Off Track: Fantasy Football

Half of the female readership of Half-Fast just rolled their eyes and ignored this post on their reader, but that’s OK because football season is almost upon us and that means it’s time for lazy Sunday afternoons on the couch with a beer in one hand and my scrotum in the other. It’s also time for the return of the Half-Fast Fantasy Football league (read: something else to distract me from being productive at work). Fall is coming, the temperatures are getting cooler and my long runs will get done on Saturday or not at all because Sunday is for football.

Last year someone other than me won the league and I would announce who it was except I’ve forgotten and CBS deleted the league so I have no way of finding out. If it was you, be sure to let us all know in the comments. This year, since I don’t have a list of everyone who played last year, I’m opening the league up to anyone, but you’ll have to sign up soon because the draft is on Thursday, September 3rd. I know it’s late notice but I’ve been too lazy to make this announcement prior to today.

Those of you who are fantasy football fanatics like me can click this link to sign up, those of you who are not can feel free to make fun of the rest of us in the comments. I suggest things like “fantasy football is just like Dungeons and Dragons for handsome, sexy people!” Ouch. I’m feeling the burn already.

Sign up link: http://freemeeting.0.football.cbssports.com/splash/invite/5960/370911/4f5dec490661d5ad
League password: fartlek

You know what you need to do.

Off Track: How Not to Solicit

Yesterday I received an e-mail from someone inquiring about advertising here on Half-Fast, more specifically they were looking for a little link love. I get these pretty frequently and I tend to be quite stingy with the permanent links unless there’s money on the table, but if you use the correct approach (read: effusive flattery) then it’s pretty easy to get a plug in the Weekend Splits, you know, when I’m actually posting them. Anyway, there was nothing particularly out of the ordinary about this e-mail, nothing malicious to speak of, but the recurrence of these types of e-mails has been increasing lately. This was just the unfortunate one that broke the camel’s back and now I’m going to take out my frustrations with all those solicitous e-mails on this one. Let’s dig in, shall we?

“Hi I’m Brenda [last name redacted] from [URL also redacted]. We offer one of the largest selections of flowers, hampers and wines and champagne gifts online, giving our customers useful tips and information to help them find the perfect flowers and gifts to send for any occasion. .”

At this point I’m thinking ‘why are you telling me this, why didn’t my spam filter catch this and why are there two periods at the end of that sentence?’

“I am looking for partners that compliment our site and half-fast.org seems a good fit.”

Really? Half-Fast seems like a good fit to you? Because runners are the largest purchasers of flowers? I’m pretty sure that the only thing my readers care of wine and hampers is that too much wine before a race hampers performance, so this seems like a strange request to me, but let’s see what you’ve got in mind.

“We can either:- 1) Exchange links with you”

Right, because I’d get tons of great traffic from a British Florist. (The URL ended in .co.uk)

“- OR - 2) Our team have been working hard creating content on our own site and we wondered if you would be interested in some free of charge content written just for half-fast.org.”

Not based on the way that sentence was written. Seriously, isn’t that the clunkiest sounding sentence you’ve read today? The next one is pretty good too. It’s even missing a word.

“Our editors cover a wide range of subjects and can quickly agree a subject with you and write specifically for you - you will have full editorial control and it definitely won’t be a sales pitch for us. All we would ask is that you allow us to include one simple text link back to [URL redacted] towards the end of the content which will hopefully be found by the search engines in the longer term - which is how we would benefit.”

You know how else you would benefit? Proofreading. Also, by sending this e-mail to blogs that cover flower related subjects. That’s two freebies off the top of my head.

“Please let me know your thoughts.”

You want my thoughts? First of all, that was the best sentence you’ve written thus far. Secondly, I’m thinking that I’d rather find an IRS audit notice and a jury duty summons in my mailbox than allow you or any of your team anywhere near my blog with a post of your own. Believe it or not I’m pretty particular about what gets written here, in fact, I’ve only ever allowed one other person to write posts at Half-Fast and she had to sleep with me before I gave her permission to post. (BTW, she is on the record as saying that it was over quickly and she barely felt a thing so it was not as steep a price as it sounds.) I’d offer the same type of arrangement, but I’m pretty sure the last one was an ‘exclusive rights’ kind of a thing.

As if all that isn’t enough I received the exact same e-mail from her about two minutes later, further proving her incompetence. Brenda, I’m going to pass on your kind offer, because if I wanted a shoddily-written, double-posted blog entry I’d just do it myself. I’m getting quite proficient at shoddy writing. And before anyone else points this out in the comments, I’m aware that I probably don’t always use correct grammar (or even know what the correct grammar is), but then, I’m not offering to write a blog post for you, am I? You can be sure that if I was offering my services as a writer I would take the time to make sure that everything was correct or blackmail hire someone else to do it for me. That’s how I roll.

Off Track: Job Opportunities Abound!

Many of you already know that I work in the financial services industry and I imagine that you’re all really jealous because of all the good publicity we’re getting right now. As part of my career in the financial services industry I was at one time required to obtain some special licenses. (I’m being vague on purpose but don’t mess with me, one of them may or may not have been a License to Kill.) The licenses required hours of classroom training followed by extensive memorizing of antiquated legalese, culminating in daylong tests. I no longer need or use the licenses in my current position (which is Senior Director of Awesomeness and Time Mismanagment), but I continue to keep the licenses because there’s a chance that I could need them again if I change my career path (read: get demoted) and I’d hate to have to go through the tests again. The downside to continuing to be licensed is that this is public information and I frequently get junk mail offering me incredible opportunities with huge commissions and zero dignity!

Today I received one that just needed to be shared, but before I share it with you allow me to tell you the path this postcard took to reach me. First, it was mailed to the office where I used to work. It was processed by the mail room and delivered to the receptionist there who knows me and forwarded it via internal mail to my new office location across town. It arrived at the correct building and was delivered to the wrong floor so the 4th floor receptionist walked around to several other floors until she found an assistant on my floor who recognized my name. That assistant gave it to an assistant in my department who then marched into my office with said postcard. The point here being: a lot of people have handled this postcard. At first I wasn’t sure why the assistant was scowling at me and holding my mail by the edges until she dropped it down onto my desk with the postcard right on top.

Holy crap! I felt my cheeks flush red with embarrassment and I stammered “wh-what’s this?” She had already turned to leave, obviously not wanting to discuss the sultry postcard that is covered with an alarming number of smudged fingerprints. (Please be smudged fingerprints, please be smudged fingerprints!) After a few minutes of staring at the postcard I realized there was a caption in the upper left corner, it says:

Hi Ian!
My boss is looking for a competent financial professional to work with qualified prospects in your area who want to buy [redacted]. Not small cases either, average compensation per case is $20,000 - $30,000. More details on the reverse side of this card.

Oh, I’d like to see her reverse side, if you know what I mean. So basically my incentive to inquire about a job there is because there’s a hot receptionist and big bonuses? Oh, I’ll bet she gets a lot of big bonuses, if you know what I mean. I can’t even imagine the kind of sleazebags that would respond to an ad like this, but I suppose I’ll get used to dealing with them as I take on my new position. Oh, I’m going to try a new position, if you know what I mean. If that company isn’t being sued for sexual harassment before the year is out, I will be extremely surprised. Oh, I’ll be extremely surprised, if you know what I mean... I don’t know what I mean.

Off Track: Idiot in an Elevator

When I returned from lunch today I was riding the elevator up to my office when I had the following conversation:

Unknown stranger: Did you vote?
Me: Yeah. Did you?
Stranger: No... It doesn’t matter, it’s going to be a landslide anyway.
Me: You think Nader’s got this all locked up too, huh?

Keep in mind that I live in Colorado, which is one of the more evenly split states according to recent polls and that we have 9 electoral votes. Now this stranger may be right, this thing may be a landslide and his vote may not have mattered but I find myself hoping that he’s weeping into his loafers as the results come in tonight. The really bizarre part was that he brought up the question of whether I had voted, obviously knowing that I would likely return the question. It was like he was dying to tell me that it didn’t matter whether you voted or not.

I know every other blog is telling you to go vote today and I really wasn’t planning on doing it because I hate to be like every other blog, but please don’t be like the idiot in the elevator. Go vote. It does matter, even if everyone already knows that your state is red or blue. It matters that you vote. It’s your civic duty to vote. If you don’t do it, then I don’t think we can be online friends anymore.

Off Track: DNC is in Town

The Democratic National Convention is in Denver this week and I work somewhat close to all the action. I took a trip down the 16th street walking mall at lunch time yesterday and thought I’d compile a few stats for all of you.

Number of people I judged to be ‘obviously a Democrat’ or ‘obviously a Republican’ based solely on outward mannerisms: 13
Number of times I felt guilty for judging a book by its cover: 0

Number of people walking the 16th street mall with signs displaying political messages: 31
Number of people that will see those signs: 89,024 (estimation)
Number of people whose minds will be swayed by a sign or poster board: 1
Number of people yelling at people with signs: 5

Number of helicopters seen overhead: 9
Number of police and security officers seen: 1,057
Number that looked bored: 1,053
Number that I could most certainly outrun: 1,035

Number of opportunities to buy overpriced DNC memorabilia: 14
Number of times survey-takers asked if I was registered to vote in Colorado: 7
Number of times I lied and said no: 7

Number of times I was asked for directions: 3
Number of times correct directions were given: 2

Number of people wearing Obama pins, shirts, bags etc. 2,695 (estimation)
Number of people wearing Hillary Clinton pins, shirts, bags etc. 3
Number of people wearing McCain pins, shirts, bags etc. 0

Number of dollars that the parking lot next to my office increased its daily rate: 31
Number of empty parking spots in that lot yesterday when I arrived: 0
Number of times I have since wished I owned a parking lot downtown: 16

Number of clients who trekked into the downtown area to pay us a visit yesterday: 0
Number of clients expected over the next 4 days: 0
Number of reasons for me to work in the office instead of at home: 0
Number of days I have been given permission to work from home: 0

Number of times I will reveal my political affiliation or candidate of choice on this blog: 0

Off Track: It's Fantasy Football Time!

Every now and then I get the urge to post something that isn’t running related whatsoever and I always usually just trash it because this is a running blog. However, I’ve decided that it’s my blog and if I want to write about something that’s not running related then that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’ll be using the new Off Track tag for these kind of posts. Get it? Off Track can mean not pertaining to the usual subject matter or it can mean not on the track, as in track and field. It’s a really funny pun! You might even say that it’s punny. (Punny! Ha! Another one, I am just on fi-yah with the jokes today!) These Off Track posts won’t happen very often, but today I’m going to talk about fantasy football.

I love fantasy football. Does that make me a geek? Perhaps, but no more than having a blog does so I’m OK with it. At the very least, I don’t cry myself to sleep about it anymore. Anyway, I decided to give you all a chance to get beaten by me in Fantasy Football and have started a league that you’re all invited to be a part of. Candis is also in the league which means there are 10 open spots left. Details below:

Who can join? Anyone. Lurkers, regular readers, first time visitors, non-runners, fantasy football virgins, seriously anyone, I don’t care.
How much does it cost? It’s free, hosted by CBS Sports.
How do I sign up? Click this sign up link and then enter the password. If that doesn’t work search for the Half-Fast Fantasy Football private league on CBS Sports.
What’s the password? bloody nippl (I was going for ‘bloody nipples’ but it cut off the ‘es’ just to be difficult.)
When is the draft? The live online draft will be held Thursday, August 28th at 9:15PM Eastern Time.

I have no idea how quickly this league will fill up or if it will even fill up at all, if it doesn’t fill up then I’ll try to open it up to the general public so that we have enough teams and then resume crying myself to sleep at night. There are no prizes for first place except the pride that will swell up in your loins which may or may not make you a faster runner (the safe money's on not).

I’m so excited for football season to start and for my productivity at the office to take a nose dive. Let me give you a little peek at what consumes my days during football season, or more specifically, fantasy football season.

- Monday is for checking the scores from the weekend’s games and figuring out what needs to happen in the Monday Night Football game. I need 4 TDs from Colts’ tight end Dallas Clark, but I need someone other than Peyton Manning to throw them to him. This can happen right?
- Tuesday is for checking out which free agents are available and submitting waiver claims for them. Kicker Rob Bironas kicked 8 field goals in one game? I must have him, he’s going to do that every week, no?
- Wednesday is for discovering which players I received from the waiver wire and checking out which players other teams dropped.
- Thursday is when I begin checking my player’s match-ups to see who’s playing a tough defense and who’s playing the Lions. Thursday is also the day that teams release their official injury lists. Tom Brady is listed as ‘probable’ oh no! Is that Belichick being disingenuous or am I really stuck starting Kyle Orton this week?
- Friday is when I set my lineup for the coming weekend’s games. Friday is also a good day for reading the fantasy analysis websites and articles and second guessing myself into losses.

As you can see, it is a time consuming endeavor, especially when you add in all of the running and blogging that I’ll be doing as well. My boss is going to have to ease up on the workload over the next 5 months if we’re going to make this whole employer/employee relationship work.