Everything I needed to learn in life I learned by playing Family Business

I am frightened by how similar my current work situation is to a game of family business.

Consider the following
Mob 1:
Supervisor; very nice woman; wants everyone to be happy; doesn't want bad things to happen.
Doesn't understand why eveyone is trying to kill her. She sees everyone as an ally, and likes to have us in the game.
Has all 9 mobsters left, but doesn't have any attack cards, and everyone except her knows she's losing.

Mob 2:
Office director; tries really hard, and loves power cards; he's dying to kill the cancer, but he just doesn't know who that is; he also knows that playing the hit might make everyone left in the game his enemy; he's trying to convince me that I don't want to play anymore, so he can knock me out of the game without making any enemies.
He has 5 mobsters left and good cards, and plays a reasonably strong end game.

Mob 3:
Practice director; needs everyone to be his ally b/c he doesn't have any cards of his own; he has a good track record of winning, though, so everybody is a little scared of attacking him.
5 mobsters left, 5 take it on the lams

The New York Mob
Hanging around with 3 mobsters; holding the Vendetta and a few police protections; when attacked by 1&2 tried playing "don't kill me, I'm too weak." #2 responded with a hit and a "Kill the cancer!" cry, followed by a dou-blay, but #1 said "let's see if he'll be the proverbial b*." I played the truce, and have slowly taken my two remaining mobsters off the list. So now I'm playing super-ally to everybody until my company is on firm enough footing. We'll see if Lucky and Meyer can survive long enough for the day that I lay down the Vendetta. And even then I'll have to play it as if I'm doing everyone a favor (no, really, you wanted me to finger that Take it on the Lam).

Mob 5:
Partner A; previously ignored in light of loudmouth cancer New York Mob. Now that NYM is buddy buddy with 1-3, #5 has taken center stage under 2-3's radar. #1 is deflecting contracts left and right, but #5 is talking smack because he's looking for a battle with #2.
down from 4 mobsters a few weeks ago to one Sammy Purple at the end of a long hit list.

Mob 6:
Partner B; sitting around with 6 mobsters, the safe house, the crackdown, and a few other reasonably strong cards. Appears to be allies with #3, and #1-2 appear to think he does not exist. Enviable position.

1-3 have no idea that 4-6 are allies, and they don't even really know what would entail winning the game.

Yes, it's an interesting challenge, but all the things Jill and Betsy don't like about the manipulation of FB are magnified when it's real life.

My hope is that, when it's all done, everyone will think they have won.

The mob war is on.

A Strange Package

So I got home yesterday to find a pretty big package sitting in front of my door. Cool, I thought, a present for my birthday. I pulled the package into my house, got myself situated, and then took a closer look.

From a UPS Store in North Carolina. Huh. I don't have any relatives there, so that's a bit odd. No matter. My zeal for presents, which remains unchanged from my days as a young child, took over, so I opened the package without giving its shipping origin another thought.

Inside, I found what looked to be a large pile of old clothing. Quite perplexed, I reached under the first old pair of jeans and found a card with a small bulge in it. A birthday card was inside, "To our special son." Ok, I thought, maybe my parents uncovered some old clothes of mine, or even got a little weird on me and bought some used clothes somewhere. Or perhaps my grandmother is starting to feel the effects of old age, and this was the result of some early senility. Who knew. I opened up the card to find $60 and two little notes scribbled inside. One saying, "Love, Dad" and the other, "You're a special guy, Love, Michelle."

Michelle? What?!?! I was thoroughly confused. Am I an illegitimate child or something? Adopted? Who are these people? If I'm adopted, how do I look exactly like my sister Bethany? Perhaps we were both adopted.

As these irrational thoughts continued to race through my head, I remembered the small bulge in the envelope. Hoping for some more information to help me solve this mystery, I quickly tore the potential clue from its hiding place in the bottom of the envelope.

A class ring. Class of 2007.

Logan High School.

Is there an inscription or something?

Jonathan W. Hurst

A wave of relief washed over me, only to be quickly overcome with even more bewilderment.

So let me get this straight. There is another Jonathan Hurst. His parents (or at least father and mystery "Michelle") sent him old clothes, $60, and a class ring from a store in North Carolina. They clearly don't know exactly where he lives, somehow got my home address, thought it looked good enough to them even though the kid hasn't graduated from high school yet, and shipped the package off. AND, this imposter implausibly has a birthday the same week as I do.

Needless to say, I was (and still am) a bit creeped out. I suppose stranger things have happened, but it was all a bit surreal.

Seeking Unemployment

Congrats to you, Kristin.
I'm still playing Family Business at work. They decided a few weeks ago that I was a cancer, so they decided to knock me out of the game. Fortunately, I called out my alliances and they are taking it on the lam for me left and right. Meanwhile I'm using up my defense cards by putting in Walshoriffic hours for a month so that I have more billable hours than all my colleagues, and I also have to pretend I'm happy and come up with a publication plan for myself. All this to buy an extra month of work while I wait on a grant application. If we get the grant, we're out the door immediately.
On the lamer side, I took the patent bar right after they told me I needed to bill 10 hours per day, and, between being stressed and unprepared, I scored three questions out of 100 short of passing. It was a bummer, but I hadn't really prepared, and I knew I'd be borderline going in.
In any case, we're still hanging by the skin of our teeth here, and I am employed... for now.
I appreciate all of your prayers, and I will let you know when there are more developments.

Dan

Whine-ending

Not Rob's type of wine. Anyway, I thought since you all listened to my belly-aching for so many weeks about the boards that I'd let you know that I passed. I'm in peds right now and really, really like it. I particularly enjoyed pediatric neurology. We'll see how the rest of the year goes. It's a lot of hours, but I'm enjoying it more than the first couple of days.
Hope all is well.
Kristin

List of Links

I added a list of links below the dropdown for all of the archived posts. Let me know if you'd like anything added.

As for increasing a site's ranking on Google, having other sites link to your site will help, but it is only part of how Google determines page relevance and/or importance. No one outside of Google really knows what their complete formula is, although a lot of people have spent a lot of time trying to figure it out. Wikipedia has some good info about PageRank. Being a total nerd, I also found this article which goes into more detail, with examples and some math.

with somniferous almond eyes

Websites

Doug,

First, thanks for calling me back. Sorry I haven't had a chance to return the call. The end of the week was a little nuts, and then I spent this past weekend in Cincinnati with Hillary and her family.

Second, can we modify the BLD website to create a list of links along one side? Perhaps underneath the list that's there of the BLD blog members? From what I've read and been told by people supposedly in the know about such things, one of the best ways to increase your search ranking on places like Google is to have other sites linking to it (I think I put a post up about this a while back). So it would be great to be able to list www.ncsports.us and www.neilcornrich.com on this website. I was also thinking this might benefit other BLD members down the road who are embarking on new business adventures (Dan & Shannon), and who would presumably benefit by having a higher ranking on Google searches.

Hello

It seems that you have all been scared away by the postings of my crazy husband. Christian, Mary Grace and I went to visit my mom for a few days, and I think Kevin was a bit delirious without us. Now I'm home, and I've gotten him back in line.

Happy 4th of July, one day late. We had a great day, and a special firecracker -- my sister had her second baby, Peter Thomas Cory, yesterday!