mOBSCENE

I saw a cop kicking a man as he ran away screaming “Yes sir!” tonight at the Marilyn Manson concert.

The concert was cancelled because of security reasons after three songs.

So basically, after driving around for a while and then sitting in traffic for 2 hours we finally made it to Freaker’s Ball just in time for Manson to go on stage.

Manson played one song and then the band walked off stage. A few minutes later a security guy tells the crowd that they have to take a few steps back because a barricade has broken and needs to be repaired before the show can go on.

This takes about 45 minutes and requires several different people, including Manson (“Just move back and I’ll come back and fuck you reallll good”) coming out and begging people to move back.

Finally the band starts playing again and manages to make it through 2 more songs before walking off. From what we hear there is a brawl in the front and mace or tear gas has been sprayed and the barricade is broken again. Nothing happens for at least 20 minutes and then it looks like the backdrops and stage gear is being removed. Finally someone announces that Manson just wants us all to be safe, and is cancelling the show to protect us. Thanks Manson!

Here is a news story about the event.

Space Fails Me Again

Yesterday there was a massive CME (coronal mass ejection) from the Sun that was supposed to produce some excellent aurora. I wanted to see em, since I never have, so around midnight I took my leave of Scott and Adam and started driving north. I finally gave up around 2:30am somewhere in Nebraska. I made it back home around 6:00am. Today I am very tired, and very bitter.

Now before you start telling me how stupid I am for looking for aurora when they don’t come this far south, check out this page for pictures taken in places like southeast Missouri, Georgia, Illinois, Wichita and so on. I just got unlucky, I guess.

15 Minutes and Counting

I can feel my 15 minutes rushing by at an incredible rate!

I had a short interview with Jenee’ Osterheldt (name spelling stolen from this article) from the Kansas City Star this afternoon about my love for the iPod. She’s going to be doing a story about how the iPod is this massive pop culture phenomenon and she was given my name as a local iPod fan.

This is going to be a different story than the one I mentioned a few months back. In that one a reporter from the Kansas City Star wanted to interview me about vPod. We played a little phone tag but he never got back to me. Aparently he moved back to Hawaii. I can’t imagine why he didn’t want to stay here in the midwest and interview some geek about his software. *rolls eyes*

Anyway, she said the story will be out in a few weeks and I’ll be sure to post a URL here when it appears.

I Am Not A Crook!

I opened my first ever savings account today. Responsibility! Thinking of the future! No, just a spot to hold money for more toys, and possibly one very large toy in 5-10 years.

I was required to answer all kinds of questions so they could determine if I was a terrorist or not. They even said, “In cooperation with the Patriot act we’re gonna ask you questions to determine if you are a terrorist or not.”
They asked me if I was going to use this account for a business, if I would be transferring over $3000 into or out of it, if I would be using wire transfers and so on. I personally would have asked me “Do you hate Americans and want them all to die a boiling bath of their own blood?” but I am a little more upfront than most people are I guess.

One of the main reasons I opened a savings account is that I have been giving some thought to starting a small business in several years. To do this, I will need a lot of money so I figured I should probably start creating some. I have always treated my money kind of like a beer glass. If there is some beer in there, I’ll drink it. If not, I will wait till someone puts more in and THEN drink it. I’ve never really put saran wrap over the top and put it in the fridge for later, or given half my beer to the church or anything like that. This is of course why every other entry on this site is me oogling over some new and useless toy.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking a lot about opening a microbrewery. With my tour of Boulevard Brewery and my increasing obsession with brewing I am getting to where I think it might be a fun, enjoyable and profitable way to spend some of my life. I’m very happily employed now in I.T., I love computing and unlike many of my friends I am not really thinking about a way to “get out” of I.T. I am just thinking it might be a good way to work for myself. I don’t really want to start a software company. It’s all been done.

Well, it’s all been done except The One True Thing. If you are a fan of my friend Adam’s Blog you have already heard of The One True Thing but for those of you that havn’t, let me tell you something. It’s cool. That’s about ALL I can tell you because it’s also secret. We’re in the “we need a good, catchy name” phase right now but we’re itching to get coding. Yes, coding. As you may have guessed this is going to be a web site. Wow man. Seriously. It’s gonna be cool.

Oh yea, beer. The cider I made a few weeks back is in the keg and being drunked. It’s not very good. When I made it I added 2 lbs of brown and 2 lbs of white sugar to try to bring the alcohol level up. It did that, but it also added a terrible taste to the finished product. This is why people ferment things like malted barley and apples instead of white sugar I suppose. I can drink it, but I don’t think anyone else would want to. Tonight or tomorrow I am going to make a new batch with just apple juice and see if that turns out better. I’m also going to try my first home made receipe batch of beer. Nothing special, but it’s going to be the first time I make a beer that doesn’t come in a kit so it’s kinda exciting. I kinda think I should probably advance my craft if I want to open a brewery and sell this stuff to the world.

That’s all for today, faithless reader. I’ve got some learning to do.

b33r

My trip to alcoholism is nearly complete! Behold The Kegerator!

This is a Sanyo 4910 compact refrigerator from Best Buy and a dual faucet draft tower from Beverage Factory and several hours of my life. It will hold 2 5 gallon “Corney” kegs, which are the kinda you used to see soda being delivered in and a 5lb CO2 bottle, which is perfect. Eventually I will hopefully have two kegs of my very own homebrewed beer in there. Since I only have a single batch ready to keg now I have a keg of Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat being delivered on Friday. That should hold me over for a while!

My cider is about ready to go to the keg so I’ll be sampling that this weekend. I made it very strong, probably too strong, by adding a lot of white and brown sugar. This was probably a bad idea as the result is a very “raw” tasting drink. I’ve just finished adding some stabilizers to it which will need about 8 hours to do their magic and tomorrow I am going to cut the cider about 60/40 with fresh apple juice. Right now the cider is super dry, and about 11% ABV so adding that juice will sweeten it up and drop the alcohol content some.

More about the kegerator:
In case you want to do this yourself, here is what I did, or actually, what I would have done had I not made all the mistakes I did.
Obtain a Sanyo 4910 fridge.
Obtain a 3″ PVC draft tower.
Obtain a 3″ hole cutter that will go through thin metal. I bought mine, and the thing that it mounts to to use in a drill at Home Depot for about $25.
Obtain some large outside diameter washers with small inner diameters. The washers that come with the tower are too small.
Obtain a piece of 5-3/4″ square by 1/2″ plywood.
Obtain a tube of hand squeeze silicone sealant.

Take the lid off the top of the fridge. This is a plastic facade that can be removed by taking out 7 obvious screws. Look at the underside of the plastic top and you will see a diamondish shape in the plastic. Dead center of that is where you want the center of your draft tower. Drill a small pilot hole right in the middle all the way through the plastic. Use a dremel or razor or anything to remove the plasic fins that are inside that diamond. What you will end up with is a 1/2″ by 5-3/4″ by 5-3/4″ depression. Your piece of plywood should fit in this perfectly and flush. Make this happen.

Use some double sided tape, or tack or something to stick that wood inside the lid so you can put the lid back on without the wood falling out. Screw the lid back down nice and tight and make sure it’s aligned properly.

Now the fun part! Take your 3″ hole cutter, put the pilot bit in the pilot hole you made earlier and go to town. Slow and steady wins the race. They recommend you use cutting oil during this but I didn’t bother. Use a nice powerful drill and take it slow and keep it straight. Go all the way through the lid, the wood, the metal top of the fridge, the foam insulation of the fridge and the plastic interior of the fridge.

Now, take the template that came with your tower, or use the tower itself to mark the spots and drill the 4 mounting holes. Drill them slightly larger than your bolts cause those bolts are going to have to go through a lot of material and it’s a pain in the ass.

Take that top back off and take the piece of wood out. Use your sealant to make a ring or two around the outside of the holes. Hell, put some wherever you like. We just want a nice airtight seal between the wood and the top of the fridge and the wood and the inside of the plastic. Put it all backtogether, put your rubber gasket on top the plastic, bolt down the tower and take pictures!

You’ll note that I left out the parts where I had to redrill everything three times, cut the wood 4 times, make a big mess of the plastic top, spill my beer, kick the dog, scream at the neighbors and give up in disgust. I took the fall for you. I hope you appreciate it.

It was all worth it. I got a dual faucer kegerator that will hold 2 Corney kegs for about $300 total. A similar “real” kegerator would have run me about $1500. Mine isn’t as nice, and it’s not all stainless steel but it looks fine and it works great. One thing I intend to add is a 120v axial/biscuit/muffin fan wired into the lamp assembly that will force air up into the tower. One of the major complaints about making your own kegerator is that the first pint of the day will foam a lot because the cold beer hits a warm faucet or warm tubes. My brother has a real kegerator and the way they do it is by having a 1″ wide flexible tube running inside the tower to the top so that cold air is being blown up and out of the tower. I think a small fan will do the same trick nicely.

Kill Bill

I saw Kill Bill tonight with Adam, Scott and Christine. Very cool movie, but weird. Weird man. It’s Tarantino so it’s gonna be weird but this was pretty weird.

To be honest, I was expecting more action. It was actually a little slow for my tastes but don’t get me wrong, it was super good. Looking forward to Volume 2.

Go see it.