No Runny Eggs

The repository of one hard-boiled egg from the south suburbs of Milwaukee, Wisconsin (and the occassional guest-blogger). The ramblings within may or may not offend, shock and awe you, but they are what I (or my guest-bloggers) think.

Archive for March 20th, 2006

Monday from Hell

by @ 23:59. Filed under Miscellaneous.

Took the war machine in to Frank Gentile Subaru for its 15,000-mile checkup with the check-engine light on first thing this morning. The good news-they got the scheduled work done nice and quick. The bad-they didn’t have the part to cure the light (an air-fuel mixture sensor). The ugly-$225 plunked down. So, they sent me on my way until they could get the part from the dealer not 5 minutes from my house. I got that out of the way this afternoon and came back home to find my new memory waiting.

That’s when things got REAL ugly. First, old reliable wouldn’t boot up with the new memory, so I put the old back in. At first it refused to boot up with that as well; then it did boot up only without the USB ports working (which is a bad thing because I have a USB keyboard/mouse combo). Then, right after that started working again, poof! I went down to Milwaukee PC to pick up a new power supply (and a new DVD writer; when I finally put the old one I got as a gift in, it didn’t work), only to find that my bank didn’t like the idea of putting that on my debit card. I went and got some boku cash from the bank, then got the bright idea of doing a full upgrade to the Athlon64/PCI-E standard (since the new memory is DDR instead of DDR2, I’m sort of “stuck” in the AMD camp). Being a gamer at heart, I went a “bit” overboard on the video card at Best Buy (where I also picked up my new DVD writer, which also does laser etching :-), then went back to Milwaukee PC to pick up the board (one of the original SLIs) and a “slow” 3200+ processor, along with my new modular power supply (no excess power cords).

I finally got home about 7, and started the long process (because I can’t really handle those tiny screws, not because the rest of it is hard) of rebuilding. I was actrually surprised when WIndows booted up instead of dumping me into reinstallation hell, though I did have to reactivate both Windows and Office. After a few reboots as I updated the drivers, I’m finally rocking again, but now I’m wiped out.

Total carnage weekend (Slaughter Saturday and Suicide Sunday)

by @ 1:26. Filed under Miscellaneous.

The East regional (I steadfastly refuse to use the politically-correct NCAA city designations because those change from year to year) went to hell in a hurry. After a 7-1 first round there, I went 1-3 and lost both my participants in the regional final, including my national runner-up. I had a similar performance in my perennial regional-of-doom, the South, but fortunately my national champ survived to play another weekend. Elsewhere, I lost my West champ while going 2-2 in each of the other 2 regionals. 6-10 in round 2 (4-4 Saturday, a dead-man-buried 2-6 Sunday), 5 of my Elite Eight teams gone, and half my Final Four and National Championship game (fortunately, the losing half) blown up. On the basis of my first-round and play-in 22-12, I’m now 28-22 with a shot at still finishing above .500 on the tourney.

The few winning plays from round 2 are underlined, dead current picks struck out, “replacement” teams in italics and my dim hopes bolded.

Second round Midwest: "˜Nova 82 over Arizona 78, BC 69 over Montana 56, UWM 60 over Florida 82 (that’s right, the Panthers are Sweet-16 dancing again), Ohio State 52 over Georgetown 70

Second round East: UConn 87 over Kentucky 83, Illinois 64 over Washington 67, UNC 60 over George Mason 65, Tennessee 73 over Wichita State 80

Second round South: Duke 74 over George Washington 61, Texas A&M 58 over LSU 58, West Virginia 67 vs.Northwestern State 54 (dead game), Texas 75 vs NC State 54 (dead game)

Second round West: Memphis 72 vs. Bucknell 56 (dead game), Pittsburgh 66 over Bradley72, Gonzaga over Indiana 80, UCLA 62 over Alabama 59

Midwest Semis: "˜Nova over BC, Ohio State over UWM (too much inside from the Buckeyes) Florida vs Georgetown (dead game)

East Semis: Illinios over UConn vs Washington (dead game), Tennessee over UNC George Mason vs Wichita State (dead game)

South Semis: Duke over A&M LSU, SIU over California West Virginia vs Texas (dead game)

West Semis: Pittsburgh over Arkansas Memphis vs Bradley (dead game), UCLA over Gonzaga

Final Four: "˜Nova, Tennessee TBD from the East, Duke, Pittsburgh, TBD from the West

Champion: Duke over Tennessee, Bruce Pearl still gets hoisted off the court on his players’ shoulders TBD

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