Author: dannyhong

Subject line: In-Office Schedule

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I saw that subject line in an office memo that came out, I knew exactly what it was going to be about.  And sure as shit, starting in August, my company is now going to four days in-office, one day remote.  Rather one day “flex,” which all but guarantees that 90% of the people who have it as a flex day won’t be coming into the office.  I know that my ass will never be coming into the office on a flex day, unless I directly told that I had to.

When I started with my company, we were still full-remote, since pretty much the whole world was still operating full-remote at the time.  It wasn’t until about April of 2022 that we were brought back to the office, and at that time, it was Monday and Wednesday in-office, Thursday being a flex day, and Tuesday and Friday being remote.  This was a good way to ease people into coming back to the office, and seeing as how my now new office had a gym that I could work out at, I relished in the opportunity to go hit the weights again, even if it meant having to come into the office again.

That being said, I came into the office on most Thursdays, despite it being flex, because it was more conducive to a workout schedule, and it turned out that I was getting more work done in the office, because at that time, my childcare situation was still an abyss of flakes prior to getting an au pair.  It also didn’t hurt that upper management acknowledged that I was present on Thursdays, which is always a plus to get brownie points from superiors.

Eventually, Tuesdays were deemed mandatory office days, with Thursdays remaining flex, and Friday being remote, which is where I’m at now.  It’s definitely a step in the wrong direction as far as personal comfort goes, because my exercise weeks are front-loaded since I’m going into the office M-W, meaning my cardio days are Thursdays and unfortunately on Saturdays too to ensure I’m running at least twice a week.  First world problems, I know, but the main thing is that the weeks now feel longer with three consecutive mandatory office days, and by the time Thursday rolls around, there’s a zero percent chance that I’m going to actually flex into the office on those days.

And as of August, it’ll be four days in the office, with Friday being the lone day where we can work from home.  I would wager money that by no later than January 2, 2024, my company will be five days in the office again, with the lone incentive to try and seem humanitarian will be a degree of leniency with working from home in the event of sickness or logical reasoning.

Continue reading “Subject line: In-Office Schedule” →

LOL’d: Zuck the grappler

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

TIL: Mark Zuckerberg has gotten into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and has become competent enough to win medals at a local event, against adults

Color me surprised at this one.  Seeing the words “Mark Zuckerberg” and “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu”  together was enough for me to try and learn more, but let’s be real here.  Nobody wants to see Zuck actually win in BJJ, most people like me want to see him get wrapped up and tap out, and keep the status quo of him being an entitled rich dork, but still completely out of his element when it comes to anything at all involving physical activity.

And the first story I came across, Zuck isn’t exactly the next GSP in the making, but the fact that he didn’t tap out, and didn’t technically lose in the video I watched, showed that perhaps he’s not a complete hopeless invalid when it comes to getting physical.  And for the record, he was going up against actual grown men, and not the kindergarteners we’d expect someone of his hypothetical physical competency should be paired up with.

Supposedly, he won two medals at this event, and I was a mixture of, “okay, so Zuck isn’t terrible at it, I guess having all the money in the world has been able to buy him some competency” and disappointed at not seeing him get twisted into a pretzel and tap out like Tank Abbott.  And the very obvious curiosity if he’s paying opponents to lay down in order to make him look good because he can definitely afford it.

But later in the afternoon, a friend of mine shared another link, from supposedly the same event, where Zuck loses a decision, but then is shown arguing and complaining to the official after the match, and as the story went, he apparently was able to get the decision reversed, and basically got another chance to compete again, to where he was able to then claim some sort of success and was rewarded with some medals.

And this is was the story and narrative that I was hoping to see and hear, where now Zuck really isn’t as good as the first and obviously cherry-picked story had him placed, and he needs to complain and whine like the spoiled entitled rich white asshole everyone thinks he is in order to attain a level of success.

I think the best part of the second video is the amount of attention Zuck’s fight was getting mainly because it was Zuck, and based on the reaction of everyone cheering on the other guy, it’s evident that even the people there were all hoping for the same result as I was; to see Zuck lose. 

The guy might have more money than many countries’ GDPs, but all the money in the world can’t buy him the amount of BJJ success as he’s hoping to attain.

Dad Brog (#110): Who knew toddler recitals were like Taylor Swift concerts?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As many parents do, mythical wife and I have enrolled #1 in dance classes, among other extracurricular activities to explore the aptitude and interest of our children to see what they might like.  She definitely seems to enjoy dance, but she’s also just three years old, so it’s way too early to tell what future lies ahead of this pathway, but for all intents and purposes, she’s nearing the completion of her first “year” of dance class.

And of course with dance classes comes an end-of-year recital, and I am looking forward to seeing my little girl up on stage in matching costumes with her peers and seeing just how well (or hilariously bad) she can work in tandem with her class.

All throughout the year, parents are pretty well-informed of everything going on with the program, and as we gear up for recital SZN (they really love to use that phrasing), emails have gone out to remind parents to get ready for ticket registration.  It turns out that the recital isn’t going to be like some local community center or a nearby high school auditorium or something, but they’re renting out an actual university auditorium, and it’ll be capable of seating close to 1,100 people.  Tickets are genuinely at risk of selling out, so we the parents are implored to be ready to register when they’re available at a specific time on a specific date.

Still, I didn’t think much of it, but when I got home, mythical wife explained to me to “be ready,” and that I should probably go get my laptop so that we could log on together.  I’m like, wtf for, isn’t this just a kids’ dance recital?  Why are we preparing for Dragon*Con hotel registration or Comic-Con membership?

I guess being part of moms groups and such have given mythical wife more insight than I have, but apparently getting our dance tickets is a really big deal, and that we should probably be very ready to go once 8pm EST hits.  But I don’t want to miss the opportunity to secure tickets for my daughter’s first recital, so I get ready to go all the same.

Sure enough, by 7:55pm, the website link we’re given to get our tickets from starts being slow to reload, and it’s clear that they’re starting to get bogged down with traffic.  8pm hits, and the button goes live, and it’s a surprising slog to get through.  The seating chart pops up, I enter our code, but I’m noticing that no matter what seats I press, there’s any reaction from the page itself.  I refresh, the site takes forever to repopulate, and the result doesn’t change.

Miraculously, mythical wife is able to get through, and secure four tickets.  However one is out of sequence, and all in all, we need five.  We solder back to the site to try and get the fifth ticket, hopefully in our row, but the site is completely borked.  I refresh and refresh, and get different results of what shows up on the page.  I get sent back to a landing and see to check back ten days later at 8 pm.  Then to check back at 9pm later tonight.  And then eventually, a crash on the page outright, and it doesn’t look like we’re going to get that fifth ticket.

Now I didn’t try and get Taylor Swift tickets when they went on sale, but I imagine it was just like what I was going through.  It’s apparent that the dance company entrusted their ticket distribution to a company that might as well have been Ticketmaster for as poorly as they go overwhelmed by a bunch of local parents who just wanted to get tickets to see their kids dance.

In all honesty, I’ve had better luck securing hotel rooms for Dragon*Con than I did trying to get tickets for my daughter’s dance recital.  I’ve never failed to get a room whenever I’ve tried, but in my first try to get dance recital tickets, I get shutout.

Apparently, this is the norm for this particular dance company, and if my kid(s) end up liking it and sticking it with the foreseeable future, I suppose I should get ready to get owned again and again for years to come.

I think I’m done gambling for a while

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I took a whirlwind, 24-hour trip to Las Vegas this past weekend, primarily to bear witness to one of my closest friends getting married.  I deliberately made the trip short, because I’m stingy with my PTO at work, mythical wife couldn’t come with me, and frankly there’s nothing good to come out of me having too much time in Las Vegas.  I’m already uncomfortable in my financial life these days, and trips like Vegas can be colossal hazards to anyone’s personal finances.

Still, short as the trip was, I made sure to tackle some of the things that I missed out on during my last trip during Labor Day, like hitting up Ellis Island, and visiting Sayulita’s, where I needed to try for myself one of the monster big ass burritos that I’d seen from their social media presence. 

And let me tell you something about this burrito pictured here, it was without question the largest burrito I’ve ever encountered in my life, and this wasn’t the biggest one on their menu too.  I waffled on the idea of going there, since I was still full from the post-wedding dinner that I got to indulge in, but I knew that if I didn’t go there, I’d be left with no real other food options except the one Shake Shack in McCarron Harry Reid which would be slammed packed from other travelers left with no other option, plus I would just simply regret not going when I was already in the city.  So I went, and even thought it was $20 after tax and tip, it definitely is more than $20 worth of food.

I wasn’t hungry at the time, but I ate a quarter of it before my flight, because I didn’t want to get hungry mid-redeye flight, and be that asshole unwrapping a monster burrito on an airplane and letting its aroma get all over the place.  After I got home and took a little bit of a recovery nap, I ate 3/4 of what was left before I felt like I was going to burst, and later in the day, I finished it off, and then I literally didn’t have to eat again for the rest of the day.

And it was fantastic, and every bit worth the trip off the beaten tourist path to go try them out.  Would definitely drop them a five-star rating on Yelp if I weren’t low-key salty about them not making me Elite status again for 2023.

But anyway, to get to the point of the title of this post, I think I’m done gambling for a while.  Not solely because I didn’t have a particularly good gambling trip in the small opportunities I had to gamble (I got pretty decimated, so much for wedding luck), it’s just that I frankly don’t have the bankrolls or the means to build the bankrolls I’d need in order to gamble as I’d like to in Las Vegas anymore.

I used to be able to stretch $500 to last a whole weekend in the past, but that amount barely kept me in the game for a single day this past trip.  Table minimums have risen across the entire Strip, and pretty much at no point does a table drop beneath a $15 minimum at any casino I’ve been to, from Harrah’s to Bally’s Horseshoe to Cosmopolitan to the Venetian.  And after like, noon, those “low” limits vanish and it’s basically $25 minimums anywhere and everywhere from there on.

Nice, manageable $10 minimums are an extinct relic on the Strip now, and that means a $100 buy in here or there just doesn’t last as long as they used to, not to mention that even at a $15 minimum, they’re harder to manage and round off to nice increments of hundos, and obviously such is done deliberately to more expediently part money away from us gambling schmucks in the first place.

Lower, more appealing to my broke ass limits are still available, off-Strip and places like Ellis Island, but other than my brother, it’s hard to convince anyone at all to go to Ellis Island with me.  I think I’ve talked about the place so much it’s to the point where people want to deliberately shun it just to troll me, that and the fact that for whatever reason, people just can’t seem to want to ever wander off the Strip in the first place.

The bottom line is that it’s gotten to the point where I can’t really afford to gamble in Las Vegas anymore.  At least at this juncture of my life, where nearly all of my earnings goes towards my kids and bills and there’s practically nothing left for me to do anything.  But it’s still a little demoralizing, because I really do enjoy gambling and being in Las Vegas, but aside from rising minimums and my cash flow not rising commensurate to keep up, the place has changed a lot since the days in which I’d make 3-4 trips a year, and after this past trip, I think I can safely say that my itch to Vegas it up in all applicable ways, is kind of gone.

But never say never, who knows how things will change in the passage of time.  Maybe I’ll make more money one day, and not all of it is hoovered up by responsibilities, or maybe but not likely Vegas will drop their minimums and bank on getting more action.  Or maybe I’ll come across some more gambling videos with supposed unbeatable, low-risk grind methods in roulette or craps that will reignite the itch.  Until then, we’ll see how long it takes for me to get back out there next.

I’ll tell you how I’m going to become rich

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

My sister made a recommendation to our family group chat about a film she saw; Happy Cleaners on Amazon Prime Video.  Just from the title alone and given the context of my very Korean family, I knew that this was definitely going to be about the Korean Story, and that it was going to fuck with my emotions.  I watched the trailer and yup, it was about the Korean Story and the trailer alone did succeed at fucking with my emotions.

Make no mistake, in spite of the title of the film, this was going to be anything but happy.  I anticipated that like so many Korean stories, this was going to be depressing, thought-provoking, probably relatable and leave me feeling like I’ll probably want to cry from having my emotional heartstrings yanked around.  Sounds like a great idea to watch right?

But because I’m a sucker for my nationality, I went ahead and watched it anyway, in spite of all the red flags of getting aboard an emotional roller coaster.

And of course, Happy Cleaners was everything I anticipated it would be, and I ended the film in a lower emotional state than which I started at.  Not only was it about an entirely too relatable Korean family much like my own, the plot of the film doesn’t really have much lateral movement, and unsurprisingly starts depressing, and ends in a more depressing state than the beginning.

To make matters worse, there’s a character in the film who’s named Danny, and he’s a Korean-American who has the weight of the world on his shoulders to the point where he can’t achieve any objectives and is working two menial jobs in order to survive.  He’s a classic underachiever, and I’m triggered because after just watching Beef, whose main character is also an underachieving struggling Korean-American named Danny, I feel like the world is trying to tell me something unpleasant.

Frankly, as much as I want to support Asians and specifically Korean or Korean-American filmmakers and storytellers, I’m just kind of over everyone’s rendition of the Korean Story.  Yes, Korean immigrants have historically had it really poor throughout the passage of time, but in most cases in everywhere in the world, when people immigrate to other countries, they’re usually going to struggle unless they learn the native language and/or get the education of the country they’re moving to. 

In most cases of the Korean Story, Korean immigrants get straight to work after arrival, seldom really try to become fluent in English, don’t bother getting an American education, and put all of their eggs and pressure onto their kids to succeed, and there just ain’t that much need for one million Korean doctors or lawyers and there aren’t that many scholarships to be had at all of the Ivy League schools combined.  Instead we’ve got hundreds to thousands of Korean storytellers all telling the same stories of their family’s struggles of surviving in America, with minimal variation.

So I’ll tell you all how I’m going to make my fortune: by writing the Korean story that isn’t the Korean Story.  Even if it’s fictitious and unrelatable to the 1.7 million Koreans in America, maybe it can just be a good exercise in escapism for all of us instead of needing yet another film of book or television special about how Korean lives suck in America.  It won’t be as exploitatively parodying like fucking Kim’s Convenience, and it wouldn’t be mentioned in the same breath as Happy Cleaners or Beef.

It can just be a story about a Korean family that succeeds at coming to America, embarking on and succeeding at achieving their American dream.  By learning English, re-learning an American education, and breaking out of the mold of working at liquor stores or dry cleaners or shitty food franchises, they become contributing members of society not completely insulated in their cultural silo.  Their kids grow up without the pressures of their entire bloodline on their shoulders, and they too become successful adults who are both well-cultured and well-educated and succeed in life.

Surely this narrative has happened somewhere in the culture, but without the angst of feeling cursed by the Korean Story, those that live it probably just haven’t gotten around to writing it out to where it could become a piece of Korean media that doesn’t make me want to jump off a bridge.

So I should just do it myself.  I’m sure I’d become filthy rich from all the Koreans who want to seek that escapism, and I’ll know I really made it if I could then get all the white guilters to get on board with it and ingest my story so that they can seem tolerant of foreigners, and then the rest will follow suite like dominoes.

Just got to have time away from parenting to get right on that though, so I guess in about 5-6 years I can pursue my destiny, hopefully.

Yeah, not going to change my mind on this one

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: Trinity Fatu confirmed to have signed deal with Impact Wrestling, will debut soon

As much as I appreciate and find enjoyment in the post-TNA era of Impact Wrestling, there’s no denying the overall perception of the promotion is that they’re very much no higher than third-tier.  WWE and AEW are the easy #1 and 2 promotions in America, and Impact is basically where anyone who is unable to land a job in the big two end up.  The roster is full of quality talents and strong workers, but there’s no denying the fact that nearly all of them have experience with  WWE and/or AEW and have landed in Impact mostly out of lack of better options.

It’s still a means to remain on camera, and in lots of cases, it’s a good low-pressure environment for workers to reinvent their characters and put in work, while still getting paid and keeping a foot jammed in the doors to bigger opportunities.  But there’s no denying that the overall perception of Impact still has the stink of Dixie Carter’s and Jerry Jarrett’s TNA all over it, and such alone is one of the highest hurdles for the brand to overcome on a daily basis.

The bottom line is, professional wrestlers don’t perform in their careers with the dream and intention to land in Impact Wrestling.  They all dream of getting to the top of the industry, or doing their best to make themselves into the top of the industry; love them or hate them, but that really means, making it to the WWE or joining the hopes and dreams hype train of AEW.

So all that being said, I can’t imagine that the hopes of Naomi, when she walked out of the WWE along with Sasha Banks, was that she was going to land in Impact Wrestling.  I imagine she hoped that the impact of her and Sasha walking out would cause a movement in the WWE creative machine to where they would be welcomed back with open arms, and some more legitimate respect would be put onto the women’s division, the women’s tag division, and maybe some more money would be thrown in their direction too.

However, what they failed to realize was that Vince McMahon was still the head dick in charge at that time, and he doesn’t even care about the Intercontinental championship much less the women’s division, and not only was their bluff called, the situation was even brought up on the air, just to punctuate their general unimpressed nature of what they had done.  Sasha would go on to Japan, become Mercedes Mone, immediately win the IWGP Women’s Championship, and is supposedly making six-figures per appearance, while Naomi has been on her ass since. 

Personally, this was not surprising to me; as much as I like Trinity Fatu and think she’s a strong performer, she was no real loss to the WWE.  Sasha Banks however, was a game changer, a franchise player, and a woman whom the division could be built around; but her conduct and general perception of her attitude put them both into a position where an old unapologetic fuck like Vince McMahon had no choice but to call their bluff and let them walk, because doing anything else is an L in his book, putting two performers above the business that nobody is bigger than.

The thing is, from the moment it happened, beyond thinking it was just a work, when it was confirmed that it wasn’t, the first thing I thought was that this was entirely Sasha’s idea, and Naomi went along with it.  Sasha has already demonstrated her willingness to walk out like a spoiled brat when things weren’t necessarily favorable for her, but when she decided to do it again, it’s clear she felt that she had to bring Naomi with her in order to feel like she was strengthening her leverage, even it if meant potentially harming another person’s career.

When the bluff was called, Sasha knew she still had demand and options, and cashed those in.  But unfortunately Naomi wasn’t as fortunate; this isn’t to say that she doesn’t have the capability of being a franchise player, but over the last decade, she’s been portrayed as nothing more than a good team player and a transitional champion at best, and no promotion is going to offer premium dollar for such perception.

And now, Naomi is now in Impact Wrestling.  The third-tier promotion that most wrestling fans don’t even know what channel to tune into in order to watch.  Even if she is shot to the top of the card to go up against the likes of Deonna Purrazzo and Jordynne Grace, she’ll still be making a fraction of the money that she would’ve been making as a WWE mid-carder.  Now I doubt her and her husband Jimmy Uso are ever going to sweat on the financial front, but there’s no denying the trajectory of her personal career has been seriously derailed, by a decision that wasn’t necessarily her own.  And as much as I like Impact now, the detour through Impact usually takes a good bit of time to reroute through.

Which brings us back to the image above, I most definitely believe that Sasha Banks screwed Naomi, and I don’t really think that I’m going to change my stance on that opinion.  The intentions of their actions weren’t bad, but the execution of it was something that you just don’t do in any line of work and expect positive results, and there’s not a single part of me that doesn’t think this wasn’t solely Sasha’s idea from the start.  I feel that she used Naomi like a pawn to try and strengthen her objective, but when it failed, she basically poisoned Naomi’s career, while she went onto to find a lucrative alternative.

Even before she married into the ultra-loyal Anoa’i family, Naomi was the consummate pro who got the business and seemed to understand that at some point, everyone in history eats shit sandwiches from time to time.  She may have been a former Smackdown women’s champion before, but she’s also done her share of jobs to the IIconics, Lana, Mandy Rose and other weak workers she could wrestle into knots if she wanted to.  There’s no part of me that believes she would ever think to walk out of the company on her own accord.

Of course, nobody will ever admit to any finger pointing or sour grapes, at least not while careers are still active.  But inevitably, both Sasha and Naomi will be back in the WWE, because on a long enough timeline, everyone comes home eventually.  They better pray that Vince McMahon is entirely out when that day comes, because that man holds a grudge like no other, and he would 100% resume whatever he had in mind for them prior to their walkout, just to prove a point, before he jobs them around for a minute, as a receipt for their past transgressions.

Speaking of receipts, to me, the real telling point would be the inevitability that Sasha Banks steps in the ring for a match against Naomi.  I would be ohhhhhh like I were watching a dunk contest if Naomi absolutely potatoes the fuck out of Sasha with like a kick to her head that’s a little too snug, as retribution for the likely 2+ years of her prime that were squandered on a really foolish idea.  Because again, nobody will ever say what they really feel, but the actions will definitely speak for them, and I’m sure Naomi is smart enough to have realized, Sasha screwed her.

Welp, that didn’t last long

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Color me a little surprised: after tremendous amounts of criticism and ridicule, the New York Mets revise the sponsorship patch on their jerseys for New York Presbyterian hospital

I’m surprised because in most cases, companies have a tendency to dig their heels in and quadruple down on their decisions, because nobody much less a gazillion dollar sport franchise ever likes admitting they were wrong.  But let’s be real here, it’s probably not (just) the criticism, clowning and ridicule they’ve been getting since debuting the former, arm-sized patch.

As I stated in my own stab at poking fun at the Mets for this, the patch was so big, it probably had the potential to affect player performance, and it probably was.  Baseball players are so neurotic and sensitive to the littlest stimuli, that a big fat patch on their arms probably made them feel a little off, and let the numbers speak for themselves:

  • The Mets as a team’s batting average is .238, which is 18th in MLB
  • Their pitching as a team has a fWAR of 0.4, which is 28th in MLB – out of 30

Keep in mind that the Mets also have a payroll of $364 million dollars which is the highest single season payroll in the history of Major League Baseball, so the expectation is that they should be the absolute best in every category in the game for as much money as they’ve invested in free agent star players.

But if you don’t think that the previous patch might not have had something to do with it, the Mets probably wouldn’t have pulled the trigger so quickly on revising this, if they didn’t believe that there was the remote possibility that it might have been affecting performance.

Either way, a good old-fashioned LOL Mets for doing the kind of silly bullshit that only the Mets seem capable of doing.  No matter how much money they dump into getting top tier pitchers and hitters, they just can’t fight the ownage that often times comes from simply being the Mets.