The Big Smoke, Foxwoods

I went to Foxwoods in Connecticut this weekend for the Big Smoke. I had a blast. The venue at Foxwoods was a huge ball room and there were nearly 30 cigar makers represented as well as at least another dozen (if not more) liquor vendors. They had every kind of cigar you could imagine and a variety of beverages -- vodka, whiskey, tequilla, rum and brandy. Needless to say, I drank too much but I didn't have to drive anywhere (thanks to my wife!) and so it was all good. There were probably about 800 people and the nice thing about a show like this is the built in camaraderie --  everyone there is a cigar smoker and so you now you have something to talk about while you are waiting online for a cigar or sitting at a table enjoying some food. And of course, on top of the common ground of cigars you usually find other things in common to talk about.

The show is a little pricey -- $240 -- but I came home with 24 cigars (including the 3 I smoked on that night) and those cigars are probably worth something between $100 - $120 and I drank a lot of the "free" liquor so I feel confident I enjoyed another $100 worth of alcohol.

As I smoke the cigars from the show I will post to the blog about the cigar and my thoughts on how it tasted, smoked, etc.

Late Thoughts on My Wedding

A friend of mine recently got married and I was speaking with her about her experience with her wedding and it prompted me to write this blog post.

When my wife and I first got engaged we originally thought we could pull off planning the wedding in about four months and then felt that was totally overwhelming and so we pushed it out a year from our original date so we had 16 months. That was much less stressful! Although I think the "perfect" amount of time would have been around 9 - 10 months.

We originally planned to invite about 50 people but that number slowly grew closer to 75. We ended up with about 70 people attending because the invite listed was tweaked and some people RSVP'ed "+1" even though we didn't invite them with a guest. Fortunately no one showed up with a guest (or multiple guests!) that we did not know about ahead of time. We also sent out "backup" invites to people we didn't originally invite but decided we could once we had a certain number of "No"s from our first set of invites.

On some level I wish we had invited fewer people - but I think in the end we wouldn't have gotten to spend any more time with our guests; the wedding was no stop movement from one thing to the next including a pass through the dining room to say hello to everyone.

Although we didn't have any issues with family fights, we did know there were people coming to the wedding whose point of views on life (politics, religion, etc.) wouldn't mesh and so we made sure to seat them as far away from each other as possible.

Finally, we knew going in we wouldn't be able to control everything on the big day and there were things that went wrong, like the programs arriving to the ceremony late and so everyone was sitting around wondering why we hadn't started. Or our dog being fixated on the horses and not wanting to walk down the isle! But all in all it was a great day and we had lots of fun both planning and participating in the wedding.

Wall Street Journal Wine

My wife and I signed up a while ago for the Wall Street Journal Wine Club (http://www.wsjwine.com). So far we've been quite pleased with the wines we have received. Its really a great deal - $140 for a case of wine, which comes out to less than $12 a bottle. We've really liked most of the wines we've received and its a nice opportunity to try out wines we would not otherwise be exposed too. Prior to joining this wine club we were buying wine "as needed" from the local liquor store - and I fully believe in supporting local retail stores - but we were paying anywhere from $14 - $18 a bottle. Whats nice about the wine club as well is that we get a case every three months and that's about how long it takes us to go  through 12 bottles of wine. Of course, during certain times of the year we drink more wine, especially around the holidays when we have friends over, etc. but overall its a great value and a good way to enjoy new wines regularly.

Great Cigar Deal

I recently got an e-mail from Cigars International with a great promotional offer - a box of 20 Pioneer Valley maduros for $24.99 plus $5.00 S & H. According to the website this box of 20 usually sells for $110 plus shipping so the offer was 20 cigars for $1.50 a stick including shipping as opposed to $5.50 a stick plus shipping.

I'm usually a little hesitant to buy "cheap" cigars because I figure they are cheap for a reason -- either they just aren't very good cigars and / or they have defects and won't draft well, etc. However, this deal literally was too good to pass up and so I took the plunge.

I received the cigars yesterday and smoked one last night. I was quite pleasantly surprised at what a nice smooth cigar I had bought! The cigars same in a beautiful wooden box that I will use for something else after the cigars are gone. They cigars also came wrapped in a thin cedar wrapper as well as the more typical plastic wrap. They smelled great out of the box and when I lit the first one it drafted nicely and lit quite easily. I smoked the cigar slowly while enjoying a movie and a good glass of red wine. The taste of the cigar was smooth and consistent throughout enabling me to smoke it down to a nub.

I highly recommend these cigars -- even at $5.50 a stick! 

A Perfect Game

I'm sure any of you who read this blog and follow sports - or follow baseball at least, are aware that Dallas Braden of the Oakland A's pitched a perfect game yesterday against the Tampa Bay Rays. I was trying to explain to my non-baseball fan wife how amazing and rare a perfect game is -- but she didn't seem to get it. Even when I told her that, in the history of Major League Baseball, there have been only 19 perfect games. Of course, as a long suffering Mets fan, I'm waiting for a Mets pitcher to throw a no-hitter! The Mets franchise has played over 7500 games without a no hitter. But several ex-Met pitchers have thrown no-hitters after leaving the Mets: Nolan Ryan, Dwight Gooden, David Cone, Tom Seaver. I'm sure there are others that I'm forgetting.

We Won!

I play on a company softball team and we had our first game yesterday and we won, 13-6. I'm very excited because I played in a touch football league this past winter and my team went 1-12 and our only win was a forfeit so playing a sport - ANY sport and getting a good old fashion "W" is very exciting. I went 0-4 but made some good defensive plays so I feel that I contributed well to our team's victory and I look forward to a fun softball season!

Old School Baseball

There is a great article on ESPN.COM today regarding the "unwritten rules" of baseball and how those rules are enforced. (http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=crasnick_jerry&page=starting9/100505). I'm not that old but I'm a fan of old school baseball. When guys stand and watch a home run they should get plunked the next time they bat. Guys like Barry Bonds totally annoyed me because he wore all this gear on his arms when he batted. That stuff should be outlawed. If guys don't want to get hurt at the plate then don't crowd the plate (Jeff Bagwell!) and don't admire your home runs (Bonds, among many others!) Of course in today's game guys will charge the mound which is BS too. If you get hit, and you think its intentional, chances are you or one of your teammates did something to provoke it. If so, deal with it like a man. And if not, your team will have a chance to retaliate and then things should end.

The All-In-One Device I Want

I really think the iPad is a cool looking device. There are a few drawbacks with the iPad though, at least for me. First, it doesn't have a USB connection. I am a PC user not a Mac user and I have a large music collection I want to transfer to my music playing device. With the iPad I'm not sure how I would be able to do that - if at all. I'm certainly not buying from iTunes all the music I already own on CD form. I guess that I could but the "dock" to go with the iPad but I shouldn't need to purchase  an accessory like that to connect the device to my PC.Secondly, storage on the iPad is an issue (or would be if I could put all my music on it.) I have almost 40gb of MP3s and the cost of a 64gb iPad is prohibitive. (Currently $699 for the 64gb non-3G version). Third, I don't like the "locked" nature of the Apple hardware. I'm a developer, a tinkerer, etc. I want to be able to play around with my device - add apps I build to it, etc. without "jail breaking" and thus void the warranty. Its my device - I want to do what I want with it! And along those lines, I want to see the entire web - the lack of Flash really bothers me as, again, I feel like Apple is telling me whats "good" or "bad". Let me decide! Finally, I wish the 3G version could be used as a cell phone -- that way the device would be a true "all in one" for me - cell phone, MP3 player, eBook reader, light web surfing. Perfect.. except its not so. And so my search continues for "my" perfect all-in-one device.

I was excited for a time about the Touch Book from Always Innovating but there stated "two month" order fulfillment time appears to be more like five months based on  comments on their online message boards. The proposed HP Slate interested me a bit, but it was vaporware and now has been scraped. Even so, I wasn't excited about a device running any version of Windows. I really would like a device running Android or some version of Linux with touch screen capabilities. Another product I've just learned about is the WePad by a German company but that is not yet available and is even more expensive than the iPad.

One of these days I hope to find my perfect "All In One" device but if anyone out there has a device they like let me know about it!

Welcome to My Blog

Hi! Thanks for tuning in. I have stopped and started various blogs over the past few years but this time I hope to finally post regularly. The thing is, however, WHAT to post about. A friend suggested that I pick a topic I really enjoy talking and learning about and write about that. But there are many topics that could apply -- sports would be the top of the list, but I feel as though there are tons of sports blogs out there. Computers -- and computer programming -- is another topic of interest as that is what I do for a living. However, again, that is a topic of which there seems to be a million blogs about. Then there is photography, but I haven't been as much into that as I once was; writing, which is partly why I've decided to once again start a blog; cooking, wine and cigars are also topics of interest. So what I've decided to do instead is just write about ALL the stuff that interests me and I'll tag my posts appropriately.