Odds on Favs

The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger then their democratic state itself. That in it's essence is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group. - FDR

I see Madison has been voted one of the top 10 cool places for 20-29 year olds.   Why you ask? Well because of the normal jobs and so forth you have the "quirky, progressive and hyper-literate urban culture".    What?  hyper-literate urban culture?  I'm not actually sure what that is.  Overstimulated knowledge of literature?
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I visited the new brewery in Columbus, right across the street from the F&M Bank (sucks to be you "who's") .  They have submitted all the paper work, have the liqueur license but the brewers license will take some time.  On average it's taking 3 months to get the license as the government is understaffed and are forbidden to hire more (smaller government and all that).

They finally got their building permit and construction is now going at full tilt.  I stopped in and took a photo of the hectic, almost crazed level of construction.

 
It won't be long now until Hyper Street . . . oops  Hydro Street Brewery will be serving it's first pint of craft beer.
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Check out this panorama of Lake Geneva I stitched together.

Lake Geneva - about 150 degrees. 

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I just went out to look at my rain gauge and found a beautiful Monarch Butterfly trapped in it.  I put him on some "warm" rocks.   We had 0.23 inches of horizontal rain yesterday. Sustained 30mpg winds last night about midnight. The house was a rockin.

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Brewers - I think one of the biggest reason the Brewers will win the series against AZ is the bullpen.  KRod could be an MVP on the team.  Not that he has pitched THAT well but just having him has solidified the bullpen.  It's like he was the missing piece and all others now have their place.

The big question is will we see Slumpy McGoo or Hairston at 3B.  It's sad when Counsell is totally out hitting Slumpy in September.

Let's look at both teams and see how they match up. I'll use  RC27 for hitting  (Runs Created per 27 outs) for the 2nd half of the year.

C Lucroy  3.59 Montero 6.06
1B Fielder  7.95  Goldschmidtz 5.52
2B Weeks 5.11 Hill 6.56
SS Betencourt 4.00 Bloomquest  4.01
3B Slumpy McGoo 3.23 Roberts 4.98
LF Braun  9.37 Parra 6.11
CF - Tony Plush  5.00 Young 4.08
RF - Hart 6.85 Upton 7.23

So the Brewers average 5.64 runs per game. The D'Backs 5.57

Pitching staffs the 2nd half  Brewers have an ERA 3.08  D'Backs 3.48

Brewers win series 3-1 taking both at home and one on the road.

If you are wondering about Miller Park - this year Miller Park was 10th out of 30 for giving up the long ball. 6th in hits,  8th in doubles and 8th in triples and overall 10th in runs.  Chase Field in Arizona is 5th in runs 10th in HRs, 5th in Hits, 5th in doubles and 6th in triples.

Hold on to your hats - two hitters parks. 

Game one the Brewers are -139 to win  and  large favorites to win the series at -170. Brewers are +800 to with the World Series while the Phillies are +180

Phillies are -220 to with their 1st game and  -290 to beat St. Louis!
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Have a great weekend and let's go for the trifecta!  Brewers, Badgers, Packers. And yea - I'm rooting for the Phillies!  I hate St. Louis more then Philadelphia!

Here is an oddity - who had the BEST pitching outing of the year in the Majors?    Chris Capuano!  9 innings, 2 hits, no runs no walks and 13 Ks and 122 pitches.  WHO KNEW!! 

rod

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Whats a little dent anyway.

I was a little off with my prediction.  If you remember two weeks ago I predicted this

Brewers  95 - 67  .586   ----
Cards      88 - 74  .543     7 games behind!

and in reality the final outcome was

Brewers 96-66
Cards     90-72  6 games behind

I was close.

ESPN will be in Madison for the Game of the Day and tickets are at their all time highest price EVER (which is a redundant sentence) for the game.  it is expected that there will be 40,000 Nebraska fans in Madison NOT going to the game. Madison will be a very crazy city Saturday.  I bet there will be puke, or shall I say "tactical chunder" everywhere on State Street. 
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Being a fashionista I love watching the new fashions that are being pushed on woman and I believe they totally suck.  Have you seen what Boston Store, and all the other stores are pushing on us?  Do they think we live in New York?  6 inch spike heels and just really weird things no one in Wisconsin or the Midwest would ever wear.  Let's see how those heels hold up when it's -10 icy with 3 foot drifts.
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Check out this panorama of the International Boat Show that I stitched together.  It's too big for this blog so I had to upload it to it's one page.  Originally it 2 by 14 feet. Click on the image to enlarge it.

Rods Pano

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hmmmmmm - every night I remember things I need to say and every morning I have forgotten them.  Seems I need to take notes at night! 

One thing you need to watch today is the wind - it's going to get REALLY windy  gusts up to 50.  So this morning I went out and took some shots of the Sweet Autumn Clematis.  These shots look a little fuzzy on this site  hmmmm.

Remember we thought it was dead as it did not poke it's head out of the ground until the 1st week of June.  Elwood and I had to make a small adjustment as we have 2 more. One is on the lattice work and if we went with the original plan we would not be able to get down the stairs.

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Check this out

 

Friend of mine ordered a specially made Manual, Black, Camaro (90% of Camaro's are Automatics).  Took two months to get it.  He got a call that it was FINALLY ready and was being shipped to him.  Only a three hour trip.  He get's it and it seems the delivery truck forgot that there was a chain loose and for three hours that chain was banging against the car.   Those are nicks and dents from the chain.

I'm not sure if that little piece of plastic helped any.  Yea - he is a little ticked off.

Columbus is the news.

Seems a American Funding Company, here in Cbus made like 3 million calls to the no-call list.  OOPS!!  so it needs to pay Wisconsin $175,000.

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That's all I got - I'll take notes tonight when I become brilliant

Rod

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How Full Tilt Poker Screwed Poker Players Thanks to Republicans

I actually went to my old work yesterday.  They hired me back for like 1 day a week or whatever.  So yesterday was the day I was trying to remember my old phone number and get passwords and remember to plug in LAN connections.   One day a week ain't bad.


In fact it seems all the people Walker tried to get rid of are now double dipping.  Schools are hiring back teachers because they can not find replacements and so forth. So instead of hiring new people to replace the old people, there are not enough trained new people. 


BTW - did you see that it seems many of the jobs Walker said he created are actually OUTSIDE the State of Wisconsin?  It's almost like he was not telling the truth or something.


But you can't get totally mad at Republicans (of course you can but follow along).  11 years ago Republicans were all anal about online poker because the Christian right Tea Partiers (before they were formally called Tea Party) believed poker was evil.


The Republicans wanted to shut down all online poker because it was not regulated.  After passing a bill which basically DID shut it down online poker (and took $10,000 a year out of my pocket).  They made it illegal for banks to accept poker money . . . like a bank could tell it was poker money.  So what happened was that Neteller, a very very large  AND SAFE bank in England was shut down to Americans.


So with only a few places still open to Americans we were forced to leave our money IN the online sites instead of transferring the money to safety.  But recently it was getting harder to get money INTO the online sites (I had not tried to get money INTO a site since 2001 . . didn't have to it was always coming out).


WELL - It seems one major online site.  Full Tilt WAS CROOKED.  It was a giant ponzi scheme that the Republicans forced poker players to partake in.


The problem started with getting money INTO a poker room. Full Tilt could not get accept money into their accounts, HOWEVER, it wanted business, so it just SAID the money was in the accounts so people could play.


So Full Tilt had hundreds of millions of dollars in virtual money that people were playing with.  When someone wanted to cash out they would us OTHER peoples money. Except all of a sudden everyone wanted their money.  $300 million is owed to American players.  Meanwhile the people running the company were pulling out tens of millions of dollars a month.  In fact $444 million were paid to owners and partners while payouts were not being processed.



Lawyers say it was not a ponzi scheme . . . it was just bad management.  PokerStars the rivel was having the same problem getting money from US players but instead of saying "yea we got it trust us" they said - "sorry no money no playing"


The whole problem as with all ponzi schemes is what happens when everybody wants their money at once.


So while Republicans sort of had the right idea saying money COULD be stolen, they totally screwed Americans with how they attempted to fix the problem.  They actually CREATED the problem by closing all of the SAFE places to store money. 


And these guys think they have a better idea on financials?
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Columbus had another 0.42 inches of rain yesterday and combined with the 0.72 inches the day before we are pretty soaked. Madison has had twice that amount. This LOW system has been siting over Wisconsin for about a week now and if you have been watching, a 50 wide 200 mile slash down the middle of Wisconsin has been some of the coldest weather in America.

Also of note is "weather forecast slippage". This is a really hard part of the year for forecasting. The battle between good and evil, summer and winter has begun. The week long predictions for the most part are pretty good but there has been nothing to push the low away. There is a cold front not even on the west coast yet that is now suppose to push it away. We will see.
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Ticket for the Nebraska/Wisconsin game are going for $400 a ticket on ebay. Did playing high school teams and technical schools really help UW prepare for Nebraska? This is a totally different animal. The College football world will be in Madison this weekend.  The game of the week in America.

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Last weekend I was at the International Wooden Boat Show. This was the first time the show has ever been in Wisconsin and WOW, were there some amazing boats on Lake Geneva. Most were built in the 30s and 40.  I walked around all day Saturday snapping photos and now have the task of preparing all 300 for viewing. 

 

The boat above was the first boat to ever go 100mph. It was built in the early 30s   Huge engines.  The cool thing here is that the owner was able to fire up it's engines from this dock and have it on the trailer in 42 seconds.  He demonstrated it.  You can't tell from this shot but it's 33 feet long!

In fact that was one of the odd things.  As he left the dock and turned left so we could see the broad side people gasped at it's length.  They built boats very long back then.  At the end of the day there was a boat parade with over 130 antique boats!  AWESOME!!!

You can see more at Rod Melotte dot com,  I'll be slowly putting more and more shots out there.  

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Watched Pan Am last night - excellent show - not like anything else on TV and I liked it.   Check it out or record it for something different.

Have a great day today!

Rod

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I LIKE TV!!

This weekend I'm attending the International Boat Show in Lake Geneva BUT DON'T WORRY - I'll be in front of the TV for the Packers!!

I've been reading a lot about Nick Collins injury - scary stuff. One report said "If you look at the replay tape carefully, you will see a slight bend in Collins' neck when he impacts Stewart. That type of involuntary motion to the neck, delivered by an impact at speed, can cause a narrowing of the spinal canal and permanently increase the risk of paralysis from a recurring injury".

I doubt we will ever see Nick Collins play football again which . . for HIM this is a good thing. The average life expectancy of an NFL player is 55 years. Collins is very very lucky he was not paralyzed.

Looking at the injury list is crazy with Packer/former Packers/Badger players

Lee Evans
Aaron Kampman (again)
Al Harris
Jim Leonhard
Josh Bidwell

Before people get all worried about the Packer defense. ALL the NFL teams are having trouble. This looks like Canadian football. Green Bay is ranked 20th in Defense efficiency right behind Minnesota after 2 games. The Bears are 17th. BUT the Packers are #2 on offense and actually #1 in rushing offense. #1 you ask? The reason is that when the Packers rush they ALWAYS achieve their goal. It's not quantity yard but quality yards.

The Bears? #29 on offense.
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TV - I LIKE TV.

2 Broke Girls is pretty good with some peppy repartee' and an interesting story.

If you have a chance it's a nice comedy. I liked Unforgettable

New Girl - I have always liked Zooey Deschanel but for some reason the show did not make it for me - she was good and I'll have to watch episode #2 as pilots (not piglets) are always a little over the topish with acting.

I have not see Person of Interest or Terra Nova yet. 

Of course the BIG news on TV is that this is the last week for All My Children and it's been interesting to see how they are all coming together and saying good bye to people that have been in our homes for 40 years!

One last TV thing - the rock group Cake. What a bunch of ass holes they are. I saw them on the Audience Channel and I tell ya - the lead singer is just a POS in my book.
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Have a great day.

Rod
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HARRRRRR!!

HARRRR - It's international  talk like a pirate day and as Cap'n Slappy says:

Thar be only three pirate jokes in the world. The biggest one is the one that ends with someone usin' "Arrr" in the punchline. Oh, sure, thar be plenty o' these, but they're all the same damn joke.

"What's the pirate movie rated? - Arrr!"
"What kind o' socks does a pirate wear? - Arrrrgyle!"
"What's the problem with the way a pirate speaks? - Arrrrticulation!"

The second joke is the one wear the pirate walks into the bar with a ships wheel attached to the front o' his trousers. The bartender asks, "What the hell is that ships wheel for?" The pirate says, "I don't know, but it's drivin' me nuts!"  ARRRRRRR! 


And finally. A little boy is trick or treatin' on Halloween by himself. He is dressed as a pirate. At one house, a friendly man asks him, "Where are your buccaneers?" The little boy responds, "On either side o' me 'buccan' head!"   ARRRRRRR!!   


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Then thar be Micheal Vick! He got slapped last night in the noggon and he be out with a concussion! Oddly no one is really sad about this.

Sad are the Packer Corner backs by giving up 800 yards this year so far. No worries - it's early.BUT - this is an extreme year for the NFL - look at Brady who is putting up video game numbers!
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The weather was good for  half the weekend and Saturday we went on the Down Syndrome walk.  Here is a shot of Caydence being herself.  She had a great time even though she is getting over a cold.

A funny thing happened to Josh.  He applied for Channel 15's Biggest Loser contest and got in (even though he is not 700 pounds or anything)

WELL - as told by him they are at the initial weight-in and get to meet their personal trainers.  The first 4 contestants meet their trainers and they are buff guys that shake hands and ask normal questions.  Then it's time for Josh's trainer.

Out steps this HUGE RIPPED WILD EYED AMAZON WOMAN.  She looks him in the eye and says  YOU, ME, WE ARE GOING TO WIN THIS THING, I'M GOING TO MAKE YOU HURT AND WHEN WE'RE DONE WORKING OUT TWO HOURS A DAY I'M GOING TO TAKE YOU GROCERY SHOPPING AND IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW TO COOK THE FOOD I TELL YOU TO EAT I'LL TEACH YOU!

all said in a somewhat intimidating scary way.

Let's just say something about his work outs - his REST period, is running on a treadmill (seriously).

And BTW - I guess there is no food pyramid anymore?   It's not a "Food Plate".  this is the new "Food Pyramid".    

Notice there is no spoon or knife and I can not find where the cake would go.
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Nice amount of rain yesterday and this morning.  Columbus received 0.51 inches of good soaking rain.  In another weird thing - we are at 59 degrees for 18 straight hours.

But here is so real news - the first prediction for snowfall has arrived.  We are heading into the 2nd straight year of La Niña and the NOAA prediction, based on previous results from back to back La Niña's, is that we will have below average snow fall.

Here are the last six winters.

2005 - 47.9 inches
2006 - 55.1
2007 - 101.4
2008 - 72.0
2009 - 51.6
2010 - 73.1
2011 - 43.8
Average - 50.9

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I was in Milwaukee with Karl and Jody last Thursday and took a bunch of photos,  here is one of a lion in front of the Bradley Foundation house.

also a statue shot which I loved because of what was behind it.

We all know who this is right?

And finally a Milwaukee street scene. 

In my pools I have two pools where "in the long run" it would be nice for the Giants to lose tonight - but in one pool I need the Giants to win so I can win the week.  

Have a great day! 

Rod

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Brewers - win going away!!

THAT was close - I wrote a small blog yesterday before I took off to Milwaukee - I had made a comment about the laundromat burning down (at least that was the report I received) but now I hear a DRYER caught fire and it was extinguished with a fire extinguisher. That is MUCH different the the "laundromat is engulfed in flames".

We have a Cuisinart coffee maker which started spilling over the sides (I think I told you about this once but it's the prolog to another thought). I guess you have to soak the TOP of the carafe in warm soapy water every so often to clean it - ANYWAY before I found the simple fix we purchased an $8 drip coffee maker and while reading the instructions I was perplexed. Then I realized that THEY consider a cup of coffee to be like 6 ounces!! SIX OUNCES?? Why even bother!!
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HEY - Survivor looked pretty good but I dislike Ozzie and like Coach much better. Also notice that Jeff Probts is now the Executive Producer. Why is this a big deal you say? Because in the last two Survivor's he has been the Executive Producer and in tribal council's he is allowed to steer the tribes in a certain direction.

For instance - this week John Cochran was on the block to be kicked out and Jeff steered conversations away from him and to Semhar, who was eventually kicked out. And I was happy. I noticed this a few times in the last season. Normally Jeff was pretty fair but all of a sudden I saw a change. THEN I noticed that he had become the Executive Producer. AHH HA!
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As I said I went to Milwaukee with Jody and Karl to see their condo. I took my camera (of course) and snapped away! I've never really walked around Milwaukee that much. I mean really explore. Seriously, what a nice city, at least in the downtown district (don't go north of 30th street).

So many people smiled at me an said high. Two older woman saw me and as I passed with my camera tripod and so forth, one said "nice equipment" I said "thanks" and then a few seconds later I said "OH, you mean my camera!". They ignored me.

It was cool for sure but in the sun it felt good. HOWEVER, Columbus was very very close to frost the other night! This would ALMOST have been a record for how soon we got frost. The record was 9/13 and on 9/14 there were patches of frost but not everywhere. We got to 34 degrees.

Back in Milwaukee the condo was nice. The condo/hotel had impressionistic prints all over in muted colors so I created the below shot.  I don't know if colors in that era were muted OR they faded over time . . . whatever.

I had an hour to walk around by myself and then Jody and Karl showed me around a bunch.  Had lunch at the Water Street Brewery.  Here is the inside of the brewery.

As I said I liked downtown Milwaukee.  I'm not going to put a lot of photos here because they can be copied to easily.  If you want to see them LIKE Melotte Photo Imagery on Facebook OR email me to get on my email list as I send out photos periodically.

In baseball the GOOD news is that Detroit lost and FINALLY Jim Leyland can change his underwear!  He was not changing until they lost.  TWELVE DAYS MAN!!!

The Brewers - here is the rest of the schedule for the Brewers WITH the opposing teams winning PCT

Cinci .493
Cinci .493
Cinci .493  should win 1.73 games
Cubs  .433
Cubs  .433
Cubs  .433 should win 1.92 games
Florida .447
Florida .447
Florida .447 should win 1.88 games
Pitts  .453
Pitts  .453
Pitts  .453  should win 1.86 games

So the Brewers SHOULD win 7.39 games of their next 12 games - the Magic Number is 8

The Cards play

Philly  .655
Philly  .655
Philly  .655
Philly  .655 should win 1.22 games
NYMets  .473
NYMets  .473
NYMets  .473 should win 1.71 games
Cubs  .433
Cubs  .433
Cubs  .433 should win 1.83 games
Hou .342
Hou .342
Hou .342  should win 2.15 games


 So the cards SHOULD win 6.91 of the next 13 games

Final Standings

Brewers  95 - 67  .586   ----
Cards      88 - 74  .543     7 games behind!

BTW - K-Rod - shut the f*ck up!!  I guess you care MORE about YOU then winning!  Would you rather play on a 4th place team as a closer or a first place team as a set-up!!   DUDE - leave - you are a free agent and you just told everybody you don't care about the team - just yourself!

Rod  

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Survivor

Few things before I get going to Madison.

SURVIVOR - season Premier is tonight on CBS - 8:00 featuring Coach and Ozzy - WHOO HOO!  Also tonight is Big Brother 13 finale'.

A few photos of the The Pagami Creek fire in NE Minn (Boundary Waters) thanks to efudd.

 

 

Brewers - WHEW - Magic number is now 8 after Braun's walk off HR!!   WHOO HOO!!

I have fallen in love with Black IPA's  YUMMO!!!!    New Holland and Dogzilla make outstanding Black IPAs.  New Glarus has a new one, it's good but . . . .not as good as the much more expensive ones mentioned.

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I was doing my spread sheet for the art fair to see what sold and saw that there was a completely different set of prints sold.  Of the 19 different prints only ONE was the same as what sold in Fitchburg - weird.

OK - sorry - gotta run.

Cheers
Rod

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