Penguins @ Flyers 10/29/2016

Pittsburgh 5  Philadelphia 4 

Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin - 2 G each

Pittsburgh scored 3 goals in a 55 second span

NY Islanders @ Penguins 10/27/2016

Pittsburgh 4  NY Islanders 2

Phil Kessel - G, 2 A

Pittsburgh is 5-0-1 at home this year

Panthers @ Penguins 10/25/2016

Pittsburgh 3  Florida 2

Sidney Crosby, Eric Fehr, Carl Hagelin - G each

Each of the goal scorers for Pittsburgh recorded their first goal of the season

Penguins @ Predators 10/22/2016

Nashville 5  Pittsburgh 1

Scott Wilson - G

Second consecutive game Wilson tallied a goal

Sharks @ Penguins 10/20/2016

Pittsburgh 3  San Jose 2 

Patric Hornqvist, Evgeni Malkin - G, A each

Pittsburgh won despite trailing 2-0 after two periods

Penguins @ Canadiens 10/18/2016

Montreal 4  Pittsburgh 0

Marc-Andre Fleury 28 SV

Pittsburgh outshot Montreal 36-32

Avalanche @ Penguins 10/17/2016

Colorado 4  Pittsburgh 3  OT

Matt Cullen - G, A

Pittsburgh is the first reigning Stanley Cup winner to not start a season 3-0 since 97-98.

Ducks @ Penguins 10/15/16

Pittsburgh 3  Anaheim 2

Ian Cole, Phil Kessel, Conor Sheary - G each

Sidney Crosby missed 2nd straight game with a concussion, Pittsburgh is 96-49-18 in 163 regular season games without him in the lineup.

Capitals @ Penguins 10/13/16

Pittsburgh 3  Washington 2  SO

Patric Hornqvist, Evgeni Malkin, - G, A each

Pittsburgh is 5-0 when opening the season against Washington

B365V3.54 - Unvolunteered

Lots if things on ye olde cranium, let's see if we can unpack some of it shall we?

So I woke up a couple of Sundays ago (obviously, otherwise I would not be typing this now) and being Sunday morning I clicked on the TV and a show came on.  The show was about business in the region, I am sure it is on solely for the station to meet the station's community affairs programming requirement.  Usually this is a show that I pay no mind to, but this particular Sunday I did, as the guest was the head of Yellow Cab, which Pittsburgh's version makes it the third oldest cab company in the United States.  They were talking about a new addition to the cab fleet, Z Cars.  Unlike Yellow Cabs, these cars are painted gray and rumor has it you can either call for one, hail one from the street or use an app to order one.  I say rumor has it because I have not taken a cab in many a year, so I am going on the word of the Yellow Cab president here.

During the interview he said Yellow Cab was losing business to Uber and Lyft, because both companies have new fangled apps that people can use in order to get a ride somewhere.  This is the point where, if I were in the studio, I would have said shut the hell up.  While an app makes getting a ride easy, most people that have the app have it installed on a phone.  With a phone in one's hand, how hard is it to call for a ride versus use an app?  I would argue the requisite effort required to navigate an app rather than press 7, 10, or 11 keys and call someone is negligible.   I would argue Yellow Cab's biggest problem and the main reason they were losing market share was the extraordinary numbers of times people have called for a cab and the cab arrived late or not at all.  It was a big enough problem than many cabbies carried around business cards and gave them out to customers in an almost underground cabbie network, to avoid dispatching from the main office altogether.  That mister President, was why you were losing market share, not because of some new fangled app, but rather execution of your main function.

So as I was at work on Thursday I managed to unvolunteer myself from something.  Long time readers of the blog may recall a fire that happened in the trailer park (yes, I am trailer park people, just deal with it) that my mom and her husband currently reside in.  The fire was across the street from their place, if I remember correctly, something in the kitchen exploded and the fire consumed everything, including the life of a young girl.  During the course of fighting the fire, the fire department sprayed down neighboring trailers in and effort to keep the fire from spreading.   While that plan worked at containing the fire, their trailer did sustain some damage, the heat from the fire distorted some of the metal in the front, and spraying down the trailer revealed a leak in the ceiling.  My mother's husband claimed they called their insurance company to look at the damage, a claim I find more dubious the longer I think about it, and the insurance company eventually put plastic over the leak in the roof as a temporary solution.  And then nothing happened, for months literally.  That year I remember it was a particularly rainy June, like it rained off and on for a week or more straight.  The plastic solution was not much of one, as rain got underneath the plastic and got into the ceiling and then into the walls and finally even warping part of the floor.  At this point I was asked if I could come home, to rip out carpeting so the floor could be fixed and ultimately new carpeting put in.  At this point I asked the fundamental and reasonable question, why didn't they get estimates and turn those over to the insurance company and have this fixed already, as opposed to waiting months and having the damage get substantially worse.  Nonetheless, I made the trek home and helped tear out carpeting, which was more than that because they hadn't even removed the furniture from the room in question, despite the fact no one in the house works, so it isn't like they didn't have time.

Now lets fast forward to better than a year later, to this Thursday.  I get a message while I am at work, I have to come home this Monday to install the new carpet.  Let's table the fact we are better than a year and a half past when the fire occurred, or better than a year past when I went home to help the first time, the idea that I can just drop everything at a moment's notice and rush home for a nonemergency is what pissed me off.  I have shit to do on Mondays, including getting two trucks in that day, placing a grocery order,  and as tack ons this Monday I have one person on vacation, I have tax increases on all snuff and vapor products (thank you Gov. Wolfe for that bullshit btw) that I need to reprogram the registers for and I have weekend paperwork to deal with.  Needless to say, I put the kibosh on this nonsense before it garnered any momentum.  Mind you my mother's husband is just a couple years older than me, heck if my brother were still alive he would be younger than my brother, and while my mother's health is suspect at best, to sit around for 2+ years without working and not get shit done is beyond me.  Further beyond me is to then expect me to drop everything in order to help get shit done that should have been done eons ago.

Before I get myself angry on my day off, I should note both my fantasy teams lost last week.  I note this only because I had noted the previous two weeks where they won so.....

I have been pricing my return trip to Vancouver.  I figure if I absolutely kill myself over one pay period I could make enough money to pay for it in a two week span.  Or I could ask to be paid for my vacation early, like I did last time and pay it off in January.  Well not pay it off but pay for the airplane tix and the hotel, then worry about spending cash leading up to the actual vacation.  Prices for me look to range between $800 and $2000, depending if I want to stay in a flea bag joint or away from downtown, or if I want to upscale the classiness of the vacation and stay in a more reputable joint downtown.  I most likely will do the latter, it worked so well for me last time, though some amenities I can live without.  Like the continental breakfast, I am sure I will be Tim Horton-ing most days so breakfast is not an issue.  Other meals will be an assortment of what I can have/make in my room and eating out.  It is vacation after all, the less cooking I do the better.   Last time though I did make a trip to the local IGA (a downtown grocery store, imagine that Pittsburgh) and stock my mini fridge with some items.   Plus I do have two dinners already planned, one at Storm Crow Alehouse and one at EXP bar.  Both are role playing themed type bars (another idea for Pittsburgh) and I already have lots of ideas on things I want to do there, things the weather prevented me from doing last time, like go to the beach.  Swimming in the ocean isn't recommended in March after all, this trip will be in June over my birthday, so you all will have an extra week to shop for cards and presents as I will be away.

That got some shit off of ye olde cranium and took up most of my breakfast foray so I will stop now.