Go, baby goalie Holtby! :-) I'd like to see Washington tie this series tonight.

Finally figured out how to see the *UK* version of Planet Earth series (narrated by David Attenborough). Watch it on BBC America. Winning.

YESSSSS

2-1 Flyers

freaking posts... that's two so far tonight

Has either team got a PK strategy? The Flyers are 10 for 16 on the PP, and we've given up a slew of PP goals in the past 2 games.

Now let's have a FIRST for this series... having the team that scores first actually be the team that wins the freaking game.

And the dog, who has only lived here 2 years and is still acclimating to Hockey Playoff Donna, stares at me when I whoop for a Flyers goal!

How many Raisinettes are needed to make up a serving of fruit?

Life is full of little wins. My Sticky Buddy arrived (permanent sticky roller) and I was able to REALLY de-fur Captain's favorite nap spot.

My orange iPad case, chosen in honor of the Flyers, has arrived.
:happy dance:

A very tiny dog is speed-wagging her very tiny tail at me as I eat Easter candy. She's NOT getting chocolate from me, though! Sorry, Mini.

Working and listening to the online stream of WNYQ. Life is good.

RIP Ed

Many, many police & firefighters attended Mark's cousin's funeral. He worked with emergency management for decades. Seeing a cop exit church near tears moved me greatly. An immense procession of police, ambulances, and firefighters accompanied the family after the Mass.

STILL aggravated with myself over laaving my ID behind. I don't use the phrase FML very often, but I think I've earned it this time. Arrrgh.

ARRRRRRRRRGH!!!!! I forgot my freaking ID at the appointment I had this AM. Gotta go pick it up when their office reopens. @*@&^$@*&#$^@#$&^

Naturally, I discovered my error AFTER they had already closed early for Good Friday. FANABLA...

Then, when I tried to call the friend I'm meeting later, to say I can't drive w/o my driver's license, I found out that SIRI is having an outage. ARGH. Nothing's going right today. I'm going back to freaking bed.

WTH is going on with NJ and school bus crashes? :-( I just saw a bulletin about yet another one, the third (or is it fourth) in ~6 weeks.

Wow. Someone's not having a good day.

So I've got The Weather Channel on, and we're getting the weather-related-news report from the presenter. Trouble is, either she's having a bad pronunciation day or she just flat-out doesn't know how to pronounce some pretty significant words.

To wit: The first three letters of Nairobi are pronounced like the surname of Bill NYE, not like the horse-vocalization NEIGH. She gave us NEIGH-robi at least twice, and I think three times, during the course of the report. (And for the record, her ethnicity is such that this error is the equivalent of my mispronouncing an Italian city's name.)

Second... The word glacier is NOT a homonym for the word glazier. They are two different words, and there is no Z sound in glacier.

I don't want to come off as a grump, but this issue has awakened one of my pet peeves: if your job puts you on national TV, and speaking words is your craft, then you need to know how to pronounce. One hopes that she's been clued in to the correct pronunciations, now that there's been a commercial break, so these slip-ups won't be repeated if she has to read those stories again in an hour.

Deviled Eggs, just in time for Easter

OK, how cute is this?

They have black-olive eyes and carrot beaks.

Flyers Orange FTW

Late last night, I decided that I was going to invest in a proper iPad case ASAP. So I tracked down an article I'd read a day or so earlier, about top-rated cases for the new generation of the device.

One particular style of case caught my eye, with an adjustable built-in stand. It comes in four colors: black, royal blue, berry, and tangerine.

I was all set to get black. Most of the other peripherals, accessories, etc. that I buy are black, because I don't normally prefer to have eye-catching stuff. But I just kept liking -- REALLY liking -- the orange case.

So at length, I figured, "Aw, what the heck?" and ordered the tangerine case.

Now all I have to do is keep close tabs on the device until sometime next week, when the order arrives.

All done. Almost.

iPad: replaced. 4G service: transferred. Fee: paid. Apple Care: one incident remaining.

Aspirin: needed.

It was determined that my near-miss accident this morning wasn't a miss after all. The iPad started to fall from the kitchen table. I "caught" it between my hip and the table. So when it never hit the floor, I thought I was in good shape. Till I saw the glass.

I guess the table edge pressed the glass, breaking it. Never again.

Plus I'm going out and getting all spherical furniture. No sharp edges, no problem, right? ;-)

At least it wasn't plugging/unplugging that caused the issue. Anyone know where I can get a CAST IRON hard-shell case?

Son of a curse word

I have an appointment with the Apple Store to get my iPad screen fixed. I have. I have no clue how it broke. &$%#£+...

I know it's hardly the end of the world, and people would happily trade problems with me. But it sure is annoying.

Crapola. My iPad fell & its screen cracked. Glad I got Apple Care; I'm on hold with them now. FirstWorldProblems

Good thing they're cute. :-)

‎>WHUMP< of cat jumping onto a table (verboten in this house)

I can see Captain's sitting on the floor, so...

"STANLEY, get your stripey butt in here."

(no response)

"That's it, I'm getting up. I'd better not see a cat on a table!"

(nada)

I get up and start walking toward the dining room. "Here I come!"

>THUD< of cat jumping down

>JINGLE JINGLE< of bell collar as cat trots

Stanley emerges from the kitchen, with a demeanor of, "Hi, Mom! How nice to see you!"

Good thing the kitties are cute. ;-)

I'm LOL at the ads in my email today. So many techie sites celebrate April Fool's Day with faux "new items", some of which I WISH were real.

Eleven years ago

It's hard to believe that it's been eleven years, as of today, since I got downsized from my 15-year career in IT. It doesn't seem it's been as long as that.

I'll always wonder if the reflexes I developed during the years of being bullied (which translates to most of hell-imentary school and all of HS) were a factor. In those years, I learned the reflex of hiding my achievements. Since the good grades and the high-percentile standardized test results were the purported reason that the bullies were targeting my every move, I made a point of not trying to stand out in obvious ways. When I got test results back, if the grade was high, I put it away immediately. If we were reviewing the test in class, I'd put something on top of the grade so no one would see it. God forbid that anyone should SEE that I was doing well.

Camouflage is a tactic that's often used in nature to keep the predators at bay, or at least, keep them guessing. So it was a natural reflex. However, not only did that strategy NOT work to keep the bullies off my back at school, it turned out to be a bad game plan in the working world. I didn't, and to a large extent, STILL don't, feel at ease excelling in obvious ways. In my first workplace, when I was working literally three different jobs (programmer, tester, and customer support), not one person knew how hard I worked until after I left. My boss thought he'd be able to fold my duties into his own, rather than hire another programmer. But when I had to call my ex-workplace back about something a couple weeks later, the receptionist let on that my ex-boss was absolutely tearing his hair out at the amount of added work suddenly dumped onto his plate. He'd had no idea just how much I was doing. Camouflage... camouflage... if you're really good at something, God forbid you should let anyone know.

And you know, I'll wonder for the rest of my life if that camouflage reflex was a part of what made me expendable when the downsizing axe dropped. Personally, I think the biggest issue was that they were required to reduce payroll by X%, so they found people whose salaries added up to the target number and wished us all luck in the next phase of our lives. But still, a part of me will always wonder: if I'd been willing to visibly excel, instead of just doing good work quietly and never missing even one deadline in a decade and a half, would that have made a difference? I guess we'll never know.

But if anyone wonders why I'm so adamantly in support of anti-bullying measures... it's not just the bullied kids who have psychotic meltdowns or turn to drugs and alcohol who are affected badly over the long term. It's also the ones who never come out of their shell for the entire rest of their lives who are impacted negatively. I'm one of the lucky ones. I *realized* what was going on, and am working (present tense, STILL working, decades later) to undo that negative impact. I can't change past events, but I can make a deliberate effort to ensure that present and future events don't continue to repeat any unwanted patterns. What about the people who don't even realize there IS a pattern going on? They could spend their entire lives hiding their best talents and abilities from everyone, even themselves. THAT'S the cost of bullying.