Some updates and reflection

What a summer! It's hard to believe that I actually went to GeoWoodstock this year, it seems like years ago now. Some of the other highlights:

• GHAGAFAP X
• Over 100 caches in one day!
• 100 days in a row with a cache!
• Placing 15 caches!
• An amazing day at Dairy Daze!
• Introducing my cousin to caching (He now has over 100 finds!)
• A double event day
• A September with over 180 caches.
• Starting Waymarking 
• Caching with legends like Bruce Iroquoia, Pasha 88, Surly2 and Karen Renora

Whew. This month I have less than 20 caches. It's because, well, partly laziness. But a lot of it is the shorter days combined with disorganization. Add in school and a job then well, you get the picture.Thankfully a no-school week should bolster my numbers. In fact I'll give you a preview of what's coming up.

• Caching partner Sharon12 will be getting her 1000th cache this week. She's chosen Deerbait, an old cache that dates back to 2001.
• BFL Night is coming up, this will be my first attendance and I'm excited. I'll report back to you.
• I will be getting an iPhone 4S as early as tomorrow. I'll be reporting on how it compares to my Magellan in a few weeks.
• A ton of ideas for new caches.
• Visiting the GPS Maze in Toronto.

This Week in Fantasy Football: A mixed bag

First up was the Caledonia Maulers who lost 90-69 against the Boston Celtics. This was a complete fumble by my team, the highest scoring player was BGE with 13 pts. Even if I hadn't bench Eli Manning I still would have lost by 6 points.

Next up is the Hamilton Stingers who led a great 92-74 victory over the Honey Badgers. Michael Turner did most of the work netting 20pts and Graham (TE) and Kasay (K) got 19 and 11 pts respectively.

Now the Hamilton Thunder lost out to NAA 119 to 91 unfortunately Fitzpatricks failure and Austin being sidelined with injury lost us the game. The rest of my players did well though, all having over 10 pts.

Finally the Tornadoes preformed a come-from-behind victory 91-89 against the Waterboys as Bernie Wells got an amazing 31 pts. Mike Williams 6 pts gave us the win on Monday night.

A Sweep of a Different Sort TWIFS

I don't want to talk about this. Last week my teams were on overdrive. This week however, we lost Miles Austin, Beanie Wells, and had a complete melt down of our Running corps.

Let's start with the Maulers who lost 107-89. Starks (RB) and BGE (RB) got -2 and 1 respectively. Grossman (QB) got 12. Shout outs for Gronkowski, Wallace and the Steelers D for keeping it in shooting distance.

Now on to the Haldimand Thunder  who lost 101 to 94. Again BGE had 1 point which f'd us. Dieon Branch had 0 points which didn't help. Ryan Fitzpatrick and McFadden both scored over 20 pts so props to them.

Next is the Hamilton Stingers, who were wiped out 156-87. This game was pretty much unwinnable.

And finally the Tornadoes lost 103-92. Beanie Wells out and Mendenhall got 3 points. The Eagles DST had 3 pts too. Thanks to Stafford, and the Johnsons for keeping this close.

It's A SWEEP! TWIFF Week2

Let's start with the Caledonia Maulers who picked up the Steelers DST from waivers to get 19 pts! A big shout-out to Miles Austin for 32 pts. But really the whole line was amazing! Kasay (K) had 14 pts, Moss and Wallace (WRs) had over 30 pts combined, waiver wire pickup Starks (RB) had 11 pts and Green-Ellis (RB) had 13 pts. Finally waiver wire pickup Grossman (QB) snagged 19 pts!
Final Score: 158 Maulers - 68 Domination
Analysis: Damn! Even my Bench did well (Packers DST 14 pts and Henderson (WR) 16 pts). The guy who gave up the Steelers must be kicking himself! I believe this is probably my highest score in fantasy football thusfar.

Now for the Hamilton Thunder who in addition to Austin (32 pts remember) had both RBs (Fred Jackson and D. McFadden) getting 49 pts combined! Vick got 17 pts and throw in Henderson's 16 and Kasays 14 you get...
Final Score: 148 Thunder- 85 Trollshrouds
Analysis: Another unbelievable performance by everyone involved.

Next is the Hamilton Stingers, they had Tony Romo getting 25 pts, Ben Tate and Michael Turner (RBs) combining for 30pts, Austin's 32, Steve Johnson's 15 and Kasay's 12
Final Score: 146 Stingers- 93 Wreckin' Crew
Analysis: Simply amazing. Another blow out win. Austin has earned his pay.

Finally its the Tornadoes, who were going against my father's team the Rhinos. If you followed my fantasy teams last year you'll know that I suffered a devastating loss to them in the Championship. Out for blood, Matt Stafford (a risky draft pick) snapped up a monster 33 pts. Mendenhall (RB) had 13 pts, the Johnson's (WR) totaled 30 pts. Rob Gronkowski had an amazing 20 pts at tight end and Kasay again had 14 pts.
Final Score: 118 Tornadoes - 100 Rhinos.
Analysis: Finally some revenge. A dish best served with a 4 team sweep.

Welcome Back to TWIFF 2011: WEEK 1

This year rather than having college teams I've elected to have 4 NFL teams. Let's see how they did:

First is the Caledonia Maulers. With Peyton Manning injured, his brother Eli had to step up, snagging 14 pts. RBs Steven Jackson and Green-Ellis totaled 20 pts combined. My WRs and TE totalled 46 pts and kicker David Akers put the cherry on top with 15 pts.
Final Score: 106 Caledonia Maulers - 96 Leathernecks
Analysis: Great first win, team looks good, going to have to pick up someone to replace Peyton, busy waiver wire this week.


Up next is the Hamilton Stingers. Starting QB Tony Romo played well getting 21 pts. Primary RB Michael Turner got 12 pts. My receiving corps totaled 44 pts (Miles Austin, Jimmy Graham and Steve Johnson). The Chargers DST and John Kasay rounded out the team with 24 pts.
Final Score: 105 Hamilton Stingers - 63  Mother Green
Analysis: Another great win, Romo played great, and the whole team looked brilliant.

The Tornadoes are part of the league that my family is playing in. I took a late pick with Matt Stafford as QB which payed off with 28 pts. Green-Ellis got my 9 pts on RB, but it was my receiving corps that was the monster 52 points. The Eagles luckily made up an error on my part (Hartley was out and I didn't have time to change him) with 19 pts.
Final Score: 110 Tornadoes - 83 AJ Crushers
Analysis: Should be even better once I get an active kicker

Finally the Haldimand Thunder played well too. Michael Vick scored 26 points and McFadden got 15 pts. My tightend and kicker both fell short.
Final Score: 105 Cowboys - 93 Thunder
Analysis: Going to get some new TE & K, over a good start

E3 2011

The title of this post is deceiving, since this is mostly a message to Microsoft (Don't get me started on the Vita or Wii U).

Microsoft, buddy, we got some issues to talk about. We (gamers) have been growing concerned over the last couple E3s but its gotta stop. Here are some of my observations of your press conference.

Stop it with the kid shit. Disneyland Adventures and Sesame Street have no fucking business even being at E3, better yet the Xbox 360 briefing! Why? People watching E3 are not the target of these games. Do kids even know about E3?! No one watching E3 got excited and said "I can't wait for Disneyland Adventures!". Even parents don't care, a father who plays video games isn't watching E3 for gift ideas.

"But," you say, "this is showing off the Kinect!" Shut. Your. Whore. Mouth. A lot of gamers already hate the Kinect, why are you making it worse by showing games for 6 year olds? Its even worse when you show child actors or whoever playing the games, pretending to have fun. I have a Kinect, so stuff like Ryse, Ghost Recon and Star Wars were actually pretty cool. But then you show dumb shit like people playing football. I don't think there was a single person watching who didn't facepalm at that.  Next year I'll have a drinking game where every time something like this happens, I take a shot. I could die of alcohol poisoning Microsoft, do you want that on your conscience?

Now that I've vented a bit there's also some good stuff I haven't mentioned, like Halo 4, the Halo 1 remake, MW3 and  Gears 3.

Now how do we fix the embarrassing issues? The first step is simple: if someone comes to you and says "We should show (insert game for kids 8 and under here) at our E3 press conference", you slap them and tell them to get the fuck out of your office.

The next solution is send it to me. Honestly, type up an itinerary and e-mail it to me. I will tell you what I think for free.

Overall, E3 this year has been lackluster, with the exceptions of MW3, Dead Island, and Bioshock Infinite.

The Death of Guitar Hero

First let’s get the obvious “our thoughts are with the people who were laid off” out of the way.

Now, how does it effect Rock Banders (and gamers in general)?

Well we could see the signs at least a year ago. Rock Band 3 was announced with the “real guitar” and piano hardware, what was Guitar Hero’s response? Warriors of Rock? Although the game has a bunch of good songs (most notably Rush 2112), it seemed like a desperate last gasp in comparison to RB3.

It’s only a wonder this didn’t happen sooner. Think about it, how did Rock Band advertise? It didn’t. Game sites and word of mouth made Rock Band popular. Now look at Guitar Hero and all those Bob Seger commercials. How much did those cost?

And then of course there’s the market over saturation. Seriously: Warriors of Rock, Guitar Hero Smash Hits, Guitar Hero 4, Band Hero, DJ Hero, Guitar Hero Aerosmith, Guitar Hero 5, Guitar Hero Van Halen, DJ Hero 2, Guitar Hero Metallica. And those are just off the top of my head! What was the logic in this? I could go on for hours, so let’s get to the benefits.

The immediate benefit is that Rock Band is suddenly a monopoly over the genre. And since Harmonix is a pretty well liked by everyone, this is sort of like having Santa as president or something. If a band wants to be in a music game they pretty much have to go to Rock Band.

The next big thing is that it forces anyone who is a new entrant to the music genre or a Guitar Hero fan to go to Rock Band. This will greatly help the franchise which is frankly no prize right now either.

What are the problems? First is the people who are saying this is the death knell of music games. It’s not. It’s sort of like saying HD-DVD dropping out of the HD wars was signifying the end of HD movie discs. Yet Blu-Ray is still around.

Even then, it’s not some sort of revelation that music games are in a slump. The problem is the image this presents might turn off artists from using Rock Band.

Finally the worst part is how shaky it makes Rock Band look. If a well established game like Guitar Hero can just collapse, can the same happen to Rock Band? A couple of songs and I could have been a Guitar Hero player. That’s a lost investment in hardware, software and downloadable content. They can at least use the hardware for RB3 but even then, what happens if Harmonix closes? Then where would we turn?