Ace Wisdom

I turned on my TV this morning and got a big black screen on Channel 11. There was a note proclaiming that Channel 11 was being greedy with their financial demands. Of course that was the Cable Company’s opinion. Now what? Packer games are predominantly broadcast by Channel 11. The real question is “can a Wisconsinite exist without Packers in it”?
Most people don’t care that a “collider” has been built deep in the ground under France and Switzerland. It has sucked up 7000 scientists from around the world in an attempt to send protons from opposite directions at the speed of light around a 17 mile loop. The objective is to get these infintesimal proton particles to crash and duplicate conditions similar to when the universe was created. It is called the Big Bang Theory. It is supposed to help explain why particles have mass (along with a lot of other things). When I was a kid, “big bang” meant something else.
One of the things that they don’t tell you is that when the experiment is executed, the colliding protons whizzing around the 17 mile circuit is that a “black hole” could be created. The universe outside the planet Earth has many black holes that are really super mass locations that suck up and destroy anything that comes close to them. You don’t want to be sucked into a black hole. The fear is that colliding protons could produce mini-black holes and our world could be imploded into the hole and we will all disappear. Essentially it would be a mini “big bang”.
So with all the negative in the world like global warming, financial crisis, energy depletion, world health issues, now we have to worry about being sucked into a mini black hole. The one positive to this whole thing is the the “collider” is partially located under the country of France and it would be the first to disappear into the hole. Now that brightens my day!
The lesson Grasshoppers is that life has many issues. Human beings have been very resourceful in solving complex issues and somehow we keep moving forward. Rejoice! The collider experiment will not generate a black hole and somehow I think I will get my Channel 11 back. The sun will come out tomorrow.
Love,
Dad

When the college football season started, the Badgers had Ohio State scheduled at home on Oct. 4. It potentially would be the clash to two unbeaten teams (both at 4-0). Oh the excitement of it all.
So the tickets for Ohio State were sold out early. I don’t know what e-Bay was bartering the tickets for, but it had to be substantial. I have 4 tickets that I thought would be worth a fortune.
But things change! Ohio State was beaten by USC two weeks ago. Then last week the Badgers let a 19-0 halftime lead against Michigan slip away and they ended up losing their first Big 10 game. My fortune in tickets was slipping away.
So Saturday night the Ohio State game takes place and each team has 1 loss. It still is a great match-up but my guess that the e-Bay price for my tickets has dropped a little.
Lo and behold, the Milwaukee Brewers won the National League wild card for the Major League Baseball playoffs. There is one male family member living on Saemann St. in Sheboygan who continually predicted the Brewers would collapse. Boy, did he have a “wrong number”. The Brewers play Game 3 of the playoffs in Milwaukee on Saturday evening (Oct.4) at Miller Park. The game starts at around 6:00 PM so that it conflicts with the evening Badger game. Whoa! Now sports fans that had Ohio State football tickets will have to make a decision on whether to atttend Badger football or Brewer baseball. Brewer fever seems to have pre-empted “Bucky Ball”. Again the e-Bay bidding for Badger tickets will probably drop. I might have to pay someone to take my Ohio State tickets.
The lesson Grasshoppers is that nothing in life can be taken for granted. One minute I’ve got 4 tickets to a highly anticipated Ohio State game worth a fortune on e-Bay and the next minute both football teams have a loss and their game is competing with the Brewers. A fortune just slipped though my fingers. I’m still smiling though because like a hot date, anticipation is the biggest part of the experience. I have my dreams of what might have been.
Love
Dad

Our HP printer “puked”. I didn’t originate the descriptive word “puked”. Grasshopper No.5 used the word when the computer she was using at Eau Claire just shut down. Nada! Nothing! Dead! She said it “puked”.
Our old Hewlett Packard printer was purchased 5-6 years ago from Sam’s Club. We paid $140. We wanted photo printing capabilities so we paid a little more at the time. I think we got our money’s worth. But the real cost (as you know) lies in the ink cartridges. Black cartridges are about $18 and color units are $25. Then there are special cartridges with more intense color capabilities for high quality prints. Another $30 per unit. I don’t even want to think about the total cost of printing over the years including cartridges, special paper and software upgrades.
You can’t really afford to take a broken printer to a technician for repair. A new black printer can be purchased for under $50.
So merrily we went to Best Buy and looked at the new printers. The cheapest were black printers. A color printer costs a little more. If you want color and scanning, the price increases. The big incremental jump up in price comes with “photo” capability. A printer with photo features along with internet wave transmitting and receiving was the most expensive. Amazingly, the unit with everything was priced at $189. How could they offer this futuristic “do everything” machine so cheap? The answer of course is that you will pay for the printer again and again and again with all the cartridges you will buy.
So we bought a new HP photo capable printer. It does everything except brew coffee in the morning. Then we bought a special cord to connect the printer to our computer and an additional cartridge for high quality color reproduction. The extras pushed the total cash outlay to over $200. And now we are destined to purchase a never ending stream of ink cartridges forever or until the new printer “pukes”.
The lesson Grasshoppers is that you never know when an unplanned expense is going to hit. In this case it was a printer. Who knows what is next? My mother always said bad things happen in 3’s.
I have to admit the new printer is kind of cute! It blinks lots of lights at me.
Love,
Dad

Grasshopper No.5 reluctantly invited her Mother and Dad to visit last weekend. It is a “duty” that every single, independent daughter dreads. My parents are coming to town! What do I do with them?
Actually we found lots of things to do and the weather was incredible. No.5 was a gracious host.
No.5 doesn’t talk about her personal life much but she did have a medical procedure to remove a suspicious looking mole from her side over her rib cage two weeks ago. There were internal stitches that dissolve over time and then surface (skin) stitches. The stitches were pretty blue color. She down plays the significance of the procedure but it unscores the significance of getting moles checked on a regular basis.
We always stay at a cheap hotel in downtown Minneapolis. It is on the edge of the Nickolett Mall that graces downtown. By walking from the hotel, every store you could want is within 3-4 blocks. It is very busy during the week as workers commute to downtown and shop in their spare time or after work. Weekends, the Nickolette Mall is like a ghost town. Stores are open but it is very quiet. It is like having your own personal shopping center.
I always liked early mornings growing up as a kid in downtown Plymouth. It was quiet. Occasionally a water truck washing the streets would cool off a warm morning but their was serenity. My mother would send us down the block to Muellers Bakery for sweetrolls (long johns, crescent rolls, mudpies and some hardrolls) for breakfast. They were always fresh and we didn’t know that sugar was bad for us. So in the early mornings, Plymouth’s downtown concrete streets belonged to me filled with smells of fresh bakery.
Fast forward to Minneapolis. If you get up real early in the morning and venture from the hotel you will find that it is a cavern of concrete with very few people. There are a few “shady” looking characters requesting “spare change” and a few dedicated joggers. It took me back to my childhood Plymouth mornings. One block from the hotel is a Caribou Coffee shop. It had expensive coffee but guess what? It had fresh sweetrolls. So the devil made me buy a couple of sweetrolls. For the morning, I just didn’t care if it was bad for me. It was like 50 years ago. And there were the bakery smells. Oh, the smells.
The lesson is Grasshoppers is that sometimes you can go back in time if only in your mind. For a short hour or so, I was a teenager reliving my childhood. Happiness is a sweet roll!
Love,
Dad

You can’t miss the financial chatter that is coming across the news services. Brokers fail. Banks fail. Stocks are down 20-25% since the first of the year.
Over the last 5-10 years, the term “money market funds” has crept into the financial vocabulary. The only place you could safely “park” your cash previously was with your friendly banker. Your account was insured by the FDIC (a federal agency) and you were sure to get your money back. The problem was that they paid a pittence for their interest. You know! No interest on a Christmas Club but they’d handle all the accounting. 1/2% interest. Maybe 1% interest. It was a haven for widow and orphan accounts. It is a known fact that 85% of all bank account holders will not switch out of the bank no matter what the incentive.
Money market accounts changed all that. Mutual fund companies like Vanguard and Fidelity offered “money market accounts” for their customers as an enticement to “park” their cash until they could amass enough funds to invest in their family of funds. The money market accounts paid 2-3-4-5-6% interest depending on whether interest rates were high or low. The money market fund is based on you buying shares of the money market fund at $1 per share and when you went to cash out, you’d get your $1 back. The selling point has always been “nobody has ever lost a cent in a money market account”. Money market funds buy corporate and government bonds for 90 days and get really high interest that they turn around and pay to you the participant.
Now the good news and the bad news. The good news is that as of this date, nobody has still never lost a penny in a money market account. The bad news is that there are money market funds presently “closing themselves to new deposits”. The reason is that some of the money market funds invested in risky brokerage firms (not perceived as risky one month ago). One broker went bankrupt and suddenly the money market fund investments didn’t seem so safe.
The chances that money in a “money market account” will drop below $1 in value and that you might not get you money back is pretty slim. If necessary the big companies like Vanguard will put their own money into the money market account so that it doesn’t lose. They don’t want the public to lose confidence.
For the second time in a week, I’m telling you that there is no such thing as security. If you have money you don’t want to lose, put it in a bank savings account with FDIC insurance so that you are assured you’d get you principal back.
Love,
Dad

The Milwaukee Brewers fired their manager with 12 games remaining in the season. The team is tied with the Philadelphia Phillies for the Wild Card selection to baseball’s post season playoffs.
You would think that after continually building a team to a better record each year for 6 years, Ned Yost (the manager) would have been able to complete the journey. Actually one of my basic universal laws is still in tack: “there is no such thing as job security”.
It is fun to watch the soap opera play out. Doug Melvin, the general manager, doesn’t fire anyone. He is loyal to his subordinates to a fault. He tries to build on trust and loyality and it usually works. His boss, the loving Mark Attanasio owns a big part of the Brewers along with his investment partners. He has become wealthy by making shrewd financial decisions. There is no question in my mind that Attanasio said “fire Yost tomorrow” and Doug Melvin dutifully complied.
In defense of Attanasio, he has a business to run. There are hundreds of employees (maybe thousands) that depend on the Milwaukee Brewer fanchise. Success means winning. The Brewers have spent big bucks locking in Ryan Braun to a $46 million long term contract. They traded for C.C. Sabathia along with his $10 million dollar salary for the rest of this year knowing he will cost $18 million next year and beyond. Attanasio opened the wallet to winning this year and that is in suddenly in doubt. What would you do?
Maybe Attanasio fired the wrong man. Doug Melvin has been the architect of this baseball club and it is faultering. Melvin chose Ed Yost to manage player operations. Melvin’s plan isn’t working. Of course you fired Yost. It is simple logic. The boss isn’t going to get fired.
I mentioned that there is no such thing as job security. Doug Melvin should be worried. I can tell you his job is in jeopardy. Yost thought his job was safe and look what happened to him..
The lesson Grasshoppers is that the person who owns “the ball”, controls the game. It is Attanasio’s money. The rest is a social soap opera. Doug Melvin should start looking for a job. The only thing that could save Melvin’s job is that the Brewers, through some miracle, make the playoffs and win the World Series. I guess miracles can enhance job security.
Love,
Dad

First I need to acknowledge Grandson Mitchell. I forgot about his football exploits last Saturday. He wears No.36 and he plays tight end and running back. Saturday he caught a long pass but was caught on the ten yard line short of a touchdown. His team subsequently scored. The chant from the other team from that point on was “watch No.36”. Obviously he scared them with his pass catching skills.
Last night (Thursday), Grandson Dominic played in a driving rain against a very good opponent. I errored by referring to his wearing No.75. That is his practice jersey. On game day he wears No. 58 and plays center. In his uniform complete with white helmet, Dominic looks like a football player. He fills out the football garb. By the way, his team won 12-6 despite the inclimate weather. He knocked a couple of opponents on their ass and his tackling was superb.
Now quickly to Joe Schmuck. The Milwaukee Brewers might make the playoffs for the first time since 1982. If they do, fans everywhere will want to see “home” playoff games. First priority goes to season ticket holders and 20-game ticket packages. 93% of the preferred ticket holders purchased playoff tickets. Now three options have been offered beyond 2008 season ticket holders. You can purchase full season tickets for next year and you will be guaranteed playoff tickets up to a limit of 8 if you deposit $1500 per seat (non-refundable). Or you can purchase a 40 game package for next year up to a limit of four seats for a non-refundable $1000 deposit per seat. Lastly, a 20 game package for next year gets you the division series and one championship game up to 4 seats. Cost is $400 per seat and again is non-refundable.
My observation is that there won’t be any seats left for Joe Schmuck. You know, the average guy that takes his family to one or two games, drinks beer and eats their $5 hot dogs. What the professional sports teams are doing is screening out the average guy. I know that baseball is a business and it’s purpose is to provide entertainment but it is slowly evolving into entertainment for the rich.
The lesson Grasshoppers is that the professional and college sports arena is evolving into a party for the elete. I guess if I owned a sports franchise, I’d leverage it for maximum profit too. What is lost is a sense fo fairness. What about the other loyal supporters that have accounted for close to 30 consecutive sellouts? Somehow I think we are all getting Schmucked.
Love,
Dad