twelve beers of christmas

It has got to be the only things I really wanted for Christmas. Erin dropped them on me early so I could have one a day and be done by tax season. Given my last couple of batches went so poorly, having some really good beer is a complete joy. The first one I tried was Goose Islands - Honkers Ale. I opened the bottle and spent 3 min just smelling it. It smelled like home brewing. The Styrian Golding hops, which I have used several times is just awesome. It smells fresh and light and delicious. That with a little of the yeasty smell and some of the steaming grain smell. I didn't even have to drink it to be happy.

But I did, and is was great. A simple, very well balanced, very flavorful, absolutely awesome ale. I'll keep my eyes on the look out for other beers by these guys. Get one if you can.

Windows's Fu(king windows

I recieved my windows 7 upgrade dvd (Free) in the mail Thursday. I was very excited as I was running vista and didn't much like it. I spent the next 72 hours trying to do everything I could think of to get the upgrade to work.
-first it failed
-then it took 35 hours to get 85% done, before locking up.
-then the DVD drive quit working
-then I got the dvd drived re installed and delete a bunch of programs hoping to get a successful re attempt of the upgrade.
-then the up grade worked. It took only about 45 min and it was all done, until I ran the updates
-then it installed 8 upgrades then uung on the last 2.
-then the system (now running in windows 7)would crash after about 3 min.
-then I cussed a lot, and tried to figure it out
-then I threw up my hands in discussed and did a clean install.
-which worked perfectly the first time.
-and now runs great, but I have to reinstall everything.

So I'm now pleased to report I have windows 7 and it is great. But I don't recommend the upgrade.