Big Deal is a BIG DEAL!

Today, Oct. 31, represents various things for different people. For some, it's Halloween. For others, it's Diwali. For me it's the end of the quarter. My company's fiscal year runs Feb 1 - Jan 31, so today is the last day of Q3.

The last day of the quarter in sales is often a day of great stress as people are straining to complete deals by midnight. Yes, ordinarily 9-5 types work late into the evening on days like this. Yes, it makes a big difference whether a deal is considered closed at 11:30pm tonight versus a few hours later in the wee hours of tomorrow. It makes a big difference in the quarterly results a company reports to its investors. It can also make a big difference in how people in sales are compensated.

For me and for my team, though, today's a day of relaxation. We closed every deal on the table already in the past few days. We not only closed every deal, we closed a HUGE deal; the biggest single deal ever in the company's history.

"Have you taken a look at the commission reporting tool?" a colleague slacked me yesterday. "I think there's a mistake in it."

"What kind of mistake?" I asked, already having a (happy) suspicion what he was seeing.

"The number is BIG," he wrote.

"Quick, take a screen shot!" I joked. Then I added: "Did you look down in the detail section? Did you see the $11 million deal we closed this week?"

BOOM!

The biggest single commission payment I've enjoyed in my career will be coming in my paycheck in about two weeks.

Breaking Bad: The Murder Twins, part 2

The Murder Twins, as I call them, are a pair of recurring minor characters in Breaking Bad's season 3. They're featured in 3 extended scenes in S3E1, as I outlined in a previous blog. They appear again in subsequent episodes, each appearance being just as creepy and sinister while also revealing more about their plans.

In S3E2 they arrive at an old folks' home. Former cartel leader Hector Salamanca now resides here. He's the guy who suffered a stroke and is mostly paralyzed and is only able to communicate by ringing a loud bell attached to the arm of his wheelchair. Have they come to kill him? No, they've come to... play a game?



The Murder Twins stride through the recreation room, past other doddering retirees, to a shelf of games. They rummage through the boxes and pick out Ouija. They set the Ouija board down in front of Hector and move the pointer until he rings the bell. Writing one letter at a time on a piece of note paper, they soon spell out WALTER WHITE.

Next we see the Murder Twins arrive by car at Walt's house. Walt is inside, alone, taking a shower. They enter the house. One of them is carrying a shiny axe in addition to their guns.



The Murder Twins sit on Walt's bed outside the bathroom where he's in the shower, singing. This possibly the most iconic picture-scene with the Murder Twins.

What's going to happen? How's Walt going to survive this? I mean, we all know he survives it because he's the main character and there are still dozens more episodes. 😅

( Plot Twist! S3E2 Spoilers... )

Breaking Bad: The Murder Twins, part 3

I've been writing about the arc of "The Murder Twins", a fictional pair of hit-men brothers who appear across a subplot in Breaking Bad's season 3. After being introduced as creepy killers in S3E1 and then being interrupted from murdering someone in S3E2 they're back again for two extended scenes in S3E3 and then pop up again in S3E6.

Their first scene in S3E3 is another cold-open flashback. Tortuga, a cartel enforcer who's also a DEA informant, played by character actor Danny Trejo, is drinking at a bar. We know it's a flashback because we know he was killed in S2E7. Mexican Cartel boss Juan Bolsa surprises Tortuga with a visit, saying he's brought him a birthday gift. He leads Tortuga to the back room, where there's a desert tortoise. Tortuga is touched; his chosen name, tortuga, is Spanish for turtle. But then he sees Bolsa write "HOLA DEA" on the tortoise's shell. Just as he realizes his duplicity has been discovered, the Murder Twins appear behind him, grab him, and cut his head off with a machete. (This method of death may be an intentional Hollywood joke. Trejo has played at least one memorable movie hit-man characters whose name was Machete and another whose name was Navajas— Spanish for knives.)

Later in the episode the Murder Twins attend a meeting with US cartel boss Gus Fring outside Albuquerque. But first they steal a minivan from a wheelchair-bound woman at the old folks' home and use it to transport Uncle Hector. Mexican boss Juan Bolsa has crossed into the US to attend this meeting, as well.

The Murder Twins continue their creepy act of not speaking. Bolsa speaks for them. (They''re his employees anyway.) They are avenging the death of Tuco Salamanca, their cousin. Victor was the US gang boss who kidnapped Walt and Jesse early in S2. Bolsa and the Murder Twins believe, incorrectly, that Walt betrayed Tuco and killed him. (In fact the DEA decided to round up Tuco's gang after finding two gang members dead, one of whom Tuco killed; and DEA agent Hank killed Tuco in a shootout.)

Gus refuses permission to kill Walt. Bolsa insists it's the Twins' right as family to avenge blood. Gus refuses again, stating that Walt currently is important to his business, and reminds them all that while Bolsa runs business in Mexico, he (Gus) is the boss in the US. Bolsa says that the Twins will wait— but not long.

The Murder Twins lay low for a few episodes before appearing again in S3E6. They come to one of Gus's Pollos Hermanos restaurants and sit there, menacingly. Yes, the Murder Twins are so creepy they're menacing just sitting there! Gus tries to ignore them, not dignifying their threat with a response, but they're creeping out his employees and customers. He tells them he will meet them at sunset.

At sunset the three men meet in the desert outside town. The Twins speak, as no one is there to speak for them, but only barely. Gus tells them while Walt is still off limits because he's a crucial business partner, the man who shot their uncle is DEA agent Hank Schrader (Walt's brother-in-law). The Twins object that government agents are off limits. Gus reminds them that that rule is from their boss in Mexico, and Gus is the boss in the US. He allows it.

This is setting up an interesting showdown.

October Blogging Stats

I've finished the month of October 2024 with 62 journal entries posted to my blog. I thought I'd finish about 60 but then I squeezed in 4 just in the past 12 hours. Technicalities count!

Five Things:

• I once again met my baseline goal of blogging every day. I continue my streak of posting daily for nearly 7 months.


• With 62 blog entries I posted at a rate of 2.0/day. This meets my stretch goal— for the first time in 4 months. Earlier in the year I surpassed 2.0 for four months.


• Usually the driver of blogging more is travel. It's unusual, then, that I blogged more in October than in July, August, or September because I didn't travel this month. ...Well, that's not exactly true. I had a 24-hour business trip to LA early in the month. But that was it; just that one day. And only 2 blogs.


• Instead a lot of my blogs this month came from TV. I started streaming Breaking Bad early this month. I've now watched up through the 3rd season (out of 5) and have written 20 blogs about it. Though even that is just less than one-third of all the blogs I posted this month. So, yay not letting TV/streaming dominate my blog.


• I go into November with a few things in my backlog. There are still a few blogs I've been meaning to write about the last fun trip we took, wheeling/hiking in the mountains in late September. And I'm a few blogs behind on Breaking Bad. Plus, I've written nowhere near the number of blogs about political issues I wish I'd had time to write. With the election coming up in just a few days now we'll see what happens there.