December 14, 2018
"Fleet" Of Fog
No, not that sort of "Fleet of Fog". I mean the type you get when clouds decide they're tired of the sky and go slumming here on the ground. But why "Fleet"? Because I'm doing stupid wordplay again. Let me explain.
I left work tonight around 930pm. Not the last to leave, but not a whole buncha cars in the lot, y'know what I mean? I walked out the security door into the hallway that leads to the Door To The World when I stopped dead in my tracks. All I could see beyond the Door To The World was... white. Or gray. Grayish-white. I knew it wasn't snow, it's been around 40 all day. Oh crap... that means its gotta be fog. Once I stepped into The World, I actually swore rather viciously. THICK fog. I could see the Duckmobile, about halfway down the lot, but not all that great, Well, nothing I can do about it, and the longer I stood there the longer it'd be until I got home. Then I could start the weekend off right with some tea... maybe a little Darjeeling?
I am so very sorry...
In auto racing, there's a term used to describe a track surface when it's just little bit wet, not bad enough to put on Inters, but damp enough that your slicks are going to be a tiny bit squirrely. That condition is called "greasy." I understood the concept, but I never expected to experience it with my shoes. See, over this past summer The Powers That Be resurfaced our parking lot. It was pretty impressive... it wasn't Vantablack-levels of black, but it was awfully black. So much so that there was a noticeable difference in temperature when you walked onto it. It was also very very rain resistant. Even a small amount of rain would cause streams and ponds to appear... seems nobody gave much thought to drainage.
It was onto this I walked as I headed to my car. As I got about 20 yards away, I noticed the windows were more opaque than normal. Frost. Swell. And then it felt like I had stepped onto an ice rink. Like slick tires on a greasy track, I suddenly felt like I was right on the edge of adhesion and just about to understeer into a wall. Metaphorically. Thankfully my cane helped, but the rest of the walk was done with those little mincing penguin steps you instinctively use on ice. Scraping the frost off the windshield wasn't fun... the fog must have settled around my car, because the lot was pretty darn slippery right there. Got in, turned on the defroster full blast so as to allow some visibility, and began to drive home...
...and realized I had a problem. I don't think I could see more than a a few car-lengths in front of me. I was forced to navigate via painted lines. Thankfully, I took the non-rural route home, so there were some street lights, and that helped a little bit. It also helped that I've lived in this part of town for 18 years or so and knew the road.
Not that that helped me when I dipped into a small valley. Battleships are more transparent than the fog was at that moment. I've experienced worse fog in my life, like the time the woman I was dating fell ill and asked me to drive to her apartment in a Chicago suburb and make sure she didn't get REALLY ill. The Duckmobile was new then, and such a trip was nothing... 45 minutes to an hour tops. Except I-90 was fogged... and it was cold... and every leading edge of my car was iced over in just a couple of miles. By the time I reached the Belvidere toll booth, I knew I had two choices: turn back and live, or go forward and die. I turned back. Unfortunately, she did get very ill, wound up in the hospital for nearly two weeks... and was pissed that I didn't make it. The relationship ended a month or two later with her resenting that I didn't put in a bigger effort to get to her. Visibility was friggin' zero, the ice on the car was getting thicker by the moment, and I still had 50 miles to go. Hell, when I got home and turned off the car's radio, the antenna automatically retracted. Or it tried to. The ice on the front of it was so thick it prevented it from going into its little hole... and the motor broke. The antenna has been up ever since.
Anyway. I did eventually get to Pond Central tonight, but I was more than a little stressed. Hopefully THAT won't happen again for a while... not fun stuff. Unfun. The drive home was very much NOT fleet of fog.
I said it was stupid wordplay.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:51 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
Post contains 820 words, total size 5 kb.
December 11, 2018
Music? Gaming? Various? Other?
I'm not entirely sure where to put this one, but I've got to linkify it or I'll go even more insane than usual.
K/DA - Pop/Stars
I don't know if any of the Pond Scum plays League of Legends. I don't, and I've never even been tempted to, and I'm not now. But I'll be damned if I don't think this song by four of the Heroes from the game (well, no, not really, but you know what I mean) isn't stupidly catchy. The video isn't anything to sneer at either... it wasn't all that long ago that animation would have been the only way to get something that looks like it. Nowadays you could pull it off in the real world with a lot of Premiere... heck, maybe it was rotoscoped, I dunno, they don't tell me these things.
Anyway, now you've got the song in your head too. Good luck with that.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
09:37 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
Post contains 158 words, total size 1 kb.
December 08, 2018
Pay. Bed. Continued.
It was a better day, but to explain exactly why it was better, you need to know why yesterday sucked the chrome off a trailer hitch. So here we go.
The life-cycle of a claim is convoluted even before it reaches my computer screen. It's like this: you go to the doctor to have that... thing... on your shin looked at ("Is it supposed to have a face, doc?" ICD-10 S89.80XA). After he finishes flame-sterilizing his examination room (ICD-10 T31.99), his office manager bills your insurance company (ICD-10 G93.9x)... which just happens to be the company I process claims for. Whatta coinkidink!
Assuming the claim is sent electronically, the system attempts to process it automatically. If that attempt fails (and there's a good chance it will), it gets shuffled into the Big Bucket o' Claims that gets dumped into the Intartubez where it sits until I or one of my cow-orkers has it land in our laps (ICD-10 S38.01XA). We attempt to process it.. and remember, these are the ones that couldn't be done by the Master Control Program... and either we can or we can't. If we can't, we have to detail what the problem is and send it to specialists at the insurance company's TM Department. There, they fix what's wrong and send it back. At which point we should be able to complete the claim and get the doctor paid.
That's the way it's supposed to work. Now let me tell you what's actually been happening.
Somewhere after the Big Bucket o' Claims but before it got to us, there was a glitch. For whatever reason, about two-thirds of all claims were sent to the TM Department whether they needed to be or not. Now, the TM Department is not what you would call tolerant of mistakes... you do NOT want to send a contract problem to enrollment, for example... so when they came in on Monday morning they reacted as one might expect. All of these claims got a message put in the notes field stating, in effect, that they were sent in error and need to be processed according to the usual rules, then they were dropped back into the Bucket.
And that's when the fun began. See, we tried to process the claims according to rules, but just like any claims there were occasional problems... a new physician has joined a clinic and hasn't been "associated" with it in our system, can you fix that please?... which we duly sent back to the TM Department.
And they promptly sent them back with the same message. And by promptly, I mean next day. Better yet, they didn't actually do anything to them. I've taken to sending them back with a painfully detailed explanation of the problem in the memo field: "This doctor, David Smith, needs to be added to the rolls of James Clinic so this claim can be paid" instead of "firing edit 999, please advise" which has worked perfectly fine for the past three-plus years. And at least half the time, THOSE claims came back with the same message.
So all of that is bad enough. But here's where it gets REALLY REALLY FUN! Long Term Care claims (LTC) are a huge part of our daily drops... if we get 4000 claims in a day, 2500 of them will be LTC. And most of those are for Personal Assistance Services... back when I first started at this job, PAS claims were the greatest thing ever! When I was really rolling, I could easily do 45 or 50 of them in an hour. But then about a year or so ago, a new policy was instituted by the client that required any PAS claim with a certain flag set had to be held overnight so the automagic system could... I dunno, check a contract or something. Since the claims aren't actually finished, we don't get paid for them until they ARE done. Okay, whatever... at least we get them completed the next morning. No big deal.
How does this flag get set you may be asking? Well, if we have to actually enter the provider into our system, that's one big way... the electronic form we work from is fine, but for whatever reason OUR ops program didn't get the info carried over. If there's multiple providers under the same name, for example, the system won't carry it over. This happens a lot with some of the bigger LTC companies that might have offices in four or five cities. They should all fall under the banner of "Bob's Bunny Care", and in fact do, but the system has "Bob's Bunny Care - Marengo", "Bob's Bunny Care - Union", "Bob's Bunny Care - Elwood", etc etc etc
Another way that flag will be set is if the claim comes to us via the TM Department. Yeah, you see where this is going. On Thursday, I pulled over 120 LTC claims in four hours or so, and almost all of them I had to hold overnight. Well, so what? At least I'll get them Friday morning, right? Even though I knew those claims were going to be held, absolutely knew it... they still took time to deal with. In fact, it takes very nearly as much time to get one of these claims to the point where you can hold it as it does to actually COMPLETE the claim. And then the next day, even though the claim is almost done, you still have to spend time finishing it up... and the total time between the two days is LONGER than if you could have just done it all in one go.
So those 120 claims that should have been done on Thursday but weren't cost me time that could have been better spent on NEW claims on Friday. Annoying enough, but when I mentioned this fact to one of the supervisors and explained that I had basically made half minimum wage on Thursday because of it, she got very very quiet.
Jump to Friday night. Wonderduck is very literally the only person working the State I was pulling claims from... and they were LTC. But there was a difference... all of the broken claims had been removed and sent back to the TM Department to get them fixed for easy processing. I still had about 60 or 70 claims that wound up being held over for Monday, but the "good" claims were all like the Old Days. So. Better. But why couldn't they have done that on Thursday? I don't know, and I probably won't ever know.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:59 PM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 1112 words, total size 8 kb.
December 06, 2018
Sometimes It Just Doesn't Pay To Get Out Of Bed
You hear people say that a lot, in a metaphorical way. I mean it literally.
I was at work for 11 hours today. By my reckoning, I grossed $42 and some change.
That's right. Not only did I not make minimum wage, I didn't even make 1996's minimum wage.
If I had called in sick today, I would have more than doubled my day's income. That ain't right.
I'd try and explain why all this happened, but I'm not sure I could do justice to the exquisite confluence of screwups, stupidity, and something else that starts with "s" that brought me to that point. Let's just say that I am going to have words with my supervisor tomorrow, and it will probably be an unpleasant conversation. That my per-claim rate is low at the moment is my fault, and thankfully that mostly goes away in a week. But the cavalcade of cockups was not my fault, and it should have been prevented. Prevented, hell... it never should have been allowed to get that far in the first place.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:45 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 188 words, total size 1 kb.
December 03, 2018
Just Think What I'd Feel Like WITHOUT The Happy Pills!
Hi, everybody. Wonderduck here, and I've gotta tell you, I'm not in the mood for fun and games. Sometime Sunday I began to feel somewhat less than chipper, and by the time I finally went to bed I realized I was fully in the grasp of what Winston Churchill called "the black dog." I slipped further and further during work today, to the point of very nearly screaming at the entire room to shut up, stop talking, nobody cares about what you want to say and for the love of all that's holy STOP SINGING!!!!!
But I didn't. What's the point? The talking will continue no matter what I say or do, no matter how much I complain. So I slowly go deaf, turning my mp3 player up louder and louder. At one point today, I very nearly began sobbing, simply because my claims had gone sour. Frustration, and knowing that it's never-ending.
I know, shut up and blog. Workin' on it.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:33 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
Post contains 172 words, total size 1 kb.
December 02, 2018
Hey Wonderduck, What're You Listening To?
Everybody has their musical obsessions of the moment, right? The stuff that you've simply got to hear when you're listening to music, on heavy rotation on your mp3 player, constantly streaming online, whatever, you've got 'em, your friends and co-workers have 'em, and I have 'em.
The difference is, I've got a blog.
Benny Goodman - Sing Sing Sing (Swingwhale Enhiezima Remix)
Because I simply will not let electroswing go down without a fight. And yes, I do think the original is better, but I like the addition of the modern bass elements. Plus, hell, it's fun stuff and I'm no expert on music theory or anything like that.
Kid Kasino & Dutty Moonshine - Everybody
Sometimes you stumble across clever music in the strangest of places. One place that has a surprisingly high ratio of "entertaining tunes" to "content" is gameplay videos. I was watching a guy named Arlios and his World of Warships highlight vids, when a couple of minutes into it I realized I was diggin' the tune more than the gameplay. That's happened before, but it's always a fun time when it occurs. The videos are good, too!
Zooly - Siri Says
Lets get this out of the way right now: I'm not sure if I like the song, or I like the AMV and the song just tags along. What I didn't realize is that the AMV is by Haunter103, the creator of The Greatest AMV Ever. While it's not as good as that one... how could it be, when it's up against The Greatest AMV Ever?... it's still awfully darn good. Song's catchy too.
Adhesive Wombat - Anthem
Speaking of music in gameplay videos... you know the game SuperHot? FPS, time only moves when you move, opponents are all red? This song was used in SuperHot's greenlight trailer. Is it original? No. Is it repetitive? Yes. Do I care? No. Do I enjoy listening to it? Yes.
Gevolt - Khokhotshet
Klezmer is a type of music originally played by Eastern European Ashkenazi Jews, but got mixed with American jazz in the 1920s. That's the version most people are familiar with; the original style is apparently having a quiet resurgence. Heavy Metal is a type of music that stems from the late '60s that includes the use of driving guitars, a heavy bass and drum back beat, and often dramatic (or overdramatic) singing. Klezmer Metal is an unholy mutant that is simply wrong in so many ways. Which is what makes it so stinkin' good. Seriously, if that isn't some of the best metal music you've heard recently, you've got to tell me what you're listening to that's better.
Korpiklaani - Ievan Polkka
Hatsune Miku is over in the corner crying, because in Finland even the polkas are metal. And yes, that viking is wielding a feather duster. And this might be the best use of Valve's software ever.
Right, that's all. Everybody back on your heads.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
02:54 AM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 498 words, total size 4 kb.
November 30, 2018
So There I Was...
Man, you hear somebody say "So there I was..." and you know a good story is inbound. So there I was, early Wednesday morning, all ready to go back to work. And by ready, I actually mean "resigned to my fate", but what do you expect after four days away? Yes, four, I did have to go in for five hours on Black Friday. Still, four days plus some, means yeah, I really didn't want to go back to work. But like any good adult, I gathered myself together and began to make my way to the Duckmobile. As I did, I looked upon the fresh fields of snow covering the parking lot and an overwhelming urge took hold of me! An urge... to snow angel the *hell* out of the lot!
Not quite the "snow angel" I meant.
Ignoring the stares of the neighbor or two nearby, I promptly began angeling like a little kid. After a minute or two I realized something interesting... I was actually comfortable! Like lying on a really soft bed, lying on the snow in Pond Central's parking lot was... well, it was a little cold, but yeah, I was comfy! Reveling in this strange and wonderous feeling, I just continued to lie there. I could almost doze off, I was so comfy... or hypothermia was setting in, one of the two. Anyway, it was really nice until the snowplow came.
How could I have anticipated that showing up? There aren't any rails in the parking lot!
I immediately found myself thrown high into the air, landing in a snowdrift and rapidly covered with more snow from the plow. Some time later, I managed to half-dig, half-drag myself to the surface where I discovered I'd been surrounded by a bunch of Greenpeace-like people, all yelling about protecting the rare and endangered Snow Manatee. A loud cheer was raised when they spied me struggling to gain my feet, and then they began to pelt me with more snow.
When I asked them to stop doing that, they replied that the rare and endangered Snow Manatee needed to be kept covered with snow, lest they dry up and shrivel away. I pointed out to them that I'm not a Snow Manatee, I'm just a guy trying to get to work, they laughed and pointed out that the rare and endangered Snow Manatee was known to have a great sense of humor. "What a kidder, Snow Manatees don't have jobs!"
And that's why I was late to work.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:37 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 425 words, total size 3 kb.
November 26, 2018
Snowmageddon Came Early This Year
On Thanksgiving, I noticed that the forecast for Saturday night called for a little bit of snow, maybe as much as three inches. By Friday, the snow had moved to Sunday afternoon/evening until Monday morning, and maybe six inches in the worst case. "Cool," I said. "I've got Monday and Tuesday off anyway!"
What we expected. We were fools.
By late Friday night/Saturday morning, winter weather advisories had changed to winter storm warnings, and then to blizzard warnings. Four to eight inches were likely in Duckford, but heavier to the south. The very worst of it was going to be in a narrow band that'd surely miss us. Indeed, the storm coming was so narrow that people 20 miles north of the city were not expecting any snow at all, or a dusting. They were right, that's all they got. That's all they got.
What actually happened. All of these idols are now dead, buried by snowfall.
By 4pm Sunday afternoon, there was already a couple of inches on the Duckmobile, but it looked like it was only flurrying anymore. Piece of cake! Then the sun went down and I was unable to see what happened next... Duckford experienced snowfall rates of up to two inches/hour for a while overnight, and it never actually stopped snowing until about 6am Monday. The official snowfall amount at Duckford International Airport was 11.7"... and that measurement was taken only a couple of miles to the west of Pond Central. I assume the narrow bands sorta moved a bit to the north. Oopsie!
I am fortunate. One of my neighbors decided to take it upon himself to shovel the sidewalks clean and start removing snow from cars. He had my car pretty much cleared off before I even woke up today. Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do about the parking lot, which hadn't been visited by the Snowplow Fairy yet, and wouldn't be until about 2pm.
All this caught Duckford by surprise. It was much heavier than expected by anyone. Anyone, that is, except for the National Weather Service, at least two different TV stations in town, and the newspaper. I'm still not exactly sure the tertiary... quadiary?... road Pond Central is on has been plowed yet... or even if it will be at all. But then, what do you expect when this was the heaviest snowfall ever recorded for the month of November in Duckford? And not just by a little bit: the record was just over six inches on a day in 1996. We nearly doubled that.
All the schools in the area were closed today. Many businesses never opened... it looked like almost everybody who lives in Pond Central's building did not go to work today... and I have no idea if the mail was delivered or not. And now it's snot-freezingly cold and windy outside.
And I'm still on vacation. Hee hee hee.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
02:17 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 489 words, total size 3 kb.
November 24, 2018
F1 Quals: Abu Dhabi 2018
Race in the morning. See you sometime afterwards!
Even though it rained a few days ago, it's pretty safe to say that the weather in Abu Dhabi was hot and dry... though humid and cooling off because of a fairly strong breeze. Still, pretty decent for today's session. Here's the provisional grid for the 2018 Grand Prix of Abu Dhabi:
| Pos | Driver | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:36.828 | 1:35.693 | 1:34.794 | |
| 2 | 1:36.789 | 1:36.392 | 1:34.956 | |
| 3 | 1:36.775 | 1:36.345 | 1:35.125 | |
| 4 | 1:37.010 | 1:36.735 | 1:35.365 | |
| 5 | 1:37.117 | 1:36.964 | 1:35.401 | |
| 6 | 1:37.195 | 1:36.144 | 1:35.589 | |
| 7 | 1:37.575 | 1:36.732 | 1:36.192 | |
| 8 | 1:37.124 | 1:36.580 | 1:36.237 | |
| 9 | 1:36.936 | 1:36.814 | 1:36.540 | |
| 10 | 1:37.569 | 1:36.630 | 1:36.542 | |
| 11 | 1:37.757 | 1:36.982 | ||
| 12 | 1:37.619 | 1:37.132 | ||
| 13 | 1:37.934 | 1:37.309 | ||
| 14 | 1:37.255 | 1:37.541 | ||
| 15 | 1:37.890 | 1:37.743 | ||
| 16 | 1:37.994 | |||
| 17 | 1:38.166 | |||
| 18 | 1:38.577 | |||
| 19 | 1:38.635 | |||
| 20 | 1:38.682 |
This is the first time in F1 history that a team has had five consecutive front-row lockouts at a track. Yeah, Mercedes likes Yas Marina. This is also Hamilton's 11th pole of the season. 11 out of 21 races... we're really watching one of the all-time greats, you know that? Sure, the car helps, but Lewis Hamilton seriously has a chance to be the best in F1 history. Now we just need to see if his engine holds up. Apparently his power unit was riding the ragged edge of annihilation for much of the race in Brazil, and it definitely suffered some damage. How much? The team isn't sure themselves. Either it'll hold together, or it will go kablammo and be Hamilton's first engine failure all year.
It seems very unlikely, but Haas still has a chance to finish fourth in the Constructor's Championship. They just need to score 24 points more than Renault. Remember, the points system is 25/18/15/12/10/8/6/4/2/1. It's hard to imagine a realistic scenario where Haas scores 24 points, period, let alone outscore Renault by that much. But I guess it's not impossible.
Race in the morning. See you sometime afterwards!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
05:47 PM
| Comments (3)
| Add Comment
Post contains 400 words, total size 19 kb.
November 23, 2018
F1 on TV: Abu Dhabi 2018
And so we come to the end. The last race of the season is upon us, and with it the ending of a legendary career. But first, here's the track map of the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi:
No real changes to the layout, but one big change to the curbs. In the past, Turn 20 has been infamous for the track limits being ignored. It was common... normal... to see cars running so wide that they were practically only on the curbs, not on the asphalt. This year, a new "sausage" curb has been installed, and mark my words, someone is going to badly damage their car on it either in quals or during the race. It's high enough that a car will grind away most of its floor if it spends much time on it. Indeed, DH Verstappen did exactly that in Practice 2 today, though the extend of the damage is unknown to me.
Sadly, this is the final F1 race weekend for Fernando Alonso, who is moving on to do... other racing things that aren't F1. It's not because of the way McLaren has blown chunks the past few years and thus deprived him of any chance at all of another championship... or even of one more win... just ask him! However, that can't be 100% true. He's still a top-level driver, after all... anybody doubt that if he was in a Ferrari or Mercedes he'd be a championship contender? I've gotta admit, he's rehabilitated himself in my eyes. This is the man that for years was nicknamed HWMNBN for his $100 million backstab of McLaren a decade ago. And yet, he's escaped that moniker.
Also, just officially announced on Thursday, Williams is bringing Robert Kubica back as a driver in 2019. It's a great story for Formula 1. Great young star terribly injured in a crash, works his way back to the top level of racing despite his right arm having had nearly 14000 surgeries (I exaggerate). I'm on record stating that I think he's an idiot, and he was over four seconds slower than the fastest car today in Practice 1... allegedly they were doing setup work... and from watching the in-car cameras his right hand appears to be useless. He's doing all the shifting, both up and down, and all the adjustments on the steering wheel, with his left hand. His right hand is just keeping the wheel straight while he does all that.
Anyway, yeah, I mean, I hope it works out for Williams and Kubica, I really do... even if I don't think he deserves to be back in the seat, it's still a fantastic human interest story. Who knows, perhaps he'll surprise us all.
Quals in the morning... see ya then!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:25 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 468 words, total size 3 kb.
November 20, 2018
Of Turkey And Overtime
Remember that six-day weekend I mentioned a while ago? Well, throw a half-day of work in there on Friday. See, the Powers That Be, in all their wisdom and glory, decided that we needed to work eight hours of OT this week. "Well hey," I hear you say, and that's impressive because I'm listening to some electroswing at very high volumes at the moment, "that's less than the usual 10, that's great!" Sure, if we were doing it in the normal five days. This week we're technically only open three: "...but you're welcome to work on Thursday or Friday if you'd like."
However, instead of doing 32 hours in three days and killing myself in the process, I've decided that I'm going to work a half-day on Friday and curse my employers the whole time. Who needs holidays? There's claims to push! I'm not the only one somewhat discomfited by this, it needs be said.
Who knew PSB could do "angry"? Anyway, in the grand scheme of things, this is nothing. A hurricane hasn't blown my house away, a forest fire hasn't burned down a quarter of my city, this is just griping about having a job. Yes, I know how whiny that all sounds. Tough. I want my holiday time, dagnabbit.
Big plans, anybody?
Posted by: Wonderduck at
09:06 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
Post contains 219 words, total size 2 kb.
November 18, 2018
F1 Backdate: Mexico 2018
Hello, and welcome to the first ever F1 Backdate! When I'm running stupidly late on coverage of a F1 race, this is going to be the result: a look back at the most important aspects of the race with benefit of a week's worth of analysis. Let's get back(date) to it!
*WHAT HAPPENED: DH Verstappen and False Esteban! had a coming-together on Lap 44. FE! was in 16th and a lap down on the Dutchman, who was legitimately leading the race and appeared to be cruising to a victory. However, the Force India driver had only recently emerged from the pits with a brand-new set of tires, while Verstappen was on fairly used rubber. Thus, False Esteban! was substantially quicker than the Red Bull as they came down the pit straight. He managed to get alongside the outside of Red Bull, and held that position through Turn 1. This put him on the inside for Turn 2, and stayed very close to the curb as the two entered the turn. Verstappen, on the other hand held the normal line. The result was predictable:
click for larger
Not only did Lewis Hamilton, who was trailing Verstappen by a few seconds, take the lead but Verstappen suffered enough damage that he had no chance at all of catching the Mercedes driver. He still finished second, but his profanity-laced radio calls showed the level of agitation he was suffering. On the podium, he looked angry enough to spit teeth. In the interview room, he called the Force India driver "a p*ssy", while Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen had to restrain themselves from laughing out loud. Verstappen would later get into an altercation with False Esteban! that involved shoving and vituperation. He would be assigned two days of "public service" by the FIA for that.
*ANALYSIS OR SOMETHING LIKE IT: So who's to blame for this incident that probably cost Verstappen the victory? False Esteban! was given a 10-second stop/go penalty during the race, very nearly the stiffest the stewards could hand out, just short of an exclusion. So no matter what the rules say, the Force India driver was at fault. That being said, the actual sporting regulations are... contradictory... on this matter.
On one hand, a backmarker is 100% allowed to unlap himself from the leader during a race. Also, in any passing situation the driver in front must leave at least a one-car gap; clearly Verstappen did not do this, closing down on False Esteban! in Turn 2. By those rules Verstappen was the cause of the collision. The rules also say that any pass must be accomplished in a safe and controlled manner, and thus False Esteban! should have backed off and waited, probably making the pass down the back straight with DRS assistance.
But there's also the rules of common sense. Common sense says that False Esteban! was an idiot to challenge the race leader at that time and place... he was in 16th, for heaven's sake. What was the point? He was faster, on fresh tires, and could have waited a couple of turns without costing himself anything... and it's not like the Red Bull wouldn't be passing him again once the Force India's tires wet off. Common sense also says that DH Verstappen shouldn't have put himself into that position. He had nothing to gain and everything to lose by futzing about with the backmarker, and should have given him plenty of room. Think of it like False Esteban! was a drunk fratboy staggering around a party throwing punches. Anybody with a lick of common sense would move back and avoid the punches. Verstappen just walked into a punch he could have easily avoided.
I'm inclined to declare this a 'racing incident' and let it go. False Esteban! was an idiot for trying that move when he did and thus costing the Red Bull driver the win. DH Verstappen was an idiot for not giving the Force India the room it needed, and thus costing himself the win. I really want to point at Verstappen and say "you're a fool." The thing is, could he have really expected the Force India driver to be where he was? A backmarker isn't supposed to push like that... and that's a failing of the "Blue Flag Mentality" that Formula 1 has. Slower cars are supposed to get out of the way of the leaders after all. I don't have an answer for any of that. I'm not sure there is an answer without rewriting the rules. Both drivers legitimately had a right to be where they were when the accident occurred.
The stewards thought Ocon caused an accident, thus was at fault. I guess that's the answer we have to go with, but it doesn't overly sit well with me.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:20 PM
| Comments (8)
| Add Comment
Post contains 803 words, total size 5 kb.
November 15, 2018
A Late-Discovered Icon Passes
Roy Clark died today at the age of 85.
Growing up, I was too cool for Roy Clark. Why, he was on Hee-Haw, that hick show for hick people! Overall wearin', dirt-farmer soundin' redneck...
Then one day, something strange happened. I was walking around my favorite music store, Appletree, and I stumbled over a new album by Mark Knopfler. Great! I'm a huge Dire Straits fan, Money for Nothin', Sultans of Swing, y'know right? But who's this Chet Atkins guy?
Wait. Wait. Waitwaitwait. That's... oh my god, I bought a COUNTRY album??? But... but... this guy Atkins? He's pretty good! Maybe there's more to this than I thought...
I'm not a country music fan. Most "modern country" is really just pop/rock music with a twang in it occasionally. And most Country & Western music is really still kinda cringeworthy to me. But I can tell talent when I hear it, and there's a LOT of skilled musicians in countrymusicland.
One of them, maybe one of the best, was Roy Clark.
Sure, he's kinda muggin' for the camera there, but there's no denying that being that good on three distinctly different instruments means somebody's got talent in spades.
That he can stand next to Glen Campbell on guitar and not come off looking like a stooge is a pretty good indication that he's got chops... and not just on the side of his face.
This has got to be one of my favorite clips from Hee-Haw that I've ever seen. That's bluesman Clarence Gatemouth Brown he's playing with. Gatemouth wins, but it's not a runaway. I'm more impressed that Hee-Haw put him on, actually. But in my mind, Roy Clark was and always will be a banjo player.
What it really comes down to isn't that I was too cool for Roy Clark... he was too cool for me. My loss.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:47 PM
| Comments (6)
| Add Comment
Post contains 314 words, total size 3 kb.
November 14, 2018
I Have Been Lax
Apparently the combination of "being quite sick" and "muscle relaxer" and "total silence for two days" is enough in this day and age to make people who read The Pond somewhat... jumpy. I'm not sure why.
I'm okay. I'm back on overtime... apparently my being bad was a one-week aberration. Or since we're approaching end-of-month, they want to shove as many claims out the door as possible and recognize that I manage to at least do that much. One of the two.
Thanksgiving is coming, and it'll be a six-day holiday for me. Yeah, I hit the jackpot on the lottery at work. Literally. To prevent EVERYBODY asking for Christmas Eve off (for example), time around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years is blocked out so you literally can't request it. Then everybody who wants to take some time off has to submit an e-mail to the boss, stating what your Top Three Picks for time off would be. I actually requested some this year, mostly because Christmas and New Year's Day are on Tuesdays this time around. I requested Dec 21 and 24, because five-day weekends are good, Nov 26 and 27, because six-day weekends are even better, and Dec 31 and Jan 2, because hey, why not.
I got TWO of my choices, Thanksgiving and New Years. I'll take it! I dunno how many people got two selections, probably not many... I guess being a lil' angel at work pays off. Which doesn't explain why I got in the greatest sick burn dude on my Big Boss today. Big Boss? Yeah, my original boss got promoted to overseer of the entire building, so she's now Big Boss, and her replacement is now my boss. ANYway. Big Boss and I have always gotten along well... Cubs fans, y'know? When they won the World Series (did I mention that the Cubs won the World Series?) she texted me to celebrate because she knew I'd still be awake... we've gotten along well. She was at the office late tonight, didn't leave until nearly 9pm, or a half-hour before I left. While she was waiting for the multifunction photocopier (which is next to my cube) to spit out something or other, we were bantering away, blah blah blah Spartan pig Saracen dog blah blah blah, when she said "I used to be a good time once." It was totally in context with our conversation, really. Without even stopping to think, I come out with... "That's what all the writing on the bathroom walls said, yeah."
She couldn't stop laughing for at least five minutes. So I entirely expect to go to work tomorrow, clock in, and be totally fired. Like, epically, get police to escort him off the premises fired. I mean, c'mon, the 13th Amendment makes it illegal to own people like that, I wouldn't blame her in the least.
But man, it was sweet.
Speaking of going to work tomorrow, I've got to. So I'm going to bed tonight. Good night!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:59 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 504 words, total size 3 kb.
November 12, 2018
That Was... Unpleasant
Early Saturday afternoon, I started to feel... not so swell. I think I had a low fever, but by the evening I developed... not chills, exactly, but sort of an intermediary state between chills and non-chills. My left side, from the back of my head all the way down my back, would feel shivery, while the rest of me felt fine. This is nothing out of the ordinary, I've had that exact feeling since I was a kid. Everybody is different, y'know?
Sunday I definitely had a fever, but watching first the F1 race, then the Bears game, in real-time with friend Ben from Midnite Tease who is in Illinois for some training thing, distracted me enough that I kinda didn't notice until later. Around 5pm I took a nap... if you can call a sleeping period that lasted six hours a nap... woke up feeling not terrible, then went to bed a couple of hours later (stopping to post the PSB thing below, of course).
That was a mistake. I woke up this morning with a brainsplitter of a headache, definite fever, chills, the works. I called in after trying to convince myself for a while that I was fine. Failing in that, I took a shower and realized I just felt worse. That's when I called in. Like any good patient, I decided to do very little for a few hours, then go back to sleep.
Why I wound up watching two-hour long replays of 24 hour livestream events by 
a person who appears to be the go-to guy for GTAV racing mods. There's apparently a huge community of GTAV players who don't actually play the game, but have modded it into a racing "sim". Then I wound up watching a LIVE livestream event by my favorite rac
ing sim driver... he takes it seriously, but not TOO seriously. Oh, and along the way he's been noticed by actual broadcasters and provides commentary for one simracing championship or another. He recently was in Japan for a stop on the tour there, and got to tell a great story where it turns out he was invited to Macau to do some of the coverage there. His response was "I'd love to, but I'll be in Monaco then." Just once, I'd love to be able to say that and mean it. "Gosh, I appreciate the offer to work at Bathurst, but I'll be doing the 24 Hours of LeMans that weekend."
*ahem*
Eventually I did go lie down for a nap, around 430pm or so. Nothing. For five hours I laid in bed, remarkably vivid thoughts of being a sim driver in GTAV and just sucking at it running through my head. And oh my stars and garters was I hot. I don't know if I was hot because I was running a fever, or if it was because the heater was turned up and all the windows closed, or what, but it was horrible. I've had this happen before, and I never can tell what the reason is.
Which brings us to now. I'm going to take a muscle relaxer before I go to bed, that should let me sleep... and hope in the morning I feel better. Fingers crossed.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:59 PM
| Comments (2)
| Add Comment
Post contains 543 words, total size 4 kb.
November 11, 2018
NEW PSB EP!!!
Ladies and gentlemen, Public Service Broadcasting has released a new EP.
White Star Liner is the story of the Titanic, from her construction to her sinking. The band got to debut the songs in June, as it turns out, during the BBC's "Big Weekend" concert in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast. The stage was placed on the graving yards that the great ship was actually built upon, and if that isn't cool, what is?
Here's the first song:
White Star Liner is available wheresoever you choose to get your music thang on. It was $4.00 on Amazon, for reference's sake. Now if only they'd come to the Chicago area...
Posted by: Wonderduck at
11:59 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 112 words, total size 1 kb.
November 10, 2018
F1 Quals: Brazil '66 in 2018
I don't understand Formula 1 anymore. First it rained but nobody seemed to care. Then drivers forgot how to drive, but nobody was penalized. Then a driver decided to break everything in a fit of pique, and he didn't get a grid penalty. Then it didn't rain but everybody freaked out anyway. And then the announcers thought one of the lakes was rain. Brazil: if you're not confused, you're not in Brazil! Here's the provisional grid for the 2018 Grand Prix of Brazil '66:
| Pos | Driver | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1:08.464 | 1:07.795 | 1:07.281 | |
| 2 | 1:08.452 | 1:07.776 | 1:07.374 | |
| 3 | 1:08.492 | 1:07.727 | 1:07.441 | |
| 4 | 1:08.452 | 1:08.028 | 1:07.456 | |
| 5 | 1:08.205 | 1:08.017 | 1:07.778 | |
| 6 | Frowny | 1:08.544 | 1:08.055 | 1:07.780 |
| 7 | Sony | 1:08.754 | 1:08.579 | 1:08.296 |
| 8 | AMX-30 | 1:08.667 | 1:08.335 | 1:08.492 |
| 9 | Lettuce | 1:08.735 | 1:08.239 | 1:08.517 |
| 10 | 1:09.046 | 1:08.616 | 1:09.029 | |
| 11 | 1:08.474 | 1:08.659 | ||
| 12 | Lawsuit | 1:09.217 | 1:08.741 | |
| 13 | 1:09.264 | 1:08.770 | ||
| 14 | 1:09.009 | 1:08.834 | ||
| 15 | 1:09.259 | 1:10.381 | ||
| 16 | 1:09.269 | |||
| 17 | 1:09.280 | |||
| 18 | V8S | 1:09.402 | ||
| 19 | 1:09.441 | |||
| 20 | 1:09.601 |
I said that I didn't understand F1 anymore, and this Quals session just made that totally clear in that I couldn't follow what was actually going on. Nothing seemed to be happening the way I'm used to and I can't quite put my finger on why. The only thing I got out of it is that Ferrari got sneaky, managed to qualify on the hardest rubber compound in Q2, while everybody else was on either the softest or the medium. So not only will Ferrari be fast, and at the top of the grid, but they'll be able to go longer than anybody else in the Top 10, too.
Fortunately for DA Vettel, he's not going to get penalized for his little contretemps in Q2. See, cars are randomly selected during Quals to be weighed during the sessions, just to make sure everybody is conforming to standards... and since it's random, you can't cheat without risking getting ejected. Vettel was selected as he was coming in for new tires, which caused a little problem. See, it was looking like rain, so you really wanted to get laps done before the moisture made the track undriveable. So Vettel hurried over to the weighbridge, which was blocked by an orange cone... don't move in until the cone is removed... and promptly kicked the cone into another city. Then he drove onto the scale pads and did NOT turn off his engine, which is required. He then started waving his hands in the air like he was trying to land a Dauntless on a carrier. Eventually he got settled, the car was weighed, and he drove off to his pits, screaming a blue streak as he went. Except those scale pads? They're NOT designed to be used as takeoff points, so his rear wheels basically kicked them in the opposite direction from the one the cone went. This destroys the weighbridge. For a while, it looked like DA Vettel was going to be kicked out of Quals. Then there was thought he'd get a grid penalty. As it turned out, he was hit with a €25000 fine and a non-driving reprimand, which means he was taken to the principals office and hit on the hands with a ruler. Oh, why "DA"? It stands for "dumb@ss," which he's proven to be this season. Wear it with pride, DA.
Race in the noonish on ESPN2, I think. See ya then and there.
Posted by: Wonderduck at
01:03 PM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 648 words, total size 21 kb.
November 09, 2018
F1 on TV: Brazil '66... 2018
Yep, Brazil. Home of Interlagos, "Between The Lakes." Also one of only two places that drivers have been attacked via attempted hijacking recently... and the other one was in the middle of a revolution at the time, so take from that what you will. Here's the track map.
Apparently the start/finish line has been moved. Or more correctly, I saw video footage of the start/finish line being waterblasted off the track surface, I only assume they put down a new one. I hope they did... an infinitely long Brazillian Grand Prix would drive me to drink... poison.
In other less-than-important news, it appears that Williams may or may not have offered Robert Kubica a race seat next year. There's been so many differnet headlines, tweets, and other posts popping up that I don't think anybody is really sure what's what. As much as I liked Koobs back in the day... the only Pole in F1... I am currently of the opinion that he's a f*cking moron who doesn't deserve to be offered a drive in a taxi, let alone in F1. This is a driver who was anointed as The Golden Child. He had a win at the 2008 Canadian GP a year after having that amazing wreck there. He was actually tabbed as being the best pure driver in F1 in 2011... better than Vettel, Hamilton, Alonso, all of 'em. He had Formula 1 in the palm of his hand. It was only a matter of time before he won a championship. Kinda like DH Verstappen, just with a bigger nose and lips smaller than his entire head.
And then he threw it all away in a stupid piss-ant rally race in Italy. He was there because "racers gotta race," and he wanted to go racing. And then he managed to impale his car on the end of a metal highway barrier which ripped up his leg and nearly amputated his hand and his arm. Surgery saved them, and they function.. but only a little bit. Go ahead, guess which arm was damaged. So instead of becoming the King of F1, he became the King of Arm Surgeries, having something like 17 in total. And now he might be back. Dumb*ss threw away what could have been a special career just because he wanted to go hooning a Skoda around the Italian countryside. Moron.
Race is on Sunday, Quals are tomorrow. More then!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
08:20 PM
| Comments (1)
| Add Comment
Post contains 410 words, total size 3 kb.
November 08, 2018
Space Doggity
I can't believe I forgot this. This past Saturday, 11/3, was the anniversary of the first Earth-born living creature going into space.
One must also remember that it was the anniversary of the first Earth-born living creature dying in space, too.
Good doggie... go fetch!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
12:39 AM
| No Comments
| Add Comment
Post contains 47 words, total size 1 kb.
November 05, 2018
F1 Update: Mexico 2018, The Eight Days After Edition
I think doing an actual writeup for the 2018 Grand Prix of Mexico would be somewhat pointless now, so instead let's take a look at the fallout from it, shall we?
*DISPARITY: For whatever reason, the Mexico track this time around just highlighted the gulf that exists between the Haves and the Have Nots. Only four cars were on the lead lap at the end: Verstappen, Vettel, Raikkonen and Hamilton, aka Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes. Fifth place was Bottas in the other Mercedes, a lap down. Then came pretty much everybody else two laps down. It's been a long time since we've seen that sort of split. Because it's been such a long time, I'm inclined to not worry too much... things happen like that sometimes. If it happens again though...
*(THROWS ENERGY DRINK AGAINST WALL): You'll note that the only driver of the Big Three missing was Smiley Ricciardo. That's because he DNF'd... again, his eighth of the season, and fourth in the last seven races. When a clutch problem that began on Lap 5 finally became terminal with 10 laps to go, the Aussie was in second place and under no threat at all from Seb Vettel. Amusingly, as he walked away from the car, he flipped it off. It then burst into flames. Suprisingly, team principal Christian Horner did not burst into flames when Ricciardo later said in an interview that he doesn't "see the point of coming any more, of doing the last two races. Let Ghastly drive it, I'm done with it." Of course, he is leaving for Renault next year, and Pierre Ghastly is moving in. I feel for him, I really do... and also suggest that if Red Bull can get the young Frenchman out of Toro Rosso in time for the next race, they should. It just seems wrong to have someone that doesn't want to drive in the cockpit... particularly as it won't make any difference: Red Bull is locked into third in the constructor's championship, they cannot gain or lose places. Neither of their drivers are in any sort of driver's championship points battle, so you may as well put the new kid in the car, get him some practice with the big team. We love Smiley Ric, but it'd be for the best.
*VERGOIN': With his win, DH Verstappen became the driver with the most race victories in F1 history never to have gotten a pole position. He now has five, including Mexico back-to-back years. I find him to be a sulky brat with a tendency towards self-destruction on the track occasionally, but he's also a talented driver. And it's not like F1 hasn't seen drivers behaving like children before. Of course, DH still IS a child, so...
*FIVE: Of course, some guy named Hamilton won his fifth world title with his fourth place finish, joining some fairly exclusive company... St Fangio the Quick and Slappy. If you're curious, here's the song used in that video. I don't really have that much to say about Hamilton's championship; he's pretty clearly the best driver in F1 today, he's almost certainly got the best team behind him, and while the car may not be the best on the track anymore, it's not very far behind. Anybody believe that he couldn't end up with eight Driver's Championships if he feels motivated enough? It'd be hard to bet against him right now.
*NEXT!: So what do we have to look forward to in the next two races? A lot of battles lower down the championship tables, mostly. Haas shot their chances at being fourth in the constructor's championship in the foot with dual DNFs in Mexico. They're 30 points behind Renault, while McLaren is 22 points behind them in sixth. Even if they've only got a third as many points as third place, finishing fourth in the constructor's race in their third year of existence would be quite the thing. The American team has finished eighth the previous two years.
Brazil is the next race, coming up this weekend... and we all know how much I dearly love Interlagos. See you soon!
Posted by: Wonderduck at
10:17 PM
| Comments (5)
| Add Comment
Post contains 699 words, total size 5 kb.
<< Page 1 of 184 >>
164kb generated in CPU 0.16, elapsed 0.367 seconds.
63 queries taking 0.2564 seconds, 334 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
63 queries taking 0.2564 seconds, 334 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
