I was reminded of how much I like beer on our trip to visit my parents in Washington State.
On the western side of the Cascades, the folks have a local brew called Rainier. The beer used to be brewed by the Rainier Brewery, but they went under a few years ago. Like radio stations and antiperspirants, the universe of beer labels is owned by three or four gigacorps.
Rainier beer may be churned out of corporate bowels in much the same fashion as Bud or MGD, but that doesn't keep it from being a supremely tasty, clean, and refreshing beer. It's an unassuming, easy-to-drink lager with a satisfyingly full malt flavor and the merest touch of hops.
Contrary to popular perception as pushed by platoons of pinheaded pundits, I don't believe that hops make a good brew. Hops may add some character, but in the end, I can't forget that hops are merely a preservative. Adding hops allows a weaker brew (lower alcohol content) to be kept longer. The bitterness of hops also masks any off flavors from the brewing process. In the days when brewers had to be enjoined from adding ingredients like blood to their brew, the bitterness of hops was a godsend.
Now that we have refrigeration and that brewing has been a science since the middle of the 19th century thanks to Carlsberg's J.C. Jacobsen, there's really no need for hops beyond tradition and taste.
I have to wonder about folks who trumpet their love of hoppy quaffs. To me, their raves end up sounding like "I love beer that tastes just like dish soap! Anything brewed that doesn't make you gag on your first pull is total crap! I have discovered a way to distance myself from the white-trash, Bud-swilling Bubbas of the world! I have built my tolerance to the point that I can chug brew that would make Linda Lovelace gag! I'd pass over a wonderful, malty Scotch ale for enema effluent if it had hops in it!"
There's nothing quite like curling a translucent shaving off a board with a Lie-Nielsen bench plane. Turning a bolt on your small-block Chevy is so much more pleasurable when you have a mirror-polished Snap-on combination wrench snugged into your palm.
As slick and beautiful as Lie-Nielsen planes are, a bronze #4 bench plane will set you back a hefty $300. An 11-piece Snap-on wrench set will put a $450 dent in your wallet. If I made a good living by using my tools, I might be able to justify paying such a whopping load for premium tools. I'm not a cabinetmaker, a finish carpenter, or a mechanic. I'm a tech writer with a tool addiction, so I get a lot of satisfaction from cheap tools that work well and allow me to get things done around the house.
My table saw is a perfect example. I wanted a cabinet saw for its inherent stability. Most of the cabinet saws I could find started at around $2,000 plus shipping. This was a bit more than I could justify to myself, let alone to my wife. I had a tough time settling for a contractor saw or a table-top saw considering some of the plywood cutting I planned to do.
In the end, I found Grizzly's G1023S saw. For less than $1,000 delivered, I got a solid cabinet saw with all the capability I will ever need.
I spend a lot of time bitching and moaning about work. I've dealt with a bit more insanity than usual in the past year or so that I've been the last remaining tech writer of a vibrant, healthy writing group. I'm currently being underpaid according to the STC's salary survey. The commute can suck festering donkey balls sometimes.
In the end, I still like my job.
I'd rather be working than not. The mortgage company that owns our house prefers money to other forms of exchange. Also, I'd hate to find another way to fund my home improvement habit.
The location is pretty nice. We're tucked deep into a business-park forest of concrete tip-up box-buildings. It may be a far, far cry from our halcyon days on University Ave in Palo Alto, but we are right next to a regional park on San Francisco Bay that affords some great recreational opportunities. I'm able to ride my bike to meet my wife and son at the local duck pond where we feed the gulls.
It's interesting to have so many projects so utterly dependent on me and so many bigwigs in the company working directly with me. This results in a constant ad hoc zaniness to my schedule, but at the same time, it's curiously ego-inflating.
The actual work itself is fascinating and rewarding. It seems there's always a new technology or new tool to learn. I'm constantly exercising my writing and editing skills.
So as long as they keep paying me, I'm happy to sit in my cube.
Lord knows I've done much worse work for much less money, like singeing all the hair from my forearms at a teriyaki take-out joint or lying on my back in icy mud under a customer's truck trying to hook up the U-Haul trailer they just rented.
Sometimes I sit in my warm cube with a cup of java and thank my lucky stars.
Then our CTO asks me to print out our Javadoc API doc for a sales presentation for the fifth time in as many years and my java cools a bit as I struggle to find a civil way to ask him where he's going to get a forklift for all 20,000+ pages.
Pakeha