greysky.us
“Oh, God, the terrible tyranny of the majority.”
Fear and Loathing Review
Oct 26th
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream by Hunter S. Thompson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I thought this was a pretty good read. The only problem I had with it was that since I’ve seen the movie so many times, it was hard not to picture the scenes as I read them, but rather as they were portrayed in the film.
I’m anxious to pick up something else by Hunter S. Thompson to see how it compares.
View all my reviews
WTF To Write About?
Sep 7th
As usual, it’s been a good amount of time since I’ve posted anything here. There are just so many things happening I’m not sure what I should ‘document’ and what should just be left to memory. So, I’ll just throw a few things together here. An amalgamation to say the least. And if I forgot you and yours, let me know and I’ll make it right.
Three weeks ago, I got a new car. Well, not *new* new, but new to me at least. It’s a 2009 Honda Civic – and it’s awesome. It’s such a change from driving a minivan. Sporty, handles well and gets some pretty awesome gas mileage. This is my little to work and back car and if it pencils out like I think it’s going to, it should end up saving me about $75 or more a month in fuel alone. Woo Hoo!
We went to a Twins game a few weekends ago. Jacki and I took Jude to his very first game at Target Field and he loved it. If you haven’t read about the game itself, there’s a post on JudeWilliam.com you should check out. Other than that, while we were in the cities, we did a little shopping. I even got to go to the Midwest Supplies home brewing store! Holy cow. That place is like the Menards/Lowes of home brewing! I picked up a few kits while were there.
Speaking of home brewing, and those kits I picked up. One has been brewed and is sitting in the primary – it’s a Heffeweizen (brew #4). I’ve still got the Irish Red (#5) to make, but we’ll have to wait a bit to get to that. Whenever I get the motivation I’ll throw it together and rack the Heffe to the secondary for a little clearing action. And if you were wondering, the Belgian Wit was absolutely delicious and now the ESB is being worked on. I took some of each to the fantasy football draft this past Labor Day weekend and the few people that tried them seemed to be somewhat impressed. They could have been lying, but whatever, I’ll take whatever compliments I can get 
And speaking of the draft, we had it this past weekend at Nik and Jason’s house in SXF. And much like last year and the year before, the gathering was a pretty awesome time. Good friends, food and drink were in abundance. Throw in a corn cob pipe, some wings, beer, tents, a hot tub and general shenanigans and you’ll have a pretty good idea of what transpired just a few short days ago.
That’s all I have for now. Not bad for only around two months of updates, eh? Till next time.
-Cheers
First batch of homebrew = bottled!
Jun 22nd
It’s true. For my birthday, my wonderful wife bought me a home brewing kit, and I just bottled my first batch last night. I just thought I would share a few details about the process.
All-in-all, I think I put about 8 hours into the process, which IMO wasn’t too bad. Now, a good two hours or so of that time was put into peeling labels off of old bottles and then scrubbing the glue off of them. Damn I’m glad that I won’t have to do much more of that. What a pain in the ass. Another hour or two was put into general cleanup. Not all of it was related to the brewing process, but I figured I would count it in there anyhow.
The boil and wort making process probably took about 3 hours from start to finish. A good portion of that time was spent literally waiting for water to boil. Then once the water is near a boil, you put in the wheat and hops and just let it boil for an hour. Since I’m a complete newbie to this whole deal, I think it took me considerably longer on my first go-round than it will in the future. Anyhow, the wort making process is actually very simple and straight forward.
Then it became a waiting game.
After the beer is set to fermenting, you have to wait for it to do it’s thing for a week or more. This is the hardest part – especially since I was really excited to be making my first batch of brew. Eight days later, after taking some readings, I decided that the beer was done with it’s primary fermentation period. Time to bottle!
Bottling took a few hours from beginning to end. Again, like the wort making process, it wasn’t difficult at all. A lot of it was just becoming familiar with the process and the cleanup. I’m sure after a few times, I’ll be able to refine my process and cut some time off.
The beer now needs to condition itself in the bottle for 10 or more days until it’s ready, so that should put it right around the 4th of July. Perfect!
The end product should be approximately 4.2% ABV and taste awesome. I actually overfilled a bottle or two, so instead of dumping it down the drain, I put it in a glass and tasted it when I was finished. It tasted just like a wheat beer should, so I’m pretty pumped about the end product. I’m not sure what the next batch will be – I’m leaning towards a pale ale. I haven’t decided quite yet, but I’m pretty excited to give it another shot! I’ll be sure and post an update when I finally crack into batch #1.
-Cheers
The Pickled Products Peddler
May 3rd
Jacki and I went back home over this past Memorial Day weekend.** It was the longest drive of my life. Long story short, I drove 11 1/2 hours on Friday. I started in Rapid City, SD and went to Groton, SD – by way of Olivia, MN. If you don’t know where that’s at, it’s in BFE. Anyhow, it was a long drive and we ended up at the Jungle. I bowled a 168 (probably my all-time best) followed by something like an 86 (after some cocktails had taken a hold) and all was well.
Saturday was a day full of nothing. J and Nik went to town and did some shopping while Jason and I watched some kids. Nothing special, but it was a relaxing day. That next evening, Dave cooked some hot wings at B&E’s house and we had a feast. I think he said he cooked 15 lbs. and we ate all but one or two. Wow, that’s a lotta wings! We ended up in Columbia that evening and there we slept.
The next day I awoke and while I was looking for something to munch on before we left to see the pastor, I saw a giant jar of pickled items. Eggs, sausages, onions etc. It was absolutely delicious looking. Not exactly breakfast foods though, so I opted to wait a bit. We went to town after we were done visiting the pastor and it was around lunch time, so we decided to grab some drive-through food from Arbys.
As we’re sitting in line waiting for our food to be prepared, we notice a man in the adjacent parking lot of a self-service car wash with some very interesting items for sale out of the back end of his pickup. We were a good distance away, so we were taking bets on what they were. To me, from that distance, they looked like they were some form of animal in a jar filled with formaldehyde. And to J, they looked like the same exact thing that was currently residing in my parents’ fridge. Sure enough, when we pulled out of the drive-through, we were able to tell that the mystery items were in fact, pickled items that were for sale.
We had a laugh and I told her that I highly doubted my dad would be one to buy pickled items (or any foodstuff for that matter) off a man selling them out of the back of his truck along the main drag going through town. She thought he just might be that type…
A couple hours later we were at home and were discussing the events of the day with my parents when we came to the story about the peddler. J asked my dad where he got the pickled items from, and he made a little chuckle, cracked one of his patented half smiles, and asked us ‘why’. We told him we had a bet going and that’s when we learned that my dad actually is the type of person that would buy food items from a man selling them out of the back of his vehicle.
He said that he had noticed him and that the guy was in the same spot for a week or two and that he had a decent amount of business. According to his logic, if the guy kept coming back to the same place again and again, his products couldn’t be that bad.
Turns out he was right: they were delicious.
**This post was originally started almost two years ago. After quite the hiatus, I decided that it was finally time to finish the story since it was too good not to share…I hope you enjoyed this post, and all it’s pickled glory!
The Great Toyota Scare of 2010!
Mar 12th
This is a pretty interesting article about how there may be a pretty strong relation between the age of people driving the vehicles and their likelihood of being in an ‘incident’. Reading the article, you’ll find that most of the people that were driving Toyotas that broke were in, or past, their Golden Years.
I especially like the stats about how you’re more likely to die walking home from the dealer after taking your car in to fix it. However this is my favorite line from the article:
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“If computers are going to discriminate against anyone, they should be picking on the young, who are more likely to take up arms against the rise of the machines and future Terminators”
Read the full article at the Washington Examiner:
Theodore H. Frank: I am not afraid of my Toyota Prius | Washington Examiner.
Batch Converting RAW Image Files in Linux Mint
Feb 23rd
Well, like I said in my last post, there are a number of things that I had to find a way to do because the software provided by certain companies is only available as a Windows program. One of these is the Nikon ViewNX software that I use to convert my RAW .NEF images that I take with my Nikon D40. I generally keep the .NEF format around just in case I want to get into retouching one of these days. I also convert them to .jpg images so when we want to get them printed off, they’re ready for the printing.
First things first, you need to get the ufraw package, so from a shell prompt:
$sudo apt-get install ufraw
Once you have the package installed, there are a number of options. Via the shell, you will want to navigate to the directory you have your images stored in. If you want to convert just one file, use the ‘ufraw’ command. If you want to do multiple, you can use the ‘ufraw-batch’ command. Here is the command I used to convert all of the .NEF files in the directory into .jpg:
$ufraw-batch --out-type=jpg --exposure=auto --compression=97 ./*.NEF
'--out-type=jpg' needs to be specified if you want .jpg format since the default format is .ppm.'--exposure=auto' setting, from what I understand, pulls the exposure info out of the RAW image and adjusts the image accordingly.'--compression=97' sets the compression level when converting the image to .jpg format. The default is 85.These are the settings that I used that were able to get the images as close to the ViewNX output as I could. As always, your mileage may vary.
For a list of other options, from the shell prompt, you can always use the ‘man ufraw’ command.
-Cheers
Stupid Windows 7 RC
Feb 17th
Well, it was bound to happen. I’ve been using the Windows 7 RC since it was released, and the trial period is all but up. A couple nights ago I received a message stating that my copy of Windows “will expire in 14 days”. I also happened to receive an email that was aimed at the MS TechNet subscribers stating that once this 14 day period is up, the machine will start to reboot every 2 hours – not saving work during the process. Then, beginning June 1 the machine will no longer boot at all. Woo Hoo!
So, I did what any normal person would so and I started to shop around for a copy of Windows 7 Professional (at a minimum as I use RDP on nearly a daily basis). The cheapest OEM copy I could find was still $139. Do I have an extra couple hundred bucks laying around to just go out and splurge on an OS? Hah. Nope! Looks like I’ll be reloading my good ol’ trusty copy of XP Pro that I’ve owned for ever. Maybe I’ll finally be able to free up that random 5GB of drive space Windows 7 takes up for it’s damned WINSXS folder… Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed running Windows 7. It’s been relatively stable, and aside from the minor issue here and there it has been a decent OS. I just can’t internally justify paying $140 for something like that though.
The XP drive is going to be used only for gaming as I’m now using Linux Mint as my primary operating system. I think I’m going to use this as a place to post notes on how to make things work like I want them. Or if I struggle with a particular item, I can post the solution here. That way if someone else runs into the same problems I do, maybe they’ll accidentally run across this site and be on their merry way. Until next time.
-Cheers
D.A.R.E. Generation Wants Marijuana Legalized – latimes.com
Feb 4th
I’m a member of the first D.A.R.E. class to graduate from GHS, and I couldn’t agree with this article more. Prohibition didn’t work for alcohol in the ’20s, and it’s not working for marijuana now.
D.A.R.E. generation wants marijuana legalized – latimes.com.
The whole “war on drugs” is such an utter failure…I wonder when politicians will wake up and realize it. I’m especially outraged with I read things like this: The Case of Cory Maye
I know that second article is a few years old, but it just goes to show how out of whack things are.
Lost For Words
Feb 3rd
Well, as some of you may know, recently, my wife and I launched JudeWilliam.com. If you haven’t been there yet, I suggest you check it out; it’s a pretty neat little website where you can keep up with Baby Jude and see how he’s turning out.
As it goes with all parents of an infant, most of the ‘big’ events in my life are now centered around Jude. This is all fine and dandy, and I love every minute of it, but the single problem with that is that it leaves me with very little to talk about on here, so I’m at an impasse.
I’m not sure what direction I’m going to move in here. I’ve been playing around with my computers quite a bit lately, so just a fair warning that you might see some technology related posts on here in the future. You’ll also probably see some news items or blog posts that I find interesting from time to time. At least it will be something for me to comment on
Other than that, we’ll see what happens; until then, take care.
-Cheers
No, Sir, away! A papaya war is on! (Happy Palindrome Day!)
Feb 1st
Happy February 1st, 2010 Everybody!
