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I have been working on getting my Linux box up and running again.  This was mainly due to the fact that I have not used it in a while.  Since I am getting divorced it is one of the possessions that I am getting.  I decided to hook it back up and start working on it again.  One of the main problems it has is that it overheats like crazy.  I am sure I could put some new heatsink compound on it and that would probably help.  I have to fairly regularly blow all the dust out of it to keep it from overheating.  I used to use it as my main computer and it was my primary computer pretty much until the drive died one day and I had to put a new one in.  It does have a smaller drive that is the Windows XP drive.  I run Ubuntu on the Linux drive, which is also the primary boot.  I am aware that some people slam Ubuntu for being too friendly to new users of Linux.  However, I have found that it also “just works” and reduces the amount of time I have to spend screwing with the system.

I am working on setting up the Linux box as my development machine again.  I have mentioned that I wrote a program called CBViewer a while back, somehow it has become popular and it has gotten about 26,000 downloads or so from the sourceforge repositories.  This is very good news to me.  However I have yet to see a single penny for donations.  I don’t mind one bit, because I gave CBViewer to the community as a way of giving back for all the free software that I have used over the years.  I would like to see a community created comic book archive for it, I would gladly host the downloads for such an archive.  I am sure that this would be a great way for the upcoming comic artists and writers to get there work out there.  I could see each comic being released under a CC license of some sort.  Before I do that though I am going to make a few changes to CBViewer and post a new version for download since I believe it has been over a year since the last one was released.

So, a couple of weekends ago we tried to brew our first lager… Having brewed several ales at this point I think we may have been slightly overconfident. Everything was going just fine, the boil looked great, the beer cooled down fairly fast (thanks to slightly cold weather that day) and the yeast looked fine when we rehydrated it. However, if you read the directions for lagering, it is suggested that you should start the lager at normal ale temperatures and then move it to a cooler spot for lagering. We didn’t read this part so although we did get some pressure in the airlock we did not get the rapid bubbling that we are used to with the ales. When I visited Brian on Thursday morning he told me that the Oktoberfest we had brewed wasn’t fermenting properly. We looked at it, had a small discussion and decided to throw some dry ale yeast on the top of the wort and see what happened. When I visited on Saturday afternoon, before our trip to the brew store (more on that in a few), Brian told me the wort had already bubbled through the airlock and he had to replace it. He had come down to the basement to put wood in the stove and could smell the fermentation. He put the new airlock on and when I visited it was bubbling like crazy, it finally slowed down on Sunday morning. Hopefully this beer turns out alright. I will definitely keep updates on it.

The other mistake we had was that we had planned a trip to Jasper’s in Nashua since it is the closest brewing supply store to us and while we get great service from Midwest Brewing Supply, we still have to pay shipping fees. Nashua is about 45-60 minutes from the Keene area. So we figured we could swing over on a Saturday and spend some cash, maybe walk out with a couple of new carboys and some grains for brewing. We got all the way out there, only to find that they were closed that Saturday due to the holiday weekend. So we stopped at Burger King and picked up a burger instead.

Not that anyone really reads this blog, but I am putting this out there. I am in the process of becoming divorced. I won’t get into the details, but the end result has been major upheavals in my life. Ending a relationship of 10 years is not easy. Especially when you have kids involved. Since I was about the same age as my youngest son when my own parents got divorced, I have been taking great pains to try to make this process as easy for the boys as for my ex and I.

I have been fairly busy trying to straighten my life out again and have ignored my small efforts here. I plan to change that. I have picked up a new hobby which I truly love, brewing beer. It is easily one of the most fun and captivating things I have ever done. I plan to commit as much space in this blog as I can to beer brewing. I hope that everyone can bear with me. I will still post any game and or life related announcements here as well. However, I will be changing the focus of this blog to brewing beer. Expect a post this weekend regarding our upcoming trip to the brew supply store and what we are currently brewing.

That is all for now. I’ll write more later.