Cruftbox: My Box of Cruft

The sugars to alcohol conversion is taking place now in the wort. In other words, the yeast is working and the brew is on it’s way to being beer.

I brewed the batch of Belgian Ale last night. I even used Brad’s wort cooler. Very nice.
I pitched the yeast around 7PM and it’s still not fermenting. It’s been almost 14 hours now…
I’m starting to worry. I worry every time I brew that the yeast won’t start. It’s only happened once, but the fear haunts me.
Please start fermenting….

For a long time now I have been dismayed at the general news about cloning as a ‘frankenstein’ science. Politicians get in front of microphones and declare to ‘stop cloning’ as if it is some terrible thing.
I flet rather alone in my view that cloning, like many other fruits of science, is not inherently wrong, but could be used in wrong way. Is electricity wrong because people can killed in an electric chair? Are painkillers wrong because some people can abuse them?
I read in the LA Times yesterday a great essay about cloning. Go ahead and read it, I’ll wait.
That essay pretty much sums up my view of the cloning issue. This quote from teh article is dead on: “The soul of science is found in courageous thought and creative experiment, not in restrictive fear and prohibitions. For science to progress it must be given the opportunity to succeed or fail.”
The writer of the essay, Michael Shermer, is guy that fights for the triumph of reason over fear and ignorance. I wish we had more thinkers like him in the public view.

Ok, I’ll do the Friday Five before shutting off the computer.
1. Do you wear any jewelry? What kind?
I wear two rings. On my left hand is my wedding ring and on my right is a ring Michele gave me on my first Father’s Day.
2. How often do you wear it?
I don’t take them off.
3. Do you have any piercings? If so, where?
No. I’m not a piercing guy.
4. Do you have any tattoos? If so, where?
Yes, one. On my chest is Michele’s name and her symbol.
5. What are your plans for the weekend?
The only plans are dinner and a movie on Saturday night since the kids will be spending the night at my parents house.

It appears that Referrer Risk is DOA. I’m glad people had fun with it. Mister P. did a great job and was able to get us to 2nd place. Thank you Mister P.
Today on Slashdot I read about a new Star Trek episode based on the original series called Starship Exeter. I downloaded the movie from a mirror and checked out a few clips. I didn’t want to watch it on the computer, I wanted to watch it on TV. So I converted the .mov files to .mpeg files and then burned the show as a VCD.
I was then able to watch an episode of Star Trek from the comfort of bed. The episode wasn’t bad either. It had many of the classic scenes from The Original Series like a red shirt getting killed and shirts getting ripped during a fight.
Book news:
I finished Masters of Deception and The Skystone this week. Both were pretty good. My hacking & phreaking took place before the events in Masters of Deception. The Skystone was great book melding Roman history with Arthurian legend. I was bummed to find that the next book in the series was not at the library. I picked up Big Fish by Thomas Perry instead.
I’m listening to Henry Rollins on Loveline now. It’s a rerun, but it’s worth listening to anyways.
Enough for now.

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I was all ready to brew some beer today. I got out the gear I had recently purchased and started going over everything. Everything seemed in order, except the spigots that fit into the fermentation buckets. Take a look.

The damn spigots are missing. I went through everything three times. THey simply forgot to send them to me. I can’t brew without them, the wort would spill out of the gaping hole. I could try to rig up a plug of some sort, but brewing is a finicky business. Patching the hole with duct tape would lead to some odd flavors.
The store is out in Riverside and I should be able to pick them up tomorrow. Why aren’t they open today!!!

I trust that everyone had a fun New Year’s Eve and now awaken ready for a new year.
We had a little get together and celebrated the New Year with the kids at 9PM – Midnight on the East Coast. We had shot off some fireworks earlier in the night and watched the Dick Clark Dropping of the Ball countdown at 9PM. The kids were excited and happy with all the fun and games.
We cleaned and cleaned until about 11:45PM before trying to get ready for Midnight. Soon after, we hopped into bed, tired from the long day.
Currently, I’m typing this from linux. Yesterday I got the Romtec Trios II installed. I booted up to the linux drive that I hadn’t booted in months. It did not like my new video card at all. After messing around a bit with Mandrake 8.2, I finally decided I needed to install Mandrake 9.0 and wait for the release of Ximian Desktop for 9.0. Currently, Ximian only supports 8.2.
Right now I’m trying to get SMB browsing up on the box so I can grab files from Michele’s computer. I miss Red Carpet, it makes things so much easier with dependencies.

Yet Another Photo Post…
Yes, I know it’s something o’clcok in the morning. I just got home from playing poker. The nicotine of two cigars and the mental adrenaline of driving 40 miles home have got me a bit wired. I’d just stare at the ceiling if I got into bed now.
I played poker at Brad’s Place. I had a good time. It was fun to get away from the usual things, meet some new people and drink beers.
We do play for money, but the buy-in is $20 so it’s not that much to win or lose.
Here is a picture of the biggest pot of the night. It was the last hand and people were going for broke. The game was 7 card – Pass the Trash – Hi/Lo.

We played at nice tables with real chips. Brad even hung nice lamps over the tables.

This is the final pot. The greens were $2, blues $1, reds 25¢, whites 10¢. The final pot was over $70 and split between Brad & Dave. Nice.

Here’s my cashflow during the evening.
While I like to play poker, I’m not a good player. I tend to stay in much longer than I should and it drains my chips. I won several good hands, but lost too many others. I walked away down $20 but it was a good time.
I hope I get a chance to play again soon.
Time for bed now…

Zoe finished the single player game of Super Smash Brothers today.

Zoe & Mira in front of the ‘Congrats’ screen