sMoRTy71.com: September 2009

FFL 09 Week 2: Dbags 95, FTW! 67
Rough second week of Fantasy Football. There was a lot (a lot!) of trash talking leading up to my face-off with talentless, FFL rookie Mark Donohue. Expectations were high after my league-leading 124 points in Week 1 (and his 70 points).

Unfortunately, Mark's team had its "any given Sunday" moment and managed to *squeak* out a 28 point win.

My team, as a whole, didn't perform up to their averages. Tom Brady, Thomas Jones and Reggie Wayne all scored fewer than 10 points (after scoring 19 or more in Week 1). Then, there was a coaching mistake on my part. I pulled Willis McGahee at the last minute and he put up 19 points. Still wouldn't have been enough to catch Donohue's bunch of no-talent hacks, but I hate leaving points on the bench.

I hope Mark cherishes this win. I doubt he'll get many more. Now, I must set my sites squarely on Ted Laun's The Sour Mash.

FFL 09 Week 1: FTW! 124, RTC 69
Just like Tom Brady and my Patriots, my fantasy team, FTW!, returned to form with a 55-point beatdown in the season opener against Brendan Jackson's former powerhouse RTC. In fact, 124 points led all teams in league.

Tom Brady, Thomas Jones and Reggie Wayne led the way with 25, 22 and 22 respectively. Also got good performances out of Willis McGahee and the Giants defense who each scored 19.

My backups were solid, too, with 3 players accounting for 44 points including my waiver pickup Ben Watson who put up 19 points.

Will have to get on the waivers to get a WR. One of my starters, Anthony Gonzalez, was injured and put up the big goose egg. His backup, Kevin Walter, is injured as well.

Of course, I am playing Mark Donohue's team next week, so 8 starters should be enough...

DirecTV HR21 + PlayOn = Awesome!
This weekend, we switched back to DirecTV after a long year with cable. We had been DirecTV customers for the previous 12 years, but, for some unknown reason, we decided to give cable a shot. While our cable experience wasn't terrible, it wasn't anything special either.

With the arrival of football season and the crazy NFL Sunday Ticket promos DirecTV is running, we decided it was the right time to switch back.

One thing I wasn't expecting was just how cool the Media Share options of the DirecTV HR21-700 HD DVR would be. Out of the box, the HR21 will let you connect to your home network and pull in videos, photos and music. Nothing really groundbreaking, but still nice. What completely rocked my world, though, was the awesomeness that ensued when I installed PlayOn Media Server on my media PC.

Now, instead of your basic media sharing options, you get the ability to stream Netflix, hulu, YouTube, ESPN and CBS. I used the Netflix and hulu streaming the first night (since I had no shows on my brand new DVR) and it was great. No extra hardware to buy. No crazy DRM hassles. It just worked.

Last night, I connected my SlingCatcher in our master bedroom and will be using the HR21 to give us Netflix and hulu streaming there as well. Very cool.