Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

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  • Beer & Wiki

    I just finished up making a batch of beer, an English Old Ale that I’ll be giving to my Dad for his birthday this year. This is the second beer in as many months that I’ve brewed, and I’ve already got plans for at least two, maybe three more: a Pumpkin Ale (I used to brew this every year around Halloween), a wheat beer for my Mom’s birthday (perhaps a blackberry wheat), and I’ve been thinking about a barleywine in December. Though I’ve been thinking about experimenting with the style and using wheat malt instead of barley malt— a “weizenwine” or something.

    Here is an extremely cool site: Wikipedia.org. It uses the (relatively) new concept/technology of the “wiki web,” and is essentially an online, freely editable encyclopedia. And by “freely editable” I really mean freely editable— anyone (anyone!) “can edit any article right now, without even having to log in” (in their words). It’s true. I had edited their Beer page and added an entry for Barleywine, then added and edited the very page for Barleywine myself, just today.

    And, it’s collaborative. Within three hours of my creating the Barleywine article, someone else had edited it and added links. What more can I say? Check it out.

    Random Web Link: BookCrossing – I just love this concept. Right along the lines of Where’s George?

  • Lapse

    I’ll be more active on the site again, soon. Until then, here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been doing:

    • Reading A History of Knowledge
    • Working the new job (programming, programming, programming)
    • Getting caught up in the new season of TV (grrrrrr….)
    • Pouring concrete (well, I only spent a Saturday doing this, but it was 800+ pounds of concrete…)

    That’s about all for now. Changes coming though!

  • 9 – 11 – 02

    Peace.

  • There and back again

    We just got back yesterday from a week-long vacation on the Oregon Coast. I should say, “We just got back and recovered,” because a week in hotels with young children is taxing. But, it was a good trip.

    We started out in Newport, and the weather for the first few days was crappy: chilly, foggy, wet. Consequently, I started getting a cold and had to drink tea and take echinacea for a few days. But we found things to do before hitting the beach anyway; we visited Lincoln City for some shopping, wandered along the stores on the bayfront, enjoyed good food. We had lunch at the Rogue Brewery in Southbeach, but I couldn’t drink any beer because I was at the peak of my sore throat! How can you visit one of the best breweries on the west coast and NOT drink beer?

    Our last day in Newport, the weather turned nice, and after a great breakfast (marionberry French toast), we spent time on the beach. The kids had a fantastic time. After that, we moved on to Florence for a night.

    I’m not too crazy about Florence; it’s kind of a dingy town with a worn-out feeling. We visited Old Town Florence (decent shopping and eating), and went to the Sea Lion Caves about 11 miles north. That was impressive; you take an elevator 200 feet down into the largest sea cave in the world to see the sea lions on the rocks.

    After Florence we moved on to Bandon, on the southern Oregon coast. I like Bandon; it’s a charming, tiny little town that I can picture myself living in some day. There’s not much around there, though; the largest towns are Coos Bay and North Bend to the north, which aren’t saying much. I hear people mostly like to leave Coos Bay.

    Finally we drove over to Roseburg (not on the coast, but close enough) and visited the Wildlife Safari there, and the La Garza winery. The Wildlife Safari was fun; I’d been there years and years ago, as a teen. Kaitlyn and I rode an elephant, which was very cool.

    We got back yesterday (Friday), spent a good part of the time getting unpacked, doing laundry and recovering. I’ve gotten caught up on everything, and getting geared to start my new job up this next week, on Tuesday. We’ve got office space, I’ve got a desk and three chairs that need assembling, and a computer.

    Should be interesting.

  • Well, duh.

    Here’s an interesting study: Drinking alcohol makes the opposite sex look more attractive (Yahoo article; MSNBC is here). Haven’t we all known this for years? You know, along the lines of those T-shirts and bumper stickers proclaiming “Beer – helping ugly people have sex since 1883” or somesuch.

    I mean, really. That’s what alcohol does. It’s the same thing that makes me really good at pool after 3 or 4 drinks.

    And this right on the heels of the Beer is good for you news story. Maybe we’ll be seeing a resurgence of beer-drinking and microbreweries again.

    Random web link: Henson.com, the official Jim Henson site. I was looking at this site the other day to find an image of Animal from The Muppet Show, and it seemed kind of cool.

  • I’m Back!

    This past month since I last posted has been a very transitional one.

    I quit my job with Alpine, and I’m taking on a new one in September. I’ve got slightly less than three weeks off as of now. Of course, that means I’ve had to change servers; I no longer have the convenient access to everything I needed on the Alpine servers to play with my websites.

    I’m going with Pair Networks as they offer an affordable, reliable service with PHP and MySQL. So now, chuggnutt.com is brought to you by Pair!

    Anywho… during the decision-making period to leave one job for another, and the subsequent “last days” with Alpine, I’ve neglected my site. Not that I imagine anyone was reading it anyway, apart from a few family or friends. But, it’s back. I’m back.

    In other news, I made a batch of homebrew today. For the first time in 2½ years.

    2½. Years.

    Keeping in mind that I used to make a lot of beer. Not as much as some homebrewing friends I have who are fanatical about it, but more than average. But, once the kids were born, I just didn’t find the time… or so I told myself…

    And I’d been thinking about it lately. So, enough was enough. I’ve got (nearly) three weeks off, so yesterday we went to the homebrew shop, bought some basic ingredients (pale malt extract, ½ lb. 40L crystal malt, 2 oz. Cascade hops, dry ale yeast) and a wine kit for my wife, and today made the beer and the wine.

    The beer is bubbling happily away as I write this. The house smells like malt and hops.

    I’ve missed this.

  • Fun With Images

    Master KermitAs you can see from the image to the right, I have been playing around with Paint Shop Pro and doing some fun image editing. I don’t know why, but this seemed like an extraordinarily funny thing to do, and the results turned out pretty good. Better than the Darth Maul/Boba Fett image I did yesterday.

  • Boba Maul?

    I finally saw Attack of the Clones last Friday (the 5th), and it was pretty good. Better than The Phantom Menace, at any rate. And I’ve been thinking of the odd, cult-like popularity that has arisen out of two Star Wars characters, Boba Fett and Darth Maul.

    Yep, utterly geeky.

    My best theory as to their popularity is that they are visually interesting, bad-ass characters who were not overused. (Although, with Jango Fett in AOTC, they may be trodding down the overused path with clan Fett.) You know, less is more.

    So, I decided to merge the two characters into one, ultra-cool, ultra-bad-ass creation:

    Darth Fett.

    Here’s the image I whipped up to illustrate.

    Nuff said.

  • Fine Grind

    Still around. Had a nice, four-day holiday weekend, and now I really don’t want to go back to work Monday morning. It’s odd; I love working with the Internet, and developing in PHP, and the cool technologies, and being hands-on in all aspects of a web site from domain name registration and server management to server-specific Apache configuration, but I’m also growing very weary of the day-to-day Alpine grind.

    (Grind is not exactly the right word, but I’m being lazy tonight. Also, it alliterates nicely with “Alpine.”)

    Thinking about it now, perhaps I’m getting tired of being a part of a struggling start up company. It’s draining, and wasn’t what I had set out to do two and a half years ago when I was looking for a new job. I often feel that the amount of energy and effort and personal stake I’m investing (as I am with Alpine) should be directed to my own endeavor and not necessarily somebody else’s vision and risk.

    In other words, if I want to work for a start up, it should be my own.

    But don’t necessarily hold your breath.

    Yet.

  • One more reason to love toys…

    So I may be behind the times on this, but check out this link: Eric Harshbarger’s LEGO® website. This guy is my new hero. He actually builds LEGO sculptures for a living.

    No, really.

    He makes a living building LEGO sculptures. Professionally.

    What the hell am I doing wrong?