Go Girlacher!

My sister has been playing women’s tackle football for 7 or so years for the St. Louis Slam.  She’s been the league’s player of the year, and won numerous awards and recognition – mostly for having more tackles than anyone else in the league.  She proudly wears 54, and boasts about being called “Girlacher” after the Bears’ Ulracher.  While her team has done well in the past, this is the first time they’ve gone to the Championship.  I’ve posted the link to the stream below so you can watch the game – 7 pm tonight!

Online video chat by Ustream

Michael Jackson Died Today

Just found out that Michael Jackson died and have been watching the news. Although it’s certainly not funny, the rush of the media has made for some interesting quotes/occurances…

CNN Reporter: “Michael Jackson had a following a lot like the Greatful Dead…” (I don’t think anyone would confuse deadheads with MJ fans)

Turned on E! News, which in its intro states, “when it comes to entertainment news, E! News is always first to break the news.”. Well… No mention of Michael Jackson. (Even CNBC had live coverage… C’mon E!)

The Jackson family attorney appeared on CBS news and said, “I have been concerned about his condition for quite some time. I’ve warned that one day he would wake up dead…” Really? Wake up dead, huh?

St. Louis Mini Micro Brew Tour

This past weekend, I visited St. Louis and got to play a couple of rounds of golf and visit several microbreweries. As you can imagine, a very fun and relaxing weekend was had. On Friday evening, our first stop was The Stable, a somewhat new brewpub and microbrewery in the old stables of the Lemp Brewery (almost across the street from A-B). Looking at their brew system, it looks like they’re just getting started brewing their own and it looked like it was about a 20-25 gallon brew system. Despite only having one of their beers on tap – the Marzen, which was quite good – they did carry quite a nice selection of local and regional brews on tap. I was able to try another newer nearby brewery’s beer, which was recommended by my friend – Charleville Brewery‘s Hoptimistic. Our next stop was Mattingly Brewing Company, where I had the brown ale and their tripel. Both were pretty good. Our next stop for the evening was Square One Brewery in Lafayette Square. I had the IPA from the cask and their Single Malt Scotch Ale. Not bad, but both seemed a little on the light side. We stopped at Randall’s to pick up some bottles to go, and I got some of Charleville’s Hoptimistic and Amber Ale, some Schlafly APA, Racer 5 IPA, and some of Avery’s Maharaja. Our last stop of the evening, was the Cabin Inn at the City Museum – not a microbrewery, but a unique bar where we could get Schlafly.

Saturday was an early tee time at Tapawingo National Golf Course, but we finished in perfect time to enjoy lunch at Schlafly’s Bottleworks. There, I enjoyed their Helles Summer Lager and their Export IPA… both very good. The rest of the afternoon/evening was spent laying by the rooftop pool watching the activity at the City Museum and enjoying some of my homebrews. Sunday was a rough morning, but we managed to get in a round at Annbriar Golf Course before I headed home.

A great weekend, which I can’t wait to repeat again soon!

Busy Working on a Bunny Project

It’s been a while since I’ve posted, and I know everyone says it, but I really have been super busy lately.  I’ve been studying for an insurance exam – which I passed today – and have had several projects going on.  The one that’s been, without a doubt, the most fun is this one…. enjoy and tell me what you think!

Cinco de Mayo

A friend passed this along and I thought it was great…

Celebrating a victory over the French is like celebrating a nap.

HAPPY CINCO DE MAYO!

Travel Observations

I’ve been traveling an incredible amount these last 9 days and I’ve made a few observations on my 18 flights on 3 different airlines…

– While I appreciate the satellite radio on United Airlines, they probably should avoid hits like, “It’s the end of the world as we know it.”. Another odd selection – “Country Roads” by John Denver.

– If someone passed gas on a crowded flight, they should be thrown off mid-flight.

– If the previous does happen, turn the little air blower on your face on full blast.

– Similarly, using the bathroom on a flight less than 45 minutes in length should be prohibited.

– If your stop/layover is less than 8 hours long, they send your bags on to the next destination… Even if you need your clothes for the hotel on your 7 hour layover.

– Delta and Northwest Airlines said they merged, but really haven’t… Other than when you think you’re flying one, you could be flying the other.

– Reclining your seat should be done slowly… You just took 8-10 inches of someone’s precious little personal space away… Ease into it.

– If you’re unlucky enough to get stuck in the middle seat, you deserve to use both armrests.

– If you’re walking through the terminal with you Bluetooth headset, you just look like a crazy person talking to themselves. Don’t be surprised when security is alerted.

– There’s a fine line between people watching in the terminal and being the spooky guy in the corner eyeing everyone walking by.

– Does the Homeland Security threat level ever drop to green? I think not.

These are just a few of the thing I picked up during my crazy travels… Feel free to add to the list if you have any interesting travel observations.

Skype for iPhone

It’s finally here… one of the apps I’ve been waiting for since I purchased my iPhone – Skype. If you’re not familiar with it, Skype is an instant messenger, voice-over ip, and video teleconferencing service. It’s free as long as you use it to contact other Skype users through the service… however, you can pay for the service and use it to make/receive phone calles, etc. With Skype on my iPhone, I’ll now be able to chat (only on a wi-fi network) without having to use my cell phone minutes. I’m only hoping that the next version of the iPhone firmware will surprise us with video capabilities and we’ll be able to use the Skype app for video conferencing (although I’m not quite sure how to watch the other person and shoot video of myself at the same time – at least without doing it in front of a mirror).

Seriously Miller Light?

Watcing the NCAA basketball tournament I keep seeing ads for Miller Light. What bugs me about the ads are Miller’s references to their “triple hops brewed, adding hops at three points during the brewing process.”. First, having tasted Miller Light, I’m surprised they would brag about this since the hop flavor is barely noticeable. Second, despite showing nice freshly grown hops in the ad, I’d be willing to bet you’d only find hop extract in Miller Light’s brewing process. Finally, being a homebrewer, the practice of adding hops three times during brewing is pretty standard, and is probably a claim AB, Coors, or your local brewpub could make… It’s really not a differentiating factor. With the growth of the craft brew movement, it just seems a little odd to try to promote your pilsner on the merit of hop additions.

The Dyson Ball

I was just watching a commercial I’ve seen a hundred times for the Dyson Ball vaccuum cleaner. The suave guy with the accent talks about how a vaccuum with regular wheels can’t turn like his invention with the ball. However, it got me wondering,do you still get those little “just vaccuumed” lines on the carpet caused by the wheels? Those little lines on the carpet give me such satisfaction after vaccuuming.

Youtube to offer downlods

Google announced today it is going to test downloadable videos on their site for veiwing offline on portable devices like the iPod and iPhone. This is great for being able to take videos with on a plane and other places where you can’t get Internet access. I really hope this will be successful and will encourage other video sites (like Hulu) to do the same. For now, Youtube is merely testing this and may actually charge for downloading videos that you could veiw on their site for free – and it’ll only be an option for a few of the sites professionally produced content. At least some will be downloadable and that is progress.

Vending Touchscreen

As I mentioned in an earlier post about touchscreen technologies we saw at CES, touchscreens were being applied from cell phones to computers and netbooks. However, there was one application I failed to mention – retail vending. As seen in the photo here, Coke worked with touchscreen technology to create a vending machine for their products. As you can see in the photo, it was anactual working Coke machine (dispensing drinks for free at CES to attract more attention). The touchscreen on the front allowed them to run promotions attracting attention (when someone wasn’t buying a coke). The user interface with the screen to select your drink and make a purchase was extremely easy. I couldn’t tell if it worked like the Microsoft Surface (where you can just put your credit card up against it to pay), or allowed you to connect to an online bank (i.e. Paypal) to pay for your coke, but if it doesn’t I’m sure they’ll get there soon.

News via Social Media

Well, I just found out – via a friend’s status update on Facebook – that there was a U.S. Air plane that crash landed in the Hudson River (about an hour ago). I first turned to the usual places, CNN, NBC, etc. and thought I’d see if there was anything on Twitter. Sure enough, I found a person on twitter who was actually on one of the Ferry boats going out to rescue people(http://twitter.com/JKrums) and had taken a picture with his (I assume) cellphone and also posted it to Twitter. Not only did “JKrums” photo posting to twitpic.com seemingly shut down the site (due to heavy traffic), but I watched as his Twitter “followers” grew from around 500 to nearly 1000 in the last 15 minutes or so (that guy’s email must be insane with Twitter notifications of new followers… although he seems to be responding as the number of people he’s “following” seems to be growing almost as fast). It’s a sign of the rise of citizen journalism and by being in the right place, at the right time, with the right equipment can make you an instant “journalist.”

UPDATE: In the time it took for me to write this, JKrums added an additional 150 followers (he’s up to around 1100) and is now following that many more people as well.

UPDATE 1/16/09: JKrums is up to over 2700 followers now and twits that he’s making appearances on Good Morning America and other shows.

UPDATE 1/16/09 approx. Midnight: JKrums now has over 3100 followers.