I will be up in St. Cloud starting tomorrow (Saturday Jan 26th) through Saturday Feb 2nd. Looking forward to seeing some old friends, seeing how the office is doing, and all that. Jeff Lee – we need to have a beer. I am at the Kelly Inn so lets meet up downtown, I probably will be out Saturday night for sure. My mobile is on the side of my blog, so txt me!
Oh yeah, and MN is colder than WI right now, yesssss!
Last week, Heidi and I went to The Veranda Lounge at the Pioneer Place Theatre in St. Cloud. The Half Steps were singing. I pulled out the digital camera and recorded them singing “That’s Amore” (think: Dean Martin).
As you can see, instead of making sure I look good after going to the bathroom at the Red Carpet, I am either really drunk and look like a guy from the 50’s in black in white, or The Receders have adverts plastered everywhere. Too bad I will be on the road by the 31st (the day of the show)
Last night, a friend and I headed out around Central MN, we ended up going to the Pioneer Place, which both of us have heard of, but never ventured into. It is a theatre, that has a little bar in it. Almost feels like a “nice” house party. There was some guys playing acoustic guitar and piano. Very laid back, no smoking (yes!) and just a cool atmosphere.
It is kind of funny, because earlier in the night we talked about going to see Amadeus which is playing there right now. Obviously we needed tickets, but we just weren’t thinking.
Anyways, I recognized one of the guys up on the little stage, the piano/harmonica player. Earlier this week I was getting made fun of #1 because “blogging” was on the front page of the St. Cloud Times, and #2, because I didn’t make the article 🙂 – anyways, I read the article and it covers the blogging life of Jeff Lee, who run’s a blog called “View from the Cloud”
I snapped a picture of them playing, sounded really good too. Something I could see myself doing if only I could find someone to play with 😛
I’ve been doing alot of blogging lately, and really started a few years back, but I never really got into the St. Cloud blogging scene. Seems that SCSU Scholars just wasn’t my type of read. I’m more into technical blogs, and also friends that keep their blogs up to date [everyone is a blogger! – one post and gone for a year :)]. I’ll probably subscribe to Jeff’s blog now that I have met him, so that is kind of cool.
In any event, I think I’ll probably be hanging out at the Pioneer Place more often. I’m pretty sure they have Wi-Fi too. What I need to do is drive around and find all the hot spots, or, I could just buck up and pay the extra $ to have my phone (Pocket PC 6700, which BTW, I probably have sold more of them than salespeople at Sprint – I think I probably sold 2 last night just showing mine off) as a modem, which I just might have to do.
Fun times, as usual 🙂
Last week, I had the pleasure of “guest lecturing” at SCSU (my alma mater) – To the BCIS .NET Class. The first class, was ASP.NET Basics. The second was extending ASP.NET to connect to a database, which we created a mock employee directory in about 40 minutes. The experience was good for me and hopefully the students as well. I kind of got to see how they are doing things in BCIS (I am a CSCI grad), and also they got to ask questions and go through some real world situations and learn from me. Hopefully they take something away with them they can use in the future.
Well, a while ago I wrote a program to create a RSS feed off of the St. Cloud Times website, but I let it go and stopped running it, but if anyone wants an RSS for the local news on the ScTimes, here you go
The Red Carpet Night Club in St. Cloud is a great place to go and hang out, have some beers, listen to music, and the like. Recently, they have been in the news:
Police find man not breathing outside club
Here is a rebuttal to that article by Seth Malinksi (He doesn’t work for the Red Carpet and never has):
I would like to pre-empt this story by stating that I was NOT there at the time and I have NOT spoken directly to the person who is in the hospital. Also, some information may not be completely accurate but the MORAL of the story and the MOTIVATION behind the story can be seen without getting up in arms about a few specifics.
This is to all persons whom may have seen the Channel 5 News about the incident that happened at the Red Carpet on Thursday.
I have been a bouncer downtown St Cloud for over 3 years now. Obviously this situation is the most extreme and without understanding of how “downtown” works you may have already formed an opinion that is unfavorable to the security staff at the Red Carpet I beg you to read what follows and try to understand.
We work in an industry that serves a drug to people for a monetary charge. This drug is alcohol. Not everyone can be trusted to use this drug and maintain a copious relationship with society, police, and themselves. We work at places that invite people to drink at a cheap price with a great surrounding and offer the safety of our security.
Let’s face the facts. Most people can control how they act when under the influence of alcohol. A lot of people cannot. Alcohol inhibits the rational portion of the brain, the cognitive thinking, the motor skills (speech, walking, etc..) Alcohol is a depressant not a stimulant. Judgment is therefore muffled within an hour and decision making process is broken which leads to the reason why you as a customer need security. A lot of people drink from bar to bar, or from home to a bar, or do drugs before they come down to the bar. Many people become extremely agitated by alcohol. Some people are even allergic to alcohol. Voices get louder, people become irrational, and decisions are made without understanding or caring for the consequences.
Fast forward to Thursday April 7th 2004: A man enters the Red Carpet after spending some time with friends at other local bars. This man has a proven public history of drug use and abuse. This man enters the dance room located upstairs at the Red Carpet. He is celebrating graduation from SC Tech college and the birth of his 3rd child. This man begins to act irrationally and showing obvious signs of intoxication. Bartenders immediately recognize this behavior and stop serving the gentleman. He continues to act in this disruptive behavior and then a waitress contacts the security after she is sexually harassed by this man. Security then tries to escort this individual out of the premises. The man decides that he is not leaving. For some reason, in his mind he must be thinking that he is fine and that these “bouncers” are not going to ruin his night of fun and celebration just because he is too intoxicated and because he will swear that he did not assault a waitress. Nevermind the criminal and civil implications to the establishment with allowing someone in this condition to stay. Lawsuits galore…By employees who felt that the establishment did not take proper steps and was negligent in allowing a person to stay in the bar and assault waitresses and bartenders. Customers who can sue for the same premise liability. Then what if he falls down the stairs and breaks his neck, negligence on behalf of the security and the establishment for not making sure that the intoxicated individual did not get down the stairs safely, also if he does leave on his own then he gets in his car and wraps it around a tree and kills himself the bar is liable for negligently allowing someone to leave under obvious intoxication standards attached to the Dramm Shoppe laws of MN. Back to the situation, then the security approaches the man who is acting irrationally towards them as well and physically assaults and batters one security person. Now this man is showing signs of defiance and physical confrontation. A few more bouncers get involved and this man is fighting veraciously, (like a man on drugs..Stimulants of the sort in which he has already been convicted of gives persons who take these drugs almost superhuman adrenaline strength) He is pinned down on the ground and held by the neck. If someone is fighting you right now, and you could hold him down where would you grab him or her. Would you hold him by the arm so that he could kick and bite and hit you with his other arm, or would you try to make sure that the man is no longer in danger to yourself or to others? The man then stops breathing. The police arrive and handcuff the suspect and find out he is not breathing. Then the man is rushed to the hospital and is in critical condition because he has brain damage. Bad luck, poor decision making??? I don’t know but, You make the call but if you ask me this situation could happen in any establishment in any city at any time. Don’t judge the security or the Red Carpet because of this situation.
Now, this guy’s mother wants someone held responsible for what her son is going through. I think that the son should be held responsible for getting drunk out of his gourd and then acting like an idiot. If you start a fight, and then get your assed kicked, it is no one’s fault but your own. It would be nice if people like that were stopped at the door, and not even let in, except then they would go cause an accident, and then try to blame someone else for it. People need to start taking responsibility for their own actions.
Personally, I am glad that they have good security (and I’m not a small guy). People shouldn’t have to deal with flaming drunk morons at the bar. It should be a nice social place to hang out and just get out on the town. The Martini Bar at the Carpet is a perfect example of a “class act” bar. I don’t plan to not goto the Red Carpet anymore because of this, and I don’t think anyone else should either.
They suck.wouldnt serve me with my paper is (i lost my id). Ultimate Sports Bar didn’t even check my ID. Pestys lost my business.
More like, the price of milk in St. Cloud. WTF happened to the price of milk? I went to the grocery store, and woah, $4.49 for a gallon of chocolate milk. Are you kidding me? If you go through a gallon a week, that like $235 dollars a year just for milk. I am pretty sure you could probably go buy a Chocolate Cow for that much money. Got Milk? Got Money? Milk does a body good? But you have to sell your left arm just to buy a gallon.
I suppose it has something to do with gas price hikes, but that is another rant 😉
KVSC 88.1 is the radio station for Saint Cloud State University. You can listen online to their streaming broadcast. It is nice if you just want to listen to some different music or are sick of your mp3’s or cd’s.
Steve Novoselac's Blog 