Well, DFO, the offseason is here, and while normally it’s a dark and depressing time for all of us football fans, there’s reason yet to be positive: we’re still alive! No but seriously, there’s lots of good things coming up this year that we’re hoping to write about on here. Below is a Google Form that we’ve embedded – we’re hoping to get a better sense of who is reading us and from where & when, and what we can do to hopefully meet all your needs as the internet’s premier home of football, dick jokes, & puzzles! We hope to hear from you – all answers are anonymous, and nothing is mandatory to be answered. As well, if there’s info that I’m somehow forgetting to collect, let me know and I will go back and add it into our Google Form. Thanks, folks!
I just ratted all of you out.
Snitches get stiches, muthafucka
I mentioned once I’d be interested in making a sporadic, not-at-all-weekly hot sauce critique of the ones currently in my fridge, or chain restaurants I know of, and/or the NYC Hot Sauce expo this coming April. The hang-up would be that sporadic bit, I don’t know if I (or my colon) can commit to a weekly writing thing like the Beer Barrel.
I don’t think you need to. Write as inspiration strikes! It’s what I do, except for the AFL Beat.
I would need to talk to DTZM about it either way.
I would definitely read it. If you’re up to more than one, also.
I have severals of sauces in my fridge!
I identify as a Candy Apple. I hope that doesn’t skew the results…
I just got off one of the worst work related phone calls that did not directly relate to coworker being seriously hurt.
I’ve been taking bids for some equipment and I am trying to go with a higher end provider. But the whole process with them has been a bit of an unexpected nightmare as the person doing the bid package just seemed totally scatterbrain and was hard to get replies from.
I kind of laid into the guy…and he started sobbing. Now I know how that is because the same thing happened to me when I had a mental breakdown at work. A little too much pressure for too long and you crack. So I try and calm the dude down and keep him talking. In a situation like this, you got to put things in perspective and cut all the bullshit. The dude opens up to me and we talk for about 30 minutes.
Turns out like a month ago he couldn’t get a hold of his mother. So he went to check up on her…and he found her. Some bastard murdered her. So he has been in and out of the office, trying to handle everything from police interviews, to handling her estate and shit.
He kind of keeps going on that he shouldn’t be at work, but he can’t just stop working because then he thinks about his mom…and I just tell him…
“Its cool. I know way too well what you are going through and why you can’t just stop work. We will get the bid package fixed together. I will coordinate with your supervisors to make sure things are taken care of. You do right by you and this shit we are working on ain’t no thing”.
I got off the phone and sat in the meeting room and started crying. I find that as I have gotten older, I have turned into a complete pussy.
Jesus, that is awful. I’m giving my mom a damn big hug next time I see her.
Yeah on the drive home, I called up my mother.
“What do you want?!?”
“Um…nothing…just…you know…wanted to check in on you”
“JSD…ARE YOU ON THE SMACK AGAIN?!?”
“Jesus ma…NO”
Holy shit. Holy. Shit. It’s not being a pussy, it’s being an empathetic person
What he said.
You’re a good dude. Sometimes good dudes gotta be soft and vulnerable, for themselves and others.
Strong men also cry.
Not a pussy bro.
“Its cool. I know way too well what you are going through. I murdered her.
Now go get that bid package fixed.”
If you aren’t hated, you aren’t relevant.
I think this comment would be better if it were Rasta-fied by 10%.
I don’t know who’s face he is in, but it’s not mine.
UC iff yousa not hated, yousa not relavant mannn….
Rasta’d or jar-jar’d?
Oh, God. I’m finally not stressing out about money for at least a week now. It’s been so distracting while I try to study.
Now I just don’t want to study. I hate this. I hate everything.
http://cdn1.bloguin.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/174/2015/09/1436073891491228076.jpg
I really hope there is a survey results thread where we can all rip on the responses.
“Who’s the asshole that marked ‘other’ for gender?! Probably a goddamn Texans fan! My name is Make It Snow!”
“Seriously, I KNEW no one liked the mailbags! Where is Footsteps Flacco?!”
“Look at all these Rams fans; how many times did DTZM take the survey?”
The only thing worse than Texans would have to be people who are fans of Texans.
Thank God there’s no team with that name.
BRING BACK FOOTSTEPS FALCO
“FOOTSTEPS?”
[dives to ground]
– Jim Everett
Story Time with uncle entropy:
I do the occasional side job, fixing things for various friends, family, businesses, what have you. I did a whole bunch of IT work for a local catering business a while back, and now I get calls every few weeks from everything ranging from “is this a good price for a used iPhone 5s?” to “I cannot login to my private healthcare account.”
I just spent 45 minutes dealing with their website being down, which may or may not have been down for the better part of a MONTH, because their host and domain registrar (the same company, something I rarely recommend, even WITH the pricing discounts) merely made a robocall a month ago on the domain renewal and never sent an follow-up email.
So I called the hosting co, and tried to leave messages with the tech support folks first, to verify the registration and such. I was told, in no uncertain terms by their shitty, web-based IVR, “this account does NOT respond to messages left on this mailbox.” Man, I would LOVE to work tech support where you never had to listen to voicemail.
Strike 1 on this company.
I called back, tried to reach accounting. I was instructed to go to their web portal, which is somehow a different domain name than the company’s primary portal, which bothered me in lots of little ways. Then informed to leave a message, and to “expect a return call within 24-48 hours.”
Strike 2.
Finally, I called back and tried Sales, the one branch of any company ALWAYS glad of a goddamn phone call. This would be an incorrect assumption, as they, too, informed me to leave a message, or send an email using their handy-dandy non-affiliated web portal. Again I was told to expect a return call within 48 hours (24 not even being an option), and now I am done with the baseball strikeout metaphor and prepared to order full military strikes.
How in FUCK do you run a modern business without using your god damn phone?! What kind of web hosting company allows their tech support folks to ignore incoming phone calls and/or voicemail? I understand this was in many ways a screwup on my client’s part, but the lack of response by the host is frankly appalling.
The minute the site is back and running, I am demanding my client change hosts. If I can answer her goddamn phone calls, the fucking host had better learn to, as well.
I listen to a couple 5by5 podcasts, and I was laughing at how they had an ad for Igloo and then later the same guy who reads the ads was talking about how we sent men to the moon using slide rules and pencils.
Speaking of which, does any business actually maintain an internal wiki for any length of time? I had some experience with one doing some freelance work and then it shat itself to death and I swore I’d never work on one again (I didn’t back up my personal contributions, which was my own fault, but still).
I’ve just taken up hearing to podcasts. Besides Serial, what should I be listening to?
There are only three I listen to right now: the Filmdrunk Frotcast (although, now … Eh. It’s very hit or miss.), Back 2 Work, and Reconcilable Differences.
B2W is great for me because a lot of it is about the same thing, which is refocusing on goals and tasks and getting out of your own head and dealing with distractions that aren’t really distractions so much as barriers we put up to keep from getting work done.
RD is similar to B2W (they share a cohost) but is biweekly and the other guy on RD, John Siracusa, is a super genius.
I sometimes listen to How Did This Get Made or The Flophouse, but it depends on whether I want to bother to listen to people mocking stupid movies or whether I’m better off just ignoring stupid shit altogether.
I’ll listen to the Better Call Saul podcast when it returns. It’s hosted by Kelley Dixon, an editor for that show and Breaking Bad, and goes into detail about each episode.
I used to follow a bunch of NPR podcasts, but I just don’t have time or interest anymore.
Lots of people listen to Adam Carolla, but again, he’s hit or miss and usually I can’t stand him anymore. Same with Marc Maron. The older episodes were good, but at some point they just became entirely self-indulgent and otherwise boring or featuring boring people.
In addition to the serialized novel types (and there are a LOT of good ones totes for FREE!!!!!), I’ve also always enjoyed Skeptoid. Not as good as it used to be, but still not terrible, and all the old ones are still available also.
Plus the host Brian Dunning did a short prison stint a few years ago for scamming eBay for about $5mil….so you know he’s good people.
https://skeptoid.com/episode_guide.php
BRING BACK HOUSE OF PUNTE!!!!!11!!!
I listen to maybe 10 podcasts regularly. My favorites are:
Judge John Hodgman: noted nerd comedian John Hodgman resolves disputes.
Behind the Bets with Chad Millman: An ESPN betting podcast, very entertaining.
Slate’s Hang Up And Listen: General interest sports podcast, gets esoteric sometimes.
Freakonomics Radio: Just like the books.
Ask Me Another: Weird NPR quiz show.
This American Life: You probably know what this is.
Intelligence Squared US Debates: Formal debates on policy issues with wankers.
I also enjoy Freakonomics.
Also, Question of the Day… includes Dubner from Freakonomics.
If you’re a Stanhope fan, he’s got a pretty good one.
https://soundcloud.com/doug-stanhope
Every year I battle for 51 weeks to get everyone to utilize email as much as possible — including to send confirmation emails after phone calls to document conversations, generate document receipts, and have an easily-accessible digital copy of all incoming/outgoing documents — and then national signing day hits and blows up all my work.
http://www.voicemailoffice.com/news/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/Fax-Machine.jpg
It’s not the email that bothers me, it’s the refusal of alternative communications. If my site is down, I don’t want to have to wait for some asshole to check his freakin email.
In this case, yes, client is at fault, but that will not always be the case.
FUcking Japan. The home office REFUSES to upgrade their server because they like using fax machines.
You know how fucking irritating to print up 300 pages of electrical diagrams just to fucking scan them into a fax machine. Even better, usually the fucking documents have been emailed to me in the first goddamn place.
And of course, I got to do the reverse all the time. Its insane how much time and paper I waste because the home office server can’t handed even the smallest attached zipped file.
Holy shit, that was the most boring thing I’ve read in my life. I pretty sure my aunt reads this to me when she calls. You’re my aunt, aren’t you? Damn it.
Well, that was mean. Sorry, Aunt Janie.
I never said it was GOOD story time.
The most important thing I’ve learned as an adult is that most people, and consequently most companies are incompetent or borderline incompetent. I don’t really mind, since it means I get to slack off and still come out better than average, but I’m continuously amazed that anything works at all.
This. My place of work has done business with multi-million dollar corporations that barely know what a JPEG is. It completely shattered my belief that big companies have their shit together. They don’t.
So much this. I work for an app developer, and the GRAPHIC DESIGNER from our client sent me a jpeg of a logo and asked me to make a vector version.
Nailed it.
People are fucking dumb. Period.
http://rs261.pbsrc.com/albums/ii46/irishmafia2008/pebkac.jpg
http://rs261.pbsrc.com/albums/ii46/irishmafia2008/pebkac.jpg~c200
Well, that’s unfortunate when trying to post PEBKAC images.
It’s your client’s fault for hiring DTZM in the first place.
Can we get a weekly feature on new techniques in dog gooming? (no, that’s not a typo)
http://www.neatorama.com/2010/06/12/popular-hobby-in-china-gooming-dogs-into-other-animals/
http://uploads.neatorama.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/article-1284646-09EDF72E000005DC-418_634x474.jpg
That poor dog. Condemned to a hell of losing playoff game after playoff game…
Mike Brown would feed it better than he feeds the players.
He may in fact have fed it Jeremy Hill; Vontaze Burfict is nothing but gristle, and Pacman has more diseases than a Chipotle burrito..
Woof?
Why aren’t we covering high-stakes backgammon? Can we have a yearly convention in Vegas?
Same reason we don’t follow full-contact chess. They no longer allow cameras on the playing floor.
We should cover the chessboxing championships! That’s still a thing, right?
Checkers, that’s where it’s at. I’ve seen some full on blood matches started over that game.
True story: my cousin broke a checkers board over my head when we were 9.
Dominoes.
That’s when shit gets real.
I had never played dominoes until a beach trip this past October. First time playing, with some family members who play regularly, and I kicked their peasant asses. They were not happy….and as you say, shit got real very quickly.
But mostly because I was fairly drunk (as were they) and I talked shit like a boss after the VICTORY!!!!!
I still needle them about it. Sore fucking losers.
“Checkers, that’s where it’s at.”
We call this a Baltimore Wedding Invite.
I want to be pissed about this, but that shit’s hilarious.
Strange; there was no question about what I’m #UpFor.
Just like the alcohol, pants, and Patriots questions, I think anything with a known default answer was omitted. In this case, “whatever.”
Sophisticated marketing algorithms are used to infer that data. For example, if you are a Browns fan, the program assumes you are #UpFor cock and ball torture. Conversely if you are a Raiders fan, it assumes you are #UpFor parole in 12 to 18 months with good behavior.
And if you answered “Female” and “More Mailbags” it assumes you are not #UpFor anal
Disturbed at lack of questions regarding alcohol, wearing of pants, and most hated team/fanbase.
Aren’t all the answers just “Yes, No, and P*triots?”
Aren’t the replies to those always, Yes, No, Patriots?
Get a room, you two.
I SOOOOOOO want to tell Maestro that the “first” of something is not “annual” because it hasn’t happened yearly yet. The first of something is called the “inaugural”.
But no, I’m not going to be that guy. I don’t want Maestro thinking I’m a dick.
Just like how it’s EPL and not BPL.
Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have their own professional leagues.
But I don’t want to be that guy either.
I’ve seen it abbreviated BPL because of Barclays, not because of Britain. But again, I’m not an expert.
That’s true. It is referred to as that.
Thought you were making the honest mistake of calling it the British Premier League.
http://cdn.meme.am/instances/500x/62971748.jpg
I just drew dick n balls pictures on your survey instead of answering questions.
If you work in digital porn distribution is that considered “High Tech?”
Is “digital porn” where you watch dirty videos and your digits get involved? With your penis? What I mean is, are you just talking about beatin’ off while watching skinflicks?
Talking about it is oral sex.
That’s bong engineering.
I believe you’re in High Five Tech
FYI, no option for DC on the state
Oh shit, will fix
So? Tesla proved AC is the way to go anyway.
They’ll say awwww Topsy at your autopsy…
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-iOmz7cyPayY/UT-yQU1TcxI/AAAAAAAAIyU/0kGotP4Luyo/s1600/BobsBurgers_3ASA03_640x360_21306947790.jpg
Of course, that’s probably because DC isn’t a state. HOW DO YOU LIKE YOUR NON-VOTING CONGRESSIONAL REPRESENTATIVE, SECOND CLASS CITIZEN?
This site needs more hardcore pornography and less soccer.
Is there a word more hardcore than Hardcore?
I grew up the only person in my family understanding computers. I all but completely desensitized at this point.
yes i think there should be more make it snow please
I’d say “more entropy” but that sort of happens without any real involvement on my end.