Early Birthday Present To Me

Not that I'm going to get a lot of time to enjoy the damn thing, but I guess that it was about time to retire the Mercedes and get myself an early birthday present.

Some pics of the newest member of my household. They suck, and I'll reshoot some later to get a better look, but for now, they work. (Dropping your DLSR and having to use a pocketcam FTL...)






Holla Limited Edition 25th Anniversary DTM package with a big ass V-8 and way more speed than I need. My old boss has an S4 from the last generation of the car and refers to it as his ticket machine. Mine is number 98 of only 250 built, and I'm already worrying about it getting hurt.

The car is stupid fast, and sounds AMAZING. I will have to throw up a YouTube vid with some noise coming out of it. Priceless.

So now I am going to forgo some sleep and drool on it in the driveway... I should be washing it...

Mel(l)o(w)dramatic...

So here I am waiting for something new and exciting to ruin my Friday, and I must say that this is the easiest shitty Friday ever. I have had nothing go my way all day, and every time something new goes wrong I am the one that will have to fix it. Saturday. My boss had the nerve to refer to me as being "melodramatic" when I was complaining about the things that have gone wrong today. As I said to her; "easy for the person who's going to be home on Saturday to say."

That shut her up. But, truth be told, freaking out about stuff isn't going to make it any better

Thanks to the holiday next week (Independence Day, for those playing at home) on Friday, I had already planned on coming in on Sunday. This means that in two weeks I will not take a day off. (It's going to work out to a bit longer than that, but for the sake of argument, it's these two weeks that I am worried about right now.)

Not that it's anything new, but the rest of America will be enjoying a three days weekend. I won't be enjoying a damn thing. But...

Every year some friends and I throw a massive Fourth of July Party, and not going isn't an option. It's one of those things where the party has outlasted relationships, friendships (people who now hate each other still attend), and anything else that may get in the way of a good time. SO. The new plan is to go into work and then go to the party. Then go into work hung over the net day.

Waking Up Still DRUNK FTW!!!!

And I'll try to blog a bit more regularly... ;-)

I Made Under $ 750,000 Last Year, Where's My Check?

I have stayed away from politics on the blog as I feel that I don't need to intentionally alienate any readers, but some things bear mentioning. Looking at my IP tracking, I may be about to infuriate at least some readers in the midwest. So be it, this needs mentioning.

Yesterday the Farm Bill passed the House, and today it passed the Senate. For those unfamiliar with the 2007 Farm Bill, it is the $289,000,000,000 cherry on top of the government sundae of spending.

People can bitch about government spending here and there all they want, but when the government allows subsidy payments to individuals with incomes up to $750,000 a year (married incomes of up to 1.5 million dollars) it somehow strikes me as the rich getting richer. Isn't that what so many people are bitching about? Economic stimulus checks are arriving now. I'm wondering where mine is, as I am positive I made less than three quarters of a million dollars last year.

Then there is the ethanol debate. I just can't stand behind the idea of burning food... We have seen rises across the board in food prices and yet somehow we need to be giving refiners (those people that everyone likes to bitch about having record profits) a 45¢ a gallon tax credit for blending food corn based ethanol into our gasoline. I know that the subsidy exists to keep US farmers in the business of growing corn, but at a time of record grain prices (and shortages in other categories, the big two in my world being barley and hops) is this still necessary?
And then we end up with anomalies. Case in point, a recent article in the W.S.J. pointed out that some refiners have been switching to Brazilian ethanol due to it's lower cost even though it is hit with a 54¢ a gallon tariff. Brazilian ethanol is made primarily from sugar cane, and their economy is immensely dependant upon the export of ethanol. That said, the entire country of Brazil only produces 4.3 billion gallons of the fuel. The US produces only 7 billion gallons of ethanol. The 2007 Farm Bill mandates that refiners blend 9 billion gallons of ethanol this year alone, with an average increase of about half a million gallons a year over the next fourteen years.

The increase can be made up in their production of Cellulosic Ethanol. CE is produced from non-food items such as sawgrass, wood chips, sawdust, etc... The production of CE at least has the potential to alleviate the need to burn US foodstocks to run our automobiles, but it is still being researched and there are currently only two major CE projects, one of which is not expected to come completely online until 2011. The Farm Bill provides a significant research subsidy to increase the production of CE, and it damn well better. The bill requires that an additional 21 billion gallons of CE be blended into the US fuel supply in 14 years. (A total US ethanol dependancy of 36 billion gallons.) For some reason I think we aren't going to be able to pull that one off...

And then there is the food aid. The fact that this spending is thrown into a bunch of government pork is laughable and probably one of the few reasons that the damn thing passes with enough votes to override a veto. It's hard to tell the poorest people in a congressional district why you voted against their children's school lunch program...

I Get By

So I managed to live through my Mother's visit, Cinco de Mayo, and the last week of work before my vacation.

Now I am sitting in Florida, having already been to the beach (surfing, but the waves were so small), just trading stocks and enjoying the hell out of myself. I think that I am going to have a hard time leaving here... It's about eleven million degrees, but I guess that it's really easy to get used to and right now I couldn't give a damn. It's nice and sunny, the rain hasn't materialized, and even if it does I do not care. I am having a great time on vacation... (Who knew this was possible?)

It's The End Of The World As I Know It

So I guess it isn't that bad, but my mother is coming to visit, and while I do love the woman dearly, the thought of here staying at my house for a few days drives me insane. I do not know why...

I guess it's because I have to "behave" while she's here.

No going out drinking with friends, and coming in the front door at 3:00AM (there goes my Sunday Rock Band party, and I am not kidding). No bringing home random women (yeah, that doesn't happen when she's not here, so I guess it's not much of a concern).

And then there's the real draw back.

No being at work all hours of the day. I've got someone at home waiting for me, and while the woman lived in Seattle for six years, I feel obligated to entertain. I am sure that during the day she will be visiting old friends and seeing the sights, but she's also here to see her son. That's me. That means that I have to be there. And while I'd like to think that I can show her around the office and our operation, I can't keep her occupied for long.


Oh shit... Door bell...

Cinco de Mondayo

Well it would appear that my lazy ass has finally managed to get back to my blog after missing a couple of weeks.

Or a month.

And a few days.

Anyways. Work has kept me busy. A couple of trips to visit various suppliers of ours were both a lot of fun. They managed to entertain and educate... Lots of entertaining... Yeah...

And now we're working on a whole on a whole new holiday of fun; Cinco de Mayo. CdM is not a "real holiday" in Mexico but us beer people have managed to turn it into a traditional celebration of Mexican heritage. (Read, lot's of fucking drinking and eating pseudo-Mexican food)

Sadly enough, the date actually commemorates the date that a Mexican General defeated a French General as the French were invading Mexico... They beat the French, big fucking deal, who hasn't. The really funny thing to me is the French regrouped and a year later took control of Mexico for four years... "Mexico, the country that lost to France in battle" probably won't be making it onto the license plates any time soon.


But hey, kick back, put your feet up, and drink ANYTHING BUT a Co-ro-na... That shit is disgusting.

If Anyone Still Reads This

I'll be around sometime soon. I've just been hammered with some big beer stuff.