Wednesday

EJ and Maddie are still wandering their way around Tomah.  Stay tuned.  But it will probably be the weekend before I can get enough time to finish their tale.

Winter storm Saturn dumped around five inches on Maplecrest and on my regular haunts of the coffee shop and the office park.  Not really all that big of a mess, but most of the schools made it a "snow day", and the media weather folks had lots to chatter about throughout the day.  I see where the East Coast will have to deal with the same storm system today.  Relax, people.  It ain't all that bad.  Snowmaggedon or snowquester  will be over-used terms by the end of the day.

The Hawkeye's managed to best Illinois last night in IC.  I watched part of the first half, but couldn't muster the energy to stay with it for the second half.  (My pals Roy and Cal were there in second-row seats.)  Neither team was very sharp, and it was just too hard to watch.  The result does speak to the testimony that in these major conferences, winning away from home is hard for every team.  That has always been the case, of course, but with most of the teams now relying on lots of freshmen and sophomores, there's just not that toughness factor that can carry a team against a home team with the crowd behind it.  Another by-product of the One-and-Done rule.

Actually, a better example of trouble of winning on the road would be the ND women beating UConn the other night in triple OT in SB.  I had watched the game off and on during the evening, but actually turned to something else when ND got down by six at the start of the first OT, and had just committed their fourth straight turnover without getting off a shot in the OT.  It didn't even occur to me to return to the game, and I didn't see the final score until the next day.  UConn couldn't stand the prosperity, made mistakes, missed free throws, and ND pulled it out in the 3rd OT.  It ain't over 'til its over.

I have no explanation for the rise in the market.  My theory at this point is that the mountain of cash that has been on the sidelines, for years, is oozing into the market.  This is the result of the Fed printing money, fixed income returns at nominal levels, and Wall Street's disregard of the toxic political environment.  But volume is not that high, companies aren't spending huge amounts on CapEx, and you still have the uncertainties of Europe, China and the price of oil.  But how long can you sit on a pile of cash earning zero?  The "Not losing" argument gets pretty thin with stocks reaching new highs everyday.

I converted my desktop browser to Google Chrome last week.  Still trying to figure out the enhancements(?).  Our system here at the office (including my laptop which is also in our LAN), has our third-party IT contractor constantly monitoring the system for spam and malware, but there's something missing on the uniformity with commercial updates on things like Adobe and other common software's.  I'm always afraid to hit "Yes" when I get those on-screen messages for updates.  I can just imagine how many Nigerian hackers are waiting for me to be their favorite brother-in-law.

Make yours a Good Wednesday.

BCOT