The Red Brick Times

  Thursday, August 31, 2006

The new beer is here, the new beer is here!Fresher Beer, Once a Year - AOL News

Posted 9:33 PM by Terri S (3) comments

       Comments:
  • Homer Simpson Beer Quotes:

    Beer... Now there's a temporary solution.

    I like my beer cold... my TV loud... and my homosexuals flaming.

    Ah, the college road trip. What better way to spread beer-fueled mayhem?

    You must love this country more than I love a cold beer on a hot Christmas morning.

    I've figured out an alternative to giving up my beer. Basically, we become a family of traveling acrobats.

    Bart, a woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one!

    Now son, you don't want to drink beer. That's for Daddies, and kids with fake IDs.

    All right, brain. You don't like me and I don't like you, but let's just do this and I can get back to killing you with beer.

    Ah, beer. The cause of and the solution to all of life's problems.

    When will I learn? The answer to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a bottle, they're on TV!
    # posted by Blogger whatley : September 01, 2006 6:56 AM
     
  • The measure of a good beer:

    HOMEBREW BITTERING UNITS (HBU's)

    A measure of the total amount of bitterness in a given volume of beer. Homebrew Bittering Units can easily be calculated by multiplying the percent of alpha acid in the hops by the number of ounces.

    For example, if 2 ounces of Northern Brewer hops (9% alpha acid) and 3 ounces of Cascade hops (5 % alpha acid) were used in a 10-gallon batch, the total amount of bittering units would be 33: (2x9)+(3x5)=18+15. Bittering units per gallon would be 3.3 in a 10-gallon batch or 6.6 in a 5 gallon batch, so it is important to note volumes whenever expressing bittering units.

    INTERNATIONAL BITTERING UNITS (IBUs)

    A measure of the bitterness of a beer in parts per million(ppm), or milligrams per liter(mg/l) of alpha acids. You can estimate the IBUs in your beer by using the following formula:


    IBU= (ounces of hops x %alpha acid of hop x % utilization) gallons of wort x 1.34


    Percent utilization varies because of wort gravity, boiling time, wort volume and other factors. Homebrewers get about 25% utilization for a full one-hour boil, about 15% for a 30-minute boil and 5% for a 15 minute boil. As an example, 1 ounce of 6% alpha acid hops in 5 gallons of wort boiled for one hour would produce a beer with 22 IBUs:

    IBU = 1 x 6 x 25 =22 IBUs
    5 x 1.34


    METRIC BITTERING UNITS (MBUs)

    MBUs are equal to the number of grams of hops multiplied by the percent alpha acid.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : September 01, 2006 8:37 AM
     
  • And you thought you would never need math.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : September 01, 2006 8:38 AM
     
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Is there a link between car color and accidents? The site wisegeek has the answer to that and other questions you need to answer, like "What is the most humane way to euthanize a fish?"

Posted 9:58 AM by Andy (0) comments

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  Wednesday, August 30, 2006

We're #1 again.
Cleveland poorest big city in the U.S.

Posted 6:04 AM by whatley (1) comments

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  Tuesday, August 29, 2006

Fantasy meets unreality. Spaced Out: The Best of Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner. Read the customer reviews. Free samples here. (shudder)

Posted 12:30 PM by Andy (0) comments

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I am newly computered. I went to Royal Business Equipment in Elyria and they built a desktop cube to my specs. I have joined the LCD monitor age and have room on my desk for more piles of paper than before.

I have been working on a combination of two 7-year-old HP Pavilions and an IBM Thinkpad 600 laptop wedded to a docking station the size of a small suitcase. All were slow, requiring too much time to even refresh a screen. At first, I attributed that to the crawly dialup connection via the bearskin and stone-knife equipment maintained by the previous-Century Telephone Company. But as I upgraded software and tried to keep everything ticking, it became apparent that computers designed for former cutting edge technology (Windows 95 and IBM OS2) were not up to handling Windows XP, Mozilla, Adobe Acrobat, and the myriad of audio and video mushrooms that have sprung from the undergrowth. Don't even think about Windows Vista that is in Beta now and will be coming out next year.

So I have two old, slow computers to donate. One HP pavilion desktop, one IBM Thinkpad 600 laptop. They both have telephone modems and USB ports. The desktop has a 15" monitor with built in microphone, and Polk speakers that attach. It has a speakerphone funtion built into the modem that uses these for phone calls. Both computers are fully operational. The HP has Windows 98 and the IBM has Windows XP and Windows 2000 (select which one you want at boot-up). The IBM laptop battery is toast, but it operates from the power adaptor, or when plugged into the docking station. HP 600 batteries are on eBay ($50 to $170).

Unless anyone on the RBT needs them, I will give them to a friend who donates computers to those in his church who have none and who need to learn basic computer skills to become more employable.

I also have an HP Pavilion from which I have removed the hard drive (it failed), the 3.5" floppy, and the CD R/W to add to the new box.

Anybody need a desktop computer with power supply, motherboard, CPU (Intel Celeron), 128 Mb RAM, USB ports and an ethernet card for a you-build project?

I will throw in keyboard, mouse, CD ROM drive, monitor, cords. I will also include an ATI "All-in-Wonder" card, cables and software that lets you manipulate video tape and television images. It has a bunch of input-output connections and a TV cable coax imput. Watch TV on your screen. capture images. Play with video tape. It has a video monitor output jack in addition to the normal computer monitor output.

To make this computer work, you will need only a hard drive (used 10-40Gb drive, maybe $20-$50 on eBay) and an operating system disk (Windows 98 perhaps) to make it go. Plus some hard drive formatting and reloading time. The operating system disk should boot the computer for you to let you build the hard drive.

Posted 10:38 AM by Andy (1) comments

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  • PS:
    Both the HP desktop and the IBM laptop have ethernet ports for those of you who are DSL'd or networked. The IBM RJ41 ethernet plug (8-pin telephone plug) is in the docking station, but there is also a PCMCIA ethernet card and RJ41 cord for stand-alone use.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 29, 2006 11:45 AM
     
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  Sunday, August 27, 2006

From the Sunday, August 27th, Chronicle:
Joyce E. Jones (nee Kostyo), 64, of Ft. Myers, Fla., and formerly of Elyria, died Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006, in Tampa, Fla., from complications following a double lung transplant. She and her late husband, Bob, owned and operated Grassie’s Wayside Inn in Elyria for many years. Arrangements are incomplete and will be announced by Bauer-Laubenthal Funeral Home, Elyria.
During some of the schoolhouse years (i.e. rare times when we had money) a late breakfast at Grassie's was a once a week (at least) event. After the schoolhouse I kept going there and over time got to know the family pretty well. (One time Joyce's son Jeff, who lived with her and Bob, stayed with me for awhile to help get over some trouble on the home front. I don't think he knew it but, before he asked if he could stay there, Joyce had already approached me about it.) I dated the waitresses (one became my girlfriend for a time), went to their parties, got snuck so many free drinks that my one and only DUI was after leaving there one night, and was generally treated like royalty by everybody. I miss that place a lot. I miss those people more.

Posted 4:25 PM by whatley (2) comments

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  • I used to eat there when I was working for the telphone company. We had a couple of holiday parties in the "Trophy Room" downstairs. I do remember that the entire staff treated customers like they were either family or long-lost friends. It just felt good to be there. After the second fire, they decided not to rebuild. I think there is now a Dollar General store on the site. My current favorite place is the Ponderosa restaurant in Vermilion. The manager (Mike Sartor) has built a great team. The young folks who work there (funny, everybody seems young to me lately) work together and treat us very well. I would rather eat there than at a place with a sommelier. It just feels good to be there.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 29, 2006 10:35 AM
     
  • All the employees referred to the "Trophy Room" as "The Room of Feathered Death".
    # posted by Blogger whatley : August 29, 2006 3:55 PM
     
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  Monday, August 21, 2006

The Lorain County Fair is now through next Sunday. I will be working a ticket booth Wed and Thurs morning, Fri afternoon, and Sat night. Our Kiwanis club gets $$ that we use for projects to help young children in Lorain County. See you there.

Posted 12:23 PM by Andy (1) comments

       Comments:
  • Make sure you stop and say "Hi" to John, Pat, Marge, Ray et al, at the FOWL tent.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 23, 2006 4:49 PM
     
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Tools “Defined”

Posted 12:04 PM by Andy (1) comments

       Comments:
  • And the corollary:
    10 Best Car Repair Tools of All Time. There are only 10 things in this world you need to fix any car, any place, any time.

    1. Duct Tape: Not just a tool, a veritable Swiss Army knife in stickum and plastic. It's safety wire, body material, radiator hose, upholstery, insulation, tow rope, and more - in an easy to carry package. Sure, there's prejudice surrounding duct tape in professional competitions, but in the real world, everything from Le Mans-winning Porsches to Atlas rockets and attack-helicopters use it by the yard. The only thing that can get you out of more scrapes is a quarter and a phone booth.
    2. Vice Grips: Equally adept as a wrench, hammer, pliers, baling wire twister, breaker-off of frozen bolts and wiggle-it-til-it-falls-off tool. The heavy artillery of your tool box, vice grips are the only tool designed expressly to fix things screwed up beyond repair.
    3. Spray Lubricants: A considerably cheaper alternative to new doors, alternator, and other squeaky items. Slicker than pig phlegm, repeated soakings will allow the main hull bolts of the Andrea Doria to be removed by hand. Strangely enough, an integral part of these sprays is the infamous Little Red Tube that flies out of the nozzle if you look at it cross eyed (one of the 10 worst tools of all time).
    4. Margarine Tubs with Clear Lids: If you spend all your time under the hood looking for a frendle pin that caromed off the pertal valve when you knocked both off the air cleaner, it's because you eat butter. Real mechanics consume pounds of tasteless vegetable oil replicas just so they can use the empty tubs for parts containers afterward. (Some of course chuck the butter-colored goo altogether or use it to repack wheel bearings.) Unlike air cleaners and radiator lips, margarine tubs aren't connected by a time/space wormhole to the Parallel Universe of Lost Frendle Pins.
    5. Big Rock at the Side of the Road: Block up a tire. Smack corroded battery terminals. Pound out a dent. Bop noisy know-it-all types on the noodle.
    Scientists have yet to develop a hammer that packs the raw banging power of granite or limestone. This is the only tool with which a "Made in Malaysia"
    emblem is not synonymous with the user being maimed.
    6. Plastic Zip Ties: After 20 years of lashing down stray hose and wiring with old bread ties, some genius brought a slightly slicked-up version to the auto parts market. Fifteen zip ties can transform a hulking mass of amateur-quality wiring from a working model of the Brazilian Rain Forest into something remotely resembling a wiring harness. Of course it works both ways. When buying a used car, subtract $100 for each zip tie you find under the hood.
    7. Ridiculously Large Craftsman Screwdriver: Let's admit it. There's nothing better for prying, chiselling, lifting, breaking, splitting or mutilating than a huge flat bladed screwdriver, particularly when wielded with gusto and a big hammer. This is also the tool of choice for all oil filters so insanely located that they can only be removed by driving a stake in one side and out the other. If you break the screwdriver -- and you will just like Dad and your shop teacher said -- who cares, it has a lifetime guarantee.
    8. Baling Wire: Commonly known as MG muffler brackets, baling wire holds anything that's too hot for tape or ties. Like duct tape, it's not recommended for NASCAR contenders, since it works so well you'll never need to replace it with the right thing again. Baling wire is a sentimental favorite in some circles, particularly with the Pinto, Gremlin, and Rambler set.
    9. Bonking Stick: This monstrous tuning fork with devilish pointy ends is technically known as a tie-rod separator, but how often do you separate tie-rod ends? Once every decade if you're lucky. Other than medieval combat, its real use is the all-purpose application of undue force, not unlike that of the huge flat-bladed screwdriver. Nature doesn't know the bent metal panel or frozen exhaust pipe that can stand up to a good bonking stick. (Can also be use to separate tie-rod ends in a pinch, of course, but does a lousy job of it).
    10. A Quarter and a Phone Booth: See tip #1 above.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 21, 2006 12:20 PM
     
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  Friday, August 18, 2006

Back from Cincinnati. Living in an office in an industrial building for the past week. At least there was a shower. Pretending to be a technical writer, authoring instructions on how to put lights on bikes. Will probably be paid in pancakes. Yum.

Posted 10:36 AM by Andy (0) comments

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Elyria makes the front page of The New York Times:
Heart Procedure Is Off the Charts in an Ohio City

Posted 6:51 AM by whatley (1) comments

       Comments:
  • Ah. Capitalism. The foundation and bulwark of our society. The basic tenet of Capitalism is "more". And the man who hoarded pancakes? They put him in the booby hatch. We need to change the medium of exchange from little greenish pieces of paper to pancakes. At least you would be less likely to starve. Rob a liquor store and eat the evidence. With a limited shelf life, the pancakes in circulation would turn over frequently. Now about that shortage of flour...
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 18, 2006 10:26 AM
     
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  Wednesday, August 16, 2006

"Loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government when it deserves it."
-- Mark Twain

Posted 2:31 PM by whatley (1) comments

       Comments:
  • This quote is used as a chapter heading in a book I just finished called Chasing Ghosts by Paul Rieckhoff. Good quote and very good book.
    # posted by Blogger whatley : August 16, 2006 2:41 PM
     
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  Monday, August 14, 2006

We're number one! - We're number one!

In job losses.

Posted 3:36 PM by whatley (3) comments

       Comments:
  • I guess I can expect an influx of Buckeyes soon. No state income tax in Florida either. Social services suck, though, so don't be coming down for a handout. You will have to fight for a spot in the median strip and bring your own pauper bucket will ya'?
    # posted by Blogger Terri S : August 15, 2006 6:21 PM
     
  • Pauper bucket? Pauper bucket!? Oh, how I wish I had a pauper bucket! Had to trade it for a handful of gruel. Cold guel. With stones in it. And broken glass. Get the full story here.
    # posted by Blogger whatley : August 15, 2006 8:09 PM
     
  • Me too! Me too!
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 18, 2006 10:18 AM
     
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  Sunday, August 06, 2006

Betsy and I saw a bumper sticker yesterday on the way back from Michigan:
"And on the eighth day, God created bagpipes."

And so:

"These are bagpipes. I understand the inventor of the bagpipes was inspired when he saw a man carrying an indignant, asthmatic pig under his arm. Unfortunately, the man-made sound never equalled the purity of sound achieved by the pig." - Alfred Hitchcock

Respondez s'il vous plaid: Honk if you're Scottish.

All Scottish food is based on a dare.

Macadam, the first man on Earth, according to the Celtic bible.

I used to be sane, but now I'm better.

Insane: you're nuts and it bothers you. Crazy: you're nuts and you like it.

Yes, I'm weird, but I'm saving to be eccentric.

Scientists have shown that the moon is moving away at a tiny yet measurable distance from the earth every year. If you do the math, you can calculate that 85 million years ago the moon was orbiting the earth at a distance of about 35 feet from the earth's surface. This would explain the death of the dinosaurs. The tallest ones, anyway.

Posted 5:12 PM by Andy (0) comments

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Back from Alpena, Michigan (hold up left hand, look at back of hand, point to right side of index finger, near the first knuckle) located about here. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary and Underwater Preserve just opened a new HQ facility, the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center, in Alpena last September. They took over part of the closed Fletcher Paper Mill, built in 1898 and operational through 2004, and converted it to museum, display, store and interpretive space. The Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary encompasses a several-hundred-square-mile area of Lake Huron around Thunder Bay in which hundreds of ships have come to rest over the past two centuries. There are about 65 known wreck sites and archives suggest that there may be nearly 200 in total. A film shown at the Heritage Center has old photos, history and current underwater footage of some of the ships. The cold fresh water has preserved wood and even rope rigging on some of the older sailing vessels. Here is a link to the Shipwrecks, known and suspected, in the preserve. The displays in the Center include some large scale models of ships, photos, and recovered artifacts from some of the vessels. Thunder Bay is only one of 14 NOAA National Marine Sanctuaries.

And, since this is all owned and sponsored by NOAA (the weather bureau people), there is a dynamic display unlike any I have seen before. Imagine a white reflective movie screen shaped into an 6-foot diameter sphere. Now envision four computer video projectors spaced equidistantly around it. Now consider what happens when a flat Mercator projection of a global map is re-projected on to a sphere. The result is a full-color, pole-to-pole, walk-around planet, tilted axis and all. There is a 360-degree view of Mars with a narrative comparing geological features with those of Earth. Then the view switches to Earth. There, suspended in space, is a turning Earth with color-coded topography and bathymetry, from the Himalayan peaks to the Marianas trench. That segues into a rotating globe of day and night earth, with nighttime lights color-coded as to electrical (white) and fires (yellow). I was surprised to see how much of sub-Saharan Africa is being burned for agricultural use. Our commercial and residential development along the Interstate Highway System makes the US road network visible from space. The ocean temperatures are also displayed by color, illustrating el Nino and la Nina events that occur in the Southern Pacific off the West coast of S. America. They show the hurricane season in 2004, visually highlighting all the storm activity around the globe over a period of several months. The narrative points out the four major hurricanes that struck Florida that year, from storm genesis off the coast of Africa to rain-out over the Southeastern US. Finally, they show carbon dioxide increase projections and the resulting color-coded global temperature increases for the next 500 years. With a conservatively small (1%-2%) annual CO2 increase for the next 120 years, global temperatures rise and maintain averages from 25 to 30 degrees higher than at present. Within a couple of centuries, the polar ice caps have completely vanished, and the entire globe is a solid mass of red (25 degrees higher) shading to black (30 or more degrees higher) at the poles. Think global desertification. Think plant and animal extinctions. Think human species endangerment. We're toast if we don't do something drastic that hasn't been invented yet. I was mesmerized and entranced by this exhibit, and want one of my own. It is called NOAA Science on a Sphere and was unveiled in Alpena in early July. Here are some of the data sets and video clips used for the SOS exhibit. I downloaded the one for the 2004 hurricane season. It doesn't have the same impact on the monitor as it does glowing on a 6-foot three-dimensional planet hanging in space.

The old paper mill building itself has been made "greener" by the use of geothermal heating and cooling, low flow and waterless restroom facilities, insulation and infrared relective roofing. There is an online PDF brochure about the Great Lakes Maritime Heritage Center .

A firm calling itself Alpena Marc LLC has plans to convert the Fletcher Paper Company site into a hotel, shopping, dining, boardwalk and community showplace (the link jumps to a Powerpoint presentation for that project). The timeline puts them two years behind already. I see no evidence of any work other than the NOAA facility. There is supposedly a microbrewery operating somewhere in the other parts of the building, and I see some Yellow Freight trucks and signs that they are operating a small shipping terminal there. No boardwalk, no restaurants.

There are lots of empty retail spaces in Alpena. The small local mall has about 30% vacancy inside, and even the K-Mart has few cars in the lot. The only hopping place in town was the (you guessed it) Wal-Mart. As blue-collar jobs have vanished, and family tourism and travel is curtailed, Alpena, long a summer lake-shore and vacation rental destination, will languish. There are many, many for sale signs on houses. I understand that local property taxes have recently gone up, and that is also driving sales of vacation cottages.

In any case, I spent an interesting week on the shores of Long Lake near Alpena, Mi., which is not navigably connected to Lake Huron. No visible evidence of Zebra Mussels yet. Most of the boats on Long Lake are pontoon, fiberglass or aluminum open-tops of 18 feet or less powered by outboards. They arrive on trailers having dried and baked in the summer sun, killing possible mussel spawn. The lake visibility is about 6-7 feet, and turbid beyond that depth. The shore is heavily built up with houses and cabins built since the 1940's, and aging septic systems add to the water cloudiness. Max depth of Long Lake is 25 feet. They were catching largemouth bass (up to 12") and some smaller walleye last week. There are supposedly some pike lurking deep, but they are usually caught by ice fishermen in the winter. The lake usually freezes over with a 2-foot ice cap in most areas. Cormorants, Herons, three or four duck species with their nearly fledged young following in flotilla, gulls and the random tern falling out of the sky in a fish-plummet. Bats flicker overhead at dusk scooping up the bugs. I rowed a couple of miles each morning in an 8-foot aluminum skiff, and sat and read books in the lake breeze. If this is what retirement is like, I better hurry up and get there. Actually, one week was sufficient to practice slug-like behavior. Got to get back to projects and stuff.

Posted 1:15 PM by Andy (0) comments

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  Thursday, August 03, 2006

Niki (my pup) and I went to our first formal dog training class last night. It was kind of a spur of the moment decision to go to that particular facility but I knew I had to try something pretty quick. Niki, a shelter puppy, has been spooky ever since I got her. Small unexpected things have always frightened her instead of inciting her curiosity, and whenever someone new would approach her she'd assume a submissive position or pee or both together. I just figured she'd grow out of it. Well, she has, but not the way I was hoping. Unexpected things still make her jump but now instead of going submissive when people approach she's growling and showing a few teeth. Not good. I called a girl who grooms her once in a while to describe the change and ask if Niki had ever done that to her. She said no but offered to speak with a training/behaviourist pro she knows and ask for advise. I took Niki to her for grooming yesterday and the pro happened to be there with a couple of her own dogs. She fooled with Niki a little, no problems, and mentioned she had a class starting that very evening that would probably help and I could join. I thanked her but was pretty non-committal about the class. I left Niki for her beauty treatment and when I went back to pick her up the plot had thickened. She'd growled at the groomer (twice) and showed some teeth to the groomer's mother when she happened to make eye contact. Oh shit oh dear. Well, we all know that the Books of Bokonon say "strange travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God" so, yesterday evening, I went ahead and traveled on down to the training facility the pro invited me to. Niki was super good the whole class. We'll see how it goes.

Posted 4:35 PM by whatley (3) comments

       Comments:
  • Work, work, work. No magic bullets.
    Good luck.
    # posted by Blogger A. O. : August 04, 2006 8:14 AM
     
  • Busy Busy Busy.
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 06, 2006 1:06 PM
     
  • How are you progressing with schooling?
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 20, 2006 10:16 AM
     
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  Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Andy and were talking about this very thing when he was here. Seems the Japanese think the way I do. Never thought of piezo crystals, though, must be a technological blind spot in my psyche.

Posted 9:37 AM by A. O. (2) comments

       Comments:
  • How cool.
    # posted by Blogger whatley : August 03, 2006 6:58 AM
     
  • Large quantities of heavy things pushing really hard on the ground to generate electricity. Traffic! Highways! Truckosaurs! Most of the highway warning signs ("Constriction ahead. Expect decay. Use alternative roots.") are powered by solar cells on an overhead panel. Now incorporate piezo layers between pavement to light up when 80-foot loads of imported consumer goods roll over them. I foresee a new type of tax - an energy tax. Push through a turnstile, walk on a springy floor, blow into the little machine that the nice officer holds. Not only will it generate power, but will force us to exercise more. The Department of Energy will be announcing the "From Adipose to Amperes" campaign any day now. Generators on shopping cart wheels! On door hinges! In your bedsprings!
    # posted by Blogger Andy : August 06, 2006 12:53 PM
     
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