shrader

I've been here in the Raleigh area for 5 years now and this year was by far the worst one we had for pollen. I remember one day in particular where a specific section of my morning drive, it looked like I was driving through cartoon nuclear fallout. I'm fortunate that I don't have any allergy issues, but it's so bad here that it has introduced a new problem: getting pollen under my contact lenses. That right there is brutal. We're past that season now though, thank god.

I wouldn't call it being a cynic though. The constant use of the phrase "super secret source" doesn't exactly instill much in the way of confidence, at least for me.

Mine actually turned out ok. I'm already in that period without any promotions, so there was no price increase coming. They offered me a credit of $64 per month for 12 months, without a new contract. So that means I can just go through this whole process again in a year when the price jumps back up to their normal rate.

Ha, they have apparently switched to the car dealership method of negotiation now. The woman I talked to said she has to talk to her manager and will call me back with what they can offer. Apparently I've got a bit more time left on the contract than I thought, so I can sit back and watch this play out a bit. It should be fun to see just how close they stick to that car dealer method where the first offer is pure garbage. I've heard from a few people going that route recently. I'm not sure how it has worked out for them so far.

The same super secret source that said the coaching job was Tippet's if he wanted it, after the job had already been offered to Krueger?

I'm at the end of my latest two year deal with Directv. I hear that they don't bend quite as much as they used to with that routine negotiation game. Has anyone had that experience recently? I did just recently switch my internet provider, so I can definitely use the threat of switching to them for cable as well.

I'd imagine it's far more about money than it is about whether or not Krueger can makes a sales pitch.

How many trucks broke down over the course of that countdown?

And the casual listener is by far the majority of the audience. Of course any of these lists are going to cater to those people. There was one music list years ago that at least always nailed the #1 ranking. Back in the stone age when MTV actually aired videos, they would randomly pull out "the greatest videos of all time". No one could ever compete with Thriller.

I fully expect to see the royal blue this season. They have nothing to gain from releasing that info right now, so they might as well string along the fans for a while. It will get that much better of a reaction right around September.

And apparently they originally planned on killing Conor at the end and then have the human/terminator hybrid guy take on his face. That would have been... different. I need to go back and watch that one sometime. I haven't seen it since theaters but I remember having a positive reaction to it. But then again, I'm a fan of Bale.

And where's John Connor? He should be well over 40 at this point. I wonder if they've got something planned with him in the movie and they want to keep him out of trailers for now.

Is this a mad libs post about Kid Rock songs? The possibilities are endless.

The random place that asks you if you want to round up to the next dollar for a charity, those ones do it right. Sure it's a small donation each time, but I bet they consistently get that donation from most customers.

I hate that so many people's minds immediately jump to Vanilla Ice when they hear that music.

A classic rock station down here was running a top 500 this weekend too. I wonder if it winds up being the same exact list. After a quick google search, they're not owned by the same company, so it's interesting to see the same exact countdown format running on two unaffiliated stations and having the same number of songs.

Maybe I'm getting my bands mixed up, but I thought it was Candlebox. They bailed on a show in Buffalo and for years after WEDG refused to play any of their music. It must have been the show you're talking about.

It's pretty rare for me to have to make up on my mind on a tip prior to receiving the food. I can only think of one place where I ran into this. Still, I stick to the simple rule that if my meal does not involve a waiter, I'm not tipping. I supposed I might bend that one a bit if I was a big fan of the place or knew the workers well, but that's it.

I watched Into the Spiderverse on a flight recently. That one was incredibly well done. I can see how it was winning awards. And the scene at the end of the credits was hilarious.

I'm surprised they haven't tried to go that route again with this franchise, showing the future storyline instead of rehashing the lead up to judgement day over and over. Things at least get a bit more unpredictable in the future, where you no longer know John Connor has to survive the movie so he can lead the future resistance.

Kozlov was 29 at the time of the trade, so that one really wasn't a "looking towards the future" deal. But anyway, it's kind of funny to look back on that deal and see that the other piece wound up being a big part of a Stanley Cup champion. Speaking of Paille, apparently his draft pick bounced around between a bunch of teams and the first trade was for Joe Nieuwendyk. There's an odd coincidence for this whole discussion.

I don't mean to single you out. I had a longer post written up but then shortened it, talking about this constant rush to judgement we see with immediately grading winners/losers in trades and draft picks. So it's more about that "well, we have to print something" mentality that drives me mad. If we do want to judge it as of today though, it's amazing how quickly that picture could change significantly in a very short time. All it takes is one trade with that other pick.

I just don't see what the point is of making that assessment. A grading of incomplete is not a failure, yet it seems to be all that the fanbase wants to focus on.

I had a job in college grading tests and homework for stats classes. One year, there were these two girls (one was the star player on the soccer team) who would always hand in identical papers for every single homework assignment. It's homework, so it's not the biggest of deals, but when you have to write out explanations of results and the wording is identical every time, it sticks out very quickly. My personal favorite was when they would copy glaringly stupid mistakes on the level of "1+1=8", things that even the worst students in a class should catch if they're even slightly paying attention. I also worked in the athletic department, so I really didn't want to ruffle any feathers given that it was the star of the soccer team. Hell, I was on the sidelines for their games, standing right next to that girl for a good portion of the time. I did wind up telling the professor though.

The trade wasn't made for today, so it's not really a surprise that they don't have anything to show for it so far. Yes, we all would have liked to see more from Thompson this year, but that book's far from written. Calgary had absolutely nothing to show for the first year after trading Joe Nieuwendyk (yes, I had to google that spelling), but that wound up working out quite well. And please don't think I'm trying to compare those players, it's just the example that always comes to mind in a prospect for established vet deal that can work out for both teams. Hopefully we'll start to quickly see the true test of that trade begin next year. If Krueger truly is that great motivator who gets the most out of people, hopefully that pushes Thompson towards his potential. I'm not ready to write off that trade yet. That's like quitting on a diet because you're hungry on day 1.