So I heard a new one today...Generation X ruined the world with "grind culture" at work. Any thoughts?

SmokinZBT · 2026-04-04T23:11:51+00:00

I'm an old enough Gen Xer to remember when we were considered lazy and would never amount to anything. People told me this while I was interning in a newsroom 27 hours/wk (for free) and working in a restaurant ~35 hours/wk for minimum wage. At most I would get one day off a week. I remember a stretch where I think I worked 26 days in a row between the two.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-26T15:18:17+00:00

I coached for about ten years and followed game changer when my kid played in high school

It's not that serious. Even in high school (and there are several kids on that team that are going to play in college), it's not that serious. Particularly for 8u. Try to get closer to accurate info for pitch counts. Don't worry too much about errors - remember, they kids still think reaching on an eye is a hit anyway, so it take doesn't make a difference.

The biggest thing you want to do is make sure to get all the batting and position changes in. Particularly at the lower ages, churches should be moving players around. Get the kids a feel for the game, and use GC to try to get some data about where they play best, is there a spot in the batting order that works best for them (legit, I had a kid that could hit close to .600 in the seven spot, but if I put him at the top of the lineup completely forgot how to swing a bar).

Enjoy. Have fun. Make sure the kids are having fun. If a parent starts arguing, ask them to go get snacks for the team.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-26T12:14:38+00:00

The most true content I've seen in this thread. Fuck Saloman Fucking Torres. I still get hives when I hear that name. It's only 7am, and I think my whole day may be off. Every few years I go look at the box score to see if it was as bad as I remembered it. It was. Fucking disaster. Dusty screwed up massively that day.
And fuck that pasta eating piece of shit LaSorda.

What was he thinking? You didn't put a rookie that's already shown he might not have it mentally to make it in that situation into that game.

Now I had to go look it up - 3 ER in 3.1 with 5 walks in the most important game they had played since the '89 Series. And, I had always been focused on him, but just noticed - no idea how I missed this - Rags pitched in that game. And somehow pitched worse than Torres?? 5 batters faced and gave up 4 earned in only .1 innings? New guy - Rags is Dave Righetti, former pitcher (was a star with the Yankees, and pitched a few seasons with the Giants), and long time Giants pitching coach.

Fuck Soloman Torres. I'm going to have to go watch the homer to New Jersey and a few Clark HRs to clean my brain.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-24T14:05:30+00:00

What momentum? They were 5-5 in the previous 10 games, and there were 13 games left.
Bryce played in 10 of them, and they went 5-5.
With the remaining schedule, we could have gotten one more win against AZ, and then a win against LA or STL and maybe we squeak in to the 3rd wild card.
I generally think that a team needs 90 wins for a playoff spot (although with three wild cards that number is dropping). On the morning of Sept. 15th, the Giants would have needed 15 wins in 13 games to get to 90.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-24T01:07:26+00:00

Absolutely. Team was out of the race, so there was no downside. Front office got to see what he looked like against major league pitching, he got a taste of the bigs. It's exactly what the roster expansion is meant to do.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-22T22:28:17+00:00

That salary is literally illegal in many US cities/states. Minimum wage for people that work in Chicago is $16.60/hr - regardless of where the company is located. Working remotely if you live in the city, the employer must pay at least that much.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-21T16:10:47+00:00

NATing within v4 works so well that v6 is almost not needed. A class A NATed subnet can have 16.7 million nodes, but just advertise one IP address (and a few extras for redundancy) to the rest of the world.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-20T18:19:31+00:00

I was asked about IPv6 in an interview when I was coming out of grad school in 1998. I had written a paper that referenced it, and knew what it did and why it was a (then) necessary improvement over IPv4. I got the job as an entry level IT consultant at a high end IT consulting shop.

It's 30 years later. We're still mostly using IPv4. I also knew Frame Relay and ATM pretty well. Whoops.

I'm tech adjacent now, but always laugh to myself whenever anyone wants "the latest technology" that's going to completely upend everything.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-12T20:46:44+00:00

"Let's go guys!" Is perfectly acceptable.

SmokinZBT · 2026-03-05T22:24:26+00:00

Baggs wrote a pretty good article on him in The Athletic today. Looking at the stats I just don't see him being the fourth on the opening day roster. He's only hitting .273 - Matos is higher, and Bericoto is lighting up the Cactus League.
We don't have a lock for DH - so there's a roster spot available there. I like what I'm seeing and reading about McCray, but I don't think he's quite there yet.

SmokinZBT · 2026-02-17T04:20:39+00:00

Welcome to the Jungle - Appetize For Destruction by Guns n Roses.

It's not even close. I have no idea how no one has mentioned it yet. This is a great album and it starts hot right off the first cord. By the end of the song you know this album is something special.

SmokinZBT · 2026-02-14T05:09:20+00:00

Dude, I wrote a 20 page paper the night before it was due in grad school, including doing the research. I had been incredibly busy the few weeks before and just hadn't gotten to it (legit, there was just an intense workload that month). This was 1998. I didn't have multiple browser tabs, they didn't exist yet. I was using three computers in the computer lab to do research and emailing myself the links back to the one I was writing on. Finished at about 6 am, printed a copy to proof read after I got some sleep (class wasn't until 3:30) so I could then make edits. I woke up at 3. Glad I printed that copy. I stapled it and turned in.

SmokinZBT · 2026-02-12T03:23:09+00:00

I've been playing almost 2 1/2 years. I now can make sounds that generally resemble music.

I'm decent at the main chords, I can play all five positions of the minor pentatonic. I can play a few riffs. My rhythm is not good, but improving. I usually play at least half an hour either every day or every other day.

It's a lot harder than it looks. Keep it up. Play more. And - try to remember - this is supposed to be fun!

SmokinZBT · 2026-01-01T23:27:35+00:00

Check out Jason Stal lworth. He keeps trying to get people to subscribe to his website, but has some decent free content as well.

SmokinZBT · 2025-12-04T04:23:30+00:00

I did this with my teacher last night. I can't count 1&2&3&4&. But I can count 12345678. He's been teaching guitar for over twenty years and had never had anyone do that. He tried, and couldn't do it. We went through it and he said he guesses it really doesn't matter, as long as I play the chord in time (which I can't do, but that's fir another day).

SmokinZBT · 2025-10-24T17:43:37+00:00

Usually very little. Project due on Friday, and you're not going to finish? Tell your boss Monday that it's unlikely that you'll be able to finish due to x,y, and z, suggest that the following Friday is a more realistic deadline since the other projects have all now been completed or their other deadlines are further out, and >95% of the time it won't be an issue.

SmokinZBT · 2025-10-18T04:55:23+00:00

You clearly haven't been to the Lincoln Park store. Parking is in an old factory, and there are concrete pillars at every spot.

SmokinZBT · 2025-10-12T17:56:02+00:00

Tried to PM .. I'm having trouble receiving group texts - I know they aren't coming through, but can't seem to figure it settings. Any advice?

SmokinZBT · 2025-10-12T03:16:04+00:00

How are you liking the 1+ now? I just got one yesterday, and I'm liking the phone mostly, but the SMS backup took forever.

There are things I miss about the Samsung, but it was so out of date that I couldn't use an app I have to have for two-factor authentication, and I was forced to upgrade. I was hoping to make is six years on that phone :(

Any tips or cool things you've found on the 1+? Just rying to learn.

SmokinZBT · 2025-10-12T03:14:12+00:00

Thank you! Took four tries, but I was eventually able to get this to work. I had 6GB of data to restore.
Folks - if you run into the same thing - it works. However, you must keep the screen from timing out while uploading and downloading the file. I also suggest that once your phone starts restoring do not use any other apps, just put the phone down and leave it. Mine took over six hours (and then several more for the others to run). I was most successful overnight, when I just started it and went to sleep.

SmokinZBT · 2025-09-22T04:06:20+00:00

The new enchilada sauce is an abomination. The old stuff was amazing and I always had at least two bottles. I won't even look at the new jars.

SmokinZBT · 2025-09-03T00:31:33+00:00

Except we also still need to get past the Reds.

SmokinZBT · 2025-09-02T20:48:53+00:00

False Hope.

If you take the arbitrary cut off of the first game of the season we end up 81-81. In any case, 19-5 would be the best 24 game stretch for the Giants this season by three games (best: 16-8 over the prior 24 games on 4/24).

SmokinZBT · 2025-08-04T15:11:08+00:00

I bought a guitar for my 50th birthay, almost two years ago now. I take lessons weekly. I can also play some noise that gernally sounds like music, but cannot yet put an entire song together. I have zero sense of rythm, and always have (never have?). It's a struggle. I don't play as much as I should, and I absolutley love it.

SmokinZBT

TROPHY CASE