Just a bunch of nonsense

 

It's not every day I have the opportunity to "Seinfeld" a post, so I guess I'll do it today.

My opportunity comes because my GP thought my PSA (which is a prostate screen, not a public service announcement) was high, so I took a vacay day to see the urologist.  Takeaways from this meeting include:

-the PSA is about as nebulous, flip-a-coin thing as I've ever been involved with...

- the U has seen patients with 10 times my PSA with no problems whatsoever...

- the exam proves once again you never have to worry about me posting a 'coming out' post.  Decidedly not for me.

Long story short, he's ordered another test, whose results he hopes will tell him more nothing than he already knows.

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I was just looking at my blog stats (which in this day and age can be best done with a microscope) and found the last 3 months 75% of my pageviews have come from Sweden.  This led me on a quest for info that led me to the following tidbits:

- In 2011, 70% of Sweden's e-mail was spam.

- you can get SPAM (the "meat product", kinda like Vegemite from pigs) in Swedish supermarkets...

-There is currently some spam attack striking Europe, mainly Sweden, involving demands for payments from companies you don't necessarily have accounts with, that funnels through a Bangladeshi IP, and originates from a Russian (what else?) "malware as a service" provider called Agent Tesla.

- Most news from Sweden is behind a paywall.  I suspect the nation has been taken over by aliens- but it'll take 30 kroner a month to find out.

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I just discovered that the spanking new Seattle Kraken, the NHL team who will be picking their first players Wednesday, is co-owned by Jerry Bruckheimer.  I think they should name Gil Grissom as first coach...

Greg Sanders: I guess I should stop trying to impress you.
Gil Grissom: That would impress me.

On the subject of hockey, our family hockey teams had a rather messed up year, with COVID wiping out some, most, or all of our seasons, and at least three of our teams non-functional last year.  Prepping for next season, I have found that while one of the missing teams (Laurie's Znojmo in Austria) returns, at least one (KC's Kurbads in Latvia) most likely isn't, one of mine (Gdansk in Poland) won't, another (Val Pusteria in the Alps League) is moving leagues, and KC got one relegated (Sweden's HV71, who won the league as recently as 2017).  Out of our four teams (Me, KC, Laurie, and Misty) in some two dozen worldwide leagues, 13 never played at all and 2 played one game each (we have two Korean teams in the Asian League, and each got blasted by their version of the Tampa Bay Lightning in the "Korean championship").  Not that you are deathly interested, but more for my records, here are our top ten finishers (NOTE:  To figure it up, I add OT wins to wins, losses the same, and figure by percentage, since no one plays the same amount of games...)

1- Zug, Switzerland/Laurie, league champs, 50-15

2- Ocelari Trinec, Czechia/Chris, league champs, 47-21

3- Zemgale, Latvia/Laurie, lost in finals, 35-9

4- Sparta Prague, Czechia/KC, regular season champs, 42-21

5- Lokomotiv Yaroslavl, KHL/Chris, 45-25

6- Brasov, Hungary/Misty, lost in finals, 37-18

7- Pittsburgh Penguins, NHL/KC, 39-23

8- Esbjerg Energy, Denmark/KC, 38-23

9- Carolina Hurricanes, NHL/Laurie, 41-26

10- Les Dragons du Rouen, France/Chris, champions (regular season, no playoffs), 18-4.

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Which reminds me:  Kind of a "nations of the world" freak, I noticed that there seems to be a bit of debate on whether the former Czech-side of Czechoslovakia should be called "Czechia" or "Czech Republic."  When I saw a news story a couple years back naming "Czechia" as the official name, I thought that was it.  And officials have thought that was "it" a few times through the years.  But no matter what hoops they tried to lead the nation through, its people preferred "Czech Republic".  So it finally got to a point for people more anal than I am about it in I believe 2017 when the Czech legislature once and for all decided it was "Czechia."  End of story, kinda...

"Multinational technology companies that adopted the name Czechia include Google, Apple, and Microsoft with Bing Maps. The business network LinkedIn updated its locations to Czechia in October 2020. Microsoft updated its Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to Czechia in January 2021. However, according to a 2020 report, most Czechs still prefer the name "Czech Republic" over the shortened one in English." -wikipedia

So there you have it.  It's Czechia.  Or not.