reviews

If you’re between the ages of 18 and 30, and you live in a place like Seattle, there’s a good chance you live in an old apartment building like I do, and there’s a good chance your windows are drafty as hell in the winter.

If so, pick up a can of this stuff. “Wind Jammer” removable caulk. Its made by the same company as Loctite, and I found it at Home Depot. Comes in a convenient can so you don’t even need a caulking gun (because you live in an apartment and unlike me you probably don’t have one). Caulk up your windows in the winter so they’re not drafty, and peel it off in the spring. Your building manager will never be the wiser, and you’ll be much happier.

I’ve had it on my windows for the past month or so and my apartment is toasty warm now. I definitely recommend it. And I’m not being paid to say this (yet).

Well, I’ve been playing with MacOSX Leopard for just about 48 hours now, and I have to say that the experience has been nothing but excellent. While I won’t say it is as jam-packed with mind-blowing features as they’d like you to think, I will agree that it is defininately a worthwhile upgrade and the best operating system I’ve had the pleasure of using. And that’s saying a lot from a guy who still obsesses over BeOS.

Overall, I’m very happy with the upgrade. More details after the jump.

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I’ve been building up a good collection of awesome local micro-brews to try out, so I’m going to make a regular feature of my “beer reviews”. Stick with me, since I’m hardly a veteran beer taster, and I’ll be kind of learning as I go.

Deschutes “Hop Trip” Pale Ale is a special-edition brew from their Bond Street series. A “Fresh Hop Pale Ale”, it is brewed with “wet” Willamette Valley hops, freshly picked and added immediately to the boil.

The resulting beer is hoppier than a normal pale ale, and the fresh hop character really shows through in the final brew, yielding a beer with a bit more “guts” than an normal IPA. Those hops are balanced with malty sweet caramel flavors to make a well-rounded, very drinkable beer. The kind of beer that makes me wish I’d bought more than one bottle of it, since the chances of me finding another bottle of this limited-edition brew next time I go back to the store aren’t good.

Overall, I’d give it an 8.5 out of 10 on my still very immature beer rating scale.

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So, I thought I was really bright a few days ago at Fred Meyer, picking up supplies to fix stuff around my apartment. A flapper valve for my running toilet, some gaskets for a dripping faucet, and a can of “Plumb Away” to clear out a slow-running bathroom sink.

Little did I know what I was getting myself into…

Of course I followed the instructions. I filled the sink with water, covered the backup drain with a wet rag, and pushed downwards on the can as if it were a plunger to force my pesky plug out of my plumbing.

And then my world exploded.

I live in an older apartment building. Older as in probably about 60-70 years old. Which means I have about 50-60 years of crud built up in my plumbing. All that crud, with the exception of the crud actually clogging the sink, chose exactly that moment to leave my plumbing. And exit promptly all over my bathroom.

As it seems, the extra large backup drain of my sink also provided an extra large exit for said crud, all of which promptly forced its way out past my carefully placed rag, and all over my bathroom. Covering my sink, my shower, my walls, and even myself. No innocent bystanders were spared.

The results? I was left with:

• A bathroom covered in crap that was older than me
• A sink fully of lemony fresh fizzy water
• A drain that is still completely plugged

And, while wiser for the experience, I’m still $9 poorer, and I still don’t have a completely working sink.

I love the Internet. Why didn’t they have this when I was in college?

I don’t normally review other websites on here, but this site is screaming for a post. Two friends from Michigan recently launched The Kegulator. Input the number of people coming to your party and how drunk you want them to be, and it tells you how much beer you need. Not only that, it does it in convenient case/pony/keg increments. And accounts for beer loss. And tells you how many cups and how much ice to buy.

Best use of AJAX ever.

Update: Has anybody else noticed that lately all I seem to be posting about is beer?