Cattle.com

Blog Archive January 2014

This Year's Superb Owl "God Made a Farmer"

Chevy beat Ram on this one...




Online Sale Watch

I've removed the biggest weakness of the online sale watch thing, specifically the dependence it had upon me putting the sale links into it.


It's now updating properly for the sales on CW and BWOS and I'll get it to auto detect sales from other other auction companies after I get back from a weekend of travel to various judging contests.


Hey kids…

Are you tired of your parents giving you any free time at all while you’re at a stock show?

Do you want your father to straight up murder any jock that you so much as glance at?

Perhaps you want your parents to just load up your calves and haul them to the auction barn rather than ever risking you setting foot on a showground again?

Well do I have the answer for you... (apologies in advance, this is an admittedly rather risky embed)

...your animals will be at the auction in no time.


Tucker, Albin and Associates, Inc AKA Livestockcollections

I’m a pretty vocal critic of the BBB and I realize that there are certain industries where you are just begging to have complaints filed against you.

With that being said, the lowest our rating has been with complaints filed against me by people we banned from our sites and one guy in Houston that thinks I’m in conspiracy with the FBI to rig virtual horse races on Trophyhorse.com (that is not a joke, it was an actual BBB complaint filed against me) my rating has never been lower than an A-.

I don’t have an actual rating for my primary LLC right now, I’m not sure why.  It says insufficient history but they have an 8 year history for me.  I have no desire to pay the $500/yr fee it would be for me to be accredited and I asked them to put me on their do not call list after about the third relatively high pressure sales call ("you're a website and GoDaddy is a website, people will think they're better than you because they're accredited with us").

Anyway, HERE is my rating for my larger LLC and HERE is my rating for Livestockjudging.com.

I only point that out because while it's understandable that a company - especially one specializing in collections - could have some complaints, a rating of F typically means there are issues.

Before you sign up with a company to “put integrity back in your business”, you should probably take just a few minutes to glance at the 52 complaints they’ve had filed against them in the past three years from a fairly diverse mix of both their clients and the targets of their collection attempts…




Dear Chi Association

I'm sorry.


I was as guilty of it as anybody.

We made fun of you guys for registering anything with four legs.

It was wrong of us.

I super duper promise that if you'll just drop that 6.25% requirement to oh, let's say 3.43% (heck, 3.445% would be okay) we won't make fun of you for it.

Please?

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Top Web Sale Lots Week of 1/20/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $31,000 - Heifer sired by EXAR UPSHOT 0562B
  2. $23,000 - Bred Cow sired by Maximus
  3. $22,000 - Heifer sired by PA Power Tool 9108
  4. $17,500 - Bred Heifer sired by Hawkeye
  5. $17,000 - Bred Cow sired by Hard Drive
  6. $16,500 - Bred Heifer sired by POSS TOTAL IMPACT 745
  7. $15,000 - Pair sired by Hoover Dam
  8. $15,000 - Pregnancy sired by RITO 9Q13 OF RITA 5F56 GHM
  9. $14,501 - Bred Heifer sired by Biscuit
  10. $14,500 - Bred Cow sired by SCF Mr Broken Joe 659 PLD


Sire Summary of the National Western Steer Show

Warning: Language.

This scene flashes through my head every time I see that Heat Wave sired another major show grand.

James Gandolfini will be playing the part of the old bull in today's showing... 




Houston's Zilmax Catch 22

Before linking to all of the Denver stuff a person can possibly find…

I want to be clear that I think Houston is the best steer show out there.  You people can whine about it being slick (you’re wrong) or the capped payouts if you want but no show takes care of their kids more than the folks over there.  That’s why announcing a radical change in policy just nine-weeks before the show date comes as such a surprise.

Let’s ignore for a second that a solid portion of the people feeding steers in Texas still don’t know about it.  The policy of testing show winners for Zilmax is Catch 22 level preposterous in the first place.

Follow me.

Zilmax was taken off of the market because it was causing soundness issues in cattle.  No, I’m not talking about the occasional popping of pasterns that we call unsound in show steers, actually unsound.  They were actually having trouble walking off the trailer.  Forget winning, the soundness level issues that lead to the withdrawal of Zilmax from the market would prevent a steer from even entering the ring. 

Scott Schaake is judging Houston.  He isn’t a soundness zealot but a steer does have to be able to move smoothly for him to use him.

The calves that will be piss tested are placing steers.

Houston is going to be testing steers that have just been found to be sound enough to win a major show to make sure they don’t have traces of a legal additive….…because that additive causes soundness issues.

Your judge just did that.  With his eyeballs.

Whoever came up with this policy and then explicitly stated that they are doing this because of Merck’s suspension of Zilmax production doesn’t actually understand Merck’s official reason for that decision in the first place.

If a steer can move well enough to win a steer show, he's not the kind of steer that Zilmax was suspended over.

But he’ll be thrown out because Zilmax was removed from the market.

In fact, if a placing steer tests positive for Zilmax, please call Merck because he’s given you more evidence that removing Zilmax from the market for the officially stated reasons was unnecessary in the first place.

Your policy does not protect anybody from anything.

It isn’t preventing animal welfare issues, the cattle you will be testing will be sound because you chose a judge that will make sure of it.

It doesn’t keep illegal drugs out of the ring.

It does not clean up the show ring.

You're telling kids you won't tolerate Zilmax in the urine because of soundness/animal welfare issues but you will only be testing cattle that don't actually have those issues.  

The only thing your policy actually does create is the opportunity for you to ruin a kid’s year.


Top Web Sale Lots Week of 1/13/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $125,000 - Bred Cow sired by BR CURRENCY 8144 ET
  2. $110,000 - Heifer sired by Golden Oak Outcross 18U
  3. $100,000 - Bull sired by KJ HVH 33N REDEEM 485T ET
  4. $85,000 - Heifer sired by Rito 9Q13 of Rita 5F56 GHM
  5. $82,500 - Heifer sired by CRR About Time 743
  6. $74,000 - Bull sired by CRR 719 CATAPULT 109
  7. $65,000 - Cow sired by TR Mr Fire Water 5792R
  8. $50,000 - Bred Heifer sired by S A V Brilliance 8077
  9. $50,000 - Bull sired by A A R Ten X 7008 S A
  10. $50,000 - Bull sired by KJ HVH 33N REDEEM 485T ET


Denver 2014 - Even Better

I'm behind on organizing everything, will catch up with as much collection and organization as I can...



My Take

This is all purely my speculation after asking Houston on the Facbook post whether the memo means that Zilmax is banned or if it’s still legal to use according to label (three day withdrawal).

I’ve been on the ‘official’ side of vague policies enough times to know a “stop asking questions, we’re not going to answer” reply when I see one, I’ve given plenty of them.  When somebody replies to a question about detail on a new policy with nothing but a quote from the policy itself, it’s because they realize there are holes in it that they can’t address in a sound manner.  I don’t fault them for it, it’s an unfortunate aspect of regulating gray areas.

You’re not going to find out anything but “We will not tolerate Zilpaterol in the urine”.

They won’t tell you whether that means you can still feed it according to label because they’re going to need to be able to stand behind their policy if they want to enforce it and they’re not 100% sure that a three day withdrawal will ensure that.  By saying that they won’t tolerate it in the urine, they have something directly measurable that they can point to as the line that you cannot cross.

So good luck.

Glad I’m not one of you people out there trying to figure it out. 


Houston Zilmax Explanation/Confusion/Question/Other/All of the Above

If you didn’t come by yesterday or you’re not on Facebook, the big news was Houston putting out a slightly confusing but important notice that they’re going to be testing for Zilmax in the urine.

Overnight, while I was knocked out on Nyquil (oh hey, look Nyquil Adsense ads) and a cocktail of antihistamines somebody left a comment that goes into more detail on it. 

I don’t know her personally but I’ve seen her post on here and elsewhere under that pseudonym and don’t have any reason to doubt her…


Well, that makes it about as clear as mud.

If Houston isn’t banning Zilmax outright, there’s no reason for about half of the words in that notification.  There was a three day withdrawal on the stuff last year and the suspension of its production by Merck did not impact that at all.

“As a result of this suspension” – so they weren’t testing for it last year even though the legality of the stuff and the withdrawal time are the same?  What did the suspension of production have to do with the legality and withdrawal time?

To be clear, I know nothing.

If I were Houston though, I’d make my stance on the subject abundantly clear.  And no, if you think your notice yesterday made anything clear, you are viewing it from the perspective of somebody that actually knows what’s going on.

People think your notice banned the legal use of Zilmax.

If you didn't intend to ban the legal use of Zilmax, you need to make that clear.

People will follow your rules.  Just make it clear what those are.

If it’s the rules in the 2014 Exhibitor Handbook, make it clear the rules regarding Zilmax haven’t changed in the past year because those rules haven’t changed.

If you are just enforcing the Zilmax withdrawal time, make it explicitly clear that it’s still legal to be used according to the label and that a urine test is what will be used to determine that.

But gee whiz, that notice from yesterday is just plain old confusing.


Late Night Legacy Sale

This Saturday in Denver...



No Zilmax in Houston Steers

Until now, within the context of show steers the suspension of sale of Zilpaterol has always been with the caveat "it's not too big a deal as long as the majors don't ban it".  Well, the poop has been properly thrown through the fan.

Houston has fallen victim to the Zilmax hysteria...


A couple issues with that statement...

Minor - By what definition is that a reminder?  Maybe they sent out a notification to ag teachers and extension agents but there's not a single reference to "zilmax" or "zilpaterol" on the entire HLSR website or in the 2014 Exhibitor Handbook.

Major - It's still a legal FDA approved drug that is technically being fed according to the label.  It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Houston tries to reference the rules in the 2014 Exhibitor Handbook which do not mention Zilpaterol by name at all and only prohibit the use of "unapproved" drugs.

When you explicitly define "unapproved drugs" as "not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and/or the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)" in the rules that you reiterate that you will hold exhibitors to, you are sort of setting yourself up for legal bills trying to kick somebody out of the show for using an FDA approved drug.

I'm no lawyer but based on my few interactions with them regarding contracts, that's a superhighway of a loophole.  If it were me I'd word it "despite what the 2014 Exhibitor Handbook says" instead of saying that the use of Zilpaterol will be governed by the handbook.

5:30 PM Update - When was the last time you saw a Facebook post with three times as many shares (21) as likes (7)?


Herd Bull Alley - Italian Stallion

I'll post any of these you guys do as they're done...



1

If You’re the Social Media Manager for a Major Show

…and you aren’t the first person to tweet the grand and reserve champions for each of your shows, you have failed at your job.

You’ve all got Twitter accounts but most of you don’t use them right. 

I don’t know that I can remember a single time that a show’s official Twitter account was the one that got the retweets for a grand champion announcement.

Get an intern to stand there in the ring with a phone ready to tweet it.  Want followers?  That will get you followers.  

Your followers that are also your exhibitors want information from you, not links to press releases about what happened yesterday.

Do you know how long the person unloading right now had to stage in line before they got in?  Tweet it.

Does your steer committee have the weight breaks finalized but they’re just waiting for enough copies to be printed?  Take a picture and tweet it.

Did the judge just select first place in the lightweights?  Tweet the winner – the people in the next bred are waiting to find that information out so they know when they need to start heading over.


It's a small donation but...

...I feel they deserve it.


There aren't many counties in Texas that describe themselves as being in "southwest Texas".  Southwest Texas is typically referred to by its proper title, Mexico.

Even fewer don't have american classes.

And when you whittle that down to the ones that had a show this past weekend, there's only one, but I've removed the names to protect the innocent any way.


Reminder: We’re Not Filming in Denver

Just a reminder, we won’t be filming in Denver this weekend.

I’ve never gone and videotaped without asking the permission of the National Western and each bull owner.  It’d be rude and disrespectful.

I tried getting approval several times between November and when we called it off in December but never got a yes or no.  After I passed up several self-imposed “we have to get permission by then or we’re calling it off” dates (it takes quite a bit of time, money, and commitment to do the videos) I finally called it off a month out.  The National Western did get in contact with me the next Monday.

I’m still going on Saturday but basically just for sightseeing.

I don’t know if anybody will be shooting the kind of videos we did, I haven’t kept up with it.

I’m going to try to make a lot better resource on here than I have in the past though with links to pictures, etc.


Top Web Sale Lots Week of 1/6/2014

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $132,000 - Flush sired by Blair's Ag Donors
  2. $22,500 - Heifer sired by RED U-2 MAMA'S BOY 167X
  3. $16,500 - Heifer sired by MRLA NEW ERA 87Y
  4. $15,500 - Bred Heifer sired by Strictly Business
  5. $15,000 - Bull sired by Red SSS Soldier 365W
  6. $14,250 - Bred Cow sired by S A V 004 Traveler 4836
  7. $14,250 - Bred Heifer sired by Cowan's Ali 4M
  8. $13,000 - Heifer sired by BECKTON NEW ERA Y194
  9. $12,500 - Bred Cow sired by Heat Wave
  10. $10,500 - Heifer sired by RED HOWE ACES WILD 22U 


VitaFerm® Sure Champ® Offers Two Internships

December 6, 2013
For more information contact:
Crystal Blin, Director of Marketing (816) 344-5772 or cblin@biozymeinc.com. 

VitaFerm® Sure Champ® Offers Two Internships

St. Joseph, Mo. -- BioZyme Inc., maker of VitaFerm® and Sure Champ®, is offering two paid summer 2014 internships. Each internship will provide the selected candidate with a variety of experiences related to the livestock nutrition business, in both an office and field setting.

VitaFerm® Sure Champ® Public Relations Internship

This internship will offer incoming college juniors and seniors the opportunity to promote Sure Champ®’s brand through our junior national sponsorships, social media, video production and photography. Applicants must be an agriculture major; agricultural communications majors will be given preference. Strong writing and communications skills, the ability to work under pressure and attention to detail are necessary. For the full criteria and application process, please visit the News tab on www.surechamp.com.

VitaFerm® Sure Champ® Sales Internship

This internship will offer incoming college juniors and seniors the opportunity to learn more about the sales and marketing of mineral products and show feed supplements. The successful candidate will travel to several junior nationals and tradeshows promoting the VitaFerm® and Sure Champ® line of products. Applicants must be an agriculture major. An outgoing personality, prior sales and nutrition experience and the ability to work on their own will be assets. For the full criteria and the application process, please visit the News tab on www.surechamp.com.

Both internships will commence the beginning of June 2014 and go through the end of July 2014. Although, the internships will be based out of St. Joseph, Mo., considerable time will be spent on the road. 

Applications are due on or before Feb. 14, 2014. For more information on either internship visit www.surechamp.com or contact Crystal Blin, Director of Marketing at (816) 344-5774 or cblin@biozymeinc.com. 

BioZyme Inc. serves the agriculture industry as an innovator in the fields of animal nutrition and microbiology. In the business for more than 50 years, the company offers a complete line of high density, highly available vitamin, mineral, trace mineral and protein supplements for animals. With headquarters in St. Joseph, Mo., the company reaches a global market with customers throughout the U.S. and Canada, South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East.  


My Twitter Account Got Hacked

It’s fairly safe to say that I’d be called a Twitter addict by most of you who read this.  I’ve actually got one of my three widescreen monitors dedicated to it with seven columns of feeds for general, notifications, activity, DMs, tweets posted when somebody posts on one of my sites, and two columns of strictly keyword based searches.

I say that to stress that Twitter is probably one of the more important tools for me.  In fact if it weren’t for posting pictures of my kiddos, both the two and the four legged kind, it would consume about 80% of the time that I waste online.

That’s why my Twitter account getting hacked last Friday was sort of a big deal for me.

I should have realized it while I heading to Victoria, Tx and got a bunch of “thanks for following” tweets from people.  Whatever compromised my account followed back everyone that follows me, including the people I already follow.  After I got out of a late showing of Walking with the Dinosaurs (the absolute worst movie I’ve paid to see multiple times) with Luke I turned my phone on to a dozen DMs and tweets that my account had been hacked.  I spent the next hour and a half deleting DMs I had sent people and telling my wife how to do it over the phone.

What’s funny is I had more followers at the end of the situation than before.

How did it happen?

The only thing I can think of is I signed up for SnapChat just a few days previously.  Why SnapChat?  The same reason everyone does, I’m tired of the naked selfies I send people ending up online.

Their login credentials were compromised a few days ago and yes, my Twitter account used the same credentials, but I’m in no way sure that’s what happened.  It’s just the leading candidate of numerous unlikely possibilities.

I guess I’m lucky.  I’ve done business exclusively online for over a decade and didn’t get hacked until now.  

The moral of the story?

Don’t be embarrassed if it happens to you.


Photography Contest

Forget having people take photos of their own cattle.

Take an indoor rodeo arena like Waco, put one relatively calm show heifer per team of 2-3 (photographer and ear getters) people in it, and give them an hour.

Give another 30 minutes to download and edit their photos and judge based on the set.

It's be an actual career development event.

I’d watch.


Daddy Gushing

I took my five year old to a livestock judging clinic put on by a team of high school livestock ambassadors.  We only helped sponsor but they put on a great event and if a kid didn’t learn something from Rathmann and the guys from Blinn, they weren’t listenting.

Yes, Luke, our five year old, is too young.  We’re trying to find stuff to challenge him and he came along with me because I asked him if he wanted to learn something new.  Surprisingly he stayed focused all day and asked questions the older kids realize you’re supposed to be embarrassed to ask.  I think a lot of that was due to the attention some amazing young ladies from a local FFA chapter heaped on him.

There was a mock contest at the end of the day.  He unfortunately didn’t know how to handle the questions classes at the end (I really should have known to pull him out before the questions) and he started crying when he didn’t know what the answer was on three questions.  I went ahead and took him out and ran his scores any way, preparing to tell him “hey, look a 30, that’s good”.

He bombed a steer class that a large portion of kids bombed but then ran off a string of 45, 47, 46, 47, and 45 on the remaining five classes.  On just the placing portion of the mock contest, he’d have finished 13th out of a bit over 30 kids ranging in age from him at 5 years old up to eight grade.  The important part though is he was disappointed when he found out he has to be 9 to go to more contests.

Now that I’m done gushing, I should point out that he bombed a class earlier in the day as well.

He really didn’t have any idea what he was doing going into it and didn’t even know how to place a class.  As a way to teach him, I setup little pretend classes of things so he could place them.

Sure, he flipped the placing on this one (he swears he got it right, even after I explained to him how it's supposed to work), but give him a break, he’s only five…


…at worst, I think the proper strategy would have been to put 1 in 3rd between that pair or twins as a hedge placing.


Top Web Sale Lots Week of 12/30/2013

Top individual sale lots of the past week...

  1. $20,000 - Bull sired by Way Cool
  2. $12,000 - Bred Heifer sired by Predator
  3. $9,000 - Bull sired by SVF Steel Force
  4. $9,000 - Bred Heifer sired by Lees Outlaw
  5. $8,500 - Bred Heifer sired by Flying B Cut Above
  6. $7,750 - Bred Heifer sired by MCC Blackout
  7. $7,500 - Bred Cow sired by Meyer 734
  8. $7,000 - Bred Heifer sired by Flying B Cut Above
  9. $7,000 - Bred Heifer sired by Monopoly
  10. $6,500 - Bred Heifer sired by Flying B Cut Above


Producing Blue Roans

Do you know how I know you are buying cattle for kids, specifically young girls?

You like blue roans.

Chicks love blue roans.

They’re just as easy to sell as they are hard to win with.

For various reasons, we tend to have one blue roan born each year.  One year we had a runt, short made, unsound one that we were absolutely not going to sell to somebody.  In fact, knowing a family with two daughters was coming in to buy some replacements, I had her put in a field no less than 50 yards away.  They found that piece of crap like Mack Brown finds overrated high school QBs.

There’s no legitimate market reason to like blue roans.  It's not reliable for producing a CAB premium and there's nothing about a blue roan that makes it have any sort of better performance than another color.

It’s 100% “I want the pretty one” or “I want to sell to the people that want the pretty one”.  Even Shorthorn breeders look at them and wonder why you base your herd on what your wife and daughters think is pretty.

You can’t “start a herd of blue roan cattle”.  Even if your entire herd is blue roans, at best they only have a 50% chance to produce a blue.  That's not just abstract pondering or exaggeration, it's genetics.  Over time, a herd of 100% blue roan cattle will only produce the blue color pattern in 50% of their calves.  And even THAT assumes you've gotten rid of the red gene.

It doesn’t make sense.

To continue the piling on, I don't know if there's any validity to it but every blue roan I've seen down here has had issues with heat stress.

Anyway, I digress, the genetics aren’t hard, I’m not sure why it’s continually debated on the forums.

If somebody leaves out the fact that white cattle can be either homozygous black, heterozygous black, or red when giving you advice, just stop listening.

The next time you stop listening to your Taylor Swift albums while talking about the cutest boys at school and you start to wonder how you can produce blue roans, here's a fairly comprehensive chart...

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2013 Fall Steer Sale Summary

When 6 to 7 year old cows marketed with a highlight of producing a $5,000 calf sell for $15,000+ I have to admit that I just plain old don’t have a clue what’s going on other than rich men throwing their oil money around.  

And no, corn money is not oil money.  You people that think is in any way comparable don’t know how much money is floating around shale boom areas.  That, and typically you have to actually work for corn money.  Generally speaking the only way you can work to get the type of oil money I’m speaking of is to go back several decades and stop your grandparents from having sex that results in family land being split up into smaller chunks.

So there must be a boom in steer prices that’s causing people to spend all that money on steers, right?  I mean, that's the only "real" market force that would be causing the insane cow prices, right?

Well, yeah, in Texas.

In the Midwest?  Not so much.

The prices for the Midwest steer sales this fall were stagnant to down just a touch from last year.  The average price of the 2,967 steers sold online this fall was $3,130 vs $3,167 (n=2,467) for last year.

In fact, while the average price of steers sold online in the spring (Texas) has increased by 22% in the past two years, the prices of the steers sold in the fall (Midwest) has increased just 3%.

Why the difference?

Because a lot of Texan’s grandparents didn’t have nearly as much sex.

Doesn’t matter…had mineral rights.

2013 Fall Online Steer Sale Statistics

Percentile 2010 2011 2012 2013 % Change 12-13
95th $7,750 $8,000 $8,000 $7,500 -6.3%
90th $5,750 $5,750 $5,930 $5,750 -3.0%
80th $4,250 $3,750 $4,000 $4,000 0%
70th $3,000 $3,000 $3,250 $3,250 0%
60th $2,500 $2,500 $2,660 $2,750 +3.4%
50th $2,000 $2,000 $2,250 $2,250 0%
40th $1,730 $1,800 $1,900 $2,000 +5.3%
30th $1,500 $1,500 $1,600 $1,800 +12.5%
20th $1,200 $1,300 $1,450 $1,600 +10.3%
10th $1,000 $1,100 $1,200 $1,400 +16.7%
           
Average $3,050 $3,039 $3,167 $3,130 -1.2%
           
Steers Counted 639 1,888 2,467 2,967 +20.3%


My 2013 Reading List

I don’t read so much as I listen to audio books while driving to in-laws or to the ranch.

Street Smarts

It’s speaking directly to entrepreneurs but if you fall into that category or more importantly if you THINK you fall into that category it makes you look at some of the common mistakes you may or may not be making.

Give and Take

I typically hate any phrase that starts with “there are x types of people”.  This book’s basic premise is there are three types of people; givers, takers, and matchers.  It goes into depth explaining how each of the three gets ahead and falls behind.

Blockbusters

A book about the business side of the entertainment industry and how blockbusters and hits are what keep studios and networks going.  Numerous examples of how focusing solely upon cutting costs can wreck that type of business.

I couldn’t help but see the parallels to the bull stud industry (whether that be seedstock or clubby) where everyone is chasing after those 1-2 bulls each year that gain traction to make up for the costs involved with the dozens of bulls that don’t.

How Children Succeed

Based on what I had heard, I thought this book would be more about individual kids and instilling grit in them.  It’s actually focused almost exclusively on improving urban school systems.

David and Goliath

A collection of historical stories interpreted in such a fashion to support the central thesis of the book.  Yes, Malcolm Gladwell copy and pasted the premise for every other book he’s written and we all bought into it again.

This time his thesis is that the little guy has an advantage over the big guy.

The Black Swan

It’s a book that I heard mentioned quite a bit on CNBC back when I wasted time trading options.  Pretty forgettable overall but I stopped gambling on individual stocks quite a while back.

The System

The college football book I put a review up for last summer.  A really, really good book if you are a college football junkie.

The Skeptic’s Guide to American History

Not a book but a lecture series.  It’s on Audible so I guess it counts.  It’s takes a persistently contrarian view of American history from the revolution through JFK.

Ender’s Game

About 80% of the book is about something that is only 20% of the movie and vice versa.

ReWork

I felt like I had written the book a couple times while reading it.  It takes a hard look at everything that old fashioned businesses do just because that’s what old fashioned businesses do.

The First 20 Hours

I picked this up because I really liked Josh Kaufman’s Personal MBA.  This, in short, was not that.

After the section of the book where he lays out his pretty basic description of his process (which actually isn’t that enlightening at all) the rest of the book is filler of him describing how he learned to do various things in 20-hours.  That ranges from programming to wind surfing.

It’s a pretty blatant mail in of a book from a guy trying to cash in on the popularity of his first big seller.

Dad is Fat

Just a plain old funny book for parents that I just about finished in one day of sitting around the Bexar county jury pool.  If you are planning on kids, the book is a lot more accurate than you’d assume.

What Girls Need from Their Dads

I picked this up on our way to New York.  Good book primarily because Tessa scares the heck out of me.  She’s two and already a manipulative little princess.  Our little girl is going to be one of those kids that grows up and tells everyone she raised her brothers on her own because she thinks she’s in charge.

At least it’s just a phase and she’ll grow out of it soon.


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