New Year's Week Brewing

I couldn't actually keep myself awake yesterday, for some reason I was just thoroughly exhausted, so I didn't wind up brewing anything. The amber is still bubbling very slowly and the APA is bubbling along nice and fast. I figure I will rack these beers and brew the next two batches sometime later this week and into the weekend. The next few batches will be using the yeast cakes from these two batches, so I have to rack the same day as I brew. The London ESB yeast will be used for an ESB, while the US-56 yeast will ferment an American IPA.

I will most likely be going with the recipe I already posted for the ESB. I'm still looking around to see if my hop selection is good or not, but it most likely won't get changed. The next time I sit down to compile some code I will post my tentative recipe for the American IPA.

And yes, I do have to work New Year's week, except for the 1st. Don't know yet if I'll burn one of my vacation days immediately to get Friday off. I kinda like it around here when there's only a hundred people in the building.

English Bitter

This is my first run at a recipe for an English Bitter using the yeast cake in the Amber's fermenter. I'll play around with it more tonight, then finalize it before bed so I can start brewing after grocery shopping tomorrow.

English Strong Bitter/ESB:
-9lbs British Pale Malt
-1lb Mild Ale Malt
-1/2lb Toasted Malt
-1/4lb Crystal 60L
-1/4lb Crystal 120L

-1oz Challenger Hops (7%AA) 60 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 30 Minutes
-1/2oz Liberty Hops (4.1%AA) 0 Minutes

Mash in 3.5 gallons of water at 152F for 75 minutes.

Fermentation Update

The brief Christmas break I get is over so now I'm back in Rochester getting things done around the apartment. When I left for Ithaca a few days ago, the American Pale Ale I had in the fermenter had not started fermenting yet, while the English Amber was fermenting vigorously. Currently, the amber appears to be done and the pale ale is fermenting like crazy, we're talking about 4 inches of bubbly crap on top of the beer. I will probably take a gravity reading on the amber tonight to figure out what I want to do with it tomorrow. If it looks like it's done fermenting entirely, I will rack it to a keg tomorrow and begin carbonating it. If it's not finished entirely, I will rack it to a secondary tomorrow. Either way it's getting racked tomorrow so I can brew a beer with the yeast cake in that fermenter. I will be planning out a recipe for tomorrow shortly that uses the London ESB yeast in the amber's fermenter. I'm thinking of making a bitter, but I'm not entirely sure yet. I want to see if any of the new hop varieties, like Glacier, are at Beers of the World and maybe see if I can try out one or two of those to see how they work. Glacier apparently has some Fuggles-like qualities that make it sound interesting for an English beer.

Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday break. And screw all of you that don't have to work on New Year's Eve. Ugh.

Brew Day

My long hiatus from brewing is over and I'm right back into it the way I used to be. All it took was getting through that first brew day in my new place. Currently waiting for the mash to finish on my current batch. I'm making an American Pale Ale.

American Pale Ale:
-8lbs British 2-row (I know, it should be American 2-row, but I want to use ingredients I already have)
-2lbs Vienna Malt
-1/2lb Wheat Malt
-1/2oz Amarillo hope pellets (8% AA) 60 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 40 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 20 minutes
-1/2oz Amarillo 0 minutes
-Wyeast 1056 American Ale Yeast

Mashing with 3 gallons of water at 150F for 75 minutes.

Now I need to figure out what I'm going to brew next weekend. :p I want to reuse the British Ale yeast that the Amber is using, so I want to make an English style, but I'm not sure exactly what I want to do. Maybe a barleywine.

Amber Update

The amber took about 5 days to get the fermentation started. That's what I get for using yeast that was months old and not using a starter. Oh well. I also boiled up 2 pounds of light dry malt extract and poured it (after cooling) into the fermenter to boost the gravity. Adding that volume and DME leaves me with 5.75 gallons of beer with a starting gravity of 1.056. That's close enough to what I was looking for.

God damn it!

Stupid mash temperatures. I actually went through with my brewing, finally. The recipe was the amber that I posted a few days ago. The initial gravity came in at 1.040, which points to me sucking at hitting my mash temperatures. Instead of the mid-150s I was hitting the mid-140s, which is an important difference. Guess I should have extended the mash for another 30-60 minutes to let the starches convert. Oh well. I need to modify my technique to hit those temps more consistently. I may wind up brewing again this weekend to try to improve my technique. We'll see.

Bailout, anyone?

Here's a great article on the bailouts and how things could be made better for the long run with some simple changes to the banking system.

A chronicle of how GM got to where it is today. The company basically shot itself in the gut and has been internally bleeding to death for a long time. I really hope they sell the Saturn brand to someone that actually runs their company well as I like those cars. I was torn between Subaru, Honda, and Saturn when I was looking at cars last year.

Dollar GUTS!

This past weekend Angelos had his yearly party for John Dyson's birthday. I was able to rearrange my plans to drive out there Friday instead of Saturday. This is one of those weekend-long parties that usually involves the equivalent of about 6-8 cases of beer, lots of pool, poker, darts and whatnot, and frequently snow to some degree. We had plenty of all of that this year, except the darts.

Friday night it was me, Dave, Angelos, John Dyson, Brian Rusch, and Tom Jurus. That night was mostly spent giving Angelos shit for not having chips, and playing poker while drinking lots of wine and beer. I don't typically play poker, but I decided to throw in $20 and play this time. I think I lost all of that money by the end of the first 30 minutes. Yeah, I'm that bad.

In the morning I went with Brian to secure bagels for breakfast. Everyone realized how much of a mistake it was that there hadn't been any real food the night before. It was a good thing that Dave and I got subs on the drive up.

Swilly and Ken Conner showed up Saturday with chips and more beer. That day was a lot of bullshitting, drinking heavily, poker, pool, music, Angelos yelling at Ken about politics, and breaking a DVD player for not playing a movie correctly. I also got a long, drunk talk by Brian about how awesome the Greatful Dead are.

It was a great weekend until the drive home. Given that it's early December in upstate NY, and that I was going to be driving across the Thruway to Rochester, I fully expected numerous bands of lake effect. That would have been nothing for me. As I hit Utica, I was started to see the snow falling. By the time I hit a couple exits past there I realized it was a full storm. Until I got about half an hour outside of Rochester there was minimal visibility, extreme wind, and the road had about two inches of fresh snow on it. The plows had quite the interesting time keeping up with all of it. At one point I almost wound up off the left side of the road because I didn't have any traction during a gradual left curve on the highway. Thankfully I got my traction back when I started crossing the rumble strip just before the road's shoulder. I was going to let myself go off the road straight instead of turning anymore than I was so I wouldn't start spinning, but fortunately that wasn't necessary. There were a couple times where I stopped at a service area and sat there for a bit with a cup of coffee or some warm food and tried waiting to see if it would pass. Both times I did this I only saw it getting worse. Ugh.

Obviously, I made it home safely, but damn. Still, I wouldn't trade winter weather for anything in the world.

Beer Recipe

I've decided on the recipe for this week's batch of beer. I am now planning on brewing Friday morning/afternoon before I hit the road.

The recipe is as follows:

6lbs Belgian 2-row
4lbs Mild Malt
0.5lbs Crystal 120L
0.5lbs Toasted Malt

1oz Kent Goldings (60 min)
0.5oz Fuggles (30 min)
0.5oz Fuggles (5 min)

Wyeast 1098 British Ale Yeast

It's a full boil, so I can use less hops which is nice. It should give me based on some simple calculations, a starting gravity of 1.060 and a 3:1 gravity:bitterness ratio. This should be amber-ish, with the follow up batch looking to be a bitter of some sort.

Brewing

It has been entirely too long since I brewed beer. I'm thinking that because of my lack of going to work on Fridays, I might spend Thursday night this week brewing a batch. Not entirely sure what kind of recipe I want to make, but I'll list out the ingredients I have on hand here so I can access the list at work tomorrow when I'm bored:

Malts:
34lbs Belgian 2-row
1lb Crystal 120L
5lbs Mild Malt
1lb Munich 9L
1lb Flaked Oats
1lb Roasted Barley
1lb Toasted Malt
1lb Vienna Malt
3lbs Wheat Malt

Hops: (all are pellets unless otherwise noted)
4oz Fuggles 4%AA
4oz East Kent Goldings 5.5%AA
2oz Hallertau (leaf) 4.8%AA
1oz Northern Brewer 6.7%AA
3oz Czech Saaz 4%AA
1oz Willamette 5.8%AA

Yeast: (all Wyeast liquid packs)
1056 American Ale
3724 Belgian Saison
1098 British Ale
1084 Irish Ale
1068 London ESB

I really need to get brewing again considering the chest freezer makes my tap system almost complete. Man, I need to keep kicking myself in the ass this week to make sure I maintain the motivation I have right now.

SNOOOOOWWWW!

The past two mornings I have awoken to at least a couple of new inches of snow on the ground. This delights me quite a bit. The "winter" we had last year was pathetic as far as the winters in my lifetime have been, so I'm hoping for a really nice one this year. As long as that jet stream can keep itself south of us, we should be in for some awesome winter weather. I swear, if it gets up into the 60s in January this year, I'm going to break someone. Here's hoping the snow stays on the ground until mid-April, though there's no way that'll happen.

Huh? Wow.

The Cubs signed Ryan Dempster to a 4-year $54M contract today. All I have to say is wow. He had a decent year with the Marlins in 2001, and his 2008 season was actually pretty good. If you look past those years, though, he isn't anything special, and even those years were really just above average. This is going to look like a joke next year when he can't maintain his performance. He's never pitched two really good seasons consecutively, and before this year he had been mired in mediocrity. I doubt he comes close to this year's performance next year, and this contract is going to help inflate the contracts of the other free agent pitchers like Burnett. Hell, the Yankees are looking at possibly offering Burnett a 5-year, $80M contract! Hah! Hello Carl Pavano all over again.

Baseball offseason

It's been a few days since teams became free to talk with free agents from other teams. The Yankees are already showing that their recent, but short-lived, doctrine of building a team through draft picks and smart trades was only going to work as long as Steinbrenner was allowing Cashman to have more power in the personnel decision-making process. Apparently, The Boss' sons that are now in control of the Yankees believe that the old 'let's buy a championship' mentality is actually smart. They've offered CC Sabathia a 6-year $140M deal, while also stating that they will be making offers to A.J. Burnett and Derek Lowe within the coming days. Ugh.

To give some perspective on this, the Yankees went into this season with high hopes that a rotation of Chen-Ming Wang, Mike Mussina, Andy Pettite, and the two minor league prospects that were called up (Ian Kennedy and Phil Hughes) would combine with their potent offense to propel them into the World Series. To be fair, they couldn't foresee Wang getting hurt for most of the year, but they also definitely put too much expectation on Kennedy and Hughes. Yes, they are very good pitching prospects, but given that this is NY these prospects are always rushed into the majors, and when they don't immediately live up to the hype they are given up on. I'm just glad the Mets didn't get rid of Mike Pelfrey when he struggled after being rushed up.

Now, I agree that Sabathia, Burnett, and Lowe are all very good pitchers on the free agent market, but it irritates me that the market for pitchers gets crazy like this. For people's information, here's the story on Sabathia. CC Sabathia is a tall (6-7) large (290lbs) left handed pitcher. He was with the Cleveland Indians from 2001 until he was traded to the Brewers this season. Sabathia has been dominant for a while and usually never pitches fewer than 200 innings per season, so he's a serious workhorse. When he was traded to the Brewers before the trading deadline, he went on to put together one of the best pitching stretches I think most people have ever seen. He made 17 starts for the Brewers, going 11-2 with SEVEN complete games!! He walked 25 and struck out 128 during that period with a 1.65 ERA. He also finished the season with three straight starts on three days rest, and the final one of those games was a complete game victory over the Cubs to clinch the Wild Card spot in the NL. The real problem comes with how much he's overworked by the time the playoffs come around. He has compiled almost 500 innings in the regular season these past two years, and he has struggled greatly in the postseason both years. He really looks like he's gassed at the end of these seasons. If the team signing him doesn't realize this, they're going to be regretting the 6 year contract they give him when he starts falling apart a few year into it.

CC has been recorded as saying he had a great time in Milwaukee and loved playing with those teammates, but the Brewers are offering him 5 years at $100M, which is nowhere close to where the Yankees' offer sits. Considering how great a person Sabathia is, I really hope that he decides the discount to stay with Milwaukee is worth it. I really don't want him in the same league with the Mets, but I like Sabathia and think he's a great person, so I want to see him go to a situation that'll work really well for him. Also, fuck the Yankees. You assholes just never learn that you can't buy a championship. Your championship teams of the 90's were mostly homegrown, and all the expensive teams you've had since haven't done jack shit. Just go away.

Hockey

A friend at work recruited me for a recreational adult floor hockey league he plays in. He and a bunch of other guys back in their Kodak days played in a league that was setup in the gyms at building 69 (I think it was 69, might have been building 1, I don't remember) about 10 years ago. They got their team back together in a small league that plays out west of the city. We play Wednesday nights.

I haven't played floor hockey since Junior year at RPI, when I was Delta Phi's goalie. The captain of this team is the goalie, so I have to play forward. That's been interesting. I still can't really shoot for shit, but I'm pretty mobile and have managed to setup some good shot opportunities. It was also quite the shock to my body. Waking up the day after it was rough, considering the gym was a lot bigger than I'm used to and I don't really have that much endurance for running.

Life

Wow, I haven't been this out of it since I lost the last bit interest I had in grad school. I've been without any serious interest in anything for months now, and it's really starting to bug me. My hobbies are currently boring and uninteresting or too much effort for me to care about. I haven't brewed beer since sometime in February or March, I haven't picked up my guitar since June, I haven't read much in the past month, and even going to the gym has become a sporadic event that I'm finding increasingly easy to justify not doing. It's the same story at work, too. I haven't actually cared about what I'm doing at work in a while to the point where it's a burden to sit at my desk and get things done. Now, I admit that this was a job I took simply because I was desperate and they were the first positive response with a good salary, but I was actually interested for quite a while. Who knows what happened. Is this what it means to be an adult in the working world? I find that hard to believe. I've been looking around in my area for other work that looks interesting, but the more I look the more discouraged I get. I really don't know what I would find interesting to do.

Whatever, I guess this post was mostly supposed to be cathartic, but it even failed at that. Even if I'm bored with everything I'm still paying down my debt really quickly, and that's what really matters... I guess.

Meh.

Movies

Saw a couple new (for me) movies recently, which in itself is quite the rarity. I also went to the theater last night to see one of those movies, which is an enormous rarity, just ask Dave. The movie last night was Rocknrolla, the new Guy Richie movie. That was fantastic. It made two hours disappear without me noticing at all and that's extremely uncommon for most movies. As always with his movies, the cast of characters was incredible and varied quite substantially. The humor, action, and dialog were all really well done, as one would expect. I don't typically care that much about most movies, but I'd highly recommend this one.

The other movie I saw was earlier this evening when I popped in Iron Man. Yes, this was the first time I'd ever seen it. I enjoyed it just as much as everyone else says they did, so I guess there's not really much more to say than that. The one comment that I have is that it's weird to see The Dude as a villain; very disconcerting.

Now I have to wait until next month to see The Dark Knight. Can't wait for that one.

Election Day

I voted today. Bah. I feel like a tool voting in a system like this. Also, I am still registered in Ithaca, so I actually had to drive two hours to vote. That makes me feel like a bigger tool. Honestly, to me both of the major parties are fairly similar (anyone who actually thinks Obama will pull us out of Iraq like they want is nuts). The Republicans love war and reducing taxes while not reducing spending (now that one is a recipe for disaster). The Democrats want to turn us into a complete socialist state, which is pretty much what they did by cutting all the deals they needed to in order to get the bailout passed. They actually are thinking about proposing legislation to socialize our 401(k)s. It's too late in the night for me to find the article where I read that so I'll post it tomorrow if I can find the motivation, but apparently some senior Congressional Democrats want to make a Social Security-like fund for our 401(k) contributions to go into. Ugh, if I have to explain why that sounds like the worst idea ever, just go away.

Whatever. As always I will say the following: I didn't vote for Obama, but he's going to be my President and I hope he does a good job.

Video Games!

A friend from work got Guitar Hero: World Tour yesterday, so I went over to try it out. My impressions of the game follow:

I have only played the original Guitar Hero, so I'm not overly familiar with the series. The opening was weird, I'm not sure if I like the whole cell animation thing for a rock game, but that's just a personal preference. It was a little confusing to navigate the menus initially, though once we got past that things were cool. I don't like the way the menus are setup in that the screen is always too busy. To be lame and put it into imaging science terminology the signal-to-clutter ratio was poor on most menu screens. They compressed the menus down to a thin column in the center while there was tons of shit going on around the margins. Not a fan, honestly.

Career Mode:
There is a career mode for single player and one for a band with the capability to create a band online. The setup for career mode is that you are presented with a wall of fliers that have setlists posted for the various gigs you currently have unlocked to play. The setlists range from 2-5 songs as far as I can tell. When you beat a gig, you get money and new gigs are added to the wall. I can't tell if there is any theme to the venues like in Rock Band, but we were only playing for a few hours and I was focused on getting used to the drum set. So far the career mode is interesting, but I'm not in the position to compare it with that of Rock Band yet.

Leveling Up:
Something that I haven't had a chance to read about yet is that there seems to be some sort of experience or skill level number to the left of players' names. This shows up after a song has ended and you see how everyone in the band did. I'm not sure what number means, but when it went up we assumed it meant we were fucking awesome. Yeah.

Setlist:
For all the talk of the glaring omissions from the Rock Band 2 setlist that are filled in the GH:WT list, I only found two songs that I really want to see on Rock Band 2: Hotel California and Band On The Run. Honestly, I really have no interest in playing The Joker. That one is my biggest conflict with most people, as so many people say they want it, but I don't understand why anyone thinks it's a good song. Just personal taste, I guess. Anyway, Beat It was kinda fun to play, too.

Instruments:
The guitar was pretty much the same as all the Guitar Hero guitars I've seen. The one difference, I think, is that there is a bar-shaped button perpendicular to the strum bar down past where your wrist sits while playing. This is to make initiating star power easier if you don't want to tilt the guitar and use its accelerometers. I thought it was a nice touch considering I'm that guy who always misses the first note after tilting the guitar for star power. That's why I always hit the 'select' button on the Rock Band controller, though I sometimes hit the 'start' button, pause the game, and piss everyone off. Sigh.
The drum set is where this game is significantly different from Rock Band, at least until I actually buy the new Rock Band 2 set. The drum set is setup with three for the toms (red, blue and green pads), while it has two elevated sensors for the hi-hat and cymbals (yellow and orange, respectively). The foot pedal shows up on the note sequence on screen as a purple horizontal bar. That's right, there are now FIVE colors to hit with the drum sticks plus the foot pedal. It was very interesting to get used to, especially when I would hit the red instead of yellow because I'm used to moving one pad over for yellow, not moving up. My issue with the way they made the cymbals. Instead of having two disks to hit, they're quarter disks. Imagine taking one of those metal disks used for cymbals, cutting a slice out of it that's one-quarter of the circle, then only hitting that. It's odd to say the least. I'm going to buy the new Rock Band 2 drum set and the cymbal expansions one of these days soon and do a comparison.

Now, still on the topic of drums but needing its own paragraph, I will discuss my major issue with the GH:WT drum set. We went through and did a thorough calibration for Angela's TV to get it right. Even after that I was having some serious problems with the drum set. It seemed like it was missing three of every four notes I was hitting on the red pad, but registering most of them on the yellow cymbal. I know the set is supposed to be velocity sensitive, but I wonder exactly how they implemented that in the game. I found that there was in fact a slight timing issue on my part, but even after correcting that I had to really slam the main drum pads to get anything to register on most songs. It looks like the velocity sensitivity is used to to provide a threshold to the registration of the notes in the game so you have to hit at their desired velocity. What the fuck? And there's really no indication of how hard you have to hit until you start missing notes and say "oh, fuck, I guess it's time to smack the shit out of this bitch". I understand the desire to make it more realistic, but this is absurd. I was spending so much of my concentration trying make sure I remembered to hit the pads hard enough I wasn't able to keep up with note changes. 75% on medium?!? Come on, now, that shit's weak. By the end of the evening I was able to hit the pads hard enough to register about 85% of my notes, but it still took a serious bit of fun out of it. If I was looking for the most realistic drumming experience I would buy a fucking drum set and learn to play! Sigh, I'll get off my soap box now.

All in all, I'd say they did a pretty good job for a first run of this Guitar Hero version of the full band video game, but I think they need to improve some things. The current run of this game is definitely not up to my tastes enough to justify spending $200 on another music game, but I don't think I would do that even if the game was spooge-inducingly amazing.

Halloween costumes

I have two Halloween parties to attend this weekend, one on Friday and the other on Saturday. I'm trying to get costume ideas, and I think I've got it! The only problem with it is that it could offend a lot of people. Would that be wrong, or should I continue my mantra of "if you're offended it's your fault for being so easily offended"?
Idea:
The Nocturnal Abortion

Background:
It's a combination of a supervillain from a webcomic a few years back and an idea someone had at the party this past weekend in Waltham. His idea was to take his pregnant wife with him and dress himself as a doctor with a coat hangar around his neck (with a fake fetus on the end, of course).

So, yeah, my idea is sort of a variant on all of it. It involves a bloody hook for the left hand, a surgeon's robe painted black with a red cape, a dust mask with some blood on it, and fake blood all over the hook and left forearm. There would also, most likely, be a fake fetus on the end of the hook.

Question: Too much?

Weekends and gaming

First, yes I know it's not kosher to blog at work, but I just moved a blackbody all over the damn building, so I'm tired.

This past weekend I hopped in the car and headed to Waltham, an area a bit West of Boston, for a party. Matt, one of my friends from the undergrad days when he lived with me and Curly in Colvin 55, was having his annual Rock Band party. That involved a lot of driving in the rain on Saturday, but it was worth it in the end. I found out that I'm better on guitar than I give myself credit for, and that Visions really is a stupid song. My costume for the party involved shaving part of the goatee, which was unfortunate. The worst part was that it didn't look good for normal life, so I had to shave the whole thing off before coming into work yesterday. So now I'm slowly growing it all back in. I already have a solid outline of the goatee, so it shouldn't take more than 4 or 5 days to have back to a respectable length.

Also, a pair of jackasses here at work finally got me to break down and buy Halo 3. Wow, you have to love spending $50 on a used game (sigh). It's been a looooong time since I've done the first person shooter thing, so this is really taking a lot to get used to. Especially using the right analog stick for aiming. I'm through the first mission in the campaign and think I'm starting to get the hang of things, though I really need to learn the weapons. I played a couple games online last night with people from work and got my ass raped! I held my own at times, so things look good as long as I get enough practice.

On laundromats

Why the hell would you close your fucking laundromat?!? Fuck. They better be open tonight or I have a lot of scouring of the local area to do.

This probably has something to do with the fact that half of the machines are busted, but still!

The dollar's troubled past

Just to illustrate what the existence of the Federal Reserve and our system of fractional banking, let me do some math for you.

In 1913 the Federal Reserve Act was signed, and our money became bound to the will of the bankers. A single dollar in 1913 is the equivalent of $21.54 based on the national average inflation since then. That's a 95.4% reduction in purchasing power. To put that in perspective: my annual salary would have been $3115.31 before the government went on its money printing binge. I would be paying $27.86 in 1913 for my apartment. I don't think I really need to continue. This is just sad to watch. Rome collapsed because of their system of artificially expanding the money supply, as did numerous American colonies before they shifted back to gold (little known fact: the colonies experimented with fiat money numerous times, always to find that it ruined their economies and they promptly switched back to gold).

Scary times, indeed.

Straight into the shitter

Surprise! Americans know their country is falling straight down to hell. When the President has an approval rating lower than 30%, the number of people feeling good about the country's direction is 25%, and two-thirds of people say they're actually scared about our direction, there's a serious problem. Unfortunately, the government doesn't care, and they won't care until people start speaking up. We live in a sad state right now, and it's not going to get better for a long time.

On weather

I see that we have our first instance of the word 'snow' in Rochester now. My ForecastFox weather forecast toolbar shows that the weather in Rochester for Tuesday night is listed as "Showers of rain and snow".

I don't think anyone understands just how happy I am to hear that word this early in the Autumn season.

Money and debt

I hate being in debt. I just thought I'd throw that out there to begin. After my latest round of payments goes through I should be down to around $36K of debt. Ugh. That's a pretty daunting number, if you ask me, but it's manageable. And the first person to complain about their mortgage to me can blow me where the pampers is.

Anyway...

Given the continual downward trend of the stock markets, and the looming hyper-inflation once the $600B in loans from the Fed,$700B bailout from the government, and $250B in bank stock purchases by the government go through, I have decided to not bother putting anything over the minimum into my 401(k) for the time being. Chances are the dollar will completely tank over coming 6-8 months, in which case I will have much bigger things to worry about. Might as well pay off some debt and pour some money into hard assets while I can. If I live by the budget I have setup for myself, I can put about $1800-$2000 into my debt per month. Add in the couple grand I will get back from taxes and some money I have put away already and I should be able to get debt free in less than 18 months from now. Having done some calculations based on my spending habits, I only need ~$18K per year to spend on survival (ignoring loan payments). If I become debt free, my freedom jumps up dramatically, so that's what I'm to focus on from now on. Plan: become debt free, quite ITT, find a brewery with an opening, enjoy my life.


Oh, on the topic of moneys, if anyone has Boardwalk in the McDonald's Monopoly game, let me know: I have Park Place. We could split whatever's left of a cool million after taxes.

The path to total collapse of the dollar

Interesting

Some articles on how the IPCC report on global warming (the one Gore won his Nobel Prize for) significantly exaggerated the effects of human-produced greenhouse gases, and how Alaskan glaciers are rebounding for the first time since they began retreating.

Honestly, the more I read about global warming from real scientists, not the sensationalists and the scaremongering of Al Gore, the more I begin to believe it's all horseshit. Earth has been warming for over 200 years. Anybody remember learning about the Little Ice Age back before America was a full independent country? Of course not, cause then you'd have acknowledge that we've seen a warming trend over a much longer period of time than humans have been pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Also, CO2 is not the most significant greenhouse gas. Take it from someone who had to get infrared astronomy data from a satellite instead of ground-based telescopes because H2O absorbs infrared radiation. Yeah, water is a major greenhouse gas. Keep in mind also that water in its liquid and solid forms has a negative warming effect:

-Most of the sun's energy is in the visible part of the spectrum (very little IR)
-Earth absorbs some of this radiation and re-emits it in the IR
-The greenhouse gases absorb this re-emitted radiation and re-emit it at longer IR wavelengths
-Ice and water reflect the sun's radiation, keeping it from being absorbed and re-emitted as IR radiation
-This radiation is allowed to pass through the atmosphere undisturbed and does not heat our planet
-Any positive growth in glaciers we see will begin to put downward pressure on global temperatures

Anyway, that was a long enough brain dump for now.

Filthy disgustingness

So the corner of my basement has a pool of gray, musty smelling water sitting in it, and the smell is now seeping up into my apartment. Fuck. Need to have a talk with the landlord about that one.

There's always something....

More reasons why socialized health care is a bad idea

In Britain

A list of stories from people in the UK, Canada and Australia showcasing the ills of their systems. When health care is already paid for, there's no incentive for them to give you good treatment.

Economic collapse has its perks....

I filled up my gas tank yesterday for $39.36, at $3.37/gallon. Sweet. That's an extra $10-15 I can put into my debt. Every little bit helps.

Our system was fucked the moment it was created

A great article about the collapse of our banking system.

Video game goodness

Blood Sugar Sex Magik is now out for Rock Band! Just thought I'd throw that out there. Fantastic album.

I've been making slow progress on Rock Band 2 because I keep getting sidetracked by other things and by playing Burnout Paradise (currently 70% through Burnout). I think I'll try to spend some time this weekend plowing through a bunch more of the Rock Band 2 challenges and tour mode stuff. The challenges are very interesting. I have no idea how they expect someone to go through one of the infinite challenges that has upwards of 40 songs. Wow, that would be quite the day of gaming.

It was also great to finally play Chop Suey. I love that song.

Hilary Clinton lost the last bit of respect I had for her

In an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal, Hilary Clinton has decided to follow her husband's ill-conceived rhetoric of 'everyone deserves a house' whether they can afford one or not.

"I've proposed a new Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC), to launch a national effort to help homeowners refinance their mortgages. The original HOLC, launched in 1933, bought mortgages from failed banks and modified the terms so families could make affordable payments while keeping their homes. The original HOLC returned a profit to the Treasury and saved one million homes. We can save roughly three times that many today. We should also put in place a temporary moratorium on foreclosures and freeze rate hikes in adjustable-rate mortgages. We've got to stem the tide of failing mortgages and give the markets time to recover."

First off, the government's purchase of the bad mortgages in 1933 helped to continue the artificially high prices in the real estate market, thus delaying the inevitable recovery of the market and lengthening the Great Depression. Prior to the depression we had the same immense credit expansion in the 'roaring 20s' that we saw in the late 90s before the tech collapse, and again in the early 2000s leading up to our current debacle. Apparently no one pays attention to history.

So Hilary wants to make sure that no one that lied about their income to get a mortgage will get kicked out of their homes, like they deserve. Instead, those people that know their limits and either didn't buy houses or bought homes they could afford must subsidize these morons. Basically we get to expand the disgusting entitlement welfare state we have. Thanks, Hilary.

Politicians in the '30s were in love with the idea that there should be a 'home on every lot' because they reaped the benefits of those policies when voters went to the polls. Of course, the average voter was too uninformed to realize that the increased demand for housing was causing home prices to rise, thus reducing the value of the subsidies that the Federal Housing Authority was handing out. So this was the same thing Bill Clinton did during his tenure.

The markets need to be allowed to recover on their own, but "free market" and "capitalism" have become dirty words in this country, so big government is supposed to come in a keep these big bad capitalists from ruining our country. Answer me this: since when did the government gain the credibility to protect our interests? Do people honestly believe that government regulation will make things better? When has the government ever regulated something for the interests of the people instead of their own?

Also remember, the Federal Reserve prints our money and is not part of any government institution, but the Constitution states that only Congress shall have the ability to coin money. Instead our money is printed by a banking cartel. But that's all a topic for another time....

God that was violent. I blame... the sea.

Such a nice boy....

"We are grateful to the Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is now more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries."

- David Rockefeller, June 1991 - Baden, Germany

Have we been violating the constitution?

Article 1, Section 10, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States of America states:

"No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance or confederation; grant letters of marque and reprisal; coin money; emit bills of credit; make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts; pass any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law impairing the obligation of contracts, or grant any title of nobility."

No state shall make anything but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts....

Finally...

congress does something right. No bailout. That's all I have to say. Hopefully they won't just roll over on the next bailout proposal that's sure to come. At least for once I can say my politicians acted the way I wanted them to.

Some people know what the hell they're talking about

Great post about why we're fucked right now.

Pay especially close attention to the videos at the end. Ron Paul knows what the hell he's talking about. I'm still reading a lot about the Federal Reserve and how exactly things work with it, which was intentionally made complicated to keep people from understanding how big a scam it really is. Keep in mind, the Fed was created by a bunch of bankers on Wall St because there was too much good competition in the banking industry for Wall St to keep its power over the financial sector. This total meltdown of our financial system is almost 100 years in the making.

Not really important, but an update of some sort at least

So I went to the Sprint store yesterday and got me one of them there Blackberry Curve 8330's. Part of the reason was that I wanted a way to dick around on the interwebs while watching a game, but not have to be constantly running back and forth between the living room and bed room. Part of it was to be able to geek out away from my PC. Oh, and the fact that Sprint is rebating them down to $100 for upgrade customers until November was a nice touch. It's been awesome so far, though I haven't actually tested the call quality.

Scary stuff

1944, Bretton Woods: The IMF and the World Bank
1945, San Francisco: The United Nations
1994, Marrakech: The World Trade Organization
History knows where it is going.... The World Trade Organization, the third pillar of the New World Order, along with the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund.

New York Times, April 15, 1994, p. A9

Back in first

Despite David Wright's best efforts, the Mets are now back in first place in the NL East. Wright has been having a terrible September at the plate and it's now starting to have an effect on his defense. That throwing error last night was inexcusable. They managed to pull the win out, but this sort of thing can't happen as the season winds down and with the division race so tight.

The Phillies and the Brewers also lost last night, putting the Mets a half game up on the Phils in the division and knocking Milwaukee further down in the wild card standings. It's beginning to look like the Mets' chances of at least clinching a wild card berth are likely, but I can't be comfortable until they actually have clinched. They need to at least take two of three in this series with Atlanta considering they play four games with the Cubs this coming week.

Because the next nine days will be so damn stressful

more animals

This is painful to watch

The season got really ugly really fast. They finally managed to beat the worst team in baseball after losing two in a row to them. Ugh.
Jerry Manuel had a great quote after the game:
"No, I'm not enjoying this. Are you crazy? Walking out there every three minutes? [Fans] didn't come to see me. They come to see the guys play."

Another day, another bailout, another set of financiers saved from consequences at our expense

So the government (which of course means you and I) has bailed out AIG. The moral of this story is that if you or I make stupid, bonehead investments because of the potentially high yeild, we can be fucked by the market, but if you are a bank/mortgage lender/insurer/other fianancial institution, you can make all the money you want on high risk/yeild investments and never face the consequences of your risks if they go sour.

If is NOT in the public's best interest to prop up insolvent institutions, like the Fed says it is. This will just lead to another round of malinvestment in the future, more bubbles and busts, more transfer of wealth from us to the already wealthy elite. We need to move toward a monetary policy and system that is stable and protects against John Maynard Keynes' favored system of credit expansion through levereged borrowing that leads nowhere other than inflation. The elite have been manipulating the system for far too long to get the wealth out of our hands, and it's working beautifully. The sad thing is, no one seems to notice or care.

What did the government do to our money...?

"The abandonment of the gold standard made it possible for the welfare statists to use the banking system as a means to an unlimited expansion of credit....

The Law of supply and demand is not to be conned. As the supply of money (of claims) increases relative to the supply of tangible assets in the economy, prices must eventually rise. Thus the earnings saved by the productive members of the society lose value in terms of goods. When the economy's books are finally balanced, one finds that this loss in value represents the goods purchased by the government for welfare or other purposes....

In the absence of the gold standard, there is no way to protect savings from confiscation through inflation. There is no safe store of value. If there were, the government would have to make its holding illegal, as was done in the case of gold.... The financial policy of the welfare state requires that there be no way for the owners of wealth to protect themselves.

This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the "hidden" confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights."
- Alan Greenspan, "Gold and Economic Freedom", in Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, ed. Ayn Rand (New York: Signet Books, 1967), p. 101

For once it's not Bush's fault

Anyone that starts screaming about how this nice little financial mess we find ourselves in was caused by Bush is an idiot. The seeds of this collapse were sewn in the early post-war era with the creation of the Fed, the FDIC, and the creation of all the Federally insured mortgage companies because 'everyone should be able to own a home'.

The Fed sets the percentage of a bank's deposit that must be held on hand at any time. The rest of the money may be lent out for the bank to earn interest on. Because banks, and other Federally insured operations, have the insurance of the FDIC they are protected if they become insolvent. Now, these financial institutions all pay the same rates to the FDIC for this insurance regardless of their performance or risks. This allows banks to be as reckless as they want with how they loan their money out, as they will be covered by this insurance if they fuck up. So what you have is no discouragement to these people to make lots of risky investments that have the potential for high returns. As many other mortgage brokerages did in recent decades, they made a habit of giving out very risky mortgages that would lead to really good returns if there was no default on the account. Because of this, housing prices were artificially inflated which led to riskier loans and so on.

Fast forward to today, where all these risky investments are going south. Now everyone looks for the Fed to bail them out. Keep in mind that the FDIC only has enough money on hand to cover $50 Billion of the $1 Trillion of insured assets. So the government is subsidizing restructured mortgages for people (tax-payer dollars), nationalized Freddie and Fannie which shifts liability for these companies to the taxpayers, the FDIC pays out for the insured accounts, and the Fed has to come to the rescue when all else fails to keep these companies solvent. That usually means the Fed (the "Lender of Last Resort") allows the insolvent bank/firm to offer tax-free bonds, which the Fed then buys with newly printed money (inflation). Through all of this, the people that suffer are investors and tax-payers, while the owners of the banks/firms are shielded from too much, if any, loss. And this is happening across the board in all financial industries right now.

The one sane proposal I have seen to remedy the horrible way our system is setup is to make payment into the FDIC insurance protection fund entirely based on the firm's risks in their investments. You pay more if you perform more risky lending. It would probably be the simplest way of regulating the whole thing.

Then of course there's the issue of continuing to support the Federal Reserve, an entity that does not answer to Congress but prints money at its leisure. (Note: It is unconstitutional for anyone but Congress to coin money) However, the issue of central banking and the crooks that created the idea is for another day.

The Final Stretch Begins

Today, the Angels beat the Yankees and with the Rangers' loss, the Angels have now clinched the AL West. Rodriguez also got his 56th save, inching him to within one of Bobby Thigpen's record of 57 in one season.

The Phillies lost today to the Marlins 7-3. This means that if the Mets win their game tonight, they will increase their lead to 3 1/2 games over Philadelphia.

Tonight, Jose Reyes set the Mets' club record with his 283rd stolen base in the third inning moving him past Mookie Wilson. He went on to also steal third in the middle of a six run inning for the Mets.

It's going to be an interesting final three weeks of the season. All I'm going to hear about everyday is the collapse of '07.

Ithaca Brewfest: After Action Report

This Saturday I drove my friends Jeff and Angela to Stewart Park in Ithaca for the second annual Ithaca Brewfest. The forecast was calling for widespread rain across across our part of the state for the latter half of the day, but we saw none of that in Ithaca (though we went through some spots of pouring rain on the drive down). It was in the low 60's when we left Rochester, but it was warm and muggy when we got out of the car in Ithaca. Fortunately, the weather quickly changed for the better when a nice cool set of air started moving in from the lake and things were comfortable after that.

I need to start bringing a camera to these things, which would require either digging mine out or buying a new one, which is what I'd like to do as my camera is really old (by CCD standards). The event was at Stewart Park which is right on the southern tip of Cayuga Lake. They used a good portion of the shoreline of the park for the event. Now, as with the Flour City Brewfest they gave us a nice looking 4 oz sample glass. They also gave everyone a little green card with eighteen numbered circles on it which was intended as a sort of moderating factor. The people serving beer at the brewery tables were supposed to mark off a circle each time you got a sample. It quickly became apparent that no one really cared about that. I must have had somewhere between fifteen and twenty samples and my card only has two marked off.

When it comes to setup I vastly preferred Ithaca's plan over the Flour City plan. For the Flour City Brewfest it was all held inside the concession area at Frontier Field, this being essentially a really long hallway area under the stands. That got really crowded really fast. The setup for the Ithaca Brewfest was much more open. When we walked in there was a ling of four tents to our right that traced along the shoreline of the lake. Each tent was probably 30 ft by 20 ft (I'm lousy at judging distance, though), and were about 15 ft apart from each other and had four or five breweries setup underneath. To the left there was one tent facing away from the entrance with a large open area in front of it that led to a stage where there were some actually pretty decent local bands playing. Behing the band was another tent (containint, among others: Stone, Ommegang, Ithaca and Weyerbacher) and a pavilion that had a few breweries in it (Middle Ages, Hook and Ladder, etc). There were a couple more tents lining the other side of the area around the stage. All in all, I'd say there were probably more than 30 breweries there, and even a few I had never heard of. The open space of the setup was great because we were able to get in, grab a beer, then get out and hang out with each other while not being in everyone's way.

The high points of this adventure will be detailed below. I discovered a couple more breweries in the southern Finger Lakes region that are within easy driving distance of Ithaca, making a really set of tours doable in a Saturday afternoon (which must occur sooner rather than later!). First up is Horseheads Brewing. For those wondering, Horseheads is a small town about 40 minutes South-Southwest of Ithaca and is a place I've visited frequently because of its good mall (the Arnot Mall) and the local aviation museum. So, Horseheads Brewing had a number of beers there including: their Pumpkin Ale, Newtown Brown Ale, Pale Expedition Ale, and their Lackawanna Steam Lager (a Steam beer, or 'California Common' as the style is now known). There's extremely little information about these beers on Beeradvocate so I'm linking to the images on the brewery's website of the bottle labels. I had the Pumpkin and Brown ales. The brown was a pretty solid representation of the style, being very well balanced. The pumpkin, though, was phenomenal. It's easily the best non-homebrewed pumpkin ale I've ever had. The best pumpkin ale I'd had before this was the Southampton Pumpkin Ale, as it had a great mix of the pumpkin pie spices and was nice and balanced. Horseheads went the extra step of making it slightly sweeter to complement the spices and give it a more authentic pumpkin pie flavor, all while maintaining a flavor that still reminds you you're drinking beer. They did a great job of adding just enough sweetness to make it perfect. The website says it's now available in 22 oz bottles, so I must acquire these!

The other new discovery was Market Street Brewing Company in Corning, NY. They weren't quite as impressive as Horseheads, but still good. The beer of theirs I tried was the D'Artagnan Dark British Ale which was touted as a British Mild. It definitely doesn't fit the Mild style very well as it has a 6.5% ABV and has a more assertive flavor than you'd expect. That being said it was still pretty good. It wasn't very hoppy which is fine by me.

The next noteworthy drink was a new release from the Ithaca Brewing Company. Ithaca has been experimenting with small production run beers called their Excelsior Series, recently releasing a beer called Brute which is classified as a Golden Sour Ale. This is a light, slightly hazy golden beer with a very dry and moderately sour taste. There's a very slight hint of sweetness to it which balances things out and winds up delicious. A very good find, indeed.

Another beautiful find was Weyerbacher's new anniversary beer called Thirteen. It's a 'Belgian inspired Imperial Stout'. It's got the heavy, thick and roasty body of an imperial stout with the alcohol bite to back it up, but it also has some of the characteristic Belgian yeast fruitiness in the background. There is something slightly off about it, and looking at the top review on Beeradvocate, a guy suggests there are a bit of fusels in this beer. That sounds like what we were tasting in it. In my opinion they're not as pronounced as the reviewer thinks so I guess it depends on how refined your taste is. Overall I liked it a lot, though there are far better imperial stouts out there.

So when we finished with the brewfest we were in need of food, Angela demanding pancakes, so we headed over to the State Diner a few blocks west of the Ithaca Commons on State Street. A few shots of coffee and an infusion of bacon goodness and I was all set for the drive back. All in all it was a fun day and one I definitely will be going back for in the future. Next up will be a brewfest at Custom Brewcrafters in Honeoye Falls sometime in October, an Oktoberfest in Irondequoit sometime later this month, and there must be plans made for a round of tours through Ithaca, Watkins Glen, Corning and Horseheads. Now that would make for a great weekend.

I now have geek +10!

Cosmic arrived a couple days ago. It took a while to get here after the auction cause I bought it from one of them Canadians. It's only the basic game, meaning I have two expansions to get (though Swilly has an extra copy of More Cosmic and I have beer for him in exchange), but this basic set was fucking worth the $175. It's in nearly perfect condition. The box looks like was just taken out of the shrink-wrap except that the corners are a little bit worn. The guy said he bought it years ago cause he heard it was awesome, then punched out the tokens, and promptly never played the game. So now it's mine! The cards look like they've never been shuffled and the alien power cards are pristeen. I'm hoping that sometime after the Ithaca Brewfest today I can get some Rochester folks playing.

Alternative views on global warming

Some scientists, with research being performed over the course of decades, are point to the sun as a possible cause of the increase in temperature of our planet. The hypothesis being that the eleven year magnetic cycle of the sun's surface also impacts the solar irradiance (energy emitted by the sun). Solar irradiance is the single largest factor in global temperatures (obviously). Apparently, the evidence is pointing some to believe that the sun's magnetic cycle is a part of a larger cycle of solar irradiance. Every couple centuries, it is opined by some, the sun will either hit a lull in magnatic activity and causing a serious cooldown in the solar system, or there will be a flurry of magnatic activity that will increase temperatures. Some of the evidence supplied shows that our current temperatures are close to where they should be given that the sun is has experienced higher than normal sunspot activity during its cycles over the past few decades, and that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would be having a minimal effect if that were true. Keep in mind, carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas, water being another. If Sol increases Earth's temperature slightly, air will inherently become more humid and ice will melt; the melting ice will result in less solar radiation being reflect thus heating the ground further, and less ice cover means more exposed ground to absorb the heat.

Anyway, that's sort of a haphazard summary of what the authors of the following two articles are saying. The first one also saying that the United Nations' own report on global warming is ridiculous, though I haven't been able to read any of the academic papers he cites, so I can't yet add any of my own opinion. Basically, global warming is way more complicated than people say, and there's no argument yet that ends the discussion, as some windbags out there would like to say.

BE SKEPTICAL!

The first article talking about the UN report and the gross misrepresentations of the truth that it makes

The second article detailing research on historical data of the sun and the artic ice sheets

I hope to be doing a lot more research on this and other topics over the coming weeks, and I'll probably post some of the more interesting stuff on here if I get the motivation.

Things I'd like to look into more:

• I've heard reference to how Earth's temperature has historically increased significantly just before its various ice ages and I would like to investigate the studies on this.
• I want to look more closely at the evidence posited about the change in solar irradiance over time.
• My background in solar physics is pathetic at best, so I need to go back and look through some of my textbooks and notes from my astrophysics class. I know the sun is not a stable system, with the radius constantly fluctuating and massive convection currents roiling around, but I want to investigate the irradiance changes.
• Carbon dioxide's impact on warming the planet is the hottest topic and I would like to investigate how they're determining the level of impact it has. Yes, CO2 absorbs energy in the near infrared region and re-emits it, but how much does a 50% increase over 100 years in the CO2 levels really impact the overall absorption?
  

Down to the wire

As the calendar passes into September we enter the final month of the season and the demons that come with it. The Mets ended the month of August with a series in Florida that showcased the strengths and weaknesses of the team. All three games involved strong starting pitching with Oliver Perez, Mike Pelfrey and Pedro Martinez all holding the Marlins to two runs in each game and pitching into the seventh inning. The offense, led by Reyes in the midst of a 9-game hitting streak, scored in the first inning in two of the three games with Beltran also having a big series. Young Nick Evans hit his first major league home run yesterday, as well. The defense was also solid during the series.

The weak point of this series was the bullpen, not surprisingly. After taking a 5-2 lead in the top of the ninth on Friday, the bullpen coughed up two runs in the bottom of the inning before finally closing the deal. Things were even worse on Saturday. Pelfrey pitched a strong game and left with a 3-2 lead in the seventh inning. The first batter of the eighth homered to tie the game, then Heilman walked in the winning run in the bottom of the ninth. I can take it if the opposing team earns their winning run in the ninth, like hitting a home run or something, but when you walk in that run things aren't forgiven so easily.

So the Mets now have a one game lead over Philly going into September. They're 10-5 against the Phillies this season, which is something I hope they can maintain during the series the teams play next weekend at Shea. Every game the Mets lose this month will draw comments from everyone about the collapse last season, so now it's up to the team to redeem themselves. Things will certainly be interesting this month.

Here's a question fo you all...

Currency can be exchanged for goods and services.
Those who print their own currency are classified as counterfeiters and are arrested.
The government prints its own currency.
How is what the government does legal?

Money that has actual, inherent value, and a scarce quantity, makes far more sense than our current system. Besides, I've always wanted to carry around a satchel of gold coins. That would be awesome.

It's the most stressful time of the year

The final five weeks of the regular season are the most difficult to get through when the Mets are actually decent enough to have a chance at the postseason. They just split an important pair of games with the Phillies. I was busy doing other things, so I couldn't watch the games, but my mind was constantly on them. Especially given the magnificent choke-job they pulled out at the end of last season, the end of this season is going to be one of the most stressful I've ever experienced. I think it may even top the end of the '99 season where they made that amazing last minute push to tie the Reds for the wild card slot, going on to beat Cincinnati in that one game playoff.

The Mets start a series tomorrow in Florida against another team trying to hang onto the chance of a postseason birth.

Market forces work

despite what lots of different special interest groups would like you to believe. For years now, Americans have been living in a fantasy world where they have some inherent entitlement to cheap gas. This has led to the prevalence of gas chugging SUVs and a continuous, rapid exodus from city living to suburbia, "The American Dream". This shift was also helped (and possibly begun) by the changing of zoning laws during the mid-late 40's, post-WW2. During the war, zoning laws were put into effect that segregated commercial and residential structures, and this was continuing trend for years. That did a lot to help decentralize our population, and that was one of the most detrimental things to happen to our society.

Today, gas prices are averaging almost $4 a gallon across the country (I can find gas in Hennrietta for $3.59 as of yesterday). This has brought gas prices, and energy in general, to the forefront of American consciousness. Thus, it has become a major topic for our useless sacks of... I mean our politicians. There has also been a huge drive, due to higher energy costs and the onset of global warming consequences, to switch our country to cleaner energy production methods. The solutions we keep hearing about these topics just show how good the federal government has been at manipulating the population to be completely dependent on them. Every solution is some new government tax on company profits, excise tax holidays, cracking down on speculators (as if that's even possible, considering many of them are out of US jurisdiction), tax incentives for green energy, mandating green energy production, and the list keeps going. How about the solution that doesn't involved us collectively chugging from the government's corrupted teet? Let the market do its thing. Yes, people in this country have the quick-fix mentality ingrained in their consciousness, but if you think to the future just a little bit, you'll see that you can actually rely on the market to make corrections for you. Prices are rising? Guess what happens in economics when prices rise? Demand will drop in that market, and will increase in a different market. People will find alternatives. It's a collective pipe-dream that we should all be allowed to drive our behemoth SUVs everywhere without regard to our actions while the government does whatever it needs to do to keep our irresponsible way of life going.

Over the past few years there have been no government mandates taxing profits on oil companies, nor have there been mandates on the auto industry to stop conspiring to keep alternate technology cars off the market, and what has been the result? The market took care of it. GM and Ford, and Toyota with their focus on pickup trucks, have been desperately trying to retool and shift their focus away from gas-guzzlers as demand for SUVs and other large vehicles has plummeted. Americans are drastically shifting their transportation habits. In March we cut 11 billion miles nationally from our total vehicle miles traveled. Car companies can't even come close to pumping out hybrids fast enough to meet demand. Freight companies are mandating their truckers to drop from 70mph to 63mph on highways, increasing their mileage from 4.7 to 5.6 miles per gallon (that comes directly from my uncle, who has been driving trucks for 30 years). Public transportation, which is woefully inadequate in this country, especially in the northeast, is seeing a spike in passengers. Syracuse has started adding more bus routes, and I think Rochester will be doing that soon, too. Couple this with the mortgage crisis and you see a flood of people moving from suburbia back into the cities. This is most prevalent in California where you are now seeing ghost towns where people used to live in their McMansions.

Yes, I completely agree that the energy crisis in this country sucks. But it's a crisis of our own doing. It was brought about by our short-sightedness, our feeling of entitlement, a callous arrogance we have, and an ignorance most of us share about how our actions impact the world. America needs this crisis because it is the only way to shift our culture over to one with a more sustainable way of life. Americans can be tough and resourceful, we just prefer not to be. Well, the world is giving us a wakeup call right now.

Here's hoping for an STI that runs on hydrogen one of these days....

It's sad...

but this man represents Philadelphia sports fans. This is both funny and sad.

Notes on a brewfest

This past Friday was the Flour City Brewfest over at Frontier Field (the baseball field where the Red Wings play). I drove Sean, Angela, and Jeff to it as the... *ahem*... "designated driver". Holy shit, the place had even more people than last year! The counterbalance to that is that they had more breweries there than last year. Let's see, I believe I started the night with a Beamish sample (you get a 2 or 3 ounce sample glass at the door that the breweries will pour your samples into), and it was way uphill from there. There was some weird La Chouffe Tripel IPA that I hadn't remembered hearing of, which was the Houblon Chouffe Dobbelen IPA Tripel and that was quite tasty. Great Lakes Brewing was there, a brewery I really hadn't tried before. I drank their Oktoberfest because Jeff and I were talking about wanting to visit Germany for Oktoberfest one of these days, and I just got in the mood for one. This was very good for the style. I remember it being a bit maltier than I expected, which worked pretty well. A lot of the other stuff I had was stuff that we've all had plenty of, like Ommegang Witte, Victory Hop Devil, Rohrbach's Southwedge Summer Ale, etc.

Two other beers of note must be mentioned. I discovered a new brewery (or re-discovered is probably more accurate), Erie Brewing, out of Erie PA. I had their Railbender Ale which was pretty damn good. I'll have to see if they have some stuff at Beers of the World one of these days. I love finding small breweries in northeast region. The other beer of note was Old Howling Bastard by Blue Point Brewing. Now, I've always been a fan of Blue Point, but this beer was phenomenal. Jeff and I were both blown away by this one. It's their version of a barleywine, and boy did they get it right. I could see aging one of these beers for a few years and having it be magnificent. That was very pleasing.

The rest of the night involved eating and then drinking more at Jeremiah's Tavern in the South Wedge area. A good night all around.

BAM!

So I just won my ebay auction for a copy of Cosmic Encounter. I won it for $157.50 from some guy who says he bought the game way back in the day because he heard it was awesome, but never go around to playing it. He opened it and punched out the cardboard counters, and other than a small dent in the box, it's mint condition and never been played. Sweetness. Now to corrupt some of the Rochester friends with this great game....

Who needs the bullpen....

when Johan Santana pitches a complete game, three-hit shutout? Santana helped the Mets complete a three-game sweep of the Pirates today with a brilliant 113-pitch 4-0 win. No need to call on that shaky bullpen of ours. This puts the Mets at a season-high 12 games over .500 and a 2 1/2 game lead over the Phillies plus or minus half a game depending on who wins the Phillies-Padres game tonight.

Kick'em when they're down

Finally, the Mets are starting to have some consistency against bad teams. Last week, after the bullpen gave up a game they were leading by four in the ninth against the Pirates, the Mets went on to sweep a three-game series in Washington against the Nationals. The final two games in the series were blowouts: 12-0 and 9-3, but the first game was encouraging. Johan Santana started that game and pitched seven solid innings, leaving the game with a tenuous 4-3 lead. Now, the bullpen has blown six leads for Santana this season, so instead of being 16-7, his record is 10-7. This time, Pedro Feliciano was able to nail down the save. The series was encouraging from the standpoint that bullpen needs to show some life. They weren't responsible for any run given up to the Nats.

Currently, the Mets are 2/3 of the way through a series with the Pirates at PNC park in Pittsburgh. Mike Pelfrey pitched extremely well in the first game, and the bullpen held on for the 2-1 victory. The second game was nice because Pedro Martinez pitched seven innings for the first time all season, and he also looks a lot more comfortable than has all season. He allowed one run through seven innings. Unfortunately, this game also showed just how rusty their recent AAA callup, Eddie Kunz, is. He has been tagged as one of the possible replacements for Billy Wagner in the closer's role. Yeah, giving up three in the bottom of the ninth isn't going to cut it. He hadn't pitched in a game since last Sunday, and pitchers really need the repetition of pitching often to maintain a rhythm. They still won the game 7-4, but Kunz made it shaky. He's been a pretty closer for Binghamton and New Orleans, so hopefully he can pick it up a bit, especially since Wagner is feeling pain in his shoulder after the rehab appearances he has been making.

The Mets are now in a five game winning streak and lead the Phillies by 2 games in the division.

Deja vu of the worst kind

Didn't this happen a few weeks ago in Florida?
In Houston a woman drove to work at 6:30am and left at 3:30pm, only to find that her son is inside her truck unconscious. Turns out he had been dead for hours, which is not surprising given how quickly a closed car can heat up to well over 100 degrees in Houston fucking TEXAS! Apparently, "Cameron's mother was supposed to drop off her son at day care around 6am, before heading to work at the hospital, but forgot." Forgive the all-caps here, but HOW THE FUCK DO YOU FORGET TO DROP YOUR CHILD OFF AT DAY CARE?!? This is enraging! How are people so irresponsibly stupid?!?

I'm simply at a loss right now.

Beer me!

So the chest freezer is set up in my kitchen, and tonight I added lines and cobra taps to the chilled kegs. I am currently drinking a pint of my amber that I brewed many months ago (sometime back in the winter). Mmmm. This beer has really done well with the aging, though it lost a bit of the hop bite. It was really meant to have more hop flavor than bitterness anyway, and the flavor has been preserved quite nicely. This is delicious.

Roll of the dice

This season, the story for the Mets has been that of a rollercoaster ride after their starting pitcher leaves the game. The performance of the bullpen has been so erratic, there really is no way to be comfortable with any lead these days. Now with Billy Wagner injured, they are trying desperately to find someone to fill in the closer's role. The first choice was obviously to try using Aaron Heilman, as he's been a pretty solid setup man for the Mets for a while. Well, after blowing a two-run lead to the lowly Pirates on Monday, Jerry Manuel decided, rightly, to switch to using Pedro Feliciano. Feliciano has been one of the few consistent pitchers in that bullpen this year. He's had his down periods, as any pitcher will have, but they've been quickly corrected. I've been waiting for them to use Eddie Kunz, a young pitcher that has lots of experience closing games in college and in AA Binghamton, but Manuel keeps saying he doesn't want to throw his young guys into the fire so quickly. Well, he's starting to change his tune now that the bullpen is looking like it's going to kill the Mets' season once again. There's also talk of converting John Maine from a starter to a close, which is something I think he would be well suited for given the high velocity of his pitches and the good movement he has on his fastball. The only problem with that is the lack of depth they already have in the starting rotation, meaning that move would make the team weaker overall.

Call me cynical, but I really am already looking at what next season will bring. It's going to be a very interesting offseason given how many members of the team will be at the end of their contracts. I just hope Minaya doesn't continue his trend of signing aging and injury-prone veterans.

Wish I had a camera at the time....

A bunch of us went out to the Distillery on Mount Hope Ave tonight to celebrate Danielle's birthday. When I left and went to my car, I saw that the car next to mine looked kind of odd. Turns out someone wrapped that car in plastic wrap. Now, it's not nearly as impressive as the prank Jay Mutford pulled on one of his friends when he actually shrink-wrapped someone's entire car, as this was just someone wrapping the plastic around the car. Still, it was hilariously amusing.

As a side note, there is a beer festival at Frontier Field this Friday night. It was a lot of fun last year, especially when Angela decided to go 'sample for sample' with me. Man, she was wasted and I was good to drive. Silly girl. Should be good times once again!

Sonic The Hedgehog is a gentle creature

Game called due to... torrential downpour

The Rochester Red Wings game that Meredith and I were going to tonight wound up being right in the middle of a big storm front that is still producing heavy rain and major lightning. We went to the game for a bit hoping that the rain would let up and they would play ball, but when it became evident that nothing was changing, we headed over to the Old Toad for some beers and dinner. I just got back from dropping her off at her hotel, and I have to say that the lightning that is flashing all over the place tonight is very impressive. Some of the bolts are actually causing everything around me to be almost as bright as a sunny afternoon. We wanted to see baseball, but that'll have to wait. The beer was good, though.

Need a vacation from my free time

I spent this past weekend in Ithaca helping my parents put in new cabinets in the kitchen. The kitchen was gutted and there was an addition put on the house from the kitchen outward. That put me away from Rochester for yet another weekend this summer. All this traveling is starting to take a serious toll on me, and I really just need to start sleeping well again. I'll be doing a Benadryl reset on body tonight (2 Benadryls before bed to knock me the fuck out). Granted, 2 Benadryls don't typically knock me out all that effectively, but I don't want to go overboard tonight and risk sleeping through the alarm. I'll be able to stay in town this weekend (and drink with Swilly, woot!), but I have to go back the weekend after to Ithaca to put the tiles in the kitchen and the hardwood in the addition. I think I'm slapping a moratorium on travel for a couple weeks after that just so I can recoup some sleep and finally get out to explore Fairport a bit more for once.

Tomorrow night will be fun, though, as Meredith will be in town on business and we'll be hitting up a Rochester Red Wings game at Frontier Field. Hurray for triple-A baseball, instead of the rookie ball Valley Cats. :p Michael Cuddyer will be on the roster, as he's rehabbing from an injury. He's an infielder the Twins have used the past few years, but he's injured most of this year.

Rochester traffic: good for a laugh

I am routinely amazed at how messed up people in Rochester can be. Today I was driving home from work around noon-ish, and had to stop at a light in the city before hitting 490. The car in front of me had a license plate border that had me wishing I had a camera in my phone. The top part of the border said "21 & Single", while the bottom said "Holla At Me". I had to seriously restrain myself from bursting out laughing. I don't even know what to make of it; is the guy really desperate, or is he a douchebag? Either way, it was both hilarious and sad.

Night in the city.

I spent this past weekend down in New York City visiting Asher. This was part of what has turned into a summer-long series of trips to keep me out of Rochester. Next weekend I head down to Ithaca to help the parents put in more cabinets, but I have the following weekend free.

One thing I always make a point of doing when in New York is taking at least one trip to the Blind Tiger. It's a nice low-key bar in Manhattan, with a good menu of food and really good beer selection. This trip I was able to grab some Samichlaus on tap. This is one of my favorite strong beers, and is phenomenal on tap. It has a nice thick, sweet flavor, with a nicely balanced alcohol warmth. It also happens to be 14% ABV.

The primary reason I was in NYC this time is that Shea stadium is (deservedly) being knocked down after the season, and I needed to see it in person once more before the end. The Mets began a three-game series with the St Louis Cardinals on Friday night. This wasn't a game I was able to see much of, but Asher and I caught the end of it when we got back from eating dinner. Mike Pelfrey (9-6, 3.67) pitched 7 great innings, giving up 1 earned run on 7 hits. The Mets battered the Cardinals' starter, Mitchell Boggs (3-2, 7.41), tagging him for 6 earned runs in 4 1/3 innings.
Final Score: 7-2, Mets

On Saturday the Mets continued the series, and this was the game that we went to. Asher and I met up with Craig and Hannah and saw what wound up being a marathon baseball game. Since Pedro Martinez's father died last week, he was with his family, so they called up a pitcher from AAA New Orleans. This pitcher's name is Brandon Knight, and he has been dominant in the minor leagues this year. The minor leagues are not the majors, though. He allowed the first five hitters to reach base, four of them scoring during the inning. Through the game the Mets managed to take a 5-4 lead in the fourth inning, then lost it in the sixth. Because Knight was piling up the pitch count while not being terribly effective, they brought in Carlos Muniz in relief. That wound up allowing four more runs to score. In the end, the game went on for 14 innings, and wound up ending with an Albert Pujols 2-run homer.
Final Score: 10-8, Cardinals (14 innings)

Alright, I would finish this blog about the three games, but I'm distracted watching youtube videos of George Carlin. I'll finish this shit later.

Weekend Series

I am now off to NYC to visit some friends and watch the Mets in the second game of their series against the Cardinals. Finally, I get to be at Shea when the Mets are actually contending. It should be a good time.

A small glimmer of hope begins to stir.

Tuesday night the Mets began what was looked at as a big series with the Phillies at Shea. Both teams were tied for first place in the NL East with 53-46 records. The three games had the following pitching matchups:

• Santana(8-7, 3.05) vs. Blanton(5-12, 5.08)
• Maine(9-7, 4.20) vs. Meyers(3-9, 5.82)
• Perez(6-6, 4.15) vs. Moyer(9-6, 3.76)

These matchups certainly seemed to favor the Mets, though I'm smarter than that and expected little.

The first game featured Philadelphia's newly acquired starting pitcher, Joe Blanton, against our ace, Johan Santana. A big game with first place on the line is exactly the kind of game Johan was brought over from Minnesota to pitch. He pitched pretty well, actually, going 8 innings while giving up 2 runs on 8 hits. Blanton, on the other hand, hasn't really been having the best season. He was floundering with Oakland, and didn't fare much better in this game. The Mets managed 5 runs off of him. It would have been more runs except that there were some very nice defensive plays on the part of the Phillies. They threw two runners out at the plate during the game, and Chase Utley made a great diving catch in the right side gap with the bases loaded and 2 outs.

Taking a 5-2 lead into the ninth, Manuel pulled Santana for bullpen help, which proved their undoing. Since Wagner was out for the night with shoulder spasms, they turned to Duaner Sanchez, who is continuing to make good progress coming back from injuries received in a taxi accident two years ago. Unfortunately, he hadn't progressed enough, because the Phillies loaded the bases with no one out, and it was all downhill from there.
Final Score: 8-6, Phillies

The second game featured another Philadelphia pitcher having a poor season. Brett Meyers was actually demoted last month to the minor leagues because of his control problems. They brought him up this week in hopes that he could bolster a very mediocre starting rotation. He pitched against John Maine who has been having a lot of trouble himself of late. Maine hadn't pitched past the fifth inning in any of his previous three starts. He said he came into the game looking to attack the strike zone more and not walk as many hitters (5 walks in each of his last 2 starts, ouch).

I was not able to watch this game as I was helping a friend move into her new house, but it wound up being a pretty good game. Maine looks like he may be moving past his control issues, pitching 7 good innings, while Jose Reyes broke a tie in the sixth inning with a go-ahead 3-run homer. This was the second night in a row the Mets had a 3-run lead on the Phillies going into the ninth inning, but they had Billy Wagner this time. He pitched a quick ninth inning for the save.
Final Score: 6-3, Mets

The final game in the series was today in the early afternoon, meaning I once again missed it. This would have been an interesting game to see. Oliver Perez and Jamie Moyer are both having exceptional seasons against each other's team. Perez has a 0.35 ERA in 26 innings against the Phillies this season, including today's game. Today he pitched 7 2/3 innings, giving up 1 earned run while striking out 12. Moyer also pitched really well, going 7 innings giving up 1 earned run on 2 hits.

It was the eighth inning in this game the made all the difference. In the top of the inning, Oliver Perez wound up with the bases loaded and 2 outs. Aaron Heilman came in to relieve Perez, and got Jayson Werth to fly out to deep center. In any other ballpark, that would have been serious trouble, but Shea can hold most of the long fly balls that it sees. The bottom of the inning was beautiful. Carlos Delgado, who slumped horribly for the first 3 months of the season, has been on a torrid rampage of National League pitching this month. With two outs and Robinson Cancel on base, J.C. Romero, who left-handed hitters are anemic against this year, walked David Wright to get to Delgado. This also happened two nights previous, and that resulted in a monster 2-run homer by Carlos. On this occasion, Delgado laced an opposite field double into the left field corner to put the Mets up by 2 runs.
Final Score: 3-1, Mets

So, now the Mets have sole possession of first place in the NL East. I've been calling all season for them to not even be in contention at the end of the season, as just watching the team play left me with no real hope. They looked like a team with no fire or passion whatsoever. Since they fired Willie Randolph as manager, the team is now 21-12 under Jerry Manuel. I don't know how much that had to do with it, but the team looks fired up right now. They still have major flaws on the team, especially at the corner outfield slots and second base, but they're looking to give me a little bit of hope for the rest of the summer.

Of course, I've always known my beloved Mets to find ever more horrifying ways of destroying my hope and spirit, so we'll see where this all goes.

Personal responsibility at its best.

I have long railed against the lack of personal responsibility in America. If you know me, you know that I generally think people are too stupid to think on their own. When people think for themselves, they typically do stupid shit then refuse to take responsibility for their actions. The following story pretty much sums it up where a woman left her 4-year-old son in her car while she spent three hours in a nail salon getting her nails done for her wedding that day. This was in Florida, mind you, and the child died on the way to the hospital.

"Investigators say the woman may not have known her son was in the car.
They explain he may have climbed in to the vehicle without anyone noticing."

Obviously her nails were so important that she couldn't pay any attention to her kid who's four years old! Whenever I am with a friend that has children, they always know exactly where those kids are. If the kids have run off and we don't know where they've gone, then the search is on! It's all a basic sense of responsibility that any adult should have. Of course, that is one of the major issues with American culture today: no one seems to understand the need for personal responsibility anymore.

People should seriously need a license to procreate.

What goes up....

The 10-game winning streak the Mets have been on has finally come to an end. It's obvious, if you watch the team, that there was no good reason for them to win that many in a row in the first place. Their tenth win in that streak was indicative of why the team struggles so often. Johan Santana went 5 innings and got hit hard, while the bullpen coughed up the lead as soon as they had one. The Mets lack any real innings-eaters, with the possible exception of Santana. This lack of depth from the starters leads to a severe strain on the bullpen and that will lead to them breaking down before the season ends. The game following that win was 5-2 loss that showcased the flaws in their number 3 starter: John Maine. Maine has good low-90's velocity with good movement on his fastball and a good curve, when he's throwing it for strikes. His issue, and one that seems to creep up on him during each season, is that he gets wild with his pitches when he starts letting his left shoulder swing out too far. Maine needs to throw from over his right shoulder, not from his side. When he's on top of the ball, it has better movement and will sink instead of staying level. When he pitches more from his side, the ball levels off or starts rising, allowing it to either enter the hitter's wheel-house or miss the strike-zone completely. Anyway, that was what happened to him yesterday, he couldn't find the strike-zone.

Unless this team can keep the offense going consistently and somehow find some depth from its starting rotation, they will find themselves out of contention by September.

Home Run Derby

Yesterday was the home run derby at baseball's All-Star Game. The biggest story to be associated with it before the event was the fact that Alex Rodriguez opted not to participate. This fact, of course, caused ESPN's crack team of hack journalists to immediately jump on him for not attending. For not attending an event that is glorified batting practice, A-Rod's ego is called into question: " But it's not important enough, apparently, for Alex Rodriguez to risk not living up to his own ego. How sad is that?" (Thank you, Jayson Stark, for helping to continue the demise of real journalism). However, what's not said is that A-Rod would also be called out for egotism if participated and won the event. Then there's the possibility that he would participate and lose the event to some other player. That would lead to comments defaming his 'clutchness' and declarations would be made about him not being a 'real Yankee' (whatever that means).

Personally, I stopped caring about the All-Star festivities many years ago when it became apparent that the players didn't really take it seriously anymore. Watching Barry Bonds get taken out of the game a few years back for a replacement in the field (players typically don't see more than two or three innings these days), then walk out of the dugout through the clubhouse and just leave the stadium, well... that was very representative of how little most of the players cared. Watching Pedro Martinez decline to show up to the game because he didn't feel like it, that kind of killed it for me.

"This time, it counts", of course. Now that Bud Selig has decided to continue to destroy his legacy (which wasn't really bad before this and steroids happened) by making the game count for home-field advantage in the World Series. I had already ceased caring about the game before this decision, but the decision itself forced me into a boycott of the whole damn thing. I will not watch an All-Star Game again until that rule is removed. The home-field advantage in the World Series should go to the team that won more games during the regular season.

Bah, I can't wait until real baseball starts up again when the Mets play the Reds on Thursday for the start of a four game series. Here's hoping the Mets can continue to play the way they did to get on that 9-game win streak before the break.

First Post

So, this is the first post. Yay. I guess the first thing I'll do is describe what sort of crap will be going into this blog. Those that know me know that I love the following things:

• Baseball
• The New York Mets
• Brewing beer
• Drinking beer
• Playing video games
• Watching anime

This blog will primarily be filled with my rantings on these topics, with some other topics making appearances from time to time.

So, yeah, that's it for now. I'm in the middle of doing laundry.