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By John, on July 6th, 2011
For a while I was making a relatively decent attempt at keeping this site updated and then boom! My time got sucked away.
Let’s hit the details
1. We’re buying a house and should move in by the end of the month (as soon as the mortgage company gets their act together)
2. Jessica is starting to look extremely pregnant
3. I finished all of my upgrade training and I am now operational. I can look forward to spending time doing the job for which I was trained. It’s a shame I can’t collect frequent flyer miles in the process because I’d be getting a first class ticket every 2-3 months. I did >6000 miles last week.
4. Summer is finally here and it makes the house uncomfortably warm (by Washington standards)
5. We’ve decided on a name for the boy – Sawyer David King (this information is exclusive to this website)
6. I had 6-7 more beer reviews along with photos but I lost all of my notes. It’s a shame to think that I might have to drink some of them again.
7. In 11 days we will have been married for a year. Wow, that went fast!
8. I’ll probably have a hard time keeping this up to date in the future but I’ll try
By John, on July 6th, 2011
I just started getting into IPA’s and this one falls into the Imperial IPA classification.
Appearance: Straw colored and slightly hazy with a decent head
Aroma: Floral hoppy goodness – this smells like it was made yesterday
Mouthfeel: Finishes extremely clean – not too heavy – a little bitterness lingers
Flavor: It’s as if this beer was brewed in heaven. Have you seen the scene in beerfest when they have the first taste of their beer? Remember the look on their face? Yes, it was like drinking something divined by the gods.
Overall: This is, without a doubt, the best beer that I’ve ever had. It takes them five weeks to brew a batch and it’s almost always sold out within 24 hours. If you’re lucky enough to find it on tap there is almost always a line and people actually buy tickets for it. The beer is that good. Find it, buy it, and drink it. It is awesome!
I have photos… but I don’t want to take the time to edit them. This post has been in draft status for almost 2 months. Yes, we’ve been that busy.
This beer is getting a 10/10
You can read more reviews at Beer Advocate
By John, on May 2nd, 2011
Neither of us has known brand of creature is growing inside of Jessica. Girl, boy, monster, alien, or unicorn are some of the suggestions thrown at us. Using all “indicators” we had a mixed bag on a guess. People kept on asking Jessica if she knew what is was and she didn’t have a clue. None of us had a clue.
Today, with Leanne along for the trip, we went to Madigan to get the ultrasound. Well, it’s a boy and below is one of the first pictures of our little monster. We are quite excited. I was quite relieved because the thought of a miniature version of my wife scared the crap out of me. Thank god it isn’t a girl. I don’t think I could handle a girl.
By John, on March 25th, 2011
When I was a teenager I spent hours on end fixing broken computers and servers. As such, I’ve gotten pretty good at diagnosing if a problem is software or hardware related. Jessica’s laptop started to glitch about a month ago and the symptoms made me think of a dire diagnosis – the LCD panel was dying. She struggled through the last few weeks as it slowly gave up the ghost and spent a week or two without a laptop at all. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a backup of all of her important files of a external drive… I may have mentioned the value of a backup on several occasions as I always keep 2-3 copies of the vital stuff (music, documents, photos, and videos). When her last laptop died I pulled out the old drive and put it in an external case. I have no idea where that perfectly functioning HDD is at the moment. This time, I decided to tackle the problem in a different manner.
I borrowed my wireless mouse and keyboard and found a VGA cable. After plugging her laptop directly into the TV and changing some sharing settings we’re off to the races. Her whole computer could be a backup drive for all I care. If nothing else, we now have a HTPC of sorts. Sure, copying over WIFI is a PITA but I don’t have enough excess space on any of my externals to carry over swap space. I wish I could make a media server for the house and put all of our stuff (together) in the same place with normal backups. One day… if we win the lottery
By John, on March 24th, 2011
This is another PNW brew from Deschutes and it didn’t disappoint.
Appearance: Burnt orange and slightly hazy with a decent 1/2in head
Aroma: As the name implies there was a lot of floral notes from the hops
Taste: Bitter but balanced – it’s far too easy to put a bunch of hops in a beer and make it so bitter that you’d think that you’re drinking a skunked Budweiser. The aftertaste was clean and didn’t linger.
Mouthfeel: The beer had enough weight and didn’t feel cloying or too thick. There is nothing more I dislike than a beer hangs around in your mouth after you’ve swallowed.
Overall: This beer hit the nail on the head. There was nothing I disliked aside from the cost per bottle but I’ll definitely seek this one out in the future. I’m not sure what style of beer they were trying to hit as it didn’t confine to any style – it’s somewhere in the pale ale/IPA range but a good beer doesn’t need to conform to a style. I think that’s why this beer hit it out of the park.
I’m going to give this a 9 out of 10
You can read more reviews at Beer Advocate
By John, on March 24th, 2011
It’s been a while since I’ve written a review even though I’ve had quite a few beers between here and there (probably to the detriment of my health) but it hasn’t slowed me down.
Appearance: This one is dark and it came with a thick head that looked like it had some oil in it. The color of the head was almost khaki in appearance.
Aroma: There was a light malt odor and it wasn’t overly hopped as many others in this genre
Taste: I experienced a bitter bite and a clean aftertaste – it wasn’t cloying and it wasn’t “too much” to handle. The flavor in this beer was exceptionally balanced. Notes of roasted malt and some dark chocolate flavors.
Mouthfeel: Coffee like feel with a smooth almost milky finish – for a second I thought this was a milk stout instead of an imperial
Overall: This is one of the best imperial stouts that I’ve ever had. Compared to the most famous stout (although an Irish stout), Guinness, its darker and more robust. I could have drank 3-4 bottles of this beer. This beer will end up on my repeat offender list.
I’m going to rate it 8.5 of out 10
As always, check out more reviews at Beer Advocate
By John, on March 22nd, 2011
After a long trek, I’ve made it back home. The drive was less than fun as there was nothing interesting out there. All I saw was miles and miles of miles and miles. I was worried in western Wyoming when I hit a patch of really bad road. I ended downshifting and coasting down a few hills without hitting the brakes. The cars in the ditch told the tale of people that were going too fast. Luckily, it only lasted for 50 miles or so and I got out without incident.
I’ve been trying to not drive my wife crazy. She has a system and I’ve ruined it by doing things in a slightly different manner – well, in some cases, a completely different manner. I’ve got a few beer blog posts to write as my wife knows the key to my happiness – a fully stocked beer fridge.
By John, on March 15th, 2011
The only explanation is that someone knows how exhausted I am and they want me to get a decent nights sleep before spending 28 hours driving home.
I guess I should explain. Last night I went to bed early knowing that I had my evaluation and that I needed to be well rested. I didn’t sleep well. I went to bed at 10PM and woke up at 1230AM. I watched 20 minutes of TV and tried to fall back asleep. I was WIDE awake until 3AM. I had an incredibly strange dream and woke up when my alarm went of at 415AM. Let’s do the math – that’s less than four hours of sleep.
I caffeinated myself and went to work. I made two stupid, but not destructive, mistakes and passed my evaluation with a Q1. It’s not perfect (Q1E is perfect) but I’ll take what I can get. I knew that I had to get all of my out-processing done by 345PM and that I’d have to rush. We landed at 230PM and by the time we finished the epic taxi, my cargo download, and we finished waiting for the crew bus to show I had eaten up 45 minutes of my time. I spent the next 23 minutes waiting for someone to get out of a meeting to tell me that I needed to get someone to process some paperwork. I asked them to do so and they graciously did so. By this time I had 3 minutes remaining.
I grabbed the finished paperwork and hurried to the next building before they closed at 345PM. Thankfully, the decided to help me out. I was almost done when they told me I was missing one piece of paperwork. I wasn’t going to leave today. I’ll have to wait until someone gets into work at 730AM to give me that one piece of paperwork.
The only explanation is that someone knows how exhausted I am and they want me to get a decent nights sleep before spending 28 hours driving home. It’s probably a good thing.
By John, on March 11th, 2011
It’s been an up and down week. I’ve had two flights this week and the first of the two didn’t go as well as I would have liked. (side note: my training partner had the same guy on his second flight of the week and faced similar problems) The second, while much better didn’t go as well as I’ve liked but I’ll get into that in a bit.
The first flight was about NVG operations and should have been relatively simple. I know the information but I don’t have much time in actual practice so I’m slow. I haven’t applied most of it so it isn’t burned into my head. The instructor continued to ask me if I was sure and after a while he had me rattled. It’s hard to recover when things start to snowball. I didn’t miss any steps or break anything but I was unsure of everything by the time we were done with the flight.
My second flight was a “rec-ride” or recommendation ride prior to my official evaluation or “check-ride”. I had two instructors as one of them was getting an upgrade of sorts. I expected my life to suck but it went fairly well. I wasn’t as fast as I would have liked but it wasn’t terrible – I guess I was thrown off by the previous day. I found that it was easy to get distracted by what the instructors were asking me. There were a few occasions when I got thrown off a step in my checklist – I can’t let that happen when I have my evaluation. Why wasn’t I happy with my performance? I’m a perfectionist – nearly perfect doesn’t cut it for me. We tend to keep the lights low in the cargo box and I took a photo – the camera on my phone had a hard time picking up the light. It would take a huge image sensor with some good glass to get a good picture in the dark like that – I guess you’ll just have to use your imagination.
By John, on March 10th, 2011
I don’t know about anyone else, save for my wife, but I tend to be my harshest critic. Last night I had a flight and it wasn’t going well. For me, any problem or gaps in my knowledge are unacceptable. For a while I thought that I wasn’t going to pass my flight and that I was going to have to repeat it. It turns out that I was being much harder on myself than my instructor. He passed me and told me that I should be ready for my flight tonight.
I would have failed myself.
He said I did a good job.
Funny how that works huh? I do have a few things to study and this missive is being written in a well timed break so that my brain can get a break for a second. Ok, break is over – back to work.
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