HopsGuy

If he got #11 there would be such an uproar from the Danny White crowd.

So there's no truth to the rumor that he saw a "Girls Gone Wild" video and decided that he'd be better off chasing loose women through the French Quarter rather than dealing with bleach blonde waitresses/aspiring actresses in LaLa Land?

Well, you never know. On Sept 11th, a Chicago-bound flight with Marv Levy aboard was diverted to Omaha NE. A couple of Bills fans saw Marv in line at the rental car agency and offered to give him a lift to the Windy City. He happily told them stories the whole way. Must have made the trip just fly by. Here's the story.

For a brief time I worked as a supervisor for about 30 union employees. About 27 of them were good, competent, conscientious, hard-working employees. That makes for about 10% bad apples that were lazy, malcontents. Getting stuff done was difficult enough without the 3 that tried to mess with the program. They'd sign up for overtime jobs that they weren't really qualified to do, thereby screwing up the efficiencies when another person could have done the job. It's petty stuff like this that ends up costing everyone. One fork-truck driver punched another one in the groin and was suspended without pay with the hope of termination. The union and company went to arbitration and the guy ended up getting his job back with back pay. My fork-truck driver (a fantastic kid that will do well because of his work ethic) was bumped back down to a lower paying job when this guy came back. Of course he was a train-wreck because the other guys hated him and like the guy that he punched. I moved into engineering shortly thereafter, so I was fortunate to avoid the all out brawl that occurred 3 weeks later. One more quick story about that place... there was one guy that worked in the presses (this was a metal stamping outfit). He knew everything about every machine in the place. The maintenance guys would ask him stuff when they couldn't find the problem. The owner, an 80-year old guy that finished only 3 minutes behind me in the Corporate Challenge 3.5 mile run, said to me once, "See that guy? We pay him $22/hour. He's been here 9 years, and including management, he's probably the 6th most valuable employee in a company of 125. If it weren't for the union, I'd pay him $50/hour. He'd be worth it."

Results of a quick Google search: Q: Please explain applying the franchise tag to a player. Does this exempt this player's salary against the cap? Answer Man: It most definitely does not mean that Clint, which is too bad, because that could really help a team out. The basic effect of applying the franchise tag to an impending free agent is to bar him from signing with any other team. Obviously, that’s quite a disadvantage for that player, so in turn he has to receive, at the very least, a one-year contract with a salary that matches the average of the top five highest paid players in the league at his position, or is 120% of his previous year’s salary. The first thing I should mention is that there are actually two types of franchise tags. There is the “exclusive rights” franchise tag, which keeps the player from negotiating with any other team; and there is the “standard” franchise tag, which allows the player to negotiate with another team, but the salary stipulation above must still be met, and more importantly, if he signs with another team that club must give his original team two first-round draft picks. Despite the high salaries that come out of being “slapped” with the franchise tag (that’s the way it usually written, with an obviously negative context), players often react negatively to it, preferring the opportunities of the free market. The idea behind including it in the original collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that took effect in 1993, ushering in free agency, was to allow teams at least a limited opportunity to hold on to their best players. Obviously, you have to pay to do so, and that salary does indeed count against the cap. One thing we should reiterate from our previous discussion of the franchise tag, in Volume 22: Each team is only allowed to have one franchise tag in use at any given time. And if you sign a player while you have the tag on him, the tag is then committed to that player for the life of the contract, whether or not the player actually finishes the contract with your team.

We have a guy at work that looks kinda like Mr. Belding, but is crazy like Rainman. We're talking OCD to the 10th power. Rainman gets a DUI a couple of months ago, so he's out of a car until the paperwork gets finished so that he can get a "work only" license. Rainman is as annoying as they come. He makes bad jokes. He doesn't know any of the simple technology (Excel, email) that we need to do our jobs and is basically unwilling to learn. When the guys give him a playful ribbing, he goes and sulks in the men's room stall. Our boss is sympathetic beyond belief. He puts up with this stuff, even though he has to scold him daily. When Rainman got the DUI, the boss offered to drive him home each night (Rainman takes the train/bus in the morning). The boss and I are the first ones in each morning. He has a story to tell about the non-sequiturs that Rainman will deliver during the previous evening's ride. He turns up the radio to drown it out, which only makes Rainman talk louder. It must be pure hell. Anyway, yesterday the boss played in a charity golf tournament. One the 2nd hole, he gets a hole-in-one which wins him a cherry-red 2005 Mustang. Rainman loses the ability to drive. Boss is nice to him when nobody else would be. Boss wins car in a most fortuitous manner. Karma baby. Karma.

They have a policy where the software developers get to spend one day per week (so, 20% of their time) working on their own pet projects. This is how gmail was developed. Having been a product manager for a software company, I think that is an awesome policy. If we had that, I would have planted seeds in my most talented/creative engineers and let them go wild.

I like Easterbrook, but I'd have to go with Peter King. TMQ is pretty thorough and a nice read, but it's the same column each week: don't blitz, look at these babes, don't run up the score, haiku, Star Trek complaint, etc). I'm not complaining. I just read his NFL.com column and his NY Times column for this week. Both are interesting, and no doubt that Easterbrook is the smartest NFL writer (he's a fellow at the Brookings Institute and editor of the National Review). I just enjoy King a little bit more. Bill Simmons is really funny, but I wouldn't consider him strictly and NFL columnist. I like his picks each Friday, especially since he doesn't seem to do any better than any other gambler I know.

Go Duke. Carolina Blue is a gay color.

I'm just curious, Scott. How long did you bake them and at what temp? How long were they in the fryer and at what temp? Frank's and butter/margerine or some other type of sauce?

I was drunk. At the Neverland Ranch. With Nicole Simpson.

Is Garcia's girlfriend (Carmella DeCesare) there? Hubba, hubba.

Longtime contestant dead at 36. What are the freaking odds?

They had him on the news playing in a flag football game this past weekend. He had an event in his old Miami neighborhood for the kids. A bunch of Dolphins were there, too. I thought about Edwards, too. Then I thought about how Jim Kelly twisted his ankle playing golf one off-season. It happens.

A few of us at work at going to kick in $5 each for this parlay: First First Down Eagles Corey Dillon over 11.5 toal yards receiving There will be a successful 2-point conversion First TD will be something other than a pass completion A $20 bet will net us $1000.

About 10 years ago Dennis Miller was talking about the possibility of a virtual reality sex device. He said it might be the end of society as we know it: "If an unemployed auto worker can sit in a Barco-lounger with a can of Foster's in one hand and a channel flicker in the other and fk Cludia Schiffer for $19.95, it's going to make crack look like Sanka."

I'm a big fan. She's perfect. I hope I never meet her and have all of this shattered.

I got the same 6/10. I remeber that Eliot from ET being in that crappy Steeler's movie.

Yeah, the stock price seems to confirm that others feel the same way. They announced blowout numbers yesterday and the stock was up around 10% today (210+). They don't make forward looking projections and when asked during the conference call what they saw as trouble spots they replied something to the effect of "keeping up with client requests". A lot of original employee stock comes out of lock-up soon, but the market seems to thirst for this stock. GOOG is now the world's largest internet company by market cap, surpassing EBAY. Sergei and Larry are printing money while not doing any evil.

We're having make your own tacos for halftime. Line the stuff up on a table and let folks move down the line: Paper plates Napkins Hard Shells Crock pot of hamburger Crock pot of slow-cooked seasoned chicken Chopped tomatoes Chopped black olives Chopped Jalapeños Different sauces This is the main thing dish, but folks will bring other things; Chili Salsa Chips/Dips Bread with spinach dip Wings Now I'm starving for lunch.

I'll nominate National Bohemian and Koch's Golden Anniversary. One's piss. The other is Piss Light. Note: I'm a bit of a beer snob, but I've never been known to turn down a beer when offered.

Olean here. I'm in South Florida now. Night and day aren't disparate enough to properly compare the difference. Here's Chuck Pollock's story about a recently departed, well-known member of our community. Read that and you'll get a nice picture about what it's like to be from Olean.

You are aware that it is Warren Buffett's firm, Berkshire Hathaway that bought the $600 Million in G starting in 1989, and not simply WB, right? The guy understands that earnings drive the market. He won't buy a stake in a company unless he understands the mechanism of their business (debt, cash flow, etc). He wouldn't buy any dot-coms during the late '90s rage because he didn't understand how those companies intended to make money. Everybody laughed at him. Who's laughing now? His investors love the Oracle of Omaha. He consistently makes money. You could say it's the American way. Berkshire 'B' shares were up $58 today to $3000 (they don't split Berkshire shares). The 'A' shares were up $1350 to $90,000.

He actually said that they would have dropped him somewhere over Minnesota on the way back. The author of the article I read said, "Be careful, Thurman. The Super Bowl is in Minnesota this year."

The Bills have asked the league office to not schedule primetime games in Buffalo. The Bills marketing scheme is to "regionalize" the team and draw from all over upstate NY and the Niagara Peninsula. A typical Sunday 1 PM kickoff works with that plan by allowing folks enough time to drive home after the game and have a good night's sleep for work on Monday. That's why over the last few years, all of the Bills primetime games have been on the road. To even it up a bit, the schedulers throw the Bills a bone by sending a playoff team to Orchard Park near the end of the season. This year it was the Steelers. I think the Bills will get a road MNF game next year. Willis McGahee makes for an interesting story. A MNF game with WM returning to Miami might be compelling.