Category: Personal

Items of personal interest to me, my family and my friends.

Zappos, Spirit Airlines and the BoSox

Bobby

Business Blog Consulting had a nice post last week about the awesome customer service of Zappos, and the horrid customer service of Spirit Airlines. Now I have never used either of these companies, I don’t fly much and I buy all my clothes (OK, not all, but most) from Ross. Actually bought a way cool pair of Rocket Dog shoes for $13 last week on clearance at Ross – way cheaper than Zappos.

Regardless, if Zappos customer service is as good as it sounds, YOU should probably buy from them.

On a completely unrelated note, the Boston Red Sox swept our Colorado Rockies in the World Series last night. I guess The Lisa was right about her beloved baseball team. Grrr…

I think I hate Massachusetts

Bobby

So, the Rockies haven’t fared well against the Boston Red Sox. As of this writing, the Rocks are down three games in the series. Now, I normally don’t hate the BoSox, but when they are playing the home team…

Worst part is, not only is Boston beating up on my baseball team, the New England Patriots are busy annihilating teams on what looks like a steamroll to the Super Bowl. Appearantly Bill Belicheck has decided the way to win back the hearts and minds of America, after his cheating ways, is to embarrass his opponent in every game he coaches. Today’s 52-7 whipping of the Washington Redskins reminded me of the Nebraska (another team I hated) glory days when Tom Osborne would run the score up on every poor team he played.

Worst case scenario, the Red Sox will sweep the Rockies to be the 2007 World Series winners and the New England Patriots will beat the Colts next week, go undefeated and win the Super Bowl again.

The only thing that could make me hate Boston more is if the Bruins knock the Avs out of the Stanely Cup race.

Of course, best case would be the Rocks winning four straight to be Series Champs, Colts beat the Pats next week, and the Broncos rally to win the Super Bowl. Let’s hope for that.

Insufficient Postage

Bobby

As far as I’m concerned, the United States Postal Service serves two purposes.

The first is to deliver my monthly water bill to the city of Greeley.

The second is as a secondary delivery service for online vendors and ebay shippers that don’t use Fed-Ex or UPS.

As a result I don’t buy many stamps. With the postal rate CONSTANTLY changing, this sometimes is a problem.

Recently I had to send a personal letter, payment for some candles I ordered from my good friend Marti Jo (I know, candles aren’t very manly, but thats another story).

When I sent this letter I used some stamps I had that were clearly marked “First Class’. A few days later I recieved my letter back marked “Additional Postage Required”.

Additional Postage Required

Additional Postage Required???? I sent first class letter, the stamp was clearly marked “First Class”, why didn’t they honor this stamp???

I know, I know, they raised the rates here recently, but as a none postal employee I’m not really up on the postage rates.

OK, fine, so I go to the post office to buy some 1 cent (2 cent, whatever) stamps so I can use my previous stamps, that I am assuming are the 39 cent variety. Of course, their automated machine that sells stamps doesn’t show anything small denomination.

So, I have to either go to the post office, stand in line, and buy a dollar’s worth of 1 cent stamps, or just use some old 34 centers I already have.

Bottom line, it cost me 63 cents to send that letter to Iowa, all because the post office wouldn’t deliver the letter with my First Class stamp…

Broncos Game – Recap

Bobby

I was fortunate enough to attend my first NFL game when my friend Sarah invited me to Saturday night’s pre-season Denver Broncos game. While I am an avid professional football fan, this was the first time I had ever been to a pro game live. While I had a great time, and really appreciate Sarah taking me, I don’t think I will go to another.

The amazing thing about an NFL game is that nobody really seems to watch the game. when I watch a game at home I am bombarded by three hours of play-by-play action by at LEAST two announcers. They give background information, stats analysis, and replays for BOTH teams. Invesco Field had two big screens that showed replays and information on the Broncos, but nearly nothing on their opponents, the Cleveland Browns. From my upper deck seat I couldn’t make out the name of any Browns players. I really felt like I only got to watch half a football game.

Again, this is not a critque of the evening. I had a great time, but I care too much about the game to watch another one live. I would much rather watch Jay Cutler fumble snaps and throw incompletions in the comfort of my own home, where I can switch over to Peyton Manning when I get frustrated…

Don’t make your Compass Bank payment early

Bobby

A little over a year ago I moved my bank account to Compass Bank. Everything has been excellent since then… until today.

Today, I was checking my bank account online and I found that there was a late charge on my Credit Card statement. This seemed odd to me since I have made regular payments. The Compass Credit Card statement comes in the mail, not electronically, and isn’t even visible through the online interface. Since I can’t see the statements online, I typically just pay more than the minimum amount monthly and don’t worry about the actual due dates. This hasn’t ever been a problem until this month.

Between June 20 and August 10th I made three payments, all about three times the monthly payment. Unfortunately, the second payment, made in the first week of July, was ONE DAY before the actual date of the statement.

Looking at my account, I assumed this was the issue, so I called the Compass credit card people. After entering my credit card number into the phone four times, going through several levels of menus, explaining the situation multiple times to the young woman that finally answered and being on hold for about 20 minutes, she explained the situation. The payment was early (which I already assumed), so she couldn’t refund the late payment fee.

Just to clarify, I was penalized by the Compass Bank credit card division for making a payment a day early. Insane.

Peeling a Pineapple

Bobby 2 Comments

Recently I was at my sister’s house and we had a pineapple. Somehow it was decided that I should be the one to cut it up and serve it.

My pineapple experience has been limited to those handy canned rings Dole so conveniently provides us with, so I attempted to emulate the job the machine at the Dole factory does. It was somewhat disasterous, but tasty anyway.

Fortunately, thanks to this nice blog posting on serving pineapple, I can now impress my friends with my pineapple carving skills.

Cranberry Liqueur

Bobby

Inspired by a recent posting on the health benefits of Cranberries, I’ve decided to share my secret recipe for Cranberry Liqueur.

Actually, this isn’t my recipe. It was given to me several years ago by a friend who got it from another friend’s Russian grandmother.

Regardless of where it came from, it is an excellent recipe, if kind of messy.

NOTE: These instructions are verbatim as they were sent to me. If you are under 21, or if alcohol offends you, please stop reading now.

1. Take one (1) liter of Everclear Grain Alcohol 😉 and 2 kilograms of cranberries (fresh, I’m guessing).

2. Put all of the cranberries through a meat-grinder and put into a large container (3 litter glass jar).

3. Pour all of the grain alcohol over it.

4. Let it sit for 3-5 days.

5. Then strain what’s in the jar through a gauze (the medical kind). You gotta squeeze what’s left in the gauze to get all the liquid
out of it. Collect all the liquid in any big container and discard the cranberry leftovers.

6. Then separately make sugar syrap: boil 4 cups of water (1 litter) with 2.5 cups of sugar. You’ll want to boil it on low/medium heat, stirring continuously until the sugar completely dissolves in the water. Make sure to watch it so that the sugar does not burn and stick to the pan. It’s easier to start by pouring hot (boiling water) over the sugar.

7. Let the sugar syrup stand and cool down.

8. Pour the syrup into the ‘cranberried’ alcohol stirring well. Chilling is good.

9. Taste it. If all went well – invite a bunch of friends over and get hammered.

That is the original recipe, here are some notes that were included for your reference.

Okay, so I use a 750 of Everclear since you can’t buy a liter anywhere that
I’ve found. That means you need 3/4 of all the other ingredients: 1500g
cranberries, 3 cups of water, 2 cups sugar.

Most people don’t have a meat grinder in their kitchen, so I use a blender.
The trick to using the blender is to rinse the cranberries down into the
blades. You don’t want to water down the drink, so I recommend rinsing it down
with Everclear. Also, I only did about a cup of cranberries at a time so that
I didn’t overwhelm my blender; yours may be more powerful than mine, though.

Most people also don’t have medical gauze laying around their house, so use
cheesecloth. You may have to get creative on just how to strain the cranberry
solids out, but last time I lined a sieve with the cheesecloth and then poured
portions of the liquid through.

Lastly, cranberry juice stains everything including counter tops, floors,
clothes and especially your hands when you’re ringing that stuff out. If you
spill some, I wouldn’t wait to wipe it up… I also usually use a glass bowl
instead of plastic, unless you want pink bowls.

I can’t emphasize how good this recipe is… if you like cranberry.

Headworks Park Review

Bobby 8 Comments

Last week Jason, Jake and I hopped in the truck and headed for Nebraska. Our destination (one of them anyway) was Headworks Park near Genoa.

To be honest, I was skeptical about going to Nebraska to ride, but I must say I was pleasantly surprised. The Headworks Park riding area was clean, well maintained and very fun to ride on.

This area was created by the dredging of a canal near the river. The sand is the silt that deposits at the bottom of the canal. Twice a year the area is shut down for two weeks so the maintenance people can dredge the canal. This is one thing to watch out for – right now it’s closed and we would not have been happy if it had been closed last week.

The sand at Headworks Park is very interesting. It’s almost a silica, extremely fine. We didn’t bring our sand paddles, but we didn’t have any problem at all climbing any of the hills. The main riding area is relatively flat with hills and trees on either side. Every couple hundred yards there are large pipes, appearantly connected to the dredging operations, that separate the areas. One side borders the canal that is dredged, the other side has a band of trees with many rideable trails. The far side of the trees opens out to the river and another large riding area.

Headworks Park is maintained, at least in part, by the Nebraska Off Highway Vehicle Associaton (NOHVA). My hat is off to those guys, they have done a great job with Headworks. In fact, while there we met one of the Association members who was very polite in welcoming us to the park.

It was a great day of riding. I will post pictures before long. We had a bit of trouble with Jake’s LT80 and I had some trouble with the Warrior, but that’s another post…

Sweet Corn

Bobby

Sweet Corn
August always brings back memories of harvest. Barley, Second Cutting Hay and Sweet Corn.

As a struggling family farm back in the 80’s, one of our sources of income was sellins Sweet Corn. My grandparents had a large Weeping Willow in their front yard, and I remember as a small child, sitting on the picnic table in front of that tree selling fresh corn to passers by. As the years went by the selling became the task of my younger sisters and I helped my Dad pick. It used to become a contest to see how quickly we could pick.

We used to take dozens of ears to our church to share with the staff, and even supplied the Loveland Corn Roast for several years.

Sadly, this is yet another tradition that has fallen by the wayside. People just don’t seem to come out to the farm to buy their produce anymore. They prefer the ease of the grocery store, and those that do want fresh from the farm produce visit the farmers markets. These days our corn plantings are for personal consumption. This last weekend we picked and froze about 60 dozen ears of corn, but that’s as big as the event got.

Maybe someday I’ll get back to that life, grow some corn and sell it from a roadside stand. If I do, I know it will bring back memories of those August days under the willow tree.