ZoomSlowik

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ May 6, 2015 -> 09:30 PM) About once or twice a year Binny's does a Belgium beer sale, usually a $1 or 2 off of a $8-10 750ml bottle. I usually stock up during then. The only problem is that drinking a whole bottle of that at once will fill you up real quick, so I've typically saved them until my brother visits. I think that's another reason that I subconsciously don't buy more Belgian beers: I'm not a fan of bombers. The price per ounce is poor and they force me to either share or commit to more serious drinking. It's not a deal-breaker, but they tend to sit in the fridge longer. I know many of them come in 12 oz bottles as well, but they're like $5 a piece and I usually get two 6-packs of a good domestic instead of one 4-pack. I do need to get back to those though, I don't think I've had a bad Belgian beer.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ May 6, 2015 -> 08:56 PM) Founders and bells are probably my two favorite brewers. Lagunitas is generally solid, really like little sumptin sumptin. Firestone walker is good and generally available around Chicago these days. Not your father's root beer from small town out of Wauconda is really blowing up right now, and it's delicious. Two brothers out of Warrenville producers some solid beers as well Lagunitas makes a seasonal called Undercover Shutdown that I've thoroughly enjoyed when I've had it at the brewery. I got to remember to buy some this year, though I have WAY too much stuff right now.

QUOTE (raBBit @ May 6, 2015 -> 09:08 PM) This stuff is unlike any beer I've ever had. Really does taste like a root beer and brings a kick, I think it's 6-7% IIRC. Pretty sure they're a lot stronger than that. I may be talking out of my ass, but I think they make them at a few different proofs. Pretty sure I bought one that was 10% and I think I've seen a 16% on menus.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ May 6, 2015 -> 08:39 PM) One of my favorite breweries is Greenbush from Sawyer, MI. Flat out some of the best stuff in the area, unfortunately they are smaller (they've at least tripled in size) and only distribute kegs right now but a fair amount makes it into Chicago. If you're ever on 94 in SW Michigan I highly recommend stopping by, that place is a fun time and is immensely popular now in the area. Zoom, check out Dupont Brasserie, they have some fantastic Belgian beers are available at Binnys: -Moinette Blonde and Brune are their staples, great stuff -Saison Dupont is one of the best saisons I've had -avec le bons voeux is a great winter seasonal Also, De Halve Maan Brasserie is also great, if you ever see Staffe Hendrik Quad (not the tripel) then buy a few bottles, one of the best beers I've ever had. Also, I've had probably over a hundred Belgium and Trappist beers over the years, I was abroad in the Netherlands and found their styles to be my favorite. If you ever want some tips or anything just let me know. I've had Saison Dupont before. It was good, but not necessarily my favorite. I think part of my problem with the Belgian beers is I sampled a lot of them before I started using Untappd to keep track of my drinking. I know I've had all three Chimay's, Westmalle Tripel, Orval, Duvel, Tripel Karmeliet, St. Bernardus Abt 12, and La Chouffe, but can't remember which ones I really liked. There was one quad too, but I can't remember which. I don't think I've ever had Rochefort. At some point I probably need to do a Belgian beer run to Binny's and do some tasting, but I get easily distracted by all the American breweries, especially when I see seasonals or limited releases. I also tend to get new stuff almost every time. I'd kill to try some Westvleteren 12, but I don't expect to travel to Belgium any time soon.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ May 6, 2015 -> 08:20 PM) American Beer Classic at Soldier Field this weekend, so that means I will like all beer on Saturday. Anyone else going? I thought about it, but there are a ton of beer fests out there. I already bought tickets to Chicago Ale Fest due to a living social deal (June 19th/20th at Buckingham Fountain), possibly going to the Lombard one the week before that, plus the Oak Park Micro Brew Review is August 15th and virtually in my backyard. The last one is a blast, north of 70 different breweries and great opportunities to get sloppy drunk. Only drawback is it gets quite crowded.

More general comment... It didn't start out this way, but I'm a big IPA fan, and even better if it's imperial. 2 years ago I never thought I'd drink some of the hop-bombs that are now a staple of my supply. Unfortunately, some of my favorites are either seasonal, hard to find, really expensive, or all of the above: Bell's Hopslam, New Glarus Scream IIPA, Deschutes Hop Trip, and Dogfish Head 120 (absurdly expensive) to name a few. I also tend to like Belgian-style beers (Dubbel, Trippel, Quad, Saison and Farmhouse Ales), which I realize is completely different. I need to try out more of the true Trappist ales, but there are just too many options when I walk into a Binny's. Ommegang makes a lot of stuff I like. Glimmerglass is a spring seasonal saison that's out right now. They also make the Game of Thrones beers, which have some supremely bad-ass labels. Here's the current one, Three Eyed Raven.

I know there have been other threads about drinking. However, I figured I'd retire "the finer things in life" in honor of FlaSoxxJim and create an alternative to the general drunk thread. The timing of this post and the state of the Bulls' game are not a coincidence. I have become obsessed with craft beer over the past year, and given the number of breweries opening, I doubt I'm the only one here. So, what brews are you enjoying right now? What are your favorites? What breweries are you visiting? Any stuff you're desperately trying to find? I can ramble on for quite some time, but I'll save it for future posts. For now, I'll just talk up Three Floyds a bit. I happened to be in the area for work and had to stop in when I saw they had Zombie Dust (one of my favorite beers and normally extremely difficult to find). I've heard people complain about rude employees and poor service, but I haven't had issues on either of my trips. This one was especially easy because it wasn't crowded. They obviously have great beer and their food is good even without grading on a curve for breweries. I've never seen that much Zombie Dust in one place (easily 40 cases came into the to-go area while I was there). Hopefully when their massive expansion is done (still quite a mess right now) it will be easier to find their stuff.

QUOTE (CrimsonWeltall @ May 4, 2015 -> 11:21 AM) They had a lot of dudes and weren't doing the typical "ok let's attack him one at a time" garbage most tv/movie henchmen do. Still, kinda lame death for Selmy The Unsullied still had shields and spears, which should be really hard to beat with knives. There was a sizeable passage in the books about how the Unsullied were outnumbered like 100-1 against the Dothraki (actual fighters) and prevailed. But here, pretty much all of them but Greyworm went down like nothing. At least Barristan is old and got outnumbered in the chaos, but Dany's "mighty army" should have ended it by then. /stupid book nerd rant

QUOTE (ChiSox_Sonix @ May 4, 2015 -> 07:53 AM) What. the. f***. Barristan is dead? Really? Apparently a bunch of dudes wearing sheets armed with knives is enough to kill multiple Unsullied and one of the greatest knights to ever live. So much for combat training!

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Apr 30, 2015 -> 10:57 PM) Calvin Johnson, AJ Green, Dez Bryant, Larry Fitzgerald - 0 super bowl titles. You have to build inside out. I hate the pick. But don't worry, guy will go for 1,400 and 10 TD regularly, and the Bears will miss the playoffs regularly, too. Look at the teams winning Super Bowls. They don't invest in WR in the draft. I think the highest picked WR to win a super bowl the last decade Is Hakeem Nicks at 29. This logic is flawed. One team wins the title every year (not necessarily the best team either) and there are a ton of other variables. You could do the same thing with NBA point guards since Isiah Thomas. Just because Chauncey Billups and Tony Parker are the best pg's with rings in that stretch (I'm not counting Kidd or Payton because they were well past their prime) doesn't mean you pass on a potential stud at the position if you don't love your other options.

I'm not counting on Aegon in the show. However, you can't really announce that casting because it's a huge spoiler.

Sexually active Tommen freaked me out. He's only 8 in the books man!

To me, it's a little silly to call the Spurs (and Patriots, so I'm not just picking on the Spurs) titles all one dynasty. The first and the last of the Spurs' run were 16 years apart and only had one player in common. Even from their 4th to their 5th, there was a 7 year gap. Yeah, they've been consistently good, but there's also 3 first round losses in that stretch and 4 more in the second round. The Lakers also have 5 titles in that stretch and the Heat have 3. It's not nearly the stretch of consistent dominance of some other teams. Their first 3 titles also came during the late 90's/early 2000's, which wasn't nearly as strong an era. If they beat the Lakers, they were pretty much winning the title. Sacramento never quite got there (except for that one series against LA where they might have been robbed) and the Suns' run was really only 4 years, with Amare missing one of them and getting suspended against the Spurs in another. The Mavs were a mixed bag; a couple of their teams when they still had Nash were legit, but most of them played poor defense and didn't have the support around Dirk. There was little depth behind those teams. The East was a complete joke, there weren't any real threats to the top west teams (Including Detroit, even though they stole one. They were a below average offensive team even with Rasheed).

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Apr 11, 2015 -> 03:27 PM) Harden, Butler, Thompson with two almost surefire superstars in Wiggins/Oladipo in waiting. That's still better than anything from the 90's The first 3 are legit, though the last two were a lot better this year than they have been in the past. The other two guys may or may not get there. Keep in mind Brad Beal and Eric Gordon were sure-fire studs a few years ago. Wiggins has great potential, but has a long way to go. He was barely a factor from 3 and wasn't much better on 2's not at the rim. He doesn't have the most diverse game right now. He also will probably end up at SF, which is admittedly a cop-out. Oladipo is alright. He's a solid athlete that's scoring better than I expected so far, but I don't know how much better he'll get. He hasn't been as strong at the rim as a lot of these other wings (55.4 and 57.3% so far. Wiggins was 65% this year, Butler 63%, Harden 62%) and he's not exactly a knock-down shooter. SG went deeper than just Jordan and Drexler back then. Dumars was putting up 20 points and 4 assists with mid-50's TS%. Reggie Miller was limited, but shot well enough to put up 20 a game on TS%'s north of 60. Mitch Ritchmond averaged 21-3.9-3.5 for his career with a 55.7 TS%. Even a fairly unremarkable player like Hersey Hawkins had a 4-year run where he averaged about 20-4-4 with 1.8 steals and TS%'s north of 57. That and two solid SG's from that era DIED at 27 (Petrovic and Lewis). Just because you don't remember/acknowledge them doesn't mean they all sucked. I wouldn't say the wing spots were stellar back then, but they were serviceable. Both spots had a few HOF'ers and some other decent players. IMO, the best stretch for wing players was the mid-to-late-2000's. You had multiple HOF types that were in the late 90's drafts (Kobe, Pierce, Allen, Carter and T-Mac), two superstars and another perennial All-Star drafted in '03, a guy that probably would be considered a lock HOF if he had a bigger role (Ginobili), a couple years of Brandon Roy, plus a bunch of other guys that still put up numbers like Stojakovic, Joe Johnson, Marion, , Rashard Lewis, Caron Butler and Jamison. There were a lot of good PF's in that stretch too. Unfortunately, PG was plagued by talented but inefficient shoot-first guards (Iverson, Arenas, Marbury, Baron Davis and Steve Francis) or marginal talents that dragged down the whole era a bit.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Apr 10, 2015 -> 09:38 PM) And that's not a knock on LeBron. That's 21st century top-tier talent at its finest. Think about the 90's. It was MJ and insert whatever big (the wing talent sucked) that happened to have a career year that particular season. SG is horrible right now. Lou Williams is 5th in PER at the position by over 2 points. Plus one of the guys ahead of him is Wade, who's on his last legs and misses 15 to 20 games every year. Most of the position is guys that aren't asked to do anything but shoot 3's and defend. SF has quite a bit of talent, but 3 of the top-5 missed most of the season and guys like Gay, Hayward and Harris are better for fantasy hoops than real life. The PG's right now are obviously fantastic and the bigs are starting to come back a bit.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Apr 8, 2015 -> 01:37 PM) I don't know, I bet if I decided to use all the subs I have buying packs and selling guys I don't need, I will have an all-star team in no time. I mean, my worst offensive player right now I think is Carlos Ruiz at an 83 overall. I think I have 5 90+ hitters already. From my experience, packs aren't the most efficient use of stubs. Most of the packs I've opened have been 3 common and 3 bronze. I rarely get someone I can use out of a pack (my lineup is all 77+, my rotation is 80+, my pen is 76-79 because I don't spend on relievers on the marketplace). You can easily get a super-team given your current situation. 35k stubs will go a long way on the market place. You can get at least 3 more gold players, possibly more depending on who you buy. I'm merely pointing out that the vast majority of players aren't going to get 4 gold (at least from what you posted) and a Diamond in a limited pack sample. I'd guess that your 57 packs if you choose to buy them would max out somewhere around that unless you have a horseshoe up your ass.

QUOTE (chw42 @ Apr 8, 2015 -> 10:54 AM) My best pack pull has been Elvis Andrus and I've opened around 10 packs. It looks like you have better luck than most. And Puig only costs 19k now? Prices fluctuate wildly. I'll use two examples for guys I've checked repeatedly: Bumgarner (because I wanted to sell him) and Abreu (because I eventually bought him). Abreu was as high as 38k when the game first came out. Since then, he usually settles in between 16 and 20k. However, I was able to buy him at 12k and have seen him between 12 and 14k pretty often. I've seen Bumgarner as high as 22k. Unfortunately, no one bought him when I listed him in the 20's for whatever reason. The last few days, he's generally been between 14k and 18k. I finally sold him for 17k. With those kind of fluctuations, you can easily buy low and make a few thousand stubs.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Apr 7, 2015 -> 05:57 PM) So I think the marketplace is a little broken in DD. Once you get a really good player, sell that player, make a s*** ton of money, use that money to buy a bunch of packs, gets another good player in those packs, sell that guy, repeat. I sold my extra Puig card for 19,000. Used that to buy 7 packs. In those 7, I picked up a Jose Bautista and a Troy Tulowitzki. Decided to keep both. Then opened up a SECOND Bautista card. Sold it for like 14,000. Then decided to sell my Cole Hamels card that I never get to pitch with anyway for like 11,000. Then used all those extra players to feed to my created player. I now have Puig, Tulo, and Jose Bautista in my lineup, my created player is a 99, and I have like 35,000 stubs in the bank still. I have a feeling I could have a super team in the next few days and will probably get bored with this mode. I think they need to SEVERELY nerf the amount these cards sell for. I could get 57,000 for just my Tulo card alone. That would buy me 57 more packs. That's over 300 players! Chances are in those 300, I will get at least 3 more diamond players, and the cycle will never end. It seems like you got extremely lucky with your packs. I've opened at least 20 and I got one gold card (luckily it was Bumgarner, who I sold for about 17k). I know a guy that dropped like $50 on stubs and he got 3 gold cards (Bautista, Aramis Ramirez and Lucroy). Diamond players are supposed to show up in about one pack out of 100, which is why the prices are so high. You can definitely flip cards to get enough stubs to buy players pretty easily, but you still have to get in-demand players first (or buy stubs).

QUOTE (raBBit @ Apr 7, 2015 -> 11:25 AM) I didn't buy any of it. It was just gifts from friends, my uncle and my sister. I don't have any room in my mini fridge for this s***. I have this problem all the time, only I buy much more expensive beer.

QUOTE (Buehrle>Wood @ Apr 6, 2015 -> 09:03 PM) Is the show online down for anyone else? First time playing. Can't access any online features I've had pretty significant issues since last night. It occasionally works, but not long enough to do much productive. It seems like some people are having issues and some aren't.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Apr 6, 2015 -> 11:29 AM) At that one (which happens to be in a gas station) Ive never had the issue. Carnitas mixed, add cheese, give me a ton of the hot sauce on the side. The other two locations are more like stores so I never go there. They are pretty confusing. On the Pete's thing, if you guys go there, make sure you order the half chicken-Greek with rice. Will change your life. Okay, I normally go to the stand-alone storefront that actually has chairs. I keep threatening to get one of the guisados, but never do.

QUOTE (LDF @ Apr 6, 2015 -> 01:17 AM) does anyone remember a sick youtube of some kids sliding head first into the urinal trough ??? some said it was at wrigley?? i don't know over maybe 10+ yrs. I don't think it was actually at Wrigley, but I haven't been there enough to compare. The worst part is the guys standing near the end that get drenched.

QUOTE (Chilihead90 @ Apr 6, 2015 -> 01:09 AM) I threw a 2-hitter with Miguel Gonzalez in DD, and after the game it said that I lost connection to the server and it would upload the game result later. It never did. Yeah, I had the same thing happen, no rewards for mine. I was having serious issues with the game last night.

So I logged out/in a few minutes ago because I'm having trouble connecting to The Show servers. When I got back, the trophy for earning a diamond item popped up when I got my daily rewards. I was unzipping my pants in anticipation, then when I scrolled to it, it was a sponsorship deal, not a player. After my initial disappointment, I thought, "well, maybe I can still sell it for a bunch on the marketplace." I scrolled through to find mine, and it's going for like 1,500 studs. I'd have been better off getting a decent silver.

QUOTE (Tony82087 @ Apr 5, 2015 -> 06:07 PM) So I bit the bullet and picked up the Show. Just doing exhibitions to get timing down, and waiting for the roster updates to come out. Few thoughts. 1. Hitting is much more difficult from what I have expierenced. I can't hit home runs to save my life, aside from a few odd shots with Flowers and LaRoach. 2. I hate base running with multiple guys on base. Way too much chaos, and it's cost me a ton of runs by guys not advancing. I tried to put it on auto base running, then I had Abreu and Melky both make awful steal attempts, so that clearly isn't going to be an option. 3. Why does Abreu have so many cold zones? I hit well with him, but when Miguel Cabrea comes up, his entire batting zone is red. Abreu has like 6 blue zones. What the hell? 4. Not sure I like it or not, but I noticed when in a playoff series, when your starter is up to pitch again later in the series, his energy is usually only around 80 or 85 percent. I like the game, but some things for sure need to be tweek, hopefully I can start to play with the sliders once I get better. Hitting is definitely a pain in the ass. You are not alone. The controls for a single baserunner took me a while to get used to. What you have to do is push the left stick in the direction of the guy you want to advance and then hit the button for the base you want him to go to. So if you have runners at the corners for a sack fly, you push the left stick to the left and hit "x" to send the runner at 3rd. I'm guessing you were facing a righty with Abreu. I can't check the exact ratings right now because the server is acting up, but his contact rating is uneven. He's like 96/92 power, but something like 82/67 contact.