Claude_Verret

For many people fandom is solely determined by your present geographic location. They literally cannot comprehend how someone can't root for the "home" team. I often tell people around here that if it were that easy to do, wouldn't I have dropped the Buffalo sports teams long ago after all the heartache they've bestowed upon me?

I've already been enjoying that sound for two weeks.

IWSI is in.

Yep mid-June to late August is no fun down here. Labor Day weekend was brutally fuggy.

Khalil Mack is a player. Nice showing against the big boys.

Yes, keep us posted. I played the original fantasy sports game Rotisserie baseball back in the mid 80's (there's a great ESPN 30 for 30 episode on Rotisserie if you get a chance). We calculated all of our stats by hand from the Sporting News box scores. I haven't been involved in any fantasy leagues for about a decade now, so it might be time to jump back in.

Buffalo's own Willie Nile and his latest spectacular album. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT3MFnOxNZo

Idiotic parents at my kids school morning carpool drop off. There is a very orderly system to drop the kids off in the morning and depending on the time you get there to drop off, it can take as little as 3 but no more than 8-10 minutes before you are out of the lot and on your way. Last year there was a small group of parents who would routinely circumvent the car pool line that goes around the perimeter of the lot by pulling into the closer one way parking lane, pulling up all the way to the front, dropping the kids off and then either backing all the way up the lane or trying to do a 3 pt turn to exit. The principal sent out many emails last year asking parents to stop doing this. So school starts this week and they have put up cones at the top of that lot to prevent it, and naturally people who used that lot correctly complained so the principal sent out another email explaining he had to do it due to the unsafe actions of a small group of parents. So what do I see earlier in the week? A parent pulling through the cones, and doing exactly what they have been asked numerous times to stop. There is nothing more aggravating than people who don't believe the rules apply to them and that their time is more important than others.

I've made some pumpkin beers before for fall parties and I always added at minimum some canned pumpkin to the mash so I could legitimately call it a pumpkin beer. You're right though, the pumpkin itself doesn't add much besides body and color. It's all about the spice. The watermelon beer is pretty ok actually as fruit beers go, the watermelon is kind of in the background and doesn't hit you over the head like some of the other fruit beers like blueberry, raspberry and apricot that are out there.

21st Amendment's Brew Free or Die IPA is a highly rated beer, but I've had hit or miss luck with it. A couple cans I've had were undrinkable.

My wife loved this beer when we were out west a few years ago, so being a good husband I cloned it for her. I just brewed an American wheat and put some watermelon in the secondary. It turned out great if these types of beers are your thing, but the problem is they really aren't my thing and my wife isn't exactly a huge beer drinker. So this damn beer sat taking up one of my precious taps for months. I finally gave up with a few gallons still left and I pitched it.

And the thing of it is, most of the pumpkin beers don't actually contain any pumpkin whatsoever, just pumpkin pie spice.

Sam Adams Octoberfest was already out when I was in Chicago two weeks ago. That's actually a pretty good one. I'm very disappointed in New Belgium's Fall release...a friggin pumpkin beer. The last two fall releases were Hoptober and Red Hoptober, two absolutely fantastic beers, so why the shift to do the gimmicky pumpkin beer like everyone else? Very un-New Belgium like and very disappointing.

I'll be at the home opener too, but going to that game every year now comes in a distant second to the real highlight of the weekend....the Saturday night pub crawl through the streets of my youth with friends.

I agree Agreed. I'm not looking for anyone to be able to tell me SRM, IBU's, cohumulone content, and esters present in any given beer. But with a basic cicerone certification, or "Certified Beer Server", your server can at least have the very basic knowledge covered. I wouldn't be looking for this from servers at Applebees, but at the tap room by my house that has over 100 beers on it's menu I would.

Agree with most of the previous posts. As I've said to some friends, even without all the bad Bills news over the past few days was there any reason at all to believe that the upcoming season was going to end any differently than the previous 13?

Ray Daniels the man behind cicerone, is at the NHC every year and I have met him a few times. I love the idea of the cicerone program. There is nothing more annoying than going to a beer-centric bar or restaurant and having your server be without a clue about beer beyond dark vs. light or hoppy vs. not.

Knock Brady out before the first quarter ends and the Bills have a shot at not getting completely embarrassed.

Third one of his career, and with all the recent scrutiny the league has been under in regard to long term concussion effects, I can definitely see this being the end of the line for Kolb.

@ByTimGraham: Source tells me Bills concerned Kevin Kolb's concussion may be career-ending and they're proceeding with that in mind. Leinart and now trading for this guy would seem to support that Kolb's career may be done. ProFootballTalk ‏@ProFootballTalk 23s Bills trade with Lions for QB Thaddeus Lewis, per league source.

Fair enough. If we are among the 10%, I'll take the credit / blame.

You can't blame me. I'm only working with seasonal flu (H1N1, H3N2 and B). While these can and have caused pandemics (except B), it's the H5N1 and H7N9 and the like that are more worrisome from a truly catastrophic standpoint. Those are biosafety level 3, and we don't have those lab facilities available at my site.

Nice. I know the feeling. I've been attempting to propagate one particular antiviral resistant strain of flu for three weeks with no luck. I tried changing my infection media when I inoculated my cells on Wednesday, so I looked under the scope this morning and.... CPE all over the flask! I was beginning to worry I had lost my touch.

Well he did promise to put Americans back to work.

NC has something similar with the yearly vehicle tax that's based on the value of the car. When I went to originally register our cars down here I got nailed with an initial highway tax or some other nonsense when I went to get my plates. It was like $250 and they don't take credit cards. Wtf? So I had to go to the bank and get cash to pay the friggin' DMV.