Head Slapper of the Week

In the National Football League, practice (aka "training camp") is beginning.  Teams spend the first couple weeks of practice on a college campus eating and sleeping football.  However, these are pro athletes who tend to have much free time for other activities.  One of those activities is watching television.  Now I recall that college campuses usually have common areas were folks without televisions and/or cable could go and watch television.  


However, many folks, especially pro athletes, want to be able to choose their own channels and play DVDs with their own televisions.  One such player is DJ Moore, starting nickel back for the Chicago Bears.  Moore, figuring out that he forgot to bring a television for his three week "training camp" decided to use social media to address this situation.  So here's what he sent through his Twitter account:

"Is anyone willing to let me borrow there small tv for camp. Bourbonnais il"

I guess we should be relieved that multi-million dollar football players were able to get their needs met (hint: read the links for details).  Mr. Moore morale surely will be boosted.  Three Head Slaps 

P.S. I returned to Duluth today and saw my car tab renewal notice.  The hefty $215 fee makes me think I should be getting a second job to pay the bill.  Well, I guess the Golden Inn takes up plenty of my time already.

Bits and Food

This has been another busy week for me at work and catching up with folks.  Time seems to go quite fast these days.  Currently, I’m working on building up muscle to continue to work off body fat, which has decreased by more than 50 percent since December.  To that end, I’ve plucked down significant investment with a personal trainer to “pump me up.”  He’s a nice fellow, a former football player at North Dakota State.  Keeps telling me about the time NDSU beat the Gophers in the Brewster error (no it’s not a typo).  He’s getting me on a good program twice a week that I hope provides some discernable results.  If nothing else, it’s provided me some discernable soreness.

However, according to my Medifast counselors orders, I should take the liberty to have an "alternative” food item once in awhile.   So to that end, I have taken the liberty to eat a few times the last few weeks.  I have primarily gone to Asian restaurants, for better or worse, during that time period.  Here’s a list of places where I have eaten the past couple weeks:

Biryani (Edina)

Chapati (Northfield)

China Pagoda (Chaska)

I have to rank my experiences in this order. 

Chapati is a familiar spot that I have traveled to since I was a student at Carleton.  I remember going there as a student with my roommate and smashing up the lunch buffet.  But now it’s a “high class” affair for me as I travel down there to order off the menu (or let the “assertive” ones in my dinner party order for me).  The food is still above average, especially for rural Minnesota Asian fare (I’ve been to all 87 counties).  It rate this the top experience.

Biryani was a suggestion provided by my former intern and current tennis partner.  The cuisine there was respectable and the portion sizes quite large.  However, the other member of my dinner party (who dines with me once a month), suggested that we stop going to Asian restaurants for awhile and try fare from some other continent, perhaps South America.  Suggestions are welcomed.

China Pagoda is a place I decided to go since it was close to a fellow NE Minnesota colleague that I attended the Carlson school.  The food is was what you would expect from MN Chinese restaurant (no “spice,” very conventional) and I thought the prices were a bit high, but reasonable compared to the Twin Cities Metro area.  Of course, who am I to decide what’s a good Chinese restaurant?  Not that I’m prideful or anything like that regarding that subject.

I hear there’s a good malt shop in the area though.  Perhaps I’ll try that before the summer is out.

All in all, I guess I should branch out a bit in my culinary choices.

A Trip to Beloit

Yesterday I took a 5 hour road trip to Beloit, Wisconsin to attend a Beloit Snappers baseball game and catch up with an old Carleton professor of mine.  It was an easy drive considering the weather was perfect and it was smooth freeway jaunt via the Prius.  The actual time there was very enjoyable indeed.

I left after breakfast at 9:45 and after a short lunch break, arrived at Beloit College around 3:15.

I arrived on campus and spend about 35 minutes walking around common pedestrian areas of campus.  Here’s a map for you:

 

I then headed to Middle College, the first building built on campus in 1847, to visit the my old Carleton economics professor, Scott Bierman.  Scott taught price theory, game theory and public sector economics at Carleton and he led the seminar that I spent in Cambridge, England that I participated in 2001.  However, Scott has gone on the bigger and better things, for he is currently the President of Beloit College.

When I met with Scott, he graciously accepted me like it was 10 years ago.  We spoke a few minutes in his office and then he invited me for a walk around campus with him and his spouse.  I said sure thing.  So we left the office and to the President’s House where we met his spouse, who also graciously accepted me like it was 10 years ago.   Starting with the President’s House, Scott provided a full scale tour of campus.  Here’s a video that Beloit College released that sampled many of the buildings that Scott showed me.  I take a disclaimer for the contents.

On this tour, Scott provided me some interesting nuggets about Beloit College, such as:

• Four buildings on campus are registered as a National Register of Historical Places.

• The first president of Carleton College, James Woodward Strong, was a Beloit College alum.

• They will be the first “selective” D-III school to have a lacrosse team this fall.

• The academic side and the residential sides of campus are completely separate.

• The student body is about 1100 students and the comprehensive fee (tuition, room, board) is about $46K, which makes my final year at Carleton at $30K look like a bargain by comparison (its $56K now).

• Beloit College is switching over to Bon Appetit for its food service next year. 

I really enjoyed my time catching up with Scott.  I also enjoyed the fact that despite being a man fully engrossed in higher education, he still as down to earth and has the same appreciation of markets that I remembered he had as a professor.

The Snappers baseball game didn’t have much to it.  Here’s the lineup I saw (which was changed right before the game):

The Snappers are the full-season A ball minor league affiliate of the Twins.  They have two players that Twins fans need to pay attention to: Miguel Sano and Eddie Rosario.  Here’s a post from an earlier trip that references them.

The game itself wasn’t too much to write home about.  The Snappers lost to the Lansing Lugnuts (2-0).  Snappers starting pitcher David Hurlbut had a great outing (8 strikeouts and 5 hits allowed in 8 innings), but the offense looked awful. Sano looked really bad swinging the bat Rosario did not play.  Not a great night capper.

So as I returned to the Twin Cities today, I thought it was a weekend well spent.

Head Slapper of the Week

Sometimes I think folks have too much time on their hands, especially with their pets.  Three Head Slaps.

Myopic Bits and Pieces

A couple myopic observations:

•     Earlier this evening I had my weekly visit with my Medifast counselor and was told that I’m very healthy condition. I’m down about 45 pounds since I began the diet and have lowered my body fat to around 16 percent, a 50 percent decrease.  Now I’m currently working with a personal trainer to build more muscle and gain a couple pounds back in a healthy matter.  Like I said earlier, these are just a result of commitment to improve my health and the help of the Almighty.   Hopefully I’ll be able to maintain that commitment in the days ahead.

• I was preparing for a trip this weekend to Beloit, WI to attend a minor league baseball game when I contemplated the decision whether or not to rent a car for the trip or drive my Prius.  As I researched this issue, I ran across an old February 2011 Consumer Reports article that discussed the Prius’ performance after 200K.  Well, here are some excerpts of that article:

Hybrids like the Toyota Prius may save money on fuel, but car shoppers have long wondered how those batteries hold up over the long run. In fact, we’re often asked, “When do the batteries need to be replaced, and how much will they cost?” These questions are even more important now that the Prius has been on the market for 10 years--there are many used models on the market. But is it risky to buy a used hybrid?

Early adopters of the hybrids took a risk with the new technology. The lifetime of the batteries and the cost to replace them wasn’t clear. After all, when it comes to standard car batteries, most don’t last more than a few years. And anyone who has a laptop that is a few years old is most likely aware how significantly battery life can degrade with age.

Based on data from over 36,000 Toyota Prius hybrids in our annual survey, we find that the Prius has outstanding reliability and low ownership costs. But we wanted to know if the effectiveness of the battery degraded over the long run. So we hooked up a 2002 Toyota Prius with nearly 208,000 miles on the clock to our testing instruments and compared the results to the nearly identical 2001 Prius we tested 10 years ago.

Conclusion: We found very little difference in performance when we tested fuel economy and acceleration.

So apparently after 200K the Prius still runs like new.  As one who has a Prius with over 55K on it, that’s good to hear.

• Finally, I ran across this clip of the President recently:

I just have to say that folks like my father, who spent 80-90 hours a week running his own small businesses, would have had an interesting reaction to such a comment.  It's telling how life experiences shape an individual's views, isn't it?

Head Slapper of the Week

he National Ocean Service (NOS) translates science, tools, and services into action, to address threats to coastal areas such as climate change, population growth, port congestion, and contaminants in the environment, all working towards healthy coasts and healthy economies.  I'm so glad that to that end this government agency investigates such burning issues as "Are Mermaids Real?"  Indeed, after much toil and resources expended on this burning topic, the NOS has the following to share:

"No evidence of aquatic humanoids has ever been found."

I have to say knowing these factoids makes me feel so much better about how my tax dollars are being spent.  Three and a Half Head Slaps