Recent content by Ralph Furley

I’ll lay it out in a nutshell, given my experience.  If your sons are looking for greater competition, reps, and hopefully ( I say hopefully because each program is different) better instruction, travel ball will help. However, and this is the key, based on what I have seen when I played...

My personal belief is FB needs to go the route of Netflix and become subscription based, or at a minimum, offer this feature to turn off advertisers.  We (users) are unquestionably the target, and in this model the primary organization (FB) is inherently conflicted due to the obvious need of how...

In...

Your fear is not irrational, it is certainly a reality with this disease.   At first, when it became “real”, I was uncomfortable around him, but I was very young, and back then (late 70’s), outside of Gehrig and Hawking, ALS was not well understood or discussed as commonly as today.  Over time...

Randall, I sincerely wish you (and most importantly your wife and family) the best.  My grandfather lived with ALS for close to 30 years.  I have fond memories of him, pre-ALS, however the bulk of my memories stem from post ALS, as I was maybe 7-8 when he was diagnosed.  Watching him slowly...

Otis you just described my old life.  I did a very similar commute to the city for 15 years.  Summer is hell on earth, and winter is f’n miserable.  There are a couple days in between when you can take a moment to enjoy the city and everything that makes it what it is, but those days are far a...

In general, performance reviews are used for two primary purposes.  Identify those employees who are out-performers that you would like to promote and retain; the other is to establish documentation to move out the under-performers. The key driver unfortunately (and this is due to labor laws...

I gave a lot of thought to this, but I'm not as clever of some of the other posters on this board.  I'm smiling while I write this as I expected an immediate assault for not reporting some kind of holiday meyhem, but I'm an honest dude, what can I say, sorry to disappoint.  

Ok, I haven't checked back since the holidays, so I apologize to anyone for not wrapping this up sooner. Ultimately the family collectively ignored the SiL's crazy pay for play nonsense.  Apparently I wasn't the only one who found her control issues to be a bit over the top.  We indulged in...

Full disclose, not a labor attorney, but oversee our HR department, and work closely with our labor attorney regarding employment issues. My advice would be as follows: Have your wife attend meeting alone. Absolutely no reason for you or anyone else to attend meeting.  If your wife was not...

Yep, I hear you.  I'm going the opposite way...plan to be overly generous, even more than previous years; share good wine (but not the very very good) and see where this goes.  Also, going to bring some really nice brown goods, high end mixers...again, go entirely the opposite way.  You want to...

Far Niente, Tignanello & Cakebread cab.  

Yep...that's exactly how every other holiday, vacation, you name it has been.  Enjoy the time together, contribute the best you can, and don't be that guy.

There is some merit to this post.  There have been grumbling over the years that some of the cousin families who participate, have not done their "fair-share" in the past.  But, IMO, thats how it goes...and if you have specific issues address those offenders, not micromanage a holiday that...

I thought about taking this approach, however it pulls me down the rabbit hole, and I somehow I will come out looking bad at the end.  Best thing I can do is pretend like this nonsense isn't really happening, and cut a check at the end of the night.  Wife is onboard with my approach, so I'm in...