September was an unusual month for me.
ASL continued moving forward, but I also spent a significant amount of time on something much more personal. I have been spending time with the woman I intend to marry, and in September she said yes.
So before getting into software, here are a few "images" of my new family.
There is still a great deal to do before that transition is complete, but for the next few months I expect to be back to working full time on ASL. That should allow the pace of development to pick up again.
The Machine Is Really Coming Back
The accomplishment I am personally most proud of from September is that the rebuild of The Machine is now live on the web at themachine.run.
It is important to be clear about what that means. The pages currently use dummy data, much of the underlying mathematics and automation still need to be connected, and there is a great deal of work ahead.
But The Machine is no longer just old source code, specifications and screenshots sitting in our archives. You can now open a browser and see the new product taking shape.
That feels like an important milestone.
During September we continued rebuilding major portions of the legacy product, including the Home and Account areas, probability charts, waiver and drop tools, and the trade-analysis screens. The largest development push of the month added the rebuilt Trade Analysis, Trade Finder, Trade Judge, Waiver Analysis, Waiver Recommendations and Drop Recommendations pages. september-2026-push-log
We are still following the same basic approach I described previously: rebuild the customer-facing product first, carefully recover what made the original Machine useful, and then reconnect the mathematics, league data and automation underneath it.
The Machine still has a long way to go, but it is becoming a product again.
The DFS Optimizer Keeps Getting Stronger
September also included continued work on the current DFS Optimizer.
Some of that work was visible to customers. We fixed broken FAQ links, improved mobile Pro Options and CSV behavior, corrected player-table sizing, and fixed a problem that could cause position-filter selections to reset while a customer was working. september-2026-push-log september-2026-push-log september-2026-push-log
Other work was about making the optimizer easier for us to test and improve.
One important example is a new capture-and-replay system that lets us reproduce real optimizer requests against our cloud-processing functions. In September we verified that system against 414 test cases, with 406 passing. The remaining failures helped confirm a small number of pre-existing situations that we already know we need to address. september-2026-push-log
That kind of infrastructure is not something most customers will ever see, but it matters. The better we can reproduce unusual conditions, the faster we can understand and fix them.
That fits closely with something I wrote about recently: ASL is becoming much more systematic about battle-hardening its software rather than simply waiting for customers to find problems.
The Ten-Year Stats Archive Is Almost There
The Stat Archive System also received significant reliability work during September.
Unfortunately, we still have a few minor glitches preventing me from declaring the ten-year archive complete. The system has to collect and maintain a large historical window across NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL, and some of the hardest problems have involved keeping long-running collection jobs alive when outside websites behave unpredictably.
September fixed several subtle problems in that process, including one that had been silently dropping NBA games occurring on the first nine days of a month, and another that could allow one sport encountering a web challenge to interfere with the others. september-2026-push-log
We also improved how the archive survives interruptions and resumes its collection window after a restart. Some of these were the kinds of problems where nothing visibly crashed — the system simply believed it had collected more than it actually had. Those are exactly the problems we want to find before relying heavily on the archive for future products. september-2026-push-log
I fully expect the remaining historical capture to complete during October.
More Infrastructure Work Ahead
We also did not complete the transition to ASL's new logging and exception-handling system during September.
Part of the remaining work is changing how test cases are captured from ASL's Azure cloud functions. Rather than sending that information back through an application server first, I want the cloud function to be able to provide the test data directly.
We also still need to complete the messaging layer that will eventually allow those cloud functions to send intermediate information back to the customer's browser while a long-running calculation is still underway.
Those are fairly technical changes, but they have a simple purpose: make ASL's products easier to test, easier to support and more responsive while they are working.
What Comes Next
September was not a full development month for me personally, but ASL still made meaningful progress.
The Machine moved from a rebuild project to something customers can actually visit and see. The DFS Optimizer continued becoming more stable and easier to test. The Stat Archive System moved closer to completing its ten-year historical collection. And several pieces of the shared infrastructure underneath our future products continued taking shape.
The software push log for September shows 23 commits touching 122 files across The Machine rebuild, the DFS Optimizer, the Stat Archive System and shared engineering systems. But the raw numbers are less important than the direction: the work is increasingly focused on reliability, repeatability and turning the next-generation roadmap into actual products. september-2026-push-log
October should be different.
My personal priorities are not finished, but I expect to have substantially more time available for ASL over the next several months. My immediate goals are to finish the ten-year stats capture, continue battle-hardening the DFS Optimizer, complete more of the shared infrastructure, and keep bringing The Machine back to life.
September was an important month for me personally.
October is going to be an important month for ASL.
