2018: Day 36 the one with the big football game and a hot sauce ranking
Word count 97,468 + 3,334 or 100,802 of 1,000,000

Dear Reader,

Today is going to be a day full of watching football. Today is also the day that my overall word count will hit 100,000 words for the year. Both things happening during the same day is pretty entertaining. At 4:30 PM the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots are going to play a game to determine the champion of the National Football League. That game concludes the season for the National Football League. Even without the support of the power assist cable the TERK indoor plate antenna was able to pick up our local over the air broadcast of Channel 9 our local NBC KUSA channel. That was pretty exciting. We cancelled cable in Colorado Springs and did not have the same signal strength from over the air broadcasts. Earlier today the antenna was just plugged into the back of our Sony Bravia television and it picked up the channel just fine. It all seemed to be working. That was good news in terms of being able to watch television. I’m pretty sure that after watching this channel for a couple hours today the picture from the over the air broadcast is clearer and more crisp than what we were getting from cable. It is possible that the cable company was down-scaling our local broadcasts to 720p or some variant of that.

Lunch is now over and things in the house are slowing down for naps. Strangely enough NBC started wall to wall football coverage today very early. They were all in on football today. I guess that makes sense. People like to watch the coverage and get amped up for the game. Instead of a get psyched mix tape we have pregame coverage. I guess these days it should be called a get psyched playlist as folks don’t really have tapes or even discs anymore. I have a CD player in a box, but I’m not sure I could play a tape if we wanted to play it. The only device in the house with a tape deck is my Commodore 64. Obviously, we are not going to plug that thing into the wall. That has to be a fire risk of some kind. In this household we have had the NBC channel on since around 10:00 AM and it has been all football coverage. I would have to say that we have not had any flickering or disruption of the over the air signal. At some point this week our new TiVo Roamio OTA 1TB entertainment center will arrive. I think TiVo lists it as a digital video recorder (DVR), but to me it is an entertainment center. The only part of the TiVo box that seems to be lacking is the 4K support on the Roamio, but I’m sure they will

Wow —- Sean Evans just showed up on the NBC broadcast with Von Miller during a recap of the latest Hot Ones Youtube episode from this week. I guess Sean is now mainstream. If your YouTube show gets broadcast on NBC that means you are being accepted by the mainstream media. This is probably good for Sean. I imagine the same folks who eat hot wings and like interviews are the ones watching pregame NBC coverage. My garage fridge has about 20 different hot sauces in a plastic ice tub. It was really the best container for holding hot sauces. It has decent wall height and was wide enough for the bottle to sit side by side in two columns. I use them on vegetarian and vegan wings every week. You can catch a video of me eating the Last Dab Hot sauce on YouTube. It is pretty easy to find. The show Hot Ones really has been pretty good. It is probably one of the best examples of how YouTubt allowed creators to bring forward content that people enjoy that would otherwise be left out of traditional broadcast media.

Topic 1: My favorite hot sauces

This is a ranking of my favorite hot sauces at this moment right now. I went through and force ranked all of the hot sauces that I have had within the last 30 days. Watching the YouTube show Hot Ones with Sean Evans has been enjoyable. It is an interview show, but it really does bring out the best in the guests. I have probably watched every episode of the show on YouTube. As a result of that my diet has started to include a few more hot sauces. It is probably now full of an order of magnitude more hot sauce than ever before. It was amazing that after being exposed to hot sauces I wanted to buy them and try them. Some of them are really good. Some of them were just hot and I have limited interest in every consuming them again. I have made several purchases from the Heatonist website. If you have never visited the Heatonist website, then check it out and buy some hot sauces if you like that sort of thing. You may only want to do that if you like spicy to extremely spicy foods. My last common on that topic is that the folks over at Queen’s Majesty Hot Sauce make some really nice blends. You could start with them. They are my favorite. They really are worthy of the top 2 sauces on my list.

1. Queen’s Majesty Hot Sauce Scotch Bonnet & Ginger Hot – This is hands down my favorite hot sauce right now. My favorite midweek indulgence is dipping tater tots or tater coins into this scotch bonnet & ginger sauce.
2. Queen’s Majesty Hot Sauce Red Habanero & Black Coffee – This sauce is a close second in my book to the scotch bonnet & ginger. It is not as robust in flavor. It has one key note and it is a good one, but it does not have the waves of flavor the first sauce gets.
3. Hot Ones Fiery Chipotle – This sauce is pretty decent and works out great on my vegan and vegetarian wings. I’m pretty sure that they will come out with a 2.0 version of this sauce and it will be epic.
4. Dick’s Hot Sauce – Hot Pepper Sauce with a Tropical Twist – This sauce has a ton of flavor and is also good with tater tots.
5. Bravado Ghost Pepper & Blueberry Hot Sauce – This sauce can get a little thin, but it has some decent flavor. I have put it on leftover pancakes a couple of times.
6. Hot Ones – The Last Dab – Flavor is not the question with this one. It has some good flavor, but it is awfully hot for a daily go to sauce.
7. High River Rogue – Maybe it is just my preferences for hot sauce, but this one just tasted sweet and I did not enjoy it.
8. Secret Aardvark Drunken Jerk Sauce – For some reason this saue just does not work for me. I wanted it to be awesome, but I just do not enjoy it.
9. Blair’s mega death sauce with liquid rage – You may be aware that this one is hot and has a strange taste. I would call it fermented raise and hot.
10. Da’ Bomb Beyond Insanity Hot Sauce – Eating this sauce is not on the list of things I plan on doing again.
11. Torchbearer Zombie Apocalypse – It is easy to say without question that this is my least favorite hot sauce of all time. It is hot and I really do not like the flavor.

Topic 2: Star Trek Discovery

We switched over to watch an episode of Star Trek Discovery today. This series is darker than any other Star Trek I have watched. We are getting pretty deep into the series and it full of twists after episode 9. I get how it ended up being a streaming only type of series for CBS the writers took it in a lot darker direction than the previous versions of Star Trek.

Topic 3: Big banks are banning cryptocurrency credit card transactions

I’m reading this article from Bloomberg. It appears that a growing number of lenders (credit card providers) are stopping transactions related to the purchase of cryptocurrency. This could and probably is having a huge chilling effect on the market for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Most casual buyers of coins or a fraction of a coin probably used a credit card. My efforts are a little bit different. I’m selling my hashing power using the NiceHash mining software. That means that I receive small payments in BTC (bitcoin). I have limited interest in using my credit card to buy cryptocurrency. Just because I would rather engage in some mining and earn coins vs. buying them that does not mean people are going to stop. Now the more banks move to stop people from moving in and out of cryptocurrency positions that is going to have a chilling effect on the market. All of my TurtleCoins are safe. I’m not exactly sure you can buy a TurtleCoin with credit card. I think you have to trade some other type of cryptocurrency for the TurtleCoin within the market. I have been watching the Coinbase dashboard all weekend. The market has been wild. I’m guessing the reduced influx of small purchases is depressing the market value in an artificial way.

Topic 4: The game is about to start

We rocked 5 hours of pregame coverage for the big game today. That coverage was interrupted by a trip to Target and Costco. Oh —- and we watched that episode of Star Trek Discovery I guess, but for the most part the entire day has been dedicated to getting ready for the big game. At around noon today I even ordered a pizza for deliver after the game starts. Today is probably a pretty big pizza delivery day. I’m about to do some dangerous Google searches on that topic. Apparently, New Year’s Eve is the busiest day of the year for pizza delivery. I guess that makes sense. I can see that being a day of pizza.

The teams are getting ready to walk out. We are seeing a montage of pre-recorded player introductions. The game is about to get going here. I made it all the way until 4:15 PM without hitting 2,000 words for the day. I really thought my writing efforts today so far would have yielding more words. I think a lot of content has been included, but that has not translated to a high word count. Maybe my prose today should have been more verbose and devoted to really digging into details. Now would be the time to turn that around and begin to write at a higher level throughout the rest of the day.

Topic 5: My live game blog

Soon enough the pizza will arrive today. I decided to get an extra large pizza with half double cheese and half regular cheese. I’m just curious to compare the two sides and see which one works out better. Both of my kids stood for the national anthem. Apparently, all that pledge of allegiance training kicked in. The first commercial was for a movie that I am probably not going to see. The TD Ameritrade commercial featuring Lionel Richie with references to the song “all night long” was pretty funny. It was a little bit of inside baseball, but it was funny enough. I’m hoping the commercial game is on point tonight.

This coin toss is going well enough. New England won the coin toss and deferred. In previous years I heard a lot more about people in Las Vegas setting up proposition bets for the game. Maybe that was just not a big topic this year. It is also possible that they hype for that happened and I just missed it. This first series is going well enough. A pass got completed. That is about the extent of my play by play announcing skills. You can expect a few general game observations and that is about it.
3-0: Uh-oh the Eagles really needed a touchdown on that drive. Coming away with 3 instead of 7 is not the most effective way to start the game. We will see if those 4 points ends up mattering at the end of the game.

3-3: The game is tied after two drives. Watching the New England Patriots play offense is something that I have done a lot in the last decade. Tom Brady was a little off on that third down red zone throw.

9-3: It was an epic touchdown throw from Foles, but that missed extra point is probably going to be a factor. The Eagles have now left 5 points on the table. That Ram trucks advertisement with Vikings was lacking. Maybe it is the brilliant high definition of the over the air broadcast, but the game looks pretty sharp. I would say the overall picture quality is good and it seems sharp on the old Sony Bravia. That attempt to hurdle a defensive player by number 14 was interesting. That missed field goal by Stephen Gostkowski really hit the exact middle of the upright post. Hmmm —- they are making another MIssion Impossible movie. The best promotions during the game so far seem to be for the winter olympics. All these advertisements are probably going to drive up viewership for the winter olympics. We are probably going to be watching the olympics every night that they are on via over the air broadcasts.

15-3: Apparently, the Eagles offense came ready to play tonight. Points are getting left on the table. At this point by my count the Eagles have left 7 points on the table after that failed 2 point conversion.

15-6: Well that kick from Stephen Gostkowski was true. It feels like the 2nd quarter is not going by as fast as the 1st quarter. We ate a bunch of pizza during the game. Sadly, nobody has even cracked open the seven layer dip. That first turn over of the night was wild enough. It was batted right into the defenders hands. I really just wanted to see a competitive game. That is really the best outcome.

15-12: I’m sure this is a game that Stephen Gostkowski is going to want to forget. That missed extra point was not even close. Ok that advertisement for travel to Australia teasing a crocodile dundee remake and featuring a cameo from Paul Hogan really made me laugh. At first, I was getting nervous that it was a real movie trailer, but fortunately it was not a real movie. New England is trying to save some clock with a timeout here.

22-12: That one might have been the last page of the playbook. The Patriots defense was not ready for that move by Foles. Bradley Cooper was loving it. This last series for the Patriots is not looking crisp. On that last sprint to the sidelines Tom Brady was not going to make it.

Halftime: That performance during halftime was just not in sync.

22-19: Well it appears that Rob Gronkowski made the most out of halftime. The game is very competitive. The ratings numbers are going to be good tonight.

29-19: They need to update the rules. Even the announcers were wondering if that was a touchdown or not. If those highly trained professionals have no idea, then the rule is unclear and needs to be updated.

29-26: Well Brady is over 400 yards for the game. This game is close. It is competitive. We may see a barn burner of a 4th quarter tonight.

32-6: That field goal was a little bit of a let down for the Eagles. They need to be scoring 7 points at a time. This game is over 1,000 yards in total offense.

32-33: It took a long time for Rob Gronkowski to get going, but it happened. The Patriots now have a lead in the 4th quarter. It is bedtime for the kids. One kid is asleep and the other is almost done for the night. I have to say that the over the air broadcast has worked out really well. Not having pause capabilities is just like I remember it. You really cannot do anything about it and time marches on. At the moment, i’m watching the game on the NBC Sports website and waiting for Kaylee to finish falling asleep.

38-33: Well it is all going to come down to a Tom Brady drive. I guess that is not going to be the case. We just hit the 2 minute warning.

41-33: That last field goal might have been enough. The Philadelphia Eagles just won a championship.

It might have been a mistake to try to blog every score tonight. I really did not think that we would see so much scoring during the game. Apparently defense was not a winner tonight. It was however a very competitive game and it was enjoyable to watch. The NFL is probably pretty happy with the outcome. Ratings are probably going to be pretty high. I’ll check them out tomorrow and see where this game stacks up in the all time rating. Tonight will probably be one of those games that gets talked about for awhile. I feel like the video looked really good and crisp.

Topic 6: Rounding out the night

The weekend is quickly drawing to an end. It would have been much better to have completed my Corsair 740 build this weekend. Not having a power supply was a huge oversight on my part. It would have been a lot more fun to start working on mining cryptocurrency. I really thought a spare power supply had been sittin in the basement, but that was not the case. At some point in the next couple of weeks a power supply should show up after it comes back in stock. Even the Best Buy where I bought my TERK over the air antenna did not have any graphics cards or power supplies in stock. A big section of a shelf at Best Buy should have included NVIDIA graphics cards. It was empty. At some point, Best Buy should probably give up on the graphics cards and reclaim that shelf space.

Maybe next week will be a fun week. That is possible, but who knows. Right now all I can think about is getting some Sweet Potato Masala this week. It would be a fun lunch of fresh sweet potatoes cooked in our house favorite Masala sauce. That is something that could happen, but who knows exactly. This next week is going to be an adventure. You can probably tell that this blog post has had a lot of time devoted to it, but the total word count does not really show that. My efforts to just sit down and hammer out a ton of words back to back just did not happen. In some ways it is probably the fault of the football game and all of the pre-game festivities associated with the game. It only happens on time per year and it does pull in a lot of focus from the entire nation.

Dr. Nels Lindahl
Broomfield, Colorado
Written on my Storm Stryker PC and or my ASUS C101P using Google Docs

P.S. Some quick data analysis on my blog posts from this year pretty much indicates that I should spend my time writing about TurtleCoin. It appears that my one solid post about TurtleCoin has driven the bulk of my recent traffic. I had thought that over the course of the year my effort to write 1,000,000 words in the same year would pick up trafic. It always seems that if you produce daily content then the number of followers on YouTube or the number of visitors on a website will go up. It is also entirely possible that a website with zero traffic will just continue on with zero traffic. That first ramp up will bring in some folks and how and why that happens is context specific. I guess some of my coverage should be geared toward writing about and digging into alternative cryptocurrency. That appears to be what the people would like to read about.