Author: dannyhong

It’s all about perspective

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I had a thought today, that I realized that since 2023 has started, my job has kind of sucked.  This isn’t to say that I need to update my LinkedIn profile and start fervently looking for an exit strategy, but that coincidentally since the start of the new year, everyone coming back to work after the holidays and lots of people who feel they need an arbitrary date of a calendar before they start tryharding, it’s been a bit of a lengthy rough patch.

I still work with good people, and I like a lot of the people I work with, but it’s just been frequently busy, the nature of the work I’m doing often feels somewhat pointless, and not particularly gratifying.  I feel that due to employee turnover on the project management side, there’s some communicative chasms that are forming that’s creating a lot of job tickets that are full of incomplete/inadequate information, and I’m spending more time on the clock playing detective and trying to track down information versus doing my actual job, and when I am doing my actual job, there’s a backlog of job tickets, because of insufficient project management.

Seldom do I have as much downtime as I used to have, and I’m often going from ticket to ticket, and in this frustrating game of stop-and-go with trying to work versus knowing what I’m supposed to work on, and all the conversations with my superiors and skip-level meetings haven’t really gotten any traction at improving any of the frustrations of the job.

Here’s the thing though: no matter how unsatisfying and occasionally frustrating my job has been over the last six weeks, I still realize that I had to think and analyze and come to the conclusion that things aren’t particularly great on the job front right now.  And compared to where I was at prior to 2022 and changing jobs, it’s still a relative cake walk, and just how abysmally terrible things were prior to switching.

Like, my old boss at my old place of work made my life a living hell every single day I was on the clock.  From her endless pursuits of hyper-analyzing everything I did, looking for any and every angle possible to criticize me about, to initiating a timeline in which I could have potentially ended up fired, because I didn’t CC her on an email once, the word “toxic” doesn’t even come close to being adequate at describing my work life at my old job.

I was driven to such misery that I’ve become partially numb to when work is actually sucking, because my current situation isn’t that great right now, but I’m able to compare it to where I was before, and it’s really not that bad in comparison.

Ultimately, I’m just glad to be employed.  I’ve had moments of concern for my job, because I’ve seen more people let go by this company in 13 months than I had seen in six years at my previous place, and when my workload becomes too trite and full of projects that don’t seem worthy for someone at my paygrade to be doing, not that I personally feel that I am above anything, perception is reality to the working world, and it’s not about what I think so much as it could be seen by those above me, that I’m getting paid too well for the scope of work that I’m being assigned.

But as long as I stay busy and am helping keeping shit assignments off of people who don’t want to do them, I suppose I can feel some modicum of job security.  And as long as I don’t have to deal with the c-word of the old boss I used to have, pretty much any job in the world is perfectly fine.

Whatever it is, I’m all in

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Source: Calvin & Hobbes creator, Bill Watterson, comes out of retirement to produce an illustrated book for grown-ups

Honestly, despite the accusations of the announcement lacking substance or any real hints at what the nature of this future work is going to be like, I don’t really need it.  Calvin & Hobbes has had such a profound influence on my life as a whole, you could tell me that Bill Watterson was coming out of retirement to produce a book on growing garlic, I’d still be interested, and anticipate there being some sage wisdom in it.

I don’t even care that Watterson isn’t even the artist in this book, I know he’s a legend already artistically, but he’s also a masterful storyteller.  Seriously, I believe it’s possible to remove all artwork and just leave the text throughout all of Calvin & Hobbes, and it would still be interesting.  I look forward to the return of Watterson in The Mysteries, and it’s definitely not something I would have ever imagined, being taken back to 1995, anticipating his next release, only to be devastated in knowing that it was going to be his last.

Either way, it’s something to genuinely look forward to this year, and much like I do with film and television I really look forward to, I’m going to do my best to avoid anything about it until it’s actually released.  It’s surreal to think that after finishing Calvin & Hobbes back in 1995, I’ll be reacquainted with his work again nearly 30 years later.

Re: the Super Bowl LVII ending

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although I agree that the ending of Super Bowl LVII was less than thrilling, make no mistake, it was still one of the best Super Bowls there’ve been in recent years.  Patrick Mahomes and Jalen Hurts put on one of the most exciting Super Bowl quarterback battles since like Peyton Manning versus Drew Brees in XLIV, with both of them putting up monster numbers and neither of them blinking until the ending of the game.

And as much as I loathe the Philadelphia Eagles and revel in the fact that they’re the third Philadelphia major sports team to lose a championship in the 2022 season, I personally like Jalen Hurts.  He’s an honorable, mature man in a sport full of overgrown man-babies, and even throughout college, he demonstrated honor, class, integrity and has always been respectable in my opinion.  And despite being on the losing end of the Super Bowl, he put up the superior numbers against Patrick Mahomes, soon to be forgotten solely because he didn’t win the game.

But getting back to the point of this post, it’s been really interesting to me to see in the aftermath of the Super Bowl, all of the butt-hurt filthy casuals and not-actually sports fans who are bitching and moaning about the anti-climactic ending to the game.  Yes, the Chiefs downing the ball at the 1-yard line and milking the clock and kicking a go-ahead field goal with just eight seconds left sucked all of the excitement of the Mahomes/Hurts duel, but it was one billion percent the absolutely correct strategy to employ for the objective of winning the goddamn game.

The Kansas City Chiefs give absolutely zero fucks about what anyone thinks about the finish, because they accomplished the only thing that mattered: winning the goddamn game.  If the Eagles had the ball and they were in the same scenario, there is a two billion percent chance that they employ the exact same strategy.  Milk the clock, take the lead, and give the opposition as little time as possible to have any chance at countering.

And to the filthy casuals and not-fans who ask why?  Because throughout history, the NFL sees this scenario happen on a fairly regular basis, it’s just not often that it occurs in the Super Bowl.  Sure, everyone loves touchdowns, but when a field goal is all that is necessary to win, it’s always the right call to chew up as much clock as possible and kicking the field goal, and in fact, it’s actually more detrimental to score the touchdown if it means salvaging some time for the other team in order to make a counter attack.

One prime example of the touchdown blowing up in a team’s face actually involved the Atlanta Flacons who obviously haven’t ever recovered from the fuckup of Super Bowl Lee, and there was a game a few years ago where the Flacons were playing the Detroit Lions, and they were down with a minute left, 14-16.  When it was evident that the Flacons were going to score, the Lions basically conceded the end zone, hoping to salvage some time and get the ball back as quick as possible.  Despite the fact that a field goal was all that was necessary for the Flacons to win, running back Todd Gurley had a brain fart when rushing into the end zone, and despite his best efforts to drop at the 1-yard line, he crossed the plane and accidentally scored a touchdown.  The Flacons took the lead, but they left a minute on the clock, to which any NFL fan knows is the equivalent of like 15 when considering timeouts, commercials and clock stoppage.  Naturally, the Lions would score their own touchdown as time expired to defeat the Flacons, validating the importance of the strategy that the Chiefs employed.

In fact, off the top of my head, the same tactic was almost employed in Super Bowl XLVI, where the Giants tried to kill the clock, but Ahmad Bradshaw too, fell into the end zone despite his efforts to stop short.  It just so happens that the Giants defense managed to neutralize Tom Brady, but New York fans were sweating those last 82 seconds of the game, knowing Brady’s reputation for late-game heroics.

The point is, the Chiefs made the right call, and everyone bitching about it is just some filthy casual scenester tourist into the world of sports fandom, and your opinions hold zero weight and do not matter.  It wasn’t exciting, it wasn’t fun, but it got the fucking job done, and anyone who knows the game of football knows that in every single similar situation, the outcome would be the same 100% of the time.

Dad Brog (#104) – The impending threenager

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t want to give off the impression that these dad brogs are only reserved for when there are aspects of parenting that are only stressful and infuriating, because contrary to such logic, there are tons of times in which there’s nothing I love more in existence than being the dad to my children.

The last time I wrote a dad brog was when burnt-out dad went on his blow-off trip to visit his brother in Texas, and frankly it was a tremendous help and I felt that a lot of good came out of it.  It’s amazing what just two days of getting to sleep in without any semblance of an alarm can do for one’s mind and mental well-being.  Since returning from that trip, I think things have been pretty well overall, and in the world of parenting, no news should be considered good news, and it’s on me that good news goes quiet when it really shouldn’t.

In fact, the image above was something I made that I wanted to write a blurb about, how my oldest loves her maple syrup, and has this amusing ritual on waffle mornings, where she’s conservative about how much syrup she uses while dipping in her waffle strips, with the seeming express intent so that she can drink the rest off her plate at the end instead.  Immediately, I’m reminded of Super Troopers whenever she pulls that off, and such photoshop work is the ensuing result.

But such is the nature of parenting, is having the time to actually embark on hobbies of mine, such as writing.  Not to mention I’m such a neurotic kook about my writing habits that if one thing is off, regardless of if I have the time, and writing just doesn’t happen.  Instead, it’s kind of put on the shelf until parenting gets difficult again, and it just so happens to be convenient that the impulse to write again happens only when I’m getting annoyed by a parenting trope.

A few weeks ago, my entire household got sick.  It wasn’t coronavirus, it wasn’t the flu, it wasn’t strep throat; it was just some nasty bug that started with #1, passed on to #2, and then slowly picked off everyone else in my household, including our au pair.  It was during this time that #1 had some truly miserable times while she was dealing with the worst of the sickness.  Massive emotional meltdowns, crying and snot screaming over anything and everything, and mood swings that changed at the drop of a hat at times.

During the peak of the plague, she kind of got a pass on the exasperating behavior, because there was the possibility that it was onset by just feeling like crap.  But I remember having this dreadful thought in my mind, and asking mythical wife on what if this wasn’t just sickness, and this was the new norm of her development?

Welp, the household is just about entirely on the mend at this point, nobody’s nearly as sick as they were last weekend, and sure enough, the emotional instability of #1 remains as it did when she was sick.  #1 is less than a month from becoming three years old, which means we’re embarking on the journey of having a threenager in the house.

Heaven have mercy on our souls, it’s been trying at times.  Every event throughout every day has the potential to turn into a nuclear meltdown, and it’s a Christmas miracle whenever I can have a morning that doesn’t turn into a disaster zone for breakfast. 

Fortunately, #2 is at the stage in life where most everything is fairly predictable and she’s the chill kid of my two, because if she were still Civilization nuclear Gandhi at the same time as #1 being her own rage demon, I’d probably want to jump off a cliff.  Unfortunately, whenever #1 goes into one of her tantrums, she occasionally takes it out on her little sister, which requires some Pat Riley defense to anticipate and prevent sometimes.

Either way, this is where life is at in the journey of parenthood currently.  Taking a break a month ago was a critical success, and is something I and we, as in mythical wife and I, need to embark on from time to time in order to not lose our heads, and it better prepares us mentally for when shit like raising a threenager starts to heat up.

I kind of respect the brutal honesty

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s not personal, Brooklyn. I just hate this city, the fans, and everyone in this organization and want to watch them burn out of spite.

The best part of the whole quote is where he says “It’s not personal.”

I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t pay that much attention to the NBA these days, but I know who Kyrie Irving is, and when I saw this come up in my news feed, I had to scrunch my brow and just go wow.  These are some bombs of words to be flinging out there, and in an age where people are reluctant to burn bridges because the internet has made the world small, everything is basically recorded forever, and people just don’t know when their words can come back to haunt them, Kyrie Irving still gave zero fucks and basically told not just the Brooklyn Nets, the team that he actively plays for and signs his paychecks, but the entire city of Brooklyn, New York, that he hates them and fuck you all.

Personally, I’m not a fan of Kyrie Irving; he’s this enigma of a human being that I feel was blessed with basketball talent, coasted through life, has enjoyed immense success professionally and made a tremendous amount of money, but is still somehow an insufferable asshole who seems to get off on being a contrarian.

However, personal feelings aside, like the title of this post says, I kind of respect the brutal honesty he had no hesitation in letting become a quote.  At some point in most peoples’ lives, who hasn’t been furious with an employer before?  Whether they cared to admit or not, felt the same kind of feelings towards those jobs, as he felt about the Brooklyn Nets?  And on top of the discontent with his employer, in the world of sports, fans are about the most insufferable people on the face of the planet, much less ones from Brooklyn, New York.

I don’t really like Kyrie Irving, but I can only imagine the amount of bullshit he heard from fans on a regular basis.  In spite of my personal feelings, I’m not going to deny for a second that the guy is talented as all hell, and is genuinely a generational-level talent; when he actually feels like putting in the effort.  He can score, he can pass, and he can take over games by himself; I imagine a lot of the shit he hears on the regular is why he hasn’t delivered a championship for as much money as he’s making, as if sports fans were completely convinced that one guy could actually accomplish victory entirely by themselves.

Michael Jordan couldn’t.  Kobe Bryant couldn’t.  LeBron James couldn’t.  They all had good teams surrounding them, and unfortunately for Kyrie Irving, he hasn’t had the right good team surrounding him since 2016, when he had LeBron James piloting the Cleveland Cavaliers team he was on.

So I kind of get and I do enjoy the unfiltered venom Kyrie Irving had to say about the Nets and the city of Brooklyn itself, and I applaud him for raising the bar for any discontented professional athlete that is demanding to be traded.

Continue reading “I kind of respect the brutal honesty” →

I mean is it really an upset anymore?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Although it would be great if this was a sign that the defending ACC Champions of Men’s basketball were waking up and priming themselves for a repeat of last year’s tournament march, I’m not going to hold my breath.  The win against Duke was definitely a highlight of the season, but notching a win against UVA is like a cherry on top.

But seriously, is it really an upset anymore to see the Hokies beat UVA anymore?  It’s kind of like Duke in the sense that historically UVA has eaten Tech’s lunch in men’s basketball, but over the span of the last decade, there have been quite a number of times in which Virginia Tech has basically, troll-beaten UVA, screwing up whatever rankings they have at the time in which they’ve played.  And make no mistake, much like Duke, UVA has almost always been a ranked squad over the last decade, while Virginia Tech sporadically gets hot for brief moments in time, often times against UVA, having beaten them as highly ranked as #2 in the nation.

Despite the lopsided historical record between the schools in favor of UVA, over the last three years, it’s been deadlocked at .500, with UVA now having lost three in a row in Blacksburg.  That being said I bring up the query on whether or not it should really be considered an upset anymore when schools like Duke and UVA come into town and lose, because whatever it is about the last decade or so, Blacksburg is becoming a place where there’s always a chance for Tech to beat even the bluest of bloods.

All the same, much like the aftermath of the Duke job, the fans stormed the court; and I’m looking at the footage of the jubilation, and sure it’s a fun event and all, but I’m just kind of like, this has literally happened for the third straight year; this is not really out of the ordinary and doesn’t really seem like it’s worth storming the court over at this point.  But whatever, all wins are good regardless of whom they’re against, but me personally, I’ve always found it the most satisfying whenever Tech topples North Carolina or Clemson.  Or Notre Dame, now that they’re basically an ACC school.

This story tickles me in a way that only other parents would get

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of us, one of us: extreme tidy-er Marie Kondo admits to giving up on extreme tidiness and that her house is messy

This is what we would call a pivot, in the working world.  I didn’t realize that Marie Kondo was two years younger than me, and it probably would’ve been a real fucking chore to maintain the air of minimalist perfection for the rest of her life in order to maintain her brand, not like she really needs it anymore considering her book has sold over 40 million copies and her Netflix show had already been a big hit.

Coming out to the public to explain that she’s mostly given up on being tidy, and that her own home was messy, probably the smartest thing to do.  Better to disclose the intel on her own terms instead of having someone find it out, disclose it on the internet, and have the wrath of the internet be all over her calling her a fraud and a hypocrite that tells other people what to do with all their shit but doesn’t know how to handle her own.

But what this really boils down to is the fact that the reason why the Queen of Clean has become the Herald of Hoarding just like that, is the same reason why millions of people like me struggle to maintain our own capabilities of tidiness as much as we’d like to: kids.

Her book went gangbusters in 2011, but then she got married in 2012.  Presumably it wasn’t long before did kids come into the equation, so it’s actually very impressive to me that she had the wherewithal to even entertain producing her Netflix series that dropped in 2019, which either means she was an absent parent or her husband filled in admirably, perhaps both.

But as is often the case, once the number of kids begins to outnumber the adults in a family unit, that is where the shit begins to hit the fan.  And this is coming from someone who’s family is currently at a 1:1 ratio, and I still feel like I’m losing control all the time.  I couldn’t imagine bringing another into the home, and mythical wife and I take measures to make sure that such will become an impossibility.

And in Kondo’s case, third child enters the fray, and suddenly she’s no longer able to keep up with being KonMari, professionally, or in her own personal life.  I think it’s hilarious that she didn’t just go from “no longer being tidy,” to being “my house is messy” because frankly that’s the kind of transition that my household went through when kids started entering the equation.

The point of all this is that kids quite literally, break anyone.  If they can break a wealthy multi-media success like Marie Kondo, they’ll have no problem at all busting up the lives of all the rest of us plebes who decide to reproduce and repopulate, and the more non-parents can comprehend just how difficult it is, the better chance of understanding and empathy can emerge.