AdamStout^.com

In case you got home with your new iPad and then realized that you can't really do much with it, there is some hope.  Although Apple doesn't think you need to be able to print anything anymore (they are very forward thinking remember), HP has created a new all in one printer/scanner/copier that is compatible with the iPad.  While not officially supported by Apple, it is your best option for printing from your iPad.


Enjoy your iPad!!!

Yesterday Jenny and I were out and stopped by a local restaurant for lunch.  It is obvious to me that we have now come to the time of Snowmageddon.  Why else would you have a sign like this on your patio?  As a native San Diegian, this is just not right.

After lunch we stopped by a nearby Home Depot.  While shoveling the never ending snow the last week, we broke the shaft on our steel reinforced snow shovel so we decided to pick up a new one.  The local grocery stores have been sold out for a while, but we figured that Home Depot may have gotten some new shovels in this weekend in preparation for the next round of snow next week.

As a Christmas present, Jenny got me a Home Brewing kit from Mr. Beer.  I had mentioned in the past that I wanted to brew some "Stout's Stout" mostly as a joke (since I don't really care for stouts) but underneath that joke, I really did want to try a home brew.  This kit was a great starter, it come with everything I needed and instructions on how not to screw it up.  To the right you can see some of bottled beverages that were produced.  Now we just a have a few more weeks to wait while the carbonation kicks in a then the Stout Ale will be ready for consumption.

Brewing is fun but what I really want to try is distilling.  I'm not sure if it is legal where I live but after I do some more home brewing, I think I'm going to look into that. Have you had any luck with home distilling?

We took pictures from the brewing a few weekends ago along with the bottling from today.

For those of you who haven't heard, the Snowpocalypse is upon us, we are supposed to get 20" to 30" of snow tonight.  And on top of that there is supposed to be lighting. 
This picture is from the Shopper Stopper we had last month but it should give you an idea of what is to come.  Being from San Diego originally, this is all a bit to absorb but it was nice to get kicked out of the office at 2 and told to go home.  I never got a snow day from school, so I'll take what I can get and enjoy it.

One plus side of this weekend is that I learned the term "snowtarded".  UrbanDictionary.com lists the definition as, "Those who have no clue how to drive/function in the snow" and there is no better way to describe the people out here in D.C.  This storm is bad, but it will be clear in a few days.  There is no need to buy up a month of supplies from the store like people seem to be doing.  These are the same idiots who don't realize you need to drive slower on snow regardless of teh speed limit.

I'm just going to try to stay home this weekend.

I'm not going to go into detail about ho much spare time I have, but yesterday I was reading a dictionary and came across an explanation of why we use the word "love" in tennis to describe zero points.

Although after a little more research this seems in doubt, what I read was that love is an Americanization of the French word "L'euf" meaning egg (which is what a 0 kin of looks like right?). 

Even if it didn't come from the French, people seem to agree it is from Americans mispronouncing the original (which is also perhaps Dutch).

Yesterday I pointed out that Reuters needs to get a new editor who can proof read their articles, it looks like CNN needs one as well.  I was reading an article about Palin's new deal with Fox when I learned that the GOP had presidential primaries in 2009.  I must be behind the times, I thought all the primaries were in 2008 when we had the general election for president.

When we lived in Pittsburgh, we didn't need two cars so I left my Z3 in San Diego.  Once we decided to move to D.C., we realized a convertible didn't make too much sense so we sold my car and just kept the Montero.  Right before we moved out here, I got the news that I would be traveling every week so we decided to put off buying a car until I was back here driving to work every day.

As my traveling comes to an end, Jenny and I had to finally stop our procrastinating and buy a new car.  We were looking at a used Honda Fit but it after looking around it looked like a new Hyundai or Kia would be cheaper.  We were looking at a Kia Forte but the morning we were planing on going out for a test drive, I was looking at the inventory of a local Kia dealer and saw the price of a Soul.  It was pretty comparable to a Forte so I asked Jenny to take a look.  She liked it and after a test drive, we were sold (literally). 

Since we were looking at new cars, I looked up the Costco Auto Buying Program.  I had seen cars parked out in front Costcos for years and never though much of it, but I figured it couldn't hurt to see what the program offered.  Basically, all you have to do is look up a dealer who participates in your area and tell them you are a Costco member.  Then you get a price a certain amount below invoice with no negotiating.  Based on the Edmunds True Market Value which tells you what people are paying for a certain car in your area, this is a pretty good price.

The one catch is that you have to buy a car on the lot and can't order one.  Not a huge issue, but while I wanted a car that was metallic gray, the only one that they had in stock which the options we wanted was in Alien (Kia's name for metallic green).  As you can see based on the picture to the right, that is the one we got.  This happened to be the color that Jenny liked the most so it worked out well for us.

While we haven't had it long, I'm pretty happy with the Soul so far.  Having built-in BlueTooth is a great feature and while I'm not sure I'm going to pay $15 a month to renew the XM, it is a nice feature.  If I was driving more than 5 miles to work, I would think about it some more.