An AOC 2770vh1 monitor followed me home!

And darned if that big flat 27" monitor didn't fit nicely on my cluttered-up computer desk! It kinda dwarfs both my red alert phone and Eddie, but makes 1920x1080 under Windows 7 Pro really pop out at you. Now I wonder how I ever made do with a 24" monitor...

Pumpkin Carving 2010

I finally put away all the pumpkin carving tools this weekend. This year proved our most intricate with respect to making cool things out of those oversized squash. Next year, I don't know if I'll have the patience...

Just a little Wisconsin pond...

But the late afternoon lighting caught my eye, especially as it illuminated the dried vegetation on the pond's shore opposite the pending sunset. I grabbed the Nikon to capture the moment, and let go with the shutter for lots of frames. This one does a good job of expressing the still beauty of the scene:

Helping out Wikipedia with a Remington Model 8...

I note that Wikipedia has an absolute dearth of firearm images in some of their entries. I reckon I should fix those omissions, so I've begun inserting examples from my own personal collection wherever appropriate. That way, somebody else can enjoy the fruits of my labors, and the firearms can see the light of day from the otherwise dark confines of their gun safes.

First contribution, my restored Remington Model 8 in .32 Remington, which I spent a goodly amount of time getting to its present condition:


More to follow, I promise.

San Francisco cracks down on McDonald's Happy Meals

More specifically, Happy Meals w/toys that don't meet their arbitrary nutritional requirements.

IOW, they've decided that they don't want the wrong things going into the wrong human orifices out there.

Mr. Irony, when have you ever been so unbelievably obvious?

Sunday Breakfast - Something Different...

In a fit of breakfast creativity, I took two fresh chicken tamales from the local Mercado Marimar, added two eggs, a generous helping of shredded Colby Jack cheese, and threw in a sprinkling of Tabasco. Mmmm-good!

2010 Strawberry Wine

15 pounds of fresh June strawberries makes 3 gallons of strawberry wine, ready to bottle in October! This batch took a bit of work, from the picking of the strawberries, to the mushing up and constant agitation through primary fermentation, to the straining of the yeast-digested fruit when it went into the secondary fermentation carboy. (Mushing vs. a blender, because the latter would've chopped all the tiny strawberry seeds, releasing a bitter component the wine could do without...)

I was concerned that the wine would go straw or golden in color, but it finished as a dark reddish-amber. The specific gravity started at 1.110 and wound up at 0.990 in the end, so it took a goodly amount of sweetener to bring it back to a semi-sweet bottling stage. Due to the high acid levels of fresh strawberries, I used champagne yeast, so there's a relatively high alcohol content - but it is subdued in presence by the strawberry flavor, with a very clean finish on the palate.

I'm sure this batch of 15 bottles will disappear well before I pick another 15 pounds next spring.