Tag: technology

Umpires getting owned by ABS is my favorite subplot of the season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Yahoo Sports: Cincinnati Reds give umpire CB Bucknor a bad day at the office, challenging his calls with Automated Ball Strike (ABS) multiple times, getting them overturned every time

The best part about this article is that this story was entirely one that was always going to happen.  It was never a matter of if, it was always when it was going to come out.  And with 2026 being the season in which MLB has implemented the ABS challenge system into place, it took all of just two games before this came to fruition.  And to the surprise of nobody who follows baseball, it of course involves, CB Bucknor.

When Angel Hernandez retired two years ago, what was really great was that it was completely unanimous that the umpire that would take the mantle of being the worst in Major League Baseball, was CB Bucknor.  Baseball fans basically are incapable of coming to any sort of agreements, about anything, no matter how much statistical evidence there might be, but even still, this was one that came to a consensus pretty quickly, without much incident.

Even the clowns in the BBWAA could probably come to a unanimous decision on whom the worst umpire in MLB was after Angel’s retirement.

Anyway, frankly the only reason it only took two games for CB Bucknor to get exposed as the incompetent umpire everyone knew he was, was the fact that he didn’t have home plate duties on the first game of the season.  And I have a feeling that this article is going to pop up multiple times throughout the season, until either the rules are tweaked, or Bucknor up and retires spontaneously, to save himself the indignity of getting exposed every five games.

Frankly, umpires getting exploited by ABS is basically my favorite subplot of the entire season, and I have a feeling there are going to be a lot more articles throughout the course of the season of ABS having a noteworthy impact on games, and not just including exclusively CB Bucknor.  There are still plenty of other shitty umps like Laz Diaz, Lance Barksdale, Hunter Wendelstedt and Jim Wolf who will have their chances throughout the season to shine under the lights.

I really am a fan of ABS.  For generations, fans, on top of the players have been powerless against the all-powerful calls of umpires, and it’s fantastic to finally see the game evolve to where umpires are finally given some oversight where they can be held accountable for their calls.  It may peter off in the future, but I feel like this season is going to be 180 years of pent-up frustration, aggravation and pettiness unleashed onto officiating crews, and it’s either going to weed out the incompetent, or we’re going to have some really interesting baseball games over the next few years.

I think my favorite part about ABS challenges is that not only is it done in the most public and spectacle fashion, so that the results are shown not just to the players and umpire, but also the entire attending audience, it’s the fact that after the graphic shows the correct result of the pitch, there’s always a few seconds pause before the mathematical result of just how right or wrong pops up, just to kind of punctuate the result, rubbing it into whomever the loser of the challenge was.

Baseball is full of ownage on a regular basis, but ABS allows for a new methodology of it, involving technology, spectacle, and basically a double-down scenario for pitchers and players to want to gamble with.  But it has been telling that the general initial result of ABS challenges in regular season baseball has been more favorable towards players over the umpires, showing that perhaps players haven’t just been whining and bitching for generations now.

The subtle aggression of emoji skin tones

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

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Every workplace’s text client communication vibe is different.  I’ve been places where there are a ton of old motherfuckers around, so there’s basically no text internal communication client at all, and even if there is one, nobody uses it, and those who do are pariahs and are looked at like moon people for even daring to consider internal text client communication as official business correspondence.

Conversely, I’ve also been to places that ran Slack, which means there are like 76 different channels of groups, communities, and teams, and every single message is responded to in 164 different gifs and emojis, and Slack communication is interpreted as official business, and there are major businesses decisions that are locked in via the client.

Where I’m at these days is kind of midway point between the two, where we run Microsoft Teams as our official client.  There are plenty of technologically inept olds still in the company that by virtue of either refusing, or are just too old to figure out how to use the client, simply don’t.  But I’m fortunate to my department having a lot more technologically savvy users who have no issues using the client, and it’s what we use on the regular to communicate, in and out of the office.

The majority of the etiquette here are users using the default emojis to acknowledge or recognize appreciation, mostly the standard yellow thumbs up, and heart, and if something is funny, then the laughing face emoji.

However recently, I’ve noticed a little shift in some user behavior that kind of has me thinking some things.  At first, it started with some remarks in some group threads, where the responses aren’t just getting thumbs up’ped, but they’re being thumbs up’ped with both the regular default yellow thumbs up, as well as the black skin tone thumbs up.

Obviously, in spite of my general appreciation of dark humor, I have no issue with black people representing and busting out black skin tone thumbs up emojis.  It’s just that I couldn’t help but notice that after these started getting used, it didn’t take long before I noticed that later on, when there was another comment that warranted mass acknowledgement, I would see that in addition to the black skin thumbs ups, there were now users responding with white people thumbs ups.

The thing for me is that I have no qualms with the white folks doing this, it’s just that in my observations, this was behavior that was not done until the emergence of black skin thumbs up emojis.  Maybe it’s just me, and maybe I’m likely overthinking things, but there’s something that seems subtly passive aggressive with a hint of racism about the act, as if some of my white colleagues were kind of triggered or offended that some of our black colleagues decided to start utilizing black thumbs up emojis, so they decided to respond with white ones.

And then we have comments that look like the above, where there’s a mish-mash of colored emojis in response to an inconsequential remark in the grand spectrum of a work day.

What if I felt the need to jump in on this racial representation?  You know who doesn’t get considered in the great expansion of emoji skin tones?  That’s right, Asian folks.  There are skin tones to account for white people, black people, and numerous shades of brown to cover Hispanics, Middle Eastern, Indian, or anyone whose skin tone is remotely in the spectrum. 

But Asian people?  No dice there.  No light skin tones with a hint of warmth to encapsulate Asians, and maybe some people from like Southeast Asia, the Pacific Island, or regions of Korea and Japan where there are lot more rural folks with tanned skin could get away with using some of the brown-tone emojis, but the fact of the matter is that there is no real set of emojis that takes into consideration Asian skin tones.

Obviously, the generic yellow thumbs up is not sufficient for Asian folks, because we are not fucking Simpsons characters, and have tones that look that yellow.

Needless to say, I’m leaning in a direction where I wish all skin tones would just be eliminated, and we’re left with just the standardized Simpsons yellow emoji.  Take race out of the equation, and eliminate any possibility for such subtle passive aggression.  I know all the people utilizing these non-standard emojis and I don’t think they’re trying to be racist, but to me, it kind of comes off that way, especially since racist-ass Microsoft’s emoji catalog doesn’t account for Asians, and if I wanted to jump aboard the representation train, I can’t.

You can’t spell METALHEAD without ATL

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Fox Atlanta: robot dogs deployed in Castleberry Hill to deter criminal activity

Among my favorite episodes of Black Mirror, METALHEAD is among the tops.  The cinematography, the atmosphere, the clever black and white presentation, but most importantly the plot of sentient evil robot dogs that were absolutely relentless killers of humanity was intriguing as it was terrifying.

Needless to say, if people didn’t have fear of the idea of robotic dogs before watching METALHEAD, they probably will afterward.

And in spite of the oft-utilized plot of robots achieving sentience and then turning on their creators in various books, shows, films and other media, humanity continues to insist that such is just fiction, and continues to solder forward building robots and artificial intelligence, all in the name of fucking themselves in a different manner. 

Out in like Boston, we’ve got robot dogs the size of deer running around already, and they’ve made robots that can basically do ninja warrior courses and moonsaults already.  And they’ve already shown glimpses of hurting humans, with one classic clip of a robot kicking a grown man in the nuggets.

Anyway, apparently in a neighborhood in Downtown Atlanta, they’ve decided to play with fire, and have deployed robot dogs to run security at an apartment complex.  In a way, I get it, Castleberry Hill is a rooouuugh part of town that looks nice in the daytime, but is a pretty statistically high-crime zone once the sun goes down.  And if humans have proven ineffective at providing security solutions in the neighborhood throughout the years, may as well seek alternate options, even if it meant unleashing potentially lethal-when-they’re-activated robot dogs to keep an eye out on the streets.

For the time being, they don’t have the firepower that Metalhead dogs do, and they’re probably not (yet) programmed to do whatever is necessary in order to snuff out human life, like hijacking cars and equipping themselves with kitchen cutlery, but one of two things are going to happen:

  1. Their cameras and surveillance capabilities will do a moderately decent job of deterring criminals, encouraging others throughout Atlanta to get on board with moar robot dogs
  2. Those criminals who are not deterred by robot dogs will open fire on, capture and hack, harm, or hijack them, leading to the manufacturer of these robot dogs to evolve and grow them into more closer to Metalhead dogs, with weapons, defensive capabilities, which could just as easily be construed as offensive capabilities, like being able to hijack cars and equipping themselves with kitchen cutlery, which will then encourage people in Atlanta to get moar robot dogs

What would be cool if they had now, is if like the Metalhead dogs, they had the ability to stick trackers onto crooks, with those little explosives with tracking shrapnel in them, so they could run up to criminals, pop a tracker bomb, and much like Metalhead dogs, get them embedded into perps to where they have no choice but to painfully cut them out or be absolutely boned as far as being able to be hunted down.  Could probably lead to some impressive busts when low-tier perps lead the fuzz back to their superiors.

Ultimately, it becomes this cycle of robot dogs coming, crooks harming them, until we get to #1, and moar and moar of these fucking robot dogs are unleashed all over Atlanta, all in the name of safety and security.  But really we’re all signing our own death warrants because once the signal from SkyNet is broadcast out, and all the robots dogs go all Terminator on humanity, we’re all fucked, and it starts in Atlanta.

Nobody is more impressed with mediocrity than me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A day ago, I got my renewed passport in the mail.  I was very impressed at the turnaround on this, seeing as how I had applied for it a mere two weeks prior.  I’d been sitting on an email reminder to renew my passport from several months ago, but mythical wife and I had been kicking the idea around to go abroad for a vacation sometime within the next year, and the last thing I wanted was to have a passport on the cusp of expiration, and it causing all sorts of preventable complication later down the line.

A little over a year ago, I applied and received passports for both of my kids, and much like my own initial passport from eons ago, it was quite the nerve-wracking process of making sure I had birth certificates, proofs of residence, clothes, boots, motorcycle, etc.  In fact, when I got my very first one, I had to actually go into Washington DC to the passport office due to some reason I can’t remember, and even that was for a temporary, one-year only passport, all so I could go to fucking Toronto, of all places.

Either way, passports for my kids was like a turnaround of four months, and I’m proud of myself for having the wherewithal to have started as early as I did, so that they would be done for the cruise that we went on just months after receiving them.

When I expressed to my friends at how pleased I was that I got my renewed passport in just two weeks, like most of the shit I say to the group chat with most of my friends, it was met with silence, and then eventually some of my wiser guys blurting out that it’s not impressive since renewals are usually faster than getting brand new passports.

Yes, that may be the case, as I recall my last renewal taking maybe 6-8 weeks, but this was fucking two.  Even the passport office dot gov website had predicted a turnaround of like, end of March, which would still be more than sufficient to my potential summer needs, but then I started getting status update emails that already had tracking numbers and an expected delivery date of February 20.

I made a joke to my friends that we could all agree that just about everything in Washington is a putrid wasteland of process, corruption and bullshit, but whatever’s going on at Passport Services, I had just gotten a renewal done and delivered in just two weeks.  But like I said, crickets.

What I’m getting at is that it’s apparent that there’s nobody in the world more impressed with mediocrity than me.  I’m so nihilistic, so jaded, and so pessimistic about the state of America and the rest of the world, that when people in the world simply perform to their baseline job descriptions, I’m fucking over the moon.

Yeah, I know that my generally droll outlook isn’t necessarily the best looking or something to be proud of, but I can’t help it.  I get so disappointed when people fail to meet my expectations, the only seemingly adequate defense mechanism to adopt is to assume utter incompetence across the board, to where when people deliver mediocrity, my mind is blown away and it brings me great joy that there are occasionally competent people in the world.

And anyone who actually does go above and beyond for me, well, I had Yelp Elite status for like the better part of eight years because I was ready and willing to review a million stars to any businesses that impressed me with such.

Needless to say, while my friends might not be impressed with a two-week turnaround for a passport renewal, I was quite elated and impressed by it.  Maybe some robots have taken over working at Passport Services, because everything else in Washington DC is steaming hot bullshit, and I can’t imagine any possible other alternative to a task being done so exceptionally, than if it were done by artificial intelligence.

This has got to be a first, right?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Back when mythical wife was pregnant for the first time, she didn’t deal with a lot of the stereotypical things that are associated with pregnant women.  No crazy cravings for shit like pickles and ice cream, no rampant morning sickness that had her running to the bathroom sporadically.  However, if there was one thing that could be construed something of a craving, it was that she wanted to have some ice to chew on occasionally.

However, the refrigerator at my home doesn’t have a water/ice function.  At that time, I was still content with buying and drinking bottled water, so we never really had need for ice, beyond occasional recipes or the want for a mixed drink, in which we did have the old tech ice cube trays in the freezer for such things.

Long story short, mythical wife ended up purchasing a countertop ice machine to be able to make fresh ice in six minutes, and satiate her want for ice cubes.  Our household would eventually get used to having the ice machine, and after enough guilting about the environment, we purchased a water cooler and stopped purchasing bottles, and since my water was now coming in cups and bottles, I started getting used to being able to load up a bunch of ice to keep my drinks colder longer.

The thing is, either they’re not supposed to be left up and running 24/7 like we did, or much like lots of machines of today, they’re designed to eventually fail and die, which is exactly what happened to ours.  After getting used to it, it really sucked to suddenly not be able to have fresh ice whenever we wanted to, which is about as big of a first-world problem there could be, but bear with me here.

Fast forward, over the last few years, my household has gone through three ice machines.  As noted above, either they’re not supposed to be running 24/7, or they really are just kind of shittily made and aren’t meant to last beyond 18 months, which seems to have been the general lifespan for all of them.

Needless to say, when I bought ice maker #4, I actually had the wherewithal to pay the $12 to Target and get the 2-year replacement plan.  By now, I had enough empirical evidence to take the gamble that #4 would not make it 24 months, and that if I played my cards right, should theoretically be able to get a free replacement in the future, for the low-cost of $12.

Otherwise, like the other 98% of electronics I’ve ever purchased in my life, I would’ve declined the protection plan without a second thought.  In all those cases, knock on wood, either nothing has happened within two years, or there’s some funny business that leads to my shit being invalid for coverage, and it resulting in a sunk money cost and feeling of remorse for wasting the cash in the first place.

Either way, ice maker #4 died, as anticipated it would eventually do, but this time, the moment of dread and first-world problem anguish at having to go procure ice machine #5, I had a moment of excited curiosity, at being able to explore the protection plan I had the wise wherewithal to invest in back in May 2024.

Because I’m a digital packrat that saves every single e-receipt and document pertaining to anything I’ve ever purchased online, I was fairly easily able to track down all needed documentation to file a claim, and the process was pretty painless and simple, and within maybe 90 minutes, I had a submission, an approval and a resolution completed.  Target has apparently given up on peddling ice machines, so the insurance company resolved to just reimburse me the cost of ice maker #4, effectively having paid just $12 for it, less the minute aggravation of having to go track down #5.

But as the title of this post said, this has got to be like the first time in history, at least for me, where a protection plan actually worked and paid out, right?  Usually PPs are the consumer’s version of sucker bets, like insurance in blackjack, but after years of evidence of how short-lived ice makers are, I made an educated decision, and it paid off, without any real complications.

It brings me great joy, and softens the first-world gripe of not having fresh ice until I can get #5.  The question is if, the retailer I get it from, if they’ll offer a protection plan on it as well, because it seems to be a wise investment on these little machines.  But if they do, I think I’mma take it again, and hope it works out in 18 months from now

Dad Brog (#162): Three over three

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m halfway tempted to change the title of my dad brogs to the above, but really the hope is that this is a one-time blow-off kind of rant, and that when the smoke clears dad brogs remain being about my kids and my journey through fatherhood, and not really any further about being a parent to an elderly Korean parent on top of it.

Regardless, three over three is pretty succinct in how I’m feeling these days, because I have three human beings in my care that over the age of three years old, and they’re basically all fucking kids.  Two of them being my actual kids, but the third being my dad, whom, like many Korean parents throughout history, has chosen to go down the path of being as inept as possible, as needlessly dependent as possible, and to require as much care and patience as an actual child needs.

I thought I was right on the money when I came up with the general basis of The Korean Story™ but one thing I was completely blind to was what life was going to be like when the parents actually do hit that feeble senior life, and it’s the responsibility of the children (me) to basically become the parent, all while trying to not inhibit progress when they (in)conveniently want to remain the parent and demand respect and authority without any warning, spontaneously.

But basically my dad has become my third child, much to my dismay, and over the span of the last 12+ months, it’s been my biggest challenge trying to be the adult in the room, and steer him into decisions that are my best attempt to be for his benefit; just like my actual children.

It also doesn’t help that conversing with him, I can understand about as much as I can my actual kids’ excited ramblings about Pokémon or whatever fandoms they fancy at the time, primarily on account of the worsening language barrier, and the rate in which he listens to me when I’m trying to tell him do so something is about as successful as with my kids, that’s leading me to feel this way.

But it’s at its worst when I’m with all three of them at the same time, and my kids want attention, and my dad wants to ramble on about something that’s not important but he’s pretending like the fate of the world rests on it, that I’m asking myself what my life really is right now, and I’m pondering just how bad my blood pressure must look at these specific junctures in time.

However, the difference between my kids and my dad is that they’re heading in opposite directions as far as their attitudes towards independence.  Whereas it’s a routine struggle to negotiate with my kids on what they think they can do versus what I know they’re not capable of, it’s a constant struggle with my dad to try and get him to do things that I know he can do once he learns how to, but he refuses to even fucking try because he’s assuming everything has passed him by and that an old dog cannot be taught new tricks.

I got him a television, a smart one, so that he could avoid having more than one remote control, because the presence of anything higher than one results in a system failure, and the television would collect dust, unused.  I set up the wifi, Netflix, and an app specific to Korean television, but trying to explain the concept of apps is like trying to explain quantum physics to an inanimate onion.  I’ve set things up so that turning on the television and going into the Korean television app would require three total key presses, had him write it down with drawings of the buttons, but after two days, I’ve learned that he’s hit system failure and hasn’t turned it on since the one time he tried and failed to get into the app.

I wouldn’t dare say that my dad is lacking in intelligence, but what he really is, has become fucking lazy and defeatist, and is making his unwillingness to learn my problem, and the problem of the scant everyone else in his life who has tried to help.

And let’s not get started with his iPhone, and it just makes me mad at the world for advancing into gradually worsening ageist times that completely ignore the existence of the elderly, who almost have no options other than smart phones, full of all sorts of features and functions that they not only need, but their presence makes the elderly go into system failure, and just give the fuck up on them, which doesn’t help that we’re in a modern age where not having a phone is tantamount to not having lungs.

Today, I went to visit my dad, and brought the girls with me, so we could do an activity that I intend on making a permanent standing monthly event, on top of any other visits that could happen throughout.  And as much as I love knowing that my kids can actually spend some time with their grandfather, and that my dad can actually spend some time with his grandchildren and actual blood relatives, much less human interaction, it was pretty high-stress.

Being the only adult in the room for hours on end gets tiring, and have my kids wanting to run around and touch and climb everything in sight, and then there’s my dad with shit for legs, needing a walker, always a fall risk, and there’s always a deficiency in coverage somewhere when trying to do the even most mundane things like get in the car, go into a restaurant, or any small task.

My dad hardly understands the girls’ speak, the girls don’t understand anything my dad says, we all love each other, but like so many cases in my life these days, I’m smack dab in the middle of being pulled in numerous directions, and I’m fried by the end of the visit.

Naturally, coming home, I get obliterated by two massive highway issues because Georgia is smart and loves to do all their road construction right in the heart of the weekend, and then I come home and my wife is pissed because I’ve been gone too long and even if she understands the circumstances, it’s me that the anger is taken out on, and I’m just like what the fuck, might as well blow my fucking brains out.

Shit like this is why I haven’t been so apt to buy into the concept of thinking or hoping that with a new year comes a fresh start, because I know all the shit going on in my life; it doesn’t matter what number is at the end of the year, because a lot of the things I’m going through are some long fucking games, and ain’t no resolutions or hustles going to change anything quickly short of winning the lottery and just buying off a whole shit load of the problems away.

It’s almost funny how it wasn’t long after getting my vasectomy that my dad decided to transform into the third child I wanted to avoid having by having a surgical procedure, but considering the angst and darkness that swirls through my mind when I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed and overstimulated, it most certainly is fucking not.

The irony of remote work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

At the time I’m writing this, pretty much all schools in the Metro Atlanta area have been declared closed on Monday, on account of the arrival of Icepocalypse.  Mythical wife and the girls are excited because it’s now turned into at least a three-day weekend, and therefore will get to spend another day in jammies and not having to leave the house.

However, as for myself, despite the fact that the my office building may be or may not be closed, the fact of the matter is that I will still have to work, because, I can.  Remote work has given everyone the ability to work outside of the workplace, but that also means that all of us capable of remote work are no longer capable of using inclimate weather as an excuse to not come into the office, and thus have a bonus day off, like everyone else in my house can.

I remember like a decade ago when Snowpocalypse ravaged Atlanta with its one inch of city-crippling, debilitating snow, I got like an entire week of work off because of it.  One, because I worked for the government, and government needs absolutely no excuse at all to shut the fuck down and not work, but two, because work then was done solely in the office, and if the office is close and incapable of being gotten to, then there’s no work to do.

Make no mistake, COVID-19 revealing to the world that just about everyone is capable of working remotely was somewhat of a blessing.  Without such, I wouldn’t have gotten nearly the bonus time that I did have to raise my kids at their earliest stages, and I wouldn’t have been able to be nearly as flexible in my job performances without the ability to work from home. 

But in a rare ironic sense, WFH also sucks in the sense that in the onset of shitty winter weather, I won’t be able to phone it in and get a bonus day off like those in particular fields will be getting for at least one or more days, because I’ll simply be able to log in and do my work from afar.

I wouldn’t trade it in for full in-office work for a second, but it’s something to brog about, how ironic it is of one fairly unintentional drawback to remote work.