Illegitimum non carborundum

back in the employed column. what a weird life i'm living..

fender updates

updates

for reference

brewery guide
scotty gets wise
black acre
top tweeps
hbg's guide to beer in indy

bad day

until further notice

motor is out.

here's what this looks like.

it's been almost a month

hmm i bought a motorcyle, and some kitchen chairs, and some clothes, and i've been handed payroll, and stuff like that.

not much going yet. but soon.

Seriously. I make cookies.

Ingredients
3 cups old-fashioned rolled oats
1 cup all-purpose flour (spooned and leveled)
1 teaspoon fine sea salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup packed light-brown sugar
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup pure maple syrup
1 large egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees, with racks in upper and lower thirds. In a medium bowl, stir together oats, flour, salt, and baking soda. In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, beat butter and sugars on high until pale and fluffy, 3 minutes. Beat in maple syrup, egg, vanilla, and 1/4 cup water, scraping down bowl as needed. With mixer on low, beat in oat mixture in 2 additions until just combined.
Drop dough in rounded teaspoons, 2 inches apart, onto parchment-lined baking sheets. Bake until edges are golden, about 11 minutes, rotating sheets halfway through. Let cookies cool on sheets until set, about 2 minutes, then transfer to wire racks and let cool completely.

Cook's Note
Store cookies in an airtight container, up to 1 week.

now is the calm before the storm, or so i'm told, and what that means is that some days i do a lot of random things and some days i make cookies and wait.

five followers. what are you following?

So I've been at it with Rocket for a week now. Here's what I've done: Bought a laptop. Tried to buy a Compaq CarePaq system warranty/support package. My CarePaq would not register. I sent them an email to find out. So far, I've heard nothing. I attempted to set up multiple meetings with a software vendor for brewery production management software. This should finally happen tomorrow. I subscribed to the entire Adobe creative suite. Every piece. It's $50/month. We'll use it to limit our fees paid toward graphic design / logo types. I've spent 4 or 5 days at home with Adobe Illustrator CS5 Classroom in a Book. I bought it while back when I felt like teaching myself Illustrator. I did not get far. I have gotten quite a bit further now. I feel reasonably comfortable. Illustrator is not Photoshop. I know Photoshop. Friday I traveled to Fort Wayne Indiana where I played golf all day. Well actually I didn't play golf, I drove the cart and drank beer at a steady clip. I did not register to play golf, I was a late addition to the party. Next year I'll play if I can find the right foursome of folks who don't give a shit. An addition piece of software in the suite is Adobe Muse, which allows for website design without coding. Because I quit an IT job recently, I'm hoping to code very little ever again. Today I spent the entire day learning Muse. Tomorrow or the next day I'll have an entire website done. That's quite a time savings. I've also been waiting for insurance so I can ride my bike again. Sure, I could just go ride, but I don't want to press my luck. I need to put my desk together. Things will take off very soon. It's been weird not having a traditional sort of boss. So far I've just made sure to keep busy and keep learning. And so on and so forth forever and ever.

Fin.

I quit Hoosier Beer Geek today. Like so.

more of this for the next 10 years or so

soccer

i'm playing again. soon. yay.

this isn't done. i'm not sure what it is.

cycling is a strange hobby. the work is the whole thing. most hobbies might have a work element - gardening requires a lot of digging, golf requires walking (if you play it that way), running requires.. well, running. but the work is a means. a gardener gets his garden, the golfer gets the ocasional birdie, the runner gets a sticker on his car and a crappy t-shirt. the cyclist gets to ride around in a circle thinking about how fat he is.

i like cycling in the same way i like hearing about other people's problems. i like to take in everything - listen, look, wonder how it applies to me - and then, on occasion, actually do something about it. it's easier when you're not actually riding, but eventually you get to feeling apathetic.

six bicycles live in my garage. one of which i ride. one i bought and thought i'd ride with friends, only to later realize we were more like acquaintances. one i bought with the thinking that i'd race, then i raced and realized i'd much rather ride to the grocery store. then i didn't do that either. one i bought at a garage sale, disassembled and bought parts for, and then realized i liked it better the way i'd bought it. one i bought back when i was in college. it was cheap and got the use it deserved. one i helped buy for my girlfriend. i took her on one of those casual 40 mile rides that first-timers have to be taught to love. as it turns out, i'm a horrible teacher.

if you believe the professionals you'll learn that there's glory in speed and suffering. you get your name on the bike when you're fast. they take your photo when you're suffering. but who suffers more? the 120 pound pro? or the 200 pound amateur? the suffering is the same, but the photo is a lot uglier.

I was bored.

bad idea: mission unaccomplished

Saturday evening at about 8pm I settled in for a post-day-drinking nap, waking up again at 10pm or so, just in time to have ruined any chance of waking up to ride 80 miles Sunday morning. But the truth is that 80 miles sounded ridiculous, so I didn't do it. RAIN ride? Maybe next year.

another bad idea

So five weeks out I've decided to consider trying to do Ride Across Indiana this year. The training program is ambitious, obviously, but not so much that it's undoable - if I was in any sort of shape. But I'm not. Getting back on the bike this week has been painful and disappointing. Of course I'm only two days in, but it has been a completely joyless experience, which is something I'm not quite used to. If things go OK (not good, just OK) for the rest of the week I'm going to attempt to do 70-some miles Sunday. It's a really horrible idea. I struggled with 28 just yesterday. And yet.. (Add this to the long list of "I'm going to do this (but actually I'm not" posts.)

over a month

since i'm keeping no secrets from work now, know that the restaurant space is currently in demolition mode.

in the meantime i'm having a pretty interesting time at work, in that i feel like i can say what i think a lot more freely - which basically means i can complain out loud.

they've been looking for my replacement since i announced i was leaving some two months ago. there have been a few folks in for interviews - folks whose hands i've shook - but apparently i am not so easy to replace. it's a tricky position in that i've now got a lot of experience programming in a language no one uses anymore, but i've also got networking and help desk and web design and patience... skills that don't generally come in one giant package. the next person will have to learn some part of that, but the trick, i'm guessing, is finding someone who at least has half of it. and that you'd want to share an office with.

i'm glad that it's taken a while, only because that means i'm not being chased out the door. my original timeline.. well, my second timeline said i'd leave june/july. i'm thinking august. it seems that even that is hopeful, as my original timeline said i'd be leaving where i'm at between halloween and thanksgiving of last year. and here we are.

i'm ok with that.

may 9, 2012

things i am sure i will die from: 1) testicular cancer (thank you, lance armstrong) 2) being about 55 year old (dad died at 53. I have no idea when his dad died, but in my head it's around the age of 55) 3) skin cancer (thank you, cycling without sunscreen) 4) an ulcer (thank you, weird stomach pain that came on in the last two days)

jon just sent me this picture from 2008. I don't know what I was doing with my facial hair but I shouldn't ever do that again.

i dunno what's up with jon's hat, either.

end results, 16 lost.

sunday morning when we woke up and realized there was more drinking to do (there was so much drinking) i thought "oh yeah, i did that diet thing for a reason", but we just kept digging in and digging in and now it's tuesday (i took monday off) and my kitchen looks like a pizza bomb went off.

one day a week is plenty of time for too much to drink.

working my way back to the diet. i liked the regimen. i'll add sugar as needed for bike rides. i'm ready to get back to bike rides.

whole30

i'm on day 26 of a 30 day plan to eat healthy and detox or whatever.

i've lost 18.5 lbs as of this morning. i've exercised about 6 times since i started.

so that's crazy.

Noted

Today was the day when i had my annual review and was asked about my long-term plans. I told the truth.