Music

Bamboozled!

So there’s this huge, two-day concert at Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, NJ called The Bamboozle. You can tell you’re getting old when there’s a list of 100 bands for a show and you know maybe seven of them.

The concert is literally in Secaucus’ backyard. Secaucus, of course, is where I direct the marching band.

A former student, who is also an alumni assistant, emailed me a month or so ago, indicating that his cousin is one of the organizers and wants a marching band to help open the show.

Score!

After lots of emails, a conference call, numerous emails to the Board of Education office, and a bit of stress, we are approved to perform tomorrow morning! The band is supposed to be part of the “Photo Finish Pep Rally” and “Parade of Nothing” and be there when the opening band performs.

Everyone gets free tickets to both days of the show, and to tonight’s “secret show”, in addition to a donation to the Band Parents  Association. Not bad for an hour’s worth of performing, and a couple hours of rehearsal. They want to make this an annual thing, so it’ll be nice to use that as a recruiting incentive.

random thoughts, Uncategorized

Green Day

1 Comment

Not long ago, a cow-orker asked me what “green” things I do. I told him that I hiked, and he said that didn’t count. Since then, i’ve been thinking about all the things that we do, and have done. In the wake of yet another Earth Day that no one pays attention to, here’s as complete a list I can think of on a Thursday morning:

  • Pay for a share to an organic, Community-Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm.
  • Reuse paper, especially the backs of documentation drafts I print out
  • Take mass transit to work
  • Recycle everything – bottles, papers, cardboard, plastics with 1 or 2 in the recycling triangle
  • Give away stuff we don’t need to our local freecycle.
  • Reuse beer bottles for my homebrew 🙂
  • Wash and reuse plastic flatware at work
  • Use only natural cleaning products at home – vinegar, borax, washing soda.
  • Make our own laundry detergent
  • Pay into NJ’s Clean Energy program; part of our bill goes to wind power.
Beer, Homebrewing

Ah, homebrewing

It’s nice to have a Friday off where I’m not sick to the point of incapacitated.

I’m brewing a Belgian Wit today. Getting a late start, but that’s OK.

I’ve not brewed in a few months, so it’s a good feeling to be boiling, cleaning, and sanitizing again. I formulated my own recipe, with a few aspects slightly out of style, but I think it’s going to be a good brew.

Formulating recipes is probably the most enjoyable and most frustrating part of brewing for me. I don’t know a lot about it yet, and often, I feel like I shouldn’t ask for input, because I’ve not contributed enough to a forum. I don’t know the individual ingredients (hop and malt characteristics) well enough to know what goes well with other things, but I’m learning. It’s definitely fun, though, to start a recipe in BeerTools Pro and add and subtract different ingredients, the time during the boil to add them, and how much of each to add.

This recipe is a completely original creation with no input from anyone, other than reading other recipes and combining the best of each; which is usually how I cook, anyway. It should be a good summertime beer, though the alcohol level (a hair over 6% ABV) is a bit higher than it probably should.

 

Wazzup Wit

16-A Witbier
BeerTools Pro Color Graphic

Size: 4.36 gal
Efficiency: 75.0%
Attenuation: 75.0%
Calories: 203.9 kcal per 12.0 fl oz

Original Gravity: 1.061 (1.044 – 1.052)
|================================|

Terminal Gravity: 1.015 (1.008 – 1.012)
|================================|

Color: 2.57 (2.0 – 4.0)
|============#===================|

Alcohol: 6.02% (4.5% – 5.5%)
|================================|

Bitterness: 17.0 (10.0 – 20.0)
|===================#============|

Ingredients:

6.6 lb Liquid Wheat Extract
16 oz Cara-Pils® Malt
.5 oz Styrian Goldings (4.2%) – added during boil, boiled 60.0 min
0.5 oz Saaz (4.40%) – added during boil, boiled 20.0 min
0.5 oz Saaz (4.4%) – added during boil, boiled 7.0 min
1 oz Bitter Curacao/Bitter Orange (Peel) – added during boil, boiled 5 min
.5 oz Corriander seeds – added during boil, boiled 5.0 min
1.0 ea White Labs WLP400 Belgian Wit Ale

Notes:

Partial Mash – 30 mins @148 degrees

Results generated by BeerTools Pro 1.5.0b

Motorsports

f1 tech

“With each car producing 2GB of data per race from 125 sensors – which is often received in an unstructured way via telemetry – this kind of technology is vital to make sense of the information.”

http://software.silicon.com/os/0,39024651,39170241,00.htm

interesting to see McLaren F1 is a beta tester for SQL Server 2008. I can’t imagine what’s in that 2GB of data. too bad they couldn’t just buy a $30 CF card and put that on board the car.

Technical Writer, Content Strategist, Podcaster, and beer lover