go-doyle.com

It’s 330am and i’m not quite tired. I was up reminiscing about the 80s and how awesome (and yet shitty) the TV shows were back then. Spending time on retrojunk.com is a great blast-from-the-past. It’s amazing how many people have NO CLUE these shows ever existed. Searching the internet all over, you’ll see that a few people here/there have posted TV episodes on torrent sites. These tend to be the case for popular old TV shows (M*A*S*H , StarTrek, etc). For more obscure TV shows, you may find a few episodes on YouTube or some other streaming video site. Many of these sites do not allow for you to directly download the videos (or if they’re shitty and you can see their code, you can get the file but not be able to properly view it). I have compiled a nice page that ties together some a perhaps confusing google search would turn up. Some of you reading this may already know this or have your own way of doing it; ROCK ON! For those of you who never knew it possible, but thought ‘gee, it would be nice if…’ - look no further. CLICK HERE to see the video section and download links.

On a different subject, the current brews are coming along nicely. The mead is still slowly gurlgling away in secondary fermentation. The cider just stopped fizzling away in primary. I bought some frozen blackberries, boiled up about a 1/2-3/4 of a pound of em, and added them to the bottom of the 2ndary fermentor vessel and racked off the cider from primary vessel into this one. I’ll let it sit on there for a while and see if i can re-kickstart the suspended yeast to start working on the fruit-bits.

Last night we decided to do a ghetto-bonfire at Ledbetter Beach. Instead of going someplace far away and building a REAL bonfire, lighting, NOT getting caught, getting buzzed, then driving all the way home — we went a little bit across the street. We found a large picnic area with a 4′x4′ cast-iron grill — we lowered the cooking grate, poured almost a whole bag of charcoal on it, doused it in starting fluid, rolled up some newspapers, and set it ablaze. Meanwhile, I have never until this point, had a 40-oz. In Florida, law has it capped at the lame-ass 32-oz bottles (also known as ‘40-8′ bottles) . Pictures of the ensuing shenanigans can be found on the gallery page. Everyone is encouraged to create gallery accounts, and create albums + upload images.  I am physical so far away from many of you, i’d like to see what kind of fun things are happening. That, and unlike MySpace, I don’t really censor my site for graphic content *(well, not yet, that is… you folks always seem to surprise me with the shit you get yourselves into…)

It’s official - Cheryl and I are now members of the Maltose Falcons -  a homebrew club located near Los Angeles.   Last month, Cheryl and I were driving to LA to see Phildo and decided that we can stop and some homebrew shops along the way for me to shop and price-check.  We stopped at The Home Wine, Beer, and Cheesemaking Shop in Woodland Hills, CA (near/around Encino).  The owner/manager invited Cheryl and I to the back of the store to watch the Maltose Falcon’s workshop brew that was being done.  Cheryl and I talked with some of the board of directors and sampled many of their award-winning brews.  It was a great time. What started out to be the first shop of many that day, turned into a 3-4 hour adventure in brewing!  I felt very comfortable with these people and couldn’t wait to hang and brew again.  Their meetings are the first Sunday of the month.  The next meeting for Cheryl and I would have been yesterday.  We got to the store a little before the meeting started (noon) and were amazed to see how many people attend *(I roughly counted 20+/-, and was told that it was a ’small’ crowd this time).  The former president did a presentation on Saisons and we sampled about 6-7 different beers, noting their differences, but enjoying them all just the same.  Next came the club-brews.  Following the saisons were about 13 different beers brewed by club members.  I was partial to some of the ones that used Belgian yeast strains (and multiple yeasts), imparting complex, and often fruity, flavors.  I look forward to being able to bring my mead in for review of the club and being able to take part in the next few shop brews.  The next one is an IPA/XPA.  I’m not really a fan of pale-ales and certainly do not want a 5gal batch of it :-)   Perhaps I can get a group together to do a brown or belgian ale… hmm…

Given that I have a penchant for hands-on hobbies, I have requested that my family send me some of my homebrew equipment so I can do some brews here.  My request was granted and within a week, a big box full of goodies arrived.  I had ordered another mead kit from homebrew heaven and got to work.  I started the batch on 5/17.  I used the dry-yeast that came with the kit:  Lalvin K1-v116 (dry wine yeast), checked starting gravity (1.093), stuck in the rubber stopper for the airlock and waited…  about a week later - 5/24, sterilized a turkey baster and pulled a sample from the fermention bucket.  The mead was reading 1.069 *(about 3% alcohol at this stage — FAR from done).  Seeing that nice change in gravity readings let me know that fermentation was well on its way.  I did a racking from primary to secondary fermentation tanks on 6/2, again taking a gravity reading.  This time it was reading 1.050 (about 5.5% alcohol by volume).  I wanted to rack it off the dross, so as not to impart any off-flavors from sitting on all that dead yeast for so long.  I’m usually pretty anal-retentive about that.    At this time, I also took a baster-full (about 1-1.5oz ) of the fermenting mead to innoculate a 2gallon batch of apple cider I wanted to make for one of Cheryl’s friends.  The friend just moved from SBCA to Kentucky *(but will be back in SB in another week or so; hopefully it will be ready by then!).  Last night, 24 hours later, the apple juice has already started to get bubbly and a nice fizzing sound is coming from the vessel — Fermentation is on its way!!  Check the gallery within the next few days for pictures of the brews-in-progress.

It’s been a while - I’m sorry.   Since my last post, I’ve gotten my new DL and car registration!  This is by-far, the most STERILE-looking DL picture I have ever taken.  I felt like a deer in the headlamps: 

I’ve been searching tirelessly for a job.   I’ve been interviewing like crazy and keeping contact with many companies. I had a great interview with CitrixOnline and was told that I am an amazing candidate for them. Unfortunately, them and many other companies here are under a hiring freeze until after the summer. This is putting the clamps down on me.  Today, I went to a temp-agency called AppleOne and started my search with them.  I keep in contact with CitrixOnline about once a week to let them know that I’m still interested in working for them.  I’m dreaming of the day when they call me, offer me good money and say COME IN TO START!  ::grin:: for the time being, I have set up shop next to this guy, walking up and down State Street: