Category: Deep Thoughts

Here in class. Fezboy! slept in today, 0930hrs. Now Fezboy! is trapped in interface design class. Of course, by the time you are reading this, Fezboy! will have escaped to a terminal to tell you all about his peril. Sometimes the whole asynchronous nature of web communication can be a bit of a mind snap, however Fezboy! will assist you with any difficulties encountered. Back to the blog

This is not all bad – after all, HCI is a big reason Fezboy! is back in school. The fun thing in this class is listening to the various "International" students who speak English with varying degrees of proficiency argue with each other. The multi-level translating that occurs in this classroom is, well, a unique study in the function of the human mind. The number of ships passing in the dark would give a Harbormaster a coronary. The best of all is the no-nonsense German national who has a low tolerance for the "novice" user. When his dander is up, woe to the hapless grad studet who stands in his way.

Presenting design diary entries again today. Fezboy! took care of his obligation last week, thus, slouching in his chair, Fezboy! feigns interest.

By the way, it is snowing again.
Oh, (two minutes later), it’s not snowing anymore – and it is sunny. Hooray for Indiana weather!

Wow – someone acutally built a Power Point presentation for their diary exposition. Then, can you believe this – they brought the wrong floppy to class. Hooray for technology! Needless to say, the presenter was unable to proceed and thus Fezboy! will have to sit through another week of these silly presentations.

And now class proceeds . . .

During one of the many argumentative periods that seem to accomany the lectures, Fezboy! had the following thoughts:

Fezboy! is relatively unhappy with the current emphasis on home run hitting in MLB games. What Fezboy! misses most while watching games is the lack of anticipation and interaction this has brought to the fan. What happens when your lead off hitter reaches first base? Well, it used to be a possibility that he would steal second, perhaps a hit and run would be called. In short, there was a good deal of fan participation in that the fan could play probabilities and engage in second guessing the manager. However, in this day and age there is nothing to guess. If your lead off hitter is a guanranteed steal, i.e. Womack, Goodwin, Young, or Pierre (watch this guy closely this season), you will green light him to steal. If not, the player will sit and wait to be homered in. Why waste a potential out on getting someone to second when, in all probability, one of the next three hitters will knock the ball over the fence? It kills an out and an RBI. No one would want to do that now, would they?

Well, more on this later. Class is out and now Fezboy! can type all of this blather for your consumption.

And now that Fezboy! got it all typed out, Fezboy! gets to go work out. Oh Joy! However, the pain and suffering Fezboy! goes through is worth it in the eyes of Fezboy!‘s adoring public.

USHL Standings Revisited

It’s a new week coming up so it’s time to revisit the USHL standings. Omaha had a damn fine week–knocking off Sioux Falls with a five goal second period. Figures that I was so sick that day I couldn’t manage 15 feet from the nearest sewer-connected portal so ended up missing what might possibly be the best Lancers showing all season.

Lincoln didn’t fare as well, winning two of three on the week. They lose a game-in-hand on Sioux Falls but with both Lincoln and Omaha playing three last week, the Stars still have two in hand on the Lancers.

By virtue of the fine showing, the Lancers pick up a place in the points standings on Lincoln. The unadjusted standings look like this:

TEAM GP W L OL TP
Sioux Falls 41 29 10 2 60
Fargo 41 26 13 5 53
Waterloo 42 25 17 0 53
Omaha 42 25 17 0 50
Lincoln 40 23 14 3 49
Tri-Town 41 18 19 4 40
Des Moines 43 19 22 2 40
Sioux City 40 8 22 10 26

Looking over the table after two weeks, we also see Des Moines being overtaken by Tri-Town. The Good Life trophy participants are 4-5-6 in the standings, which makes for a more entertaining introductory season for the trophy at least. Also funny how the victories are pretty lopsided between them. Omaha pwns Lincoln who pwns Tri-Town who pwns Omaha.

But I digress. The whole point of this exercise is to weigh games-in-hand into the standings to give a better picture of how the playoff race is shaking out. If we count games in hand as +.5 games, an OT loss as -.5, wins as +1 and losses as -1 we get the following table:

TEAM GP W L OL GB Playoffs
Sioux Falls 41 29 10 2    
Waterloo 41 26 14 1 -3.5  
Fargo 42 24 13 5 -4  
Lincoln 40 23 14 3 -5  
Omaha 42 25 17 0 -5.5 -0.5
Tri-Town 41 18 19 4 -10 -5
Des Moines 43 19 22 2 -11 -6
Sioux City 40 8 22 10 -16.5 -11.5

Looking here, Omaha still hasn’t quite pushed Lincoln out of the playoff picture. Also noteworthy, Sioux Falls picks up a game on most of the league in the last two weeks. Coming up, both Omaha and Lincoln have relatively easy matchups visiting Des Moines and hosting Tri-Town respectively before meeting each other for the Battles on Ice. Yours truly will be in attendance at Teh Battlez and, if all goes according to plan, highly inebriated.

See you there!

Lagunitas India Pale Ale

1) Lagunitas India Pale Ale

The first in the 2013 Taste 100 Beers Challenge. After eschewing IPAs for so long, why not make one the first in the challenge? Admittedly it’s not a style that I’m really interested in. Or, perhaps I should say it’s not a style I’ve been interested in historically but I’ve been reading For the Love of Hops the last week or two and I’ve decided to give hoppy beers another chance.

I picked up a 22oz bomber of this over lunch today along with a couple of other beers that will end up in this series. This beer pours a nice, sparkling gold color with a persistent fluffy white head. The clarity is excellent, something I’ve not approached with my own brewing. All in all, it is a pretty beer.

Right from the bottle there’s an intriguing combination of sweet cut grass and grapefruit aromas. These are not smells I remember from IPAs past. As the beer warms the citrus keeps flowering. Even after reading about the flavors the “C” hops bring for the last few weeks, this is surprisingly inviting.

The first sip is crisply bitter that just explodes into grapefruit that lingers well past the swallow, slowly fading into a tart, bitter finish. While I’ve never appreciated the gratuitous bitterness of IPAs I’ve had in the past, this works here. It’s backed up with a strong malt backbone. There has to be some good crystal wrapped around that base malt. At 6.2% ABV you get yourself into trouble because it drinks like a session beer. The recurring comparison I want to make is like drinking Squirt without all the HFCS.

On to the scoring…

Aroma: Huge floral/citrus aroma with a bit of fresh cut grass hiding in the weeds. The malt sits underneath and brings a bit of caramel that blends nicely with the floral notes. 11/12

Appearance: Deep gold with hints of copper. Brilliant clarity with a persistant, fluffy white head. 3/3

Flavor: Up front bitterness yields to a robust citrus flavor. I don’t think you’d get more grapefruit if you sliced on in half and started tonguing it. The citrus is balanced by a stiff malt backbone with sweetness to balance all of the tart/bitterness. The finish lingers on, eventually leaving you back where you started with the bitter. If I’d ding this in any way, it’s got to be the acrid aftertaste. On the other hand, it keeps you drinking! 17/20

Mouthfeel: Full body for an IPA. Maybe a bit sticky/resinous. Is this the style? Carbonation is appropriate. 4/5

Overall Impression: Had I known how good an IPA could be, I might have had one of these before now. Still wowed by the citrus that comes through with this. Definitely changed my “Why-P-A?” tune and I’m curious to know if this is indicative of the style or a special something something. 8/10

Scoring Total: 43/50
Binary Score: 1

Ways To Look at the Standings

If you looked at the current USHL Standing in the West (prior to games played tonight) you’d see this:

TEAM GP W L OL TP
Sioux Falls 34 25 8 1 51
Fargo 36 21 10 5 47
Waterloo 35 22 13 0 44
Lincoln 33 20 10 3 43
Omaha 35 19 16 0 38
Des Moines 37 18 18 1 37
Tri-Town 35 15 16 4 34
Sioux City 34 6 20 8 20

And you’d see Lincoln sits in fourth place, on the cusp of elimination from post season play. But that really doesn’t paint an accurate picture of the season so far. For whatever reason, Lincoln has a game in hand against the division leader, two against the team immediately above them in the standings, and a whopping three games in hand against Fargo.

I, for one, prefer the baseball way of ranking teams in the midst of a season, taking games in hand into consideration instead of just throwing out the points totals. If we modify hockey standings to score as follows:

  • Loss: -1 game in the standings
  • Overtime Loss: -0.5 games in the standings
  • Win–overtime or otherwise: +1 game in the standings

and apply it to the current USHL West we get a much more appealing picture (because, hey, Stars fan!).

TEAM GP W L OL GB Playoffs
Sioux Falls 34 25 8 1    
Fargo 36 21 10 5 -3  
Lincoln 33 20 10 3 -3  
Waterloo 35 22 13 0 -4  
Omaha 35 19 16 0 -7 -3
Des Moines 37 18 18 1 -8.5 -4.5
Tri-Town 35 15 16 4 -9.5 -5.5
Sioux City 34 6 20 8 -15.5 -12.5

See, games in hand are actually important! In one view Lincoln is on the verge of not making the playoffs. In the other they’re tied for having home ice advantage in the first round. It is kind of a big deal.

Now, if Lincoln fritters them away, well…that’s just not going to happen. Go Stars!

Moar swotting

Since I finally switched web hosts a year ago, I’m no longer plagued by the cramped 5GB server space issue. Gone are the days where I had to monkey around Cox’s pesky port 80 blocking and upload throttling to serve this content from a server sitting in my basement.

Took me almost a year, but I’ve fixed all of the audio links in the Millionaire’s Holiday sub-site. It’s nothing all that exciting, just a few broadcasts of The Millionaire’s Holiday, my show on WFHB that ran back in 2005 – 2006.

Anyway, if’n you’d been pining to see what I was up to six-plus years ago, you can finally get that itch scratched.

Under the hood

I’ve spent a few minutes this morning mucking with the PHP behind this blog for the first time in forever. Notes:

  1. I still hate PHP. It so easily facilitates mixing code and output that even if you’re doing your best to avoid that kind of crappy behavior, you can’t help but do it.
  2. Not fighting the flow allows for many more fun things to be added to one’s blog.
  3. Albeit, there is much less control over the markup, and thus the presentation.
  4. PHP still sucks.
  5. I hate PHP

On the other hand, this should enable better integration between blog / Facebook / Twitter…and some day Google+ if only Google would open their API to read/write instead of read-only. It’s surprising behavior from them.

So, enjoy the “better” search, the Twitter feed, and better organized archives.