Author: David

Over-educated Curmudgeon, Bit-Bucket Tuner and Budding Brewmeister.
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Even Though This Is Very Early, It’s Still Too Late for This Year…

*sigh*

I hate doing “Christmas” posts this early, but I used to have to start preparing for Christmas about March (long story), and since I have to start preparing for doing something like this NEXT year NOW (IF I actually end up doing it next year–may take longer*), I suppose this is OK…

See what I mean? and the “*” above? Well, I threw a bunch of bottles out recently *sigh* and I also brew about as much as I buy, so getting enough bottles–especially green ones–may take me a while. Especially since I only manage 1-2 beers/day.

But since I must start really early preparing for this, I may as well post the intention now as well, eh?

I guess it popped into my head to look for something like this since today starts another brew season for me. First up? Three brews: a “Vienna lager” style, a wheat beer and some “Georgy-Porgy Molasses Beer” (with fewer cloves and more orange zest this year). If I get them all started today, then in a couple of weeks I may be able to start bottle conditioning enough to last me past New Year’s Day, though, of course, I’ll probably start another few batches as soon as these come out of the primary fermentation “bottles”. (I have several different primary fermentation tubs of different food grade plastics for primary fermentation. Why food grade plastics? Cheaper and easier to store, just as easy to keep clean and lighter when I have to move them. Oh, and a couple of them are from unusual *cough* sources, so cheaper still. Yeh, I’m cheap. Wanna make something of it? ;-))

Update:

Here ya go: I could fit the last 4 levels of something like this in our bay window this Xmas…

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Office Apps

Although I have Microsoft Office (2003, 2007 and 2010) installed on various physical and virtual machines, it’s mostly for use as a reference when someone has questions or problems, as I standardized my personal office application use several years ago on the free, cross platform OpenOffice.

Now, since Oracle bought Sun, the original source of Star Office and OpenOffice, the folks developing OpenOffice have forked the code off and formed The Document Foundation and are offering LibreOffice, which is readily recognizable as OpenOffice.

Nice that they’re attempting to keep Oracle’s hands out of the pie. Actually, when I said I’d standardized on OpenOffice, earlier, I slightly misspoke. About a year ago, I switched to another fork (or is it just a patched version with more compatibility with M$Office, etc.? The two “sides” are argued with equal vigor by people whose arguments I just don’t care about *heh*), Go-OO, a patched and slightly slicker Novell offering. Still free and still uses all the same OO interfaces and file structures, etc. There has been some friction between Go-OO developers and OO developers, but none of that matters to me. I will take a look to see if there are differences that make a difference for me in the LibreOffice offering, though.

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Num-Num

As obliquely promised to Nicole, here’s another lil smoothie “recipe” (indeterminate amounts in a couple of cases almost require the “”).

Mocha Mint Smoothie

1C cold coffee (just chill some ahead of time from some coffee brewed from freshly-ground beans)
2 scoops chocolate-flavored whey powder
a small handful of fresh, rinsed mint leaves (you do have a stand of mint handy, don’t you? ;-))
2TPS heavy cream
2TBS finely-ground flax seed (almost to powder/flour consistency–use your blade coffee grinder or a burr grinder set to as fine as it’ll grind)
1/2 Tsp leucine
1/2 Tsp D-Ribose
2TBS sucralose
~1.5 C ice.

Blend until smooth.

Yum. A good breakfast all on its lonesome, when time to cook bacon and eggs, etc., might be short. Can add a raw egg if you want (pasteurize by dipping in boiling water for NO MORE than a minute, if salmonella is a concern for you).

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Proposed Change to Oath Congresscritters Take

Just musing here…

This is pretty much the oath anyone entering federal employment must take, including congresscritters:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

My modest proposal would insert after “swear” the words, “I will first do no harm to the republic,” followed by “that I will support and defend…” etc.

It’d have no more force than the current oath does on that conspiracy of dunces who almost daily do harm to the Constitution and the republic it defines, but at least it’d be easier to point out to some of the dimmer sheeple how much in violation of their oaths of office they are. Maybe. There’s no way to plumb the depths of sheeple stupidity.