I keep parsing this ad above me to "Buy Fact or Crap Game" all the wrong way. It seems some sort of extortion to me to make me buy "Fact," lest I pass a Hungry Hungry Hippo or two.

Okay, so I'm not in Boston. Your explanation, 'cause you deserve one.
Around January, the day job formally announced what I had expected, that the six month schedule for software releases was going to put the release date for 7.1 smack down on April 14. That put the weeks of mad rush testing ending Friday, which would have been the travel day. And since I figured I was going to be out for most of last week anyway due to ICT, one of them had to go off the schedule. I had sort of prepped for this, by originally planning not to play in the regionals, preventing the question from occurring at all, but things got screwed up. First, I was needed to balance out brackets, then a team didn't make it, and I was stuck. The irony of it all comes from the simple fact that today we got the official word. Code freeze next week. I'm too dang efficient at finding bugs. Release has been pushed a month back. Gahh!