Playoff Tuesday.

Normally I'd have done this when I got home last night, but it wasn't a normal night.  My friend Mynx just did a post about the good things about her job, to counterbalance her theraputic bashing of the workday on other posts.  I shall have to do that as well.

Just not after last night.

Like I did with Laurie, let me just give you the bookends.

Beginning of shift.  I get put on single-line processing, and end up at a station where some guy had started, processed one item in a box of around thirty, and was told to move upstairs.  Now, what you are SUPPOSED to do when you log out with an unfinished box is click "no" when it asks you if you want to record failures (the stuff you didn't scan).  Then the next guy can log in, scan the box, and be on his merry way.  But, no, he hits yes, and when I got there, it was then printing all the container labels for everything in the box.  Which meant two things- one I knew, and one I swiftly learned.  The first was that I would have to take each item out one at a time, search out the corresponding label, and then process.  The second came when I scanned that first label- that what he did meant everything in the box had now "failed", and I would have to find the proper screen and check the proper box to tell the system that EACH PIECE was now okay- a proceedure that takes me twice as long to stumble onto as someone who actually knows what they are doing.  After a few futile minutes of attempting this, I went in search of our lead, who also watches over the multi-line and thus could be anywhere in an area that covers roughly a quarter of our work area.  I found an assistant lead, who professed being baffled, and took the box, parts, stickers, and all, to the lead station for her to deal with.

End of shift.  Four minutes left, doing the last piece of the night.  The last thing that happens is my printer runs off a pack list that goes in the gift box with the item.  That printer, which had all night been even noisier than the main conveyor belt (which was pretty noisy since there were a couple of tons on merchandise on it), suddenly let out with a screech reminiscent of the keening at an Irish wake.  Its screen read, "Paper jam tray 2".  I have no idea where "tray 2" is, nor time to find it.  By the time I found the lead to let her know, I had just enough time to go back and log off (properly) and go get in the end of the clock out line.

In between can best be described thusly- either it happened to me, or because of me.  And that is why I'm typing up the playoff report now instead of when I got home.

The Beagles got two of those New England scores Monday night (Nice job, Texans!) from Brandon Lloyd to hang onto a 39-34 win over the Aguas and advance to Super Bowl XVI.  They previously went in 2002 (lost 52-12 to the B2s) and 2007 (lost 28-24 to the Elks), so they continue their every-five-years schedule to attempt their first title.

The Flying Porkchops, in just their second season, hold off a furious Monday night rally to beat the Elks 46-44 and advance to their first SB.  This game was 43-23 going into Monday night, but the Elks had Tom Brady, and...  Tony Richardson tallied 2 TDs to lead a balanced attack that saw 4 players score TDs.

And thus it will be the 9-4 Beagles vs the 11-2 Porkchops in a dog vs cat Super Bowl which will give us a first time champ!  In the history of the SB, better record/worse record are pretty even:  The better record has won 6, the worse 7, with two games between like-records.  Last year it was the 9-4 B2s over the 11-2 Rangers 53-21.

What kind of game can we expect?  The historical over/under is 70.5 points, so expect high scoring on at least one side.  As for how close, 7 games have been won by 9 points or less, 4 by 10-20 points, and 4 by 20+ points.  And her's another interesting note: The Porkchops became just the eleventh team to win10+ regular season games.  How did the others do?
The 1998 Buttheads (precursors to the B2s, 10-4) lost SBII to NYCAC.  The same year, the Clock BBQs (11-3) got blasted in the second round by that same NYCAC club.
The 1999 Aguas and Rangers (both 11-3) each lost in the second round.
The 2001 Angels (12-2) lost to the T-Cubs for the second straight year in the SB.
The 2002 Elks (who finished 10-5 after an 8-0 start) lost in the first round.
The 2003 KCAs (10-5) beat the Elks (11-4) in SB VII 31-30.
The 2004 Rangers (10-5) lost their first round game, the Clock BBQs (11-4) lost to SVA in the SB.
Last years Rangers (10-2) lost to the B2s in the SB.

So look out, Porkchops! Ten-win teams are 1-5 in the Super Bowl, but at least you did better than the five who didn't get that far!

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As you migh have guessed, Lokomotiv lost that showdown game with Moscow one week ago (or else I'd have gotten to it by now).  We held Ovechkin to an assist, but Dynamo built a 3-0 lead befor Artyom Anisimov got his 9th at 12:07 of the second.  But that was our only break against Dynamo goalie Alexander Sharychenkov, who handled 24 Loko shots.  We haven't played since, but will be kicking off against Traktor shortly.  Moscow has since won against Red Army in a game which saw them up 5-0 just shy of halfway through the game, but needed an empty-net tally with just over a minute left to win 6-4. Pavel Datsyuk of CSKA had 2 goals and an assist in the rally.  This puts us now 9 points back of Dynamo, 4 behind Avangard and Ak Bars, 3 back of SKA, and 2 behind Traktor over all because of the week's lay off, in which time those teams all won a game.

They have an English-language site to vote in the All-Star Game!  They actually post hourly voting updates, and you can vote once every 24 hours.  Yesterday, Anisimov was 9th in the west on forewards, but has since dropped.  Varlemov leads the goalies in the west by almost 6,000 votes!  He has the sixth most votes behind Evgeny Malkin, Alex Ovechkin, Ilya Kovalchuk, Pavel Datsyuk, and Evgeny Kuznetsov.