Good-bye Smoltzie

See where the Braves lost out on a 41-year old pitcher coming back from recent arm surgery? He had a history of arm problems, missing several seasons due to injury. Would've cost them $10.5 million...much more than Smoltz will make the rest of his life. He's so competitive, and it would be hard for him the chance to experience an AL East pennant race from the inside, especially as opposed to the hard time the Braves are having signing elite players. Hey! Niekro and Glavine "finished" their careers in Braves uniforms!

Similar to what I told a guy last night about Stafford and Moreno...now it's easy for us to look at their decisions and see how easy it is to make...particularly Stafford, who could go number one overall. Sounds like Stafford didn't struggle with the call much, and he sounded out a bunch of experts, including Aikman and Manning.

Last night the guys from my small group got together and played poker and spades...one of the guys' idea. There were five of us, all pretty much like me, complete novices at stuff like that. We divided the chips equally, and we weren't betting real money. Still, one guy didn't even ante one chip the first two rounds. I beat him out on the last hand, when both of us were betting lots of big chips. Then we played spades, and it was the same thing. At one point I loudly exclaimed to my partner "Been to a CLUB lately?" Today I joked to Ceil that we were playing again tonight.

Guess tonight I'll watch most of the BCS game instead of Wii golf. Will has bball practice, though.

The office mood is quite lighter today, and we're all getting more work done more efficiently. The quality guys always bog themselves down with details and stuff doesn't get resolved quickly enough, but their new boss is great about cutting to the chase. Monique and I can work more unencumbered, moving ahead on stuff. When we move to the other building, so will most of the staff from my old processing office, so Sherry can be of more help.

Another co-worker called yesterday, saying how upset I must be. The Ogre was a supervisor when I started 22 years ago. The situation is much better with the Ogre than with my old boss. EZGo is still shut down, and it's nice to go home at five most every day. At lunch yesterday the Ogre had a bunch of ideas to change stuff around. I'll have to butt heads with him about how things are actually working. He did immediately address some concerns that my old boss never addressed.

The Ogre had gained a bunch of weight, mostly because a traffic accident left him with neck/back problems. But he just finished losing 60 pounds, and he looks completely different.