Things That Piss You Off

I think the Marines are still tough.

My girls’ younger brother finished at (Marine Basic)Paris Island in the fall. No phone calls except the scheduled, short ones. No cell phones.

He could receive and write letters. My girl and their mom were sending so many, he had to write back, " Not so many letters, or they’ll fuck me up!"

No selfies from Camp Lejuene (infantry school?) either.

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Yep. I’m glad I separated when I did … I couldn’t imagine being an NCO with that mindset.

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Yeah, my cousin made it through Marine basic in 2014. They recruited him at 5’4" 135lbs (he was a soccer player in college). He had to do an obstacle course and drag a heavy dummy around just to be allowed to join (I think they called it a variance).

Just this year he had to go testify at a court martial because the drill instructors are still hitting the recruits.

His opinion: They’re supposed to hit you, they’re preparing you to watch your buddies die gruesome deaths and keep fighting. If you can’t handle a drill instructor, you can’t handle war.

I gotta disagree with this. The men obey orders because of authority given by rank. Once you hit them, it becomes personal.

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Never having been shot at or been in war I can’t tell you either way what’s more effective to prepare for it. That’s why I shared someone else’s opinion. I do know from history that military discipline was often scary as hell. For instance decimation. Not saying that’s how we should do it now, but if a drill instructor who’s been to war tells me recruits should be hit to prepare them for it, I believe him.

Mehhh, I think it can be both.

I get deference to experience, BUT I’d be wary of the appeal to authority fallacy. Take it with a grain of salt. Like USMC said, it can go both ways…

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Neither have I. My point is there are lots of, and even ingenious ways to physically torment someone without actual contact during training lol. I’m sure he’s not talking about hitting them during, for example, unarmed combat training or there would be no grounds for a court martial. If you hit them outside of things like that, it becomes personal and you lose respect IMO.

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I’m (selfishly?) hoping little bro gets a more boring job than being shot at.

Hmm. Makes me wonder. My wrestling coaches used to kick the shit out of us. Literally. If you were slacking on a drill, they would actually kick you off of the mat. And if you were slacking on push-ups, you’d get the whistle leash across the back.

No one liked that, but no one likes a tattle tale either.

I’m kind of hesitant to enroll my kid in wrestling because if I saw someone do that to him I would stomp their guts out.

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Same. If you ever took a break during a set of situps and let your shoulder blades rest on the mat for .005 seconds. God help you.

Super Bowl LII

Why in the name of all that is Bellechick did Butler sit?!!! They let him play special teams, but not defense?

“Hey #2 corner, you were late for team meetings last Tuesday. No Superbowl for you.”

Your guess is as good as mine but I wouldn’t doubt it’s inline with:

Belichick is proud, to a fault. He’ll say, “I did what I felt was best for the team” - and most of the time, he’s right. It appears to be what is best for the team.

In this case…I mean, speculation and all of that, it didn’t seem that it was what was best for the team. Rowe made a couple decent plays, but Butler would’ve been superior (unless there’s something we don’t know in terms of his ability to perform in that role??)

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I don’t regularly check this thread, but here’s one more entrant in the “workplace frustration” category:

I am the lone PhD statistician (I do have two staff members working under me) supporting a large department of MD’s in cardiology and cardiac surgery. At any given moment, I’ll usually have >100 active analytic projects (end goal: write and publish a meaningful paper that can be used to inform clinical practice) with >25 different physicians in various stages of preparation, which means that I cannot always reply immediately to any single email because I’m often knee-deep in three or four other projects that I want to advance by the end of the week (of course, then they can toss another 10 new projects on my desk, lol). Furthermore, most of the MD’s that I work with know this, and yet today, from one physician that is notorious for wasting large amounts of my time asking to see every possible combination of data analyses on his project(s), with a terrible track record of actually turning all of that analysis into published papers:

8:24AM: email regarding a specific project
3:41PM: text message to ask if I received said email
4:05PM: calls my office phone to check “where things stand”

This would be different if this was my direct boss. It isn’t. Just one of three dozen guys that all are constantly jockeying for my team’s time and attention, but any of them will raise holy hell if I don’t respond to them on demand.

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Man, I usually lose my mind with only 3 or 4 bosses. 30 would crack me like an egg.

That’s the annoying thing: they’re not really “bosses” but they all THINK they’re my boss, lol.

I’m going to drift off topic and I’m going to assume this is one of those wrinkles every job has…

How is data analytics as a career? I’ve developed and led development of a few of these platforms and now I’m doing more strategizing… the politics is killing me (my eye was twitching yesterday lol).

How is the analysis side of the fence? I’m considering moving my study.

I’ve worked with salespeople … I know the feeling. Feels good to tell them no though.

Coincidentally, I now work in an environment where I DO have “bosses” but it feels more collaborative. It’s been a bit of a learning curve getting used to it…

I can’t speak for AG’s experience but I’m in data analytics as well.

Do you like granular detective work and iterative processes? Do you like simple to advanced statistics and statistical inference? There are a few different roles within the field - I lean more towards data analytics but my role will be continually evolving over the next few years I think (which I like - I thrive of dynamism) I work with a girl who’s opposite. She’s totally fine being a SQL jockey, loves data mining, cleaning and exploration. She’s not big on modeling or the business side of things.

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