NFL Fantasy Draft – Part 2

As I described yesterday in NFL Fantasy Draft – Part 1 the NFL season is just weeks away and it is draft time for fantasy sports fans. It’s time to show your friends and people around the world that you are the best scout, general manager, and coach all in one.

I listed a few players from the quarterback, running back and wide receiver positions that I would take. Now I will talk about the tight end, kicker and defensive players and hopefully by the end of this article you will have your own game plan for your upcoming draft.

TE: There aren’t a lot of really good scoring tight ends out there. In general tight ends don’t have the best hands resulting in not many touches. However there are a few that dominate the game and their position. I always like going after Antonio Gates or Tony Gonzales. Both are big guys that can shelter the ball from defenders and have good hands. You can count on these guys getting you a number of touchdowns throughout the year.

K: The most under appreciated player in football. All he does is put points on the board, but nobody cheers for the kicker. Getting a good kicker is important because of the last point that I made. In my pool you get points for kicking an extra point and incremental points for longer field goals. Fortunately there are a number of good kickers and you can wait until the later rounds to pick these guys. These are some of the top kickers from last year: Adam Vinatieri, Nate Kaeding, and Jeff Wilkins.

D: In my league I can pick any defensive players I want and I usually pick a mix. I like guys like Terrence McGee who have a better chance at getting an interception then a linebacker, but also is part of the punt returning team so he will rack up rushing yards. Other players like Zack Thomas won’t get you a ton of points, but will consistently get 6+ tackles a game. Then there are the guys who will rack up points on any given day by getting sacks like Julius Peppers.

The players I’ve mentioned really aren’t sleeper picks. Everyone in your draft will have their eyes on them, but it will be up to you when to draft them. Things can move fast on draft day so make sure you have a backup plan! Have fun and enjoy the next 17 weekends as you manage your team to the playoffs.

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NFL Fantasy Draft – Part 1

The start of the NFL season is only a couple of weeks away and that means it’s draft time for all the fantasy sports poolies.

This is only my second year in a player pool with head to head format. Meaning I’m going to draft a team of players and each week my team will go up against another team in the pool.

If the sum of points accumulated by each of my players is more than my opponents then I win that week. In our pool we have to pick:

1 – Quarter Back
3 – Wide Receiver
2 – Running Back
1 – Tight End
1 – Kicker
3 – Defensive Player (Any position)
6 – Bench spots (offence or defence)

The main Scoring categories consist of:

6 points for any touchdown
1 point for every 50 passing yards
1 point for every 20 rushing yards
1 point for every tackle
3 points for every sack
2 points for an interception
3, 4, or 5 points for a field goal depending on the length of the kick

So in total we have to pick 17 players during the draft. I thought I would share with you my vast knowledge of the game and maybe help you during your NFL fantasy draft.

QB: Selecting more then one starting quarterback is important because of injuries. I’m going to stick with the QB’s I had last year, Donovan McNabb and Drew Brees. Donovan was injured half way through last season and has lost some key players during the off season, but he is an excellent quarterback and I think is flying a little under the radar this year. I’m hoping to pick him up after a couple of rounds. Drew Brees on the other hand had a fantastic season last year and should probably go in the first round.

RB: Good scoring running backs are few and far between. It is always a struggle whether to select a QB in the first round or RB. The 3 running backs I’ll be looking for are LaDainian Tomlinson, Larry Johnson, and Clinton Portis. All three touch the ball a lot, have break away speed, and score a bunch of touchdowns. They are the focal part of their team’s offence and you should consider yourself lucky if you are able to pick one of them up.

WR: Wide Receivers are easier to pick, but the best ones are the quarter backs favourites. Drew Brees often looks for Reggie Bush, technically a running back, but has great hands. Payton Manning goes to Marvin Harrison, and the interesting tandem this year will be Tom Brady and Randy Moss. Brady and Moss could put up a lot of points this season. New England fans should be very excited about the team this year.

Tomorrow I’ll discuss my potential picks for Tight Ends, Kickers, and Defensive players.

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Award-Winning Jalapeno Cottage Canoes Recipe

I was watching FoodTV on the weekend and saw this recipe that I thought I would share with everyone. It completely fits with the theme of this site and involves jalapeño peppers, which I love.

I would suggest replacing the mayo with cream cheese or cottage cheese.

Try these out at your next backyard party as an appetizer. They are fast easy and fun. Everyone will love you for it!

Award-Winning Jalapeno Cottage Canoes Recipe

Award-Winning Cottage Canoes

Yield: 6

Recipe Courtesy of Fran Stephen

Ingredients:

  • 12 x large jalapenos
  • 1 1/2 cups sharp cheddar cheese, finely shredded (375 millilitres)
  • 1/4 cup mayo (60 millilitres)
  • 1 x green onion, finely chopped
  • 1/2 tsp of Worchester sauce (2.5 millilitres)
  • 1 x egg beaten
  • 1 cup breadcrumbs

Directions:

  • Cut the peppers in half lengthwise and remove seeds. Mix the cheese, mayo, onion, celery, and Worchester sauce together. Take this mixture and fill the peppers. Press down on each top to flatten. Chill in the fridge for 20 minutes.
  • Roll each pepper in the beaten egg, and then dredge in breadcrumbs to coat. Place on a baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees Fahrenheit (180 degrees Celsius) for 10 to 12 minute, until tops are slightly crisp.
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Start your own micro-brewery for only $5,000!

I’ve had my eye on the Sabco Brew-Magic System for a while now. I’ve always dreamt of having my own micro–brewery and with the Brew-Magic system it is a possibility. The system only produces one keg at a time, which is about 7 cases of beer, but beer only takes weeks to mature and as long as you have the storage space you could make a number of batches in one day producing a decent starting inventory.

Start your own micro-brewery for only $5,000!

The big selling feature of the Brew-Magic is its software. The software allows you to save a successful recipe and ensures that you are repeating the process the exact same way every time. The result is batch after batch of consistent quality beer. The benefit of that is two fold. If you have a recipe that you and your customers like you can continue to produce the same tasting beer every time and you will be able to hang on to your loyal drinkers. If you have a recipe that you don’t like or one that needs some tweaking then you can make minor variances to the recipe while keeping everything else the same. Through this precise process you can easily determine what works for you and what doesn’t in each recipe.

I believe as I get older and learn more about beer making a Sabco Brew-Magic will be in my future. Who knows maybe someday you will be at your cottage on the weekend cracking open and EDW Lager.

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Warning: For Men Only

Gentlemen have you ever wanted to organize a poker tournament? Maybe have a Super Bowl party at your place? 99% of the time you just send out a mass email to invite your friends over and whoever shows, shows. You don’t care if there are 8 people instead of 10. But there are times when you want to know who’s going to come so you can know how much pizza to order or if it is worth getting that keg of beer. Well now you can send out Free Online Invitations for Men and track responses without looking like a nerd. The site is called Manvite. Specifically geared towards Guys Night Invitations for Men.

The site is black, white, and grey. No need to have flowery colours that we don’t even know the names of. The site is about functionality first, get your message out and track you buddies’ responses. You can select from a list of most common manly events or enter your own event type. Write a message about your event, specify the date, time and address, and enter your pals’ email addresses. You can even specify if the wives are allowed to come.

Your guests will receive an email with the invite which they can respond to. Manvite requires a nickname, which is cool, cause guys like nicknames and you can rate the manliness of the invite. The organizer can login at anytime and see how many of the invites were accepted so he knows if he should make 1 vat of chili or 2.

There are a couple of items I would like to see changed from a personal standpoint. Only US states are provided as options for entering an address. I would love it if the Canadian provinces and territories were added to the list. The other thing that I found a little confusing was ranking the manliness of the invite. I expected to see a rating based on my friends’ responses when I logged in as the organizer, but there was nothing there. I then found out that the rankings go towards the Hall of Fame, which is a tiny link on the home page. I would suggest making the Hall of Fame more apparent and provide some explanation as to why users should rank the invite.

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Deal Locker – Because friends help friends get deals

This past week I was introduced to Deal Locker. Deal Locker is a site that provides free printable coupons and coupon codes online. This site takes a bunch of coupons and puts them in one, easy to use spot for us to search them. Pretty slick idea I think. Well, anytime I can save some money when buying things, I’m pretty interested. This was no different.

The slogan of the site is quite interesting too: ‘Deal Locker – Because friends help friends get deals’… ain’t that the truth! Anytime I find me some deals, I’m always sharing them with my friends. It’s the friend thing to do. With deal locker, they are dedicated to friends helping friends get deals and with the power of the internet, we’re magically connected to a ton of ‘friends’. Think of the coupons, think of the deals, and think of the savings! With this site/service, we all can point our friends to one single location for free online coupons.

I did a bunch of searches to see if I could find some useful things. I tried searching for some canoe coupons, since I just recently talked about buying a canoe and since I recently picked up by brand new camera, I figured I would search for camera coupons. Boy oh boy I wish I would have discovered this site a bit sooner. I found a bunch of Broadway Photo coupons that I could have used to save me some real cash!

Even thought I didn’t get to save a whack of cash on my camera purchase, I did manage to find some really cool coupons for some gear I’m looking to buy sometime real soon. You’ll all have to keep your pants on to find out what it is I’m buying. Don’t worry though, you’ll read about it in an upcoming post!

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Largest Fishing Tournament at Bounty Fishing

As I mentioned in my last post I had some fun Bass fishing on the weekend unsuccessfully. However had I know about Bounty Fishing I’m sure I would have buckled down to try and win some cash! Bounty Fishing is the home of the world’s largest fishing tournament. Almost anyone in the North America can compete. Easy to follow steps show you how to register, select a tournament, and submit a catch to compete in the tournament. Cash prizes are awarded to the top 3 anglers for each weekly tournament plus additional cash prizes for year end totals.

The site isn’t just about registering for fishing tournaments. It’s also about being part of a fishing community by participating in the fishing forums. There you can read success stories, get tips, brag about your recent win and of course hear about the monster that got away. You can upload your picture and build your profile so that other anglers in the community get to know you better. Fishing truly is an international event and now Bounty Fishing has brought everyone together for some friendly competition and a chance to win some cash doing the thing you love most.

Register today for free and get out on the water!

Bounty Fishing

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T-Fal Camping Pots

I’ve been camping for more then 10 years now and have bought a number of camping “gadgets” over the years such as the Swedish Firesteel. But the best piece of equipment I ever purchased, aside from a tent, is my T-Fal Camping Pots.

I’ve had my set for 7 years and every time I use them I’m amazed at the design and quality.

T-fal Camping Pots

The whole set, which includes, two pots and two frying pans, stacks into one another to make a nice little package. A removable clamping handle is provided and tucks away into a pouch under the top of the carrying bag. The pots are intended for camping stoves only. Of course being T-Fal they are all non-stick coated which makes cleaning up a breeze.

I even use the frying pans on the BBQ to sauté vegetables while I’m cooking meat. If you are going camping for some weekend fun consider picking up these lightweight, compact, non-stick pans. You will be glad you did.

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Missed Opportunities – Bass Lake Provincial Park

This week I took some vacation and decided to do some camping. I’ve been trying to go to parks that I haven’t been to before so I picked Bass Lake Provincial Park near Orillia, Ontario. I was a little weary of going to Bass Lake, because there were not a lot of campsites and it was formerly farm land. I was afraid I would be camping in a farmer’s field, which wouldn’t be much fun. However, it turns out the site that we reserved is probably the best in the park, site number 87 for anyone who is interested. It seemed to be the only site that had any real privacy and was located just steps from shore. Unfortunately I didn’t pay attention to my battery meter on my new camera and as soon as I got to the park the battery died. I was able to get this one picture of a frog on a rock.

Bass Lake Provincial Park

I would have loved to show you more of the park, but this will have to do for now.Bass lake was much larger then I expected it to be, which was a pleasant surprise. The beach area was much as I expected, small and overcrowded. I’m sure it would be great if I had kids they could run around with all the other children, but for two adults looking for some peace and relaxation the beach was not the place to be. The nice thing about Bass Lake is that the shores are rocky rather then marshy. My wife and I brought our water shoes and were able to enter the water at any point along the shore. The water was clean and relatively warm.

Of course with a name like Bass Lake I had to go fishing! We rented a boat and headed out for half the day. I was using a silver crank bait, which I’m told is good for bass fishing. It wasn’t too long before I had a bite. I was reeling the lure in and could see it as it got closer to the boat and with only about 1 meter to go a small mouth bass came out from the murky bottom and hit the lure like a ton of bricks. It caught me by such surprise that I quickly jerked the rod back. This resulted in only hooking him in the lip. I figured if I don’t get him in the boat now he’ll break free. As I lifted the fish out of the water he continued to struggle and dropped back into the lake. That was about it for fishing. I teased a school of small perch with my lure, but there were no more bites for the day.

I really enjoyed myself and I suggest that everyone goes out camping or cottaging this weekend for some fun with friends and family.

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Easy Delicious Rotisserie Chicken

My wife and I were invited to a BBQ this weekend. We decided we were going to have rotisserie chicken for dinner. My friend hadn’t used the rotisserie attachment on his barbeque before so he was exited to see the results. In the end the chicken turned out great! It was moist and juicy and the skin tasted amazing. I was so happy with the chicken and I just got my new Sony T100 camera that I had to take a picture.

Rotissery Chicken

I asked him what recipe he used and I couldn’t believe such a great tasting chicken could be so simple, but here it is.

INGREDIENTS

  • 1 whole chicken, approx 3lbs
  • 1 pinch salt
  • 1/4 cup butter, melted
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 tablespoon paprika
  • 1/4 tablespoon ground black pepper

DIRECTIONS

  1. Season the inside of the chicken with a pinch of salt. Place the chicken onto a rotisserie and set the grill on high. Cook for 10 minutes. (NOTE: If your rotisserie doesn’t hold the legs in you might want to tie them up with some wet string.)
  2. Mix together the butter, 1 teaspoon of salt, paprika and pepper. Turn the grill down to medium and baste the chicken with the butter mixture. Close the lid and cook for 1 1/2 hours, basting occasionally, until the internal temperature reaches 180 degrees F (83 degrees C).
  3. Remove from the rotisserie and let stand for 10 to 15 minutes before cutting into pieces and serving.
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