I let my on-line subscription to www.consumerreports.org lapse for a couple years, but I just renewed it last week. This post is more of a note to myself on what laundry detergent, dishwasher detergent, and dish soap (for washing by hand) I am going to buy next based on their latest reviews.

Laundry detergent
Tide 2X Ultra for Cold Water
Simplicity Hypoallergenic Non-Toxic 2X

Dishwashing detergent
Cascade Complete with Bleach Hydroclean Action Powder

Dish Soap (washing by hand)
Dawn Direct Foam

Liquid Fabric Softener
Ultra Gain Joyful Expressions

I went duck hunting for the first time last week and have been meaning to make a post about it. Until I get to a full-blown post describing the day's adventures here are a few pictures to tide you over.

Tom setting out the decoy spread before sunrise.


Armed and dangerous.


Our only duck of the day. Unfortunately I didn't shoot it.


Tom let me take the duck home though.


It dressed down to 1.3 pounds and turned out very nice.


Amy came over to help roast it that night, and we also made Alton Brown's French onion soup. It turned out good too.

I get to buy one of these tomorrow!

I took today off from work to make it a four day weekend and to paint my garage door. I started the day by leaving the house at 8:30 AM to have breakfast and read the paper at McDonalds. After that I stopped at the library and picked up the movies Crossing Over and In Bruges.

The main reason for going out was to swing by Home Depot. I had exterior primer and paint left over from painting the trim a couple years ago, so I took it back and had them put it on their paint shaker for me. I also picked up some sand paper.

I got home and set up camp in the driveway. I tied Mitch up in the shade, plugged the radio in, poured a big glass of Diet Pepsi, and set out all of the gear I needed.

I first ran my palm sander over the entire door and then washed it down with a towel and water. After it was dry I cut in the edges with a brush. When that was done I washed my brush and then poured primer into my roller pan and finished up applying the primer.

The primer needs at least 16 hours to cure before applying the top coat, but that's OK because now I am tired.

It is 4:30 PM, I just got out of the shower and I'm trying to decide what to do next. The first Ohio State game of the season is on ESPN tomorrow at 11 AM CDT. I was going to make a pot of chili and corn bread for the game, but now I don't feel like cooking. I think instead I will get a frozen Home Run Inn pizza (my favorite!) and maybe a few other nibbles to have on hand.

I don't know whether to get up and get the top coat on the garage door right away tomorrow before the game, wait until after the game, or just do it on Sunday or Monday. I guess I'm leaning towards doing it first thing in the morning. Maybe I will just cut in with the brush and then wash up. That is the hard part. Using the roller is easy and only takes 20 minutes.

I picked up dog poop and got the grass cut Thursday night when I got home from work, so I don't have to worry about fitting that in this weekend.

After 24 hours of drying on top of the fan my hops went from 5.5 ounces to 1.9 ounces.

I harvested my first season of hops tonight and I got way more than I expected. I was thinking an ounce, maybe two if I was lucky. I got 5.5 ounces!



I expect the weight to go down after they are dried, but I have no idea by how much.

I have a box fan on a stand. I pointed the fan straight up, and then took a window screen, spread the hops out on the screen, and put the screen on top of the fan. They should be dry by tomorrow morning.



After I was done picking the hops my fingers were coated with a wonderfully aromatic yellow sticky film from the fresh resin in all the cones.

Tonight I finally got around to watching The Wrestler. It is the best movie I have seen in a long time. Mickey Rourke was amazing. He deserved all of the best actor nods and wins he got for the role. I can't wait to see his next movies.

I just racked the beer I brewed last week and I think it is going to be very good. My basic recipe now is 6 pounds of dry malt extract, 1 pound of specialty grains steeped for an hour, usually crystal malt, and Safale US-5 yeast. Then I adjust the hops to what I want. This batch I wanted to be on the lower end of the hop spectrum and keep it on hand for people new to craft beers so they won't be turned off by a really hopped up beer. I designed the recipe to come in at 31 IBU's (International Bittering Units). The Safale US-05 is supposed to have been cultured from the Sierra Nevada brewery. It is very crisp and clean and just gets out of the way.

After I tasted a sample this morning I wanted to dry hop it in the worst way, but like I said I want this to be an approachable beer for people just starting out. I think I might brew this same recipe next weekend and just nudge the hops up a smidge, and dry hop it.

This is also the first batch I brewed where I put all of my hops in a mesh paint strainer. This resulted in a very clear beer and I think might help reduce the chances for off tastes.

Also because there were no solids in the beer I could finally see how much yeast was generated. I scooped out 4 cups of yeast hulls from the bottom of the fermentor!! All of that from an 11 gram yeast packet.

Brad's Summer APA
Brewed 7/3/09
IBU's: 31

1 lb crystal malt steeped 30 minutes
6 lbs Light Dry Extract
0.60 oz Cascade [5.40 %] (60 min) Hops
0.70 oz Columbus [12.20 %] (60 min) Hops
1.00 oz Amarillo [8.20 %] (5 min)
Safale US-05

This is what my four hop plants look like so far. I need to figure out a better support system for next season.



This is a little frame I made out of PVC pipe, four elbows and two T's. The T's are what the elastic of the paint straining bag are looped around. I put all of my hop additions into the strainer bag, and then when I am done with the boil I just pull the bag out and I am left with very very clear wort.



I got a package of two bags for $4 at Home Depot. They are made for professional painters to pour their five gallon buckets of paint through before they use it in a spray gun or if the paint gets bits and pieces in it.

For my purposes the bags will be reusable for a good number of times. I just turn it inside out, rinse it really well, wring it out and hang it to dry.

I love this picture of Mitch coveting Bella's Nylabone.

Mitch is 6 years old today!

I didn't tell him, though, so he won't be upset that I didn't get him anything.

I picked up a bottle of Don Miguel Gascón Malbec 2008 yesterday but have not tried it yet. It has a number of pretty good reviews on-line. If I had to assign a letter grade to what most reviewers said about the wine I would say it is averaging around a B+, maybe an A-, and especially for the price.

I was too full from a chicken dinner yesterday and I don't want to open it until I am ready to enjoy it without distraction, so I will wait to uncork it until then.

Went out for some beers last night with some work friends to Two Brothers Brewery. Our waitress was very chatty and it came up that she used to work at a winery. We started talking wine, and one thing she said was that Argentinean malbec's are an excellent bargain right now and very delicious. They have almost become the national varietal of Argentine. I plan on picking up a bottle this weekend when I do my grocery shopping and will let you know what I think. If you try a bottle let me know what you think.

For what it's worth, if I had to replace my GPS today I would get the Garmin Nuvi 755T. It is on Amazon.com for about $320.

A few months ago I watched the Good Eats episode where Alton Brown makes sauerkraut. There is almost nothing too it and I decided I wanted to give it a try. Since then I have been looking for the perfect glass crock to make it in. Last night I think I found it at Wal-Mart, so I picked that up and a couple heads of cabbage and attempted my first batch of sauerkraut today.

This is what it looked like after being in the crock for about 30 minutes.



My finger is pointing to the level of liquid so far. The glass of water sitting in the crock is to provide pressure to help squeeze out the liquid from the cabbage and to keep the cabbage submerged to avoid contact with the air.

This is what it looked like after four hours.



All of the cabbage is now covered by liquid. In order to fit the lid on I put a smaller glass of water on top. The glass is sitting on top of a little glass saucer. I tried it with just the saucer but the cabbage was buoyant enough to lift it up to surface level.

I am supposed to keep it cool (65 – 70 degrees) and skim off the blooms that will form every couple days for two weeks. It sounds like after the first couple weeks no more blooms will form and I let it sit for another two weeks for a total of four weeks.

I used to be able to get real sauerkraut at Bobak's when they had a local store. It is so much better than the sauerkraut that is just cured with vinegar. I can't wait to see how it turns out. Very excited. If it works and I like it I don't think I will buy sauerkraut anymore. It will keep for six months in the fridge, and it would be no big deal to whip up a batch every few months.

I love this ad. Makes me laugh every time.

I love my Toyota Matrix! I was able load up my lawnmower with lots of room to spare. It's surprising that a little car has so much functional room



The transmission/gearbox that drives the front wheels of the mower locked up. This morning I spent some time seeing if I could take it out myself and replace it, but I got to a point where the next step could have left me with a bunch of parts laying on the garage floor and not knowing how to put them back together. So I took a couple of eight foot 2x4's, laid them on my bumper as a ramp and rolled the lawnmower right into the car with no problems.

I took it to Sears and it turns out the truck only picks up lawn mowers to take to the shop on Thursdays, and the kid said it usually takes two weeks after that. Looks like I am going to have to borrow a neighbor's mower a couple times.

The gearbox froze up early last year or late the year before that, and I just took the drive belt off and used it as a manual mower. It is a little heavier than a non-self-propelled mower, but it wasn't too bad pushing it. But the last week or two my knee has been a little tender and pushing the mower up the few steep inclines I have was not comfortable, so I figured I better get the mower fixed. It's also nice having the self propelled working when it is 95 degrees and humid in the middle of summer.

Here are the latest pictures of my hop plants.

Willamette


Cascade


Chinook


Centennial

I don't print very much on my home ink jet printer, and as a result I think I end up wasting more ink it gums up in the cartridge than I actually use for printing.

I have always used the printer manufacturer's ink cartridges, but when I went to the get new ink a month or so ago I thought I would try refilled cartridges. The lesser quality was immediately noticeable. The edges of each letter was blurry and I could see the ink bleeding along the little paper fibers. Not recommended.

Because of all this I have decided I am going to buy a low end laser printer. As far as I know the dry toner powder will not dry up and clog like ink jet ink, or at least I think it would last much much longer than the ink does. My requirements:

1. It must have built-in networking so I can plug it directly into my router and send print jobs to it from any of my computers around the house.

2. I would very much like it to have automatic duplexing so I can print on both sides and save paper, but I am not 100% committed to this.

3. I am going back and forth on whether to just get a black and white printer or a color laser printer. I don't know if the quality of the color output of a low end color laser printer will be as good as the color laser I am used to at work or an ink jet. For what I mostly print I don't know if the extra money for color is worth it either. I'm probably leaning towards just black and white, but I'm still open to color. I will have a better idea once I see some sample prints at the store and price out the cost of the color toner.

A toner cartridge costs more than a set of ink cartridge, but on a per sheet cost it is much cheaper. It's something like $0.08 per page for an ink jet and $0.02 per page for a laser. The printers I am looking at are in the $200 range. The brands I am interested in are Brother, Samsung and, of course, HP.

My first hop plant poked out of the ground today! It is the Centennial variety. The warm weather being forecast the next couple of days should help coax the other three plants to show themselves if they are still viable. It looks like a mini hop cone at the top, and all of the leaves have that distinctive hop look. How fun!

I've been aware of neti pots for a while but never gave them much thought. About a month ago I was sitting in my doctor's waiting room and I noticed there were a few neti pots in boxes on the counter for sale. I have the highest respect for my doctor, so the fact that he had them for sale made an impression on me, but not enough to do any more looking into it. This morning I read a story that a scientific study was released that said using a neti pot has health benefits, and especially for people with allergies. That did it. I went to my local Walgreens, plunked down $11 and left the store with my very own neti pot. I tried it as soon as I got home and I think I really like it. I've had minor sniffles from seasonal allergies for the last couple of months. Immediately after trying it I felt like my sinuses were wide open and I could breathe very easily. Also I haven't had to blow my nose today after I used it.

It looks like a small tea pot. You mix up some salt with warm water, lean over a sink, put the tip of the pot in one nostril and then tilt your head so the water streams into your nose and exits the other nostril. One weird thing is that it takes a couple seconds after you start pouring for the water to come out the other side because the sinuses have to fill up first. I didn't realize they were that big. After you stop pouring it also take a couple seconds for all of the water to empty out of your sinuses. Also kind of a weird feeling. Then you do the same thing in the other nostril.

After leaving the drugstore I stopped and got a car wash at one of those do it yourself places, got some gas for the lawnmower, cut the grass, filled up the bird bath, hung my bird house, brushed Mitch, and applied Rain-X to my car's windows. When I came in from working outside the electricity was out. I took about two hours for it to come back.

I think I am going to watch Goya's Ghosts on on-demand tonight.

I got my four hop rhizomes planted today. The spray paint markings on the grass are leftover from the underground utility location service. You can see the popsicle sticks in the picture I used to mark which rhizomes I planted where. From west to east I planted, in alphabetical order, Cascade, Centennial, Chinook, and Willamette (rhymes with damn it).

This is mostly a note to myself:

The area I want to plant my hops is 7' wide, almost 3' deep, and the soffit is 9' above the ground.

This is what it looked like out of the front of the house Sunday night, April 5, and the backyard the next morning, April 6. April!!!

I think this is going on the Zune tonight.

I actually blew a piece of the apple I was eating out of my mouth when I saw this on TV tonight. It's funny because it's true.

After about a year of critically tasting beers I've definitely decided that my absolute favorite beer is an American IPA called Furious from the Surly Brewing Company in Minnesota.

I have only had it on tap in bars, but it also comes in 14 ounce cans. If you should happen to see this can at your favorite carry-out do yourself a favor and buy as many of them as you can afford. (I think their cans are very ugly, and if I didn't know what was inside would not bother picking up the can for further inspection.)

The Greyhound Brewery has selected the following hop varieties to plant on its estate hop field:

Cascade
Centennial
Chinook
Willamette

I added this song to my Zune a couple weeks ago and I am embarrassed to admit how many times per day I listen to it while bouncing in my chair at work.

Mitch runs in his sleep all the time but nothing like this.

Grammar Nazis

This made me laugh. Totally my kind of humor.

The guy at work that is an all-grain brewer invited me and a couple other brewing friends to his place Saturday morning to hang out while he brewed a batch. I stayed just up until the start of the boil because after that point all-grain and extract brewing are the same. The all-grain process is easier than I thought it would be, but for now I think I am more than happy with the results of my extract beers. It was neat to see though, and at some point I will probably step up to all-grain. He was an extract brewer for 10 years before going to all-grain.

He lives in Evanston which is close to a barbeque place I have been wanting to try called Smoque. I haven't tried it up until now because it is about an hour drive one way. This place is all about the meat, and is probably some of the best I have ever had. If your idea of barbeque has lots of sauce on top then this is not your place. Their pork and brisket are dry rubbed and then smoked for 12 and 15 hours respectively. It is an almost perfect balance of the meat flavor, smoke, salt, and seasoning. They only have one sauce and it is served on the side. It is a fairly thin vinegar-based sauce with a nice sweet twang. The first few times I dunked the whole piece of meat on my fork into the sauce before realizing that was not the right balance. It turned out dipping just the bottom fifth of the piece of meat provided the right amount of balance, and I didn't dip every bite. I dipped maybe every third bite. To summarize the meat, it was smoked so perfectly you really do not want to cover it up with sauce. I liked just a little bit of the vinegar sauce to cleanse my palate so the next two bites of plain smoked meat seemed like the first bite all over again.

The platter I got came with coleslaw and two sides. The slaw needed a little more dressing, but was still a nice fresh counterpart to the meat. The barbequed baked beans were on the sweet side, but not objectionably sweet side, and they had a lot of flavor and nice big chunks of perfectly cooked down onions. The mac and cheese was very good but the serving size was a little on the small side. It was baked in its own little tin foil cup.

Overall I will go back and give it a solid B+, and it would not be much of stretch to give it an A-. The place is very small and when I walked in the line was huge. If I lived a lot closer I probably would have said to heck with it and left, but since I was in the area I stuck it out. The line actually moves very fast and I was there about 15 to 20 minutes. Not too bad.

I had my cable service upgraded to digital and switched from traditional POTS service to getting my phone service from the cable company on Thursday, and I am loving it more than I thought I would!

I have already watched three movies using the free on-demand service. Unless there is a really big movie that I want to see as soon as possible on DVD I think the on-demand service will take care of most of my movie needs. So far I have watched 21, Walk Hard, and Grind House.

When the phone rings the caller ID info pops up on the TV screen. That is pretty cool.

I can look at future shows on the program grid, and if I want to make sure I tune to it when it comes on, I just click a button and a little reminder pops up on the TV telling me it is time to turn to that channel! I even went out to Friday night's schedule a week away and set a reminder.

I also LOVE being able to look at the program guide and still be able to see and hear the program I am watching in the upper right corner. With my previous service when I opened the guide the sound and picture disappeared.

One of the older fence posts in the back yard snapped from the high winds we had a couple nights ago. I need to call the fence guy and have him come out to dig out the old "stump" and set a new one. For now I braced it up by nailing a 2x4 at the top of the post and secured it at the ground by pounding a stake in front of it. It's not going anywhere now so I have time to get the guy out here. I will try and wait until it warms up a bit. Hopefully in the next week or two.

I have been thinking about replacing my furnace and air conditioner for the last couple years. I'm glad I waited because I saw in the news today that I will be able to get a $1,500 tax credit under the stimulus package to do that. There will also be money available for renewable energy upgrades. Once I get a new roof installed in the spring I would be interested in looking at adding a little bit of solar capacity to the house. I have thought about installing just a few panels on the roof and the switches and wiring to get it patched into the house, and then down the road add additional panels as prices drop and efficiency increases.

The siding on the house looks dingy and needs to have something done to it. I am going to look into having it painted rather than residing the house.

Everything is still in place to refinance my mortgage. My banker said things are taking longer than normal because of the huge increase of everyone refinancing at the same time because of the low rates.

I have Monday off for President's Day. I just have a few easy chores on the list for today; pick up dog poop in the back yard, this week's laundry, a trip to the grocery store, empty the dishwasher and clean up the kitchen. I also bought wind deflectors for the rear windows on my car a few weeks ago, but have been waiting until the weather warms up to install them.

I got to the DMV before it opened this morning and was home with my new license by 8 AM.

I rented Saw V to watch tonight.

I haven't had White Castle in forever and I have been craving them so I swung by there for lunch.

Went to Meijer to get some fun Super Bowl food. I ended up with a 10 inch frozen Home Run Inn pizza, fixings for chili, and a two pound hunk of Jennie O turkey ham that was on sale for $2 per pound.

On the way home from Meijer I was going to stop by the carwash to get the thick layer of salt from the car, but there were at least 10 cars in line so I will try some other time. Maybe I will see if it is open 24 hours and go back late tonight.

When I got home I threw together the chili and put it in a crock pot on low.

I drove 24 city miles today and averaged 31 MPG.

I'm going to take some laundry from the dryer and move another load from the washer and then settle in with the movie and hope I don't get too freaked out.

This is great.

This is where I think I will leave my ScanGauge II for now.



It is sitting inside a little compartment with a fold-down door. I have most of the cable tucked in behind the ScanGauge, and you can see the cable that leads to the OBDII connector coming out of the left side. It is snaked up over the steering wheel column and then down to the connector.

There is a little punch-out in the back of the compartment. Once it warms up I am going to take remove the punch-out and run the cable through the back of the compartment and to the connector so you won't be able to see the cable at all.

I have improved my gas mileage by almost 25% since I've started using the ScanGauge.



Tomorrow morning (Saturday) I plan on leaving the house at 7 AM to get my drivers license renewed. I hope getting there first thing in the morning will let me miss standing in a long line.

I have started my federal tax return and have only entered my W2, my mortgage interest and property tax and I owe/am owed right around zero, which is fine by me. I don't think the rest of what I still have to enter will make much of a material difference.

Mitch doing what Mitch does best.

Just a quick update post.

This morning, Saturday, an appraiser came out to do an appraisal on the house because I am refinancing. It will drop my rate by 1.125%.

Before the appraiser showed up Mitch threw up. A chunk of Nylabone with sharp edges came out, so I think that is what was irritating his stomach. It brought back memories of Goliath who seemed to throw up about every month or two and always first thing in the morning, and usually when I was still more asleep than awake. A nice way to start the day.

Today I also FINALLY got around to cancelling my traditional land line phone and ordering VoIP from my cable company. That will also save me a bunch of money. I am also upgrading from traditional analog cable to digital cable and got a bunch of extra channels that I have been wanting, and I will still be paying less per month than I was paying with cable and a land line separately. Some of the channels I am looking forward to are:

Biography Channel
Science Channel
National Geographic Channel
Two Sundance film channels
Seven Starz movie channels
Seven Encore movie channels
BBC America
49 music channels

There are also a bunch of supposedly free on-demand channels, but I don't know too much about those yet. They say there is a library of thousands of movies and most of them are free, but they don't say what kind of movies or how old. I'll let you know.

My ScanGauge and tire pressure gauge arrived today. I used it a little bit when I ran some errands tonight. It updates much more quickly than the fuel mileage display in my van did. The van's display refreshed maybe every 1 to 1.5 seconds. The ScanGauge seems to update almost continually. As a result you get much more feedback on how your throttle control affects fuel mileage. The air pressure gauge is the best I have used. It makes a very good leak-free seal and beeps when it has a reading. It has a built-in flashlight right under where the valve stem goes in. That will be very handy when I am checking the pressure in the garage at night.

Amy stopped over this afternoon after visiting a patient and we watched Astronaut Farmer. The movie was just OK. Entertaining but not great.

I went to the library tonight to return a couple DVDs, Meijer to get a few groceries, and Office Max to get a copy of TurboTax. It is $15 cheaper at Amazon (not counting shipping) so I guess I will order it from them.

I checked out the audiobook version of Thunderstruck by Erik Larson from the library and ripped it to my Zune. Now I have to figure out when and where to listen to it all. It is 10 CD's worth.

This might be the Macintosh that brings me back to Apple!


Apple Introduces Revolutionary New Laptop With No Keyboard

Fun stuff. Anyone that knows me (I measure Mitch's daily dog food ration to the gram) won't be surprised to hear that when I found a digital tire pressure gauge with resolution to the tenth of a pound rather than the standard half a pound I ordered it. Other places have it for over $30, but amazon.com has it for $16.


I also ordered the ScanGauge II. It plugs into the OBDII port on your car and gives you real-time readings of dozens of values from your car's onboard computer. It can also read error codes and reset the dreaded "Check Engine Soon" light.

I think I will mount it like this.

These are the values it can display:

Maximum Speed
Average Speed
Maximum Coolant Temperature
Maximum RPM
Driving Time
Driving Distance
Fuel Used
Trip Fuel Economy
Distance to Empty
Time to Empty
Fuel to Empty
Fuel Economy
Fuel Rate
Battery Voltage
Coolant Temperature
Intake Air Temperature
Engine Speed (RPM)
Vehicle speed (MPH)
Manifold Pressure (not available on some vehicles)
Engine Load
Throttle Position
Ignition Timing
Open/Closed Loop

A friend at work got a coffee roaster for his birthday. I have not tried any coffee he has roasted yet, but if I like what I taste when he brings me some I think I am going to buy a roaster and start roasting my own. Green coffee beans cost a little less than half of quality roasted coffee, and green coffee will keep for two years. I think I could cover the price of the roaster after about 15 pounds of coffee. This is the roaster my friend has. This website also has a really nice selection of beans.

The batch of beer I bottled on the first of the year turned out really good. It is an APA with all Northern Brewer hops. I think this will be the last of the single-hopped batches I make. Now that I have a feel for what different types of hops contribute and what I like, I will start customizing recipes to suit my own tastes. I also think the APA style, hopped to the higher end of the scale, is going to be my signature beer and what I brew most. When I am in the mood for an IPA I will pick up some at the store or visit Tim-In-Law and drink his homebrew. To get the bitterness (IBU's) just right you have to add the right amount of hops at the right time in the boil. An amazing tool for that is BeerSmith. I used it on this last batch of beer and worked out perfectly.

My standard recipe going forward will be six pounds of light dry malt extract, a pound of crushed crystal malt, and a blend of American hops (Cascade, Simcoe, Columbus, Centennial, etc.) that bring the IBU's to between 40 and 50.