just to complete the trifecta: New Year's Invitation

per the estimable redactrice

You're invited . . .

. . . to spend New Year's Eve chez Howlett-Kuhnell-Spoor in the House of 10,000 Games (OK, maybe we only have 8,452)

Sunday, Dec. 31, 6 p.m. to whenever

Food, drink, conviviality, good-natured competition, conversation, laughter, and a roaring fire in the woodstove to banish the winter chill. A soft cat in your lap (if you want one), and a universe of games (old or new) to amuse you. A birthday toast to beckon, either in person or from afar. Oh, and something about a shiny ball at the stroke of the new year, if we remember.

It'll beat banging pots and pans togther in the driveway at midnight (that was always such a letdown when I stayed up for it as a kid. "Is that it?")

poliscidivahas claimed dibs on the guest room, but any couch or bit of floor in the house is yours; we even have some camp cots, so feel free to bring a sleeping bag.

My only addition to the above is to note that though New Year's may be celebrated upstairs, if you are downstairs you will be celebrating Hogmanay. ;-)

Oh, and I think redactrice exaggerates; the last time I checked, I don't think there were more than 300-400 games... 8-)

on a somewhat less cheerful note...

We're having problems with one of our team at work who just isn't managing to keep up with their work. Being a semi-manager now, this is partly my responsibility. I and our PM (program manager) sat down withthe person yesterday and laid down the law: here's a plan for helping you do your work better, and we will help you to do so where we can, but if you can't show some improvement within the next 30 days, we will have to Take Steps.

So, today 4 more errors the person has committed showed up. The PM and I discussed it, and I rolled up my sleeves and tried to explain to the miscreant what they had done wrong and how they needed to fix it. They started insisting that they hadn't done *anything* wrong, that it was all a mistake, and I was tempted to say "To commit one such error may be regarded as a misfortune, but to commit nearly half a dozen looks like carelessness." Since I was fairly sure the reference would go flying high in the aether, I didn't bother, but proceeded to produce a detailed page of description of how and in what manner they had made the mistakes in question and exactly how I had had to spend four hours of my day tracking down the mistakes and figuring out how to fix them, so would they please correct them now? I also felt like saying "continuing to argue further about this will be mistake #6", but I thought I would just leave that for the moment.