Smalls

Could you feel any more insignificant?

Halloween Origins

Deadpool (Weapon XI), Gambit, Wolverine and Sabertooth Halloween costumes taken from the Wolverine Origins movie. Our Halloween party came a little early this year, October 17th early. Our group decided to all dress up as super heroes and super villains.
I'm all about the simple costumes. I decided to go with the Wolverine Origin movie's version of Deadpool. The real Deadpool is way cooler, but that is too much spandex for me. A little liquid latex, black marker, and plastic swords got me the part.
Mike went with the Gambit outfit and had great details not seen in this particular picture, but I think I caught it in some others: Including glowing contacts, a light up staff, card tricks, and LED finger lights to make cards glow.
Scott grew out his hair so he could pull off the Wolverine spikes. He also had me trumped in the blades, sporting some real metal claws, which became dangerous later when Mystique got a hold of them and decided to poke everyone with them.
Dink pulled off the Sabertooth/Victor Creed perfectly. Shaved beard, claws, teeth, clothes, and he's got a nice intimidating size.


The girls didn't have the cohesion us boys did, but we didn't really plan it, it just kinda came together at the end.
Catwoman, Trinity, Mystique, and Batgirl made up the girl costumes and they all turned out really well. Candice's Mystique started cracking as the night went on, but it was great while it lasted.

No Sync

I take my laptop for granted. Now that she is on vacation getting a knee replacement I realize what I have lost. I can't even sync my zune. I've finished listening to the KatG episodes that were already loaded, but now I'm dry. I used to be able to pull in to my garage and new episodes would magically appear next time I got in my car. The magic is gone my friends, that greedy little leprechaun took his pot and rode a unicorn to a Texas.

Sure I have an old desktop, but even checking my email on that thing can be painful. There is the Home Server, but not much can be done with that. It resides in the basement without a monitor; so, even if I wanted to stand down there in the morning with my coffee to get my latest facebook gossip, I can't. The media pc would work, but the only thing installed on there are the video playback essentials. Browsing the web is killer on the HDTV, but since its on the TV, it monopolizes the entire entertainment core. No sports watching, facebook surfing, multi-tasking allowed, not to mention if there are 2 people jockeying for command.

Hopefully the laptop will be back soon.
Your system has been received and is currently in queue for diagnosing. As soon as the system ships out we will be sending you an e-mail notification.

I'll probably have to take a good chunk of the afternoon off when it is delivered, you never know when that FedEx guy will show up to shove a huge box under my door mat. Master of deception.

Bed Frame

Currently building my own bed frame. I already had something I put together with 2x6s and 2x4s. The box spring and mattress would sit down just inside the 2x6 frame on top of the 2x4s. I'm taking that old frame and adding on to it.

I'm using some better wood (select pine) to give it a higher quality look and adding a head board (flush hollow core door) for a complete finish. The hardest part thus far is using a miter box to cut the angles in to the pine. Using a hand saw is ridiculous, but the final product of the angled corners will be worth it. Stay tuned for updates of a finished bed or me without fingers.

The final product will be a mix of inspiration from the below beds:

Hinge #2

Sunday morning, after getting my cup of foo-foo hazelnut coffee, I just wanted to sit down and read the news, but had to deal with this instead.

Hinge number two on my sexy beast of a laptop. If you remember, I already had a hinge go out and the over use of plastic is definitely to blame for these occurrences. Every time you open or close the lid, you are treated to a symphony of creaking, only buying time until the cracking climax.


My m15x went out of warranty in March, so needless to say, this was going to be a costly fix. While it may only look cosmetic at this point, rest assured, opening the lid splits that seam wide open, ready to spill all the LCD innards.

I typed out an email to Alienware support, detailing what had happened. Being Sunday I didn't even expect a reply until late Monday, but within the hour I had a response with an attached shipping label stating the repair would be covered for free. Woot! I'm assuming since it is a known issue on this model, the Alienware guys felt sorry for me.

Anytime I have had to deal with Alienware, whether just calling in to get a status of an order or completely returning a laptop for repair, they have been top notch. I couldn't recommend a better customer service department. I can however think of a few companies who could learn a thing or two by taking a page from Alienware's book (Sprint), heck, you might just want to take the whole book.

Homebrew for iBelly

No, definitely not the latest iPhone app. I decided to try a hobby that makes supply for my other favorite hobby. Making (then drinking) beer! I guess it would be more appropriate to say "brewing beer," but we're all friends here.

Seeing as how every weekend of my summer is booked in early March and all the weekdays seem to get packed in by the hour as well, I don't have very much time for extras. My clothes shopping is done at shirt.woot: Click on site, see shirt, like shirt, click buy and I'm done. Now I just need a site with cheap pants... Time for TV shows? I don't think I have to praise the DVR, surely you are in the know. That's why when I saw the Mr.Beer kit on sale for $19.99 I was intriguied.

The Mr.Beer Premium kit said it had everything I needed to make my own beer. Not only that, but I could make my own beer with a very limited amount of time. Obviously they have to be exageratting, making beer has to be very complex and time consuming work, otherwise everyone would be doing it. Right!?

I was partially correct. Brewing your own beer can be very expensive, very complex, and very time consuming. Grinding up your own grains, cooking up your own wort, buying buckets and glass carboys, buying the right hops, malt, yeast, etc... Phew. There are varying degrees of this obviously, you can probably read some beginner blogs that will tell you what to buy and how to most easily get started. All I'm saying, is this can be as complicated or as easy as you want, depending on how much control you want.

Where I was wrong, was how easy Mr.Beer really made it. You can find posts that dog on Mr.Beer and how its crap compared to the hardcore brewmasters that know what real beer is. You know, the real manly men. Of course, you can get a hell of a good look at a T-Bone steak by sticking your head up a bull's ass, but I'd rather just buy it at HyVee and take the butcher's word for it. I'll opt for the easy button. With Mr.Beer I just have to pick a recipe, follow the simple instructions for about 30 minutes, and then wait a month or two. I've only brewed a couple beers, but if one were to turn out bad, I'd only be down 2 gallons and the time it takes to watch an episode of Entourage.

Here is basic ingredients to get going. The cup of honey is an extra that we recommended with my particular recipe. Honey will up the alcohol content a couple percentage points and make the beer a little drier.







These are what you use to make the wort. Read the wiki if you really want to know, but its basically the meat of the beer. I have one can of hopped malt extract (HME) and one unhopped (UME). They have the consistency of motor oil. My first batch ended up all over my kitchen with things sticking to the counter and stove for weeks. That's why its best to warm it up under hot water so it pours a little easier.


You boil these guys together with some water and in my case, honey. I wish I had a pan that lent itself a little better for pouring, because once your don't here, it has to be dumped in to the Mr.Beer keg.








Once its dumped in the keg, you fill it up with cold water to the designated line. Then you stir it up vigorously trying to get a bunch of air to mix in. It sits for a few minutes then you stir again and dump in the the little packet of yeast, the active ingredient. Yeast is what makes the magic happen.

Yeast: Beer yeast is cultivated especially for use in brewing. Ale yeasts are top-fermenting, which means they tend to hang out at the top of the carboy while fermenting and rest at the bottom after the majority of fermenting has occurred. Ale yeasts will not actively ferment below 50 degrees F (20 degrees C).

This means that you need to store your Mr.Beer keg in a some what temperature controlled environment, shooting for a temp around 68-70 degrees F. You also want to keep it out of direct sun light. My basement during the summer months is perfect for this. On the other hand, my office closet is perfect during the winter months. For the hardcore or people without adequate rooms, you can get an old fridge or freeze and install a more accurate temperature control. I haven't had a problem with odor, but you can always put it in a cooler for those extra smelly brews.


Once you let it ferment for a month (they say two weeks is good, but the more the better) or more, its time to bottle it up for conditioning. Also called a "second fermentation," this will re-activate the yeast and in our case carbonate the beer. At this point you can taste your brew and probably should, to make sure it has fermented enough. If it tastes way too sweet or like cider, you need to let it sit longer. If it tastes like flat beer, then you're right on schedule. You need to add sugar to the bottles and the amount will depend on the size of your bottle. 2 teaspoons for my 1 liter monsters. Once you have the sugar in, its time to add the concoction inside the keg. Try not to shake the keg too much during this process, there are extra chunks that will have settled on the bottom: I use a funnel with a filter just in case. I also have my lovely lady give me a hand filling the bottles, because its hard to hold the funnel and bottle at an angle, while also pushing the spigot. You want to try and keep the beer from sloshing and getting air in to it, the opposite of what we did earlier.

After its bottled up, its back to the warm dark place. Once again, 2 weeks minimum, but a month sounds good to me. If you add too much sugar, then you have created time bombs. It is very possible that too much pressure will build up and plaster the beer all over your beautiful walls that you no doubt spent a weekend painting, another reason to keep them in a cooler. After enough time goes by, its time to put the beer in the fridge and/or drink it.



My first beer turned out good and my second is even better. The honey in the dopplebock really packs a punch! I plan on taking a bottle or two with me to poker tonight, so we'll see how it goes over with the masses.

For the Queen!

I'm not sure how out of touch Microsoft has become, but when I show up for work in the morning I am definitely not sporting a knight's shield and broadsword. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't mind fighting off the evil minions of the crab lord to secure the saftey of the beloved nerd princess. I'll stab some stuff with the best of em, but I'm not getting how that is in anyway related to sitting behind a computer writing software.