Tag: fail

Dad Brog (#165): Can’t even see the end of the tunnel

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often the case with a lot of the time I write under the Dad Brog tag, things are going a little rough these days.  In fact, it’s like the difficulty of my life is currently sitting at a 9 on a scale of 7, and I’m having a hard time of accepting that this is just kind of going to be the state of it, given all the circumstances around me.

Frankly, it’s not so much my children being the source of lot of my general stress and anxiety beyond the usual every day gripes of parenting.  Sure, they can be little shits when they want to, and their listening skills have a tendency to become questionable at times, but in this case, they’re kids.  A six and four year old, being a six and four year old; defiant, rambunctious, playful, but otherwise pretty normal as far as being kids go.

However, it’s my third kid, AKA my elderly dad who is undoubtedly the largest source of my general daily angst, frustration and reason why my mood gets tanked faster than anything else.  Frankly, this wouldn’t be classified as a Dad Brog if not for the fact that my own dad has basically turned into a third child for me, and is about as functional and capable as my six and four year olds, with the exception being that a lot of his inability to function has mostly been on account of his own choices, and not because he’s a six or four year old.

I struggle on a regular basis to not let my frustrations boil over and take it out on my dad, but it’s really fucking hard at times when the things I request and ask of him are never absorbed, never honored, and never respected.  And with the recent diagnosis of early signs of dementia, it’s like he’s got a permanent excuse to be inept and completely oblivious to my life or my needs, and that I’m basically expected to be available at his beck and call, because he can always just chalk up forgetfulness on account of signs of dementia.

What frustrates me a ton is the fact that he put himself in a position to let his brain rot and degrade to its current state, by his own life choices over the last 10-15 years or so.  He lived in isolation, he had almost no friends, he didn’t have any real hobbies, and he basically resigned himself to stop bothering to keep learning things in life.  It’s like he was in prison, except on his own volition, based on the life of low stimuli he put himself into and refused to get out of it.

Whenever I boil over from him blowing up my phone on a daily basis, in spite of me telling him to please not call me during work hours unless it’s an emergency, and he keeps calling anyway, because whenever he gets bored, lonely or depressed from the shit life he bestowed upon himself, he dials me up, and it makes my blood pressure immediately elevate at hearing my phone go off because I know it’s most likely going to be my dad, and I wince like OJ Simpson in court whenever I confirm that it is.  But when we do speak, everything I state or ask or more often than I care to admit, chastise, the response always starts with “no, but…”

Pretty much everything I suggest or try and convey is met with no, but, or some other form of pessimistic nihilism, and if anyone has ever wondered why I might have such characteristics, then this is most likely where I am getting it from.  However, the difference is that I’m still clear of mind and often times police myself, and try my best to not have such a tone and scare everyone because I’m like a big fucking chupacabra that scares people really easily apparently.

But I also get a ton of resistance and questioning from everyone else in my life, be it my own children, and people I work with.  My kids question everything, and not always in the good way, but more like when I ask them to do something they don’t want, it’s always met with great resistance, and feet dragging, and complaining.  Any time I try and flag something as (obviously) needing clarification or push back or some factor that’s coming from a place of pursuing efficiency and less wasted time, I’m the one who gets tagged as being difficult, glass half empty, or just plain fucking negative.

People like to label me as overly negative or pessimistic, but the truth of the matter is that I’m surrounded by it, and I’m the asshole if I become a product of my surroundings. 

And this is where I am currently, sick beyond words at how exasperated and exhausted I am of everyone questioning me, complaining to me, resisting me, and just not giving me any modicum of respect.  I don’t feel as if anyone alive these days respects my opinions or my time, and unfortunately I don’t really anticipate much of this is going to change in the indeterminate future.  I see no light at the end of the tunnel, which is a really shitting feeling to feel, but with my life basically being a glorified babysitter and caregiver, there’s pretty much no time for anything else; believe me, there are a lot of things I’d like to do, like set up an old laptop to be a good emulator machine for a lot of retro games I feel like playing, or exploring the potential gold I could be sitting on with some of the CIB video games that I have, but there simply just isn’t enough time left each day for me to do anything that I want, beyond maybe catching up with exercise, going off brogging a rant, or watching 1-3 episodes of Batman the Animated Series, depending on how much sleep I want to sacrifice.

I can’t really go to bed sooner than I do, because one of my kids is a problematic bed wetter, and I try to take them to the bathroom in the middle of the night to empty out their bladder to reduce the chances of a wetting episode, with it being a cautious game of chicken to not go too early in which there’s a lot of time left overnight for a wetting episode to occur, or going too late, and for there to already being a wetting waiting for me to have to fucking clean up in the middle of the night instead of 6:30 in the morning.

It would just be great if my life didn’t have to be so fucking insufferably hard, all the god damn time, and frankly it would just be great to have something to look forward to, because there’s a real lack of that in my world these days, and so I’m just kind of going through the motions at times, which is really unfair to my kids.

But for reals though, I really need my life to stop being so sucky more often than it is, and get me back to a position to where there’s more to look forward to in the day, than dreading.

eBay has the chance to do the funniest, probably most satisfying, thing in the world

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Engadget: GameStop reportedly trying to purchase eBay, with reports of offer being $56 billion dollars

I’m not going to pretend like I have any modicum of care of what’s really going on with this whole story, except that I think it’s really weird that a general small coffer company like GameStop is in any position to acquire a much larger company like eBay, but I think most of the world has seen stranger things and about as improbable takeovers in history.

But as the subject of this post says, I think eBay has the chance to do the funniest thing ever, and that’s telling GameStop that their $56B offer, has not met the reserve.

It would be satisfying to probably everyone remotely following this story, because I feel like every gamer in the history of existence has probably been fucked over or at least been insultingly low-ball offered by GameStop, and it would probably bring great joy to see eBay, much less any large conglomerate, basically tell GameStop something they’ve been telling their customers for decades.

Seriously though, how the fuck does GameStop have the gall to offer to buy eBay?  Their company is valued at like $9-11B, and where the fuck are they getting the extra $45B+ needed for their offer?  Store credit??

When the day is over, I really don’t give a fuck what happens with this.  I don’t shop at GameStop, and my eBay usage is pretty minimal, beyond impulsive niche purposes; however, I have recently learned about the CIB retro game market, and I’ve come across some clean and potentially lucrative games with boxes in my old belongings, and it would suck if a GameStop-ified eBay comes to fruition and manages to fuck up my potential earning.

All the more reason why I hope eBay tells GameStop to fuck on outta here with their offer.

Is there anyone who doesn’t know how to be a pro-athlete more than Kelsey Plum?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Sports: WNBA star Kelsey Plum demonstrates a critical lack of understanding of tax knowledge, embarrassing herself and whatever representation she claims with her proud proclamation of avoiding a tax clause but being completely wrong about it

The fact that a brogger like me is once against writing about anything related to the WNBA at all goes to show how much the sport has risen over the last few years or so, but it should be noted that once again, it is about Kelsey Plum, whom I’m inclined to believe seems to have no idea of what it takes to be a professional athlete.

A year ago, she made the news because she crashed out on an autograph hound that was camping outside of her team’s hotel, and sure, the dude was obviously one of those cretin fans that just wanted autographs with the intention to flip and profit, but from what I saw, the guy wasn’t pushy, maintained a safe and respectful distance, was out in public, and it was during the daytime.  As far as anyone seeking autographs, this person was pretty respectful, and not necessarily deserving of the criticism and combative approach from Plum.

But frankly, my general take was that the fact that someone was there seeking WNBA players, kind of goes to show how much the awareness of women’s pro basketball has risen, and that at least to me, there’s a degree of “we’ve made it” that should be considered when autograph seekers start seeking their players out.  And that Plum had a poor showing on professional athlete conduct with how she basically verbally dunked on a fan just tryna get some autos.

And here we go again, with Kelsey Plum making some niche news again, and once again the Magic 8 ball says outlook not good.

TL;DR the WNBA renegotiated their collective bargaining agreement, and it was a huge win for all the women in the WNBA because it came with a massive pay bump, leaps and bounds better than the paltry $74,000 minimum salary that was in place prior to.

Kelsey Plum, being a good basketball player, somewhat still in the prime of her career, was eligible for a $1.4M supermax contract, which again, considering the top players of the league were making less than 90% that a year prior, was due to make some big bank.  However, she ultimately signed with the LA Sparks for an approximate value of $999,999, notably one dollar shy of a cool million bucks.

She would go on to boast about how that one dollar would prevent her from hitting a threshold that would make her eligible for what’s known as the California Mental Health Services Act, AKA “the millionaire’s tax.”  To her knowledge, signing for $999,999 instead of $1M meant she would save $13,000 in taxes.

However, tax experts were quick to correct and educate the rest of the viewing world that Plum’s belief on how the millionaire’s tax worked was not accurate, and that the tax would only affect any dollars that were $1M and above. 

Had she signed for a $1M, she would have owed 13¢ in taxes on that solitary dollar that pushed her to $1M.  Had she signed the $1.4M supermax deal with the Sparks that she was entitled to, she would have had to have eaten $182,000 in taxes, but if we’re doing math over here, she would have still netted $1,218,000, which is $218,001 more than the $999,999 she signed for.  Sure, she would have had to have eaten a tax hit, but it’s funny that in her belief she was saving $13K, she ended up losing $218K.

The best part about all of this was Plum’s sheer cockiness in her belief that she had gamed some system.  Because fewer things are more hilarious than someone being so sure that they’re right about something, only to be completely wrong about it.

That being said, I’m more inclined to believe that there’s no professional athlete more ill-suited to being a professional athlete than Kelsey Plum is, because she doesn’t seem to like autograph seekers, and whether she was using an agent or not, she completely bombed at playing the salary game, and these are just kind of things that seem to be everyday life for other professional athletes.

Act like you’ve been there before, not like you have absolutely no clue to how the culture of privilege works.

Spirit Airlines dying is not good for the industry

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NPR: Spirit Airlines ceases all operations after failing to get bailed out by the government, effectively killing the company and costing thousands of people their jobs

I know that for years, Spirit has more or less been the butt of almost all jokes when it comes to airline travel.  Costs money to breathe, nickels and dimes for seatbelts and bathroom access, it’s the Greyhound of the skies, only a certain demographic travels on Spirit, etc. 

However, regardless of all the people who think they’re comedians, there was a definite place for Spirit in the industry; there is always a place for the company that deliberately tries to be the cheapest option, in a sea full of companies who couldn’t give two shits about customers.

I remember when Spirit rose from the ashes in like 2006 or 2007.  I didn’t know they had existed for a decade before then, but I remember how aggressive they were at trying to build a customer base, and I vaguely recall they had flights as low as like $14 and other mind-boggling fares, all to fill seats, sell their mission, and let people know that they existed.  I never did capitalize on any of those dirt-cheap fares, but it definitely did its job at announcing their arrival in the market.

I’ve actually flown Spirit more than most people probably care to admit.  Sure, they’re cheap, and their seats are basically plywood with light fabric covering them.  Yes, they do nickel and dime you for just about everything they can.  Yeah, luggage can be problematic if you don’t plan well.  But the thing is, if you know all the rules, and are willing to adhere to them, they’re actually not that bad.

In spite of their general reputation, I can’t say that I’ve ever really had any major problems with their performance.  Sure, there have been some delays here and there, and last year was the first time in which they inexplicably cancelled a flight on me, causing me to have to scramble, but by and large, I have flown with Spirit many times, to places like Washington DC, Dallas to Las Vegas, and they’ve typically been pretty satisfactory.

I’ve never needed to swindle, try and game the system, or cheat the agents at the gate, as long as I prepared properly, they’ve always been cost-effective and reliable at getting me from point A to point B.

So I’m sad to hear that they’re now basically dead.  Not just because tens of thousands of people are losing their jobs, not just because that hundreds of travelers were boned and left absolutely stranded and shell shocked at the notion that their flights were cancelled on account of, the carrier going completely tits up right in the middle of their itineraries.

But because the airline industry needs cost-effective carriers like Spirit, in order to keep the monopolies honest.  Sure, lots of people wouldn’t mind paying more to get a little more comfort, a checked bag, in-flight snacks and wi-fi, but when the price difference starts creeping into $300+, that typically tends to make even the most cash-flush flyers begin to scratch their heads and deliberate whether or not the cost difference is worth it.

And when companies like Spirit go away, and take their $149 RT from Atlanta to DC off the table, it leaves the lowest option to be like Delta’s basic $299 RT that passengers don’t get to choose seats, get no SkyMiles, get no cancellation policy, basically everything Spirit already did, but for double the price.

It’s crazy too, because from my point of view, Spirit didn’t operate too differently than like, AirTran did.  But for whatever reason, Spirit could just never get to that point where they grew to the point where they were enticing by a bigger company to come assimilate them like the Borg and the people running Spirit would have succeeded in the American Dream of being able to get to a position to where they could sell out.

Especially over the last few years, there were always rumors or press snippets about Spirit merging with others, like Frontier or JetBlue, but clearly nothing ever came to fruition with those.  I have no idea nor do I care to research on why that was the case, but it just seems sad that everything always seemed to fall through, and Spirit was put in this position of being the first head cut off in regards to low-cost carriers.

I don’t fly nearly as much as I used to these days, but I always did consider Spirit to be a viable option, and I can’t help but feel sad that they’ve been put out to pasture.  As much as I still bemoan the departure of AirTran from eons ago, I figure the next time I see the lowest cost option to fly to BWI or MCO being like $379, I’m going to be salty at all the parties involved that contributed towards the removal of Spirit from the field, knowing that I probably could’ve saved at least 50%, had I been willing to pay for my oxygen and sitting on covered plywood.

I’ve never had an April that has sucked more than this year’s has

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Even in the most curmudgeon periods of my life, I’ve always kind of held my breath and walked on eggshells whenever it’s come to the month of April.  Seeing as how it’s the month in which my birthday is, I’m always cautiously optimistic that they can’t possibly suck that much, seeing as how there’s a very concrete day in which the world is obligated to not be too much of a dick to me on, and I always hope that the grace of a birthday has a tendency to permeate through as much of the rest of the month as the fates are willing to grace.

Sure, I’ve had some shitty things happen in Aprils before, and history has shown a predisposition for some real bad shit to usually happen around the time of my birthday, but save for large swaths of the world crying, memorializing or mourning the departed, most of the time I can usually rely on my birthdays themselves to not be the worst days in the world.

Throw all that shit out the window this year, because not only was a really fucking sick on my birthday this year, it’s not a far stretch to say that I’ve basically been sick all throughout the month, and the fact that I can’t seem to get back to being 100% healthy has been mentally challenging, frustrating and demoralizing, especially since I feel like I could handle or have handled a lot of the frustrations of the month better than I have, had I had my health to rely upon to be in good standing through it all.

It’s like, #2 and I caught a cold of some sort early on in the month, that I remember taking almost an entire week off from the office and worked remote, and I kind of got better.  But it’s like neither of us truly got fully recovered from that sickness, and by the time I hobbled back home after my week of exile back up in Northern Virginia to clean up my old joint, both my kids had ear infections, and within a week, such had passed onto me, leading to me spending my actual birthday in a lot of pain and misery of having an ear infection that went undiagnosed by the first urgent care I went to because they suck, leading to me to suffer throughout it for several days afterward before I went to get a second opinion, and confirmation that I had some shit going on.

I’ve never had an ear infection in my life before, so let me just say how much it sucks to get one for the first time.  The feeling of a swollen or burst ear drum, the constant throbbing and being able to hear my heartbeat, the sensation that it’s like I permanently have an AirPod in the ear with noise cancellation on, because I’m hard of hearing through it.  And before I got put on antibiotics, the main was just so dull and persistent, and was absolutely handicapping when I wasn’t on some sort of painkillers.

Furthermore, ear infections are usually byproduct of bad colds, and it’s like I’ve had this one, or maybe two colds all month long, and although I mostly feel fine, it’s one of those bugs where it’s left a Chinese Great Wall of mucus in my chest and sinuses, that is taking its dear sweet fucking time in going away, resulting in a lot of aggravated coughing spells, which is wreaking havoc on my sleep and my wife’s sleep, and I haven’t felt like I’ve gotten adequate sleep almost throughout the entire month.  It’s been like an entire decade since I’ve had this kind of phlegmy misery, because I remember how much is sucked back then, and how much it sucks to have it again now.

The bottom line is that I just can’t seem to get healthy, and it sucks that basically the entire month of April has come and gone with me being sick throughout most of it.  And to add insult to injury, there’s been all sorts of bullshit happenings between my dad, the workload at work, my dad, all of the shit I have to do for my dad, the disappointment of trying to accomplish things but relying on the responses and communication of others, and of course, my dad.

As is often the case, I feel as if I’m being pulled from all sides from everyone in my life, leading me to grow frustrated and wish people would just take the reins and run without having to review everything with me first, and that I’m taken for granted on such a monumental level by pretty much everyone in my life.

And because as much as I’d like to memorialize these folks with individual posts but don’t really feel like I have the energy to do it in remotely a time-sensitive manner, some dudes I enjoyed or revered kicked the bucket this month, just to hammer down the notion that April this year sucked goat ball sacks.  But Darrell Sheets from Storage Wars apparently killed himself, with there being tremendous speculation that it came at the urging of a psychotic online bully stalker.

And although there wasn’t as much scandal behind a 91-year old man with dementia passing, Roger Sweet, the creator of He-Man passed as well, and this is one of those situations where there’s no hyperbole when I say a piece of my childhood just died, because I lived, died and breathed He-Man and the Masters of the Universe growing up, and it is truly sad to learn that that creator of such an iconic property of my childhood has left us.

Needless to say, this April has sucked colossally, and I’m relieved to see it nearing its end.  I try to not put too much stock into arbitrary windows of time, because there’s no guarantee May will be better than April for no other reason than it not being April anymore, but this past month has sucked so much that I’m willing to set my pessimism aside for just a little bit and hope that May doesn’t blow half as much as April of this year has.

More than anything, I just want my health back, and for my ear to stop ringing and to be able to hear like a normal functional adult again.  I feel like if I’m at least physically healthy, it will only help in enduring any other bullshit that might come along and is immediately made worse by my not feeling well.

I still want a re-do on my birthday though.  I haven’t opened any of the gifts I received yet, because I’ve been in such a negative headspace, that I don’t want the good intentions of any presents to be soiled by my negative headspace.

The poor Chick Fil-A recruiting class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A long time ago, there was a Chick Fil-A that then-mythical gf and I went to pretty regularly.  There was a guy that managed the place, who we called Sam; whether that was actually his name or not is irrelevant at this point, but Sam was one of those guys that had an explosively bubbly personality, was always smiling, always happy, and clearly had an 11 on his attribute slider when it came to people skills.

One time, he saw us in the drive-thru line and addressed the two of us by name, and after we had left, we had one of those collective moments that both found it a little weird that he clearly learned, us, and that we probably come by too often, to where it’s gotten to this point.

All the same, as slightly uncomfortable as it felt to be learned by Sam, there was no mistaking the fact that he ran a really tight ship, and this particular location was always firing on all cylinders.  The line moved fast, orders were almost never inaccurate, and the place had to be among the leaders or the region in terms of profit and satisfaction.

Any time mythical wife and I come across any sort of business, whether it’s another Chick Fil-A or not, where the customer service and general quality of employee performance seems below par, we often remark about how this place could use a Sam.  He’s basically become the measuring stick of effective leadership, regardless of it it’s in the fast food space or not.

Anyway, I’ve made no secret of my general love of the Chick Fil-A app, and locations that utilize an app-only lane.  The app is one of the greatest apps in the history of mobile application development, and I love how it gives me access to the app-only lanes of certain CFA locations, because fewer things in the world tickles my fancy than checking in with the app, and then bypassing at least five cars, slowly ordering and waiting in the pleeb line, multiplied only by how fast I get my food and am on my way versus how many cars are still waiting in pleeb class.

One of the greatest days of my fat guy life was when the CFA location that my house frequents the most, underwent renovations in order to implement a dedicated app lane.  Sure, when they re-opened, there were some growing pains and some training needing to be done by the restaurant and to the idiot customers, but eventually we got to a point where it became business as usual; I could whiz into the app lane, check in, pass by 3-7 pleebs in the old people manual ordering line, and be on my merry way.

However, over the course of the last contemporary school year, it has been noticed how ineffective the local CFA has become.  Long waits, frequency of inaccuracies rising.  It didn’t matter if I were using the app or not, the kitchen would get backed up and overwhelmed from what seemed like fairly predictable and busy periods that should be relatively easy to anticipate.  The app lane did very little to change things, and the gleeful text messages I’d send mythical wife of how many cars I passed in the pleeb lane were often replaced by frustrated texts detailing how long I’ve been waiting, and how generally annoyed I was feeling from this experience.

The coup de grace was when I was coming to pick up some food from the CFA, and I noticed that although the drive-thru still began with two lanes, with one of them being solely for app users, prior to reaching the pickup point, the lanes forcibly merge.  And in some cases, in a twist of irony, by the sheer nature of zipper merges, occasional pleebs who ordered with sticks, nuts and pebbles get to jump in front of the savvier app users, and conversely, few things annoy me as much as that.

Naturally, when inane bullshit like this begins to go tits up, I often ponder, how?  I began to think about how the whole school year, performance has been relatively on the lower-tier of output, and I concluded with the notion that my local CFA just simply had, a bad recruiting class. 

Much like in the same vein of when a college has a poor recruiting class, resulting in poor performance throughout the season, and an eventual sense of wanting this to be over with so that they can possibly retool and rebuild for the following year.

I suppose the people in my community and I have been taking for granted the general strong yearly performance of our local CFA, seeing as how when it’s actually bad, it’s really noticeable, but it’s still disheartening that they seem to operate much like a college program, where if you’re bogged down with marginal talent, you’re stuck with it until they all graduate out, and hopefully a more talented class takes their places afterward.

But make no mistake, the problems at my local CFA definitely stem from the fact that they had a very poor recruiting class for the 25-26 season, that can’t handle the kitchen, which in turns taxes the runners, which in turn slows down the drive thru lines, which unfortunately results in the deactivation of the app-only line in order to drop the general speed to something that the kitchen is capable of handling.

All I’m saying is, if Sam were in charge of this CFA location, none of this bullshit would even be a part of the discussion.

Every business out there, regardless of if it’s a Chick Fil-A or not, could only benefit from having a Sam of their own.

Why do people like Twizzlers?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Honest question.  Mythical wife bought this huge fucking sack of them, and they’re sitting on the kitchen counter.  The kids want them every time they see them, and much like a lot of the junk food that mythical wife buys, she barely eats it, so either I eat more of it than I should, the kids eat more of it then they should, or it ultimately gets thrown out.

Needless to say, I’ve had like two ropes of the crap, and each time I take a bite, I ask myself, why do people like Twizzlers?  They’re basically barely edible plastic, hardly have any flavor, and I feel that they’re more effort to eat than they are to enjoy, as if anyone could actually enjoy these shitty things that feel like you’re biting into a candle, with about as much flavor.  I imagine that they’re like the human equivalent of Greenies treats for dogs, because they look like plastic, are minimally edible, and when they break down in your mouth, I imagine the effect is the same, where they passively scrape and inadvertently clean your teeth.

In all fairness, I’m talking about the traditional twists variants, because I’ve found that the pull ‘n peel Twizzlers are actually enjoyable and tasty, but as far as brand recognition goes, it’s all about the traditional twists.  And the question remains, why the fuck do people actually like these things?

As I said, the bag has been laying, mostly open, on my kitchen counter.  Usually, I try to be cognizant of any food that’s left out on the counter, because once everyone goes to bed at night, the cats in my house definitely like to get up onto the counters to snoop around and look for anything remotely edible.  And yet night after night, the Twizzlers remain completely untouched by the cats.  Just a day ago, an errant bag of cereal that was left on the counter fell victim to the fucking cats, and I found it on the ground the following morning, with it shredded open in the middle like it had been caught by velociraptors.

So the dumbass cats in my house won’t eat these shitty Twizzlers, but my wife argues with me that they’re remotely supposed to be good.  I do not understand how any people think these are remotely as good as to warrant their continued survival in the junk food space.

Make it make sense pls