Tag: fail

The eternal struggle of making the best of my time

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Earlier in the week, mythical wife sprung on me that her parents would take the girls for the holiday weekend, as she wanted to go on a road trip to visit friends out of state.  The thought of a 13+ hour road trip each way was about as appealing as doing yard work, but the difference is that the yard work would always need to be addressed so long story short, I opted to stay home, completely alone and have myself a staycation.

I don’t think it’s hard to imagine that this was not a bad thing at all in my head.

However, as is often the eternal struggle for me, is fear of letting such freedom squander and my mind is always racing at trying to make sure every meal and every hour is made to be as “worth it” as I can, before my life reverts back to stressed out anxiety dad mode, and I hope to have at least one notable accomplishment during my solitude.

At the very least I can say that I’ve had a very accomplished break, as I ran a great time for my Virtual Peachtree Road Race, getting back to a sub-60 minute 10K (57:52) and I got to do it on the Silver Comet Trail, which is pretty much my favorite place to run.

Furthermore, I did tackle the aforementioned hard work, cutting the grass in not just my front and back yards, but as well as the field adjacent to my home that I’m responsible for and was hoping my now-former landscapers would tackle for my for a flat cost but clearly didn’t like the idea and has since ghosted both me and my neighbors who used them.

Needless to say, I think I actually pushed myself physically to oblivion; I mean I made the conscious decision to do yard work after running a 10K like a fucking idiot, but I thought I could handle it as long as I stayed hydrated and took some breaks.  But by the time I was done with the lawn, my body was exhausted, I had sweat buckets, twice now, and I was at the point where just about every bodily movement was resulting in Charley horse-like cramps in places I didn’t even know could cramp, like my toes and obliques.

However, I probably accomplished more in a single morning than lots of people would have done throughout a long weekend.  That’s just how I roll, where I want to accomplish all my shit as soon as humanly possible, so that I can then loaf and do more self-gratifying things for the rest of the weekend; even if it put me in some legit bodily pain.

But then becomes the real challenge, of not squandering the time I have.  After a nap, which is a rarity in my world in itself, I wanted to make sure the meals I ate were quality and whatever television or movies I watched were good.  The clock of my staycation was ticking, and the anxiousness to make the most of it was already creeping in.

At one point I felt myself getting extra antsy because I felt I was starting to squander my solo time, and I was paralyzed by indecision on feeling like I needed to do something but what, but then I began to ask myself of what was so good about going out and eating out if there was no real motivation beyond not wanting to waste the time. At some point, forcing outings becomes the waste of time and worse off, a waste of money if I’m doing it for the sake of going out.

Places these days don’t want people loitering around anymore. America in general doesn’t want to make places where people hang out and meander anymore. I racked my brain to think of places where I could nurse a cup of coffee or take my raptop and write or something, but aside from the few Starbucks that are always slammed, nothing came to mind and I realized that going out just isn’t always worth it.

This time last year, I made a post about how if I had a gun to my head and was told to relax, I’d probably be toast, and although the same applies to the present, I think I’m doing better than last.  On top of the shit I’ve already been productive with, I’ve had some good meals, explored some restaurants and watched a lot of television; some good, others regrettable, but I’ll probably post about the latter since I have some feelings about it, and I still have the time to do so.

Maybe I’ll go to the pool. That’s something I haven’t done in eons, at least not without having to keep watch on two little humans to not drown or hurt themselves.

Must every successful Korean thing get white people’d?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[This post is about Squid Game S3, there will likely be spoiler-ey words]

However, since I write for basically zero people, it’s merely a formality that has no real meaning.

Anyway, mythical wife and I just wrapped up watching S3 and the supposed finale to Squid Game, and I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about how the finale transpired and the events of the how it all wrapped up.  Fortunately for me, I managed to hold off on watching it for a few days and managed to not get spoiled along the way to which I am very grateful.

So, as far as S3 went, it was as well executed as I would have hoped it would be.  Frankly, the original season was great on its own, and I didn’t think it really needed to have a sequel season(s), but Netflix is rich as balls, money talks, and moar Squid Game we got.  Thankfully, the moar Squid Game was pretty decent as far as sequels go, and wasn’t just a shitty Ocean Twelve-like cash grab of a turd sequel, and although it wasn’t as flawless as the original was, and some Korean storytelling trope cracks did show, overall it was still well acted, visually compelling, and had a storyline that made sense for the most part.

Without giving too much away, one thing I found to be hilarious was when the VIPs showed up to the mysterious island of games, is just how poor the acting was from them.  It’s like Squid Game clearly is a global phenomenon that most any Hollywood A-lister would probably love to participate in, in a cameo capacity, and I imagine it wouldn’t be a difficult ask for any agent to get some known global stars to play the layup roles of the VIPs.

But instead, we get these no-name clown actors whose acting is terrible, and I can’t help that it was probably cast in such a way deliberately, so that the Korean showrunners could passively flex how great their Korean cast was compared to the scab foreign cast who couldn’t act their way out of a preschool play.

Anyway, as the final episode began winding down, I said to mythical wife, that I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the episode ended in an open-ended manner, because regardless of their association with Netflix, Korean television shows are notorious for always ending in open-ended manners, because they seem to always want to keep the door open for potential sequel seasons, spin-offs or moar content. 

No matter if this was supposed to be the final season of OG Squid Game, I wasn’t going to be surprised if the general plot was left with gaping holes for moar Squid Game to manifest in the future, because despite their massive steps forward culturally in some regards, Korean media can’t stop being so Korean in others.

[Okay, here come abject spoilers to those who might not have seen it]

Naturally, as all the arcs start wrapping up, there are massive hints that things aren’t going to be over when it comes to The Games, and the season wraps up with a teaser of a new, American, Recruiter character, played by none other than Cate Blanchett, goading some white bum in an alleyway in Los Angeles, in a game of all things, ddakji, leading to the obvious conclusion that Squid Games are most definitely not over, but are now beginning to take place internationally, most notably, America.

Mythical wife had already heard about news that there was going to be a Squid Game: America in the works, and I can’t say that I’m the least bit surprised, but at the same time, I’m also irritated that yet another successful Korean property is selling out for white people to white people all over it, and make their own variation of it.

It’s like Parasite, and the success and buzz of its rise to the top of the mountain couldn’t even cool off before news started swirling about how it was going to be remade by Americans, inevitably going to be cast with an entirely, for lack of a better phrase, deliberately forced woke DEI cast.

It’s like shows like Physical:100 and Culinary Class Wars and Street Food, that were so good in their original Korean iterations, but white people couldn’t just accept watching good television with subtitles on, so instead they just have all their shit remade for the comfort and convenience to white people.

I mean a story like Squid Game isn’t solely exclusive to Korea; despair, poverty, desperation, violence and empathy can be told in any nationality, so I’m sure Squid Game can easily be picked up by any other culture, even if it’s not white people, but it’s just the fact that white people are clearly so eager to white up the property, that they can’t even wait until the flowers for OG Squid Game to stop coming in before they shoe horn their own introduction into the ending of the finale, and set the stage for their impending colonization.

I digress though.  Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery and all that bullshit, and even if the Squid Game creators resisted a white spinoff, white people would just inevitably just rip it off and release something on their own in the future anyway, so might as well have the Korean creators get the bag in the process of having their shit stolen.

It’s just obnoxious how often and how quickly Korean successes become marked for white people-ization, and as much as I loved Squid Game and the cultural phenomenon it became, it irked me to see just how fast white people had to inject their sniveling little tentacles into the property, and sour the general ending for me.

The 2025 MLB All-Dead Money Team, starring Stephen Strasburg

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

When I was putting together my annual Bobby Bonilla Day post, I noticed just how much retained/dead money salaries existed in the MLB ecosystem.  At first, I was going to add it onto the Bobby Bonilla Day post, but as I was typing away, I realized that it had some legs to stand on its own, so I decided to ultimately break it off and let it fly and artificially inflate my post count that doesn’t matter to anyone else on the planet but me.

So as kind of an addendum to the Bobby Bonilla Day post, the topic this post is retained salaries, which I like to simply consider, dead money.

While combing through salary information, I noticed almost as frequent amounts of cases of retained/dead money on most teams, and this is different from deferred money because these payment obligations are not predetermined and agreed upon so much as they’re salaries that teams agree to be responsible for in exchange for these talents to be cut and free up the roster space.

That being said, there were 24 players spanning 18 teams who are getting paid despite in most cases, not being on a Major League roster, or even actively playing at all.  Combing through the names and cases, there are typically two primary camps of retained/dead money: young prospects who clearly have savvy agents who managed to get them guaranteed salary numbers, but they proved to not be ready for the Major Leagues yet, got demoted or cut, but the team was still on the hook.  Or, there are veterans with substantial money, that in most cases, fell off a cliff, got injured, and the team preferred to cut them and eat the salary just to free up the roster spot.

Naturally, 24 players is almost a roster, so here we go again – the 2024 All-Retained, All-Dead Money Starting Lineup that actually has a catcher:

Pos. Name Salary Team Retired?
C Matt Thaiss † $100K CHW/LAA Active
1B Eric Hosmer † $17.9K BOS/SDP 2023
2B Isiah Kiner-Falefa $1.2 PIT Active
3B Nolan Arenado † $5.0M COL Active
SS Wander Franco $16.5 TBR 2023
OF Mitch Haniger $14.5M SEA Active
OF Cody Bellinger $2.5M CHC Active
OF Aaron Hicks $10.7M NYY 2024
DH Jose Abreu † $19.5M HOU 2024
SP Stephen Strasburg $35.0M WAS 2022
SP Nestor Cortes $2.0M NYY Active
RP Ryan Pressley $5.5M HOU Active
RP Taylor Rogers $6.0M SFG Active
Reserves
INF Andres Giminez $1.0M TOR Active
OF Jorge Soler $1.9M SFG Active

†denotes player receiving multiple paychecks

So as you might be able to see, there’s an absurd roster to be constructed from the dead money alone, and further illustrates the egregious amounts of financial waste that exists in the constructs of Major League Baseball, as well as professional sports itself.  Sure, nobody should be obligated to work for free, and I too believe in the idea of past services rendered pay, when players are generally paupers on their minors to majors journey, if they even make it, but there are some dudes who simply don’t need the money and should probably feel ashamed to be accepting it.

Of course, I’m mostly referring to pitcher Stephen Strasburg, who is going to be making $35M from the Washington Nationals (bringing their total sunk cost amount to $60M).  Yes, the man carried the team to a World Series in 2019, and at that point, had already cleared $80M in career earnings.  Since then, he has suffered constant injuries and can no longer play baseball, but somehow the Nats are still on the hook for his retained salary until 2027, in which he will start making deferred payments from them instead.  At this time he has tripled his career earnings, and by the time the Nationals are done being handcuffed to him, he will nearly have quadrupled.

Wander Franco is a unique case, because his salary is probably going to be refunded to the Rays on account of his sexual deviancy scandal which has him out of baseball outright currently, but he still shows up on their books for the time being.

Matt Thaiss is a guy I’ve never heard of in my life, which added to my surprise at seeing him appear twice in retained lists, for both the Angels and the White Sox.  He’s a journeyman catcher who really isn’t good, but as documented, catching is the thankless position, so he seems to have always managed to have a job.  But his agent clearly seemed to be clever enough to ensure that he still got a paycheck, and although both teams are only on the hook for $50K a piece, which is pennies to a Major League squad, $100K to play baseball is still the dream, and why Thaiss makes a roster at all.

As far as dead money goes, there’s about $146,789,000 of it on the books of these 18 teams.  That would rank 16th in MLB payrolls, higher than 14 other teams.

Which brings me to one final observation before I begin to wrap all this up: six teams managed to have absolutely no deferred money obligations, nor did they have any dead money retained salaries.  The A’s, the Detroit Tigers, the Kansas City Royals, the Miami Marlins, the Texas Rangers, and of course, the Atlanta Braves.

People accuse me of being pessimistic and curmudgeon about the Braves and their perception that they don’t spend money, but it all comes from actual evidence.  The team is so risk-averse and absolutely unwilling to compete when it comes to any transaction that requires them to open their wallets.  There’s zero creativity when it comes to paying people, and as a result they lose out on every free agent that could possibly help them, and it’s laugh-worthy whenever the Braves’ name is mentioned an interested party in any available free agent.

As much as baseball nerds love to debate and typically applaud teams for smart spending, as it’s demonstrating more and more these days, sometimes you have to spend some money in order to get results.  Everyone may hate the Dodgers for committing a billion dollars to their roster, but there’s little reason to believe that they’re not going to cruise to the playoffs this year, and every foreseeable year afterward.  And when their payments start to come due in the 2030’s, they’re no guarantee to turn into the 2010s Phillies, because they have smart, creative people in their free agent that aren’t afraid to find alternative ways in order to remain competitive.

The six teams that have no debts whatsoever, I don’t really see that as much of a good thing as much as I see six franchises that are cowards when it comes to spending money, and more interested in finding the perfect balance of maintaining a baseball club while padding the pockets of investors.  The challenge as fans is to able to sift through the context, and find out how much teams feed us bullshit, versus how much they’re actually willing to invest.

Anyway, much like Bobby Bonilla Day, when it comes to retained salaries, there’s a tremendous amount of waste here as well.  I don’t know if I will do this one on an annual basis, because I found that writing about this topic dregs up more angst and venom towards the Braves than any Braves fan really should have towards the team they’re actually fans of.

Perhaps if they haven’t been underperforming as much as their roster’s potential could be great, I wouldn’t feel this way, but we’ll see where we land this time next season.

Bobby Bonilla Day presents the 2025 MLB All-Deferred Money Team

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year again, where Bobby Bonilla collects two big* paychecks from the New York Mets and Baltimore Orioles for playing baseball despite the fact that he’s 62 years old today and hasn’t played baseball since 2001; and I trot out this annual post to put on blast just how stupid and egregious that baseball salaries continuously escalate.

*$1,193,248 from the Mets and $500,000 from the O’s; paltry in the grand spectrum of MLB salaries, but still tremendously more than what successful doctors, teachers and actual essential personnel in the real working world make

It’s funny this year, because of the Dodgers’ absolute bonkers spending spree, and spamming of salary deferral, the whole concept of deferring salaries has come under a massively public microscope.  Most old nerdy fans like me know it’s all well within the rules and that any team in the league can employ it, and as I’ve documented, many have throughout the years, but nobody has really done it to the effect of the Dodgers have over the last offseason, promising out over a billion dollars to several players that will be paid out mostly between the years of 2030 through like, the end of the human race, at the rate we’re going.

But even in spite of the Dodgers’ deferral spree they went on this year, in the grand spectrum of the 2025 season, the Dodgers are but just a mere blip on the radar in the master list of deferrals, as well as dead money throughout the league.  Granted, this will change dramatically in the 2030’s, when Bobby Bonilla’s contract finally ends, and the Dodgers’ deferrals start to kick in and I’ll probably have to change the name of these posts from “Bobby Bonilla Day” to “the Dodgers present,” but until then, there’s still a lot of life in this little exercise continuing to be named after Bobby Bo.

Anyway, on with the show.

In the 2025 season, there are 24 players making deferred monies, according to Spotrac, spread between 14 teams.  Compared to last year, this is one less player and one less team, primarily on account of Ken Griffey Jr. finally coming off the Cincinnati Reds’ books despite not having played since 2010.  I made a joke last year that it was perfect that it was 25 players, since rosters (used to be) are 25-man rosters (with a 26th injured reserve spot).

However, in spite of the one fewer player and one fewer team, these 24 players are making an estimated $83.156M, which is a higher payroll than three teams’ total payrolls: the Chicago White Sox, Miami Marlins of course, the Oakland the Sacramento The A’s.  Barely avoiding the embarrassment of being outspent by a roster of deferred salaries are the Tampa Bay Rays and Pittsburgh Pirates.

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I think companies should be more zero tolerance about security breaches

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A little while ago, I was having a stressful morning at the office.  My workload has been quite high over the last few weeks and the quality of the projects I’m on have been leaving a lot to be desired as far as the competency of those I’m required to collaborate with, and I spent more time in meetings than I do actually working on most days of the week.

But to top it all off, my company’s IT department sent out a company-wide mandate about sweeping security changes, with a little less than 48 hours of lead time.  My first thought was, when the fuck am I going to have time to go through any of this bullshit when I can barely, actually cannot, get through my own preexisting workload on a regular basis?

I prioritized this less than the importance of finding a quiet bathroom to take a breather in and went on with my days, but unlike a lot of the bluffs that IT sends out, on Wednesday morning, I finally hit a point where all my authentications had expired, and it was now time to reauthenticate onto the network and all the shit controlled by our SSO procedures.

Naturally, since I had neglected to address it when initially notified, I had to scramble to get back on the network, and unsurprisingly the instructions that were sent by IT on what we needed to do weren’t working.  I’m no engineer, but I’m technically competent enough to be able to follow directions, and when shit wasn’t working, I had to go down to our IT floor, which is the pain in the ass I don’t want to do it equivalent to mythical wife’s feelings about needing to speak to someone on the phone.

Turns out there was still something that IT had to do with each and every user, which wasn’t mentioned, and within five minutes of having to get some face time with IT, my issues are resolved, and I could be on my merry way, but not without having derailed my entire morning and frankly, all future instances of where I need to reauthenticate my credentials.

All I could think of after this stupid ordeal, was how shit like this became a necessity on account of one or a few isolated incidents of some dumbasses within the company that probably fell for a phish or continuously have failed our periodic security checks.  No security protocols are as secure as the intelligence of the dumbest end user, and the prevailing thought in my mind is that I think that companies should be more zero tolerance when it comes to their employees failing security checks, and fire them on the spot for getting busted for being weak links in the fence.

Now full disclosure, I have failed a phish test once, on account of a moment of weakness where the company clearly managed to pique to my Asian love of name brands, claiming to have company apparel made by UnderArmour.  Since then, I haven’t bitten on a phish test, and am probably one of the more obnoxious end users who reports emails as possible phishing attempts on a regular basis, even when I’m 99% sure it’s legitimate.  And sometimes, I’ll use the report phish button as passive aggression, reporting things I just don’t want to see from the company as phishing attempts, but the point remains despite my own early-tenure discretion, I’ve been pretty exemplary when it comes to not getting phished.

I feel like if companies were a little more draconian and zero tolerance when it comes to security protocols, the more stimulating of a workforce we’d be in.  It would help weed out all the olds who won’t fucking retire and allow for the advancement of more competent employees, and it would naturally help filter out all of the unqualified goons who lied or affirmative action’d their way into their roles. 

Companies shore up their security, and those who have been axed for their shortcomings have a chance to learn, grow and with the sheer amount of job fluctuation in the workforce, allows the entire marketplace to be stimulated and fresh, with people moving around at a rapid rate.

And then there would be lesser needs for companies like mine to do massive, reactionary, wide-sweeping IT initiatives like my company had to do, and there would be less wasted time on massive scales.  Everyone wins!

Heat check: Kelsey Plum’s fan interaction

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

SI: debates churn over WNBA star Kelsey Plum’s conduct when encountering an autograph seeking fan outside of the team hotel

My knee-jerk reaction when I saw this clip, was along the lines of lmao, the WNBA hasn’t ever had fans since before Caitlin Clark that their players have no idea how to conduct themselves when it comes to interacting with people who want autographs. 

I didn’t think the fan was overstepping any boundaries beyond being an obvious autograph seeker-slash-reseller, but it didn’t sound like he was being a pushy dick, and I thought Plum’s reaction and conduct were unnecessarily rude and combative, which led me to immediately think about how ironically funny it was that she probably just wasn’t used to there being such an interest in women’s professional basketball, and her going off the deep end as a result.

But I’m also a man, and I understand and can see both sides to the debate.  Women have gotten the short end of the stick when it comes to respect in athletics no matter how much they excel at the crafts in which they apply to, and so many men in the world are just fucking creeps, so I don’t really blame many women for having their shields up by default, especially when it comes to seeing men, looking for them specifically.

Autograph seekers-slash-resellers aren’t exactly the most savory people in the world, but they’re one of those things that comes with the territory when it comes to being a professional athlete and/or a celebrity.  Some people want autographs because they’re fans, and there are unfortunately people who want autographs because they see them as a way to make a quick buck.

It also doesn’t help that like 100% of them are dudes, which they already have one strike against from women, being men, but then they’re doing something that is most likely for selfish purposes which doesn’t help.

The fact that this story is a story goes to show that the WNBA has garnered more interest than it did a few years ago, and although I imagine that a lot of its players have grown to resent the Caitlin Clark train, she clearly has helped bring an increased level of focus onto the league as a whole, to the point where autograph seekers are now seeking autographs from other players.

Who really knows what was going on in Plum’s head at the very moment of this interaction.  Maybe she was having a bad day, the Sparks were coming off of an L or something, I don’t know, and neither does anyone else.  But I do feel like coming out firing with criticism probably wasn’t the best approach, regardless of if anyone feels she should be grateful that people have grown to care enough to want autographs, regardless of their motive.

Honestly though, Kelsey Plum kind of had it easy with this fan.  Female professional wrestlers have it way worse, with creepy wrestling fan incels not only doing the exact same thing, hanging out at hotels, but also following them at airports or public places, with a few having been noted to following them in parking garages.  Plum having a guy waiting outside the team hotel, in daylight, around other people, maintaining a stationary, manageable distance away when asking for autographs is nothing on the creep scale in comparison.

My personal conclusion is that Plum was in the wrong on this one, she could’ve been a little more polite and not come out guns blazing.  Her criticisms potentially make future fans think twice about trying to have an interaction with her or any WNBA player, and those fans could be the little girls and women that the league is trying to inspire.

Perhaps if more people get interested in the WNBA, the lesser we’ll see such weird and uncomfortable interactions between their players and potential fans.

CAITLIN CLARK CAITLIN CLARK CAITLIN CLARK PAIGE BUECKERS PAIGE BUECKERS PAIGE BUECKERS lol

Baseball players’ lives are clearly so excruciatingly hard

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Athletic (paywall’d): MLB players complain about how hard their lives are because they have to work all summers

Honestly, I didn’t intend on actually reading the article, because the quotes in a teaser post were all I really needed to get all hot and triggered and ready to lay blast onto a bunch of overpaid professional athlete man-babies.  But I clicked the link in order to get the URL to link to, and must’ve gotten lucky or something because the paywall didn’t come up before I could copy the whole article, paste it into a document and actually read it after all because fuck paywalls.

But the TL;DR of the whole thing was apparently an anonymous (of course) poll went out to all MLB players and apparently the query of what the biggest misconception about the lifestyles of baseball players was a hot button topic, because it spawned this entire snowball rolling downhill to where it became an article, and snarky broggers like me use it as fodder to air out my own grievances with the wealthy complaining about first-world problems.

More than 130 anonymous (of course) players basically were quoted with some absolutely asinine and tone-deaf lines about how hard their lives are, despite the fact that the league minimum this season is $760K.  And almost every one of these quotes is easily rebuttable and can chalk up to the fact that some privileged millionaire is complaining about things that most anyone that wasn’t a professional athlete would gladly switch places with in order to just get a taste of.

And for the sake of my own amusement, I’m going to take guesses and switch in names of all these anonymous baseball players, because frankly it’s probably not that difficult or too far off to identify who’s been saying some of these idiotic quotes.

Our life is awesome, but it’s not as easy as people think it is,” one National League pitcher Zack Wheeler of the Phillies said. “I don’t know if fans realize that when we say we spend more time with our teammates than our families, we’re not exaggerating. It’s not even close. That’s why I say if you want to be a good dad, a good husband, it’s not easy.”

As both a husband and a dad, I’ll admit there are times in which I’ve felt the want for some general freedom from any sort of attachments.  From what I’ve gathered from all sorts of professional athlete autobiographies I’ve read in my life, I’m sure a lot of pro athletes on the daily probably aren’t complaining about the general nature of getting to be alone and unattached when they’re on the road for 3-4 months of a season. 

Frankly, I bet the underlying message between Wheeler’s remarks is the fact that it’s hard for him to be a husband and dad when he’s home, because he’s all used to being among bros and the team and struggles to turn it off when he’s actually home.  And if that’s the case, that’s more a matter of his maturity and priorities than it is baseball being hard

Continue reading “Baseball players’ lives are clearly so excruciatingly hard” →