Fantasy Football and the JEHPR

For those of you that don't know I've become a bit of a football junkie over the last 10 years. I play in multiple fantasy leagues every year and usually participate in an office pool (small money) but my biggest geekdom item is the JEHPR (that's Jeffrey Edward Hall Power Rankings) which I create. I'm trying to figure out if the blog will let you host any files and if it will I will start posting the JEHPR results here. If it won't I'll still post my recommended picks and what not here. So tune in here for all the action :)

For those of you unfamiliar with the JEHPR it's a power ranking based on score, yards allowed and Strength of Schedule that seeks to quantify a proper spread (vs. a gambling spread) and a over/under. I've been pretty hit and miss with the over/under (about 50/50) but my spreads are pretty good. Historically, my spreads are about as accurate as gambling spreads (meaning the favorite covers about as often as they fail to cover) but I pick the right side of the published spread about 55% of the time and in games in which my spread varies by more then 3 points from the published spread that percentage rises to 65%. In the last 3 years that I've done it my accuracy has been especially high in weeks 4-8 (including an impressive span one year of 20-2). If you're looking for a way to get an edge in an office pool I think the JEHPR is an excellent supplemental tool. And as a bonus it ranks the individual teams as well.

Week 1 JEHPR results should be available next Tuesday.

GH the craziest letters?

It's fun to have a wife. You get to have offbeat conversations like this:

Her: What's the word that the British add GH to that he says is cheating?
Me: Through. "You spell Thru T-H-R-U and I'm with you and that because we spell it 'thruff' and that's just cheating at scrabble"
Her: Thanks.
Me: GH has to be the weirdest letter combination sound wise. Sometimes it's silent, sometimes its a 'ff' sound...
Her: Don't forget when it's a 'g' sound like in ghost.
Me: That too

Then we discussed various other GH sounds including whether or not it was ever a 'w' sound or not... fun stuff...

For those of you that don't understand the reference above it's from Eddie Izzard's routine "Glorious" which everyone should now run out and buy. I'm watching it right now and it's Hi-larious.

Trying to find the next microsoft?

Paul Graham wrote this:

"I think what a lot of Venture Capitalists are looking for, at least unconsciously, is the next Microsoft. But VCs are mistaken to look for the next Microsoft, because no startup can be the next Microsoft unless some other company is prepared to bend over at just the right moment and be the next IBM."

That's quite the statement but it definitely has merit... It's also amusing to me because you could make a similar statement about Disney and Florida. The point he's missing is that things worked out fantastically well for IBM as well. What I believe happened is that IBM realized Microsoft was going places and decided, "Hey, 2nd best tech company is still a better then a lot of other people."

I've been playing alot of UT lately. Still trying to solve that board that is giving us fits.

UT2k4 and other randomness

So my clan played a match last night... once again we got pounded on this one board... We have a decent team and yet we just can't win on this one board... We've tried several different strategies but nothing seems to work... Very frustrating... just wanted to vent...

Onto other stuff. Still in the land of the unemployed... Truth be told the job hunting hasn't been real heavy yet... I'll probably really start into it this week. We've had alot of interest in our house but no more offers (after getting screwed the the first time). Hopefully we'll get things taken care of soon and be settled shortly therafter but we'll see.

I also got a call from the COO of Hancock telling me many flattering things and asking if I need any recommendation letters and what not. He actually left two messages (after he got cut off by the machine the first time) so we were pretty amused...