Dan Krill's BLOG on BinaryBedlam - Opinions, Rants, Comments, Notes, and Realizations

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Pre Labor Day Weekend with Khine
August 29, 2010 09:48:36 PM

     Khine was just here in Nashville for the weekend for the first time since Med School started, but it went by sooo fast! So I thought I'd better write it all down so it doesn't just fade like a dream. It all started off with her catching a ride from JCity with a classmate who also has some connections in Nashville. We met at the flying saucer where she was dropped off because it's near where her classmate needed to be. We had dinner there, the usual, she had the Shiner Bock, I got something off the list, this time, St Pauli Girl German Lager, chicken quesadillas, a bowl of wings, and something new, the big dipper roast beef sandwich. Afterwords we headed home, got the mail, watched some tv and went to bed pretty early.
     On Saturday morning she met the new room mate while studying. For lunch we went to the Olive garden where she got the endless pasta and I got the eggplant Parmesan. That was good as always. From there we went to the Yazoo brewery on Division St off 8th Ave in Nashville to get a tour. It was pretty cool. For 6 bucks you go around the brewing floor, get up to 3 glasses of beer, and you get to keep the glass. The only bad thing about Yazoo, though, is that they don't honor other places growlers. It makes me so made just thinking about it. The beauty of the craft is that microbreweries and home brewers are supposed to respect and honor one another. This place seems to have lost the spirit of the craft and has fallen victim to capitalism. Anyways, after that we went to an Asian market, then K & S world market, then back to the brewery (I left my credit card there), then finally home, where we ended up taking a short nap. When we got up we cooked all the things we got from the markets. I made a beef stew for the crockpot and she made a stir fry. We watched some TV, then the movie TRON, then we went to bed. We were going to go to a park with a cave today, but we found out that all the caved parks in TN are closed because apparently all the bats have a fungal infection called white nose syndrome. Bummer.
     Sunday went the quickest because she had to leave at noon. Basically we got up really late, had breakfast, we went through some scheduling and paperwork, had dry noodles for lunch, packed up, and headed back to the Gulch in Nashville where she was to be picked up. I went straight home. And just like that she was gone :-( I ended up playing star craft for effectively the rest of the day. Can't wait to see her again, seriously, only 1 full day is basically like a tease, but certainly better than nothing!

DATE: August 29, 2010 09:55:48 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: I miss you terribly, hon. It went by so, so fast! Maybe we could see each other the weekend after Labor Day..I`ll ask around to see if anybody is driving back then.

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Beer Batch 9: Guinness Extra Stout Clone
August 29, 2010 07:10:22 PM

Finally made my first stout. To date, all of my beers have been on the lighter side, the darkest one I've ever done was probably my continental pillsner, but even that was blonde in comparison to this beauty! I always wanted to do a stout so when I started looking on the web for a recipe, I thought I'd start by looking for one to make that resembled one of the best stouts out there, Guinness! When I found a clone recipe I went straight to the brewery supply store and got all the ingredients. I guess what makes this an extra stout is that it has lots of extra roasted barley grounds. This is largely what provides the dark color. I also learned from this brew that the barely flakes are added to the recipe to provide a higher than normal protein content. This is important in stouts because you want a thick frothy head retention after pouring and it's the protein that holds the bubbles together.
I think this has become my new favorite batch, although my American cream ale was quite nice too. Some quick facts about this one: the boil was 75min, hopped at 30min and 70min. Was in the Primary fermenter for 2 weeks, and the secondary for 1 week and 3 days. Racked 30 12oz bottles, 4 Grolsch, and 1 Growler, and tastes better than Guinness!

DATE: August 29, 2010 09:52:18 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: I agree! I love this batch too!

DATE: September 01, 2010 10:13:26 AM NAME: dankrill
COMMENT: The only thing I`m not impressed with is the duration of the head retention, it`s basically gone after about 1.5 min. It should be lasting for like 5-10min given how much flaked barely I put in there.

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Appalachian Trail South from Erwin
August 22, 2010 10:35:13 AM

     During one of my weekends visiting Khine in Johnson City we finally got the chance to go hiking again. We typically look up state parks or large recreational areas that have hiking trails, well in the process of finding a good place I discovered that the Appalachian trail runs right by here! Basically our entry point was at a little mom and pop run hostel/camping-supply-store just outside of the town of Erwin. We didn't really have the time nor were prepared enough to do a really long distance leg, and fortunately we were only 1.6 miles or so from a spot on the trail with a great view of the river down bellow. So we headed south bound on the trail to see what we could see.
     Along the way we saw a good bit of wild life, even more so than in some of the parks we've visited. Since it had just rained, it wasn't too hot either. But this section of the trail was quite treacherous in some places. Very steep, uneven, and narrow bends along mountain sides. You definitely can't be messing around on some of these stretches. Eventually we made it to the top and saw our view. I deviated from the trail a bit once up there to see if I could find an even better view, and I discovered a camping site. There was a fire ring and even a US flag perched on the highest rock cliff. Hiking this trail was pretty neat, especially when we passed people that were on it for days. It spans over 2000 miles from Georgia to Maine! Looking forward to hiking the whole thing some day!

DATE: August 22, 2010 04:04:02 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: It was fun! I`m glad we did it even though I was so exhausted by then. And you put that idea inside me of hiking along the trail for days! Now, I can`t get that idea out of my head =) We`ve really got to do it, man!

DATE: August 23, 2010 03:12:13 PM NAME: jue
COMMENT: very cool guys! i love it!i cant imagine hiking for DAYS! try a hike-in campsite, and then attempt the hiking for days part!

DATE: September 01, 2010 10:57:17 AM NAME: dankrill
COMMENT: Very true, we deff need to go camping in the woods somewhere sometime.

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NavFac

August 04, 2010 09:09:35 PM

New Car

August 03, 2010 06:29:32 PM

My Computer is Back!
July 27, 2010 09:41:36 PM

I've actually been with out my primary computer for about 2 weeks now. I came home from hiking with Khine one afternoon only to find my computer was off, and not just off, the power supply had managed to let out it's own magic smoke, you know, the smoke in electronics that make them work, if you let out the smoke, they don't work? Yeah well, luckily the PS was still under warranty, I mailed it back to the manufacturer as soon as I could, and I finally got my new one in the mail! I hooked it up straight away.
Strangely enough, I think I have just discovered that my computer is actually the source of my powers. I suddenly feel so motivated to do things again. For the past 2 weeks, especially after Khine moved out for med school, I've been so apathetic about things. Weird a?

DATE: July 27, 2010 10:57:14 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: YAYYYY!!! You`ve come alive again!

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Balcony Garden 2010
June 19, 2010 07:09:14 PM

The garden has been doing pretty good this year, but I sure do have to water it a lot because of Nashville's constant high temperatures. The humidity and bright sun are good for them and even though it's still early in the season, I'm already yielding. Now granted I started them from seeds during the winter indoors under a grow light, that's still pretty good to be harvesting things already. This year I'm growing tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, basil, cilantro, mint, and snow peas.

Some new things I've learned this year. Some of my tomatoes look like they are rotten on the bottom. This is called Bottom End Rot, and it's usually due to either a calcium deficiency or irregular watering, and I know it's not the water. So for a quick remedy, you can break some ant-acid tablets up and sprinkle that over the soil.

Also, you should not water your plants at night, especially if they are potted. This encourages fungal growth. This was actually a common problem for me this year because I have been watering only at night. I have a lot more plants this year, and when I water them they drip down onto the downstairs neighbor's balcony, and they have a lot of stuff down there, so I watered at night so they wouldn't catch me getting all their things wet. Well I guess I'll just have to take the risks and go back to watering during the day.

DATE: June 23, 2010 11:13:56 AM NAME: KM
COMMENT: I just thought that the people downstairs would have already figured out where the water was coming from. If they had any problems, they would have come to us already or moved their things. Gosh, it`s like a plastic and metal jungle where their balcony is. I thought`s it`s not allowed in this complex.

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Another 5k run
June 15, 2010 08:40:35 PM

Today was a run day, I normally run 2 miles every other day just for exercise, but I was so angry and frustrated with work today that I some how accumulated extra energy to vent through my running. I ended up doing a full 5k (3.2 miles) and in record time apparently, well a PR for me anyway, 28min 46sec. Four whole minutes better than my previous best. My Naval Base smart grid advanced electrical metering infrastructure lab test presentation to the Military network admins was a great success, it's just that now all the project managers expect me to single handedly assemble a fully completed design and vulnerabilities baseline documentation package for submission by the end of next week! That's absolutely ridiculous! Even if there were 2 or 3 people working on it, there's at least a months worth of work to do for that damn package. So I'm a bit in a tizzy right now, but hey, look what it did for my run. I guess I should run all stressed out more often?

DATE: June 17, 2010 06:12:51 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: Definitely! Just run them all out! You feel better at the end of it knowing you exercised and you don`t have the pent-up frustrations either and will sleep better =) Remember the cartoon strip? It sounds like that`s what`s happening. The harder you work, the more you have to work. Sorry, hon. Hope you can talk some sense into those people.

DATE: June 17, 2010 08:20:31 PM NAME: dankrill
COMMENT: Yeah, I guess exercise really is the best way to relieve stress. I just wish the deadlines on this project weren`t so tight.

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Jean Yip Photo Shoot

June 09, 2010 09:29:46 PM

Car Accident

May 11, 2010 09:57:58 PM

The Little River Band
May 9, 2010 09:36:51 PM

     Well once again my celebrity picture is so bad that you're just gonna have to take my word for it again. On my way home from my Singapore vacation, while at my layover stop in Minneapolis, I ran into the entire Little River Band. They too were flying to Nashville, so not only did I get to talk with them for a while, I sat in front of them on the plane! We actually hit it right off because the flight was over booked, and they were waiting for people to volunteer their seats, and they were complaining about Delta Airlines the whole time. Well, I actually fly this flight regularly because it's in my work region, and I was telling them how this is not a one time thing and that this happens to this flight about every 3 in 4 times. Once we had a common enemy they were more willing to talk to me, and boy did they ever, especially Steve, the 2nd stage hand lead, boy was he a talker, the whole flight home he jibber jabbed. We were talking about the recent flooding in Nashville, how their concert just went in Grand Falls, again about how Delta Sucks, etc.
     Oh yeah, so in case you don't know who they are, they are an Australian band now living in Nashville who formed in 1975. Probably their most famous songs are, Baby Come Back, and Lonesome Looser.

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Singapore Vacation
May 2, 2010 05:42:39 PM

     I Just got back from an amazing trip to the Far East. There were so many new experiences and differences from life in the States. And it�s so clean and well maintained. I guess the harsh spitting, littering, flower picking, and gum chewing laws really are having an effect. And not just that, people are so nice to each other. I�ve witnessed a few accounts where complete strangers would go out of their way to help random people. Also, from what I can tell, people smoke, drink, and curse a whole lot less than here in the US, so maybe I wouldn�t want to live there after all, I mean I gotta have a few bad habits :-/ Plus if you�ve never been to Asia before, this is the perfect place to break the ice. It�s got a lot of the surrounding country�s cultural influences, but the national language is English, so just about everyone there can speak it, so as a tourist, you won�t be completely lost. Any way, here are some of my observations.

     Singapore drives on the left side of the street, so I was confused everywhere we went. I mean it sounds like such an easy concept to adjust to, but until you actually experience it, you don�t realize how many of our driving habits are almost instinctive. From what I�ve heard, people that started off on the right, have an average of 2 accidents in their first year after switching.
     Vehicles have to post their maximum number of passengers and their maximum speed as big round stickers on their rear for every one to see, so that if either is exceeded, it is plainly visible and easier to report to the authorities.
     Traffic lights are made by Tyco and make all sorts of sci-fi like sounds and beeps. Doors just like Star Trek, thin yet big and heavy and still slide open rapidly and effortlessly. Normally noisy things are all so quite. Cars, subways, sliding doors, and even construction equipment, all run practically silent. While riding on the metro, and turning corners at what seemed like 100 mph, it was still quite! It was like riding on air. The country in general just seems so efficient. Even little things seem to make a huge difference. Like the escalators move about twice as fast as the ones in the US, so very crowded places are quickly dispersed. And everyone even follows the escalator etiquette; everyone always stands left, leaving the right open for people walking. I mean we sort of have that here, but how many times have you actually seen people all standing precisely single file allowing others to pass by?

     Very safe, crime is practically non-existent and yet there is hardly any visible police or military presence, in fact during my week long stay I may have only seen 1 police car! Just about all law enforcement is done remotely. There are cameras everywhere, down every corridor, at every intersection; it�s basically a Big Brother scenario. People won�t do anything wrong if they know they are constantly being watched. Also, because of the laxed mentality on urban safety, there are just as many kids walking all round the city during the day as adults. School-uniformed kids as young as 7 years old are using the metros and buses all on their own to get around between classes. Singapore�s school system, unlike the US, is based on ranking, not location. In the US, you typically go to school based on where you live. In SG, you go based on how you did on a nationalized placement test. So kids, both young and old, may spend up to 1.5 hours a day trying to get to school!

     For food we actually rarely went to restaurants. Instead, it is more common to eat at street side markets, food courts, and Hawker Centers (which are effectively out door non air conditioned food courts under big pavilions.) The food is good no matter where you go, and its so cheep! The cuisine selections are typically Malay, Chinese, and Indian and you can fill yourself up for as little as $3. The one most annoying thing about eating traditions over here, however, was that you don�t get drinks or napkins with your food. Now I am a very messy eater, so this was very frustrating. Apparently you are supposed to bring your own tissue pack with you when you go out to eat. For drinks you have to go to some place that specializes in drinks. Now Restaurants will have these things, but you have to ask for them, you don�t get them by default. What they do have, though, are these storage baskets for women to put their purses into while they eat to prevent passer byers from plucking things from your bags. So after you�ve taken your seat, they will bring over this canvas and wicker collapsible storage device and sit it beside you. Once you put your belongings into it, they cover it with a towel .

     Holy freaken hot! It�s about 93 degrees with about 75% humidity all day, everyday, all year. You sweat buckets just walking around, but this makes sense, SG is tropical, in fact it�s only 1 degree above the equator. And because the sun light is so intense, I had to put sun block on every morning. I got used to the heat pretty quickly though, after about a day I was fine, Khine hated it the whole trip, though. She said she doesn�t know how she managed back when she was actually living there.
     If I had to speculate, I would think that the elaborate underground shopping centers and shear number of huge malls are an indirect product of the heat. Sometimes SG feels like one giant shopping mall in that all these places are interconnected underground. And places like these with their AC blasting on high provide excellent refuse from the heat outside.
     Singapore has a small island just south of it called Sentosa Island. The whole thing is effectively one giant resort. It�s covered with hotels, theme parks, a casino, it�s own metro system, and the famous white sandy beach, Siloso. This island is also where you can find the largest Merlion statue in all of SG. And in case you weren�t sure, a Merlion is a creature with the head of a lion and the body of a mermaid, it�s sort of a national symbol much like how the Statue of Liberty is to the US.

     While the rate of exchange was in my favor (1 US$ gets you 1.4 SG$), the price of electronics are actually a lot higher than here in the US. Here you can get netbooks for around 300 and laptops around 600, there it�s like 600 and 1300 respectively. So I ended up not getting myself any new gadgets. Even at Sim-Lim square, an 8 level electronics boutique filled with tons of the same type of dealers selling effectively all the same things, where you can even exercise your level-10 bargaining skills, things were way too expensive.
     There are, however, a lot of other items and services available for better than the US. There�s a huge 7 level department store above Little India called, Mustafa. They have everything walmart has times 1000, and then each of those items in 1000 different makes and varieties. I got myself a nice backpack for $15US, and a travel tripod for my camera for 10. As far as services, Khine wanted us to do a couples photo shoot because there is nothing in the US anything like what they offer in Asia. At a place in the Bugis mall, Jean Yip, a hair salon / photo studio, they offer a package including hair styling, makeup, eyebrow plucking, in house outfits, (all for each of us), 40+ pictures (we keep 12 different ones ranging from wallets to 8x10s), and photo enhancements, all for only $170US. (And yes, I had makeup and my eyebrows plucked, but hey! It was a good deal!) Another good example is massages. You can get a 1.5 hour full body massage for about $50US, including tip. We did this too, but in Malaysia, it�s even cheaper there, about 40.

     To conclude, an awesome experience, very neat stuff, and meeting all of Khine�s old friends was really fun too, I can�t thank them enough for everything they�ve done for us from getting us food to showing us around and everything else in between. If it weren�t for the ridiculously long 23 hours of flying or mad expensive tickets, I would deff go back more often.

                  SEE PICTURES HERE

DATE: May 22, 2010 08:22:15 AM NAME: GRNDPA
COMMENT: U SPEND ALL THAT MONEY FOR UR TRIPP. I JUST CAME BACK FROM MY VACATION FROM SINGAPORE. THANKS THRU UR PICTURE IT DID'N COST ME A CENT.THANKS DAN I LOVED IT.

DATE: May 23, 2010 12:13:17 AM NAME: dankrill
COMMENT: Nice! I'm glad you were able to travel through me. So where would you like to go next?

DATE: May 23, 2010 07:26:25 PM NAME: Kev
COMMENT: Dan! you sure you went to Singapore? haha! the Singapore you depicted sounds so friendly and nice it sounds surreal from what i remember! :P i remember my first time driving back in Singapore as well, oh man, few times did I accidentally turn into the opposing lane, freaked me out. traffic helps thou, i find myself making more wrong turns when there are no cars around to reference from. haha. thought the Mustafa to Walmart comparison was funny as hell. didn't think about it that way. cool read seeing from your perspective, didn't realize some differences till you mentioned them. nice to see you are trying local foods in outdoor hawker centers. most of the best food's are usually located at these places, but i can't stand the heat and humidity eating there :/ hehe. i guess im gonna keep commenting on and on, think i better stop for now. cool man! keep having fun!

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San Jose, CA: Jue & Dexter�s Wedding
Apr 30, 2010 09:06:55 PM

     Our vacation started with a trip to San Jose California to take part in a wedding for Khine�s friend Jue. On the way over we had a layover in Salt Lake City Utah where we almost missed our connecting flight, we had to run to the other side of the airport and they were literally closing the gate door as we entered.
     San Jose was chilly, about 68 degrees, sunny and breezy. This was only my second time to California, but I didn�t really have time to do any site seeing the first time because it was for work, so one could argue that this was my first real time here. San Jose is right in the middle of Silicon Valley so as soon as we started driving away from the airport I saw tons of headquarters of big tech companies. (i.e. Xilinx, VMWare, Apple, Cisco, Adobe)
     The first thing we did was go out for Korean food, we were starving and Jue and Dexter wanted to treat us. Next we went out into the country up to the mountains for some hiking and to see the view. And what a view! CA is soo beautiful, so many insanely steep rolling hills and mountains all in close proximity covered with everything from forests to flowery plains to dry desserts. We were so high up that I was getting a little afraid of the heights, even the drive up was scary because of how close to the edge of cliffs you get driving around every other curve. I got some good pictures up there though.
     Afterwards Jue�s parents came over and we watched them all perform the Chinese Tea Ceremony, which is done before the wedding as a sign of acceptance. Then there was the pre-wedding party at one of Dexter�s coworker�s house. They were serving 5 different pizzas.
     On the wedding day we all got up early, dressed, and drove down to Monterrey. It�s about an hour south of San Jose. The wedding and the reception were held at Tarpy�s Road House; a classy place with an antique look. The wedding went really smoothly and it seemed like everyone had a good time.
     Afterwards Khine and I drove over to the beach for a photo session of our own. The wedding party was going to go to the beach for pics but things were getting a little behind schedule so they canceled it. Khine and I went anyways because we wanted to see Pacific beaches, especially since we traveled so far.
     On our drive back to Jue�s we stopped at an authentic CA orchard and bought a box of freshly picked cherries and strawberries. We also stopped at a farmers market to see what local products were indigenous to that area.
     At Jue�s there was a final wedding party. And again we had pizza! We all stayed up late playing games then crashed. The next morning we pretty much said our goodbyes, took a detour to the SF airport through Cupertino so we could see Apple�s Headquarters, and we were off to Singapore.

                         To see all the pics click HERE

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Nashville Opera: Rigoletto
April 17, 2010 02:35:16 PM

Khine and I went to our first real Opera. And I mean Real; tons of rich people all dressed up drinking their $10 glasses of wine, a full sized orchestra, and the whole thing was sung in Italian, luckily there was a small screen above the stage for sub titles so you you know what's going on as they sing. The tickets were $80 a pop but we got them for free from one of Khine's friends from work. It was an interesting experience, and even though it was a real formal, foreign love musical, it was still kind of fun pretending to be like the other real classy people there for one night. Now it's not something I'm looking to do on a regular basis though, but hey, you know, I'm willing to try anything once.

DATE: April 17, 2010 03:35:41 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: It was really fun =D dressing up and all.

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My first Competitive Run: Isaiah 5k
March 20, 2010 11:11:10 PM

     I've always enjoyed running, in fact, it's the only exercise I get. But even after 4 years of really getting serious about it, I've never done more than just run for myself. Well today that all changed. One of Khine's friends from work invited us to participate in a 5k competition held by her church, the Isaiah Challenge. For the longest time only Khine was going to go, but right around 1.5 weeks left they were loosing their training steam so I thought I'd join in to help keep them motivated by running with them since I run on a regular basis any ways.
     So today was the actual run. It started around 12:30 and the weather held out the whole time. I think I did pretty well, out of around 100 people I finished in 15th with a time of 32:30. 5 kilometers is about 3.2 miles and it's a lot harder than it sounds. I thought I was going to throw up at least twice during, but I pushed it and I didn't walk once, ran the whole thing, and so did Khine!
     Despite all the prayers and preachy stuff, it was a pretty good day. We got free pizza and gatoraid afterwards, and I really liked running for competition rather than just jogging on a treadmill day in and day out. I would probably do it again.

DATE: March 21, 2010 09:27:00 PM NAME: KM
COMMENT: Yeah! Need to go get those foot paddings soon! And then, IRONMAN!!

DATE: March 22, 2010 08:44:57 AM NAME: dankrill
COMMENT: Very soon! It's ashamed that the only thing keeping me from running even more are these damn foot blisters.

DATE: May 26, 2010 11:21:01 AM NAME: Andy
COMMENT: sweet. nice job guys

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