Tag: comparison

Life as The Janitor class

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Like many topics that swirl around in my head that I think about writing a post about, there are times in which I feel like I have to be in the right mood and/or headspace to optimally write about a particular one.

Considering #1 peed all over her bed because we’re still in the process of night potty training her, and #2 decided to obliterate her night-time diaper, probably because I’ve let the kids eat some fairly rich foods over the holiday weekend, which meant I had to clean everything up in the tiny window of time in which is usually spent ushering the girls downstairs for breakfast, I think I’m in the right frame of mind to write about this one finally.

A long time ago, my friends and I played this one board game; I think it was Nemesis Lockdown, because it’s the only board game that I can Google that sounds like what I’m trying to recollect.  Among the playable classes was The Janitor, and that stands out because I’d never heard of a game that took such realism into consideration to where they’d force a player(s) to take on the role of an actual custodian.

And it wasn’t a case of where it was a class in name, and that The Janitor was more a metaphor in that they CLEANED UP THE OPPOSITION or anything remotely more audibly interesting than what actual janitors do.  No, The Janitor class was an actual janitor, where their primary action is to, eliminate waste, that other players and the monster classes leave behind in their wake.  Like, the typical turn for The Janitor was, movement phase towards a tile where waste was, and action phase, the act of cleaning up said waste.  No cool special talent, no hidden bonus to where they could one-shot a baddie, their sole existence in the game was to shuffle around the board, cleaning up after everyone else.

Here’s the twist to the game – if The Janitor were ever to be eliminated, the clock in which the game comes to an end would accelerate to an insurmountable speed.  The game was set up to where there was no way for The Janitor to ever stay on top of the amount of waste that other players and enemies generate, and required tactical management and prioritization of waste disposal.  Smart, cerebral players learn and know how to manage waste disposal to where it doesn’t hinder the survival cause too much.

But if The Janitor were killed, there is no more player who can eliminate any waste, and after every player phase, more and more waste accumulates in the base, and eventually the map becomes immovable.  Either players trap themselves in a prison of waste, or they’re forced to evacuate the base to where monsters would more than likely overwhelm and kill them, but either way, the game ends much faster after the elimination of The Janitor than if they live.

That’s basically what swirls through my head on a daily basis when I spend an absurdly inordinate amount of time of my life cleaning up after other people.  I try not to think about it too much, but the reality is that so many people in my life are basically slobs.  Family, friends, my own household, it’s like everyone I know has way more shit than they know what to do with, and as a result, it’s just piles of said shit all over the place.  And it’s like I’m not only a player who has my own set of tasks and duties to do, but I’m also The Janitor on top of it all, and having to do all of the tasks and duties of The Janitor, except I still only have the number of movement and action moves of one player.

It’s often overwhelming and always frustrating, and I try on a daily basis to keep my head above water over the endlessly growing piles of waste that accumulate and clog up my board in an endless cycle.  More often than not, I don’t get to do any of the actions of my primary class, because I’m using all of my actions being The Janitor, cleaning up the endless shit that keeps materializing around me, while having to be tactical and cerebral on what has to go versus what I can push off onto a later player phase.

And if I were to ever be killed or eliminate from the game?  There’s absolutely no doubt that the same thing would happen to my home as what would happen in the game when The Janitor is removed from play.  Shit would start to accumulate and accumulate, and with nobody to give a shit about actually cleaning up and eliminating some of it on a regular basis, the home would eventually become overwhelmed, and I don’t even want to think about what would happen if that were the case.

In the past, I used to be critical of Marie Kondo and her whole spiel of get the fuck rid of everything.  I criticized her Netflix show but watched more episodes than I care to admit, and then laughed when she had kids and admitted to being just like all of us other parents who get overwhelmed and start accumulating more shit than she knew what to do with.

But as my life has progressed through the 2020’s, the more I wish my life were closer to being able to pulling a KonMari than not.  I’d probably need an entire dumpster to purge my home of all the shit that I know we don’t need, and pretty much only then, would The Janitor be able to take a backseat to whatever class I’m really meant to be, I don’t know fucking know anymore, because I’ve been The Janitor for so long now that I guess I don’t really have another player class anymore.

lol, I love to see the Dodgers lose

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In case you missed it because I did too: the Disney Anaheim Angels of Southern Orange County Los Angeles sweep the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend

Unsurprising, this is what happens when a team gets good, succeeds, spends boatloads of money, signs all the notable free agents and becomes the internal darlings of the league they’re in – they mostly become reviled by fanbases that are not supporters of them in the first place.

I mean, I wasn’t really ever a Dodgers fan at any point of my life with the closest thing to support being when Chan Ho Park was there, but for the most part, I just never really cared about them.  They were a fringe team that played in a weak division and never seemed like they were any threat to actually succeed, especially when the Phillies bounced them every time they ran into each other in the playoffs.

But then they eventually got their shit together, started making the playoffs every single year, basically bounced the Braves from them every time they encountered each other except for 2021, and had been enjoying a renaissance of sorts.  I started to dislike them.

Then, they poached Freddie Freeman from the Braves, which wasn’t entirely their fault as much as the Braves being the Braves, meaning the cheapskate fucks that absolutely will not spend money on a free agent that isn’t at their peak, but for all intents and purposes, the Dodgers took the heart out of Atlanta, and I really disliked them.

And then their organization deployed a pelican strike on the league by exploiting deferred money deals to avoid luxury tax penalties while at the same time securing massive money deals on just about every notable free agent on the market, most notably getting Shohei Ohtani for $700 million dollars, en route to committing over a billion dollars on free agents.

By this point, if baseball fans that weren’t Dodger fans already didn’t dislike the Dodgers, this is where they really began to.

It’s not that they’re cheating or doing anything at all that’s not legal, it’s just that they’re really driving home the reality of the importance of spending money, and there’s a lot of misguided frustration and hatred for their own teams, being directed at the Dodgers, but the bottom line is that the Dodgers have basically become the most hated team in the league, even more than the Yankees depending on whom you ask.

So that’s why it’s so satisfying to see when the Dodgers perform like anything other than the team that outspent the rest of the league to construct an uber-roster, and not just get swept at home, but get swept at home to their in-city archnemeses, in the Angels.  And not just the Angels, but the lowly Angels who have 2/3 the payroll of the Dodgers, as well as have a living leech on the squad in Anthony Rendon who is getting paid $38M to not play at all. 

And to top it off, the Angels were without superstar Mike Trout, who is also on the disabled list, and they still took the Dodgers behind the toolshed to shellack them, in their own house no less.

I didn’t catch a single game, much less even know about it after the fact, but I just fucking love it all the same, and it does bring me great joy to see the Dodgers fuck up in such a monumental manner.  It’s just so hilarious because the TL;DR of the whole thing is that the Angels suck and the Dodgers don’t, but the Angels still swept them. 

It’s as big of an upset as the Pistons beating the Lakers in 2003, whenever Tom Brady had a brainfart and lost to the Dolphins, or when the Honda Civic beat the Ferrari in a drag race in that one video clip that was ever only available on fucking RealPlayer.

When the season is over, the Dodgers will still most likely be in World Series contention, while the Angels probably won’t even be close to even the play-in series, but for one weekend in May, the Dodger-hating contingent of baseball fans can all collectively point and laugh at the Dodgers and all their shitty soft-ass fairweather fans.

Nobody feels bad for the Dodgers when they don’t succeed, and it is always joyous to see them lose, but getting swept at home by the rival Angels, is probably going to be the lowest point for the squad this season.  And I love to see it.

The peace of mind of the long way

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I hate commuting.  I often lament that among the great things that happened during the pandemic was the dramatic reduction of traffic across the board, and when I was one of the poor unfortunate souls who had to begin returning to the office, commuting wasn’t so bad because there were still a whole lot of lucky schmucks who were still allowed to work remotely and didn’t add to the cars on the road.

Nowadays, traffic is right back to the same shitshow things were before the pandemic, and unlike the days when I wasn’t married and didn’t have kids, I can’t be an early bird, and willingly head out to the office at a nice early time in order to have a more peaceful commute.  No, I have to leave at a strict time, determined by how long it should take me to get to the office, and basically into the teeth of the morning rush hour.

Honestly, I actually have it kind of good, in terms of mileage.  My commute is basically 7-8 miles each way, no highway driving, but it still takes the better part of 30 minutes to traverse it, because of fucking traffic.

Worst of all is the final mile of my drive, where there are some mornings where that last mile takes as much time as all the other distance before it, just because of the sheer overpopulated massive of human existence that clogs up the roads, right in front of my god damn building.  Frankly, this daily malady of the final mile is largely in part why I’m so salty about commuting, and why the thought of driving into the office four days a week is always met with a sneer.

My office park is made up of several buildings and has about four entry points.  However, it’s also close enough to the interstates to where the main roads just outside of the complex are often completely clogged by hordes of assholes trying to subvert the highway, preventing people who are just trying to get into the complex from being able to get in, not without waiting through numerous lights and taking some creative detouring just to get to work.

But recently, I accidentally came across an alternate route, that perhaps it’s still too early to tell, but in the few times that I’ve used it, has been a refreshing breath of fresh air, and has alleviated a tremendous amount of commuting anxiety from my daily list of grievances.

One of the access points has a two lane left turn into the grounds, but everyone camps the right lane, because there’s a fairly immediate right turn upon turning in.  Anyone who is in the left lane is obviously a supervillain akin to Thanos who will definitively try to force their way into the right and cut in front of others like the galaxy’s biggest dick.

The other day, I got in the left lane, solely because I wanted to just make the light, and the time math dictated that it would be more efficient to make my left, camp in a parking lot for a minute while the mass of humanity that wanted to make their immediate right turns made their right turns, and then leisurely hop in the back of the line.  But I also had the wherewithal to give a quick glance to Google Maps, and I saw that even if I didn’t make the immediate right everyone was preparing to bully me out from making, the road would ultimately loop and eventually connect to a road that I needed to get on anyway, so I thought, hm, let’s just see where this takes us.

It’s slightly longer, maybe adds a minute or three to my overall drive, but so far, has shown to be sparsely used, no speed bumps to further stress out my 13-year old whip, and by virtue of taking this road instead of the routes that 95% of other commuters that work in my office park take, seems to get me out of the traffic light rhythm from all the other clusterfucks of entry points, so I’ve been able to leisurely cruise into the parking garage without any slow fucks trolling in front of me or any tryhard assholes tailgating behind me.

But most importantly, it has completely removed the mentally stressful need to fight and battle to get into the office complex, which is a tremendous weight lifted off my mind.  I’m often time the guy who will take back roads and alternate routes that might be longer, but if it keeps me moving and is less stressful, they’re worth it.  I’m just very pleased to have found an alternate route on my tedious commute to the office, and I’m hoping it continues to be the refreshing change of pace that will help calm down the stress of commuting for years to come.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: This is point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of doing this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I don’t know what it is with this #SZN, because we’ll going through stretches where there’s no news (at least that I can find) of any #TRYHARDs flaunting their college acceptances, and then a weekend will pass, and then bam, there’s suddenly multiple #TRYHARDs that have emerged and the news outlets will have said that these have been reported since two weeks ago and I’m like wtf.

Anyway, because we’re at the point of the #SZN where I’m getting tired of writing about these #TRYHARDs unless they’re truly exceptional, these next #TRYHARDs have the unfortunate distinction to being lumped into an aggregate post, because frankly none of them are particularly exceptional compared to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN, and I don’t feel like dedicating an entire post to each and every one of them.

WIFR: Louisiana teen accepted into 75 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Nothing out of the ordinary here.  No SAT scores listed, no GPA listed, no extracurriculars listed.  Just a 27 on the ACT which is impressive, but just 75 school acceptances, and just $1M in scholarships is pretty low in comparison to some of the other #TRYHARDs of the #SZN.  That’s basically a $13K per acceptance average, which wouldn’t even be a year at community college, given the escalating prices of tuition and school expenses.

Naturally, she’s going with the HBCU that in all likelihood has given her a free ride, but hey free education is always a win, so who really cares what I think anyway.

MSN: Austin, Texas teen accepted into 22 schools, amassing over $1M in scholarships

Compared to the aforementioned girl from Louisiana, $1Mish out of just 22 acceptances is a far high average, at $45.5K per acceptance, but in the #TRYHARD game it’s not just about the average, as much as it is the sheer volume of acceptances, which makes this one kid very much average in the grand spectrum of the game.

But the article is interesting in that it not only discloses that he got into 22 schools, it said out of 24 applications, so the #TRYHARD actually did suffer a little bit of rejection.  However, for as high-character as this kid seemed as far as grades, extracurriculars and altruistic side-hustles, seems like a low bar to have only applied to just 24.  I feel like if this guy truly #TRYHARDed and applied to 155 schools, he’d probably have gotten into like 140 of them, and amassed $6M in scholarships.

And for such low ambition, boy is but an aggregate footnote in the #SZN.

NBC41: Georgia teen accepted into 110 colleges, earning $5.2M in scholarship money

I think it’s safe to say that no matter what comes from the rest of #TRYHARDSZN2025, there’s no place where the game is played harder anywhere in the country as it is in Georgia.  It’s not even just a Southside Atlanta thing either, because we’ve had several documented #TRYHARDs from various other Georgia towns like this one, where they’re shooting for the moon and applying to every school under the sun, and succeeding.

110 colleges and $5.2M isn’t the biggest haul of the #SZN, but it’s also nowhere near the smallest, and it absolutely obliterates every  #TRYHARD that’s been found outside of the state.  She would probably be agitated if she ever found out about the girl in Georgia that cleared 155 and one in every state, but that’s what she gets for not #TRYHARDing enough.

What’s interesting is the factoid that of her 110 acceptances, it’s revealed that 86 of them offered scholarships, meaning 24 schools just simply said yes but no relo.  That being said, that clears up her average scholarship value at $60.5K per, which isn’t bad at all.  I’m going to assume that of the 24 schools that accepted with no offer, they’re probably the Power-5 conference schools that were the moonshots, and of the 86 that offered up some coin, these are the more average-tier schools, and seeing as how she’s already committed to Mercer, seems to be a fairly accurate assessment.

But hey, nursing.  The country definitely needs more of them, and as most of us are very well aware, nurses are really the real nuts and bolts that hold the entire medical profession afloat.

TapIntoPatterson: New Jersey teen accepted into multiple Ivy League schools; but not all of them

Okay, my sub-thing this #SZN is calling bullshit on all the extra #TRYHARDs who don’t just shoot for the moon, but shoot for Milky Way, by aiming for nothing short of the Ivy Leagues.  So this kid, gets into Harvard and Yale, as well as Princeton, Columbia and Penn, all on full-rides no less.  But what about Brown, Cornell and Dartmouth?

I have a hard time believing anyone in this position is so selective of which Ivy League school they want to go to, that they don’t apply to all of them, and I feel like I have to call bullshit on any of these uber #TRYHARDs when they brag about getting into a select number of Ivy League schools, but not all of them, but pretending like they only applied to just the ones they got accepted into.

Don’t get me wrong, the backstory on this particular #TRYHARD is pretty impressive, and it seems apparent that he’s qualified for all of the schools he got into, but I just don’t buy that he only applied to only the five Ivies that he got accepted into, and it’s extremely easy for him, his family, or the news to twist the truth just a little bit to make him sound more impressive than he already is.  Everyone has a little bit of ego at some point, and there’s something less shiny than disclosing that he was “accepted into five of eight Ivies,” versus “accepted into five Ivy League schools.”

The funny thing though, is that this #TRYHARD’s desired academic path is all about robotics, engineering and mathematics.  I’m sure he could pursue such educational paths at any of the Ivy League schools, but when the day is over, this kid’s real optimal school is probably MIT.  Frankly, he should be taking into consideration what the kid from Texas did, and use his Ivy League acceptances as leverage to possibly get MIT to sweeten the pot for him, before also pulling an nWo and revealing his MIT shirt on selection day.

Maybe he already is.

But because he didn’t get into ALL the Ivies like the Texas #TRYHARD did, he’s relegated to shared aggregate acknowledgment in the brog.

And I think I might be done for the #SZN, barring some truly exceptional #TRYHARDing.  But never say never, because there’s little end to the lengths some of these #TRYHARDs #TRYHARD.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: What’s the beef with Cornell?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

7onMySideNewark: Newark teen accepted into seven Ivy League schools

My first thought when I saw this headline was, haha seven, why not eight?  Which of the Ivies rejected him?

But according to the article, for whatever reason, the #TRYHARD alleges that he only applied to seven, and was accepted into all seven of them, which leads me to think, why the fuck didn’t he go ahead and apply to all eight at that point?

The odd Ivy out in this case was Cornell, and considering the #TRYHARD wants to study political science, I’m thinking why the fuck didn’t he go ahead and apply to Cornell as well?

I mean, he can’t use distance as a reason, Ithaca is closer to Newark than Boston is, and Dartmouth might as well be on the moon in comparison to most of the other Ivies, so I can’t really wrap my brain around why this #TRYHARD would apply to every single Ivy except for Cornell.

Either way, acceptances are one thing, but there’s no information given about scholarships, or if there were any scholarships even offered at all.  As impressive as gaining entry to 7/8 Ivies might sound, the real question is how he and his family are going to manage to pay for it, because scholarships are always disclosed in these #TRYHARD articles for further flexing, and his family runs a pizza shop.  Going to imagine it’s going to be quite the difficulty for he and his family to support the gargantuan tuitions and supporting expenses college is going to be, even if Harvard allows for certain financial thresholds to attend for free.

No matter though, good on this #TRYHARD for almost completing the Ivy Sweep.  I don’t necessarily believe that he didn’t apply to Cornell, because if you’re going to shoot for the moon, there’s little reason why he wouldn’t have gone after all of them, and it’s like a marketing tactic.  If 4/100 people like a product, it can still be spun that 4/5 like it, and toss the other 95 testers out, just like this kid can say he only applied to seven Ivies, and throw Cornell out.

Doesn’t compete against some of the more notable #TRYHARDs of the #SZN, but anyone who can get into multiple Ivies, let alone one, is still worth mentioning.

#TRYHARDSZN2025: Asians just try harder

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

VNEX: Vietnamese student secures fully-funded PhD scholarships from three different continents

So the sheer volume of schools isn’t going to clear the 155~ mark previously set earlier this #SZN, and no idea what the dollar amount is going to be exactly, probably not clearing $6M cumulatively.  But if there’s one flex that this kid, and I use that term loosely considering he’s a 22-year old undergrad already, can make is that he pulled full rides from schools in three separate continents, from Asia, Australia as well as the United States.

Obviously context matters, and sure he didn’t get acceptances from North Dakota A&M or Idaho Tech, but some of the offers that he turned down were from Nanyang Technical University in Singapore and the University of Sydney in Australia, both of them ranked among the world’s top 20 universities.

Here’s the kicker, and the primary reason why I’m making this post work in #TRYHARDSZN2025: the school he ultimately did end up picking to pursue his PhD at is none other than Virginia Tech. 

That’s right, boy genius from Vietnam going to be a Hokie.  He won’t help the football team or the basketball team suck any less than they have over the span of the last decade, but I’ll take a Hokie W in quidditch much less getting some super boy genius from another country.

But seriously, he definitely does fall into the category of #TRYHARDing, because the boy wanted to improve his station in life, and he understood that education was his best means to do so, and instead of staying in Hanoi, he had bigger aspirations and goals, and worked his ass off in order to achieve them.  Wasted little time at flicking those applications out overseas, and clearly his resume and credentials speak for themselves, if all sorts of colleges are coming out and offering full rides.

All the same, in the grand spectrum of the #SZN, it’s impressive that can flex multiple continents for amassing college acceptances, but he’s also 4-5 years older than most of the teen #TRYHARDs I’m putting him up against.  It’s like when Japanese players out of 5-6 years of NPB go to MLB and are considered rookies, against true untested prospects fresh out of high school and the minor leagues, shit just doesn’t really match up.

But I’m still pleased to read of his overall story, and to know that he’ll be going to Virginia Tech, and hopefully raising their stock in something, even if it’s not athletics.  I support all Hokie success, wherever it may come from.

Once upon a time, taxes edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time, people used to say that homeownership was a huge benefit come tax time.

At this point, I’ve been a homeowner almost longer in my life than I haven’t.  Hard to swallow that pill, but I did purchase my first home when I was 22 years old, and I’ve been paying mortgage notes almost entirely since then, with only a small gap while I was in between homes in 2017.

However, the first home, I was splitting the mortgage 50/50, so at the end of every tax season, it really didn’t benefit either myself or Jen.  We had talked about alternating years in which we would declare head of household and file 100% of the taxes on our respective returns, but it never came to fruition, and that was all at the tail end of our tenure.

It kind of helped when I was in my current digs, when mythical then-gf and I were living in sin and filing our own taxes as individual singles.  It helped me from going straight negative, and I had maybe 2-3 years where I actually made a little bit of cash back, which was a massive win considering how many years previously in which I always seemed to owe money.

Once upon a time, people used to say that marriage was a huge benefit come tax time.

I can’t really speak much to this one, considering mythical now-wife and I have been married for closing in on year, this summer.  I think in 2019 we still filed as individuals, since we were not-married for more of 2019 than we were.  By the time we filed in 2020, the vast majority of the year was spent preparing for the birth of #1 and then navigating through the coronavirus-addled world, and I can’t say that we really had a single tax return where we were a married, childless couple.

Once upon a time, people used to say that having kids was a huge benefit come tax time.

Stories of degenerate baby mamas, entrapping dumbass men who can’t be bothered to put a raincoat on, popping out and collecting children like they’re Infinity Stones, and collecting come tax time.  I’ve known some women who perhaps weren’t as degenerate, but they also weren’t shy about expressing their anticipation for taxes, due to the supposed benefits and breaks they were always subject to based on the number of children they had.

In all fairness, contrary to the tone of this post, mythical wife and I actually did have an incredible 2020 tax return.  The amount of money that was refunded to us, I had to wipe my eyes and run the numbers multiple times, because I was positive that there had to have been some sort of mistake.  But it was legitimate, and for that one calendar year, we thought that all of the things people used to say was finally coming true, and by having the trifecta of a house, marriage and kids, tax returns were about to become a fucking holiday every year.

But coming back to reality here and to the present, I’ve been a married homeowner with children for five years now, and over the span of the last two tax returns, I’ve never owed so much money to the IRS in my life.  Take 2020 and 2021’s great and okay tax returns, and they’ve been paid back with interest between 2022-2024.

I’m not a CPA or even willing to find out what tax laws and policies are in place that have been systematically fucking my household since 2020, but all I know is that when I do my taxes, the fact that I’m married, own a home, and having kids does absolutely nothing to my bottom line when it comes to filing taxes.  And I mean that literally, when I get to the point in the tax software where I enter in information about my property and my kids, the number doesn’t even flinch.  Not a single dollar saved on account of the things that once upon a time, people used to say would help one’s taxes.

I suppose marriage helps a little bit, because out of curiosity, I ran mythical wife’s and I’s numbers as individuals, and we would owed a noticeably higher debt, but like I said, my house, or my kids don’t affect a single fucking cent in my return as a whole.

The one thing that I do know is that both mythical wife and I did technically switch our jobs in the 2022 year, and I vaguely remember when I was filling out all my initial paperwork, I didn’t fill out a W-2 but a W-4 or whatever form has taken the place of the W-2.  Somewhere in my allowances, myself or both mythical wife and I clearly checked something different from what we know, and both of us are not having nearly enough deducted from each paycheck, which is the primary killer for us.

I don’t really know what I have to alter in order to stop getting raped by the IRS come tax time, so I just opted to just have a straight set amount withheld each paycheck, with the hopes that the cumulative math on my withholdings is closer or exceeds what I’ve owed each of the last three years, with the hopes that when I run 2025 taxes in April in 2026, I won’t get as obliterated as we’ve been getting over the last few.

Because relying on marriage, homeownership and kids to bail us out in April is clearly fairy tales that started with once upon a time are clearly a dead thing of the past now.