Sorry to hear about your health, Brink. I hope that you are doing a bit better now. Haven't had a chance to check the forums until now. Still trying to iron out my computer problems, and then the holidays consumed a lot of time, too. I had 'walking pneumonia' once, and it was very rough and hard to lick. Hope you do better and get well real soon.

On a happy note, I see today that out team has made it to #89. Great! Of course, I also notice that the Teddies will pass us tomorrow.

I hope that everyone had a nice Christmas.

Cheers.

Bill Velek

Nice of you to visit again, Adywebb. I'm sure our whole team wishes you a belated Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year, too.

Brink, I hope your health is continuing to improve.

Fred, I hope your computer and job situation is working out okay, too.

Everyone -- HomeBrewers and visitors alike -- happy holiday wishes to all of you, and please be careful and safe with any New Year celebrations. My wife and I will probably go to a New Years party -- for the first time in many years -- but I'm not sure I'll have anything to drink. Many folks in our small town frown on it, and so it just isn't very socially acceptable around here. For one thing, this is a 'dry county' -- no bars or liquor stores or even beer except in private clubs -- to give you an idea of the predominant attitude where I live; I have to drive almost 30 miles one way to buy any, and until a year or so ago there was a limit of possessing just one case of beer at a time. Anyway, maybe I'll take a six pack of assorted homebrews (enough to share a few) and leave them in the car until I see what the party is like.

As for homebrewing, I don't think I shared the good news of how nice Santa was to me this year. My wife bought me a digital scale, a digital thermometer, a new set of beer mugs, and other brewing utensils, and my kids gave me a kegging system and a "HomeBrewer's Garden" book -- about growing hops and herbs for brewing.

Finally, while we dropped from #89 to #90 tonight (passed by the Teddies), we should recapture 89th tomorrow night, then #88 on Saturday night, and then #87 on Sunday night before the new year. What a great performance by our team this year -- especially the heavy hitters who can take most of the credit for getting us here. But we all contribute what we can. Thanks.

Cheers.

Hi Bill, Brink, Dave, everyone else lurking (myself included)

I haven't been keeping up with the forums, still trying to get more machines online, but I am not sure it's going to happen soon. I won't give up hope, and all machines I do have are still crunching for Homebrewers.

Brink, I am sorry to hear you had trouble, both personally and with a less than caring workplace (though I know that 95+% of workplaces are less than caring, it's always worth a hope that you would have been in the 5%).

If you have asthma, may I recommend moving to Arizona (not Phoenix)? My mother in law has asthma (takes medication once a day for it) but has had no overt symptoms for years - she walks miles every day with her dog, and feels fine. She also has a good doctor who took her off all the other crap she used to take, and gives her just one pill (don't ask me what it's called).

I hope everyone's new year is the best and brightest yet.

Cheers
FB

brinktastee,
Happy to hear you are on the mend. Look on the brightside, it is less than 70 degrees, your heat bill is reasonable, your snowmobile is not wearing out, the government's snowplowing budget is not getting spent, you should not be having any trouble getting your car started, etc. Sure does not seem like winter though. I like snow too, but Denver is going overboard.

Cheers

Sgt.Joe

Minnesota Crunchers

Happy New Year, everyone. I just checked our stats and it looks like we closed out the year better than I had predicted a couple of days -- and we're now #85 instead of #86. Very good work.

Also, I just accidentally discovered that I've been running UD agent at less than 100%. When I replaced my computer and reinstalled UD agent, I had forgotten all about how it is now throttled back by default -- and when I installed the program to increase it, I also noticed that my UD agent appeared to be set to only 25%. Is that a new default? Is it really necessary or appropriate to be setting this so low? It really gives the impression now that raising it all the way to 100% is harmful, or else that crunching is not needed as vitally as before.

Cheers.