"We Didn't Lose Vietnam! It Was A Tie!"
Feb. 27th, 2022 11:11 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogPretty morbid events to end last week, which are still going on in Ukraine; I decided to blow one of my few remaining direct-to-LJ posts by putting one up over there cheerfully titled "Fuck You, Putin" which displayed a Ukranian flag meme that's been making the rounds the past few days-
- along with a link to the story behind it: This meme has been doing the rounds. It says "go fuck yourself". The defiant last words of 13 Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island in the Black Sea, after they were given an ultimatum by a Russian warship to surrender or die.
I'd like to see Tucker Carlson be that brave. Or maybe Kyle Rittenhouse can take his assault rifle over the Ukranian border to prevent the destruction of their private property.
----
I'll get to the "tie" story in a moment; the rest of the week just past was mostly okay, but with a few weird work moments. My bigger cases were fairly quiet, I filed my first actual new bankruptcy of the year (as of yesterday, only 81 had been filed in Rochester for almost two entire months), but the weird came out when I resolved a couple of small cases, both involving bumps along the road.
First was a small claim case that got referred to me a few months ago, where the client got an award for a little under 800 bucks and the guy wouldn't pay. I sent a letter which he ignored, I couldn't find any bank accounts (apparently the Kids These Days all use Paypal and Venmo to move their money around), so I decided to issue a subpoena to make the guy come to my office so I could find where the Benjamins were. The address I had for him was one town east of here, and I had to head that way a few Fridays back, so I decided to drop it off myself. THAT's when I realized where his office was: in a building owned by a lawyer I know, that Eleanor actually worked in (under previous building ownership) right after we moved here, and that a good friend of mine also has an office in. Friend's Landlord's Paralegal put me on the phone with the guy, and he promised to get a check out. Weeks went by with no check. Then, two Fridays ago, I had to meet my friend at the same building and again saw FLP, who this time made clear she wasn't helping me with this case at all anymore. My friend over there got the same message directly from her (and the guy's) landlord. So I emailed Landlord, and said, look. If you don't want me to bother you, that's fine, but I can do other things that will bother your tenant more. Like find out who HIS tenants are and put freezes on their paying him rent. Then I looked up an address of a building the guy owns. I instantly recognized the address: I'd been IN an apartment in there back in law school. Weed may have been involved, but I remember it anyway. Fortunately, I won't have to relive those memories, whatever they were, because the check for the full amount finally showed up.
The second weird moment was another fairly small case I settled for a client. Opposing Rochester Lawyer and I agreed on an amount. I told the client to get a check for that amount made payable to ORL, but to send it to me so I could track it. He got the check, mailed it to me but forgot the stamp, so it didn't show up until this past Thursday morning. I went to look up ORL's address to mail it to him and realized, shit: I gave the client the wrong lawyer's name. I'd been working with a DIFFERENT Opposing Rochester Lawyer on a similar case, and just mixed them up. Since this was my fault, I decided to make it right: on my way to Rochester on Thursday afternoon, I stopped at the client's house, switched out wrong check for right check, and got it right in the mail to Right ORL. But before I did, I called Right ORL to tell him what had happened and why the check was late.
He emailed back: No problem, as long as you didn't confuse me with....
and he names the guy I'd accidentally told the client to make the check out to.
So my final words on that subject were simply, No Comment.
----
And at night, we watch things. On one of them, I actually went out to watch them:
The Little is Rochester's long-time indie arts house cinema, which merged with the city's NPR/PBS affiliates a few years back to preserve it as a part of its cultural history. (The original building is also a historic landmark, the last of the city's classic movie houses, since expanded to industrial buildings behind it for its now four additional screens and its performance venue cafe.) I've seen music, art shows and, now, stand-up there. Lisa opened the proceedings with some Darth Vader jokes:
And then introduced the six comics-
-along with introducing her husband and co-host Scott, who works for WXXI and was therefore technically "at work" for the night recording the thing-
Lots of jokes from Dick's and BJ's to Wordle and Star Wars. The cappucino machine kept going off during sets and itself became a running joke among the comics. We threw bills into the tip jar and the two women on the bill wound up winning the drawing to split it. I then drove home to radio and then an album of 10,000 Maniacs in the car, and was happily exhausted when finally getting home around 10.
The next night, we watched someone I've known her entire life on Jeopardy!
That's Theresa, oldest daughter of my two still-dear-friend college roommates (and a year or so older than Emily). I got an email as I was heading home from the stand-up that someone I knew would be on the show Friday night. I'd been paying more attention to the show lately than I usually do, because of connections to the trivia group I participate in.
It's not unusual for Learned League members to be on the show- longtime champ James Holzhauer and even the current fill-in co-host Ken Jennings are former participants- but I saw earlier in the week that two different LLamas were going to be on the same show Wednesday night. I didn't watch, but was curious to see if one of them had won, and one of them did! But in a way I didn't even know existed!
One of the two, named Christine, wound up beating the other (non-LLama) contestant in a tiebreaker, after they both racked up $34,000 after the Final Jeopardy! round. I wasn't even aware they HAD a tiebreaker- I remember co-champions and even one memorable tri-champion occurrence- but apparently it went into effect after the nerdiest of the nerdy started a strategy of "playing to tie" and they were becoming very common and a distraction. (They were also depriving contestants who'd flown in on their own dime, after navigating the whole gauntlet and being selected, only to be told that they'd have to go home without playing.) This article explains the history of it; I later learned that the originator of the "playing to tie" strategy, and one of the participants in the first and last three-way tie game, are also Learned League alumni.
Christine also won Thursday, so when I found out Theresa was going to be on, I knew that the two of them would be playing each other. So for the first time in ages, Eleanor and I both watched the show. Our friend's daughter was a little slow on the draw early on, but she caught up nicely in the second half and was very much in the running for the championship at the end of Double Jeopardy! (I was perhaps most surprised by the number of clues that nobody got; they now track them in official website "box scores," and there were 12 "triple stumpers" out of the 60 "answers" on both boards in the first two rounds. That seemed high, but I looked back and the previous games that week had 17, 4, 13 and 12.)
You can see the entire game recap here, or try your luck at the Final Jeopardy answer! You have 30 seconds to write down your question.... please be sure it is in that form:
I knew (but then you ALWAYS know when you're watching at home); Theresa also knew. The guy in second place didn't know, and dropped to third behind Theresa. But the champion from our trivia group got it- they're the Hugo Awards- so she remains on the show, Theresa finished second with a $2,000 prize (and no encyclopedia or Rice-a-Roni;), and Jim later told me that their daughter found Christine incredibly nice and was glad she won.
Maybe it's time to take that damn test again; you can now take it as often as you want. But then I'd probably put down the wrong name of an Opposing Rochester Lawyer or something.
----
Wow- that was a lot for a post. And we still have to get to Pepper's adventures at doggie daycare and the misadventures of a stray pup from around the corner. Come back next week, when two more contestants will be with us on....
- along with a link to the story behind it: This meme has been doing the rounds. It says "go fuck yourself". The defiant last words of 13 Ukrainian border guards on Snake Island in the Black Sea, after they were given an ultimatum by a Russian warship to surrender or die.
I'd like to see Tucker Carlson be that brave. Or maybe Kyle Rittenhouse can take his assault rifle over the Ukranian border to prevent the destruction of their private property.
----
I'll get to the "tie" story in a moment; the rest of the week just past was mostly okay, but with a few weird work moments. My bigger cases were fairly quiet, I filed my first actual new bankruptcy of the year (as of yesterday, only 81 had been filed in Rochester for almost two entire months), but the weird came out when I resolved a couple of small cases, both involving bumps along the road.
First was a small claim case that got referred to me a few months ago, where the client got an award for a little under 800 bucks and the guy wouldn't pay. I sent a letter which he ignored, I couldn't find any bank accounts (apparently the Kids These Days all use Paypal and Venmo to move their money around), so I decided to issue a subpoena to make the guy come to my office so I could find where the Benjamins were. The address I had for him was one town east of here, and I had to head that way a few Fridays back, so I decided to drop it off myself. THAT's when I realized where his office was: in a building owned by a lawyer I know, that Eleanor actually worked in (under previous building ownership) right after we moved here, and that a good friend of mine also has an office in. Friend's Landlord's Paralegal put me on the phone with the guy, and he promised to get a check out. Weeks went by with no check. Then, two Fridays ago, I had to meet my friend at the same building and again saw FLP, who this time made clear she wasn't helping me with this case at all anymore. My friend over there got the same message directly from her (and the guy's) landlord. So I emailed Landlord, and said, look. If you don't want me to bother you, that's fine, but I can do other things that will bother your tenant more. Like find out who HIS tenants are and put freezes on their paying him rent. Then I looked up an address of a building the guy owns. I instantly recognized the address: I'd been IN an apartment in there back in law school. Weed may have been involved, but I remember it anyway. Fortunately, I won't have to relive those memories, whatever they were, because the check for the full amount finally showed up.
The second weird moment was another fairly small case I settled for a client. Opposing Rochester Lawyer and I agreed on an amount. I told the client to get a check for that amount made payable to ORL, but to send it to me so I could track it. He got the check, mailed it to me but forgot the stamp, so it didn't show up until this past Thursday morning. I went to look up ORL's address to mail it to him and realized, shit: I gave the client the wrong lawyer's name. I'd been working with a DIFFERENT Opposing Rochester Lawyer on a similar case, and just mixed them up. Since this was my fault, I decided to make it right: on my way to Rochester on Thursday afternoon, I stopped at the client's house, switched out wrong check for right check, and got it right in the mail to Right ORL. But before I did, I called Right ORL to tell him what had happened and why the check was late.
He emailed back: No problem, as long as you didn't confuse me with....
and he names the guy I'd accidentally told the client to make the check out to.
So my final words on that subject were simply, No Comment.
----
And at night, we watch things. On one of them, I actually went out to watch them:
The Little is Rochester's long-time indie arts house cinema, which merged with the city's NPR/PBS affiliates a few years back to preserve it as a part of its cultural history. (The original building is also a historic landmark, the last of the city's classic movie houses, since expanded to industrial buildings behind it for its now four additional screens and its performance venue cafe.) I've seen music, art shows and, now, stand-up there. Lisa opened the proceedings with some Darth Vader jokes:
And then introduced the six comics-
-along with introducing her husband and co-host Scott, who works for WXXI and was therefore technically "at work" for the night recording the thing-
Lots of jokes from Dick's and BJ's to Wordle and Star Wars. The cappucino machine kept going off during sets and itself became a running joke among the comics. We threw bills into the tip jar and the two women on the bill wound up winning the drawing to split it. I then drove home to radio and then an album of 10,000 Maniacs in the car, and was happily exhausted when finally getting home around 10.
The next night, we watched someone I've known her entire life on Jeopardy!
That's Theresa, oldest daughter of my two still-dear-friend college roommates (and a year or so older than Emily). I got an email as I was heading home from the stand-up that someone I knew would be on the show Friday night. I'd been paying more attention to the show lately than I usually do, because of connections to the trivia group I participate in.
It's not unusual for Learned League members to be on the show- longtime champ James Holzhauer and even the current fill-in co-host Ken Jennings are former participants- but I saw earlier in the week that two different LLamas were going to be on the same show Wednesday night. I didn't watch, but was curious to see if one of them had won, and one of them did! But in a way I didn't even know existed!
One of the two, named Christine, wound up beating the other (non-LLama) contestant in a tiebreaker, after they both racked up $34,000 after the Final Jeopardy! round. I wasn't even aware they HAD a tiebreaker- I remember co-champions and even one memorable tri-champion occurrence- but apparently it went into effect after the nerdiest of the nerdy started a strategy of "playing to tie" and they were becoming very common and a distraction. (They were also depriving contestants who'd flown in on their own dime, after navigating the whole gauntlet and being selected, only to be told that they'd have to go home without playing.) This article explains the history of it; I later learned that the originator of the "playing to tie" strategy, and one of the participants in the first and last three-way tie game, are also Learned League alumni.
Christine also won Thursday, so when I found out Theresa was going to be on, I knew that the two of them would be playing each other. So for the first time in ages, Eleanor and I both watched the show. Our friend's daughter was a little slow on the draw early on, but she caught up nicely in the second half and was very much in the running for the championship at the end of Double Jeopardy! (I was perhaps most surprised by the number of clues that nobody got; they now track them in official website "box scores," and there were 12 "triple stumpers" out of the 60 "answers" on both boards in the first two rounds. That seemed high, but I looked back and the previous games that week had 17, 4, 13 and 12.)
You can see the entire game recap here, or try your luck at the Final Jeopardy answer! You have 30 seconds to write down your question.... please be sure it is in that form:
I knew (but then you ALWAYS know when you're watching at home); Theresa also knew. The guy in second place didn't know, and dropped to third behind Theresa. But the champion from our trivia group got it- they're the Hugo Awards- so she remains on the show, Theresa finished second with a $2,000 prize (and no encyclopedia or Rice-a-Roni;), and Jim later told me that their daughter found Christine incredibly nice and was glad she won.
Maybe it's time to take that damn test again; you can now take it as often as you want. But then I'd probably put down the wrong name of an Opposing Rochester Lawyer or something.
----
Wow- that was a lot for a post. And we still have to get to Pepper's adventures at doggie daycare and the misadventures of a stray pup from around the corner. Come back next week, when two more contestants will be with us on....
I swear to God...
Date: 2022-02-28 02:22 pm (UTC)How cool that you knew someone on the show--YAY!
And of course *I do* want to read what happened at daycare--so hurry and put it up! :D