• Woz now has live plants
• Heater cables are now routed so the case fits correctly.

Finished Aquarium - Front

Finished Aquarium - Side

Woz!

Lizzy finishing up the iMacQuarium

All set up

It's Woz!

We’ve since added a heater and a bit of terrain. I’ll take pictures once we route the wires correctly for it. However, in order to do so, we need to empty out most of the water, and we don’t want to disturb Woz quite yet. He got a little cold a couple of nights ago, and we want to give him a few weeks of nice warm temperatures before we go rearranging his world.

This was a kit from Jake Harms. The instructions were very detailed, but the process does take some time. Of course, he has ready-made ones already built, so if you don’t want to spend the time, it might be worth ordering one.

I’m also putting in a cut to not make this too absurdly long.

Lizzy paints the garage, outside of the house with all the flowers in bloom (this is from about a month ago), and some other bits..

So, I got some pavers and put a little patio under the grill, since it was sinking into the sandy patch in the lawn:

Mini-patio for grill

A couple of shots of the house:

The house

The house

And while I was taking those, this fellow showed up to get his picture taken:

It's a butterfly!

Behind me, Lizzy was finishing up painting the garage:

Lizzy painting the garage

Yeah, we had to build scaffolding in order to paint. Of course, I saved the 2×10’s, and am going to use them to build a couple of workbenches (looks like an 8 foot one for the garage, and a 4 foot one for my reloading room).

Note that I can take no credit for basically any of this – my wife has the taste. I just suggest crackpot things and sometimes she likes them.

Trees: Last weekend, I took down a bunch of tree limbs which were attempting to induce cranial injury when I mow the lawn. I’m still not done, but this gets me most of the way there. We also had two big bonfires (12′ wide circle, basically constantly fed, for a total of about 8 hours over two nights) to get rid of all the stuff that had accumulated in the previous year to make room for all this. Today, I dragged everything I cut down over to the stone burning circle. I still need to cut it into small enough sections to be able to be able to throw it on to the fire. Of course, this is mostly pine – the apple wood is going to be used for the fire departments chicken BBQ (August 23rd for anyone who is interested).

Garden: The peas are all done, and I’ve pulled them away from the fencing, which we’ll take down when we have a chance. I thinned the third planting of corn today, and the first planting (which, incidentally, goes in at the same time as the second planting, but is a super-early variety, so it only takes about 70 days, as opposed to 90). I weeded the onions, garlic, horseradish, and various other bits. On the good side, we have green tomatoes, the carrots are ready, we’re getting squash, the broccoli is basically done, and the pumpkins, onions and watermelon are progressing nicely. On the downside, the peppers are a little stunted, and the eggplant is completely dead. Next year, they won’t be going in before mid-june, especially since we have light racks to give them plenty of light.

Front walkway: Lizzy has been working on this more than me, but I’ve been helping when I had a chance, but we’re pulling up the walk from the drive to the house (about 30′ by 3′ of gravel walk) which we’re digging down about 6 inches, tamping it flat, putting down sand, and laying bricks (of which there were a pile which came with the house). This will allow us to shovel and salt better to hopefully mitigate the slip and fall issues which we encountered last year. The last thing we want is for the mother in law to fall and bust a hip.

Beer: Liz got me basic beer stuff for my birthday (starter kit (2 carboys, bottling bucket, capper, various other bits and bobs), immersion chiller and some extract kits, and a 155,000 BTU propane burner), and for our anniversary she got me a 15 gallon stainless steel pot with valve. For the curious, it’s probably about $600 worth of stuff, which is about the same as my annual beer bill. I estimate that making my own beer will pay for itself in about 3 years (assuming time is free).

Our first batch was a Bavarian Hefeweizen, which we did a condensed one as we only had a 6 gallon pot. We also got some littlenecks and made some salmon dip and sat on the front porch drinking beer and letting the boil do it’s thing. 2 week primary fermentation, and we bottled it… and then I realized that I grabbed the wrong yeast. I used a Lager yeast.. so, we have a “steam” hefeweizen. It’s actually not bad – somewhat estery and complex, a little malty-sweet. It also could use a little more fizz. The instructions said to bottle with 2/3ds of a cup of dextrose, but I need to do the actual calculations for dissolved CO2 based on fermentation temperature… I expect I need it to be more like 3/4 of a cup or so. But then again, it’s a hefe, so it should be fizzier. This amount of carbonation would be fine for a general dark ale, for example.

The second batch is an Oktoberfest but, as I said before, I had the wrong yeast (I got the two confused). So, I’m going to ferment it in the same way (1 week primary, 5 week secondary, 2 week bottle conditioning) but at ale temperatures, because I don’t want the yeast to go to sleep.

For the curious, we have a spare fridge in the garage, which is currently only used during hunting season (and I need to wash out the deer blood), so we can use it for lagering the rest of the year. However, our cold cellar ranges from about 65 degrees in the summer (good ale temperatures) to about 50 degrees in the winter. We need to insulate it a little better, and finish pouring the concrete (part of it is just dirt) and then maybe put down an epoxy floor, but with appropriate shelving we can easily cellar 1000 bottles of beer, 500 bottles of wine, plus various provisions (garlic, potatoes, onions, canned goods, etc.).

We’ve also gotten kits for an oatmeal stout, a brown ale, and a spiced winter ale. This should keep us good until into the new year, as doing boils from about December until about March becomes problematic – there being about 3 feet of snow on the ground and all, and the freezing temperatures causing problems with the hosing for the immersion chiller and the vaporization of LP. As it is, I need to stick the cylinder in a tub of water to stop it from freezing up.

Come spring, we’ll likely start using other recipes rather than working from kits. I have a book with recipes for beers from around the world and there are a few which we would like to try. That, and I had a Chocolate Coffee Imperial Stout called Mokah and it has me interested in variations on that. See, they put the ingredients on the side, so that gives me a starting point. However, Lizzy doesn’t particularly like stouts, but she likes porters (a very, very subtle difference, I know), specifically Yeungling’s porter, which happens to be in the aforementioned book. So, take that porter, adjust it a little bit, and poof, chocolate coffee porter.

Oh, and any type of variant original recipe is being named after cats (presuming we like it). So, the “pleasant surprise” steam hefeweizen is Sunkist hefeweizen (as Sunkist was one of the triplets with the least personality, but has grown into the family and become a very lovable little rascal – a pleasant surprise).

I think that’s about it for now.

I’ve updated the blog to WP 3.8.

I also had a bit of an overloaded meltdown a couple of weeks ago. Basically, the working theory was that we weren’t going to work on the house or do anything until after the potatoes went in (which happens about the second week of July). At least, this is what I thought. After the list got stupidly long, and it had to be done sooner, rather than later, I basically just stopped doing everything outside work, working on the house, and being a fire commissioner. This made Liz sad, because she was looking forward to brewing beer, and I had told her not to get me any brewing stuff for my birthday, since I would not have time to use it and it would just take up space. I think that put a bit of a point on it, so she agreed to let me set the pace of things, and not set deadlines, and try to slow down. So, theoretically, we’re actually going to be able to do things like brew beer and sit and read…

At least, once the peas are picked and the potatoes are in. We picked and processed about 4 gallons of peapods today, and we’ll do our first picking of garden peas later this week. The replacement tomato, pepper, squash, etc. plants are all in (next year we’ll wait until the second week of June to plant them).

Fire stuff continues to be stupidly busy, with 3 meetings last week, and while there right now aren’t any this week, I expect there to be 2 by the time the week is out.

As I mentioned, I’m basically not gaming. Essentially, I’m not going to schedule anything recurring until it’s been a year and I’ve actually had at least one night free a week for a year where I can just read and play video games. I’m still buying game books, as I tend to collect them, and like to just read them, etc.

I upgraded everything to Jaunty, fixing the XFCE bad window placement problem by giving new windows focus. While it is not ideal, I spent several days poking different window managers and basically being disappointed by them. KDE4 is too unstable, GNOME is not configurable enough, and FVWM would take too much work to make it not make my eyes bleed. E17 is too unstable (though I may try the official E17.org Jaunty builds)

There’s more, but I think I’m going to break here for tonight. I finished reading Watchmen (there’s a pile of other books I need to review, and will do once I unbury them in the mess which used to be my office), and am now on to V for Vendetta.

Oh, as of right now, I’m planning on hitting Carnage, and will likely be bringing some homebrew. Since it’s not a regularly schedule thing, I likely will be able to find the time. If anyone else is going, let me know – especially if you want me to run something.

1. Solar
   Panels seems to be something like $1000 per 100w panel. 17 panels will give you 1kw, so you’ll get 600kwh for $17k… in Arizona. On the other hand, in NY, efficiency is a lot (lot) less than that, so we’re talking about 1/5 or so from what the various estimators (which are from the solar industry, so I suppose they’re optimistic). So, figure at least 4 times the cost, so call it $50k easy, just for the panels.

   $50k is 30 years of power at current prices.

   Not worth it.

2. Wind
   Turbines end up being like $6500 for a 3kw generator which, at peak, will give you 1800kwh.. at the peak efficiency of the unit. Problem is, this usually requires a decent amount of wind – more than I have. Wind maps say it’s like 10 mph, which (depending on the unit) will end up maybe producing half the rated power – if it’s constant. Figure it’s not, so maybe a quarter of the power – so 450kwh. So, wind is cheaper than solar, it if it pays for about half, it pays for itself in 5-10 years (you still need to add a tower and other miscellaneous stuff, which drives the cost up a bit).

   Marginally worth it.

3. Hydro
   This requires a stream (which I have) and some amount of drop – ideally 2-3m (which I don’t, without some.. creative excavating). A 1kw unit will be about $3000, plus some extra bits, but, it’s more likely to work year round, as long as I can keep it from getting plugged up and reorient the stream.. and deal with the ecological permit issues and such. The problem is that I don’t have the 2m drop. I might be able to swing 1m, but that’s iffy. So, I’d need two generators to make it back up to 1kw.

   So, likely not possible, but if it is, it is on par with Wind.

So, here’s the problem – In order to pay for your alternative energy system, you need to front $6-$10k, some of which you will get back in tax credits (according to my research, it can be up to 80% between federal and NY state credits). But, you have to come up with that money ahead of time and, in the case of wind, it needs to be an approved system installed by a licensed installer – which means that the cost roughly doubles.

This also doesn’t even scratch any type of redundant power solution – batteries to store excess energy, etc. which will likely be cheaper to add to an existing system than a small generator, but the generator is cheaper than the system.

However, I suppose that if it was like $2k for a 10kw windmill setup, then everyone would be doing it, wouldn’t they?

Crated up

So, we dragged out the scaffolding and the ladder and hung it up:

New chandelier

It’s much easier with three people, and Liz didn’t have to listen to me whine about being up on the ladder and afraid of heights.

Full gallery: