A week late, but still...

Due to a close encounter with an immovable object last week, I was unable to post my normal Thursday update about my Windows Secrets column. Of course, once they're published, the columns go into a permanent archive from which they're always accessible. The folks at Windows Secrets put my columns in the paid-content section, which is an honor-system deal: You make one voluntary payment--- you decide how much--- and gain access to all the Windows Secrets content for a full year. It's actually a pretty reasonable deal.

Windows Secrets is normally published 4 times a month, on Thursdays. Some months have 5 Thursdays (this month, for example), which gives me a chance to catch you up with the missing post from last week's issue, still available in the archives.

The lead article was/is "What to do when Chkdsk won't finish the job."

A reader asked: "Chkdsk won't run with Windows open, nor at reboot; it reports that it's unable to obtain direct access to the volume. Windows support techs suggested I boot from a Windows XP install CD and run Chkdsk from there. I did, but Chkdsk stops after quickly reporting one or more unrecoverable errors on the volume. I ran OEM drive diagnostics and it passed all tests. The Microsoft techs are suggesting I replace the drive because there's something very wrong with it. Trouble is, my laptop is running fine, with no program glitches, no delayed write errors, no data corruption, or any other symptom of an ailing drive. I have a recent drive image plus a full backup of all files. Any suggestions?"

There actually are a number of steps to try before giving up and replacing the drive, and I'll walk you through them all in the lead article.

Other reader questions answered in that issue:

Steve Roach's Vista question actually affects all versions of Windows: "I'm running Vista Ultimate x64 on a 100GB partition. My applications and Documents folders are also on this partition. Media files are on a different partition. Over the course of the day, my percent used varies from 47GB to 62GB. I'm not adding or removing programs. What's causing this? How can I manage it?"

Aaron Groom's Wi-Fi setup is stuck in first gear: "I run wireless on my at-home office PC. Typically, I would get 1.5–3Mbps transfer rates to my networked storage drives. I recently went on vacation and cleaned out my office to have it painted while I was gone. When I set up my PC again upon returning home, my wireless-transfer speed dropped to 512Kbps or less. Everything is set up as it was before I left, and my home wireless router has not moved or been reconfigured. Any 1) idea what could cause this and 2) general ideas to boost my transfer rate?"

Rich Rauth wants to move one of his default Vista folders: "My Vista install really works great. I'd like to clean up some of the mess made when I transferred files from my old XP machine to the new computer, which came with Vista Business. One issue is how to get the Documents folder to reside on a second, roomier 1TB hard drive. It was easy in XP, but not so with Vista."

Again, access to all my columns, past and present, is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the weekly paid-edition content (not just my columns) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here: http://windowssecrets.com/

Thanks for checking this out!

Earth at night (composite)

Remember yesterday's post about the US electric grid?


(click to enlarge)

Visualizing The Grid

Visualizing The Grid: The U.S. electric grid is a complex network of independently owned and operated power plants and transmission lines. NPR created this interactive map that compressed a ton of information into a compact and very accessible format.

http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/

I'd love to try this...

Gutsy swimmers at Victoria Falls (real photo, not 'Shopped):




The formation is called the "Devil's Armchair."

large-format, hi-res photo:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tourists_swimming_at_Victoria_Falls.jpg

Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1inueBSwko&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWbuINKhhDM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uu5nlu4IBN8&feature=related

Interesting Space "Top 10" List

http://tinyurl.com/d5m2xv

Snap, Crackle, Bang

HALFWAY, Md. (AP)— An Oregon company has ordered new packaging for its Peace Cereal after a typo on the box sent callers to a phone sex line instead of the cereal maker's 800 number. Instead of reaching Golden Temple of Oregon, callers were greeted by a recorded voice asking, "Do you love sex? ... Isn't that why you called?"

Spokeswoman Elissa Brown said Eugene, Ore.-based Golden Temple ordered new packaging when the mistake was discovered in December and new boxes have been shipping out for weeks.

However, 13 varieties of the cereal were on shelves Wednesday at one Halfway, Md., grocery store, including seven varieties in boxes bearing the incorrect telephone number.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-odd-cereal-phone-sex,0,2545987.story

physics experiment

Q: Can 2 solid object occupy the same space at the same time?

A: No.

(My car, in the towing company compound.)

Real-Life Bumper Cars

Sorry for the break in postings here. I was in the hospital briefly and unexpectedly.

I apparently had medical problem of some kind while driving earlier in the week and (I am told) ran into a building(!) at what must have been a reasonably low speed. I recall my eyes feeling very strange for a few seconds, but have have no further recollection of the event. I awoke in the ER, with doctors working on me and a cop watching over me, telling me I'd been "combative" when they arrived to collect me. Holy shite. I am about the least physically aggressive person I know, so I can't imagine what was going on to make me combative.

The initial tests showed no obvious cause for me to decide that rolling into a building was a good idea, so there's more medical detective work to do over the next few weeks.

They sent me home in scrubs because they'd cut my clothes off after the accident, trying to find out if I'd had a heart attack (nope) or was externally injured (negative, except for minor dings here and there). So, at long last, with scrubs, I can begin to fit in to contemporary urban youth culture. Next, I'll stop wearing a belt so my pants will hang low. Chains! Maybe I can wear chains! (I may need a chest-hair transplant, though.)

The cops say my car was "significantly damaged," but I don't know what that means yet. I'll see it later today--- along with the no-doubt moldering groceries that were in the car at the time of the accident. (I was on the way home from food shopping.) Sigh.

Bottom line: I'm OK. There'll be more tests in the coming weeks and we'll try to figure out what did happen and if a repeat is likely. But for the nonce, all is well, and once I get things organized here again, I'll resume posting to the blog.

I apologize for the brief break.

This looks like fun!

(but bring the Dramamine...)


http://tinyurl.com/b9g9m6

Anti-Zen Motorcycle Repair

Some of you may remember my motorcycle, perhaps from the "10,000 Mile Ride Around North America" posts.

The bike's a Honda Goldwing, and it did great on that trip, even though I took it places heavy touring bikes with street tires aren't supposed to go.

Like miles and miles of gravel:

Miles and miles of dirt:

And then more miles and miles of gravel:

Even stopping occasionally to sample said gravel. It was not delicious.


The bike did great, except for one breakdown that could be called "operator error:" I had an electrical failure on a deserted back road in Nebraska, 40-something miles (65km) from the nearest town. That part of the story is here, if you're interested: http://www.advrider.com/forums/showthread.php?t=310834&page=2

Eventually I figured out that the many hours of rattling over gravel had loosened one or more electrical connections. I was able to effect a roadside repair and resume my trip. I had the bike checked professionally at a Honda shop in Denver a few days later, and the service supervisor agreed: Just an electrical connection shaken loose by the unusual roads (for a touring bike) I was riding in. They re-tightened all the accessible connectors, ran tests on the alternator and battery, and pronounced the bike good to go. I went.

I finished the trip without incident. This was in 2007.

Last year (2008), during a group ride, a friend said he thought my headlights looked yellow instead of the normal bright white. But when we checked, all seemed fine. Hmmmm.

I rode the bike the rest of last year without incident. But this spring (2009), in starting the bike from its winter nap, the headlights were totally dead. All other electrical stuff worked fine, but both the high and low beams were totally out.

That's 4 bulbs total; two each on two separate circuits. No way all four bulbs would fail at once. The circuits are fused separately too, so the odds of both fuses blowing simultaneously were pretty low. It had to be something more fundamental. Sigh.

You can't legally ride a motorcycle around here without the headlights on at all times, and it's stupid to do so anyway: You're very vulnerable on a bike, and it's important to be conspicuous to car drivers who (what with cell phones, lattes, and other distractions) tend not to see motorcycles until they feel a bump and say "What was that?"

So, the lights had to be fixed before I could use the bike this year.

I'd heard of vibration-related electrical problems with one of the Goldwing's central electrical grounds ("earths" to our UK-oriented electricians). A number of ground wires come together in midbike, where they join in petal-like fashion to a large bolt that attaches to the frame. It's very hard to get at; it's one of the most inaccessible spots on the entire machine. Among other joys, you have to physically remove the gas tank from the bike.

I had put the bike away last Fall with a full tank of gas, so I really wasn't looking forward to the job of tearing the bike down and removing a brimming-full gas tank.

Another reason I wasn't looking forward to this job: I've (ahem) extensively modified the bike's electrical system, adding circuits for a satellite radio, a GPS, camera- and cell-phone charging circuits, 12v power taps, enhanced audio, heated clothing, an alarm, and more. I literally felt vaguely ill--- a pit-of-the-stomach feeling--- at the thought that perhaps my electrical work had seriously damaged an expensive motorcycle. Gah!

But the day finally came when I could put it off no longer. Part of it was the emergence of Spring here; almost all the snow is gone at the lower elevations, and the grass is finally starting to green.

And part of it is reaction to the winter-induced interior focus. Robot vacuums, breadmaking and such are fine, but I needed a task more suited to a garage than a kitchen. I needed to make a mess instead of cleaning one up. I needed less nurture and more nasty. I needed toxic chemicals and dirt-encrusted fingernails! What can I say: It's primal.

Unghhh. Tools good. Me like tools.

So, with the forecast calling for warm weather with a chance of widely-scattered motorcycle parts, I dug in: I stripped all the tupperware off the bike to expose the guts. It ain't pretty that way. (As usual, click to enlarge any photo.)


For those of you who haven't seen it before: A Goldwing isn't a putt-around-the-block bike. It's not one of those rolling sculpture chromium things meant mainly to be looked at in a parking lot. It's not a rolling noisemaker that screams "Look at me! I'm cool because I can make loud noises!" (I've never understood that--- any idiot can make a noisy engine. The skill comes in making an engine *quiet.*)

Anyway, a Honda Goldwing is built for long distance touring. It's comfortable, quiet and powerful with many fully up-to-date automotive-type technologies: a fuel-injected 6 cylinder engine, antilock brakes, and so on. Supposedly, a Goldwing has more separate parts than a baseline 4 cylinder Honda Civic. When I have to dig into the bike like this, I can believe the parts count:


Here's some of the wiring I modified on the left side of the bike, normally hidden beneath the plastic shell:


I tried to do good work on my electrical mods. I worked carefully, used good connectors, reinforced my work with zip-ties to keep all wires secure, and labeled everything as I went. I like to think my electrical work is like me: crude, but effective. :)


I have custom wiring tucked everywhere....


I dreaded the thought of having to undo everything.

But since I'd already had one vibration-induced electrical problem, I figured that checking the central ground--- known also to sometimes have vibration problems--- would be the best place to start. But that meant pulling the gas tank.

The tank is an odd shape that takes advantage of various openings in the frame: It balloons around parts and juts into crevasses, enclosing volume where it can. You have to lift and twist it at the same time to get it out of the frame. Part of the twisting motion hits the battery, so before moving the tank, I removed the battery and snipped all the zip ties that had kept the extra wiring there neat. I also opened the fuse tray. Things were getting messy.


I disconnected the fuel-level sensor, the electrical lead for the gas pump, the supply and return gas lines, and the vapor-control and spill hoses. The tank was now just about ready for removal.




Fred Harmon, a well-known Goldwing guru, suggested using scrap hose and bolts as temporary plugs for the hoses:


It mostly worked; I only lost a little gas due to the residual pressure in the fuel injection system.

Eventually, I switched to using a medical hemostat instead, which closed off the scrap hose completely. (I got the hemostat through a tool catalog; the inexpensive device was made in Pakistan, and the quality of its construction--- while fine for working on motorcycles and cars--- makes me want never to have surgery in Pakistan.)



I lifted the tank out. Ok, it really wasn't that simple, but I did get it out with much cursing and grunting and silicone spray on the friction points. There is nothing Zen-like about the art of my motorcycle maintenance.

There, beneath where the tank had been, was my quarry: The central ground, covered with 50,000 miles of grunge:

That ground is mostly for small-amperage control wiring; it's not for the bike's heavy circuits themselves, but for the low-amp circuits that in turn switch the heavy circuits.

Nothing was obviously loose. I unscrewed the bolt and lifted it off its seat.


There was light corrosion, but it seemed to be superficial:


So maybe it was my add-on wiring that caused the problem, after all. Grrrr.

Still, I was in there, so I figured I'd clean up the connections anyway. I opened the multiple eyelets and cleaned them all with solvent. I recrimped the wires. I reassembled the whole thing using threadlocker to prevent the bolt from working loose, and using WD-40 on all the electrical contact surfaces to keep them from re-corroding. I then coated the assembled connectors with a bit of dielectric grease to seal out everything.

As a last step, I added a new wire to the group; one that would run straight back to the negative terminal on the battery: a new, just-in-case, secondary low-amp path to ground.


While I was in there, I also inspected the frame welds. The Goldwing 1800 was the heaviest production bike ever to use a welded aluminum frame, and some of the early model years eventually suffered cracks at the welds. My bike is a 2005, and the problem was supposed to be solved by then, but I thought it worth a look.

I checked 'em all; they were OK.


Next, just for the hell of it, I opened up the Goldwing's three banks of relays. Checking the electrical operation of the bike's 20 separate relays--- about 100 separate circuit paths--- was more than I wanted to do, but I could at least remove and replace the relays, ensuring that the sockets and plugs were clean and making good contact.


Also, although I'd done it before, I re-checked all the fuses both visually...


...and electrically:


They were all OK.

So, I hadn't really found much: no obvious problem. If the central ground had been a mass of rust or had clearly been loose, it'd be different. But it actually had looked OK.

I again had that pit-of-the-stomach feeling. Had I just spent a bunch of hours chasing down the wrong alley? Was my add-on wiring at fault? Was I going to have to undo all the mods I'd done? Man, that would takes weeks and weeks of part-time work. And had I torn apart the bike and made a colossal mess for nothing? I mean, click on this picture--- look at the state the bike was in. And maybe for nothing? Gah!


Ah, fack.

OK, moment of truth: I temporarily repowered the bike using jumper cables:


I turned the ignition to ON (without starting the engine) and walked around the front of the bike.

Fiat lux!


Well OK, Honda lux, but you get the idea. Low beams were back on, fully normal.

So were high beams:

It had worked! Maybe it was removing and replugging the relays--- I can't discount that it might have been that--- but that central ground is a known trouble spot for Goldwings, so I'll go with the theory that the problem had indeed been there. Any in any case, my electrical glitch was now fixed.

And, thank goodness, the problem definitely was NOT my other electrical mods, to the great relief of my thought-it-was-about-to-be-wounded pride. Man, those lit lights made me feel good.

Because I have the bike open, I'll do some additional work on it over the next week or so, as time permits. But I felt really good today in accomplishing a fairly nontrivial repair, and thought I'd share it with you.

Thanks for reading along!

Checked out Google Labs lately?

They've been busy:

http://labs.google.com/

You gotta hand it to those Australians...

We interrupt this beermaking...

... to talk about its progenitor: Bread.




Goddam, bread can be good. It also can be awful, of course, like the commercial sandwich loafs with slices that have the mouth-appeal of a cellulose sponge. But when bread's well made or fresh, or (ideally) well made and fresh, oh man, some primal circuit completes and your hindbrain pleasure centers light up. At least mine do.

My guess is that humans like smell of fresh bread for the same reason we like the smell of woodsmoke from a clean-burning campfire: It's a windborne clue to the direction of warmth, food, safety; home. And while fires can be natural or artificial, the smell of food cooking--- the controlled application of heat to foodstuffs--- is a uniquely human signature.

Humans who weren't afraid of fire tended to survive more than the ones who feared it: The fire-friendly humans could artificially warm themselves. They lived longer and had more of their kids survive.

Fast forward a couple dozen centuries and all that's left are descendant of the original fire-loving humans.

Humans have a long history with fire. Play with fire long enough, and you'll burn stuff. Imagine eating by a fire every day. Eventually, you'll spill some food into or next to it. If you're hungry enough, you'll eat the burned or fire-changed foods and--- wow--- discover that some of it actually tastes pretty good that way. Turns out cooked meats are easier to chew and digest, and don't go bad as fast. Cooked hard roots and fruits soften and develop new flavors. After a while, you learn that tough seeds, including proto-wheat, are much easier to digest if left to soak a bit in water warmed by the fire: You've invented gruel.

And look at that! If you leave gruel long enough by the fire it sometimes turns into a bubbly paste that tastes OK when it dries: You've invented flatbread.

Indeed, humans have been making bread for almost as long as there have been humans. We're all descendants of those earliest peoples who tamed fire and invented bread, so the love of those smells is written into our very genome.

I've always been impressed with those who bake their own bread today. It's a fair amount of work, and the task spreads itself across several hours. It's kind of a pain. (Small pun.)

I freely admit I am not a big fan of repetitive household work. (This will come as no surprise to those of you who know I own a robotic vacuum.) Avoidance of repetitious domestic tasks is one of the reasons why I'm a mediocre cook: I keep changing recipes around so my individual meal iterations never get very good. It's a personal failing of mine, brightened only by a select few recipes that I learned to do nicely and then left alone.

So while I love fresh bread, I don't love it enough to to go through the repetition required to become a good breadmaker.

Ah, technology. I bought a programmable automatic breadmaker:



It's this one, if you care. The brand probably doesn't matter.

Did you see the fresh-cut whole wheat loaf at the top of this post? The last few slices of it are still in my fridge. It was good. It still is.

It started life this way:

Nothing fancy. Only weirdness is the "Smart Balance" spread instead of butter. (I'm doing penance for a lifetime of too much red meat.)

I'm told it's also slightly nonstandard to use dark brown sugar instead of light brown sugar in whole-wheat bread. Call me a rebel.

Here's a peek into the breadmaker's mixing/baking pan (already showing some battle scars):

That strong paddle-blade at the bottom does all the mixing and kneading. The blade bakes right into the loaf, as you'll see later.

You place all the ingredients into the pan, starting with the liquids. You dump the flour in second to last, and it floats on top of the water, butter, salt and sugar beneath it.


Fast-rising yeast goes in last. You make a little crater in the dry flour, and place the yeast there, far from the water that will bring it back to life. Because the yeast is still inert, the programmable breadmaker lets you set things up as much as 12 hours ahead.


The machine is programmed for many bread types, loaf sizes and degrees of crustiness. The programs determine how long the dough gets kneaded, and when; how long the rising times are, how long the baking cycle takes, etc.

The kneader's motor is a low-RPM, high-torque thing that does a pretty good job of powering through the dough. Eventually, the dough balls up as the kneader beats the crap out of it. Here's a shot of kneading in action:


After the allotted rising times and additional kneadings, the heating element kicks in and bakes the bread in the same pan it was mixed it. The breadmaker draws 600 watts; far less than a conventional oven.

Here's a fresh-cut loaf. You can see the breadly umbilicus on the base of the loaf where the kneading blade (now removed) baked into the loaf. There also are a few vestigial seams that a skillful human baker would scoff at, but I'm not that baker; and besides, they don't affect the taste an iota. Other than minor aesthetic flaws, it looks pretty good.


And yes, it was delicious! Hot, fresh bread, steaming as it melts the butter--- or butter-like low-cal, vegan butter substitute, if you must--- is a real treat. Like bacon, fresh bread is one of the foods whose taste fully lives up to its aroma. Mmmmmm.

Want a warm slice?


(PS: The missing beer keg gasket arrived, and I was able to resume my home brewing experiment. Stay tuned for more yeasty wonders! ;) )

Solving "Me First!" Startup Software Conflicts

What to do when two or more programs want to run first.

Reader Hal Allert has several essential programs that all need to start very early in the boot process. As a result, they end up stepping on each other's toes.

"When my laptop boots up, I usually get the Red Shield from Windows Alert telling me that my Kaspersky Anti-Virus is turned off and I am not protected. After closing that warning, Kaspersky AV then starts up. It tries to get updates from the Web but my Internet connection hasn't completed yet. Everything else is loading up when it wants to, so other warnings are popping up. When my computer is finally connected to the Internet, things calm down. It would seem to easier all around if the boot order was reversed. Is there a way for me to re-arrange the order in which the programs are starting up?"

Yes. In fact, there are two ways. One is easy but crude. The other, hard but precise. Both ways work, so it's your choice!

That's the subject of the lead item in my column this week at Windows Secrets. In it, I'll walk you through bother options and provide links to free tools that can let you fine-tune the exact order in which your software starts.

I also discuss three other topics:

* Lost: "Send To" setting (and how to get it back)
* Disk bloat and the "overloaded camel" syndrome (Just one more program...)
* Reader tip on great uninstall tool

Access to all my columns, past and present is by a kind of honor-system principle: You decide what the content is worth, and whatever you decide to pay lets you in to *all* the weekly paid-edition content (not just my columns) for a full year.

Full info (you start by signing up for the spam-proof free version) here: http://windowssecrets.com/

The Time Traveler's Wife

It's been a long time since I put down a book and said "Wow," but The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger did just that.

It's wonderfully written and with a highly imaginative concept. It sounds science-fictiony, but it's also honest-to-god literature. And you can pick up a used copy for around $4.

These two reader reviews from Amazon sum it up well:

From a guy:

I was not disappointed by "The Time Traveler's Wife." The book both moved me and challenged me to think about a number of deeper issues in life (most notably, the true meaning of love in a romantic relationship).

The underlying story concerns Henry, a librarian at the Newberry Library in Chicago, and Clare, his artist wife. Henry suffers from CDP (Chrono-Displacement Order) which whisks him from the present to another point of time (usually the past). One minute he may be in the stacks of the Newberry Library in 2003, the next minute he may find himself in a field (probably naked) in Michigan with his future wife as a child sometime in the early 1980's.

The author does an excellent job of sequencing the book. Even though Henry is shuttling back and forth in every chapter, she manages to move the plot forward. You do feel that you see Henry and Clare meeting, falling in love, starting a marriage and going through the stages of their lives. You do get to know their family and friends and see life happen to them.

From a woman:

I stumbled across this book by mistake and hesitated to read it simply because it was 518 pages. To my surprise, I devoured this book in a few days and felt a pang of sadness when it was finished. The author crafts a story of something that is quite unbelievable and yet deftly makes it so very believable. I was hooked after the first chapter. Niffenegger managed to suck me in to this story so that I felt emotionally bound to the characters and their plight. It's a tragic story that weaves so much love/pain/joy/disappointment that it fairly bursts with emotion. Read it!

Highly recommended!

Least surprising police discovery ever!

At least, if you only read the headline.

For want of a gasket, the beer was lost.

(click to enlarge)

Today, I was going to tell you about a simplified home beer-making kit I got (see above). But it didn't work out. Yet.

I've recently tried some very simple bread making and enjoyed it. Beer really is just an interesting form of liquid bread, right? I don't drink all that much beer, but I thought home brewing might be interesting and fun to try.

Beer is almost as ancient as bread itself; the first beers were brewed in the late stone age. Want to know how important beer is in human history? Humankind's very first written legal document, the Code of Hammurabi, devoted an entire a section to beermaking.

The Egyptian pharaohs wanted beer in the afterlife (who wouldn't?), and so included statues and carvings of beermaking--- little beerish dioramas--- among their entombed treasures.

(Max res original photo HERE )

With that kind of historical importance, I'd be very surprised if one of the very first human sentences wasn't something like "Beer good."

(And it was probably followed by something like "Come here often?")

Beer is largely cross-cultural and universal. After water and tea, beer is the third most-consumed liquid on the planet. Almost every human culture has its own beer, from local ingredients. And most of the ones that don't, trade for it.

Yes, there are aberrations. There have been legal and religious prohibitions against beer (and all alcohol) in various times and places. But left to itself, every culture that can develop beer, will.

It's amazing when you think about it: Hardly a human kidney has ever existed that did not filter at least a beer or two during its existence. Or, somewhat more poetically, when you have a beer, you are sharing a link with almost every human that has ever lived, anywhere, for all time.

Yes: Beer good.

Hard-core home brewers start with raw grain and work from there, but that's a level of complexity I wasn't ready for. So, instead of a full from-scratch beer making setup, I opted for the disturbingly named "Mr. Beer" kit. Name aside, it's a hybrid beermaking process intended for the easy brewing of small batches of beer.

With the Mr. Beer approach, the initial grain milling, mixing, soaking, mashing (etc) is done for you. You buy a highly concentrated, non-alcoholic wort extract that's ready for blending, fermenting, and bottling. You can buy worts made with different grains and flavorings in a wide range of colors, strengths, hoppiness, and such. The idea is that you can blend different worts together to produce beers of whatever custom flavor/body/strength you want. You can also use the basic worts as a starting point to add additional fresh ingredients (eg local hops) if you wish. There are several online communities dedicated just to Mr Beer-type home brewing (and many more general home-brewing sites); these guys--- and they are mostly guys--- share recipes, suppliers, tips and such. Some geeks congregate there, too. There's a whole section I saw on "keg mods," for example. Really!

Yes, beer good.

The kit I got (above) has enough stuff to make two 2-gallon batches of beer; a basic Budweiser-style American lager and a slightly richer blonde. I'm not a big Bud fan ("What do Budweiser and making love in a canoe have in common? They're both f*cking close to water."), so I also bought a couple extra wort extracts: an "export pale ale" and a Canadian-style draft. I have no idea what any of them is like, yet.

I was going to provide a little photo essay today on setting up the kit and starting my first batch fermenting, but I was stymied by a manufacturing problem: The kit's supplied keglet has a tap assembly that fits a predrilled bung hole. The tap assembly consists of a threaded spigot, a gasket, and a mounting nut. Mine was missing the gasket, so the assembly would not seal tightly.

This may be the only time you'll ever hear me say this: Yes, I had a leaky bung hole.

I called the tech support line, and they're shipping the missing gasket.

So, my brewing plans are on hold.

Meanwhile, if you'd like a quick primer on beer:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer

And remember: It's not drinking; it's exploring history!

Happy Spring!