Baseball - Head-To-Head Versus Category

Head-to-head leagues pit teams against each other on a weekly basis. The team that has better numbers in the greater number of applicable categories for seven days is declared the winner of the game that week. Each week of the season counts as one game, and standings are recorded over the course of five to five and a half months. The teams with the best records make the playoffs, which are usually contested over the final two weeks of the season.

In category leagues, teams do not go head-to-head in individual weeks; they accumulate statistics and earn points based either on ranking in each individual category or by points awarded for each statistical accrued (for example, a home run is worth 10 points, a stub base 5 points, and so on). Most of the standard categories are aggregate totals like home runs, stuben bases, wins, and saves, so it's of the utmost importance to have players who actually play. Ratio categories like earned run average (ERA), which is the number of earned runs allowed per nine innings (earned runs times nine divided by innings pitched), WHIP (walks plus hits divided by innings pitched), and batting average (hits divided by at-bats) give more value to players who do not see as much action as others but are especially effective when they're in the game (like platoon players, pinch hitters, and middle relievers).

Most category leagues fall into two different groups: the 4 × 4 leagues and the 5 × 5 leagues. The main difference is that the 4 × 4 leagues use two fewer statistics-one offensive and one pitching: most often runs scored and strikeouts. The more categories a league uses, the more realistic the game looks. With the advent of Moneyball, the Michael Lewis book about the statistics-heavy inner workings of the Oakland A's, more fantasy leagues are including more esoteric and ratio statistics such as OPS (on-base plus slugging percentages) and strikeout-to-walk ratio . Some leagues just go all out and use as many categories as they can.

I was the silent partner for novelist Michael Jaffe (owner of the Big Hoss Posse fantasy franchises) in a Yahoo! MLB league run by members of the legendary rock band REM That league used 20 different categories, including innings pitched, losses, triples, complete games, and shutouts-the latter two being some of the rarest occurrences in baseball in this era of specialized bullpens and closers. There were too many categories, and the rare ones that have become devalued in real baseball had too much importance placed upon them. That was also the only league I've ever been part of where errors was a category. It was an interesting twist because the thing that fantasy baseball usually ignores is defense, and it's something that I'd like to try in another league. While errors are not the best judge (sometimes you're penalizing players for getting to balls others would not have even reached), I'm in favor of some kind of defensive component to fantasy baseball.

'The Big Short' Tells Fascinating Tales About Market Meltdown

Now that about 1 years years have passed since America's financial system is almost collapsed, is there anything left to say about what went down?

Turns out there is.

In The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine (WW Norton & Co., $ 27.95), best-selling author Michael Lewis (Liar's Poker, The Blind Side and Moneyball) delivers fascinating tales of how a few professional investors foresaw the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and then pocked millions from their big bets.

Each of the players is something of an oddball:

• Steve Eisman, the book's star, is a blustery stock-analyst-turned-hedge-fund-investor who's prone to Cassandra shout-outs in public forums. "Even on Wall Street, people think he's rude and obnoxious and aggressive," says his wife, Valerie Feigen. "He's not tactically rude." He's really rude. "

• Michael Burry, a money manager and former neurologist, is an obsessive loner with a glass eye and Asperger's Syndrome, a developmental disorder that can affect a person's ability to socialize. "My nature is not to have friends," Burry says. Lewis notes that Burry bride the same shorts and T-shirts to work for days on end and refused to wear watches, his wedding ring or shoes with laces.

• Charles Ledley, Ben Hockett and Jamie Mai started their "garage band hedge fund" in a shed behind a friend's house in Berkeley, Calif. Hockett is apocalyptic, with an isolated farm where he and his family can hunker down, if necessary.

Each saw the bubble through a different lens. Eisman felt the subprime mortgage bond market "appeared mainly stupid or delusional." Burry thought it "looked unexpectedly like fraud" perpetuated by bond trading desks. Ledley and his team believed the financial system was corrupt by "a cabal of Wall Street banks, rating agencies and government regulators."

Each found ways to short the market and lay stringent bets that the bonds would crater - by purchasing credit default swaps on them. A form of bond insurance, credit defaults swaps could be purchased without owning the underlying bonds.

In some cases, the players had to beg Wall Street firms to let them buy the swaps, because few bankers could understand why they'd want them.

Making these gigantic bets did not always go over well with the funds' impatient investors.

Burry was a hero when his Scion Capital wildly outperformed the market (up 242% over the first half of the decade, while the Standard & Poor's 500 was down 7%.) But his investors turned after he lowered mortgage-backed securities that wouldn ' t tank immediately. "You know a lot of people are talking about withdrawing funds from you," one investor said.

Those who held on profited big time. By June 2008, an investor who had stuck with Scion from November 2000 earned 489%, after expenses, compared with the S & P's 2% return.

Like Charles Gasparino does in The Sellout, Lewis spreads the blame for the nation's financial meltdown:

• Bond raters Standard & Poor's and Moody's misused subprime bonds, magically turning BBBs into AAAs.

• Lax accounting rules let mortgage companies assume their loans would be repaid.

• The Securities and Exchange Commission ignited inflated valuations of collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), the structured finance vehicles that acted as viral agents spreading the American crisis to the global economy. The SEC "did not know anything about CDOs" when Hockett and Ledley complained to the agency, says Ledley.

• Wall Street firms were clueless about the strength of their subprime woes. "They did not know their own balance sheets," Eisman says.

• Insurer AIG, a major seller of credit default swaps on subprime mortgage bonds, did not believe home prices could fall across the country simultaneously.

Like Liar's Poker, The Big Short views its subject cynically.

While the prescient investors made millions shorting the subprime market, the Wall Street firms made out pretty well, too. Most of the CEOs kept their jobs and the Federal Reserve bought the banks' bad subprime bonds, sparing them from having to recognize losses.

As Lewis writes, "Pretty much all the important people on both sides of the gamble left the table rich."

How to Make Money With iPhones

The iPhone is a revolutionary device that many people want. This is where you can make tons of money. I've outlined a few of these ways below:

1) Become an iPhone app developer. You can make money from ads on your app and also by selling apps on the Apple Store. You can create simple apps to really complex ones. A simple app such as iFart generated thousands of dollars for the developer within days. You can even create much advanced apps and make them subscription based. This way you will have a steady stream of income.

2) Become an iPhone consultant. You can make up to $ 150 / hour with your expertise on the iPhone. You can pick up an iPhone manual from a bookstore and learn everything there is to know about the operations of an iPhone.

3) Learn how to Jailbreak iPhones. Jailbreaking allows you to customize the iPhone beyond what Apple allows. This is a great niche to get into as many people always want to customize their products to suit their needs. In addition, a court ruling has now made Jailbreaking legal. So feel free to post your ad on Craigslist for quick responses, without fear of any legal repercussions.

4) Fix broken screens and other miscellaneous hardware issues with iPhones. Given the sheer number of people with iPhones and the poor nature of the screens, you can make plenty of money on people dropping their phones!

5) Sell accessories such as cases, armbands and headphones for the iPhone. Many people want to accessorize and protect their phone so this is a great market.

Top Ten Barriers to Having a High Performance Work Culture

Organizations today must be an unified culture of high performance if they wish to thrive and leave a legacy to the next generation. Achieving a high performance culture can be done provided these top 10 barriers have been removed.

1. Barrier of Beliefs: Beliefs drive the attitudes that are demonstrated through behaviors. Until the beliefs are identified, behaviors will not change.
2. Barrier of Thinking: Many people are on auto pilot because they have been conditioned how to perform their jobs. People need to remove the barriers so that they can begin to think proactively and look at their roles and responsibilities differently.
3. Barrier of Ethics: The lack of unified and shared ethics within any organization creates an incredible barrier. When a company has clearly articulated what having high ethics means within that organization, becoming a high performance company is much easier.
4. Barrier of People Development: The world is a much faster and more complex place and should the business world be any different. People are expected to do more with less time. This is possible if training matures into development by helping people be better at what they are currently doing.
5. Barrier of Goal Achievement: Goals are a part of any organization. Yet, most people do not know how to consistently plan, set and achieve personal goals, let along professional or organizational ones.
6. Barrier of Measurement: What gets measured, gets managed. Measurement requires understanding what needs to be measured and because that needs to be measured. Judgments need to be made and in today's world, making judgments has been viewed as a negative.
7. Barrier of Leadership: Without effective leadership, high performance is the impossible dream. You have a better chance of catching a windmill that moves your organization forward into a culture of high performance.
8. Barrier of Policies & Procedures: Are you easy to do business with both with external and internal customers? How much business are you losing because of your policies and procedures? What impact do these rules and regulations have on the performance of your employees?
9. Barrier of Working the Strategic Plan Consistently: Plans are designed to be work and not placed on a shelf or in a drawer to be taken out once a year. All efforts must be consistently reviewed to determine alignment with the plan and to adjust for any necessary course corrections.
10. Barrier of Consistent Communication:
Communication is the linkage between all the barriers. Without consistent communication, you may have people potentially working against each other and draining your bottom line.

Are these the only barriers? No. However, these are the key barriers that are currently keeping your organization or business from getting to where you want to be - a high performance culture where transformational change is always in the air.

How to Install a Manual Boost Controller Without Blowing Up Your Engine

Prior to installing any manual boost controller, it is important to have already added a high flow exhaust and an aftermarket air intake / air filter. This will ensure the car is able to breath, and will allow the turbo to spool easier.

It is imperative to have installed an aftermarket boost gauge. Most stock boost gauges are not accurate, even at stock boost levels, and lose further accuracy once stock boost is increased. Without an aftermarket boost gauge you risk damage to the engine from overboosting.

How It Works:

The wastegate actuator determines your stock boost levels. The boost controller interrupts the pressure line that runs into the wastegate actuator, allowing you to increase boost over stock levels.

Step 1:

Find your wastegate actuator which is normally attached to the turbo, unless you are using an external wastegate. The wastegate actuator will have a vacuum line port that runs to a boost source. The boost source is usually either the turbo's compressor housing, the intercooler pipes, or the intake manifold. This vacuum line is where the manual boost controller will be installed. If there is a T fitting in the vacuum line between the boost source and the wastegate actuator, it will have a separate vacuum line that runs to the boost control solenoid. If you have the T fitting, remove the line that runs to the solenoid, but leave the solenoid plugged in.

The barb on the boost controller that connects to the wastagegate actuator will have a small hole drilled into it. It is important to leave this hole open, and never switch the wastegate barb and the boost barb.

Boost controllers typically come with approximately 3 feet of vacuum line that you can cut into 2 pieces of desired lengths. The first piece will connect from the boost barb on the controller to your boost source. The second piece will connect from the wastegate barb on the controller to the wastegate vacuum port. Tip: if you have difficulty sliding the vacuum lines onto the barbs, use a little bit of oil to lube the barbs. Block off any open boost sources with vacuum caps and use cable ties to secure all vacuum line connections. We recommend using Premium Fuel with all turbo cars, especially once you have increased your stock boost.

Step 2:

Now that the boost controller is installed, it's time to test the car. We recommend leaving the adjustment knob exactly where it was when you received and installed your MBC when you begin testing. Turning the adjustment knob clockwise increases boost, turning the adjustment knob counterclockwise decreases boost. This step is very important to keep an eye on your boost gauge to make sure you do not overboost and cause any damage to your motor.

Drive your car in an isolated area where you will be able to stop and go multiple times without interfering with traffic. Slowly press the gas and watch your boost gauge climb. If the boost gauge does not hit your target, increase the boost. If the boost begins to exceed your target, decrease the boost. Repeat the steps as necessary. It typically takes between 5 to 10 adjustments to get the boost exactly on your target. We recommend starting by adjusting the boost knob in 1/2 turn increments, and as you get close to your target you may need to make smaller adjustments. Never adjust more than 1/2 a turn at a time.

Each car has a maximum safe boost level, depending on upgrades to the vehicle and the characteristics of the fuel system, specifically how much fuel your pump and injectors can provide. It is important to research and know what the maximum boost level your specific car can safely run.

This guide serves as a basic starting point for manual boost controller installation. If you have an external wastegate or twin turbo vehicle, the installation technique may vary slightly.

Money Has a Cost

When I speak about the "cost of money" I am talking about just that. Allow me to explain it here to avoid boring you by repeating the same definition whenever I talk about it. All money has a cost

Money is either used to make you money or you have lost the opportunity for your money to make you money. Or at least to make you as much as it could.

If you are borrowing money to operate your business this money has a price. The price, of course, is the interest you are paying on the money while you are borrowing it. If you have money that you are holding in the form of cash in a low interest bearing account or short term investment, this money may also be costing you money.

How? Simple. Let's say you are in a good cash flow situation and you have a cash balance of $ 50,000. You know this money will be needed for operational expenses in the near future so you let it sit in your business checking account or a short term liquid investment account. Let's say you are learning 1/2% interest during this time.

It might seem that this money is working for you making money, and indeed it is. But the question is whether or not this is the most effective use of that money. If your money is in one place it can not be in another at the same time. Obvious right? Well, if your money is tied up in the bank you must ask yourself - is this the best place for it? Is there another use you could put this money to in order to earn more money?

For example, you can pay some bills off early and take a trade discount of 2%. I will cover this in future articles but for now think and understand money has a cost. If your $ 50,000 sits in the bank earning 1/2% interest you will earn $ 250 per year. Now I know I have not factored in compound interest but I want to give a simple example of how you should think.

If you have the cash sitting for 30 days you will have earned 1 / 12th of this $ 250 or $ 21. But what if you had used that $ 50,000 to pay off bills early and get a 2% discount? A 2% discount on $ 50,000 is $ 1,000. A simplistic example to be sure, but even using this you have increased the return on your money significantly.

Leaving your money in the bank had a cost to you. A lost opportunity cost. An opportunity to use this money to make you more money. But you must consider your cash flow, no matter how effectively you might otherwise use your money, you only have so much of it to use and there before the availability of cash must be considered.

Money does not have a cost. If I have used $ 10,000 to pay an invoice early that offered me a 1% discount I have saved $ 100. If I used that same money to pay a bill early that offered me a 2% discount I have doubled my return on the use of that money as I have saved $ 200.

Do you see my point? Now put aside any cash flow questions for a minute while I make another
point.

Now what if I did not pay any bill off early, but instead put that $ 10,000 in an investment for 12 months paying me 1%? Have I not done well by perception $ 100 on my money? It would seem so, but this is not the case.

By paying off an invoice early to take advantage of an early payment discount, you will save much more than the discount. When you earn a 2% discount by paying an invoice early, you are earning a return far greater than 2%. Unless you understand this there will be no way you can properly determine whether the best use of your money is to pay the invoice off and take the discount or not.

The formula is simple so do not despair. Here is the formula:

365 x discount rate
Effective annual interest = ---------------------------------------
Number of days payment must be
made ahead of the due date to earn this discount.

So if a supplier offers you terms of "2/10 net 30" what is the effective rate of interest? Well, first
of all, he is offering you a 2% discount if you pay in 10 days. The normal terms are 30 days. This
means that to get the 2% discount you must pay 20 days early.

For this example we are assuming that you would normally comply with the 30 days terms.

For the sake of this example let us say the amount of the bill in question is the same $ 10,000 we have been talking about. This is what your formula looks like:

365 x.02
Effective annual interest = -------------- = .365
20

Your effective annual interest rate is 36.5%. Obviously, even if you had to borrow the money to pay off this invoice your rate of return will be well worth it.

Do not think I am suggesting paying off discounted invoices as the only option you want to look at. I have simply chosen this often overlooked strategy as an example.

You must always consider all your options for using your money. The goal is to seek out the most profitable option available to you at any given time.

Never forget that money has a cost. How you use it can make a great deal of difference to your bottom line.

The Secrets to Making Millions Online As an Affiliate

What's the secret to making online?

Wow, what a great question and I know many people want to know the answer, because the answer will be life changing for many, many people ...

Now who knows the answer ?? Well, ask any Internet Millionaire and they will tell you that there are a few options to be successful but the most proven, most effective and by far the most profitable business online today, is to become and Affiliate Marketer.

Affiliate Marketing is one of the easiest ways to generate high volumes of consistent cash on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. In fact many newbie Affiliates are eaching anywhere from $ 1000 up to $ 10,000 per month with no website, product or list of their own.

There are hundreds of programs that will show you how to become an affiliate online, but I can tell you now that most of them, or at least 90% of them are full of crappy e-books, up sells and fake promises that leave you more confused and more frustrated than ever before.

The best way and the only true way to learn something, is to learn it from someone that has achieved the results you are looking for or better still someone who is currently achieving them.

Introducing you to Michael Cheney, who is one such person approaching Millions of dollars a year as an Affiliate Marketer. He has many years of experience in this area and has a wealth of knowledge to share as a teacher and mentor for anyone who are seeking to create a solid "up your boss" income on the internet. Michael has created an unbelievable program that is by far one of the best Affiliate Marketing Programs online today and is guaranteed to make you a very successful and wealthy Affiliate Marketer.

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