How We Got Enron!

…the letters “E”, “L” and “O”

September was rough. Too much going on at work as I (a) transitioned on to three accounts and took over for someone who (a.1) left with three days’ notice and (a.2) left the accounts in a bit of a mess; and (b) struggled to learn some of the ways of an interactive agency. A lot of stuff fell through the cracks and clients who were already pissed at us got even more pissed. Yikes.

So my theme for last month was Green Day’s “Wake Me Up When September Ends”. Not one of my favorites or anything, but it fit.

I’m ready to leave that all behind and make October a super-kick-ass month, and things got off to a great start today. I won’t bore you with the details, but I got some breathing room which is allowing me to get ahead of things instead of being in a constant reactionary emergency mode, all without having to rely on anyone else to bail me out.
I went out today at 12:30 to grab a bite to eat and put some air in my right front tire that looked a little low. When I got in and turned on Sirius, it was tuned to Ch 15 “Classic Vinyl” (Howard must have been on a break when I got here this morning) and ELO’s “Mr. Blue Sky” happened to be playing. Perfect. Up-tempo, bouncy, light. Just what I needed to kick off the workmonth.

Thanks, universe! Keep up the good work!

I’m a coffee drinker. Have been since I worked at a job in Bloomington during the summer after my junior year in college. Since the majority of IU students go home in May, summers in Bloomington are a time where the bars aren’t very crowded, making it a lot easier to get drinks. So that’s what I did most nights. Until 3:00 am in many cases. I usually had to be at work around 8:00 in the morning, so coffee became something of a necessity to get me through the day and from there I developed an affinity for the drink.

Nowadays, I usually have 2-3 cups of coffee every morning. Not out of necessity, but out of habit and because, well, I like to drink coffee. A lot of times I’ll stop by a Starbucks on the way to work (perhaps you’ve heard of this small chain of stores?) for a venti cup of the bold blend o’ the day and then I’ll have a cup or two of the office stuff. The thing that always gets me though is how you can walk in the break room at 9:30 - prime coffee-drinkin’ time - and there will be four pots with about a quarter cup of coffee each. Seriously. Who does that? It takes something like ten seconds to start a new pot with the industrial-strength coffee makers we have here.

One thing I’ve noticed is that managers are the biggest breakers of this Golden Rule of the coffee community; Terrible Terry Tate famously codified this in Reebok’s “Office Linebacker” commercials by declaring “If you kill the Joe, you make some mo’!” Are these the kind of people you want to work for?

In a couple weeks, when I start my new job at a much smaller company, I’ll keep a close eye on the coffee-making situation. I have a feeling that the folks in a marketing agency will share my weltarschauung on this particular issue regardless of rank. At least I hope so.

I read a good letter to the editor re: the Iraq war and the troops today from some suburban Minneapolis/St. Paul paper off a link I saw on newsmap. Anyway, aside from thinking that the last sentence of the letter should be plastered on giant billboards near every polling station in the country before the mid-terms, I couldn’t help but notice the Google ads on the sidebar; each one hawking some sort of “Support The Troops!” swag. Our soldiers may be dying, but our demand for high-quality patriotic magnets and wrist bands remains as strong as ever!

In case the link is expired, I took the liberty of reprinting the letter here.
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Still the world’s worst weblog!

Welcome to the brave new world of blog.jimgross.net. I doubt I’ll update this any more often than the old one, but you never know.

…for copyright infringement?

A CNNMoney.com article on February 17 relates the story of “a Houston theater company… setting a tragic story to a musical tune, in a play simply titled Enron: The Musical.”

Five-and-a-half months after I started How We Got Enron! …the musical (and about three-and-a-half after I let the blog fall into disrepair) it seems the world has - at least inadvertently - recognized my genius. This is a proud day for everyone here at HWGEtm.

A couple friends from work and I went out to Boston Market for lunch yesterday. I had the meat loaf with new potatoes and that really good creamed spinach they have while coworker #1 had turkey with two sides that I can’t remember now. Coworker #2 saw a sign in the restaurant for a new “top sirloin” meal that they apparently recently introduced to the menu. This turned out to be a poor choice on his part. After a moment of reflection, I decided that it’s probably best to avoid “top sirloin” in a place that uses plastic knives. Just a friendly FYI!

On the plus side, I also had a really tasty brownie.

So I think I found something that I can engage myself in, writing-wise. While those of you who don’t enjoy the baseball stuff may not find it particularly interesting - I’m looking at you Gregory and Amanda - perhaps it will inspire more writing of other stuff like cats pooping on scooters. And let’s face it, everybody likes cats-pooping-on-scooter stories.

Here’s the deal. I’m going to pick six Cubs prospects. One each from the June 2005 amateur draft, the Midwest League (low-A) Peoria Chiefs, the Florida State League (high-A) Daytona Cubs, the AA Southern League West Tenn Diamond Jaxx (man I hate that name), the Iowa Cubs (AAA Pacific Coast League) and the big club. I haven’t finalized my list or even the criteria, but right now I’m looking at last year’s 1st round pick Mark Pawelek, a 19-year-old left handed pitcher from Utah; right hander Angel Guzman or outfielder Ryan Harvey who both played in Peoria last season; JG favorite Brian Dopirak, a power-hitting first baseman who struggled a bit in Daytona last season after dominating Midwest League pitching in 2004; “K”orey’s little brother Eric Patterson who had a breakout season for the Jaxx (guh) last year; top prospect Felix Pie who may start the season in Chicago, but whom I expect will be in Iowa in April; and Ronny Cedeno who performed well after a September call-up and should be the opening day starter at short.

The idea is to do regular updates on these guys and the organization as a whole, a la Jamey Newberg, but without, y’know, the talent. This will probably die off eventually too.

In the meantime I have a thrilling study on leadoff run production that is sure to amaze and I’m still working on a weather/fatigue study on the Texas Rangers. NEWSFLASH: IT’S REALLY FREAKING HOT DOWN HERE IN THE SUMMER!

Until the cat poops on something else (proverbially speaking, I hope) that’s as good as it’s going to get I’m afraid.

So after the disappointment of the single-table tournament chronicled below, I played at PartyPoker again in a $100 no-limit cash game and finished more than $400 up after about 3½ hours. It’s too late so I won’t go into much detail on all the big hands, but I did save the best for last.

I had decided to go to bed after my last hand before the big blind. That hand turned out to be QT clubs. I raised right off the bat to $3 (blinds are $0.50/$1.00) and had two folds before a re-raise to $7. Everyone else folds around to me and I call. What the hell, it’s my last hand. The flop was Jc, 6d, 3h, so I’m left with not much outside of the three clubs. But once again, it’s my last hand, so I decide to be a little cute with it. I check and the other guy bets $5 and re-raise to $15 trying to steal the pot and also planting the seed that maybe I’ve got wired jacks and hit my set on the flop. If he re-raises, I’m dropping the hand and going to bed up a couple hundred bucks, but he just calls the $15 bet. The turn is the deuce of clubs giving me nine outs to the flush. I decide to semi-bluff to see if I can buy the pot for $30. No such luck, he re-raises me to $60.

Sometimes in poker you just have to play a feeling, and while I’d been riding a hot hand all night, I hadn’t really drawn out an anyone yet. It just felt like the right time to see if I could, so I called. At this point, I’ve got $82 invested in the pot on nothing but a flush draw, and despite my own misgivings, I was getting 5:1 odds on my $30 call after the raise (because of my own ill-advised $30 opening bet, of course). The odds of hitting the queen-high flush were 4.1:1 against. So there’s one reason to call right there. Also worth considering were the higher implied pot odds if my read was right on his hand; I figured he was riding a high pair so my flush would hold up if it came in at which point I’d put him all-in for his final $72.20. Basically I was getting better than 10:1 odds (assuming he called on the end) on a 4.1:1 chance to hit the flush.

By now you’ve probably guessed that flush came on the river. And so it did when the nine of clubs fell. He calls my bet for the rest of his stack, turning over his kings to meet their sad fate while the $300+ pot slides my way.