My Retirement Plan

For those of you who are not aware, Michelle is writing a book.  It is a short non-fiction book on… well, I’m not sure I can tell you.  Sorry Sweety.  Something about technology in conferences.  I know it is not specific to libraries so I think it has to do with using today’s social networking and teleconference technology to hold conferences.  Anyways, not the point of this post.

I have decided that these non-fiction books aren’t going to fit into my retirement plan.  And by retirement plan, you have to realize that I am hoping to just keep my family floating for long enough for my wife to hit it rich and I can leech off her immense wealth.  I’ll even settle for mild to moderate wealth, as long as I don’t have to work.  So here is where I need to steer my wife in a new direction.  These non-fiction books require a lot of research, and believe it or not you can’t just make stuff up.  You have to write about facts.  Then, after all that, it doesn’t pay great.  I mean, don’t get me wrong it pays, but remember I am looking for break the bank type of retire now kind of pay.

Here is what I think Michelle should do.  Drop the non-fiction and move into fiction.  In fiction books she just gets to make up whatever she wants.  I say she goes into the YA field.  They sell big right now and readers are more forgiving to all kinds of things because they can just say, “Ah well, it’s just a children’s book.”  High reward, low risk.  But to make things even easier, she doesn’t even have to be original.  Have you seen the top sellers these days?  Vampires and werewolves, superheroes, fantasy, greek mythology.  None of these are new or original concept.  She can just recycle old ideas into a new story.  She doesn’t even have to get the mythology correct, she can change it to her whim because it is her universe.

Now, I understand that I have to play my role.  So I am currently thinking of a basis for her story or universe.  Here is what I know.

• The main character (I prefer ensemble casts so I think I would push her towards a small group of people, 3 or 4) has to be a young teenager with some real life problems.  That helps the audience to relate.  Don’t worry they can be shallow problems.
• There has to be some love interest.  Could be a love triangle.  Could be a love destined to be together from the beginning of time.
• Character development is the most important thing.  In all seriousness, this is what makes books good.  You need a good plot / environment but what makes stories shine is always the characters.
• The main character(s) need something that isolates them.  Most likely as both a gift and a curse.
• Needs some kind of supernatural, superhuman, magical, fantasy, futuristic, etc. theme.  Something to take the reader out of this universe and into another one while still saying something about our own world.

So far I am thinking something along the lines of angels and demons but even that is a little played right now.  I need the new old thing.

I kind of went off on my views on how to write a book.  That’s a little odd coming from me since I am neither a good writer or a reader.  But I am allowed to have opinions right?  Right?  Maybe I shouldn’t.

–Ries, unicorns.  How about unicorns.  Girls like unicorns!

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Kegerator

This is probably the crowning achievement of our new hobby.  I am sure there will be more to come as time goes on and we further invest.

Michelle’s parents just moved to another house.  In the process they were getting rid of a fridge.  We had just bought a used fridge off of Craigslist to control fermentation temperatures of our beers, especially lagers.  We had talked about the possibility of putting taps in a fridge and begin kegging our homebrew.  With the fridge falling in our laps and a little extra money from Christmas, we decided we could not pass on the opportunity.  The picture shown to the right is the final result.

Outside of Kegerator

It holds two 5 gallon kegs, so each keg will hold one batch of beer.  Frosted beer glasses go in the freezer.  Michelle has really enjoyed making labels for each of our batches.  She makes them into magnet form so that we can stick it above the keg for identification.  Before long, our fridge will be covered in old magnets of previous batches.

Kegs inside

We still want to paint the outside of the fridge to spruce it up a bit.  We had some initial beer leaking problems because I failed to insert some rubber washers but that is fixed.  We have a CO2 leak on one of our valves so we still have to fix that.

We now have a refrigerator and freezer for every 400 square feet of house.  I wonder if that says something about our priorities?

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Recipe: Carrot and Sweet Potato Kugel

Every year, Ries’ family celebrates a Christian Seder meal. We prepare a kosher seder meal and go through the ceremony. Wine, kosher and otherwise, flows and there is a bounty of food. It is a wonderful reminder of our heritage in Christ. Most years, I am in charge of making the haroset and the kugel. The haroset is part of the seder ceremony and the kugel is just delicious.

Kugel is easy and delicious at any time of year. This recipe is very flexible. You can use any combination of sweet potatoes, carrots, or all of one or the other. I have cut the margarine and sugar for this recipe from the original, which had a crazy amount of both. I use a food processor to finely dice the vegetables. You can also easily increase this recipe by adding a bit more of everything but sugar. I think this year I used closer to 8 c. of vegetables and 3/4 c. of margarine. It is a very forgiving recipe.

For those of you who do not know what a kosher seder meal involves: no yeast or dairy can be used in the food. That is why margarine is used instead of butter and matzo meal is used instead of bread crumbs.

Carrot and Sweet Potato Kugel

1/2 c. margarine, melted
3 c. grated or diced sweet potatoes
3 c. grated or diced carrots
1/2 c. matzo meal
2 tbl. kosher red wine (or grape juice)
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 c. packed brown sugar

Heat oven to 375.

Grease 9×13 casserole pan or a size equivalent baking dish.

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl and mix well. Pour in baking dish.

Bake at 375 for 45 minutes or until it starts to brown a bit on the top and sides.

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New Legos

IMG_1936

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre

Thanks to some dear friends, Ries and Gideon were able to get a bunch of lego bricks last week. They had fun picking them out at the store. Since then, Gideon requests lego play often and his engineering daddy is only too happy to comply.

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Honesty and a Good Job

Yesterday, after praying a blessing over our breakfast (wheat waffles and strawberries), Gideon clapped and said, “Good job, Mommy. Good praying.”

It made me laugh.

He is so busy these days and he narrates everything to us. I can hear him talking about his actions when he is in other rooms of the house. Our house is not that big so I can hear him no matter where he has hidden himself. Often, his honest narration get him in trouble. For instance, here are some things I overhear which result in scoldings:
“Stepping on books.”
“Jumping on bed.”
“Sprinkling.” (which involves turning over his cup and sprinkling water on something)
“Poking puppy dog.”
“Coloring table.”
“Trying to get up on table.”
“Climbing on chairs.”

He also will honestly answer me when I ask him, “Gideon, what are you doing?” He will tell me even if the thing he is doing is something he should not be doing at all. I know this will not last, but it is funny. Soon enough he will be hiding his infractions.

Gideon has begun to understand time in the sense that things are in the past or in the future. Everything that has already happened was “last week” no matter when the event occurred. Everything that is going to happen is “tomorrow.” It is wonderful to see him make these time connections. We sure were busy last week, according to Gideon.

The boy in question just told me he was hungry so I better feed him.

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Dental Care

IMG_1924

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre

Gideon loves to brush his teeth and by brush I mean suck the toothpaste off his toothbrush. This is a picture of him, being adorable.

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Holes

It must be wonderful to be young and to have every day filled with new and exciting discoveries. Every experience is unique and wonderful. Gideon made a truly astuonding discovery last Thursday. Here was the event as it unfolded:

Gideon was taking a bath and playing. I noticed he had his hand underneath his junk (his boy parts which we do call by their actual names but I figured would be better left off this post). I figured he was just playing with it or cleaning his “undercarriage” as the boys in this house call it. He looked up at me and said with wonder in his voice, “Bum… has a hole. Bum has a hole in it.” I realized he must have been reaching a bit farther back than I thought. With my lips twitching up I replied, “You are right. Your bum does have a hole in it.”

He kept feeling around and repeating, “Bum has a hole in it.”

I told him that was where the poop comes out. He thought about that for awhile, continuing to feel the area in discussion. I could see the wheels turning around in his head.

After a couple minutes of this conversation going in circles between the two of us, Gideon said, “Tell Daddy. Tell Daddy something.”

I was fairly certain I knew what Daddy was going to be told, but I yelled for Ries, who was doing the dinner dishes, “Daddy! Gideon has something to tell you.”

Ries dutifully appeared and I smiled at him, trying not to laugh.

“What, Gideon?” Ries asked.

In a very serious voice, Gideon announced, “Bum… has a hole in it.” Then he asked, “Daddy bum have a hole in it?”

To his credit, Ries, who had been hearing the exchange before entering said very solemnly, “Yes, my bum has a hole in it. That’s where the poop comes out.”

“Everyone’s bum has a hole in it,” I added for good measure. Gideon made the connection and said, “Mommy’s bum has a hole in it?”

“Yep.”

The conversation continued in this vein for the rest of bath time.

Sunday night at bath time, I said something to my child I thought I would never say in my life, “Gideon, take your finger out of your bum. That is where the poop comes out. Yucky.”

It was really hard to ask him to do that with a straight face. I was laughing on the inside.

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

Gideon recently discovered that the world sounds different with his fingers in his ears.

Friday, he popped his fingers in his ears and leaned close to me and said very earnestly into my face, “I hear the voices.”

So do I, kiddo. So do I.

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Recipe: Yeast Starter for 5 Gallon Homebrew

When I was looking for an easy recipe and explanation of how to make a yeast starter for a 5 gallon homebrew batch, I could not find one that did not involve taking some crazy measurements and requiring equipment I did not own. Therefore, I present to you, an easy, simple, dummy’s guide to making a yeast starter. All you basically need to do is make a small batch of wort with some nutrients for the yeast.

As a side note, if you are homebrewing and you do not make yeast starters, you should strongly consider it. Making a yeast starter does two things:

1. You will know if your yeast is healthy.
2. You will increase the number of yeast you pitch so that your yeast is not overworked and they can produce a better flavor.

There is some debate over the amount of starter yeast need, 1 or 2 liters. This recipe is for a 2 liter starter but it can easily be halved. I usually make 1 liter starters, but I just made a 2 liter starter for the porter we made Saturday and it is chugging away.

I should state that all equipment should be properly sanitized before use just as when you start the regular brewing process.

2 Liter Yeast Starter
Equipment Needed:

large pot
funnel
3-4 liter glass bottle (any glass bottle with a small opening will work)
small piece of foil or bunghole plug and airlock that fits your bottle
bleach for sanitizing

Ingredients:

2 liters of water
2 c. DME (a variety that matches your beer or something in the middle. I use amber or light.)
2 tbl. Brewer’s Yeast* (nutritional supplement, not yeast for making beer)
yeast packet, smack pack, or vial

24 to 32 hours before you want to brew:

Take the yeast out of the refrigerator and allow it to come to room temperature. If it is a smack pack, follow the instructions on the pack regarding smacking it and letting it swell.

While the yeast is coming to room temperature. Place 2 liters of water, 2 cups of DME, and brewer’s yeast into a large pot or saucepan. Stir the mixture until all the DME is dissolved. Bring mixture to a boil.

Boil the mixture for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes, place the lid on the pot and remove from heat.

Allow the wort to cool to room temperature or about 75 degrees F.

Use the funnel to pour the wort and the yeast into the bottle. Swirl the mixture vigorously to aerate the wort. Place the foil (or fancy airlock) over the bottle opening, but not too tight, if using foil. The air will need to escape.**

Keep the starter at about 70-75 degrees (less if it is a lager), but this temperature may vary depending on the yeast strain. Most packets or vials will tell you what the optimal fermentation temperature is for each yeast. It is best if you can keep the starter somewhere you will see it often. We usually keep ours on the kitchen counter and every time we go in the kitchen, we give it a little swirl. This is important because the starter needs to aerate.***

You should see bubbles and movement in the yeast. Some yeast will take a few hours to get going, but you should see some foaming and bubbling after a few hours. I usually make mine in the morning and expect to see some action by dinner time. If nothing happens, your yeast is bad and you need a new batch. This has happened to us once.

If all is well and happy, pitch the yeast into your beer like normal!

Prost!

*Brewer’s Yeast is a nutritional supplement that can be added to bread, cereal, and other things. I think it tastes gross as human food. Yeast love it and our beer yeast needs to eat something. I add this. You can also use honey or sugar.

**Some brewers may be appalled at my use of foil. I always sanitized it and was careful not to mess with it much. We have graduated to an airlock for the starter bottle, but the foil works in a pinch and this is a dummy’s guide.

***Serious brewers use a stir plate and an Erlenmeyer flask but that equipment is expensive, hence our hand swirl method.

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Carnival Food

Carnival Food

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre

We went to the rodeo on Friday, full post coming soon, and Gideon loved the fried onions. We tried to get his friend Caleb to try some but he just fed them to Gideon.

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Recipe: Spinach Dumplings

*I actually had this ready to go up yesterday than I ran into some problems with WordPress. Sorry for the delay.*

I made these last night and they are definitely going to stay in the Smith family meal rotation. I used the water from the dumplings to cook some pasta which I topped with a simple herbed marinara sauce. It was a perfect side for the spinach dumplings. You’ll never miss the meat! You can substitute cottage cheese for the ricotta and a bit of milk for the eggs if you find yourself an egg or two short. I also used wheat flour.

Spinach Dumplings

1 package frozen spinach, thawed
1 c. ricotta cheese
2 eggs, plus 2 yolks
1 1/2 c. flour, divided
8 c. water
1 ¼ c. Parmesan cheese, grated, divided
garlic powder to taste
salt and pepper to taste

Place the 8 c. of water in a large sauce pan or fill a large pot about halfway. You want the balls to be able to be completely submerged. Bring to a rolling boil while preparing the spinach balls.

Preheat oven to 350.

Squeeze excess moisture from the spinach. In a large bowl, combine ricotta cheese, eggs and yolks, 1 cup flour, 1 cup Parmesan cheese.

Mix well and form into 8 large balls. Roll the balls into the remaining ½ c. flour so that each ball is lightly coated.

Drop the balls lightly into the water and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the balls start to float. Gently remove them with a slotted spoon.

Place the spinach balls into a greased casserole dish. Top with the remaining ½ c. of cheese.

Bake at 350 for 20-30 minutes or until desired doneness. At 20 minutes the dumplings will still be very soft and wet. After thirty minutes, they have more of a bread consistency, though still very soft.

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Why you should back up

I created the previous post several weeks ago but was waiting to put the CPU-Z screenshot in there.  In the meantime my hard drive failed.  This was a new hard drive but of course passed the 30 day return limit.  Two things kept this from being a catastrophe in my new toy.  First thing, is that I set up my computer with 2 hard drives in a RAID 1 configuration so that all data is saved to both hard drives so no data was lost and there was no down time using my computer.  The other thing is that Samsung has a 3 year warranty on their hard drives and I was able to send it back in and get a replacement in about a week and a half.  So, I installed the new one and it Nightcrawler is once again complete.  But this did remind me why it is important to back up your data.

–Ries, when was your last back up?

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Good Morning, Sunshine

**I found this in the drafts folder and, though it is a year old, I decided to publish it anyway. Since it is Lent, this is appropriate. Luckily, I did not give up coffee for Lent this year.**

My precious son decided to be awake for over an hour this morning, from about 4-5:15 am. AM! It is uncivilized!

After finally going to sleep, I expected him to sleep in a bit. No such luck. He wiggled awake at 7:10.

*sigh*

In other, but related, news, I gave up coffee for Lent. I figured that if I was going to give something up, it should be something that I would really miss. An actual sacrifice. I like hot tea, but nothing replaces coffee with plenty of sugar and real cream on mornings like today. I miss my coffee on mornings that start too early after long nights and let’s be honest, that is most mornings for me.

Ries informed me I was not allowed to give up things that would adversely effect him without consultation. He said my lack of coffee has made me a bit grumpy in the mornings.

Lent is almost over and I will celebrate the Resurrection of my Lord Jesus with a hot cup of coffee and coffee cake.

Hallelujah, indeed.

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Stably, Mildly, Overclocked Computer

My newly built computer (named Nightcrawler) has received a few minor upgrades in the couple months since I built it.  My wife got me a stocking stuffer for Christmas that was a green LED lit case fan.  I stuck that inside the case to blow on to the video card area.  The green adds a nice hint to the blue that is in all the other fans.  Also, with some gift card money, I bought a card reader so I can stick all those SD cards (and other cards) I have lying around into my computer.

I have been spending a bit of time here and there for about a month trying to overclock my CPU.  I haven’t done this before but I have been reading a lot about it online for a while now.  One of the reasons I went with the Core i5-750 was the relative ease in which it could be overclocked for significant gains.  I even had bought the CPU cooler that I put in there with this in mind.  I did not however, want to attempt any aggressive overclocking that would give me high speeds but created a less efficient system that would reduce the lifetime of my processor.  My last computer served me well for 7+ years and I still have plans for its occasional use.  I want the same out of this computer.

Most overclockers for the new Core i5 / i7 processors tend to due things to get high clocks that I think reduce the effect of some of the advances that Intel has made with this newest generation of processors.  Specifically, the energy saving features and the turbo mode.  It seems that a lot of people turn these features off because they find that they cause stability issues with some of the higher clock rates.  Not that I didn’t believe them, but I did find out that they were right.  Like I said, I didn’t care about aggressive overclocks so I wanted to try and gain a moderate overclock while keeping these features on.  I wanted my cake and eat it too (still don’t get that saying). This article from Tom’s Hardware gave me added courage that I could do it and concrete justification that this was actually the optimum (measured in efficiency) way to go about it.  I just wish they would have put more details about the BIOS settings they used.

I decided that my target clock speed (BCLK) would be 160 MHz with little to no extra voltage, which would give me a default CPU frequency of 3.2 GHz (160 x 20 CPU ratio) and up to 3.84 GHz (160 x 24) in single threaded applications with Turbo Mode.  This seemed reasonable and I was sure I could do it.  A series of tries with unstable torture tests for a single threaded application showed me otherwise.  I am pretty sure I narrowed the problem to having the C-states enabled (power saving feature) but I wasn’t willing to give that up.  I still think I can get those speeds to work, but I don’t have the time, patience, experience, or knowledge to do it right now.  Therefore, I dropped my BCLK down to 150 MHz, which is the point when my motherboard BIOS automatically turns off those processor features mentioned unless you manually enable them.  With this setting I have a stable system and no extra voltage.  I have a 3.0 GHz processor (it usually runs about 3.15 GHz) for the price of a 2.66 GHz one and I am happy.  I may try to slightly increase that BCLK and I think I can get some tighter timings on my memory, but I have to leave something left for me to do, right?  For now, I am happy.  See my final stats in the CPU-Z screenshot below.

Nightcrawler Overclocked Settings

I have also done a simple overclock of my video card using the provided Overdrive from ATI.  Unfortunately, it looks like I will not be able to add another video card to my computer as planned because the Radeon 4870’s are simply dying out of the retail supply.

-Ries, next upgrade?

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Olympic Score

I am not going to take the time this year to bash NBC’s coverage of the Olympics.  Quite frankly, it was horrible.  Again.  Especially their primetime coverage.  Horrendous.  I can’t say enough about it.  So I will just stop there.

However, I do want to point out that I like to keep my own personal score of the olympics to determine which country “wins” the Olympics.  Although, cheesy, I do feel that every olympic athlete that makes it there is a winner.  I can’t imagine what kind of experience that must be.  And Olympic village must be the hottest party in the world.  Again, with the digressing.

I keep a number score where I give each medal a weight.  Gold worth 3, silver worth 2, and bronze worth 1.  Those numbers could be tweaked but I feel it is probably the simplest method.  Sometimes, the total medal count, which is quoted so often can be misleading if one country (usually USA) is winning a lot of bronzes but another country has fewer but higher quality medals.  But this year it played out in-line with the medal count.  The top 3 countries are:

1. USA – 70 points
2. Germany – 63 points
3. Canada – 61 points

Maybe next time I will divide the points by country population or GNP.

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Ride, Puppy Dog!

Ride, Puppy Dog!

Originally uploaded by Wandering Eyre

In celebration of the rodeo:

YeeHaw!

Here you see Gideon participating in the infamous big dog saddle event.

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Recipe: Roasted Pork Tenderloin

Normally, I never post recipes that I have not cooked myself. However, this comes from a reliable source (a friend) who assures me that it is a never fail recipe. Add that to the fact that is is so easy that you might die of boredom while it cooks.

Roasted Pork Tenderloin

1 whole pork tenderloin frozen
5 c. water
1 envelope Lipton onion soup mix
vegetables of choice (carrots, onions, potatoes, whatever!

Preheat oven to 350.

Put the frozen (that’s right, I said frozen!) pork tenderloin into a large covered casserole dish or a roasting pan with a lid. Place the 5 cups of water in the pan. Sprinkle the soup mix over the pork and water. (I guess if you felt like dirtying a bowl you could mix the water with the soup mix.) Place the vegetables of your choice, if using, in the pan.

Place the lid on the pan.

Bake for 3 hours at 350.

That is it!

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