Broken Bottle Blog

Well I keep saying this “I’m gonna blog more” and I keep not doing it. But I’ve been busy and have some news. I got married! I have a whole new family now kids and everything, and I love it. Plus I’ve been moving, going to bachelor parties (mine and Mark’s) , planning a wedding, and there’s that work thing too. But the kids are gone for a month with the aunts and uncles, so I should have some time to blog. Actually I’m thinking of wiping out the server and starting anew. I just not feeling the old blog anymore, that’s the old me I guess. Thinking of making more of a family website, with a blog still. I don’t know if that’s good web etiquitte or if there is good web etiquitte. I mean I’m sure that would create broken links to those few who may have linked to my blog. We’ll see. If there is anything my readers need, like a picture I’ve had posted up here, let me know before I delete it. But I think I have everything backed up on my PC. I’m thinking of using the Drupal CMS software, and I’m sure it will be a couple of months until all this happens, so check back from time to time.

I think I’m gonna put this blog on Hiatus until after the first of the year, so check back mid January or so.  Just been busy lately.

I just read about Jimmy Camp in Wired magazine, and he claims to have the first commercially availiable cd recorded solely with an ipod.  He has audio on the site, and it doesn’t sound to bad, was a little distorted but that was on my laptop, the speakers suck.  I don’t know if this should be the new trend in recording but I could see this as a way to get a quick demo out or just to record something so you don’t forget.  Check out the video on his site and he’ll tell you how he did it, if you can get through the first part of him ranting about the music industry.

Well, Todd cancelled his show Thursday night, but he’ll  be back july 20th, and our tickets are still good.  His flight got cancelled apparently. Bummer.

Our phone has been shut off for good. Our internet has been down for over a week, but obviously back up. I have a new cell phone, same number, but new phone. It’s verizon, so if you have verizon call me for free. Decided to use cell phones for the main phone, the reception is sketchy sometimes but you’ll have to deal with it.

My internet connection has been down for a few days (but if you’re reading this it should be up, along with our home phone, finally!) so this is old news, but you may have heard. Lonelygirl15 is fake.

Well, it’s fun while it lasted, Lonelygirl15 has been exposed. Apparently 3 men from L.A. hired her and Danielbeast to act out the videos in an experiment in a new way of storytelling. It’s even been on T.V., here’s a a video, from Renetto’s youtube channel, taped off NBC. Try to ignore Renetto’s annoying commentary.

It’s also been on MSN news (link)

I saw her on Jay Leno, also.

They are still going to keep the series going, but are posting the new videos to revver.com. If you haven’t heard of revver it’s similar to youtube except every video has an ad at the end. If anyone clicks the ad, the poster of the video gets paid. Now, maybe this was a planned move. I mean LG’s videos have got over 2million views and if that continues, and even a fraction of people click ads, cha-ching. I don’t know how much money you get but it must be worthwhile. Hopefully LG and DB can get some other work out of this, ride their fame for a while. Although LG videos are still getting posted on Youtube.

I don’t know if I’ll keep watching, now that the cats out of the bag. I’m sure there will be a lot of people trying to copy LG now.

Border radio is fast becoming my favorite internet radio station. Tokyo ninja radio was my favorite, but I think border is better now. Just heard of Border and haven’t turned it off yet. Border is a mix of bluegrass, folk, country (good country, aka. Johnny Cash) rockabilly, psychobilly, blues. Just played Otis Redding and Nekromantix and Johnny cash. Tokyo ninja radio is just rockabilly mostly, but you should check both of them out. I’ve got them bookmarked in winamp. Another favorite of mine is Chronix radio but it’s a metal station.

Haven’t posted in a while, just haven’t been in the blogging mood, but feel like I’m letting my readers down ( all three of you). I’ve been a little obsessed with conserving energy lately, I’ve been reading alot about global warming, and feel a bit guilty actually. And it’s completely in my power to do something about it. Plus I just feel so wasteful, I’ve been feeling that way for a while now. I aspire to live off-the-grid, and I may be a long term goal, we’re talking years. What got it started was when I went to fast food joints and I pulled the straw wrapper off and threw it on the floorboard, after a while there was a big pile of wrappers. I thought what a waste of paper, how many millions of straw wrappers get thrown on the floor everyday. I still go out for fast food often. My reasoning is, well it’s paper it’ll biodegrade pretty quickly. But, I’ve been changing other aspects of my life, I’ve started a recycling, Plano has a pretty good recycling system, anything that is recycleble, Plano will come get it. Computers, grass clippings, chemicals.
I recently started changing my light bulbs over to Compact Fluorescents, they use way less power than incadescent bulbs.

For Example:
I have six light bulbs in my bathroom, four 60 watts above the sink and two 125 watts above the shower/toilet area, and I changed these over to Compact Fluorescents. Actually the four over the sink, I just use two bulbs now, I thought four was overkill. So let’s do the math:

Original set-up:
Four 60 watts________________________240 watts
Two 125 watts________________________250 watts
Total_______________________________490 watts

New set-up (with compact fluorescent)
Two 60 watt equivilent (uses 15 watts each)____30 watts
Two 90 watt equivilent (uses 26 watts each)____52 watts
total________________________________82 watts

490 watts to 82 watts just for changing out bulbs, they are more expensive though, but they do last for 5 to 7 years, and in my opinion they are brighter than their incadescent counterparts. They take about 2 minutes to reach full brightness also. Plus they save on the electric bill.

I’ll probably never live off grid, but a boy can dream can’t he.

Turned my cell off today, don’t feel like talking to anyone.

Advantages of a laptop #53: You can blog while you brew. Man I love this laptop. It’s great, not only because I can entertain myself with the internet while I brew, but I can keep the recipe on screen. Also, I can keep my homebrew log on the laptop and update while I brew. Brewing an Oatmeal stout today, I try to brew this every year around the Holidays and my birthday, so I’ll be on par for that. I was planning on getting two batches ready for my B-day, but don’t have time today, maybe next week. Here’s the recipe:

11/16/02
Oatmeal Stout, Extract

Ingredients:

6 lbs. dark malt extract
1 lb. flaked oats (oatmeal)
1 lb. six row malt
1 lb. dark crystal malt 140L
1/2 lb. roasted barley
1/4 lb. black patent malt
1 oz. kent golding hop pellets 5.3% (bittering)
1/2 oz. willamettes hop pellets 5.1% (flavoring)
1/2 oz. willamettes hop pellets 5.1% (finishing)
wyeast #1084 irish ale 11/5/02
3/4 cup priming sugar
5 gallons water

Procedure:

1. Smack yeast pack
2. Steep grains in 4 gal. water until boil.
3. Add extract and bring to rolling boil.
4. Add bittering hops, boil 60 mins.
5. Add flavoring hops in last 10 mins. of boil, boil 5 mins.
6. Add finishing hops in last 5 mins of boil.
7. Steep finishing hops 5 mins.
8. Pour into first fermenter, check gravity reading and pitch yeast.
9. 4 days later, transfer to carboy.
10. At 2 weeks transfer to bottles. Add priming sugar, check final
gravity.
11. Leave in bottles 2 weeks.
12. Drink.

O.G.: 1.062
F.G.: 1.022
Alcohol%: 5.4%
Results:Fucking good, make more as soon as possible!!!

I think I’ll start a homebrew page too, and put all my recipes in there. Happy Brewing.

Got some pictures and videos up from Nascar. Pictures are in the Photo Gallery. Video is of the end of the race, didn’t have much disk space to record much video. Enjoy.

Never done this shit before.