What's bugging you? (2015)

[LouisEly]

Tell your client that you'll sell them to his buddies for $4000. If he was stupid enough to pay $9500 for them, he has to have friends that would be stupid enough to pay $4000 for them.

 

Or offer to trade them on Craigslist for something with a value of $5000. Maybe your client's buddies have a $5000 car or motorcycle they would trade for them. Then sell that for $4000.

 

Also, I'm guessing the type of person that would purchase/wear those probably isn't in high supply in the Fox Valley or on eBay. Try listing them on Craigslist in Chicago.

[1992casey]

Two TVs, tuned to same channel on the same cable system. One of them gets an amber alert and the other doesn't. Strange.

[TURBO]

Tell your wife to go to Trainwreck. Good movie until the last 30 min.

 

meh.

 

I thought it would be a lot better than it was to be honest. Entertaining at times, but simply forgettable in my opinion.

[AKCheesehead]

I am revenously thirsty for some damned retribution via a Packers win over seattle today.

[hawing]

My right ear has been plugged up for the last two days. Same thing happened for about a week and a half this summer. I had it checked then and my clinic said "no sign of wax, no sign of infection...you can only wait it out." It feels the same this time, so unless it starts to hurt I'm not going to incur a clinic visit just to be told to wait it out again.

 

I've chewed gum and other chewy foods, held my nose while swallowing...no luck yet. Meanwhile my hearing is maybe 2/3 of usual.

[jerichoholicninja]

That commercial where two guys are talking at work about some big project and the one guy is being considered to lead it. So he asks, "You have your Masters, right?" Because that is what determines how well someone can lead a project.

[Vgmastr]

My right ear has been plugged up for the last two days. Same thing happened for about a week and a half this summer. I had it checked then and my clinic said "no sign of wax, no sign of infection...you can only wait it out." It feels the same this time, so unless it starts to hurt I'm not going to incur a clinic visit just to be told to wait it out again.

 

I've chewed gum and other chewy foods, held my nose while swallowing...no luck yet. Meanwhile my hearing is maybe 2/3 of usual.

 

Try holding your nose and blowing your nose at the same time. My ears always get plugged up bad when I fly, and that always works for me.

[BillScottCanRake]

Two TVs, tuned to same channel on the same cable system. One of them gets an amber alert and the other doesn't. Strange.

Is anyone else incredibly frustrated with the lack of information in the EAS Abducted Child Alerts? We received alerts on our TV over the course of three hours that night, and all of them were exactly the same:

 

A child abduction alert was issued for: NW WI, Northern WI, NE WI, Eastern WI, Central WI, Western WI, SW WI, Southern WI and SE WI. This alert is until 2030 CDT.

 

About an hour or so after the first EAS alert, I got a message on my phone that gave vehicle information and a possible destination, which gives us something to keep an eye out for. Yet that information was never made available on the EAS on my TV. They continued to broadcast, in essence, "Someone is WI was abducted."

 

You'd think the information on my phone was available to the people who did the EAS message, too. Thank goodness someone provided us with good information, even if EAS never did.

[stoutdude04]

When the EAS came on my television it did give me all of that information the 2nd-5th time it played. It gave the names of the children, what they looked like and what they were wearing.

[BillScottCanRake]

When the EAS came on my television it did give me all of that information the 2nd-5th time it played. It gave the names of the children, what they looked like and what they were wearing.

 

Strange... we never got that information. At least not before I went to bed around 11:30 or so. Maybe different parts of the state got different messages?

 

It's good to know that someone was getting something. If that had been someone in our part of the state, we'd have been helpless to provide any assistance.

[DHonks]

when parents tell you that their child should play in a high school sports event that requires missing school, despite carrying 2 D's and 2 C's. This is the third straight year this student has struggled to make the grades in-season. The last two years I allowed her to play 1 day of the State Tournament (for golf) and I'm hoping she'll have decent enough grades to play both days this year. But for an upcoming tournament I decided I cannot have her missing school. Her dad angrily called and tried to demand that she be reinserted into the lineup or else there would be a meeting with the principal. After about 30 minutes, he was calm and understood what I was doing. But it was a buzzkill for a Friday to have to explain to a parent how their child's grades are not acceptable.

[JimH5]

FWIW, DHonks, I think you did the right thing.

 

I'm astounded when parents put non-academic stuff ahead of actual school. Our collective preoccupation with sports has gotten way out of hand. And with what we continue to learn about the dangers of contact sports--4 deaths from on field contact in HS Football so far this year--I'm surprised that football and hockey haven't had more parents pull their kids out.

 

I'm happy when parents are supportive of their kids, but I can't see putting a sports event ahead of classroom performance.

[Patrick425]

Golf is a killer HS sport in regards to missing time from school. My son played golf his Freshman - Junior year. Last year, as a Junior, he bounced back and forth between Varsity and Varsity reserve matches. He missed a lot of classes. I don't think he is planning on playing this year (his Senior year) because he has a business internship job through the HS and it would be very hard to avoid conflicts with that job if he played golf. He get's good grades, but his 2nd semester grades are always a notch lower and I'm sure that golf and then baseball (which start mid-May at his school) did not help that cause.

 

One thing I also noticed with baseball (not sure if this happens in other sports), but there seems to be some players that make their college decision based on where they can make the baseball team. My son is friends with a kid who graduated last year and is playing baseball at a very small college in the suburbs of Chicago. He has told my son that he would probably have no problems making the team at this school if he went there. The school would not be a good fit for my son and what he wants to do and would be a definite downgrade compared to other colleges that he is considering (some that don't not have a baseball team or that have a team at a level where my son would not make the cut). Luckily, even though my son is pretty passionate about baseball, he is level headed and realizes that that the academic college choice is more important. I can understand if you are a D1 or top D3 type player and have a choice of different quality colleges to attend based on baseball (or any other sport).

[TheCrew07]

FWIW, DHonks, I think you did the right thing.

 

I'm astounded when parents put non-academic stuff ahead of actual school. Our collective preoccupation with sports has gotten way out of hand. And with what we continue to learn about the dangers of contact sports--4 deaths from on field contact in HS Football so far this year--I'm surprised that football and hockey haven't had more parents pull their kids out.

 

I'm happy when parents are supportive of their kids, but I can't see putting a sports event ahead of classroom performance.

 

I realize that football is always going to grab headlines but soccer isn't any safer to play, in fact from a concussion standpoint it's much worse. Soccer is #1 when it comes to concussions, it always has been and always will be, and popular women's sports like basketball also have higher per athlete concussion rates. *Disclaimer here that data varies by the year, and will also vary by reporting method (how the data is framed). For example the most common reporting method now is by 100,000 "athletic exposures" which on the surface seems fair, but in my experience it's usually the same players having repeat issues over their careers due to poor habits. So based on my experience I prefer a measure by # of athletes but most reporting is done these days by total frequency.

 

The facts regarding these issues are not supported by the spin national media outlets, especially CNN put on them. The pieces are neither well researched nor even handed, they are sensationalist. Instead of trying to educate parents on prevention and treatment (like for example how a follow on concussion is much more dangerous than the initial) the articles are written from the slant of "barbarism". The whole key to concussions is letting the initial injury completely heal before returning to action, post concussion syndrome is most often the result of an athlete taking another blow to head while already being concussed (regardless of sport). In football most of our concussion issues were seniors because they would get a minor one and try to play through it without telling any of the coaches or our excellent trainer, so then 1 concussion always became 2 and a much bigger issue (longer recovery time and worse side effects) it literally doesn't much to get another if you don't let the first one heal. Concussions are no joke and in years past I took the Brewers to task repeatedly for their horrible handling of head injuries, especially on the MiLB side, but again the inherent risks in each sport remain the same, they are just being amplified by a culture in which is 180 degrees different than the one many of us older people were born in. The days of kids playing unsupervised outside all day are long gone which is having negative effects beyond athletic playing fields around the country, studies are showing that our children have over inflated feelings of self worth and entitlement coupled with problems dealing with failure.

 

Football hasn't suddenly become unsafe, it's the same as it's always been. The difference here is that kids are not as well coached, nor do they play the game enough to learn how to protect themselves. My generation played unsupervised tackle football without pads as early as 2nd grade. Everyone learned how to fall and what not to do long before putting on pads which for most of us was 7th grade, there bumps and bruises but no one broke bones and no one led with their head because without a helmet it's incredibly obvious that it would hurt like hell. I've yet to see football fatality or spinal injury that wasn't the result of leading with the helmet and hitting with the head down so the neck can compress or fracture. It's nearly impossible to suffer a catastrophic injury if the head is up due the physics and mechanics of the human body. It's a such a simple correction and yet one so often overlooked in reporting.

 

This is no different than the TJ surgery in baseball. Cause and effect is continually wildly speculated on and regularly misapplied... In truth very few people are seeing and talking about the actual root cause which is year round specialization isn't good for the athlete for a variety of reasons but from a TJ standpoint because the tendons never have time to fully recover. Recovery time is measured in months and not days or weeks for tendons because there is so little blood flow to those areas.

 

Concussion and injury rates are going up drastically on a yearly basis, part of that is better reporting but mostly it's because our children are less equipped to play sports than they've ever been because they don't play outside anymore.

 

Most of us over 40 had many more concussions than our children by simply falling off/wiping out our bikes repeatedly when we were kids. I was knocked unconscious 3 times on my bike but never once in a sporting event, in fact the only concussion I had in sports was my very first play in a varsity game as a sophomore making a solo tackle on a kick-off. Even being a coaches' kid I initially severely underestimated the power and speed of playing young men who were 2 years older than me, for some reason it never occurred to me that I should maybe go low when taking on the other team's best player even though it was incredibly obvious after the fact. There's no such thing as eliminating risk from sport or from life, rather we need to manage the risk and we do that best by educating ourselves through trial and error at a young age.

 

If we want our sports to be safer then the solutions are simple and mostly 2 fold...

 

1) parents need to let good coaches coach and quit sabotaging what's being taught. Parents, administrators, coaches, and teachers should all be on the side here... that way good coaches will continue to coach 30+ years and not burn out in 10-15 due to the continual political battles. Parents who have never been to a practice whining to the administration about playing time based on little more than their son or daughter's word is ludicrous. How many of us told the whole truth at that age? I continue to be shocked at the number of parents who believe their children are completely honest with them when the truth is usually 180 degrees the opposite. I could spend 10 minutes in a locker room and know more about their son than they do just by listening to the conversations going on.

 

2) Get kids playing outside again as parks are largely empty and that's a shame. As a culture we're so caught up in fear mitigation that by and large we're no longer allowing our children to develop the life skills necessary to live on their own...

[DHonks]

FWIW, DHonks, I think you did the right thing.

 

I'm astounded when parents put non-academic stuff ahead of actual school. Our collective preoccupation with sports has gotten way out of hand. And with what we continue to learn about the dangers of contact sports--4 deaths from on field contact in HS Football so far this year--I'm surprised that football and hockey haven't had more parents pull their kids out.

 

I'm happy when parents are supportive of their kids, but I can't see putting a sports event ahead of classroom performance.

 

thanks for the support. I can't talk about the grades with another, but the golfer did speak to my team captain. She in turn spoke with me. We had a productive conversation (as productive as can be without directly discussing the grades issue). That led me to talk to the golfer that I had removed from the event. After a brief discussion, I offered that I could let her play today with several stipulations--all academically oriented--including understanding that failure to meet certain conditions will prevent her from playing in State. I also expressed that she owed a big thanks to her team captain for acting to help find an acceptable solution (true leadership). After clearing the air, she responded with a team-leading 79 today. Teammates have offered to help her in weak classes. It's up to her to take initiative. After speaking with a co-worker and expressing mixed feelings about "giving in," she responded that I didn't give in. I used it as a teachable moment and a chance to place strict requirements on her, which she agreed to. I appreciate her desire to win. I'm still not happy that her dad doesn't place importance on academics.

[JimH5]

Football hasn't suddenly become unsafe, it's the same as it's always been. The difference here is that kids are not as well coached, nor do they play the game enough to learn how to protect themselves. My generation played unsupervised tackle football without pads as early as 2nd grade. Everyone learned how to fall and what not to do long before putting on pads which for most of us was 7th grade, there bumps and bruises but no one broke bones and no one led with their head because without a helmet it's incredibly obvious that it would hurt like hell. I've yet to see football fatality or spinal injury that wasn't the result of leading with the helmet and hitting with the head down so the neck can compress or fracture. It's nearly impossible to suffer a catastrophic injury if the head is up due the physics and mechanics of the human body. It's a such a simple correction and yet one so often overlooked in reporting.

 

Here's an excerpt from an article I link below regarding the dangers of football:

 

Roughly half of the estimated 1.1 million high school players last year got hurt, and a quarter of those injuries were concussions, according to the National High School Sports-Related Injury Surveillance Study. That’s upwards of 100,000 developing brains exposed to trauma. There were five direct football deaths at the high school level last year, according to the National Survey of Catastrophic Football Injuries compiled annually at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Every single one was from a head injury.

 

http://nypost.com/2015/10/01/were-seeing-the-dark-side-of-high-school-football/

 

Seemingly every week we're getting more and more information about the dangers of football. Adrian Robinson is the latest publicized case of a guy who developed CTE. He was just 25 when he killed himself.

 

I would hope that parents of young athletes would pay attention to the mounting data about Traumatic Brain Injuries. Many educated people are suggesting that concussions aren't even the biggest problem in football, but it's the accumulation of repeated (and unavoidable) "minor" head contact that leads to CTE.

 

I suspect that as long as the Packers are winning, that many Wisconsinites will ignore the safety aspect of football, even as it relates to their own children. Run to Glory and all that. But maybe when the shine is gone after a downturn, people will take a serious look at the dangers.

 

Youth sports success is so unimportant in the world, and yet some parents put their kids' academics and brain health at risk.

 

Chris Borland is a hero, and yet I wonder how many families have forgotten or ignored his decision.

[Patrick425]

Currently watching an example of how over the top HS sports can get. Watching the Muskego/Arrowhead game on Time Warner Sports. The QB for Muskego was hobbling around really badly after a play. It was a situation where in the NFL they would have immediately called a time out and trainers would have been out to take a look. Took forever for Muskego to call a time out. The coach came out. Trainer never came out and they ended up leaving the QB in the game even though he clearly was hurting. After two more downs they ended up kicking a field goal, but the QB then hobbled off the field. Will be very interesting to see if he stays in the game when Muskego gets the ball again. He clearly should not.

[LouisEly]

I would argue that the average player is bigger, stronger, and faster than they were 30 years ago. As a 12-year-old playing tackle football without pads or a helmet 30 years ago, there was no 6'3", 240 lb linebacker who runs a 4.55 40-yard-dash looking to hit me - that is the biggest reason why we didn't break bones. If someone like that hits you, no matter where or what technique, it could do damage. Force equals mass times velocity; both average mass and average velocity is greater than it used to be. A close friend of mine was the #3 ranked QB recruit coming out of HS in the early 90's; he was 6'5", 240, ran a 4.5 40... and wanted nothing to do with 6'6", 280 lb Javon Kearse chasing him.

 

The other factor is technology. The technology of helmets and pads couldn't keep up with the increasing speed and size of players resulting from improved training techniques and pharmaceutical supplements (legal or not) in the 90's. That contributed to the increase in brain injuries.

 

Yes, technique is very important, and yes, many people don't use proper technique. But the size and speed at which guys are now... proper technique or not, it could still jar your brain.

[LouisEly]

How in the world can the microwave be the dirtiest thing in the kitchen?

 

Where in the world is all of this grease coming from??

 

Anyone want to take a guess as to how many Q-tips I have gone through already in cleaning this thing?

[JimH5]

It must be more than one!

[GAME05]

Sprained my shoulder really badly about 1.5 weeks ago. It doesn't hurt anymore but I've lost a lot of strength. I have to do two sets of 20 pushups soon and be able to do them quickly. I wasn't able to do them well in the first place. I have a LOT riding on it.

[RobDeer 45]

Sprained my shoulder really badly about 1.5 weeks ago. It doesn't hurt anymore but I've lost a lot of strength. I have to do two sets of 20 pushups soon and be able to do them quickly. I wasn't able to do them well in the first place. I have a LOT riding on it.

 

I would start doing some light strength stuff for your arms and chest. Do some pushups with your knees on the ground and see how that feels. Maybe a few planks. I would mix in some ice on the shoulder after too. See how it reacts. If the pain is gone you are probably ok. If it flares up, you should probably see a doctor.

[LouisEly]

Yep, push ups from your knees or on an incline - find a ramp, stairs, hill, etc., where you can shift more weight to your feet. Build strength from doing lighter weight with more reps.

 

The other part of it is your body weight. I don't know what your physique or diet is, but if you have a lot riding on it then immediately cut out all sugar, simple carbs, and alcohol as well as processed foods (as much as you can) until after you've passed the test. Dropping a little weight will help too - less weight to push up.

[GAME05]

Thanks. Just a couple weeks to go. The pain is gone. I'm maybe 80% full strength at this point and am doing full-body-weight pushups almost every day (gotta rest it some). Daily B12 and Vitamin C. Sometimes creatine.

 

It's gonna be close. I'm weak to begin with. The last practice run I slow-jogged through it and then did 10-5-5 on the pushup sets, but they were bad-form pushups that won't count in the real thing. Passed the practice run with 20 seconds to spare. This time I'll probably end up doing 6-4-2-2-2... for the first set and then 4-3-2-2... for the second. Going full-speed should give me an additional 45 seconds, so I'm hoping that balances out with the slower pushups.

 

Worst-case is I lose my job and house, go through this for an additional four months and then wait on another opening. But I need to have more confidence, so I'm gonna just pass it the first time.

[rwa12]

If I recall, you're very tall...I have the same affliction, and that makes pushups brutal. I found, when I was still in the military, that a decent way to build strength, and add a rep or 2 to my next test...was to do pushups until I reach exhaustion, and then on the last one, lower myself into the "down" pushup position, and hold it as long as I could. Seemed to build some strength. When in doubt, just try and go as fast as you can!