Helping the other side undestand

....We're entering another election cycle, and that always polarizes people as much as my eye is currently against mascara because it's hot and I've sweated enough that said mascara is now in my eye.

This time I've done 0 research, and I need input on who to vote for.  Tell me who and why!

Clearance....

For some people clearance means a good deal on shoes.  For others, the appropriate background checks and paperwork to access the information they need.  For me, it means getting a drawing "clearance" to be given to someone else outside of my place of work to have it fabbed or whatever.

Now, the system is really pretty simple.  You have to include a bunch of details in your drawing and in the paperwork associated with your drawing that mean something to someone higher-up who has to deal with a wide assortment of various drawings and because the various classes of drawings are so different, treat each one very differently.  I think one of those persons is named Jose (for the purposes of this blog we'll call him Jose, anyway, it's a good name for a good guy), because that is the name associated with all my drawings that get repeatedly rejected from the system.  Unfortunately for me, those details are peripheral to my work and ALWAYS the exact same, and you all know how well I deal with monotonous details that appear to me to be minute.

Anyway, I always find a way to screw it up, and Jose has to reject my work 85% of the time.  At first I'd get the rejection e-mails and be confused.  The e-mail has no details as to why the drawing was rejected.  I'd change a few things, submit again, and get rejected again.   Then I'd get frustrated and scream, "KHHAAAANN" at the computer every morning.  Then I realized most of my rejections were associated with the name "Jose," and my scream became, well, you know.

Then one day I was looking at the system a little more closely and realized there's an unobtrusive button on one of the pages that lets you see comments as to why your drawing was rejected.  It's an oddly-named button for this sort of thing, so it's easy to see why I might miss it.  I finally found it, though, and saw that "Jose" had been making comments all along as to how I could modify the documents to make it possible for him to "clear" them through the system.

Suddenly, I had a paradigm shift.  I could see poor Jose opening his e-mail every morning to see that I'd sent him the third version of a sub-par drawing.  He'd been leaving me messages on how to do it right, and every time, without fail, I'd been sending him back a drawing with everything changed except for the one detail that he had been telling me I needed to change before he could clear my drawing.  If he's anything like me, he's been yelling my name in KHAN caps at his computer every morning.

I felt very bad.  And very stupid.  And suddenly very empathetic with Jose.  The man's been patiently putting up with my idiocy for months, when he should've tracked me down and yelled at me for making his life much harder than it needed to be.  Now, I double and triple-check all my drawings before putting them into the system.  Really, I should just break down and bring the man cookies for putting up with me all this time.  Jose is a saint!

Learning Process

Learning Process....

Usually, I like to write about the insanity of other Mad Scientists.  Today, I give you a glimse into my own internal mad world.

The Situation

I have to make a circuit diagram so that I can get the appropriate clearance for the diagram to leave my place of work and go to a contractor that will design a printed circuit board from my schematic.  Originally we had taken an existing design someone else made, printed it off, and wrote in edits by hand in red pen.  I sent this to Jose, who probably hates me (that is another story all together, maybe for tomorrow night), pleading with him to let this version go through.  Poor Jose, he said he could put it through as a "sketch" but it would really be best for everyone if I redid the drawing for real.  Which means I have to learn new software.  Here is the ensuing internal mental dialog, broken down into rough sections.

Getting Started

Okay, I'm smart.  I can figure this out.  Other people learn this program every day.  Let's just find the right website....  great.  Okay.  Which version of the software do I want?  Why are there so many choices?  Where's the download button?!  AAAHHHH!!!!  Okay, okay, calm down. 

*reads the fine print really closely* 
*click* 

"Thirty-two minutes remaining?!" 
Morgan: "Huh?" 
"Whoops, that wasn't meant to be out loud, sorry!"

32 minutes later....

Installation

Which of these files is the right one?  Hmmm... that one looks good, let's try it.
*Error messaged!!*
Huh.  That's funny.  Let's try again.
*Error messaged!!*
Maybe I should read the error message before clicking >Enter< next time.
*Error messaged!!*
Oh!  I should un-zip the folder and try again.  Hey, that worked.
*5 minutes later*
Waiting, waiting, I hate waiting....  I know, I should go talk to Fernanda!
*30 minutes later*
What?!  Only 12% completed?!  ....Ugh.

Initial Panic

Where did the program go?  Why isn't it showing up?  It should be highlighted yellow for new programs?  Where is it?  Should I uninstall and try again?  Wait, wait, no.  It's got it's own folder, let me click that and.....WOW!!!  That's a lot of sub-folders!  Which one do I choose?  Don't panic, you can figure this out, you're smart.  Let's try that one.  Hey, that looks right.  Let's open the program and....
OH NO THAT'S A LOT OF BUTTONS THAT MAKE NO SENSE AND A BIG BLACK EMPTY SPACE BEGGING ME TO FILL IT!  EMPTY SPACE, I'M SO SORRY BUT I HAVE NO CLUE WHAT TO DO!!!
Oh wait, I saw something about a tutorial in that folder.  I should do a tutorial!

Tutorial

La dee la da da...  this is a breeze, I'm a natural at this!  Look at me picking up this new software like I OWN it!  I'm just clicking away, putting stuff here and there and....
WHAT JUST HAPPENED?!  I DON'T WANT THAT!!
UN-DO!!  UN-DO!!  CTRL-Z, CTRL-Z!!
Ahhh, I'm glad CTRL-Z works the same way in this program as in all other Windows programs.  Macs are so much harder - I still haven't figured out CTRL-Z on them....  yep, this is easy.  Cruising along.... and it says the exact coordinates are supposed to show up in the status bar in the lower right-hand corner....
"NO THEY DON'T!!"
Morgan: "What?"
"It says the coordinates are supposed to show up in the status bar in the lower right-hand corner, and they're not.  Wait, yeah they are, I was looking at the wrong right-hand."
You're an idiot, get back to work.  Okay, so the next step is to build a new part.  I just click here and here and....
*New complicated thing pops up on the screen.*
Ahhh!!!  I'll never understand this!  I'm such a failure.....  The only option is to just keep going with the tutorial and maybe you'll be able to figure it out later.  Ah, now I'm starting to get it.  Oh, this is easy!  Why was I so worried before?  Wait.  Why is that button greyed out?  I need that button!!  Do I have to select something?  De-select something?  Little button, please talk to me!!  Hmm.  Maybe there was an early part of this section of the tutorial I breezed over but I should have actually read.  Let me scroll up.... yeah.  I did something wrong.  I have no clue how to fix it.  Maybe I should close out of this, open a new document and try again.  Hey, that worked!  I have no clue why, but that's okay, I don't have a lot of experience with this program yet....
Okay, I think you're ready.  Let's try making the circuit diagram you wanted to make from the start.

Starting from Scratch

Doo doo dooot... open new file...
WOW THAT'S A LOT OF BLANK SPACE!!  DON'T WORRY BLANK SPACE, I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING NOW!  YOU'LL HAVE FRIENDS SOON!!
Crap.  I have no clue what I'm doing.
*Opens tutorial file again*
Oh yeah!  That makes sense, I'll start there.  Oh, this is easy, look at me go!!  I'm filling up blank space like a bandit!  Circuit designers, I'm going to put you out of business with my new skilz at design work.  Wait.  No.  I don't want that there.  What did I do wrong on that part?  It doesn't look right.  This is not at all what I wanted.  Crap.  I can't figure out what's wrong.
WHY DO YOU HATE ME, COMPUTER?!!
Oh, I think that's the problem.  Is it?  Did that fix it?
KHAAAANNNN!!!!!
Oh, wait, I think it did fix it.  Ha ha, I'm so awesome at this!  This is too much fun.  I understand why people get addicted to video games.  Speaking of which, what time is it?
OH MY GOSH, WHEN DID IT GET SO LATE?!
I should probably eat something, goodness.  Hmmm.... it's going to take too much time to cook something and I'd rather be playing with my new toy.  Dominos.com here I come!!
Mmmm.... pizza.
NO NO NO!!  I DIDN'T TELL YOU TO DO THAT!!  CTRL-Z, CTRL-Z!!  WHY ISN'T CTRL-Z WORKING?!!
Oh.  Whoops.  That was stupid.  Hmm, maybe I should go to bed.....
Wait, that suddenly makes sense!!  I'll just fix that, it won't take long.
*Half an hour later*
I really should go to bed.  Just another couple minutes and I'll have that part over there done and figured out....
*45 minutes later*
KHAAAAANNNNN!!!
*An hour later*
No, I can do this, I won't let this thing beat me that easily....  It'll only be a few more minutes and then I'll go to bed.
*2 hrs later*
For real... I really need to go to bed.  But I'm so CLOSE now....

Conclusions

There you have it, folks.  That's my learning process when I get a new bit of software to play with.  I hope you've enjoyed the little glimpse into the personal workings of my brain.  Don't forget to comment if you enjoyed this or if you have an alternative humorous "learning curve" story!

How to drive in any city....

How to Drive in Any City

A guide on how to "drive like a local" in any city across the nation, and maybe even a few international locations
Disclaimer:  Based entirely on anectdotal evidence, and I have definitively not let the truth get in the way of a good story.

Norman, OK

This is the town where I first learned about "big city traffic."  Near and dear to my heart.

Left turns:  There are many intersections in Norman where there is no "green arrow" to facilitate your turning left, and enough traffic that there's no safe way to turn while the light is green.  The appropriate way to accomplish this maneuver is therefore to watch the cross-traffic lights and start turning one millisecond before the light turns green.  In this town, only one car gets to turn left per green light.  This holds true for all of New England, and I like to call it the "New England Left Turn."

"Jumping the gun:" I.E. where you watch the lights and start moving a second or two before the light turns green is acceptable in this town.

Yellow lights:  You probably don't want to run one of these, because of the way left turns and "jumping the gun" is approached.

Driving in inclement weather:
Winter wonderland
Norman doesn't have normal winters, with snow and stuff.  Either it's all clear, or there is a layer of ice 10 inches thick from an ice storm, and then there are all kinds of things on the road that make you want to go wicked slow anyway, like branches, entire trees, power lines, etc...  Just assume that everyone around you is just as freaked out as you are and has about as much control over their vehicle as you do.
Rain
Normal rain is nothing to Norman folk, turn on your windshield wipers and proceed as usual.  However, rain could mean tornadoes, and if these happen, expect lots of people driving kind of slowly rubbernecking for the twister.  If you see one, I would highly recommend not driving into it.

Boston, CA

Left turns:  Boston is even worse than Norman for the lack of the "green arrow" and lots of traffic.  Here the appropriate thing to do is pull WAY out into the intersection until you're blocking cross traffic, wait for the light to turn red, wait for all the people running the red light to get through the intersection, and then turn.  In Boston it's perfectly appropriate for two or three cars to get to turn left on a single light.  The max I think I've seen is about five.

Yellow lights:  Typically look more like an orange-ish pink to a native Boston driver.

"Jumping the gun:"  Highly recommend against doing this.  It's a good way to die given the way Bostoners will run "well, it was almost still yellow" lights.

Round-abouts:  Are EVERYWHERE.  These are pretty straight-forward:  You enter one by turning right into it and going around and around until someone lets you over so you can exit it.  You might be there a while.  Therefore, directions may say something like "left turn on Washington St." but what it really means is "turn right into the round-about, get stuck going around and around for 20 minutes trying to figure out which Washington St is the one you want to exit on (there are 5 of them), finally pick one, then spend the rest of the day trying to find your way back to civilization on a maze of round-abouts, one-way streets, and no-left-turn intersections."

Turns / directions / street signs:  Boston, the international hub it was at the time of the Revolutionary War, was obviously designed to discourage British tourism trying to prevent us from becoming our own nation instead of a British colony.  Obviously.  Take for example the 6-way intersections between three streets with nearly the same name.  This would be fine, if any of the three streets were actually labeled, or I suppose if you have a GPS with the cute little map that helps you distinguish between a 30 degree left and a 60 degree left.  Unfortunately, your GPS will undoubtedly be unaware that Mem. Dr. is closed for the Boston Marathon and be unable to help you actually find your way around town.  Additionally, if you ask for directions, don't be too surprised if you get an answer like, "Well, you can't really get there from here... maybe if you go into Medford and come back on that one street... honey, what's the name of that street they can come in on from Medford to get where these kids are going?"

Medford:  Looks like it's close to Cambridge on a map.  Has a TGIF's, a Costco, and a Krispy Kreme, so it looks like an attractive destination to someone from a less-urban environment as a little taste of home.  Google maps will tell you it's only 10 minutes to Costco.  Your GPS will agree.  You'll start off on your journey, and 10 minutes later you will look off to your right and see a TGIF sign and a Costco sign, and start heading towards them.  Every time you get close a one-way street will put you on an elevated highway and whisk you away from the mythical mecca of suburban delights.  Two hours later you will settle for a 7-11 donut and a route back home.

Parking:  Before you go to Boston, I would highly recommend practicing parallel parking.  The way it's done in Boston is you drive down Mem. Dr., that is nearly a true highway complete with exit and entrance ramps at 40-50 mph, see a spot 6 inches longer than your car, and get into it with 3 inches between your tires and the curb in less than 5 seconds so you don't get hit by the guy behind you also going 40-50 mph.  Yes, you do actually get good at this.  I once measured the parking space I had crammed my ancient Chevy Lumina into, and it was only 5.5 inches longer than my car.  Total.

Driving in Inclement Weather:

Winter Wonderland:  Boston really has a handle on winter weather.  The snow plows will be out with a vengeance at the first sign of snow.  If you parallel parked your car on Mem. Dr., either wait for summer to thaw it out of the six feet it is now buried in, or remember to keep your emergency snow shovel in your dorm room, not in your car.  Fortunately, if you can get your car out of its parking space, driving in snowy weather is pretty blase.  Additionally, if you have a Jeep with 4-wheel drive with lots of undercarriage clearance, you can actually park on top of the drift of snow that gets piled up in one parking space of a busy parking lot.  Useful for Sunday Indian buffet on Mass. Ave.

Rain:  Boston gets a lot of rain.  One January it started raining and didn't let up until March.  It was more days of rain than the 40-day and 40-night episode that Noah rode out in his ark.  The streets are well-drained, so there's no issues with driving in the rain, even if it's a rain storm of biblical proportions.  If you do find a puddle, it's extra points if you can hit it at high speed and spray the pedestrians.

Red Sox:  Don't even try.  I warned you.

Getting to the Providence Airport:  The airport in Providence, RI is much cheaper to fly into or out of and is only 60 miles away, which is really close for a country girl.  This looks really straight-forward on google maps, you get on 93S, merge with 95S, and follow signs for the airport.  What no one tells you is that of the 4 lanes of 93S, ALL FOUR merge with 95N and you have to take an exit to merge with 95S.  I found this out one day when I was heading along my merry way to the airport to fly to Oklahoma and was like, "Huh, that rock climbing gym over there looks a lot like the one I go to in New Hampshire."  Yes, I was trying to go south of Boston to Rhode Island, and didn't realize I was off course until I got to New Hampshire.  Totally missed that flight.

San Fransisco Bay Area

It's not too bad in this city, in all reality.  The people are generally nice, there are multiple 7-11s, and the area is, for the most part, laid out more like a blind person constructed it and less like an evil civil engineer that hates cars designed it (Boston would be a good example of the latter).  There are a few things you should be aware of, however.

Tolls:  If you want to cross a bridge, you will have to fork over some dough (~$6 or so, maybe more).  None of the bridges (as of this writing) take plastic money, they require their extraction in the paper or metallic form.  Some exits are labeled "last exit before toll bridge," but in general you have little to no warning that you're about to be extorted.  Keep a couple $20s in your ashtray, it will save you in those random times when you get lost and wind up having to cross a bridge twice in order to find your way home.

Emeryville:  Much like Medford, this place has not only a Costco and a TGIFs, but it also has an Ikea and a GAP outlet!  Additionally, it looks like it's only 10 minutes from Berkeley.  Are you noticing a trend of similarity with Medford here?  Well, I should have.  I don't recommend trying to find the elusive Emeryville and its seductive establishments.

Berkeley:  This place is a student town, and apparently the students don't know the meaning of "jay walking."  Stay alert at all times, you never know when some girl in 80s attire that is apparently back in style will jump out in front of you while texting on her phone "OMG, isn't he so HOT!?! :-)"  It's like running the gauntlet, I swear.

Hills:  Everything is on a hill in this region.  If you drive a stick-shift, then get really good at starting from a dead-stop with someone 3 inches behind you on a 45 degree incline.  Also get good at parallel parking on a hill, and expect that other people will give you the same 5.5 inches of extra space that you got with your Boston parking job.  At least here traffic will not be whizzing by at 50 mph.  (But a student my decide to walk in front of or behind your car while you're trying to pull out.)

Pull-outs:  There are lots of windy, narrow roads up into and out of the hills.  If you notice there is someone behind you who would like to go faster than you, you are supposed to look for a "pull-out," pull into it, let the other faster people pass, and then proceed at a speed you find safe and comfortable.  It's California state law that you can't let traffic pile up behind you more than 3 cars.  However, there's always someone who doesn't know about pull-outs and is obviously quite new to the whole thing of driving-a-car-at-high-speed around gut-wrenching curves with 90-degree  (or worse) drop-offs without even a guard-rail or a bush or two to break your fall.  I'm usually the slow person, but at least I've heard of pull-offs.  USE THEM!  Can I just say that a guard rail would be nice?

Driving in Inclement Weather:  The only weather the SF bay area gets, really, is sun.  It's always foggy, and everyone drives as if fog were normal and the speed limit still applies even when you have only 10 feet visibility.  Everyone actually slows down a little when it's sunny, and you can nearly audibly hear the chorus of people emerging from the fog, "Wow, I didn't know there were so many pretty hills around here!  Look, I can see the bay!  Honey, is that the bridge?  I didn't realize it would be so pretty from a distance!"  It is really pretty.

Los Angeles Area

This city... man, this city.  And it's drivers.  It's where I live now, and I'll keep it brief because I know my sense of humor develops with distance and time.

Los Angeles Freeways:  

Freeways: First in your education as a LA person:  they are "freeways," not "highways."  I'm not sure why, but that's what they're called.  Also, it's not "highway 2," it's "THE 2."  If you are asked for directions, the best way to show that you're not from LA is to say, "Well, you take highway 210 west, then highway 2 south, then 134 west, then exit on Burbank St. and take a right."  The correct way to give directions is, "Well, you take the 210 to the 2 to the 134, and it's right there."

Freeways....:  When you look at a map of LA, you just have to think, "Some frustrated engineer built this."  It's like the city was first "organically built," like Boston was, where you want to get from point A to point B so you build a road between them.  Rinse, lather, repeat, until there are many roads between many interesting places.  What is this square grid, and why do we need it when our points of interest aren't on a square grid?  Freeways then happened.  Now there are so many freeways that you can't go 5 miles in LA without a major intersection of freeways.  This would be fine if it weren't for the fact that at every intersection, there are 4 lanes of traffic to the right that want to be in one of the left 4 lanes, and 4 lanes of traffic on the left that want to be in one of the right 4 lanes.  Every intersection is a slow-down because that frustrated engineer wasn't given enough space for there to be more than maybe 1000 feet between intersecting with the other freeway and diverging from it.  And this brings me to the....

California Lane Change:  When you're in the most right hand lane of a freeway that then merges with a further 4 lanes of traffic off to the right, and need to exit within 500 feet, you have to do something I like to call the "California Lane Change," or crossing 3-5 lanes of traffic in one smooth, fluid movement and exiting the freeway while going 65 mph.  It sounds like something some jerk would do if you life in any other state (including denial), but it's a fact of life here.  Just today I wanted to turn right on Lake after exiting the 210, and there's no way to do that except plow across 3 lanes of traffic in less than a block.  I would say practice this, but if you practice that maneuver in Dallas you're probably going to be in trouble with the locals.

Blind Spot:  You have one, the driver the lane over has one.  The driver the lane over wants to get in your lane, and puts on her turn signal.  The appropriate thing to do is to decrease or increase your speed such that you are riding right in her blind spot.  If she slows down, you slow down to remain in her blind spot.  If she speeds up, you do too.  She knows you are there, and therefore can't move into the lane she wants to be in, but she can't see you.  Hahaha!  You've got her trapped!  ...Apparently, even with all the fun things to do in LA, this is the most fun some LA drivers have had all week, and they do it all the time.  To fit in, you should attempt the same from time to time.

Driving in Inclement Weather:  Inclement weather means anything less than full sun.  If clouds appear, people are like, "what are those fluffy white things up in the sky?"  and traffic will slow down.  If it rains, people slow down to 25 mph on the freeway because they can't understand why wet stuff is falling from the sky.  (Digression:  Actually, it's really dangerous in LA after a rain, because the drainage systems are inadequate, there's lots of oil build-up on the roads that gets suspended by heavier water, and it's really easy to hydroplane lose control of your vehicle like if you were driving on ice.  End digression.)

The 405:  Carmageddon.  Enough said.

Other Cities / Countries

I could include many more cities, towns, countries, etc.... but I think I'll leave that up to you.  Please comment with your humorous guides to driving in other places!

Why I dislike talking about politics....

It seems I am cursed with this belief....

...that people hold their political views not because they are smart or stupid or good or evil or educated or uneducated or want to control your life, but because they are good, hardworking people basically like me but live in their own unique world that is subtly different from anyone else's.

Any time I get in any political discussion, I am immediately the outsider.  Why?  Because I am always trying to understand the point of view of both sides of an issue.  When I am with a crowd of liberals, I try to explain why conservatives might have their point of view.  When I am with a crowd of conservatives, I try to explain why liberals might have their point of view.  When you're able to understand both sides of a story, you're not really going to fit in with either crowd when both are extremely biased that their way is the only right way.

Most of the time the story goes like this.  Person: "This is the right way, and those other people are wrong."  Me: "Well, try to see it from their point of view.  They see it like this."  Person: "Well, the way they see it is wrong because of this that and the other."  Me: "They'd counter your arguments with X, Y, and Z."  Person:  "(Ignoring X, Y, and Z) 1, 2, and 3!!  So there!"  Me: "I have to walk away now, before I get angry."

It's kind of ridiculous.  You'd think, if we wanted a working government, that people would bend over backwards to try to understand the other side of the story and find a way to modify their own platform to appeal to both sides.  This isn't impossible.  

Just on the way home from work I was thinking about the health care debate, and how yes, it makes sense to fund preventative care, but yes, it also makes sense that people shouldn't be forced to fund or take a hand-out they don't stand behind.  A facebook friend recently posted a pictograph that showed that the states least in favor of federally funded health-care are also the most likely to give charitably outside of taxes.  I say we take advantage of that factoid, and not do a federally funded healthcare, but perhaps give the states the tools to set up the health care systems that will work best within their boundaries.  California might work best with a universal health care law, much like Massachusetts does, but in Texas and Oklahoma, perhaps it is best to provide a little federal and/or state funding to set up mostly-privately-funded preventative care free clinics for those that are uninsured.  I'm not a politician, but to me it seems like the best way to approach this problem is to break it down a little.  I won't say this solution thought of in 15 minutes is a good one, but at least it's trying to solve the problem.

Another issue that comes up quite often in my little circle of friends is religion or lack thereof.  I'm sorry to both sides, but this country is all about FREEDOM of religion.  You can be athiest all you like, but because of the freedom of religion thing, you can't get pissed off at Christians when they want to tell you how awesome it feels to be loved by God and have a community of fellow believers that all also love God back.  Likewise, you can't do the patronizing, "I feel sorry for you" thing if you're a Christian meeting an athiest.  We should both be happy that the other side has found peace with the world.  Calling Christians "stupid and misguided" is unacceptable, as is telling athiests that they're going to hell.  These are incendiary remarks, counter productive, and not at all accomplishing what either side wants to.  Let's try some new language like, "Well, I'm glad your beliefs make you happy, but you're starting to annoy me with your profession of them."  and "I'm sorry I've annoyed you, but I feel strongly about this and have found joy in my personal belief system, so let me know if you would like to discuss this again in the future."  Let's try to remember that we're all people, and that it's OKAY to be different.

I could swear right now I'm so angry with how various factions are dealing with each other.  It makes no sense why there is no compromise in sight, but I know, compromise sells few papers, while demonizing does.

I'll post a name tonight,

Amanda Stockton

Blackberry Surprise - Bottling

Bottling the Blackberry Surprise

Post 8/19/2012 describing events of 8/11/2012

Equipment

The new pieces of equipment in this step are the bottling bucket that has a spigot, the bottle caps, the bottle capper, the bottle filling tube, and the yummy snacks from the garden.  The big tomato is a "Mr. Stripey" or "Striped German," and it is just stellar with coloring like a peach and a sweet peachy flavor.  Amazing.

Because I found it rather difficult later on to take pictures as I am actually doing this process (bottling day is always fun and chaotic, and I'm doing this alone so there is no one else to hold the camera for me), I'll show you how these new pieces of equipment work now rather than later.

Pressure Bottle Washer

This piece of equipment screws down onto a standard garden hose:

I like to keep the hose in place by tying it to a kitchen cabinet over the sink with a piece of pink yarn from my attempt at knitting a tank top.  Here's how the bottle washer works (more on the pink tank top another time):

When you put a bottle over the end, the lip catches on the rod perpendicular to the one-way valve, opening the valve and releasing water at high pressure into the bottle:

Bottling Tube

This tube also has a one-way valve that works the same way.

The valve closes when you pull the tube out of the bottle due to the fluidic pressure of the beer, and opens when you hit the bottom of the bottle with the bar attached to the plunger of the one-way valve.  This tube is sized such that you leave the proper 1.5" headspace at the top of the bottle for pressure build-up during natural carbonation.

Bottle Capper

This is kind of hard to explain, but if you saw one and operated you would figure it out pretty quickly.  Here is the basic structure:

Here's how it works!  First, you attach a bottle cap to the magnet:

Then you place the bottle inside the bottle cap:

Then you pull the two handles down, which closes the clamp around the lower lip of the bottle.

Then, using two hands, you pull the two handles all the way down.  This causes the mechanisms of the bottle capper to crimp the sides of the bottle cap around the lip of the bottle.

You wind up with a perfectly capped bottle!

Admire the View

An essential part of any experience with here at Life and Science.....

Preparation

Unless you want to keg your beer, which I have never done (yet), we will need about 4-5 12-packs of bottles (~48-60).  I've preferred to re-purpose Samuel Adams bottles for this, because the labels peel off quite easily and I love the Sam Summer ale (brewed with lemon peel and grains of paradise!).  New Belgium bottle labels also peel off easily, so I use them very occasionally.  Their Ranger IPA is pretty stellar.

This step starts by soaking the bottles for 5-10 minutes in hot soapy water:

After they've soaked, the labels peel right off.  A simple wipe with a normal dish sponge around the exterior removes the water-soluble glue, and a scrubbing of the inside with a bottle brush removes any nasty from the bottom that has grown on the dredges of the beer because you were too lazy to rinse the bottle before storing.  On this note, it's essential to make sure that you hold the bottle underwater with the open end slightly raised to allow the air to escape and soapy water to enter.  Otherwise the nasty at the bottom will stay dry and intact.

After a good rinse (3x):

My dish-rack holds approximately a 12-pack of bottles, so I repeat this step 5 times.  This is a time-consuming step, but essential.  If you forgot to rinse out your bottles before storage, expect to find large chunks of mold in your drain:

This is completely disgusting, but pat yourself on the back for getting that nasty out of your bottles and therefore your baby beer.

Corn Sugar

This last little dose of sugar is what carbonates the beer naturally in the bottle.  We have to make sure that the sugar is pretty sterile before adding it to our beautiful beer, so first we measure in about 3/4 a cup of corn sugar into a small saucepan and add in a cup of water.

This we apply high heat to, stirring all the while.

When all the sugar is dissolved, the solution turns clear.

Now we turn off the heat and let this return to room temperature.

Sanitizing

As always, all the equipment must be sanitized.  Let's look at things sanitizing in front of a really pretty window first.

Ahh, lovely.  Now let's look at it in the nitty gritty:

Yep, every single bottle must be sanitized.  Note the two "floater" bottles.  There are not being sanitized properly right now, because they are not completely filled and immersed in sanitizing solution.  The bottles further down are.  FYI.

All those bottles need a good rinse, and that is accomplished with the pressure bottle washer.  About 3 2-second bursts is all they really need, but I typically apply 5 5-10-second bursts, just to be sure.  Sanitizing solution is not good drinks!  I lay these out on the turtle towel to dry.  I got too lazy to take good pictures at this point, and I promise to do a better job of documenting the bottling process at some point in the future.

Actually Bottling the Beer

This step starts by moving the secondary to a table top or other elevated location:

I'll quickly run you through the following steps, and update with a better photodocumentary when I get a brewing buddy to help out.

1. Autosiphon from secondary into bottling bucket with a spigot.  You saw how this worked in the last step. Practice your yoga - the all-glass carboy for the secondary is a lot heavier than the plastic of the primary bucket.

2. Move the tubing from the autosiphon to connect the spigot with the bottling tube, and move the bottling bucket up a level to the table.

3.  Put down a large baking sheet (with high edges), put a bottle in this, put the bottling tube in the bottle, and open the spigot.  

4. Scream in frustration when you realize you opened the spigot too much and the bottle fills in 2 seconds and starts spurting beer all over the kitchen.  Turn the spigot down and get a new bottle.

5.  Wail in frustration after waiting five minutes for the bottle to fill, and turn the spigot back up a little.

6.  Scream in frustration again when the bottle fills the rest of the way too rapidly and starts spurting beer all over the kitchen.  Turn the spigot down and get a new bottle.

7.  Repeat steps 5 and 6 until all bottles are filled.

8.  Mop the floor, and be glad you waited to do this until after bottling!

Storage

Move all your bottles to the one room of the house you keep closest to the 60-75 F temperatures that beer loves.  If you're in New England, your basement is the best spot year round.  If you're in Oklahoma, your living room is best in winter, and your bathtub wrapped in a wet towel is best in summer (your storm cellar is still probably over 90 F most of the summer).  If you're in Los Angeles, anywhere is fine in the winter.  If it's summer in LA, choose a room, turn the AC on in that room, and put the beer in there.

After a couple weeks it should be good drinks at last!  I can't wait to taste this beer!  I hope my husband likes it, he always likes lambics (which this one was for a little bit), and he also always likes blueberry wheat beers.  I'll update with a "tasting" post.

Cheers, and happy brewing!

P.S.  If you read this and find anything useful or humorous, please comment!

From the annals of history

English Project
Amanda Stockton
3rd Hour (7th grade)


Dear Mandi, (note: one of my good friends at this time was also an Amanda, and she went by Mandi)

I'm sorry I couldn't write sooner, but just lately I got your address when Josh wrote home with it.  (Note, apparently people didn't have telephones before 2000.)  Congrats on the big archaeological find!  (Josh wrote about it.)  What have you decided to name this "missing link?"  (You could name it Steven Ealy, or perhaps the equivalent, Doofus maximus.)  I notice you haven't written, either.  I live in Aberdeen, Scotland, now.  (I decided the plains of the Serengeti weren't really for me, after all.)  Its really neat here.  You'd like it.  Aberdeen is called the "Granite City."  That's what makes it so beautiful.  Many of the buildings are made of white, polished granit.  It's local here!  (I knew you would like that.)  We live at the mouth of the river Dee.  It's a bonnie river, with unco guid fishing.  (I'm proud of myself, I'm finally learning the slang here!)  Josh and I live about 90 miles from the Loch Ness, and have a summer home there.  We still haven't seen the Loch Ness monster, but our neighbors say they have.

Mandi, you've got to stop by my house sometime.  It's so pretty!  It's made out of pink and white limestone bricks, with light blue trim.  We own such a small lot in town, we have to buy land along the Loch Ness to raise cattle.  So far three have turned up missing.  The neighbors say the Loch Ness monster ate them, but that's only three out of about one hundred fifty head, so they were probably victims of storms or died while giving birth or some other natural phenomena.

As you've probably heard, I've become an aerospace engineer after finally getting out of college.  I had to take four years of engineering school, and after that, four years of graduate school. I went to MIT, the Massachussetts University (hahaha, whoops Institute!) of Technology, that is.  I majored in aerospace engineering, took a few hours of astrophysics, took calculus, physics, algebra, biology, chemistry, computer programming, the Russian and Japanese languages, a few speech and writing classes, Advanced English, and typing (haha, like I needed typing after all the years of AIM).  (Try saying that in one breath... or paying for it with one job! Note: I did work 2 full time jobs one summer, and got the unique experience of never having a full day off working 80 hr weeks.  It was fun, I recommend it to anyone.)  Anyway, it's a pretty little mile-long campus, and just happens to be on the Charles River.  I'm glad to be out of it, no matter how pretty it was.  (Those were the best years of my life, and it was very pretty and a ton of work.)

Brie and I have designed and built an engine that is half the size of the onew that were being used, are reusable, has 1/2 the feul consumption, and is twice as powerful.  We have been to Mars and back in the last year.  We left on July 4th, 2009 (wow, that was a few years ago!), orbited the Earth five times taking readings on the Earth before breaking orbit and travelling on to Mars, where we landed the "Scotty" on the Martian surface on July 11th, set up a permanent "Marsbase" where we can leave people in the future, and retured to Earth July 4th, 2010.  It is sort of like a miniature Earth, with plains, forests, rivers, an ocean, three lakes, two marshes, a mountain range with twelve mountains, a polar region, and plans for the plants and animals to live in the appropriate regions.  We have found that the Mars soil is fertile in places, including where we landed.  The Marsbase has been pumped full of oxygen, equipped with the oxygen recycler that one of the people I went to college with invented, and has a few plants, mainly the ones from the shuttle.  We will be leaving fifteen lizards and around 100 plant-eating insects along with the plants.  Our goal is to see how lizards might evolve in the next few years.  We will be returning to Marsbase September 1.

...Other paragraphs fulfilling the assignment:  I convert to Islam, etc...

My garden's doing pretty well this year.  The Delphinium elatums bloomed right when I got back, a little behind schedule.  The seeds must have germinated later than I thought they would, or else Josh must have not wanted to plant them when I told him to.  He wouldn't admit to it, though.  I only planted purple foxgloves before I left to Mars, and this year I had red and pink as well as purple, which must mean they evolved because they self-plant every fall.  That's why I planted them, so I could have pretty flowers to come home to.  The bleeding hearts died while I was away.  I was a little upset, because they were the prettiest (little rose pink 3-D hearts with little liquid-looking growths at the tip for flowers) and forgot to save seeds.  You have no idea how hard it is to find a Japanese species of seed in Scottish stores.  In other words, don't try it.  The wheat crop is doing okay.  These Scots really seem to like hot rolls made out of stone groungwhole wheat flour, and the cows seem to like wheat hay just as well.  I haven't tried cooking much with oats yet, but that's my next course of action.

The main reason I'm writing this was to speculate on the up-coming Q.E.2 cruise. ..writing assignment bull...  Oh, but apparently I do speculate that a certain J.T. Kirk otherwise known as Vulcan is "most likely" to be the person to arrange our future (past?) cruise.  I write on and on about all these good foods I am looking forward to that at that point I'd never even heard of, let alone tried.  Fortunately, it's hard to go wrong there.  All food is good.  I liked this part, though:

"Now here's something that's not so good.  10,000 bottles of champagne, 27,000 bottles of still wine, 16,500 bottles of spirits, 500 bottles of port, sherry and liquors, 45,000 cans and bottles of beer, and 2 million cigarettes, so, just some friendly advice, WATCH OUT!!"

After another 2 pages of obvious writing assignment work, talking about the straight of Gilbraltar and things, I get back to business:

I don't get to see Josh very often.  It's almost as we're not married at times, and I sure was thinking about him during the trip to Mars.  The times I am at home and not at NASA headquarters or something, he's usually trekking across the Sahara desert looking for Bronchitosauraus or Do-you-think-he-saurus Rex or Jake's ancestors.  (Note:  Wow, for a 7th grader with only the role-models I had at the time, I really accurately predicted the future!)  I hope you and John are getting alng better than we are.  I'll get to see both you and Josh and John at the cruise (he's meeting me up there) so I guess it doesn't matter.

Well, I just ran out of subject matter, and you're probably getting tired of reading this, so I'll let you go.  My address is 6613 Tarbet Rd. Aberdeen, Grampian 99371 Scotland, Earth, Sol solar system, Milky Way Galaxy, Einsteinic Universe.  You need only go to Scotland, but in a few years my address will change and you will need to put Mars instead of Earth.  Bye!

Your friend and colleague,
Amanda Michelle Stockton-Matlock

Blackberry Surprise - Moving to the Secondary

"Moving to the secondary"
Posting 8/4/2012, describing events of 7/29/012.

This is the second official installment of the Blackberry Surprise stream.  There was an explosion issue to document unofficially, but nominally that shouldn't happen, so this should be the next step.

Secondary Fermentation:
First, let's put on some music.  I'd recommend looping Karl Wolf's "Africa" at this point....  Or maybe Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar on Me."  There is no good reason for those songs, I just like them tonight.

Second, let's assemble the hardware:

Sanitize
As is almost always the case when brewing, our first real step is sanitizing everything.

The 6 G carboy is most easily sanitized outside, so I place it in the window / pass-through between my apartment and the great outdoors.

Man, I love that view.  When I saw this apartment and saw that I would have this handy-dandy pass-through from my kitchen to an awesome roofdeck with that view, I signed the lease the next day.  Oh, the towel is there because that's my unfinished wood island and I don't want it to get wet and warp.  You can see I scooped some sanitizer through a funnel into the carboy inside.  I used to just try to pour as much as I could into the narrow mouth of that bottle outside, but I finally bought a funnel so I thought I'd use it.

With the carboy outside where there is a water hose, it is really easy to fill.  I pick it up and shake it some at the start to try to dissolve as much as possible, because it is impossible to pick up and shake when it's full (6 G water weighs 50 lbs, and the glass carboy is probably 10-20 or more lbs by itself, so it's "moveable" but not "shakeable" for me).

This gets filled all the way to the top and then a little bit so that the rim of the carboy also gets sanitized.

Next we sanitize everything else.  Sometimes I fill one side of my kitchen sink with sanitizing solution, but today I want to do a load of dishes while I wait on sanitization, so we'll sanitize everything in my large brew pot.  Pretty easy - fill the pot with sanitizing solution and toss everything in!

Because I have no water vessels large enough to fully submerse the auto-siphon, its peices will be rotated every 5 min or so for about half an hour to make sure they are sanitized along the full length.

Great!  Now we walk away and do something else for about half an hour!  (Except don't go too far, we have to make sure to rotate the auto-siphon every 5 min or so.  This is a good time to do the dishes!)

Rinse
Sanitizing solution =/= good drinks. 

Man, that carboy holds a lot of water.  It took so long to drain that I had time to go back inside and grab my camera and it's still flowing.  The plants downstairs will be happy!  (One of those plants is an apricot tree.  When it's happy, I'm happy.... mmmm)

Everything is rinsed and we are ready to move on!

Transfer Beer from Primary Fermenter to Secondary Fermenter
Hey, look at that.  After a week of fermenting, that "wort" we finished with last time has turned into a "beer!"  Isn't brewing fun!

First, I (VERY CAREFULLY) move the beer from the floor to the table.  We do not want to stir up the yeast poop that has settled out onto the bottom to get suspended in our good beer!  Yeast poop is not good drinks.  I let it sit for a little bit (actually, I let it sit the whole time I was sanitizing) so any solids I may have slushed around can settle, and then I take the airlock out.

Then I take the lid off.  Very carefully, again, because I don't want to disturb the layer of yeast poop at the bottom.  This sounds easy, but you pretty much need rock-climber fingers and a little bit of experience to do it correctly.  I would say you could practice on an empty fermenter for a little bit, but perhaps tis better to scale up your brewing operation to more batches per unit time if you think you need practice!

That's kind of gross, really.  But here is what the beer should look like:

Yeah, I know it looks gross right now.  The floaters are yeast-poop-covered blueberries.  Not good drinks!  Our baby beer needs to age a few more weeks before it is ready to bottle, so we want to rescue it from all that nasty yeast poop everywhere so it can develop.  We'll do that with this:

Whoops, sorry, got distracted.  Isn't that just lovely?  I love the view from my kitchen window.

This is the right photo.  This is an auto-start siphon.  When I started brewing, I did not have one of these and had to mouth-start my siphons.  To try to maintain a somewhat sanitary situation, one of us would have to mouthwash with vodka ahead of time.  Then one of us would have to try to suck beer through basically through a 3-foot long, 1 cm inner diameter flexible straw.  It would take multiple tries, and someone always wound up with at least a mouth full of not quite-there-yet room temperature beer.  Auto-start siphons?  Possibly the best investment a home-brewer could make.

Here's how it works:

There is a one-way valve at the end of the auto-siphon.  This only lets fluid come into the tube, not out (well, it leaks some but not too badly).  There is an inner tube that has a plunger with an air-tight (supposedly, mine is starting to leak a little) seal to the inner wall of the outer tubing.  When you pull the inner tube out, away from the 1-way valve, beer flows into the auto-siphon.  When you push the inner tube back down towards the 1-way valve, the beer has no where to go but up through the hollow inner tube and out down into your secondary fermenter.  This will make more sense in the following photographs.

Here's the basic set-up.  We've got the secondary at a lower level than the primary, and the tube connected to the auto-siphon is threaded down into the secondary.  The next step takes two hands, so no photograph until my brewing buddy moves down to So Cal, but basically it's just pump the inner tube up and down a few times while the end of the auto-siphon is somewhere in the middle of the beer.  We want to avoid transferring any floating yeast poop on the blueberries or any settled-out yeast poop at the bottom of the barrel.

Success!  The beer is running smoothly from the primary....

Down into the secondary.  Now there's nothing to do but stand here for about 20 minutes and try to hold the auto-siphon as still as possible in between the upper and lower levels of yeast poop.

....and take pictures.

It's coming along!

Starting to get a little tricky to keep the siphon between the two layers...  also, that seal is leaking a lot now.  Can you see the difference in color from all the bubbles?  My camera isn't fast enough to pick up the individual bubbles that are moving very fast.  Therefore....

Time to move the secondary down a level to help keep the flow of water rate higher than the introduction of air.  As a note, it is bad to introduce air into your brew at this stage.  Air has oxygen in it, and oxygen reacts with compounds in beer to create aldehydes, ketones, and acids, which are all bad off-notes and some will give you a really bad stinking hang-over.  Let's keep the oxygen out and try not to invite hang-overs to the party.

Tricky tricky!  I'm tilting the pail a little to increase the distance between the brown sludge at the bottom and the blueberry sludge at the top.  It's something where yoga and "hold that pose" kind of training really helps out.  I have to sit in this weird position moving only slightly for like 5 minutes in order to pull this off.

But it's worth it!  Success!  Look at that beautiful red-brown color!

Excellent.  We are all done for this step except for the clean-up!

It is very important to rinse and rinse and keep rinsing the siphon and the tubing, long past when you think they are clean.  If they aren't completely clean, you will come back to your brewing closet to mold inside these.  No one likes mold, and an auto-siphon costs $12.95 so you don't want to screw one up so bad you have to buy another one.

Cheers, and happy brewing!