[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: football (US style)

[Catherine Keegan]

At 03:27 PM 1/8/02 +0000, Michelle wrote:
>Michelle :) <---who just got booted out of Doug's Football Fun
>playoffs for the first year in a while, 'cause Minnesota apparently
>sucks this year.  <sigh>

You didn't sucker for a fantasy football league, did you?  My husband Tim 
did that several years ago and I almost stopped watching the games.  I root 
for teams and the darn FF stuff is set up around statistics so you root for 
players or defensive squads.  Made me nuts to have my Raiders/9ers/Seahawks 
game switched to some other station to see if someone playing for Dallas or 
Denver was doing well.  Argh!  Luckily, that phase has passed.

As for the math stuff...  I have a degree in biology which has gone unused 
for the last twenty years except for cocktail parties and trivia 
ooogieness.  The math there was useful.  Tim's last masters degree was in 
geologic engineering and the stuff he brought home looked like Greek 
instead of math.  Three years of physics, differential equations and the 
"regular" math.  Made me happy that I was a programmer.

Now, one of the great leveling factors is, of course, beer - something that 
all geologists excel.  Watching the engineers at the consulting company 
where the previously mentioned fantasy football league was rapidly become 
"level" during the fantasy draft was always a hoot.  The ties would get 
loosened, the spreadsheets of player analysis would be hauled out, the 
latest issue of some football magazine would be passed around, and an 
amazing selection of beer would be consumed.  It was pretty darn funny to 
listen to them as they would go from football to statistics (work) to beer 
to statistics (football) and then listen as these great brains degenerated 
into frat boys.  Well, I guess you probably had to be there.  Programmers 
of my era and language (COBOL/CICS/DB2) eat and eat and eat but most of 
them don't seem to drink very much.  Engineers, OTOH, were low on the 
eating and high on the drinking.

Catherine in California who just finished her toast and is working on the 
first cup of coffee.

Go Raiders!  (Does anyone else think that Gruden looks like one of the 
vampires in Buffy when he gets mad?)