black monday

As a warning, I don't expect most of my readers to bother with this one.  The major themes are football, business, and statistics, and I am fairly certain that only interests a small percentage of my readership.

Today is the day after the last day of the football season, and is typically known as a black Monday when teams who had disappointing seasons announce which coaches are getting fired.  This year, a lot of coaches with relatively successful careers have gotten the boot.  The names wouldn't mean much to people who don't follow the NFL, but they include people like Lovie Smith, Andy Reid, and Norv Turner, all of whom are usually in the playoffs.  And that brings me to a point.  I think that most of these firings are ridiculous, and they point to a mistake that people make when they look at statistics.  there frequently is not enough data available to make the right decision.

One that sticks out a bit to me is the firing of the Chicago Bears coach, Lovie Smith.  I have always detested the Bears, but I have long held quite a deal of respect for Smith, both on and off the field.  While Detroit struggled through ridiculously bad season after season, Chicago was graced with a defensively-minded coach who kept getting them into the playoffs, and was also someone to look up to personally.  Something to envy for sure.  This season, he was canned after a winning season that just missed the playoffs.  A lot had to do with the poor performance of the team's offense, but turn a couple of the team's losses to wins and Chicago would be falling over themselves to keep Smith.  That's the point of my contention.

The win/loss ratio for a sixteen-game football season is not a large enough data set to use to know whether a coach is good or bad.  String along several seasons of mediocre performance, and that would probably be enough, but if you have someone in-house who has a record of success, but one or two mediocre seasons, that is reason to keep rather him rather than to get rid of him.  I see this in other business environments as well.

In my experience and in discussions in my MBA classes, I have been amazed at how willing businesses are to live and die by quarterly numbers.  Most executives and financial decision-makers will have had to have had statistics classes to attain both their bachelors and masters degrees, yet they make decisions (out of necessity or not) that ignore the fact that statistical variance all but dictates that everyone will have periods where their unmanipulated numbers underperform expectations.

Looking to another business source, one of the biggest red flags for the Bernie Madoff scam was that his hedge fund never underperformed.  Statistically this was nearly impossible, even if Madoff was the wisest investor around.  Everyone misses on some quarters if they're being honest.  Rather than his consistent performance being a reason to invest with him it should have been a reason to avoid him like the plague.  People simply aren't wired to look for that sort of red flag, though, and they are wired to punish others based on the appearance of underperformance caused by statistical noise.

the dad who works too much

I recently saw a Lifetime movie the title of which I don't recall that belongs in a very specific niche genre of movies.  It is a movie where the central focus is that a relationship is restored to a functional state once the man in the relationship discovers that he has focused too much time on his job at the expense of his family.  I can't begrudge this about the movie too much , since this is the type of movie that would be well-targeted to Lifetime's typical audience, and I did enjoy it more than I would have expected.  These type of movies do get to me on some level, though.

I have mentioned this before at a time in my life when this was much more of a sore spot for me than now, but I'm still a bit sensitive to movies where the fault is placed squarely on the husband who places work above family.  I know there are a lot of men who focus more on their work than their family, but it oversimplifies a complex issue.  It also usually couches the issue in terms that make the husband irrevocably the selfish bad guy who is the only person who needs to change for the relationship to be made functional again.

Most breadwinners in situations similar to the characters in these movies are not working long hours to afford a nice summer home, but rather to provide standard of living that they see as important.  The movies do not usually appropriately portray the inherent split priorities trying to be a good dad and a provider can be in the best of situations.  What we learn from this sort of movie is that if a man has to spend a lot of time working or if he pursues his career dreams at some family sacrifice that he doesn't really love his family or is not committed to them.  So, the women in the audience who feel like their men care about work more than them are supplied with a erroneous perspective that will only add harmful conflict and tension to the relationship.

I should acknowledge that of course the fact that this is a sore spot for me says a lot of negative things about me.  Of course it says that I view financial and other types of responsibility differently than I should, and it will be a long time before that is not true.  Of course it means that I still need God to set some of my priorities right.  All of this is something that I have been trying to allow God to fix in me, but old tendencies die hard.

As is obvious, this is a sort of soapbox for me but I have said enough of my peace.  Is there a specific sub-genre of movie or type of character or common plot twist that sets you off like this, even when you find the movie overall enjoyable?  Do you have a movie soapbox?  The obvious caveat to answering that question is that it reveals something about you as well.

griping about winter drivers

Since Draco passed just north of us, this counted as our first winter storm of the year.  Since it was a glancing blow, it only amounted to an inch or two of snow and maybe a bit of ice.  Nevertheless, traffic offered the opportunity for nearly everyone I know, including myself, to make the same complaint.  Everyone forgets how to drive in winter weather over the summer!

I realized something this week, however.  This is one situation where people complain about other people to those peoples' faces without anyone being the wiser.  Some people, when they complain about other people forgetting how to drive, are thinking that the bad drivers are the ones who drive too fast in the ice and snow.  Some, alternately, think that the bad drivers are the ones who drive dramatically slower in bad weather.

Slow drivers complain about fast drivers and fast drivers complain about slow drivers, and they do it to each others' face.  It's a statistical certainty that some of these gripes are between the opposing types of drivers.  On top of all of this, everyone assumes that their audience agrees with the right way to drive.  The thought is just hilarious.

I typically drive a little faster than the average, so my gripes are usually about the people who drive ten or fifteen miles slower than I think is necessary.  There are people who blow by me at speeds I consider ridiculous as well, so that probably goes both ways.

Anyway, It's fun to have something to gripe about once a year.

looking forward to winter

I remember as a kid the anticipation I felt toward the Christmas holiday.  The little Advent calendar seemed so long.  The twenty-five days leading up to the holiday seemed to take forever.  Of course, at that early age what really excited me about Christmas was the prospect of toys, time off school, and an opportunity to play with cousins.  The time felt long in part because my responsibilities leading up to the holiday were minimal.  I certainly did not appreciate all of the responsibilities my parents had in the time leading up to the holidays.

After all of my excitement, it was over so fast.  I enjoyed the next few days of playing with the new toys, but the sense of anticipation was gone.  December 26 was always bittersweet.  The next week when schoolwork started again was downright horrible.

In the past several years I have seen December as a bit of a chore.  There are a lot of things that have to be done for the holiday now including gift-buying, extra parties, traveling, and coordinating schedules.  That has made opinion of the holidays a bit less festive.  I have an advantage today, though, that I did not have as a kid, and that is that the time after Christmas day is actually quite enjoyable.

What I look the most forward to is undirected down time that I can enjoy how I like.  What I am realizing is that, while the time leading up to Christmas sucks that up and destroys it, there is more of that after Christmas.  Like when I was a kid, I typically get some time off around the holidays and can enjoy that time.  Unlike when I was a kid, I do not have a semester of homework to look forward to in January.  Beyond that, a lot of the things (both that I do and do not enjoy) that take my time are less of a factor in January than in other times of year.  There is no football that I care about as a Lions fan, and fantasy football does not stretch into the playoffs.  There is no mowing or lawn care in general.  There are fewer outdoor activities that I am likely to participate in.  There are more evenings when I can enjoy a movie with Golden.  It is really the perfect opportunity to enjoy down time with movies, games, or a hobby.  I have been clear that I generally do not like cold weather, but I don't have to be out in the cold to enjoy some of the side-effects of the weather.

This line of thinking came about because I am now realizing that this is the third December in a row where I am feeling optimistic about how much I expect to enjoy the upcoming winter months.  That seemed unlike me. It appears to be an outgrowth of the fact that I know what it is like to have work and school and a lot of other things ahead of me for the upcoming semester, and so with fewer things on my plate I expect to be happier.  This could become a trend, and so I could be modifying my negative attitude about the winter in future years.  Who knows, maybe I will even start enjoying the cold.

c64 batman

When I was a kid our family had a Commodore 64 computer, and most of the games I played were on that machine.  Of everything that I played, though, the game that probably had the greatest impact on me was Batman: The Caped Crusader.  I was really into the old campy TV series, and the game was more advanced than most Commodore 64 games, so it made sense that I would like it.  It also held some value as one of the gifts for me that my dad had picked out.

As much as I liked the game, I was never able to complete either of the two missions, one against the Penguin and one against the Joker.  In both situations I was able to get right to the end, but was never able to figure out the last thing to do to complete the mission.  I spent hours trying to figure it out, and never to any avail.  In the years since I have often wondered if I was missing something or if the game had been broken.  What I would not have given for the ability to get a game walkthrough like is available online for most games today.

In thinking about game walkthroughs recently occurred to me that I could probably get a walkthrough of completing the game online, and I quickly found some YouTube videos of someone completing each mission.  That completing both missions combined lasts less than twenty minutes is not a reassurance to my gaming abilities as a sixth-grader.

I'm including the videos below of the game for my reference rather than anyone else's because there is no reason anyone who did not play the game would care.  However, I still wish it would have taken the person playing this less than twenty minutes.

Joker, Part 1:


Joker, Part 2:


Penguin: