Had the annual Fantasy Football Draft last night. Overall I’m not really high on my team at this point. I finished 4th last year in a 10 team league. It’s a keeper league and my only keeper was Tony Romo. Perhaps you can see where this is going. I pick 7th. As it turns all top 10 RB were gone and the top 3 WR were also gone. That doesn’t leave much for pick 7.

Here’s how it turned out:

Keeper : QB Tony Romo

7 RB Larry Johnson
15 RB Thomas Jones (I think he’ll have a better year than last)
24 WR Plaxico Burress
47 RB Edgerrin James
54 WR Greg Jennings (Tough to reproduce what he had last year, but I think he’ll be fine)
67 TE Chris Cooley
74 WR Hines Ward
87 RB Ahman Green
94 WR Reggie Williams
107 QB Aaron Rodgers (solely because Romo’s bye is wk 10 and GB plays a terrible pass defense)
114 D Balitmore Ravens
127 TE Donald Lee (somewhat of a homer pick)
134 RB Kolby Smith (had to handcuff LJ)
147 K Jeff Reed
154 WR Ronald Curry

I attended my first user group meeting tonight.  It was the Minneapolis ALT.NET User Group.  It was a good experience. I went in not expecting much as it was the inaugural group meeting in the Twin Cities.   I was accompanied by my fellow geek, Jason.  The ALT.NET group is something I’ve recently started following after a few posts that I ran across in my searches for professional development and to find different and potentially better ways of doing things.

Since finding the group, reading some blogs, and listening to the podcasts, I’ve become more of an advocate of finding the right tools and methods to gain efficiency and provide appropriate methods to provide appropriate client solutions.  I like and respect the passion in the community, hope it continues on, and hope that I can appropriately contribute my successes and stories back.

At my current job we are currently “rewriting” our main application, converting it from a VFP windows fat client to a .NET web based solution.  We decided to go with NHibernate vs other ORM’s or self-baked DAL’s.  Since we are starting from scratch (at least from a system/application perspective), I am very interested in promoting some of the ideas from the ALT.NET community.  Having been with the company for only a year and seeing some of the struggles with the current implementation,  I feel that in our particular problem domain I think DDD is something that would be extremely benificial.  The same goes for Continuous Integration, and unit tests…. (any unit tests). I’d even prefer a new method of source control.  That leads me to one of my motivations for the ALT.NET community…how do you sell some of this new stuff to your development manager and your company president?  Obviously I can initiate discussions and float my ideas, but how do I grab traction and have a concrete example of how this is better than it is today? What are other success stories out there?

I’m open for comments and I hope to pick some brains about some of this.

It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy so back off!

After a whirlwind July being and being out of town every darn weekend, I finally got a chance to settle in at home for the weekend, do a little work around the house, and catch some good Olympic games coverage.

I finally was able to find decent 5/4″ x 6″ x 12 PT deck boards.  And I’ll be darned but the Endeavor can damn near swallow em.  I only needed 7.  A large number have been a trickier transport home, but it was all good.  They are drying out as we speak and will get put on this week.  Then it’s time to stain them and seal the new fence.  I need a new garage door, service door, and garage door opener too… I could go on, but it’ll get depressing.

I’ve been obsessed with the Olympics.  Let’s just say I got my fair share of coverage this weekend.  I watched plenty of swimming, USA vs China in basketball and water polo.  I’ve seen plenty of beach and indoor volleyball and as I mentioned both are absolutely outrageous.  I can’t imagine being on the receiving end of some of those kills.  A couple of highlights stick out in my head — Dalhausser/Rodgers losing to Latvia, the US Men’s Indoor Volleyball team pulling out a tough match against Venezuela, May-Treanor/Walsh continuing their sport’s dominance, Michael Phelps’ quest to become the most successful Olympic athlete of all time, and of course the rousing upset of the Frenchies in the Men’s 4×100 Freestyle.  Awesome race!  I can’t wait to see what else the games bring us.  You can bet that I’ll be watching both the men’s and women’s triathlon as well.  I don’t care if it’s streamed at 3AM.

Aaron Rodgers gets his first start tonight.  Even though it’s only their first preseason game, it’ll be interesting to see how he comes out and how fans react to his success or failures on the field.  I feel it might get ugly if he doesn’t perform.