…send it UPS.

So you may recall my whining about my fancy new beer machine being shipped without all the parts required to actually brew beer. This was rather disappointing, but I know that shit happens. So I e-mailed the company that makes it and got a prompt reply (as prompt as it gets, considering the company is in New Zealand – which is 18 hours ahead of me, time-wise) apologizing and stating that they’d get those parts out ASAP. That was pretty much all I heard for a week or so, so I e-mailed them again and asked, hey, have these parts shipped yet and/or is there any tracking number? ‘Cuz I was really hoping to brew a batch this weekend (actually I was really hoping to brew last weekend, but never mind).

Before I received a reply (this 18-hour time difference is really a hassle), I got a FedEx notice that I had a package arriving on Friday (yesterday) by 10:30 AM. It looked like they had paid for “Priority Overnight” shipping from California, which supposedly means your package is guaranteed to arrive anywhere in the US by 10:30 AM (as opposed to “standard” overnight, which they claim will get there by 8:00 PM). I thought this was mighty nice of the company (who eventually replied with a re-apology).

I watched the tracking intently yesterday as I waited for what was one of the longest weeks ever to end. The package was “in transit” from Indianapolis pretty much all day. When it wasn’t delivered by 10:30 AM, the “scheduled delivery” by 10:30 magically evaporated. But it was still scheduled for yesterday. Of course, it never arrived.

Today, the scheduled delivery is “Pending” with a note that “No scheduled delivery date available at this time.” Though I see that it got to Syracuse at 6:37 AM.

So, will they deliver this today? Who knows? The “Special handling section” says “Deliver Weekday,” so it may be they won’t bother to deliver it until Monday.

Obviously this isn’t the biggest deal in the world (let’s face it, everything else pales in comparison to the prospect of President Trump), but if my Kiwi friends paid to ship a 5 kg package across the United States to arrive by 10:30 AM, they really need to get a refund.

Oh well, at least it looks like things are shaping up for an early spring.

For the most part, it’s been a pretty mild winter here in the Great White North, so we were cautiously optimistic that the weather would be decent when my stepdaughter and the grandkids came to visit. So of course they flew in on the coldest Valentine’s Day in history, with the official temp hitting -23 (and colder out our way). It finally warmed up a bit yesterday, at which point we were blasted by freezing rain up until the rain turned to snow. I plowed about 5 inches of slush out of the driveway in the morning, and another 6 inches or so of snow in the evening. It was fortunate I didn’t have to go anywhere, because the commute both ways would have been a real mess.

On the bright side, my new brew toy showed up yesterday. It’s called the GrainFather, and it’s a sorta all-in-one electric mash, sparge, and boil pot (plus a built-in pump for recirculating and transferring the wort, and a nifty counter flow wort chiller). I’ve been using a big-ass propane burner to brew in my basement, which you’re not supposed to do (something to do with carbon monoxide poisoning or something). I have bulkhead doors to my basement, so I’ve been opening them up and putting a box fan on the steps to draw fresh air in and I haven’t died yet. Still, it’s kind of a hassle (and you have to keep going out and buying propane), so I started looking at going electric.

Besides hopefully not succumbing to CO poisoning, it has the advantage of being able to dial up the correct temperature for whatever it is you’re doing. I won’t bore you with the details, but basically you let the milled grain sit in hot water for a while to extract the sugar from it. Depending on the temperature, you can get a dry beer or at a slightly higher temp, a sweeter beer (because the higher temp creates non-fermentable sugars). Too hot, and you extract tannins from the grain husks and you get less-than desirable flavors.

And of course there are multiple-step mashing techniques where you take it to one temp for a while, then increase it, etc. After you’re done mashing, you can do a “mash out” where you bring the temp up for a while in order to stop the enzyme action that’s going on, and then you drain the sugary water mixture out and then you run more hot water over the grain in order to flush out any leftover sugar. The sugar/water mix is called wort, which you then boil, add hops and whatever else you want to toss in there along the way and when it’s done boiling you cool it off, transfer it to your fermenter and add yeast.

And then of course your little yeasties eat the sugar, fart CO₂ and (most importantly) pee alcohol.

So, anyway, there are a lot of steps involved and it was my hope that this GrainFather thing would make my life a bit easier and I was really looking forward to trying it out this weekend. Sadly, the goddamn thing came without a bunch of parts, leaving it unusable. They said they’d get the parts out to me ASAP and I understand that shit happens, but, damnit, this is pretty disappointing.

And today I’m back at work, which is not a big thrill, more snow in the forecast for this afternoon, and tomorrow it’s supposed to get frigid again (though not double-digits below zero), and if that wasn’t bad enough, I have a goddamn dentist appointment on Friday.

I’m ready for spring.

So, in case you’re interested in what the New York State Unified Court System wasted what is probably a ridiculous amount of time and tax dollars on this week (not to mention I, personally am out over $20 for parking and whatnot – though they did buy us lunch on Thursday because we were sequestered while deliberating), here’s the gist of what it was all about. Before I go on, I will say that everybody involved on the court side of things seemed to understand what a pain in the ass jury duty is, and they seemed to go out of their way to try and make it as positive an experience as possible.

Anyhow, back in October of 2014 an undercover state trooper went to a “Spa” on the north side of Syracuse (not the worst part of town, but not exactly high-end, either) and got a massage from a 50’ish year old Chinese woman (after this was over – we were admonished not to do any research on anything related to the case while the trial was going on, which, while admittedly being tempted, I respected – I looked up the arrest, and she was apparently 53 at the time) who didn’t speak English (she had an interpreter in court), and he (the cop) claimed she offered him a hand job (or, in official court parlance, “manual masturbation”) at the end of the massage as part of the financial arrangement (which he turned down). He then claimed to ask for oral sex, to which she shook her head and said no (one of a handful of English words that she knows).

As part of this, the cop went in with a recording device in his pants pocket (as an aside, these are apparently cellular-based devices that upload to a server and also allow other parties to listen in live, so if you plan to do something nefarious, you may want to invest in one of the devices available here). So we had to sit through something like 45 minutes worth of recording – which was about 40 minutes worth of silence or him walking down the street in squeaky shoes. They played this recording back on a crappy Dell laptop using crappy Dell desktop speakers using crappy Windows Media Player. You’d think they’d have something more elaborate than that – or at least use something like Audacity that makes it easier to scrub back and forth and pinpoint exact locations in the recording, but, no, they do not.

Since the defendant no-speakie the English, they communicated primarily through hand gestures (you can probably imagine what those were – part of the voir dire was the ADA asking us if we knew what this gesture meant – turns out, I do indeed know that one). This does not make for riveting listening.

So, anyhow, she took him into a massage room, and went out again as he took all his clothes off and laid on his front (uncovered) and then she oiled him up and rubbed him (I kind of wondered if this guy was married or not – “what’d you do at work today, honey?”). This went on for like 20 minutes (mostly silence on the recording – again, really compelling to listen to). She asked if he liked it hard or not and he said the harder the better. So she spread his legs apart and got up on the table between them so she could apply more pressure (and he says she grabbed his junk a bit). Then she had him turn over.

The case turned on one portion of the recording, when, after he rolls over, you can hear him say “Is that included? Is that part of it – you’ll do that for me too?” At which point he claims she nodded her head and said yes (it was hard to hear, but I think we did hear the “yes” from her – we did ask to hear this portion of the recording over again).

According to him, at this point in time, she was grabbing his junk with one hand, and with her other she made a fist and gestured in an up and down motion (aka, the universal jerk off signal).

According to her, however, it was when she started to massage the front of his arms that he said this.

Next, he said he pointed to his mouth and his penis and she shook her head and said no. According to her, he pointed to her mouth and his penis, and she said no. Either way, it appears that a blow job was not up for discussion.

So then she massaged his feet for a bit, and then the massage was over, at which point she left the room while he got dressed, went out to the lobby, said the “code phrase” to alert his supervisor who was listening out on the street someplace and left as the other trooper came in and arrested her.

So it would appear that there is so little actual criminal activity in the Syracuse area (though Syracuse had NY State’s 8^th highest violent crime rate in 2013 and 12 of 22 homicides went unsolved in 2014) that the New York State Police have nothing better to do than arrest some soft-spoken tiny little Chinese woman for a rub and tug (which, I found out after this was over is an actual thing that people pay for – go figure. I actually found the most reference to this sort of thing in some online “body builder” forums, for some reason I don’t understand, but these people seem a bit odd to me anyway. I’ve never had a “professional” massage – let alone an “Asian massage” – so I had no frame of reference as to whether or not this sort of thing was normal). And then send it to a 3-day jury trial, that has to cost a ton of money (my assumption was that they would have to have tried to plea this out to a fine and probation or something, but of course we weren’t privy to any of that information).

In order to try and impeach the testimony of the trooper, the defense attorney (who – if my years of watching teevee and movie courtroom dramas are any indication – was not the sharpest lawyer in the world) basically said that pretty much all cops are bigoted liars, and that cops killed that kid in Ferguson and choked that guy in NY City to death and didn’t get arrested but Chinese-American police officer Peter Liang was indicted for manslaughter (among other things) in the shooting death of Akai Gurley, so clearly the system is predisposed to hate Asian people. Or something.

He also pointed to 16 “shocking” inconsistencies in the testimony of the cop between the preliminary hearing in December and his testimony this week. This included things like in Dec, he gave the number of the street address as 704, and in Feb, he said 705. (which is what it is), and that back then he said he’d been a trooper for 19 years, but this week he said it was 18 years, and went he first went to the spa, he said they told him to come back in 20 minutes, but on the recording it was actually 40 minutes, and that he testified that the “code phrase” was “I can’t wait to tell my friends” whereas what he said on the recording was “I can’t wait to tell my friend Buck about this.”

In the end, it just didn’t seem reasonable that after having everything on his back (neck, shoulders, arms, back, ass, legs) massaged that he’d say “you’ll do that for me, I don’t want that” about having the front of his arms massaged. I really wish the cop had made things a little easier by saying something like “why are you grabbing my dick? Is that part of the massage?” or something like that. And, while you’d think a trained police officer would get all the details down prior to testifying, a few very minor discrepancies in his testimony didn’t really seem like enough to determine that he was lying (hell, I’ve been known to forget a thing or two once in a while).

In his closing argument, the defense attorney basically said the cop was untrustworthy and couldn’t be believed, but that even if you believed him, the offer of a hand job was complimentary – like getting peanuts or a free soda on an airline flight (really, he said this).

Anyhow, the judge instructed us that if we believed that “manual masturbation” was a sex act and that it had been offered in exchange for money, we’d have to vote guilty.

The jury was three guys and three females. One female was probably in her 20s, the other maybe 30, and the third probably in her 40s. You can imagine how awkward that was. It’s pretty hard to talk about this kind of thing without actually talking about this kind of thing.

We went around on this for quite a while, I think because we all thought this was ridiculous bullshit and had no desire to see this woman get thrown in jail or deported or whatever over this shit. But they said we weren’t supposed to consider any of that, or how stupid we thought it was.

So, in the end, we reluctantly felt we had no choice but to vote guilty.

When it was over, I felt dirty and kind of sick over the whole thing (the night before, I had a really difficult time sleeping in thinking about all this).

On the bright side, they said I’m off the hook for jury duty for at least 10 years.

Now, I will say that the judge in this case seemed like a really nice guy, and he seemed to go out of his way to be patient with the defense attorney, who as I said didn’t exactly strike me as Clarence Darrow. And in my post-trial research, I found that this judge is in charge of the prostitution cases for Syracuse’s Human Trafficking Court.

The new court, established late last fall in Syracuse as part of New York State Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman’s statewide Human Trafficking Intervention Initiative, takes a new tactic by treating those arrested for prostitution as victims, rather than criminals. In lieu of jail time, defendants are offered a plea deal that provides six months of counseling and social services. Upon successful completion of the program, the court will dismiss the case.

“We can provide an opportunity for these women to have some hope for themselves,” said Limpert. “We can get them mental health treatment, drug treatment if they need it. We help them get identification because sometimes they don’t have it and get them work so that they can become productive citizens and not be on the streets anymore.”

Though the court has only existed for a few months, Judge Limpert is optimistic about what he’s seen so far. He estimates that about 80-percent of defendants have successfully completed the rehabilitation program, though more time is needed to know the long term success of the new court. In the meantime, human rights groups are applauding a system that no longer treats prostitution as a victimless crime.

So maybe this was all part of that and something good will come of it for this woman after all.

In other words, I’m hoping for a Happy Ending.

As the week winds down, I have my impending jury duty hanging over my head. By tomorrow evening, I’ll know if I have to report next Monday. Last week, they only went up to juror number 135 and I’m #170 for next week, so I was feeling pretty good. This week, though, they’d called in the entire 450 person panel by Tuesday. I’m really hoping next week is a slow week, but I’m not feeling confident.

I’m sure everybody is aware of the fact that 30 years ago today, the space shuttle Challenger blew up. It’s one of those “I’ll never forget where I was when” events, like the the Kennedy assassination (which I was of course too young to remember) or when Neil Armstrong stepped out onto the lunar surface, or when you heard about 9/11.

I recall quite clearly where I was on January 28, 1986 (I think I’ve probably mentioned it before, but I’ll mention it again because I’m old and old people are always repeating themselves). I was in the projection booth running porn movies at the Franklin Theatre (and, no, I don’t actually recall what movies we were running that week).

It seems rather odd that there was a time when perverts had to go to a movie theater to watch porn (in a matter of a few years, home video all but killed that “theater experience,” and now with the Internet, porn is so ubiquitous that kids are paying their way through college doing it).

Poor Pewee Herman – he was just born a little too soon.

Anyhow, back then I was working double shifts five days a week (something like 9:00 AM to 10:30 PM), and another 10 – 4:30 shift on Saturday. Contrary to popular belief, you do not have to stand there and watch the movie the whole time. Other than the first run-through of the week when I had to at least pay a little attention at the start of every reel to make sure you didn’t splice something together the wrong way, about the only time I needed to look at the screen was when I was getting ready to change over from one projector to the other one (and by the time you ran through these movies for the hundredth time, you could more or less go by grunts, without looking).

Anyhow, so there I was up in the booth reading or something with the radio on, when I thought I heard the DJ say something like “the space shuttle exploded.”

Huh? That couldn’t be right. By this time, shuttle launches were routine – I don’t think they were even bothering to cover the launches live on television anymore (except on CNN, which was an actual news network back in those days).

So I went downstairs where the guy sold tickets. He had a little teevee down there, and we sat and watched the Challenger explode over and over and over again. And then it was time for a changeover.

At the time we all figured that they were all blown up right away and that was that. Sad, but there are worse ways to go. Unfortunately, it’s pretty certain that most if not all the crew members were alive and scrambling to get their oxygen masks on and regain control of the vehicle as they continued up for 25 seconds before watching what was left of their ship stop and then flip around for what must have been a terrifying nearly three-minute nose-first plunge to ocean – which they hit at over 200 mph with a force of 200 Gs.

Ouch.

When most people think of the Challenger, they of course think about Christa McAuliffe, who picked a bad time to try and become the first civilian in space. Not me though. I mostly think of Judy Resnick, who I kinda had the hots for (especially the way her hair floated in zero-gravity).

Amazing how fast 30 years goes by.

Sorry to those of you who are (or about to be) getting hit with this big snow storm on the East Coast, but I can’t help but smile when I see the storm track is going to completely miss us here in my neck of the woods. Like, it’s not even going to come close – we’re supposed to have a pleasant (though slightly chilly) weekend. Thank goodness – I’m getting too old for this stuff (and never mind they say we could get hit with another bout of lake effect next week to make the daily commute miserable), and am really not in the mood.

I try not to snicker derisively as I see news reports of the “killer” storm in places like DC. Mostly because the video basically looks like the commute I had back and forth to work on several days last week, and I didn’t see any news reports about that (other than the lo-cal news, which doesn’t have a whole lot to talk about – I never really understood the purpose of sending somebody out into the snow to tell me it’s snowing. I can look out the goddamn window to see it’s snowing). Of course I realize that they have way more people and they don’t have the equipment to deal with it (they sent a fleet of DOT plows from here down to Long Island to help out – I hope we don’t need them) or the experience of driving in it (hell, there are plenty of accidents caused by idiots around here who really should be used to this shit by now).

But it sure is nice to be able to sit this one out.

Instead of plowing the driveway, if I feel ambitious I think I’ll plow the front and back yards so the dogs can run around a little easier (and hopefully not try to jump the fence anywhere). I should also drop the plow off the bucket so I can move the piles of snow around a bit. I usually wait until the drifts are so high I have no place to push the snow, and then it’s a hassle. I at least need to clear it away from the gates to I can get them open and drive the tractor through.

The big event for the weekend though is Sunday, ‘cuz it’s brew day. This week I get to try out my new pump. Last brew day I realized that I’m getting too old to be lifting what feels like a thousand pounds of hot water and grain up in the air high enough to let gravity do the job. My back still hasn’t completely recovered.

Unfortunately, my new conical fermenter won’t be here until next week, which is too bad. But there’s always next weekend, I guess (or maybe the one after that – it kinda kills a whole day, or at least a whole afternoon). But I really need to step up my production, because it takes a lot less time to drink then it does to brew.

Anyhow, if you’re in the path of the storm (or even if you’re not), stay safe and warm. I guess I better get my trip to Costco out of the way today so I don’t have to do it tomorrow.

It basically hasn’t stopped snowing around here for the past three or four days. Not a ton of snow by our standards (I don’t know what the official tally is, but I’d say we got something in the 18″ – 24″ area at my place), but enough to have me out on the tractor plowing twice a day for the past few days. Nothing more invigorating than starting off a 12° morning with a ride on the tractor. I really hope it stops, soon – and it looks like the impending Nor’easter is going to stay away from us, so that’s a good thing.

I get to go back to the doctor tomorrow morning. Nothing too icky, thankfully – they’re just gonna steal some of my blood and see if my BP is better (which it is; I’ve been taking it twice a day, and it’s somewhat amazing to see how easy it was to get it to normal). I’ve also knocked off the beer for a bit (mostly because I killed my most recent keg of homebrew – it takes an awful lot longer to brew 5 gallons than it does to drink it), and all work (and snow plowing) and no beer makes Jack a very dull boy indeed.

The doctor informed me that if you’re going to drink every day, you’re not supposed to drink more than 2 8-oz beers a day – which is of course ridiculous, since beer doesn’t even come in 8-oz containers. I mean, can you even buy “splits” anymore? I remember being able to get a case of O.V. splits (we called them “German grenades”) and dumping a bag of ice on top. And rather than inhibiting drinking, it actually induced you to drink more, ‘cuz the damn things went down in one swallow and never got warm.

Ah, those were the days.

Anyhow, I think I’ll go for one more night of enforced sobriety, and then spring for a few cold ones tomorrow night. Otherwise I’ll have to keep going to bed at seven.

Although we officially celebrate his birthday with a day off on Monday, my dad would have been 96 years old today. Oh, and Martin Luther King Jr would have been 87. While my dad died too young at 74 (hard to believe it’s been close to 22 years already), I find it truly astonishing that King was only 39 years old when he was assassinated. At this stage in my life, 39 seems like a kid. I would definitely like to be 39 again (though if I could choose an age, I think I’d go with 34 – things were still pretty good back then).

In an effort to stave off my own death, I finally went to see a doctor yesterday. First time (other than the occasional trip to the Urgent Care) in more years than I can recall. I couldn’t get an appointment until the afternoon, so I had to sit around all day thinking about it (though I did get a few things accomplished in a losing effort to keep my mind off it).

I really hate the thought of getting caught up in the medical/industrial complex, but I’m a bit past what folk medicine can do for me at this point. In fact, my BP was so high, they immediately have me a pill and wouldn’t let me leave until it came down (they had me lie down for a while, even).

Yesterday was fairly painless (nobody tried to stick anything into any of my orifices or anything like that), but I now how all this works, and now I’ll be thrust into the world of tests and appointments, and a lot of people trying to stick things up my ass.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

But you can only walk around feeling like your head’s gonna explode for so long (before it actually does).

It doesn’t help knowing that if my dad had stayed the hell away from doctors, he might still be alive today. OK, well, probably not. But he’d certainly have lived longer (and better) had he avoided the urologist that set the wheels in motion to cure his prostate cancer, since it was the cure that killed him in the end (hey, at least he died cancer-free).

Oh well, time to hurry up and get this week over with already. Enjoy your 3-day weekend, if you’ve got one.

So, after what was the warmest December ever with the least amount of snow, ever (2.1″ vs. a normal 45″ or so), our luck finally ran out. After an early morning (like, midnight) high temperature of 20 yesterday, we plummeted into the single digits and have just now gotten up to around 10°. Plus, I had to get out on the tractor at 5:00 yesterday morning to plow the driveway (I even shoveled the walk). Not that I’m complaining (much) though. Things are supposed to start warming up a bit, and it looks like we’ll be in the 40s and rainy for the weekend (though they say we’ll have another arctic blast for a few days next week). And even if we have a “normal” year from here on out, at least we were spared a miserable November and December.

In other news, I reckon everybody’s heard about the brave patriots who have taken over a federal wildlife preserve (and gift shop) in Oregon. Twitter has dubbed them as ‘Y’all Qaeda’ or – my preference – ‘Vanilla ISIS’. The are prepared to fight and die – though they forgot to bring snacks, so if you could send them some Little Debbie’s (I think they have more than enough Ding Dongs), they’d greatly appreciate it. And although they despise the tyranny of the Federal Government, they are happy to have you send them whatever you can via the USPS.

I’m not sure if this Junior Bundy guy aspires to be the next Prime Minister of the Duchy of Grand Fenwick or what. On the one hand, I find this all rather amusing. On the other, it pisses me off that these assholes think it’s OK for them to steal what belongs to all of us for their own personal use. And I’m certain that if these weren’t white people, they’d be branded as thugs and wiped off the planet (or thrown into prison) with the full backing of all the Republican candidates for President (which, sadly, no longer includes George Pataki. You know, I really thought he had a shot).

I think I mostly wish everybody would just ignore them until they get cold and tired and run out of pretzels and Old Milwaukee and then declare victory and head back to Arizona.

This is our first year without cable or satellite teevee, so the tradition of watching the Twilight Zone Marathon on the network formally known as SciFi has come to an end. This tradition began back in 1998 or so, when we first got off dial-up Internet and switched to RoadRunner. At the time, we only had basic cable, and there was an old analog filter on the line to prevent up from getting the “good” channels. They had to take the filter off to get the Internet to work, and so we’d be forced to get all the channels (including SciFi) until they cam and replaced it with something newer.

About five years later (right around this time of year, in fact), a cable guy came and put the new filter on. Bummer. So we missed the TZ marathon that year (I promptly went to Best Buy and bought a DirecTV system (no HD and not even any local channels back then), but other than that, we’ve watched every year – until now.

Of course we can always watch them via NetFlix (or Amazon, I think) which has the added advantage of not having to deal with commercials. I think the first season is something like 15 hours, so that should be plenty for me. Last year, I didn’t even try to stay up until midnight, and I doubt I’ll do it this year, either. I guess I’m officially old.

Without Dick Clark, there’s just no incentive for me to stay up late anymore (not that I was a huge Dick Clark fan, but it was at least tradition. He was my generation’s Guy Lombardo). Ryan Seacrest just doesn’t do it for me. Or any of those new kid music guests they have on I mean, who the hell are these people? Back in my day….

Oh, that’s right, I forgot. My day is over. Let’s hope these new kids can clean up our mess.

Anyhow, I think I’ll go take a peek around the office and see if anybody else is here besides me. I kind of doubt it. If the coast looks clear, I think I’ll make a break for it.

Stay safe out there, and see ya in 2016.

Happy Christmas to everybody, if you’re into that sort of thing. It doesn’t really seem like Christmas around here, what with the lack of snow and all. Not that I’m complaining, of course. They say things will get back to normal for the new year, so there’s always that to look forward to. Personally, I’m still not feeling all that terrific, though I did manage to get through the night without having a coughing fit. My big plan today is to watch the Doctor Who Christmas special. Whatever you get up to today (I hope you at least have the day off, if nothing else), I hope you have a happy time. And get some rest – you’ll need it to hit the malls tomorrow.