104 thoughts on “January 11, 2012: Questions”

      1. I screwed it up yesterday, too, but changed it after I set up today's Cup. I knew it was probably several times. Har har.

        It's also hilarious that nobody noticed.

  1. Here's to you Wisconsin!

    Binge drinking varies from state to state, and estimates of adults who binge drink range from 10.9% in Utah to 25.6% in Wisconsin.

        1. Yeah, this doesn't surprise me.

          Here's one for the people who love their humor pitch black: When women 65+ die, their husbands' odds of committing suicide go way up, and when the married men die their wives' odds of committing suicide go down.

    1. speaking of, the details of this giants/packers game i'll be attended are getting more and more frightening. not only is one of the company's more prodigious imbibers going to take me into green bay the night before to "meet the locals," as he put it, but we're now meeting up with one of the company's younger members that rented a party bus with 20 friends to drive up from chicago, tailgate, and go to the game. i give myself 50/50 odds i make it back safely.

                  1. I like chili, but when it comes to brats, I'm more of a traditionalist. Sauerkraut and spicy brown should be all they need.

    1. I'm glad to hear they're still looking, because I don't think what they have now is going to cut it.

  2. Has anyone tried Alaskan's Black IPA yet? I just picked up a sixer for drinking with a beer friend who's coming in this weekend from out of town. Grabbed a sixer of Bell's Third Coast Old Ale, too.

    1. I haven't tried theirs (New Glarus and Lakefront are really the only two BIPA's I've had.), but I did make one last weekend. I just found some reward money on a credit card I haven't used in, like, two years, so maybe I'll pick some up when that comes as a reward for me. Let me know if its any good.

      1. That sounds suspiciously like an assessment of those breweries in general.

        I haven't seen either. I'll take a good hard look today when I'm done assisting the no customers we have here.

        1. Well, fwiw, I think the Alaskan Smoked Porter is "exceptional," and I very, very much like the Alaskan Amber. Their barleywine is rich, powerful and delicious, their white ale is quaffable, and their Baltic Porter is mighty tasty.

          Deschutes has a nice, solid line of regular products -- a step above Pyramid, a step below (perhaps) Rogue, with the exceptions of the Obsidian Stout (really, really good). But they also have some world-class brews: their Abyss and Dissident, Jubelale, and Mirror Mirror among them. I know Spooky is all over their Red Chair Pale, which I think is very nice.

          So, I'd have a hard time picking between the two. I guess I'd go with Deschutes because of their wider variety of top-notch beers, but Alaskan is no slouch.

          1. Alaskan's Kölsch is pretty drinkable, too. I was pretty disappointed to see they retired their ESB.

            I haven't seen the Deschutes out here, but I'm going to keep my eyes peeled now.

            1. As far as I know, the Deschutes still hasn't made its way to Wisconsin and I don't believe they have any plans to in the near future. Your best bet is to get someone to bring some down when they come from MN, if you don't ask them to bring Surly instead.

                1. I must get a bit myopic when requesting beer and completely forget about that strategy. That's not a bad plan at all.

                    1. Interesting... Just got the Northern Brewer Winter 2012 catalog- they aren't listing the Surly Pro-kit for Furious - they have Bitter, Bender, Cynic, and Smoke. Hunh; zoinks, Scoob.

                      Am getting low/out on my CT batch o' the Furious and ready to reload...

        2. I'm usually a little underwhelmed by Deschutes, and didn't take to Alaskan's Amber. I'll stick with the Black until saturday's Oyster extravaganza.

          1. Deschutes remains my go-to brewery. I know there's higher-end stuff that's mind-blowing, but I can rarely justify the expense. Deschutes was also the brewery that got me into real beer.

            Alaskan Amber...yeah, I continue to really dig it, though their Winter is even better. Their beers are just so smooth and drinkable, even if they're not too complex.

            The Total Wine next to me had neither of the things I was looking for, by the way. Alaskan Winter it is!

            1. I've never been much of a fan of the Alaskan Winter, flavored with pine needles. But I was remiss in not mentioning their Kölsch. Thanks for the reminder, CH. That's a tremendous (after) lawn-mowing beer or sit-on-the-deck summer beer.

              as long as we are talking about winter ales, however, I want to plug this year's Anderson Valley Winter Solstice. It is tremendous. Rich, creamy, not over- or under-hopped. I think it and the S.N. Celebration have been my two favorites this winter.

              1. Yeah, I'm all about those spruce tips. I can't get enough of them, and it surprises me how much I like it every time I drink it.

                SN Celebration was my favorite this year, too.

              2. Really? I was completely underwhelmed by this year's Celebration. Perhaps my sixer came from a bad batch? Last year was fantastic but I just didn't taste the spicy highlights this go-round.

                1. It is a bottle-conditioned ale (like all of SN's products, I think). So I'm a little surprised that you got a bad one. I don't think I've ever had a mishandled SN product.

                2. I can't speak for Walt, but I was very, very surprised to get a bad sixer (it was a twelver, now that I think about it). It wasn't "bad" by beer standards, just by theirs. It was also from Total Wine, which is notorious for allowing hoppy beers to go bad because they sit under insanely bright lights all day.

    1. Certainly helps when the previous #1 prospect can't actually play in the upcoming season.

      Assuming he's healthy in the spring, [Levi Michael] will play shortstop in a talented Beloit infield that also will include Miguel Sano at third base and Eddie Rosario at second.

      That could be one awesome infield in Beloit.

          1. Wait, are you saying if the job search goes the right way, you may be in southern Wisco/northern Illini? That would have to mean mini-caucus.

                1. I'll add this bit, When in doubt, stout is holding a search for a printmaker this year..... .... .... No word on if I contend.

                  1. Good luck with that, man. Its a little farther away from down here than a few of us were probably hoping, though.

                    1. distance is a relative thing. The good Dr.'s job prospect would put us close enough to spit on your new fence..... with an air cannon assist.

                    2. And you could aim it using google maps, because my fence can be seen from the satellite now!

                      But yeah, I hope it works out because it would give me added motivation to re-visit my old college haunting grounds.

                    3. Hey CT, my SIL lives in Cambridge. Maybe sometime when I'm dragged down there to help clean out an Aunt's house, who recently died and lived in Janesville, I'll look you up.

                    4. I do remember you saying you were heading down to Janesville for that funeral, didn't seem like the best time to grab a burger somewhere. But yeah, if you come back down this way, please do. Since you'd pass by Madison, we could try to grab CH for a meet-up.

        1. Better believe it.

          You guys need to come up for a Mallards game, too. They're far more fun than Snapper's games. (free tailgating! Better beer!)

          1. One of my biggest disappointments about my time in Madison was that I never made it to a Mallards game. Had tickets once, but scheduling conflicts got in the way.

            1. I've been here six years, and last summer was my first time. I don't think you missed out on much pre-renovation, but post-renovation made the Pond a really nice place to watch a ball game. Plus, they have a really nice tap selection. Sucking down Great Dane APA's while watching some decent, wood bat-using ball is a good way to spend a summer day, you ask me. The only downside is they seemed to abandon the "don't play music/sound effects constantly and only do it between innings" thing about half way through the season.

              Perhaps if this mini-caucus idea flies, you can make it down. You're not all that far away.

              1. I guess what I'm really saying is, there's really no reason for me to go to Miller Park anymore.

  3. Free music!

    The Bang on a Can All-Stars are offering a free download of their latest album, Big Beautiful Dark and Scary on their website until Jan. 25. Some of the best contemporary classical music out there (the title piece and the contributions from David Lang (track 2) and Michael Gordon (track 3) are highlights so far for me).

    I was going to wait until Music Friday, but then I would probably forget about it.

    1. "We hope the victim is able to fully recover from his serious injuries."

      There's no such thing has fully recovering from a traumatic brain injury

  4. I can't recall if there are any citizens currently residing in the Milwaukee area. But I will be in that fair City Saturday night (1/14) dropping the daughter off at school. After fulfilling my fatherly duties of delivering my daughter to her apartment (and buying her groceries) I am sure that I will be dismissed. Is there any one on the area that would like to get together that night? Let me know.

  5. Courtesy of The Atlantic Wire, confirmation of something that has been a WGOM hallmark* pretty much since LTE #1. I wonder, though, if Disqus included the STrib in their survey group.

    * Certain game logs excepted.

    1. Their bar graph image was put together very poorly. Besides being too small to read clearly, it looks like there is little difference between using a pseudonym and your real identity. Maybe a slight edge to a real identity since there are fewer negative "signals". Except, it's 51% good for real identities versus 61% with pseudonyms.

      Edit: Also, putting all of the information in a single graphic is stupid.

      1. also, there are 15 times as many comments from "pseudonymed" authors as from those using their Facebook names in their data, but they don't say how many comments or commenters are in the data.

        I'm not sure that they can say anything meaningful about pseudonymed comments vs "real name" comments, even as I tend to believe that there probably is no difference between the incentives for commenters with those two types of handles to behave civilly.

      2. I've done that before: Change the values on the graph, but not in the data supporting the graph (and therefore keeping the image the same). But I caught it.

        There was a pie chart that was used in annual and quarterly meetings (via powerpoint) showing how much premium was coming from the different products in our office. At one point, it needed to be updated with values that weren't from our final quarterly statements, so I was tasked with updating it.

        I rarely use powerpoint, and had to kindof dig into it to see how to change the pie slices without changing any other formatting (so nice in tints and shades of the company colors). As I realized that the data table wasn't changed, just the labels. I assumed that the pie was with the prior year's data, but when curiosity drove me to check... there had been three years since the pie changed (although the values did).

        So now I look at those things closely (keeps me awake in the quarterly and annual presentations): is the image reasonable for the values?

      1. How do they even know real names? My SiL is on FB as her dog. She's also on there as Firstname Middlename. (As is my other SiL My MiL and FiL share a FB acct with His first name and her first name as surname.

        On this site, how could one tell if Rifding Hokme or Chico Escuela were real names or just handles?
        Or CarterHayes or davidwatts? And I think "Zack" would count as a pseudonym.

    2. the Internet wasn't created so we could express ourselves, real name attached and all, but instead so we could invent a whole new fun Internet person to be.

      So Al Gore has been wanting to get away from Tipper for far longer than any of us had realized...

  6. So, today I had a customer who threw an embarrassing tantrum in front of his son, insisting that we wanted to use his email address to sell to other companies. Uh, no sir, that would be...dumb.

    That should have been my weirdest customer of the day, right? Wrong. I sold an iPod to an elderly man who, every ten seconds, would slowly roll his eyes down until he was staring straight at my junk, and his eyes would bug out. I wish I was exaggerating this. I've never felt so violated at work, but even at the time I knew it was hilarious.

  7. With respect to the discussion yesterday of getting more eyeballs on the site, I think the re-watch and game-log of the 1991 world series (we're still doing this, right?) might be a good chance to get people over here and see the WGOM at its best.

    1. I'm free on Saturday. Or maybe we could do the last seven Saturdays leading up to the first weekend of baseball? That seems like it would make sense.

  8. I continue to be confounded by Subaru's use of The Pogues' "If I Should Fall From the Grace of God" in the commercial with the pee-wee hockey team in Tennessee.

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