So now that we have the U-Verse service installed (it's quite nice, 25 Mbps downstream with 3 Mbps dedicated for internetz and the rest for video) I want to be able to capture HD output from the set top box and view it in MythTV. The only way to do that currently is through the Hauppauge HD PVR 1212, which I ordered today.

Next I'll be shopping around for a 1TB SATA II drive to add to the main server and I'll most likely be removing the HDTV OTA capture card out of it - after all, I still have the two tuner HDHomeRun for OTA capture and it seems to pull in the stations a little better.

When I'm done I should have 2 OTA HDTV ATSC tuners, 1 U-Verse HDTV capture input with 2TB of online disk space in a master backend and 2 frontends.

So I heard on the radio this morning that AT&T was finally taking orders for U-Verse in Middle Tennessee beginning today. I had noticed them installing a new SLC at the bottom of the hill for my subdivision back in November, so there was a good chance that I'd be eligible for service. Sure enough, I checked online and it said that I was good to go. I just got a call back from AT&T saying that they could do the install tomorrow, but I asked them for Friday morning, instead.

What is U-Verse?

Fiber to the home. IPTV throughout the house. A DVR with the ability to view the streams on any other receiver in the house. Currently only 1 HDTV stream is available at a time, but that's enough for us. Most of what we watch is still NTSC or HD over the air, which I'll be keeping. Oh, and up to 18 Mbps down / 3 Mbps up internetz connectivity!

EPIC WIN

I have been meaning to make another batch of cider and another of beer since PhreakNIC, but simply haven't had the time to gather up all of the required ingredients and then to make them. I finally decided to go ahead and do the cider by itself, but since it was already too late to have any by Christmas, I thought it would be nice to start a batch on Winter's Solstice. Four years ago today I was standing on the rocks of Stonehenge, watching the sun come up between the pillars. It was cold as could be and I nearly froze my everything off. It's cold here in Tennessee, too, but inside the house it's kept just under 70 F. To help make this a Winter Solstice batch I'm employing evaporative cooling - I have the fermenter sitting in the bathtub with about 2" of cold water in the bottom and a wet towel wrapped around the carboy. The bottom of the towel is in the water, so it will continue to wick the moisture up and keep the temperature of the fermenter cooler than the ambient temperature. This hack is also known as an Arizona Air Conditioner.
Winter Solstice is the first day of winter, the longest night of the year, and a time that I have always enjoyed, even before my trip to England. Those are the things I'll associate with this batch of cider, as well. I hope to listen to the Paul Winter Consort concert on NPR tonight, which I try to do every year.

Preparation Date : 21 Dec 2008
Kegging Date : 1 Feb 2009
Drinking Date : 14 Feb 2009

We (the family) went back out to Walden Farm in Rutherford County, TN, this year. I got some fun video of my son running through the corn maze, among other things.

Name : pn0x0bian Pumpkin Ale
Recipe:
3.3 lbs. Plain Amber Malt Extract
2 Lbs. Plain Amber Dry Malt Extract
8 oz. Crushed Crystal Malt 60L
1 oz. Willamette Hops (Bittering, 60 min)
1/2 oz. Willamette Hops (Finishing, 5 min)
11g Nottingham Yeast
(Above ingredients are the contents of a Brewer's Best English Brown Ale kit)
2 Tbsp. Pumpkin Pie Spice
2 Tbsp. Imitation Vanilla Extract


Brew Date: 7 Sep 2008
Secondary Date: 21 Sep 2008
Kegging Date: 4 Oct 2008
Drinking Date: 10 Oct 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.053
Final Gravity: 1.007
ABV: 6.1%
Calories: 172.2 per 12 oz.
Carbs: 13.4 per 12 oz.

(Calculations from Mr. Good Beer)

Notes:
Tweaked this just a bit from the last batch that I had made. I put a half tablespoon less of Vanilla in it. I also added the pumpkin pie spice into the water before the grains. This seemed to do a much better job of dissolving the spices into the wort and the smell has carried over past fermentation.

So I've had my head buried in some code at work for that past couple of weeks, barely escaping pulling my hair out and looking like Kojak.

Let's step in the wayback machine. A few years ago I was tasked with implementing ITIL, at least in terms of Change Management and Incident Management. We had been using a web based app written by the medical center to manage changes, but were unsuccessful in getting them to make any modifications to the software, because they wanted us to migrate over to HP Service Desk with them. They wouldn't even give us the source to let us host it ourselves. The basic idea was that we would eventually get tired of using a bad tool and migrate to what they perceived was a great tool. The only problem is that we could recognize the web app for what it was - something that had flaws, but that we could mold to our own use. The new tool was a fat client app that couldn't be touched via API unless we went through the medical center's support groups and competed for time on their calendar along with all of the well funded doctors. I'm sure it's not much of a stretch for you to realize that we preferred to stick with the old system.

Now step back to the present. The medical center is tired of maintaining really old hardware running a really old version of IIS. They sent us the source and told us to get it hosted locally ASAP so that they could retire the old server. Yay! Er, wait. We don't want to run IIS 5.0 and interface to an Access DB backend! The first thing that I tried was to migrate to SQL server, which was a step in the right direction, but ASP recordset code doesn't quite work in an ASP.NET environment. I kept getting odd, inconsistent results back from queries.

I had to make a choice - convert all of the ASP to ASP.NET, or rewrite the entire thing in PHP. Since I don't really know ASP.NET that well and don't want to, either, I chose to rewrite the entire thing in PHP. I built class libraries around all of the database objects and built methods for everything but rendering HTML. Yesterday we rolled out the new system into production and the most common thing I keep hearing is, "It's so much faster now!" I've also managed to integrate two other tools that I had hosted locally for Change Management into one seamless interface, and get rid of all of the libcurl web scraping routines that I had been using. Yeah, the only way I was able to automate some tasks was to go back to the old school ways of screen scraping. Fortunately now, however, it's just a class method away.

Woot. I used to have the domain phpimp.com. Too bad I don't anymore. heh.

I started the batch of Apfelwein for PhreakNIC on Wednesday night, so it should be just hitting the right maturity by the first or second week of October.

The recipe is the standard Apfelwein recipe with no changes on the front end. When I move it to secondary I will probably add some vanilla and cinnamon, but I have 45 days to think about it.

I will also be making a batch of Pumpkin Ale for PhreakNIC and another batch of something else that I haven't decided on yet.

Limelight

Recipe:
Brewer's Best American Light Ale
(Sorry, I threw out the directions before getting the exact ingredients)
6 fresh limes (purchase 1 week after you brew!)

Brew Date: 15 Jun 2008
Secondary Date: 22 Jun 2008
Keg Date: 29 Jun 2008

Starting Gravity: 1.039
Estimated Final Gravity: 1.009
Estimate ABV: 3.91%
Estimated Calories/Pint : 175

I decided to make a "lawnmower beer" for summer - something light and low in alcohol content so that I can drink a few while mowing the lawn, or sitting outside watching the grass grow. I decided to go a little south of the border, though, and make a lime flavored beer.

After only 1 week in the primary fermentation stage, I took 6 fresh limes and scraped the zest off of them into the secondary fermenter. I then cut each lime in half, squeezed out as much juice into the secondary as possible, then dropped the lime halves into there as well. Once I had all of the limes, zest and juice in there, I siphoned the wort from the primary to the secondary. This allowed the yeast to wake back up as I started getting bubble on the airlock around every 20-30 seconds.

I think the video clip speaks for itself.

This weekend I took 2.0 out to the Adventure Science Museum (formerly known as the Cumberland Science Museum when I was growing up) since we had a boys' day out. They have a lot of neat stuff there and one section is called Bodyquest. You get to explore the different areas of the body and see how many of the organs work. Part of the experience is to follow food from entry to exit, so you first toss some balls at an open mouth to feed it. Next you have to squeeze the food down the esophagus and it makes lot of neat, fun, disgusting and gross noises. If you push the wrong way it makes an upchuck sound, if you push the right way it makes a gulping sound. Anyway, the next part it to churn the food in the stomach and then finally you wind your way through the small intestine. Both 2.0 and I rode down the slide at the exit, which is basically the Poop Chute. There is a sensor at the end that triggers a fart/poop like sound to play when you get to it. It was enough to make any mother have a nightmare and any child or male laugh out loud.