Ok. I'm late again, but I had a good week, so instead of writing this up,?I celebrated yesterday! Seriously, I just plain forgot - too much real work to do!

• Arizona 21, Detroit 29 (-3.5) (39.5 O/U) [P: $5.43, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $5.43]: Joey Harrington looked like the guy everyone wanted him to be when he was drafted. Now, he's had this kind of performance before, and it's never lasted. Remember, it was only Arizona. As for Arizona, I like their future, with both Boldin and Fitzgerald, but they only needed to look across the field to see a team with great receivers who still aren't that good!
• Baltimore 3, Jacksonville 30 (-6.5) (33 O/U) [P: $3.70, S: $10.00, O/U: $0.00, T: $13.70]: Wow. The Ravens have fallen fast and hard. When will Jamal Lewis finally be benched? Or is the coaching staff chalking his poor play up to the lack of a passing game? Maybe that's it, but regardless, wouldn't you at least want to give Chester Taylor a test run? He's supposed to be pretty good.
• Houston* 17, Indianapolis 31 (-17.5) (44.5 O/U) [P: $0.50, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.43, T: $19.93]: Here's?a game I would never have bet on. Why? Well, to pick the winner straight up, it was pretty obvious who was going to win, but by picking Indy, you only win .05 per dollar. Not really worth it. The spread was huge and hard to judge, and the over/under is always unpredictable. Having said that, had I bet on each of those three this week, I would have been right!
• Kansas City 3, Buffalo 14 (-2.5) (41.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]: I'm not sure anyone saw this coming. Larry Johnson actually had a pretty good game, even though he didn't score. The only stat that jumps out as a reason for K.C. to lose is that Green threw three picks. That really hurts an offensive momentum!
• Minnesota* 24, New York Giants 21 (-9.5) (45 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: $10.00, O/U: $0.00, T: $0.00]: A chink in the armor for Eli Manning. It figures - I just traded for him this week! This is the first game with three different types of "special teams" TDs - a pick returned for a TD, a punt returned for a TD, and a kickoff returned for a TD. I guess you don't need a great offense when you can score other ways.
• New England 23 (-2.5), Miami 16 (41 O/U) [P: $6.85, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $6.85]: New England gets back on track, albeit against Miami.
• San Francisco* 9, Chicago 17 (-13) (32 O/U) [P: $1.22, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.52, T: $20.75]: I told you 13 was too many. Especially when the you pick the under at 32 points! I even said that if the 49ers just scored a few points, covering would be virtually impossible for Chicago, who was without (as it turns out) both of their top two running backs.
• Washington 35, Tampa Bay 36 (0) (33 O/U) [P: $9.09, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.52, T: $28.61]: You have to love the gutsy calls in the past two weeks when teams have had a chance to take the easy way out and go into OT, but decide to go for it and get the win. I'm predicting the boldness of these two teams (K.C. last week) will embolden coaches for the rest of the season - that is, until one doesn't work out.
• Denver 31 (-3), Oakland 17 (47 O/U) [P: $6.94, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $6.94]: A solid rushing attack for the Broncos doomed the Raiders, who all but abandoned the running game. Collins passed the ball 50 times. When will teams learn that the Philly offense isn't working?
• New York Jets 3, Carolina 30 (-9.5) (41 O/U) [P: $2.64, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $2.64]: Ok. The Jets are just bad this year. Yeah, injuries have hurt them, and because of that, they just can't do anything on offense, which is why I traded Curtis Martin straight up for Eli Manning (that, and my two drafted quarterbacks were Griese and Culpepper).
• Green Bay* 33, Atlanta 25 (-9.5) (41.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: $10.00, O/U: $9.90, T: $9.90]: Who would have predicted this? Green Bay played it's 53rd string running back and he puts up 100 yards. Nice. And despite losing, Vick had a very quarterback-like game. But yet, he still lost.
• St. Louis 16, Seattle 31 (-6.5) (51 O/U) [P: $3.85, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $3.85]: When will teams start game-planning for Alexander? Make the Seahawks beat you through the airand eliminate the ground game. Someone better. This guy's on fire.
• Cleveland 21, Pittsburgh 34 (-8) (35 O/U) [P: $3.00, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.52, T: $22.53]: So, yeah, having Roethlisberger out isn't fun, but they have good backups. Not great, but good enough to know what they can do, and do only that. Of course, it was Cleveland, but still, a win is a win.
• Dallas 21, Philadelphia 20 (-3) (39.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $10.10, T: ($9.90)]: Despite having success running the ball, the Eagles insisted on passing late in the game despite only needing to grind out the clock. Result: Well, I think you know. Roy Williams returns a pick to the end zone, and Dallas is on the winning side of a late game comeback this time, unlike their loss to Santana Moss in week 2.

Results Summary

• Picks (this week): 10 - 4 (71.43%) - Winnings: $3.23: I could get my daily supply of M.D. with this! This just shows that just because you can pick a lot of games right, the money lines are very important. 5 of the 10 games that I picked right resulted in a return of less than $5.00.
• Picks (season): 88 - 56 (61.11%) - Winnings: ($83.62): I'm slowly chipping away.
• Spread (this week): 12 - 2 (85.71%) - Winnings: $100.00: A huge week here. I actually was right on more spread picks than straight picks. That's surprising actually, but I'll take it.
• Spread (season): 66 - 75 (46.81%) - Winnings: ($90.00): I did a little more than chip away this week. One more week like this, and I'll be in the black!
• Over/Under (this week): 6 - 6 (50.00%) - Winnings: ($1.99): Barely down on this, despite being only .500. See? The line is very important. All six that I picked right returned more than .95 on a dollar, and one returned more than I would have put in.
• Over/Under (season): 66 - 74 (47.14%) - Winnings: ($114.18): Still down larg here - and getting larger.
• Total Weekly Winnings: $101.24: Great week...
• Total Overall Winnings: ($287.80): ...until you look and see that I'm still down huge overall.

More picks tomorrow!

Well, we finalized the last few things that we needed to get the Beta out of the Tourney Bracket Control, and over the weekend, Brian posted the source to the Quickstarts that we put up last week. So if you watched the video, you can now download the code, and play with it for yourself, instead of watching us mess around with it!

Here's Brian's announcement, and here's a link to download the quick starts. And in case you haven't seen it yet, here?are the videos where we demo some of the features.

My favorite continuous integration tool has turned 1. I'm excited. Best new feature: The dashboard now includes a link for everyone to download the CCTray client - no more telling people where to go to get it.

I was in the process of getting the build process working for Tourney Logic yesterday, and decided to push off installing the latest version of CruiseControl.NET - now I'm really glad I did! Now, I can mess around with the latest and greatest bits!

RossCode Weekly #026 - Week of 11.13.2005

Intro - 0:00
Download this episode -?25:08 /?12.1 MB
Subscribe to RossCode Weekly

Previously on RCW - 1:09
Grokster shuts down?(#019)
Grokster's assets purchased by Mashboxx?(#019)

News & Views - 1:54
Unsecured WiFi to be prosecutable
Firefox 1.5 RC2 released
Firefox 2 less than a year away
Thunderbird hits RC
Google adds referrer program for AdSense and Firefox downloads
Google does Newspaper Ads
Google adds Creative Commons license search
NBA launches ad-supported broadband service
Warner Music launches online music label
Pandora offers a free ad-based service
iTunes comes to the Palm OS

The Cold Wars - 9:27
TiVo and Yahoo team up
DirecTV will block Yahoo scheduling
TiVo offers subscription-based box
NBC to offer .99 VOD on DirecTV
CBS to offer VOD through Comcast
Skype hits 200,000,000 downloads
Feedster launches new ad networks
AOL buys MusicNow from Curcuit City
AOL and CBSNews.com in content deal

The Grapevine - 14:21
Microsoft ahead in AOL courting game
Yahoo drops out of running
Google to launch travel site soon?
Intel Powerbooks & iBooks by April?
UBS says Intel Apples by January 2006
Apple machines to be dual-OS?
Vista beta 2 delayed
Office 12 technical beta in a few weeks
Office 12 to include mobile version
XBox Portable by 2007?
PS3: Christmas 2006?
RIM to buy Palm?

Bonehead of the Week - 21:19
Sony and Mike's Words

A?Look Ahead?- 23:27
New Apple Hardware next week?

Contact / Feedback - 24:00
weekly @ rosscode.com
(206) 424-4RCW (4729)

Sponsor - 24:40
RossCode Weekly is sponsored by Tourney Logic: Get In The Game

Check out Tourney Logic's new bracket demo video!

Production Notes
Background music provided by Chronos (Introvert 4) and the Podsafe Music Network.
Hosting of RossCode Weekly is provided by OurMedia.org.
Would you like to sponsor RossCode Weekly? Contact me at sponsor @ rosscode.com.

So, we're between week 9 and 10 - roughly the half way point. Each team has played at least 8 games, so it's time to look back at my preseason predictions and see how I'm doing.

First, let's start with the division winners:

• AFC East: I said New England would win the division. Despite being 4-4, they are in first place. I still feel pretty good about this one, since no one else seems to be ready to step up in that division.
• AFC North: Pittsburgh was my pick. Right now, Cincy is in first place by 1/2 a game, but they have to play Pittsburgh again. If Pittsburgh gets Roethlisburger back healthy, they should still be able to pull this one off.
• AFC South: This is probably my surest pick: Indy. They already have a 3 game lead - probably no real chance of surrendering that one!
• AFC West: San Diego. They probably won't pull it off, but they still have a chance. Denver holds the lead, and look pretty good. I'm guessing they'll take the division
• Wild Cards: Neither of my picks stand a chance. I had Baltimore and the Jets. How wrong I was! I'm guessing that Cincy and San Diego will get them now.

As far as the way I saw the playoffs going, I'm still seeing a Pittsburgh vs. Indy in the AFC Championship, with Indy in the Super Bowl.

• NFC East: I said the Eagles were "the only choice really." Oops. They're only two games back, but they aren't exactly a team on it's way up. This one is up for grabs, but the way the Giants are playing, I'd say they are the favorites.
• NFC North: I said Minnesota, and we can see how that's going. Chicago is likely to take the North, and will probably be above .500. Surprises all around!
• NFC South: Carolina. Still looking good, but Atlanta is right there. Still up for grabs.
• NFC West: St. Louis. Probably wrong here. Seattle is playing way too well right now, and St. Louis is without their coach.
• Wild Cards: Seattle and Atlanta. Either Atlanta or Carolina will get a wild card (the other will win the division). St. Louis probably won't get in (Seattle will be in the playoffs), and neither will the Eagles. Dallas or Washington will get the other wild card.

Playoffs: I picked Seattle and Atlanta to win the first round. I could still be correct. But my pick for the Eagles to go back to the Super Bowl? Nope. Not going to happen. I'm going to go with Seattle versus Atlanta, with Seattle going to the Super Bowl. I'll still stick with my Indy Super Bowl pick.

Now, how about team over/under wins? I'll list out the over/under, and then

• Arizona Cardinals - 7.5 (O -137 / U +125):?2 wins so far. I'm pretty safe here!
• Atlanta Falcons - 9.5 (O +114 / U -125):?Not going to get this one. They already have 6 wins, and show no signs of slowing.
• Baltimore Ravens - 9.5 (O -135 / U +123): If they win out, then I'd be right. That won't happen.
• Buffalo Bills - 8.5 (O + 138 / U -150):?They'd have to finish 6-2 to go over, and that probably won't happen. I'm safe here.
• Carolina Panthers - 9.5 (O +106 / U -116): 6 wins so far. Looking pretty good.
• Chicago Bears?- 6.5 (O -108 / U -102):?The Bears need 2 wins to go over. And they still have games against other NFC North teams. They'll get those.
• Cincinnati Bengals - 7.5 (O -197 / U +179):?One win needed to go over. I'm pretty sure I'm good here.
• Cleveland Browns - 4.5 (O -120 / U +110): 3 wins so far. They need to go 2-6 to go over. It's still a possibility that I'll be right, but it's not looking good.
• Dallas Cowboys - 8.5 (O -117 / U +107):?They surprised me this year, and they already have 5 wins. They should get 4 more, although they don't exactly have an easy schedule - only Detroit is a given.
• Denver Broncos - 8.5 (O -132 / U +120):?They'll get three more wins and blow the 8.5 o/u away. Oops.
• Detroit Lions - 8.5 (O +135 / U -147): 6-2 over the next eight games? Nope. With their schedule, they won't do it. They'd have to beat one of the following teams: Cincinnati, Dallas or Pittsburgh. Plus they'd have to win the rest of their games. Not going to happen.
• Green Bay Packers - 7.5 (O -107 / U -103): They're 1-7 right now. As good as Favre is, he's not going to go 7-1 over the next eight games.
• Houston Texans - 7.5 (O +128 / U -139): They're (surprisingly) in the same boat as Green Bay - needing to go 7-1 to hit their mark. Again, no way!
• Indianapolis Colts - 11.5 (O -128 / U +128): I'm still on track here. 8-0 is a great start, and while they won't go undefeated and have a tougher schedule down the stretch, they'll at least go 4-4 to finish out the season.
• Jacksonville Jaguars - 8.5 (O -107 / U -103): I'm probably wrong here. They only need to go 4-4 to finish the year. Their next four games are Baltimore, Tennessee, Arizona, and Cleveland. That should do it. And if not, they play San Franscisco, Tennessee (again) and Houston. They could go 8-0 or 7-1 pretty easily. That other game? Against Indy.
• Kansas City Chiefs - 8.5 (O -177 / U +164):?Another team that's got to finish 4-4 to hit their mark. They probably will, but Holmes is done for the season. Larry Johnson is good, but can he handle a full load for the remainder of the year?
• Miami Dolfins - 5.5 (O -145 / U +133): They need to match their current record (3-5) to hit their mark. I think they will, but who knows.
• Minnesota Vikings - 9.5 (O -121 / U +110):?Can the Vikings go 7-1 to finish the year? No. But that's what they'd have to do for me to be right.
• New England Patriots - 10.5 (O -128 / U +117): Another team that needs to go 7-1 to go over. Again, not likely, but they do have a schedule that could let them do it.
• New Orlean Saints - 7.5 (O -135/ U +125):?2 wins so far. They need 6 more, so they'd have to go 6-1 to finish. While it'd be the story of the year in the NFL, it's not going to happen.
• New York Giants - 6.5 (O -160 / U +140): They need one win to hit this. Yeah, they will.
• New York Jets - 9.5 (O +153 / U -165): Can the Jets go a perfect 8-0 to finish the year? No. Not without Pennington. Given Pennington is done for the year, I'm feeling pretty good about this pick.
• Oakland Raiders - 7.5 (O -136 / U +125):?They need to turn things around to get close to this number. They have 3 wins, but have a tough division to get the 5 they need to go over.
• Philadelphia Eagles - 11.5 (O +135 / U -146): Like the Jets, they must go 8-0 to hit the over. Not going to happen.
• Pittsburgh Steelers - 9.5 (O -126 / U +116):?They'll go better than .500 to finish the year, and that'll push them over.
• St. Louis Rams - 8.5 (O -136 / U +124): This is tough. They're only 4-4, but need 5 wins to finish up. Looking at the schedule, they have 4 pretty sure wins, but those others are up in the air. They should get one, but who knows.
• San Diego Chargers - 8 (O -154 / U +142):?They need to go 4-3 to finish the season. I think they will. They should at least get the three to push.
• San Francisco 49ers - 4.5 (O +118 / U -130): I only see 3 wins even?possible for these guys. They'll probably drop one of those, which means I'll be right!
• Seattle Seahawks - 8.5 (O -143 / U +130): 3 wins, and they got it. They'll get those.
• Tampa Bay Buccaneers - 6.5 (O -199 / U +185): 2 more wins? Piece of cake!
• Tennessee Titans - 6.5 (O +113 / U -125):?5-2 finish for a 2-7 team? No way.
• Washington Redskins - 7.5 (O +125 / U -137):?They're in a tough division, so who knows what will happen, but they only need 3 more wins in 8 tries to go over. They should.

Ok. Back to my regular weekly picks. We won't revisit these again until after the season is over.

We're on the downside of the NFL season - the season is past the halfway point, which means we're just getting closer to the long off-season of anti-football. The good news is that the games get more and more interesting until that point! Anyway, on to my picks.

• Arizona vs. Detroit (-3.5) (39.5 O/U): It's in Detroit, so Detroit has the advantage. Here's?a stat: Dennis Green is 8-16 as coach of the Cards. Guess which quarterback has all 8 wins? McCown, who was benched a couple of weeks ago in favor of Warner. Odd.
• Baltimore vs. Jacksonville (-6.5) (33 O/U): Before the season started, this looked like a?great match up. Now, it's just another W for the Jags.
• Houston* vs. Indianapolis (-17.5) (44.5 O/U): I don't think I've ever seen a spread this big. If any team is going to cover it, it would be Indy, but I think they'll have a bit of a lag after the big emotional win in New England on Monday. I know the record of teams coming off a road game on Monday night isn't great, but this is Houston. They won't have that big of a lag.
• Kansas City vs. Buffalo (-2.5) (41.5 O/U): K.C. loses Holmes for the year, but they were smart enough to make sure that Larry Johnson is ready to go - and he is. He's had a few great games this year, and now that he's the focus, he'll have a little more trouble getting those yards, but he'll get more carries. He'll do OK, and thus, so will the Chiefs.
• Minnesota* vs. New York Giants (-9.5) (45 O/U): Eli Manning is quickly starting to establish himself as a premiere QB in the league, and Minnesota won't tarnish that image.
• New England (-2.5) vs. Miami (41 O/U): New England needs to get back on track. Miami does too, but they won't this weekend.
• San Francisco* vs. Chicago (-13) (32 O/U): The spread and the over/under almost seem contradictory to me. If the 49ers score just 10 points, then Chicago can't cover and have the game stay under. I think it'll stay under: Chicago is without Thomas Jones and just don't put up points. The 49ers are, well, the 49ers. However, I do think the score will be closer than 13.
• Washington vs. Tampa Bay (0) (33 O/U): Expect a defensive, close game. Good battle expected here.
• Denver (-3) vs. Oakland (47 O/U): Denver should be able to run all over Oakland (literally!).
• New York Jets vs. Carolina (-9.5) (41 O/U): The Jets are a bad team this year, mainly because Pennington isn't playing. Carolina is playing pretty well right now, and showed last week that they can score too - Steve Smith is a solid receiver.
• Green Bay* vs. Atlanta (-9.5) (41.5 O/U): In my mind, Atlanta started the whole Green Bay slide a few years back when they beat the Packers in Wisconsin in the playoffs - something that was unheard of up to that point. Now, the Frozen Tundra doesn't seem as daunting, and Favre seems much more human.
• St. Louis vs. Seattle (-6.5) (51 O/U): A intra-divisional battle between the top two teams in the division. The winner of this is most likely the favorite to win it too.
• Cleveland vs. Pittsburgh (-8) (35 O/U): Any question on this one? Even with Charlie Batch at the helm, it's only Cleveland. Duce will get a heavy load, but that's why he was brought in.
• Dallas vs. Philadelphia (-3) (39.5 O/U): A great Monday night game, and Philly's only favored because they're at home. If the Eagles want any chance of recovering this season, they need to start giving the ball to Westbrook ON THE GROUND and not through the air. It's too easy?for defenses to pin their ears back and rush the quarterback while defending the pass when you don't have to worry about the run. Hopefully they'll figure out that soon, especially now that there will be no T.O. for the rest of the year. It's time to diversify!

Ok. I'll be back next week to review the results.

Today, Brian and I sat down for a little while and talked about what it takes to build a bracket in the Tourney Bracket Control 2.0. We recorded it, and Brian does most of the talking, but I was behind the camera, and made a cameo appearance early on.

Brian even writes code, and we have a small debugging session right in the video. If you're interested in what's going on with the Tourney Bracket Control, and how it can be used, this video is awesome for that. Brian built a bracket from scratch using the designer.?Then I put him on the spot and made him build one in code. After that, he showed how our databinding works (which is pretty cool) by binding to a database, and how to load results from a database.

Go have a look and let us know what you think!

Dave Donaldson was interviewed by Jeff Julian and Jon Alexander over of Podcast Studio at the Heartland Developers Conference back in October, and it's now online.

Having met Dave at Tech Ed and helped him test CodeKeep (sort of - I dropped the ball because I got so busy), it caught my attention and jumped to the top of my podcast queue. I listened to it on the way to work this afternoon, and it's a good one. Dave talks about how to make quality code (what his talk at the HDC was about), CodeKeep, and working as an independant consultant.

If you're?a developer, it's definitely worth a listen!

Yup. That's right. You've probably seen it elsewhere, but I've got a different spin on this whole free thing.

First the news: All of the Visual Studio Express editions (Web Developer, C# Express, VB Express, C++ Express, J# Express,?and SQL Express) are all free for one year. And it's not a one year trial - if you download it in the next year, it'll be free forever. That's awesome!

Why is it awesome? Well, it blows away the barriers to entry for .NET development. That's good for me in two ways. First, as a consultant, any time that more people have access to the technology I specialize in, that means more work for me. And no, I'm not really worried about it taking away business.

It's also good for me as an owner of Tourney Logic. Why? Well, we're developing (actually, Brian is) a tournament management app on top of the Club Site, and we'll be able to publish that for anyone to use, and with the tools to use it being free, that only helps.

By the way, on the Tourney Logic front, Brian published our Tourney Bracket Control 2.0 beta quick starts, where you can start to see how easy it's going to be to configure brackets in the future. You can't see the code yet, but Brian has a nice post laying out what your code would look like to create the quickstarts. He's also working on getting the code downloadable, and tomorrow, we're putting together a "Channel 9 Style" video that'll show how easy it really is!

For me, I'm knee deep in double elimination. It'll be there, that much I know!

Tim Huckaby did a fantastic job with his presentation tonight about smart clients and why you would (should?) pick them over a web application. He's also a great presenter - some presenters use Powerpoint as a crutch, where as Tim knows exactly where he's going and the slides are just an aide for him. I was impressed. His demos were good too - I'm looking forward to downloading the code and checking out how some of it is put together.

He laid out the "Big Three" platforms for smart clients: .NET winforms (the one I'm most used to), VSTO (NuSoft does a little bit here) and the compact framework. Is anyone seriously developing for Pocket PCs right now though? I'm not doubting him - I'm just not seeing it. Although, he did have a pretty sweet demo for the compact framework...

Oh yeah. If you were there, I was one of the guys in the back getting in trouble for talking!