Championship Sunday – the day after
So the participants of Super Bowl XLII have stepped up and declared themselves. Congratulations to the New England Patriots and the New York Giants. They have won their respective conferences and have a date to face of with each other in just under two weeks.
Yesterday's games were sort of odd. For the record:
AFC Championship
Actual Scores
San Diego Chargers: 12
New England Patriots: 21
My Prediction
San Diego Chargers: 10
New England Patriots: 35
NFC Championship
Actual Scores
New York Giants: 23
Green Bay Packers: 20 OT
My Prediction
New York Giants: 14
Green Bay Packers: 28
Wow! There is not much else to say about this week's games except the two front runners, the Patriots and the Packers, did not at all play up to the level they were supposed to (or could have) played up to. Tom Brady stunk worse then a sweating skunk on a Brooklyn Summer day. He threw three interceptions, was totally out of sync with his receivers and seemed to not be able to conduct his offense at all.
On the other hand, the Chargers made one of the most critically and spectacularly stupid decisions ever made in championship football. They sat future hall of fame running back LaDanian Tomlinson for most of this game with no real reason for doing so. In the end, the Patriots horrid offense was still good enough to beat a Chargers team that was minus one great player. This says a lot about the Patriots.
In the eventing game Brett Favre decided that his game was only two and half quarters long and packed his stuff up midway through the third quarter. Yes, I know the temperature was a mild -4 degree Fahrenheit with a wind chill factor of -24 degrees. But the Packers live in the cold. They invented football on ice. Brett Favre should have had this game in the bag.
Instead he handed to game, literally, to the totally outmatched New York Giants. They couldn't muster up nothing. So rather than putting a kife in them, in overtime, the Packers decided to give them the ball in Packer territory. Yeah, ok. Any quarterback could have won the game in that circumstance. In the end, the Packers showed they are not nearly as good as the Patriots, who, despite playing as bad you can on offense, can still win a football game.
Super Bowl XLII Prediction
New York Giants: 17
New England Patriots: 21
New England needs one more win to make history all over again this year. They beat the Giants a month ago and they will beat them again. The Giants, coming off a huge win at Green Bay, know they did not play a great game against a great team. They played an OK game against a garbage team. New England, at its worst, is better than anyone else at their best.
Look for New England to be just a tad conservative early but to put this one out of reach early. New York will make a charge toward the end, but the Patriot defense will do what it always does: win this game and break history.
Catching up
So I have spent the last few weeks trying to keep my head above water and I desperately need to catch up. On a lot of things.
Like laundry. And coding. And blogging. And cleaning. And just about everything that goes on in our house regularly. So today is that day.
The day that all the laundry gets don. Blogs get updated. The house gets cleaned. And it is a day to watch some football. While doing all the other stuff.
Forms, forms, everywhere a form
So I have spent the better part of a week trying to develop a dynamic web form generation and validation tool, the purpose of which is to alleviate the strain on a developer to have to built a form, scour the form for field names, write conditional evaluations throughout the processing code to handle each element and then handle failure after form validation is ran.
This has been an interesting week to say the least. I have always wanted to work on something like this. And earlier this week it became evident that I needed this tool more now than ever before.
The framework I am building (for work and personally, but mostly for work right now) will be used across several web site for my company. From our very simple WWW site with about 4 forms to our intranet that houses as many as 40 to our online account management application that is like one big form wrapped in another form. Since the framework will be used as a platform onto which all other applications will be layered, it is important that the tools our developers need in the framework be there.
So I started building my form object this week. And I have to say, for a first run, it is pretty neat. I will posting code for my personal version soon and hopefully it will be something useful that anyone can take advantage of.
In essence the object, once instantiated (or while being instantiated) can accept an array of form field names. These names map to field attributes which are interpreted by the object and the used to build a sort of master set of instructions. In the markup the fields can be easily looped through to send to the screen (or through a view object or some other templater) and contain the essential ingredients of each element.
On the back end, each form field also contains validation rules which are applied to the form when it is posted. These rules are easy to set (for example, you can tell a field it must be at least 10 characters long by saying something like 'minlength:10' => 'This field must be at least 10 characters long') and are handled internally by either the core framework validator or by a custom validator the user can set.
All in all it is a pretty sweet and useful little piece of code. When I get it fully tested and ready for prime time I will make sure to post some code. Until then, I have some arrays to write.
Sickening up the house
Late last night (or was it early this morning, I can't seem to remember) I was woken up by my oldest daughter Sarah. She said she didn't feel good and that she needed to throw up.
After grogily attempting to figure out the conversation I had just had with my daughter I got up, made sure she was OK, let her throw up and then went about praying for her and returning to bed myself.
Then at the stroke of 3:something this morning I was awoken again. By the same daughter telling me that while she was in the other bathroom she didn't quite make it and threw up a little on the bathroom floor. But it was OK since she actually missed the floor and managed to hit the mat instead. So after making sure she was OK again, I proceeded to spend a few minutes cleaning up vomit, cleaning what I could off the mat and Fabrezeing the bathroom.
So after getting back to bed and just moving into a deep sleep, I was woken up for the third time today. This time it was at about 5:45 or so. And again, I tried to do my best to take care of my daughter.
So after waking up a few minutes after I should have I decided that since my wife was fluish and Sarah was throwing up all night and two of my other kids had fevers yesterday I was staying home to work and take care of my family. And here I am, working, taking some time to write about my day and thinking of how I can actually work while taking care of my family.
Got any ideas? I sure don't.
Taking down Christmas – finally
So a few weeks ago I mentioned that I had put away Christmas. Well, that was just the inside Christmas. I still had the outside Christmas to handle.
So Sunday I decided that Christmas had survived at the Gonzalez house long enough and I took it down. No more blue icicle lights around the entire house. No more cancer-ridden reindeer that looked like a dying dog in the tanbark by the garage. No more "Merry Christmas" lighted in the front yard. No more snowlakes under the front window.
It was, for a moment, almost sad. Then I realized "It is freaking January. Midway through even. This should have been done long ago.". And the grinch in me came out just long enough to smile at the work he had accomplished.
Appointment Monday
Wow, today is a busy day for us. I took today off to attend some doctor's appointments with my wife. And I can see more and more why it is she is as overwhelmed as she is with all this homeschooling, childcaring, mothering that she does.
It started out last night actually, getting the kids ready to head to a friends house while I took my wife to an appointment this morning. Then it was up early this morning to get the kids up, dressed, fed and in the car. Then we took them to our friends then headed to the appointment. The first appointment.
After the appointment was over I took my wife to lunch, then we headed back to get the kids. We took them home for a while and, though I didn't find out until later, I was supposed to have them rest for a bit. That didn't happen, so I got them up and took them for their flue shots. Al five of them.
We got home where I am not planning on another appointment tonight with a counselor for my wife and I. Perhaps I will explain this a little later, but for now, just know that I still have a lot of work to do today. So I gotta scram Wish us luck. We need it.
Divisional Weekend: Day 2
Day 2 is done and the conference championships are set. Though this did not play out like I thought it would. In either game. For the record:
Game 1
Actual Scores
San Diego Chargers: 28
Indianapolis Colts: 24
My Prediction
San Diego Chargers: 12
Indianapolis Colts: 38
Game 2
Actual Scores
New York Giants: 21
Dallas Cowboys: 17
My Prediction
New York Giants: 10
Dallas Cowboys: 17
So what can I say. I knackered this one up pretty good. I was totally wrong on both side of the house. I suck at this predicting thing.
On the other hand we got to see Peyton Manning's human side, the Chargers show they that can win in the playoffs AND with backups (Antonio Gates was hurting, Philip Rivers and LaDanian Tomlinson were both out of this game with injuries). The Chargers earned this win with hard work, clean execution and smart play calling. The Colts lost this game with terrible execution. Tony Dungy, you are still my main man, but your players left entirely too much on the field. Super Bowl Champions don't play that way.
The Giants... well, what can be said about the New York football Giants? The Cowboys certainly helped the Giants with their receivers' inability to catch a ball and break tackles. Bu the Giants, much like the Chargers, earned this win with every fiber of their being. I had no idea they had it in them. I wonder what next weekend will bring?
Conference Championship Predictions
San Diego Chargers: 10
New England Patriots: 35
New England should have had their explosive offensive game this week against the Jaguars. They didn't. Tom Brady needs to get a high scoring victory heading in to the Super Bowl to feel like the superman he is. Look for the Pats to open it up on offense and close it off on defense. It gets words if the leaders on the Chargers offense don't have a chance to show up
New York Giants: 14
Green Bay Packers: 28
Not quite as many points next week as this week for the Packers who have a legitimate chance at knocking the powerhouse Patriots in the Super Bowl. I would guess we are going to be seeing some very cold weather at Lambeau Field which certainly favors the Pack. But the Giants have surprised a lot of people this year. Could they shock the Green Bay faithful? No. Green Bay sticks it to the Giants in the cold Wisconsin air.
Divisional Weekend: Day 1
Is it just me or does football seem to be getting better and better as the season progresses? Oh wait, it is the playoffs. That's right. For the record:
Game 1
Actual Scores
Seattle Seahawks: 20
Green Bay Packers: 42
My Prediction
Seattle Seahawks: 14
Green Bay Packers: 31
Game 2
Actual Scores
Jacksonville Jaguars: 20
New England Patriots: 31
My Prediction
Jacksonville Jaguars: 21
New England Patriots: 24
Ice ice baby. Green Bay played in another ice bowl today against the Seattle Seahawks ad they absolutely destroyed the team from the Northwest. Green Bay, after starting very slow and allowing 14 early points, put on a show the entire game. Brett Favre had the game of his life and looked like a little boy playing street ball. It was a clinic. Anyone that had a chance to watch this game can say that Favre looked like he was just out there having fun. The Seahawks? Not so much.
In the evening game the Patriots did what the Patriots do. They won scoring touchdowns while keeping the Jaguars losing by scoring field goals. I remember hearing an old wrestling coach of mine telling me "You never take second place. The guy that took first handed you second.". This is what the Pats did for the Jaguars.
Tomorrow looks promising. I hope Peyton comes ready to light it up against the Chargers. You know they will be looking to avenge their mid-season loss to this stout San Diego team that is looking to show everyone that they can win in the playoffs. And the Giants will be looking to prove that they are no fluke as they take on a tough Dallas team that is looking for their groove with TO back in the lineup.
