Random thoughts on Life, Music, and Beer.

Scotch Ale

Sunday, July 08, 2007 - 06:38 PM

This is a Scotch Ale recipe that I found on the internet, but changed a little to suit my needs (and what they had at the local home brew supply shop).  I also changed the procedure so that the specialty grains weren’t in as long as the malt, and I made the malt extract a late addition.

Scotch Ale
Extract (Partial Mash)
Original Recipe: Jeff McNally

Ingredients:

6.6 lb Northwestern Gold LME (late edition)
2.0 lb Munich malt (10L)
0.5 lb Crystal malt (60L)
0.5 lb Crystal malt (20L)
3.0 oz Chocolate malt (350L)
4.0 oz White wheat malt (2L)
2.0 oz Peat smoked malt (2L)
1.0 oz UK Kent Goldings pellets @ 60 min
1.0 oz US Fuggles pellets @ 30 min
1 tsp Irish moss @ 10 min
Wyeast 1338 European Ale
5 oz corn sugar (for primimg)

Procedure:
- Mashed Munich malt in 2 gallons of ~160F water for 1 hr
- After 1/2 hour added specialty grains to steep for 1/2 hour
- Sparged with 4 qts of ~170F water
- Brought to boil, added first round of hops, 2nd round of hops at 30 min.
- Added LME at 15 min, (increased temp to bring back to boil)
- Irish moss at 10 min.
- Cooled, pitched yeast, fermented

I ran into a problem with adding that much LME as a late addition; I had to really increase the temperature to bring it back up to a boil.  It was taking a while to get boiling again, so I ended up throwing the cover on to the pot.  I kept an eye on it to make sure it wouldn’t boil over, but of course in the ten seconds that I wasn’t paying attention, what happened?  (Luckily, I cleaned up the mess before Carrie saw it, or she’d have never let me brew in the kitchen again!) Hopefully the boil over won’t effect the final product, since it was really late in the boil I don’t think I lost much of my hop utilization (this recipe is already kinda low in the hop department).

Best Buy - Now serving bootlegs.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 09:09 PM

So, I was at a Best Buy today, and I was browsing through the music DVDs, as I’m wont to do from time to time, and I came across something interesting.  I happened to see “Led Zeppelin Live at Earls Court, 1975”.  This caused me to do a double take, as I was unfamiliar with this title.  Naturally, I picked it up to check it out…

“This is clearly a bootleg”, I thought to myself. The label said “Masterplan” and the producer credit said “Can A Puss”.  I contemplated buying it (it was only $14.99) to check it out, but after researching it on the web I’m glad I didn’t.  It is most definitely a bootleg, and apparently a poor quality one at that.

I snapped a couple quick pics with my camera phone (sorry about the quality, I accidently had it set to the lower setting).

Funniest show on TV

Tuesday, July 03, 2007 - 08:58 AM

Last night I managed to catch an episode of Flight of the Conchords on HBO.  I had seen these guys’ musical stand-up act before on Comedy Central, which I thought was funny.  Plus, cultural bellwether Lin Brehmer mentioned it in high regards on his morning show, so I decided to check it out.

If you haven’t already caught on to this show, check it out - you won’t be sorry.  (If you don’t have HBO, maybe the episodes will show up on-line somewhere.  Otherwise, I don’t know what to tell you!) This has got to be the funniest show on TV right now; I laughed so hard I was practically in tears.  I immediately went into the “OnDemand” feature on our cable to watch the first two episodes (which I had missed, as a late-comer).

I don’t even know how to describe the show in a way that would do it justice.  You just have to see it for yourself.  Basically, it’s about these two guys from New Zealand who are trying to make it in New York as a band.  They have an ineffectual band manager (who holds band meetings in his office at some New Zealand tourism bureau) and a single, obsessive fan.  Through the course of the show it occasionally morphs into a kind of musical, where the plot turns into a cheesy music video.

Again, describing it does not do it justice.  Trust me, and go check it out for yourself.

Norton, how I hate thee, let me count the ways - Part Two

Monday, July 02, 2007 - 11:14 AM

In Part One I ranted about how I’m through with Norton, and a little bit about why.  Welcome to Part Two, wherein I recount my tale of woe at what should have been a simple update.  (Warning: This is going to be a long post!)

I was at a client site last week (the day of the rant) and was looking at this one computer that was having some minor Internet Explorer related issues.  While working on that system, I noticed that the antivirus software was out of date.  (Generally, I try to get my customers into the corporate level antivirus apps to make sure that everything is up to date and all of the client computers are updated from the server.  This office, however, is smaller and doesn’t have a server.  They also have a haphazard array of computers that were all purchased at different times and have varying software packages on them, including the antivirus.) Of course, I let the customer know that the AV was expired and no longer receiving updates, and that it would have to be upgraded.  I mentioned that we could stay with the Norton (which was what it had on there), or take off the Norton and install McAfee, which is what I was hoping they would opt for, since they’ve had issues with the computers running Norton in the past (particularly networking issues, thanks to Norton’s retarded firewall, which for some reason is now forced on you with the AV).

They opted to upgrade Norton.

So, I had them go through the online order process and began my journey.  The entire process took two hours, which I’ve broken down into steps:

1. Download installer file.  No big deal here, quick connection equals quick download.  I actually love this as an option for software delivery.  There are some minor flaws with this, which I’ll touch on in the next step.
2. Run installer, receive error that the Windows Installer needs to be updated.  In the past, when software primarily came on CDs, if the software you were installing required version X of some other software that happened to be a redistributable software package, the CD would include it.  Now, any dependencies have to be worked out seperately.  So, on to the next step...
3. Run update for Windows Installer.  (Luckily the Norton installer was kind enough to include a link to download the Windows Installer package.) Receive error that you don’t have permission to update the software and to contact your administrator.  WTF?  Okay, I can’t in anyway fault Norton for this, but it was a part of the ordeal, so it’s being documented here.
4. Reboot to see if it fixes above error.
5. Run update for Windows Installer, this time successfully.
6. Reboot.
7. Run Norton installer again.  Receive error that there is an older version of Norton that needs to be un-installed first.  Okay, this I have a major problem with.  Most software will update an older version without complaint, but not Norton.  Even if there is some technical reason that’s beyond my grasp as to why the old version needs to be un-installed first, why in the world can’t the Norton install program do this for me!?!  Seriously, every other software installer that I’ve used that needs the old version removed first does this step for you.  It may ask you to proceed, but it does it for you.  Symantec has this same problem with the System Center Console on their Corporate product.  Not only does it need to be separately un-installed first, but it requires an additional reboot to do so (which can be a pain if you’re working on someone’s server during business hours).
8. Un-install old version of Norton.
9. Reboot.
10. Run Norton installer again.  Receive error that another installer is currently running.  What’s happening here is that the reboot you just did was not the final step in un-installing the previous version, and the un-install is running more tasks in the background without telling you.
11. Wait a few minutes while the un-install continues in the background.  Monitor running processes until all MS installer processes to exit.
12. Run Norton installer.  Receive error “Setup has detected that one or more Norton Antivirus device drivers have been marked for deletion.  You must restart Windows before continuing.” So, not only did the un-install continue after the reboot without telling me, but it’s not even complete yet.
    
    (It’s worth it at this point to mention that, each time the installer is run, it has to decompress the files as it’s first step.  Every time.  If it exits, it doesn’t leave the temp folder with the decompressed files and provide you a link to continue installation, like I’ve seen with some installers.  Nope, every stinking time you have to sit and wait for it to decompress those files.)
    
    
13. Reboot. Again.
14. Run Norton installer again.  Yeah!  It’s actually installing.  (The actual install takes 11 minutes to complete.)
15. Register software with Norton.  Really?  Why?  There’s no technical reason for this, the software already has the subscription information, so why force me to go through this?  I should be able to chose whether or not I want to register the software, yet there’s no way to cancel or exit out of this screen.
16. Run LiveUpdate.
17. Sit while LiveUpdate runs, only to realize several minutes later that LU has actually locked up and is hogging the processor.  Try to cancel LU - no luck. Try to end the process through the Windows Task Manager - says access denied.  Wait to see if it frees itself....
18. Force reboot.  Yep, manually power the computer down because there’s no way out at this point.
    
    (At this point I installed Sysinternals Process Explorer, in case LU locked up again, so that I could see what it was actually trying to do at that point.  I don’t include this as a separate step, as it’s something most people wouldn’t have even thought to do.)
    
    
19. Run LiveUpdate again.  This time, when it locks up, view processes with Process Explorer to see what’s going on.  It turns out that the update for the Norton firewall (which shouldn’t even be a part of this product, or should at least ask you if you actually want it installed instead of forcing it on you) is the update that’s locking up.  Let it sit for a very long time until it actually completes the update (LiveUpdate took 20 minutes to completely finish).

So there you have it, that’s how something that should take 5-10 minutes actually ends up taking two hours.  There are several very unnecessary steps in all of this, and things (like LiveUpdate) that should just work better.  But, the unnecessary is forced upon you, and the you just have to live with the things that don’t work like they should.  (Unless, of course, you learn from your mistakes.)

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend…

Friday, June 29, 2007 - 10:22 AM

Say goodbye to the internet as we know it.  Say hello to outrageous fees to do the things we take for granted everyday.  Say hello to AT&T and Comcast limiting your ability to do what you want, go where you want on the internet.  Say goodbye to the internet startups that end up changing the world, ‘cause they don’t stand a chance now.

FTC Nixes Net Neutrality

Is it really any shock that they sided with Big Business on this one?