chakadrum.com

Vote

Yesterday, I received my absentee ballot. Today I cast my vote and put it in the mail. It felt good.

I think there are three main problems with the way people vote.

1) They get hung up on a single issue and cast their vote based solely on it (e.g. abortion). That is ignorant.

2) They believe that when someone gets elected they will actually be able to follow through with all of the promises. Don’t forget that there is a separation of powers (the legislative and judicial branches need to approve a law before it becomes a law). Voters should focus on that items that will most realistically change.

With regards to John’s comments, I should have stated that the judicial branch does not actually approve any particular law but rather comes into play after a law is passed and question about its constitutionality is raised.

3) They vote for someone just because that person is in their particular party irrespective of what the person stands for. That is also ignorant.

This leaves me wondering whether it is better to have a low turnout of educated voters (resulting in an intelligent election) or a high turnout of ignorant voters (resulting in high execution of an American duty).

World Series Champions: Philadelphia Phillies

The curse of ‘Billy Penn’ is over. Maybe that little statue tall atop the Comcast tower put things in order. Maybe it was just a team and a city ready to put things in order. Whatever the case, this city is electric right now. It feels pretty good to be a citizen of this town right now. It feels really nice.

Beer Adventures

Bottling homebrew is a real pain. First, you need to collect bottles (and find a place to store them when they aren’t in use). Second, you need to clean all bottles. Third, you need to sanitize bottles. Fourth, you need to add priming sugar to your homebrew. Fifth, you need to fill bottles. Sixth, you need to cap bottles. Seventh, you need to store your bottles. Eighth, you need to clean your bottles again when you drink them. Too many steps in my opinion.

The alternative is to keg the homebrew. While it requires a small investment to upgrade ones tap system to both pressurize and serve, it is an incredibly valuable investment. The key components are a used Pepsi container and the matching connectors. Simple enough.

Since I was going to buy parts for this upgrade, I also picked up an auto-siphon and a cleaning kit for my kegerator setup. Trying to do a regular siphon action never seems to work as well as I want when I rack beer from one container to another. Running keg after keg through my system builds up yeast and other beer residue.

The beer is kegged and the system has been scrubbed and flushed. It feels like I just accomplished some spring cleaning or something. I feel really great about the effort. The kegging couldn’t have been easier and the cleaning was pretty straight forward once I figured out what parts to breakdown.

The process of carbonating a keg of homebrew can go down two paths. The first is just like the bottle method where you add priming sugar to the keg which will activate some of the remaining yeast and produce carbon dioxide (and a tiny bit of extra alcohol). The second is to hook-up carbon dioxide to the keg just as if you were ready to serve it. Dialing in the pressure to a specific PSI and leaving it for around a week will prime the keg. I opted to speed things up and followed a process called “force carbonation.” I rolled the keg across my lap for 100 seconds while injecting CO₂ into the beer. The rolling increases the surface area in contact with the gas and resulted in more absorption. The beer still needs a few days on serving pressure to complete but this will definitely speed up the process.

Each style of beer has a specific range of volumes of carbon dioxide that should exist in the beer (I targeted 2.5 volumes of CO₂). The temperature of the beer affects how readily the liquid can actually absorb the gas with colder temperatures resulting in a quicker process.  I took a sample tonight and I’m pretty sure it needs a few more days before things are all set.

In a different direction, the beer is impressively tasty. This was a completely made up style with a completely made up recipe. If I had to slap a style to it I’d go with a Belgian wheat pale ale but I think it is so much more. The smell is Belgian yeast deliciousness. The initial taste is the sweetness you’d expect from a wheat beer. The second wave of taste is great balance from the bitter hops. The third wave hits you with a lightly lingering bitterness. I look forward to this once it has had time to settle and carbonate properly.

I can’t wait to brew my next batch: Matt’s Fireside Winter Warmer. It will be dark in color, rich in taste and high in alcohol.

Finally, the other week I was drinking a beer and noticed an interesting lacing on my glass. I think it is a hidden message but I’m not sure what it says or what language it is in. If you can figure it out, please share.

Phillies Delay

I’m admittedly a passive Phillies fan; mainly supporting them because I live in Philadelphia. I’ve only ever been to two games. However, I care very much about them locking this thing up and bringing a championship to this city. It has been too long without one, especially for the true residents of this place.

With that said, the rain delay that occurred tonight really bothered me for three reasons.

1) I don’t like the way things feel. I don’t want to stir up bad omens by going further, but it just doesn’t feel right. Even if everything goes as it should and the Phillies win, I predict it being a little melodramatic.

2) I had plans for tomorrow night. Sure, my plans can be adjusted, but that means adjustment and I’d rather not even have to deal with adjustment. However, I’m flexible and I’ll go with the flow. There is the chance that the game won’t even be tomorrow night. Well, I’ve got plans Wednesday and Thursday night and I’d really like to be within the city limits when we close this thing out.

3) If this gets pushed to Wednesday, the earliest that they would have a parade would be Friday. I’m in the city on Friday but I’ll be tied up with a recruiting event. I can’t exactly blow-off the candidates to go stand outside and watch the parade. If for some stupid reason we can’t close this thing out in Philly, I will likely miss the parade altogether since I’ll be out of the country next week. That would be disappointing.

I don’t know what the best case scenario is for me personally. In any case, let’s just win this thing and deal with the rest later.

Soccer Strategy

Things have been a bit challenging on my work soccer team as of late in that we have too many people on the team (men specifically) and we are not very competitive. I haven’t finalized my plans for dealing with the excess of players but it will likely result in the creation of a second team. Part of this split will also result in focusing one of the teams more on winning and less on inclusion.

In the short-term, I decided that a new game plan was necessary to keep it fun. I don’t care how much fun you think you are having, if you can’t win a game the little satisfaction you get from running around will fade quickly. The main problem I saw was that we had too many unskilled players on that field at one time and they were placed in offensive positions where they were very unlikely to contribute to the team.

So, I took a risk and moved things around so our very best players would do nothing but attack and our less skilled players would be on defense. A potential bonus for this strategy was that the less skilled players would have a greater opportunity to positively impact the game.

The plan that I sent to my team was as follows.

A – Attack
B – Feed the ball to A
C – Run up and down the entire field and make stuff happen
D – Play defense, don’t go out wide, don’t go out long, just stay back and get in the way

Perhaps by luck, or just by my amazing strategic abilities, we won the last game 6-2. It should have been 6-1 but I got lazy in goal and let one ball fly over my head because I though it would fly out of bounds. I was wrong. We looked like a team more than ever. Hopefully, it continues to work.

Quotes

I hear a lot of funny things and from time to time I make a note on my phone so that I can recall them and laugh again. Over the last few months these are the funniest things I’ve heard.

“If you can’t taste the bacon you might as well be eating poop!” -My brother

“You let me have sex with your girlfriend but you won’t let me use your cell phone!?” -Overheard at the tailgate two weekends ago from some guy talking to one of his buddies

“I’m milking this $20 like it’s a cat” -My older brother when playing video poker in Vegas

“It’s actually tiny invisible elves with cigarettes.” My older brother explaining why fajitas come out of the kitchen sizzling and steaming

“Your city is gonna fall into the ocean! Your city is gonna fall into New Jersey.” -My brother and I arguing about how a large amount of rain was going to affect our respective cities

Perfect Sports Weekend

I can’t ask for a better sports weekend.

-Penn State won (and the win meant a lot)
-Michigan lost
-The Phillies won on Saturday night
-The Eagles won
-The Phillies won on Sunday night

I can’t think of another time in my life where so many good sports things happened in such a short span. It feels good to be a sports fan.

For Penn State, they just need to keep up the good work and we need to hope that Texas and/or Alabama loses. If that happens, Miami here we come!

Good luck to the Phillies tomorrow night.

If The World Could Vote

I found this interesting website where someone wants to see how the world would vote on the presidential election. I don’t know anything about the authenticity of the results, but I still find the results to be quite interesting.

http://www.iftheworldcouldvote.com/

Predictive Search Boxes

I’m a huge fan of predictive search boxes. If you utilize amazon.com or google.com with the correct browser you will see that as you type search criteria it starts to suggest additional criteria you may want as part of your search. Not only does this help you to search for a multi-key-worded item but it helps you when you aren’t sure exactly what you are searching for. Whoever invented it deserves a raise (or at least a free drink [from me]).

Three Unncessary Items

I’m going to get a bonus check in two weeks. I plan on using a portion of it to pay off 2 bills. I will add another portion to my savings account. With the third portion I’m thinking that I should buy something unnecessary. I’ve got three items on my mind.

1) Nikon D80 digital SLR – My younger brother had borrowed one last weekend and I got to play around with it for a couple minutes. Since my days as the photographer for GoPSUSports.com I’ve wanted to buy a nice DSLR. Nikon is coming out with a new model for the prosumer (D90) which should help drive the D8o price down a bit. I am starting to get tired of the quality on my Casio point and shoot.

2) Sony PS3 – I’m not too keen on building up a collection of BlueRay DVDs but I would like to experience the full-power of my TV. This model is supposedly one of the best value players you can get. When you factor in the game-playing ability, it would be a fun toy. I have been wanting to play that latest Grand Theft Auto game.

3) Concept 2 rowing machine (used) – I’m pretty much tired of running. However, I’m technically in good shape and I hate to waste it. I don’t like the gym. They say rowing is one of the best low-impact, full-body exercises you can do. This particular brand is pretty much the best. I could row all winter long and be in good shape to start training for a spring marathon.