thoughtfulUPDATE: Here’s a google map of my journey
So I’m back in the office today, after a week on vacation, and some 4000 miles of traveling complete. I’m kind of easing back into things, and no one has spotted me come in yet, so I think I might have a few minutes before I find myself with 12 new things to do.
I left out of here Saturday before last, slightly sleep deprived from the stressful week leading up to departure. Of course, I waited to the last minute to finally get around to machining up the mounts for my new side cases (start here and click forward), and the bike servicing was last minute and didn’t include a valve lash adjustment like I planned on. The usual amount of stress before a trip, I guess you could say. I managed to leave home by 6am, and ran well ahead of schedule. Thanks to the Camelbak, I drank 4 liters of water on my 680 mile ride and managed to arrive just a little before 2pm PDT. Thank goodness for mesh riding pants, I was feeling good despite the almost 100 degree heat in Nevada/California. Other than almost being run off the road once just as soon as I crossed into CA, the trip was fairly uneventful. My fuel economy suffered with the new bags and the 85mph+ average: I don’t think I managed better than 38 the whole way.
I found some interesting open source software for tracking beer brewing, so… I installed it on the server. As such, I’ll be yakking about my brews there, so feel free to check out what is going on at the ‘brewery’ as it were.
As always, I’m open to suggestions as to what to brew and the like.
In other news, I found some pretty interesting designs for using a small dorm style fridge to chill a couple of 5 gallon Corny kegs, complete with spigots. I sense a project in the not so distant future.
Today I brewed up an Irish Stout which the kit claims tastes like Guinness, which would be nice. This was my second attempt at beer, the first of which was a collaborative attempt with the GF. That attempt was an Irish Red, which is now complete, bottled, and the first couple of 6 packs are chilling in the fridge. I wasn’t feeling great tonight, so tomorrow I will be able to really sample how the Red came out. Since there was some manner of dispute about who did more work and/or the quality of the work in brewing last time, I bought my own carboy and brewed up this batch myself.
This was the first time I used a kit requiring the use of grains in addition to malt extract, so it was interesting making the ‘tea’ with the grains. The kit (from The Beer Nut) contained the grains, the socks, the hops, yeast, malt extract (syrup), bottle caps and priming sugar. I was rather impressed with the contents, for the $30 I paid. The basic steps I followed to brew were: Read More
accomplishedSo I went out and learned how to ski on Sunday. Very much more fun once you figure out how to control the darn things. Thankfully I work with a guy who is also a ski instructor.
Looking forward to skiiing with Geoff this Friday, woot!
And that’s right LJ fans, you can comment in LJ now. I found a WordPress plugin that syncs comments to my blog, so it should all show up automatically.
In yet another installment of my continuing series of reviews of overlooked movies, I review the 1973 Woody Allen movie ‘Sleeper‘.
Netflix felt I should see this movie, and who am I to argue with the Netflix movie guessing AI? I mean, it is vaguely better than having an angry monkey hurl DVDs at me, but with a lot less of the unsightly facial blemishes the next day. I haven’t really seen much Woody Allen, so I was somewhat interested in seeing this flick.
Amanda, who was taking a break from playing The Game That Must Not Be Named, informed me that Wikipedia told her it was loosely based on H. G. Wells novel The Sleeper Awakes. She then proceeded to poke fun at me for choosing to watch such an obscure Woody Allen movie, and for the fact I have not seen any Woody Allen movies. Well!