linsenbardt.net
A Blog for Brooke and Andy
Homemade Presents for Christmas!
Jan 27th
Now that we’re a full month out from Christmas, I thought I’d share our “homemade” Christmas gifts with you. Our house was a mess from the time we moved in in late October until… ummm, actually, there are still boxes that need to be unpacked. But, we managed to give some pretty cool and personalized gifts. In the end, I don’t think we saved very much money, but the gifts we gave were definitely worth far more than anything we would have been able to purchase for the same amount. We probably won’t go to this extreme in the future, but will definitely add homemade touches and do a few things here and there!
For full-size version of these images, click on over to our Picasa album.
01.23.12 Dinner
Jan 26th
Roast chicken, rice, and California blend vegetables. I don’t know why I don’t roast a chicken more often. Less than $5 for at least 4 meals and not a ton of effort.
Cabin Fever 2012
Jan 25th
This is an India Brown Ale in the tasting glass you get for attending the event. Mmmm!!
We went to Schlafly’s annual Cabin Fever event this past weekend at their Maplewood restaurant, the Bottleworks. It’s always held around this time of the year as their Winter Festival, featuring somewhere around 30 of their beers.
Generally, you pay $25 for a ticket (or $30 at the door, but it’s always sold out if you wait that long) and, in exchange, you get a nifty tasting glass and eighteen 2 oz samples of various beers. As it’s wintertime, the beers tend to be “high gravity,” meaning they’re a bit heavier and tend to have a higher alcohol content. They always have a few of their lighter beers on tap, too, but the big draw is their other fare.
Now, you say, “well Andy, that doesn’t sound like very much beer for the money you’re spending.” To a degree, you’re right, but the kind folks doling out the beer are kind enough to a). “forget” to bring along a Sharpie to mark off your ticket, and b). start at 2 oz of beer, and as the afternoon wears on, the volume increases. So in the end, you can get plenty of beer and taste just about anything you want to.
In the Picasa album that’s accompanying this post, you’ll see pictures of the list of beers that were available, including a brief description of each one, and my own marks to show which ones I had. You’ll see that I actually did get all 18 beer tastings…
…but my ticket only had maybe 5 of them marked off… :-P
There were quite a few great beers on that list that we tried. The India Brown Ale (pictured above) was probably my favorite, as it was pretty different from others I’ve had before. The similar, yet different, India Wheat Ale was also pretty good, but the hops didn’t seem to gel as well with the “wheat beer” flavor as it did with the “brown ale” flavor as before. The Raspberry Coffee Stout was also exceptional, with a flavor leaning closer to the “raspberry” than the “coffee,” yet not as fruity as you might expect. I had figured I’d prefer the Strawberry-Cocoa Porter over the Stout, but alas.
The Southern Hemisphere IPA was also shockingly good, mostly because it tasted recognizable, yet different. I mean, it was hoppy, as you’d expect, but the hops they used were something from Tasmania called “Galaxy,” so it turned out to have a very different flavor profile than other IPAs I’ve had in the past. Believe you me, I hope they put that beer in bottles so I can get more of it!
Regardless, the event was quite fun. Granted, the weather turned out to be cloudier and cold(i)er than the forecast had led us to believe, but with some good friends to crowd around and some strategically placed fire pits, we weren’t bothered all that much. That, and high gravity beer tends to keep you all warm and fuzzy on the inside.
If you want some additional pictures of the event, STLhops was there taking pictures. We even made it into one of them!
That's Stu, Brooke and my bald head off to the right...
I expect you all to go along next year. 
01.19.12 Dinner
Jan 24th
This meal looks pretty boring, but it was fried egg sandwiches, sweet potato fries, and applesauce. The sandwiches made me sad for not having fresh tomato, but soon enough!
Internet Bi-Partisanship
Jan 21st
By now, surely you have read and/or heard plenty about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). These two bills were heading through the U.S. House and Senate (respectively) and seemed destined for passage as recently as last week, with the first votes coming up next week.
Also, as you probably know, a shutdown of Wikipedia, Reddit, and other popular websites (as well as a host of other “In Solidarity” messages on homepages across the web) managed to galvanize support against the bills that has never been seen before. In a single day, Google.com collected over 7 million signatures on an online petition. Rather than the English-version of the website, Wikipedia redirected you to a list of your Congressional representatives and senators so you could either phone or e-mail them (I sent e-mails to all of mine; heard back from two of them, so far).
I don’t want to belabor how bad the bills are (or now were). They were pretty bad. They were so vague as to allow for entire websites to be brought down, or at least to make it so cost-ineffective to host any interaction with users and consumers (for fear of copyrighted material being posted) that an entire industry of user-generated content would die. I highly suggest you watch the video above if you want to understand the issue fully. If you’re an internet user in any capacity, it’s an important 13 minutes for you to spend.
Mostly, I wanted to address how ridiculously cool it was to see the entire internet united, even if for only one day. For that 24 hr period, this is all anyone was talking about across social networking. For that 24 hr period, people were engaged in the politics of what was going on with an issue that applied to them directly. For that 24 hr period, it didn’t matter if you were a Democrat or a Republican posting on some message board: both political parties supported the bills, and both party’s voters were against it.
For that 24 hr period, the internet and its users had more political power than the lobbyists from the motion picture industry and the music industry. And that’s saying something.
We’ve seen something like this before, in the form of the Arab Spring nearly a year ago, where social networking and the internet helped spawn a revolution across the Arab world, in multiple countries, casting down dictators long thought to be invincible by their people. Their citizens got organized, coalesced behind a belief that they could make a difference in their lives, and decided to take action. And in some small way, the internet did the same thing for the people of the United States this week.
And I just think that’s kinda cool.
