I’ve been playing a lot of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion lately.   It is accessible, intuitive (for an RPG), and tons of fun.  The only downside is that it is a bit of a system hog so on my PC it doesn’t look super pretty as many reviewers say it is.

MN Sports Summary

A summary of the status of MN Sports teams.

MN Twins – The team has some young talent but where there isn’t talent the holes are massive and often hopeless.   Even if the division didn’t have two very good teams they wouldn’t be going anywhere anyhow.  If they play notably above .500 I’ll be surprised.

It’s all irrelevant anyway as I give the team a 70% chance of leaving MN in the next 18 months, and 95% chance in the next 36 months.

MN Timberwolves – How many bad trades, horrible drafts, and poor free agent pickups do you need before you fire your GM?  The only solution at this point is to dump your dead weight and pay some team to take it, trading dead weight for dead weight and a pile of point guards does not a team make.

MN Wild – I’ve never liked the ownership.  I still don’t.  They’ve proven they’ll never take a chance and spend $ even when there is opportunity.  The TV broadcasters suck.   The logo is asstastic.  The only thing that would make me happy is if they proved they’ll make the moves you need to make to win, and dumped that stupid logo and changed their name to what it should be The Fighting Saints.  Now that is a mascot!

MN Vikings – A team with a dash of promise?  Yep.  The new coach seems like a no nonsense guy.  Childress combined with a new owner who clearly is willing to throw down the $$$ makes for some real hope there.

The team isn’t in horrible shape.   The O-Line needs some work but not up and down the whole line, there’s something good there and they’ve added more.  The D-Line is adequate but clearly needs more emphasis on pass rushing.  The Defensive secondary is in good shape and on the offensive side of things the WRs have some life in them and if the QB can be protected they should be alright. 

Trading Culpepper seemed odd but the guy clearly didn’t want to play for them anymore.  Keeping his rehab secret and not contacting the team for ages after his potentially career ending injury, firing his agent after asking for a pay raise, denying he asked for a pay raise, then going to the media and ranting about how he wants a pay raise, and then wants to be traded . . . WTF?  I don’t see much choice there.

I’ve always been a Culpepper supporter even during the hard times, but he always seemed a bit fragile emotionally.  He was never a leader, and never the kind of guy to take the imitative and win the game.  That’s not to say he sucked.  I’d say he’s better than most QBs and on the right team could win it all.  Yet he’s far from that top level player who can make any team better with any skill.

Anyway I like the changes.  The new coach seems like a respectable and legitimate hard ass and even the owner seems that way.

Fiancé Job

The fiancé has been in search of a career for a while now.  Her education and experience in costume design/construction (something like that) eventually resulted in some disillusionment about that path.  Things like the odd schedule where during the off season she is pseudo laid off each year, the limited pay, and the absolutely crap ass insurance claim system made her wonder if that was where she wanted to go.

After some research (and based on some experience) she decided speech therapy was a path for her.  Test taking and preparation followed and the somewhat surprising and depressing rejection letter arrived from the local University graduate program.

A few depressed weeks followed and the Fiancé came across an option from her current employer.  They were asking her to apply for a job at their corporate HQ.  By some miracle the fiancé was then offered the job.  Not that she’s unqualified.  She is more than capable of doing the job.  The miracle is the fact that she’s moving from the retail end of things to the corporate HQ.  In my experience the ungodly retail world is just a cage where any advancement is minimal and good jobs at HQ are usually just a pipe dream used to placate the retail workers but never actually available to them.  I guess this is the exception that proves the rule. 

The big bonus here is that the job is creative and should be relatively fun.

The Work Game

I’ve been trying to teach the fiancé the delicate skills of establishing relationships at work, and about how getting along with your coworkers is as much a part of your job as anything else. In my experience this seems especially true when it comes to getting along with the idiots, assholes, and the all important boss.

I believe the fiancé is a good worker but she ran into some issues with some notably unprofessional folks at her retail job.  Mainly the issue was a supervisor who seemed insecure and reacted by being an unstable and unpredictable dork and blaming everyone for everything thus giving license to the other managers to do the same.  While I certainly felt for her, I also felt my fiancé could have handled the situation better.

It’s hard to really put into words how the game works, probably because I think it comes naturally to me now.  I’m not expert but I feel pleased that even the people who I’ve ran into conflicts with at work like me these days.  I know where and when to pick my battles, and I think I’ve learned a fair amount during my short time in the working world. 

Like me the fiancé has strong feelings about right and wrong and how the world should be an equitable place.  While I don’t think such feelings are totally incompatible with work, I’ve found that it is as much about how you present yourself and the issue as it is about the facts at hand.  The little things you say and do build up and can get you a great deal. 

In addition I’m trying to teach her how going along with the little injustices and how you react to them can make later such situations result in far more favorable outcomes down the road.  This is seems especially true when you realize you’ve hit a wall of sorts that no matter how idiotic you just can’t move it.  Despite my positive relationships around the office there is crap that lands on me and I can’t change, but even taking that crap appropriately can be useful.  Even when it isn’t helpful sometimes fighting does no good and can only result in negative things.

No doubt there are far more eloquent people than I who have written about this topic.
There has to be a good book about this somewhere I can get her. 

Wedding Registry

The fiancé and I did some wedding registry stuff recently.

The whole process feels awkward.  I’m just not the type of person who is comfortable asking people for things.

What would I really like?

• A new PC.
• A new camera (Cannon 30D please).
• A new car for the fiancé.
• If all else fails, cash.

So what am I getting?

• Kitchen things.
• Things to use to make the guest bedroom look less like a closet and more like a place that someone might tolerate sleeping in.
• Misc. items.

Another issue with the registry is that we don’t have much stuff on our list . . .  We’re both in our late 20s, and have lived on our own for a while.  We’ve accumulated a fair amount of the necessities.  Our registry is currently roughly 1/4th the size of our guest list.   According to the books that make crap up about weddings and tell people that don’t know any better (like me) we should to have twice as many items on the registry as guests.   How the heck is that possible?

Oh well.