Note:
A view of Madeleine’s room with the new furniture we just received. This view includes the bookcase I assembled for the room as recounted in an earlier post.
Zipping around the 500 block of HD channels on my television last night and I came across some new channels that I never noticed before. Without any fanfare, Time Warner Cable add four new channels from the Discovery Network. Now we have access to Animal Plannet, TLC, Science, and Discovery Channel. The original Discovery HD network, HD Theatre is still available though it is probably less relevant now. Much of the content that was presented on HD Theatre was originally part of the content of the newly added channels.
More HD channels are laways appreciated though i think personally, I will not get much use out of them but it goes to show you that soon, you will not need any of the standard channels to watch television as there will a HD equivalent.
It is a long stretch til the Pennsylvania primary on April 22nd but I feel that somehow this Democratic presidential process should be wrapped up before then. Things are getting too ugly right now between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama and the collateral damage to the party’s chances in November may be too hard to overcome to secure the White House.
Thing is though as that piece by John Vandrei and Mike Allen at Politico.com amply demonstrates, there is no real way for Clinton to win the nomination through the normal process i.e. through delegates. Obama’s overall lead in delegates may not be overly great but it is substantial enough that winning just a few of the primaries still on the calendar like North Carolina and Oregon will be enough to deny her the delegates she needs to overcome the deficit. Yet she soldiers on and through her surrogates keeps tossing grenades at Obama to the effect that one wonders if she is thinking that if she can not get the nomination, then she will make sure that Obama will never occupy the White House.
The personal attacks along with the Reverend Wright controversy has brought up Obama’s negative ratings though it seems from the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released yesterday, the after effects of Obama’s rough week has been limited to some degree. But just as the controversy starts dying down, Clinton brings it up again to draw away attention from the issue of her creditability when she highly exaggerated the circumstances of her trip to Bosnia in 1996.
Then there is all of the other noise going on around the campaign like prominent Clinton supporters sending off a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi generally to the effect that if she did not play ball with them, then they will pull their support from the party in the fall. Needless to say, when this letter became known, it did not cast the Clinton campaign in a good light.
… and the Pennslyvania primary is still several weeks away.
Not sure how much more the Democratic party can take of this. The media is somewhat complicit in this as it needs to talk about something during this quiet period. Consequently, every mis-statement, gaffe, or controversy will be played up as a significant turning point in somebody’s campaign.Yet as seen in polls released this week, the Wright controversy has only mildly damaged Obama among Democrats. How the fall campaign from Republicans handle this remains to be seen.
Wish she would just go away by graciously conceding and leave the nomination in Obama’s hands giving him opportunity to build his case for the whole nation on why he is a better candidate than John McCain. But it looks like she will not and will fight to the bitter end, Democratic party be damned.
Second weekend of NCAA tournament ball. Right now my brackets are in not in very good shape but my Elite 8 teams are all still in there. Right now, I am picking Carolina, Tennessee, Kansas and Wisconsin on the East & Midwest brackets. For the West and South brackets, I have Memphis, Texas, UCLA and Xavier advancing.
If I had a do-over on my brackets right now, I would make three switches based on the tournament play to date. I would now take Louisville over Tennessee for the Elite 8 winners and for the Final Fouradvancees I would now take Texas over Memphis and Wisconsin over Kansas.
Regardless though, I am still picking Carolina all the way.
I have a love-hate attitude towards ready to assemble furniture. Very practical furniture for the money. A decent bookcase or television stand can be put together reasonably quickly for a price much less than completed furniture found in furniture stores. Never the highest quality of wood; essentially it is particle board sheathed in vinyl veneer. This makes such a piece heavy but quite solid.
However, my problem with ready to assemble furniture is that the vey nature of their manufacture makes them less than high quality as a finished product. With nothing more than an Allan key, you join up various pieces with dowels and bolts. This makes the joins less than flush than say something put together with nails and screws. The pre-drilled holes always cause the various pieces to never come to a flush edge. I had put together an entertainment centre where nearly every edge was recessed or sticking out as when joined with its neighbour.
So my expectations were not too high when I bought a bookcase for Madeleine’s room. It looked to be a solid piece sold under the Shabby Chic line sold at Target and the pattern matched well with the bedroom suite that I also bought for Madeleine. As for price, it was considerably more expensive than any other RTA furniture i bought before and it approached the cost of items you could get at the furniture store.
Yet I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the piece. Very detailed instructions allowed to assemble it in quick order but most importantly, the edges lined up virtually everywhere. The backin, always an afterthought with cheaper pieces, was flush to the edges and much better than the strips of cardboard I worked with before this piece. When I was done, the bookcase was as good as any piece of furniture I would buy in a store. Very solid piece and I appreciated the design of the adjustable shelves. Very well thought out in every way.
I wish other RTA furniture was as high of quality as this piece but like nearly everything in life, if you want quality, you will have to pay for it. It is definitely worth it in this case.
Starting at noon today, an orgy of games kick off for the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Sixteen games on Thursday starting at 12:20 with Xavier against Georgia and ending with UCLA tipping off against Mississippi Valley at 9:55. The more notable games today are the Xavier-Georgia, George Mason against Notre Dame, and Kentucky versus Marquette.
No doubt many company Internet servers are going to be strained as people check on the live scoring through websites or even stream the video from CBS.
All for their brackets.
I got mine set up. I am favoring North Carolina to take it all the way and generally I stayed true to my conservative choices. I do not get the feeling that there will be many upsets this year and certainly none past the second round. I just hope that my brackets get somewhere in the top 20% or so on Yahoo’s Pick’em Tournament.