Colorado Trip 2013: Days One and Two

Near the end of last month, my girlfriend Sara and I flew to Colorado for my now annual visit with my sister April and her family. I previously posted about my trips around Labor Day last year and back in April of 2011. Colorado is well known as one of the best states for beer. My previous two Colorado-related posts were heavy on beer consumption, but this trip topped both of those in that regard. So much so in fact, that I am going to break up this trip into several more-easily-digestible posts.

On the first day, I was happy to discover that my sister has a sample pack in her refrigerator from Left Hand Brewing Company. I tried a bottle of the Stranger American Pale Ale which was new to me and a bottle of their flagship Sawtooth Ale which was already on my Beer List. Left Hand's brewery is located in Longmont, Colorado.

On the afternoon of the second day of our visit, Sara, April and I had ourselves a little outing. We started at Avery Brewing Company's tap room in Boulder. I decided to have four IPA tasters. Their standard IPA is on the Beer List in almost every imaginable form. The other three samples, Simcoe/Chinook IPA, Summer’s Day IPA, and duganA IPA were all specials of the tap room. It was interesting to taste the subtle and not-so-subtle differences between the four flavors of IPA.

The next stop on our second day beer outing was Twelve Degree Brewing (or 12° Brewing per their logo) in Louisville, Colorado. They seemed to be a relatively new microbrewery. They focus almost exclusively on Belgian-style beers which I appreciate. The three of us sampled six of their own brews plus two from guest taps. The six of their beers that we tried were the Soleil Saison which is a Belgian farmhouse ale, Walter's White which is a which is a Belgian-style white ale, Brabant Tripel, Foxx Rougge, Sorach which was another farmhouse ale, and Sorach L'Orange which was brewed with oranges. The two guest brews were Powder Daze Pale (now Powder Run Pale) from Echo Brewing in Frederick, Colorado and Hop Savant from the Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project out of Denver.

Our next stop before getting some ice cream was Lucky Pie Pizza & Taphouse which is also in Lewisville. In addition to some great food including their hand-made pizzas, I elected to go with their Colorado beer sampler. The sampler included Tivoli Helles Lager. Tivoli Brewing Company is located in Denver. The sampler also included Hoppy Bock Lager from New Belgium Brewing which is located in Fort Collins, Colorado (and soon to be Asheville, North Carolina) and Moirai IPA from FATE Brewing Company in Boulder.

After enjoying some ice cream and before heading back to April's house, we dropped in at Gravity Brewing which was down the street and across the railroad tracks. While there, I had an Ante Meridiem Espresso Stout and a Schwag Session Ale.

I will cover the rest of my Colorado trip in a subsequent post (or posts). However, I did want to mention that Boulder and the surrounding areas were hit hard by devastating flooding a couple of weeks after Sara and I were safely back home in North Carolina. I am happy to report that my sister, her family and their house were all spared any harm from the flooding.

Review: Secret Pilgrim

Secret Pilgrim by John le Carré

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This book is eighth and final of John le Carré's works featuring his most well-known character, George Smiley. I have read five of the previous seven novels, and of those previous works, I think this one is most similar to The Looking Glass War in the fact that Smiley is not the main character but plays an ancillary role. The main character is a fellow spy by the name of Ned who due to the outcome of the Russia House as come to serve as the headmaster of the training academy for new agents. Ned has invited the now-retired Smiley to visit the school and address the new group of recruits.

This book does not read like a single coherent novel but rather like a group of episodic short stories or chronological vignettes. With the background of Smiley speaking to the agents-in-training, Ned reminisces about his own career starting with his first adventure as a young intelligence officer. Each episode is interesting own its own and helps develop Ned into a full-featured character. I suppose the aim of the overall novel is to highlight the themes of the Smiley series as it brings the series to a close.


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Another Great Idea

Last Wednesday, the National Football League announced changes to the Pro Bowl starting this season. There will be multiple changes including eliminating kickoffs and adding two-minute warnings at the end of the first and third quarters. The most prominent change is dropping the long-established NFC and AFC affiliations. Instead of selecting players based on conference, the players for the two teams will be selected by a fantasy-type draft. This change is similar to my suggestion for the Pro Bowl as part of my proposal for improving the NFL and is similar to the format adopted by the NHL several years ago for its All-Star Game.

To be honest, my suggested change to the Pro Bowl was necessitated by my proposal for dropping the AFC and NFC. I am hopeful that the actual changes to the Pro Bowl will foreshadow a future elimination of the two historical conferences. Perhaps changing the Pro Bowl format is just the first step in a major reorganization of the league.

I previously never got around to fleshing out the details of the last component of my NFL proposal with addressed managing the broadcast rights for NFL games, To finally finish up my NFL proposal, I am going to write about this last part (for now at least). Below is a summary of the first six points followed by the seventh.

NFL Proposal Summary

1. Eliminating Conferences: Drop the NFC and AFC and change from the eight four-team divisions to four eight-team divisions by merging the divisions with the same direction names
2. Realignment: Rotate Baltimore, Indianapolis and Miami to form more geographically-correct divisions
3. Relocation: Not a fixed proposal, but the suggested divisional alignment would be better able to handle future relocation of teams
4. Regular Season Schedule: Teams would have 16- or 17-game schedules composed of two games versus each divisional opponent plus two or three games against teams from other divisions
5. Playoff Tournament: Fixed-bracket postseason tournament with semifinal winners continuing to receive the George Halas and Lamar Hunt Trophies
6. Pro Bowl: Players for the two Pro Bowl teams are selected from a pre-established pool in a televised fantasy-style draft - Done

7. Television Schedule

The current contacts with the various television networks would have to be adapted to handle the first part of my NFL proposal that eliminates the AFC and NFC. The two contracts for broadcasting NFL games on Sundays at 1 PM and 4:30 PM are based around the two conferences. The Fox Broadcasting Company currently owns the rights to televise NFC games while CBS has the rights to the AFC games. For inter-conference games, the broadcast rights are based on conference of the visiting team. There are separate television contracts for the time slot on Thursdays at 8:30 PM (currently held by the NFL Network), Sundays at 8:30 PM (currently held by NBC), and Mondays at 8:30 PM (currently held by ESPN).

Under my plan, the networks would basically buy the rights to the currently established time slots. The networks would also be allocated a certain number of points for each season. Using these pools of points, there would be an auction for the television rights to each regular-season game. I think there would probably have to be a separate auction to establish the broadcast schedule for postseason games.

In regards to broadcast scheduling, I would also establish a rule that teams located in the Mountain and Pacific Time Zones could not be scheduled for regular season games starting at one o'clock Eastern. I do not think scheduling West Coast teams for early kickoffs is fair for the players traveling across the country or the fans of those teams. Unfortunately, there would have to be an exception to this rule for the playoffs since there are a limited number of playoff games and my tournament format forces teams to travel across country.

The Searchers

I want to begin by promising my mostly imaginary readers that this post will not be a book review from Goodreads. I have had some free time recently, so I have been able to finish a few books that I had been reading plus had plenty of time to write reviews for them. My three most recent posts were book reviews which makes four straight going back to March and five out of the last six going back to February. Instead of a book review, I am going to discuss a few topics somewhat related to career.

I was contacted recently by a friend I had not seen in a few years. He was the primary organizer of our friendly neighborhood get-togethers. I had thought that he had gotten a new job, and he and his family had moved somewhere out west. Instead, it seems that the job offer fell through, the family had not moved, and he has been busy getting his own business off the ground. He was previously a recruiter for various companies. Now, he is trying his hand as a career consultant. He is also working on a book. He asked me to stop by his office for a conversation. I readily agreed but mostly because his new venture is headquartered in the offices behind his sister-in-law's and her husband's new brewery.

The visit went well. I am glad that he is still in the area, and we discussed getting the get-togethers restarted. Those have fallen off significantly since he stopped participating. Unfortunately, I was never quite clear on his intentions for me. He obviously was looking for assistance with his new business from several different angles. Specifically what he was looking for from me was never quite clear. He mentioned technical help with the company although I assume on a volunteer basis. He was also discretely looking for investors. (However, he has been not-so-discretely searching for funding via the online site Fundly.) Of course, I am also a potential client for his career services and a customer for his book. In the end, I just enjoyed the conversation and the free beer.

In other news, my company has recently gone through a reorganization which included some layoffs. Several people that I know were affected including three in my group. Some of the affected people I know were older, so they were able to take early-retirement. I was switched to another department, but at the moment, my job is safe. In fact, a few months back, I was approached about an open position in a different group under a manager I know pretty well. I interviewed with that manager, was offered the position, and accepted. However, my transition was blocked by the manger of my new department. While you would think being needed that much would be a good thing, I do not think that is the case here. My recent annual rating was only average. I had discussions about a promotion with both my previous and potential managers, but my current manager has not been receptive to that idea. However, I did get a decent raise which helped somewhat salve my disgruntlement.

I also ran into one of my old managers at a recent chapter meeting of my particular professional organization. I have always been friendly with this guy. At our previous company, he and I played on a softball team together. His son and daughter also stepped up to play a few games for the team when we needed some extra players. I started called him "bossman" in the softball field and eventually in the office. He organized outings to hockey games. Unfortunately, I learned that he had just lost his job and was now looking for a new position.

Which brings us to the topic covered during that particular chapter meeting. The presentation just so happened to be from a career counselor. I paid rapt attention and took notes. I am sharing some of his career tips covering résumé-writing and interviewing below.

Résumé

• Your résumé should be in a readable font such as 11 point Times New Roman
• Your name and email address should be at the top of each page on your résumé
• Have a professional summary instead of an objective statement
• Research the company to know what they do and what they are looking for
• Instead of just a résumé, make the document a proposal presenting solutions 
• Include a list of skills specific to the job posting to which you are responding
• Address every key word in the description from the job posting
• Your résumé should be limited to two pages with all the fluff removed
• Do not list your membership in organizations that are not related to the job posting

Interview

• Be well-groomed with a professional-looking haircut, trimmed fingernails and shined shoes
• Again, do some research in order to be knowledge about the company
• Do not under-dress or significantly overdress for the interview
• Dress a step above how current employees at your potential position in the company dress
• Answer the "Tell me about yourself" inquiry with a professional response that addresses solutions to the job posting
• Have prepared questions for the interviewer such as "How does this position contribute to the overall success of the company?"

The speaker was a retired lieutenant colonel in the United States Army, so some of his tips such as the shined shoes reflect that experience. However, he also had experience in the private sector, and some of this tips such as not overdressing the part reflect that.

Review: Smoke and Mirrors

Smoke and Mirrors by Neil Gaiman

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I has been has been quite a long time since I read Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere, Stardust, and American Gods. In fact, it was several years before I joined Goodreads. However, I remember thoroughly enjoying all three of those novels. (I also thought the movie version of Stardust was great.) I do have to admit that I have not read any of his graphic novels though.

Perhaps it is the length of time that has elapsed or perhaps it is just the prudish American in me, but I do not remember his novels being particularly disturbing or having a heavy reference to sex. With many of the stories and poems in this book, it almost seems that the author is just trying to be shocking for the sake of being shocking. Many of the works either focus on sex directly or relate tangentially and usually in an overly creepy manner. Some other selections might not have concerned sex per se but still managed to relate to genitalia with the male type seemingly more referenced than female. While I really do not think of myself as particularly prudish, all this just did not work for me. However, I did find the various works readable, and almost all of them were thought-provoking which I very much did appreciate.


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