I am out of clever titles

Hopefully everyone had a good Easter. No complaints here, though from a sports perspective, it was a less than stellar week for me. My NCAA bracket for work is over before it begins this year. After the first weekend, I have lost two of my final four teams (Pitt, Georgetown), so there is no chance I can make up any ground in the second and third weekend of the tournament. This weekend, the field of 64 was whittled to 16, I have already lost 6 of the final 16, 3 of the final 7 and two of the final 4. As the lingo goes, my bracket is definitely broken.

Fantasy hockey was no better, I went 2-4-4 in the semi finals, which means I get dumped to the third place game rather than playing for the championship. The final week of the season is actually two weeks long, so there probably will not be an update on my progress for a while. Mind you a win in the third place game still gets me a trophy for my fantasy sports profile, a loss gets me nothing other than the knowledge that I finished 4th out of 12 teams.

So with all of that badness taking place, the holiday was still quite good. I got to work around 10:45 am and shortly after I got there, my phone rang and it was my mom saying they were coming down to see me. I like spending time with my family, and since it was a holiday, I figured my mom probably made me an Easter basket again. No matter how many times I say not to, she still does it. As a kid, rather than hunt eggs, we would hunt for our baskets Easter morning, and in some ways it was almost like a mini Christmas, my mom would buy lost of candy, but there would also be presents as well. At least now it is just candy and a card, so I guess she has cut back somewhat. Anyway, they were going to stop by and see me at work, which means I will be having a short work day, because usually if my parents come to see me there, I tend to leave with them. So I scrambled to make sure I got all of my work done, I still had a commercial feed to put into the system when they arrived, but I was mostly done. They wanted to go to lunch, and since I was still relatively flush with cash from my weekend winnings, I figured I would spring for the wholesome eatings. We ended up at Golden Corral, which is a buffet type place, you pay one price and then you eat as much as you want. I will just say I ate too much. Between pot roast and then Bourbon Street chicken, I was stuffed. It more than made up for my disastrous fantasy sports weekend.

I think I have solved some of my disillusionment with the radio show as well, I booked us so full of guests this week, that hopefully I will not have to deal with ye olde chronic complainers. We had two guests today, two more on Tuesday, one on Wednesday, two on Thursday and 3 on Friday. Take that whack jobs. I have started booking guests for the following weeks as well. I'll be honest, guests make my job easier, we get fewer calls for me to screen and I don't have to know anything, because unlike normal banter between Lynn and I, when she interviews someone, I don't get involved on air at all. I just sit back with my coffee and run the board, which is fine with me. A quick look at my schedule and it looks like I have 6 guests already lined up for next week. Go me!!!

I even got an email from a listener today. This is not common, I am not one of the on air talents per se, but still sometimes, it shocks me to find that people are out there looking for me. One lady called the show one day and said she was shocked I had a beard. Apparently she googled my name and found the photo I submitted to WQED when I was on TV. Well today, someone saw a post I made on a local radio forum page, I will sometimes chime in if I think that there is a question worth answering, and he tracked down my email address to ask my opinion on something. Since I am not inundated with emails, unlike on air talent, I took the time to fire off a lengthy response.

I picked up[ my paycheck from my part time gig today, it looks like they want me to work 3 nights again this week. Originally, I was getting every other Friday, but one of the cooks left, so the one cook who was looking for more hours was also dishing Thursday nights and he and I alternated on Fridays, now that we are short handed, he is cooking every night, so the other part time dishwasher, lamont has been getting Thursday nights and I have been getting all of the Fridays. The thing is, Lamont wants the hours, so last week I gave him my Friday, I don't know if he will want it again this week or not, if he does, he can have it, if not, I will work, it really doesn't matter to me either way. I don't have to be up Saturday morning, so I can lay in bed as long as I want, I don't have to be back to the radio station until Sunday.

Anyway, since I had a couple of shekels again, I did my stop by the bar after work to have my consumption of the afternoon beverage. Again I played the poker machine and again I won, $25 in, $80 out. That paid for my beer and my lunch and continued my run on winning. Mind you, I do lose money from time to time, I just tend to cut my losses most days. I will watch people in there dump literally hundreds of dollars into a machine in the chance they may win something. A couple of weeks ago, I was in there and this guy had literally been playing the machine for the better part of a week. Everytime I would stop by, he would be playing the same machine. I talked to some of the regulars and they told me he was into the machine for over a grand. Mind you, I say he had some numbers that I certainly would have cashed out on, but he was so far in the hole, that rather than cut his losses, he would play the machine down to nothing again, then dump even more money into it. Just craziness I say. I have a simple rule I live buy, "Don't bet the rent." If I have a few bucks and can afford to play, that is one thing, if I am just dumping good money after bad, that is quite another. I basically have a set amount I am wiling to lose, if I blow it, I blow it and walk away, if I win something, i don't get too greedy, I take a decent amount, maybe throw an extra 5 spot to the bartender if I am doing really well (like today) and come home.

I have been playing more with surfthechannel.com. I have noticed a lot of crappy links in there that just don't pull up a video, or it takes so long (most of the servers that supply the shows are in China and regulated by the Chinese government) to get a video to play, that I just move on to something else. that being said, i did get to watch some old West Wing episodes. Damn I miss that show. I looked to see if there were any Homicide episodes and it looks like just the one that I posted from Youtube earlier, "The Subway" so I have been relegated to West Wing and family Guy episodes for the time beings. Mind you there is a lot of other stuff on there, but I am just beginning to play with the links. From what I have appraised so far, the most reliable server seems to be tudou.com, whereas servers such as blip.tv seem to be almost useless.

I haven't picked an Asshat yet, I am open to suggestions for the past week. It would be easy I guess to dump on Rev Wright, but those of us that follow the political campaign more than from a distance could see that Barack Obama's church would end up being an issue for him, I have been getting info on it for better than a year now, just as the Tony Rezko trial will prove to be an issue for him as it unfolds, but the Chicago newspapers have been covering that story for a year and a half now. I have a hard time treating those as new items, let alone items that have happened in the past week when they were common knowledge to me for quite some time.

Lastly, another .08 to the change meter, the new total stands at $34.46. And I have scooped up some more Pepsi and Coke points as well, I haven't purchased anything, but I rest comfortably in the knowledge that if I want to be the ultimate dork, I can get a Pepsi belt buckle for free. Woohoo indeed.

Well off to internet TV and then bed. Nite all.