Here anyone can nominate Who you think is the most broken-hearted member of the sports world for last week, and then try to cheer them up or give them some advice.
This contest is for anyone in any Scorum domain and is designed to give everyone something fun to write about every week with a guaranteed minimum upvote income that you can count on. There are always fails and goofs in sports, so even if you have nothing else to write about you can find a subject for a Happy Moan-Day blog. Although this contest does have solid prizes, it is not about winning the contest and collecting the SCR it is about writing a steady weekly blog that will provide you with a constant and steady income stream. It is also about having fun, most people enjoy a chuckle about a funny fail, how many of us can help but laugh when someone slips and falls? In sports such gaffes can provide grounds for a funny blog as long as no one was seriously injured. Upset losses seem to be the easiest targets for Moan-Day blogs followed by managers, coaches and players who were released or who have otherwise lost their jobs. While not always funny it can be easier for the victim to take when a little light-hearted ribbing is applied, especially when followed by some timely words of encouragement or advice.
At a certain steam plant there was a maintenance department comprised of six crews of 6 men each. Three of the crews worked day shift, two crews worked evening shift and one crew worked night shift. Usually the day shift crews received the hardest jobs and the evening shift tried to finish any jobs that the day shift failed to complete. The night shift crew took care of the light work, mostly preventative maintenance and cleanup work.
There was one older man named Stanley that had been relegated to night shift because, though he did good work, he was considered too slow and methodical to handle the bigger day shift jobs. While on lunch break the other hands would take a nap or play cards, but Stanley was a chess player and he would sometimes get out his miniature chess board and start reviewing the moves of the masters, because no one in the shop could even give Stanley a good game. Stanley was a loner who pretty much stayed to himself and simply did his job to the best of his ability. He took some abuse from time to time for being slow, but he never complained, he just kept on working as if nothing had ever been said.
As time went by and the plant got older more and more of the bigger jobs had to be handed out to the evening crews and the night shift personnel, there was just not enough time and manpower anymore to get them done on the day shift and the company did not want hire more crews, if they did they would have to build a newer and bigger maintenance shop to support them all.
One night during a major outage for plant repairs the shift foreman brought out a job for Stanley and his young apprentice that seemed simple enough, the pin bearings had shattered the big missile shield door, this door was only used to bring in huge equipment by rail car during work outages. The door had a large motor that turned a screw gear for opening and shutting the door automatically at the push of a button. What the foreman didn't fully understand was that the door had been installed using huge cranes during the plant construction phase and it had worked flawlessly since that time, no one had ever worked on it before.
As usual Stanley spent a great deal of time going over the blueprints and finding out all of the information about the door that he could before going to the job site. This was the main reason he was on night shift, there were no big bosses walking through to see him sitting around reading tech manuals and looking at drawings. Finally Stanley gathered a large load of tools on a four wheeled work cart and he and the apprentice headed to the job site. Every apprentice in the shop loved to work with Stanley because they never had to return to the shop to get more tools, when Stanley got to the job he already had everything that they were going to need including the most likely parts that would need replacing.
When the shift was over Stanley reported to the foreman that the job was not complete and that it was going to take three to four days to finish the repairs. Of course that was very unsatisfactory to the foreman and he made sure that Stanley knew this fact and that if the job was not completed the next evening that it would be noted on his work evaluations. The next night came and went with the same results, Stanley informed the foreman that it would surely take the full four days just as he had told him to begin with. Each night the foreman got angrier and angrier, he was getting a lot of pressure from upstairs now to get that job finished, and he hated to get calls from upstairs. At the end of the fourth day Stanley turned in the work order showing that the job had been inspected and the work accepted as complete, the door was now working normally again. But Stanley was not happy, he informed the foreman that the bearings had been replaced as requested, but he stated that the door was not repaired and that it was going to break again if they continued to operate it in that condition. Stanley had patiently watched as the operators had cycled the door open and closed, and just as he had suspected the limit switches that told the motor when the door was open all the way or shut all the way so that it could automatically turn the motor off had been knocked out of position, this allowed the motor to continue running for a second or two after the door had reached its limits, thus putting a tremendous amount of pressure on the hinges and their pin bearings.
But all that mattered to the foreman was that the job complete, the operators were happy and the shift manager had inspected the door and signed off on the job. That meant no more phone calls from upstairs and that was what that foreman wanted most of all. The door was shut and it would not be opened again for at least a year until the next plant outage occurred.
Time passed passed by and Stanley said nothing about the bad evaluation report that he received for the year. The report cited him somewhat for being slow in general but mainly because it took four days to repair that missile shield door, which was something that still burned fresh in that foreman's mind every night when Stanley came in to work. Not a single mechanic in the maintenance shop, nor any of supervision, knew of Stanley's genius. Only the young apprentices that worked with him knew and understood his talent. None of his jobs ever came back for rework like all of the other mechanics in the shop. The supervisors thought him slow, but in actuality he was faster and more efficient than anyone else in the shop because he got to the job site with what he needed and he knew how to do just about anything you threw at him. They rarely ever saw him have to go ask someone a question about a job, he just went to the job site and worked until it was complete with absolutely zero wasted time.
Of course after a year and three months the plant was again shut down for maintenance and they had to open that big door for the outage, and just as Stanley had predicted they busted all of the pin bearings on it once again. Not wanting to spend as much time on that job this time around the work was assigned to a senior day shift mechanic, and this time they sent the full crew over to make quick work of it. After two weeks of no progress on the big door at all, the day shift manager put another full crew on the job. Those two crews ended up working the rest of that outage on those doors and when time had run out and the doors had to be shut they had not been able to successfully replace one single bearing. The fact is that they almost had a disaster on more than one occasion trying to keep the door steady while they were trying to disassemble the hinges. Every mechanic on those crews had begged Stanley to explain to them how he had managed to replace those bearings, and it just being him and one apprentice? All he would say is "I don't rightly recall." They asked his apprentice also, but he said " I was just the apprentice, I saw him put the new bearings in but I don't know how he managed to pick that door up off of it's hinges to do it." All they knew was that Stanley had used several hydraulic jacks and had gently moved the door off of those hinges long enough to install the bearings without the door falling to the concrete floor and causing serious damage or injury.
They ended up having to force that door shut while hiding behind protective shields as pieces of the crushed bearings popped out and flew across the room. After another year and the beginning of the next outage the company hired an outside contractor to come in with a heavy duty crane and repair the door correctly, including an electrician to readjust the limit switches on the door properly. There was a lot of cursing in the department and whispers when Stanley walked by, but no one ever dared challenge him over that job. The only reward that Stanley received was a new foreman, and he never received a bad evaluation report again.
The moral of this story is that you can't judge someone by appearances alone, Stanley was the best mechanic in the shop and he did the best work. The company had reaped many saved man-hours and hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in savings because his jobs never needed to be reworked, except for that stupid door. But Stanley was the most under appreciated and abused mechanic in that shop. It is not always the speed at which someone appears to be working that is important, what often matters much more is the quality of the work and whether that work will stand the test of time.
I view the Scorum team as a group of Stanley's. I picture them as chess masters or poker sharks. They work for what seems like an eternity and then suddenly it's bam, bam, bam, new updates arrive and they are all wonderful and work much better than what I would have expected. Whenever there has been any problems with Scorum's operation it has invariably been because of a failure on one of our partners side, not on Scorum proper. I believe that they build something right the first time and they build it to last. I think they have a well thought out plan and they are thinking several moves ahead while most of us are simply concentrating on the next move. I have also noted how they have handled adversity in stride, things don't always happen like we expect them to and no one can predict the future with perfect accuracy. But each time the conditions change or their partners falter, this team simply adjusts their plans and comes up with a new strategy. Try asking a chess player during a game or a poker player in the middle of a big hand what he is going to do next and see where it gets you.
Watching the Scorum team work may be a lot like watching Stanley get ready for a job, and we sometimes might act like the foreman trying to be patient when Stanley seems to be taking too long on the job site. But no one can deny that that the Stanley's of this world do good work that lasts as long as the parts are designed for.
I believe that the Scorum team is playing to win, they are always several moves ahead and they have figured all of the odds. What seems like wasted time to us is actually important work behind the scenes that we have no way of observing, but when completed it will work and it will be better than what any would be competition can come up with. That is my thoughts anyway, and I sleep well at night knowing that on the other side of the world the job is getting done and Scorum will be a complete and fabulous ecosystem one day.
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All Happy Moan-Day Contest qualifying entries will receive a 35% upvote from me and there will be 3 winners for the contest with prizes totaling 100 SCR. I'm increasing the payout due to an increase in support, thank's to everyone who supports this contest!
1st place will receive 50 SCR
2nd place will receive 30 SCR
3rd place will receive 20 SCR
In addition we still have 60 SCR remaining from the Freaky Friday contest that was set aside to be given out as 5 SCR consolation prizes to any Happy Moan-Day entry that does not finish in the top three. This means that for as long as the Freaky SCR lasts you can't lose when you enter the Happy Moan-Day contest, every qualifying entry will be a winner!
(This contest is all about Sports Losers, Fails, Muffs, Falls, Goofs, or anything else that would make a player, coach, fans or spectators moan and groan. It is meant to be funny and light-hearted so please, no post that would cause us to mourn like fatalities, or serious injuries, diseases or any other true personal tragedies. This is meant to be in fun, there are always funny fails that happen and there are losers that need to be cheered up. This is simply a way to cheer up all of those losers of the week who are trying to pull themselves back together again for the next competition.)
- The power of this competition is in recognition, by entering a blog in this contest you are sure to have some readers checking it out. I will upvote every qualifying blog as soon as I see the link posted below so that it gets bumped up on the trending pages. My hope is that readers will soon begin to recognize the blog title and make it a practice to support the entries. To enter this contest you must write and publish your own blog with the Title "Happy Moan-day ______________!" Fill in the blank with the name of a person, group, place, or team. This must be concerning something that has happened during the previous week prior to the contest blogs posting. So this current contest is for sports-related items that have happened between last Monday a week ago and yesterday, Midnight Sunday.
- Next include a photo, meme, short video clip, a screenshot or something similar that best represents the subject that you used to fill in the title blank. Make sure that you have usage rights and provide any necessary links.
- Now you need to write a blog of at least 450 but no more than 2,000 words to describe what happened and who was involved, as well as the reason that you are nominating them for moaners of the week.
- Provide a link back to this blog somewhere in your Moanful Monday Blog.
- Last you must say something at the end, one final quote or comment that is meant to cheer up or encourage the subject of your blog. This could be something simple like "C'est la vie," or a quote from a famous author or poet, a proverb or religious text, or best of all your very own words of wisdom or consolation. You are welcome to have your own signature encouraging comment and use it on all of your Moan-day blogs, or give a different comment or quote every week that best fits the situation.
- Once your Moanful Monday blog has been posted then leave a link to it in the comment section below so that I will know that you have entered the contest and I can then visit and upvote your blog.
- Your blog can be posted at any time before midnight Sunday night where you live, but the content must be from the previous weeks sporting events.
- You may enter this contest using any language, just post your blog in the native domain and provide links as stated above. Just know that I will be using a translator in order to read and judge your entry which may affect my ability to properly and fairly do so depending on the accuracy of the translator that I use.
Notes on Judging the Contest
Several factors go into judging the Happy Moan-Day blogs, here are a few of them.
- The blog is unique and engaging, it keeps the readers interest.
- The blog is fun and light hearted, it leaves the reader with a smile on their face.
- The reader learns something about the subject from reading the blog.
- The advice or quotes at the end are appropriate and helpful to the subject of the blog.
- While all of the words in the blog will count toward qualification, only those words that actually add to the story are used for judging, fluff words are ignored for this part of the contest.
- Spelling and grammar are not directly judged in the contest, but readability is. If the judge can't read or make sense of the story then it is hard to judge it's quality.
Tiebreakers
Tiebreakers include how many of the other contest blogs you read and support and your overall engagement and activity on Scorum. The goal of this contest is to help support and build good blogging members that will in turn help build and grow the Scorum Platform. In a close decision the contestant that appears most active on Scorum will usually get the nod from the judge or judges. If there is nothing else to clearly set one entry apart from another, then the judge or judges will be looking for anything that the contestants have done recently to boost Scorum or help another blogger.
Everyone is encouraged to read and support as many of the Moanful Monday blogs as possible during the week. I will try to get these blog posts out early every Monday so that you can begin posting your blogs. I encourage you to write about an event that happens during the week and save it as a draft so that you will be ready to post it on Monday as soon as the new contest blog has been added.
Here Are The Winners Of Last Week's Contest!
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First Place and Winner of 50 SCR Plus 10 Extra SCR for Third Place
First Place Entry: "Happy Moan-day Hakim Ziyech"
Second Place and Winner of 30 SCR Plus 10 Extra SCR for Third Place
Second Place Entry (A very touching story about a boy's struggle for life): "Happy Moanday-The Devil Finally Lost"
There were only two entries this week so I split the Third Place prize between them.
*** Congratulations To These Winners! ***
I want to also thank everyone who supports of the Happy Moan-Day Contest with your upvotes and words of encouragement.
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This weeks highlighted video
Do Your Own Research
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