John Gutzmer’s jeans club for men

John Gutzmer’s jeans club for men

John and Cara on the LasVegas strip

08/06/07 QuadCities golf tournament
Drew: Is that what you’re wearing
John: Yeah,
Drew: You know it’s like 100 degrees out
John: And…
Drew: And, we will be walking around a golf course…
And, you’re wearing jeans.
John: I’m good.

You see, John Gutzmer’s jeans club for men is not just for guys who like jeans… Hey who doesn’t. It’s more of a state of mind. Is it hot outside? Yes. Do you want to look like a little girl? Uh, no. And from these humble beginnings began John Gutzmer’s Jean’s club for men.

It is not that I have anything against shorts, they defiantly have their place, (bicycling, running, swimming), it is just that I would prefer to wear jeans. Why?.. Well I am glad you asked.

John at the palace at Versailes

Comfort
Is there anything more comfortable than a well worn pair of Jeans. Apparently the more you wear them the better they conform to your body. Almost all of the jeans I wear have even have a worn spot that holds my wallet at a certain angle in my pants. (apparently that is where it goes

John ice skating on the lake

Utility
You want to crawl around under your house, or climb a tree. You are going to want some jeans. Putting on a roof, or walking around town… jeans. They are good for almost all tasks. They protect your skin from sharp things, and they encapsulate your legs with a soft delightful sheath of cotton... What more could you want.

John and the youth in Juarez Mexico on a 110 deg day

Durability
I have had some jeans that have had exceptionally long lives. I have thought about sending some of them back to Levi for breeding purposes. What other apparel could you use to crawl around on gravel, then shake the dust off and expect to wear the next day.

John and Cara at the City Museam on the 4th of July

Consistency
I don’t try on jeans any more. I haven’t for 15 years. I do still shop around for deals, but I know what I am looking for… 34 32 550. And when I find them at the price I want, I usually buy several pairs. Girls may spend hours and days looking for pants and skirts, but guys have a number then can find in on the shelf and walk up to the register, no trying on, no hassle, find the number and check out.

John at the Venice Naval Museam

Yes. There is a downside. Sometimes it is hot, and other times it is really hot, and jeans are not known for their cool airiness. So what is one to do? Suck it up. Sure it is summer and it is 110 degrees with the sun beating down on you, but most of your body heat is concentrated around your head and your chest. So throw on a t-shirt and sweat it out. It will be worth it when your friends come up and ask if you are hot, and you can snidely reply “Yeah, I am…. ;) ”

Paper or Plastic

Paper or Plastic

It’s yet another one of life’s great decisions. The plastic bag that is worse for the environment (not true), or the paper bag made from our nations forests (also not true). This is the age old question that many struggle with at the checkout line, if you have not switched to the trendy reusable bag, which still may not be any better for the environment, espicially, if it sits in the garage like our 4 or 5 do.

My personal preference is for the cheap plastic bags. They are stronger, more moisture resistant and easier to hold onto than those ridiculous paper bags. In fact if they start bagging my groceries w/ paper I will usually make them redo it with plastic. Just for the fact that I like to pick up all 4 or 5 bags at the same time, which you simply cannot do with the paper bags. People should probably get the reusable bags and make a point to take them to the store, but that is not really what this blog is about.

We do make every effort to conserve. We reuse as many of the bags as possible as trashcan liners or numerous other misc uses, and what we don’t reuse we usually recycle at the bin in the super market. So we have the reuse and recycle going, but what really pisses me off is trying to reduce the number we end up with.

This is what I ended up coming home with the other day while I was not watching the bagger. When I got home I was very upset as I started putting stuff away, and realized that not only did numerous bags only have 1 item in them, but some of them were even double bagged. For the 30 some grocery items we had 20 some bags. Granted the bagger may not have been the brightest crayon in the box, but come on. This is why I prefer the self checkout.

Items that received their own individual bag (from top, left): single pack of flour tortillas, pre bagged oranges, half gallon of OJ, 12 eggs, half gallon of milk, half gallon of icecream, single pack of corn tortillas, quart of margerine, prebagged apples.

In future outings I will try to be more proactive to reduce the number of bags we end up with. If I would have noticed this before they started I would have consolidated some of these myself. I guess I will reuse one of the plastic bags to bring its 50 friends back to be recycled.

Oh and one more bright spot for plastic bags, if you get a bag that feels a little rougher than the normal bag it is probably made of bioplastic, which is made from corn or soybeans. These are much more biodegradable and use substantially less hydrocarbons to produce and deliver. And if the shipping peanuts that came with your latest online purchase are tan and crush between your fingers those are bioplastic as well.

other info:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plastic_bag
• http://www.durobag.com/news/permalink/2007/6/26/104028.html
• http://www.plasticsindustry.org/files/about/fbf/myths+facts_grocerybags.pdf
• http://finance.yahoo.com/family-home/article/105486/10-Things-to-Scratch-From-Your-Worry-List
• http://www.reason.org/commentaries/smithheisters_20080417.shtml
• http://www.triplepundit.com/pages/reusable-bag-or.php

Billboards I Like to Argue With 2

Billboards I Like to Argue With 2

On my way home I came across this gem while stopped at a light. At first this seemed like a reasonable request for a PSA type billboard. Yes, yes I will stand up to an abuser. Who does he think he is anyway, abusing some poor kid? But, as I continued to sit at the very unnecessary light at the corner of Bradley and County Fair, this got to bothering me.

First of all why the hell does this guy look so smug? Now I’m kind of pissed. Someone really needs to put this abuser in his place. And another thing, why is he black? What exactly are they implying here? I have half a mind to call up this “CASA” and giving them a piece of my mind. This billboard is a racist attack on the community it is so clearly trying to serve. I have not seen any of these ads with a smug white guy anywhere else around town.

Just before I got out of my car and started yelling at the sign the light finally turned green. “Thank god, now I don’t have to look at this inflammatory propaganda anymore” I thought as I pulled away slowly… Oh, nevermind

aAlgorithm for finding the bar at large gathering using Newton’s method

Algorithm for finding the bar at a large gathering using Newton’s method

Figure 1 Typical sample of people flaunting delightful beverages, while others remain beveragless.

Last year at the artists against AIDS benefit, I was enjoying the weird art, but was somewhat frustrated that I could not seem to figure out where the bar was, despite my best efforts. About ready to give up I decided to use my 20 years of schooling to come up with a robust method of finding a resource in a large group of people. What follows is the derivation and algorithm.

In order for this to work we must make some assumptions about the group.

Primary to this algorithm is that the group be sufficiently large and uniform to make observations on a sample of the group and apply gradients those samples. Depending on the type of room and the type of resource being sought the minimum total group size could vary from 30 to 70, but typically if it is a group of less that 50 the room size would be small enough that more direct methods could be utilized.

Second, we must assume that the members of the group are moving around the area. If it is obvious that some or all of the members are stationary for an extended period of time then those individuals should be excluded from the calculations. This is often the case where there are tables that people are sitting at.

Finally, the participants have to be, on average, consuming the resource in question at a fairly constant rate. This does not need to be constant over the course of the event, but must be continuous over the time period in question. Thus people will start with a full drink and slowly consume it over 20-40 min. The more variance in the rate of consumption the larger the sample size of the group will need to be. Large deviances from the norm like shots should be identified and discarded.

Figure 2 Vectors measuring the movement of alcoholic beverages in a confined space. The length and direction of the vectors is proportional to the velocity vector multiplied by the percentage of remaining beverage.

Once these criteria have been met the algorithm can be implemented.
First take a survey of all of the individuals in a certain radius from your location. Scale the individual’s movement vectors with the quantity of their drinks and average to obtain a single vector. This vector will show the average movement of the alcohol near you.

Figure 3 Initial sample group and the coresponding vector indicating the negative of the mean alcohol movement in the group.

With this invaluable piece of information we can derive several things. The first and most important is the direction of the bar which is in the opposite of the mean alcohol vector (MAV[1]). One could just start walking tat direction and see where they end, up, but would have substantially more success by moving in the direction opposite the mean alcohol vector, but only 30% of the length of the room, or a suitable distance depending on circumstances.

Figure 4 Second survey at location indicated by MAV[1], including MAV[2]

Once at the new location a new survey can be taken yielding a second mean alcohol vector MAV[2]. Furthermore by comparing the overall glass levels at both locations one may extrapolate the location where the glass levels would be full, and presumably this would also be the location where you would also be able to obtain a full glass.

Figure 5 Second survey point with the inclusion of a vector of the average of MAV[1] and MAV[2] weighted by the mean percentage of remaining beverage at each site.

Figure 6 Predicted location of bar by extrapolating the weighted mean vector for the location where beverage levels will reach 100%. ie. If you find where peoples drinks are full you will fin the bar.

In the extensive testing conducted by the author, this method has typically worked in as little as a single iteration and as many as 4. This is most useful for items with a known maximum and minimum such as beverages, but can also be used to locate cheese trays, chocolate fountains, or any one of a number of other items.

Figure 7 The results of the search method.

Special thanks to Rob Raguet-Schofield for providing the initial figure of randomized vectors, without which none of this would have been possible. Nothe that these figures are meant as a tool for explanation and may not be to scale. Please feel free to point out any questionable methods or overwhelming dorkyness in the comments section.

Blago-Cake

Blago-Cake

I was very excited to hear on the news today that Blagojevich got arrested yesterday, and to celebrate I decided to make a cake for Cara and the teachers whose pensions are no longer in danger of being stolen. Clearly I went with an AB Classic (Yellow Cake), which was slightly more difficult than it should have been.

First weigh all of the ingredients.

Cream together and weigh batter into each pan.
Top the layers.Make the icing w/ a ridiculous amount of sugarApply to the layersTada

Now you have your very own Blago-Cake.

The hardest part was clearly making the hamburgler-esque Blagojevich.

Here is the full recipe if you want to try your own.

Hunting FAQ

Hunting FAQ

Ok, I apologize for the lackluster live hunting blog. After the first couple of posts I started having hardware problems and issues uploading pictures. That combined with the fact that I Shot a deer pretty early and then had to start backfilling, with no pictures, which all in all made for a bland dry blog (like so many turkeys this week). So to make it up to you I have “John’s hunting FAQ” Filled with questions mostly from my coworkers

Can I see your gun?
Certainly, I would love to let you know how it works and discuss gun safety and operation, sometime guys from work go out and shoot sporting clays, but not while people are drinking which is when I am always asked.

How long do you have to wait to get a deer?
It depends on a lot of things, mostly luck. The prime times to get a deer are around sunrise and sunset. Usually you hit the tree stand just before sunrise and stay until 10:30 or 11 in the morning, then head back out after 2 in the afternoon and stay till dark. So 1-6, 4 hour chunks depending mostly on luck. The past 2 years I have gotten a deer in the morning both times then went back out. The previous year I sat out for 3 days and did not see anything.

What do you do while you are waiting for a deer?
Aside from live blogging and enjoying the majesty of nature, pretty much the same thing I would do sitting in a doctors office for 4 hours. Bubble breaker on my phone, read some magazines, keep a watch out for deer.

How hard is it to see the deer?
It depends, if things are still they tend to blend into the background. However, the human brain has the amazing ability to spot and focus on moving things. It is all part of our innate carnivorous breeding, along with our sharp teeth, eyes on the front of our head and relatively simple digestive system. It is not that hard to see a single leaf falling at 100Yds, but it is very difficult to find a doofus in a red and white hat in a crowded picture.

Is it cold?
Yes. Some days more than others, but as long as you are sitting still 20ft up in a tree in Nov you will want a jacket. A couple of year ago I figured out that if you really layer up on your core then your body will not get as much vaso-constriction in your extremities, and your fingers and toes will not be nearly as cold. But you will also want to bundle those up, and your head.

Depending on how cold it is ranging between 0F and the mid 50s there are also hand and foot warmers available that contain powered iron and an oxidizer that reacts slowly and releases a small amount of heat. These are awesome if they are inside something insulated and they can get some oxygen. The ones in my water proof boots usually heat up quick then slow down as the O2 is depleted.

What safety stuff do you have?
Surprisingly shooting accidents are not the biggest cause of injury during hunting season. The #1 cause of deaths is heart attack, presumably from out of shape middle aged men getting a small amount of exercise. Number 2 is falling out of a tree. To combat this some hunters wear a harness that can then be tied to the tree. If the tree falls down you probably have other problems. Often hunters use a rope to hoist their gun into the tree to avoid dropping it or falling while climbing the ladder. I usually have a small first aid kit as well. And the most important thing is not to be stupid, which is sometimes difficult for all of us.

How old do you have to be?
Apparently, 10. This year one of the neighbors sons came along and shot a deer. He seemed kind of young to be out in the woods with a shotgun, but apparently he took the “hunters safety course”, so more power to him. I think he is required to be supervised by a parent, at least he should be.

Do the Lead bullets cause lead poisoning?
Hunting deer with a shotgun is not like hunting birds with a shotgun. Birds you want a dispersion of BB sized pellets since it is unlikely that you could shoot a moving bird with a single bullet. For deer the bird shot would not really harm them all that much, much like shooting them with a bb gun several times. Buck shot is available which is a larger BB but still does not have much range. Most hunters use a single “slug” that is the size of the gun and a rifled barrel that will give the slug some range. Still the range is limited compared to a rifle, which is why only shotguns are allowed in most flat states.

The conventional wisdom is that since the bullets pass through the animal or are pulled out in processing that the metallic lead does not have enough time to permeate into the meat. However, an article one of my friends recently sent me had evidence that small fragments of lead slugs may break off particularly if they hit any bone, and that those fragments could end up in ground meat, react with the meat. This year I have started using solid Copper slugs, just in case. More foul hunters are using steel shot instead of lead.

Doesn’t all of that orange make you stand out to the deer?
Like me deer do not see colors, also they are not very observant. They do have a good sense of smell and hearing. So it is more important that you are quiet and don’t smell good or bad.

So is that like free meat?
Hardly!
Depending on how you calculate it and how far you have to travel and how much time you take off of work, it can cost anywhere from ground round to top sirloin. But golfers spend about as much for a weekend of hitting balls, and all they do not end up with a shiny deer at the end. If one lived where they were hunting and did not need a hotel, and processed their own deer, and inherited a gun, and did not use many $2-$5 dollar bullets, it could be almost free.

Hunting Live Blog

Here is the link to the rest of the photos... enjoy

Hunting Live Blog

112108 1900

After a long day of sitting in the cold. We all adhourned to the property owners house to drink some cold beer and eat a variety of game dishes he and his wife prepared. One really could not ask more of a host.

112108 1500

I got to the deer about the same time as one of my hunting buddies Steve. After about 20 minutes of deer photoshoot (coming soon) Roger went to get the truck while we dressed the deer. I tied the legs to a fence post and was getting redy to start cutting when, Steve schh'ed me. He saw a deer 80 yds off in the woods. I did not see it, but after about 15 min he grunted in into about 30 yds in heavy brush. Just as he was figuring out a shot Roger and Mike came back with the truck and the deer trotted off.

We got my deer field dressed and used Rogers truck to to pull it out. It turned out to be an 8pt buck. Done for the evening I helped get things ready for dinner.

Sorry for the lack of updates, and pictures, I will try 1 more time to upload some, and cut me some slack it is hard to type when you are cleaning a deer :)

112108 1330

After looking around where the deer was I did not see any blood. However after following the path the deer took for about 30 yds, I did find a blood trail. I followed it just over the ridge and there was the deer.

112108 1304

I took a shot at a deer, but I am not sure I hit it. It was about a 6 point buck that was coming toward me through some brush. When I took the shot it rand through some brush and over a ridge. I will go down and check for blood in a little bit, and keep you updated.

On a sad note it appeas that my wireless signal is now low enough that Up loading pictures is kindof painful. I will upload what I have when I get back into town.

112108 1230

I am informed my live Blog "sucks". I'll try harder wait for updates

112108 0730 BREAKING NEWS

There are som cows grazing on the ridge now, also the sun is shining in my eye, also "My gmail looks awesome".

112108 0702

Well, it is just after 7 and nothing much intresting has happened. While it is definatly sub zero,@ least it is not windy, so i am not that cold. It probably helps that this morning I put on:

Long Johns, sweatpants, wind pants, jeans, cotton socks, wool socks, foot warmers, boots, 2x long sleeve Ts, sweat shirt, under shirt, coat, hood, hat, hunting hat, glover, and hand warmers.

And that isall i'll say about the cold, because as the youth know, "John charges you a dollar to complian about the weather. Here is a pict of me in the stand (only a matter of time until I drop my micro SD card in the woods), and a couple of the view from the stand.

Looks like it is going to be a cold one tomorrow morning. We usually hit the woods about 6am, so for those who do not like graphs that is about 22deg w/ a wind chill of 15. I have packed numerous layers of everything, but I can only assume I am going to be freezing my ass of. In looking for winter clothes I realized that we were missing numerous gloves. In a (vain) attempt to find and match them, I got out all of our winter stuff and spread it out on the floor. Sure enough there were 7 orphan gloves, some purchased as recently as last year. I put them in a box in case there mates ever show up, but I am not holding out much hope.

Now you can experience all of the fun of hunting w/ out the waking up at 4am, sitting in a 25 deg tree, and having cold water drip on you. With the magic of technology I will be live blogging from the tree this Friday and Saturday, starting early. So keep an eye for updates, and pictures.

Four Day Work Week

Four Day Work Week

I love 3 day weekends, hey who doesn’t, but when you think about it what I really love is the 4 day work week. The knowledge that coming into the office and that tomorrow it is already Wed. Wouldn’t it be great if we could have a 4 day work week every week. Well it is actually quite possible. No no, I’m not talking about working 4 - 10Hr days. That is even worse. I am talking about juggling a few things and making the work week, work for you.

OK, First a little math
How much does your employer expect you to work:
40 hrs/week * 50 weeks/year (-xmas and holidays) = 2000 hrs / year

Now what if hypothetically there were only 6 days in a week. We will get rid of Mondays, you are welcome Garfield.
Well first of all instead of 52 weeks there would be 365.25 / 6 = 60.88 lets call it 61
Now we will give you your holidays back making it 59.
2000 hrs/year / 59 weeks/year = 33.89 hours/week

Wait for it…

So if we take our 33.89 hour work week and distribute it over our 4 day work week we get
8.47 hours per day for 4 days per week
Now that I can defiantly live with (I am often here that long anyway)

So now instead of working 5 out of 7 days of the week you worked 4 out of 6. As an added bonus no one will ever say “Sounds like someone’s got a case of the Mondays” again.

Ok so we are agreed, but wait now that we have settled all of that we can use this opportunity to clean up the calendar a little. Give February back the days that were stolen from it by the Roman Emperors (I’m looking at you July and August), and all of the months can have 30 or 31 days.


Now that we have fixed the calendar, it is time to fix this Daylight Savings Time mess.

I have yet to meet anyone who was overly excited about DST, and almost everyone’s opinions range from mild annoyance to utter disdain And what does it really accomplish anyway. We shift everyone’s schedules twice a year and now suddenly it is pitch black at 4:30 pm in the sinter and stays light till 9 in the summer. There has to be a better way

First to dispense with a myth, farmers hate DST, because any livestock they have is unaware of the change and does not really want to change their eating schedule, so if anything they just ignore DST and keep on the same schedule.

Second, I don’t really have any problems with getting more daylight in the evening as much as I don’t like changing all of the clocks in our house twice a year, as well as adjusting everyone’s sleep schedules.

Maybe we should all just pick a time and stick with it. For that matter does it really even matter what time you get up in the morning. Maybe a more suitable solution would be to shift our schedules to the daylight and not our clocks. It doesn’t really matter is the sun comes up at 4:40 or 6:30 if you are going into work at 11. So we should set the local schedules to what best fits the area.

This raises an interesting point, since we could change our schedules to our daylight hours, why do we really need time zones at all. Aren’t they really just another confusing layer of complication on top of everything else we are dealing with?

“Oh your meeting was at 2pm EST you are an hour later”
“Your flight from NY to LA will last 45 min but the one coming back will be 8 hours”
“Damn I set 30 rock to tape at 8EST not 7CST”

What if we were all on the same time, some standard time that is already programmed into all of our computers, maybe GMT. Now all of those useless flight calculations would be unnecessary. 5pm in Chicago would be 5pm in NY and 5pm in Tokyo. We would not have to have multiple clocks with different time zones there would be 1 time zone to rule them all. Our schedules would shift , but after the initial weirdness of the sun coming up at 11pm there would be no more changes…

Until, we finally switch to the metric system in 2047.

A House Divided…

A House Divided…

The other week when we were at the farmers market Cara noticed that the Champaign Democrats were selling Obama signs. Against my urgings she got one for the yard. I was however very adamant that I wanted equal representation.

My first step was to look on the “interweb” to find the Champaign Republican headquarters. Several addresses were given on different sites including one near art mart in Lincoln Square Mall (the mall). After looking at the addresses with no success, I tried calling the listed number. I got the voice mail and left a message requesting a sign. A few days later I went to the address from the message, which was a law office. I the back room w/ no distinguishing signs denoting it as the headquarters for a county of 200,000±, a nice woman told me that they were out of signs and probably would not be getting any more.

Somewhat discouraged both at the state of the party in Champaign Co and my distinct lack of a sign I returned home, and informed Cara that she could put up her sign. Fortunately, 2 days later I received a call that they had gotten another shipment of signs and I could pick mine up whenever it was convenient, and while I know we are canceling each other out, so are 100M other Americans, and at least we can do it in style.

Sayonara Bush

Sayonara Bush

Wait Wait, before you head to the comment section (like you always do), this is not anything political. However, I’m sure Cara would love to make a corollary. This is the complement to the "popular" blog article “Tree Planting Tips and Ginkgo Facts”. While we still love the Ginkgo and it is settling in quite nicely. There is a bush in front of our house that Cara hates. After some discussion I finally agreed that we could get rid of it and replace it with something nicer.



The first thing we did was hose the whole think down with roundup, and don’t get chincy. Sure enough a week later it was dead as a doornail. I gave it an extra week just to make sure it was dead all the way down to the roots.

Then I wrapped the base with a tie down strap and hooked it up to the hitch on Old Blue (the Saturn). While Old Blue held some tension on the bush I cut roots around the perimeter with a shovel. I hopped in and gave it some gas, and pop went the tie-down. Fortunately, in typical Gutzmer fashion I happened to have a professional 4” tie-down left in the garage.

The “trucker grade” strap did the job and drug the bush out into the driveway, along with most of the rocks. After it was out I wrapped up the top part with the broken strap and took a chain saw to the base. Now we have a delightful fall decoration for the front of the house, and in the spring we can plant a new box hedge.

Note: The optimal means for pulling plants out of the ground with a vehicle is to put a wheel hub from a discarded tire in front of the plant and to put the strap or chain over that so that you are pulling up instead of sideways. I did not have any old wheels laying around.