Thanks to all of you at PB IV. I had a fantastic time reconnecting with all of you even if I did have to miss my wifes birthday. You all feel like family to me and I appreciate all of your support. Well done Bob & staff. I'll be back.

Blaine

It was great meeting you Blaine! We should go fishing again soon. The way we did it was so much easier.

Good times for sure!

Now, Blaine, go and 'Smash some V___!"

+1 . Glad you all got home safely.

I was waiting for that one to come out Sunil. LOL! I think I will.

Conference...what conference?

You missed it TJ. Lemons were falling from the sky! Wait, you didn't miss that.

Condello slapped that lemon wedge right up on TJ's neck. What a throw!

I bet they heard it in the front row.

As I recall, Blaine was catching some zzz's and it didn't wake him.

Yep. I think our laughing might have finally woke him though.

I have a wedge shaped welt lingering...I had entirely forgotten it's origin. I appreciate being enlightened there...I'll begin plotting my revenge.

You guys are awesome. Hope everyone got home safely. Chuck and I pulled into North Texas about 1:30 Sunday morning.

Hope to see everyone at next years conference. Until then let's keep in touch here and on Facebook.

Hope everyone had a good time and learned a little in the process I know that I did. For those that did not make it you missed out on a good time in the rain at Buzzard's Bar a little cold and wet but good friends new friends and alot of information.

What? I have no idea what you're talking about!

It was Blair from Canada who slung the fruit.

Yeah, I saw him do it too.

You're all guilty by association and you've all made the list - Private Francis style.

"The name's Francis Soyer, but everybody calls me Psycho. Any of you guys call me Francis, and I'll "be angry with" you."

"Lighten up, Francis!" - Sgt. Hulka, aka, "Big Toe" or "Uncle Hulka"

Keep your meathooks off my stuff

Blair did that to me, too. He's the guilty party. The lemon slinger, as it were.

I was practicing being an air traffic controller.

Sure blame the foreigner. If it was me I would have used a full lemon on T.J.and 2 on Bruce.

Yah, no for sure eehh! good times!!!!

Dude!!! It was your beautiful wife that ratted you out!!!

It was great meeting you and Sara (Sarah?)! It was great meeting everyone , both again and for the first time!

Although we had to go swimming for our paddle wheel vendor's camera after I set it on the EZ Dock displayer's slippery bench...oops! The camera and irreplaceable storage card WERE recovered...my $100 payment to him was not....lol

I turned the $100 down two times!
Ross got the pictures off on the way home.
Good thing, the memory card wouldn't work this morning.

Kent< I was teasing you buddy! I enjoyed getting to work with you and look forward to seeing you at the next conference....And I am VERY glad to hear you retrieved all of the pictures from the memory card!!!!

You've got a great product and I wish I could get to my pond,,I would put one in!

No, Blair, we APPRECIATE the foreigners!!

Perfect.

Looks like it takes a few days for the shenanigans to wear off of Sunil. Thats good We had fun also. Yah no forsure eh.

What?

What a blast!! TJ,or aka, Hurricane TJ, I can't help but to post this ~ too bad you lost the sombrero that night, I guess you'll just have to steal another one next time!!

"Do you like the hockey?"

Wow, that was a BRIGHT flash.

Couple items to clarify:

1. The Sombrero in question was not STOLEN [what an ugly term], rather, consider it on temporary loan to the Hudson Museum - available for auction at PB V.

2. I did NOT lose the Sombrero as I originally believed - in fact, found in the back of my car on my return home. It's safe and sound!

Takes a certain man to preserve his dignity whilst donning a sombrero...I sadly am not that certain man.

Yah, no.



Forsure.

Well, I am glad the sombrero is OK!! It shall make a nice auction item at the next PB convention!! The wearer will have a BIG hat to fill!!

Bruce, I have a funny picture of you too....

How is it that Sunil managed to stay out of all the late night drunken picts??

I thought there was a much more flattering shot of our Aussie bearing the brunt of Hurricane Hud somewheres?

Eh?

Sunil is an old hand at avoiding incriminating evidence.

The pink hat is no longer in the control of the originating group. Someone keep up with it. May have to replace it with the TJ sombrero.

That sounds ominous, what happened?

I'd have to say that all the pictures from that night are of the same caliber ~ but here is The Hurricane and The Aussie

The pink hat was auctioned off ~ I was in the lead and some other lady came in at the last minute and out bid me!! I told her that meant she had to come to the next conference, she seemed OK with that...

I spent the first two days introducing myself as ‘Omaha’. This wasn’t clicking with Sue apparently, until the last night when I introduced myself by my 'Facebook Name'.

That lady outbid me by a measely $2.00 for the pink hat.

Bring it on! I fear nothing!

On Saturday after lunch, I had to transfer all the beer that we bought on Friday night from the trunk of my car to the fridge in the room. I found that my smallish fridge couldn't bear the brunt of the quantity.

Luckily, it had been so cold on Friday night that the beers were still cold.

So I had a twelve pack of beer that I walked down the the convention center. I saw Blaine outside and he said "are you going to start now?" and I told him "yes, and so are you."

I know Omaha, it was driving me nuts that "Josh" was there posting pictures of big cedar and we hadn't talked ~
Here is another party picture ~ it was a little chilly out ~

Who is THAT?

Hard to tell.... who wears glasses like that?

We interrupt this thread to bring you some late breaking news.

Pancho Villa and the Unabomber were seen partying together recently at a pond management conference....

...Details at 11.

Goodness...I was unaware a film crew was following me. I'm thinking these just might appear again should I ever entertain pursuing a City Council seat.

Not only did Sunil bring beers at lunch time, he iced them down with the soda pop being sold by Big Cedar! Didn't take long and we weren't drinking beers anymore.

Unibomber? I heard that was Kenny from South Park.

It seemed like those Coronas were warmish everytime I stumbled upon the Sunil twelve pack...

Yep the BC employees did not know what to think when Sunil used their ice and cooler to cool his right next to theirs (which were for sale). They started crying and whined to Diane with PB who took the party away. Next time just bring the cooler to the mods booth like last time. Then use a cup.

Chilly for Bruce only; TJ showed no reaction to the sub-zero weather.

Your political career is over before it started.

I can almost guarantee that this photo will reappear should you choose to run for the city council, neighborhood watch captain, PTA board member, or even if you just decide to run around the block for exercise.

It was a great time! Just a short note, I'll be doing a lot of reading tonight. Good to put faces with names. I just pulled in at 11:30 a.m. today (Thurs). I took the long way home, going thru Dallas then stopping at Plano to say HI to George. Lots of catching up to do, 254 posts in the "Questions and Observations" sub forum alone.....

Very informative. The guy who gave the whitetail presentation is a natural born speaker. Exiting to hear what is in development at the fish farms with all female bass.
When I told the wife that the speaker at the dinner would be a outdoor show host she gave the eyeroll as she is not interested in hunting/fishing. The next day she is talking on the cell to friends about how interesting his speech was and how much she enjoyed it. We get home and she is on the outdoor ed website. Alan did a great job "getting though".

I have to defend my actions with the beers at the convention center and the potential "warmish" nature of the beers.

While I agree that icing down the beers in Big Cedar's ice bins was risque, I did not know if those beers were cold enough as they'd been in my trunk overnight but then also for the entire morning and lunch our. At the time of my decision to put the beers on ice, I had not yet cracked one open.

Then, when Big Cedar denied us basic constitutional rights, Diane put the beers in the trunk of her car. The day was starting to warm up. Then the time arrived for the outdoor pond activities, so we had to take the beers to the pond. I did not have a cooler.

We should get you an Official "Vertex Sponsored" Pond Boss Cooler for the next convention. Despite them being "warmish", they sure hit the spot. You never saw me turn one down, did you? Thanks for always being there, with a busted into Corona twelve pack when I needed it!!

I had a cooler with ice. I just did not bring it to the booth. We need to coordinate better to avoid the beer police.

No defense needed.

Is it wrong that incriminating photos of TJ make me happy? Maybe I'm just MEAN!

Best conference ever! Glad to meet (most) of you

Amanda, it was good to meet you.

Do you or Sue know how many gallons of water a single diffuser will lift if placed below a 10" or 12" diameter tube that has a flared bottom? Diffuser would be 1' to 2' below the flared end of the tube.

Yes, sidekick, you are a onery one - a fine quality for a Vertex representative!

Great meeting you, though - I will be sure to be aiming my camera at YOU during our next conference so we can help explain why the charges to your "client" expense account were so high...glug glug glug.

Here's some pics that were on my camera:
I liked the sayings that were at the ceiling:


Mr. Texas Hunter on the left:


Alan Warren, Otto and ?


Sue getting ready for a day of work.


View of the lake from the convention center


Part of Bill Cody's seminar


Bruce looking at his monster LMB that he caught. Note to George: they DO look smaller when you can see his fingers!


Here fishy, fishy......


I think they flop less when you cover their eyes.....

One more:

The fish are getting a shot of O2.

Don't be jealous because I'm smart enough to stay off camera, TJ

That's definitely a Sue question. I'll forward that to her.

Why place the diffuser below a 10"-12" diameter vertical tube. What is the advantage or goal of doing this? The flow out the tube can be affected by the length of the tube.

Because I'll have to get a significantly larget tube if the diffuser is in the tube to allow the water to get past the diffuser to carry it to the surface.

The top end of the tube won't be past the surface film.

Hi Scott ~ I don't know how much a single diffuser disc will lift, but our 2 - disc AirStation will lift about 3250 GPM at 10' of depth with 2 CFM. You need to talk to Amanda about performing that AirStation suspension experiment to see if we can oxigenate the deeper water with out de-stratifying it this summer.

We sure had a great time. Nice to meet so many of you. We will be back for sure. I learned a lot too.
I still can't believe my wife won the drawing for the free weekend at Big Cedar. She is still getting over the embarrassment of having to go to the podium. I'll have to use that puppy later this summer.

I thought TJ won that?

Thanks Sue. That gives me some numbers to play with. I'll get in touch with Amanda when it gets close to building the experiment.