Texsox

Are Ozzie's chances now better about managing in Bristol? Turning this back on Ozzie, does he get a chance again to manage? I say no. He has proven to be too much of a liability for a franchise plus he hasn't taken a team past their expected production in 8 years. In fact his teams seem to underperform the majority of the time in the past 8 seasons.

And you think the companies will pay you the same per mile?

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 11:44 AM) Yea irresponsible assholes drive until they are exhausted beyond the clutches of No-Doz and caffeine. Guess what? They still do. They ignore the rules because they are irresponsible. Its everyone else, the same guys who could drive more but don't because its against the rules tend to be the same ones who know better than to drive at the brink of passing out, they get hurt by this. But yea, this is my America. There are more rules to break than there are ways of complying. Thanks liberals. Laws do not stop people from doing anything. Anyone that believes they can stop something by writing a law is fooling themselves. That is not why we write laws. These laws are in place to protect drivers from irresponsible companies that demanded they work too many hours without sleep. Perhaps you do not need the protections, but professional drivers fought like hell to get them. Think for a moment, who benefits from these laws? Drivers who were ordered to drive for 24 hours straight and more and the general public that isn't sharing the road with drivers working for irresponsible companies. Your company limits your speed. Why? I'm confused by your last comment. Do you believe that only liberals like laws?

The squat was the first clue I had that the coach and I were going to have a problem. I was taught when there are runners on base to get up off the back of your heels to be able to get into a throwing position quicker. You also call a lot of fastballs if the other team likes to run. As soon as he saw me "up" he told me it was cheating and I had to stop. I went to my travelling coach and asked, he of course told me it wasn't cheating. So I had my first argument with the new coach. I think he coached a team so that his son could play.

I ran so many laps playing baseball I became a distance runner. It's just not right for a catcher to be running. My "I quit!" moment came after playing travelling ball four seasons for a well respected, knowledgable coach. I was done playing but I got a phone call from a coach looking to fill one last team in the house league. The guy was clueless. The cool thing is I was a career .275 hitter on travelling teams, I was batting .500 in the house league. Could throw out almost everyone. I was finally feeling like a stud. After half a season of the coach not knowing squat the final straw came. About 15 games into a 20 game season I'm up with runners on the corners and one out. I would screw around in practice and bet lefty sometimes, but never in a game. The coach calls time and tells me to bat lefty. WTF??!! Ok, so I do. On the second pitch he sends the guy down from third to steal home. He's out by 30 feet. The coach then tells me to bat righty. I get in the box, back out. Walk down to third and tell the coach, ok yell at the coach "THAT WAS STUPID!". First off I'm hitting insane in that league, second you want a righty to hide the runner, you have to tell the batter, I was the best bunter on the team, a suicide would have accomplished the same goal. A few minutes later I am standing on third and the coach says some b.s. to me and I started arguing with him again. The ump came down and started to throw one of us out, but looked so confused he just said stop it. LOL I didn't finish the season. My parents had planned a vacation that I was going to skip, but I said screw it, I'll go.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 5, 2013 -> 09:34 AM) I have a great idea...we could have the government construct a website where truck drivers could register their hours and have them reported to their employerrrrrrr....umm...wait a second..... Actually more and more companies are doing just that. They are tracking their trucks via sats. Using speed restrictors, which save lives and fuel costs. Dash cams that also monitor the drivers. Drivers don't have to think as much, the computer tells them when to drive and when to sleep. My family has been in trucking and shipping my whole life. From local to OTR. Drivers and company owners. It's a tough industry filled with people from all walks of life and all different views. I really enjoyed hanging around our terminal and swapping stories with the drivers.

A couple other problems with the laws you didn't mention. As you know there is a huge difference in driving 500 miles or ten hours through congested eastern cities and 500 miles or ten hours across the open spaces of the western plains. Those obvious differences are not factored into the rules. Also depending on your schedule, erratic sleep hours and not nearly as recuperative as regular hours. I'm not certain if there is a way to write the laws to reflect that. Overall, I know a lot of drivers in the 1980s appreciated restrictions being put in place. I agree the laws aren't perfect, but they really aren't too bad most of the time. Now with computerized logs, I see an opportunity to relax some of the rules. The fear before was with paper logs there would be too much cheating, so make it more restrictive so with the cheating there would still be some margin of safety.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 04:54 PM) This all sounds just fine to me and if it was any less strict I think even you could see how companies would be happy to take advantage of it to over-push their employees. Which is why the rules were revamped after deregulation in 1980. Prior to that pricing was fixed. Once compenies were allowed to set their own prices, the obvious way to increase profits was to force drivers to drive longer hours and at higher speeds. The work hours were put in place with a lot of industry involvement, some would call it lobbying with high priced former government employees.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 4, 2013 -> 02:18 PM) But it just shows how these people in government cannot even begin something without bureaucratic expansion that just rewards the politically savvy with jobs they have no technical qualifications for. This really doesn't make sense. The website was built by CGI Group, under contract, not civil service employees. CGI is a large international firm with experience in building similiar systems. They were the low bidder, as required by law. There are also several other firms, such as Quality Software Services out of Maryland that were awarded part of the program. What jobs went to politically savvy individuals with no technical qualifications and why would a company like CGI employ them?

Thanks for posting the link. It was a nice read.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Nov 3, 2013 -> 02:16 PM) A lot of those were responding to his first inauguration. Yes, his hometown paper blasted him that way while he was in office. Papers all over the country did. This is how the world works. I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but man, it seriously needs burst. The insults heaped upon presidents are legendary. I don't know of many writers or orators who come anywhere close to the impressive insults tossed at presidents in this country's first century. Andrew Jackson's "pipe-smoking woman of ill-repute" wife is still one of my favorites. Lincoln was a republican, this just proves how the liberal press has been attacking republicans forever.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 3, 2013 -> 01:49 PM) I'm so disappointed in myself for voting for Obama and the public being fooled by superficiality every time. Read this about Romney calling Obama a liar. The fact people find it so necessary to blast the current president, never showing him an ounce of respect, shows how unqualified Obama was/is to be our leader. http://news.yahoo.com/romney-meet-the-press-140953473.html Obama is no Ozzie Guillen, that's for certain.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Oct 30, 2013 -> 06:02 PM) Yeah, despite everyone who went to my high school saying "High school sucks!!", I had a great time. My teachers loved me, I had a normal group of friends, was moderately popular (or as much as you can be in a HS of 3200+ students), scored solid grades, and was able to pretty much get away with a lot of s*** despite being the class clown and smart ass of most of my classes. You can generally get away with being a smart ass if you are charming enough and get good grades. Almost word for word what I could write. I was more the class comedian. I didn't do too much of the physical humor. A good friend who had a locker next to me for 8 years was the clown. One teacher told me a couple years ago that he let me make my remarks because they were always on subject so he knew I was listening.

The "free" money from the feds came with an expiration date and a lot of strings. It isn't quite so cut and dried.

QUOTE (DukeNukeEm @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 08:49 PM) While I've been gone I surely hope the board consensus, even from the Obama shills, is that that this thing is an absolutely collosal failure. Like, I cannot think of a bigger boondoggle in my lifetime... And to preempt the argument that comes from anyone delusional enough to defend it. It is not "too early" to give up on it. When a trains running off the rails the engineer doesnt just throttle up hoping it jumps back on the tracks. The ACA is not the website. The website is one tool to achieve the goals of the new requirements. Your example is not quite the same thing. A bigger boondoggle? Perhaps the billions we spent and the lives lost removing "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq come to mind. And it sounds like in your example that as soon as a train jumped the rails you would have tore up the train and rails and recycled them. Would you have tried to build another train, or give up on train travel?

I've been thinking about how the GOP and the rift between "Tea Party" types and regular and wondering if it is by design. At first it seemed like a Dem technique to tag ultra conservative members as "Tea Party"and possibly paint that in a negative light, but I've seen now mainstream REPs using the label. And in turn the Tea Party types refer to those leaders as "RINO"s. Could it be helpful or shooting themselves in the foot? Looking ahead to the next election, it seems that it will take a moderate candidate to win. Will that be a regular conservative or RINO? But to get the nomination, the person may have to be much further right. I don't know if that is a "U" turn that is possible. I may not be typical, but there are a few Reps that I may vote for before Hillary. A couple have been mentioned as possibly running, Christie for example, and Perry. My litmus test would be immigration and the ACA. So Perry may be out based on the ACA, which he opposed for Texas, not certain his position nationally.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 06:50 AM) Hillary is a lock to win in 2016 (unless some Democrat makes a strong primary challenge) because the Tea Party will ensure that an absolutely unelectable candidate wins the Republican primary. And believe it or don't but that makes me sad. I think we benefit the most when both sides have great cadidiates. Instead the GOP nominee, to get elected, will have to make a huge "U" turn after locking up the nomination. A moderate Republican looks conservative to a Dem and a RINO or worse to a Tea Party leaning Republican.

I hope, and fully expect, that adjustments will be made as opportunities present themselves. For example, the website problems should mean a delay in deadlines.

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 01:08 PM) OK, I get what you're saying. I guess as I'm looking at it from the standpoint that we are going to spend X on employee benefits and then what we have left in the budget goes to employee salaries, so the amount that you spend on an employee's benefits is independent of their salary. Salary and benefits cannot be separated. Each person you add increases the cost, each employee dropped decreases. Plus not all employees take the benefits. So they must be factored per employee.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 11:54 AM) http://gawker.com/documents-reveal-the-ter...re-g-1456675306 Isn't there a difference between viewers and people who sign up? Isn't it to be expected that people will view the site without buying right away?

QUOTE (HickoryHuskers @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 12:10 PM) I don't necessarily see how everybody paying the same amount benefits the higher paid employees. They are not getting better coverage for their money. A lower prcentage of their compensation goes towards their benefit.

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 11:18 AM) That's not an answerable question, as I don't create the plans/salary range/benefit packages where I work. In the system in which I work, everyone pays a portion of the health insurance costs, whith a much higher burden shifted onto the higher paid employees than on the lower. Also, a system designed as you are asking about always benefits the richer employees. And what I am trying to explain, from being the guy that has created plans. There is a maximum amount a company can pay an employee. (In your example it is $60,000 plus a portion of their benefits). That pay includes everything. First there are certain costs that can not be changed. Contributions for Social Security, taxes, etc. Then there are costs that can be changed, salary and benefits. Your employer established a system where they will cover $X of a given employees health insurance. Employees cost the employer money. How much they pay someone is something the company controls. They have options in how they pay. They can pay someone hourly, a salary, they can offer 100% commission, a base salary plus commission, offer a draw against commission, etc. They can offer to pay 100% of their insurance costs, they can pay zero. It's up to them for the most part. Now, if you are the guy hiring a new CEO and you offer a base salary of $9850,000 and explain they pay 100% of their insurance costs of $15,000 annually. They can counter and say they will pay their insurance but they won't take the job for less than $1,000,000. You agree on a $1,000,000. Is the CEO really paying 100% of their insurance if they receive a raise to pay for it? Likewise, you have an employee at Coke earning $50,000 and paying none of their $15,000 insurance policy. Another employee at Pepsi is paying all of their insurance, but earning $65,000. Who has the better deal? Which employee is costing more to their employer? The person at Coke or the person at Pepsi?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 10:45 AM) Again, that's not what we are doing. We are shifting the burden for health benefits on the higher paid employees, we pay more, and it has nothing to do what's left to pay them in salary. In effect, the benefit package the lesser paid employees receive is actually better. Salary works in ranges, if you are a level 10 employee for example, you can make anywhere from 30-60k, which will overlap a level 11 and 12 to a great degree. They aren't paying them less money because their benefits are lower in this case. Why can't you make $65,000 and have all of your insurance paid for?

QUOTE (Y2HH @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:58 AM) That's not quite how it works, though. We aren't simply shifting cost like that. We aren't giving you 20k in salary and 5k in benefits. We are giving you the same salary, but charging you far less for your benefits, and charging the CEO a lot more. Essentially, we subsidize the employees that are making less, so they have the same coverage as we do. yes it is. There is a cost associated with every employee. When you build a compensation plan ALL costs are included. When their benefits cost more there is less to pay in salary. Think about this, if you have $30,000 to hire an employee, you can't pay him $30,000. Those benefits cost the company something. So subtract the cost of benefits from $30,000 and that is what is available for salary.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Nov 1, 2013 -> 09:54 AM) Nope. There are 10 basic requirements for each healthcare plan in this country. Pregnancy/maternity/newborn care is the only gender-specific one. The "substance abuse" services is sorta bulls*** too. Why should I have to pay more because you chose to do heroin? So they can leave out testicular cancer in policies that are written for women?