March 2007 Archives

it's Frobuary 2, YOMHC 0x14.

meh.

sometimes they're good, sometimes they ain't. this time: ain't.

now, in hindsight, with an airlock burping the familiar, estery gasses of a proper fermentation (at least, this is what my experience tells me is proper), i can say with some hope for the future: that went well. it's always a bit of a harrowing first (or, bog forbid, first and second) night as we waits and we sees if fermentation will begin. well, it began. the kreusen isn't as thick as with my old pal the burton ale yeast, which i've been using for at least the three last batches. i've had this sort of less-than-bubblicious fermentation before so i'm not spooked. in fact, even the burton was less foamy than my first couple of ales.

but the fermentation bubbles are only the middle of the story: the brewing itself is the topic of the minute. as i said, in retrospect, that went well.

the forces of brewing chaos banded against me to present me with many problems. and so, to break it down for us, may i present my good friend: me.

me reminds me that there were three brewers assistants present: brewers assistant first class lt. spu, brewers assistant second class, bottling master 203, and brewers assistant provisional, ensign mister noob the mook. the task at hand was simple: to brew from a recipe kit (my first in many batches) an oatmeal stout, utilizing several brand new techniques, listed here for my listing pleasure in the order in which they were utilized during the brewing process:

NEW PIECE OF EQUIPMENT NUMBER ONE: outdoor propane burner. nice and sturdy, relatively inexpensive, REI bought. only problem: it was precisely the right size to exactly not fit my new brewpot (below!). the diameter of the pot-ring was such that my brewpot could sit neither on the ring nor within it, only balance precariously and lopsidedly upon it. this was worked around by the addition of two screws to provide a still shaky platform, but at least we were not lopsided.

NEW PIECE OF EQUIPMENT NUMBER THE SECOND: 9 gallon SS brewpot with spigot and thermometer. oh how this pissed me off: the gorram thing leaked! there was a bad weld in one place, and a loose fitting in another. fortunately, my brewing team improvised a seal using saran wrap and kitchen string. we still got some leakage but not much. i returned the pot the next day for a new one, leak checked before i left the store.

NEW TECHNIQUE NUMBER ONE : outdoor brewing. that's what you do when you brew with propane, yeah?

NEW TECHNIQUE NUMERO DOS : mini mash. we learned all about mashing and sparging. how fun oh my. the mini mash instructions mentioned putting a lid on the mini mash bucket, but alas, a lid was not included with the kit sold to me by the same folks who wrote the instructions (argh). fortunately, i have many many lids, and one of them fit perfectly. also fitting perfectly was a nice blanket to insulate the mash. the sparge was slow and boring but workable. we didn't get the proper timing, exactly, but we were close enough. at times we may have sparged with water too hot, and today i discovered that because of this, i can look forward to husky astringent flavors in the beer. oh yum.

NEW TECHNIQUE NUMBER DOS EQUIS : full boil. starting with (probably) (about) six gallons, we ended up with 4.5 gallons after a steady 1 hour boil. the new propane burner took about 30 mins to get to boiling, but once there, it was a proper, rolling boil like we'd never seen on my crappy kitchen stove. since a large surface area of water is exposed by my wide brewpot, perhaps next time we'll take the boil a little more gently. also next time, we'll have better gallon markings so we'll know if there is actually 6 gals in the pot or not.

NEW EQUIPMENT/TECHNIQUE NUMBER FIVE (NO, THREE!) : wort chiller. a nice long coil of copper tube attached to really long vinyl tubes attached to my sink. the damned thing leaked sink water into the cooling wort (ARGH!) and i'm not sure how to fix it. the brewstore guy said to try moving the worm clamps closer to teh end of the copper, which i will do next time. we'll see. aside from the leaks (which we caught (mostly) with towels), the cooling was accomplished quickly enough. interestingly, i observed a 10F difference in temps between the top (hot) portion of hte wort (as measured by the in-pot thermometer) and the bottom (cooler) portion of the wort. this will have to be remembered for next time.

by the end of the five hour brew session we were getting tired of it all so i hastily dumped the wort into teh carboy, tossed in the yeast, and closeted it. no thermometer readings, no hydrometer readings. don't care for this batch. we dumped the wort when it read about 90F by the pot-thermometer (or 80F if you believe the floating thermometer), but by the time we got the thermostat thermometer in the wort, it read 70F. perfect! and of course, the next day, fermentation.

that's not all for the new stuff -- this beer will be kegged, i should think, and dispensed from the to-be-built kegerator. yesterday i recalled, while driving around, that i had a beer name on hold (203 wouldn't let me use it for the wedding brew) and i applied it to this batch. i regretted it later since it's a good name but a kit batch. still, i suppose i can re-use it. or maybe i'll just come up with a new one, ya think?

ADDENDUM :

I am relatively sure that the next batch will be all-grain. i'm moving up in the world. won't that be exciting? yes, yes it will.

POST-SCRIPT TO THE ADDENDUM :

we consumed some firefly ale during the making of the sullen beaver. it was good but i think i fancy the EPA more. alas, the EPA is nearly gone. EPA certainly has a nicer color.

ADDENDUM TO THE POST-SCRIPT TO THE ADDENDUM :

last night we cracked open a st. peter's cream stout, which i contend will be somewhat similar to the SBOS, or at least, more similar to the SBOS than to the EPA. 203 didn't care greatly for the stout, which implies that i'll be drinking the entire five gallons of SBOS. huzzah!

two of my totally unrelated hobbies are bringing me into unexpected contact with paintballers.

that's kind of weird.

deadlifted 203 (the person, not the poundage) today. that was easy (both the person and the poundage). so then i cleaned 203 (the person, not the poundage), which was pretty easy (the person, but not the poundage). then i tried to press 203 (the person, not the poundage) and that was not at all easy (the person or the poundage). in fact, i dropped 203 right on my head (the person, fortunately, not the poundage). i guess in retrospect it's good that she's not shaped like a barbell. true, she would have been easier to clean, and i could have pressed her, but, if i have to drop 203 on my head, it's best that she has a tummy between her feet and her crown, and not a steel bar. ow!

after all this, mighty unix machine #2 went and done locked up on me last night, before hte backups even ran, and for no apparent reason.

i was doing a large transfer of files over the network, but really, that's not something that should bother a mighty unix machine. previously, i had plugged in a usb mass storage drive that MUM#2 could not read, perhaps that put it in a state succeptible to hoseage. still, it should not have happened.

i've been considering switching MUM#2 to a different flavor of mighty unix, since the current flavor is not a precise fit for its function -- but i do so love the OS it's got on there now, with all its crankyness. i love my unix? man, i'm a nerd.

still, i'm the kind of nerd who appreciates a good, uninterrupted stretch of uptime, and now i haven't got that. sigh.

what is this that i am listening to? this is not my beautiful crystal method! this is something entirely different. what are these musical sounds i hear?

where were they when i was listening to this on crappy speakers?

latent, like a good dose of teh gay.

i wondered, as i pondered how to present this post, whether repetition makes things boring. because, of course, i'm about to lay out for youse, faithful readers, a frequent whine of mine that you've heard before, that is, if you've been here long enough, and will surely hear again, that is, if you stay here long enough. and, of course, the answer came to me in the usual place: the shower. or was it on the drive to work? i can't recall. but the answer is this:

it doesn't matter if i say the same old thing, as long as i say it differently, it's writing. that's writing with a capital W. wait, no, this is writing with a capital W: Writing.

today in my humble gym, i chose to skip ahead a workout in my 5-lb/week deadlift progression so that i could pull 300. it came up easily enough, for two sets of five. 5x300 is not my personal maximum, that would be 320-330 for 1 rep (and indeed, the 1RM calculator indicates that 5x300 is equivalent to 1x330).

now, 5x300 is nudging the ceiling of difficulty for me, and it's a nice little psychological checkpoint: only 100 more pounds to go for my goal! 100 lbs! that's nothing! i don't even feel the weight on a deadlift until i'm pulling 200lbs!

sadly, the last 100lbs are quite a lot more difficult than the first 100lbs. still, it's a nice round number to plug into the "only X more to go!" formula.

if i can manage to add 5lbs a week that's 20 weeks to go which gives me a whopping 3 months of wiggle room. that's a lot of wiggling.

and now, the whine you've heard before: i'm conflicted in my lifting. heavy deadlifting leads to unrestrained eating, which i have not hit quite yet, though i'm ramping it up for sure. unrestrained eating leads to yoda-like predictions of suffering, or, in other words, fatness. and fatness has its own problems, not least of which is putting a damper on my burgeoning new twin hobbies of climbing and drinking. you see, if i'm getting all fat, even if it's muscle-gain-associated and totally unrelated to increased beer intake, i'll feel bad about building a kegerator, and i'll feel sluggish on the rock, and neither of those things makes me happy. i don't tend to pack on huge amounts of muscle (well, not on the old upper bod, that is, which is where most folks look for "huge amounts of muscle") and even when i do reach my 400lb deadlift, i do not expect to "look like someone who can lift 400lbs".

to break it down like your favorite DJ: any minute now i'm going to freak out about my pants being too tight and i'll want to switch over to a running-and-fat-loss-based workout routine, and thus, my deadlift will surely suffer.

i must therefore, "stay the course" so that in november i can claim, "mission accomplished". or something.

anyhow, i'm off to the lunch buffet.

the new audio gear is really revealing the compression defects in my favorite music.

you know, the high ends or low ends of the spectrum where the mp3 codec says "nobody will have gear sensitive enough to notice the fudging we do!"

whelp. now i do.

two backup-related articles today on slashdot. whenever there's a backup-related article on slashdot, i get paranoid and send myself lots of reminder emails to get into the habit of backing stuff up. then i usually ignore the reminders until the next time there's any such article.

surprisingly, at this most busy point in my life, i actually have a decently solid backup setup, though it's hardly fire-resistant. i have four things that i'd care to back up:

1) the blog. i'm rather fond of it.
2) photos. meh. i lost a bunch on a stolen laptop and i don't even remember what they were. i could live without these, but why not back them up?
3) digital music. i've, uh, ripped all my cds and it'd be a PITA to, uh, re-rip them all.
4) misc. configuration data (/etc!) and stuff like old school papers and tax info.

i used to occasionally dump the above onto CDs when I remembered to do it, and then I got a DVD burner and thus backups became even more infrequent (had to fill up a DVD!). when I started caring about the blog, I'd duplicate it onto another partition of the server's HDD. hardly disaster proof.

now, I've got, as mentioned, a setup that i am somewhat happy with, though it still has kinks. I have two mighty unix machines in my server room. mighty unix machine #1 hosts this very blog, mighty unix machine #2 hosts my local mp3 store. one or the other or both hosts my photos. attached to mighty unix machine #2 is a nice 250G usb drive. each night, mighty unix machine #1 dumps the blog and other assorted goodies to a backup partition. later that night (as of today's script mods), mighty unix machine #2 rsyncs that backup partition to its local drive, then rsyncs the backup partition, plus the mp3 store, plus the photo store to the external drive. thus, the blog is mirrored nightly on three different hard drives, and the music is duplicated once. i'm safe from individual hard drive crashes, but less safe from monsoons or hails of brimstone.

and every once in a while, just for fun, I dump the backups from mighty unix machine #1 onto a DVD. i suppose I could do the same for the photos. by now, the music takes up too much space for dvd backup.

and at last, i don't freak out and send myself TODO emails when i read on slashdot that someone deleted 83 billion dollars (or 200k, depending) worth of data.

the better they get.

headphone amp + quality cans = amazement.

it's not just that, listening to decades-old favorites i hear "things" i'd never heard before.

it's not just that, listening to decades-old favorites, i hear 3-d effects, positioning, and soundstages i'd never known existed.

overall, everything just sounds better. tomorrow i'll listen to the same old stuff on the same old lower-cost cans, and it'll sound deficient. but for now, amon tobin rocks my socks, but he's new to me -- it's orbital that's blowing me poor little mind. orbital rocks even more socks than i ever knew.

the box. it's 3-d!

so that's that, then. having finished exposing the future mrs. toad to the entire run of futurama and having myself grown off of "family guy", the future mrs. toad and i sat down and watched the bbc's "the office" from end to end, over a series of days, of course, because the mrs. and saint are busy toads.

which is to say, we had to brew and bottle beer these last couple of days/weeks, but that's a different story.

this story is about my life and how it parallels that of tim/dawn in the bbc's "the office".

true fact: the week of the thursday when i told 203 that i loved her, i watched the final episode of the final season of the office. true fact #2: either the day after that, or the week after that (can't remember which, but in either case, i was alone, and i think it was the week after), i watched the "christmas special".

this won't mean much to you if you haven't seen the office. the office in its first season is a comedy, in its second season is a tragedy (in the greek sense), and in the christmas special, is a stroke of brilliance -- an ending that hollywood fumbles again and again, yet, in the hands of merchant and gervais, transcends.

or maybe that's just because my life imitated their art.

that week was a busy one in my life, and while i was blessed with a confluence of influences, the scene where tim listens -- really listens -- to what he's saying is pure brilliance.

sitting on the couch last (last?) night with the soon to be mrs. toad, i nearly cheered out loud as tim realized what he was saying and did what he did -- because in that moment, when i first watched tim come to that conclusion, i was coming to the same conclusion that he arrived at (sorry about that sentence, folks).

tonight, as we watched the special, i teared up when david grew a pair and when dawn cried. the office sent me a message at a crucial point in my life, and the message is a nice one to see so deftly presented:

the world, in its natural state, is unbalanced and unpleasant. but when, through our efforts, through the magic of doing the right thing at the right time, the world is jarred, the pieces can sometimes fall all into their places, and bring joy instead of frustration.

you never slow down
you never grow old

cripes i'm busy. and that goes for the both of us.

daft punk's "around the world" popped into my ears via my mp3 player, and immediately i recalled the last time i grooved out to this tune.

i was on my way up a 5.9 or a 5.10a and as i floated up the face i shook my groove thing to the appreciation of 203.

good times. i'll miss that stuff once we're hitched and no longer speaking.

No Order Too Big or Too Small (36 pcs. Min)

that is strange, but true.

also, the horrific redesign of his website a couple years back didn't help anything.

it's amazing how incompetent his web designers are. broken links all over the place, all the time, several years in to the "new" design. all requests go inexplicably through some strange dll. it's bizarre, and it's hurting the movie industry!

a kegerator it is.

203 made reference this weekend to the reason for my return to beer drinking. allow me to post the details for all the world (for small values of "the world") to enjoy and ignore.

Once Upon A Time, I was fat. And I drank beer. Then, I stopped drinking beer. Then I got less fat. I didn't start drinking beer again because I didn't want to be fat. Also, I was reading a book about home brewing but it sounded like too much trouble.

Then, much later, I met 203, and she was always talking about how after our hikes she'd go home and have a beer. Now, the only reason I ever bothered to hike with 203 is because I liked the way she looked from behind, which is to say, she looks fantastic in short hiking pants (sadly, I never managed to tell her this until *after* she'd moved away). Anyhow, an thought formed in my mind, and it grew into an idea, and blossomed into a notion, and then became a plan: i would brew my own beer, on account of 203 drank beer and still had a nice behind.

So shortly thereafter, I started again with the beer drinking, and then the beer brewing, and then the hard liquor, and finally, the cohabitation. Now I'm fat and I'm going to get a kegerator so I can drink even more, and then I'm getting married. So much for that.

Same goes for the ice cream. Ice cream doesn't make 203 flabby but it decreases my bench press. I don't get it.

Back in the old hiking days, 203 would say she liked beer but not hard liquor. Back then, I drank more whisky than beer. Now she's more of a scotch coh-nuh-soor than I am, and I've moved on to wine, by which I mean, every Friday night I'm forced to consume half a bottle so we can have a nice sit-down dinner. But the point is, neither of us drinks now what we said we drank back during the days of Getting To Know You, and if that's not bait and switch, I don't know what is.

busy busy busy, i guess.

so much going on, and yet so little.

a camping trip this past weekend, though disappointing in some regards, pulled it all together for a very nice couple of hours.

i finally got the whole "star navigation" thing down, for example, the true understanding of which had eluded me for many years.

i've decided to use the tools of technology to keep myself better organized. i was already pretty well organized using the tools of pen and paper, but i can do better, and in doing better, i can flex my python.

speaking of which, wtf, python?

new habits, new routines, new cycles, new all kindsa things.

i'm obsessing about beer, right now, having just come off an obsessing-about-headphones period, which ended only monday when i actually ordered them. waiting now for the fedex man to deliver. but the beer, oh my, so much obsessing to do!

here's the skinny on the beer obsession :

- i ordered some hop rhizomes today. when they arrive, the damn-near-wife and i will attempt to grow enough for a batch or twelve, all from a pot or twelve on our tiny little patio, which the nearly-wife has said will be clean enough for hop growing by the time they arrive.
- the next batch is going to be, i think, mini-mash and full boil, two big steps in process which, while not guaranteed to improve the quality of the beer, are guaranteed to improve the quality of the beermaking process.
- the next batch is going to be, i think, kegged.

PROBLEM : i dont want to fork out for a keggerator right now, but I dont know how to keep the keg at dispensing temperature in my summer-heated apartment. it's a conundrum.

anyhow, this all adds up to a pretty big chunk of expense, even before the thirty-odd bucks for the next batch's ingredients. in fact, for the full-boil upgrade alone, i'll have spent more than i spent on my initial brew kit. so it goes. hobbies are expensive, but there's no better hobby than beermaking. chicks dig it.

oh, the blog, the poor, neglected blog.

i wrote a poem about why it was neglected, but that didn't help. i was supposed to kick back into gear and write, but all my writing time is taken up by work, play, or you-know-what. that's right, cooking.

i'm actually getting better at cooking, which is to say, i'm approaching my former glory. the problem, as always, is that i get in late to work and stay late(ish), so that by the time i arrive home, i'm too hungry to cook anything that takes more than 30 mintues. and i only know one recipe that takes 30 minutes, and that's X in sweet tomato sauce, for all values of X.

but i'm branching out. i destroyed a batch of asparagus last week but elevated a head of dino kale.

i had vowed to squat 400 lbs before i turned 30, but then, i vowed that before i started getting tired from climbing. and now, i like the climbing too much to cut back to where it would be possible to make the progress to a 400 lb squat. but, i think i'll change my vow instead of discarding it. so here we go, in front of all (none) of youse, i vow to deadlift 400 before i'm 30.

maybe i'll even manage 350 before i'm hitched. won't that be something?

/me checks calendar

holy shit!

if i add 10lb a week to the mighty dl, i can actually hit 400 before i'm hitched. won't that be something!

oh, wait, no i can't.

that's fine, i'll do it afterwards. got to save something for all those lonely, boring, post-marriage mornings.

i think, perhaps, that once i've deadlifted 400 i can stop all this lifting obsessiveness and focus on damaging my knees marathoning and climbing. won't that be fun!

although, since i'm going to put on 30lbs of fat the day after i'm married, just like my wife is scheduled to do, maybe i should stick to the lifting. it's too hard to run while fat.

just as it's too hard to write when uninspired.

sigh. a good dose of misery should get me writing again. check back here in 70 days.

we will spend a night under the stars at the same spot where we foolishly parted ways for the first time.

this time, though, i won't have to return to my car to get her number.

today you turned 22222

and then when i parked you, you turned 22223!

whoopie.

what has become
of the flowering streams
and the swirling bright eddies of trees

where is the place
for the glistening dreams
of the emerald flames of the seas

where have they gone
these ebullient themes
of life reborn in the whispering breeze

the pen must succumb
to the crawling pale frost
as muse, born of longing
is steadily lost

last night i did, imho, poorly at the climbing gym. overhangs were the reason for the season, and i spectacularly wasn't cutting it. on the face climbs, i'm solid, even with the old GI distress. the funky taste is back in force and won't go away. sleep hasn't been great lately, and work stress has returned.

and then, from the peak of the last of a triset of heavy deadlifts, with the world's best lifting/climbing/driving/dance music irritating my neighbors, with the sun on my face, the memory of love in my mind, fresh air in my lungs, and not a scape on my shins, i remembered: life is good, after all.

until about the 330 mark, that is.

it is nice.

she does not want to go up, only sideways.

first straight razor shave of the new year, and i'm so out of practice i nearly lost my chin. stubbles everywhere and a big han-solo cut. that's what i get for getting out of practice. sigh.

INGREDIENT LIST :
7 gal crystal geyser (water)
2 oz gypsum
1 tsp irish moss
6 lb English Light liquid malt extract
1 lb victory malt
1 lb caravienne
1/2 lb carapils
4 oz whole kent goldings
WLP0023 (burton ale yeast)
3/4 cup bottling sugar

PROCEDURE :
- sanitize carboy
- thaw yeast
- place grains in grain bag. steep grains in 2.5 gallons of water + gypsum. offset brewpot on crappy electric burner to create convection current.
- place malt extract in separate pot on low heat (to increase fluidity).
- as water reaches 180F, reduce heat. remove grain bag. squeeze with tongs to recover malted water.
- add malt extract
- add 1.5 oz EKG
- crank up heat and stir vigorously, keeping malt from burning on bottom
- sanitize carboy
- boil for 60 minutes
- sanitize carboy
- add 1.5 oz EKG and 1 tsp irish moss at last 15 minutes of boil.
- add 1 oz EKG at last 2 minutes of boil.
- remove brewpot to ice bath. cool to ____ F (determine final concentrated-wort temp by taking "foundation water" temp and calculating backwards from 70F)
- sanitize strainer and funnel
- dump 2.5 gal room-temp "foundation water" into carboy
- use stainless spoon to vigorously stir concentrated wort for 10 seconds, creating trub-gathering whirlpool (don't needlessly aerate wort)
- siphon concentrated wort from corner of brewpot through strainer into carboy.
- take temp and OG readings
- cork and aerate
- sanitize yeast vial
- pitch yeast

- ferment at "low temp" 69F