Cab ride on the way to vinyl

hangover

The bbq yesterday was fun, and so was clubbing at vinyl. I didn't get home until 5am this morning, so I'm feeling a bit hung over.

Weekend

My friend Angie comes in tonight for the weekend. Tomorrow we have a bbq in wash park, some clubbing at vinyl Saturday night, and who knows for Sunday...

dinner@home -- Italian theme night

pictures -- click to view.

My Italian dinner theme last night was fun. The food was great, the wine was nice, and we had some great conversations. I'm a bit tired today.

Cinnamon bread

...and he bakes bread too.

A better idea

I have a better idea. I'll just go through the back wall and put all the guts in the basement. The chiller should be somewhere else anyway -- it puts out heat.

Dinner party

I'm having a dinner party tonight. Last night, I stuffed the chiller into the tank assembly. It seems to be working fine, but I'll have to vent the cabinet somehow. I'm not enamored with the idea of chopping a hole in the side of my $2k oak base, but something has to be done.

The dinner party theme is Italian. I made a regular and veggie lasagna, and the other attendees (8 of us total) are bringing the rest.

Long weekend

The entire weekend was a lot of go-go-go. The symphony on Saturday was fantastic. Yesterday I spent some time with Javon and then went down town for a MID event. I haven't been home very much lately.

I may sneak out and see star wars at 11am this morning. Maybe it won't be a zoo of people.

I need to put the chiller in the tank today, and tomorrow I'm having a dinner party here, so I need to get ready for that as well.

Good tools are hard to find

One of the coolest tools I've been using lately is a virtual CD/DVD rom emulator.

http://www.daemon-tools.cc/dtcc/portal/portal.php

It's free. I can create iso images of disks and virtually mount them to the computer. That helps with installs, stupid games that need the disk all the time, etc. Give it a shot.

meetin.org

Well, Seneca got tired of approving all my meetin.org events so she made me an event planner (no approval required). I think I've got the record -- I've been there a month and I've planned/hosted a ton of events.

www.meetin.org

go to DENVER.

The workout was fine today. My sleeping is better. Last night I was out for sushi at sushi den with some Mid'ers. I bought the latest New Order CD and am listening to it now....

Next wine event -- RED Zinfandel

Send an email RSVP.

Enjoy wine, friends and fun at the next wine event:
Saturday June 11, 2005, 7pm.
RED Zinfandel, $35 or less.

Zinfandel
[ZIHN-fuhn-dehl]
Grape that is considered California's red-wine grape because it's not widely grown in other parts of the world. Zinfandel vines were brought to California by AGOSTON HARASZTHY (known as "the father of California wine") in the 1850s. By the 1880s this variety was rapidly gaining acceptance by California growers, and it is now that state's most extensively planted red grape. For years Zinfandel's origins were very mysterious. Now, however, a relationship between Zinfandel and Primitivo (a variety grown in Italy's PUGLIA region) has been established. Outside of the Zinfandel grown in California (and Italy's Primitivo), there are only isolated plantings of this grape-mainly in South Africa and Australia. Zinfandel is vinified in many styles, which vary greatly in quality. One popular style is White Zinfandel, a fruity-flavored white wine that's usually slightly sweet and ranges in color from light to dark pink. The Zinfandel grape is also used as a base for SPARKLING WINES. When made into red wine, Zinfandel can produce wines ranging from light, NOUVEAU styles to hearty, robust reds with berrylike, spicy (sometimes PEPPERY) flavors, plenty of TANNINS and ALCOHOL, and enough DEPTH, COMPLEXITY, and longevity to be compared to CABERNET SAUVIGNONS. Another style is LATE-HARVEST Zinfandel, which exhibits higher alcohol levels and some RESIDUAL SUGAR. Occasionally, Zinfandel is fortified and marketed as a California PORT-style wine. Large Zinfandel plantings exist in California's CENTRAL VALLEY where the hot weather tends to produce lower-quality grapes, which often make their way into JUG WINE. The Italian DOC, PRIMITIVO DI MANDURIA, produces dry red Primitivo grape-based wines that are similar to some California Zins. As Zinfandel's popularity increases, more and more enterprising Italian Primitivo growers are labeling their wines "Zinfandel" and exporting them to the United States.

Special instructions: Bring some food to share with the group, and one bottle of wine per person or couple.
This is RED Zin, not WHITE Zin.





Download printable directions and info here.
Get a mapquest map here.
Join the e-mail list.

There is a bit of confusion on the theme for this next wine event, so I've updated some of the info. Basically, Zinfandel is a variety of grape. It's actually a dark skinned grape, like cabernet. Grown mostly in the US, Zinfandel is typically lightly crushed and the juice is tanked for fermentation. That's how you get WHITE ZIN which is a pink, rose, or blush wine. We're going to do RED ZIN, which is made by letting the grape juice after crush spend more time with the skins. RED ZINFANDEL is more like a Cabernet and less like a Chardonnay. So, when you're at the store, don't get a white zin. Get a straight ZINFANDEL. It's a red wine. Thanks!

ordering an aquarium chiller

I had to order a chiller today. Now that it's warmer out, it's hard to keep the tank temp in range without keeping the house like an icebox.

I should have bought a cat instead.

Uhg

Please God. No more sweet wine tastings.

2005-05-14 Wine event pictures -- Gewürztraminer

Wine event pictures, May 14, 2005 Gewürztraminer.

Click to view.

2005-05-14 Wine ratings -- Gewürztraminer

Wine rating results in pdf format. Click to download.
Gewürztraminer

2005-04-16 Barbera wine event ratings

Wine rating results in pdf format. Click to download.
Barbera

space 1999

Sometimes it's nice to just remember being 7 again in front of the TV. Thanks, netflix!

It's late

I finally got the 500G array up on the server. It took forever to sychronize, then took forever to copy all the data to it. Yeah, it's really 4:33AM. I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep.

Wine class sucked!

Well, that wine class tonight sucked. Really bad info, wrong info, you name it. I could have taught that class better.

What a waste of 3 hours.

Stuff

Mowed the lawn, worked on the garden, did some volunteering this weekend. Monday I hosted an event at the Truffle for the MID group. It was fun. Tonight I have a wine class.

Random from the web

Sometimes I wonder...is being a fish so bad?

saturday

I gave up on the mirror. I ordered another drive and a controller. I'll do raid 5 in software on the server instead. That will give me a 500G array with parity.

more zzz

drives...48% resynched. I think I'll order another drive and make it a raid 5 array instead. This is lame.

zzz

Went to the funky budda for a MID planning event. WHOOO! fucking server is on 11% for synchronizing the mirror. What a joke.

Like watching grass grow...

The stupid mirror is formatting STILL...about 1% per hour. Christ, at this rate, it will be next week before it finishes. That is pathetic.

Drives

I stuffed the drives in the server -- 2 250G IDE drives set up as a mirrored pair. I wish they would give up on this 1G = 1,000,000,000 bytes crap. That's retarded. They are formatting on the server at the moment....

How about a couple 1T drives for a mirror? That would work for me.

On a work roll last night..

I was out a bit yesterday afternoon, and back around 6PM. Somehow, I got on a work roll and didn't quit until 12:30AM. Sometimes you just have to ride those waves.....

Tonight I'm downtown to help plan a MID event with some people in June. It should be interesting.

Interesting

http://home.tiscali.nl/annejan/swf/timeline.swf

Too much data, hubcaps

Last night I was at solera hosting a MID wine tasting. Anita was there too. When we left, she noticed she was missing all her hubcaps.



I'm paranoid about losing data, so I run a raid 5 array using 15K rpm scsi drives and an adaptec raid controller with 128MB of ram. The problem is, I've had it a couple of years and it's only about 100 Gigabytes.

Let's stop and think about the 'only' part. My first hard drive was 80 Megabytes and cost $800 dollars 13 years ago.

Anyway, only about 15G is company data. 69G is my personal data, which is really growing lately due to mp4 files, iso images, divx files, and digital pictures. I've been running out of space, and after deleting some old stuff, it's still not that great, space wise.

I gave up today and ordered (2) 250GB 7200 IDE drives. I'll set them up in the server as a mirrored pair and move all my personal data to it. It's not as redundant as raid 5, but it's better than nothing.

180G of space will probably last (hopefully) till the end of the year...

Overtraining, glock 27

After considering several compact self defense firearms and talking to my friend Paul Voita, who has lead a swat team in the past, I decided on the Glock 27 .40 cal compact semi-auto. I'll be starting weapons training soon and then will go for a concealed weapons permit.

I think that I'm stuck in some kind of overtraining condition. Maybe I'm getting old...yikes. All the classic symptoms are there. I'll take a short break and change my workout schedule.

Tonight I'm off to solera for a wine tasting. I'm hosting it as a MID (meet in Denver) event, and it looks like it will be fun.

Random from the web.

If only she'd lose the plastic cup.

Sunday night

Well, it's late late late Sunday night. Monday if you're picky like that. I spent the night volunteering and I'm ready for bed. I hear it is supposed to rain/snow at least through Tuesday.