John Madden's Back!

So football season's back, that means the always lovable and usually annoying John Madden is back (you may recognize him as the guy that Frank Caliendo imitates). He's on Sunday Night Football, and I got to watch him tonight. A couple of "highlights":

- "His percentage when he throws outside the tackle is over 100%." He was talking about Donovan McNabb throwing outside of the pocket. OK, he meant the QB rating, in which the max is I think 152.6 or something screwy like that (why don't they just normalize it to 100?)

- Madden has picked a new thing to be annoying about this year, and he's talked about it I think 1822 times so far this season (and I don't even think I was paying that much attention to the other game he did already!). Before, every time someone knocked down a pass, Madden would talk about how great of a play it was for the guy to have the presence of mind to jump up and knock the pass down (geez, what a genius... the ball is coming at me, what should I do?). This year, whenever there's a pass that's overthrown, he says it's because the receiver turned around to look at the QB instead of running down field. Somehow I don't think that's the reason why EVERY overthrown ball was not completed, in fact I'm not sure how you're supposed to catch the ball if you don't look back at the QB.

Sunday Night Badinage - 8/27

To answer Martha's question from the last blog... The marinade the intern used was a pre-made one bought at the grocery store (I taught him well... the easier the better!)

My trip to the aquarium last weekend inspired me to return to the pet ownership world... I got myself a couple of goldfish for home and a betta for work. I had goldfish bowl that was more fat than tall that I used for their initial home. One committed suicide while I was at work last week... so this weekend I went out and got a stereotypical fishbowl and another fish. Both fish are doing well, very active, and very hungry (they gobble up the food really quick). The betta just looks bored or aloof. Just kinda sits there, and when its fins and tail droop down it looks as if it's sitting in a boring meeting. A corporate betta... perfect.



Today I went to my very first board meeting for the Cincinnati Community Orchestra. Was pretty interesting to see the behind the scenes workings of the orchestra. I'm probably the youngest person in there by 15 years. One thing I might be able to influence is getting them to get more younger females...

Sunday Night Badinage - 8/19

Quite an interesting weekend... Was able to take another step towards one of my goals this weekend, namely to go on 4 dates this year. Got to go on date #2 of the year last night... I actually broke a record with this date, unfortunately it wasn't a record that Jim would be proud of... Saturday night was the shortest date of my life! I was home by the 6th inning of the Brewers/Reds game. Quote from my sister and the intern who's staying with me (more on that later): "Back already???" Sigh, I'm quite disappointed... looks like date #3 will most likely need to be with someone else.

P&G interns stay on the Xavier University campus; however, they must all move out in early August to make room for the fall students. So that leaves many of the interns out in the dust. This year I'm housing one for two weeks. The cool thing is he's a tennis instructor, so we've hit the courts a couple of times and I've learned a great deal. One thing that I surprisingly was able to coach him on is cooking! He's been at my side learning as I grilled burgers and steaks. Quote: "Wow, I'm never going back to Lean Cuisine!" It's almost like I have an apprentice with me. Now he's graduated on to chicken, and he's got chicken breasts marinating in the fridge right now. He says this is the only thing he's learned from a P&Ger in his whole internship.

Book reports

So I have three books that I have finished... Here's a little blurb, and a rating out of 5. Five stars means life awesome, life changing inspirational. Three stars is worth reading. One star means I couldn't or could barely finish it.

The Dip (***) - Typical Seth Godin book... they tend to be short and good. This one was short, probably could've used a LITTLE more content. But the concept was interesting, talking about the concept of a "Dip" (a tough part that successful people work through) vs. a cul de sac (aka a dead end).

Mavericks at Work (***) - Audiobook - Had some good stories about the role of mavericks in the success of companies. It was more corporate and less rebellious than the title might indicate - talked a lot about Southwest Airlines (which book doesn't?) and even talked about the guy at P&G who developed Connect and Develop (maybe revolutionary amongst P&G, but hardly a new concept). It had its moments, but I did find my mind wandering while listening to it.

The Art of Innovation (****) - Story about IDEO, the company that corporations hire to provide innovation. Some products they've helped invent include the mouse and the palm pilot. Had some great stories about how they held company soap box races, used foam blocks instead of cubicle walls, and other fun anecdotes.

Sunday Night Badinage - 8/12

-Winston asked me how I was doing on my other non-softball goals for the year. Well, one goal was to have two websites up making $1000/month in revenue. I do have two websites up, www.thelunchboard.com, and www.notthebookstore.com. However, neither are remotely close to the $1000/month. Not the Bookstore is up and active, just started advertising for the fall season at XU. The exciting thing is I also am in the middle of preparing for UW-Milwaukee, who my sister is going to do the promotion for me. Another goal I had was to go on 4 dates. Current tally is 1 (a lunch setup that wasn't a good fit). I guess there's still 4 months left in the year... hopefully I meet my goal by getting more than 3 more dates with one person.

-Bucky the Beagle made his Cincinnati return this weekend. Still spry and active, still begs for food constantly. He actually had a little incident prior to the drive out here where he swallowed a whole chicken drumstick. They had to take him to the vet, where they had to induce vomiting to remove the chicken bone. Then he went on a 7 hour car ride here (he hates cars).

- As you might have noticed, I have listed the books I am currently reading and books that I have finished. Figured it was a good conversation starter.

Final softball stats

Goal for this year:

Average: 0.500
Slugging: 0.650

Actual:

Average: 0.651 (#1 on the team)
Slugging: 0.857 (#3 on the team)

Softblog and stuff

Been a while since I've softblogged... but tonight we played a doubleheader that started off in 100 degree heat, and between games had a rain shower that wetted down the field and cooled things off. This was the last week of the season, and I ended with a very successful hitting year. I look back and marvel how far I've come, and it feels really good to be able to work on something and have it come to fruition. Hopefully I'll be able to parlay that into some life achievements. Next step: improve the throwing arm!

I got to my car yesterday and someone had left a note on it saying that she had damaged the right front bumper. She had called it into security and everything and offered to pay for the damages. I went over to look at it, and saw a scratch. I looked really hard and honestly it didn't look that bad at all. Ironically, I noticed on the other side there was a similar scratch that I hadn't noticed. But I figure I should acknowledge when something positive happens, like someone who's willing to be so brutally honest about something like that. I ended up emailing this person and telling her not to worry about it... I got an email back saying real nice things and that I had made her day.

I blogged at work today! My new department had set up a blog for stuff... there were some postings, mostly of articles about innovation and stuff. So I figured I'd take a shot at it and blogged about what I'm working on, and included some pictures of the site. I must say it was a lot more interesting than the other stuff on there (except for the guy on the team who blogged that he was adopting a child and was in Africa doing that... I think he got me beat).

Sunday Night Badinage - 8/5

One of my life goals was to learn to play Gerschwin's Rhapsody in Blue. For perspective, this is a piece that professional piano players play. Not only am I not a professional piano player, I'm not even a piano player. I recently learned Minuet in G, and then moved on to "The Happy Farmer." So getting a little ambitious, I recently purchased the music for Rhapsody in Blue just for the heck of it. Well I started playing it last week... I'm getting there on the first two measures. I plan on skipping the next two measures because I physically don't know how to play it yet, and maybe hitting 2-3 measures after that. So there. I can at least say I started it!

Today we booked tickets to the next Stupidfest, which is slated to be in October and will be in Atlanta and a beach (probably Alabama or Florida Panhandle). One awesome thing about Atlanta is the great fares... I booked a non-stop flight from Dayton to Atlanta for $158. Any suggestions as to what to do in Atlanta, feel free to let me know!

Congrats to my little sister Linda, as she was proposed to on Friday and is now engaged. She is the first one in my generation to be engaged, and of course the entire family is very happy for her. I'm looking forward to the destination wedding next August! This picture is of them in front of an Ohio Sonic restaurant when they visited me in May.


Also looking forward to my good friends Jason and Linda arriving next weekend to go see the tennis tournament that my fair city hosts each year. And with them will be the return of Bucky the Beagle to Cincinnati!

Jersey Mike's Follow Up

Just to close the loop, I received an 4 $2 gift certificates in the mail this week. Nice of them to do that. They didn't respond to my follow up email about how it was bad business to just not accept the frequent buyer card. But I'll take my free sandwich and run.

DJ Ortho response

I recently received a letter back from DJ Orthopedics about the letter I sent on July 8:

Dear Mr. Ting,

The purpose of this letter is to provide you with confirmation of your written complaint which we received on 7/17/07. We are looking into your concern and will make our best effort to provide you with a written response that will include our final determination on this matter no later than 8/3/07.

Addressing patient complaints is never a simple issue. There are usually many factors that need to be considered and we make our best effort to understand the patient's perspective, as well as the perspective of others who may have been involved. Our goal is to resolve patient complaints promptly and in an unbiased manner.

We do appreciate your input and thank you for your patience.

My take: I certainly do appreciate that they wrote me back, and gave me a time deadline for responding. "Addressing patient complaints is never a simple issue." Well, to me this one is pretty simple. You can make an investment of $272 and get a return on investment when I buy my next few knee braces at huge margins. Or you can take that $272 and lose out on that. We'll see what happens pretty soon...