Before you put the finishing touches on your bracket, here are some tips...

 Tune out what the "experts" are predicting. The experts have no better of an idea who's going to win it all than you do. Seriously. In fact, they may even have less confidence in their picks than you. It's their jobs to be bold and take risks. As is the case with preseason football predictions, it does the talking heads on TV no good predicting the favorites to win every game.

 Avoid everyone's "sleeper" picks. A "sleeper" team is usually a squad seeded from 6 to 12 that is expected to make a run in the tournament. If everyone's buzzing about a particular "sleeper team", your best bet is to stay away.

 Value coaching experience. There are a lot of young "up and coming" coaches in college basketball these days. Real bright shining stars. And that's great. But none of them stand a chance of winning it all come March Madness. The last time a coach participating in his first Final Four actually won the NCAA championship was 1999, when Jim Calhoun's Richard Hamilton-led Connecticut Huskies beat Duke for the national title.

 Don't go with Client Number 9. No number 9 seed has ever won an NCAA title. Only one No. 9 — Pennsylvania in 1979 — has ever even made a Final Four.

 Beware of the "Unbeatables". When it comes to March Madness, undefeated and one-loss teams are by no means sure things. In fact, the last undefeated or one-loss team to win a national title was the 1976 Indiana Hoosiers. That's 32 years.

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Jerrt is up-to-date with routine shots and spayed/neutered.

Daylight Saving Time begins this Sunday

  The average U.S. city commuter loses 38 hours a year to traffic delays.

  Wonder why you have to set your clock ahead in March? Daylight Saving Time began as a joke by Benjamin Franklin, who proposed waking people earlier on bright summer mornings so they might work more during the day and thus save candles. It was introduced in the U.K. in 1917 and then spread around the world.

  The Department of Energy estimates that electricity demand drops by 0.5 percent during Daylight Saving Time, saving the equivalent of nearly 3 million barrels of oil.

  By observing how quickly bank tellers made change, pedestrians walked, and postal clerks spoke, psychologists determined that the three fastest-paced U.S. cities are Boston, Buffalo, and New York. The three slowest? Shreveport, Sacramento, and L.A.

  One second used to be defined as one-86-thousand-four-hundreth the length of a day. However, Earth’s rotation isn’t perfectly reliable. Tidal friction from the sun and moon slows our planet and increases the length of a day by 3 milli­seconds per century.

  Weather also changes the day. During El Niño events, strong winds can slow Earth’s rotation by a fraction of a milli­second every 24 hours.

  In 1972 a network of atomic clocks in more than 50 countries was made the final authority on time, so accurate that it takes 31.7 million years to lose about one second. To keep this time in sync with Earth’s slowing rotation, a “leap second” must be added every few years, most recently this past New Year’s Eve.

  The world’s most accurate clock, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado, measures vibrations of a single atom of mercury. In a billion years it will not lose one second.

  Until the 1800s, every village lived in its own little time zone, with clocks synchronized to the local solar noon. This caused havoc with the advent of trains and timetables. For a while watches were made that could tell both local time and “railway time.” On November 18, 1883, American railway companies forced the national adoption of standardized time zones.

  Einstein showed that gravity makes time run more slowly. Thus airplane passengers, flying where Earth’s pull is weaker, age a few extra nano­seconds each flight.

  There may be an end of time. Three Spanish scientists posit that the observed acceleration of the expanding cosmos is an illusion caused by the slowing of time. According to their math, time may eventually stop, at which point everything will come to a standstill.

A survey of the 1.9 million accounts on AshleyMadison.com, a dating site for people looking to cheat on their spouses, rounds up the most common occupations among the would-be infidelitous:

For Women:

    1. Teachers
    2. Stay-at-home Moms
    3. Nurses
    4. Administrative Assistants
    5. Real Estate Agents

For Men:

    1. Physicians
    2. Police Officers
    3. Lawyers
    4. Real Estate Agents
    5. Engineers

You are in the middle of some kind of project around the house -- mowing the lawn, putting in a new fence, painting the living room, or whatever. You are  hot and sweaty, covered in dirt or paint. You have your old work clothes, T-shirt with a stain from who knows what, and an old pair of tennis shoes. Right in the middle of this great home improvement project you realize you need to run to Home Depot to get something to help complete the job. Depending on your age you might do the
following:

In your 20’s
Stop what you are doing. Shave, take a shower, blow dry your hair, brush your teeth, floss, and put on clean clothes. Check yourself in the mirror and flex. Add a dab of your favorite cologne because you never know, you just might meet some hot chick while standing in the checkout lane. And you went to school with the pretty girl running the register.

In your 30’s
Stop what you are doing, put on clean shorts and shirt. Change shoes. You married the hot chick so no need for much else. Wash your hands and comb your hair. Check yourself in the mirror. Still got it. Add a shot of your favorite cologne to cover the smell. The cute girl running the register is the kid sister to someone you went to school with.

In your 40’s
Stop what you are doing. Put on a sweatshirt that is long enough to cover the hole in the crotch of your shorts. Put on different shoes and a hat. Wash your hands. Your bottle of Brut Cologne is almost empty so you don’t want to waste any of it on a trip to Home Depot. Check yourself in the mirror and do more sucking in than flexing. The spicy young thing running the register is your daughter’s age and you feel weird thinking she is spicy.

In your 50’s
Stop what you are doing. Put a hat on, wipe the dirt off your hands onto your shirt. Change shoes because you don’t want to get dog doo in your new sports car. Check yourself in the mirror and you swear not to wear that shirt anymore because it makes you look fat. The cutie running the register smiles when she sees you coming and you think you still have it. Then you remember the hat you have on is from Buddy’s Bait & Beer Bar and it says, ‘I Got Worms’.

In your 60’s
Stop what you are doing. No need for a hat anymore. Hose the dog doo off your shoes. The mirror was shattered when you were in your 50’s. You hope you have underwear on so nothing hangs out the hole in your pants. The girl running the register may be cute, but you don’t have your glasses on so you are not sure.

In your 70’s
Stop what you are doing. Wait to go to Home Depot until the drug store has your prescriptions ready, too. Don’t even notice the dog doo on your shoes. The young thing at the register smiles at you because you remind her of her grandfather.

In your 80’s
Stop what you are doing. Start again. Then stop again. Now you remember you needed to go to Home Depot. Go to Walmart instead and wander around trying to think what it is you are looking for. Fart out loud and you think someone called out your name. You went to school with the old lady who greeted you at the front door.