Tom’s of Maine (not to be confused with Tom’s of Finland) has changed the formula of their Natural Original Deodorant Stick and added hop extract.
It works well and keeps me less stinky, proving that there actually is a valid use for hop extract.
Yesterday while Danielle was over I picked up a six pack of New Holland’s beer The Poet. I’m happy because Meijer is now carrying it, which makes it easy to pick up for enjoying with dinner. Unfortunately, all but one or two bottles of this beer seem to be as flat as you can see up above. There’s just no head / foam on it at all.
After finding the contact page on New Holland’s site I emailed Isaac Hartman, who is listed as the Ambassador of Great Beer (Sales). Hopefully he’ll respond and, at the very least, do what he can to ensure that their beer at Meijer is better in the future.
As this beer tastes pretty sweet, I’m figuring that it didn’t bottle condition right. Maybe New Holland gave Meijer a few cases of them expecting them to age a bit in the store room or on the shelf and instead they just went into refrigeration. Or… who knows. It’s definitely not right, though.
Things have been a bit boring around here lately, with me working at my job, working on the new server, riding my bike, and trying to relax a bit, so I just thought I’d post this photo of Souther Tier‘s Back Burner, a decent (and quite hoppy) barleywine which I drank while watching The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou with Danielle on Sunday night.
Today I got GEOM-based disk mirroring working on banstyle.nuxx.net (photo gallery retired), but in doing so I realized that the on-board SiI3114 controller only supports SATA/150 (aka SATA I) and thusly no NCQ, which disappointed me. To remedy this I ordered part number N82E16816104007 from Newegg.com, a Koutech PSA421 4-Channel Serial ATA & Serial ATA II 64-bit PCI Host Controller which appears to be a reference (or very standard) implementation of the SiI3124 PCI/PCI-X to 4 Port SATA300 chipset. This should fit in the one usable slot in the case and provide the SATA interface that I really want. I just wish it’d arrive sooner.
Tonight I ended up staying at work until about 8:20pm helping a coworker out with something. It’s not set and he’s on vacation tomorrow, so I’ll end up working on it too. Ah well.
Since I got home too late to go ride my bike I ended up boxing up Ivan’s P3 (photo gallery retired), making a frozen pizza, then watching some TiVo’d stuff and WTVS-HD before wandering back up here to my computer. So, why did I box up the P3? Well, remember the failing PLED post? Yep, it’s bad. While the first one didn’t display very well, the second doesn’t display at all.
I had actually emailed the pictures of the questionable display (1, 2) to the tech support people at Crystalfontz to see if what I was seeing really is indicative of a failing PLED. One of the tech support people replied, confirming that it is what I thought, and suggesting a replacement display. If you’d like to read the whole thread between the tech support person and I, it’s archived as a PNG here.
So, now Ivan is sorting out grabbing a new LCD and then I’ll get back to work on his P3. For now I’ve boxed it up and it’s sitting in a safe place, above ground level, not below any water pipes.
My next (current?) project is now a set of PCBs similar to the RS232 to Eaton Leonard Level Shifter (photo gallery retired) boards which I did last year, but instead accepting ~7VDC – ~40VDC (or straight 5VDC) for the power, with the conversion being handled by a reference implementation of a switching supply. (This is the supply whose ripple is shown here.) The parts are ordered for the first run of them, I just need to wait until they arrive, confirm the footprints, order the PCBs, test, and build.
But for now? I rest.
Tonight I am sipping one of Dogfish Head‘s beers which I, to my surprise, hadn’t tried before: Indian Brown Ale. I first tried this last week at IPM and I really, really like it. Normally I think that brown ales are just so-so, but this one, with its extra bittering hops and extra malt really does it for me. I really enjoy this beer.
[Cross posted to
Bell’s Two Hearted Mini KegThis should make NYE a bit more interesting. That right there is 1.32 gallons, or 5 lites of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale (sorry, no direct link available).
At 7% ABV the numbers work out to just under 12oz (or 350mL) of pure alcohol, or about the same amount of alcohol as in a fifth of vodka. It’s a good thing that this is much tastier than vodka.
Oh, and the cost was US$19.99, plus Michigan sales tax (6%), but without deposit. Not bad, when you consider that this is just about as much beer as 14 bottles, and a six pack normally runs right around US$8 – US$9 each.
3L of Ginger BeerYesterday Danielle and I stopped by Cap N Cork so I could check out prices of the champange bottles for when I finally get around to bottling the cider. While there we picked up stuff to make soda (basically, a small funnel, yeast, and some soda flavor).
Today we made it. 383g of cane sugar, a bit of honey, 2.5 tsp of ginger flavor, yeast, and 3L of water went into the three bottles. That’s it sitting right there. The rightmost bottle also has minced ginger in it, to boost the flavor. Hopefully it’ll be good.
Danielle is treasurer of the microbiology society at U of M Dearborn, which she is just about to graduate from. For a group activity she set up a tour of Dragonmead Microbrewery, over in Warren, MI. While I’m not a member, I went along and took some pictures.
Dragonmead is one of my favorite breweries in Michigan. It’s a nice, small, non-smoking place which has an absurd variety of beer, all of which they make themselves. In fact, they produce the largest variety of beer for any microbrewery, and have 52 taps and two beer engines. I think there were 40-some taps going when we were there yesterday. They are also starting to offer mead (one style for now, more to come once co-owner Larry Channell’s son graduates from college and starts making some.
All in all, it was a very nice tour, lasting somewhere around three hours. After the tour we (Danielle, Sarah, Bo, and one of their friends and I) ran over to Chicken Shack, grabbed food, then brought it back to eat at the brewery while having a few more beers.
If you’d like to see more of the photos (there’s a lot), click here: Dragonmead Tour (photo gallery retired)
I went to buy some beer today, but I instead was given a six-pack of Arcadia Jaw Jacker. I don’t particularly care for pumpkin beers, but it’s much appreciated anyway. I also ended up getting a six pack of Brooklyn’s Black Chocolate Stout. I’ve been told that it’s tasty, but I didn’t realize it is 10.1% until I got home. I also grabbed a 2004 (or is it 2005?) bottle of Dogfish Head’s World Wide Stout.
Now I’m going to go make another toasted cheese sandwich. I forgot to mention in last night’s detailing of dinner that I had put the bread in the oven until it was thoroughly hot, cut it open, then filled it with the cheese before toasting it some more. This will be the same, but with hot pepperjack on different bread. Unfortunately I don’t have any side veggies or whatnot to go along with it. Although… I could heat up some fire roasted corn… Mmm!
750mL Bottle of Caol Ila 12 YearOut of a desire to try something new, on suggestion of
Thankfully the price was the state minimum of $47.92, which made it reasonably affordable. It’s still not cheap, but it’s right around what my other choice, Laphroaig 10 Year would have cost.
I tried a few sips of it straight, before cutting it with about 40% bottled water. (Just Aquafina, PepsiCo‘s finest highly filtered tapwater product. I find it good for mixing things because it has a nice, neutral taste.) I’m thinking that I rather like it. It’s plenty peaty and smokey, but it’s also got a little bit of sweetness to it. There is not enough sweetness to make it something I dislike, though, more like just enough to nicely round it out.
I’m wishing that I had one of the Millett Hybrid Maxed headphone amps to use (my two are disassembled currently) so I could sit back on the couch and listen to some music while sipping this in the dark. It’s quite nice.
