A quick note about the new look. No major changes for you, the loyal reader, to worry about. Squarespace, the service I’ve been on since early this year, just released the newest version of their platform. Version 6 brings in a bunch of new technologies, most of which can be lumped under the term ‘responsive web design’. Basically what that means is a site should look the same whether you’re reading it on a 30' display, an iPad, or a smartphone.
This is a frightening story. Mat Honan, a technology writer, had his iCloud, Google, Twitter, and Amazon accounts hijacked, and in turn, his iPhone, iPad, and MacBook remotely wiped, destroying years of data he had not backed up. He was lucky, though, in that the hackers were only interested in having some fun rather than running amok with his financial data. All of the big technology companies are pushing us towards exclusive use of their cloud-based systems.
From the time I left my house Friday morning until I returned very late Sunday night, I spent approximately 67 hours in, or traveling to-and-from, Kansas City. The obligatory run down of the weekend’s events. I landed at 7:30 Friday morning. Having been up since 4:45 Eastern, I drove straight to The Roasterie to grab some coffee and enjoy the easy-going ambiance of Brookside. I followed that up with a few laps of the Plaza.
I couldn’t wait any longer, so last night I cracked open my first bottle of my first batch of beer. While I found it lacking in a few areas, I am reasonably pleased with how the B. Brewery’s first beer, Naismith Nut Brown Ale, turned out. My first concern, as I mentioned last week, was that I had presented too much oxygen in the bottling process and there might be some off odors/flavors present.
Another entry into the list of things the girls did for the first time in the summer of 2012: tubing on a lake. Thanks to some friends, the girls got to go out on a boat over the weekend. M. and C. both got a couple turns on the tube behind the boat. Both had great times. M. was the first up. I was a little surprised at how eager she was to get out on the water given her cautious nature.
Two weeks down, two to go. Yesterday I racked and bottled my first batch of beer. Racking is the process in which the beer is moved from the fermenter into a temporary container, where it is mixed with sugar which will kick off the carbonation process once bottled. Everything appeared well with my nut brown ale. When I popped the top of the fermenter, I was greeted by the pleasant smell of a healthy, growing brown ale.
Today is M.’s eighth birthday. The kid is growing up and beginning to leave the trappings of early childhood behind. Over the weekend, we were in the vicinity of a group of girls I will guess were in the 12-14 range. M. kind of drifted away from the rest of the family and just stared at the party for the longest time, taking in everything the girls were doing and saying.
We’ve reached the time of the year when the Royals completely fall apart, before their inevitable signs of life in September that we will cling to over the off season in hopes it was a sign that the team’s fortunes are finally changing. I’ll call it now: Eric Hosmer is going to start hitting again in mid-August. Luke Hochevar will do his annual ‘pitch solidly when no one is watching' thing.
The NCAA has spoken and now Penn State gets to deal with another part of the rebuilding process after the Sandusky Affair. A $60 million fine. A four-year bowl ban. The loss of ten scholarships per year for four years. And vacating all wins from 1998 to 2011. That fine is not insignificant. Neither is the loss of bowl games in four straight years, nor the longer term effects reducing scholarships will carry.
Four days in Denver. Sounds like a bad political thriller from the 1970s, no? Our weekend in the Mile High City was far from bad movie from my childhood. The highlights: The girls travelled very well on the way out. S. sat in a row with C. and L., while M. and I sat a row up. We were lucky enough to share our row with a pilot from another airline who was all-too-happy to share information about flying without being asked.
For a crappy game, the 2012 All Star Game will certainly go down as one of the more memorable All Star weeks in recent memory. Thanks to the mini-controversy of Yankee Robinson Cano not selecting Royal Billy Butler for the Home Run Derby, the event turned into an opportunity for Kansas City baseball fans to unload 25 years of frustration on the best player on the best team in the league.
What a busy few days. Let’s see if I can cram some of what’s happened, and is about to happen, into a post of reasonable length. We spent last weekend enjoying a fine Indiana freshwater recreation site with some good friends and family. The weather continued to be ridiculously hot, but being in the water was a fine way to cool off. The girls learned how to jump off a dock, pedal a paddle boat (or is it pedalboat?
Def Leppard is rerecording their back catalog because of an argument with Universal over the digital distribution rights of their original songs. Despite being the slickest of the 80s hairbands, it took some effort. ”You just don't go in and say, 'Hey guys, let's record it,' and it's done in three minutes," Elliott notes. "We had to study those songs, I mean down to the umpteenth degree of detail, and make complete forgeries of them.
I love it when events coincide with specific dates so that they are easy to remember. Example: earlier this year we purchased a new lawn mower. S. wondered how long we had our old one1 and I said, “I can tell you exactly when we got it.” “OK, what game was that day?” She knows me well. “It wasn’t just a game, although that was the same day that KU lost to Georgia Tech in the regional finals.
For a minute or two, I thought Italy had a chance in Sunday’s Euro 2012 final. But then Spain got rolling, picked apart the pressing Italians, and rolled to a dominating 4-0 win that gives them a legitimate claim to be the best soccer team ever and in the conversation for best sports team ever.1 Those moments of hope were delicious for us fans of the Azzurri though. Their destruction of Germany in Thursday’s semifinal was especially sweet.
To start, a link back to the beginnings of my blogging life and my 2003 draft breakdown. I just reread it and it’s fun, especially my panning of Miami drafting D. Wade. I actually have a few decent observations in there. And a lot of inside stuff that makes no sense A) nine years later and B) without watching the draft. Last night I only watched bits and pieces of the draft, so this year’s summary will have less snarky comments about suits, crying mothers, bad commercials, etc.
Ahh, more Gen X navel gazing about the changes in the music world. I’m sorry, I can’t avoid reading these pieces, linking to them, or adding some comments of my own. I think most of that is because this profound change in the technology of music has come right at the time my generation shifted into true adulthood: the getting married, having babies, and getting deep into your career part of adulthood.
First, a quick story from my youth. I once had a babysitter who had stacks of newsstand tabloid magazines. I recall them mostly being The National Enquirer but I believe she had some of the really crazy ones, too. Anyway, I liked to read and since the TV was usually on soaps or the news, I would hide in the corner and work through the latest celebrity gossip. At some point I began throwing the things I learned into casual conversations elsewhere.
After a busy weekend, some sports thoughts. LeBron got his ring. While I was pulling for OKC, I’m glad the national nightmare of LeBron not having an NBA title finally came to an end. I enjoyed his enjoyment of getting the proverbial monkey off of his back. LeBron has made a few poor choices in the PR side of his career, but for the most part he’s been an exemplary professional.
Are the Royals, in a rather passive-agressive manner, trying to suck us fans back in? While they’re still generally mediocre, they’ve won enough games over the past month to get within spitting distance of both .500 and first place. As I write this they are 31-36 and just 4.5 games behind Cleveland. Far better than they were six weeks ago, when they wrapped up a brutal April. I say passive-agressive because of how they’ve reached this point.
File under: Sometimes otherwise smart people do dumb things. I’ve never been in a tanning bed in my (almost) 41 years on earth. Until Monday. Thanks to a meeting of two circumstances1 I decided to take the plunge and get a little unnatural color Monday. I knew going in there were risks. S. will occassionally use the tanning beds at our gym and while she gets some color after a day or two, she often has to go through what appears to be an uncomfortable red-pink stage to get to the brown.
One of the many cultural icons of my generation is the 1992 US men’s Olympic basketball team: The Dream Team. While this oral history of the greatest team ever is good, I must admit I was a little disappointed by it. It doesn’t seem nearly long enough. I know there were more great stories that could have been repeated. Johnson: Oh man, the best basketball I ever played was during those practices.
I’ve been slowly working my way through the most excellent Joe Strummer documentary The Future Is Unwritten. If you’re a fan of the punk rock prophet, or just a fan of music in general, I highly recommend it. The film features audio from the late Strummer cut with interviews with people he was close to through his life. Family members, friends, lovers, rivals, bandmates, people he inspired, etc. The only downside is none of the people are identified when they speak, so I have no idea who a few of them were.
It’s been a busy start to the summer, thus the slow rate of posts here last week. I can’t promise it will increase, but know it’s because we’re enjoying the season. For example, here’s how we spent the weekend. Friday the girls got to go to Target and spend some of the money they’ve saved. L. got a turtle from Nemo that really swims. M. and C. both got (yet another) Barbie.
Back in mid-May 1990, when our circle of high school friends was retuning home after our first year away at college, a good friend was insistent that it was going to be “the greatest summer ever.” It’s tough to measure these things accurately, but I do recall that being a pretty solid summer.1 Obviously that became a running joke each summer after that, and it’s always fun to think of it as we transition into our summer schedules.
One last entry for the 2011-12 academic year. Monday I covered a baseball sectional championship game for a christian school that we normally don’t cover. Part of that is because this is the first year the school, GCA, has fielded a baseball team. I’m really not sure why we don’t cover them in basketball all season, but that’s not my decision. Anyway…it was quite the accomplishment for them to make the sectional final in their first year, obviously.
As I mentioned earlier, Friday was field trip day for M. with the bonus of having me tag along as a driver/chaperone. We were going to Conner Prairie, one of those old time re-creation towns that is on the site of one of the first white settlements in Central Indiana. It’s also five minutes from our house and I had never been there in almost nine years living here. Hey, we’ve been busy!
We’ve reached the manic, two-week period of spring in which all the high school sports cram their playoffs into the final days of the school year. Which means many chances for me to work. In theory. This week I grabbed the plum assignment, the 4A softball sectional in which four of our teams were playing. Wednesday I was to cover both semifinals, including the #2 ranked team in the state (CG, one of our schools) and then the championship game on Thursday.
I wanted to write something about the passing of Donna Summer. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized her music never really qualified as “mine.” Sure, I heard her songs a million times growing up, but her peak - 1976-79 - came before I was reposnible for the music that I listened to. I heard tons of Donna Summer songs because I had young parents who listened to pop music, especially disco.
I have a few friends who are masters of the random celebrity encounter. They have no problem either approaching or breaking the ice with a famous person and have many stories about running into Quincy Jones, Milton Berle, Dave Matthews, or Lawrence Taylor, to name a few. On the other hand, in those rare situations when I see a celebrity, I tend to sneak glances, elbowing and whispering to the people next to me, and keep my distance.