Really hating Sean Coffey

I've received 3 robo-political calls now from Sean Coffey. The first was to tell me that I would be receiving MORE robo calls from him. I immediately contacted his campaign and asked to be removed.

Fat chance.

I got my second and third calls, and each time asked to be removed.

Fatter chance.

I posted to his face book profile- and had my post removed (Free speech only works if you're a politician).

I've called the phone number at the bottom of the profile- and talked with "Tami - Son?" and been told she would take my name off.

We'll see.

The last time I went rounds with the Democratic party I was fed lie after lie- they said they got my name and phone number from my poll registration. Unfortunately, I have no phone number registered- which means... you guessed it- a politician or his underling lied and/or obtained via illicit manner a list of names in the Greece township.

One more phone call and then I will again show up at the Greece police station and demand to file a harassment charge against him. The politicians might have legislated a loophole under the guise of free speech (why not spam, telemarketers, and stalkers- all unwanted calls) but no one should have to endure repeated unwanted contact.

Perhaps a restraining order is a better way to go? Hrmm... any lawyers out there...

Learning to Hate West Ridge Road Liquor

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Rochester-NY/West-Ridge-Liquor/106039763651

I have always bought my wine from West Ridge Liquor- I was crushed when Century closed up shop and swore not to bring my business to them. When West Ridge Liquor opened up (it was written up in the D&C) I was excited. The first couple of weeks it was open I dropped several hundred dollars there- replenishing the supplies- but also to let them know they were welcome back in the community.

That's changed. They've changed- and not for the better.

The last few times I've been in there the staff is as helpful as ... well, I can't really describe it properly. Let's relate an incident- I was looking for a wine "Casa", Cab Sauv, which I had bought a week earlier. It wasn't anywhere near the Cabs (where it was supposed to be).

The clerk was useless- he said "I've never heard of that" and went back to doing his IM or texting. The next one said there were 20 bottles in the store, but couldn't say where. Eventually I found them on the wrong shelf- and when I brought one to the clerk he said "Oh, CASA" with the tone that implied had I just said it again he would have known exactly where it was.

Which is why it was hilarious he spent 15 minutes trying to find the unopened case that I bought.

I then spent 2 weeks waiting for the rebate that was supposed to go with the wine. When it did finally show, they kindly included the Cline Winery rebate- but the wrong dates. Several back and forth conversations with various clerks, trying to demand my rebate form to get my 30$ back. All this did was waste air time. Their final comment was "Well, I'm sorry the distributor is out of rebate forms. Sometimes they do this to limit the responses". WTF- you advertised it on your shelf... and you won't make good on your promise?

I even tried to return the wine, but they refused stating there was no returns on wine. It's a great scam, really- offer a huge rebate, 'lose the form', and then tell the customer they're stuck with their purchase.

I passed on the option to charge back the entire amount of the purchase- over 200$- as tempting as it was I was on the road too much for work with not enough time to do the paperwork and chase down managers (none of which ever seemed to be in).

Having written a letter and received no response my next step is to send one off with a return receipt. Jimmy Ren, are you listening?

Because I'm a PITA, I'm also going to use one of the contacts I have at the ABC (Alcohol Beverage Control) to see if there is anything that can be done for false advertising of prices. I'm sure I read about that somewhere.

These two incidents show a marked decline in the quality of the folks working at West Ridge Road Liquor.Thus, I can no longer recommend them as a source... and I'll probably switch to Marketview Liquor. A little further, a little pricier- but saving that 30 cents a bottle doesn't mean much when you get screwed out of 50$.

2008 Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel

Recently there has been run a rebate of 30$ on Cline wines. The 2008 and the 2007 bottles were intermixed at my store- I mistakenly grabbed a few 2008s.

Bad.

Very bad.

The first time I got a 2008 Ancient Vine Zinfandel from Cline I remarked that it tasted like the smell of dryer lint. I know that sounds odd, but there really was no way to characterize the bottle. I tried leaving it out in the air, corked, and it still didn't improve.

I aerated it. No dice.

I finally fed it to some plants.

DO NOT BUY THE 2008 ANCIENT VINE ZINFANDEL. Buy the 2007 instead.

Cline Ancient Vine Mourvedre Zinfandel - 2007

A note about vintages- each year, each winery strives to create a product that can sell based on the previous years' advantages. Each year the winery will do whatever it takes to create a seller- otherwise they've ended up with nothing but slop.

The 2007 Cline Ancient Vine Zinfandel is an excellent, delicious, smooth, tannin laden wine with blackberry and a nose so rich you'll wish to inhale it rather than sip.

Right now there is a 30$ rebate for this wine- at 12.99 a bottle it is very well priced.

BUT ONLY GET THE 2007 VINTAGE!

The 2008 is quite awful- it reeks and tastes of, for lack of a better term, dryer lint.

Jacob's Creek 2006 Shiraz (not reserve)

This wine was not to my liking. I'm not sure what was wrong with it- oh the flavors were there, but it was very harsh and just did not drink well. I ended up wasting 3/4 of the bottle. I did let it age overnight (corked) after pouring the first glasses, and the second day it was still not any better.

Interesting to note, it was $7.99 a bottle to the reserve's price of $6.99.

Skip it.

Altos Del CUCO Syrah / Temperance

I found this wine online- here
http://www.bourbonstreetwineandspirits.com/r/products/altos-del-cuco-monastrell-syrah-tempranillo-2007

Another good wine, priced at 7.99$- didn't match my steak so much, but it did actually go well with charred vegetables on the grill. Speaking of which I'll have to pick up another case or so.

ATTECA Old Vines Zinfandel 2007

ATTECA Old Vines Zin 2007

I've grown to love Zinfandel - strong flavor, heavy on the palate- sometimes overpowering, but usually worth the taste. This bottle was labeled as a deal and so I grabbed it. It was excellent- I'd rate it up with Cline Old Growth Zin- and it was 2$ cheaper too at $10.99.

Cotes Du Rhone par Kermit Lynch 2007

Cotes Du Rhone par Kermit Lynch 2007

Every time I hit the wine store I try to pick up a bottle from France- a special bottle, or one with a wine spectator review- or a name or place I recognize from my travels. I don't tend to cellar much wine (although I did find a case I forgot about- as soon as my wife allows me to have some that is) so most of the wines I grab are for immediate consumption.

This bottle was excellent. Best of all- and I don't typically do this- I finished the whole bottle in one evening. Better than that? No hangover. I don't know if it was the low sulfites or just luck, but this was an excellent wine and it went down oh-so-smooth.

I'll have to pick up a few bottles to keep around for folks that don't like reds- or are sensitive to them. In fact, I'll follow up after MAO tries some to see if she could drink it.

Priced at $7.99 - excellent value.

Castle Rock 2008 Pinot Noir

Castle Rock 2008 Pinot Noir

Castle Rock delivers another excellent wine. Opened and with no airing it was delicious, smooth, full of flavours and not a bit harsh anywhere. The bottle also kept for several days of small wine tastes as I cooked various meals.

I don't think I've ever had a bad bottle from Castle Rock- and this is no exception.

I'm skipping the usual scores as I'm in a hurry to get some posts made, but you can't go wrong here.

9.99$ - very fairly priced.

Jacob's Creek 2005 Reserve Shiraz

Jacob's Creek 2005 Reserve Shiraz

An excellent vintage from Jacob's Creek- flavors of plum and pepper (of course, I cooked pepper corn steak, so I may be biased).

When I first opened the bottle I felt it was a bit harsh on the palate but after 30 minutes of breathing it was just fine.

The wine paired well with dark chocolate- so that makes medium rare steak, potatoes, and chocolate as all acceptable pairings.

The nose is a bit short- not as aromatic as I'd hope, but the taste is made up for the lingering smooth finish.

Priced at only 6.99 this wine should be in your cellar for pulling out at short notice.

Nugan Estates Vision Riverina 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon - Australia

Nugan Estates Vision Riverina 2008 Cabernet Sauvignon - Australia

This wine is a bit hard to review for one simple reason: I know it's a fake.

Lets step back some. I make my own wine. As such and when I started I played around with loads of additives, thinking it made my wines better. They didn't, or they did, or they sometimes did and then stopped- but I tried alot of different things. I still have them around- tools to make wine better, or improve on something, etc.

One of those items is 'tannins'. Tannins can be purchased, say, from Scott Labs, and there are a couple different types. These tannins are not the same ones you find in your typical wine store- no, these are very delicious tannins and priced accordingly. A little goes a very long way.

One of these tannins, the "Grand Cru" etc was a purchase from an online pal, who kindly sold me a kg or so for use. And use I did- I fluffed out all my reds, and some whites, to the point I recognize the taste.

It's that same taste that I realized I was slugging down in this wine. The Nugan Estates 2008 Cab Sauv has the exact same taste as a wine fortified with 'fake' tannins.

Now I suppose you could have two wines with the exact same flavor- and I suppose that Nugan Estates could have the exact grapes being used to make the tannins later sold for flavoring under-ripened harvests. If that's the case, this wine still fails for the simple reason- it has nothing unique in it. The wine tastes 'fake' and forced- too sweet to the mouth.

As advertised on the bottle, it contains "Silky smoothe tannins" - just what you'd expect if you were buying your tannins by the kilo.

The Nugan Estates is priced at 12.99 - an incredibly expensive table wine for it's quality and best left on the shelf.

Rex-Goliath 47 - Shiraz - Great choice.

I've had a few other wines in the intervening days but I'm trying this one right now, so it gets reviewed.

The aroma / nose of the wine is very strong- most shiraz wines are- but this was pleasant.
The taste caught me by surprise- fairly sweet, for a red- a well balanced sweetness with a bit of black currant, blackberry- excellent mouth feel. Now, personally I am against licorice - and this wine has none, so it's even better in that regard.
The finish of the wine is very nice- lingers on the tongue and back of the throat. The aromas from the sip also are still, well, aromatic, with a final taste of dryness.

Aroma: 2
Taste: 7
Finish: 6/7

At a price of $7.99 from West Ridge Liquor this is a good choice.

:edit: The next day I opened the little less than 3/4 of a bottle to have with a steak. The wine had definitely picked up an acetic acid taste to it over night from the extra air. While no wine should be judged harshly for left unfinished, this one was a little rapid on that- I had used one of the vacuum pumps to seal it, as I do with all wines. Something to be aware of.

Tisdale Cabernet Sauvignon

I'll start off the wine review with this ... winner. At $3.99 a bottle when I walked into West Ridge Liquor I knew I wasn't going to find a strong winner, but I had hoped it might be a little flashy, perhaps a bit strong in one characteristic.

Boy was I wrong.

The shopping carts full of this wine should have been the hint, but I just didn't take it.

Scores: modified from the beer tasting, first number is 0-3 and is appearance, aroma/smell, etc. Second number is 0-9, and is taste taste taste. Third number is 0-9, and is 'finish', which could entail pretty much everything else after that. A wine too chilled might fair poorly on aroma, but then be re-tried later (which is what I do with beers as well).

Aroma: 0
Taste: 2
Finish: 2

No aroma, varietal or otherwise, to speak of. Color was lackluster in the glass.
The taste was not unpleasant but just lacked, like every other aspect, anything. It tasted as if it were a 'thin' wine- one that had had water to fineness it's fermentation (say, recover from a stuck, etc). There were no tannins to speak of.
Finish: Nothing doing. No spreading flavour, not a single smidge of varietal pepper left on the back of your tongue.

As a mulled wine this might work- but even at that price you're better off grabbing jug wines.

Opinion: Skip it.

Pregnant Again....

....

You know how they say having a kid changes your life? It does. Want to know what changes it more? Getting ready to have a second one :)

Evelyn is now almost 17 months old. It's been a wild roller coaster of a ride- and all of it good (except for getting tubes).

As we prepare to welcome her little brother / sister into the world (we don't know yet) we're struggling with finding a new house, clearing out all the junk, and all the stuff you'd expect when your family grows.

In addition for the last several months we've been facing layoffs at work. About a week ago we found out I'm OK, for now- even though there has been repeated notes from our President about 'phases'. Oh well, can't live in fear your whole life (although lately it sure feels like that).

Expect to see more posts as time permits (which hasn't been alot). I'm going to start posting wine photos and reviews- sorry Liz can't drink it, but at least I can and spare her the agony of bad bottles of wine.

http://testingpupilsexperience.mybrute.com

One problem down, one now begins.

Today I had a conversation with the principal of the local HS. I've been the 'lead' mentor of a FIRST Robotics team there- team 1591. In 5 years the program still has not become self-sustained. This past year was so incredibly bad I lost all but one mentor- they became so disgusted with the way things (weren't) happening that they felt (rightly so) it was easier to go back to work and get paid than to take vacation.

See, we don't get paid for this- we donate all our time without any reimbursement from the company. The company puts in 11K, of which I try (every year) to hold a $1000 back to purchase supplies for the coming year, only to find out my budget has been 'robbed'... thus enticing me to spend recklessly instead of conservatively.

Back to my conversation with the principal: Mr. Snyder asked some tough questions that I was just not ready to answer honestly- but I felt horrible when he asked if we had some sort of 'performance requirement'. My lord I felt sick to my stomach- if he thought we were backing out because the kids didn't make it to the semi finals- that would go completely against the entire concept of FIRST.

As it was he told me he was planning some radical changes for this coming year in the program. I smiled as the program desperately needs more teachers, more funding, and more commitment from the students involved.

I would love to see us sponsor Team 1591 again- and perhaps having a year where their funding is lost will finally force them to step up to the plate and do their own work. If not, then I expect that the money, if I end up being able to transfer it elsewhere, will be better spent on programs with more enthusiastic folks.

As I left a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I didn't have to listen to students being called stupid (even if they were). I didn't have to sit and want to scream anymore at them for refusing to work. I didn't have to stare at the clock and realize that I was once again going to be late getting home because there was something only I was able to do.

Just for grins I started to write a list of ways to destroy a team- here is what I've seen done and what irks me:

1) Never write a letter thanking your sponsor. Just take the money and never acknowledge it.
2) Never invite the president of the company to come see the team (skip the lead mentor- have students do it).
3) Never get your name published in a paper because you don't feel like self advertising.
4) Don't do your 'homework'- when you're told to get a ChiefDelphi account and find something, don't do it.
5) Sent out short, cryptic emails the day of or the day before a meeting changing something. Make sure that either the date, the time, or the day of the week is wrong.
6) Refuse to meet off-season for practice.
7) Talk about setting goals but never do it.
8) Never thank your mentors. Nothing says you don't give a care than blowing them off.
9) Never put your mentors in for awards at the competitions- that's why they have those little award tables.
10) Horse around in the shop.
11) Wrap cable ties around someone's neck and try and tighten them up- that way if they do get hurt the mentors will probably be sued out of house and home.
12) Refuse to make any effort to bring other groups inside your school into the program. After all, what do art, mathematics, physics, business classes, and computer programming have to do with FIRST?
13) Don't put together a business plan year after year.
14) Get some additional sponsors and promise them space on the tshirts, but don't tell the primary sponsor about it.
15) Don't finalize a tshirt design until 3 days before the competition.
16) Don't show up to meetings.
17) Only meet 3x a week for the first 4 weeks and then try and start building a chassis on week 5.

Thats all for now.

Pop! Goes the baby!

While I was cleaning up downstairs I hear my wife say "Jason, I need help". Concerned since I've never heard her say that phrase before in regards to our child I ran up stairs and was greeted with a very confused looking baby, a crib dripping with milk, cereal, and oatmeal, floors covered with it, rocker, ... well, let's just say everything.

Poor girl.

Everything gets wiped up and she gets settled down- wasn't crying, wasn't upset... probably just wondered where her dinner went and why she was so hungry.

Momma fed her again in her room instead of ours just in case she got sick again- no need in washing two sets of sheets in one night.

Photos coming- seems to take forever.

It's a busy busy life, for us!

With time quickly passing me by I realized that, once again, I'd managed to make it another week without posting anything. Again. For what, 5.5 months now?

So in an effort to prevent that I'm going to set an assignment for photos. Now unfortunately I can not post a photo every day as it simply takes too much time to unload them from the camera, even with the fully automated systems I've put in place, but at least I should be able to get a few more up.

My daughter, Evelyn, now has learned to roll over. It's a great feeling and she loves doing it- except at night when she gets stuck and starts to scream. At all hours. Every hour. It's as if we never figured out how to sleep through the night again.

Now we're hoping that within a few days she'll either learn to sleep on her belly with her butt in the air until she stops crying or I'll move into a soundproofed office and sleep elsewhere. Either one is an acceptable outcome- I slept today (Sunday) from ? til 1 pm something- I was so exhausted over the past two nights- even MORE so than when we first brought her home.

She's a giggle fest with lots of smiles and laughter and absolutely no trouble, save for regular pooping which worries her parents more than her. Prune juice passes/fixes everything.

OK back to dinner. I have 5 minutes while baby and momma take a bath until I have to come in and scrub them down.

I'm BACK!

We've had our daughter. I'm back...

Attic

This weekend has been spent ripping out old insulation and installing new insulation. I now have effective R58 to R98 in the baby's room and over the lights- and I've also shut down the air intrusion that would happen around them because of the way the old insulation has sagged.

Seth cut, I imitated Darth Vader, and the insulation just fuzzed apart. Very long, very tiring, very itchy work.

It's mostly done except for some spots around the bathroom fans- I'm going to add a cellulose insulation there to keep air intrusion down and then toss on a few more pieces. Then I'll put up a shelving unit around the outside that should hold a couple dozen crates (next to see what will fit up the attic).

Joys :)