Post Race!

[Shaggy Hiker]

That is SO last week.

I follow this site, though it is tabular rather than graphical:

https://wcc.sc.egov.usda.gov/reports...ateReport.html

That one gets updated daily.

[wes4dbt]

Man this last system has been real cold. I know CA needs all the rain and snow it can get but I'm ready for a little warmth and sunshine. It's true, us old people don't like the cold. lol

[dday9]

It's 79 with a feels like of 86 here.

I cut the grass during my lunch break and barely broke a sweat. It feels amazing!

[Shaggy Hiker]

I saw some grass during my lunch break...it looked dead.

Spring will arrive, eventually.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I can wait.

[dday9]

I just got the phone call that my grandfather passed. It's a weird feeling because I'm certainly sad that I won't see him anymore but I'm also relieved that he's not hurting like he was. I'm not sure how to explain it.

[Niya]

My condolences.

[Shaggy Hiker]

My paternal grandfather had dementia for the last several years of his life. He could recognize many people, but would forget you had been there as soon as you stepped out. Of course, that meant you could visit him MANY times in a single day.

Still, when he passed, it was something of a relief. He wasn't suffering, exactly, as he had no idea and seemed always happy, but he wasn't him, either.

[wes4dbt]

I just got the phone call that my grandfather passed. It's a weird feeling because I'm certainly sad that I won't see him anymore but I'm also relieved that he's not hurting like he was. I'm not sure how to explain it.

I've lost a lot of family and friends and it always leaving me filling strange. It's so permanent. What I wont do is go look at the person at the funeral or viewing. I don't want that to be my last memory of them. So I just hang in the back, if I go at all.

[Shaggy Hiker]

All my family members who have died, were cremated, so that wasn't an issue. I've always wondered whether the ashes were really remains, or not.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Spent a couple days cross country skiing. Now where the hell am I????

[wes4dbt]

It's not official but it looks like the Saints signed Derek Carr to a 4yr $150m deal. $100m fully guaranteed. I like Carr but this trend of very large amounts of fully guaranteed money worries me. I think Cleveland's deal with Watson was terrible and it seem to have added to the momentum of players demanding fully guaranteed money.

I don't blame the players, if they can get guaranteed money good for them. But with a sport like football, injuries are going to happen. Possibly career ending injuries. Guaranteed money seems likely to end with teams at their cap limit and unable to replace injured players. I admit, I don't know exactly how the cap limit is implemented so maybe this wont happen. But fully guaranteed money in a violent sport like football seems risky.

[Shaggy Hiker]

They may be able to spread that out over a very long length of time.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Perhaps it can be spread over an unreasonable length of time. That would be funny.

[dday9]

It's not official but it looks like the Saints signed Derek Carr to a 4yr $150m deal. $100m fully guaranteed. I like Carr but this trend of very large amounts of fully guaranteed money worries me. I think Cleveland's deal with Watson was terrible and it seem to have added to the momentum of players demanding fully guaranteed money.

I don't blame the players, if they can get guaranteed money good for them. But with a sport like football, injuries are going to happen. Possibly career ending injuries. Guaranteed money seems likely to end with teams at their cap limit and unable to replace injured players. I admit, I don't know exactly how the cap limit is implemented so maybe this wont happen. But fully guaranteed money in a violent sport like football seems risky.

Being a Saints fan all my life, I can tell you that the current GM thinks of the salary cap as a suggestion. Just look at how they've structured some of their deal before, it's ridiculous.

[dday9]

Personally I'm neither happy nor upset with the Derek Carr deal, probably leaning a bit more to the upset.

When I compare him to Andy Dalton and Jameis Winston, he is definitely a step up, but for the amount of money we are going to spend? Come on.

[wes4dbt]

Really $150m for 4yrs isn't out of line. Most top qb's are asking for $40million a year or more. It's a great time to be a qb in the nfl.

The one that seems crazy to me is Lamar Jackson. He basically wants all guaranteed money, even though he has been injured the last to seasons. Seems like a bad bet. The shelf life of a running qb is usually pretty short. Plus I think teams are getting better at handling running qb's.

[dday9]

I know this is going to sound controversial because of who it is, but look at Colin Kaepernick. He killed it his first year or two at San Francisco, then teams figured him out, and he couldn't adjust to looking at his 2nd/3rd option. The same exact thing with Tim Tebow and RG3.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

I just got the phone call that my grandfather passed. It's a weird feeling because I'm certainly sad that I won't see him anymore but I'm also relieved that he's not hurting like he was. I'm not sure how to explain it.

Sorry for your loss dday, I felt something similar when my Grandfather passed away, glad he was no longer in pain and mental decline, but sad I would no longer see him.

[NeedSomeAnswers]

Personally I'm neither happy nor upset with the Derek Carr deal, probably leaning a bit more to the upset.

When I compare him to Andy Dalton and Jameis Winston, he is definitely a step up, but for the amount of money we are going to spend? Come on.

$37.5m a year does feel a bit high but then the Seahawks just paid Geno Smith $35m a year (dont know Geno's guaranteed money yet to compare), so it does look like thats the going rate.

It really depends which Derek Carr you get, if you get last years version then this is a bad deal, but if that was a blip and you get the Carr from the season before its probably an OK deal.

[FunkyDexter]

Sorry for your loss dday

Me too. I lost my Granddad about 20 years ago and I remember it being a pretty melancholy experience. I knew it was time but that doesn't stop it being sad.

I know this is going to sound controversial because of who it is, but look at Colin Kaepernick

I don't think that's controversial. Even if I support his activism, I don't think it gets his sporting performance a get of jail free card. If he's not delivering, he's not delivering.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I know this is going to sound controversial because of who it is, but look at Colin Kaepernick. He killed it his first year or two at San Francisco, then teams figured him out, and he couldn't adjust to looking at his 2nd/3rd option. The same exact thing with Tim Tebow and RG3.

I don't think those two comparisons are apt. Kaepernick was a dynamic runner, but generally didn't see the field all that well. Take away his first read and he'd run. He wasn't a very complete quarterback in that regard.

Tebow wasn't even that. He happened to play just well enough on a team that had a strong defense. He was never an accurate, reliable, threat with the ball in his hands. Basically, he lacked the tools to be an NFL level quarterback.

RGIII is a better comparison, but after he got injured and couldn't run the way he was at first, I don't think he had the arm. He didn't stick around long enough for me to ever hear what his issue was. Kaepernick saw only his first read, Tebow...well, it was a coin flip whether he could hit ANY read, let alone his first, but with RGIII his game was the run and I never heard anything about his arm.

[Shaggy Hiker]

It really depends which Derek Carr you get, if you get last years version then this is a bad deal, but if that was a blip and you get the Carr from the season before its probably an OK deal.

That's always the question, when shopping for a used Carr.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I never knew one of my grandfathers. Sounds like he was a right...uh...problem, for my grandmother, but then created a whole new life for himself, including what sounds like a whole different personality. He sounded violent and dangerous when he was with my grandmother, then, once he started a second family, they see him totally different. Kind of weird, really, but he was long gone before I was born.

For my other grandfather, since he'd had dementia for several years prior to his death, I felt that the actual death was something of a formality. The loss was years earlier, and slow in the making.

[dday9]

This will sound cliche, but now that I am in my thirties, I am starting to contemplate the concept of mortality more.

I am still young and have God willing have many more years ahead of me but at the same time I felt like I was a teenager just yesterday. But the reality of it is that I have two children who are closer in age to being teenagers than I am.

It is a unique thought experiment that I never seriously dwelled on before.

I think that, along with the number of family members I have had pass away recently just has me thinking.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Yeah, when I look in the mirror, I wonder when my beard turned gray.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I have no living grandparents, and only one living parent, remaining. It does make one think.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'm thinking of retiring...and hiking more.

[dday9]

I am personally looking into options that make it so that I do not have to trade time for money like working as a W-2 so that I can do more that I want leisurely. Things like SaaS offerings and commercial real estate are what I’m currently looking at.

[Shaggy Hiker]

I'd be fine with working all winter, so long as the project is of interest, but I want to play all summer. That might work out.

[dday9]

In the words of Slaughter you could "work all night sleep all day"

[Shaggy Hiker]

Same thing, up here. The winter nights are long, the summer days are longer.

[Shaggy Hiker]

Spring is possibly going to be arriving by next week. It's currently cold, but that's going to change. By the end of the month, I might be turning the heat off.

[dilettante]

As an old fart, my health insurance company has a nurse call every month to check up, prod me to get to the doctor, hound me about lifestyle issues, etc. Or maybe just to see whether I'm gone and they no longer should pay out for bills that come in to them.

How annoying though, this time their calls are going straight to voicemail without ever ringing.


Cell phones are so annoying. I can call my cell phone from my home phone just fine. Checked all of the wacky settings that silence incoming calls, forward them to voicemail, etc. Found I had 3 blocked numbers, probably spammers, so I unblocked those.

I got the nurse's voicemail again and gave her my home phone number. I hope when she gets around to calling back I can convince her to try a test call to my cell phone now.

I even tried a "ring my phone" web site, and that went through (so it isn't blocking calls from numbers not in my Contacts) and now that'll probably get my number sold to more phone spammers. Grr.

[dilettante]

Funny stuff they do, but it might help explain the costs of health insurance.

Last month there was a mass shooting not far away and two days later the health insurance nurse called me to ask if I was coping with it, needed counseling, etc.

Not complaining at all, but it felt sort of over-the-top at the time.

[Shaggy Hiker]

That puts me in mind of that government delegation that went around to give an elderly Japanese man an award for becoming the oldest living Japanese citizen. They found his mummified remains. Turns out, he had died many years before and nobody had known.

[Shaggy Hiker]

There has always been a possibility that my body would go undiscovered for a long time. That was brought home when I was struck in the head by a falling rock on a route where people only had a rough idea where I was going. Heck, I only had a rough idea, too. I was generally following a line I roughly laid out on a map across some significant wilderness area. Not likely anybody would have found me for a very long time had that rock hit slightly differently.

[Shaggy Hiker]

A couple days later, on the same hike, I found out what a rock glacier is. By the time I realized how incredibly dangerous that place was, it was way too late to turn back. That was one where I could have vanished without a trace, beneath a boulder the size of a small house.

[homer13j]

That puts me in mind of that government delegation that went around to give an elderly Japanese man an award for becoming the oldest living Japanese citizen. They found his mummified remains. Turns out, he had died many years before and nobody had known.

Yeah, his family never reported his death so they could continue to collect his pension!

My paternal grandfather had a stroke and dropped dead on his favorite golf course. At least he died doing what he loved. But it certainly killed the mood for those playing behind him.

[homer13j]

I currently have three dealers competing with each other to give me the best OTD price on a new motorcycle. One of them only has a '22 model in stock, yet they won't budge below what the high-volume dealer in the next county south is asking for a '23 model. Hoping to pull the trigger by Friday.
Still too cold to actually ride here, yet. So it will be coming home in the back of my van.