with our Development (fund-raising) team to build a website for an upcoming event with the Miss Universe pageant.

You can see the website that I built right here.

Meh… it’s ok I guess.

I also put together a very simple landing page – click here – to tie the various fund-raising events together (also, meh).

Everyone here seems to really love the sites – which is awesome – but I feel like that is more a reflection on their own low expectations than the quality of my delivery. To see what I mean, go to that events page and click on the links for “Season 4 a Cure Cancer Run” or “Viva Bike Vegas” to see what NVCI had been using before they hired me.

As uninspired as my own pages may be, they are still a clear upgrade from the HTML 1.0 embarrassment of our previous work. It is tough to sell potential donors on cutting edge cancer research when your website is helplessly trapped in 1997.

And while my bosses and co-workers are all thoroughly impressed by my thoroughly average display of digital creation, on my next site I really want to do better. My strengths have always been in constructing the code behind the page, not the look and layout of the page itself. As a web development team of one, my job here – and personal sense of pride – demands that I shore up these weaknesses. I continue to get better with CSS and document construction, but I don’t have a particularly good eye for aesthetics. As you can see from the two pages linked above, I have a dirty love affair with rectangular boxes. I am also a sucker for hard horizontal lines. The end result is inevitably – and predictably – a brutish and block-y feel.

Anyways, I just bought a bunch of books that will hopefully help me to get better at the design aspect of web development. I learned the lesson with FantasyBlueBook that even the most useful website becomes worthless when saddled with a bad user interface. I don’t expect to ever become a graphical wizard, but hopefully by learning more about design I can make some strides in the right direction.

Oh, and if you are going to be in Las Vegas on August 14th you should come out to the Miss Universe Gift Auction! Hanging out with really hot girls while helping us raise money towards curing cancer… sounds like a pretty solid night.

Here are the books that I ordered:

Web Standards Solutions : Markup and Style Handbook
Dan Cederholm

Designing the Obvious: A Common Sense Approach to Web Application Design
Robert Hoekman Jr

Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability
Steve Krug

Letting Go of the Words: Writing Web Content that Works
Janice Redish

The Zen of CSS Design: Visual Enlightenment for the Web
Dave Shea

I’m still a tubby piece of garbage, but I didn’t really need a separate website just to prove it though. Having grown increasingly disinterested with my cycle of boring lifting routines I went ahead and canceled my gym membership and decided to take a different approach. Those of you who follow me on Twitter (may) know that today is Day 12 of P90X. A lot of you are probably already somewhat familiar with the program, and those that aren’t can always look into it themselves right here. In a nutshell, P90X is an intense 90-Day DVD-based workout program that alternates weight lifting with various cardio/flexibility training including plyometrics, yoga, and kenpo.

I workout for 60-90 minutes at home six days a week, and so far every single day has been brutal. My goal isn’t so much about a result, but rather to never miss a workout and try my hardest during each session. If I can do that, then the results will come. And if I can manage my eating habits even just a little bit better (higher protein, lower carb) I’d be stunned if I didn’t end up in significantly better shape at the end of the ninety days.

I took a series of “before” photos, but you can be sure that they will never see the light of day until the man in those photos no longer even closely resembles the one in the mirror.

Now that I am doing all my workouts at home I called into 24-Hour Fitness to cancel my membership. Rather than lose a customer the lady offered me a free personal training session if I would reconsider. I said no. Not ready to give up, she then offered me two free months. Obviously I said yes. After two months I can always just call in and cancel it again – “fo realz” – but until then… free gym membership! (I used to do this trick with Netflix from time to time – call in to cancel and end up with a few months free – but it can be a risky game to play if you don’t actually want to cancel anything.)

credit Jim via Buzz

I did want a smart-phone though, and it turns out that the newly released Droid Incredible is a pretty damn good one. The Droid Market is not currently as deep as iTunes’ App Store, but there are a surprising number of incredibly good apps (widgets) that I am quickly beginning to love.

While on a bit of a mobile tech binge, and newly flush with discretionary cash thanks to a new job (more on that later), I spent the afternoon researching aftermarket car stereo kits. My 2004 TSX is indisputably badass in nearly every way, but the one place it comes up noticeably short is in the stereo department. Specifically, I have no way of directly connecting an mp3 player to my car’s system. That wasn’t a big deal back in the days (read: years) when I hardly ever left my house, let alone drove long distances. But now that I commute about 20 miles to get to work I’m getting sick of my cds… and let’s not get into the nightmare of morning zoo radio.

Finding a cheap aftermarket stereo is generally simple and straightforward, but (sorta) unfortunately for me my car has a built-in nav system which is all integrated into a single sound system. I can’t just replace the CD player with a better model, I need some custom hardware. Well, after a few hours of forum scouring I finally sucked it up and placed an order for a DICE Media Bridge.

I ended up spending an extra $50 for the Media Bridge as opposed to a more standard iPod kit. For one thing I want to be able to plug my Droid into my car; it uses a standard USB connection vs the proprietary (and stupid) iPod connector. Also, different iPods use different cables (particularly old models) and I don’t want to invest in a device that may not even work with some of my devices. Finally, the Media Bridge should give me a lot more flexibility for the future… who knows what I may end up wanting to plug into my car?

The biggest downside to the Media Bridge is that it is a Do It Yourself install. I am completely helpless when it comes to cars, so hopefully I can find a good set of instructions on how to take my car’s dash apart. I suppose I could find and pay somebody else to do it for me, but from what I’ve read the install is actually pretty easy.

I am pretty pumped to get this bad boy installed, jack in my new Droid, and be able to just stream Pandora Radio whenever I drive. This IS the future after all… I don’t think this is too much to ask.

Ugh.

Honestly, it’s probably actually working, but the payoff is not being reflected on the scale. I have been doing exhausting full-body workouts every other day, pushing myself to the point of (nearly) puking every time. My body is constantly sore from head to toe, and when I wake up most mornings I can barely move. This past week the soreness was actually getting so bad that I decided to take a few extra days off to help recuperate (and avoid potential injury). Hopefully my body weight is hovering steady due to a combination of both fat-loss and gains in new muscle and bone-density… rather than simply a total lack of progress. I imagine that I look slightly better in the mirror, but I can’t say for sure. I definitely feel better, though… excruciating muscle soreness aside.

Clearly my diet has significant room for improvement, but at least I am making some effort. However, because I am doing so much weight-training I am trying to eat a lot more protein than before, and as such I probably am taking in many more calories than I should for a pure weight-loss approach. I also have largely abandoned all cardio workouts since my full-body circuit has my heart constantly pumping as hard and fast as it does on the treadmill, and I am sweating even more. I wouldn’t have expected that doing weighted lunges or step-ups could be so aerobically intense. Even worse, I finish most of my workouts with weighted jump squats (to improve speed and vertical leap) that always threaten to empty my stomach onto the gym floor. At the end of my gym session I can barely stand, let alone ride a bike or elliptical. My days off are apparently crucial for allowing my body to recuperate and rebuild, so I am extremely wary of filling them with cardio sessions. I worry that doing so may actually cause me more harm than good.

My current routine has been vigorously attacking muscles that I had never bothered to exercise before. Presumably that is where all the pain comes from, and hopefully it will ease up soon, but eventually I expect that the new muscle will start arriving at the expense of my unsightly belly fats and not simply as an addition. I’m going to Hawaii at the end of the month and after that it will be coming up on pool-season here in Vegas. I need to get this bod ready for public consumption asap.

Having been away from the game for so long I spent the first hour playing super snug while talking to a few people at the table about the best party colleges in the country. The high point of my night came when a cranky woman was complaining to the dealer (and cruel universe) about how she hated her current table position. “I want to sit over there!” she whined. “I hate this seat. I love that seat over there.”

On reflex I retorted, altogether way too loudly, “if you love it so much then why don’t you marry it?”

One person laughed, but the rest of the table looked at me with the exact expression that my third-grade wit deserved.

Anyways, I stayed even for about an hour until I was eventually dealt pocket kings. After a standard raise I went heads-up to a 6-high flop, and then got all-in against a guy with pocket aces.

Welcome back to poker. I forgot how much fun it is.

The very next hand I had pocket aces myself and won a small pot. The very next hand after that I had pocket kings again (three in a row!) and three of us ended up in a giant all-in pot on a board that read J-10-5. I had my kings, another guy had queens, and the third player had ace-ten (wtf, i dont know). The turn brought a queen and I was broke again.

Ugh.

If it hadn’t been so long since my last (or possibly next) time at the casino I probably would have just gone home. Instead, I pulled out some more cash and kept playing. Maybe twenty minutes later I found myself in another weird/dumb hand. Honestly, it’s not even super interesting as poker hands go, but I suppose there is something to take from it.

I was dealt pocket jacks and raised from middle position to my standard $10. Four people called and we saw a flop of 3-6-8 rainbow. I led for $20 and was called by one person, a young thuggish-looking black kid (being maybe around 25 years old) just off of the button. The turn came a 9, putting two clubs on the board. I checked for pot control, and the guy bet $25. I thought a few seconds and called. The river brought the king of spades and I checked again. Without much hesitation the guy went all-in for about $140, only slightly less than I had left. I stared at the guy for about 45 seconds and watched as he stared back at me, chewing a piece of gum with an open mouth.

Eventually I told the dealer, “I guess that I will just pay him, then…” and then pushed my chips towards the pot. The guy didn’t say anything at first, and then showed me the ace of diamonds. I waited. Sheepishly he then turned over his other card, the ten of spades. I flipped up my pair and won the pot, stacking the chips as the guy left the table. The other players all started congratulating me on an amazing call and talking amongst themselves about how great it was.

Honestly, I don’t think it was. I mumbled a few polite thank you’s, but I didn’t feel all that good about the hand.

There are times when I pick off a big bluff and feel really proud of myself. This wasn’t one of those times. I was happy with the result, but it really felt like I had just gotten away with a big mistake. If I had watched that hand take place online, or simply read it on paper (as you are now) I would probably estimate that calling the river all-in is the wrong move somewhere around 90% of the time. In fact, in the moment I struggled with the decision for so long (45 seconds being a very long time for me to make up my mind) because my brain kept telling me to fold. Meanwhile my gut kept telling me to call. That happens a lot, and usually you need to find a way to reconcile one with the other.

I wanted to call because, for no particular reason that I could possibly point to, I really didn’t think the guy had anything. His table presence pointed to a bluff: his chewing, his posture, the way he stared back at me, the way he had pushed in his chips… whatever. The kid’s betting line was also very suspect (call, call, bet, shove), but not completely unreasonable. Worse, my brain was telling me that there was not really any hand I could beat, but a TON of perfectly reasonable hands that had me crushed. The flush draw didn’t appear until the turn so he probably hadn’t called the flop and then bluffed the missed flush on the river. Meanwhile the obvious flopped straight draw had come in with the 9 on the turn, and worst case he could have missed his draw but ended up with a random two pair. All those middle cards are prime candidates for sets too… all perfectly normal hands for me to be up against, and all of which could have conceivably been played exactly as the kid was proposing.

I just didn’t believe him, though, so I called. And this time I was right. Still, it was probably a bad call. I was happy to win the pot, but didn’t feel much like high-fiving anyone either. Just the same, that hand got me back into the game a little bit. I stuck around until the game broke at 1am, playing short-handed for the majority. It wasn’t terribly exciting or even terribly fun, but after six hours I not only completely erased my disastrous start but managed to walk away with a solid win.

So that’s how I spent my night and morning. How about you?

If so, then you should join in the fun and play with us on Google Wave using one of the gadgets that I have written.

What it is

A full breakdown of Google Wave would take way too long – and is available elsewhere – but the ultra-short version is to say that Google Wave is “modern email.” Rather than the conventional email method of passing individual messages between people, Google’s vision of the future involves a single email message (or ‘wave’) with multiple people attached to it. Each person can add to or edit any part of the message at any time and the changes are broadcast to all other users instantly. Basically think of it as a hybrid of traditional email, instant messaging, and a wiki all rolled into one.

Google Wave is not yet publicly available, but a “preview” version exists on an invitation-only basis. You can apply for access here, or else simply let me know and I will get you an invite.

In order to play with us you will need an account.

How my game works

All of us who will be playing all join the same wave, which is basically a single ongoing conversation that will last all season. For instance, all of my friends who watch Survivor join the “Survivor wave” while those who watch American Idol will join an “Idol wave.” Embedded into each wave is a gadget that I have written which allows each of the wave participants to rank each contestant on that show based on the position they think they will finish. Because of the unique capabilities of Google Wave, each of us can update our own rankings at any time, and those changes are instantly viewable by everyone else.

Each week, as one or more contestants are eliminated from the particular show, the gadget is updated and each person scores points based on the accuracy of their projections. At the end of the season, obviously, the person with the most points wins.

Rules and scoring

Eliminations are considered in the order of when they get voted off the show. If multiple people are eliminated in the same episode, finishing order will be the order they are announced. (This may mean some luck/guesswork for early eps of Idol where they eliminate both boys + girls in random order).

Each participant can adjust their own rankings order as much or as often as they like. However, the gadget will automatically lock all rankings at the start of the east coast broadcast of the relevant episode each week. Every episode of Survivor is considered “relevant” whereas only the results episodes of American Idol are important. Basically, the gadget locks for any episode where somebody might get eliminated. I will unlock and update the gadget whenever I watch the episode (almost always that same night, but I am on the west coast so there is a delay).

Whenever a contestant is eliminated from the show they “die” in whichever projected rankings slot each player had them. That slot is then unavailable for the rest of the season. This means that if your projected winner gets eliminated in Week 1, then you will not be able to move anyone else into your First Place slot. Worst case scenario, when it gets down to the finals for American Idol you may only be able to put the two finalists in your 23rd and 24th place slots… which sucks for you because you will only get the minimum number of points for those two contestants. Consequently, at any point during the season two people may have identical scores but one player may have a much higher potential score because he still has his top slots open whereas the other player’s may already have been used up.

For each show contestant that gets eliminated, each player is awarded a variable number of points based on where the player had projected them to finish. Naturally, players are awarded more points the closer their predictions are to the actual results.

Specifically, the formula for assigning points per elimination is as follows:

score = (T – abs(Projected Finish – Actual Finish)) * weight

where T is the total number of contestants on the show (on Survivor T=20, on Idol T=24). The “abs” means absolute value so you take the same penalty for being too high as for being too low in your projection.

The weight is calculated as follows:

weight = (T – Actual Finish + 1)

This means that you earn a lot more points for correctly predicting the overall winner than for predicting last place. We tried to make the scaling fair, though. Unlike your March Madness bracket you don’t need to correctly pick the top spot in order to win (although it definitely helps).

The easy way to think of this is that, assuming there are 20 contestants, correctly picking 20th place is worth 20 points. Correctly picking 19th place is worth 40 points (20 x 2). 18th is worth 60 points (20 x 3)… and so on. The first place projection is worth a maximum of 400 points (20 x 20).

Credit to Lukas for helping me determine this scoring system.

Want to play with us?

It’s all for fun (prizes anyone?), but you need a Wave account to join in the party. Fortunately, getting an account is free and relatively easy.

If you already have a Wave account just send me a message at littlewyvern@googlewave.com and I will add you to our waves.

If you need an invite to Google Wave either leave a comment here with your email address, or send me an email at littlewyvern@gmail.com

I will be alternating between two lifting workouts, three days a week. Depending on how it goes I will also be adding one or two days of raw cardio per week. I only followed my initial routine for about two weeks, and this new one for only about one, but so far the newer routine is a lot more intense. Rather than having sore arms one day and sore shoulders another, my entire body is pretty much constantly exhausted. It’s a little painful, but I suppose that’s a “good” pain.

I have also switched my diet to more protein-heavy while also trying to cut out most of the added sugars. I am not counting calories, but supposedly just eliminating things like regular soda goes a long ways towards controlling body weight.

My plan is to follow this new routine for four weeks and then reevaluate depending on the results that I am getting.