Lotsa Little bits vol. 11

ITEM:  Bobby G. made a comment that reminded me to tell you the rest of the TV buying story.  Whilst we waited for his register to free up ( another guy who was having a problem knowing what he was doing was on it), We had mentioned the capacitor popping problem and our salesman tried to convince us this was a "surge protector" problem.  He then led us to a set of their surgers- priced at 7.99, 8.99, 59.99, 79.99, and 129.99.  He said we should get a "good" one, not a "cheap one".  Laurie asked what he considered a cheap one, and he pointed to the 59.99 one.  Then she asked the difference between the 59.99 and the 79.99, and we got a "well, um, "filled explanation that told us nothing.  After we passed on that, he tried to get a register where we were standing, but it was busy as well.  So he led us to another one while telling us, "We had some kind of power problem yesterday and now I can't check out anyone on the registers in the back."  With every ounce of strength I had, I refrained from asking if they were using a cheap surge protector when it happened until we left.

ITEM:  Just as KC (the drug-test king) went to leave last night, he beckoned us to the back window, where we saw this:

As you will notice, we still didn't have that snow at that point.  However, come morning...

...I had about 7 inches on my car.  It started somewhere between 11:30 and 12:30.


ITEM:  The gerber has been repaired- sort of.  About 2 today I  was given the okey-dokey to try it out, and it cut two patterns without incident.... but 3/4 of the way through #3, it messed up again.  The gerber guy messed with some more things, and we ran 3 covers and 2 canopies without incident.  If it's going to mess up again, pray it does so by about 8AM tomorrow when he returns.  Of course, the printer went awry again, and ended up printing the cut sheet (usually of an 8 1/2 by 11 1/2 paper) on a box label (a 4 x6 sticker).  Apparently they had it hooked in through the program that had all our production stuff, and every time you shut the computer down, the program erased the defaults.  Always sompthin!

ITEM:  Hockey update!  Denmark, Czech Rep., Slovakia, Switzerland, and Sweden are in their semifinals (4 teams left).  The Asia League is in the finals with Oji's Eagles and Tohoku's Free Blades tied at 1 game apiece after each took an OT win this weekend.  Sunday the Austrian league made it to the finals, with Vienna Capitals and KAC Klagenfurt winning their series with game 6 victories.  France is in the semis, but Angers and Rouen have 3-1 leads in their series.

Finland reaches the semis when all four teams- Lukko, Jyvaskyla, Tappara, and Assat (and wouldn't you like to be on a team with that name?) won 4-1 series.  In Italy, sixth place Asiago won two matches against 5th place Valpellice to go up 2-0 in their finals, the second a 6-1 rout.  Poland is also in the finals.  Krakow was up 3 games to none and could have been our first champions Sunday- but gave up 4 straight scores to Jastrzebie to lose 5-4.  No problem, they had another chance to win it all today- and got smoked 5-0, and now it's a 3-2 series.

Grizzly Adams Wolfsburg, the 10th place team, took a 1-0 win over #1 Adler Mannheim to lead their German quarterfinal series 2-1.  In Norway, Valerenga won it's way into the finals by taking out Sparta Sarpsborg; they'll play the winner of the Stavenger/Lorenskog series.  And in the KHL, Moscow Dynamo and Ak Bars Kazan (the Russian snow leopards) each have 2-0 leads in their conference finals, over SKA St. Pete and Traktor (the meteor guys), respectively.

And the UK?  Still in season.

ITEM:  Why hasn't a sports fan like me said something about March Madness (AKA the NCAA men's basketball tourney)?  Because My champion got knocked out on night #1, and my bracket is 6,088,900 (and change) out of 8.15 million on ESPN.

ITEM: But did you see the ending of the NASCAR race in Fontana?  Whatta helluva race!  Hopefully Denny Hamlin will heal fast.  It was a lot of fun for my son and I to see Hamlin and Logano wipe out at the very end so Kyle (my son's guy) and Junior (my guy) finished 1-2.

ITEM: Dinnertime!  And no, I have no idea what I'll have yet.