Andrew (R.S Admin) @ajroach42@retro.social

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You can find me at http://ajroach42.com

Well, no. I should rephrase that.

I don't know how much alcohol is produced by yeast in the day or two it would take to carbonate a soda. I don't know how much sugar would be consumed.

I should learn that.

I'll learn that.

I wish I could carbonate stuff myself, but the only safe and ethical method of home carbonation I know of is yeast.

The problem with adding yeast to a soda mixture is that the yeast eats a bunch of the sugar (so the soda gets less sweet) and produces alcohol (which I dislike.)

I know it's possible to use yeast to carbonate a beverage without introducing a significant amount of alcohol, because there are companies that do it, but I don't know enough about the process.

With the ginger and the roots + a dash of vanilla extract you've got root beer.

I think that coffee is a great addition to the root beer flavor, and I like the addition of caffeine.

It's amazing how well the coffee marries with the root brew. It's basically a perfect addition.

Sometimes I will take the instant espresso, heat dried rather than frreeze dried (normally this is bad, but in this case the extra bitterness is good) and add a lot of sugar to it, add some water, and reduce it down to a syrup.

Sometimes I will add some ginger or some sassafras or some sarsaparilla to the brew.

Let it cool, filter the solids.

When you're ready to serve it, mix it 3 parts syrup to 4 parts seltzer water.

Today, mine was coffee milk. Two table spoons of instant espresso (freeze dried, because it's better that way) in a cup of warm (almost hot, but not actually hot) milk.

I add to that a few tea spoons of sugar, maybe two, maybe a full table spoon, depending on how I'm feeling. Today it was more like one and a half teaspoons.

This method is neat, because the coffee is dehydrated to start with, and you re-hydrate it with milk. It changes the texture of the brew, makes it velvety.

How do you take your coffee?

Just stuck some smoked coffee, chicory, salt, and filtered water in a jug. Stuck the jug in our icebox.

Tomorrow, I'll mix it 60/40 with some high quality milk from a local dairy, and then add about a tablespoon of simple syrup. I'll pour that over ice.

The end result is, allegedly, new orleans style iced coffee. It's delicious, and I'm glad I took the time to prep it tonight.

AIM culture really was something else.

Alerts when your friends logged in. Appearing away, so that you didn't alert people, but could still keep up with the people you *really* wanted to talk to. Direct connect file transfers.

I remember how, fifteen years ago, I would sit at a computer with an IM client open talking to 10 or 12 different people. Sometimes having the same conversation with each of them. Sometimes in chat rooms.

Mostly, though, I was always talking to *someone*, not to the void.

It was less lonely than the internet today, where all my direct messages and group chats live in my phone.

We use zoom for meetings at work. Would it be insensitive for me to set a picture from the Andromeda Strain as my virtual background?

If it would be, should that stop me?

Hatbot is back? Damn. Gotta block another instance.

I AM GOING IN TO BATTLE AND NEED ONLY YOUR STRONGEST POTIONS.

One thing I really love about onion sites is that they are slow enough that you can't effectively use them for real time stuff, which makes the internet about distribution again.

I had pizza, made with biscuit dough and homemade sauce, cooked in our toaster.

It was good enough.

What's everyone having for lunch today?

We watched (well, I watched. She fell asleep) Star Trek Insurrection last night.

Better than I remembered it being (and I liked it when it came out.)

Next up is nemesis, and I am sorely tempted to skip it.

Saw a post saying something to the effect of "guess I have to stop lying to myself about all the things I'd do if I just had the time" and ... I can't relate?

I mean, I'm still working. But I'm also cooking and cleaning house and reading books and watching movies and making toys and writing and recording mission logs for the crew of the Jupiter's Ghost.

But that's how I cope, I guess.

Gotta get back to this now. http://ajroach42.com/reaching-the-world-from-windows-3-1/

I think I've settled on a palm OS hotsync style solution, and I've made some progress towards building one, but I feel like my goals aren't clear enough for me to be able to continue moving forward.

So I gotta do some requirements gathering on myself, and map out what I need to build.

I don't actually write software often, so this is unfamiliar territory for me.