A Scattered Brain

So, my wife and I just bought a new HP All-in-One printer since our other two printers pretty much became unuseable around the same time and I’ve spent all freaking night trying to install the software for it.  I know you probably don’t care, but while I’m trying to download the contents of the CD to my computer (500 MB eek!) I’m going to vent.

5:15 pm – First install – I’m really excited that it has a network interface so that we can print even if our laptop isn’t at it’s dock, that’s just way cool.  The install takes about 35 minutes in all, but isn’t too bad.  I have to reboot and then finish the setup… no problem.  Then I try to use the software to scan and it gives me some BS about having to reboot or re-install.  I reboot just to make it happy and the same thing occurs.  So I try to re-install just that piece but I can’t find an install for just the scanning piece so I uninstall the entire package and try again.

6:00 pm – Second install – Here’s where things really start to go wrong.  I install again and somewhere in the middle the installer crashes, just disappears POOF!  So, I do what any reasonable person would do, I reboot hoping it finished but just didn’t look like it.  Now I can’t do anything but print (no faxing, no scanning) so I’m two steps back.  The software doesn’t even show all the icons I need… so I uninstall again.

7:00 pm – Third install – I reset the printer and everything to their “factory” defaults (funny, the time didn’t clear and the network settings stayed the same, the only thing that changed is Auto Answer was turned back on for the fax).  Re-install a couple of times without uninstalling hoping it would get past it’s crashing point… you guessed it, not a chance.

… (tried this a few more times until…)

8:30 pm – HP Support – I first look up on their website under installation issues to see if I can find my problem(s).  I do, but the solution is uninstall/re-install.  Sound familiar?  Yeah, to me too.  I then try to call HP support.  After being on hold for about 10 minutes someone (who was most certainly not from this country, but that’s another blog altogether) answers and for some reason can’t hear me talk and he hangs up on me!  So as a last resort, I use their chat service and that proved to be utterly useless… he only suggested that I copy the install files to my local hard drive and try the install again.  If it works, kudos to him, but in my experience, I’m not all that convinced.  I did also find some files that may have been trouble and deleted them but again, I’m shooting at straws.

Now – The file is almost finished downloading and is copying from the temp location to my desktop and I will give it ONE MORE TRY tonight.  I’ll let you all know if it works, as if you truly care (and I’ll pretend that you do).

Wish me and my printer luck.  Once it gets working, I think it’ll totally rock!

Well, after getting a number of requests and knowing deep down that I wanted to, I will be running an NCAA Tournament Pool. If you are interested in participating, send me a message and I’ll give you the web address where you can enter your picks and keep track of results. The pool will open Sunday shortly after the brackets are announced and I’ll accept entries until the first game starts on Thursday (the play-in game will have no effect on the pool deadline).

I’m hoping for a fairly large turn-out between my old job, my current job, and maybe a few from here as well.

So, most of the major conferences have started their end of year conference tournaments leading up to the release of the brackets on Sunday. Unfortunately, my beloved Purdue Boilermakers won’t be in the Big Dance again this year. Given that, I am still really excited about the tournament as I am every year.

However, this year will be the first in a long time in which I don’t run a tournament pool and probably won’t participate in one (of course that may change once I get in full swing and if I get enough requests I may run one). This will most likely be a one year hiatus.

Something has gotten me thinking though. The original intent of the NCAA Tournament is to determine the best basketball team in the country. For the most part, I think it does a good job of that. One thing I don’t like is this ‘guaranteed’ bid for all of the smaller conferences. Each winner of a conference tournament automatically gets a bid to NCAA Tournament.

This means that about 20 teams or so that have no chance of getting to the final four, let alone win it get into the tournament and it leaves out many good teams from larger conferences to fight it out in the NIT. Why not change the NCAA format to have only at large bids to determine the field of 64 and then all of the smaller conferences that currently get guaranteed time in a tournament that is clearly outside of their league to make up the NIT Tournament? Really, unless your a fan of the 1 seed in a region, do you really want to see Duke beat up on Fairleigh-Dickinson by 60 points?? Sure, F-D can say that they made it to the big dance, but then they feel like the Broncos when they lost to the 49ers in the Super Bowl.

Of course, on years when a school from a smaller conference is good enough (so you could still have your Cinderella stories), they’d get their bid for the NCAA; but for all the rest, they’d have a much more competitive chance against other smaller conference winners in the NIT.

It also, by extension, makes the NCAA Tournament much more competitive and harder to predict and would allow for the actual real possibility of a 16 seed upsetting a 1 seed in the first round. Still unlikely, but not impossible as it is now.

The NCAA has become such a politically correct entity that they feel obligated to give spots away to each conference, even when most, if not all, have no chance of really making things exciting in a game, let alone for the whole tournament. I would rather see the 64 best teams over about 40 of the best teams, and 25 that have no business being there.