About this time 10 years ago, I was tossing and turning in bed. I couldn’t sleep because in a few hours, I was going to be… to be… A HUSBAND!!! I was excited about moving on in the Great Circle of Life, but scared at the same time. Will I be a good husband? Will I be a good provider? Will I still be able to be me? A lot of questions popped in my head. The one thing forgot to remind myself is that I’m going to start a new chapter in my life with the absolute best person possible, my best friend. I know that it sounds cliche, but many people say that your best friend is someone who will laugh with you, cry with you, be normal with you, be crazy with you, explore the world with you, and just sit around and do nothing with you. Your best friend has seen you at your best (and your worst), but no matter what the circumstances, your best friend is proud of you and proud to be at your side. Your best friend will push you to reach for the top shelf, but will also catch you when you might fall. If this doesn’t describe my ‘Nala’… Jennifer Lynn….

Jennifer, the past ten years have seemed like minutes to me. Despite our ups and downs, this ride has been a lot more fun because you’ve been on it. Let’s stay on this ride as long as we can…

I love you, my cheeky monkey! I guess Joshua Kadison was right when he said…

Here is the latest from Brewmaster Doug Beedy about Fort Street Brewery:

Boy, I missed this announcement at the Microsoft Seminar I was at last Thursday. Microsoft Frontpage IS NO MORE! Looks like another slide (or at least a reference in Ed Brill’s cool presentation at Lotusphere. People who use that garbage product should go and take a look at Nvu. It’s more standards based, and has a lot of the features that Frontpage had (or that you’ll need).

Bruce Elgort brought this Ed Brill blog entry to my attention. It seems my friend, Rob Wunderlich (of Domino Unplugged fame) is the next ‘big name’ to jump on the IBM ship.

For those people that said that IBM and Lotus are going away… this should be a signal that it’s going stronger than ever.

Congratulations, Rob!!! (Forget the device envy, because there is one other type of envy afoot…)

Here is the latest from Brewmaster Doug Beedy regarding Fort Street Brewery:

Greetings and salutations!

 

     Thanks to all who came out to our first Volksfest Party last week.  Great beer, great food, and me in lederhosen.  Now, that’s a party!

     This Thursday, October 5th we will tap our 38th cask-conditioned ale at 7:30 p.m.  "Eleven Angry Men" is our new Oktoberfest lager with ginger added to the cask.  As usual, we will have a celebrity guest tapping the cask and prizes for a few lucky people in attendance.  Don’t miss it, or you might be one of the angry ones!

     Wi-Fi is finally here!  Thanks to Terrell’s hard work on Saturday, it’s now up and running.  At Fort Street you can watch sports on our big screens, enjoy good food and beer, and check out porn on the internet all at the same time!

     Speaking of big screens, it’s baseball playoff time and this Saturday is the MSU-U of M football game.  During all these games, we will have 60 oz pitchers of Lincoln Lager for just $8 and everything else (except KILLER) for $9 and 32 oz pitchers of everything for $5 (except KILLER).

     I still have some spots open for our next Beer Fantasy Camp on Sunday, October 22nd.  This month we feature a great selection of fall beers paired with a tasty menu.  Cost is just $30. 

     For those of you who have gone to the Fantasy Camps and wished they got more in depth with the brewing side of things,  I have a new event for you.  "Brewin’ with the Brewmaster" is going to be one Saturday a month.  The first one is next Saturday, October 14th.  I’ll be starting the brew at 12:30 p.m.  Come in, drink some beer, talk about beer, and help me brew.

     Following a big week, Dave Hazelton is the new leader in the Fort Street Fantasy Football League.  For complete resutlts and all the other news and such, visit www.fortstreetbeer.com

 

See ya soon,

 

Doug

Fort Street Brewery

www.fortstreetbeer.com

1660 Fort St.

Lincoln Park, MI

(313) 389-9620

My little teacher
Originally uploaded by Ray "The Lion King" Bilyk.

Jennifer and Kiara stopped by at my work yesterday afternoon. Kiara immediately went to the whiteboard in one of the classrooms I was setting up and started ‘teaching’. I continued to finish up my work and didn’t look at what she was doing. This morning, I walk into the room and see the ‘formula’ for making rainbows… rain plus sun equals rainbows. I immediately called Jennifer thinking that Jennifer helped Kiara make that. “Nope,” Jennifer said, “She did that all by herself.” It seems that Jennifer told her about that when she was 3, and always remembered it.

Now I’m scared… she’s going to be WAY TOO SMART for me…

This week (week of September 25, 2006) looks like fun, courtesy of Brewmaster Doug and the folks at Fort Street Brewery:

Greetings and salutations!
 
This Thursday, September 28th is the kick-off of our Volksfest and Welcome to October party.  The fun begins at 7:30 p.m. with the tapping of not one, not two, but three new beers!  First, we have a big batch seasonal called Eleven!, which is a classic Oktoberfest-style lager.  In addition, we have two small-batch pumpkin beers.  “The Great Pumpkin Ale” is a pretty standard pumpkin beer made with real pumpkin and pumpkin pie spices.  “Potiron Mort” is what I call a Belgian pumpkin beer, because it is fermented with a yeast from a Belgian brewery, so it has some of that typical Beglian ale character, in addition to the pumpkin and spice.  As usual, we will have some nice prizes for a few lucky guests in attendance.  Fan Club members can get their sneak peak of “Eleven!” on Wednesday.

Aside from the new beers, we will run a small German food menu all weekend long, consisting of German meat loaf, sauerkraut balls, and potato pancakes.  On Friday and Saturday, we will have a DJ playing from 9 p.m. to close.  I know that’s not very German-like, but you should see how much those German bands charge!  But don’t let those two letters scare you away.  These guys are not obnoxious, the music is not too loud, and they don’t play any of that music the gang bangers like to kill each other over.

Fort Street is going Wi-Fi!  Finally, this week we are having wireless internet installed.  If you simply cannot be away from your computer, you don’t have to hang out at Starbuck’s anymore!  Now you can spill beer on your computer instead of coffee.

Kevin and Susan Adkins are the new leaders of the Fort Street Fantasy Football league.  Complete results are posted on the website and at the brewery.

See ya soon,

Doug
Fort Street Brewery
www.fortstreetbeer.com
1660 Fort St. – Lincoln Park, MI (313) 389-9620

Well, as live as you can get without Internet service.

Mike Sobaczak, President of DNP, welcome us all to the Summer DominoFest. He also reminded us that summer doesn’t end until tonight. (I didn’t know that…) Bruce Elgort is the first presenter, talking up OpenNTF.org solutions. The crowd is eating it up. He’s also giving away OpenNTF shirts. Not a lot of questions, but the presentation was well received.

Our next speaker is Fred Pycko (and local rep Greg… sorry, didn’t get your last name) from IBM/Lotus Software, who is speaking on running Lotus Notes on Linux. He’s also talking about IBM’s Open Source Strategy for the Linux operating system distribution. It’s a high-level presentation, with very little actual Notes/Domino information until the end. Too bad…

Lunch was Mr. Pita, which was good. The next presentation, which was a video from Lotusphere 2006 on Application Performance Techniques for Domino Developers, was started. Bruce had to head back to the airport, so we left around 1PM. (Sorry I missed your presentation, Mike. I actually was looking forward to it. Maybe you can give me a one-on-one.)

I took a few pictures, which I placed up on Flickr. I also placed a couple of videos up on YouTube. (Here is video one and video two.) Overall, a very good meeting. Hope to see more of you at the next DominoFest.

This morning, I picking up my buddy, Bruce Elgort (of OpenNTF fame) to take him to the Detroit Notes Professionals User Group meeting. He’s going to be talking on OpenNTF.org and their options to make your life easier. For those of you going, it’s going to be another great meeting. To those of you not going, you’re missing out…

If you can’t make this meeting, make sure you attend the next meeting… It’s worth the time away from work. Trust me!