The oracle of Cjezuaza.

Today so far:

This morning some customer reps happened to show up in the lab as I was doing some work that's outside my job description and that voids the warranty on a part that the customer owns. I think this is why that particular customer rep likes me. "You want to know what's wrong with it? We could throw out opposing theories and argue back and forth forever, or we could just pull this bitch apart and find out for sure. Let's do that."
I got back to my desk and worked out some initial plans to go skydiving with some mensa friends. At first there were a several people who seemed interested, but pretty quickly it turned into "I really want to go, but I'm going to be busy for a while so maybe sometime later I'll go." It looks like it will probably just be two of us. As long as I get to jump out of a perfectly good airplane for no reason, that's good enough.
I went over my calendar and finally decided when I'm going to China. Now I need to let the drummer know and see if those dates work for him, find out about lodging options, buy plane tickets, etc.
My neighbor called a little bit ago to tell me that her new refrigerator arrived. Actually, she called to say she'll be wanting her food back from my freezer. We'll be going to dinner tonight.

Pretty good weekend.
Went out Friday night with some friends. Allison was thrilled to be around technical people for a change. A whole evening with no backstabbing or manipulation. It was good to have her around, and I'm happy with the way this whole thing with her is working out. She wants to get together with me before I leave for Alaska, but that's as much planning as we've done so far.
Saturday was the summer party for the homebrew club and it was a blast. There were 14 active taps on the bar and 13 of those were homebrew. The food was simpler and less varied than I'm used to for a homebrew party, but it was still quite good. I'm very quickly becoming an insider in the club. The club president talked to me for a while about how he sees me as a revitalizing force within the club and wants me to be more involved. I told him I'm not interested in holding any official positions within the club, but I'm happy to help make things happen. I even offered to host a club brew in my garage.
Sunday was a slow day. For the most part I sat around the house surfing the web and playing video games. Eventually I managed to drag myself out of the house and went hiking with the geeks. This one was easy to do because it was an evening hike. Far too often I skip the hike because I don't want to get up early on a Sunday. I need to make this more of a priority.

Pretty good night so far.
Spent some time talking to the girl next to me at the bar about scotch and Bob Dylan while I waited for my friend to arrive. When he did it was time to move my car. While I was away, the bartender's shift ended, so my friend paid my tab. The bartender was so moved by the gesture that he comped my next round. Note that I got a free drink, but the guy who paid didn't. Allison is on her way. Cordelia might come by later. Things are shaping up nicely.

Part of the reason of the previous post was to serve as something of an explanation to the people I added to my friends list today. Looking it over, there's one line in particular that could do with a bit of explanation.
I said "It's also been responsible for the greatest successes I've had in dealing with social dysfunctions."
Growing up, I was always conditioned to keep my feelings to myself. Whenever I expressed a feeling, the result was bad. Sometimes I was chided, scolded, told that I was wrong or a bad person. Sometimes I was viewed with shock and horror. Sometimes the feeling I expressed was used against me.
Looking back it's not clear whether this was because I was an adolescent dealing with other adolescents (who by nature are divisive and cruel), if it's because I was dealing with people who were themselves broken and who needed me to fit into a certain box in order to support their world view, or if I grossly misinterpreted the reactions I got. It was probably a combination of these things.
Whatever the reason, and regardless of the validity of those reasons, I protected myself by isolating myself. I never gave people the chance to judge me, but I never gave them a chance to know me, either.
When I started throwing my feelings out raw and unfiltered in a place where other people could read them, I expected the random strangers on the internet who happened across them to hate me for them. I was shocked to find the opposite result.

It's about 8 years now that I've been on livejournal. When I first started it was pretty much just a scratch pad for getting the noise out of my head, and I never thought anyone would read it. People did, I made some friends with it, and for a time it was an integral part of my social life. It's also been responsible for the greatest successes I've had in dealing with social dysfunctions.
For a while now my online dealings and my real world dealings have been moving farther and farther away from each other, to the point where nobody on my friends list is anyone I have regular contact with anymore. I went from never telling anyone this existed, to regularly introducing myself by real name and lj name, back to never telling anyone this exists.
When I think about why I no longer let people know about this, I can come up with a couple of reasons. Part of it is that it's not the integrating force in my social circles like it was in Seattle. It doesn't come up naturally in conversation, so it requires me to make the effort to tell people about it. I generally don't have a reason to do that. But that's not the only reason. Sometimes I do have reason to bring it up, but when I do I refer to it generally. I mention "my blog", not "my lj".
It's a bit of a regression. I keep it hidden now for the same reasons I kept it hidden originally. After all the effort of learning to be open, I'm closing up again. There's a lot of me on here.
It's probably time to shake things up again. And by that I mean I've found some lj's of people I know and added several of them to my friends list.

For 4th of July I went to my uncle's house. It was a good time. There were ridiculous amounts of fireworks ranging from mostly safe and completely pointless, to totally illegal and extremely dangerous. The latter group was the most fun.
Usually when I go to family events like this, my parents are there. My dad and I usually bond over a cigar and an appropriate drink (beer, scotch, brandy, etc.). This time they weren't there as they were still traveling back from Italy. I didn't bother to bring any cigars or accoutrements with me since he wasn't going to be there, and was surprised when one of my uncles brought out the collection he brought, offered me one, and asked to use my cutter. The tradition has apparently grown beyond my dad and me. Had I known, I'd have been better prepared.
My parents told me before they left that they were getting home late on the 5th and arranged to have breakfast with me this morning. Apparently what they meant is that they were getting back very early on the 5th (or late on the 4th depending on your perspective) and intended to meet up with me on the 5th. They called while I was at my uncle's and said they'd call me around noon and we'd meet for lunch. Noon apparently came around 8:30 am that day, and they had the nerve to act surprised that I wasn't ready to run out the door when they called.
We went to breakfast and they told me all about why it's a bad idea to travel during peak travel season. Right now the annoyance levels outweigh the enjoyment levels, but a month from now they'll be raving about what a wonderful time they had. Well, a month from now dad will be raving about what a wonderful time he had with me in Alaska, but you get the point.
That evening, my neighbor called to say she was about to leave with the downstairs neighbors to see a movie and wanted to know if I was interested in joining them. It was sort of a weird double date. Fun, but weird.
Today I had numerous options for things to do. I could have gone hiking with friends in the morning. I could have trekked out to BFE for my cousin's son's birthday party. I could have gone shopping with some neighbors at the soon to be closed Sharper Image store. I decided to skip all of those possibilities and make beer instead. This beer is for a friend's housewarming party a few weeks from now, so I'll have limited opportunity to enjoy it.
While I was brewing, I got to meet one of the new neighbors. There are 2 sisters, and they've been there for about 2 weeks so far. Very friendly. We could have done far worse for neighbors. I mentioned the idea of having a barbecue in the courtyard and they're all for it. I think I might make up an invitation and post it by the mail boxes just like I did for my housewarming when I first moved here.
All in all, not a bad weekend.

Yesterday I was telling a friend about last weekend's hike. He'd heard a little about it from some of the other people that were there and was disappointed he missed it. At one point he asked me if Garrett was on the hike. I said that he was and we talked about him for a little while.
Somewhere in the discussion he made a comment about what's happened with Garrett "since he became famous." I wasn't aware that he was famous, so a bit later I asked what he was famous for. It turns out this is Garrett Lisi, popularly known as the "surfer-dude physicist" who recently published the Theory Of Everything. I'm pretty sure he's the only person in history to make the cover of both Surfer Magazine and New Scientist.
Now that I know who he is, a lot of the conversations that took place during the hike make a lot more sense.

A friend of mine asked me to brew a keg of beer for the housewarming party he'll be hosting soon. I asked him what kind of beer he wants and he answered that he expected the best possible results would come from letting me brew whatever my own inspiration dictates.
When I told him that at the moment what I'm really itching to brew are some weird and obscure beers I turned up in my research this weekend, he was completely in favor of letting me do that for his party. Right now he's talking to a botanist friend of his to see if he can get me some scurvy grass to do it with.
This party might end up as a chapter in my book.

It was a good weekend.
I knew they were expecting me at the library. Shortly after I arranged the trip I got an email from the librarian to tell me that my visit had been mentioned in their staff meeting. I thought it would be a simple matter of arriving at the special collections department and telling them who I am and they'd bring me what I needed and give me a space to work.
It turned out to be even simpler than that. The reading room hadn't opened yet when I arrived. One of the librarians saw me in the lobby, opened the door and asked "are you the beverage researcher?" I had a team of librarians ready to assist me in whatever way I required. It was awesome. It kind of made me wish I was needier so I could have asked them for things.
They kept an eye on me, stayed out of my way, and made sure the other people using the reading room left me plenty of room. When five o'clock approached, I thought they would give me polite reminders that they were closing, but they quietly stayed away and waited for me to finish in my own time. I packed up my stuff and returned the books right at 5, and the lights went out as I walked out the door.
Reading rare and fragile books for 7 hours is surprisingly exhausting. The books can't be handled much, so I had to set them on a cradle and hunch over them as I read. Turning the pages is laborious. Just flipping the pages will tear them, so I had to gingerly find the corners, ensure I only had one page, then move in a large arc so the page would remain flat as it transitioned from one side to the other. I was tired when I left.
After leaving the library I met up with humanstudier. I've missed her and it was good to wander around town talking about love and loss and the pain and joy that comes with each. We talked a lot about my relationships with children, why I identify with them, and why they respond as they do to me. We spent a few hours together, then met up again in the morning for breakfast before I headed back home.
Yesterday I went on one of the most enjoyable hikes I've been on in a long time. The trail we intended to take initially was closed due to a bee hazard. We took a different trail instead, and had no idea where it led. We followed it far beyond where it was reasonable to continue as we crawled through bushes, clung to narrow ledges, and found some of the bees we'd been warned about. We eventually ended up amongst some hill-top mansions in Beverly Hills, had a picnic lunch in the green belt, and really surprised the guard who had to open the gate to let us out. We followed up by having lunch at a fantastic (and fantastically overpriced) Indian restaurant nearby.

I just spent the last 7 hours reading very old books about beer. I didn't find what I was looking for, but I found a lot of good stuff. I also learned that plagiarism was rampant in the late 18th century - I read the same text word-for-word in four or five different books.
I'm going to keep working on the research. I'll look into some of the less obscure areas for a while, but I'm probably going to be making a few more trips up here.

This weekend I'm making a trip to do some research I started about 15 years ago. I'm pretty excited about this.
The research I'm doing has to do with the kind of beer produced in the US before prohibition. The goal is to identify styles of beer that originated here and to reproduce them.
I've talked about this to a number of people over the years and many of them have offered to help. Some offer to share what they know, others point me to potential resources. So far not one of them has been able to give me anything I didn't already know. I've joked that I'm the nation's leading expert on this subject.
A thought occurred to me today. Leading expert or not, I know a lot about this and there are people who would like to know what I know. I've been engaging in this entire exercise merely to satisfy my own curiosity and with no plans for what to do with all I learn. Maybe I should be working on gathering this all together into a book.
I already have an approach in mind for writing it. I have the knowledge (though I'd have to revisit some sources for details). There would still be a lot of work left in terms of converting archaic brewing practices and ingredients into something that could be done with modern ingredients and equipment.
This project suddenly got a lot bigger.

At every place I've worked, they hold an annual security event of some sort. They usually put up tents, sell hot dogs and popcorn, and have prize drawings so it seems like a carnival, or something fun. Usually there are several booths manned by the local security staff explaining why it's important to always wear your employee badge and why you should lock the door to your house.
Today is the security event here, and it's very different. There are still tents, popcorn and hotdogs, prize drawings and people wanting to tell me really obvious things. What makes it different is that there are also a number of booths with things that are interesting. I talked to an Air Force OSI agent about counter-terrorism, I talked to an FBI agent about the use of SWAT team equipment and tactics domestically and overseas, I talked to a demolitions expert about fuses, and I talked to a firearms expert about submachine guns. I got to handle an MP5 and a Thompson Submachine gun (among others).
It was pretty cool.

I ran into my former boss at lunch today. He told me they're hiring like crazy right now and taking over multiple buildings to house all the people they're bringing in. He doesn't know what it's all for, but I suspect it's something I was slated to work on before I left.
I'm not sure if he was telling me this to make conversation, or if he was trying to convince me to come back.

My neighbor is insane.
Last night she came by to ask me for her spare key. She opened her door and gave the key back to me, then came back an hour or so later to ask for it again because she couldn't find her other key.
This afternoon she called to tell me a very convoluted story about how a dream she had last night reminded her where her key is. She believes that it fell out of her pocket while she was riding her motorcycle home from work yesterday. She further believes that she knows where this happened well enough to be able to find it. It would be too dangerous to go looking for it during the day time when it might be visible because there's too much traffic, so her plan is to go out there at about 3 am to try to find it. I'm not entirely clear on what my role is in this plan.
She has a friend who drives a tow truck who's going to block traffic for us (which brings up the question of why it couldn't happen during the day time) while we go looking for it on the side of the freeway.
Clearly this all makes much more sense than going to the hardware store and having a new key made.

The tire shop just called to apologize about sticking me with a flat spare tire and to tell me that they're giving me a new tire to make up for it. They also told me that the tire I punctured this morning isn't repairable and that they're going to replace it for me. They're doing the alignment right now and as soon as it's done I can pick it up and I don't owe them anything.
I thought I was going to have to fight them on this. I thought they'd try to patch the tire with a plug the size of my thumb and try to convince me that the tire is just as good as it was. I thought they'd tell me there was nothing they could do about the spare and try to sell me a new tire.
They didn't try to pull anything over on me. It's a pleasant surprise, but I was all keyed up for a fight. I need to bring myself down, but right now I'm angry with nothing to be angry about.

What a huge pain in the ass that was.
I went to the parking garage to change the tire on my car. It turned out there were cars parked tight up against it on each side, and I decided I didn't want to deal with it. So I called AAA.
For the most part it went the way it should. At first they dispatched a tow truck from more than 20 miles away, but then someone who can read a map took over and they sent a local tow truck. He arrived, and I led him to where my car is. The tow truck was too big to fit in the parking structure, so he collected some tools and we walked up. He jacked up the car, took the spare out of the trunk, and that's when the problems started.
The spare was completely flat. And it had a hole in the sidewall. I remember that tire. It's the reason I bought new tires a few months ago. And when I bought new tires, I told them to leave me the best of the old tires for a spare. They left me the one with a hole you can put a finger through. I'm pissed.
Changing the tire is now pointless and I need to take it somewhere. He gets a small air compressor with the idea that we can put enough air in the tire to drive it out of the parking structure and to the tow truck. The air leaks out as fast as it goes in. The next option is to drive it down on the flat tire. The tire's already fucked, so why not. I get it down there, and it's at that point that the driver noticed that my car is all wheel drive. He can't tow it with his truck, it needs to go on a flat bed.
So he calls me another tow truck that can take my car. It gets all loaded up and I'm ready to give the driver directions to the tire shop. He insists that I come with him to make sure he gets to the right place. I don't think it's necessary, but he won't go without me.
This should have taken about 20 minutes and it ended up taking about 2 hours.

Yesterday I finally got around to joining my local homebrew club. That was long overdue. This club is affiliated with another that I used to belong to, so I recognized a lot of people.
I was surprised at how little homebrew was served at the meeting. I would almost say this is more like a beer aficianados club than a homebrew club, except that these guys are clearly fanatical brewers.
They were all friendly and made an effort to let me know about some of the club events coming up. Then I opened the beers I brought and passed them around and I was suddenly everyone's best friend. Apparently they liked the mexican chocolate stout.
It wasn't exactly what I was looking for in a homebrew club, but I can't say I'm disappointed. The summer party is next month and several people have insisted that I come. I can't think of a good reason not to.

Got a flat tire on the way in to work this morning. I ran over something (don't know what - I didn't see it) just before I got to work, and the tire went flat just after I pulled into the parking lot. I managed to limp my way into a parking spot, but my mobility is dramatically reduced.
Right now I've got about 45 minutes until my next meeting. Normally I would go back to my office and get something done, but today I'd have to take the tram which means I'd have just enough time to get there and come back.
On the plus side, I've got road hazard coverage on the tires so I don't have to buy a new one.

Roger called yesterday to invite me to his step-daughter's high school graduation party. Apparently I'm going to be spending my Saturday with a bunch of giddy 18 year-old band geeks.
He was telling me about some of the weirdness about this school and the graduation. Apparently there's going to be 3 days of graduation practice. Neither of us can figure out what they need to practice that will take more than an hour. His step-daughter is the saludatorian. There are 6 valedictorians, 5 of whom have lower GPAs than his step-daughter. They also have parents who protest loudly that their children are special and deserve special treatment. The school will be issuing three categories of diplomas. One is the standard diploma, one is an "honorary diploma", and the other is a sort of "certificate of participation" for those students who don't qualify for a diploma. Apparently it would hurt their feelings if they weren't allowed to graduate with all the students who deserve to. And that somehow matters.
I'm glad I don't have to deal with any of this shit.
It's going to be good to see Roger and his daughter (note that I say "daughter" and not "step-daughter". only one of them matters to me). Hanging out with each other used to always be a priority, and as it's gotten harder to make that happen it's gotten easier to get used to it not happening.

So far today:
Washed a case of bottles. 2nd case is currently soaking and should be ready to clean shortly. I should be able to bottle beer tomorrow.
Moved a lot of things into my garage. This was observed closely by the neighbors who were involved in the feud that made it possible for me to get this garage. One of them asked me for some plant pots that the previous neighbors left behind, the other one gave me a wine rack.
Late lunch followed by a beer and a cigar (that would be now).
I may go out soon to Home Depot to get a ladder, garden hose, and extension cord.
Later I'll be driving much farther than is reasonable for pizza and beer.