Jill and Eric Penne

While taking a break from painting the inside of my new home studio/office this weekend, I tasted a glass of the blackberry pale ale that my friends and I have been working on for the past two weeks. The ale is a recipe we got from Brewer’s Connection here in Tempe, AZ, and we added four pounds of frozen berries to the wort right at the beginning of fermenting (for a five gallon batch of beer). Freezing berries breaks their cell walls, allowing the juices to be released upon thawing, and the berries had to be “flash pasteurized” by pouring two pitchers of hot wort over them in the fermenting bucket before cooling down the rest of the wort. This sanitized the berries without ruining their flavor. The brewmaster at the store suggested using a fruit extract as an alternative, if we so desired. The color of the beer is just out of this world, and the flavor’s pretty far up there, too.

Here’s a review of the beer by RC, one of my brewmates’ cat (photo by Matt Mets):

The first thing that I noticed upon opening the bottle was the sweet, delicate fruit aroma that had just the right punch of flavor to tease the palate and whet one’s appetite. Unfortunately, the neck of the vessel proved impossible to drink from (neither head nor paw would fit), which meant that the beverage needed to be decanted to a more suitable container for tasting. After moving the liquid to a glass, the complex flavor of the drink was analyzed and found to have the same fruity kick as the initial whiff predicted, and was followed by light notes of hops, with a smooth finish. Overall, the the beer receives a rating of 9/10, with points removed for not being milk or heavy whipping cream.

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It turns out kids in wealthier homes have higher IQs, not because of genetics but because of environment. Surely you can be frugal (or just plain poor) and raise a smart one? A psychology professor suggests you focus on praising effort over achievement, and teach delayed gratification—something that also helps when it comes to financial responsibility, so it's a win/win skill. You should also explain that IQ is expandable, not inherent: "Students exposed to that idea work harder and get better grades."

“How to Raise Our I.Q.” [New York Times]
(Photo: Flyinace2000)

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Easter greeting for the family.

Cast: Eric Penne

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It seems like a never ending struggle to balance the different items you have to do and want to do around the house with the amount of money and time available.

This year we are delaying the lawn upgrade so we can pay off all of our debt except the house by next summer. I feel like this will really help clear up the congestion of ideas in my head by lowering my stress level.

I NEED to get the hole in the basement sealed to lower the radon levels but I should vent it somehow. It seems a waste to vent the area using a fan plugged into an outlet. If only I could use a small solar panel to do it.

I would like to put a wind generator up between the houses. Just a small one about 100 to 200 watts because the wind always seems to whip between my house and the neighbors. I should do some minimum requirements gathering first though and get the average wind speed over the year between the houses. Of course this requires an anemometer and a way to record the windspeed. In itself this is a couple hundred dollars.

Jill wants a garden in the back.

We also want to hang up clothes outside but Taz’s poop area is right next to the place we would hang the clothes. Probably not a good idea. I would need to move Taz’s area and clean up the poop. Where would I move it to?

Last year we also had thistles in the yard so I have to keep on top of those this year and make sure they don’t take over. The kids can’t play in the areas with thistles.

Our basement is a mess. I don’t mean a little mess, we are talking huge mess. 1200 sq ft of mess. Disorganized and a pain to deal with.

I also need to do some work on my van. Oil leak, tranny fluid leak, interior torn apart, slightly messy (better than the basement).

Christopher wants to (and I promised I would) build an air rocket launcher that we saw in MAKE magazine.

This doesn’t even go into all the side projects I want/committed to do with LAMBA or computers.

LAMBA -
Website update
Forum update
Trail conditions notifications via Twitter/Facebook/etc.
Calendar notifications for website
Membership lists – ugggghhhhh
Wednesday night rides.

computers –
reconditioned Linux PCs for the poor
baseball card database
LAMBA stuff
microcontroller programming

This must be what it means to be an adult/parent. I look at everything I’ve read above and think about how much everything is going to cost and how much time it will take and I get completely overwhelmed. In the end, I’ll probably do very little of it. I’ll spend a lot of time on the couch playing Nintendo or helping Christopher play Nintendo.

I try to pull it all together with sites like Remember the Milk and Twitter but something seems to be missing in my organizational skills. I just can’t get it going and keep it there. I’ll go a week and really kick ass and get stuff off my plate then I’ll ramp down to my lazy ass self. I get to the point where I don’t even remember to find nail clippers to trim my nails. All of this stuff rolling around in my head bouncing all the ideas into the dark areas so I forget them when I need them but they come back just in time to knock something else out of my memory.

I’m out of here. I think I’ll go to Menards and pretend like I’m going to do something useful.
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This past Palm Sunday, Fauna and Flora International highlighted the overexploitation of palms in Central America in an attempt to raise awareness of the impact that global demand for palm leaves is having on some of the world’s most pristine rainforests. We’re no strangers to the intersection of religion and the …read on
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This past Palm Sunday, Fauna and Flora International highlighted the overexploitation of palms in Central America in an attempt to raise awareness of the impact that global demand for palm leaves is having on some of the world’s most pristine rainforests. We’re no strangers to the intersection of religion and the …

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Want to suggest where bike lanes and bike routes should go in Cedar Rapids?

Go to the workshop/open house on Thursday (4 to 7 p.m. at the African American Museum of Iowa, 55 12th Ave. SE) and help with plans to make the city bicycle-friendly.

More details on Rick Smith’s Eye on the Island blog.

Maybe you can ride your bike there, or pedal to a bus stop and ride the bus the rest of the way. Those racks have started to show up on Cedar Rapids buses.

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If you’d like to have delicious home-grown tomatoes but lack a garden to grow them in, you’ll definitely want to check out this ingenious and inexpensive self-watering system.

Ray Newstead, silicon valley executive by day and gardening aficionado by night, wanted a more efficient way to grow tomatoes. He was tired of the wastefulness of having to deeply water large areas of soil to make sure his plants were well watered, along with the hassle of weeding all the nuisance plants that sprung up between his beloved tomatoes. His solution was to create a simple self-watering container from readily-available and cheap hardware store buys.

Unlike manual or drip irrigation top watering, the Earth Trainer employs a bottom up, automated watering approach based on the principle of capillary action. Water stored in the lower reservoir is wicked up into the soil much like the wick in a candle draws the liquefied wax upward to the flame. Moisture meets the roots of the plant where the plant “drinks” just as much water as it needs. This water consumption will vary significantly throughout the growing season as the plant produces fruit, and by providing a constant supply of water from the reservoir, the plant can achieve optimal growth and productivity.

Ray estimates the system consumes 75% less water than his in-ground tomatoes, and because of the way the water is stored within the planter, it requires radically less fussing. As an added bonus for apartment and condominium dwellers, the planter is easy to move and rotate for consistent sun exposure in small places. More information, including a video and plans, at the link below.

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A volunteer helps clean up the disused grocery store. Image credit: Company Shops Market

Hometown Security through Local Co-ops
The current climate might not seem like the best time to open a grocery store. A group of residents in Burlington, NC – a town that has seen its fair share of unemployment and company closures over the years – would beg to disagree. They argue that this is exactly the time to support local, sustainable businesses that can breathe life back into America’s towns and cities. That’s the inspiration behind


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There are several ways you can try to protect yourself from Conficker. These include disabling AutoRun, since Conficker can spread by infected USB drives; using current anti-virus software; use Windows’ own malicious software removal tool; or, switch to OpenDNS for your DNS service. There are many ways to try to stop these attacks, unfortunately, the bad guys are always working on getting newer and better ways to infect your system. The sad truth is no matter what you do with Windows, whether you’re running XP, Vista, or the Windows 7 beta, you’re not safe. Now, however there’s a patch that will stop Conficker, and almost all other malware programs, in their tracks. It’s called Linux.
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Looking for ways to keep your budget in line? Cut your spending on money wasters like overdraft fees and auto insurance and you could save roughly $1,000 a year.
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