Blog Archive September 2013
Jeff Salecatalogs.com
I added the ability to show video to the large catalog sort.
The sale watcher will be able to handle semen sales on Tuesday. (http://www.salecatalogs.com/sale_watch.aspx)
Did some database tuning to speed the site up by approximately 68%.
Added support for Steer Bidder online sales.
Sacrificing Cows
I tell you what, any time you want to trade a well-timed four inch rain for the right to strike down an 8 year old non-et calf carrying recip with lightning, I’m game.
Homeland
I’m having trouble watching it now because I’m so pissed at her for that speech that got Zilmax taken off the market.
Breaking Bad
Here’s how it ends, really…
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $90,000 - Heifer sired by Irish Whiskey
- $30,000 - Heifer sired by S A V Iron Mountain 8066
- $30,000 - Heifer sired by K Bar D Joe Canada 18Y
- $22,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $19,000 - Steer sired by Monopoly 2
- $15,000 - Heifer sired by LCC New Standard
- $14,000 - Heifer sired by Barstow Cash
- $14,000 - Heifer sired by Hoover Dam
- $12,450 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $11,250 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
From the Wall Street Journal yesterday...
CHICAGO—Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the world's biggest futures-exchange operator, said it would stop accepting cattle fed with Zilmax for delivery against contracts traded on its exchanges, the latest move to halt use of the controversial growth additive made by Merck & Co.The exchange operator, a unit of CME Group Inc., said in a notice to customers Monday that it would implement the new policy starting Oct. 7. In the notice, it said, cattle that have been fed additives "which prohibit them from being purchased for slaughter under the current commercial practices imposed by major cattle slaughter facilities are unmerchantable and are to be excluded from the delivery unit."Zilmax is a beta-agonist additive that is given during the final few weeks that cattle are in feedlots, making the animals heavier and their meat leaner at slaughter. The product is produced and marketed by Merck's animal health division, which announced on Aug. 16 that it would halt the sale of Zilmax in the U.S. and Canada while it investigates problems of animal lameness and immobility that some companies are associating with the drug.
I think it's a terrible decision based on fear and the general ignorance of agricultural technology in general but I'm going to call that the tipping point.
They're the level up (or down, depending on how you look at it) from Tyson and Cargill in the food chain and at this point it will be hard for other packers to not just go along with it.
So yeah, I was wrong**. I said five years, it was closer to five weeks.
NOW, when the easily available, legal, and most ethical tool to put muscle on a calf has been taken away, is when the ACTUAL cheating happens.
**No, not wrong about Susan, Gerald, and Harvey. They are lying cowards that could have just sat on their hands and waited for the industry to settle the situation themselves rather than slandering thousands of hard working kids.
I launched the beta version of SaleCatalogs.com yesterday.
Each breed association has their own sale EPD search system. When complete, SaleCatalogs.com will be the only such system for all breeds. It currently supports Angus, Red Angus, and SimAngus sales with other breeds only requiring 15 minutes of work on my end.
Specifically, the R.A. Brown Legacy Sale has all of the bull data up and will have the females up later today.
If you are looking for the sale monitor tool I put up on here last week, it's on that site as well.
R.A. Brown Ranch Legacy Sale EPD Search
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $35,000 - Steer sired by Believe in Me
- $30,003 - Heifer sired by I-80
- $27,100 - Heifer sired by Chopper
- $24,000 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
- $23,000 - Heifer sired by I-80
- $20,000 - Steer sired by man Among Boys
- $19,500 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $19,500 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $19,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $17,500 - Heifer sired by Man Among Boys
Amount of calves sired that topped one of the 42 online sales we have tracked this fall so far...
- Monopoly - 9
- Believe in Me - 7
- Man Among Boys - 5
- Heat Wave - 3
- I-80 - 2
Eye Candy - 2
Monopoly 2 - 2
Unstoppable - 2
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $42,000 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $39,500 - heifer sired by AH JDH Cracker Jack
- $30,400 - Bull sired by +JDH Mr. Elmo Manso 309/4
- $24,000 - Steer sired by Believe in Me
- $23,100 - Pair sired by +JDH Sir Avery Manso 159/7
- $19,000 - Steer sired by Game Plan
- $18,000 - Heifer sired by Thriller
- $17,500 - heifer sired by THM Durango 4037
- $16,000 - heifer sired by AH JDH Cracker Jack
- $16,000 - Pair sired by JDH Sir Parker Manso
…because productivity amongst your Aggie employees is guaranteed to be down a touch today.
I don’t like going to football games. I never have. I went to two games in college, both A&M v UT. Once my freshman year because I served as a grunt for some senior friends to pull tickets and once my second senior year because my future wife wanted to go to a game. Outside of that, I ran the game day bus service for three years because I could get a solid 12-16 hours in at good pay on game days and it was a blast.
99-01 wasn’t exactly the golden age of Texas A&M football any way. It was closer to watching a loved one slowly deteriorate in a nursing home than anything entertaining.
Nowadays, I’d go so far as to pay what people pay for their expensive seats to sit in my upstairs game room and watch in HD with 18 wings (if I don’t say “I’ve made a terrible mistake” at some point in the following twelve hours they weren’t hot enough), two pitchers of margaritas, and a well-tuned Twitter feed up on the iPad.
Alone.
My wife asked if I wanted to invite so-and-so or that guy or somebody else over for the big game. She said it might be nice to watch the game with somebody. I told her she’s welcome to go over to their place if she’d like, she can even take the kids and I’ll send beer, I really don’t mind.
Don't get me wrong, I've actually taken to trying to teach her bits and pieces every now and then (you see, it's a screen like a screen door, they let through on purpose) but I'm one of those grumpy grumps that's no fun to watch a game with.
But Jeff, You Questioned Manziels Integrity
What’s your point?
If you’re not able to root for people that have serious moral or character issues you should stop wasting your time with show cattle.
Tech v TCU
I root for Tech now but I'm glad I’m not a TCU fan, it’d be hard to get over that treatment from the refs.
“He called for a fair catch but we didn’t really know he called for a fair catch when he did it so we’re not going to penalize him for the delay of game because nobody could tell he called the fair catch. But he did call a fair catch. Right? Yeah, sure, that works.”
“We just spent a few minutes reviewing that play and even though there was pretty clear video of what happened, it wasn’t a fumble for some reason. Oh, and it’s third down now because there was a play run before we did that review and that play totally counts. So, like, yeah, the fact we screwed that review up doesn’t really matter any way because technically it never happened.”
Oklahoma State
ESPN and Yahoo Sports both do their best investigative reporting when they’re dismantling each other’s stories.
Alabama
Aggies have been such fans of the #BTHOBama hash tag because it looks so much like BTHO Obama.
Texas Fall Prospect Shows
Local feed companies need to start sponsoring televisions hooked up to satellite for the fall Texas jackpots.
Houston set a new record for their additional premium for market steers.
Full Announcement HereThe following was distributed to each exhibitor in the respective auctions, in addition to the guaranteed amount each already received at the auctions:Junior Market Steer Auction: $2,373.08 (record additional premium amount)Junior Market Lamb and Goat Auction: $774.30 (record additional premium amount)Junior Market Poultry Auction: $433.68Junior Market Barrow Auction: $357.77
For those unfamiliar, that's money that is paid in addition to the guaranteed premium money.
There was a time when the lifespan of an anonymous Twitter account was exactly 20-minutes longer than the first time they messed up, tweeted something a bit too specific, and revealed their identities. Everybody wants to be the comedian but nobody wants the cool kids to know.
People have gotten smarter over time and they tend to survive quite a bit longer than two months now. How much longer and how active do they stay?
I took the stats from a dozen different anonymous livestock humor Twitter accounts and graphed their activity by month.
1.00 is the average amount of tweets in a month for each account. For an account like @judgingqueens that’s 5 tweets a month. For @badluckstockshw that’s 47.
There’s a pretty clear trend.
Month 1 – Hey, I can be funny.
Month 2- Haha, look at all of these followers.
Month 3 – There really isn’t as much that’s funny any more.
Month 4 – Ughhh, what am I going to tweet this time.
Month 5+ - Ummmmmmmmmm
The only difference between that and trend for blogs, is a blog would have a spike around sale time.
A show is cancelling the livestock portion of their county fair because of fears of E. coli coming in contact with the visitors to the fair.
NEW MANCHESTER - This year's Hancock County Oldtime Fair, taking place Friday through Sunday at Tomlinson Run State Park, will have all the attractions of last year, with one exception: Animals will be noticeably absent.Fair officials decided to eliminate livestock judging and showing this year after the livestock committee raised liability concerns about the potential for E. coli infections, said Jim Harvey, fair board vice president."We were not able to find an insurance agency that was willing to write us a policy to cover us in that area, so we had to make a call on it," Harvey said. "We're liable if anybody does get that. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find any way to get around that."
It’s not in some large non-ag metropolis, it's in West Virginia.
"There is no specific risk in West Virginia and no greater risk than at any other time," Davidson said. "There is always a risk when kids come in contact with farm animals that they could be exposed to E. coli."
Huh?
...is you have to stay sharp.
You have to make sure you check every calf.
You can't get lazy.
Folks, give him cleaner backgrounds in your picture pens.
He may get 90% of them right for you but he's going to screw up the electric fence on a few of them and he's going to leave remnant distortions behind when he fixes the toplines.
And regardless of whether I feature them any more, people do still laugh at you when everything in the background is off center to the left...
I've been working on this new toy off and on over the past few days...
It allows you to watch all of the sales closing from one screen.
Some features...
- Checks sale prices with increasing frequency throughout the day.
- The hour before the closing time through the end, it checks and updates the prices once every 30 seconds.
- Updates the list with "New Bid" when a lot gets a new bid.
- Works with any Maxanet based online auction system.
- Can monitor a virtually unlimited amount of sales.
- Automatically refreshes the list page every 20-seconds.
- Links are to each of the individual sale lots.
I'm still playing with it so if you're serious about an animal, I wouldn't trust this thing yet.
However, for nights like tonight, if you want to watch all of the sales at once, it's a great tool.
Right now it's checking the two sales on CW and the one on Steerbidder. The two sales on BWOS will start updating once they start accepting bids.
It only works with Maxanet based sales right now but if you see one I missed today, please let me know in the comments.
This is pretty far into to beating a dead horse territory but Susan actually answered the phone last Friday when I found THIS press release and called to find out if she was saying it was me. She talked over me with something about bullying and hung up as soon as I asked her why she continues to call children cheaters.
For those that don’t care to read it, the summary is…
She is now saying she’s being bullied, implying that a “lone activist” installed a key logger on her computer, that the “lone activist” is creating fake Facebook profiles, and saying that somebody got access to her Facebook account because I posted a screen shot of publicly available stats.
Have you ever been so incapable of defending your actions that you put out a press release to tell the world you don’t know how Facebook works?
Susan has.
Look, bullying is a real issue.
For people actually being bullied.
Let's ignore for a second the irony of somebody who is falsely implying that thousands of hard working kids are cheating claiming she is being bullied. A woman who is paid to lie about kids and then refuses, blocks, and ignores dozens of requests to explain herself is not being bullied.
She’s bastardizing the actual phenomenon of bullying to hide from her critics. She's almost literally hiding behind child victims to deflect the criticism of her own words.
Susan Stern isn’t going to explicitly say I’m the one that did any of the stuff she is implying I did in her “press release” (PRWeb is the first place all of the amateur PR hacks put out press releases) because she knows I didn’t do it and things would get really fun if she actually made those accusations.
Of course, that assumes it is happening at all.
But who is surprised?
The lady accepted money to lie about children.
Why should I be surprised when she goes another two or three steps further into the gutter?
I'll admit it, I was wrong about them being smart.
They're something much more dangerous than smart, absolutely shameless.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $22,502 - Steer sired by Man Among Boys
- $22,500 - Heifer sired by Monopoly
- $16,500 - Heifer sired by Master of Puppets
- $14,100 - Bull sired by Rito Revenue 5M2 of 2536 Pre
- $14,000 - Bull sired by Silveiras Conversion 8064
- $13,500 - Heifer sired by I-80
- $13,000 - Bull sired by Connealy Right Answer 746
- $12,500 - Bull sired by SAV Bismarck 5682
- $12,500 - Steer sired by Monopoly
- $11,600 - Heifer sired by BC Eagle Eye 110-7
I had posted a fairly lengthy reply to some claims that Susan Stern has been making but when I figured out what exactly it is she is talking about I realized just how stupid they are.
I’m fairly certain I’m the “activist” that PR professional Susan Stern is talking about in this.
We also suspect the "activist" has created fake online profiles after getting banned from commenting. Most notably, said individual is on our radar after posting a Tweet with a photo of our client's Facebook administration panel - that only we can view with the private username/password - credentials that we believe may have been stolen in the keylogger attack
I have no idea what she’s talking about regarding fake profiles and keyloggers.
But the “Tweet with a photo of our client's Facebook administration panel”?
Yeah, I finally figured that out.
It was this tweet…
@beefalert @sternpromaha That's a rather interesting demographic for your Facebook page. Big in Taiwan? #astroturfing pic.twitter.com/IMd6YIgs3B
— Jeff Schroeder (@cattledotcom) August 30, 2013
Evidently PR professional Susan Stern thinks that comes from a page they only have access to.
Because she doesn’t know what she’s talking about…
That's a public page Susan. Nobody hacked your Facebook account.
I sure as heck didn't hack you and if you were hacked you should find the person responsible because you're wasting your time if you think it was me.
It's wrong to make false accusations but I forgive you. I can see how it might be stressful to defend the position you have taken. It's not an excuse, but I understand that you're likely experiencing quite a bit of cognitive dissonance while falsely calling kids cheaters. Reconciling the false statements you are being paid to make with the fact that they are kids must be causing all sorts of stress.
I'm still interested in interviewing you on the record.
My phone number is 210.380.7459
Would you please go on the record regarding who you are accusing of doing the stuff you claimed is going on in your recent press release?
Would you also make sure Harvey and Gerald are liable for you saying it as well? Please?
That'd be just swell.
Thanks sugar, xoxo
Jeff Schroeder
210.380.7459
This kind of stuff is why I call BS any time Rick Perry tries to take credit for job creation or lack of budget issues in the state of Texas.
They stayed out of the way of the shale boom but they haven’t come close to keeping up with the infrastructure requirements that came along with it. Instead, they’ve been content to sit back and let entire regions of the state deteriorate under the increased load and take credit for their job creation.
Side note: Dane Elliot is the guy who taught me that the ability to clip steers doesn’t translate to the ability to give somebody a haircut.
My mom asked me to stay home from church the next Sunday.
I know, it’s getting old, boring, and predictable now. At least it’s not about Johnny Manziel. Did you hear Nate Fitch hasn't tweeted in a month?
I'm limiting my attempts to get in touch with Susan to one per day now. This morning I called Susan Stern of Stern PR in Omaha at 402-212-7489 because I’m just about done transferring the Livestockjudges.org layout and wanted a break I haven’t been able to get in touch with her via other methods.
Here’s a complete transcript of the call…
Susan: Hello.
Me: Hi Susan, it’s Jeff Schroeder with Cattle.com. I’m calling to find out a little bit of information about your definition of cheating.
Gerald Timmerman and Havey Dietrich, this is the coward you are paying to slander children because you don't want to do it yourself.Susan Hangs Up Phone
I don’t know if you noticed but Beef Additive Alert’s Facebook page increased from ~300 to over 1,400 totally legitimate likes over the weekend. As the PR hacks gurus put it, this is blatant unquestionable social proof.
So it’s time to fight back. You can’t see all of the people that liked the page over the weekend but if you go to the comments and see who liked them, you can see a list. Here’s just a sample of people that actively like the page, the full list of likes for comments looks very similar to this. Look for people you may know…
(it has to be an image because most of the names won’t post since they’re Chinese)
I personally know that one in the middle with the building that looks like an airplane followed by the squiggly lines that look like a topographical map of a bay.
I tell you what, if I see "building that sort of looks like an airplane" at Gonzales next weekend I’m going give him and the entire "squiggly lines that look like a topographical map of a bay" family a piece of my mind.
...because people are selling out due to drought conditions.
Top individual sale lots of the past week...
- $245 - Semen sired by Monopoly
- $59 - Semen sired by I-80
- $58 - Semen sired by I-80
- $57 - Semen sired by I-80
- $48 - Semen sired by Monopoly 4
- $45 - Semen sired by Dakota Gold
- $40 - Semen sired by Dakota Gold
- $37 - Semen sired by Bojo
- $34 - Semen sired by Johnny Football
- $32 - Semen sired by Man Among Boys
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