Bakker Bugle Blog Say it three times fast. In Luxembourgish.

31 August 2007

Trivial Surprise #47

Filed under: entertainment,ireland — Will @ 18:23

Coors Light is a real presence in Dublin. There are lots of billboards and commercials on TV for Coors Light, and they aren’t much different than American versions. Coors Light DealThe current tagline is “Amazing Things Happen High in the Rockies.”

In pubs, you almost always see just one American brand on tap, Coors Light. That’s odd, I thought, as I remembered stories about how Coors Light had to be smuggled into the Midwest in the good ole days. I thought no more about it, until I started this post and I googled around a bit.

I found a fascinating document from an Irish self-regulatory body for Irish advertising. Coors Light is imported into Ireland by Heineken, the 363-kg gorilla in the global beer industry. Apparently, Bud Light recently became the first real competition for “light” beer in Ireland, and is brewed in Ireland.

Do I remember correctly — Didn’t Guinness recently run an ad campaign in the US that said that Guinness has fewer calories than major American lagers?

29 August 2007

Ah, the Dubs

Filed under: dublin,ireland,sports — Will @ 21:09

Sunday, County Dublin’s gaelic football team lost to County Kerry. So Kerry will play Cork for the All-Ireland title on September 16th.

In the spirit of self-deprecation, here are a few jokes that require a basic understanding of Irish culture to understand. In the spirit of sadness at the Dub’s loss, I’ll give bonus points towards Commenter of the Week to commenters who kill the comedy by explaining the jokes. (Jokes courtesy the culchies at askaboutmoney.com.)

What’s the difference between a Dublin jersey and a school uniform??
You can see school uniforms in September.

Paul Caffrey, Dubs manager, was arrested last night after vandalising a cigarette machine. He replied by saying he was in a bad way for 20 players!!

What is blue and navy and goes beep, beep, beep?
The Dubs’ bus reversing back into the garage.

What do you call a Dublin man with an all Ireland medal?
An antique dealer!

What I find remarkable is that County Dublin comprises almost 20% of the population of the island. Many of the 32 counties have less than a tenth of that population. Croke Park, the site for the All-Ireland contests, is in Dublin (although it is not Dublin’s home stadium). Yet Dublin is relatively unsuccessful in both football and hurling.

The Bakker Bugle staff are engaged in a long-term research project to determine the cause for this anomaly. We hope it will bring insights to similar oddities in American sport.

28 August 2007

I hate IE more than the British

Filed under: administrative,mental state — Will @ 17:19

Permit me a rant. For more than two hours this morning, I worked on a “Recent Comments” section for the BB Blog’s sidebar. I tweaked settings and code and got it looking very nice. Furthermore, the additions are compliant with all the relevant standards for HTML, CSS, and all those web-oriented languages.

So the blog looks great in Firefox, the best web browser, and Safari, Apple’s browser. I made the layout a little different in the comments area, so that it’s easy to tell who commented most recently.

Then, Anita calls at 5 pm (our time) to say that the blog is broken. She sends screenshots. Indeed, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer cannot understand the minor changes I made.

First:

The blog is not broken, Internet Explorer is broken.

When I tried to add a linkroll in June and Internet Explorer didn’t like it, I sighed and used an alternate, inferior service. A few weeks later, I fought an all-day, pitched battle with Internet Explorer in order to display our latest Flickr photos in the sidebar. I lost that battle, and so you get no pictures. In all cases, every other browser worked on the first try.

But the majority of our friends read our blog on Internet Explorer. So for today, no cool recent comments thingie for you!

And tomorrow morning, I’ll try to trick Microsoft’s demon-spawn into displaying simple text … instead of writing real content, or reading about Irish politics, or exploring the Northside.

27 August 2007

Commenter of the Week (19-25 Aug)

Filed under: award — Will @ 7:36

Our Commenter of the Week is Laurie! It was a down-week for posts from Bakkers, so Laurie came through in the clutch to contribute to the blog this week. Her comment on coffee was apropos, nostalgic, and funny. Laurie’s TrophyBut it was the dedication and hard-work of finding the Folgers commercial on YouTube that won over the judges. If you missed it the first time, take a look this morning.

Laurie’s comment gives us the opportunity to mention two Things You Might Not Know about the Commenter of the Week award. First, you can comment on a post from weeks past to win Commenter of the Week. (This week, we’ll put a “Recent Comments” list on the sidebar so you can see, well, the most recent comments — no matter which posts they’re attached to.)

Second, you don’t need to write a paragraph to win. In Laurie’s case, a clever reference and a truly excellent link were more than enough to gain the prize. If you’d like to include a link in your comment, you can simply copy the web-address (e.g. “http://www.rwor.org/”) into your post.

25 August 2007

Do You Hate the British Too?

Filed under: culture,ireland,travel — Anita @ 12:55

I’ve had the following conversation on three separate occasions with three different Irish co-workers:

Man: Hiya, Anita. What did you do on your holiday?

Me: We spent the weekend in Dublin, and spent some time at museums and especially at Kilmainham jail. We heard a lot about the Easter Rising in 1916. During the week, we traveled to the West, around Galway and Connemara.

Man: And you liked it?

Me: We did, it was beautiful. But we joke that it could have been depressing because it was like a “Famine Tour.” We saw famine monuments, and we even finished the trip with a visit to the Famine Museum in Strokestown.

Man: So now you hate the British too!

24 August 2007

Up the Dubs!

Filed under: dublin,sports — Will @ 18:25

Dublin’s football team will face Kerry in the semi-finals of the All-Ireland Football Championship, Sunday.

In Ireland: “soccer” means soccer. “Football” rarely means soccer, although it can. “Football” can also mean American football, but very rarely. In most cases, “football” means GAA (Gaelic Athletic Assocation) football, which is like a faster, less tackle-y form of rugby, played with a volleyball. Except when “football” refers to Australian Rules, which was even more confusing back when teams from Ireland and Australia would play each other. Recently, it seems, the difference over the linguistics of “football” lead to a game called “donnybrook,” which is (incidentally) a district of Dublin and a town in Australia. Anyway, Irish GAA football teams do not play Australian football teams, although players from Irish GAA football teams occasionally go to Australia to play professionally. All clear?

The Dublin County football team‘s colors are dark blue and light blue, and those colors have served as a casual uniform for Dubliners for about a month now. dublinnewcrest.png(The formal uniform is a fluorescent yellow safety jacket; more on that at a later date.) I didn’t know that there were so many variations on a blue striped collared shirt. Houses are festooned with the checkerboard of blues, especially on the northside.

There’s no chance of getting a ticket. But if we’re not busy after the Tour of Ireland passes through our neighborhood, we’ll probably go to a pub to watch the game. Dublin are the underdogs, so this should be fun.

22 August 2007

First Visitor, Departed

Filed under: entertainment,ireland,travel — Will @ 19:57

Good-bye, Cindy — We’ll miss you!

1150972490_3e2e4a10bc_m.jpgThe B.B. B&B said, “Farewell,” to its first customer today. Despite the threat of a pilots’ strike, Cindy was able to fly to Chicago today. With her help, the staff are now even better able to serve future customers of our B&B.

Although the staff haven’t finished putting together the book for this visit, we like to keep our friends informed. So, for an overview of her visit, and tantalizing information about the staff’s retreat, follow the link…

(more…)

20 August 2007

Policy regarding award acceptance comments

Filed under: administrative,award — Will @ 21:46

The Management would like to clarify the policy regarding the acceptance of Commenter of the Week award in the comments for the succeeding week.

A comment written by the winner of the Commenter of the Week award, in the week preceding the comment’s posting — that is, the week succeeding the notice given of the Commenter of the Week award, except where such award is given late due to secret retreat — shall not be considered as part of the contributions of the previous week’s Commenter of the Week, when such comment pertains to the award given in the preceding week. Thus, such a comment, as described above, may not secure for the Commenter of the Week for the previous week an award for Commenter of the Week where such week is the week succeeding the week of the previous award, that is, the week of such comment’s posting itself.

In haiku:
Winner of last week
Comments to accept award;
Other words, win twice.

19 August 2007

Rookie wins Commenter of the Week

Filed under: administrative,award — Will @ 21:25

Some people are recognized as leaders just as soon as they enter the fray. This week, we recognize one of these natural talents. Jaime’s comment on Will’s new knife combined her personal experience with wise advice. We hope that her talents continue to develop over the next several weeks.

In addition, the Bugle staff would like to take a moment to recognize the contributions of all our commenters, both on the blog and for photos on Flickr. jaime18aug.jpgAt our retreat, we resolved to recognize the contributions of our stakeholders using effective processes. In the coming months, a committee will review our current processes to discover unrealized potentials. We expect things from this initiative.

Tomorrow, this blog will review some other results of our retreat. Today, the staff will implement innovative suggestions from our “Work-Life Balance” session. Unfortunately, that session was scheduled at the same time as the “Q&A with Our CEO” meeting. So the only person there was the administrative assistant who organized it. Fortunately, the CEO text’d one suggestion regarding Work-Life Balance to the All-Staff Distribution list during the Q&A. So the staff are allowed to take the rest of Sunday off, once they finish Sunday’s assigned tasks.

15 August 2007

Hiatus: BB Staff Retreat

Filed under: administrative,award,travel — Will @ 7:09

The Bakker Bugle staff will attend an offsite for the next few days. On this retreat, the staff will work on ways of re-focusing on our core values. The staff will also develop plans for innovative content to satisfy our clients’ expectations of excellence.

Although we value openness, the Bakker Bugle cannot divulge the location of the retreat for liability reasons. In addition, the Commenter of the Week award will be announced one day later than usual. Rather than compromising our unstinting standards of effectiveness, we will give the award on Sunday.

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