Thursday, March 21, 2013

Dave's Thoughts of the Day: March 22nd

First of all, Happy Belated Birthday to my Sister, who had her birthday yesterday.  I look forward to joining her for her birthday party this weekend.

Just when you think you saw everything, you see a team like Harvard have their way on the inside, kill the three point shot, and knock off the heavily favored New Mexico Lobos.

Sometimes you see a double digit team upset a 3 or a 2 seed and it's not a huge upset in context.  Last night's game *was.*  This was pretty incredible.   Not only that, but it seemed that Harvard had control of the game most of the way.   Hard to imagine we'd be speaking of this today, but indeed we are.

That single upset reduced a pool of 8 million perfect brackets down to just over a thousand.   IS THAT NOT CRAZY?

 This week, I was unable to present any real news or stories from this writer's pen, but today I'm happy to offer one to you.   Well friends, if I seemed a little lost or out on Mars yesterday afternoon, there was a good reason for it.

Without realizing it, I offered Thursday afternoon in the schedule to deploy a new computer to a professor's home.   --at his house.

Now I *rarely*, in fact extremely rarely deploy new computers to a person's home.   I genearlly set up the machine and have the professor bring his old computer to me so we can exchange.   This was new territory.   So I said, "Thursday is open" and the man jumped at the opportunity.  Then I realized that was the opening afternoon of the NCAA tournament.   Oi.

While it was an "oi" moment, I was really excited to install this new computer.  It was really tricked out... multiple core processors, oodles of RAM, and a sturdy case.   He drove me over from the office to his home... now at UCLA, some people live pretty close by.  In this case, the home was really close by in an adjacent neighborhood known as "Bel Air."  It even has its own gate.  I have always wondered what was inside that Bel Air gate.  Today, we found the answer.

...the answer was more homes and lush hills.  It was pretty sweet, my friends.  So the computer installation went without a hitch at all.  He had some nice equipment set up for the computer.  For example, did you know you could attach a USB printer to an AirPort Extreme Base Station?  Talk about blowing one's mind... that instantly allows the printer to be accessible by Wi-Fi.  Any computer can then interface with the printer that way.  Any computer in the house.  That's pretty neat!

This new computer was so good that it allowed for a second hard drive to be installed comfortably inside the case.  The computer can actually house up to four, maybe even five hard drives.   *Really* impressive.

The Professor's House was tremendous, my friends.   Swimming pool in the back, living room, good open spaces, stylish.   Professors on campus live the life.  The only problem was that the neighborhood had awful 3G reception, so I couldn't stay up to date while I installed and migrated to the new machine.

So predictably, all kinds of exciting finishes and thrilling games went on while I was away from the office.  While true, it was no bother.  It was very calm and peacful in the person's home office.   Definitely a unique experience.

I honestly don't want to make a habit of going to peoples' houses for computer deployment, but in this particular case for this particularly tricked out system, I was happy to oblige.  Timing was right too with it being Finals Week.   School was pretty dead in terms of foot traffic.

I was worried about doing something like this and having it cut into the work week but honestly it wound up being a good time.   The professor was very grateful for the help and things should be running well as far as I know.

Goodness, what if I check the work emails and the person reports panic.  That just seems like my luck.

Onward...

I remember another guy, not a professor but someone else at the department, offered me a paid gig on a weekend to do a computer setup once.  I really should have taken the dude up on it.  It does not suck to be paid extra to set up computer systems.

Obviously if the ladies were to ask for some help I'd place a priority on it.   I am *all* about helping people out there with their machines, especially if $ is involved.

One dream job I had was to be an audio/video home theater designer.  A person who goes out and sets up home theater systems for a number of wealthy clients.  That sounds like a lot of work, but the diversity in the homes involved would be extremely fun.  I love setting up TVs and stereos too.

Last night, my buddy "Coach" and I met up with a third friend, let's call him "Overkill" a la his favorite band, at Tony P's Bar and Restaurant.   Great times.  Good food.   The basketball that night was "ok."

At Tony P's my favorite thing there is the Pulled Pork Quesadilla.   Tender, juicy, tasty, quite good.  I love their beer selection -- they have quite a few.  I wanted a lighter beer tonight, so I went for the Orange Wheat.  Great choice!

I'm doing all right in most of my bracket pools, but there is one pool where we don't do a formal bracket but instead we are assigned two teams and to stay alive, at least one of them has to cover the point spread.  I got Oklahoma State and "Northwestern State".   So far, Oklahoma State was blown out and all I have left is Northwestern State tomorrow against ***FLORIDA!!***  Florida is favored by 20.5 points.  Northwestern State would have to lose by 20 pts or less. 

The concept of that point spread pool is *really* cool!   It's too bad I could not have hung around longer, but it's truly the luck of the draw in this case.  It's a very fun way to follow the games.  Mad props to John even though I do not have the good fortune of lasting past the opening weekend.

That's all for now, the NCAA Tournament Excitment is just beginning.  Enjoy all the games, and enjoy the weekend!



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