Cup of Coffee

January 6, 2015: Scarlet Fever?!

116 Comments

Sour Cream has it. From what I can tell, either people don't know it still happens, or their kid has had it. It's quite a bit more common than I would have guessed.

Oh, Hall announcement today, too. So there's that.

116 thoughts on “January 6, 2015: Scarlet Fever?!”

  1. Oh, Hall announcement today, too. So there's that.

    That reminds me, Tango has been roughly forecasting the vote and his latest prediction has four members going in. Raines is so, so close to making it. Fortunately, next year has only one obvious* candidate in Griffey so there's a chance of reducing the backlog a tiny amount.

    * Yes, I think Jim Edmonds is an obvious candidate but right now I would be surprised if he makes it on the first ballot.

    1. Based on the public ballots with ten votes, there would be seven people inducted. If the BBWAA can remove/greatly increase the limit for 2016, I could see that happening next year.

    2. Four it is. Crazy that is the most since 1955.

      Spoiler: Votes SelectShow

  2. Made my first excursion to ND for 2015. It was cold this morning, but the roads were pretty good, so it wasn't a difficult drive.

    1. I always thought it would be fun if actor William Hurt shortened to Will for the gags, but he takes himself needlessly seriously, so that wasn't going to happen.

      Now we got one!

      1. Walking through the Phoenix airport last week, I heard a message announcement for "Seymour Butts."

        Sophomoric humor is alive and well in the world.

        1. Are you serious?! I was there too. Early afternoon on the 31st. I knew I should have shared that info with my Facestalkers.

          The boy giggled for about 30 minutes.

          1. It definitely caused me to shake my head and smile.

            Yes, early/mid afternoon on the 31st. Got there around 12:30, had a burrito, hung around until our plane finally left for Sactown at 3-something. Bummah. Would have been fun to say hello and confuse your family as to why you were talking to Some Random Dude at the airport.

                1. Yeah, I was. Sick again now, possibly, but I can no longer tell sickness from fatigue as a result of taking care of other sick people.

              2. In my defense, I was with my parents, 3 siblings and spouses, and 4 nieces and nephews plus my own wife and kids. And you live about an hour from my parents.

                (But you can yell at me for not contacting you last spring when I went to the spring training game in Goodyear.)

                  1. When I went to visit my mom last spring while she was going through chemo. Went straight from airport to the field with my dad.

                    Sat right by the Rangers dugout. Highlight was seeing an Asian "performer" making sure that Yu Darvish got her card.

                    Most of the time when I visit, I am in very far south Phoenix. (Sun Lakes) It may be closer to Tucson than your neck of the woods.

                    If I ever make it there without it being some big family event or a health crisis, I will definitely get in touch. I've now made a few "last" visits. Hopefully, I make many more.

                    2. Don't worry about it. I don't talk about it much so I definitely wouldn't expect you to know much about it.

              3. *was also in Phoenix over Christmas*

                It wasn't a vacation though. Well, it could be if not for having to care for a 16-month old child in a totally not baby proofed home. I don't know if we'll be back. I already intimated that I do not want to bring any young child back to her grandmother's house.

    2. What I can tell you about him is that he can't hit. He's had 220 minor league at-bats, 152 in the GCL and 68 in Elizabethton, over three seasons. His numbers are .205/.306/.218. He's a middle infielder, and I assume he must be a pretty good fielder, but you'd have to be better than Ozzie Smith in his prime to make it with that slash line.

  5. Delayed Festivus Grievance!

    Anyone using the phrase "Please advise" ever. It is passive aggressive and condescending. If that's the tone you're going for (and some people obviously are), wonderful. If not, then use your words and ask an actual question.

      1. If "please advise" actually meant "I would like your advice on this matter", then maybe. I can't think of a single time where I've read it where that's been the case.

        Lately, it's generally meant "I didn't get your original answer to my question because I deleted your email without reading it. Why isn't this done?"

            1. So I'm the only one in my boat?
              Next thing you know, someone's gonna use my favorite turtle-stacking metaphor in a popular song and ruin everything I find good and concise.

              1. It's likely that to a certain extent, I'm making something out of nothing. A quick jaunt around the Internet seems to confirm that the phrase rubs a lot of folk the wrong way, though.

                1. A quick jaunt around the Internet seems to confirm that the phrase rubs a lot of folk the wrong way, though.

                  I'm pretty sure you could find the same for just about ANY phrase or behavior. Complaining is why the Intertubes were invented. That, and trolling.

        2. Really?
          I rarely see it and only ever use it myself to mean "I await your instruction on how to proceed in my response to the matter I have detailed above or mentioned above and which I detail in excruciating precision below."
          I like to grab wordcount-shortening devices like this when I find them. Because verbose. Excessively.

          Also, I almost never delete emails except the most perfunctory. I've got a "keep" folder that's basically a "done" folder.
          A long time ago, we were hitting memory limits on our email boxes and I spent a week deleting, saving, sifting, sorting, etc. my communications. Then a higher-up got wind (because I'd asked IT how to strip attachments from my mailbox because big attachments (that were needed when they came, but not once I saved them). He asked "How much do bigger mailboxes cost? How much does the LAN memory for all of the emails and attachments he's saving cost? How much does AMR's week cost? Make AMR's mailbox as big as he needs. Also, all of the other pricing actuaries."

            1. Actually, that's exactly the meaning I typically intend.
              I've thought about it and I really use it with insurance companies, banking institutions, etc, when I have to communicate about inexplicable charges/allocations/denials/etc.

              Found out last Friday that when we cancelled our old home insurance (a year ago), they never took no for an answer and we never got the check we were supposed to put we failed to notice it was missing. Then this year, new company sends us a message that the bank won't pay them from escrow, so pay us now or we cancel. Because the old company billed the bank first, they got the money. At least we now get our 2014 insurance payment back, when we'd never realized it was missing.

            1. Interesting. I've been instilled with a resistance to clichés in my writing and it makes business communication a challenge to me. I have to force myself to get over that and push through it, but it always seems so false and forced. But if I don't use them, I've got to come up with new ways to say the same damned thing that's been said for years and years.
              I do re-use my emails for any periodic communication. I don't dare talk to others about it because it feels so pretentious. "Oh, look at AMR! He's so writerly he has to force himself to use clichés."

              1. I've had clichés on the mind lately; you may have noticed occasional PwtP comments from me chastising writers for using them. In fiction, I often find them to be lazy or unrealistic. (Was his heart really beating like a drum?) But at the same time, they can work as a sort of shorthand because they're part of our shared vocabulary.

                In business communication, I think jargon bothers me even more than cliché, though perhaps jargon is really just another type of cliché.

                1. In reinsurance, it's all jargon, but the audience should know what it means. I don't understand how removing it would work. Emails would be just numbers followed with "Please advise."

                    1. I just remembered how Glitter was heavy on tired and slightly mis-used clichés because that was the best way I could figure to write in a different voice consistently and easily.

                    2. That's funny--I don't think I picked up on that, though now I want to go back and look. I thought Glitter's most endearing quality was the way he renamed everyone.

                    4. So Glitter was a mildly-effeminate (but into young women*) skewed-cliché-spewing Gardy-clone who worked at a greeting-card factory and maybe was once a rock star or roadie or something involving "Rock And Roll (Part 2)". And maybe he used to do a lot of drugs but now mostly clean and stayed that way through positive affirmations. Kitten posters were his new drug, and he was good at puzzles.
                      *He's a straight version of the gay uncle and found that archetype worked to his advantage by making him seem threatless.

                      Maybe if I'd spent more time playing the game than developing his character... nah.

        3. Three separate people? Sounds like you've been slacking off at work then. Why isn't this stuff done?

  6. So I was offered a promotion, commensurate with the one I was applying for. In fact, it's a new position they created, and they're not even sure all of my duties yet. Essentially, though, I'm a float supervisor. At 34, for the first time, I'm a boss. Sort of. 17% pay increase as well.

    1. That sounds good. That raise is like an extra two months of pay for the year!

      Edit: Forgot to say "Congrats!" So, congratulations!

    3. Good for you! Though being a boss isn't always all that great, it's usually better to be one of the people in charge.

      1. This has nothing to do with Beau's sitch, just rumination on bhiggs' observation...
        My FiL said he screwed up the day he took left his regular MNDOT job to be a supervisor. He missed plowing and road care and hated personality management and having to review everyone etc. He probably got to retire earlier for the extra pay though.
        I worry about when I'll be at that point. I'm too-aware of the Peter Principle, and my joy in my job is in the doing things, building spreadsheets, arriving at novel solutions, not in finding others to find the novel solutions.
        Furthermore, my ambition isn't that high. I'm quite comfortable where I'm at. I guess the low ambition could keep the Peter Principle in check: but for how long? What happens when someone high up gets promoted and my boss fills that role and I have to step into half of that job? Eww. I know our local office head is getting promoted to a higher role in the global org over the next year. Could that be the event that leads to a vacuum that I get sucked into to fill?

        1. The nice thing about my promotion is that I will still be doing the plowing and road care, just less of it. And I'll hopefully get to be proud of training competent plowers. And, if I can later step back and see that the roads look fantastic, then I can pat myself on the back.

          1. If you enjoy the work, then training is a great way to go. That way you can still do the work and you will most likely be pretty good at training since the trainees can generally tell how much the trainer enjoys the work.

        2. I spent the first half of my working career as an academic, barely able to supervise myself (although I did ok with grad students). Since transitioning to the gubmint, I've had the challenge of managing people, not just data. There are definitely highs and lows both.

          But it definitely is a challenge. I'm challenged almost daily to figure out problems -- how to motivate staff members, how to get staff members to work together, how to get staff members to problem-solve on their own and not just depend on Dad. I don't spend nearly as much time with intellectual challenges any more, but these challenges can be interesting as well. When I'm not pulling my hair out, anyway.

        3. That's pretty much what happened to my brother. He was very happy as a college professor. Then he became a department head. He hates it and is counting the days (literally) until his retirement.

          1. being a department chair (a dept head, but without the authority) or department head is a pretty thankless task. One of my best friends is dept head at my old department in IL; the other is dept chair at my last department. Both regale me with tales of woe and misery and hatred of colleagues (I say that latter only partly in jest). I riposte with Tales From the Civil Service Crypt.

            1. As I think about it, something similar would probably happen to me if I was pushed into a higher position like a District Superintendent or even lead pastor of a large church. Luckily, there's very little chance of either of those things ever actually happening to me.

          2. Joking aside, I feel like the best managers at our place come from within. They have already bought into the company mission and practiced it, so there's fewer "where the hell did that come from" moments with the boss

            1. which is great when you have a strong, productive corporate culture. If you don't, then it can exacerbate dysfunction.

    1. with as many big names as there are on this year's ballot, how the heck did Lee Smith still pull in 30 percent?

      I look forward to seeing Piazza's election next year.

      1. Lee Smith got 166 votes. Don Mattingly got 50. Meanwhile, Brian Giles got zero (two fewer than Aaron Boone!) and falls off the ballot.

        I'd laugh, but that's the opposite of hilarious.

          1. Lee Smith had the record for 13 years!!!!! and more than 400 saves!!!!!!

            Speaking of saves, who holds the active record?

            Prolly obvious SelectShow

  9. Dish now offering streaming live TV with no satellite TV subscription required.

    Sling TV will cost $20 monthly for about a dozen live TV channels, including ABC Family, Cartoon Network, CNN, Disney Channel, ESPN and ESPN 2, the Food Network, HGTV, TBS, TNT, The Travel Channel and Adult Swim.

    2. This is long overdue. The speed at which my customers are abandoning cable is staggering, and the cable companies' inability to adapt has been an amusing trainwreck.

        2. I think for most people nowadays, there's no question of whether to have Internet (assuming they have the money for it). This is about not having to have both Internet and cable/satellite TV.

    3. I saw this story yesterday, but the list in that article was not that long. I'd get that list. As long as that TBS still has MLB playoffs.

      1. TBS alternates between AL and NL playoff games. Last year was AL, so 2015 will be NL. Other games on FOX or its affiliates. TBS contract goes through 2021 for playoffs.

    4. Plus, they are planning on offering an extra $5 sports tier. If they do this for FSN, I will have everything I need.

      1. I can't imagine it would be FSN. FSN1 maybe. More likely will be some of the major sports networks (NFLN, MLBN, NBATV, NHLN). I'm hoping for BTN as well since I can't watch those games online even out of market.

      1. After the first half, anyways. Russell held to just 2 points after halftime. Freshman Nate Mason missed the second of 2 FTs in the final minute of regulation that would have put the Gophers ahead. Instead, game goes to OT and OSU made bucket with 5.6 seconds left to win. Gophers outrebounded and had 14-14 assist to TO ratio after leading the country in assist/TO ratio in nonconference games.

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