Month: November 2021

I had no idea it would be so satisfying

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Last week, I had a job interview.  It was from a company that had cold-called me from LinkedIn, so needless to say, I didn’t have any particular interest in them upon finding out who they were and what they did.  But they didn’t bat an eye when I dropped some inflated salary requirements, because I wasn’t really that interested, so I decided to take the interview anyway, because it would be good practice and who knows, maybe they would have wowed me in some way to make me reconsider.

The interview had several warning flags from the onset, specifically the fact that one of the guys on the call, I recognized their name, and I knew our paths had crossed at some point because if nobody’s ever told you, Atlanta isn’t as big of a place as people think it is, which is why it’s particularly important to burn your bridges with peril, because you just never know if you’ll run into people again.  I just couldn’t place it, but I know that I knew this guy from somewhere.  He didn’t seem to indicate that he remembered me, either.

Second, the nature of the company practically bored me to tears.  Something about transaction technology, development of some apps and shit, and honestly, I was already hard leaning towards not wanting this job in the first place, since they had listed for a “UX Graphic Designer,” to which most people aren’t aware, the two things aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but there’s a far bigger divide between the two than the working world is aware of.

Needless to say, the indication I got from the position is that the company doesn’t know what they want, and mashed two disciplines together, hoping they’d be able to find a singular person to do two jobs.  But it also meant that for a company that doesn’t know what they’re looking for, I could’ve either gotten into the door and coasted to a good salary, or I’d fail to meet expectations that I wasn’t aware of and be in a disadvantageous position.

But it’s the third strike where I completely checked out and definitively knew that I was going to turn this opportunity down: the sample project.  Basically, because “they wanted to get in my head and get a sense of my style,” they wanted me to reimagine and redesign one of their landing pages, “in my style.”  

Basically do some work, for free.  I have no problem with competency tests or assessments, because those are usually pretty quick, and can show a lot of insight.  But to be assigned a multi-day project, for no payment?  No fucking way.

In my mind, upon hearing this, I’m basically saying, bitch, I’ve got two kids and no time as it is, and you want me to do some fucking work for free?  Fuck.  That.

*no joke, I might not have written this post if I didn’t realize it was great opportunity to use this Sonic gif I made eons ago because I actually do like it that much

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Being a man of my word

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

A wise man; the Ultimate Warrior to be specific; once said: blah blah blah skeletons, blah blah blah, sacrifice.  Rooooarrrrrrrr snarrllllll

Chris Jericho said it best about the Ultimate Warrior: I don’t know what he said but it sounded cool yaaaayyyyy

Anyway, this isn’t a post about the Ultimate Warrior, Chris Jericho, or professional wrestling, for once.  Those were referenced just to zone in on a single concept, that’s kind of stuck with me, especially when it comes to trying to tempt fate and potentially get the things that I hope to get: sacrifice.

I have this belief that seldom do good things occur without some degree of sacrifice involved.  It’s basically like when kids behave and act good because they want something.  And when I’ve wanted things like, the Braves winning the World Series, I most definitely think that there should be some sacrifice made by all Braves fans, if they really wanted to see a World Series win.

A few weeks ago, I dogged on Dugout Mugs, and basically how I thought they were the most useless products on the planet.  And how in an era of pandemic, wealth inequity, teetering on the precipice of financial ruin everywhere, the absolute last fucking thing anyone needed was a cup made out of a baseball bat.

One of the last things I blathered about how was that I should probably make a sacrificial bet that if the Braves won the World Series that I should get a Dugout Mug, in spite of just how abhorrent I think they are, because if I really wanted to see the Braves win, I should make a sacrifice, after all.

I wasn’t at all writing all that, in an attempt to superstitiously manipulate fate, and put on a show.  Believe me, I have done it before, and naturally it doesn’t work, but my disdain for Dugout Mugs is very much legitimate.  They’re useless products, AND they have a ridiculously ludicrous $70 price point for a fucking hollowed out bat head.  The Braves winning the World Series would definitely cost me something, that I would never purchase in any other circumstance.

And despite the fact that I made this bet with myself, and probably zero people even read or knew about it, when the Braves finished the Astros, I went ahead and bit the bullet and purchased a fucking Dugout Mug.  Thankfully, there was some sort of promotional deal for early purchasers, and I was able to get my mug for not-$70, but it was still basically the cost of a brand new video game once taxes and shipping were applied.

I didn’t have to do it.  I could’ve denied everything and just said eating my words should be enough.  But when it comes to fates and superstition, I am that gullible, so I believe that it’s probably for the best that I remain a man of my word and fulfill the obligation I made for myself if the Braves were to win.  

Considering how long I’d been hoping to see this, $57 is a paltry price to pay, and even if I think this mug and all other Dugout Mugs are bullshit, at least everything will taste something like victory for a little while from it.  Even gross-ass IPAs.

What kind of message is the Rainbow Fish sending kids?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Spoiler alert: I’m basically going to tell the whole plot of The Rainbow Fish.

Yes, we’ve arrived at that point of my brog’s timeline where I am using children’s literature as fodder to write about.

Imagine a kid goes to school with a box from Costco, of Butterfinger candy bars.  The full-size ones, and not the annually shrinking fun-size nuggets.  Naturally, their ownership of all these candy bars catches the attention of all the other students, and one day, one of the kid’s classmates comes up to them and asks for one.  Seeing as how there is nothing offered in return, the kid refuses to part ways with a Butterfinger for free.  The classmate is disappointed, and others have witnessed this failed transaction, everyone steers clear of the kid, alienating them from everyone else.

Upon asking for some guidance, it’s suggested that the kid give some of his Butterfingers away, as it might make other classmates happy.  And eventually, the classmate who wanted a freebie comes back to beg for a Butterfinger again, and not liking being alienated, the kid acquiesces and gives them one.  Now classmates all around swarm the kid, and they start giving away Butterfingers to everyone.  Finally they are down to one Butterfinger, but now they have successfully bribed numerous classmates to be their friend.

The kid has basically bought friendships, and everyone seems to be okay with this dynamic.  The end.

That’s basically the story of The Rainbow Fish, except the kid is a fish and the Butterfingers are the fish’s ornate, shiny scales.  All the other fish in the sea avoid the Rainbow Fish, because they aren’t willing to give away it’s scales, which is actually worse than giving away Butterfingers, because fish kind of need scales in order to protect themselves but the point is the Rainbow Fish is alienated simply for wanting to keep their dermis, theirs.

But eventually, the Rainbow Fish gets kind of lonely, but then the wise octopus suggests giving away their scales in order to win favor with the other fish in the sea.  Right there, is a red flag of bad suggestion, as the octopus is basically endorsing bribery, instead of trying to earn friendships through conversation, commonality, or any other organic method.

Unfortunately, the Rainbow Fish heeds the advice and basically rips off their own scales one by one, in order to “earn” friendships with the other fish in the sea, and by the end of the book they’re down to just one last shiny rainbow scale for themselves, but at least they have all these friends.

This is not a positive message to be sending children, and I’m kind of disappointed at the message this is sending kids.  I don’t want either of my daughters to have to buy their friendships by giving away anythings that they might have in their possession that others might want.  I want them to develop friendships organically through teamwork, camaraderie or commonalities, like real, sustainable friendships should be; not by giving their shit away for free.

WWE’s Women’s short-strap blets bother me

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m fairly sure it might have started with Sasha Banks after she won the Smackdown women’s title from Bayley a while back, but I didn’t notice it until she lost the blet to Bianca Belair at Wrestlemania last year: the strap was noticeably shorter.  It bothered me.

This was no more prevalent than during a “surprise” segment during the NXT show after Wrestlemania, when all three brands’ women’s champions all gathered in the ring to signify the whole NXT and NXT alum success thing, with all of them holding their blets, with Belair’s stumpy looking blue blet next to the red blet and the NXT women’s blet.

Obviously, it doesn’t take a genius to understand that the logic behind shortening the strap was likely due to the fact that Sasha Banks is pretty petite in stature, and a short strap allowed her to wear the blue blet without there being like a foot of excess hanging off of her.  I just figured the WWE would transition back to a longer strap on a need-be basis, but from what I can tell there doesn’t appear to be any long-strap versions of the blue blet anymore, or nobody with a waist larger than 20” appears to have held it to warrant going back to one.

To make matters worse, the red blet has been shortened now too, so now RAW is subject to having a stumpy looking women’s blet as well.  Yes, Becky Lynch has bounced back from pregnancy like a house of fire, and is probably slimmer than when she rose to the stars, but thanks to such a body transformation, now the red blet is all stumpy too.

I dunno, it just bugs me to see these blets looking all stumpy and shortened.  There’s something prestigious and traditional looking about a normal-length strap with all its rivets and snaps, and seeing it all shortened just makes them look lower-class and less prevalent.  Alexa Bliss would undoubtedly not be able to do her trademark pose with these new stumpy blets, which is kind of ironic considering she’s probably the most petite superstar there’s ever been, to hold a championship.

All I know is that if the WWEShop ever changes their women’s replicas to short straps, there’s a 0% chance that I’d buy them for my girls.  They look silly, and they would undoubtedly fuck up the aesthetic that I’d try to go with their own hanging blets.  These women need to stop being divas, and get back to traditional, classic, normal-length straps.

I was interview ghosted today

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As if the job searching process wasn’t frustrating enough, today I had an initial screening with some company, scheduled between 4-6 pm, that completely ghosted the fuck out of me.  I am quite unhappy about it, and I’m not entirely sure what my next steps are at this point.

I mean, a 4-6 pm window was already a small flag to begin with, seeing as how there’s an implication that someone is going to be continuing to work after the traditionally conclusive 5 pm hour, but I always like to remain as flexible as possible, even with babies handcuffed to me, I can get out of those temporarily for a noble cause like job interviewing.

But when I didn’t get a call early on in the 4 pm hour, I snidely remarked to mythical wife that, watch them reach out at like 5:55 pm.  But by the time 5:30-ish rolled around, I began to think that there was the possibility that they weren’t going to call me at all.  Sure enough, the clock hit 6 pm, there was no call, and worse off, there was no email or any sort of message or notification that this wasn’t going to happen.  I had just been ghosted.

The thing is, I had actually emailed the recruiter earlier in the day to see if they could narrow down the window of time, so that I could make sure my children were accounted for, plus the question on whether this was going to be a phone call or a video call, since all correspondence prior had been fairly informally through email.  That message was surreptitiously not responded to, which did slightly tingle my Spidey-sense.

So job ghosting really is nothing new to today’s spineless world, but most peoples’ stories about job ghosting is that the ghosting typically occurs after the interview, in which people’s hopes are high after landing an interview, and then doing the interview, but then never hear jack shit from the potential employer again.  However in my case, the ghosting happened before any sort of verbal communication could even happen.

Who knows, it could just be some recruiter just being bad at their job and genuinely making a mistake and maybe tomorrow I’ll get some apologetic email about how they’re soooo sorry for missing it, and try and schedule some other immediate time, or maybe they really are just a fucking asshole and decided to ghost me, after getting me to commit to a time appointment.  Frankly, I don’t really know how I’m going to react regardless of which of these outcomes is.

Honestly, this isn’t even really a job I’m that genuinely interested in.  I’m pretty sure it’s not remote, the area it’s in is a traffic shitshow, it might be considered a step backward from where I’m at, and the only reason I applied to it in the first place was that Glassdoor said the high-range of the salary was something I’d have been interested in, which means it’s probably nowhere near it, and I felt that I was a shoe-in to get their attention based on my current employer, which actually proved true, since they reached out to me, even if they did ghost me.

That being said, seeing as how I’m below lukewarm about this company in the first place, and don’t think I’m going to lose any sleep by severing this bridge, I kind of want to email or even call and try and get in someone’s e-face, and say my piece about how I don’t appreciate the time commitment I made being wasted by their lack of professionalism.  Or if it was an honest mistake, do I retaliate by ghosting them in return, if they dare to reschedule?

The likelihood of me enacting any sort of ghosting is probably not high, seeing as how I live my life a quarter mile at a time by the general rule of treat those how I’d want to be treated, and even if they ghosted me first, I fucking hated it and wouldn’t want to be ghosted, so I probably won’t be doing any ghosting no matter how much I’d really want to.

But it’s fun to imagine.

2 Under 2: My second is basically nuclear Gandhi from Civilization (#071)

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much bitching and moaning about how hard being a dad is and how much my life sometimes feels like it’s sucking because of my inability to cope with the stress of parenting, when my head is less foggy and slightly clearer, things really aren’t that bad.  I’m sure any dads who might stumble across my brog might interpret fatherhood as being the most arduous thing on the planet, but I have no regrets and I love my daughters and my family, no matter what I say or put in writing.

All that said, as difficult as I might make my second daughter seem, things really have gotten better throughout her brief passage of time on this world.  The crippling colic is still happening, but instead of happening like 3-4 times a day, we’re typically down to 1-2 really bad colic incidents, so with that in mind, I want to jump out of a window less these days than I did on the days when it was worse.

However, if there’s one thing that has remained a constant throughout, is that #2, really, really objects to the act of being put down to sleep, regardless of how much she might actually want or need it.  No matter if she’s a sweet and cooing cherub two minutes prior, shortly after setting her head down in the bassinet and putting her into her sleep sack, when she realizes that I’m trying to put her down for sleep, the fussing begins, ramps up and eventually turns to screaming, which either escalates into colic screaming, or just a whole lot of crying.  Eventually, hopefully, she tires herself out, latches onto the pacifier and then I can turn on the motion to the bassinet, where she eventually passes out.  This is where I exhale a massive sigh, and creep out of the room as quietly as possible.

Attempting to put her down for naps, I’ve begun referring to as going to war, because that’s what it feels like, nearly every single time.  I’ve basically realized that when it comes to sleepy time, #2 basically is Gandhi from the Civilization game series, where he’s nice and peaceful, but the second you deny him the technology for granaries or aqueducts, he goes completely ballistic and is declaring nuclear war on you in two seconds.  

That’s pretty much what it feels like dealing with #2 when it comes to trying to put her down.  Attempting to get her to sleep is akin to telling Gandhi that he can’t have my windmill, and therefore she declares nuclear war on me and screams her head off until I lose the game.

One day, hopefully, this will pass, and I’ll just be able to look back at a post like this and laugh and not want to cry myself from emotional scarring.

Time to get a new Braves cap

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I got this cap during the tail end of the 2008 season.  The Braves lost 90 games that year and they were not a very good team.  But, I was working for Cartoon Network then, and as a Turner network, one of the perks we got were these booklets of house money that was redeemable for tickets.  And then one day, a colleague told me that they didn’t work on just tickets, and could be used to purchase merchandise in Turner Field.  So I cobbled together what remaining vouchers I had left, and decided to get a new cap.

NewEra was still young at that time, as hard as it is to believe considering they’ve been the official baseball cap of just about everything forever now.  And my unknown-brand red and navy Braves cap was beat to death, so it seemed as good as any to get a new one if I didn’t have to pay anything out of pocket.

I went with the road navy, because I already had the aforementioned two-tone, and I just really dug the all-navy.  I loved the way it fit, and I was sold on NewEra caps, and it quickly became my default cap.  It’s so old, that it was before NewEra put their logos on the side of caps, and the only identifiers to the brand is all the 59Fifty markings on the inside of it.

Over the next 13 years, this cap has been to countless Braves games, MLB games, MiLB games, a World Baseball Classic game, and visited 14 of the 30 MLB ballparks.  It has been worn in 117F degree summer games, 49F spring games, and been rained on countless times, and had enough sunlight beaten into it to power a house if could absorb the solar energy.  It has never seen the Braves win on the road (except in Washington DC, where I’ve seen numerous Braves games against the Nationals). 

Now I could make up some story about how I vowed to never change this cap until the Braves won a World Series, but I’d be lying if I said that, but seeing as how the Braves have become world champions 13 years later, I think now would be as good time as any to explore retiring this cap, and getting a new one.  The color is faded and tired and the integrity of the fabric and brim is flimsy.  But mostly because this cap is a size 7 3/8 which fit perfectly back in 2008, but my head alarmingly is now a 7 1/2. 🙁

But in all likelihood, the new one will be another road navy, because it’s classic, subtle, but just the fucking best.  However, in true fashion to myself, who can get sentimental over the littlest shit, here is a fond farewell, to a baseball cap.