Nothing makes me happier than trying a new Colorado brewed IPA. This one is extra special. This one is from New Belgium, Colorado’s finest craft brewery. I didn’t think it was in New Belgium’s DNA to make an IPA. But low-and-behold, as I walked into the liquor store tonight to purchase my favorite beer (Modus Hoperandi), there it was — Ranger, the long awaited New Belgium IPA.

Ranger is delicious. An immediate jump into my Top 5 favorite India Pale Ale’s brewed in Colorado. New Belgium claims there are 3 pounds of hops per barrel, and I’m thinking that’s accurate. Ranger is very hoppy. There are three hops used in the beer: Cascade (citrus), Chinook (floral/citrus), and Simcoe (fruity). Although the beer is extremely hoppy, Ranger finishes dry. It’s fantastic!

Ranger hits you hard with lots of insanely bitter citrus hops, and then — bam! — it dissipates as soon as it’s off the tongue.  It’s a fun beer.

The packaging for Ranger is different than anything I have seen from New Belgium. For a very long time, looking at a bottle of New Belgium was a bit like playing Where’s Waldo?.  In this case, replace Waldo with Horsetooth Rock, which towers above Fort Collins west of town.  You could spot Horsetooth Rock in most of New Belgium’s marketing efforts, including their beer labels, but there’s no such imagery in the new packaging.  A new look for New Belgium?

The alcohol content in Ranger is 6.5%, which is about average for an IPA.  Beer, in general, tends to have more flavor when the alcohol content is lower.  Ranger is no exception.  New Belgium’s website states Ranger will be available “where good beer is served and sold February 1, 2010.”  But trust me, it’s January 24th, and it’s on the shelves.  Got to your favorite liquor store and indulge today!

Ever since the iPhone was announced, I wanted one. I desperately wanted one. The problem I had, and still have, is the horrible coverage in the area I need it most — the area where I work.

AT&T’s network shortcomings, despite what a heftier Luke Wilson will tell you, is well documented. I was told by an AT&T rep that I would be lucky to receive a text message in the area I work, and certainly have major trouble with phone calls. Not good. It’s a map issue.

I stuck with Verizon and their map, which gave me 3G Broadband in the same area that AT&T could not guarantee text messages. I also was stuck with the Blackberry Storm. The multiple, daily urges to toss the Storm into the Arkansas River was too much to bear. I purchased the Motorola Droid two months ago and cannot be happier.

I am in Sales and spend most of my days on the road going from appointment-to-appointment.  I have a lot of clients who are very needy.  It is not uncommon to receive 50 calls in a day in addition to a full day of appointments.  It’s tough.  I had a very successful sales year and I attribute much of the success to the Droid.

The apps I use most often on the Droid is Google Voice, Google Maps, Google Calendar, and GMail.   I live outside of my sales territory, so prior to activating Google Voice I was using a long distance cell phone number with my clients.   With Google Voice, I was able to pick a local phone number for my clients to call — for free! This makes a big difference on how my clients and prospects perceive me.  A local phone number is very beneficial.

The Droid has perfect integration with Google Voice. I am notified almost instantly after a message is left.  A few seconds later the message is transcribed into text. Perfect! This saves me a ton of time not having to dial into voice mail and then finding scratch paper to write down the message. A quick read and a press of the button and I’m returning the call.  Then another press of the button to the Calendar to view my next appointment and one more press of the button for step-by-step navigation to their front door.  Awesome!

Another great feature of Google Voice is that it saves all of my messages like email, so it’s easily accessible.  You can also add contact info on-the-fly and add notes to each individual message.  When you add the contact info it updates to your GMail contacts, as well as your contacts on your phone.  Beautiful!  And of course, GMail then syncs with Google Calendar, which in turn syncs with Google Maps for step-by-step navigation.  And all of this syncs with the Droid instantaneously.  It has streamlined and organized my day.  I love it!

The Droid has yet to fail me. I would do a “battery pull” with the Blackberry Storm at least ten times a day to get the phone working again.  I haven’t pulled the battery once with the Droid.  It just works.  Droid does, or something.

My iPhone envy has not completely diminished, though.  It’s too bad the iPhone is still exclusive to the AT&T network.  It’s also too bad Google Voice is not compatible with the iPhone.  I’ve read conflicting reports of who banned the Google Voice app from the iPhone, either Apple or AT&T.  Either way, a phone without Google Voice is a deal killer for me.  Perhaps the best compromise is to purchase an iPod Touch.

I will continue writing about my experience with the Motorola Droid and Android in the near future.  I have discovered a ton of great apps that I’ll share, most of which are free.  It’s a wonderful phone that has made my life better!  I say this with confidence.

I first met John Reidy about ten years ago when he approached me about a radio talk show idea he had called Pop Autopsy. I was familiar with John’s work as Editor of the Denver underground ‘zine, the Hooligan, and was anxious to hear a “demo” of the show.  At the time I had an Internet radio station and was always on the lookout for good talent.  John definitely has talent. The demo was a bit rough, but it was a no-brainer to give him a slot on the station.

Pop Autopsy Intro:

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John had the only talk show on the now defunct Alpha Radio. At every show he had a room full of people, five or six guests at a time, and would lay to waste any-and-all pop culture figures. It was quite entertaining.  My favorite segment of Pop Autopsy was the movie reviews based on the trailer.  I loved that.  They were spot-on with every review, all based on nothing more than a 2 minute trailer.

South Stands Denver Fancast

John recently started a new radio venture at South Stands Denver.  And it’s very good.  John hosts a podcast every week with Colin Daniel and producer Aaron X (who also produced Pop Autopsy).  It is a Denver Sports podcast, or as they call it… the Fancast.  Most of the talk so far has been dominated by the up-and-down season of the Denver Broncos, but they also discuss other Denver area sports teams like the Nuggets, Avalanche, Rockies, DU Pioneers, and CSU Rams.  It is the only area sports podcast that despises the Colorado Buffaloes, which earns them extra points in my book.

In addition to the sports talk, they delve into pop culture.  Perhaps my favorite segment of the South Stands Denver Fancast is “Raiders Fan or ICP Fan”.  I have learned it is very difficult to tell apart a Juggalo from a Raiders fan.  I also enjoy the conversation about commercials.  Local Yokel is always fun, too.   They came up with my favorite new sports nickname recently, which is BM “The Turd” for Brandon Marshall.   It’s a clever, entertaining show and one of the few podcasts I listen to every week.

South Stands Denver posted their 18th show this week which features the fantasy football guru, Cecil Lamey from Footballguys.com and 9News.  Surprisingly, there wasn’t much fantasy football talk.  But that’s what I like about the Fancast.  I find my self laughing out loud (the kids do the LOL) while driving to work.  By the way, the South Stands Denver Fancast is available for download at iTunes.  The only trick is that they break up the podcast into two segments, so you must manually add the second segment to download the entire show.  Here is a link to the latest show:

1st half of the Fancast: 

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2nd half of the Fancast:

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I must add that the Fancast is not appropriate for all ages.  The language can be a little rough.  The topics can also can be a bit suspect, especially the talk about what happens to young men in prison.  But hey, it is certainly not your average sports podcast.  Give it a listen!

Alright, it has been a couple months since I last updated scott stafford [dot] com.  I will be more active in the next few weeks.  Let’s start by posting some interesting tidbits about our vacation in Florida.  The main focus of our trip was Disney World (note: 5 year old boy and 3 year old girl), but we also took a couple day-trips to the beaches in Pinellas County, just west of Tampa.  It is about an hour drive from where we stayed in Kissimmee to Tampa, and about another 1/2 hour from Tampa to the beaches.  I took a bunch of pictures at Fort de Soto State Park and St. Pete Beach.

I loved our trip to Florida and could totally live in a beach house if the opportunity arose.  I also feel that Florida receives a lot of undeserving criticism.  Yeah, there’s a lot of old people.  Yeah, there’s like 100 different kinds of deadly, man-eating snakes.   Yeah, the mosquitoes are the size of small birds.  Yeah, there’s like a 90 percent chance when you hear about a missing-child-found-dead-at-the-bottom-of-a-lake-after-being-molested-by-his-mother’s-boyfriend that it happened in Florida.  But, c’mon, the beaches are awesome!!

We only explored two beaches, so I can’t say with certainty that Fort de Soto State Park has the best beach in Florida, but I’ll say it anyway.  North Beach at Fort de Soto State Park is the best beach in Florida!!

The main reason I love Fort de Soto so much is because it is an amazing escape.  In an area of 3 million people, you can drive for 20 minutes from St. Petersburg and find yourself on powder-like white sand collecting sea shells, building sand castles, fishing, sunning, and swimming in complete solitude.  No restaurants, no hotels, no broken glass, no cigarette butts, no washed-up band-aids… no people.  Pure awesome.

I swam out to a sandbar and spoke to a local couple who were diving for sand dollars.  I dove down and grabbed some myself.  They told me that the secret to preserving sand dollars is to use a half-water and half-bleach solution and let them soak over night.  We never got around to buying bleach, but it’s supposed to make the sand dollars bright white.

I’m not the only one who loves Fort de Soto.  Both Dr. Beach and Travel Advisor have named it the best beach in America.  Probably for similar reasons.

A few days later we ventured over to St. Pete Beach which — as a pelican flies — is only about 6 miles north of Fort de Soto.  But what a difference!  St. Pete Beach is more like a California beach, but with about 1/3 less people.  That still means that there are a lot of people, but you can easily find a place to lay your towel or blanket with a 30 to 50 foot buffer or so.   The waves were bigger at St. Pete Beach and it was certainly more lively.  There were kids running around, teenagers throwing a football, locals leathering their skin,  a gang of skimboarders, and general beach stuff.  We were in walking distance to restaurants  and hotels, as well.  Alcoholic beverages are not allowed on St. Pete Beach.  From my research, alcohol is only allowed on Treasure Island Beach, which is only a couple miles north.

St. Pete Beach has very easy access and good parking.  It’s a fun place to hang out for a few hours.  The place really fills up around 4:00 pm, when the kids get out of school.  Not a bad way to grow up.  Oh, and there is a great restaurant called Middle Grounds Grill in Treasure Island.  Some of the best fish I have eaten.

Here is the link to the pictures at Fort de Soto State Park and St. Pete Beach in case you missed it.