Spell check is not your friend

I guess you have to leave Tim behind with a shotgun when you're not adequately prepared for a disaster.

Ladyface IPA

I have a long commute, but it takes me past the Ladyface Ale Companie in Agoura Hills. Last night I had some time, so I stopped and had a pint of their signature IPA. This is a very tasty brew; big hop flavor and aroma in addition to the bitterness you expect of an American IPA.

Liberal calculus

On the way into work this morning, I heard that Jerry Brown, in addition to wanting to raise taxes, is still insisting on spending $100,000,000 on his high speed train boondoggle. Now that train may be fine and dandy for someone commuting to Corcoran, it doesn't do anyone else a bit of good. (I suppose that I should say "anyone who isn't latched onto the public teat".)

Just for giggles, I looked into what it would take to use the existing train to go to work. Only $170 per week would do it, provided that my boss doesn't mind me getting in at 10am. Of course, if Jerry Brown gets his way, I won't have that $170 to spend on train fare. It would go toward building a bullet train to Corcoran instead.

Beer on tap

I tapped that keg of "Pooh's Blustery Ale" last night. I had just spent the last day and a half on a plumbing project and needed a drink. But, in addition to having beer on tap, we now have a new hot and cold filtered water dispenser and a new kitchen faucet with a big gooseneck.

Dogs and beer

Did I mention that the new dog is a bit of technophobe? And apparently, a5 gallon carboy is a piece of high technology and thus something to bark at.

Beer posts

Ok.... I just looked at the list of posts... The last three were about beer.

Back to beer!

Ok... So I really didn't drift away from writing about beer.

I finally got around to kegging a beer from November. Either I'm really patient or really lazy. Either way, that beer really cleared out.

I'm writing this at the bar at Ladyface. I'm drinking a wine barrel aged ale. It's a sour that's really tasty.

Drinking in the Big Easy

I'm in New Orleans for a trade show. This is the kind of town where you'd have to work it to have a bad meal. And from what I've had from Abita Brewing, you'd have to work at having a bad beer. These folks brew some tasty beers.

Have I mentioned that AT&T sucks?

More brewin'

I'm in the midst of a brew day right now. I just finished the boil for a new and improved version of my strong ale; new, improved, and slightly improvised!

My mash wasn't as efficient at I had hope, so I goosed up the OG with 2 pounds of brown sugar. I also had to play around with the hops. I didn't have as much of my chinook as I thought I did. So, I lengthened the boil by 10 minutes to pick the IBUs back up. Some people might have gone into freak-out mode at all that, and I might have too, but it was kinda fun figuring out these work-arounds on the fly.

This is all going onto the yeast cake from a batch of a new and improved version of Pooh's Blustery Ale.

With both of these, I did decoction mashes. I really like that rich, malty sweetness that this technique gives. (Technically speaking, the process yields melanoidins which give rise to this flavor.)

An update: OK... So the added sugar may not have been necessary. I forgot to calculate boil-off into the equation. My 5 gallon boil yielded about 4 gallon. So that SG of 1.072 that I thought I had turned  into 1.095.

Oops.

This is gonna be an ass kicker of an ale.

"I'm not dead yet"

Just a wee, pointless post to show that this isn't a zombie blog.

It was just a matter of time

Give the man enough time and he finally does something I can approve of. Obama is brewing beer in the White House

Nekkid Pichurs

Seriously? You mean there are still celebrities around who are stupid enough to keep naked pictures of themselves on their phones? I thought they had all learned by now that anything on a phone might a well be posted on a web server.

And let's be honest: If you take nekkid pictures of yourself, or allow someone else to take nekkid pictures of you, they're gonna wind up on the internet. I don't care what you intended or what that other person promised, your nekkid butt is going online. You want your naughty bits to stay private? Then keep the camera away from 'em.

Too much granularity?

The Obama administration has released a new medical billing code system.  Instead of a mere 18,000 different codes, there will be 140,000 codes. So how does your doctor know that a special code exists for your particular malady? Let's say that you come in with a burn you got on the backyard BBQ. How does he know that there's actually a special code for injuries sustained while grilling or smoking foods? (It's aY93G2, by the way.) And if he screws that up, will your insurance refuse to pay?

Kindle on a Linux box

I'm not sure what Jim Lynch is talking about in How to read Kindle books on Linux. I've been reading Kindle books just fine on my Linux box using Wine. If there are any compatibility issues with Kindle for Windows and Wine, I haven't run into them yet.

I almost got away with it

I'm sitting here next to an empty beer bottle. My wife walks by and asks "Did you drink that whole pint?" I responded "It was only 22 ounces." There followed 15 seconds of silence where I thought I had gotten away with that one.

Somehow, I thought there'd be more

A few weeks back, Verizon announced that they were ending their unlimited data packages. It doesn't affect me since I'm grandfathered in with an old plan. The new plan caps you at 2GB per month then they start to charge you out the wing wang for any overages.

Now when they announced this, I thought I was getting away with something with my old plan. I thought "Ha! You fools! I'll chew up data by the terabyte and there's nothing you can do to stop me! Muuwhaahaaaahaaaahaaaaahaaaa!" Well, I just checked my data usage for the month and found that I'm on track to use a whole gigabyte for this billing cycle.

...which makes me wonder: Just how much time must one spend on a smartphone to rack up 2GB?!?

The Precious

I was listening to Glenn Beck this morning on the drive to work. I had never caught his radio show before.

He had Sen. Rand Paul on and the two of them came up with a great analogy for John McCain before and after getting to DC: McCain before going to DC is Smeagol. The Beltway is the Ring Of Power. McCain then becomes Gollum after falling under the toxic influence of The Precious.

Something that bears repeating

Sen. Mark Rubio on the debt...

What could go wrong?

The way I see it, there are two bad outcomes that could emerge from the debt ceiling talks. Failing to reach a deal would mean that the US could default on some of its loans. This is bad because it impacts anyone else trying to borrow money. Federal debt is normally a sure thing for lenders. They charge a lower interest rate, but are sure of getting paid. Not so if the US defaults. That added risk will affect how they price loans for the rest of us.

The other bad outcome, and I think this is worse, would be a deal that fails to cut up Obama's credit cards. Raising the debt ceiling, without reducing the size of government, will just lead to endless replays of this same drama year after year. This means more borrowing and an unmanageable level of debt; or, it means astronomical taxes to service that debt. Either would be a bullet to the head of the economy.

All in all, the short term disruption of a default would be preferable to endless debt and taxation.