Oh look, Google finally got a clue...too late

The real name policy and google+ fucking nightmare is finally getting acknowledged as the clusterfuck that everyone said it was back when they started trying to make it a thing. It's largely why I've abandoned this shit hole. They held my blog hostage, use your real name or it's going to be read only, and I caved.

I caved because I've been blogging here for years, I liked it more or less and liked some of the people I'd met. Not so much after they purged all the good people, but the spammers are still thriving. They've driven adsense payouts down to the point that it's not even worth pursuing as a small time blogger.

So thanks for the memories Google, blogger used to be kind of awesome.

Beer update snippet

I escaped for an afternoon and brewed with a friend a little over a week ago, I have a citra pale ale sitting in secondary on a 1oz addition of citra hops. It's cloudy because we didn't put moss in the boil kettle and at this point looks a lot like a little lighter Manny's Pale ale (his pale is almost copper).

Should be about 5.6% abv all said and done.

I'm vaguely tempted to leave it cloudy (I like that about Manny's), but since it's going into a keg and I hate haveing to clean my keg after a dirty beer I'll probably cold crash it hard and see how clear I can get it.

Stuff and junk

An odd assortment of tidbits that have nowhere else to go. At nearly 1000 posts I'm loath to let this place wither on the vine, but at the same time Google's real name policy makes me loathe to participate any longer? Where does that leave me, something like facebook? A highly postured subsection of myself where I post PR approved sunshine to keep from endangering my future? There's plenty of places still online not owned by Google, and not being slowly killed by their aborted/failed/stalled crap social network. I cannot believe that they mortgaged their sub-properties to try and buoy up a new one. Look what it got you Google, no one wants to manage two social networks for the purpose of connecting and sharing. It's too tedious, people are happy to maintain different profiles for different purposes. This blog was some spleen venting, some part nerding out about various technology things, other parts being a book nerd. It was a place to put things to remember for later, a place a few friends knew about so I could just be me.

Our past defines us, moving to somewhere new gives us a chance to change that and our corporate overlords don't care for that. It's  hard to sell to a multi-headed hydra of a person. They need to be one monolithic person a collection of all there pieces so we know exactly how they'll move when we push them. To that extent it's no wonder that the NSA was tapping into Google's vast store of information about us. They already did the hard work aggregating data on us.

But enough about my complaining what about Me?

Well, I've been busy. Oldest boy is working his way towards being 3 and we just had another son that's 3 weeks old. Otherwise I've been spending way, way too much time in the hospital for <cough>swollen testicle<cough> for my own good. Now as much fun as it is to have repeated ultrasounds on your nuts, the blood work and peeing in the cup hardly makes it worth the effort. Also I got my favorite and most often response from the many days there. "Huh, don't know what that was about. Looks fine now."

Thanks Doc, glad to see those years of med school are working out for you.

In the months since my wife got pregnant, I've not managed to brew a damn thing (though I did do a run on my still) and only have made one batch of hard cider in the last year. My brewing skills are in serious disrepair, and I want to get a lead test kit before I run the still again (better safe than sorry)

Donuts

http://www.saveur.com/article/recipes/Cinnamon-Sugar-Cider-Donuts

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/hawaii-malasadas

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/long-johns

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/french-crullers