Whats the GEARS OF WAR 2 TV Spot Song?

Devotchka – How It Ends.

I’M GLAD I DOWNLOADED THE REST OF THEIR ANTHOLOGY BECAUSE IT SUCKS.

No really, I would love to have said the band is great – and there’s moments where it almost is and has this philip glass quality to it. Those moments are few and far between and mostly it just stays as a folk band for folk music I’m not interested in. They also helped out with the Nightmare Before Christmas Revisited album, which is why the GEARS commercial sounds so familiar. That album is actually this album, which I have a download of since it wasn’t available state-side for the longest time. Some of the tracks are sincerely awesome, but the Devotchka track isn’t it. What is awesome are the tracks from unknown (to us USians) artists who really did a good job redoing the songs. What sucks is that bands like the All American Rejects put no effort into redoing the song whatsoever so you’ll waste five minutes of your life every few tracks putting up with craptastic emo one shot American band trash. Protip to the All American Rejects – If you’re producing a cover track, don’t just sing along with your vocals to the original. That’s karaoke night, not cover night. On the other hand, The Polyphonic Spree did a cover of “Town Square” and it sounds like Pink Floyd did the music. It’s absolutely fantastic.

On the Advice of… Everyone…

On the advice of the K5 brewers, they said I needed MOAR DRAINAGE if I wanted to do all grain correctly.

I added yet another legnth of screen. This is simply yet another stainless lint trap with the end cut open and brass fittings on it. The first question I got was “why brass?”

Because it doesn’t float.

Revised Drain Small

The Tun Assembly

The Assembled Tun - Interior

The Tun Assembled - Exterior

Dual Head Screen - Assembled

The Nylon Bolt

All The Parts You Need

Shaping the Straner

The Raw Cooler

People asked for HIREZ of the post below, so here it is.

Making an All Grain System

I made the oath I would jump to allgrain sometime in this lifetime. The hobbles always were that it was expensive to buy a “kit”, so I got the brilliant idea to head over to MR2 Beer Home Depot and get the fitting myself. Since the valves are usually around $25 alone on the brewing sites, if I could do it for $25 total, I would consider it a success.

I made it all for $17.

I had bought an eight gallon gatoraide cooler awhile ago on the ebay. I never got around to using it for beer. The previous owner had used it extensively and said the valve would need to be replaced. I picked it up for a penny + S&H. Getting the stupid valve for it would prove to be impossibly hard, so I just waysided it until the light bulb went on one day and I realized Home Depots plastic fittings were all food safe along with the sealant in the plumbing aisle. If you’re playing along at home, now would be a good time to mention that the only food safe plumbing and sealer is the one in the plumbing aisle. Don’t get tempted by the much cheaper pipes in the other aisles (landscaping), or you’ll be wondering why your beer tastes like plastic. And, just to be safe, I plan on running boiling water through the whole thing anyway to make sure it’s water tight and not going to taste like plastic.

A few notes on what we’re building:
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A Little Bit of Beer History

Shamelessly stolen from Beer Advocate:

Seattle, WA (November 2008) – Pike Entire is a blend of three beers: Pike’s XXX Extra Stout, original gravity 10.73 / alcohol 7.00%; the same beer aged for more than half a year in oak Bourbon barrels; and an Imperial Stout original gravity 10.98 / alcohol 12%. The Entire blend contains 42.7% barrel aged beer and finishes at 9.5% alcohol. The taste is complex with velvety malt tones, a coffee aroma, and a palate and finish of bitter chocolate. The biscuity character of pale and crystal malts, along with roasted barley, is balanced by a generous amount of Yakima Valley Willamette, Goldings and Columbus hops in the boil; finished with even more Willamette and Goldings. Adding complexity are the underlying wood tones perfumed by the caramel sweetness of wood-aged Kentucky Bourbon.

Pike Entire was unveiled for the first time on November 8 at the Washington Beer Lover’s (WABL) Third Anniversary Party in Seattle that featured 20 local “rare and hard to find” beers on draft. The next morning, Seattle P-I beer writer, Geoff Kaiser, commented: “this was everything I hoped it would be…. It had plenty of bourbon and oak character without being overwhelming and it still allowed the stout to do most of the work. Quite lovely, and easily my favorite of the night.”

Until the 18th century, malt was “kilned” over wood fires making most beers dark brown or black, and contributing significantly to the pollution in cities like London. The use of coal allowed brewers a little more control, but it was not until coke, a bi-product of coal, was introduced as a fuel that pale malt could be made. Pale malt yielded more sugar than black malt. Because the Thames was polluted, soft water was drawn from wells, ideal for dark beers, but yielding unpleasant flavor to black beers unless they were blended with the paler beers made by country brewers who had access to hard water. These country brewers also bought dark beers from London and aged them in large oak casks. After aging they sold them back to the London brew pubs as highly desirable, “stale” (aged) beer. Home brew houses then began to blend the black, pale, and stale beers and the result became known as “three threads”, a corruption of “three thirds.” Ralph Harwood’s Bell Brewhouse, one of London’s original common brewers and was the first to market an already blended beer to other pubs, called “Entire”. It is believed that he blended his own black beer with purchased pale and stale. Since it saved publicans the chore of blending their own three threads, it became an immediate success and the beer style of choice that was sold by London’s train porters. Ultimately the style became known as Porter. As brewing moved away from the brew pub to common brewers, Harwood’s creation became London’s great contribution to beer. As the British Empire expanded, “Porter,” later known as “Stout Porter,” then simply “Stout,” became the world’s most widely distributed beer style.

In order to brew a beer in keeping with the original style but still distinctly American, Pike acquired oak Bourbon barrels last year and filled them with Pike XXX Extra Stout in April 2008 to be blended back. Pike Head Brewer, Drew Cluley, describes the beer as “complex and chocolaty with a great vanilla wood overtone.”

On Monday, November 24, 2008, Pike Entire, in wax-dipped 22 oz. bottles, will be released. It will have very limited availabilty at the Pike Pub and in select bottle shops, primarily in the Seattle area. A few quarter-barrels will be released for sale on draft. The Pike Pub will tap its one and only quarter-barrel of Pike Entire on Friday, November 28.

The Pike Brewing Company is a family-owned gravity flow craft steam brewery and pub in the heart of Seattle next door to the entrance to historic Pike Place Public Market. Founded in 1989, it was one of the earliest American craft breweries to offer styles like Imperial Stout, IPA, and Barley Wine.

All About Cars and Buying American

This is a response to this powerline post.

I just read the article on cars via powerline and I felt compelled to
comment as a shadetree mechanic.

Both GM and Ford are American companies only so far as management is
concerned. If you buy a Ford, it’s built in South America with South
American wrenches. Check the sticker on the driver side door for the
assembly. GM has roughly the same problem, but since they have a
partnership with Toyota (sold under the GEO brand), sometimes their
cars are built in Kentucky and sometimes they are built in Mexico.
Toyotas are sometimes built in Kentucky and sometimes built in Japan.
If you’re really interested in Buying American, buy either Chevy or
Toyota – but only after checking the door sticker.

Ford’s engines are almost always built in Brazil, so you are never
truly buying American there, Chevies are built sometimes in Ohio,
sometimes in Kentucky, and sometimes in Japan. All three plants send
the parts either to Mexico or Kentucky to be assembled into cars.
Finally Toyota buys their engines either from Yamaha (which is
actually Fuji Heavy Industries) or builds them in Japan. These go to
Kentucky or stay in Japan. There’s no real “buying American” anymore,
not since the 80s. Having built several cars by hand, I can safely say
that out of the two “American brands” and the “foreign brand”, the
“foreign brand” has superior engineering by far. I was briefly in love
with the Lincolns, and owned a Mark VII. Despite the best efforts of
me and the mustang crowd, keeping the 302HO running was a chore,
especially for a luxury car which served as my daily driver. The
engineering just sucked, no thought went into assembly, and minor
things which should be user serviceable were built as a unit and then
bolted to the engine with no thought to service. (The alternator on
the 302HO is not only notoriously unreliable, but the bolt which holds
it to the bracket is put facing the engine block – which means you
can’t service it without pulling the entire accessory bracket).

Turn that around and consider the “foreign brand”, made in Kentucky. I
built two 1992 MR2s as project cars. I bought into the first one, then
when it was involved in a hit and run, I bought back the wreck and did
an engine swap into the second one. The engineering is night and day
comparing domestic and foreign cars. The MR2, the midengine
suicide-sled from the 1990s, has more in common with the Toyota Camry
(and Celica) than any two ford vehicles or chevy vehicles would. Just
about everything, including the 5SFE, will swap between those cars.
This is why America’s industry, unfortunately, sucks. With talent like
that overseas, I’ve sworn off buying domestics. Even the turbo MR2
(3SGTE) engine, something you would assume would end up only on
sportscars, is still used almost 20 years later today in Toyota’s
“crossover” vehicles. Plus, frankly, it saves you money. While Pepboys
is going to look at you funny when you tell them you want to buy Camry
brake pads for your MR2, the difference is nothing on the materials
and about $40 off the price.

Now, all is not done for the American auto industry. The ECOTEC is
built a whole lot like the 5SFE which Toyota used as it’s mainstay and
incorporates a lot of the same concepts (different heads all go on the
same shortblock to make different engines). Unfortunately it’s made by
“GM Daewoo”, so it’s South Korean. But, if GM holds onto the ECOTEC
design (simply called Series 0, Series 1, and Series 2 along with the
CDFR diesel ECOTEC) for another 20 years or so, they stand to make a
comeback. The chassis standardization trend is also a good thing for
GM – the Pontiac Solstice, the Saturn Sky (and Redline), and the Opel
Speedster all use the same frame and engines with just a change of
window dressing. Unlike Toyota, however, GM exclusively uses the
ECOTEC “system” in various configurations to get varying levels of
sportyness into the cars.

That’s really the long and short of the problem with the American auto
industry’s excesses. Everything Ford and Chevy built until recently
has been unique to the car, and everything Toyota built has been made
to be assembled like LEGOs.

Four Years of Chimp Government

Looks like the Stupid Monkey won. Good job guys.

Way to chimp up the election.

We’ve given a guy who served less than one term in senate (three years) the keys to the nuclear program. A guy who grew up in Indonesia, hardly a paragon of American values, has now taken the highest office in the land.

Hitler too, grew up in another country, but at least had the decency to serve his country before taking it over. Hitler too, had great oration. Hitler too, hardly participated in politics before taking the highest office and Hitler too implemented a policy of National Socialism.

So, what can we expect from a Democrat Party Supermajority? Well, for one, the red states and red state people are completely alienated. Pennsylvania? Mostly red except for Philadelphia. Barely a win.

For the Upcoming Race War

For anyone who loves Gears of War…

The Lancer

I Had a Wonderful Birthday

I had a wonderful birthday yesterday thanks in a large part to my wife and my parents. Of course, I got the XBOX 360 with the 60GB drive as my Christmas (Yuletide?)/Birthday present, so this was simply a bonus on top of an already excellent birthday. We went to Iron Hill and the food was fantastic as were the beers. The only problem with Iron Hill is that it’s very easy to get pallet fatigue because the food and beer are both excellent. The service occasionally is questionable but otherwise it was a nice sit down with my parents, my brother, and my wife. Thank you all.

My wife also started going hunting with me. While the Marlin 39 is only good for small game, it’s all she needs and frankly I’m just happy to have her go out with me. That was a better present than the XBOX. Hopefully we can keep that up as a family tradition also.