Tag: personal

It’s me Swimming… and Critiquing

A note: If you don’t want to see men and women in speedos swim do not watch the above video.

I’ve been swimming with the Davis Aquatic Masters now for over a year. I’ve enjoyed the program, and the people in it. So much so that I now serve on the Board of Directors.

The above video is just one of the many things DAM is doing (besides putting on an open water swim every year, raising funds to fight cancer, and annual food drives) for its members and the community. Seeing your stroke is vital to improving it. Thankfully, according to the coach, mine isn’t too bad.

I’m the first person you see swim across there, D is the fourth, and then I’m the seventh. Once it switches to a heads-on view I’m again the first. I have a tendency to bring my arms to far over on my stroke extension. if you draw a line going from your shoulder straight out in front of you they’re not supposed to cross over. Mine occasionally do. I also have a tendency to ignore my kicking, defaulting to a single 1/1 stroke/kick ratio. The ideal is 4/6

Last Flight of the Discovery

The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited. ~Neil Armstong

February 24, 2011, was the last flight of the Shuttle Discovery. Endeavor’s last flight is scheduled for April 19, and Atlantis has a tentative final launch for the summer. After that the Nation and People who once broke the bonds of gravity and went into the stars will be again tethered to their blue planet.

There is hope that private space programs will be able to pick up where the Shuttle program ended. Mostly, the ferrying of people and materials from Earth into space and to the International Space Station. NASA has plans for a program to replace the shuttle program but, as of now, it remains unfunded. In the current political climate in Washington, D.C. I do not see that changing anytime soon.

In a climate where such helpful programs as WIC and funding to public radio and television are being gutted, yet funds for two disastrous, decade long foreign wars has remained steady I have little hope for NASA.

I find this terribly depressing without being able to explain why…

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*
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