icedavis

Wait for it ..... wait for it ..... (and try not to get motions sick)....

 

That white marble was the Jordan Spieth of marble racing. Wonder if white marble had to hand the trophy over to red at the awards ceremony too?

I pretty much agree. PTO is a benefit and you should use them. My PTO and "sick days" are one in the same but if you are one that has separate time, then I would say to utilize the sick days to their full benefit too. As someone who struggles with mental health issues (and has a few friends with mental health issues) I can't stress enough the importance of taking "mental health days". Obviously be careful if you typically get the flu or whatever...but don't parlay the importance of mental health vacations. And I agree that if the company frowns upon you using it, then find somewhere else to work. That's a horrible situation in the making. I always tell the team I manage to use it all and don't regret it.

As far as when to submit, as a manager, I also agree that you want to probably wait 90-ish days after starting a job before submitting for time off, then submit your time as soon as you know the hard dates you want for PTO. A couple of weeks before a couple of days PTO is a good mark, and as suggested above a month or two before a week-ish PTO is a good mark. Some jobs don't require the need for backups/fill ins but the ones that do need that time to make sure procedures are updated, backups are properly trained and ready to go. So it's a common courtesy to submit as far in advance as you can. And as suggested if something comes up last minute, hopefully they understand and will let you go.

I've had Twin Cities commutes of 45 minutes and 35 minutes (all highway) and for me, it wasn't worth it...I grew up in a smaller SD town and much prefer to live closer to my daily activities. I was driving into the city from Waconia. I spent a lot of time in the city for work and various activities across the metro, which meant a TON of time on the road. This naturally means a lot of money spent on gas and wear and tear on your car. Gas isn't so much of an issue right now but I was doing that during the $4/gallon times...woof. Traffic on the first snow of the year and then the heavier snowfalls is completely mental.

I've stuggled with mental health issues for a number of years now and being in traffic that long and that much is very stressful and definitely doesn't help relieve those issues. I realized too that was a lot of wasted life hours on the road each week that i would rather spend elsewhere to improve my quality of life. So naturally this was a big influence to move closer.

Another big thing was that the southwest metro is growing south and westward like crazy and people are pushing to drive longer and longer distances. Not that it's a bad thing if they are cool with it...but this was putting a lot of strain on the network of roads I was driving and drivers were getting VERY aggressive and VERY VERY risky. I am talking, i witnessed a single car attempt to make 3 separate passing attempts of 2-4 cars per attempt, on a two lane road, in some of the most obvious, worst possible "no passing" places, in about a 5 mile span. two of the three times the car was playing chicken with on-coming traffic, running one car off the road and almost colliding head on with a garbage truck. This was the worst I saw but there is no doubt that overall traffic had gotten significantly worse in a short time and seeing that was the nail in the coffin for me.

I still spend a great deal of time in traffic driving around the metro for activities but on a far less regular basis and typically non-rush hour type traffic too. It helps that i was able to move closer to work and then shortly after, work moved me to a "work from home" status too.

For you though, you would be going the opposite direction of nearly all commuters and doing it from a Rochester to a smaller sized city makes it a lot easier relatively speaking. 30 minutes isn't much for Twin Cities standards but might start to be on the long side for those smaller areas. Being closer to more activities the bigger city can provide is always a plus but like The Dude, I prefer to be closer to the places I have to go to daily. I like the suggestion someone above said of renting a place in the bigger city and trying it out. After a year you can re-evaluate and re-locate if necessary.

I found a job in Washington state that wants people to have an M.S. and all sorts of experience with different programming languages and database software and they're offering $30k per year for full time. Assuming it's not a typo I'm wondering how companies like this survive. Maybe they just have no idea what someone with the skillset normally gets paid? They're certainly not going to get a quality employee with that salary. Why would anyone go to college and then accept that job unless they just lie their way through the interview about their qualifications? I could make that as a grocery store manager or administrative assistant. But barring anything crazy happening at those jobs the mistakes in those jobs would not cost the company hundreds of thousands - millions of dollars. Not so with the job this company is offering.

I worked for a weather forecasting company with this salary strategy. They basically preyed on local college grads, starting at $27k/year, and hadn't had pay raises for a handful of years prior to my working there. The health benefits were pretty good. When you have 24/7/365 service you need numbers. They had to have been killing themselves by selling services for uber-cheap to get clients, that or the money wasn't making it's way down to employees. Either way, as a result, the turnover was INCREDIBLY high. I am talking like 30-ish% per year. The market crashed and I got let go, i was never given an explanation. I didn't even know I was even close to being on the chopping block.

Fun anecdote: About the same time, just prior to being let go, I was up for review. Being young and naive (but generally curious) I asked on the form why everyone hated working there (literally everyone constantly bitched when the boss wasn't around), why the turnover was so high and (amongst other things) why in the hell they made their proprietary software so overly difficult to use. then I made (what i believed to be) some great suggestions how to improve each. I never made it to the face-to-face review. I say the market crash was why I was let go but some might say that call out had something to do with it. I am not saying I influenced it but a year later everyone got a $3k pay bump buuuuuut were told no pay raises for the following 3 years.

The company I work for now pretty much treats programmers the same way. Keep it cheap, understaffed with high turnover. I am pissed about it and I am not even in that department.

In both cases, the companies have somewhat related yet independent service offerings that help them survive.

Good luck in your search man.

My wife did once and was unemployed for like 4 or 5 months. She was pretty well qualified for the positions she was applying for and had a number of interviews but turned some down and unfortunately didn't get the ones she really wanted. Lucky for us she got something right before we had run our savings dry.

At that time she had been in the mindset that she needed to take the first or second offer and the highest paying job even if it wasn't exactly what she was looking for, just so we could keep paying the bills and keep trucking. She eventually landed one of those jobs and absolutely hated it and regretted it BEFORE the job even started. Naturally going in with that mindset doesn't help but she stuck it out until the nearly perfect job for her came up, which luckily was only a few months later.

This perfect job didn't originally look like it was gonna pay very much (the original offer was barely more than just the bills) but after a string of not very agreeable corporate jobs, It opened her eyes to "do something that makes you happy, even if it doesn't pay that well" and she was willing to take it anyway. She was able to negotiate a bit better pay and a few more hours per week. She will have been at that job now for a year in February, is extremely happy and hasn't looked back since. If you are curious to know the field of the new job, she manages a dance studio.

If you do end up taking the leap, good luck.

 

The run for 100!

 

 

Three +1s for ya. I gotchya halfway to the goal line, buddy! :

 

Was out all weekend so I am catching up on going all Oprah on the +1s in here.

 

That is the best TD celebration, of someone who didn't score the TD, ever. I love every second of it!

 

^This

Resurgence of Minnesota football and Nebraskas poor record might have something to do with lower # of Nebraska fans.

No doubt.

Hmm, sorry about that. I think I forgot to change the permissions to public.

Try this link: www.flickr.com/photos/icedavis/sets/72157659614057458

Otherwise go to www.flickr.com/icedavis click "Albums" and its the first one "Huskers v Gophers 2015 Sideline"

I had the opportunity to have field access during the game yesterday. I brought my camera and snapped a few shots. I have posted them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/icedavis/sets/72157659614057458

Some thoughts (probably not all that much of a revelation to anyone but here they are nonetheless):

The sidelines were very crowded by us during the first half with media, cheerleaders, players families and other various staff. The ESPN camera crews require quite a bit of room due to the camera they have on the dolly cart moving up and down the sideline.

I could have moved around anywhere but chose to stay where I was when I found out my phone was dead and didn't want to lose contact with the person I went to the game with. Otherwise I would have gone to the Husker sideline and could have had more Husker specific observations.

There was a lot of action that happened in front of us during the game (we were standing right by the kicker's warm up net, watch for me on the replays!). A few TDs, some big runs, a number of passes etc. Makes it a lot easier to watch, lol, especially with such a crowded sideline. Plays happen way quicker when standing right there. Surprisingly though shooting photos wasn't too bad.

From where I was, it seemed like Nebraska controlled the game the whole way through but yet the Gophers players and coaches were still positive, supportive and never really seemed to think they were out of it. Although I will say as a Husker fan first and Gopher fan second I felt like the Gophers were out of it. Leidner was awful passing (I am not sure I saw many that weren't fluttering) and the Huskers seemed to be doing well against the run. Easy to see why then that their OL progressively looked more and more defeated when they would come to the bench right next to us. I felt like they were being let down (even though I wasn't looking to see how well they were blocking).

I know the players are tall but I am 6-6 and I felt short around players of both teams. and yet the disparity in height (between tall and short players) isn't very noticeable on tv or even from many places in the stands.

I have been to every Husker game up here (I live in the Twin Cities) since the move to the B1G and while the Huskers fans always show well, I felt like there were less this year than in the past. Not that it matters, just an observation. Those that were there though were just as loud as the Gopher contingent on big plays. The Husker Power chant that occurred later in the game was very noticeable and the GBR chant was so loud it seemed almost like a home game. A lot of Red hung around after the game and a lot of the Gopher fans

Still need more practice for better football shots...ugh.

 

 

I'm willing to bet that a majority of these mass shooters don't come from privileged or even middle-class backgrounds, and when you talk about lack of access, it's usually the poor who suffer most.

As someone who suffers from anxiety and depression I can say that in my experiences, while access is a problem for some, I also believe that for many there is lack of recognition of the problem (it doesn't show up like a broken leg on an x-ray) by people around the sufferer and the ability of the sufferer to admit they have a problem and seek positive help. It wouldn't matter how much money the government threw into the mental health system if people can't/won't see there is a greater issue than just a "bad day" or "bad month" and be humble enough to seek help for it.

Throw in the fact then that people are ever increasingly quick to take sides and be angry rather than taking a step back and trying to positively impact a negative situation and then relatively easy access to weapons that can cause large scale death toll and little brain power to use and you come to a place where impulse action reigns and a lot of people die frequently.

It's not all guns' fault. It's not all mental illness' fault. These are not the only issues by any means, (i.e. issues like the one brought up on desensitization of killing and death through movies, video games and the like) and no one of them is the end all. the point is that we recognize all these areas as problem areas but we as a collective unit are spending more time arguing about where "the one big problem lies" rather than trying to do something about them all.

At some point pro gun people have to get off their pedestal and admit that guns are part of the problem. Hopefully at the same point anti-gun people get off their pedestal and admit that there probably can be a better solution than just taking away all guns. Then we all can admit there are also more contributing factors like mental illness, self esteem issues, self serving nature issues, etc that also need to be addressed. And then at the end of the day we'll admit we just want the killings to stop and will do what it takes to ensure that happens.

Can't agree more. It's hard to address a problem when you either don't realize it exists or you're too proud to admit you're dealing with a problem. Even more, I think another issue is the lack of recognition of access to resources.

 

My post wasn't meant to point solely at mental health and say "that's the only thing preventing all mass murders." That would be incredibly naive. It isn't just guns fault (although they contribute) and it isn't just mental health's fault (although it contributes) and it isn't just violent media's fault (although it contributes).

 

The outrage comes because we have one side firmly entrenched in ignoring research that can help us solve these problems. We've studied violent media, we've studied mental health, but we're unable to study guns because the NRA continues to block any research exploring it. That's not right, and at some point the NRA should be held responsible for the continuance of extreme gun violence in the USA.

 

Yep, i was reading you loud and clear and wasn't arguing with you at all...just agreeing and supplementing.

I'm willing to bet that a majority of these mass shooters don't come from privileged or even middle-class backgrounds, and when you talk about lack of access, it's usually the poor who suffer most.

As someone who suffers from anxiety and depression I can say that in my experiences, while access is a problem for some, I also believe that for many there is lack of recognition of the problem (it doesn't show up like a broken leg on an x-ray) by people around the sufferer and the ability of the sufferer to admit they have a problem and seek positive help. It wouldn't matter how much money the government threw into the mental health system if people can't/won't see there is a greater issue than just a "bad day" or "bad month" and be humble enough to seek help for it.

Throw in the fact then that people are ever increasingly quick to take sides and be angry rather than taking a step back and trying to positively impact a negative situation and then relatively easy access to weapons that can cause large scale death toll and little brain power to use and you come to a place where impulse action reigns and a lot of people die frequently.

It's not all guns' fault. It's not all mental illness' fault. These are not the only issues by any means, (i.e. issues like the one brought up on desensitization of killing and death through movies, video games and the like) and no one of them is the end all. the point is that we recognize all these areas as problem areas but we as a collective unit are spending more time arguing about where "the one big problem lies" rather than trying to do something about them all.

At some point pro gun people have to get off their pedestal and admit that guns are part of the problem. Hopefully at the same point anti-gun people get off their pedestal and admit that there probably can be a better solution than just taking away all guns. Then we all can admit there are also more contributing factors like mental illness, self esteem issues, self serving nature issues, etc that also need to be addressed. And then at the end of the day we'll admit we just want the killings to stop and will do what it takes to ensure that happens. The fact of the matter is we have to start somewhere and the elephant in the room is guns, so lets have a conversation about how we can reduce their impact in the equation.

WARNING: NSFW (F BOMB central)

Boston Bro's mind is BLOWN by....................a sunfish.

It's stupid they don't know what it is but the reaction to them seeing one for the first time is hilarious.

http://www.boston.com/news/odd/2015/09/22/this-the-most-boston-reaction-seeing-sea-monstah-nsfw/yCdHZQXWBvjDLZUQhpjFaO/story.html?p1=well__main

Michigan St looks like Colorado St.

And?

That's bad? That's good? Neither here nor there, they just look the same to you?

Just asking for context.

Fantastic win for Minnesota over Michigan, one of the few.

I like the green treatment. Helmet is only okay for me. Laces on the ND ball say "I Will". That's neat. I haven't seen that on a ball before but then again maybe I haven't been paying attention...

Come on Nike, you can do way better with that design. It's so boring adidas could have done better. They clearly mailed it in on that one. I would have preferred a throwback to the 60s Woody Hayes era Ohio State toilets.

41 posts without anyone saying "Adidas sucks"? We're slipping.

Is this like Godwins Law of Huskerboard?

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/lQGudEq.jpg

 

 

I like it. Whats the triangles, some brush with a blend mode? I have seen that type of effect/processing before but never looked into how it's done.

 

 

 

It's a really resource heavy photoshop action.

 

Interesting, is there a name for that particular look/action? I'd like to check it out. Funny thing is i probably won't ever use it but being self taught I like to learn that new stuff and every time I go through new tutorials I always pick up on functions and tools that help me on future projects.

Edit: I think I found it. That's pretty intense but produces some fantastic effects.

http://i.imgur.com/lQGudEq.jpg

 

I like it. Whats the triangles, some brush with a blend mode? I have seen that type of effect/processing before but never looked into how it's done.

 

 

Still have no idea what Adidas is thinking with those undershirts, though.

 

Yeah. WTF does 'break the rock' mean?

 

http://dieharddevil.com/articles/hammertime-the-complete-story-behind-the-new-sun-devil-sledgehammer/

 

By now, you may have seen or heard about the new Sun Devil Hammer used by the Arizona State football team.

On game day, the players carry it off the bus, through the Devil Walk and into the locker room before battle. When game time arrives, a chosen player gets to wield the hammer and lead the team out of Tillman Tunnel. The team also takes it on the road.

It has become a symbol of Sun Devil Strength.

The hammer breaks rocks when the Devils emerge victorious on Game days. Specifically, it crushes a designated rock for each opponent. The goal each year is to break twelve rocks, a symbol of perfection. It’s one of the latest ideas to have materialized in the new culture that Coach Todd Graham has created at ASU.

I didn't realize that ASU had the permanent tribute to Pat Tillman on the unis so when I saw the PT*42 on the bumper of the helmets, I googled it and then found this extra bit. This is really cool.

They updated in 2013 (so obviously this is old news) but I didn't see it till now and thought I would share for those that may not have seen it yet.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mikehayes/arizona-state-footballs-inspiring-pat-tillman-tunnel-will-gi#.iaKKwlkEO

When Arizona State takes the field at Sun Devil stadium this season, they’ll be led out of the tunnel by Pat Tillman.