Dave's Thoughts of the Day: February 27th

I am thoroughly enjoying the response to the Fast Food Bracket Tournament so far.  Tons of debate and other complaints, along with some exciting voteable matchups.  It's been tons of fun to watch.

We could be on the cusp of a 15-2 upset but it's not the one you thought!   Some may have pegged #2 Subway to lose out to their opponent but instead it's #2 Starbucks in the Pizza/Misc. region that's losing to Anthony's Coal Fired Pizza of all places!

More to come from the bracket, and remember, to vote, you can go to themikefrancesa.com and register now.  You can find the Fast Food tournament in the "Misc Sports" section.

Indiana is Ranked #1 but not in the Fast Food Bracket but in the NCAA Top 25 poll for basketball.   Last night, they lost to a desperate Minnesota team on the road 77-73.  It is *unbelievable*.... can you believe Minnesota scored 77 points?  Usually they do that in two games.

I knew Indiana was going to lose that #1 sooner or later.  College has been that crazy this year.  Nobody holds onto number #1 for more than a week or two at a time.  Who's Number One now?

Speaking of things hard to believe, can you believe the Miami Heat took two overtimes to put away the woeful Sacramento Kings in Miami?   They won anyway -- it takes a great team to win even when not playing one's best.

I'm ashamed to admit I have no exciting events from yesterday to share this morning.   I do have to admit, it blew my mind when I realized that Oroweat bread is sold on the East Coast as "Arnold" bread.

There are a lot of companies like that: they use one name to designate their products in one region and a different one to represent companies somewhere else.  I don't get it... you can tell it's the exact same things.  Is the purpose of this a method for divesting assets?  A way to constitute separate companies to prevent a monopoly on paper?

More things I'm ashamed to admit:  I actually find dry ramen noodles pretty tasty.  It's like eating a form of chips or crackers.   It's nuts.  I don't eat entire packages of ramen this way, but you take a few loose noodles and pop em in your mouth before cooking and it's delicious.

Today we have a going away party for one of our uppers at work.   He asked to do a cookie party so I am happy to provide for the occasion.  Everyone is bringing cookies to this thing.  My choice: Oreos.   Not only tasty, and abundant, but pretty cheap too.   I believe our co workers will be pleased.

Most of my peers and I, in all honesty, are relieved that said person is moving on to other things.  I think there were only so many office scavenger hunts we could take under his watch.   I'm not sure if he was very helpful at all, instead delegating work to others, but no point in going over this now.

I wonder if there's anyone out there that hates Oreos... most people I know either love them or don't care about 'em.   I would find that person intriguing.  I'd like to ask what one doesn't like about the Oreo?

The Oreo cookie does seem loaded with saturated fat... but even so, I think it's palatable in moderation.

Sunshine's Hydrox cookie actually came *first.*  The Oreo was an imitation of **that**.  Somehow Oreo became the dominant brand anyway.   I bet a lot of grocery shoppers were unaware!  I was until I read about it last month.

One other personal note:  I have been starting Sharepoint Training on Lynda.com.  Lynda is a website offering training and how-tos on every conceivable software solution in America.   Most of these are offered in video "courses."   I currently am engaged in the "Getting Started with Sharepoint."

I suddenly got a great interest in Sharepoint because I use it already as an end user and really want to learn how to make my own Sharepoint sites.  It somehow combines MS Office with SQL Database, Internet Explorer, and even a form of Wordpress to set up workspaces, document repositories, image collections, and web sites.  Powerful stuff.   I want to create an improved ticketing system, for one thing, but more importantly, it came to my attention that there are jobs that specialize in Sharepoint.

Sharepoint seems much more intuitive than SQL Server ever was.   I'd love to be a Sharepoint administrator someday, or a systems analyst.

To do all that with just Sharepoint could be quite enjoyable, challenging, and interesting.   The training courses at Lynda so far have been very good.  More to come.

Until then, I'll keep doing what I do, with some fun side projects like a 64 entry Fast Food bracket, hee hee.

The increased focus on Sharepoint is probably going to decrease the time and effort I put into following sports, but I'll still stay up to date on all the big sports.  For example, the Honda Classic for Golf starts on Thursday and I'll look forward to it.

I also look forward to rest, and it is now time to rest my blogging for the day.  Back tomorrow with more.  See you soon!