Dan Conley

I love News Groper for its fake celebrity blogs, particularly Samuel L Jackson’s. So, when I saw that he had reviewed the new Indiana Jones movie, well, I could practically guarantee that I’d like it more than the mediocre offering that I saw on Monday. To be clear, it wasn’t just the stupid plot that got me (although the plot was stupid, too). It was the overall ‘meh’ feeling that I got. The script was just… bad. Especially for an Indiana Jones movie.

Fake Sam Jack summed up my feelings perfectly (seriously):

And look, I’ve been in some bullshit films but this is Indiana motherfucking Jones–you don’t have to bullshit around with that motherfucker. Ain’t no need to turn in no mediocre fucking script  after twenty got-damn years.

I had forgotten how totally awesome the other three were. Rocky and Rambo needed another movie to redeem their series, but Indy? Why, man, why?

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• The alt is in bottles, havign trouble carbonating because Buffalo was (until this weekend) stubbornly refusing to realize that it is May and should be warm
• The American pale ale, my first all grain, is in secondary and I should probably bottle it early next week. This means I should find some bottles…
• On Monday I made a batch of cider (not as strong as the first applehol, which was 10.5%) and mead. The cider has been fermenting like there’s no tomorrow and the mead has yet to bubble

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As soon as I got into Harriman Hall this morning for my daily ‘Elizabeth makes me get to work an hour before I can get into my building’ laptop surfing, lights started to flash and a siren went off. I paused for a second, deciding what to do, before shrugging and turning on my Macbook anyway. Eventually people came and fixed it, so I assume the cafeteria didn’t burn down or anything.

That dropped journalism major of mine seems to still have some claws in me, because I recorded some of it for posterity:

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(that’s a lie; I just like playing around with multimedia)

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I eventually decided that ecto wasn’t worth spending money on, but damn if I don’t miss it. I’m trying out Qumana which seems… crappy. It seems to be coded in Java, and Java apps in OS X have this… look to them that I don’t like. They also don’t particularly function well. I probably won’t use it again, but it’d really be nice to have a way to have all my entries (across all the blogs that this self-important author has gotten himself into) stored locally, be able to have drafts stored here, etc.

Sigh.

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I think I’m sort of unofficially naming the altbier that we bottled* on Tuesday ‘the secret alt’ — I have to specificy that a beer I made has an unofficial name? I hope you see the depths of my self importance — because in stark contrast to the porter and raspberry wheat that I brewed last summer, I never blogged about it. Onoes! However will the internets (all seven of them) know what I’m doing?

It was my first partial mash, and I again got it as a kit from Niagara Traditions (they were very nice, by the way, and made one for me fresh because they were out). I wanted to get back into the swing of things before I made my own partial mash recipes, got one from Homebrewtalk, etc. Well, I got back into the swing of things. By saying ‘to hell with partial mashes, I’m going all grain!’ My theory was that I can get the equipment to mash and do it halfassed, or I could go all the way.

So, that lead to converting a 10 gallon Rubbermaid cooler ala FlyGuy, buying a turkey fryer (I suppose at some point I could also fry turkeys), getting 50 feet of copper tubing at the much cheaper CopperTubingSales.com… this Saturday it’s on, and starting around 7 am (which in reality will probably be 8:30 at the earliest) I’ll be starting up my first batch, five gallons of Bee Cave Brewery’s Haus Ale (ie an American Pale Ale). Mostly because I can, I’ve decided that in all likelihood I’m also going to be broadcasting the event live on Mogulus (if you visit that link before Saturday it will be extremely boring, as opposed to the only ‘very boring’ that 60 minutes of a Rubbermaid cooler sitting there will be).

Also, before I head out, I have to give a ton of thanks to Ethan and the rest of the Niagara Association of Homebrewers, as they’ve been incredibly helpful and friendly. The Amber Waves of Grain banquet seems like it’s going to be a rollickin’ good time (as though an event with a s’mores bar could not be!)

* Elizabeth filled them all and then was capping the second half (she’s better at bottling than I am, which means I need to start kegging immediately for my ego’s sake) when all of a sudden I heard breaking glass. She pushed the capper down (see fig. 1) and apparently used so much force that the top of the bottle was crushed instantly. Don’t mess with her.

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In the past 12 weeks I’ve lost 27 pounds and my body fat has gone down 4 percent. I guess I can be pretty happy about that.

To celebrate, tonight we’re going out for fondue. I feel like one of the Mr Boffo ‘People Unclear on the Concept’ strips.

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I decided to ditch Ecto. A very good program, but in essence it only allowed me to

1. Post from one place instead of the admin interface of each blog
2. Link to Flickr easier

Now, those are nice options — and I also liked having a local backup of posts, and the ability to draft — but the $18 I’d have spent on it is instead going to go to BeerAlchemy.

More on that in a moment…

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