Got a Cold?

I do. I have been taking this Zicam stuff, pretty much as soon as symptoms occured which was Monday. I feel much better already, although I did take yesterday off and along with the Zicam I was taking some Tylenol Cold. The day off was nice, I watched Cold Case Files and FBI Stories on A&E all day with naps in between.

Now I am back to work. I also feel a little better about the holiday coming up. I think feeling sick plus a call from home got me all worked up about it. I am still not a fan of the whole thing though.

Tis The season

and I am already officially X-mas'd out. Maybe it was the decorations being displayed before Halloween, maybe it is the music being played 24/7 on 93.9FM and maybe it the fact that I just hate this time of the year.

But I am almost completely done with the whole thing.

I am not holly jolly.

My favorite holiday is over. you know, the one about turducken and football.

WHAT?????

I swear, I have answered more questions in the last few days for people who either don't know how to read, or don't know how to follow directions.

I feel bad (not really) for lashing out at a few people, but come on. If you ask me a dumb question I am going to give you a dumb answer. So I will share some of my vast knowledge with all of you in hopes of avoiding another dumb question.

To sell an item on eBay, you click the "Sell My Item' tab at the top of the page and follow the on screen instructions. If you don't know what something means you can click the 'Help' tab.

The extended warranty for you ipod is tracked through its serial number. You would know this if you had just followed the on-screen instructions.

I don't know how to spell his last name, but his first name is Steve. Why don't you ask him? I bet he knows.

Self checkout and 10 items or less means you scan you 10 or less items yourself, bag them yourself and pay.. that's right.. yourself. No its not that new either.

Yes, we have the next two days for the Thanksgiving Holiday. You need to come back to work at 9AM Monday November 27, 2006.

I don't work for Panasonic, so I don't know how your camera or controllers work, but I do know that your lens works and it is working just fine here in my shop.

If you have a dumb question and want a dumb answer, feel free to ask.

blah

that's about all I have today. blah.

I Need My Space

A crazy trip to Florida to meet with some NASA people. I went all the way down to re-wire 6 cables. Total time spent working, 15-17 minutes. The best part...

having this as my lunch time back-drop, with a beer in hand. (that's the Atlantic Ocean and Coco Beach in case you were wondering.)

Now its back to the doom and gloom of the Chicago November.

No Bell's For the Holidays, or ever again it seems

I just saw this in the newspaper. Well, the interweb version anyway.

Dispute taps Bell's out of the Illinois market

Move by microbrewery spotlights distributor law

By Josh Noel
Tribune staff reporter
Published November 10, 2006

A funeral is under way at bars across Chicago.

The deceased is a lovely shade of brownish orange bubbling to a fizzy head in smooth pint glasses.

The pallbearers are the thirsty souls hoisting their last rounds of Bell's beer, a stalwart on Chicago's microbrew menu for more than a decade.

The cause of death is a dispute between Bell's Brewery Inc. and its distributor, which has led the Comstock, Mich.-based brewery to stop shipping to Illinois.

Bell's still can be found at a handful of bars and liquor stores, but when the bottles and kegs run dry, one of the city's top-selling microbrews will be gone.

"This is a big blow to the average guy at the bar stool," said Michael Burton, 41, sipping one of the last pints of Bell's Two Hearted Ale to be served at Wicker Park's Handlebar Bar and Grill last week. "Without a Bell's tap handle here, it will be like a tooth missing."

The dispute spotlights the state's Beer Industry Fair Dealing Act, a 1982 law that binds beermakers to their distributors in relationships many industry observers compare with slavery. Under the law, manufacturers essentially are wedded to their distributors, able to be freed only by a buyout or convincing a judge there is sufficient cause for a separation.

Larry Bell, 48, considered one of the mavericks of the microbrew industry since he began selling beer in 1985, said his troubles began when his longtime distributor in Illinois, National Wine and Spirits Inc., sold the rights to his beer. The buyer, according to Bell and others, is Chicago Beverage Systems, one of the Midwest's largest, which includes Miller beers among its products.

Bell said he worried that Chicago Beverage would ignore most of his brews and limit its interest to the two or three that could make the most money without competing against the distributor's other beers.

Bell said he was even less impressed with Chicago Beverage after a one-hour meeting at its headquarters in the middle of August. He said officials were unfamiliar with the names of his beers and didn't know the history of his brewery.

Representatives of Chicago Beverage and National Wine and Spirits did not return several telephone calls for comment.

"They're box counters and don't have any passion for good beer," Bell said. "My choice was to be sold to [Chicago Beverage], to be sued or pull out. I saw the lesser evil as pulling out."

Experts said state beer-distribution laws were intended to protect small distributors from massive, bullying beermakers after Prohibition. But with the rise of microbrews like Bell's, and the growth of distributorships into billion-dollar businesses, many argue the law has become antiquated.

James Seff, a San Francisco lawyer, said laws are slowly shifting in favor of beer and liquor manufacturers, but that the rules still largely favor distributors.

"They're just stuck with who they sign up with," he said. "It is arguably very anti-competitive in a marketplace sense."

Bell's sales are but a drop in the bucket compared with the national brews. Bell's 57,000 annual barrels sold is infintesimal compared with Anheuser-Busch Cos.' 100 million.

Bell's decision to leave Illinois pulls him out of what he called his fourth-largest market, accounting for 11 percent of his $12 million in sales last year, and deprives beer drinkers and bar owners of what they say is one of the city's most popular microbrews, led by its summer wheat ale, Oberon.

Bell's last shipment to Illinois arrived Oct. 9. Some bars are already out, and others have enough to last through early 2007.

Bell said he has struck deals in the last several weeks with distributors in Iowa, North Carolina and Virginia/Washington, D.C. Some Chicago-area fans and bar-industry insiders hope a loophole in the state law will allow Bell's to return in a year with a new distributor. But even that could set off a court battle that Bell said he could not afford. He said he doubts he will be back in Illinois.

"We have plenty of places we can ship beer and not deal with the malarkey that's there," Bell said.

His move has become the talk in craft beer circles, and the response has varied. Ray Daniels, a past president of the Chicago Beer Society who called Two Hearted his "regular drinking beer," said Bell would have been wise to at least try to work out a peaceful solution.

"It seems like you could as least make the effort to try to work with them and see what it would be like rather than just pull out," Daniels said. "I'm admiring of Larry's accomplishments as a craft brewer." But as a consumer, he said, he's miffed.

Others say Bell has earned the right to turn his back on the Illinois market without losing loyalty, and that Chicago Beverage would have done him as wrongly as he feared.

"I think it's the coolest thing in the world," said Alex Huebner, owner Weegee's Lounge in Logan Square, lauding Bell's decision.

Local beer experts say microbrews expected to fill the void include Three Floyds of Munster, Ind., Two Brothers of suburban Warrenville and Delaware-based Dogfish Head.

Mike Roper, owner of the Hopleaf, an Andersonville bar long on microbrews, said he has avoided buying kegs from Chicago Beverage for 14 years and expects that it would have severely limited Bell's availability in Chicago.

Roper criticized National Wine and Spirits for selling Bell's rights against his wishes, and, above all, he criticized the state law.

"It's just been exposed with this situation," he said. "Most things are set up to encourage growth of business and competition. Except this. It's just not fair. If he wants to sell me a product, and I want to buy it, why can't I?"

While stewing over pints of Bell's beer at the Hopleaf's wooden bar, customers have discussed sending a petition with thousands of signatures to Springfield to convince legislators that the law needs to be re-examined, Roper said.

"I don't know how that would affect anything," he said. "I don't think it's high on Gov. Blagojevich's calendar. To change the Illinois franchise laws would be a long process."

Bell, who grew up in Park Forest and maintains a condo in Lake View, came up with an idea last week to show solidarity with his Chicago customers. Anyone presenting a valid Illinois identification at the brewery store gets a 15 percent discount on packaged beer.

"I feel bad," he said. "If they want to come get it and spread it around, I'll help 'em out."

He calls it the bootlegger's special.

----------

jbnoel@tribune.com


humm, 15% off. Anyone up for a road trip?

Blast Off

I am going BACK to NASA.

I guess, if you care.. check back later next week and I'll fill you in.

Choose Wisely

So after voting early this morning I got to wondering about the whole voting system. Why isn't 'Neither' a choice for every selection. It would act like a minus vote for both or all candidates on a particular ticket. That seems more fair than forcing me to choose between two bad candidates. Instead of one of them, or neither of them (I wrote that in for one of my choices today) they would both get one vote taken out of their total. This would reflect my frustration over poor candidates over writing in neither. To me, that is the same as not voting at all and I feel like I should have slept in that extra 1/2 hour this morning since I stayed up to see the end of the MNF Game. Just long enough to see Tyler Brayton of the Raiders knee the Seahawks tight end Jerramy Stevens right in the balls. (I can't find a good picture of it, but I am sure it is out there. I'll upload one when I find it.)

In my system you would get 1 vote per race. You could cast that vote for one or the other choices, OR use it against one or both of the choices.

EXAMPLE:

Governator's Race

Vote For G-Rod here ___
Vote For the Other Dude here ___
Vote Against G-Rod here ___
Vote Against the Other Dude here ____
Vote Against Both G-Rod and the Other Dude here ___

In this system, each vote would really count.

Vote

View 1: Tomorrow is election day. You have a choice: You can participate and do your part to shape America's future, or you can stay at home and do nothing. We encourage you to make the choice to be heard. Experience true freedom. Vote.


View 2: You may have noticed that there's one thing I don't complain about: Politicians. Everybody complains about politicians. Everybody says, "They suck". But where do people think these politicians come from? They don't fall out of the sky. They don't pass through a membrane from another reality. No, they come from American homes, American families, American schools, American churches, American businesses, and they're elected by American voters. This is the best we can do, folks. It's what our system produces: Garbage in, garbage out.

....I have solved this political dilemma in a very direct way: I don't vote. On Election Day, I stay home. I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. Now, some people like to twist that around. They say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain", but where's the logic in that? If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and they get into office and screw everything up, you are responsible for what they have done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.

I, on the other hand, who did not vote -- who did not even leave the house on Election Day -- am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess that you created.

[George Carlin]


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Here I am, wanting to be heard, wanting my choice to count, but not wanting to be responsible for the aftermath.

What to do, what to do.

My choice for Governator, Cook County Board President and a few others are poor at best.

Governator's Race.
Do I vote for the nice guy who called me Saturday morning reminding me to get out and vote, or the other dude that came of age under now convicted George Ryan? Do I make my vote based on keeping someone out of office?

Cook County Board Pres.
Do I vote for the guy because his dad did the job until he had a stroke, or the guy I think will clean up the patronage hiring and corruption even though I think he has too many extreme values?

I just don't know. Maybe I'll sleep in instead as Mr. Carlin suggests.