It’s a Festivus Miracle! Internet Gift Exchange Loot

Talking Time (TT), the only on-line community worth being part of, has a winter gift exchange every year. Members of the forum sign-up and then we do a secret santa style exchange, though Festivus, as we call it, is full of in-jokes and TT only memes. I’ve been doing Festivus for two years now and both times it’s been a blast. This year my secret Santa (ninja Santa on TT) had some difficulties in getting everything together and missed the deadline for mailing things out. Then there were some communication problems and by the end of it I was sure I wouldn’t be having any Festivus cheer.

At the beginning of this month I went to a friend of mine’s birthday in the Bay area, a friend who also happens to be a member of TT and whose birthdays are giant events with people coming from as far away as Indiana! It turns out that my ninja Santa was also attending his birthday party and brought the first part of my gift. She tells me there is more coming, something to do with eBay and assembly…

Who cares though? Here is all the cool stuff Luana (Loo-aun-a) got me for Festivus:

 

for me?
Such nice handwriting
That's Percy... He's a thing we have over at Talking Time... It's convoluted.
I've only flipped through it so far but it looks interesting
Yum genre fiction

Of course it wouldn’t be Festivus (or Talking Time) without something horrifying:

 

a hideous amalgamation of Mario and Mickey Mouse?

Happy Festivus everyone! I can’t wait to see what the rest of my gift is.

Wherein I attempt to brew an ale Part. 2

This is just how I did it too

Last Friday was when I was supposed to bottle my apple crisp ale. I couldn’t though because the bottle caps had not yet arrived (either had the bottle capper.) Spoiling my plan to have this post appear here yesterday morning and why you are reading a post here on Tuesday. I received the capper on Saturday and the caps showed up on Monday.  Seeing as I was already behind schedule I decided that last night had to be the night. With the help of D I sanitized all the instruments, brought the beer out from its dark hiding space and tried to move it into a pot.

This is MY beer you go make your own!

Why did it need to go into a pot? Well the pot had some honey in it which I believe is necessary to either sweeten the beer after the yeast has eaten everything or give the yeast a little more to eat, maybe both. I have no idea really this is my first time doing this and I spent more time just trying to get the procedure right without worrying too much about the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of it all. The hardest part by far was managing the suction in the hose and getting the beer to flow into the pot and afterwards into the bottles. I also had a small problem with some of my bottles, when it came time to cap them. They were screwtops. It only took me breaking one bottle and for D to point this out to me before I figured it out though! So, not a lot of beer was lost nor any additional bottles broken.

All total the one gallon kit made nine beers. One which I couldn’t drink because it had broken glass in it. Two which might become contaminated because I couldn’t cap them all the way. All in all not the most efficient use of my time or money. Beer is cheaper just about anywhere. These cost my, not including labor, more than $4 dollars a bottle. But, the experience of brewing my own beer is priceless, right? RIGHT? Right. Next time maybe I’ll share some with you.

Everything I need to get bottling...
Everything after it's been sanitized.
The mysterious art of siphoning... I'm not very good at it.
What's left after all the beer is gone, yum?
These might not make it two weeks. They're only 'half-capped.'
A bottle full of beer that I can no longer drink. *sadface is sad*

Next time I’ll do it myself!

Five lions are always better than one

I was going to write about some of the books I found at my parent’s house today but I have all sorts of books and I’m getting more and more all the time. So a blogpost about books didn’t seem to be that interesting. Then I was going to blog about the state of education in California and how the Legislature intends to deal with the problems in the upcoming year but, that takes a lot of research I haven’t quote done yet (I might do it someday.) So, I was kinda at a loss as to what to make today’s post about… I could do another picture diary of Ninja Turtles or video game manuals or some other random thing I have in my closet but I wasn’t feeling that either.

So what is a blogger with writer’s block to do? Oh it’s February and my Let’s Play of King’s Quest II: Romancing the Throne starts!  I can write about that… Except I haven’t started it yet. Hrmm. Hrmm. I got my W-2s and I can do my taxes now and get a fat tax return! No, that is boring… I know!  I’ll talk about how I was ripped off last night by Dimple (They bought out part of Tower Records.)

Dimple is a one-stop music/movie/video game store that also sells vinyl and objects usually found in a Hot Topic. I’ve never shopped at the store all I knew is that they bought used Movies, CDs, and Video games. I recently needed to make some money and after putting numerous items on eBay was slightly burned out making auctions and wanted something simple. So I forego the internet and head over to Dimple with the entire American Voltron cartoon collection, the kind that came in these nice fancy tins. Now prices for these thing seem to be all over the place on-line. Amazon has volume four for just over five dollars, volume one for sixteen, and volume two for over thirty… Ebay’s prices are just as erratic with brand new copies costing $9.99 and used ones in good condition for over thirty. Perhaps there is some misunderstanding and some of these are in the tins and others are not. I don’t know. I do know though that all Dimple gave me was $16.  Yup, if I had wanted to buy a CD (and who does that anymore) I could have received $20 in store credit. It doesn’t matter how cheap these things are now I would have made more money if I hadn’t saved myself the minor trouble and sold the things myself.

Dimple isn’t the only store that does this. Gamestop is notorious for its used game policy. Gamestop will give you less than half of what a game is worth in store credit, even less for cash and then put it back on the shelves for just under the price of a brand new copy. The margins they have on used games are criminal. This is why I always sell my games on-line.  Even if I don’t get much I’m guaranteed to get more than I would from Gamestop and the person buying from me is likely to get the game cheaper as well!

Laziness is expensive I guess.  Here are some more cool pictures of Voltron:

JPRart
lastscionz
Mborkowski

Don’t read this! Go watch history being made!

With so many momentous things going on I think there are better things you could be reading about today.

Al Jazeera’s coverage of the happenings in Egypt – Al Jazeera has been seeing a lot of traffic since the trouble in Egypt started. They have correspondents on the ground (most of the cable news networks and some of the major networks no longer do,) and they’ve given far more coverage to the events than American media has.

Tunisian Revolution – The secular uprising in country of Tunisia is what started the large scale rioting and demand for right throughout the Middle East.

Jordanian Riots Cause Reform

Student Riots in Yemen – Have forced the country’s autocratic ruler to stop grooming his son to replace him.  Students have larger goals too forcing out the autocrat entirely.

By the time this goes up I’m sure other people will have taken the initiative do demand their governments recognize their natural rights as well.  I only wish our government was more supportive of such movements.  The United States was founded by people who were tired of seeing their natural rights denied, but our government often asks against the words found in our Declaration of Independents:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

For too long the United States government has actively worked to make a mockery of Mr. Jefferson’s word and their meaning. I encourage you to remind the President and your elected representatives of that fact in the hopes they will reconsider American policy towards Egypt and countries like it.

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