jmowreader
jmowreader's JournalIf you want to go to a New York Subway Series game, get your tickets NOW!!!
I have finalized my vacation plans: a Mariners game in Seattle on July 22, a Subway Series game in Yankee Stadium on the 24th and a Mets game at Citi Field on the 26th. I'll do a little shopping on the 25th and do a couple museums on the 27th.
So...I went to the Yankees' website to get my ticket for that game...and the stadium is nearly sold out. Even the 400-level nosebleed deck is selling out quick. (I am in that deck. The way I figure it is, the lower decks should be for New Yorkers and the top deck for out-of-towners at Subway Series games...besides, ain't no one ever hit a ball into the 400-level deck so the risk of flying objects conking me in the head is pretty damned low there.)
Inadvertently humorous girls softball story
https://cdapress.com/news/2024/apr/21/prep-softball/On Saturday the Sandpoint Bulldogs girls softball team traveled to Lewiston to get absolutely waxed by the Lewiston Bengals in a doubleheader…the second game was stopped in the middle of the fifth inning with the Bengals leading 32-0. Anyway, here’s the good part: the Bulldogs have a player on their roster named Peyton Cessna, who was the only Bulldog who hit the ball more than once yesterday. Lewiston’s softball field is at Airport Park. Yeah, I’m sitting there plating this going “wait, WHAT?”
I saw a Tesla Cybertruck in the wild today
First: Yes, they are just as ugly in real life as they are in photos.
What the pictures of this vehicle don't really reflect is how big they are. If you've ever seen an H1 Hummer or an Army Humvee...well, they're about the same size, in both length and width. The one I saw was taking a right turn off Lakeside Drive onto Second Street in Coeur d'Alene, ID. (I give you this location so you can look it up on a map and see how tight this is.) The driver must have gotten it really recently and not been familiar with how wide it is, because he or she ran over the curb making the turn - which is something pretty much every new Humvee driver does at least a few times. I'm suspecting you'll soon hear about all the parked cars these sideswipe, which is another common thing new Humvee drivers do.
Fun trivia: Norman Schwarzkopf was the commander of 24th Infantry Division when the Humvee was first issued. Stormin' Norman got so pissed off with how many of his new trucks had the front-right corner of the hood knocked off by hitting things with these trucks he emptied his commander's imprest funds account to buy brush guards for every Humvee in the division. The Army realized he had a good idea and retrofitted all these trucks with brush guards.
A little update on my new position (this is really good)
Here at the Press when we put someone in a new job we traditionally have someone working with them for about a month to be sure they're trained and capable of doing the job without supervision.
Okay, so I've been in this new position of floor supervisor for three weeks. The first week, my department manager - who'd been working on weekends for seven weeks straight because it was hard to get me down there - was supposed to be there to back me up but called out on what I described to our HR person as "sick of working weekends." (She thought that was pretty funny. She knew what he was up against and was fine with it.) So first I thought, oh crap I've been thrown to the wolves. What are ya gonna do? Give the damn wolves a dog treat and rub their little bellies, remember I did way more complex leadership stuff in the Army than this place requires, and completed the mission. Our dock supervisor was really loving how the papers were coming out, the carriers were happy, the crew is happy because I run the equipment slower than most people do so it keeps up with us, we beat deadline, all is serene.
The second week our other floor supervisor was there to back me up. At the start of the night she told me, "I'm only here for moral support." So naturally I moral-supported her to the loading dock to stack one of our editions on a pallet because I needed her out there. And...she was fine with that. Dock supervisor is still happy with the papers, carriers and crew are still happy, we still made deadline (even though we got a VERY late start because we print lottery results in the paper, the Powerball people were on a computer-glitch-induced delay and I finally had to make a command decision to remove the lottery results block from the papers and insert a "no lottery results because of technical issues; we apologize for their omission" message), all is still well. After she got done stacking newspapers she told me that she was tired and I'm doing well so she went home.
Yesterday I got a call from my department manager: The dock supervisor, the carriers, the rest of the crew, everyone who might be called to supervise you and the publisher all say you're awesome at this. You gonna be okay being in there by yourself Saturday night? Well...of course I am, so...here we are.
So much for one-month training periods.
Idaho man "pledged to ISIS" arrested for plotting church attacks
https://cdapress.com/news/2024/apr/09/feds-cda-man-tried-to-provide-support-resources-to-isis/Read the article. No way to excerpt how screwed up this is.
Today's cat rearing advice
Never buy food for yourself that comes in pull-top cans if you feed your cat wet food that comes in those cans.
I was making myself a nice cottage-cheese-and-mandarin-orange salad one day when I reached for the can of oranges and pulled the lid open. Within five seconds my two cats are standing there demanding to be fed. I had to show them the oranges so they could see this wasn't food they wanted to eat.
I got promoted at work!
I work in the production side of a somewhat-decent-size newspaper company in Idaho. In the building I work in we make the printing plates for the paper (what I did when I first joined the company), print the papers one section at a time, and run them through a machine that assembles the sections and any advertising inserts into complete newspapers. We publish three daily papers, seven weeklies, advertising circulars for a smallish supermarket chain, and several other things that come up on an irregular basis like "sports previews" for all the high school sports teams in the area.
A little over a year ago, the man who runs the inserting department (we call it the mailroom) decided I was just the guy to fill in a massive hole in his crew and I went to a weird-ass hybrid schedule where I'd plate newspapers on Friday and Saturday and work for him Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and on the two days I made plates after I got that done. This led to a situation where I was working one more day than anyone else in the building, and I had five different reporting times. (Let's see...8 pm Monday, 6:30 pm Tuesday, Wednesday off, 10 pm Thursday, 4 pm Friday and 5 pm Saturday, and I get off shift when everything's done.)
Forward to today. Each mailroom shift has a supervisor that sets up the machines, handles personnel issues and makes sure the papers come out looking good. One of our supervisors quit so the decision was made to give the job to me. It comes with one less day of work once we get enough people that I don't have to be there Monday, but because it also comes with a $5 pay raise and several hours more duty time every day I come out monetarily ahead. And I get to use all that neat shit I learned in those Army leadership schools in the civilian world. (Whoda thunk it that Army training could actually get you promoted, but that's one of the grounds they used to give me the position.) Yeah, I'm pretty damned excited.
Ronel Blanco of the Astros throws no-hitter in 5th game of the season
https://www.mlb.com/astros/news/ronel-blanco-no-hits-blue-jaysIn Blanco’s eighth MLB start, he sets the record for the earliest first no-hitter of the season in MLB history. It’s not the earliest no-no in a pitcher’s career - Clay Buchholz of the Red Sox and Wilson Alvarez of the White Sox both threw one in their second starts - but it is a team record.
The difference between Melissa Moats and Donald Trump
In the weird world of advertising there is an entity called the Voice Actor. If you’re making a radio spot, or a television spot where an off-camera voice narrates the advantages of the product, you need one.
Melissa Moats is one of the biggest names in this field. If you need a woman with a deep, soothing voice to sell your product, she’s first-call. And because she’s REALLY pretty, she’s been on-camera for a lot of ads.
Donald Trump needs no introduction.
On Melissa’s website there’s an illustration of a woman with a speech balloon over her head; it reads “Oh my…that girl can sell ANYTHING!” Which is true.
As for Trump…oh my, that boy will try to sell ANYTHING!
You may be wondering how the University of Utah's basketball team was even in Coeur d'Alene
The NCAA loves to hold March Madness subregionals in Spokane, WA. They've done it before and they've always received a lot of support from this city.
So...how better to show your love than to put both a men's subregional (eight teams) and a women's subregional (four) into Spokane on the same weekend?
Apparently the people who scheduled this disaster have never actually been to Spokane, because there aren't enough hotel rooms in the Spokane Metro Area to handle eleven college basketball teams and all their fans. (It was a good thing for us that Gonzaga's women's team played at home. They would have been stuffing fans down at the Coeur d'Alene Casino in Worley, the Edgewater Resort in Sandpoint, and Silver Mountain Resort in Kellogg if we'd have had to deal with twelve teams.) The NCAA granted Spokane an exception to policy that allowed them to house teams outside Spokane...and two teams, including the University of Utah's women's team, were housed at the Coeur d'Alene Resort. And you know the aftermath...once again, Coeur d'Alene is on the front page of every newspaper in the country for all the wrong reasons.
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