A note, a snip, and a jab.

August 5, 2004

Geez, all you people reading my thoughts on The Village who haven’t seen the movie. Tsk, tsk. I clearly labeled it as containing spoilers, so if anyone else reads it, it’s your own fault if the ending gets spoiled for you. And for the rest of you, well, you weren’t supposed to read it until AFTER you’d seen the movie.

The other day after lunch I was working through testing part of the software we’ve been working on and bumped my leg up against my desk. I had kind of a sharp pain when I did that, so I looked down and noticed a quarter-inch thorn sticking out of my leg. That was odd, since the only opportunity to get it in there would have been when I cut through the brush and across the train tracks to go get my lunch, but that meant that it had been sticking out of my leg–unnoticed–for close to an hour and a half. Duh. I made sure that I used an alcohol wipe on it the wound, naturally. Still kind of a stupid thing to miss, though. I guess that’s me, though, focusing on one thing and completely missing another. Or ignoring, whatever.

The other day I was deciding whether to spend a bit of disposable income on either a new hard drive for my computer or a copy of Doom 3. Alas, if I get Doom 3 first, I’ll install it, play it for a bit, and then in a week or so I’ll be reformatting my computer when Microsoft releases service pack 2 for Windows XP. Which means I’ll have to reinstall the game, and since it’s on four or five CDs, I don’t relish the fact. If I got the hard drive first, I could do a single reformat when XP SP2 comes out, THEN buy Doom 3 and install it only once. I didn’t feel like dropping the money for either, though, so I made a decision and spent my money on booze instead.

No joke.

I’ve been meaning for quite some time to pick up a couple of bottle of good hard liquor to try. Not hard liquor for mixing, but good sipping stuff for the times when I want something a little different than a beer. I have my bottle of cognac that I’ve been nursing for close to four years now, plus my bottle of Scotch that I doubt will ever get finished unless Dan comes out here to visit and the two of us knock it back once and for all, but other than than I’ve mostly stayed away from hard liquor because I knew I didn’t really have the appreciation for it that good stuff deserves. Anyhow, so I went down to the liquor store and picked up three bottles that set me back a cool $75 total.

The first bottle was Jose Cuervo Tradicional tequila. Unlike the standard Jose Cuervo gold tequila that most people tend to buy (or even worse, the crap with the worm that can’t even legally be called tequila), this is good, 100% pure blue agave tequila. See, thanks to my little tequila-tasting party at McMenamins a few months ago, I’m a bit educated on the production methodology of tequila, and I actually know good tequila when I taste it now. I had a margarita last Friday night when I went to dinner, and frankly, that was good tequila. Most of the times I’ve had tequila in the past it hasn’t agreed with me, but I had some of this stuff at the McMenamins event and I liked it. So now I have a bottle.

The second bottle was Captain Morgan’s private stock rum. I’m not a big Captain Morgan’s fan, and most of the time in college when I needed rum for something (mostly daquiris), I would spend a little extra and get Bacardi since it’s the–no pun intended–gold standard for rum. Captain Morgan was a step lower in my mind. But I had a bit of the private stock rum awhile ago, and it was tasty. VERY tasty. In fact, it didn’t make me wince when swallowing it unlike most other hard liquor. The only other hard liquor that’s ever been easy going down, actually, is the aforementioned tequila I had at McMenamins. So I knew this was quality stuff. I made myself a rum and Diet Coke (what I have to settle for not having regular Coke around) to taste how well it mixed, and boy, it was quite good and easy on the mouth. Remind me not to get too attached to it.

Lastly was something I’ve wanted to try since, well, since I first saw it in the first Spider-Man movie. Yes, yes, stupid, but it has nothing to do with product placement in that regard. That is, I didn’t want to try it because of where I first saw it. Maker’s Mark Kentucky bourbon is what I bought, and though I’ve never particularly enjoyed whiskey in the past, I wanted to give it a shot because it’s so famous. After seeing it in the movie, I saw a few references to it in the news about how the head of the company was surprised to see it in the movie as there had been no pre-arranged deal, etc. Maker’s Mark, for those who aren’t familiar with the name, comes in the bottles with the neck and cap hand-dipped in red-wax, giving each bottle sort a unique look both among the other bottles of Maker’s Mark, and definitely on the shelf with the other liquors. I just tried a bit, and while it wasn’t quite as smooth as the tequila or the rum, it was tasty. Warmed the body pretty quickly, too. I’ve always had a goopd laugh in cartoons and movies when someone drinks hard liquor to stay warm because it’s never happened to me. Just a sip of this stuff really warmed me up, though. That was kind of cool. But Maker’s Mark has been around for a long time, and each batch is made in small quantities so it’s not mass-produced like so many other beers and liquors. I’ve tried Jack Daniels and Southern Comfort in the past and I’ve never cared for them too much, but this wasn’t bad stuff.

Interesting to try, good to have around, too expensive to drink regularly, that’s what I bought the liquor for. I don’t drink hard liquor very often, anyway, and like my mantra of beer, if you want to drink it for the taste and not the effects, you might as well drink the good stuff. Frankly, I’ll probably get more time and usage out of the liquors than a new hard drive or a computer game. That’s just fine with me. I just have to remember not to let my Dad pack them and ship them across the country. Whoops! That was glassware, not liquor bottles. But the principle remains the same, yes?

Got myself a haircut yesterday. Not much else to add to that except that like the last one I got, it was done entirely with scissors. I think I prefer it that way, actually. I’d been having them use the electric clippers on parts of my hair for so long, I’d forgotten how much softer my hair looks when it’s cut using just scissors.

Sooooo…here I am, ready to wrap up another week, but I still have a day-plus-some left before I can officially wrap things up on this second project here at work. I’m sooo glad that things got postponed until this week, particularly since the company that we’re writing the software for keeps changing things on their side and we have to change our software to match it. They’re literally still developing the backend of their software while we’re trying to match every move they make. Would have been helpful if they’d gotten all that done BEFORE we started our work. Oh yes, and I may be getting a new computer here at work, which would make my job much, much easier. Currently my computer here is slower than my laptop and has only half the RAM. Honestly, I could bring in my laptop and have it be a better primary machine, but since I may be getting a faster computer I’m happy. We’re also supposedly hiring a couple of new techs sometime soon, so I won’t ever have to deal with answering the phone ever again. Not that I have in the past two weeks, anyway. Too busy testing software.

So that’s my life at the moment. Happy Thursday.

Posted in Beer, Geekery, General