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Mud!

Part of my CamelBak Mule after a slushy, snowy, muddy night time ride in and around Stony Creek Metropark.

I’m about to go to bed, but first I thought I’d post this photo of my CamelBak from last night after riding a bit at Stony Creek last night with some friends. The route to and from the park was quite muddy, and the whole area in the park was either muddy, snowy, slushy, or covered in wet leaves and pine needles. It was a nice ride, just very tiring because of the snow and slippery-ness. My bike is thoroughly covered in mid and snow, and my pants, jacket, face, gloves, and everything else had a pretty solid spray on them as well.

Hopefully Saturday or Sunday I’ll be able to get out for another ride before cleaning off my bike. Well, time for sleep.

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Southern Tier’s Krampus

Souther Tier's Crampus poured into a glass. This is a nicely hoppy, slightly roasted tasting 9% lager.

Here, have a photo of the beer I just started sipping, Southern Tier Brewing Company‘s Krampus, which is one of their Seasonal Imperial beers. It’s a very nicely hoppy 9% beer with a very slightly roasted taste to it. I also think it smells a bit like grapefruit.

Here’s some text from the back of the bottle and the relevant Wikipedia article:

St. Nicholas, aka Santa Claus, is a magical figure, the bringer of gifts and an icon of holiday spirit. Forgotten by most is his evil side kick and enforcer of ‘the list’.

European tradition says while St. Nick is busy delivering presents to good little boys and girls, Krampus hands out punishments to the bad. A fanged, goat-horned bully, the Christmas Devil uses sticks and chains to beat the naughty children.

Dark malts and aromatic hops create the diabolical spirit of this brew. It is finished with lager yeast and aged cold for no less than 30 days. This Imperial Helles Lager will warm even the darkest hearts.

This season, replace the cookies with a bottle of Krampus. If he happens to pay a visit, toast to him with this devilish brew. Merry Kramp-mas to all, and to all a good pint!

Alc. 9.0% by Vol.
20° Plato
2-row Pale Malt
Debittered Black Malt
Munich Malt
Caramel Malt
Kettle Hops: Chinook
Dry Hops: Willamette

Store In A Cool Place
Serve In A Snifter [Whoops!]
Best at 48°F (8.9°C)

Now I think it’s time to go watch King Corn via the Netflix / Xbox 360 streaming stuffs.

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Laphroaig Quarter Cask

Laphroaig Quarter Cask, 1L, purchased at the Duty Free shop in Heathrow Airport for £30.99.

Save for an awful cold, an Oyster Card, some cash, a few receipts, and two packs of candy chocolate bars, this 1L bottle of Laphroaig Quarter Cask purchased at a Duty Free shop at Heathrow Airport was the only real souvenir which I brought back from the UK. Cost was £30.99, and with the ~1.58:1 exchange rate we received, the state minimum price of $54.98 for a 750mL, and a 6% sales tax, presuming the same size bottle was available, this cost 63% of what it would back here in Michigan.

This is a very interesting whisky. Despite its higher alcohol content it’s not as potent of a flavor as I expected. It’s still nicely smoky, but there’s something much softer about it. I did mix it with about 40% water, and I may eventually work up to trying it neat, but that’s typically a stretch for Laphroaig. It’s almost always best with at least a small splash of water.

I guess I should go fill out the form to claim my square foot of land on Islay. Maybe one day I’ll end up there and have a chance to collect rent.

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Cool Weather Riding

New SIDI Bullet 2 shoes with my old(er) SM-SH51 cleats after a first ride. They work well.

I finally put the cleats on my new Sidi Bullet 2 shoes, covered them with Pearl Izumi AmFIB Moutain Shoe Covers, and went for a bike ride. Beyond the new shoes and covers I also wore the gloves I purchased last month, BDU pants, my old blue North Face jacket from my Alaska adventure in 1996, and a Descente Coldout Beanie under my helmet. I did not feel cold, nor did my toes get numb. This is good.

The ride was 13.5 miles, and in just over an hour I went from my house, up to River Bends park, through the 5km hiking trail, out of the park, down to 21 Mile, back past Schoenherr, through a subdivision, then back to my house. At one point while riding someone in a car yelled something at me, but I’m not really sure what it was. It may have been “Ghostrider!”, but I couldn’t really tell. Weirdly, I caught up with them at the next light (about a mile away) and ended up passing them as I crossed.

My head and tail light both worked great for the whole ride, but it was a bit spooky riding along in the woods alone, knowing that it was unlikely that anyone else would be out there any time soon. At one point I turned the light off just to see how difficult it was to ride, but the only markings I had to follow were the dim blue/grey slush and snow on the path. I quickly turned the light back on. That said, there was something really pleasing about riding along seeing small snowflakes fluttering down and streaking past me, and in the woods I saw at least one set of eyes looking back at me in the brush.

I think I’m set for cool weather (~32°F/0°C) riding.

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NXE Xbox LIVE with pf and miniupnpd on OpenBSD 4.2

New Xbox Experience (NXE) showing a successful Xbox Live test via NAT and UPnP on OpenBSD 4.3 with pf and miniupnpd.

(UPDATE: This issue has been worked around / resolved. Please see Xbox Live Open NAT Using pf on OpenBSD.)

I rather enjoy turn-based artillery games like Worms, Scorched Earth (and Scorch 2000 and Scorched 3D), and GORILLA.BAS, so when I found out that Worms for Xbox Live Arcade was available, I purchased it.

A few months ago, before Microsoft released NXE, or the New Xbox Experience, I had no problems playing Worms online when using my Trashwall set up with the Microsoft proscribed forwards of 88/udp, 3074/udp, and 3074/tcp. However, after NXE was released it seemed to stop working. The Xbox LIVE test would consistently tell me that I have “Strict” NAT settings and that some things won’t work. I was unable to host private or public games. Xbox LIVE supposedly works best with either a direct internet connection or a firewall which implements UPnP, so I set to implementing UPnP on my pf-based firewall.

In order to do so I compiled and set up miniupnpd per the directions, but I ran into a whole bunch of weirdness along the way. I eventually got it working, getting an occasional successful Xbox LIVE test (as seen above) which indicates “Open” NAT, and I was able to play a private game against , but things don’t seem right.

Below the cut I’ll document what I’m been seeing.

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LOL Banana

Today's banana came festooned with a LOL sticker. It was a very tasty, perfectly ripe banana.

The banana I ate today came with a LOL sticker on it. It was a perfectly ripe banana which made for a good noon time, starting to feel better meal-ish thing. Now to decide on the rest of the day’s food. I think a nice Thai or Indian curry will jump start my digestive system.

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Winter Is On Its Way

Snow falling on my last day of vacation, 24-Nov-2008. Winter is definitely coming.

Winter is definitely on its way. I guess this is a good day for it, though, as Danielle and I are both stuck here at my house sick with something sort of flu-like. It’s my last day of vacation, but she was supposed to be at work today.

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~300 Miles

Danielle standing outside of her car after we filled it with fuel. A failing gas gauge caused her to run out.

Last night at 1am Danielle was reminded that her gas gauge occasionally fails to indicate the amount of fuel remaining in the tank. Whoops. It’s a good thing she had a gas can and was able to make it into a church parking lot in a reasonably decent area.

Here’s another photo which doesn’t show quite what I’d hoped. That is, it was supposed to show the pile of leaves and tumbleweed collected outside of my garage door, but instead it just illustrates the shadow of my bike at night. Ah well, I guess I can’t expect the CCD in it to be that great.

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The Sounds Of American Doomsday Cults, vol. 14

Can any of you help me locate a digital copy of the album The Sounds Of American Doomsday Cults, vol. 14?

I’d heard samples from this a few times before, but when listening to Rough Trade Shops: Counter Culture 06 (disc 2 track 13) I was finally able to put an album with the sample. Searching around revealed this site with a broken RapidShare link, but no other traces of where to find a copy. Would any of you happen to know where I could get one?

Thanks!

UPDATE: I’ve found a few places to buy the CD from, so it looks like it’s available, it’ll just take a while to get.

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Office Rearranging

(November 2008) ...after rearranging things so that a chair and desk for Danielle could fit in my office. The rack was moved and recabled and unneeded things removed.

After acquiring a table and chair for Danielle I had positioned it right in the middle of my office, which was quite in the way. Having some time off, wanting to stay around the house due to feeling sick, and having completed today’s main goal I decided to rearrange my office and fit the table in.

I ended up removing everything from the rack, rotating it against the wall, putting the table between it and the CD rack, then completely re-cabling the rack with only the needed items in place. The vertical wooden shelves were moved next to the door where I previously had a theremin. Everything fits great and I’m really happy with this arrangement.

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