Out with the New, Back in with the Old

Back to the old color scheme. Hope y'all had a Merry Christmas. Also I'll take down the poll on Christmas, I think I'll put one up about whether or not the NFL playoffs should be expanded. Remember it is just a matter of time before your team gets screwed out of the playoffs because of some old antiquated way of doing things.

Disappointing Ending

Well 2007 gets to end on a sour note for Browns fans. Not only was I wrong about the Browns winning 9 games (they actually won 10), but they didn't make the playoffs. That's right 10 wins and they get left out of the playoffs, but in the NFC 9 wins gets you in. Maybe it is just me, but I think it is time for Roger Goodell to make his first mark on the league and expand the playoffs to 16 teams. They can still keep their re-seeding after the first round to help out the teams that did really well in the regular season, but it is time to get rid of the bye week for two teams in each conference and let two more teams in and let everyone play the first weekend. They expanded the playoffs to 12 teams when their were only like what 28 teams or so, but since then the league has expanded multiple times (the new Browns, Texans, and Jags and Panthers). But does expansion really mean they should expand the playoffs. Yes. Baseball finally caught up a little bit when they added another round, but their season is too limited and the World Series in November really works against them. They would have to shorten their season in order to accommodate longer playoffs, but that would cost revenue due to the lack of teams playing, even though the games would mean more. Football though only goes for 17 weeks and could easily add more teams, because it wouldn't lengthen the playoffs anymore. They could play Friday night Saturday and Sunday. It is a no lose situation for the league because it adds four more money games on the biggest weekend of the playoffs. Anyway I will no longer root for the Indianap0lis C0lts and I hope they get beat the first game they play in. I am tired of this "we need to rest players" crap, they're getting an extra week off anyway. And then your gonna go out and give a half an effort anyway, what kind of message does that send to your team and your fans. Well we can throw this game away cause we did so good in the other ones. That's garbage I want my team to beat all comers, they are giving their "A" game you should at least give yours. If not you know what don't even play, just forfeit the game, don't travel or have the other team travel, then you really don't have to worry about "injuries". I was proud of the Browns for playing everyone even though the game was essentially "meaningless" and even though Derek Anderson got hurt he came back. Although I would have liked to seen Brady Quinn stay in the game (his very first drive ever he took them down and scored a field goal with less than two minutes left in the half, no wonder Derek wanted back in the game). Anyway will look forward to the off season and a probable first round exit by the Steel-towners, since they took this week off the assured themselves of another game against a Jacksonville team that just beat them in Pittsburgh. Good thinking Mike Tomlin, then if you do win you get to play at New England, in all likelihood. Plus they don't have Willy, it is like I said I think the honeymoon with Mike will end pretty shortly, this was his first really big strategical error, and I could be wrong, but ending the season losing 3 out of 4 games is not the way to enter the playoffs. You know what if Cleveland would have got the call at the end of the Arizona game when Kellen Winslow made an incredible catch and got shoved out of bounds but the ref didn't call it, then Cleveland would be in and Pittsburgh wouldn't. Oh Well. That is another change they need to make, if the defender can push the guy out of bounds before he comes down that should just be incomplete, as long as he doesn't pick the guy up an carry him out of bounds, that way only the catch is reviewable and the Judgement part of the call is taken out. It is a completely miss used call anyway. Come on 2008 I can't wait.

Only 364 Shopping Days Left

Well another Christmas has come and gone. This one was special because it was Peach's first Christmas where she really tore right into the presents. Christmas eve at Mimi's we were eating and we were going to wait to do gifts, but she walked right over and ripped the paper of her littlest pet shop play set. We got her stopped though and she managed to hold off opening the rest until we were ready. Then yesterday morning I told her that Santa had come to visit and left her presents, and she got right up and walked down stairs, went right to the gifts wrapped with strawberry shortcake and started opening them. It was funny she would carry the present to an open area on the floor open the gift and then stack it in a neat little pile and carry the next gift to another open area. Meanwhile Sampson just ripped through all of his stuff, it was a mess of wrapping paper and toys. By the end of the morning we were swamped in Transformers, Marvels, littlest pet shop, my little pony, and barbie dolls. I don't know how long it took for the elves to make all that stuff and wrap it up, but it took about 45 minutes to get everything open and about 4 more hours to get everything out of boxes and setup. Apparently the new craze in toys is these little clear rubber bands, I guess the twisty ties weren't annoying enough, and the really bad thing is the stupid little rubber bands just won't break if you try to tear 'em apart. I pulled as hard as I could until I thought it was gone to just slice through my hand. We had fun though, and I think the kids had a really good Christmas. Now Sampson is bugging to go to the mall and spend his gift card and Toys R Us, so that is what is on the agenda for today. That and basketball. As for me I got a new Browns controller for my PS3 and new browns hat, and Sophie got a new Bobby Labonte rug and a couple of CD's. Well that's all for now, I'll start putting a list together for Christmas for next year only 364 shopping days left.

The Browns Win, and then lose

Well the Browns won again and then lost to the Bungels in Cincy. They beat Buffalo in the snow and then lost to Cincinnati by West Virginiaing themselves again like they did to Arizona. I am not sure what we did wrong other than maybe trying to watch the game on two different televisions, I really don't know we had the Jerseys, Sophie didn't have any orange. The bad new or good news is that the playoff picture will be decided before they play Sunday night. If Tennessee wins they are in, if they lose the Browns are in. That's it, it really won't matter what we do next week... unless we find a way to jinx the titans. Hey, maybe Sophie will get a Vince Young jersey for Christmas.

The Christmas Letter 2007

Hello everyone, it certainly has been a quick year. We had a wedding in Florida, Sampson started his second year of school (4 year old pre-school) which he is really enjoying and Peach managed to not severely impale herself so far this year. I also helped install a new Siemens DCS at work at got my Six Sigma Green belt right before break for a project that could save over $100,000 next year. Work was good for me, other than the turn around when we actually installed the DCS (19 straight days), but I am making up for that now with my first actual vacation around Christmas since I was in school. I can't wait until tomorrow to watch the kids open their stuff, and then I er... we get 3 days to play with everything. Sophie gave me a great surprise for my birthday, an actual surprise party and we celebrated our 7th year of marriage in June. (See that makes it real easy to remember for me it is just the year minus 2000.) Our Florida trip was definitely the best part of the year. We got to swim with dolphins (I didn't do a very good job of capturing it though), see the gulf of Mexico, visit the zoo, go in our first human size maze and see Ripley's believe it or not. We also drove for what seemed like 200 hours to get there and back, no I am just kidding the kids did really well and they got to go through 8 different states on their first official vacation. We also went to the Barnsville Pumpkin festival where we saw a giant pumpkin and I had my first deep fried twinkie, those things should have a surgeon general warning because there is no way they can be good for you, but it really didn't taste that bad. I also got to go to Atlanta for training and saw the Olympic park and ate at the Hard Rock in downtown with a couple of other engineers. Well here is wishing you a Merry Christmas and a great 2008.

Love,
The Helfensfelder's

Tank Job

The tank is finished. Actually not as bad as I thought. I took the screw out and water started to shoot all over the place, but that was the worst part. Everything else went OK.

Global Warming History

Found some good links for global warming history and a take on the "rising" sea levels.

this is a report on the different climate reportings of the last 110 years. Very interesting.
http://www.businessandmedia.org/specialreports/2006/fireandice/fireandice.asp

this is a link to an interview with one of the leading sea level folks in the world.
http://www.larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2007/2007_20-29/2007-25/pdf/33-37_725.pdf

More wintery fun

Well the old hot water baseboard heat has sprung another leak. This time in the pressure control tank. I noticed the leak yesterday morning and stuck a dishpan under the tank and when I came back from work the pan was over flowing. So I took a screw and part of a rubber glove and put the glove over the whole and drilled the screw into it. And surprise it didn't leak. Sophie went and picked up another tank today, I got all of the info off of the web last night (ain't the Internet great!) including the price information. So she went to Johnson Boiler (or as she called it Johnsonville Boiler) and she said they were extremely helpful. So good job Johnson Boiler and good job Sophie. Now I just hope that screw holds one more day because I gotta drain the furnace again and I didn't want to start tonight. Basically I got another fun filled day of working on the old heater. Yeah! Actually the installation didn't look that bad. We'll see, if I am able to blog tomorrow you'll know it went OK.

Responding to Another blog

The following is entry is a response to the following blog and its subsequent comments concerning global warming skeptics.

http://illconsidered.blogspot.com/2006/02/they-predicted-cooling-in-1970s.html

THE RESPONSE:

I first read this entry and comments a few days ago and have been waiting to respond so here goes.
I agree a lot with what Barry wrote and linked to, good job Barry. The idea of being "skeptic" is different from denial. As a chemical engineer, like one of the other commenters, I feel that some of the information being portrayed is overstated. There are several reasons to be "skeptical" of the data. One reason is people don't see the effects where they are. I live in the Ohio River valley and last winter was the first that I actually remember the river developing ice on it. I have only lived along the River for 7 years, but it was one of the coldest January's I remember, after living in the general area for 30 years, but not necessarily record cold. The second reason for being a "skeptic" is the lack of the scientific method. These people have come up with conclusions then gone back and cherry picked data to fit the conclusion and then developed the theory of GHG causing global warming. Sorry but that is completely bass ackward. That is why I agree with the other comment that says let's check back in 20 years and see what the REAL scenario is. Let's have some honest to goodness science. Let's design the testing, use a control like the space station or the Mars rovers for some inter-solar system control, and then make conclusions based on the data. If there is a rise in temperature in the controls and the Earth then guess what, the Sun is getting hotter. And the general scientific consensus is that our Sun will become a Red Giant someday and eventually the Earth will crash into the surface of the Sun. When that happens it is going to get pretty warm here, and it won't matter how times you rode your bike to the grocery store because GHG will be the least of the concerns. Actually there won't be any concerns because there won't be anybody. At least not on Earth.
The only way we can truly tell if temperatures are rising is by looking at independent research. Not data derived from people who are getting paid to find facts confirming global warming, because guess what if someone is paid to do a job more than likely they will do that job or else the person writing the checks will find someone to do the job. That said here is some independent data from my area over the last 27 years using the data available from www.weather.com. Over the last 5 years 18 (4.9% of days of the year)different days have had their highest temperatures set and 14 days (3.8%) have had record cold temperatures set. In the last 15 years the numbers go to 161 (44%) record highs and 144 (39.4%) record lows. Over last 20 years, the numbers are 253 (69%) highs and 238 (65%) lows. The most remarkable thing though is that there haven't been any highs or lows set in the last 2 years. If there was global warming wouldn't we be setting record highs every year?

New Lists

I decided to go ahead and add a couple of lists on the left side. Just general quasi-interesting things. Check 'em out.

The SubPrime Bail Out of Aught 7

Recently the federal government of the USA got with the banks and decided to extend the subprime mortgages for thousands of Americans. Great right? Not so fast my friends. This really a terrible case of negative reinforcement in my mind, but do to the mass amount of people involved the federal gov't had no choice but to step in. Right? Well this is a bit tricky, but due to some of the federal programs, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and the like, and the depressed interest rate that the federal gov't has held for the past 7 years it kind of draws marginal people into the housing market. These people wouldn't normally be in the position to buy a house but because of the incredibly good market people just have to get in. Then they go for the best deal at the time, which is of course the adjustable rate mortgage, but when you think about a 30 years and considering that mortgages were in the high teens as a percentage little more than 20 years ago, it really shouldn't be that big of a deal whether you have an adjustable rate of 4% or a fixed rate of 5%. Since both of them are so much better you should bet on the fixed rate being better in the long run, but some people don't see it that way and end up having the gov't bail them out. Sweet for them, but what about the people that got the fixed rate and paid all of the bills on time. Oh, I know, they get nothing! In Japan, they take on no credit and will spend money only on things they know they can afford. Pretty novel idea, "if you can't pay for it, don't buy it". That was one of the pieces of advice from one of my teachers in school and it really is good advice. He kind of took it to an extreme that if he couldn't pay cash he didn't buy it, but I look at it as long as you can pay it off before it accumulates any interest you are still ahead of the game. Back to the subprime bail out though, the program is completely voluntary for one, so you have to know if you are eligible or not, 2) you can't be behind at all on your payments, which knocks out about 22% of adjustable rate housing owners, and the gov't isn't offering any money it just extends the low entry rate. I don't really know how many people will actually benefit from this, and it probably won't change the number of foreclosures significantly, but it just upsets me that people can do everything wrong, buy a house out of their price range, get a finance rate lower than they deserve and then fall bass ackward into a loan guarantee from the gov't. There really is something wrong with this picture, but I am going to teach my kids to take care of themselves when it comes to money, don't overextend for things you really can't afford (champagne taste on a beer budget), pay your credit cards off every month, and buy big stuff when it is same as cash (18 months if you can). I'll put a list together for ways to be good at money and stuff, and number one on the list will be to have good friends click on the old ads to help out the retirement plan. Thanks.

Sophie saves the Day!

Browns win, AGAIN! Thanks to Sophie, the kids had their jersey's on during the game. I thought we were going to have a close call, when Peach spilled something on the shirt, but I told Sophie even if the stain sets in and she is soaking wet we can't let her take the Jersey off. Fortunately Sophie agreed, no no, it wasn't that bad she just spilled some food on it, she was fine. I don't subject Peach to those kinds of things, other than you know that time I put her in time out. Oh well, back to the good stuff the Browns are now 8-5 and beat one of the teams that the Steel-towners lost to, so the people at work are in for the old J-E-T-S chant tomorrow. Relax Steel fans, I did root for the P-towners today against the Cheatriots and their coach Bill Billicheat. Bill Billicheat, man that is great. Hey you know he used to coach the Browns and never did any good here, why oh why didn't he cheat when he was coaching them? Probably because he hadn't honed his cheating ways yet. Anyway Pitt-city folks can go ahead and blame Sophie for this loss because this is the first time I think she ever rooted for them. Of course she blames me because it was a first time for me, but maybe not the last. I'm torn whether I should root for them or Jacksonville next week because of the playoff implications. If the Jags lose and Browns win the Browns would be tied for the first wild card spot, but if the Jags and Browns both win then the Brownies pull into essentially a tie for the division, but then would need at least another steely loss and 1 or 2 more victories for Cleveland. Well I could just let fate decide, but if I rooted for the old steel-town rivals today and they lost I could always root for them every week and maybe they would lose, bwah hah ha (evil laugh)....

Hey if you don't want me rooting for your team you could always give the ads a little click, that would be a good deterrent for me, trust me.

Sophie learns a lesson

Saturday Sophie and I ventured to the store and experienced some of the perils mentioned in my check-out blog entry. Basically we got in the shortest line possible and by the time the person in front of us had the manager come over and take something off the register and then decided to write a check we could have gotten out faster if we had broke our order out into 2 separate orders and gone through the express lane. We had to laugh about it though. Oh well, later that day she went to Kroger, by herself, and spent 25 minutes in the checkout because the lady in front of her used a small sandwich bag full of coupons, but most of them didn't scan because they were photocopied or something. Then whatever didn't scan she wanted taken back. I told her to avoid the coupon ladies. Funny thing is Sophie had coupons herself and by the time the other lady was done returning 3 out of 5 uncle Ben's rice boxes and half of the rest of her order, Sophie forgot to use her coupons and had to go to the service desk. What was she gonna do with all that rice anyway, I guess we'll never know.

RaCeCaR

Sophie just saw a commercial that had a guy who said it took him a while to spell 'race car' backwards. But 'race car' spelled backwards is 'RACE CAR'. Check it out. Funny stuff.

Sophie Takes the Blame

I won't say the Browns' loss on Sunday was totally her fault, but... You see the kids didn't have their Jersey's on, so the Browns really didn't have a chance. Even though the Ref blew the call at the end of the game. Clearly Kellen Winslow would have come down in bounds, but he was pushed out by the safety. They then would have had the opportunity to kick the extra point for the win, but you can't West Virginia (turn the ball) over four times and expect to win.

Also Sophie cost the Mountaineers a chance at the title, by watching the game on Saturday. I think it was the first full game she watched.

Note: As much as I hate to admit it I will be rooting for the Steelers to beat the Patricheats on Sunday. One game only. It took me a while to come up with that name too, it was either that or the Cheatriots. Actually I might like Cheatriots better.

fun wintery stuff

Had to change the pump for our hot water heat. It was leaking. Merry Christmas to us. It is my fault though, I never did any up keep on it since we moved in. I really don't know what I was thinking, i don't think the pump suffered any major damage, I am going to get a repair kit for it and fix it up just in case we have another problem later. Then I won't be out $300, hopefully. Hey, I was surprised I was able to get it in without any real problems.

Winter 2007 is Here

Winter is Here! Today we had our first real snow fall. It was quit a treat to wake up and realize I was going to get to shovel snow, I had almost forgot what that was like. Well I got my fix, ha ha ha (sarcasm). It is supposed to warm up a little next week. Which is good, but I do hope that we have snow for Christmas. I like the first snow at the house, because the pine trees on the hill make it kind of look like a scene from a snow globe. Maybe I'll see it Saturday though since I leave for work in the dark and get home in the dark. It was good to see the Departments of Transportation were ready for the snow too. They were bragging on the radio and TV about how they had salt and were ready, they must have been so ready to go that they figured they didn't have to actually put anything on the road this morning. That's OK, at least Ohio figured out it was snowing and put some stuff on the road by night, I still don't know if the folks from West Virginia have figured out that the roads were covered with snow, because they sure hadn't figured it out when I came home from work. There was a report that there were 50 wrecks today, that sounded about right. It seems to take people a week or two to realize they can't drive like idiots in the snow. And Sampson missed school because it was canceled, he was upset. Probably someday he won't be, but I hope not for a really long time. I try to make school seem as fun and interesting as I can. Speaking of fun and interesting I think I will do one of those year end review letters that everyone sends out, except I'll just do it on the blog and if you don't want to look at it you don't have too, I don't want you to feel obligated to read it since I didn't send it to you directly.