Cup of Coffee

March 20, 2012: The Plan

173 Comments

Alright, so I've set aside Saturday Friday as a WGOM night (or day/night, if people are up for it) and Sunday Saturday as a Casa de Leche day. There's a ton of overlap, so anytime that works for people to meet is great. I'd like to come out of today knowing where stuff is happening...just get me a place with Surly on tap, a large house, or a hotel meeting room where nobody cares how loud we are, within reason.

173 thoughts on “March 20, 2012: The Plan”

  1. I know that I have mentioned this before but after seeing that there is going to be a mini-caucus on Saturday I'd like to ask once more if it is possible to move the WGOM draft to Sunday. Rob, if you are out there, let me know. Anytime on Sunday would work. Thanks.

    2. I'm here, honest! We can definitely move the draft to Sunday. There didn't seem like any objection from anyone else. I'll try to make the change from my phone right now.

      1. Okay - I've managed to change it to Sunday, but for whatever reason, my phone won't let me scroll down beyond the 9:45 AM time. I'll plan on updating it to a later time tonight. I'm thinking something around 5 or 6 would be one option, or after 8:00 (say 8:30) would be the other.

        Any thoughts?

        1. After 8:30 might be better for me; it's recruitment weekend here, and there's a departmental dinner for all faculty, current grad students, staff, and recruits running from 6:30-8:30. I wouldn't be staying for the whole thing, but I probably ought to put in an appearance.

          1. After 8:30 sounds good to me, too. My folks are coming into town this weekend and they will definitely be heading back before 8:30, so that would ensure I can attend the draft. Plus, next week will be my last week at my current job so I don't care if I have to stay up past my bed time on a work night.

            1. it's recruitment weekend here

              so, what you are saying is that there will be free food and beer?

              1. I'm not saying that, but I will say that if any citizen happened to show up at my house this weekend, yes, there would be free food and beer.

          1. I could maybe swing that. I'll know more later. (This is not this coming Thursday, but the next one.)

  4. If the place that's chosen is friendly to 3 week old babies, I'll be more likely to come and show off the new addition.

      1. I saw it in the theater. I assume that was the way to go, since spectacle is really what was going for it.

        I didn't mind it at the time...I wonder how I'd feel about it today.

  6. Amelia Earhart disappeared 75 Years Ago today. Here's a video from the Handsome Family to commemorate that event.

    httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPr67tFmyFo

    This song haunted me one summer about 10 years ago when I first heard it.

    1. Good call. "Bowling Alley Bar" first drew me to them. It's still my favorite of theirs, but this is up there.

  7. I will do my very best to make it to the caucus. It will depend on my ability to weasel my way out of some dinner plans with New Gal.

    1. This.

      Confirmation of the places and times of both the WGOM and CdL caucuses as soon as they are set would be much appreciated as negotiations with wives need to begin immediately.

        1. For me it's actually a week early as I will be a bachelor from March 31st to April 5th (wife and kid going to NYC).

        1. Heh. She really wants to see the live announcement of the winner of Survivor. Plus, she wants to meet my friends.

          1. Plus, she wants to meet my friends.

            Hope this meeting has no bearing on your lives together.

            1. Ha! Well, she did show up at the last one I attended (where I met you), though they hadn't been together long so she was a little tentative.

      2. You're still in that "we-are-so-madly-in-love-with-each-other-I-want-to-do-everything-with-him-and-meet-his-friends-and-just-drink-up-his-aura-because-we-are-going-to-spend-the-rest-of-our-lives-together" stage of your relationship. Don't want to burst your bubble, but it will change Beau. It. Will. Change.

        2. this is just ridiculous. We passed the cloud nine, gaga stage about twelve months ago. She genuinely likes Survivor and wants to meet some of the people she'll be judging in he next game.

  8. I won't be able to attend both a Saturday and Sunday get together. Saturday is far, far more likely. And, to be honest, daytime/evening is probably better than evening/night, but we've probably got some flexibility. Somewhere in the southern half of the cities is probably most ideal.

    1. I could do Friday night for sure, Saturday night maybe. Probably not both of them though.

    2. Realistically, I'd just make both of those nights open to both groups, considering the large amount of overlap. I've already committed to the live reading of the winner of Survivor X on Saturday night (both finalists (nibbish and Beau) will be in attendance) at the Old Chicago in Apple Valley, unless a better idea crops up, though I'm not expecting a better idea than Surly and pizza.

    3. Typos aren’t necessarily counted against you since I don’t want this to feel like homework, but CoC's with huge issues aren’t easy to enjoy.

                    3. Brother Sean? The Right Reverend Sean? Assistant Deputy Undersecretary for Deobfuscation?

      1. Yeah, the draft moving to Sunday still makes sense.

        Now I just need a spot for the WGOM Caucus. It can be the same place - it would certainly work for me, given my location - but I'm open. My brother doesn't start training for his new position for two weeks, so his time is wide open to chauffeur me around.

        1. With the Saturday Caucus in the South, I propose we look at having the WGOM one somewhere in NE Minneapolis. I'm not coming up with a great idea for a location yet, but I'll think on it.

                1. They have a new location than the one you were probably at, too. I've never been there A(at either place), but I have heard great things.

          2. Psycho Suzies is fun but would be PACKED on a nice Friday night. Elsie's? That place that serves "Greenies?"(which is really tiny) Mayslack's?

            Bootsy would have some good NE Mpls options.

            1. What place in NE wouldn't be packed though? And what place would be large enough? Wilde Roast? Bulldog? Nye's?

                1. I do like the looks of that, and putting the Caucus in the NE isn't a bad idea.

                  free, if you know the place, would you mind terribly calling them and mentioning we're looking for a potentially large area? You might be able to see if the place is going to be crowded, too.

                    1. Regardless of where, how many people are we talking? I don't think a caucus has had more than 10-12 people.

                    2. I'm definitely down for Saturday night (although, ironically, I would be missing a friend's birthday party that night at Psycho Suzi's), but am "questionable" for Friday.

                    3. Also, the most important question: Has Grey been coerced into coming on Saturday?

                    4. I can try my darnedest to make it on Friday, especially if it's in NE, but I really don't know for sure. Saturday looks less likely for me, but again, you never know.

                    7. Work harder on Grey. I want to meet that dude. If he comes, Nibbish will buy him a beer. And/or something else that Nibbish is known for.

                    9. I don't know how many people we're talking.

                      I'm also possibly open to making both nights at Psycho Suzi's, which would solve Will's problem, and if I recall correctly, Old Chicago doesn't necessarily have the best spot for a large group (except for outdoors, which might work, if the weather's cooperating. Is the weather cooperating?).

                    11. It's 65 degrees right now, and that's the coolest it's been in a week. Looks like Friday is going to be 70 (with rain likely) and Saturday also 70 (but just overcast).

                      /still researching

                    13. I desperately wish that this is something that I could attend. Alas, my parents are coming down this weekend.

                      I still think you should make your way down to Madison for a small caucus in the event that Grey cannot make the trip up.

                    14. cheaps, just get your parents into a game of Werewolf, and they'll have an excuse to attend. Hell, Beau's mom is playing the next Survivor.

                      Seriously.

                    15. Heh, my dad and stepmom and the internet don't really get along too well. Now, as far as a drunken gathering of my friends, well, no excuse would be needed. They'd almost certainly have joined in.

  10. So I probably should have mentioned this yesterday in the Movie thread, but I hadn't yet watched the second episode, so I figured I'd wait.

    Philosofette and I have started watching Awake. I've been impressed so far (2 episode in). Anyone else?

        1. I don't think that's a real thing, but it should be. Or maybe that should just be what you call the DD's beverage.

  12. Saturday would work better than Friday, I think, but NE would work better than South. I'll have to see...

  13. Apologies if this has already been linked here, but I was amused by Joe Meower although Roberto Meowlomar and Ryan Meoward were also hilarious.

  14. I'd love to caucus, but I'm flying to Florida Saturday for spring break / spring training / vacation. Sorry, but I'm also not sorry!

  15. Of interest to probably at least Magoo: Butler about to join the A10 beginning in 2013. Losing Temple to the Big East hurts the A10 (Temple and Xavier have been the two flagship programs over the years after GW botched its chance about 5 years ago), but replacing them with Butler is almost the best possible outcome for the conference.

    1) It adds another midwestern program to give St. Louis, Xavier, and Dayton another regional rival.
    2) They seem content in football (and play in a unique conference there), so they're not likely to be plucked away by another conference.
    3) Obviously great recent success.

  16. Couldn't find anywhere good to add an LTE, but I'm a definite for Fri and a possible for Sat. Suzi's/Bulldog is fine - OC in AV is fine too.

      1. I checked on Bulldog and we can make a reservation if we'd like, that's the only way to guarantee a table on a Friday night. Not sure what the deal is with Psycho Suzis. My sense is that it gets really busy, but a little later. If we started by 7 or earlier, probably could get a table. Again depending on numbers, not sure if we are breaking 10 yet for Friday night.

        1. I should be able to do friday. The earlier the better for me. I will just go straight from work.

    1. Everytime I see a crazy-ass story like that I think of this exchange from 30 Rock

      Liz Lemon: [sighs] I can't end up like that. I have gotta make money and save it. And I have to do that thing that rich people do where they turn money into *more* money. Can you teach me how to do that?
      Jack: With my eyes closed.

    2. The "death wish" headline is ridiculous. Does my wife have a death wish for me because she wants me to have life insurance or does she want to make sure she can make rent if I die? Of course she has no such death wish. This isn't high finance. This is a team which depends on unreported, black market revenue from boosters, and if those boosters die, those funds dry up. Now, the real question here is whether OSU overpaid for those life insurance policies, but since college football is the most corrupt sport in the country, we'll never really know how much money those boosters put into the program so it's impossible to put the premiums in the proper context.

      The real story here is that based on these premiums, a small group of OSU's boosters are easily pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into their football program. Yet I'm supposed to believe that college football players are amateur athletes. Right.

    3. The actuary can probably chime in that the biggest mistake they are making is not continuing the policies. Assuming they are level premiums, the first two years are now a sunk cost. The actuarial value of those policies is now higher tnan two years ago now that all are two years older. It shouldn't be that surprising that everyone in a sample of 27 lived for two years. Especially when you consider that they all had to be insurable.

      Dirty little secret of the insurance industry - they make a lot of money off people that cancel their insurance.

      1. I think where OSU runs into trouble is that they are using on-the-books revenue to pay the premiums which are more or less there to protect their off-the-books revenue. To really make this work, they probably needed to use off-the-books revenue to fund the premiums, like, for instance, getting their younger boosters to pay for the life insurance for the older boosters.

      2. The numbers also seem wacky to me, but maybe I'm not reading things right. Forbes claims they purchased 27 $10M policies, which should have a total possible payout of $270M. It also claims they paid $33M in premiums over 2 years, which works out to about $610K/year per policy, although it's likely that the premium for each policy was different. I would defer to anyone who has actually priced a life insurance policy, but those seem like pretty steep premiums. They may have been better off self-insuring, especially since you generally don't get "DEATH WISH" headlines by saving money for a rainy day.

        1. The article says they paid $16M in premiums over 2 years, but "spent" $33M overall (for those two years?). Huh?

          1. Hmmm. This Washington Post take seems to be a bit less confused (though not much.) My best understanding of the situation is that OSU bought the life insurance policies, but didn't have a clear way to fund them. I think the premiums were $16M over 2 years (so roughly $8M/year), but they may have lost an additional $17M due to investments going south:

            The school was unwilling to use Pickens’ $165 million donation to the athletic department as collateral on a loan, and that fund eventually took a hit when the economy soured.

            Now, it could well be fuzzy accounting to include that $17M with the insurance premiums, but that's my best guess as to how they get to $33M. $8M/year on a $270M life insurance policy seems a little more reasonable, especially since the highest-risk individuals would have been most likely to die first and they would have had the highest premiums.

            1. OK, I think I get it. They had this fund with Pickens' money, on which they hoped to use some of the increase in value to pay for the premiums. After two years, they couldn't pay the premiums and so lost their up-front premium (which looks like it was a more traditional level term).

              The Forbes article just wanted to bring back the Corporate-Owned Life = Evil argument, corporations wanting to profit off of the deaths of their employees, etc. Although the way the WaPost describes it, the insureds volunteered. I still don't see what the reason behind the plan was. (On either the insurance's side or the school's side.)

              1. I was reading a different thread on the matter and the general consensus seemed to be that Pickens likes to take big gambles and he figured he could out-smart the life insurance companies.

                The only way it really makes much sense from the school's standpoint is if they feel the boosters wouldn't leave anything to them in their wills and they were using it as a sort of hedge to make sure they didn't get left out if a bunch of boosters died. Maybe they heard about this happening to some other school?

      3. You rang?
        This probably counts as corporate-owned life, which may be more likely to be on Yearly Renewable Term (YRT), so it's not like term individual life like we may all be accustomed to.

        I am not a life actuary, so that is just my gut impression. Reading that forbes.com article made so little sense.

        1. Bay, presumably in between plans on how to just make the whole film one giant explosion,

          Heh.

          1. I loved this quote from Bay himself:

            Fans need to take a breath, and chill. They have not read the script…

            Yeah, because reading a Michael Bay script is something that generally puts people well at ease. We're in good hands, folks. Michael Bay is on it.

  19. This is page one of a letter my favorite college professor (I "traveled" the Mediterranean with him studying the Greeks, Romans, and Ancient Israel but unfortunately missed out on Egypt) received in the mail today.

    2. Well, I guess I can't use it as my next Spookymilk Survivor entry now. Thanks a lot, Will.

      1. Since it's wrecked now anyways- on page two, I go into great detail on how the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles came to this planet from outer space.

          1. I'm a little disappointed that there's only two pages- I thought he was really starting to get on a roll. Still, would have been better if it had been typed up in Comic Sans.

  20. I guess I haven't been around that much, but what are you guys talking about this weekend? What's going on? Draft (I'm guessing that's for your fantasy league or something). Can someone fill the dweeb (me) in?

    Thanks

    1. I'm in Minnesota for two weeks, starting tomorrow night. Friday night is a WGOM Caucus - looks like it'll be at Psycho Suzi's, but free's got another place in the mix. Saturday night, people from Casa de Leche (Survivor and Werewolf players) are doing the same over in Apple Valley at Old Chicago. Sunday night's our fantasy baseball draft on Yahoo.

    2. Oh yeah, Fantasy Baseball... I should probably sign back up for that.

      No keepers, but I'm not particularly put out by that, I guess.

  21. So about 3 years ago, Sheenie could not for the life of her find a position in the Twin Cities for an IP attorney with 2-3 years experience. It took her eleven months to find her current position (where she is very happily employed). Now, it appears that there are approximately 25 open positions in the area with that criteria. Weird.

    1. I was hoping you were going to say that y'all were moving back to NOLA. A sailor can dream, right?

      1. Pretty much any type of job search of various job sites leads me to numerous IP postings whether in-house (St. Jude, Target) or at a firm (Faegre, Fulbright) or unclear (like this random posting or this one). I just found all 6 of those positions in about 2 minutes of searching just now.

  22. I just found out that, due to necessity, I'll be at the airport five hours before my flight tomorrow. It isn't going to be the most enjoyable day of my life.

        1. Or you could, you know, read a book, Mr. I Didn't Read A Single Book In the Last Calendar Year.

      1. At the airport in Seattle, they have a place with Gordon Biersch offerings, which get the job done and would kill the time effectively.

        Anyway, it seems we've figured out a way to make it three hours instead of five. I guess that's as good as it's going to get.

        1. I often have three hour layovers, so a good book works there. Besides, getting drunk then getting on a plane results in having to pee really, really bad.

          1. Yeah, I'm actually not much of a drinker before plane rides. It's after plane rides where I shine.

            Alaskan Airlines - where I'd fly from Seattle to Yakima, or vice versa - was the greatest. There are tons of breweries around there, and one of the ways they'd test their beers was to offer them for free on Alaskan flights. Forty-five minute flight, free beer. A nice setup.

          1. Spoiler SelectShow
            1. Spoiler SelectShow

      2. (Neither his parents nor his school are aware of his efforts.)

        Umm, yea. Not so much anymore.

    2. Gotta love that last line!

      Here is how this story ends. He raises the money, buys her an airline ticket, and then she cashes it in.

  24. My wife just made her predictions for the year's team awards.

    MVP: Valencia
    Comeback: Morneau
    Disappointment: Mauer (heretic!)

    When I asked her who was going to be the pitcher of the year, she said Capps, then started laughing evilly and said Dumatrait.

    1. I don't yet know who pitcher of the year will be, because I haven't kept up on which MLB vets got Minor-league contracts.
      [Checks Roster]
      Jason Marquis! Wow, I'm kindof surprised he hasn't hung them up yet. I can totally see him dominating the International League until I get infatuated with him and demand he be called up.

      1. He had a good game during one of the games we saw him, and she thinks he's kind of cute (though not as dreamy as Morneau), so she thinks highly of him.

      2. Hey if Mauer & Morneau return to form, and Valencia is legitimately the MVP, I'd be ecstatic with that performance.

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