77 thoughts on “February 5, 2014: Habits”

  1. Ugh, get up early, ready to go to work early. Soon as I'm fully awake, we get a call saying work's delayed til 11. Now it's hard for me to go back to sleep. Plus, I was supposed to have an 8 o clock meeting, and rescheduling that's going to be fun (not!). Sorry, don't mean to be crabby. Maybe I should go back to bed.

  2. Ugh. Last night at 4:29 my boss sent me an e-mail asking me to come in right away in the morning and see her, and have her paged if she's not there. She left zero details. I called her back immediately and she didn't pick up. I spent all night thinking I was in trouble or being laid off. It turned out to be something time sensitive, but nothing bad.

    1. Oh, I hate that. My boss once did that to me five minutes before I left on a Friday. It ended up being practically nothing - nothing but one of the most pointlessly awful weekends of my life.

      1. My GM does that, and I think it's intentional. He's an effective leader, but I think he likes to remind people of what he wields now and again. He'll tell someone over the headset - so everyone hears it - that he'll "talk to them before they leave." Then he gets with them and usually says "Thanks for organizing the bowling night" or some such. So why give them the ominous warning of a future conversation? I don't think I've had more than one GM in this company (and I've had about twelve) that I liked more than this one, but none of them ever had this bad habit.

    2. Bosses...sometimes I wonder what they're thinking when they communicate with us. I'm glad yours was nothing serious.

      2 weeks ago, I put in a bunch of long days due to deadlines and was going to hit 40 hours about noon on Friday. Thursday afternoon, I was asked to stay late to help with another project. I could only stay until 6 because I'd ridden the bus, but was at my desk working on it by 6 am on Friday. Project would have been done by close of business no sweat, but we had technology issues all day and things progressed slowly. Again, I could only stay until 6 pm, because bus. I offered to come back but the deadline was 8 pm which I wouldn't make so my coworker had to complete the task on her own. I did come back in on Saturday morning, cancelling my pre-Plunge brunch & Bloody Mary plans, in order to take care of something else that had come up for this project during the scramble on Friday.

      Following week, the boss is out of the office. This week Monday, he calls me in and berates me for leaving my coworker in the lurch that Friday night.

          1. It's not something I would ever expect from this person, but she had a crazy week and is not a peer of mine (step or two above me), so I don't know - could be. More than likely, she was frazzled and mentioned my absence to the head-honcho. In fairness, I was later given the chance to explain myself and, when I'd done so, he seemed somewhat placated, saying that he'd never had any complaints about my work before and had been surprised to hear about this...so that was nice.

    3. Last week I got an angry email from my boss because I was doing something she wasn't expecting. She sent me a meeting request labeled "discuss expectations". I feared the worst. It turned out she actually wanted to discuss, I had input, and things ended up exactly the same as they were.

    4. You have my sympathies. No need for me gripe more about my situation, but I've been there, many, many times.

      1. in my case, I really like my boss, and my performance reviews have always been good. She even used to have my job. I think she just didn't realize what she did.

  3. The final four got their matches out of the way quickly, and your championship match for the (annual? bi-annual? bi-monthly?) WGOM Cribbage Tournamenf is...

    Beau vs. brianS

    brianS backed up his trash talk, and Beau...backed up his...occasional acknowledgement that he was in fact in the tournamenf. I'd give you all a time frame so you could get excited, but that's all them. Guys, if you feel like writing a half-baked recap of the match when it happens, I'll CoC it the next day.

      1. I am happy to move to best-of-seven, if we want to draw baseball analogies. Either way,

        httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygQvB6OjHOU

      1. pretty cool. Reminds me of this from my alma mater (regional title game last year to send the boys to State)

        httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3sDXMGsiJk

        1. Still can't top this one:

          httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_gNzEXHNhw

          I was the sports editor for the local newspaper for Declo. I was underneath the basket for both shots.

  4. Mpls Washburn RB Jeff Jones, 44th best recruit in the nation and #7 running back by Rivals, signs with the Gophers.

    Not sure who MVofDT is, but this is kinda neat (if accurate):

    Not only is Jeff Jones the highest rated prospect to ever sign with the #Gophers , he's the highest rated RB commit in the Big Ten.

      1. Jerry Kill might be one of the top 5 coaches in CFB right now.

        Let's see: Nick Saban, Urban Meyer, Steve Spurrier, Les Miles, Jimbo Fisher. Top five? Heh.

        1. I think about all we've really established is that he's better than Tim Brewster (okay, he's way better than Brewster, but then again, aren't we all?). I'd take Glen Mason over him any day.

          1. Jerry Kill is not one of the top 5 coaches in College Football but that does not mean that Glen Mason is better.

            You've been listening to too much Dan Barriero. Glen Mason at the end of his tenure was a tired coach going through the motions. He didn't know how to coach D or make defensive adjustments or recruit defensive players. Guy could design a good running game. But at the end he was happy with being a coach of a middling team and saying F.U. to the boosters and the glad handling that comes with the job. He left Brewster with an empty shelf (not 1-11 empty but if Mason had stayed we would have been looking at a series of 3-8 or 4-7 seasons). Oh and believe me in no way is that an endorsement of Tim Brewster.

      1. Caring about what the quarterback is doing is so 1996. Everyone wants to watch the head coach make decisions now.

    1. I told a friend that I was watching it with that there was no way the RHCP guitarist was actually playing the song while he was having that seizure.

        1. Flea has always been spastic, but the guitarist went way over the top. I'm sure he's really good, but there would have been missed/mangled notes the way he was flopping around.

          And now that I read the actual article, I wouldn't be completely shocked to hear that he "played" like that on purpose.

  5. Back in the bad old days, pretty much every great college basketball player played at least two seasons and many, many of them played all four years. Further back, everyone played until their eligibility ran out. Now, all the best players leave after one season. So, what has that done to college basketball? According to one unbiased observer, Jim Boeheim, it's made it better than ever. Right on. Dilute the product enough and anyone can win! Who wants to see the best players play the game when you can get upstarts playing in the Final Four???? At least he's not so stupid as to believe that the endless parade to the foul line in college basketball is a good thing.

    'Spoiler' SelectShow

    Jim Boeheim is pwning us.

    1. Its a better product for the coaches because the players who are not one-and-done are more apt to fall in line and follow the coach through a brick wall.

    2. The NCAA could find ways to deal with it if they really wanted to, but it's really the NBA that created this monster. I think college basketball would be a lot better off if the NBA had gone the MLB route of either drafting players after high school or after their junior year in college. Drawing the line at 19 years old is dumb.

  6. apropos of our most recent discussion about typography and style, I give you econstyleguide on teh Twitters!

    1. "cancer" is about a billion different things. For his sake, I hope he's got one of the treatable ones.

      1. I actually like that Schilling didn't announce what type he has - ain't nobody's damn business. I'm sure some mediot will eventually flush that detail out, but until then Schilling and his family will at least be spared the jabbering and speculation about his prognosis and/or life expectancy.

          1. Schilling works in front of the camera for ESPN, non? Presumably there would be questions about why he hadn't been seen in some time, or why his physical appearance was changing. This announcement answers those questions on Schilling's terms. Patients should always be allowed to answer questions on their own terms.

          1. I know he's had his issues, but I'd like to think Curt Schilling is a better person than that. I'm not sure I'm prepared to live in a world here I'm automatically suspecting people of flaunting their cancer for publicity.

            1. His wife is a cancer survivor, so I can't imagine him trying to "milk it" since that would be an insult to people who have truly battled cancer. He had a heart attack and a stent placed in an artery a couple years ago, so my hope is that this was caught early because he's been seeing a doctor regularly as part of his recovery. Also, since his wife had cancer, he might have been more likely to be concerned about symptoms and had it checked out, too.

              1. As I recall, he kept the heart attack pretty quiet for a while. Maybe he just likes to keep his health issues private to the extent he can.

    1. I concur. I'm still not so favorable on it because it replaced Stout.
      But without that context, it's really tasty and there was a while there where I wanted to drink nothing else.

        1. Yeah, those BA guys are something else when it comes to styles. But I really like it as a good beer with some smokiness to it that isn't overwhelming. Its screaming at me to get some this summer and drink it with grilled food. Also, I'm using it in a marinade for some glazed chicken I'm making tonight.

  7. Rumor is that The Hold Steady are going to be at SXSW this year to build some buzz for their new album. It is now my #1 priority to get into that show.

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