Fax Bucks

At some point, I'm going to have to tackle Alias: the TV show, and my exhilaration/frustration with it so far. My wife and I have gotten through the first 5 DVD's of 6 in the first season (meaning we have 2 more whole seasons to go to catch up -- ugh! Or yay!), and I've got some HSO's on it. But today I have 2 other things to get to -- one sportsy, one not. We'll start with the one that is not.

My fax machine at work just busted the heck up yesterday, and I would not have minded, except for the fact that other people kept bugging me about it (I literally never have received a fax there, either for personal or business reasons -- I've sent a couple out, but they were small and useless), coming by and expressing that they just need it. To be fair, they probably do, and as usual it's up to me to fix something that has nothing to do with me other than I happen to be the closest human to it when it breaks. So I look up the tech support documents online and they are clearly not meant to help fix anything but the most basic problems, i.e., a baby stuck in the carriage area and so on. There was nothing there. It just wasn't working, and the message on the screen said, "carrriage jam"-- please open door and remove. There was a lot of stuff inside that thing, but a "carriage jam" describes none of it. It may as well have said "PC load letter". That would have been funnay at least.

To make a long story short, the tech support guy is called and he comes up with the same diagnosis as I, and we have to "set it up for destruction", which is an elaborate ritual we have that equates to the English term "chuck it". I was going to suggest we do like in Office Space, but I did not want to press my luck.

The best part of this story, and the part that makes it interesting enough to put it on a blog (IMO), is the replacement fax/printer/scanner they gave me. It's the cheapest all-in-one we have (retails for $99 new), and it was on clearance because it was returned. It's also the same brand as the one that just broke, and about half as sturdy. Now, I know the reasons why they did this, and they all relate to money. They don't want to invest anything in a good (or even mediocre) fax machine when I will just break 14 months later. But suffice it to say I am skeptical of this rinky-dinky fax/copier meeting the needs of our department. I'm putting the over/under on how long this thing lasts at 3 months. Hopefully I won't be around to find that out.

In other news, I have done the math on the Milwaukee Bucks' remaining schedule, and there is at least some room for optimism. I took the remaining 53 games and divided them into 3 categories: likely wins, likely losses, and toss-ups. I came up with 20 wins, 11 losses, and 22 toss-ups. I did this under the assumption that their early-season death march was due to injuries and going temporarily mental, and that their recent play is more indicative of how they will play from now on. It also assumes TJ Ford is out the rest of the season, because he almost assuredly will be (and THAT'S another blog entry waiting to happen, let me tell you). So, here are the numbers:

current sucky record: 10-19
almost-sure wins left: 20
almost-sure losses left: 11
lowest possible Bucks record: 30-52
highest possible Bucks record: 52-30
median/normal/most likely Bucks record: 41-41
most likely playoff seeding (if the playoffs started today and the other teams' current records continued on into infinity): 8th in East
most likely first-round playoff matchup: Miami (yuck)

I should be enough for Terry Porter to keep his job. Now the big question is: What do they do with Michael Redd? Trade him or keep him? The mind boggles.

SSS (sorry/so/sportsy)