The other oddity of any layoff: the one piece of information that everyone desperately wants - who was let go - is pointedly withheld from staff.
On the day of, or perhaps for a day after - this is defensible. Some people have not been contacted - and you don't want to have situations where a person's fate is known to others before they are told. Nobody wants zombies.
But once all of those affected have been told, it would save a lot of time to just get a list out there. If for no other reason, than it will help productivity, since the entire staff won't be hopping around gossiping about "have you heard?" and "Do you know if...?"
It also clears out the misinformation.
Source, as it turns out, was right about most things - but they were wrong about west coast dev. Thespian and Pirate are safe - and thank God. NerdHaven would plow into months worth of relearning if those two weren't around to make sense of our data.
But the west coast QA was all but destroyed. Three out of four of their QAs were cut. Bizzaro, Toad, and BK.
They still lost devs, HellBoy is gone. And ZeDev.
HellBoy I will miss. They had a fantastic logical mind - I gather they were a handful to deal with in person, and there were questions about their code quality. But I always clicked with them. They made sure the feature I asked for was at least as good as I wanted - and frequently made it better.
ZeDev just makes me sad, they were out of the office on PTO - taking care of their kid. Really nice person, quiet. The kind of person who just gets it done without being all in your face like HellBoy.
This side of the wire, BigDog's team lost a dev slot, but it was FNG's slot, who'd already left us for another job. They won't backfill the slot, so Corporate still gets their pound of flesh, but nobody has to get walked out of the building.
Dragon lost Gooner, who I was hugely fond of - they were an encyclopedia of soccer knowledge and very entertaining.
The SMEs lost Ihaq and Balin - that was known.
Hockey2 is gone. The person who said they had better opportunities outside of NerdHaven, but stayed because they liked who they worked with.
Hockey1 is safe - and again, thank God. Nobody knows the plumbing better than they do.
Services lost four folks I don't know terribly well, but this is on top of having two put in their notice a few weeks earlier. I'm guessing those won't backfill, so the load on that group just got a hell of a lot heavier.
And we lost both of our documentation folks. So, software documentation (traditionally terrible) will now stop getting written at all.
All of this will make delivering our work take longer.
And while it is pessimistic to assume that only terrible things can follow, its where NerdHaven is right now. I truly felt we were getting momentum going into this next month - people were excited.
Now morale is in the toilet and will stay there for a month or so.
We gotta claw our way forward and be professionals. And I'm sure we will.
But we're gonna bitch first.
Thursday, April 28, 2016
Wednesday, April 27, 2016
A Too-familiar Ritual
"Why does this keep happening?"
-Sisyphus
Four minutes.
I timed it.
Inadequate.
And immediately after, I'm screwing my guts back together in a conference room - trying to look like a professional.
* * *
This morning started out normal, mostly. Crate the dog, corral the kids. Out.
Runner's setting up the gear for a charity run that NerdHaven is participating in. Passing out the swag. I'm opting for the green water bottle right about the time I get a notice on my phone.
Living Room movement.I have DropCam. The dog is up to something. He's in his crate, so he's probably not up to much, but I check and-
he's not in his crate.
I check the history and see that Mr. Dog tried the side door (which we forgot to latch) and happily escaped into the kitchen. He's probably doing God-knows what kind of damage to the house, right before he leaves an epic steamer on the new couch.
I gotta bug Gumby about something first, but their door is shut. So I get some coffee and head into an in person meeting I have to. Afterwards I'll bop home and work remote until noon. I have a presentation to the SMEs this afternoon and I need to be in the office for the video conf.
I get a desk check with HellBoy over in our west coast office - HellBoy is killing it on a story I wrote for this big feature Sprint's running. HellBoy spots all kinds of issues and (this one time) I actually am ahead of them, since the UX group went over all the crazy edge cases yesterday.
Well, almost all of them, Sprint caught another one this morning, but... anyway. The story is going well. Should go to QA today.
I take my machine and head home to uncover the horrors the dog has inflicted on my home. I don't see him in the window... but-
-he's happily greeting me at the door. I check everywhere, but nothing is ruined. The dog has....been good. I don't know how to express my disbelief of this, but perhaps he was just stunned into inaction by the amount of choices he had.
Which should I destroy first? OOhhh! I can't decide...!
I set up my VPN and go back to virtual work. Right away, I get IM'ed by Source. They want me to call them.
I start explaining why I'm out of the office, and Source laughs.
"Y'know, it's probably a good day to be out of the office. Put your feet up a bit, there's news."
Source is pretty good about knowing things, it's kinda how they got this gig.
"There's gonna be a team meeting today."
As I have said before, sudden meetings with the boss are never good.
Still, this doesn't have to be bad.
"Remote is in town."
Sh!t.
Remote lives on another plane of corporate existence. Runner's been saying money is tight, lately - so if our corporate masters have deemed it necessary to fly Remote out here, something is about to go down.
"This will be an announcement of a force reduction."
Bad.
"UX will be affected."
Really bad.
"The West Coast dev team is being let go."
Are you F*#k-ing kidding me? We can't lose Pirate and Thespian, that's not possible...! Nobody can do what they do...!
Source backtracks a bit, but repeats that the west coast team is going to be hit hard.
And then they say it "You are safe." The words I've been afraid to ask for.
I am safe. But somebody on UX isn't.
Source has to go, they swear me to secrecy until the appointed hour. I'm supposed to cancel my presentation to the SMEs.
"They won't want to talk to you anyway, their team will be affected, too."
Cripes.
So, now I'm in the know - about something I shouldn't be. I don't know much, so there wouldn't be much point in sharing what I've heard. When it comes to issues like these - only dead certainties count. But you're never allowed to share them.
I don't want to go back to the office. I don't want to face people today.
I go walk the dog to clear my head.
I start thinking about our group. If we're losing someone, there are two main candidates: Red and Gumby.
Red's on a contract and keeps getting jerked around by NerdHaven. They were supposed to make Red an FTE months ago - and pointedly hadn't. Red was starting to get more than a little nervous, but their project work is never ending. If Red goes, a metric sh!t-ton of work will fall on someone. Red's been absolutely great. They've inherited all of Dash's old work and kept up with their original team's work besides.
It will suck if it's Red. They are good people.
Gumby... I admit that's a bit of a long shot. But Gumby was strong-armed out of the UX director job and into Product - where... I don't know. They don't seem to have distinguished themselves. They probably do a lot more than I realize, but my interactions with them have not gotten better since they shifted jobs. Gumby always wants to have more meetings, more discussions - and they never seem to push back against the factional foolishness going on at higher levels. Easy for me to say, I know - but a criticism of Gumby's project always seems to turn into hip shooting a solution to appease the critic. Instead of, "Hey, is this criticism something I should give a sh!t about? No? Then screw it." Or some other, more professional version of that. Just because someone else isn't happy isn't a reason for a complete do-over.
And Gumby does not seem to be making allies with the powerful set at NerdHaven. It's not really a lot to base a theory on, but it's just a feeling.
Source thought Sprint and Data were safe, too. I have to think Dash is, as well. Their project is a colossus and no way they get pulled off it.
I get back and log in. Cancel my SME meeting - and I see that the team meeting is scheduled to start in the next 30 minutes.
!!!
I put the dog back in his crate - making sure to latch both doors, this time - and bolt back to the office. No time for lunch, and no real appetite. I grab a snack at the ground floor cafe and jump into an elevator.
With the meeting starting in the next....geez!...five minutes! People who are getting their notice will probably know by now.
The 'vator opens and I see two co-workers from Service headed towards me. One of them is sobbing, the other is telling them to just breathe. "You're okay, you're okay."
* * *
They don't have a box in their hands, but it's full on obvious what is going on. I clear a path and head towards my desk. I see Drool in the hallway, they're looking grim, but they are still here. They have the look of forced stoicism.
Scan fob, duck through the door. I know the bad news a bit early, so I'm going to shut my mouth until the meeting. In four minutes.
I'm almost at my desk and see Runner. They smile.
"Hey, I'm packing up my sh!t"
No.
They're chucking pens and such into a box.
No.
All I can manage is "Whu-?"
No. No. No.
"I got laid off."
Not Runner.
Runner and I started on the same day. Literally went through all the same sh!t in the rampup. We were joined at the hip on Arwafn. Then Runner became the go-to on two huge internal projects and,
and now?
Runner says Remote was trying to get their attention all morning, so they knew. Walked into Remote's temporary office, saw the two other guys in suits and just said "Gimme my damn folder."
They will get a severance, it's not catastrophic, but I'm just gutted, and Runner's always talking about how they are the stable income in their family. Their spouse has good work, but it's sporadic as hell.
Gumby walks in, they hear the news and are staggered, they hadn't a whiff of this, didn't even know Remote was in town.
Red comes in, they appear to have survived the cut. Which means Runner is the only loss to UX. Runner knows that Ihaq is gone, and Balin is also gone.
Sh!t.
The team meeting with Remote starts in seconds and I ask if this is immediate, or if they will be around after the-
"I'm gone."
I hug Runner and try not to lose my sh!t in the hallway. BigDog comes in as I'm leaving and I have to just walk off.
Two years, I work with you - and now I just walk off.
After four minutes.
Inadequate.
Monday, April 25, 2016
Three Bucks
This story is about the collision of three random things.
Thing one: I'm on Twitter and see this picture.
It's a picture of Errolson Hugh, in a rain jacket he designed - retweeted by William Gibson (who, I firmly maintain, is the most consistently interesting guy on twitter).
Because Gibson retweeted it, I look at it. It's from a website that looks to be designed by people who hate their users. It has marketing copy that practically begs you to find the author and punch them in the head.
To wit: "Full spectrum. Full frontal. Uncut. Hard R. NC-17. Overbuilt. Ultralight. Asymmetric"
Ugh.
The brand is called Acronym.
And pretty much everything they have is black. They are fronting. Hard. And then you look at the pricetags and about blow a fuse. That raincoat in the picture? It costs 1,200 Euro, which is just around $1,300.
Which is nuts.
But William Gibson loves this guy and his jackets. And Gibson (channeling Cayce) is into high quality stuff that doesn't have visual flash. No visible brand names. Just good design and high quality.
Watching a few of the Acronym videos, it's pretty clear that Errolson is huge on style - but is all about design for use and durability. Yeah, he does kung fu in the videos, but mostly to show that his pants can do that without tearing.
And there is a sick amount of cool stuff going on with his gear. I love the little collar magnets to hold your earbuds.
Still, $1,300 is madness. This company makes tee shirts that cost almost $400. Entry level? F$*k that noise.
Still, ya put it on your "If I win the lottery list."
In ink.
* * *
Next up is Gumby.
Last fall, Gumby comes up to me and Runner and asks us if we want to get in on a football pool. After the reflexive eyeroll, I get back to work.
Runner's into it, and pretty soon Gumby and Runner and talking about all the fun of picking winners and losers for the week.
I think of it as homework, but eventually Gumby announces that they'll sign up for me and I can pay them back later.
Uhh....thanks...?
So, next thing I know I'm being emailed a spreadsheet from the pool organizer. It's one of those pools where you pick winners for each game, and weight them based on how confident you are. Each team gets a number from 1-16 and if you end up being right, you get whatever points you assigned to the matchup.
It's more than homework, it's homework on a subject I'm not interested in.
But, high score for each week gets $5... so.... meh.
Sportsball!!!
*Eyeroll*
I pay Gumby the $20 entry fee, so I'm not a deadbeat. And get back to work.
Literally the next time I think about the pool is Thursday afternoon when Runner bugs me to get my picks in, because they are due in three hours.
I'm leaving work in fifteen minutes, so I've got less than that to make my picks and then get the boy to practice.
I go to FiveThirtyEight.com, because Nate Knows Numbers. I literally grab his picks with print screen and paste them into paint. I move the chunks around until they are in first to worst order and then type in my point assignments 16, 15, 14...
Runner is asking me all kinds of questions about whether or not the Cards are good this year or if the Ravens are back on their game. I have no idea about any of this $hit. I pay literally zero attention to the sport these days and what little I have managed to observe has been forgotten so I can free up enough RAM to remember where I work.
I email FM my picks and bail - regretting that I ever got into this stupid thing.
Next Tuesday, the scores come in. Runner has won the week, and I'm down somewhere in the last 4. Not dead last, so leaning on Nate the stat guru has really helped me. But Runner's jazzed, and good on them. They actually thought about their picks. Did some research.
Three weeks in, I've resigned myself to coat tailing on Nate Silver's odds, because I know absolutely nothing about what is going on. Knowing that I have points at risk makes Sunday Googling a little more interesting: Hey, did my teams win? Well, sorta.
"Sorta" is good enough to get me into the middle of the pack. A few weeks after that, I actually get the high for the week.
Yea! Five bucks! Three more like this and I'll break even.
Hah.
But the organizer keeps emailing a list of who won the week, and who has the highest number of points across all the weeks so far. It's just bragging rights, but I'm up in the top three. I guess my week to week numbers aren't winners, but I'm more stable than most of the players, who bounce from worst to first and then back again.
I'm using the same stats every week, so... I guess I would be stable. It's not putting me top of a given week, but I won't be the anchor man overall.
That's cool.
And then I win two more weeks. Fifteen bucks, total!
After those two weeks, I'm ahead in the overall score. Runner is mad at me. They got the first week and pretty much nothing afterwords.
I'm getting coffee one morning in the breakroom and TierI starts razzing me, "You gonna let anyone else win the pool, murph?"
Ha, ha. Yeah, I'm on fire at the moment, but don't worry. It'll pass.
Two weeks later, I haven't won another week, but I'm still ahead on the overall.
Next time, its Ehl giving me grief in the breakroom. "Geez, let somebody else catch up, will ya?"
Ha ha, Well, if I win another week, I'll have gotten back my entry fee, so...
Ehl's incredulous. "Screw the weekly winning, the overall pool must be over four hundred bucks..."
!!!!!
I nod and head back to my desk.
WHAT???
Okay, I re-read the contest rules and find that the overall score is not being included for laughs, The person with the most total points at the end of week 18 gets 80% of the total pot.
I count the total number of players and we're around 36 people. That's like $700! which means....
*calculating sound*
Over $500 bucks!
Holy crap, I'm an idiot.
I literally had no idea about this, but (duh) of course there would be a pot. Imagine paying $20 per person and paying only $5 per week.
Great work, if you can get it, but...
Okay, so now I'm looking at the overall and trying to figure out how I got to this point. Looks like most of the other players are bouncing around wildly from week to week, but there are about three or four that really have been cruising along with me. These folks have a method, too.
My method is simply: ask Nate, but it's a method I've used consistently for almost ten weeks. Better still, Five Thirty Eight's stats improve over time because more is known about the various teams each week. No odds are bulletproof, but these odds are the result of quants pumping data through all kinds of scenarios to see what shakes out.
Folks who pick however the mood strikes them are not going to beat the likes of Nate.
Now, I'm getting grief from a number of people in the office who (unlike me) have known that this pool was for real dollars since the beginning. One of those is PD, who is chomping at the bit in the overall - barely 10 points behind me.
They ask me, "How are you doing this?" I've led in the over all for seven straight weeks.
I could say "I'm using odds from Nate Silver." But then, that would help them. So, I say (disingenuously, but accurately) "I have a spreadsheet, and I plug in the odds."
Which is true, I have the spreadsheet the pool organizer gave that lists the matchups for each week. Everyone has the same spreadsheet.
And yes, I do enter the odds into this spreadsheet - but the only odds I have are the odds I take from Nate Silver.
Five weeks from the end of the pool, some dude comes out of nowhere to overtake me in the overall.
I knew this would happen. Just about the time I'd start to think I could win the thing, my method craps out on me. And - thinking logically - there's lots of reasons I should have expected it to.
Nate Silver's method is to compare the team strengths and run through all the probably scenarios to see what percentage result in wins vs losses. But that ignores a key aspect of the late season: when a team has their bye in hand, or is assured of their playoff slot regardless of their remaining record, they may just choose to tank a game or two. Why should they risk injury to their stars in a meaningless game against an opponent that is never gonna make the postseason?
Screw that. And so Nate's clean numbers on how often this team's starters should beat this other team aren't really relevant - since the coach is benching his starters after the first quarter.
I have two crappy weeks in a row and some dude is pulling away. I'm starting to wonder what system they are using. They probably have a real spreadsheet with odds in it.
And then I go back and check all my scores, because the organizer keeps saying "errors can happen." And I find an error - and unfortunately, it's an error where I got 14 points I shouldn't have.
I check and double check, and find out that Runner's score was too low that week. Oof.
I contact the organizer and fess up. They dock me the points and I'm solidly in second place
But then some dude has a truly brutal week when I net 119 outta 136 points. I'm back on top, with two weeks to go. PD is faltering and some dude is the only one who can catch me. Second from the last week, I get pummelled on the Pats and the Hawks tanking, but so does everyone else. I'm still up.
Some dude gets the exact same score I did. Hmmm.
Last week of the pool, the Pats bone it again, but they are my only double digit fail, and I end the week with 90 points out of 136. I'm averaging 68.8% of the available points overall.
Some dude misses me by five points.
I've won the pool. The pool I didn't know existed.
A few weeks later, the organizer comes by to give me my winnings in cash.
Five hundred and twenty three dollars, thank you very much.
* * *
At which point, E steps in to ruin things. I'm jazzed about having a big wad of bills and E's like "What should we spend the money on?"
Now, I'll admit, that at this stage of the game - Es plans for the winnings had not entered into my thinking.
At all.
I'm pretty sure she was yanking my chain, too. But the point was made.
You think that money is yours, do you?
And I don't know where to go with that. The closer this money got to reality, the more my brain entertained thoughts of getting something for myself. After all, this money was "off budget."
The bills will still get paid, our savings deposits will not falter - and this money will arrive and become... something I wouldn't normally get.
* * *
Runner wasn't exactly helping. Soon as they saw the cash, they were like "Now you can get that jacket."
Ha ha ha. This is like, a third, of what that jacket costs. Ha ha.
Ha.
But that's about all the pollination that idea needed. I know there are five stages of grief, but I'm not sure how many stages of pining there are.
Let's count, shall we?
First: Denial. Ha ha ha.
Second: Advocacy masquerading as doubt. No, no. It's completely impossible. But WOW would it be amaze-balls, right? Look at the way they did that pocket...
Third: Feigned Logic. Well, it would probably be the last raincoat I would ever buy. And really, it's a good thing to increase the amount of things in life that make you happy. Think of the Nest - every time you use it it makes you happy. Or your Tom Binh bag - that makes you happy, right? This would be just one more thing like that. And hey, its not like you're going to get a $400 tee shirt, that's nuts. A jacket is a long lasting thing. You can wear it and still dress down.
Fourth: Actual Logic. Ermagawd, that is a lot of money. Don't you have car repairs to do? Wouldn't the responsible thing to do be to put the money in savings and watch it get devoured by some stupid household expense?
Fifth: Anger. WhytheFark should this money get gobbled up buying a duvet and some pants for the kids?
Sixth: Bargaining. Hon? I'm wondering what you'd think of buying one of these jackets. I don't want to buy anything that is going to cause resentment or that will blow a hole in our budget. I think we can do this without breaking our bank, but I wouldn't think of buying such a thing without talking to you.
* * *
That was about a week ago.
Two months ago, E's surfing the web and shows me a picture of a puppy called Tobias. We've been looking to complicate our lives with a dog for some time now, and have not been having much luck.
I want a dog that looks like a dog, which poses a problem, because apparently only I know what this means. Moreover, our local shelter is blessed with the problem of more demand than supply. This is great for the doggies, but hard on potential owners.
The day after our shelter got over 60 puppies in and put them up for adoption, I'd called them to ask if they still had puppies and was told "yes." So we dragged the kids down there after work to look at the doggies.
All were cute.
All were taken. A fact that is not apparent until after you find a suitable puppy and ask their staff. "Oh, that one is taken. Guess again!"
It is not a fun game. Particularly when all but 1 or 2 dogs are spoken for.
Finding out which dogs are available is something that can only be done away from the kennels. We've spent the bulk of our visit staring at the cute puppies in the kennels, oblivious this fact. All the while, people who reviewed the dog inventory online have been snapping them up at the adoption desk.
The kids resigned themselves to a dogless existence.
E and I got back to being ground down by work.
So, weeks later, E spots this dog, Tobias.
Tobias looks like a dog.
E's done this game too many times, so showing me the dog was more of a forlorn hope than anything else.
"I'm like, if we want this dog, we need to go now."
E takes this to mean, there is no hope. As E has to take little e to an appointment soon, this is it for her. Not this dog, then.
But this is not where I'm going with this. E takes off and I drag the boy out of the basement, because the shelter opens in about 30 minutes. I understand that people are usually there early.
The boy is cranky and I manage to stand on him hard enough to get him in the car and out. Google tells us we will be there about 15 minutes before they open. Good enough?
When we pull up, there are at least a dozen vehicles in the parking lot. Most with people in them. The boy and I wait in the car before we see a father and daughter walk up to the doors of the shelter and go in.
??!!
The Boy and I go in and discover that - in addition to the ten or so people in the parking lot - there are about a dozen people in the entryway of the shelter. The staff tells us all to wait until they make the announcement that the shelter is officially open.
It is nice of the staff to let us in early, but literally everything about getting to see a dog is opaque and difficult. Which dogs in the kennels are available? Who knows? How do I go about seeing a dog? You'll figure it out!
When the appointed hour arrives, the staffs gives us the go-ahead and the Boy and I all but bolt over to the adoption desk. It's more than a bit unseemly. I'm thinking of the people in the parking lot, who waited for someone to turn on the "Open" sign. They will be too late. Or the people who are headed into the kennels, they are hosed. I'm trying to move fast without being tacky. I get body blocked by some senior citizen, utterly clueless to the fact I need to get by. I dodge around them, so much for not being tacky - and then we scramble up to the desk like we're in an event.
Even then, we are fourth in line.
The first person in line asks to see a cat.
Huzzah!
The second person is asking for a dog, but not Tobias.
Third person also wants a dog, but inexplicably wants one of those dogs that look like cats.
We're up and blurt out "Tobias, I want to see Tobias."
And he's available. They give me his folder (the coveted, tangible symbol of "I got dibs on this animal") so I snap a picture of it and text it to E.
We get to meet him and he's a dog, not one of those freak cat/dog hybrids. More importantly, he's a very calm animal. Dog, dragged out of a kennel, after being picked up as a stray - plopped into a room with two new people including a child.
Dog's like: whatevs. Got anything to eat?
This is impressive. Too many dogs in this situation are freaking out, or jumping/chomping, or hiding or any number of things that are the opposite of calm.
This dog is calm. I tell them that barring a sudden, violent attack, we will go forward with adopting this animal when my wife arrives. We're in an observing room and more than a few families (fresh from the kennels) are emerging to ask if they can see Tobias next. The staffer helping us says there are a few more people on Tobias' list who want to see him.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen.
And I feel bad for these folks. They are learning the hard lesson I acted on when I came in. Ignore the kennels. Know which dogs you want to see when you show up, and ask for them immediately. We are going to get this dog - and I feel like a thief.
E and little e show up to formally say "Yes" to Tobias. We are going to rename him - the shelter name doesn't suit him at all.
Thankfully, once you agree to get a dog, the process is very smooth and easy. Some light paperwork, they recommend getting a microchip, and we buy some dog gear: a crate, a leash, collar and two chew toys.
It takes about 20 minutes to get him chipped. Meantime, they ring up the charges.
Five hundred and twenty dollars.
* * *
I resist that math. What did you get with your football winnings? I bought a dog.
Not a jacket, or a cool, once in a blue moon extravagance. But a dog. Something the household was planning to buy anyway.
I swear, it's almost as if the Dog is trying to make his case. He's mostly housebroken, takes to his crate well, loves people, and aside from the occasional, unauthorized gnawing - is a pretty solid dog.
He gets us up early.
Makes us clean up our floors.
Gets me to walk almost every day.
Makes me familiar with my neighborhood.
I've actually met some people (they're nice).
He helps get the kids up in the morning.
He's gotten us to go on family walks - and to dog training classes.
But I'm still resisting the urge to erase the line item in our ledger marked "football pool" and accept that this is where that money went.
I just...
Oh, fine, dog...
You win.
Last stage of pining: Acceptance.
But I'm keeping the last three bucks. Gonna start me a jacket fund.
Thing one: I'm on Twitter and see this picture.
It's a picture of Errolson Hugh, in a rain jacket he designed - retweeted by William Gibson (who, I firmly maintain, is the most consistently interesting guy on twitter).
Because Gibson retweeted it, I look at it. It's from a website that looks to be designed by people who hate their users. It has marketing copy that practically begs you to find the author and punch them in the head.
To wit: "Full spectrum. Full frontal. Uncut. Hard R. NC-17. Overbuilt. Ultralight. Asymmetric"
Ugh.
The brand is called Acronym.
And pretty much everything they have is black. They are fronting. Hard. And then you look at the pricetags and about blow a fuse. That raincoat in the picture? It costs 1,200 Euro, which is just around $1,300.
Which is nuts.
But William Gibson loves this guy and his jackets. And Gibson (channeling Cayce) is into high quality stuff that doesn't have visual flash. No visible brand names. Just good design and high quality.
Watching a few of the Acronym videos, it's pretty clear that Errolson is huge on style - but is all about design for use and durability. Yeah, he does kung fu in the videos, but mostly to show that his pants can do that without tearing.
And there is a sick amount of cool stuff going on with his gear. I love the little collar magnets to hold your earbuds.
Still, $1,300 is madness. This company makes tee shirts that cost almost $400. Entry level? F$*k that noise.
Still, ya put it on your "If I win the lottery list."
In ink.
* * *
Next up is Gumby.
Last fall, Gumby comes up to me and Runner and asks us if we want to get in on a football pool. After the reflexive eyeroll, I get back to work.
Runner's into it, and pretty soon Gumby and Runner and talking about all the fun of picking winners and losers for the week.
I think of it as homework, but eventually Gumby announces that they'll sign up for me and I can pay them back later.
Uhh....thanks...?
So, next thing I know I'm being emailed a spreadsheet from the pool organizer. It's one of those pools where you pick winners for each game, and weight them based on how confident you are. Each team gets a number from 1-16 and if you end up being right, you get whatever points you assigned to the matchup.
It's more than homework, it's homework on a subject I'm not interested in.
Sportsball!!!
*Eyeroll*
I pay Gumby the $20 entry fee, so I'm not a deadbeat. And get back to work.
Literally the next time I think about the pool is Thursday afternoon when Runner bugs me to get my picks in, because they are due in three hours.
I'm leaving work in fifteen minutes, so I've got less than that to make my picks and then get the boy to practice.
I go to FiveThirtyEight.com, because Nate Knows Numbers. I literally grab his picks with print screen and paste them into paint. I move the chunks around until they are in first to worst order and then type in my point assignments 16, 15, 14...
Runner is asking me all kinds of questions about whether or not the Cards are good this year or if the Ravens are back on their game. I have no idea about any of this $hit. I pay literally zero attention to the sport these days and what little I have managed to observe has been forgotten so I can free up enough RAM to remember where I work.
I email FM my picks and bail - regretting that I ever got into this stupid thing.
Next Tuesday, the scores come in. Runner has won the week, and I'm down somewhere in the last 4. Not dead last, so leaning on Nate the stat guru has really helped me. But Runner's jazzed, and good on them. They actually thought about their picks. Did some research.
Three weeks in, I've resigned myself to coat tailing on Nate Silver's odds, because I know absolutely nothing about what is going on. Knowing that I have points at risk makes Sunday Googling a little more interesting: Hey, did my teams win? Well, sorta.
"Sorta" is good enough to get me into the middle of the pack. A few weeks after that, I actually get the high for the week.
Yea! Five bucks! Three more like this and I'll break even.
Hah.
But the organizer keeps emailing a list of who won the week, and who has the highest number of points across all the weeks so far. It's just bragging rights, but I'm up in the top three. I guess my week to week numbers aren't winners, but I'm more stable than most of the players, who bounce from worst to first and then back again.
I'm using the same stats every week, so... I guess I would be stable. It's not putting me top of a given week, but I won't be the anchor man overall.
That's cool.
And then I win two more weeks. Fifteen bucks, total!
After those two weeks, I'm ahead in the overall score. Runner is mad at me. They got the first week and pretty much nothing afterwords.
I'm getting coffee one morning in the breakroom and TierI starts razzing me, "You gonna let anyone else win the pool, murph?"
Ha, ha. Yeah, I'm on fire at the moment, but don't worry. It'll pass.
Two weeks later, I haven't won another week, but I'm still ahead on the overall.
Next time, its Ehl giving me grief in the breakroom. "Geez, let somebody else catch up, will ya?"
Ha ha, Well, if I win another week, I'll have gotten back my entry fee, so...
Ehl's incredulous. "Screw the weekly winning, the overall pool must be over four hundred bucks..."
!!!!!
I nod and head back to my desk.
WHAT???
Okay, I re-read the contest rules and find that the overall score is not being included for laughs, The person with the most total points at the end of week 18 gets 80% of the total pot.
I count the total number of players and we're around 36 people. That's like $700! which means....
*calculating sound*
Over $500 bucks!
Holy crap, I'm an idiot.
I literally had no idea about this, but (duh) of course there would be a pot. Imagine paying $20 per person and paying only $5 per week.
Great work, if you can get it, but...
Okay, so now I'm looking at the overall and trying to figure out how I got to this point. Looks like most of the other players are bouncing around wildly from week to week, but there are about three or four that really have been cruising along with me. These folks have a method, too.
My method is simply: ask Nate, but it's a method I've used consistently for almost ten weeks. Better still, Five Thirty Eight's stats improve over time because more is known about the various teams each week. No odds are bulletproof, but these odds are the result of quants pumping data through all kinds of scenarios to see what shakes out.
Folks who pick however the mood strikes them are not going to beat the likes of Nate.
Now, I'm getting grief from a number of people in the office who (unlike me) have known that this pool was for real dollars since the beginning. One of those is PD, who is chomping at the bit in the overall - barely 10 points behind me.
They ask me, "How are you doing this?" I've led in the over all for seven straight weeks.
I could say "I'm using odds from Nate Silver." But then, that would help them. So, I say (disingenuously, but accurately) "I have a spreadsheet, and I plug in the odds."
Which is true, I have the spreadsheet the pool organizer gave that lists the matchups for each week. Everyone has the same spreadsheet.
And yes, I do enter the odds into this spreadsheet - but the only odds I have are the odds I take from Nate Silver.
Five weeks from the end of the pool, some dude comes out of nowhere to overtake me in the overall.
I knew this would happen. Just about the time I'd start to think I could win the thing, my method craps out on me. And - thinking logically - there's lots of reasons I should have expected it to.
Nate Silver's method is to compare the team strengths and run through all the probably scenarios to see what percentage result in wins vs losses. But that ignores a key aspect of the late season: when a team has their bye in hand, or is assured of their playoff slot regardless of their remaining record, they may just choose to tank a game or two. Why should they risk injury to their stars in a meaningless game against an opponent that is never gonna make the postseason?
Screw that. And so Nate's clean numbers on how often this team's starters should beat this other team aren't really relevant - since the coach is benching his starters after the first quarter.
I have two crappy weeks in a row and some dude is pulling away. I'm starting to wonder what system they are using. They probably have a real spreadsheet with odds in it.
And then I go back and check all my scores, because the organizer keeps saying "errors can happen." And I find an error - and unfortunately, it's an error where I got 14 points I shouldn't have.
I check and double check, and find out that Runner's score was too low that week. Oof.
I contact the organizer and fess up. They dock me the points and I'm solidly in second place
But then some dude has a truly brutal week when I net 119 outta 136 points. I'm back on top, with two weeks to go. PD is faltering and some dude is the only one who can catch me. Second from the last week, I get pummelled on the Pats and the Hawks tanking, but so does everyone else. I'm still up.
Some dude gets the exact same score I did. Hmmm.
Last week of the pool, the Pats bone it again, but they are my only double digit fail, and I end the week with 90 points out of 136. I'm averaging 68.8% of the available points overall.
Some dude misses me by five points.
I've won the pool. The pool I didn't know existed.
A few weeks later, the organizer comes by to give me my winnings in cash.
Five hundred and twenty three dollars, thank you very much.
* * *
At which point, E steps in to ruin things. I'm jazzed about having a big wad of bills and E's like "What should we spend the money on?"
Now, I'll admit, that at this stage of the game - Es plans for the winnings had not entered into my thinking.
At all.
I'm pretty sure she was yanking my chain, too. But the point was made.
You think that money is yours, do you?
And I don't know where to go with that. The closer this money got to reality, the more my brain entertained thoughts of getting something for myself. After all, this money was "off budget."
The bills will still get paid, our savings deposits will not falter - and this money will arrive and become... something I wouldn't normally get.
* * *
Runner wasn't exactly helping. Soon as they saw the cash, they were like "Now you can get that jacket."
Ha ha ha. This is like, a third, of what that jacket costs. Ha ha.
Ha.
But that's about all the pollination that idea needed. I know there are five stages of grief, but I'm not sure how many stages of pining there are.
Let's count, shall we?
First: Denial. Ha ha ha.
Second: Advocacy masquerading as doubt. No, no. It's completely impossible. But WOW would it be amaze-balls, right? Look at the way they did that pocket...
Third: Feigned Logic. Well, it would probably be the last raincoat I would ever buy. And really, it's a good thing to increase the amount of things in life that make you happy. Think of the Nest - every time you use it it makes you happy. Or your Tom Binh bag - that makes you happy, right? This would be just one more thing like that. And hey, its not like you're going to get a $400 tee shirt, that's nuts. A jacket is a long lasting thing. You can wear it and still dress down.
Fourth: Actual Logic. Ermagawd, that is a lot of money. Don't you have car repairs to do? Wouldn't the responsible thing to do be to put the money in savings and watch it get devoured by some stupid household expense?
Fifth: Anger. WhytheFark should this money get gobbled up buying a duvet and some pants for the kids?
Sixth: Bargaining. Hon? I'm wondering what you'd think of buying one of these jackets. I don't want to buy anything that is going to cause resentment or that will blow a hole in our budget. I think we can do this without breaking our bank, but I wouldn't think of buying such a thing without talking to you.
* * *
That was about a week ago.
Two months ago, E's surfing the web and shows me a picture of a puppy called Tobias. We've been looking to complicate our lives with a dog for some time now, and have not been having much luck.
I want a dog that looks like a dog, which poses a problem, because apparently only I know what this means. Moreover, our local shelter is blessed with the problem of more demand than supply. This is great for the doggies, but hard on potential owners.
The day after our shelter got over 60 puppies in and put them up for adoption, I'd called them to ask if they still had puppies and was told "yes." So we dragged the kids down there after work to look at the doggies.
All were cute.
All were taken. A fact that is not apparent until after you find a suitable puppy and ask their staff. "Oh, that one is taken. Guess again!"
It is not a fun game. Particularly when all but 1 or 2 dogs are spoken for.
Finding out which dogs are available is something that can only be done away from the kennels. We've spent the bulk of our visit staring at the cute puppies in the kennels, oblivious this fact. All the while, people who reviewed the dog inventory online have been snapping them up at the adoption desk.
The kids resigned themselves to a dogless existence.
E and I got back to being ground down by work.
So, weeks later, E spots this dog, Tobias.
Tobias looks like a dog.
E's done this game too many times, so showing me the dog was more of a forlorn hope than anything else.
"I'm like, if we want this dog, we need to go now."
E takes this to mean, there is no hope. As E has to take little e to an appointment soon, this is it for her. Not this dog, then.
But this is not where I'm going with this. E takes off and I drag the boy out of the basement, because the shelter opens in about 30 minutes. I understand that people are usually there early.
The boy is cranky and I manage to stand on him hard enough to get him in the car and out. Google tells us we will be there about 15 minutes before they open. Good enough?
When we pull up, there are at least a dozen vehicles in the parking lot. Most with people in them. The boy and I wait in the car before we see a father and daughter walk up to the doors of the shelter and go in.
??!!
The Boy and I go in and discover that - in addition to the ten or so people in the parking lot - there are about a dozen people in the entryway of the shelter. The staff tells us all to wait until they make the announcement that the shelter is officially open.
It is nice of the staff to let us in early, but literally everything about getting to see a dog is opaque and difficult. Which dogs in the kennels are available? Who knows? How do I go about seeing a dog? You'll figure it out!
When the appointed hour arrives, the staffs gives us the go-ahead and the Boy and I all but bolt over to the adoption desk. It's more than a bit unseemly. I'm thinking of the people in the parking lot, who waited for someone to turn on the "Open" sign. They will be too late. Or the people who are headed into the kennels, they are hosed. I'm trying to move fast without being tacky. I get body blocked by some senior citizen, utterly clueless to the fact I need to get by. I dodge around them, so much for not being tacky - and then we scramble up to the desk like we're in an event.
Even then, we are fourth in line.
The first person in line asks to see a cat.
Huzzah!
The second person is asking for a dog, but not Tobias.
Third person also wants a dog, but inexplicably wants one of those dogs that look like cats.
We're up and blurt out "Tobias, I want to see Tobias."
And he's available. They give me his folder (the coveted, tangible symbol of "I got dibs on this animal") so I snap a picture of it and text it to E.
We get to meet him and he's a dog, not one of those freak cat/dog hybrids. More importantly, he's a very calm animal. Dog, dragged out of a kennel, after being picked up as a stray - plopped into a room with two new people including a child.
Dog's like: whatevs. Got anything to eat?
This is impressive. Too many dogs in this situation are freaking out, or jumping/chomping, or hiding or any number of things that are the opposite of calm.
This dog is calm. I tell them that barring a sudden, violent attack, we will go forward with adopting this animal when my wife arrives. We're in an observing room and more than a few families (fresh from the kennels) are emerging to ask if they can see Tobias next. The staffer helping us says there are a few more people on Tobias' list who want to see him.
Yeah, that's not gonna happen.
And I feel bad for these folks. They are learning the hard lesson I acted on when I came in. Ignore the kennels. Know which dogs you want to see when you show up, and ask for them immediately. We are going to get this dog - and I feel like a thief.
E and little e show up to formally say "Yes" to Tobias. We are going to rename him - the shelter name doesn't suit him at all.
Thankfully, once you agree to get a dog, the process is very smooth and easy. Some light paperwork, they recommend getting a microchip, and we buy some dog gear: a crate, a leash, collar and two chew toys.
It takes about 20 minutes to get him chipped. Meantime, they ring up the charges.
Five hundred and twenty dollars.
* * *
I resist that math. What did you get with your football winnings? I bought a dog.
Not a jacket, or a cool, once in a blue moon extravagance. But a dog. Something the household was planning to buy anyway.
I swear, it's almost as if the Dog is trying to make his case. He's mostly housebroken, takes to his crate well, loves people, and aside from the occasional, unauthorized gnawing - is a pretty solid dog.
He gets us up early.
Makes us clean up our floors.
Gets me to walk almost every day.
Makes me familiar with my neighborhood.
I've actually met some people (they're nice).
He helps get the kids up in the morning.
He's gotten us to go on family walks - and to dog training classes.
But I'm still resisting the urge to erase the line item in our ledger marked "football pool" and accept that this is where that money went.
I just...
Oh, fine, dog...
You win.
Last stage of pining: Acceptance.
But I'm keeping the last three bucks. Gonna start me a jacket fund.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)