Objective Sports Rankings Are Back!

I know I've missed the start of the college football season, but the rankings don't really start to make sense until we're 3-4 weeks in anyway. You can check them out here: http://www.objectivesportsrankings.com

The rankings are updated nightly, so check back tomorrow morning to see where everyone ends up after the games are played today.

I'll get this season's NFL rankings up soon too.

Kegging Frankendog Red Ale

Just got done kegging the Frankendog Red Ale. I was worried that the
color wouldn't be red enough, but it came out perfect. It smells
great, but I can't really taste it yet because I've got this stupid
Listerine taste in my mouth (it's an unfortunate part of the kegging
process). And it measured out at 7.8%, so this should be a nice
strong beer.

Now it's off to O'Briens for lunch (where else would I eat lunch on my
birthday). Then we're brewing up Bowser's Pumpkin Pie (our holiday
beer), which I will bottle and ship to our loyal customers for
Thanksgiving.

If you look closely at this picture you can see the brewmaster keeping
a watchful eye on the kegging operation.

Buckeye haters, I owe you an apology...

To all of you who've been saying all along that Ohio State is overrated (and the Big 10 in general), I have to agree with you now. I'm sorry that it took me so long.

One loss to Florida could have been a bad game. A second loss to LSU could have been because of sloppy play and stupid penalties. But this loss to USC just proved what us Buckeye fans have been worried about - Ohio State really can't compete with the best teams outside of the Big 10.

Maybe if the game had been close it would be a different story. Maybe if OSU had at least looked like it could compete with USC. But that wasn't what happened last night. OSU was over-matched at every position, except when Pryor was in at QB. Even then, the offensive line was so pathetic that Pryor was on the run most of the time. The receivers may have been open, but that hardly matters if your QB has no time to throw.

But I think the defense had the most disappointing showing. This is the great OSU defense that gave up 6 points a game last year. But this time, they couldn't apply any pressure. They couldn't stop the run. They couldn't cover USC's receivers. They looked like a Division II (or FCS or whatever) team. Pathetic.

So to all you Buckeye haters, I'm sorry. You were right. I'll admit it.

Now, that being said, I'm still looking forward to the Big 10 season this year. Assuming that OSU can make it past powerhouse Troy (can we stop scheduling these teams, please?) One thing that Ohio State does do well is recover from these ass kickings. Tressel should have these boys ready to play against Wisconsin in 3 weeks. Assuming all goes well there, the matchup of the year looks to be the game against Penn State on Oct. 25th. That may well decide the Big 10 title. And, it will certainly be fun to watch them pummel Michigan into submission again (how long until Wolverine fans can admit that they're not even a top 50 program anymore?)

Here's hoping that OSU runs the table in the Big 10 and gets put into a BCS bowl against the non-BCS conference team this year (i.e. BYU or Fresno St.) Maybe the Buckeyes would have a shot in that game. An 11-1 season would be nothing to complain about.

An interesting way to start the day

As I'm trying to sleep through my alarms this morning, this loud
dinging sound wakes me up at 6:45. It's the hotel fire alarm.
Probably just some kid pulling it, right?

Not this time. They announce on the loudspeaker that "due to a severe
flood in the lobby they have to evacuate the building." It's a good
thing I had ironed my shirt the night before.

I packed up my bag for work and was about to head out when I realized
that I should probably just pack everything (which is, in fact, what
the fire department came by and told us to do). Looks like I'm
staying somewhere else tonight.

Fortunately I was able to get some pictures...

Abby's first trip to the beach!

We took our niece down to the beach today. She loves the water! And
the taste of sand, apparently.

First Dance

Joe's Getting Married!

Brushing Bowser

Wow. I don't even know what to say. For some odd reason we started
brushing Bowser tonight. Check out this massive hairball!

The sad thing is that this is only like half of what we brushed off.
I have no idea where he keeps all of it.

This is why we bought a Roomba!

Nummutts IPA Photo

Alright, so I'm thinking that I need to get a nice picture of the Nummutts IPA to put up online. I figure I'll try to get a good head on it and find a cool place to take a picture of the beer.

But, once again, spontaneity proves to be much more entertaining. This is why I'm glad I have a camera on my phone - sometimes you just have to capture the moment. As I'm trying to pour this fantastic looking glass of beer, of course it over-foams and spills all down the glass and on the floor. That is why I'm glad I have a dog - he doubles nicely as a wet/dry vac.

So what better way to showcase Bowser's Nummutts IPA than with a couple pictures featuring the brewmaster himself? I think this one is my favorite:



I've posted a few more pictures on my swurl page (below for those of you already reading on swurl).

High speed chase in Tierrasanta!

Breaking news from Tierrasanta... we never get this kind of excitement around here! Apparently there was a high speed chase that ended just up the street from my house. Fortunately it didn't end in my house, as you can see from the pictures.

From what I heard from other people around there, apparently the car is stolen. Or obviously, I suppose. The guy ended up in the bushes and took off running. The police eventually caught up with him (I have no idea where). We had the helicopter circling right over our house and something like 20 cop cars in the street.

You can see the pictures on my swurl page.

Of course, you won't find this kind of breaking news from your old school media outlets. Just had to point that out.

Now that's a sampler

They don't mess around here. No little 3oz pours at this place.

Oggi's Pizza and Brewing

Last stop on the tour... Met the ladies here. Well, we actually had
them pick us up because the trolley all of the sudden switched to
every half hour. So we almost did the entire walking tour - we just
took a much more comfortable form of transportation over here.

More Samplers

Another cool looking photo. Too bad it looks a whole lot better than
it tastes.

Gordon Biersch

Next stop here in Mission Valley. Sampler on the way!

I realized one drawback of the walking tour... plan your bathroom
breaks accordingly!

Ballast Point

You know this is going to be good! 11 beers to sample here.

Trolley Ridin!

The trolley is always a fun time...

We almost missed it downtown because the stupid ticket machine didn't
take cards and wouldn't give change for a $20.. So there we were
trying to cram 10 singles into the machine with the trolley pulling
in. We had to run across to the Santa Fe depot and catch it there.

Then, of course, there were two guys on the trolley dressed as pirates
with white masks on.

Samplers

Thought this looked pretty cool.

Karl Strauss (Downtown)

Now this is much better. Only a few people here. Huge seat by the
bar, with the Open on 3 TVs and baseball on the other. Not a soccer
game in sight.

And our sampler was out before we'd even looked at the menu. The
Barleywine is pretty good. But it's only 8.4%, which is low for a
Barleywine. That's probably why it actually tastes good.

Kind of a disappointing start...

I don't know what it is, but there always seems to be something off
with that Coronado brewery. Maybe it was the fact that they wouldn't
pour us samples (we had to buy pints). Maybe it was the slow
service. Or the beers that aren't that good (granted, they were out
of their 3 best). Whatever it is, I never seem to enjoy that place.

But whatever... Onward we go! Taking the ferry across the bay to Karl
Strauss.

Coronado Brewing Company

First stop here. Where they won't pour us a sampler tray and they're
out of 3 beers (the IPAs and the Stout). Bummer.

This sure beats work!

The Ocean

I'm glad I decided to drive by the ocean on my way into work today.
It's beautiful today! And the smell just put me right at ease.

Well, I guess I was already at ease. But it still smelled good.

Koopa the Turtle

Some of Sarah's students got her a turtle yesterday for her birthday:


Yep. A real, live turtle. He's really cute! We're pretty sure that he's a red eared slider. We've decided to name him Koopa, so now we have a dog named Bowser and a turtle named Koopa. If only we could find a walking mushroom to keep as a pet...

When she brought him home yesterday he was in this cute little cage:


Unfortunately, it's not exactly the right environment for an aquatic turtle. So we did a little "Pimp My Habitat" last night. The guys at Pet Kingdom (the best fish/reptile store in the city) hooked us up. Check out his new diggs:


Now he's got the heated pool, a nice floating rock with a basking lamp, special UVB light so he can make all the vitamins he needs, and a nice filtration system. We even had an old fake plant from the fish tank to put in there.

It says on wikipedia that these guys will eat feeder fish. That should be pretty cool! I think we need to wait for him to get a bit bigger. Speaking of which... wikipedia also says that these guys can grow to like 10 inches. We may end up converting the fountain outside into a turtle pond if that's the case!

Some brewing fun in the morning...

We're eating breakfast today when we heard this loud bang from the other room. It sounded like something had fallen off a shelf. Sarah figured it out pretty quick though - the airlock had blown off the top of the carboy.



The only other time I've had this happen was when I was brewing the "9-toes Berryweizen" which fermented like crazy because of the raspberries. I've never had it happen with any of the other beers I've brewed. For some reason though, the fermentation for this IPA has taken off like a rocket...

I had to resort to plan B:



This thing is bubbling like crazy in the water at the bottom of the bucket. There's all kinds of foam heading down the tube, but at least it won't explode. I hope.

Anyway, this should be a damn good IPA. I'm still working on a Bowser-themed name for it... any suggestions?

I thought today was going to be a bad day...

I just had that feeling when I left for work today. Not surprising, since Wednesday mornings we have our weekly "argue about useless features" meeting. I don't usually look forward to that.

But as I pulled onto the freeway, I had the pleasure of driving right behind a Stone delivery truck. For some reason, that really helped put things in perspective for me. Perhaps it was the gigantic photo of beer bottles on the back of the truck. I guess it reminded me that I'm really just working so that I can enjoy the time when I don't have to work. The job is simply a means to an end.

So the meeting wasn't too bad. And this day isn't going to be bad either.

Ahhh, the power of beer.

Padres game tonight

Yes, they're already losing.

The Death of Offices

I have to say that I much prefer my backyard office to my work office. Even though my work office has an ocean view. With gas at $4 a gallon, it now costs me about $8 a day to drive to work! Not to mention the hour I waste in traffic and the wear and tear on the car. Driving to an office just seems like an absurd waste of resources.

A lot of people like to talk about how high gas prices will lead to the death of the suburbs. As if we're all slaves to our jobs and we'll gladly uproot our families and change our entire lifestyles simply to live closer to the office. I think that high gas prices will instead lead to the death of the offices.

See, these people that think we're all going to move closer to our jobs are still living with this old mentality that people will work the same job for 25 years and retire with a huge pension and a nice pen set from the company. The problem is that people don't work jobs like that anymore. In fact, jobs like that hardly even exist anymore. It makes no sense to move closer to your job because in two years you'll probably be working for someone else, and the karma gods would make sure that your new job is on the complete other side of town that you just moved from.

The more you think about offices, the less they make sense. Why do I need a separate place where I can plug in my laptop and make calls on a different phone number? Why can't I just plug in my laptop at home and use my cell phone for calls? Then it really doesn't matter where I work - the tools I need to do my job are portable.

Think of how much money a company could save if it didn't pay for office space. In San Diego, office space costs an average of $2.15 a square foot. I'm assuming that's the monthly rent cost, not yearly. So for a 10x10 office (or cubicle), it costs $215 a month just to have a space to put me. Add in the cost of a phone, Internet connection, janitorial services, utilities, etc, and you're probably looking at something like $300 a month just to stick me in a little box. In a company of 50 employees, that's $15,000 a month. Instead, the company could just pay everyone $100 a month to help cover the cost of their own phone, utilities, and Internet (which would probably cover about half of what I pay for those services at my own house) and save $10,000 a month. I'd actually come out ahead in that situation given the savings on gas. It's a win-win situation (see, I even worked some management speak into this post).

What about meetings and "office camaraderie"? Most meetings that I'm in now are conference calls anyway, so again it doesn't matter whether I'm at the office, at home, or at the beach. Nobody on the other end of the call knows, or should care. If there needs to be a company wide meeting, have it at a park. Or rent out a hotel conference room. Or a restaurant room. Any of those options are cheaper than renting office space, and they're all equally effective places to gather a bunch of people who are going to zone out for an hour while management rambles about company paradigms and organizational charts.

As for "office camaraderie", take every other Friday afternoon (or one Friday a month) and schedule something fun. Bowling. Happy hour. Video games. Beach volleyball. Pool party. Hiking. Pay everyone to take the afternoon off and spend some time with their coworkers. I'd be willing to bet that company morale would be much higher and your money would be much better spent than cramming everyone into little cubicles in a sterile office environment.

What's even better about ditching the office space is that you could save oodles of money on IT support as well. Just give everyone a laptop computer when they start. Here. It's yours. You own it now. You take care of it. You pay to get it serviced (we'll reimburse you, of course). You pay for any accessories you need (we'll reimburse you, of course). In two years, let us know if you need an upgrade. Keep the old machine. We'll buy you a new one. Mac? Windows? Linux? It's up to you. Company Exchange email servers? Useless - we're using GMail instead. Microsoft Office products? Useless as well, we're using OpenOffice and Google Documents. One more thing - encrypt important or sensitive documents. There you go. IT problems solved for less than the cost of employing one IT person (or deploying one Exchange server).

So, what's holding us back from the work at home revolution? I think it comes down to trust. Management just doesn't trust employees to get the job done when working outside of an office. They'd rather have you there so they can watch over you and guilt you into working. But as high gas prices push more and more people to work from home, these unfounded fears should disappear. Maybe then this working at home setup will become obvious enough that even managers will get it.

Farewell Telemarketers!

I'm sorry it had to end this way. But I had no choice. My once useful home phone had turned into a useless decoration. I had to end my service.

Oh, how I'll miss those five or six calls a day with nobody on the other line. Those nice 8am Saturday morning wakeup calls. I'll never know who really has the number 000-000-0000. I'll always wonder where on Earth you have to be in order to be "out of area".

How will I decide who to vote for now? Without all of those pre-recorded calls from every politician and lobbying group I'm sure I'll have no understanding of the real issues. But alas, the home phone had to go. Even if it means I'll have to study the issues myself and be an informed voter.

Most of all though, I'll miss the arguments with the police fraternity callers. They just wouldn't take no for an answer! Those days when they'd belittle me for not wanting to donate $50 to support their administrative overhead will be sorely missed.

But life goes on. With or without a phone attached to my house.

I love government logos!

I got a nice envelope in the mail the other day in regards to this whole economic stimulus thing. But it wasn't the tax rebate that I was excited about. Check out the sweet logo they put on the envelope:



How do you think the creative juices got flowing for this one?

Marketing Guy: "You know, this whole tax stimulus thing is missing something. I think we need a logo."

Logo Guy: "Alright boss, I think I could help with that."

Marketing Guy: "Something good. Something that says progress and conveys excitement. Maybe an arrow. That'll make people feel like spending."

Logo Guy: "And red text. Red text is always exciting!"

Marketing Guy: "And make sure the arrow is pointing backwards. Nothing says progress like an arrow pointing backwards."

---

And just what was in this envelope with my new favorite logo? A piece of paper telling me that I would be getting a rebate direct deposited into my account. Never mind the fact that the rebate showed up last week. Or that I'd have to be living in a cave to not know it was coming. But hey, it's the government, so of course they have to send more paperwork telling me about how cool it is to save paper by using direct deposit.

Anyway, the point of this whole post wasn't to whine about government inefficiency. I'll leave that for another day. Now I'm sure this logo was paid for with taxpayer money, which means that as a tax paying citizen I have ownership of that design and can reuse it as I see fit. I was inspired to try it out for a few of my own sites that need logos:




What do you think?

Getting RMagick to work after upgrading to Ubuntu Hardy

After upgrading from Ubuntu Gutsy to Heron last week, I could no longer run any of my ruby on rails applications that needed RMagick. I was getting the following error:

libMagick.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rmagick-2.2.2/lib/RMagick2.so

The problem is that I had installed ImageMagick from source in Gutsy since the ImageMagick available from the repository was 6.2 and RMagick depends on ImageMagick 6.3. After the upgrade this didn't work anymore.

Turns out to be an easy fix. Since ImageMagick 6.3 is available from the Ubuntu repository in Hardy Heron, all I needed to do was this:

sudo gem uninstall rmagick
sudo apt-get install imagemagick
sudo gem install rmagick

Now everything is working fine again. That's sure a lot easier than building ImageMagick from source.

Dog Park

For some odd reason I decided to take ol' Bowser to the dog park
today. We've been here about 10 minutes and now he's just lying down
next to me and watching everything. That's a nice change from the
hour he spent running around like a maniac and rolling in the water
when he was younger.

The lab in this picture must think Bowser is a total nut job. He just
shook his head and walked away. Seriously.

Microfilm

I've been running across all sorts of ancient technology this week.
Check out the microfilm reader at the library (Sarah's getting a
journal article for class).

This is completely absurd. The print quality is awful and it's filed
away in some hard to find drawer.

I know what you're thinking... this is just how you have to get these
old journal articles. How old is this one? 2007. That's right.
This article was published in 2007, and we have to get it on 1967
technology. I find it hard to believe that there isn't a PDF of this
article that they could use instead. Did the author really type this
on a typewriter instead of on a computer? Is it cheaper to archive
the journal on microfilm instead of on a computer?

Garage

I had to take a picture of this. Our garage is actually clean enough that we can fit both cars in there now. Amazing! Let's see how long that lasts.

Don't worry, there's still plenty of room for the beer fridge.

Artifact from ancient times

Check out this artifact I stumbled across today. In the old days
people used to have phones attached to the wall. But it's quite rare
to find one of these historic items still in place.

It has arrived!

No, this isn't a picture of my garage. Dogfish Head is officially for sale at the local BevMo. Was for sale... until I bought it all.

Just kidding.

Termite Treatment

Mental note: moving all of your stuff to the center of the garage isn't sufficient when they're treating it for termites. Apparently the stuff they spray with is like a power wash and gets all over everything. At least these guys were nice enough to tell me that and help me move everything out of the garage. So now all of our piles of crap are sitting out in the driveway for everyone to see. It's pretty sweet. Maybe I should just stick up a "Garage Sale" sign instead of moving it all back in when they're done.

The guys are big fans of the beer fridge.

Teacher Rally

This is a pretty crazy scene! Save the teachers!

Top Chef Insults Beer

In last week's episode of Top Chef, the quick fire challenge sounded great. The chefs had to create a dish that paired well with a specific beer. They had all the beers lined up on a table (in glasses, so they had to pick a beer on taste). Pretty cool, right? The whole beer/food paring thing is finally starting to get some mainstream attention.

Now, you'd think that they'd bring in some beers from one of Chicago's many fantastic craft brewers. You'd think that. I'd think that, at least. But, of course, you'd be wrong. The selection of beer included a wide array of various Anheuser-Busch products and related beers that they distribute. You know, the same crap you find on the shelves at the grocery stores. As each chef selected a beer, they'd pull out the bottle so you could see what the chef was paring with. The defining moment was when they pulled out a Michelob Ultra.

You know what pairs well with a Michelob Ultra? A beer.

Sam Calagione

I got to meet him last night at O'Briens (he's the founder of Dogfish Head). He showed up with his wife and kids as I was finishing up my 90 minute IPA. He said they are going to start distributing in California, so it looks like I won't have to hoard it anymore every time I'm in Phoenix.

Since we were about to leave, we let them have our table - O'Briens was packed at this point. The line for beer was out the door - the first keg of their Palo Santo Marron was gone in like 30 minutes. It was a crazy scene! Anyway, since we let them have our table Sam hooked me up with another glass of 90 minute. That was cool - a free glass of one of the best beers from one of the best brewers. It made my day for sure!

90 Minute...

There it is. The holy grail of beer. Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA. On draft. In California. At O'Brien's. Life is good!

Add another one to the list

I had to try it. Even if it comes in a can.

It's not all that good. Maybe it's a little old. Or maybe I
shouldn't have had the Russian River IPA before this one.

Gas Prices

Check it out. $4.09 for the cheap stuff. That's the cash price, which means that it's probably $4.19 for credit/debit.

But right next to this station is a place with gas for $3.79. I think you can even get there by driving through the parking lot of this Shell station. Who on Earth would actually fill up here?

Unbelievable - Watered Down Beer at Baseball Games!

Wow. So those beers that they charge $8.50 for at Petco Park? Watered down. 3.2% alcohol. Here's the full story.

Forget the fact that it's absurd that they're going to charge a ridiculous price for beer. We've all heard that before.

What I find particularly amusing is that they can water down Budweiser, Miller Lite, and MGD and nobody knows the difference. You can't even tell. That's how amazingly pathetic those beers really are! No respectable brewer would just "add water" to a beer to intentionally lower the alcohol content. Leave it to the big boys to pull such a dishonest trick.

Fortunately, if you look around for it, you can find some San Diego micros on tap at the game. And they're only .50 more ($9). What's another fifty cents when you're already paying $9 for a beer? You know that Stone isn't going to water down a beer.

Lazy Dog

Can you believe this dog? He sat at home sleeping all day while I was
working. And now he's tired.

Crazy Dog

Bowser enjoying his daily walk.

Test post

Test blog post.

--
Chris