As promised, here's my week 11 pick review. Sorry it took so long to get it up here.

• St. Louis 17 (-1.5) vs. Buffalo: Ouch. How does a team in the playoff hunt (a division win is very important in the West - where losing the division most likely means missing out on the playoffs) lose to Buffalo? Of course, now Buffalo has won three of the last four games, losing only to New England.
• Dallas 10, Baltimore 30 (-8): People are starting to see that the Parcells experiment isn't quite working out as expected. But hey, when your quarterback is almost as old as your coach, what do you expect. How long before Henson will be yet another U of M quarterback that breaks into a starting job in the NFL?
• New York Jets 10, Cleveland 7 (PK): Apparently the oddsmakers were right. This was a close game. And I was right, because the Jets came out on top.
• Pittsburgh 19 (-4), Cincinnati 14: The Steelers keep on rolling.
• Indianapolis 41 (-7.5), Chicago 10: I listen to a few talk shows out of Chicago, and they actually thought they had a chance against Indy. At least when Detroit played Indy, the talk shows had no false hopes - it was just a matter of how many touchdowns would Manning get (6!).
• Detroit 19, Minnesota 22 (-7.5): Minnesota better get their game back in order. Having Moss back should help next week, but barely beating Detroit is not getting back on track.
• Arizona 10, Carolina 35 (-3): In the weekly "doesn't matter" game, the AFC's best team last year beat the NFC's worst. Wow.
• Tennessee 18, Jacksonville 15 (-3): With McNair back, and Leftwich hurting, this wasn't surprising.
• San Francisco 3, Tampa Bay 35 (-8): This was. Tampa Bay can be very good, and then very bad. San Fran only has one gear - very bad. I understand that, but getting whooped by 32 points? Come on. They're starting to look like Detroit of the past three years.
• Denver 34 (-4), New Orleans 13: Denver is tied for first place with San Diego, and kept pace. New Orleans gained one on becoming the worst team in the NFC. They have stiff competition there, mainly from the Niners.
• Miami 17, Seattle 24 (-10): Does this count? Beating Miami isn't impressive, especially when it's only by a touchdown.
• San Diego 23 (-4), Oakland 17: Everyone said San Diego always struggled against the Raiders, but apparently they are either over that, or lucky. Either way, they won.
• Atlanta 14 (-2.5), New York Giants 10: Altanta continues to roll, and the Giants skid to .500.
• Washington 6, Philadelphia 28 (-10.5): Wow. Philly shows again why they are the best team in the NFC.
• Green Bay 16 (-3), Houston 13: Barely beating Houston? I guess a win is a win, in the NFL. But not for me - this one won't count. It's an exact cover.
• New England 27 (-3), Kansas City 19: This was a better game than I expected. It came down to a last minute drive if I remember correctly, so that's about as close as you can get without overtime.

So how did I do? Let's see

Back above .500! Let's hope I can stay that way.

I'll get my week 11 review up next, but I'm tired and have 1500 unread blogs to read, so I want to make sure I get this out first. I already posted the Thanksgiving game picks (and was right on both!), so those aren't included.

• Baltimore vs. New England (-7): I don't know why, but I think New England will lose this one. Baltimore has Jamal Lewis back, and they still have Ray Lewis on defense. New England's defense is dropping left and right, so Baltimore should be able to move the ball.
• Philadelphia (-7) vs. New York Giants: The Giants have been struggling lately (they even lost to the odd week Falcons), and Philly is still the best team in NFC.
• Washington vs. Pittsburgh (-10.5): I don't have any disillusions here. Washington won't win, but they should cover. It's that whole 10 point rule again. You'll see that again this week too.
• Cleveland vs. Cincinnati (-6): I'll take Cincinnati to win, but Cleveland will keep it close.
• Jacksonville vs. Minnesota (-5.5): Minnesota has to get back on track at some point. Barely beating Detroit doesn't count. Might as well be Jacksonville then.
• Tampa Bay (-2.5) vs. Carolina: Surprisingly enough, this isn't the least meaningful game of the week. But don't be fooled. This game is still meaningless. I'll take Tampa Bay though.
• San Diego vs. Kansas City (-3): How can KC, who's 3-7, be a favorite over San Diego, who's 7-3? I'll take the Chargers.
• Tennessee (-1.5) vs. Houston: Another match up of the old Houston versus the new Houston. New Houston won last time, 20-10, but that won't happen this time. McNair is back, and knows that one more loss could mean no playoffs (a likely situation anyway).
• New Orleans vs. Atlanta (-9.5): I like to knock Atlanta as an even-odd week team, but they are 8-2. Pretty impressive - 4th in the league. They should be able to run New Orleans out of Atlanta.
• New York Jets (-3) vs. Arizona: The Jets should take this one easily.
• Buffalo vs. Seattle (-5.5): Seattle needs to get back on track. At 6-4, it's pretty pathetic they are in first place in the West by themselves. That's the only division that's possible. St. Louis has a difficult game against Green Bay, so this is a good chance to gain a game on them.
• Miami vs. San Francisco (-1): This is the most meaningless game of the week. No doubt. I think Miami, if they lose, could be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs. They already can't win the division. The 49ers still have a miniscule chance, but they aren't eliminated yet. I'm not sure any of that will play into this game, but Miami will win.
• Oakland vs. Denver (-11): Denver will win, but Oakland will cover. It's that Ross Code of Betting - 10 points or more, pick the 'dog.
• St. Louis vs. Green Bay (-6.5): If Minnesota and Green Bay both win, they increase their lead over the Bears and Lions to three games. Of couse they'll still be tied, but at least they won't be overtaken by the other guys in the division. For the division being a (typically) weak division, if Green Bay is to lose the division to Minnesota, somehow, at 6-4), they are first in the run for a wildcard.

So there you have it. For what it's worth.

Ok. Before you start flaming me, let me explain.

I don't think this, but that's what an external vendor a client of ours said to our client today, so it must be true, right?

The client called me today after he got off the phone to tell me about his conversation. It's a classic. He contacted them because we wanted a pure .NET interface to their system. They offered a COM DLL, but we didn't want that - this app is pure - only managed code here, thank you very much! The guy told us they didn't bother writing a .NET component because .NET is a dead technology. His words (well, the gist of his comments): I know you guys are using it, but no other companies are using .NET. Microsoft is abandoning it too. You may not know this, but they've already moved on to other things. .NET is dead." At first, I was skeptical. Can .NET really be dead? I didn't think so, but he was convincing. "I've been in the business for 15 years, and I can tell you .NET won't be around for long." 15 years? Well, with that kind of history, how could he be wrong?

Already resigning ourselves to the fact that we made a bad technology choice, we asked about Web Services - if they offered that, we could integrate that way. His answer, "We don't do .NET." When informed that Web Services aren't really .NET related, he responded, "XML is tooo slow."

This revelation is unbelievable! Now, I have to stop using .NET and XML!

I've already added a feature request into the bug tracker. "Convert all code to php, and migrate to Unix." I can't take the chance that Microsoft abandons Windows too!

Unfortunately, I don't have time to do a full review of week 11, or a full pick set for week 12, but I'll pick the Thursday games quickly here. Then, on Friday, I'll post my results from week 11 (spoiler: 13-3 picking winners, and 9-6 against the spread), then do a full pick set for week 12.

So with that, here's the two Thursday games:

• Indianapolis (-9.5) vs. Detroit: The spread opened at 7, and apparently quickly rose to almost 10. Not surprising. No offense to keep Detroit close, and a defense that'll be overwhelmed by Manning and company.
• Chicago vs. Dallas (-3.5): There's an advantage to playing at home on a short week, and that should be enough for Dallas.

I've heard talk about how it's unfair for Indy and Chicago to have to travel on a short week to play on Thanksgiving. While I can see the point, I think this year Chicago has it worse than Indy. Indy gets a fairly easy game, and then an extended week off before their next game. Chicago gets the same, but the team isn't as easy as Detroit is.

Anyway, I'll be out of town on Wednesday and Thursday, so blogging will be light (as in non-existent).

I can't believe I almost forgot to post this! It's been very hectic around the house the past few days.

Our daughter was sick over the weekend, throwing up for the first time - well, she spit up as a baby, but she's outgrown that. It's tough to watch your little girl (she's two) throw up, and know there's nothing you can do. But she handled it like a big girl - she knew it was coming, and would run to the bathroom.

That night, I slept for 15 minutes, then was up until 2:30 with Maddie, slept until 5:30, then was up until 6:30, then back up by 8:00. Four and half hours of sleep. Ouch.

So that was the bad part. The good part was that we had our ultrasound this morning. We found out we are having a girl, and I'm very excited. I'll post pictures as soon as they are scanned.

Now, we just need to figure out a name. That'll be the hard part. Well, maybe not the hardest part. A house full of women! Now, that'll be the hard part!

Have you gotten Halo 2 yet? I haven't, but if I do, I'll know how to beat it! Why? Because there's an article about the Artificial Intelligence in Halo 2. It's a pretty good read.

Chris Hynes has posted SlickUpload, a tool to do uploads in ASP.NET. I haven't tried it yet, but I may find a use for it sooner or later.

It even looks like someone towards the bottom of the comments has created a pop-up progress bar too. You can email him for the info. Just look in the comments for his email address.

Thanks to Scott Galloway for the link.

It's now official. NuSoft Solutions has acquired Sagestone Consulting.

To be honest, I hadn't heard much about NuSoft before we found out about the acquisition, so I can't tell you about them, other than us combining should be very good. Both of us are Microsoft partners, and have the same philosophy about business. I spoke with Dale Mansour, CEO of NuSoft, last week, and he seems to have the same passion about business as Keith (Sagestone's CEO) does. Personally, I think it's a good move for both companies, and am excited to see what's coming for us.

And in the short term, I am getting a free shirt!

Apparently, a public API is the cool thing to do. And we all know Google is cool! So that's why they released an API for Google Deskbar. What can you do with it? The SDK shows how to search your Outlook contacts and generating a random password.

Other ideas? Search and play a music files, solve equations, or send instant messages.

How about this? Write a plug in that can talk to all of your communication software (ICQ, AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Trillian, Skype, etc.). Then type in a status into the Google deskbar, and have it change your status for you. Now, that would be useful.

The SDK requires the .NET Framework, and you can code against it using the any .NET language. That's prety cool. I may have to give that a try someday.

TiVo took some heat this week. There were numerous posts about unplugging your TiVo and moving to some other solution. Even Mike Swanson talks about how nice MCE 2005 is. He was the first person to ever talk to me about TiVo, and he was passionate about it. He sold me on it. Nevermind that it took me two more years to convince my wife! (I wonder why Mike's been so quiet lately?)

So while TiVo is getting attacked in the blogosphere, what do they do? They announce that they'll start inserting advertisements into fast forwarded commercials. Let the rumors begin! It started out that TiVo would no longer allow fast forwarding, but TiVo quickly clarified that. No, you can still fast forward, but advertisements will be inserted for you. I wonder if the advertisements will be for the same thing that the commercial you're fast forwarding through is for.

I don't remember where I saw this, and can't find it (so if it's you, sorry for not crediting you), but I read that companies were going to try to do exactly what TiVo will now do. They were going to take one out of every thirty frames (or however many frames TiVo samples), and put a special banner in there. Then when you fast forward, TiVo would only pick up that banner, resulting in a solid screen for fast forwarding users. To the normal users, who are watching live TV (notice my TiVo terminology!) it would appear as a normal commercial. I wonder if something like that qualifies for subliminal messages.

Then came a study about fast forwarding (again, can't find the link). It turns out that fast forwarding through an ad results in roughly the same retention as watching the ad in real-time. Think about it. If you fast forward, you pay close attention to the TV. You don't want to miss the show. But if you watch the commercials, you go get a drink, use the bathroom, etc. As an advertiser, which would you rather have? Someone watching attentively, albeit at a much faster pace, or someone in the other room?

I don't quite get the controversy. Nothing really changes. You can still fast forward. I understand that when you pay for a service, you want it to be ad free. But you pay for cable, and that isn't ad free, is it? Your newspaper isn't ad free. So why should you expect TiVo to be?