Congratulations Rory and Roxanne

Juliana Rose was born to Rory Asher – my brother – and Roxanne Reed – his girlfriend – on November 15, 2005 at 5:18 pm. She weighed in at 8 lbs, 2 oz. and was 20.75 inches long. Everyone is doing very well, there were no complications to speak of during the birth. Right now, everyone – Rory, Roxanne, and Juliana – is just very tired.

Oh, and I’m an uncle! Yippie!

SxSW Or Bust!

If people have heard of South By Southwest (SxSW), it’s usually for the music festival portion. However, also hosted at SxSW is the SxSW Interactive. The SxSW Interactive is basically a huge conference for web developers of various sorts. As my boss would say, “So, it’s a big nerd convention. Are there any Star Wars panels there?” I can’t wait, it will be tons of fun and I’ll be around some of the greatest innovators in the web design/development community.

Update
My registration for SXSW is now being processed and the flights are booked. Yippie!

My Childhood Hobby

When I was a kid, my big hobby was collecting baseball cards. Since I moved out of my house, they’ve been in storage. This past weekend my dad, in an effort to do some cleaning up, gave me all my cards. I started going through them and I found this little gem.

As it turns out, I had a 1953 Topps Pee Wee Reese card. According to Beckett magazine, the de facto standard for baseball card worth, the card is worth 175 dollars. Woo Hoo!

Walnut Valley Festival – Winfield, KS

This weekend Becky and I went to the Walnut Valley Festival (WVF) in Winfield, Kansas. Winfield is located just a little north of Arkansas City, KS, which is just north of Oklahoma. That was a long drive, let me tell you, especially after driving from Kansas City to Manhattan. Traveling to Winfield is a family tradition for Becky and her family and I was glad she wanted to go.

We got there late Saturday Friday night and there weren’t any more musicians playing on any of the five stages. Apparently, the big after-hours thing to do is to go “camp-grounding.” Camp-grounding consists of walking around with your friends in the campgrounds while drinking and listening to people play instruments. Since the WVF is a Bluegrass festival, the fiddle, banjo, acoustic guitar, and upright bass were seen all over the place on our trek.

The next day we ventured inside the venue to look at all the items that vendors were selling. You get a lot of handmade crafts, hippy/folky clothes, and various musical instrument related wares. Another thing you see a lot of is homemade food. The free samples were magnifique. Most of the middle-day was spent at the campsite just lounging around in the shade.

Later that night we went to see some of the musicians play. First up was Tom Chapin. Tom Chapin is the brother of the late Harry Chapin. Tom has written/sang lots of songs through his many years, but is most notable for his children’s songs. Very kid-friendly kind of music.

After Tom’s set we went back to the campground to hang out. We came back to listen to the latter half of John McClutchen’s set. Offhand, I don’t remember much of this because I fell asleep.

Becky wanted to hear Tommy Emmanuel, so we just hung around and listened to The Wilders because Tommy played afterwards. I also slept through much of The Wilders, which surprises me because they play the sort of old time music where the fiddle is played really fast. If you can picture a redneck ho-down, this is the type of music that would be played. This also is where a lot of the folksy people came out to dance, so I’m surprised I was able to sleep.

Tommy Emmanuel wasn’t playing his solo set like Becky had wanted. He was playing with another guy and they kept playing really slow music. None of which was to Becky’s liking, so we left.

I’m not sure if it was because of the 60+ hour work week I just had or the late night on Friday or the hot days/cold nights, but I was really tired on Saturday. Consequently there was no camp-grounding for us that night. Plus I had to drive all the way back to Kansas City on Sunday.

So, we made it an early night. Sunday morning we did our best to get on our way early. The long drive went by fairly quick, so that was happy.

Overall, I had a good time. I wish I had more energy and would have listened to more of the musicians, but c’est la vie. Perhaps next time I will. I’d recommend going to the festival to anyone if they got the chance. It’s a lot like Country Stampede here in Manhattan, only it’s bluegrass music instead of country.

New Belgium Beer

This past Wednesday, at my apartment complex clubhouse, a New Belgium representitive put on a beer tasting. We tasted all of their six regular beers as well as their current seasonal beer.

I would like to comment a bit on each of the beers I tasted. After reading, I hope that you, my dear readers – all six of you, will have a better idea about the beer offerings by New Belgium.

This list of beers is presented as it was presented to me – roughly from lighest to darkest. Enjoy.

Sunshine Wheat
This is the beer that I thought I would like the most. My favorite beers happen to be wheat beers and I wasn’t disappointed by this beer. This beer is a nice light beer with a refreshing citrus taste – orange in particular. On a related note, our New Belgium representative noted that many people in Colorado – where this beer is brewed (Fort Collins) – drink this beer with a slice of orange in it to heighten the orange flavor. I’ve heard of lemons in beer, but the orange additive is new to me. Sounds good though. Because of its orange tastes, this wheat reminded me of Blue Moon by Coors. Only this was a better taste in general.
Fat Tire
Fat Tire is New Belgium’s flagship beer. Prior to this beer tasting, it was the only New Belgium product that I had heard of. This is a fairly light beer that has a nice balance of hops and malt flavors. It’s one of those beers that I could drink regularly. This beer is named because of a bike trip the founders of New Belgium took while touring Belgium.
Loft (Seasonal)
Loft is New Belgium’s March through September seasonal beer. This is another fairly light beer offering from New Belgium. Not too malty or too hoppy – nicely balanced. There is a light citrus flavor to it as well. The name Loft pays homage to the wind powered New Belgium brewery – a first for American breweries.
Blue Paddle
Blue Paddle is New Belgium’s pilsener offering. Because it’s a pilsener, it is more bitter than the previous beers that I’ve written about already. It was a nice crisp beer, that I thought, depsite me not being a pilsener fan, was quite acceptable.
1554
1554 gets its name from the type of beer drank in Belgium during that year. 1554 is a black style ale. However, despite it being very dark, it doesn’t have a dark taste like a porter or a stout. It’s actually very light. When you first taste it, you will be pleasantly surprised at how light it is. The more I drank it, the more I liked it. In fact I might be picking up some of it the next time I’m at the L-store. Another distinct taste you’ll find is a coffee overtone.
Abbey
This beer is made in the tradition of Belgian styled double ales. This is the type of beer that monks used to brew to support their abbeys. It’s a higher alcohol by volume beer. It’s much darker than the previous beers and has a more malty taste. Even for a lighter beer drinker like me, this was a very drinkable beer that I would have again, given the opportunity.
Trippel
Trippel is similar to Abbey – dark and malty. This is New Belgium’s most alcoholic beer, something like 10.2% alcohol by volume – if memory serves me correctly. Yet, despite the high alcohol content, it is still a very drinkable beer. This beer gets it’s name from the way that beer casks were labeled in olden times. The Abbey would have been a XX and the Trippel would have been a XXX, hence the name Trippel – three X’s.

Overall, I would say that I would drink all of these beers again. As I’ve noted, I prefer the lighter beers, yet the darker beers were still very good beers. As such, I’d recomend you pick up one – or more 😉 – of the New Belgium beers and try it, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.