Saturday at the Hut - 7/14/12

We had a full house at The Tobacco Hut today, so let's jump right in with the roll call. In addition to Lou and myself, we had Joe K, Don W, Arnie, Vic and his cousin Russ, Bryan, and Aaron. The jokes were as thick as the smoke and we all got a lesson in grammar too. More on that later.

This will be Don's last Saturday for awhile as he begins training for his new job (congrats and good luck to Don). Fellow pilot Arnie was in town as well, so to celebrate he and Don both tried an Opus X for the first time. Vic and I and others warned them that it can be a strong smoke, but they both threw caution to the wind and lit up. Within about ten minutes Don had to let his go out as he was feeling a bit light-headed. He decided to smoke it at a much slower pace. Arnie was fine with it until the last third or so when little beads of sweat started to break out on his forehead. They both agreed that the Opus does not live up to its reputation as a top shelf cigar and that they would never smoke another. We did tell them that Tom L occasionally brings some aged Opus cigars that he's stored for the last dozen years or so and that they are completely different from a fresh, out-of-the-box specimen.

Russ T wins the award for traveling the farthest for a cigar. He's down visiting from Rochester, NY although he had some difficulties in departing from the airport a week ago. Russ was evidently under the impression that he could just arrive at the airport without a ticket or boarding pass and get right on the plane. The ticket agent had different ideas, so he had to delay his trip by a day. Seriously, Russ had purchased the ticket six weeks ago but when he got to the airport they had no record of him in their system. Russ, maybe you were supposed to fly out of Buffalo...

Readers of this space will recall the last blog posting from June 16 where Aaron recounted his romantic tale of him and his friend attending the critically acclaimed movie, "Brokeback Mountain" when it came out a few years ago. Speaking of "coming out", Aaron announced that he - no, no. I'm only kidding. Anyway, since there were some folks in attendance today that didn't hear the original story, we persuaded Aaron to give us his impressions of the movie, with full animation, of course. I passed around the Photoshop image I had prepared of Aaron living his dream of actually being in the movie, to everyone's enjoyment.

It was around that time that the typically sophisticated level of discourse took a downward turn. Russ ingratiated himself to us by telling some extremely distasteful jokes. I, for one, was deeply offended. Of course, you couldn't tell that because I was howling with laughter. There was one about three missionaries being faced with Yanye or Death, but since this blog's wide readership(!) reaches many women and children, I won't go into the full joke here.

So what's this about a grammar lesson? Oh yes, let me explain. One of the regulars at the Hut, Paul O (not to be confused with Scott R's brother-in-law, Paul V), had a very public hissy-fit on Facebook over a comment I left on one of his posts. Rather than explain it all, I submit the evidence from this past Monday and let my gentle readers come to their own conclusions:

Paul O wins the "I Can Dish It Out But Can't Take It" Award for 2012
(Click to enlarge)

Yes, you read that correctly, Mr. O gave me a thorough thrashing (and his wife even got in the act) over six words that I left for him. Not only did he "unfriend" me on Facebook (oh, the horrors), he even removed himself from The Tobacco Hutters. One can only hope that this means he has removed himself from the Tobacco Hut as well. I am quite sure that his "wit" will not be missed. Moving on...

Had a great day at the Hut with so many folks in attendance. 'Til next time!

Saturday at the Hut - 3/24/12

Today at The Tobacco Hut the following folks were in attendance: Joe K, Peter G, Paul O, Bryan J, Lou, and myself. I was smoking a Crown Viking filled with Tinder Box Reserve 1928, a most excellent tobacco. I got the pipe from Lou several years and it's one of my favorite freehands.

There was a lot of tech talk throughout the day. Paul had some computer questions for Joe, Joe bragged about his latest iPad and Apple TV purchase. He sold his iPad 2 to his daughter (I thought initially he had sold it to Vic!). Later, after Joe had left, we talked about various TV viewing options, from streaming to Tivo to Hulu to Netflix and RedBox.

Bryan and I talked at length about e-readers such as his Nook and my Kindle, their advantages and disadvantages. A shout out to Bryan for his 25th wedding anniversary! One thing I pointed out regarding obsolete technologies such as floppy disks is that the regular ole' book, i.e. the printed word, will never die out. It can't be made obsolete by some new technology.

Bryan, I mentioned this to you today when we were talking about music. It's a link that I've mentioned in this space before and Paul O is happily listening in now. It's called Psychedelicized Radio and features songs from the latter half of the 1960s, some you've heard but mostly obscure bands. Give it a listen - I think you'll like it.

It's free but they do welcome donations to pay for the server space. It runs them about $90/month and I've donated since they began about two months ago. It kind of works like Joe's favorite broadcaster, NPR. Joe, if you tune to 89.7 FM this week, they're in the middle of their pledge drive. Would you like me to donate on your behalf like I've done before? Maybe you can add to your NPR coffee mug collection.

If you read the blog last week, you know that Lou has come to a decision regarding the store. If he is unable to sell it by April 30th when his lease is up, he will be forced to shut the doors. As sad as that will be, I think we all understand his reasoning and support him a hundred percent.

I've been thinking about how we can all stay in touch when the Tobacco Hut Era comes to a close. We've had some great discussions and forged good friendships throughout the years and I, for one, would like those to continue, even if it's just in a "virtual" sense online.

When I send the blog update announcement out everyone's e-mail address appears, so folks can obviously stay in touch that way, but I'd like to duplicate the lively discussions that take place every week at the Hut in some online form. I'm exploring a couple options: an online forum, a Facebook group page, or Twitter.

The Facebook group page is extremely easy to set up and use; the downside is that not everyone is on Facebook. Twitter is also easy to set up and use, but tweets are limited to a small number of characters so isn't really conducive to proper discussions. An online forum offers the most robust environment in which to converse (I'm thinking of the Smokers Forums, Puff.com forums, and others).

There are a couple challenges with creating an online forum. The first is financial. The most full-featured and reliable forum software is vBulletin, but it costs $195/year plus hosting costs. I would also have to get up to speed on the technical issues as I've never been on the "back end" of forums, only as the user.

There are free forum applications but they are chock full of unwanted advertisements, and I would still have to arrange for hosting.

Another alternative is Ning.com - it's a niche social media development application which is only $19.95/year for the Mini site. The Mini site is limited to 150 members, but is fairly robust with a lot of cool features. It would be kind of like a Facebook site just for us - you can make comments, add photos, etc.

I'm kind of leaning toward that option if there's an interest in it from the gang. Let me know your thoughts and have a great week!

 - Bob

Friday at the Hut - 7/3/09

Since The Tobacco Hut is closed on Saturday for the holiday, and many of us were off work today, we met a day early. The roll call included Bryan J, Joe K, Paul V, Joe D, Steve B, and myself. Lou was there of course, but not nearly as keyed up as he was last week for the anniversary party. We also had a special guest as Lou's daughter Diane surprised us with a visit and a special delivery: a Blizzard from Dairy Queen for herself and Lou. The joy and cheer we all felt when Diane walked in was dampened a little however when it became apparent that she didn't bring Blizzards for all of us.

For my second pipe in two months' time, I turned once again to the Tinder Box Reserve 1928, this time in a Bjarne billiard. It made for a fine smoke and burnt down almost completely.

Joe K reported a milestone in his little side computer business - assisting someone in setting up a new Mac. Joe is the proud owner of a 24" iMac, of which I am insanely jealous, and he successfully helped somebody with a new MacBook Pro get it all set up. Kudos to Joe!

It was good to see Paul again as he always has some interesting historical facts and trivia to discuss. He was at the Hut's party last week, but it was difficult to have a meaningful conversation with so many people in the store.

Paul was very thoughtful today by bringing Lou a Diet Mountain Dew - oops, sorry Lou, Brand X. Well, I called it thoughtful; Joe K called it stupid as Lou gave Paul the Look of Death.

It was a good thing I kept the leftover bag of chips in the car and didn't bring them in. I've flirted with death enough these last few weeks - I didn't want to risk it again at the hands of Lou.

Not much else to report this week. I do have to get busy with a request from Lou - he wants a link to this blog and the addition of the Smoke Stik brand of e-cigarettes he carries on his website. Can't keep the boss waiting...

Cheers!
- Bob