LTS

So far it appears I have not been impacted. I am just going to be expected to do more... even though I am already doing more. But hey, I have a job right? Sigh.

I can actually point to ways to fix the arena experience. Don't assume. I never brought up ROR, why did you choose to use him in your response to me? Moreover, I'm not one of the posters who hates that the trade was made. The information I had about ROR was enough for me to want him gone. (Well, WANT is a strong word.. I understand why he needed to go.) Yes, all teams have up and down periods. When they are down, they lose money. When they are completely mismanaged, they lose more money. You get attacked because your responses don't address situations. Your responses repeat the same words over and over again. It's not a discussion, it's like listening to a talking display case. Each time you push the button you get the same message. My tensions are anything but high., COVID doesn't bother me, and I don't have preoccupations with socioeconomic issues. I have a fundamental problem with a lack of critical thinking, especially the lack of it that you are applying in responses to me. You're not making arguments, you are making statements. Argument have supporting evidence.

Yes, but you stated a quite specific instance about neurosurgeons. I happen to have one who lives on my street and I spent 11 years in health care consistently meeting with administrations and researchers. I refuted it. Not opinion, reality. Players don't come to Buffalo because the team has been bad, the ownership is clearly not winning people over, and frankly has demonstrated an actual lack of competence in running an organization. Why would any player or executive want to come here and work for this family? It's not about the city, it's about the owners. Should we not expect that all the people who were let go don't speak about the inability of this family to lead an organization? I know I've asked about jobs in other companies only to be told about the culture there and then reconsidered my interest immediately. It wasn't based on the city. You know how many kids grow up to play hockey that have never had an NHL team in their city? They weren't crushed. People will be upset if the team leaves, but that will quickly be replaced. Quebec City is still standing and last I checked, the kids there still play hockey. If you want some blind fan loyalty to a franchise then don't tell me its a business. Instead, tell me its a social club, where we can $2 brews and some wings and watch a crappy hockey team get their arses kicked year in and year out. It's amazing how little I'd care about the product on the ice if it didn't cost so much money just to get in the building. But that's the not case, fans get to pay an large sum of money to go through metal detectors, have the option to buy seriously overpriced beverages and crappy food and then sit in seats so uncomfortable and jammed in that the Delta CEO uses them as a reference of how far the airlines can cut back. What's left? Oh yeah, a terrible arena experience, and to top it off... the whole reason people showed up? See some really crappy hockey. Sounds like a I've got it all wrong though. I should be happy to have that. Hell it's an HONOR to have all that. Nope.. not how it works.

True. Had my grammar been better I think that would have come across. I used really twice.. and I meant to say as well at the end. But the point is there. In other news.. this week is almost assuredly the week our company is making big changes and right now I am waiting to see if I am impacted. I give myself a 90% chance of having a new role or no job by the end of the week. This is the 4th time this has happened to me in the 7 years of working here. Only once was I kind of left to fend for myself. I'm not sure I will be so lucky this time.

This is an absolutely horrible take. The best neurosurgeon will go wherever a healthcare system will promise them the most money and almost assuredly the most leeway to run various levels of medical studies with insane resources and as little oversight as possible. Patients will travel between cities to find that single neurosurgeon. The success of the organization is dependent upon those who run it, not the people who live in the same area code it's run in. The fans can take down a successful organization by still continuing to not care about it. Fans aren't responsible for a failing organization, it takes care of itself. No business is run on the premise of give me money first and I will give you a quality product second. It doesn't work that way, period. Even if it happens to work for a brief period of time, it's not sustainable. Your take is myopic and puts a value on sports that is perceived but not real. Plenty of cities in this country thrive without a sports team in them. The initial impact might be significant, but people move on and these days they usually do so within weeks. I suppose everyone is different, but eventually each person wakes up and realizes that handing hard earned money to an entity that has no interest in improving your quality of life is not justifiable. I mean, why improve the product or invest if people keep blindly handing over money?

Great point. It really doesn't apply to anyone paid hourly really.

It's like everything related to Buffalo professional sports at this point is terrible. I have no sympathy for those two and frankly I'm done with them and their franchises. I'll stick around the forums for the discussion, but the teams are dead to me. (Well, the Bills have been for awhile).

It simplifies things. For example, we have sick days. They are not accrued. You don't use them, you lose them. In theory only the sick take them. Of course those who don't generate up to 7 days more work than those who do (all things being equal). There is no reward for not using them, despite the fact that those who don't benefit the company more. So, in order to keep people from using them you then generate a policy that says, the company has a right to request medical documentation should you be sick more than X days in a row, etc. So, why bother with that. You got with blank PTO. Of course then the question is, is it accrued or not and can you carry it over? All of that accounting that weighs on the books, etc. In the end.. it's overhead. It makes far more sense to just judge people on their output and not worry if or when they are at work (with certain guidelines of course). Those who are more efficient would be able to have more time off than those who are not. In school, if you can do A level work in half the time as someone else then you effectively have more free time. Ahh well, it's all theory.

Internal accounting can be an ugly construct. As you indicate, those who paid into the system while in NY and then collect later in life while in Florida are really doing nothing more than getting back the share they paid in (in theory). Whereas those who have lived in Florida all their life are not. Except, what if they are disproportionately spending elsewhere? After all, money ends up in the government pockets in many ways. Analyzing one piece of the pie, or even 4 pieces of the pie is dangerous when there are thousands of pieces and the pie is so big you can't make out what is 5 pieces away from you.

I thought those were to see if you got the high score! So, we're "restructuring" right now. I hate this period. We have these levels of executive approval on processes but during these times they are never available. They don't understand why work slows down. Then they take forever to implement them and basically waste 3-4 weeks worth of work time by either undoing or not responding to the checkpoints they put in place. My major project is in this restructuring.. so at the moment I am also hoping that I am still around after they are done figuring things out. I'm almost assuredly losing the project (being taken from our whole business unit). I have other projects.. but... you never know. Sigh.

To me that reads that RJ is scheduled for the rest of the home games... that's all.

That's cool.. I've been by there. If only I had a boat.. ?

Yeah, and to jam together you need to send far more information across the pipes than a game does. Hell, just trying to do recording on a PC without proper drivers can make it difficult. I spent a good amount of money back in the day I used to use my laptop for many of the VSTs I ran and had to source out the ASIO to an external box just to keep the latency low enough locally.

It's a fair question. So why aren't people asking the news media why they haven't asked the question. I suppose this opinion piece is an attempt to call it out, but it would seem that it might not be too hard to get a few people to rally up and begin asking, openly, for NBC, ABC, CNN to respond to why they have not mentioned it. I don't follow this stuff, but is this a FOX News item? Are the Republican backers out there hamming it up over social media calling out the other media outlets for not discussing it? I have not heard anything about this until you posted it and while I don't really follow the news, I do see an equal number of headlines from what I would consider both conservative and liberal media outlets. So, if the Republicans aren't asking these questions it makes you wonder just how much there is to the accusation. Or, somewhere, the analytics say that bringing that subject up now, while the country is in the middle of the pandemic, would be career suicide.

Impressed? No. Why should you be impressed? People should give what they want and can. If that group gives $100k, then it's $100k more than existed before they gave the money. Instead of being thankful they gave anything, people want to chastise them for not doing enough. Talk about looking that gift horse in the mouth. Next time perhaps they should just keep the money right? If its such a worthless gesture, then why bother. Who needs that extra $100k anyway? Can we also chastise those who don't do enough in life to elevate themselves? Is that acceptable? After all, these players are in the sub 1% of the population who make it (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/how-hard-is-it-to-make-it_b_5803634). So, they had to work hard to make it that far. Are they required to give it all back? Bottom line, you can blame people for their money and you can blame people for not working hard enough. Neither position wins. So best to just get along. I don't find it advocating for "the privileged" so much as advocating for people getting to live their lives the way they see fit without having to be criticized just because it doesn't conform to someone else's view. I see plenty of people with money who live a lifestyle I don't agree with. I also see plenty of people without money who live a lifestyle I don't agree with.

It wasn't for me. Just... I dunno, not for me. It looks great. I know a lot of friends like it. But I really couldn't get past learning the basic controls before I didn't want to touch the game again. And so it sits on my PS4, consuming disk space, having only been played perhaps for a total of 3 hours, including the online piece. Depends on what kinds of games you like as to what I would recommend. Also, what system are you on? I just played Ori and the Blind Forest (on PC, but it's on Xbox too) and I loved it. I actually completed 100% of it, not just the story but got every power up and hit all of the map. Only game I've ever done that on. I am onto Ori and the Will of the Wisps now. On PS4 I played the ever loving hell out of Horizon Zero Dawn. You can pick that up for super cheap now. It's excellent.

I grew up loving Ted Darling. I had no love for RJ. There was something about his voice on the radio that initially just turned me off. I couldn't deal with it. Then, you rifle through a slew of just absolute PBP hacks.. and they adopt the dual-broadcast... RJ is suddenly my favorite. Now, I can't imagine a game without him and I don't want to. I don't dislike others that have done the job and I am sure, at some point, I will come to grips with RJ not calling games, even with his mistakes these days. But for me, RJ is to PBP and the Sabres to what Anthony Bourdain was to me for travel/culture/food TV. It's in their sincerity and their delivery, it's how real they are. I would rather hear a Sabres game with no announcer, than someone other than RJ at this point. I do have one hope, that when players have something extremely emotional and tangible to play for there tends to be a way to get more out of themselves than usual. I would hope, hope like hell, that whomever is on the roster next season finds a way to dig deep and give RJ a proper season.

I do. and it really depends on the game. I mean, as networking stands, latency is the real enemy of it all. But, let's say I am playing FortNite. It makes a real difference if you get on NA-East servers versus further West. I play with friends from coast to coast, so it varies and inevitably people on either coast due worse when they are on the servers the opposite side of them. Last weekend I was playing at 20ms ping. (insane?). I was far more successful than I was the other night when it was 135ms. It wasn't even worth playing. I can't get my ping in Warzone, but it makes a huge difference there as well. Every game is different and in reality there is far more to the calculation than just latency. This is a really great write up of all the factors that go into things and while it's written for Overwatch the variables remain the same. Now, go read about how Valorant is being set up. Riot Games, over the past few years, has been buying up large 10G-100G waves between major data centers (link is to part two of their vision and creation) to create their own network that is "off the Internet". The concept was to get the gamer to the closest interconnection and then transfer traffic onto a private wavelength that did not compete with other Internet traffic. Essentially building out the "E-SportsNet". Any game, in theory, could be put onto this network.

You have a campground? How did I not know this? Do tell.

It would seem. Person in Monroe County was arrested for not self-quarantining and refusing to be tested despite displaying symptom. They had to convert a suburban precinct into a quarantined holding area and move the inmates there to another facility all because of this person. Insane. Putting deputies and others at risk.

Kinda makes that night at the Flying Dog Cafe in Stockholm seem like a dream dinner? Just remember, you can't fix stupid. Not all of us are lucky enough to have the perspective that this isn't the worst thing ever. For many they've spent their lives tuned out to the fragile nature of the world. They have to process all of this still. It will take time.

It goes further than employment, but you are right. One that you hope sticks when this passes.

A friend showed me that they have an app that brings their wine labels to life. It was pretty cool when they showed me.

I figured that would be the case. Frankly it's why it's okay for video streaming to phones to be a lower resolution as well. The device, despite its amazing screen, still isn't suited for properly displaying the resolution. Similarly, the speakers/headphone cannot handle a full sound resolution. No need to send the frequencies in the extreme ranges if the system converting it to sound can't reproduce those frequencies.

Given what most people listen to Spotify on, do you think it matters? Honestly curious.