Wednesday, February 23, 2011

On the virtues of forgetfulness

Sometimes, forgetfulness can be a good thing.

My wife was rummaging around in the pantry and found some jars of homemade pickles that have been back there for nearly 3 years. I remember opening some jars from that batch back then and being less than happy with the results. I should have been more patient! These just needed some time to age. The flavors, once sharp and unpleasant, have mellowed. The vinegar dominated everything; now the spices and garlic come through.

I put a few bottles of 2010 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale in the back of the pantry now. I intend to forget those for a while and see what happens.

Tuesday, February 22, 2011

BitTorrent hair pulling

I have been pulling my hair out trying to get my torrent client to make nice-nice with my ATT-UVerse supplied router. Long story short: It was just a bad torrent I was trying to download. (For the record, it wasn't that kind of torrent! I was trying to get a report on gun running, or the lack thereof, into Mexico.)

I don't know how, but the router had a program already using the default port for kTorrent. I just switched kTorrent to another randomly chosen port an we were off to the races.