2010 hit like an angry bull in a brillo tornado. Well, not that bad, but it’s been pretty freakin’ nonstop. Work’s been crazy. Picked up some tech reading on the side. Been finishing the basement. A few ski trips. Daily-ish gym trips, yoga, and cycling. Lots of brewing. Sorry I haven’t been sharing. I’ve been somewhat holed up in many ways. Anyways, I apologize. It’s not you, it’s me. But I hope to be visiting more often again.

It’s a new year and I have a lot of resolutions on my mind, and I’m working through what I want to really focus on. But two really stick in my mind as relevant and important. The first is to continue on the path that I set out on mid-year last year, cultivating relationships and habits that really help me move forward. The second is to make and drink more of my own beer, and specialty beers, and to spend less time drinking commodity beers, even from the great microbreweries.

wow…current inventory in the basement: 10 gallons imperial alt (carboys), 10 gallons dubbel (carboys), 5 gallons IPA (carboy), brown, IPA, porter (cornies). The 10-gallon batches are destined to go into barrels for aging.

Spent the night at my Aunt and Uncle’s place on the Sandy. It was a beautiful night, surprisingly warm in the tent, the sound of the river rushing past was soothing. Augie woke me up a bit early, and I joined my Uncle Corbett on a drive up to The Reel Tackle, a nice local tackle shop for some lures. Good thing, because I would soon be going through them quickly.

Life is getting better all the time. Drink beer from your kegerator and it will let the world know. Spark Fun makes it possible (I’ll have to checkout their toys!). Link via Kelly of the Oregon Brew Crew.

Sparks is no longer being produced. Get’em while they’re cold.

pdxpipeline has a nice bit on the party as well.

I finally broke down and got me a flickr account. Now I have photos at picasaweb, facebook, and flickr. So, now I have wonder…what goes where? I’m thinking that the picasaweb will continue to be my library-type space. Pretty much all my photos go there. Then facebook gets the goofy fun ones, the parties, whatever. And lastly, flickr will diplay my favorites. Some I think are good photos, some are representative of what I’m about, and some just end up there.

Date: 10/19/2008 Colin Powell has endorsed Barack Obama for president (of the United States). Personally, I think this is huge. A Republican who has always provided a steady, well-reasoned approach, he is widely respected on both sides of the aisle. But this is more than “a rightie supports Obama.” This is support from a figure broadly and recently well-regarded in national defense. “As gifted as he is, he is essentially going to execute the Republican agenda, the orthodoxy of the Republican agenda, with a new face and a maverick approach to it, and he’d be quite good at it,” Mr.

Tired of all the right-wing emails I’d receive, and especially the fact (yes, fact) that most of them contain gross inaccuracies or straightout lies, I began writing and sending my own emails. I am trying to keep them as factual as possible, and while they highlight issues more popular on the left than on the right, I am trying to present facts in a “think about it” approach, rather than an editorial.

Jack Bog kinda asked about my beer cellar. This is the real deal. Inside: Hercules Double, Elysian Avatar, assorted homebrews, and lots more fun stuff. cheers.

After quite a bit of work I’ve got a new version of beerdrinker.org ready to rock. Some of the new features are pretty obvious…a new banner and some random photos. But there are other new features. I’ve included a feed of my latest ficlets so at least you can tell I haven’t been slacking too much if I haven’t been posting. Then there’s the beer grab bag on the right, so if you’re ever thirsty and not sure what to consume, just checkout that doodad and let you thirst be forever quenched.

Upgraded the site, and got a new theme, and made a new banner…it’s just a trial run, but let me know whatcha think (I know, I need to clean it up a bit). cheers.

have to keep the cast on an extra week…I go in Wednesday 8:30am. Yay, cuz it’s starting to get a bit nasty.

sorry to have cut back so much…one-handed typing is a pain in the ass. Looking to be freed 6/20.

Hey! Hope is was nice. If you’re not into xmas, cool. I hope it was a good day for you anyway. Also, James Brown rest in peace. A true star and visionary.

I had a bunch of stuff to say today, but I ended up having to do a bunch of maintenance on the site. One of my buddies, who has a subdomain from me is getting hammered and it used up all my bandwidth. Sorry ojingo, had to turn you off for a few days until we can figure out what’s causing it. A few other little things, and now I have to get out of here.

Alright, so according to google I’m now the #1 repository for “scared kitty” and it’s taking quite a bit of traffic. Beer drinker gets plenty from the internet community, so I’ll keep holding onto it. BUT I’ve lowered the quality of this pic…saves me about 10KB per transfer which is more than it sounds like. You can still get the original at http://www.beerdrinker.org/images/scared_kitty_orig.jpg. By original, I don’t mean that I created it, because I didn’t and I have no idea who did.

ugh…my machine went down hard last week. Problem turned out to be a bad stick of RAM and is fixed now, so I should get stuff back up. Still recovering because some system stuff was upgraded during the bad memory time and now some things are hosed. In the meantime I got me a new friend, a MacBook.

woohoo! found a really cool script called bbipsto handle scaling down all my images. I’ve replaced all the big ones from before with blog-friendly pics, so scroll down and take a gander at them all happy on one page. And I’ll get some more up here asap too!

yep. I did it. WordPress had a new major upgrade, and I did it. It was easy. Amazingly smooth. In particular I’d setup the database in an old b2 installation manner that I concocted to have multiple blogs on the same domain, and that has been a pain in the instalASStion process for a long time…I modified my table names (after backups) and all came out alright. I also spent eight minutes and threw together the banner and the mod of a much nicer www.

been super busy at work lately. Doesn’t mean I haven’t been drinking beer, just been taking in the waning summer too much lately to write about it. I haven’t even brewed in awhile. Go Timbers.

I’m pleased to announce that I’ve achieved one of my longterm goals in life a little early! Go to Google and enter beer drinker OR beerdrinker. You can expect news of other great accomplishments in upcoming posts.

added two new Oregon links: simple subjects and Slacker Manager. The first is just about a guy and/or his family living a low-impact lifestyle (environmentally speaking) and has some thoughtful words. The second is a guy with a job writing about it the way he knows. Seems pretty sharp. He also wrote this nifty manifesto, Slacker @Work.

sorry about the hiatus. Been way quiet lately, even though I have a few good things to post. Partly busy, partly trying to lessen computer/rick time, partly just beaten down dealing with all the frickin blog spam.

Came across a coupla cool blogs through Sun. Jonathan Scwartz is COO there and says lots of smart things. The DivaBlog is an open source advocate at Sun as well.

A perhaps depressing, perhaps enlightening article in the New Yorker on the Unpolitical Animal: we. The people. It discusses a number of ideas that I’d been kicking around for awhile, and introduced a lot of new ones to me as well. There are a few fantastic quotes in there as well.

That’s right. Leonardo DiCaprio is coming to town. He will be accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi and some guy named John Kerry. I’m sure it’ll be a good time…remember, you need a ticket, but it’s free and all you have to do it print it out. Props P Stew for the link.

We learn how it wentwith getting Condi “Tank” Rice on the stand over at Zeros and Ones.

Well, my buddy abrichar finally got her own blog up. It’s quirky, quaint, lifelog and linkroll, with a fab colour scheme. So I probably won’t get to rip the links she sends me nearly as much since she’s got them up herself. cheers.

So long to one of my favorite linking blogs…genfoods. Iggy, drop a line if you get back on it. Oh, and I’ve been dying to know if that’s your car with the GEN FOO license plate.

hi, one of those busy weeks, and the sun is shining, and we just got the Sopranos second season from the library, and blah blah blah, so light on the posts, sorry. That and I’m trying to be a little lighter on the political…kinda busted at the seams on the gay marriage thing. Oh, and none of the autonomous vehicles got very far…the Red Team got the furthest in the least time…though I’m not sure if it was the furthest…because it was just down to miles.

Adding Silt to my list (under altblogospheres) who is an ex-Oregonian. Referred to my views on Measure 30 as a nihilistic rant, which I particularly enjoyed 😉

Zeros and Ones has an interesting post discussing the differences between real and issue candidates, that also has an interesting Dean perspective (just a wee bit outdated from my side, but short and good).

whew. Stupid newline. One blank line after the closing bracket in a file and the whole thing blows up. Well, all should be alright now. Yay. Please drop a line if you notice any problems.

Oh, it’s so nice to have my old look and feel back. Finally, I found both the time and the motivation to fix it. Coupla changes, but nothing big. There’s probably a hundred broken parts in the background and this post will corrupt my whole db. Life goes on.

Finally got around to adding Little Lost Robotto my list ‘o blogs. Check it out, another Oregon/PDX blog, and a lotta fun stuff. woohoo!

The headlines today are all touting how Bush is backing off the weapons claims. It’s appalling. Does nobody remember his claims last year, as if he’d seen them with his own eyes? Amazing. He’s now saying that we went to war because Saddam was a bad man. Once again, I’m down with that…Saddam is a bad man who was bad for his country and the world may well be better without him.

via rayray…Dio for America. As a bit of a rocker type myself, I am fond of Dio and see him as a breath of fresh air for the Party of his choice. From his brilliant performances with Sabbath to Holy Diver and beyond (to where…?) I’m with you man, I’ll ride in that van.

happy new year everyone! It’s started off with a bang, making up stuff after the ole freeze, and xmas, and all, so the beerdrinier’s in, drinking beer even, but shuffling through the madness makes for light bloggyness.

Testing a feature that makes blogging easy. Here’s a link to beerdrinker.org is a beer drinker here. As you might guess, I’ve just upgraded the software! Don’t be scared! I’ll have the beerdrinker.org that y’all love and drink beer and wassail soon enough. cheers! Oh, that and the ruckus wrough by holiday mayhem is unrucking.

wow…it’s been all week and I’ve only posted once! methinks I’ve been working too much cuz I know I haven’t been drinking enough beer, and still no time to blog.

lots to do, and heading out for thxgiving soon, so like last week I’ll probably be light blogging till next monday.

argh! I’ve gotten on someone’s happy list, and they are spamming the heck out of my comments. Take it to Hawaii, they love it there, jerks! But anyway, I’m trying to figure out a solution. One is to have a little image with some text in it, and then you, the commenter would need to type that text into a field, like a password, but public, just something the spambots can’t replicate.

A new Oregon blogger find…he’s into law (are they all?), has an incomprehensible view on Sirius radio, and might be a Newcastle FC fan. Sounds like fun. Hi dicta.

In a follow-up to this post, I checked out my googlation for ‘beer drinker’ and actually came up on the first page. Inspired and blindly hopeful, I changed the title of my blog from the inspired ‘beerdrinker.org’ to the functional ‘beerdrinker.org is a beer drinker’. Everybody, stay calm. cheers.

looks like pablo’s got a new home…hope it’s warm and cozy, I’ll fix me link.

Just upgraded to the latest wordpress version (link at bottom of page), so I’ll need to get my old ugly-ass look and feel back. This is a heads-up for my friendblogs too…you’re next. But don’t worry, I made backups.

I’ve uploaded the gallery photos, upgraded the s/w, and made it work. cheers.

like my buddy at ojingo blog, I too am the top google result for my name: beerdrinker. I’m pretty pleased about that. Now if I could just get rid of that “Did you mean: beer drinker?” question I’ll have achieved my goal for world domination, or at least an acceptable life accomplishment.

If you’re seeing this then the transition is through and you’re seeing this page from a new server…not the one in my office any more.

Having been a rough and tumble soldier himself protecting the Great Nation of Texas in an elite military squad, GWB understands the squalor that soldiers have to live in…which probably explains his year of non-reporting for duty. But the degree of soldier-abuse by his flag-waving administration sounds utterly unacceptable. Despicable even. They are filling the coffers of their cronies so fast that nobody has time even to count. These people are so blatant about the atrocities they are committing against the American people (and the world) that it is nearly transparent.

wow, I’ve just been slammed here lately. I’m totally out of touch with all my blog buddies, the news, the world, beer, whatever. Work’s been nonstop. I feel like I have meetings or appointments or whatever every night. Last night we talked wedding plans, tnite I have a bizarro hearing about some players on one of the teams that I manage. And if that wasn’t happening I’d be at a coach’s meeting for the under 10’s team I manage.

very busy lately…work’s been demanding, preparing for wedding, soccer’s been nuts, the beer festival (as a consumer) was pretty engaging, an so on and on, so light blogging lately and the near future.

cpr and AED (automated external defibrillator) training today in the office so did that instead of interesting posts. Also listened to the Rogue Hour this morning, pretty good stuff, I’ll tune in again next week. And the beer fest is this weekend, so I’ll be downing a pint or 2. or so. I expect to see all my favorite blogland friends down there, brett, emma, fred, rob and have no idea which you are.

I saw in the PDX Tribune that the good people at Enron have rejected Portland’s bid for PGE. I’m sure Jack Bog is full of glee about this, and I’m going to go over now and see if he’s redefined his intention to not talk about various issues based on this info. I don’t have too much of my own opinion on this, thought his viewpoint seems pretty reasonable.

I’m heading down to Bend tomorrow to play in a soccer tourney with some friends. If I can arrange it I’ll have no access to the internet. Looking like a nice trip…camp out, drink beer, play soccer, get sunburned. A very dehydrating weekend. Jake has suggested some nice happenings down in Bend, so my itinerary is getting fleshed out: get in car, drive, find camping, setup camp, register team, drink beer, sleep, play soccer, drink beer, sleep, play soccer, drink beer, go home, sleep, wake disoriented wearing 1-2 shoes, shower.

Is there a protocol on bloggers meeting bloggers through blogs? I’ve just suggested to another whose town I’ll be in soon that we have beer, and after sending the email I wonder to myself if I haven’t crossed an invisible magic line. Personally, I’m almost always up for a pint, so if anyone ever feels like crossing the line, just let me know and I’ll try to meet you there. Of course there is a certain mystique to the anonimity of the blog too.

took the day off. it was a very weird day, one of those weird in a bad way ones. that’s all. here’s to brighter tomorrow.

BoMa metioned crossing the 3000 visitor mark yesterday after blogging for three months. Well, through a combination of lower-quality posting and poor UI aesthetics I too just managed to cross that point like ten minutes ago or something after blogging for about twice that long. So, cheers, BoMa (the link’s over on the right), and race you to 10K!

yee-haw. cowboy’d through a coupla big updates last night. First, configged and installed a new linux kernel on the server. It was a security release, so I figured it’d probably be a good idea. It went pretty well, except that I installed the wrong ethernet driver the first time, so had to boot on the old kernel and do it again, but right. Second, WordPress released a new version so I had to go ahead and install it.

been busy at work lately, and some family’s been visiting, so posting time is limited. Hope to be back to normal soon.

I’m upgrading the blog software. It’s a significant version change, so I need to rebuild the template and links and stuff. Bear with me, the words themselves should work out just fine. Update: all looks well, the template is sloppy but functioning. props to the fellas at WordPress for picking up the work on b2 and getting these fixes out. Now I just hope that random sec. holes haven’t made me one of the net’s larger Qu@ke 3 m1rr0rz

okay…I’m getting close to done putting the fotos onto internetland which means that there’ll be something to link to for the little stories I’ll be posting, so those’ll be appearing soonish. It should all be in the gallery though. phew!

Hello! I’m back from Germany, so now begins the process of transcribing notes to blogland and getting hundreds (including a few good ones!) of photos online. Well soon. I have to work first though. The quesion in my mind before I begin is, should I timestamp them as they’re posted, or as they happened, is there a precedent on that for blogging?

I’ll be in Germany for awhile, so expect sporadic posts. I’d like to put something up daily in a travel log effort, but we’ll see what happens. Leaving tomorrow, woohoo!

beerdrinker’s been lamed with illness. That’s kept me from posting much due to lack of interesting thoughts. On the up and up now though, so I should be back on track.

Not extraordinary news to stand out among the atrocities, but I noticed that West Linn-Wilsonville School district is making a good decision and even handling it well in disallowing students tranferring to other schools outside their area. The good part is that they are letting next year’s seniors finish with their current school. This decision will save the district hundreds of thousands of dollars and is a good example of positive changes that are available to help with the current budget crisis.

This fancy bloggin software lets me use a more tag. Expect that more. For your bloggy pleasure you’ll have less scrollbar mileage to get to the bottom of the page and find what you think you’re looking for.

Been sick the last coupla days, plus I’ve been actively trying to spend less time in front of the computer on weekends. Once I’ve gotten the hang of not checking my email incessantly I think I will be able to blog on weekends without clocking 7 hours of idle computer time, but in the meantime I am fearful and weak, like a recently quitted smoker at the Sandy Hut. I’ll be heading out to Idaho on Thursday for a fabulous fun-filled getaway in Wendell, gateway to Twin Falls, to observe a wedding.

Service outage this morning…due to online banking confusion with Comcast/AT&T switchup. All is well now.

Friend surprised me by getting older by a year on short notice so all smart thoughts went out the window and you get this instead. cheers. Discuss amongst yourselves, the partridge family were neither partridges nor a family.

Finally got off my butt and put the beerdrinker.org gallery up after the migration. Check out some photos. If you want an accout to put up some pics, let me know, I’ll set you up.

Almost done with the key parts of the migration. I moved over comments tonite. email addresses other than mine are false. Still need to setup a little game reminder doodad so I show up to soccer, figure out what to do with the few not-me posts from the legacy site. That’s all I feel like I need to do…but there’ll be some looksy/feelsy changes of a minor sort coming along.

Hello! I’ve been thinking about this site in blogland, and decided to move more towards a blogging content solution than a community solution as I’d been previously running (postnuke). Basically, I found that certain features were not particularly utilized, so I slowly pared down the site. I found that I was left with a solution far larger than what I needed, and theming it was a severe pain. So, I’ve switched (back) to b2 which is a pretty nice little php/mysql-based blogging solution, far as I can tell.

Yesterday was Nedra’s birthday, and the festivities were rolling. We spent most of the day doing bday related odds-n-ends. Like how I took Augie out to play soccer with me for a few hours, or how I slept in late because I’d been out bar hopping late the night before. I would’ve been in big troube if I’d woken with a disabling hangover. Anyway, it was great fun. Nedra and some of her girlfriends made a crapload of Asian food like phad thai, sushi, garden rolls, and all sort of other good stuff.

Art is cool. Sometimes awkward. Rarely liberating. Is it coffee house art that is full of penis and twat? Or is it normal that challenge and beauty are found primarily in bizarro interpretations of sex organs and other private areas? Much less often the butt. Eyes are a popular target too, much more understandably. Never the focus, just part of the scene. Eyes are pretty cool, I can get into them.