My ongoing efforts to broadcast my life continue.  It’s a bit bizarre as I’m such a private person in general. I’m so fascinated to play with all of the technology involved I suppose I’m willing to sacrifice a bit of privacy. For now.

Anyway, I played Carl in my SEC Dynasty in NCAA last night and not only did I broadcast the game, I also recorded it to my gergi-TV channel.  
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My first ustream broadcast went off pretty well.  The broadcast was a bit delayed as Dan showed up about an hour late but three other friends stayed on and watched Fresno State grind out a solid 24-7 victory over New Mexico State.  My second-straight run at a WAC title is in motion and off to a very good start.  My only regret was that I forgot to record the broadcast.

My NCAA dynasties continue, though ever more slowly.  I’m now in three dynasties: WAC as Fresno State, SEC as Vanderbilt, and CUSA as Tulsa.  We’ve got 6-10 people in each dynasty and the time between “weeks” is getting further and further apart.  

The WAC is still my #1 dynasty and Fresno State is off to a spectacular start with huge wins over Kansas, Oregon, and an in-conference victory over Carl’s La Tech.  I’ve been practicing various plays and finally  figured out how I can call in my backup QB to run certain plays — something I’m definitely planning on doing in my upcoming game against Dan’s NMSU team.  My backup QB is the superstar recruit I snagged last season whom I promised early playing time and I’m definitely interested in using him to help me acquire my 2nd WAC title.  Unlike last season, Chris (Hawaii) is off to a red-hot start and could be the favorite to win the conference at this point while Josh (Boise State) seems to have fallen off a bit.  Right now, I have to like my chances though it will likely come down to the games against Chris and Mike (Nevada) for the title.  

The SEC is the slowest moving dynasty and Vanderbilt is really struggling against the competition.  I’m 1-3 though I have confidence I have at least one upset forthcoming.  The talent pool is a lot deeper than my WAC team but the competition is light-years above.  Most of my fellow dynasty-ers picked the cream of the crop in the SEC so it may be awhile before I can compete in that league.

CUSA is my newest dynasty and is made up mostly of people in the WAC dynasty.  I got assigned Tulsa who, in real life, had a pretty phenomenal seaon with a ridiculous offense.  That offense prowess is not to be found in the dynasty however.  In my three games, I’ve gone 1-2, scored 4 offensive touchdowns, and thrown 9-10 interceptions.  My receivers can’t seem to get open and while my HB is solid, the offensive line is awful and can’t hold off any sort of defensive rush.  My prospects at Tulsa are also pretty weak as the recruiting pool for a 1-star school in Oklahoma is rather limited.  Tulsa is definitely a work in a progress — from the ground up.

This past weekend was another full one.  Friday night was an old-school Gears party and a great time, as usual.  The chainsaw is still overpowered but what can you do.  Saturday was another painting day at the condo as we try and class up the joint for the new tenant.   It went pretty well and I was even able to get home in time to watch VT pull ahead in the ACC championship game — in HD on my new TV as well.  I told Christina later that might have been one of the best hours I’ve ever had.

Anyway, I then had to head out for my company’s (very early) Christmas party.  My company always does something a little different than most — we can get away with it since we’re so tiny — and this year we had a bowling outing and then dinner at McCormick and Schmick’s.  It was fun despite my worst bowling game ever — need to do Wii Bowling next year so I can show them up.

After dinner I was finally able to get in a co-op game of Left 4 Dead.  All I can say is that it lived up to my expectations.  Exceeded them.  Chris, Frank, Lucas, and I teamed up and played through the No Mercy level and I can honestly say I’ve played few games that were as non-stop intense as Left 4 Dead.  The forced co-op works as advertised;  You simply cannot wander off alone no matter how good you are because the zombies will overwhelm and kill you in less than a minute.  The game is extremely polished with a lot of attention to detail, plenty of humor, and just an all around well-made game.  The other highlight is that each play-through is completely different due to the “AI Director” who randomizes everything on the level and adjusts based on the current status of your progress.  Very cool concept and adds tons of replayability.

Sunday was a bit more tame as I met my sister Erin in Fredericksburg to swap the van for my Celica.  So very glad to have my Celica back — it might not be the fanciest car in the world but it suits me perfectly.  The evening was wrapped up with a birthday dinner for Christina’s grandmother.  Whew!

“What player would be the most annoyed on Valentines Day?”

Game night with my friends led to the above question during a round of Imaginiff.  We’ve been trying to have a regular get-together and it usually revolves around some combination of Cranium, Taboo, and what other board games we can come up.  In Imaginiff, each player picks the player they think the question most corresponds to and if you have the same answer as the majority, you score a point.  4 “Shawns” and 3 “Christinas” later, the above question illustrated the commonly held belief that I’m not a romantic.

I made a comment to Christina that despite what everyone thinks, I am certainly one of the more considerate “significant others” out there.  She didn’t disagree but made the comment that I’m probably the least romantic person — not she has a problem with that — and am not one to, for example, give flowers unsolicited.  I reminded her that I had done that at least once but I just didn’t want to spoil her.  :)

I continued that I just don’t want to give a gift without a reason.  Christina pointedly told me that being romantic means doing EXACTLY THAT: Giving gifts for no reason.  To which I responded: Doing things without reason leads to anarchy.  

Oh, and I won the game of Imagiff.

My NCAA Dynasty moved on to Season 2 last night.  Using the NXE (yes, there will be a post about this later), we were able to use the new group chat feature and power through the offseason all at once.  8 of the 9 people in our league pulled a 3-hour administration session to allow us to get to next seasons games.  

The highlight of my offseason was wooing back the #2 QB in the nation from his soft-commit to Nebraska.  He’s now the 2nd string QB for my Fresno State team after I promised him the world, including “no redshirt”.  The level of detail in the recruiting and management is really quite amazing.  Regardless, Fresno State came out of the offseason with the 29th ranked class, best in the WAC.  Hawaii was the closest at 49 while the rest of the players were in the 70s or higher.

There’s definitely hope that I’ll have the ability to defend my title even though I was only picked to place 3rd in the preseason predictions;  Dan’s high-powered NMSU offense seduced the voters and garnered most of the preseason picks.

Over the past week, our WAC Dynasty has approached the end of the season.  My last two games were against San Jose State and Boise State, manned by Roy/Luke and Josh respectively.  I contemplated writing up recaps but other things kept me busy.  I only needed to win one of the games to lock up the WAC title and I wasted no time by defeating Luke 17-14 in my fourth straight 3 point win over human opponents.  I didn’t feel like I played well and Luke played quite well but I managed to squeeze out the win by holding on after jumping out to a 10-0 lead early.

I didn’t have a good feeling about my game with Josh and it was to prove true as he pummeled me 42-17.  My quarterback had 3 interceptions and seemed to be off the whole night.  Josh had the better team and he played them excellently and thoroughly dominated me on both sides of the ball.  It didn’t matter much in the standings as we were #1/2 in the conference and I’m destined for the Hawaii bowl as WAC #1 versus what is predicted to be a 7-5 team from Rice University.  The only fallout that might have occurred is that the #2 QB recruit in the nation, and the only 5 star recruit of note between the middle of the road WAC teams, has had my Fresno State as his #1 choice the whole season but soft-committed to his #2 choice Nebraska the week after the Fresno State/Boise State game.  The loss of the star recruit is a big blow to the Fresno State recruiting and worries me about next season.

More interestingly, the WAC Dynasty has started to accumulate more members.  A friend of Chris’s has decided to join as Idaho, our friend Murf is joining as Utah State, and Carl might even join as La Tech, filling out the WAC with all human competitors.  Next season looks to be a fun one!

I seem to have taken a momentary hiatus from blogging the past week.  Work has been insane and I’ve spent a significant amount of time wandering back and forth to my condo as I try and get it rented out to a new tenant.  That said, there really is only one true reason I haven’t been blogging: Gears of War 2.   I consider Gears of War to be the only reason why one should get an XBox 360 so I was obviously stoked when the sequel came out last Friday.   Christina has stepped up and accepted her widowed status once more as I spend way too much time delving into the game.

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When I first signed on to the NCAA online dynasty, I threw my lot in with the expectation of being 0-fer against my friends.  Starting the season off 0-4, my Fresno State team looked set to match those pitiful expectations.  Since that time, I finally started to turn my steady improvement into wins.  Starting with the win against Chris’s Hawaii team, I knocked off five straight victories including a monumental victory over Mike’s Nevada team, the WAC leader at the time.

At 5-4, my rush looked set to come to an end as Dan brought New Mexico State to Fresno last week.  Dan had been pivotal in helping me figure out how to learn the game though I do wonder about his suggestion that “zone” defenses are good when playing humans because they have a hard time reading the coverage;  My defensive schemes were not particularly effective at shutting down his pass-happy offense.  From the get-go, I was extremely nervous about playing the resident NCAA expert even during the relatively calm first few quarters.  When the game turned into a action-packed shootout in the fourth quarter, I figured that not only would I lose the game for sure but I would probably also have a heart attack before it ended.  Against all odds, my crazy streak of upsets continued when I eked out a 38-35 victory in OT.  Recap follows.

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My NCAA dynasty continued with the Fresno State Bulldogs welcoming the Nevada Wolfpack to Fresno for a big-time game against two undefeated-in-the-conference foes for a pivotal game to determine the front-runner for the WAC championship. Nevada entered the game as the favorite with only two losses by 3 points each to top 15 teams. Optimistic, Nevada looked ready to stake claim to the WAC title and a top 25 ranking. Fresno State was riding high after a 4 game winning streak and an upset of then #16 La Tech. Saturday night would leave the Wolfpack players scratching their heads trying to figure out convoluted schemes that would allow them to win the WAC title after losing 17-14 to the Fresno State Bulldogs. Game recap follows.

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