Some Harry Potter Thoughts: 1 of a Lot

            So I recently finished reading the Harry Potter book series, which is my favorite book series of all time.  I’ve been contemplating writing about Harry Potter for the last little bit, but I’m not sure what all I could write about.  I could write about my original experience reading the books, or why I love them so much, or all of the questions I would ask J.K. Rowling, or the movies, or any combination of the above.  This could turn into the longest post of my life, or several posts.  I think I will bore you with several posts instead.
            So I think I will begin with why I love them so much, because the original experience requires more research.  I will begin with a small overlap on my original experience though.  I’m actually surprised I ever liked Harry Potter.  We had it read to us in 5^th grade.  Normally I don’t like being assigned reading (even to this day), so it either means the book is that awesome, or the fact that my teacher read it to us helped me not care, or both (but definitely that the book is awesome).  Either way, a very big thank you to Mr. Dean for getting me hooked.

            Most people know I’m a big Star Wars fan, and Harry Potter seemed to fit in just fine.  Fantasy and Sci-Fi are similar enough in my mind.  So that was my first reason for getting into it.  Another reason I liked it was that when I got into the series, I was around the same age as Harry (and roughly grew up with Harry, but more of that will be mentioned with my original experience), which helped me feel a connection to him…and having glasses helped too.  It seems somewhat ridiculous, but I didn’t like having glasses, so Harry having glasses made me feel better.

            While we are on connections, I never really identified specifically with one character, but I always felt like I had something in common with several of them.  I already mentioned the connections with Harry, the connection I had with Ron was the red hair, and Hermione was a bit of a know-it-all/bookworm/nerd – and I had more of those tendencies in my youth (I still do now, but not nearly as bad).

            The good vs. evil aspect is always something I’ve liked in my stories.  Maybe it’s too much of a kid mentality, but I always preferred good vs evil over the troubled hero, or the gray moral areas.  That’s changed some, but I’m still that way in general.  One thing that hasn’t changed is my overactive imagination.  The book was very descriptive in general, so entering that new world was all sorts of fun.  I’m sad to say I still often day-dream and get caught up in other thoughts, but it happens.

            Another them from the booked that I really liked was family and loyalty.  Granted, Harry didn’t have his family, but it was an important theme.  Seeing as how Harry didn’t have his family, his friends became his family, and he showed them a lot of loyalty.  I don’t mean to toot my own horn, but I am quite the loyal friend.  Maybe a little too loyal sometimes, but that’s not the point right now.

            I don’t really want to get into specifics of each book, but each book had its adventures, sports, hijinks, commodity, drama, and some romance (in the later books).  Also, being kids/youth books, they are pretty easy to read.  I am a big fan of Netflix because I can binge watch.  Well with Harry Potter I could binge read.  I like to finish things that I’ve started, such as TV shows, movie series, or books.  I like to know things as soon as I can.  I hate waiting, and so I would often do nothing but read Harry Potter to find out what was going to happen – there aren’t many better days than that in my opinion.

            So that’s it for now, I will write more later on – most likely next week since I have a couple of paper’s do this next week.  I know you’re all excited to read it, so I will try as much as I can to get to the next blog, which will be my original experience with the books.            

I am a Dead Man!

So the title comes from Doctrine and Covenants 135:1, and I admit I used it as an attention-getter, but it will make sense in the 3rd paragraph (not counting this one) and on down.

So I am one that usually makes fun of BYU, its overall setting and its large amount of church related stuff. My brother once made a statement that I think applies here and it’s “There are three levels of people in the church – being inactive in church, active, and then over-active”. I feel like BYU and most of the people here put some over-active people I know to shame. That being said, there was an awesome experience I had this past weekend that I’d like to share with you.

So I recently started working at BYU Studies, which does a lot with scholarly articles dealing with the LDS church. I had to work this last Saturday for a couple of hours while a lot of board members were in a large group meeting. I was able to sit in for most of the meeting, and at the end of the meeting, there was a presentation from a descendant of Hyrum Smith.

There were several of Hyrum’s items on display as well as some Smith family items that were passed down through Hyrum’s descendants. Some of the items on display included a box that Alvin owned that eventually held the golden plates for a little while, as well as the clothes Hyrum was wearing when he was martyred in Carthage. It was surreal to see the clothes, with the bullet holes and blood, and the shattered watch that was in his pocket.

I’ve never been on a church history tour, or any historical church sites east of Colorado, so I’ve never seen any items similar to what I saw Saturday. It was really special to see those things at that time. It was an interesting time, and it made me appreciate everything early church members did to stay true to the church, and to help the church grow and become what it is today. Seeing bullet holes and Hyrum’s blood really brought that all home and made me appreciate what Hyrum and Joseph did to help restore the church.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever get the chance to see those kinds of things again, or if I’ll ever go to some historical church sites out east, but I very much appreciated that chance I got Saturday. If you get the chance to do something similar, I would encourage you to do it. It’s a rare chance, and it will help you appreciate the church more. Bad transition here, and on a lesser note, you should also go see the Dead Sea Scrolls up in Salt Lake. It wasn’t as neat to me as the Hyrum stuff, and because I was able to go to Israel last year (vacation dropper), some of the stuff was similar to what I saw over there. But if you can, go see that as well.

Well that’s all for now…until next time, I will try and come up with a better close to my blog posts.

Estimated 2014 Opening Kick Off

If you are like me, today is a sad day -- no more football for a while.  Well to ease your pain, well my pain, I have estimated the day of the next kickoff.  Since 2002, the opening game has taken place after Labor Day (first Monday of September), and most of those games have happened on a Thursday (instead of Wednesday).  The time has been somewhat variable...it started at 9 p.m. EST for the first couple of years, but has since moved to 8:30 p.m. EST (with one 7:00 p.m. EST thrown in for fun).

So my guess is Thursday, September 5th, at 8:30 p.m. EST, football will be back.  I can't imagine I'm off more than a day, but if it happens, I'll post a more accurate clock.  Until then, good luck surviving the remaining 213 (from the time that I posted this) football free days.

2013 Travel Log

Full disclosure, this is long, and probably doesn't interest you.

So I didn’t do a whole lot of blogging during our time in Florida. I didn’t want to be one of those over-sharers (even though I kinda was on facebook/twitter).  I’m not going to give a recap on the Florida trip here so much, but a general summary of all of our adventures and travels in 2013.

So here are a list of the places we (or I) spent some time this year (places out of the ordinary anyways, so no St. George or Provo references).

San Diego for New Years, and all the cities that require getting there and back.

We went to Jerusalem (I went for a week, Jocelyn went for two).  So to get there I went from SLC to Houston to Newark to Tel Aviv (the airport in Israel).  While in Israel we went to a bunch of awesome places, but I won’t go into detail here. Suffice it to say there was lots of travel over there.  On the way back we flew through Newark again and then Denver, and back to SLC. I was originally supposed to go through Toronto on my way to Tel Aviv, but there were some delays and plane problems, so I went to Newark instead.  Kinda, bummed, but oh well.

So shortly after I got back, I flew out to Baltimore with EY.  I went through Minnesota to get there, so that was somewhere new for me.  I was out there for a couple of days, and then flew back (pretty sure that was direct to SLC).

I got back from that trip on Friday (I think) and then that next Sunday, I flew down to Orange County California also with EY. That was a few days as well.  Once I got home from that trip (that was a very busy 2 weeks) we didn’t have any travels for a while.

Once August rolled around, we packed up and moved out to Florida. We stopped in Nebraska, Maryland, and North Carolina along the way. While in Florida, we didn’t travel to far from the Orlando area (no Miami) except for the one time I went to the Rays/Red Sox game.

Once it came time to leave, we went from Orlando, to Louisiana, New Mexico, and then to St. George.  We also went to San Diego for Christmas, and then from there back to Utah.

What I learned, I can go work for Disney, spend 4 months surrounded by it, and still be upset I was in Southern California three times this year and didn’t go to Disneyland.  I feel like I have my priorities right. 

So now I will give you a big long list of the major interstates we drove on, and the major cities we drove through/visited.

I-4 (Florida)

I-5(California)

I-8(California)

I-10(Florida, Alabama, Mississippi)

I-15(Utah, Nevada, California)

I-20(Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas)

I-30(Texas – Very brief time on this highway)

I-35(Texas – Very brief time on this highway)

I bring you a break in interstates to rant about Texas. We drove through lots of small roads and cities on Texas…I kinda hate Texas for how much time I had to spend there. Back to your boring list of interstates.

I-40(Texas, New Mexico, Arizona – we spent a lot of time on I-40 because I didn’t want to take any smaller roads after Texas)

I-70(Pennsylvania, Maryland)

I-75(Florida)

I-80(Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana [at some point this was also I-90], Ohio,

I-95(Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida)

Now, in more or less the order that we drove through (or close enough that I’ll count) them, here are a list of cities that I think are important enough to be on this list.  There will be random paragraphs…only for the white space.

Lincoln, Omaha (oh Peyton Manning), Des Moines, Chicago, South Bend, Toledo (only included because BYU used to play them so often), not really but kinda Cleveland, and same with Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Washington DC.  Richmond, Raleigh, Durham, Some other St. George (but not as cool), Savannah, Jacksonville, Daytona, Orlando, Tampa, St. Petersburg, Gainesville, Tallahasee. 

Mobile, Hattiesburg (home of Brett Favre) Jackson, Monroe (that made me happy happy happy), Dallas (very not happy), Amarillo (the first big town we had seen since Dallas…which was like 9 hours earlier), Albuquerque (no walter white though).  Side note, if you made it this far, I’m sorry, but my real side note is we drove through 3 areas where 3 of the biggest TV shows of the last year are filmed. South GA (walking dead), Monroe LA (duck dynasty), and Albuquerque (breaking bad). I feel kinda awesome…more so than usual that is.  Anyways, here is the home stretch.

Flagstaff, some of the Grand Canyon, St. George (other than coming home from my mission, I don’t think I’ve ever been more excited to see St. George…and get out of a car), Las Vegas, a bunch of California, which led to San Diego, and then Imperial Beach…from there we actually saw Tijuana.  We brought our passports, but never actually went through.  Kinda a bummer.

And now I’m in Provo, delaying homework.  It’s due tomorrow night, so I don’t feel too bad at the moment, but still. Anyways, if I can put homework off, I will. I will try and blog more, but no promises.  After this the 3 of you that read this are probably ok with that.

Playoff Layout

So this what the playoffs look like now (assuming Lynch doesn’t get hurt early, and totals 3.6+ points).

#1 – Chad

#2 – Ren

#3 – Tyler (wins his division, and is therefore guaranteed a top 3 seed, even if his power ranking/overall standing would have put him behind me)

#4 – Skyler

#5 – Jordan (had less points than Brady, but one more win)

#6 – Brady

However, if Lynch gets hurt or something, here is what the scenario would be.

#1 – Chad

#2 – Jordan

#3 – Ren

#4 – Skyler

#5 – Tyler

#6 – Brady

So the north division has their spots locked up at 1, 4 and 6.  However, bye weeks depend on Lynch not getting a concussion, or playing his worst game all year.  Though he has scored 3.7 this year, as well as 6.9 and 7.2, and I think that’s without injury.  So who knows. I could be wrong.  I had to double and triple check this and make changes.  So leave comments correcting me.  It’s not been my week. 10 and a half hours in a car leaves you loopy.  Also, had Matt won, he would have been in.  Brady would like to thank Trevor for the help.  Even after I gave Trevor grief about who to start, he still won.

Going into the last week

Let’s get to the obvious.  Rob, Geoff, Koko and Trevor are out.  What I’m about to say isn’t 100% certain.  I mean there is always the chance Jordan wins, Ren wins, and Jordan outscores Ren by 270 points, but it’s not likely. If there is a chance points come into play, I’ll let you know.  Otherwise, someone has a better record, or is leading by like 70 points and should be safe.

Win or lose, chad has a bye.  Ren has a bye if he wins, or Jordan loses.  Jordan has a bye if he wins and Ren loses.  The winner of Jordan and Tyler will win the division. If Jordan wins he has the better record, if Tyler wins, they have the same record and Tyler wins on points. Jordan is in the playoffs no matter what.

Now to the gray areas.  Of the teams with 7 or less wins, I’m leading Hukill by 40, who leads matt by 20, who leads brady by 7, who leads kyle by 40.  Check the standings on Tuesday, or the table at the bottom of the post for point/standing breakdown. 

If Matt or Kyle lose, they are out.  Winner of Brady/Skyler is guaranteed in.  I have a decent enough of a lead in points, that I should get in even if I lose next week, as long as my team doesn’t score an all-time low of like 70. 

If Hukill wins, the last playoff spot will be battled out by the loser of Skyler/Brady, Matt and Kyle (assuming they both win).  I have a 60 pt lead on Matt, and 107 on kyle, so I’m in a solid position even if I lose.  Brady on the other hand is down 7 on Matt and up 40 on Kyle, so that would come down to how much he scores vs how much Matt scores for a playoff spot.  Matt should be cheering for him to win, brady to lose, and tyler to lose just to be safe. 20 points behind hukill can be recovered in one week.

I feel like most everything can be deciphered from there, but I’ll break down the last 5 people real quick in best and worst case scenario (both within the realm of possibility…there will be no predictions of 60 point losses or anything.

Skyler: Best – win and in.  Worst – lose, everyone else win, likely beat matt and kyle by points tiebreaker.

Hukill: Best – win and get division title (but no shot at a bye). Worst – he loses, brady wins, and matt outscores him by 20, while he doesn’t outscore me by 40.  That happens and he’s out. Or brady could lose instead of me, but outscore hukill by 25.  He would also be out.

Brady: Best – win and in.  Worst – lose and have matt win, while not outscoring matt by more than 7 points.  That happens and he’s out…and/or kyle win and kyle outscores him by 40.

Matt: Best – win, Brady lose, Tyler lose.  He then ties them on record, and if he outscored hukill by 20, while staying ahead of brady in points, could take the 5^th seed.  Worst – Lose and he’s out.

Kyle: Best – win, Matt lose, Tyler lose, Brady lose.  He would pass matt in record, and then he would have to outscore brady by 40 and Hukill by 65 to claim the 5^th seed, and outscore only one of them for the 6^th seed.  It’s very unlikely Kyle makes it.  Worst – lose and out.

That’s it.  Here is the table of the teams, their wins, and their points.

I am Batman	9	1584.26
El Gordo	8	1685.18
P- Town	8	1417.88
Dixie	7	1502.8
Hukraine	7	1460.4
B EZ ON MY SNAX	7	1435.82
BHers	6	1442.82
Hit Squad	6	1395.98

Two Weeks Left

So due to the predictions of one team and his ability to make the playoffs, I decided to write a new playoffs scenario.  Also, at the bottom I am going to include some possible rule changes, format changes, site changes, and owner changes.

So the standings changed.  Some of my predictions happened, some didn’t. Some of my predictions were based on what I wanted to see happen, so I shouldn’t be shocked that I got them wrong.  Unless Ren falls apart and loses out, he will have a bye – just on sheer points.

Chad won.  That makes me mad.  I needed him to lose to have a shot at the division title. This is a big week for both of us.  I have to win by about 80 points to really have a tie going into the last week, but that’s not going to happen.  He will win the division as long as he doesn’t lose both games.

I’m no lock to make the playoffs, so beating chad would make sure I get in, as well as give me a chance at the division title.  Fortunately for me, Jordan plays Kyle this week.  If I lose and Jordan loses, then I’m tied record wise with Jordan and Kyle going into the last week. If kyle loses, that will keep me a game ahead of him no matter what.

Brady also has a big week against Geoff, he is projected for a nice big win, which will help keep him in the playoff hunt now that he has the same record as Tyler and Kyle.

I know already mentioned Kyle vs. Jordan, but a win for Jordan will keep him ahead for the division race. I’ll get to this later, but it’s likely that the South division will only have Ren in the playoffs, and Chad is most likely in. So winning your division keeps you from the elimination bubble.  If Kyle wins (by more than 6.64 points), he will pass Jordan in the rankings.

I’m not sure what to say about Hukill.  I thought he was the surging team (he still could be), but Koko has the highest current win streak (tied with chad) and could be the surging team. While he can’t catch anyone with 7+ wins, he could catch anyone with 6 if they lose out.  He needs Jordan to win his games to keep Kyle and Tyler at 6 wins.  That would put Chad, Skyler, Ren, and Jordan ahead of him, with Brady Kyle, and Tyler all at 6 wins (not likely, but it could happen). 

If the above scenario happens, BHers and Native Americans could still be in the hunt as well.  If Trevor wins out, he will have 6 wins.  That would be 1 more loss to Matt, but if he beat Ren this week, he would also end at 6 wins.  I think it’s all very unlikely, but if 6 teams ended at 6-7, it would then come down to total points, which I’m not going to guess because that’s even harder to get than wins.

Rob and Geoff, I’m sorry.  Better luck next year.  You can play spoiler to some other teams though.  In fact, I need Geoff to win out if I want a small chance to win my division.  Well, I think that’s everyone.  Now to the changes that could happen next year.

So there have been some keeper complaints: should we be able trade them and then keep them, should we be able to keep waiver wire pickups, should we get rid of keepers all together?  I’m ok with whatever.  Honestly, I’m all up for what is best for the league.  You can argue thinking long term is good for the league or playing in the moment is good for the league, and both have valid points.  I just ask that people be objective in their view of the rules. I don’t like how one year keepers are bad, but then the next year it’s great because you have a great keeper. So try and be reasonable. But it appears something needs to change.

One of the arguments for removing keepers is that it puts more skill and importance on draft day, which is everyone’s favorite day anyways.  My only issue with that, is it makes draft day longer, and sometimes we all take too long, or aren’t prepared, and 2-3 extra rounds would make that longer.  You can argue that’s good or bad, but it’s another way to think of keepers changing our favorite day of the year.

Tanking – it happens.  I have minimal issue with what Rob is doing because he is trying to build for next year, and it’s in the rules – I do hate that he is trading with people in my division, but that’s just me being biased and subjective.  However, I don’t want people giving up and not worrying about this year.  Plus now Rob has great keepers and has the inside track to next year’s 1^st overall pick.  Obviously, we can’t change this for next draft, because it’s unfair, but what if we have the winner of the consolation bracket get the 1^st overall pick? That way people still try all year long.  Other options would be to make the trade deadline earlier (that could be fine), or expand the playoffs to 8 teams. 

I will say straight up, I don’t like expanding the playoffs.  Sure, more people get in and will try harder, but that makes most of the regular season worthless.  The year I won it all, we had several teams with losing records in the playoffs.  If we expanded to 8 teams, how many teams would make it that wouldn’t really earn it? Plus, that 8 seed could upset the 1 seed in the first round.  There isn’t a benefit on seeding (because there is no bye week), the benefit is in the schedule and match-ups.  That is my opinion on expanding the playoffs.

Other changes could be to change tie-breakers. I feel like basing it on record and then points is probably the most accurate representation of someone’s season.  However, if we wanted to make tie-breakers based on head-to-head results to make individual games matter just a little bit more, I’m ok with that.  It would change things to some degree.  I believe the year I won, had we gone to head to head tie-breakers, Brady would have made it ahead of me, I would have moved down to the 6 seed, and Ren would have been eliminated.  I don’t think I would have won that year. So there’s something to think about.

I was thinking there is the possibility of putting the divisions up to 4, with 3 teams each.  That way we could play each division team twice (4 total) plus the other 9 teams (13 games total now) and still have the playoffs go from weeks 14-16.  It’s not great, but it could fit with some of the rule changes (like if we wanted to expand playoffs). Part of the reason I suggest that is because there is one opponent we don’t play every year, and this would change that.

Geoff mentioned switching to ESPN.  I have no issues with that, but I don’t know everyone else’s feelings.  My only concern is having to get everyone to adjust to the new page.

So Konner will be going on a mission at some point, and we will need to replace him.  If we stick with our “tradition” theme we often go with, we should probably have my brother Logan replace him or Tommy Leavitt, since they were both original members of the league in 2006.  However, if we want to find someone else, or widen the pool, we need to find a way to do that.  I was thinking start up a minor league.  We won’t drop anyone down to it, but we have enough interest that we could start up the minor league, and the winner can move up to replace Konner.  Plus we have a pool of replacements if anyone quits, dies, or sucks too much.

Please comment on any of the possible changes.  Feedback is always encouraged. To encourage more feedback, I was thinking of creating a competition committee of 3-5 members that can go over rules and make rule changes.  So let me know what you think of that as well.