Sarah’s idea of using white felt pinned against a wall, with a piece of plexiglass for Carter to sit on to get a nice reflection worked amazingly well.

 The rest of the set can be found here.

In order to scientifically predict the outcome of this Sunday’s Super Bowl I ran five simulations of the game using an updated version of Tecmo Super Bowl for Nintendo with 2008-2009 rosters.

The only adjustments I made were in terms of injuries. I benched Hines Ward for Pittsburgh who by most accounts will be mostly ineffective Sunday even though he will play. I also benched the starting tight end for Arizona who is out (the back-up is as well, but there is no third string option).

Game 1:

Game 1 starts off with an odd bang, with Arizona running up and down on Pittsburgh and winning the game by 11 points despite Kurt Warner throwing for just 37 yards.

Game 2:

Pittsburgh responds in game 2 by shutting down Arizona’s run, and Ben Roethisberger throwing for 320 yards on 90% passing.

Game 3:

More defensive domination by Pittsburgh in game 3, keeping Arizona under 100 passing yards and under 100 rushing yards. Warner again throwing for only 25%.

Game 4:

A defensive battle in game four as Pittsburgh pulls off a squeaker. Warner continues to struggle completing passes, and Pittsburgh can’t seem to run the football.

Final game, Game 5:

Another dominating game by Pittsburgh who completely shut down Arizona in all aspects of the game. Roethisberger has a huge game with 260 yards, while Warner completes only 14% of his passes. Pittsburgh seemingly has given up on the run, with only 4 attempts.

There you have it. Pittsburgh wins 4 out of the 5 games with their defensive completely shutting down Arizona. Pittsburgh will have great success throwing the ball, while Warner will find himself under too much pressure to get anything done through the air.

The Tecmo Super Bowl 2009 score prediction: Pittsburgh 21, Arizona 13

Tecmo Super Bowl predicts an eight point win for Pittsburgh, right in line with Vegas who has them favored by 7 points.

Tecmo Super Bowl MVP prediction: A member of Pittsburgh’s defense.

Carter-

You are now nine months old.

They say that history is written by the winners, but in your case it is written by the parent with the nice penmanship. Your baby book is kept up-to-date by your Mother, which lists everything from what the weather was like the day we brought you home from the hospital, to the big news stories during the year, and all your “firsts”.

Your Mother’s penmanship rivals that of a typewriter, while mine resembles someone finger painting with ink. I only mention this because according to your book your first smile so happened to fall on Mother’s Day. While a first smile is obviously objective, I’ll give your Mother the benefit of the doubt on this one. However, we have an even bigger first: Your first word.

Da-da!

That’s right. We are giving the nod to Da-Da as your first word. You’ve been saying it for a while now, but when you say it while looking at a cup full of apple juice we can’t really count it. However, now when you are asked, “Where’s Da-Da?” you look around the room until you see me. It’s great. I’m honored. Thank you. It’s in the book, and it’s in black ink.

We have also both agreed that you are essentially saying the word “kitty”, just without that pesky “ki” part. Now that you are crawling, you spend a large majority of your day chasing after the two cats, then jumping on top of them. You’re very lucky our cats are overweight and docile because I think they are too lazy to fight back as you pull their fur.

This isn’t always the case, and you’re learning to be nicer to them. I received a flurry of instant messages from your Mother when you began petting the cats nicely and laying your head on them.

“HE LAYED HIS HEAD DOWN ON THE KITTY
ULTIMATE CUTENESS
I AM GOING TO EXPLODE”

Since your Mom puts you to bed two times during the day for naps, she has given me the honors of putting you to bed at night. Two things you hate in this world more than anything: getting dressed, and being put to bed.

Your tactic against the first is to simply squirm and try to crawl away. This is largely ineffective, and does nothing more than slow the process down. However, when it comes to going to bed you have developed a strategy that has rendered me almost helpless.

When I take you into your room with the light off, you automatically know whats going on. As I switch on your music you go for the ultimate move and lay your head on my shoulder, pet my back, and don’t make a sound. I feel so bad I now let you lay there until you fall asleep.

Okay, that’s a lie. I let you do that because I love it.

Until next time..
Love,

Dad

Papa John’s is offering people a chance to pre-register for a 25 cent large pizza if the opening kick-off for the Super Bowl is returned for a touch down.

This has happened once in Super Bowl history, just two years ago when Devin Hester returned the opening kick-off for the Bears against the Colts. The Bears still lost. That means it’s happened once in 42 tries, giving you a 2.4% chance this year.

A mock-up of the classic Nolan Ryan/Robin Ventura fight done in RBI Baseball. (from Dee-Nee)

A link to my updated list of active RBI Baseball, Tecmo Bowl, and Tecmo Super Bowl players.

The other day I finally received my last Christmas present that unfortuntely shipped late and missed the holiday. My sister bought me the high powered laser pointer I asked for, and my wife immediately asked me what I planned to do with it.

The product description says it can be used for skypointing, projection on low clouds, signaling, and highlighting potential explosives. Lets just say the only star constellations I know are the big and little dipper, and I don’t plan on being near any explovies — so I didn’t have a good answer for her. And I still don’t, but we did this last night:

One of my favorite infomercials of all-time due to the amazing amount of sexual innuendos is the Slap Chop. The host of the infomercial is Vince Offer, who proves that you don’t have to be Bobby Brown to wear a headset. A look at his Wikipedia page shows that he’s into some bizarre movie making.

Update:

Below is an Obamatized Vince Offer holding his other famous product, the Sham-Wow.

Jarret Johnson from Anderson University had one of the better in-game dunks you will ever see last night.

It still fails to even compare to Vince Carter’s Olympics dunk, and my personal favorite — Tom Chambers with what seems like his entire upper body over the rim.

I recommend checking the Inaugration photo pool on Flickr over the next couple of days for photos from individuals on the ground in D.C.

The Boston Globe also has some amazing photos online.

Joost has online an all Obama channel, with clips from various shows and his speeches. They will also be streaming the inauguration tomorrow.