Olympics / Pandora / Lists

This Olympic commercial reminded me how much I like Pandora and how I haven't used it too much lately. The song is Breathe Me by Sia (I love the piano).
Here is an Eric Weeks style list of artists/songs I have discovered on Pandora that I may have never found.

Sia
"Breathe Me"
"Day too soon"
"Little black sandals"
"Soon we'll be found"

The Cure (apparently I like The Cure)
"To the sky" (my ring tone)

Katie Melua
"Just like Heaven" (as made famous by The Cure)

Damien Rice
"9 crimes"
"Delicate"

My favorite Idol audition

In response to Tom's blog, here was my favorite audition so far:
Maybe I'll take her in our work Idol pool this year.

Animal Update

So far today, Benson has turned on the air purifier and the Bose radio all by himself.

This looks like a cat/dog stare down but it's actually a sleep off.

On the hunt for a squirrel.

Sometimes Benson is too busy for Lucy and she needs some alone time.

Price is Right Birthday

After watching this, I have high expectations for Matt's birthday...

How did you sleep?

Yes, there is an App for that.
You put your phone on your bed under the sheets at night.
The accelerometer tracks your movements to determine how well you are sleeping.
Here is how I slept last night:


I set up the phone at 10:30pm.
I read in bed from 11 to 12:10am.
Looks like I fell asleep around 1am, had 4 dreams, and woke up at 5:30am when Benson knocked my iPhone out of the bed. And as it shows I wasn't able to fall back asleep until 7.
Looks like I only had 4.5 hrs of real sleep.

The data alone is worth the $1.
But there is a benefit.
You set a peaceful alarm for the latest you can sleep in.
Then, anytime within 30 mins of that alarm it will wake you up if it senses you are in light sleep. This is because they say you won't feel rested if you wake up from a deep sleep.

For example, I set mine to 7:20am and it went off at 7:14am after I had fallen asleep.

Sir Benson

I have a cat, his name is Benson and he's actually proof reading this blog over my shoulder.
Last month, a lost cat followed Lucy and I home from our walk. He ended up living in the garage for a week while I traveled to Toronto. When I got home, he was gone but 3 other neighborhood cats were using the garage as a late night waffle house.
I had never really thought about having a cat, but I missed that cat after he was gone. I had told Molly that I would like to find an orange cat and she found one that had been rescued. So on the night of our softball party, I bought a cat.
The top picture his him on top of my birthday present from Mike, Jen and the girls. Note his orange mustache.

Benson loves the sink while I brush my teeth in the morning:

He loves to watch Lucy when she goes outside:


He loves to knead everyone including Lucy, and his greatest accomplishment so far is climbing half way up the stone fireplace in front of everyone before falling.
I told you he was proof reading this:

Mental Stimulation

I love to learn and I love numbers.
I hate the NBA and hate to watch NBA basketball, but I love to play Fantasy Basketball which Dale got me into 3 years ago. I love it because of the Moneyball like effect in the statistics that can be optimized.
It's funny that at times I don't even know the players on my team, and get surprised when I see them and think they don't look like guys who could play that well.

1. The graph below shows how you would expect to draft a team vs some chosen rankings system, that rates the top players versus the average players. The goal is to get as many above average players on your team as possible.

2. However, when you look at the player value ratings (a mathmatical calculation I do to rate each player vs an average player) the Yahoo Rankings show a wide spread vs the exact data they used to make those rankings.

3. The top half of that spread are players who are underrated versus the rankings, the players on the bottom half are overrated versus the rankings. I try to use this to my advantage to get as many underrated players as possible.
The Red circles are players I kept from last years team and the Blue circles are the players I drafted this year (mostly underrated).

4. Despite taking over a very bad team, I have slowly improved my team year after year from 10th place in the Regular Season to 1st last year. (Billy Beane and I agree 1 week Playoffs are a little bit of a crap shoot that can't be predicted).
The best compliment I got last year was someone in the league said: "It's surprising how good the team is, when no one on the roster scares you."

5. Those are the basics, but to get to intermediate team management I focus on the leverage plots of each statistical category.

The Blue line is the plot of Points scored. It shows the very best player will only score 2 times as many points as the average player. Therefore, you would need 4 or 5 of the top scorers to be sure you could beat any other team any given week.
The Pink line shows the same plot for Blocks. A less sexy category, but the best players can get 5 times as many blocks as the average player. Therefore, if you have 2 of the top blockers in the league you should be able to win blocks every week.

Sadly, the season just started and my favorite part is already over.
Luckily, I use the same approach for Baseball which is only 6 months away.