Medicine

Went to Walgreen's, got my prescription flavored with "Ghoulish Grape."  Later that night, when a ghost grape visited me, I couldn't stop screaming in terroir.

Lowe's Attack

So I've been fixing up the baseboards in my house.  There are a lot of them that are pretty messed up, having been removed and nailed back on due to floor work.

Anyway, I had to run to Lowe's this weekend to get one more piece of trim.  I picked it out, carried it over to the saw, and went looking for a helpful associate.

"No sir, the saw is down"

"No, we can't use any of the circular saws in the store"

"No, we can't use a handsaw either"

"No, you can't bring your own saw"

Well, crap.  There's no fitting a 16-foot board into my car.

As I left, something shiny glinted from the corner of my eye: an electrical plug cover just by the door.  A plan quickly formed itself.  I'd go get my circular saw and a couple of cinder blocks, buy the long piece of trim and cut it up just outside the door like a parking lot ninja.

"I'd better check the plug to make sure it's right," I said to myself.  I went over to open it up.

In addition to a few 110V plugs was a large nest of wasps.  They weren't happy.  Also, my opening the cover knocked their nest onto the ground.  They got even less happy.

So I ran away, and bought my trim at Home Depot.  So much for being a parking lot home improvement ninja.

Projects Lately

Fixing the Trim
When we put in tile awhile back, I put the same baseboards back into the bathrooms and kitchen, and they looked terrible.  I'm finally getting around to replacing them.   Pics coming.

Android Progamming
Built my first hello world app last weekend.  Reading the O'Reilly Android book now.  Very fun stuff. 

Socks.  Yes, socks.
I've got a couple of pairs of running socks that I've owned for about six years, since I was living in Dallas.  This morning I put one on and it felt very weird, like it was pulling on the wrong side of my foot.  After a moment, light broke free of the clouds and granted me wisdom: These socks are left-right differentiated, and I was feeling the arch support on the wrong side of my foot.  One has a grey logo, and the other a black so you can tell them apart.  I've owned them for six years and had no idea (granted, I don't wear them often).
 

Vegas

Just got back late last night from a week in Las Vegas for EMC World.  A few observations:

• At the Las Vegas airport, every restaurant tries to sell you four dollar shots of liquor with everything you order.  Not "Would you like a four-dollar shot of bourbon?"  No, it's "Would you like a four-dollar shot of liquor?"  That's both skeezy and ambiguous. 
• A lot of people who happen in Vegas should stay in Vegas
• Went to Delmonico - best meal I had all week.  Emeril Lagasse can cook.
• Found Tiffany an Elvis bobblehead.  It was an epic quest.  After hitting every tchotchke shop on a mile long section of the strip, I looked up and saw a hundred-foot Elvis on the side of the Aria, bathed in sunlight.  And lo, there is an entire store of Elvis-themed crap inside.
• I found myself constantly wondering whether scantily-clad women were ladies of the night, or just girls who decided to wear six-inch heels on their trip to Vegas.  And you can never really find out: It's like asking a fat woman if she's pregnant. Bad idea. Some things are best left a mystery.
• People often compare Las Vegas convention centers to airplane hangars.  I disagree.  I think they're for when you're like "Oh man, I need a building to put all my airplane hangars in!"
• Las Vegas also has armies of cooks and waiters that can usher 8000 people into one of those airplane hangar-hangars, and feed them all in like 30 minutes.  It's a well-oiled machine with layers of logistics, and it's a beautiful thing to watch.
• It's good to be back and play with Raz again.

Clamz MP3 Downloader

Just installed Ubuntu 11.04 on my shiny new SSD drive (I was going to have to double-install Windows 7, since I only had an upgrade - huge pain)

Anyway, it turns out that Amazon hasn't ever released a version of their MP3 downloader for 64-bit platforms.  So after some searching, I found clamz, which is a command line Amazon downloader.

The only deal is, when you go to the man page, it has no description of how to configure its config file.  So here's how I think it's done, after diving into the code. 

ForbidChars "!\"$*:;<>?\\`|~"
OutputDir "/nfs/music/${album_artist}/${album}"
NameFormat "${tracknum}. ${album_artist} - ${title}.${suffix}"
AllowUppercase True

At least I think that's right.  I haven't been able to find an example online anywhere.  So I'm going to go purchase an album and report back.

If every other mistake I made in Linux cost me five bucks, I would have been evicted from my house by now. 

Reading List #2

Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
Yup, it's good.  As usual, KSR is dense with ideas, which is really the whole reason to read sci-fi - without cool ideas, it's just space opera, man.  In this one he explores the societal impacts of hyper-longevity, the development of systems of government, the impermanence of memory, and much more. 

Gideon's Sword, Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child
Breezed through this one in a couple days.  It almost seems like the authors are intentionally trying to make the sort of character and story that can be easily turned into a marketable movie.  And hey, there's nothing wrong with that - good on ya, guys.  I was taken out of the story a bit at the end - a character asks about some gaping plot holes, and Hari Seldon Eli Glinn explains that it had to be that way because he had computer simulations of what all the people involved would do.  Cheese.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Susanna Clarke
What a great book this was!  In the same way that Kim Stanley Robinson fills every page with great ideas and philosophy, Jonathan Strange is a thousand pages of magical weirdness.  It's a little bit like a book-length version of that Old Spice commercial: "Look up, look down, look back at me.  I'm on the Raven King's horse."  Seriously, it's worth the price of admission for the chapter where Jonathan Strange decides he needs to go mad (Spoiler: he does.)

Agent to the Stars, John Scalzi
You can't beat Scalzi.  This is just great, clever sci-fi.

The Last Colony, John Scalzi
About halfway through this right now.  Again, you can't beat Scalzi with a stick.

Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoesvsky
About fifty pages in.  Looks interesting so far. 

National Geographic Travel Guide to Costa Rica
Apparently there's a village in Costa Rica with a strong bruja tradition.  There's an evil spirit there which will seduce men, and after they've made love, will turn into a horse.  In completely unrelated news, there's a village in Costa Rica with a strong horse-fucking animal husbandry tradition.  


 

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

I've been playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow this morning.  What a happy song.

Intro:
C Em Am F
C Em Am F

C C Em Em F F C C
ooh...    ooh...
F F E7 E7 Am Am F F
ooh...    ooh...


C         Em               F      C
Somewhere over the rainbow way up high  
F       C                        G              Am     F
And the dreams that you dream of once in a lullaby        
C         Em               F          C
Somewhere over the rainbow blue birds fly     
F       C                         G                     Am     F
And the dreams that you dream of, dreams really do come true        
    C                          G                                  Am   F
Someday I'll wish upon a star, wake up where the clouds are far behind me
      C
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
G                              Am           F
High above the chimney tops is where you'll find me   
C         Em               F         C
Somewhere over the rainbow bluebirds fly       
F       C                           G                 Am     F
And the dreams that you dare to, oh why, oh why can't I?           
            C       Em        F            C
Well I see trees of green and red roses too,    
F               C         Em     F
I'll watch then bloom for me and you
      F                G                Am     F
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world       
           C        Em             F         C             F             C
Well I see skies of blue and I see clouds of white and the brightness of day    
E7         Am          F               G                C        F    C
I like the dark and I think to myself, what a wonderful world
    G                        C
The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
    G                    C
are also on the faces of people passing by
      F               C              F          C
I see friends shaking hands saying, ³How do you do?
F              C       Dm7             G
They're really saying, I,      I love you
       C      Em        F          C
I hear babies cry and I watch them grow,
F                  C     E7        Am
They'll learn much more than we'll know
      F                G                Am
And I think to myself, what a wonderful world
C                        G                                  Am    F
Someday I'll wish upon a star, wake up where the clouds are far behind me
       C
Where trouble melts like lemon drops
G                              Am           F
High above the chimney tops is where you'll find me   
C         Em               F      C
Somewhere over the rainbow way up high
F       C                           G                 Am     F
And the dreams that you dare to, oh why, oh why can't I?

Beer Primer for Team Pendergast

Well, Team Pendergast, I can't ship you any beers.  I'm sorry.  However, what I can do is give you some practical instructions for making some of your own.  If you can boil water, you can do this - really.

What special gear do you absolutely, positively need? 

• A 6-gallon food safe bucket

• A lid for said bucket

• Some way of blowing off CO2 - there are airlocks for this you can buy at a brew store for about 2 bucks.  If you want, you can just fit a piece of plastic line into a hole drilled in the lid, and drop that line into a another, smaller bucket of water
• A muslin bag, or optionally a re-usable tea bag big enough to hold a pound of grain
• Some sanitation.  I like StarSan - it's easy to use and you don't have to be obsessive about rinsing.  Never fear the foam.

That's really about it.  Everything else you've got in your kitchen.

Step 0: Set up some sanitation
The way I like to do this: Put a few gallons of tap water in a cooler, and throw in the appropriate amount of StarSan.  Then, I just throw all my utensils in there.  I can also use that sanitizer to wash out the fermenting bucket and lid.

Step 1: Steep the grain

That Briess Caramel 40L is malt.  That pretty much means it's germinated barley that's been roasted to a specific darkness - the higher the L (Lovibond) value, the darker it was roasted.  You're going want to crush this grain - most of the time, your local brew store will do it for you.  Take the crushed grain, put it in the muslin bag.

Now, you're going to heat up some water in a stock pot.  You've got one of those, right?   You'll want to heat up about a gallon of water - I prefer the gallon jugs of spring water you can find at the grocery store, because I know they don't have a lot of chlorine.  Heat this water to 160 degrees F.  A thermometer will help here - if you don't have one, your brew store will sell you one for a couple bucks.

Put said grain into the hot water, and leave it there covered for 30 minutes.  In the meantime, have a beer.  When the 30 minutes is up, remove the bag and discard the grain.  If you want to get fancy, throw it in a colander and pour some more bottled water over it into the stock pot.

Step 2:  Gentlemen, start your boil.

Add some water and crank up the heat.  Once you get a boil going, turn down the heat to keep it steady, and start a timer for 60 minutes. 

The three injections of hops in that recipe all have times listed next to them: 60 minutes, 15 minutes, and zero minutes.  This refers to the amount of time left on the clock.  Put the 60 minute hops in right when you start your timer.  Put the zero minute hops in when it runs out.  If you can't figure out when to put the 15 minute hops in, you've had too many beers - call someone to help you off the floor.

When the boil starts, you'll also want to stir in all your extract.  Go ahead and do this over the course of the next 10 minutes or 20 minutes - no rush. 

Step 3: Once again, into the fermenter

You're going to start this step by cooling down your wort.  (That's the name for the stuff you've made up till this point)  The most gear-free way of doing this is to drop it in a sinkful of ice water.  Make sure you don't get any of that nasty, dirty ice water in your nice clean wort.

Once it's getting down into the 80-90 degree range, go ahead and dump it into the fermenting bucket.  I like to filter it through a colander to get most of the hops out, but I won't judge you if you leave some chunks in - this is your first time.  Once it's in there, fill the bucket up to the 5 gallon mark, seal the lid on, and apply whatever excuse you've got for an airlock.  You sanitized it, right?  Good.

Step 4: Wait.

Let it sit in a corner somewhere for about two weeks.  In the meantime, you're going to need to figure out your bottling situation.  I recommend you go back through some previous beer posts I've made that have more detail, and do a little reading.

After a day or so, the airlock will really be bubbling.  This will settle down to a bubble every minute or two after a few more days.  And that means it's working.

 

More Brewing

Today I kegged Delicious Aloysius, which is full of Glacier hops and is named after an icy fictional detective.  A few weeks ago, the recipe went something like:

Delicious Aloysius

1 lb Briess Caramel 40L
6.6lb Extra Light Liquid Malt Extract
1 oz Glacier - 60 min
1 oz Glacier - 15 min
1 oz Tettnang - 0 min
Safeale US-05



Anyway, I had an idea.  I always spend a lot of time filtering the hops from my wort, and I figure the problem is my filters are too small.  The ideal case would be a tight screen about the size of a sheet pan, which attaches to a sheet pan with a hole in it.  I could attach some rails to it so I could slot a funnel onto the underside.  Then I could pour a lot more beer into the fermenter before I ran out of working filter medium.

So yeah, I'm going to see if I can find the parts to build such a thing.  Wish me luck.

The Birth of a Thousand Cuts

Here are some pictures of the flooring we put in:

Notes on Installing Laminate Flooring

So we just spent the weekend installing some laminate flooring in our living room.  It's surprisingly like work.

First, why laminate and not hardwood?  Well, we got a bunch of samples of both that we liked, and performed the highly scientific test of beating them against each other to see how easily they scratched.  The high-quality laminate stuff was by far the most durable, and it looks very similar to the real stuff.  Now that it's installed, you can't really tell that it's not hardwood, except that it feels different than hardwood to bare feet.

So, what does a person need to know?  Well, I needed a lot more tools than any of the online guides mentioned.  At various points I used:

• Tapping block
• Deadblow hammer
• Pull bar
• Spacers
• Measuring tape and ruler
• Level
• Miter saw
• Regular circular saw
• Circular saw with adjustable depth
• Hand miter saw
• Hacksaw
• Plant trimmers (for clipping tiny pieces off the thresholds)
• Screwdrivers of all sorts
• Drill
• Utility knives
• Electric jamb saw
• Hand undercut saw
• Sheetrock saw
• Various types of pliers
• Table mounted vise
• Dremel tool with cutoff blade
• Assorted safety equipment (goggles, earplugs, gloves)
• Wood glue

In other words, it's not something you should attempt unless you have a fairly well stocked toolbox.  You'll have problems, and you'll need to solve them.  Check out my hooks while the DJ revolves them.

I made some mistakes in the process as well.  The big ones:

1. The thresholds I got to cover transitions require a little over an inch of space for this aluminum trough that you have to screw down.  When I started, I only left a spacer's worth of space.  This meant I had to do some fairly serious cutting with the flooring already in place when I realized my mistake.  This added a half day and a trip to Lowe's to the process.
2. While you should leave that inch for the threshold transitions, you don't necessarily want to screw the troughs down first, because they'll often need something under them to provide extra height.  For a few thresholds, I ended up solving this problem by putting down scraps of underlayment.  Later, I went to Tractor Supply and got a big bag washers for about 50 cents, and I'm using those for the last few.  My bathroom, for example, has a threshold trough that's five washers higher than the subfloor.
3. There will be places where it is difficult to lock a board in place.  For example, a board with an angled end can be very difficult.  Your best bet is to realized early that you can sand off the locking lips of the plank (a flathead screwdriver will make short work of them as well), and glue it in place.

What else?  There's a fairly specific angle for your tapping block that won't damage the boards.  It's not quite flat, but it's not too steep.  Maybe 10 degrees.

If you purchase the quarter-round made out of PVC, it's white all the way through.  That means you don't have to paint the ends when you cut it.  It's also a little bigger than wooden quarter round, which means you can cover more.

In one very tight area I ended up removing the baseboards as well - there just wasn't enough space to work otherwise.

It would've been really nice to have a jigsaw.  

I didn't realize at first that I could lock the planks from any direction.  The instructions suggested an only-left-to-right-and-down sort of thing.

Once you've put threshold in the metal trough, it's pretty much in there.  A few times I was able to very carefully remove it with a butter knife.

Also, my dog doesn't like running on it.  I still don't think hardwood would hold up though - he makes a pretty big splash when he jumps to or from the couch.

Keep your vacuum cleaner handy - you're going to track in a lot of sawdust.

That covers most of the stuff that wasn't in any of the instructions or Youtube videos.  I recommend you do this stuff yourself when you can, at least once, because it's a great learning experience.  After you've done it once, it's okay to pay someone (example: I'm going to pay someone to repaint the kitchen and living room.  I've painted rooms, and I know the process, and I've decided I don't have the patience for the detail work.)

Carpet on Craigslist

I just posted an ad to Craigslist:

About 250 ft^2 of carpet and pad, free to anyone who has the means to haul it off. What would you use this carpet for? Here's a few suggestions from our crack team of flooring scientists:
* Re-carpet your dorm room
* Add some warmth to your man-cave (don't your feet get cold on the concrete when you go for a beer?)
* Hang it on the wall and paint a soft, fuzzy mural, you avant-garde paradigm changer!
* Carpet the ceiling of your stairwell, just like The King
* Re-upholster your vintage '73 Chevy El Camino (fuzzy dice not included)
* Add it to your Craigslist used carpet collection. *shudder*

Whatever you plan to do with this shining example of freecycled goodness, this fountain of fabulous flooring, this diamond in the fluff, you should do it soon, because I'm taking it down to the dump in the next day or two. For real.