Week 14: Saturday May 2, 2009 (3:50pm)
...one FINAL entry. The website has been updated to its final form; I've added any remaining documentation, user guides, etc to the site, along with cleaned up a few odds and ends. The version seen here is what I will be turning in with the hard-copy binder at my defense on Monday. I'm a bit nervous about the defense, but I am not expecting too many problems as my presentation seemed fairly well-received. We shall certainly see.

Once again, thank you for following the progress of this project. Good Night, and Good Luck.

Cheers,
Ryan Kroening

Week 14: Friday May 1, 2009 (7:05pm)
Presentation day has come and gone, and I was quite happy with how everything turned out for my project. My overview lasted about 30 minutes exactly, including a demo and Q&A session. The PowerPoint I used for my presentation can be found on the Overview page or downloaded.

I am currently in the middle of finalizing the contents of this site, as I will be unable to edit it as of Monday the 4th at 9:00am. Because of this restriction, as well as the presence of a few other projects for the weekend, this entry will be my LAST one for the site. It has been a pleasure maintaining this resource, although I look forward to enjoying some hard-won free time. Hopefully all internal links will remain operational on this site, but please contact me if you experience any issues. The final version of the code, the version currently in use by Dr. Quinn, can be downloaded here. While the site may be locked down as of Monday, I will still have the ability to modify and upload code changes for the simulator, which is a nice little feature.

Lastly, as a good portion of this journal has tracked not only my progress on this project, but also my hunt for some sort of career decision post graduation, it should be noted that I have elected to remain in Green Bay for the time being. I am still waiting to here back from my current employer as to whether or not they can keep me on full-time; but regardless, I will not be attending law school due to various economic and personal factors.

Week 13: Tuesday April 28, 2009 (10:45pm)
Updated the "About Me" section of the site to include my altered career path and a new resume format. Ran a spell check of the site as well.

Ran through my presentation, it clocks in at about 30 minutes allotting about five minutes for a demonstration. Will probably work on getting the final version down to twenty minutes to allow for ten minutes of demo and questions.

Also fixed a couple of bugs that my roommate discovered while trying to break my project the other evening, the newest version is now online in the same location as before.

Week 13: Monday April 27, 2009 (11:59pm)
Just finished a rough draft of my Power Point presentation for Thursday, which can be viewed here.

Will give more details as to the presentation and general debug progress with tomorrow's update as I got about an hour of sleep last night think that at the moment my time is best spent in bed.

Week 12: Sunday April 26, 2009 (11:59pm)
...done.

Well, the day has finally arrived...at least partially. After a week of solid clean-up work, tweaking, and finalizing the various components of my project, I finally have a deployment version ready to demonstrate. Yes, more than likely I will alter this version before my presentation on Thursday (5:30pm), but if worse comes to worse, I have something to go on.

Essentially, I spent the last week making everything look nice: catching errors, making displays uniform, double checking my normal distribution function, creating meaningful status/message boxes, etc. I am quite proud of a few more intuitive error checks that I have implemented, and it should take a lot to corrupt the data. Going to give the program to a few key people this week and have them attempt to find any errors that I overlooked, but otherwise I should be all set for Thursday. Granted, I still have to put a PowerPoint together, but years of PPT experience has made this portion of the project almost negligible. I am much more comfortable with putting a few bullet points on a slide and expanding upon them rather than filling each slide with a lot of overbearing information.

The remainder of the week will be spent bug-checking and with housekeeping tasks, including getting this website in order and printing off all necessary printouts for the project. Should be a pretty hectic week, but there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Week 11: Sunday April 19, 2009 (11:59pm)
Wow...so concludes perhaps my most productive week of this project, and it really couldn't have come at a better time. Here's a brief recap of the week in code:

Wednesday: Finished the draft algorithm (finally) and got everything in place for a meeting with Dr. Quinn. In essence, I completed all the algorithm components of the project; however, everything was in a very rough rapid-prototype sort of form, so a massive overhaul was needed to make the program production worthy.

Thursday: Met with Dr. Quinn who reviewed the program. He signed off on all the features of the program and stated it both met and exceeded his expectations. I asked if there was anything else he would like to see in the program feature wise, and he said no, everything he wanted was there. This meeting was a huge relief, especially coming from someone starting a project from scratch, not knowing what to include and where to stop feature-wise. We did find a couple quirks with the program, mostly related to run generation in the simulation component. Found the error that evening and corrected it.

Friday: Began putting in place the components for the revised and final version of the program (Version 3). Reviewed and modified the database somewhat, added a top level class to handle the high-level interactions with the database (ie. the table adapters). Began going through each form to make it function properly and look nice from a user's perspective.

Saturday/Sunday: Continued revising the program, ended Sunday evening having about half of the Draft form, simulation, and add/drop players form to go. Everything else has been completed and documented, so hopefully by the end of this week I will have presentation-worthy code! I would like to get everything done before Friday, as I have a family reunion and wedding this weekend that is going to occupy most of my time.

Overall, I'm incredibly happy with the many, many, many hours I put in this week. I'm incredibly close to having the program completed, with enough room to spare for final error-checking and review from Dr. Quinn. Assuming DCP signs off tomorrow afternoon at our scheduled meeting, I should be ready for the home stretch.

New Code has been uploaded here and the new database can be found here.

Week 11: Tuesday April 13, 2009 (12:30am)
Just finished writing seven Crystal Reports in about two hours...it's almost like I do this for a living...

Oh, also added archiving of roster information to the database model, basically two tables storing the rosters used for each team for each season. I'm a fan of archive tables as opposed to storing all information in one giant table. Unless Dr. Quinn has any additional requests, reporting is DONE!

(code update to come at the end of the week)

Week 10: Sunday April 12, 2009 (11:59pm)
A very productive Easter Break so far, with one more day of work ahead. On Thursday I added the necessary function to allow the user to advance to the next season (taking care of all relevant database copies, etc). Friday and Saturday were spent finishing working ahead in my GS12 course, writing two papers that, while they may not be due until May, are a load off my mind to have completed. After a lovely Easter dinner with my family, spent the majority of my night creating the roster management form, which essentially allows the user to add/drop free agents from his or her roster. Am also nearly finished with the reporting component of the project, I will essentially be writing a handful of basic reports for Dr. Quinn that he can then export to PDF, Excel, etc and work his own econo-magic on them.

With only two weeks remaining until my presentation, things are beginning to come together. Will be meeting with Dr. Quinn either Wednesday or Thursday to get his final sign-off on the program, assuring that it incorporates all the functionality and data he has requested. On my end, I just need to finish up reporting and complete the drafting algorithm (for which I think I have found a solution) before moving onto documentation and final testing (essentially clean-up work). While always nervous, I think I am in a good place to finish on time and with a quality product.

The most recent source code has been uploaded, and the add/drop form can be found here.

Week 9: Monday April 6, 2009 (1:00am)
Going to file this entry under Week 9 as I began working around 11:00am Sunday, took a bit of a break in the afternoon, then worked solid from 7pm-1am. Was able to complete the season simulation portion of the program, which was a major hurdle to overcome. Also put a lot of time into the user interface, specifically the screen allowing Dr. Quinn to set the weights for all of the 19 different statistical measures available to him. I'm quite happy with how things turned out.

Still having a bit of trouble with the whole drafting algorithm, Visual Studio 2008 is giving me fits in running the queries I need to pull the correct data. I will investigate this problem later in the week. Should have a decent chunk of time to work, specifically Tuesday and Easter Break this weekend. Hopefully I can finish EVERYTHING on a rough draft sort of level by the end of break, giving myself a week for cleanup work and the rest to pull everything together. I'm a bit behind in writing the reports to summarize data for Dr. Quinn, but I feel confident in my ability to churn those out rather quickly.

As usual, I have some updated code. The form for the interface described above can be found here, while the most recent database can be found here.

Overall, I think I'm in a good place. For the first time in this project's history I feel like I can see the finish line on the horizon. Slowly but surely the pieces are falling into place.

On a personal note, I visited the John Marshall Law School this past Friday and was rather impressed. Depending on how the rest of my applications turn out, turning down JMLS would be a tough decision.

Week 8: Sunday Mar 30, 2009 (11:50pm)
Another lengthy evening of coding that resulted in my hammering out the algorithm to draft players, along with the addition of some key features to the program (setting number of batters/pitchers for each team). Also tweaked the interface a bit to limit user freedom with input (dropdown boxes instead of text boxes). Should finish drafting and general team management during my next coding session, leaving only simulating a season to go! Yes, I still have a lot of work in front of me, but the major coding challenges are nearly complete. Once I can simulate a season, I should be able to write all necessary reports for the league, after which any additional features are merely "nice additions" rather than mission-critical undertakings.

Documents posted this evening include a link to my Power Point Walkthrough, which I felt went rather well, along with the latest updates to the database and code revisions. Given my current schedule, I should be able to squeeze out several days of work this week, hopefully Tuesday, Thursday, and either Saturday or Sunday. This Friday I will be travellng to Chicago for the John Marshall Law School Open House, which should give me a feel for the school and surrounding area, helping me make my final decision of where to go this September.

Week 8: Friday Mar 27, 2009 (1:35am)
Worked from 8pm-1:30am this evening, getting things in place for my walkthrough later today. I essentially spent a majority of the night tweaking my model and updating code to use the new schema, resulting in an efficient design with which I am very happy. I cleaned up a few things in the program itself, including hammering out the user being able to manage his team, but none of the computer teams. Did not finish the draft portion of the program, although having thought about it since Monday, and given my progress this evening, I am not worried about implementing it over the weekend. Presentation is all set to go, as are the two programs I will be demo-ing (the original team management program and the newest version). I will upload the latest code, along with my walkthrough presentation, with the normal Sunday evening update. Right now, though, I have to wake up in less than four hours for work, so good night!

Week 8: Monday Mar 23, 2009 (11:50pm)
Started work on the entire draft algorithm. Currently writing queries to select available players based on various criteria, such as max singles, max home runs, minimum salary, etc. Will hopefully finish this portion of the program by Friday to demo at my walkthrough. Updated code will be available to download by Friday morning.

Week 7: Sunday Mar 22, 2009 (11:35pm)
Saw Flogging Molly in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day, got home at 3am and woke up for work at 5am. Spent a very long day tired and covered in bruises. Also went to the Mall of America for the weekend, picking up a new wardrobe full of clothes that actually fit me (down about 90lbs since January 2008). Lots of driving, lots of work, overall a very fun Spring Break.

Oh, and I also worked on my project this evening, getting everything in place for a very detailed walkthrough on Friday. Working on the league setup side of things, added the ability to setup leagues of multiple sizes and setup each team for that league. Began working on putting the entire "draft" portion of the program together, including how to handle draft criteria for multiple teams. Add the ability to set a salary cap for the league. Overall, I have two very nice demo programs: one to show the league/interface side of things and the other to demonstrate the nitty-gritty of adding/dropping players, running simulations, etc. I should be well established to present on Friday. The most recent code can be downloaded here.

Lastly, in law school news, I was wait listed by the Indiana-Bloomington, which was unfortunate. Still waiting on word from Madison, Santa Clara, and Chicago-Kent, having already been accepted to John Marshall and Marquette. Not too bad of options, if I do say so myself!

Week 7: Sunday Mar 15, 2009 (11:59pm)
I'm time-stamping this update as Week 7, because I technically started work today around 11am, put in about two hours, started again at 7pm, and finished at 2am Monday morning. So sleepy...but added randomization functions for a normal distribution and started putting together a polished version of the program. Added user login ability, encrypting passwords, assigning leagues to specific users, support for multiple leagues for the same user, and of course creating new leagues and users. Also determined it's still not feasible to user LINQ/SQL given the constraints of the project, so continuing to work with Access. Have got a handle on using the DataSet class, which has certainly made things easier. Was able to acquire the latest version of Access for both my home PC and my Macbook (via VMWare), so productivity should definitely go up (can now do all work on Macbook if necessary). If you want to see the newest "polished" build, click here ...I'm going to sleep.

PS. Found out on Saturday I've been accepted to The John Marshall Law School in Chicago...yay!

Week 7: Thursday Mar 12, 2009 (10:40pm)
Met with Dr. Quinn regarding randomization functions on our various bits of data. He said he would prefer everything to have a basic Normal distribution, with the addition of other distributions to be a "as time allows" feature. This meeting should make tomorrow's meeting with DCP easier, as he will just need to show me how to implement a randomization function for a normal distribution.

Investigated using Crystal Reports within my program, and it should not be an issue. I literally work with the Crystal Reports program everyday at work, and C# makes adding a report to a form a job that can be accomplished in a few lines of code, with controls already built in to save/print/export the report within a CrystalViewer object (really a window). Created a basic report with a dynamic parameter, and while there may be a few issues with caching (the CrystalViewer object is designed to hold one instance of one report), it is nothing I can't get around. Should not be an issue writing all necessary reports by the end of Week 9 (per the timeline).

As stated earlier, I have a basic program ready for demonstration for Week 8's walkthrough; however over Spring Break I will begin the process of "formalizing and finalizing" the project. Basically, I will be abstracting out the functions developed in the prototype for use in the interface that Dr. Quinn will see. In a sense, it's time to make an interface! I've also been studying LINQ, or Visual Studio's built in data handler, specifically with regards to SQL Databases. After implementing it in my CS330 project with incredible ease, I may convert my current queries to use LINQ once I start formalizing everything. Most likely, I will take the afternoon in which I am modeling/setting up my final database and weigh the feasibility of switching to use LINQ to SQL. This process will most likely occur over Spring Break, so check back for an update.

Once again, all timeline goals for the week met, although will be working like gangbusters over about half of Break to begin the "formalization" process. Also need to split time between this project and CS330, it will certainly be a challenge.

On a personal note, tonight I found out I've been accepted to Marquette Law School. While I am not sure it will be where I end up, it's nice to have the first of six decisions be a "Yes". We'll see what Madison, Santa Clara, etc have to say!

Week 6: Thursday Mar 5, 2009 (9:40pm)
The nice thing about working incredibly hard one week is that it reduces the amount of work the following week, assuming a set timeline is followed. Thanks to two marathon sessions last week I was able to implement the "handle more than two teams" portion of this week's tasks, leaving only the implementation of a schedule to keep pace with my timeline. I completed the scheduler this evening along with a bit extra, as I added a "League Setup" form to the top of my program, actually creating (and allowing support for) multiple leagues within one database. The schedule is essentially a round-robin, with the user selecting the number of teams in the league and the number of "rounds" within the season. Each team plays every other team once a round, half the rounds at home and half away. The updated code and database has been uploaded, with the additional form viewable here.

Overall I am very happy with my progress, as I am still on pace with my timeline. My working ahead last week paid off, as I am very nearly burnt out after a rough week of "real world" work and several pre-Spring Break exams. Add in my best friend of 10 years visiting from Chicago and a roommate's 21st birthday this weekend, and I picked a very good time to not have deadlines pressing down on me.

Week 5: Saturday Feb 28, 2009 (10:20pm)
Another marathon coding session tonight led to the completion of all Week 5 timeline tasks as well as half of Week 6. I finished the "rough" program, which now allows support for multiple teams (Week 6), adding/removing players, keeping a running calculation of average slugging/OBP as well as salary, and simulating a single game between any two teams in the league. As the program is a rough draft and will be completely reworked in the new future, did not include any error checking on the Forms side of things, which does not need to be done for purposes of this version. For all intents and purposes, I would be ready for a walkthrough as I have a basic working program to demonstrate, but will stick to the timeline and work on scheduling games between the league teams for next week. Also, need to meet with Dr. Quinn before Spring Break to discuss probability distributions of the statistical data.

As promised, the new version of code has been uploaded and can be viewed (the main form file) here. As before the most recent database I am working with can be viewed here.

Week 5: Friday Feb 27, 2009 (12:15am)
Thanks to Professor Blahnik who provided a folder full of useful C# utilities, especially functions to talk to Access databases. Spent the evening working with them to get adding/removing players to work, along with various buttons to run a handful of queries. Will most likely end up creating a library file of SQL calls to Access than I can have stand alone from any forms or other classes. New code update will come at the end of the week as still have a few issues to work out, but things are looking a-ok to keep pace with my timeline for Week 5.

Two sidebar items: work began this week on my CS330 database project, so rather nervous about having to juggle two major projects at once. However, went ahead and took care of a major timeline item for Week 7.5, Spring Break. Currently planning on seeing Flogging Molly in Chicago on St. Patty's Day, then heading off to the Twin Cities on the 20th for a weekend at the Mall of America. I need a new wardrobe and some time to unwind.

Week 4: Sunday Feb 22, 2009 (11:59 pm)
To complete Week 4, I added a command to write the results of a simulated game to a GAMES table in my database. Therefore, the program now takes the value of each stat as an input, simulates the game, and writes the results to a table. So far, so good at this point in my timeline :)

PS. Download links have been updated with this most-recent code.

Week 4: Sunday Feb 22, 2009 (11:45 pm)
Pilot program in C# is up and running. Currently, the program reads in some pre-filled data from the Microsoft Access database for two teams, calculates the team average for OBP and slugging, then determines a winner based on some random values input for how many runs each point of the respective statistics are worth. Program is incredibly simple with only two inputs, but it is functional and demonstrates a basic query to the database and the pulling of some key data.

Source Code for the pilot program's main form can be downloaded here while the most recent database I am working with can be viewed here.

On a design note, I believe I will be changing one significant portion of the project: the database format. While using SQL would be nice from an integration standpoint with Visual Studio 2008, certain factors have made this not as feasible, or more of a headache than necessary, when compared to using Microsoft Access. First, as stated in a previous entry, the data from Baseball1.com is already in an Access DB, and while conversion to SQL is possible, it is not pretty. Second, there is no good front-end for interacting with the SQL data, especially after a "not pretty" conversion and using ODBC to connect through Access. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, this project will eventually need to be deployed on Dr. Quinn's computer, which would not have SQL Server installed, and thus deployment would be messy (would have to setup the ODBC connections, install the server software, etc). Therefore, Microsoft Access will be used for database maintenance.

So far so good, currently keeping up with the timeline, will meet with DCP this week to discuss progress and make sure I am moving along quickly enough.

Week 4: Thursday Feb 19, 2009 (12:10am)
Just finished running my own regressions for the value of a win and the contributing factors to a win. Using data from the 2000 to 2007 seasons, each win is worth about $695,000, while each thousandth of a point in team slugging yields 0.091 wins, each thousandth of a point in team OBP yields 2.318 wins, and each thousandth of a point in WHIP costs a team 0.319 games. I am now ready to plus these numbers into a pilot program and run some data.

Week 4: Wednesday Feb 18, 2009 (11:40pm)
After dealing with C# at work (merging VB, C#, and our in-house language into one program :) ), in CS330, and with this project, I am at a point now where I feel decently comfortable with the language and Visual Studio 2005/2008. Should be able to have a bare pilot program up and running by the start of next week. So far, so good for keeping to the timeline.

Week 3: Sunday Feb 15, 2009 (9:55pm)
Received the regression results from Dr. Quinn, will be meeting with him Tuesday afternoon to review how they will be used, essentially making sure my equations for salary determination are correct. Once this review is complete, should be able to assign every player in my database a salary for the simulation, and thus all pre-existing data necessary for the simulation should be in place. Will also have equations in place for determining winning and team aggregate statistics by mid-week.

Met with DCP on Friday to review my current work, and he approved of the progress so far and gave me the goal of having at least a basic program up in running within a week or so.. Given constraints of other classes, will most likely have something up and running by this time next week (Sunday Feb. 22).

Week 3: Friday Feb. 13, 2009 (12:52am)
I have added a Gantt project management chart to the site, which can be viewed online here, or downloaded as an Excel spreadsheet (preferable).

Week 3: Thursday Feb. 12, 2009 (12:52am)
The timeline for the project is now up.

Week 3: Wednesday Feb. 11, 2009 (11:50pm)
Met with Dr. Quinn today to discuss simulation techniques for the program. He agreed with the approach of pitting teams against one another based on aggregate (team) statistics, which would determine a "Win Score" and thus the game winner. In creating the "Win Score", he suggested the sabermetric measure of "Runs Created", which incorporates, among other things, hits, home runs, stolen bases, etc. Each statistical component results in a certain number of runs, and thus the team with the highest number of runs in a given game would be the victor. For the "random" component, he suggested calculating how many runs a team's stats will normally (on average) generate, then either inflate or deflate this number to signify a team having a "good" or "bad" day.

From a player value standpoint, Dr. Quinn suggested running OLS regressions for player salaries as determined by certain statistics, using WHIP (pitchers), slugging % (hitters), and on-base % (hitters) as a starting point. To save me time, he offered to run these regressions himself, as long as I provided him with the data. This evening I emailed Dr. Quinn with the appropriate pitching/hitting data (Excel Spreadsheet) for the 2007 season. Once he runs his calculations, I will be able to determine the value of a point of WHIP, slugging, and OBP, thus determining each player's salary for the simulation. With each player assigned a value, adding/dropping players from a team will be rather easy to program and interpret, as the user will in a sense be "buying runs", as they will be paying the true value for a certain average output.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, Dr. Quinn requested that the scope of user interaction be restricted to controlling a single team. He wants to be able to play "general manager" for a team, and not have to worry about what everyone else is doing. Therefore, user interaction will deal with one team, while other teams in the league will simply have a random collection of players/statistics. Furthermore, Dr. Quinn suggested I begin with a two-team league to get a feel for simulating games, randomizing outcomes, etc, before adding additional teams or features. My next task, as a result, is simply to have two teams (no players) with a given collection of statistics, and have them play one another in a series of games. Random components will be left for later; I will first get the economics and basic statistical components in place before advancing.

Meeting with Dr. Pankratz on Friday to review my progress.

Week 2: Sunday Feb. 8, 2009 (8:30pm)
Met with Dr. Pankratz on Friday to discuss simulation ideas. After realizing that this project could end up bogged down simulation components, that is we could simulate every component of a game (each at bat, pitch, etc), the decision was made to setup simulations on a team level. In a sense, each team is composed of players that create aggregate team statistics. These statistics will each be given various weights based on past economic research. Combining a team's given stat with a weight and some random component, a number will be generated for each statistic. The sum total of all stats will go into something like a "Win Score", and the team with the highest Win Score will be awarded the win within the simulation.

The next task of the project is to meet with Dr. Quinn to determine which statistical components should be available to the program, and how they should be weighted. I will be setting up a meeting with Dr. Quinn on Wednesday to discuss these components, and will meet again with Dr. Pankratz on Friday to review everything. Documentation on these statistical components will be created before Wednesday and posted to this site.

From a software standpoint, I downloaded SQL Server Express Edition and will be testing it to see if I will be able to use it for the program; otherwise, I may have to use Microsoft Access to handle the data, which would not integrate as well with Visual Studio. However, the player/team data for the simulation, which has been downloaded from Baseball1.com, is a Microsoft Access database, so time would not need to be spent converting from one DB format to another. Hope to get the database issue sorted out by the end of the week.

Week 2: Wednesday Feb. 4, 2009 (11:30pm)
This entry is the first in a series documenting my thought process and progress on this capstone project. While I could make up an entry for Week 1, this site was born in Week 2 (in line with Dr. Pankratz's timeline, mind you), so instead of blatantly lying to you, scholar, here is a summary of work complete thus far.

Week 1: I received my project description from Dr. Pankratz, and was rather excited to learn my project incorporated both CS and my economics major. The focus of my economics work at SNC has been in the field of sports economics and human capital theory, so the project blends my two concentrations rather nicely. Dr. Pankratz informed me that he had no formal requirements for the project, as it was the brainchild of Dr. Quinn in the economics department. It was up to me to work with Dr. Quinn to come up with something that met his ideas of what the project should be and how it should function. After meeting with Dr. Quinn, drafted a project outline and proof-of-concept document that diagrams the inputs, interface, subtasks, and challenges of the project, along with a description of what the final product should look like. Received the blessings of both DCP and Dr. Quinn to proceed in line with my outline.

Spent the weekend reading, finishing Moneyball and the first three chapters of The Mythical Man Month. I'm hoping to divide my reading/researching time between an equal amount of CS and economic literature. Also read a paper from Dr. Quinn regarding competitive balance in sports leagues.

Week 2: Spent the first half of the week (up until tonight) putting together this site, writing the About Me and Project Description sections and uploading all relevant documents. Decided to focus the "Career" portion of this site on my decision to enter law school as opposed to something in the CS industry.

Received my reference book for C#/Visual Studio 2005 from Amazon and installed both Visual Studio 2005 and Visual Studio 2008 from the Microsoft DreamSpark site. Also looked up other literature and books that may be necessary to assist in the project, specifically computer programs and books related to baseball theory, what wins games, statistics, etc in order to guide the actual simulation portion of the program. Need to select a database system to handle the project, would prefer SQL server although implementation would be rather difficult.

Scheduled a meeting with DCP on Friday to go over simulating games and "randomness". Will most likely spend the remainder of the week reading Man Month and learning C#.

Required Reading

Moneyball
by Michael Lewis

The Mythical Man-Month
by Fred Brooks