Friday night meet and greet.

#startrek I seem to be a small negative voice in a sea of positive energy regarding the Star Trek movie and I am trying to figure out why. I am usually not one of the uptight purists who just feels like it is his job to criticize everything. I really hope I don't come across as the comic book guy from the Simpsons.

Any who, as a lifetime fan of the Star Trek franchise I feel like the writers of this movie have taken all that I loved and tossed it in the recycling bin like last week's newspaper. I don't want to provide any spoilers so I will just say that I kept waiting for a validation in the plot of this storyline that never delivered. The only hope now is that there will be a sequel that will turn this train wreck around but I don't see any promise of that so far. At least that promise would have been something.

I feel like they looked @ the history of the Star Trek franchise and said "Eh, it doesn't really matter. Let's just do our own thing." They concentrated on action sequences and sacrificed on plot by using conventions that are more than over done. To top it off they spat in the face of the storyline that I have loved for about 25 years.

I should stop now before I say to much for those of you who haven't seen the movie yet. Please, someone out there give me a perspective that I haven't considered yet to help quiet this seething ball of angst inside me.

The spaghetti mess!

Exploring more efficient means of distributing and consuming electrical power. This is what I like to see.

http://charlotte.bizjournals.com/…ily17.html

from Charlotte Business Journal

I've been doing some serious brewing lately. I'm pretty happy with my beer corner so I thought I would share.

What you see here are 4 batches of beer in various stages of readiness.

Starting from the bottom you see the white bucket with the German Hefe-Weizen. I brewed it about a week ago and it is finishing up its time in the primary fermenter. Beside that is a Cornelius keg with a batch of Irish Red that I kegged last night. It will sit for about 2 weeks while it naturally carbonates. Above that you can see the bottles of a batch of Dead Dude Ale. This one is ready for drinking and I have had a few. I've had trouble getting it to carbonate but it is coming along nicely now. I think it is drinkable now but might benefit from a few more days of carbonation. Finally @ the top you see the batch I brewed last night. This is a German Altbier. This is the first time I have used the 5 gal. carboy as the primary fermenter with a blow off tube. You can see from the color of the tube that it is already doing a nice job of pushing some of the gunk out. I also used a yeast starter for the first time on this batch and I have to say that I am really happy with the results. It helped the beer move to vigorous fermenting activity within hours.

Also, not pictured here, I have a keg of an IPA that I made in my outside fridge. With the oak in the recipe it needed a little bit of time to mature but it is really good @ this stage I believe. Come on by and have one! ;)

I am on Jason Calicanis's email distribution (blog replacement).

This is a positive response I was compelled to create based on his latest message. I chose video for the human touch so that you could hear my inflections and see my face.

I know we all get discouraged at times by the lack of empathy and "real" human interaction on the web. Sometimes it seems like every conversation is an attack and all discussions degrade into flame wars.

Here's hoping we can find the light in the darkness. There are a lot of good, kind people posting out there.

Just me, my Kindle, some coffee, and my Mac. Waiting for my new computer to be ready. It's kind of nice to have a valid reason to allow me some time to not work and read.

This is an interesting service. http://www.cucku.com/

I just heard about it so this is not an endorsement but I have been looking for a good way to maintain an off site backup. The service requires Skype and I may have to give it a try.

You would think that I work for RTM by now with all of my endorsements. Don't worry. I have no affiliation with the company other than as a standard user.

This morning RTM online is down. I was upset for a couple of minutes wondering how I was going to be able to work effectively this morning without my lists. Then I remember that I downloaded the RTM Offline Application that works with Google Gears.

Good work RTM!