Fantasy Hockey

So I've been fluctuating between 1st and 2nd place in my Yahoo league for the past little while. I've taken a nice lead after Heatley's amazing 4 goal performance in tonights 8-0 shutout against the Leafs. I've never really been a Senators fan but I've always hated the Leafs. And after watching Spezza and Heatley in action, I'm definitely liking what I see. The only notable roster change was the addition of Lubomir Visnovsky from the LA Kings in replacement of Jordan Leopold. The Calgary defenseman, whom I thought would be a points monster as one of the Flames' point-men on the power play, has been an utter disappointment after 4 weeks of play along with the entire Flames powerplay and scoring in general. I've kept Hamrlik because despite the low scoring, he's still managed to accumulate 1 goal and 7 assists. I wish Kipper was doing better but Hasek has proved to be a great pick and is keeping me on top of the goalie stats.

As for my SportingNews teams, I'm being overtaken by my buddy Gilbert from church. My strategy involving picking up a lot of players from the same teams (Detroit and Ottawa) has been pretty good but I think once I hit a gap in their schedules I'm going to have to change things up.

Since Hejduk's return, the Avs are looking pretty good. He's definitely given them the extra scoring punch they've needed. After a couple wins over the Canucks, I think the Avs are going to be okay.

Yahoo Team

So I did sign up for a public fantasy league on Yahoo! Sports. There were 12 people in the draft and I was #8. Here's the team i scraped up:

Centers: Lang (Det), Spezza (Ott), Langkow (Cal)
Left Wings: Zetterberg (Det), Brunette (Col), Simon (Cal)
Right Wings: Heatley (Ott), Selanne (Anh), Fedotenko (TB)
Defensemen: Redden (Ott), Leopold (Cal), Rafalski (NJ), Hamrlik (Cal)
Goalies: Kiprusoff (Cal), Hasek (Ott), Garon (LA)

I have 4 players from the Senators and 5 from the Flames. Not sure how good of a strategy it is but I figure these two teams will be among the top in their conferences so they're bound to collect piles of points (or get plenty of shutouts behind a solid defense). Only time will tell.

EAC/SCCAC Merge Complete!

And so passes another lengthy void in my blog where I either didn't have the time to update it, didn't have anything interesting to say, or could care less about upheaving a bunch of blogorrhea. But it's my first Saturday afternoon in a while that I've been at home and after battling my way through a bombardment of readings for school, I figured I could take a break by reminscing some of the more recent parts of my life...

EAC/SCCAC Merge

So my old church, Evangel Alliance, has finally merged with the South Calgary Chinese Alliance church. I must say I think it has been going smoothly since the beginning of September when it all went down. I've found everyone to be very pleasant and easy to get along with; especially the university/career group. We are now meeting at SCCAC's building which is almost within walking distance from our house. So we can leave our house at like 9:10 and get there with plenty of time to spare before Sunday School starts at 9:30.

As I've mentioned before, music is a huge passion of mine and I've decided to continue serving in the music ministry of the new church. I was very encouraged by all the young people who had taken up responsibility to handle much of the worship leading at SCCAC. It's so awesome to see that servant's attitude in so many people. A bunch of the worship leaders and our senior pastor met a few weeks ago to plan out how to conduct the services and how the worship leaders fit into the big picture of facilitating the corporate worship time for everyone. We sorted out four worship bands/teams that will begin a rotation starting tomorrow morning. I think it will be great to have a building and sound system to practice with.

In general, I'm very excited to see where God leads us as we journey forward into the 21st century. We must tackle the task of embracing this post-modern world and meeting the needs of an emerging generation. It's not going to be easy and there are always going to be the same inherent struggles that any church faces, but I'm confident that we will succeed.

Fantasy Hockey

I've made a bunch of teams on SportingNews.com. I doubt I will spend too much time during the season making changes to my teams unless people get injured. I think I might join a Yahoo league too and draft a team. I know that the season hasn't started yet but I'm going to post up my teams anyway (doubt anyone will actually read this anyway haha).

Team 1: Rice Rockets
C - Spezza, Jason

C - Langkow, Daymond

W - Gagne, Simon

W - Zetterberg, Henrik

D - Ozolinsh, Sandis

D - Lydman, Toni

G - Hasek, Dominik

Team 2: Flower Power

C - Spezza, Jason

W - Selanne, Teemu

W - Heatley, Dany

D - Hamrlik, Roman

D - Phillips, Chris

D - Ozolinsh, Sandis

G - Kiprusoff, Miikka

Team 3: Fox Force Five

C - Peca, Michael

W - Heatley, Dany

W - Parker, Scott

W - Iginla, Jarome

D - Ozolinsh, Sandis

D - de Vries, Greg

G - Kiprusoff, Miikka

Team 4: ABC 123

C - Drury, Chris

W - Bertuzzi, Todd

W - Zetterberg, Henrik

W - Oliwa, Krzysztof

D - Leopold, Jordan

D - Ozolinsh, Sandis

G - Hasek, Dominik

Guitar?

So I've been thinking about getting an electric guitar. I've tried out a couple Fender's and Gibson's and I must say I like the Strats much better than the Les Paul. The body just feels so much lighter and easier to work with than the bulky Gibson's. I can hear the difference in sound but the deeper, more mellow sound that the Gibson's supposedly make isn't that spectacular. My little brother has a Squire Strat that I've play a bit and I like it except for the fact that it's sort of made for kids or people with smaller hands and the strings are a bit too close together for comfort on the neck. I have skinny fingers and I still have troubles with it.

It looks like i'm leaning towards a Stratocaster but even then there are so many possibilities. The Mexican Strats start at around $400-500 and the American ones start at around $800. I probably don't need a brand new one but I definitely think I'm going to invest the extra money in one Made in the USA. The way I see this, it's a long term investment and as long as I take care of it, it should last me forever. From there I have to decide what kind of features I want (ie. the new cobalt noiseless pickups, screw locking pins, the S-1 switching system adding 5 more pickup configs to the standard 5, humbucking pickups, etc.).

The other kicker is that I need a good amp to make it sound good. My uncle told me that if I get a Fender Strat, I should go with a Fender amp. I guess that makes sense. I don't need one with effects but I want something that's at least 30-40 Watts that I can crank up and fill a large room/hall. Price wise, I saw this one Peavey solidstate 40 W amp for about $300 which seemed to be a pretty good deal. I'm going to need some time to consider this all since it will probably set me back close to $1500.