Aroma: Roastiness. Dark Chocolate, to the point of reminding you of really good hot chocolate or chocolate milk.
Appearance: Very dark, almost black. Tan head with very little to no head retention.
Taste: Roasty and strong chocolate flavor. Reminds me of drinking chocolate milk, but with a really nice bitter, dark chocolate. Low alcohol and sweet.
Mouth Feel: Creamy! Good carbonation, maybe a little higher than I would have expected for a stout, but it really helps to balance the creaminess of the swee stout.
Overall: This is probably the best sweet stout I have ever had. This is not a beer you would want to drink all night, as I had all of two in two hours. It was, however, absolutely delicious! This is most certainly a beer I will be trying to clone soon. This beer is rated 9.1 on beeradvocate.com.
I found this in a build your own 6-pack at Whole Foods.
Aroma: Spice, spice, spice.
Appearance: Clear brown, perfect to style. Little to no head. No head retention.
Taste: You get the spices right away and they dominate, but they are well balanced with the malt of the beer. Taste like drinking pumpkin pie. Finishes with a slight tartness, that is refreshing after the malt and spice. No hop character, no alcohol perception.
Overall: Hello fall! I’ll be drinking a few of these as the season progresses.
I decided to give sauerkraut a try. After watching several different videos, I opted for a small batch method in a mason jar. I’m really just dipping my toes in the water with this, so who knows how it is going to turn out. The recipe was extremely simple. To make it, you need the following ingredients.
- White Cabbage
- Sea salt
- Caraway seeds
I shredded a single head of cabbage and mixed with a tablespoon of salt and handful of caraway seeds. Immediately the smell was amazing. The caraway seeds really lend a beautiful aroma to the mixture. I mixed it all by hand and squeezed the cabbage to try to bring the water out of the cabbage. I then covered the bowl with a towel and let it sit for an hour. Then I crushed the lettuce again and let it sit for 3 hours. I probably should have let it sit overnight, but at this stage I added the cabbage to a jar, covered it with a cabbage leaf, some water, and finally added pressure (with 2 shot glasses) to keep the cabbage below the water/brine level.
Hopefully in a few days I will start to see some fermentation working.
For anyone who may actually be following a feed for my blog, I will soon be dropping the domain name breaking-catch22.com. That name was given to the site when I first launched the blog, and represented the goals of the site at that time. Things have certainly changed and I have achieved the goals I set out to accomplish. That domain name expires next month and I have elected not to renew. The blog will continue and will be moved to http://timewasted.net. See you there!
It’s been pretty chaotic and I haven’t had the time or ability to post. Our power came back on Friday night, but Saturday the power company replaced the lines to our house. While my power appears to be stable now, they also cut the cable lines. It may be a few days before I have internet back at home.
The paleo challenge is going great so far. I’m not craving grains. I am including sweet potatoes, so that helps with some of it. This morning’s weigh in was 154.2! This is the lightest I have been in many years. I am feeling a dip in energy though, as expected. Hopefully as my body begins to adjust, my energy levels will go back up. I was sick most of last week, but I plan to get back in the gym this evening. This should be a good test of how bad the energy dip may be.
Nutrition has been good. Today’s breakfast was coconut milk kefir and 3 boiled eggs (1 yolk). Lunch and lunch 2 will be chicken breast with tomato sauce and sweet potato. I have a banana and Laura bar for snacks. I am going to drink my Jack3d supplement and have a protein shake on the way home.
The best side effect of the paleo diet is that my reflux has disappeared! Hopefully that will remain a thing of the past.
I had a nice run yesterday, but really wanted more today. I decided to get up early for Muay Thai. It starts (on Wednesdays) at 5:30am with 30 minutes of conditioning and then an hour of working/sparring. I had a great time, but I am really sore now. My knees are still beat up from Monday’s Jui Jitsu class and today just happened to be focussed on knees. On the upside, I seem to have good flying knees.
If I can make it, I intend to do MMA101 tonight. I doubt I will be staying for Jui Jitsu afterwards, since I really want to make it to conditioning tomorrow.
Today is the last day of PyCon 2010 and I am waiting on the next talk to begin. I’ve learned so much that, at times, I thought my head might just explode. Sessions run until 5pm, with Open Space sessions often running past 10pm. There are so many really smart people here and it is easy to get caught up in a conversation with someone you met just moments ago.
I think coming to PyCon may have been one of the best things I have done for myself in some time. It’s truly and amazing language and coming to a conference like this just lets me know that I am on the right path. I got the great chance to meet and speak with the folks doing the Jython work and that may be the way for me to do more python at work, considering I work for an almost 100% Java shop. Most of all, I take away from this that I need to get more involved in the community and do even more than I do. To get hired doing python, it’s probably best to get your name out there and be active. The community is small enough that it really shouldn’t be that hard to get your name known. So that is my goal for the next year, get my name known. Part of this will be running the Birmingham Users Group, part if it will be maybe helping with documentation and such for Python.org, part will be getting involved and coding on some open source projects.
Serendipitously, it seems PyCon 2011 will be held in Atlanta again next year. I will surely be here, regardless of what it takes to make that happen.
Lessons learned: If you really care about software as more than just your day job, get involved with the open source community in whatever language you have chosen. Take part in your local users groups. Get your name out there and do something to be a part of the community. Attend a conference, especially if it is one that is small enough that you can feel significant. If you are still searching for one, let me suggest the Python community. It really does rock!
Looking back, I have generally been the type of person who lets people dictate to me what it is that I am going to do. I make my desires known, but don’t do anything to make it a point that my desires will be the outcome. Today I took a big step and stood up for myself. After a couple of years of being led to believe that I would finally move into a full time development position, and then being stuck in a designer/analyst position, I laid it all out on the table. I let my boss know that either we start making the move, or I would need to look at other opportunities.
I’m very happy to report that it actually went over well. As I understand, we will be developing a plan to train someone to start stepping into my position as I start stepping into a much more development focused role. It was the perfect time to make the move as I am currently needed and we are about to be in a position that we will be short on developers. I’ll continue to post and update on how things go over the next few weeks. I’m tired of getting stepped on and ready to take my destiny in my own hands.
Only two more weeks left until PyCon! I’m excited to get out and see the greater Python community.
Lesson learned: You don’t get anywhere without taking risk. It was really scary to make a play like I did today, but the outcome may be worth it.
I’ve just found out that my annual review will be next Wednesday. I’ve been looking forward to this. I rarely get the chance to sit down with upper management and discuss my goals, at least in a setting where I feel like anyone may care. I’ve officially requested a re-titling to “Programmer/Business Analyst”. I don’ t believe my current title reflects all of what I do. While it may not actually mean much in the end, it affects the way others view me. I’m hoping to get a mandate to do more coding as part of this title change. This is the most direct I’ve been about this, but after almost a year and a half since I got my certification, it’s getting pretty old. I’m trying to find a way to stand up for myself without making the wrong impression.
Wish me luck, I’ll update Wednesday evening with the results!
I’ve added a section to the Portfolio page to include sys admin scripts I’ve written, and used. I started by adding a quick script that can be run from cron. It will check your external IP against a website and let you know, via email, if it has changed. The local file is ip.txt and should be saved in your home directory if running from cron.