{"id":3172,"date":"2018-08-07T16:31:00","date_gmt":"2018-08-07T16:31:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/?p=3172"},"modified":"2018-08-07T16:31:00","modified_gmt":"2018-08-07T16:31:00","slug":"mendocino-complex-fire-and-fantasy-football","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/mendocino-complex-fire-and-fantasy-football\/","title":{"rendered":"Mendocino Complex fire and fantasy football"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I sit here typing, I can smell and see the smoke from the Mendocino fire about 130 miles north of here. The sun rose with an eerie red tint. Despite this, the weather people say the air quality is good. The smoke, at least the dangerous part, is too high to affect the ground level badly. The fire is the largest in state history and only about 35% contained, so it’s a bad one. So far there’s been no loss of life on this one that I know of.\u00a0 It’s located near Clear Lake, the setting for much of my fourth Cliff Knowles novel, Death Row<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In my last post I complained about needing to fill my time with more reading and having trouble finding good stuff to read. In the last twelve hours I’ve started and given up on three books, two of which were audiobooks: The Strange Bird<\/em><\/a> by Jeff Vandermeer (too artsy-fartsy and weird), The Crack in the Lens<\/em><\/a>, by Steve Hockensmith (audiobook reader had horrible hokey Southern+Western accents, a sort of cross between Gomer Pyle and this narrator of Huckleberry Hound<\/a>), and Future Home of the Living God<\/em><\/a> by Louise Erdrich (an author reading her own work is usually a mistake).<\/p>\n

So what’s next? I joined a fantasy football league. I’m no pro football fan, although I often watch the local team, the 49ers. I record the games and don’t bother to finish watching if the Niners are losing badly. I joined the league for two reasons: I like analyzing data and it gives me an opportunity to do that, and a good friend and my son are both in this league, so it provides and activity to share with them. I don’t care about winning or losing as long as I get a season’s worth of entertainment. I just looked at several websites ranking players for fantasy football purposes and I’d never heard of about 98% of them. I also don’t have much idea of strategy beyond what the pros say (yes, there are fantasy football pros), but the point scoring system for my league is different from the standard one, so that strategy may not be of much use. Still, I’ve got my spreadsheet going already. By the way, in case you’re wondering, my research indicates that the league I’m in is legal in California – skill required and no rake – so it’s not considered gambling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As I sit here typing, I can smell and see the smoke from the Mendocino fire about 130 miles north of here. The sun rose with an eerie red tint. Despite this, the weather people say the air quality is good. 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