Hows my little stirrer?

Hello!
Over the last couple of days I built a stir plate for making beer (well, yeast) . It was a fun project and I learned a new life skill to boot! Many of the beers I brew seem like they don't ferment as completely as they should and having a good population of healthy yeast to start fermentation is one of the biggest keys to making this happen. I decided to build one from scratch because if you were to buy one online they easily go for $50-$100+ just for a thing that spins a magnetic bar in place. So for under $30 I was able to make my own!

Yesterday I spent a few hours at home working on this, I took the day off from work because a cold had deenergized me and sitting at the table watching metal melt was actually pretty therapeutic.

So here's how I did it, Loyal followers might be bored but this post is for the internet strangers who might want to tackle this for themselves.

Part List:
Cigar Box (mine was $2 I got it from a liquor store with a cigar humidor)
Machine Screws, Nuts, Lock Nuts, Washers (you can see the sizes in the photo)
Old Computer Fan, I had a fancy LED one on hand from my out of commission PC I built in High School (I got rid of my junk part computers.)
Potentiometer
On off switch
Power Jack Socket (make sure it fits your power cable if you use an old one)
Wire
Old 12V power cable (I got rid of a bunch a few years ago so I  bought a new one. Damn.)
Drill and bits
Soldering Iron with Electrical Solder
Wrench and vice grip was useful too.

Parts & some tools.

Measure and Drill. I made mine slightly off center because there is a graphic on top that I thought would make a good visual cue for knowing where the magnets were located. Experience has now taught me that was a good idea at the time but unnecessary.

I couter-sunk the screw heads a little so they wouldn't stick out as far.

Washers for stability so I don't pull only on the wood.

I had to drill out the front a little so that I could get the mounting nut onto the threads.

Big hole for the On/Off Switch

An interested person could use this as a wiring diagram

This was my first time soldering anything.

 I hope the above two pictures can help show the wiring for the on/off switch. The diagram in the review section of the Amazon page was what I used.

This seems like a good time to say, unlike a lot of DYI stir plates rather than hard wiring a split power cable around the inside I used a power jack. Since I'm a recent Dad I realized if the cord were to get kicked or pulled I would rather the power cord pop out than to have to re solder (or buy) a bunch of parts. For only one extra hole and two more soldier points, it wasn't much extra work, and it cost less than $1, totally worth it.

This one is tricky, you actually solder the right wire to the first two posts and the left wire just goes to the far left post.

I used lock nuts to hold the fan up so it can be as close to the lid as possible. I chose lock nuts because they wont slip with constant vibration so they will stay in place when a little fan is spinning on top of them. On the bottom of the screws I used two nuts to hold the screw tight, it's a poor mans lock nut, this way I didn't need to use a wrench to get them all the way to the bottom, just to tighten.

A couple of nuts on top of the fan to tighten, it works!

I thought I read somewhere that you want some distance between your magnets and the fan to keep the fan motor from interfering with the magnets. I don't know if that's exactly why, but I had these washers around and they ended up fitting the center part of the fan perfect. This is them being glued together.

I held the magnets on the washer under the flask with the stir bar in it. You have to align the polarity of the magnets up with the stir bar so it automatically rights itself above the magnets, so the ends of the bar are attracted to the magnets, not repelled. When I first did it, one end spun away when the other stayed attracted, but when I flipped the other magnet it aligned nicely.

Stupid foamy but effective Gorilla Glue.

Mounting to the fan with more glue. Clamped overnight.

My assistant, Jinx. 

 The big test! It works! I had to do some tweaking with the height of the fan to get it to fit properly but afterward all was good!

 My first test with water kept throwing the bar off, despite being able to spin at high speed while it was dry. After asking for some help from the homebrewing subreddit I stuck another magnet to both the glued ones to increase their strength. Which worked! I'll probably also get another smaller stir bar because it should fit between the two magnets, not beyond, this will supposedly help it spin faster to create a bigger vortex.

This is my baby vortex but it's all I'll need.

The puropse of the stir plate is to keep yeast in suspension and to aerate the liquid they're in to help build a nice healthy population. A bigger vortex may actually do more harm than good for the yeast. I just want to make sure my stir bar won't get thrown in the middle of the night, so if it can spin faster without getting thrown it should work just fine at a slower speed when I'm using it for it's purpose.

Final thoughts:
Soldering isn't as hard as I thought it would be, I was really dreading it, but after watching this video on YouTube I realized it wasn't so bad. I picked up a $4 soldering Iron and had some solder on hand in my old computer repair kit.
The potentiometer I got might not be the right size for my project, only about a quarter of the dial is functional before the fan just stops spinning. I don't know if it has something to do with the LEDS taking some current, I don't know how that stuff works, maybe someone more knowledgeable than me could let me know.
I might get some grippy rubber feet to stick to the bottom.

This was fun! Altogether I think I spent about 6 hours on this project.

Hows my little biker?

You know when you're at a store and they have a bike with a sign that says 'WIN ME!' on top of a big pile of something? I usually associate that with a liquor store and a bike hanging above a bunch of Beer. We were at our lovely local Co-Op in Urbana a few weeks ago and I saw this goofy looking bike on top of a pile of Honest Tea, I thought, sure why not, I like signing up for free things. Much to my surprise I got a call on Monday, I was drawn as the winner of a folding Citizen Bike! 

Last night we picked it up I bought my first ever Honest Tea (It's the least I could do) and when we got home I took it out around town for it's maiden voyage. It's definitely not built for speed but it's certainly lots of fun. I feel like I look like a giant on it, which makes me feel silly and then I like it even more. 

Shameless.

Hows my little nuptial?

As of today, any of my friends can get married to whomever they love anywhere in the country.
Moving in the right direction America.
Thank you for your hard work, strangers.

Hows my little memorial weekend traditionalist?

In May of the year 2000 I began what became an annual pilgrimage to the cabin of my good friend Justin. Last year was our not so grand finale of this annual tradition. This weekend I spent quite a bit of time reflecting on my annual tradition and this being the first year I didn't make the trip I thought it was worth sharing some good memories of our shenanigans and adventures.

In the interest of time, rather than telling a long disjointed story I'll list out some of the highlights of what went down on these weekends.

Easy Cheese - The first year we went grocery shopping and I insisted on getting like 4 cans of the stuff. I may have finished one, the others greeted me more than one year after.

Cookies.

My mexican "poncho" the guy who sold it to me called it a pullover though. Ponchos don't have sleeves. This was a staple piece of my weekend wardrobe, I usually slept in it.

Putting in the dock - We only did it one time and it was freezing.

Losing the prop on the blue boat without beaching it, still an unsolved mystery.

Launching fireworks, lots and lots and lots...and lots of fireworks.

Going to movies on rainy days.

Bowling at night.

I got a boaters permit to drive the Jet ski solo, I rode the jet ski for hours. Bouncing spinning, tipping, and falling off were some of my favorite things to do, as I got older I realized I really like driving around looking at houses too.

Taking the new Jet Boat out one morning and running it out of gas. We got towed back in.

Taking a Jet Ski out and flipping it and it didn't restart, this was a different year but I think the same guy towed us back.

Tubing, waterskiing, learning to wakeboard, and cruising in the pontoon listening to the best rock and roll the early 2000's gave us.

The Kite tube.

Smoking my first (of many) cigars on the dock. I didn't know cigars could impair someone's ability to walk before that one.

The real naked centaur.

Some other naked things. Mostly involving running and swimming.

The Kite Tube.

Mountain Dew (before it became MTN Dew), Lots and lots of it.

Board games, like Talisman and Settlers of Cataan. Risk was also played over the course of a day often, I did not partake in Risk usually.

Puzzles.

Throwing farts.

Setting up the water trampoline was always one of our jobs. An air blower and a giant inflated tube was hours of fun for a bunch of 15-18 year olds.

The blob. We had more fun with it on land launching people off than we ever did on water (too slippery).

Lots of really really good food. Justin's Dad is a wiz on the grill and we had some fantastic meals like Brats, Houston Burgers, Lobster (or was it crab legs?), Salmon, Prime Rib, Steaks, and yummy egg bakes.

Geocaching

In my time the Houstons had (not all at once) 3 power boats, 1 pontoon, and 4-ish Jet skis.

Eventually we all turned 21 and alcohol consumption became a part of our weekend. There was a beer pong tournament for a few years.

Haircuts.

Football tossing and yard games.

Night cruises on the pontoon.

Bar Hopping, Justin always liked this bar called the Top Spot.

Long conversations about anything under the sun, the foundation of our fantastic friendships.

Summer Shandy in a can!

Lots of stories, catching up, joking, drinking, smoking, and laughing around a campfire.

Last year I even found some morel mushrooms and fried them up.

Relaxing, and getting some sun.

I think I will forever associate Our Lady Peace and Oasis with riding shotgun in the Lexus with the windows down to the cabin.


I went up there with a group of guys who I still call my closest friends for fourteen years. We didn't always have the full crew and new people rotated in and out but it was always a good time. Unfortunately all good things must eventually come to an end. Last year most of us had either moved all over the country, or recently married to begin or continue new traditions. Every year memorial weekend was a source of bickering between Laura and I because it's the first Long weekend of the summer and she never shared it with me. After beginning college and then moving to Illinois I found spending memorial weekend with my best friends more and more valuable, I loved catching up with everyone along with running around naked, shooting fireworks, and getting drunk around a campfire (sometimes all in the same night). Life has a way of changing, our final few memorial weekends were remarkably different than our first few, not only in our activities and lack of nudity, but also our conversations changed too. We went from talking about school, sports, girls we liked, girls we needed to break up with, what college we were going to, and stories from the year at school, to more adult things like, current events, who was buying what house/car, where people were moving to, what their new job was like, and what their goals were. Of course like old friends do, we would still trade stories and memories from the old days.

With a heavy heart I'm sad to be moving on from this annual tradition, but like someone once said, when you shut one door a new one will open. I have a new baby girl, and I'm excited to start shaping her memories of memorial weekend traditions. This year we didn't start anything noteworthy but next year will be a new and exciting time as she'll be up and moving.

So, Cathy and Lanning Houston, thank you. Without you guys providing a wonderful place to make memories and supplying hungry guys with endless amounts of food, fireworks, mechanic shop bills, and gasoline we all wouldn't have made the lasting memories we have. You may never read this but I'm forever grateful.

And to my friends, Justin, Jon, Andrew, Brian, Henry, Matt, Ben, Tom, and Alex, thanks for the memories.

This is probably one of the sappiest blog posts I've made yet but like I keep telling myself, I write this blog as a diary of sorts, everyone else who enjoys it is a bonus. Today I realized that for nearly half my life on the same weekend every year I went to the same place and had a great time, this is worth marking in my online diary.

Hows my little governor?

It's not often one gets to meet the governor of their state. In my case I handed him my wine glass and said he needed it for the picture. He drank from it, stole it, and walked away. I eventually got it back from his assistant? sans wine. That was my whole interaction with governor Bruce Rauner. The man with a million robo callers, whom I didn't vote for strictly based on the how harassing the frequency of the calls were. But anyway, I was in springfield pouring some samples of wine on the Governor's Mansion lawns, to spread word that Illinois wine is good, when my photo op happened. Not much to say about the event except that I realized how strange the world of politics really is when looking form the outside in.

From Left: My district representative Chad Hays, Some Lady, The Gov, Me.

Hows my little Facebook quitter?

Recently I’ve been having this rather large and incredibly corny debate in my head and with other people regarding the world’s largest social advertising network. It all boils down to me realizing tired of facebook and I think I should leave it once and for all. Most of you might remember I’ve done this twice now. I’m probably turning into the boy who cried wolf, but that was then, before facebook had over a billion users, before businesses were pretty much required to have a page, before ads, before those stupid one dollar gifts, before farmville, hell it was before newsfeed was added. That was back when the facebook was solely about connecting you with people.

But now that I’ve connected with everyone I’ve begun unconnecting with them too. I think I left college with three to five hundred “friends”, many of whom I simply attended high school with or met in college classes, I didn’t even have an interest in their ongoing lives. It took a few years but I finally paired my friend list down to around 150. Which to me sounds like a lot of people but some of those friends have over A THOUSAND (facebook) FRIENDS! Which is totally cool, but how can you be interested in that many people’s lives? Maybe you can. Anyway. The reason I’ve stayed with it since moving to Illinois is that it was a great way to keep in touch with the people I like without actually keeping in touch with them. This is just the way life is now, so I won’t bitch about that too.

So here is where my disdain for facebook starts. I’m a guy who just wants to use it to know what my friends are up to. Lately thats been what they’re drinking, where they are, who they married, and what kid just fell out of a vagina. Which is awesome, that’s why I’m connected. But there is also a vast scourge of regurgitated unoriginal content having little to do with anybody’s lives (I’m looking at you ecards). I’ve become a professional at hiding game notifications and requests. I’ve even unliked businesses and other pages because if I want to find more info I’ll just check their page at a relevant time, or I’ll sign up for their e-mail newsletter. 

On top of all of this I have another major issue. Most of what I consider to be my real life closest friends on facebook, the people who I’d like to know what’s going in in their lives, no longer participate aside from the occasional ‘like’ because they are friends with too many people to share their ideas and thoughts. Professional lives have crossed into their personal life, and pictures and opinions are now too dicey to share socially. Facebook made these cool friend lists to prevent such happenings but they are apparently underutilized.

Lastly I hate that newsfeed sorting constantly reverts back to top rather than new. For some reason this isn't a permeant setting and it drives me up the wall. To me, the top post sorting doesn't make sense. Plus I hate when people I don't know bring old posts back from their order by liking or commenting on it days, weeks, or even years later.

I’ve taken great pains to make my facebook time shorter and simpler so I don’t waste so much time on it. I’ve been largely successful but even with all of my efforts of friend lists, unliking and unfriending I’m not getting the same easy straightforward experience I once enjoyed with this social network. 

Which is a roundabout way of saying, maybe I should quit facebook once and for all, I don’t like it anymore. If you’ve read my rant this far you’re probably thinking this blog post has been a lot of whining about one of the most lame and insignificant parts of someone’s life.

Which brings up another point, facebook is no longer insignificant. There are over a billion users. Hell, people in some parts of the world consider facebook the internet. Some businesses opt just for a free facebook page rather than a webpage. Bands announce tours, share links to early releases. Stores announce sales with offer codes available only to people on their page. Authors announce book tours and release dates, newscasts air comments and posts. Not to mention all of the pages just for pushing news, teaching, and entertaining. So leaving facebook can disconnect a person from some of their favorite things in the world, having a tool that makes it so easy to consume this information is rather useful, some might even say necessary. 

So in our digital age can someone feasibly quit?

Of course! But at the same time you have this tool to remain connected to the world. A tool that is relatively easy to use, so quitting just makes life a little more challenging for you. But only a little. So right now i’m not sure if I’m going to totally nuke my account by changing my password to something I’ll never remember and log off for good, or if I’m just going to go inactive to pop on occasionally to check out something I need to know of. What I can say for sure is facebook as a platform isn’t about connecting people any more, its about connecting money to facebook through people and I’m not enjoying myself anymore. 

Also I’m quite certain 95% of my readers of this blog follow the link through facebook so I do have that going against me if I quit. The irony of automatically sharing my quitting facebook blog post to facebook is one I enjoy.

EDIT: I wrote most of this over two weeks ago. Since then I’ve taken all my shortcuts from my phone and computers away so I'm not unconsciously checking. I can honestly say, I haven’t missed it. The only time I needed it was for work, I can just make a work account and nuke my personal one. I’m done folks. Done for good.

After having a conversation with someone else who very recently quit I realized I’m engaging in an uphill battle towards simplicity and straightforward updates which isn't the facebook platform any more. 

I guess you can find me on instagram but honestly most of you have my email address and phone number, I’ll still be around.

Hows my little eclipse?

Last Saturday Laura, Lilly and I got up before the crack of dawn to watch the lunar eclipse. We set the alarm for 4:45am and trucked out to Sleepy Creek to watch the moon disappear. I got a fancy new camera before Lilly was born and now I'm excited about taking pictures of things again.
So I did a little research on how to take pictures of the moon, which is surprisingly tricky, even though it's pitch black outside you're still taking a picture of a great big light source, so my shutter speeds were actually similar to a daytime photograph. When I was reading about this it didn't make sense to me so I went out with more of a trial and error approach. After about 20 minutes of internal panic because I was taking pictures of just a great big ball of light and the eclipse was underway I decided to employ the advice of my research, and sure enough, the people who were experienced in this subject knew best! Shocking!
I ran back and fourth from the car to the camera every ten minutes for about an hour and a half to capture this lovely little stepped eclipse shot.
We were expecting a blood moon where the moon turns red after it disappears but the sun was rising and the moon set over the horizon before we saw any of that. Oh well.
It was a fun night, and now I'm even more excited to take some pictures of stars and to try some more moon photos, next time I'll frame my shot a little better and have something a bit more exciting to look at. In the meantime, if you missed the eclipse I've brought to to you.

It's more interesting if you zoom in.

Hows my little Baby?

Last week was quite exciting for Laura and I.
 
It all started last Sunday at about 8pm Laura had a Gallbladder attack. After lying around the house wondering what the hell was going on (they didn't sound like labor pains) we finally called the hospital and they said, "Chest pain is a sticky thing, you should probably come in, just to be safe." Since Laura was pregnant it seemed like a good idea. After a fun couple of hours, several tests in the ER, and a doctor telling us 'we'll probably have a C-Section but we'll wait to see what L&D says.' We weren't excited but we were remarkably calm about the whole situation.
So we headed up to Labor and Delivery to monitor baby. We were awake for almost the whole night with various tests, a noisy blood pressure cuff, and the false hope of labor. Our nurse thought Laura's cervix had dilated while we were there but had stopped, this seemed fishy only after I had notified everyone we were probably having a baby. After the Doc came in and confirmed she was dilated at 3cm but was not in baby pushing labor, but rather some other mild form of labor with contractions. On that news we went home for some much needed sleep that whole afternoon. That was Monday.

Thursday we had a few things to do in Champaign, we started off by getting our carseat installation checked out at a place that does it for free. I learned that we picked out a good car seat AND installed it correctly! Apparently something like 70% (or more) of carseats are installed improperly. Later we had a regular baby checkup appointment and baby wasn't really moving on the ultrasound so we scheduled a followup for Friday, just to be sure everything was cool. That afternoon we saw a movie in the luxury theatre with recliners, and went out for lunch, it was a great relaxing afternoon together. That night we had a breastfeeding class and learned a lot of basics.
Friday morning we headed back into the Doc and Laura was again hooked up to a monitor and had another cervical exam, about halfway through it our doctor popped her head up and grinned a giant grin and said, "I'm going to stretch your cervix" After some very uncomfortable wiggling from my wife the doctor said you're going to have your baby soon. She had progressed to 4cm over the week.
We hopped into our car and made the 35 minute drive back home as Laura started having her first uncomfortable contractions. By the time we got home they were already about 5-6 minutes apart. I realized I had to take care of some things at work that I didn't want to describe over the phone so I helped Laura inside where her water broke. Back at work I had a bunch of boxes from an Amazon order that I grabbed quickly and turned back to the house. One item was a back massager I thought was going to be necessary for Labor(it wasn't). Laura and been home for 20 minutes tops when the rest of her water burst out with a gush. Again, we hopped back into the car and drove 25 minutes back into town to the hospital.
We got to the hospital at about 11:00am and at about 12pm she decided her pain was too great to manage on her own, she got an epidural at about 1:30pm. It helped for approximately one contraction. She had a second epidural an hour or so later. The second one alleviated pain greatly, but didn't eliminate it like they supposedly do. After about two hours epidural number two slowly began to fail. It wasn't doing anything by the time she began to push, she was now feeling everything. Apparently out in the nurses station someone quipped 'that poor woman needs an epidural', and when they said she's already had two there was a lot of sympathy pouring over from them.
Laura pushed like a champion for about an hour and a half and Lilly Lynn was born at about 5:53PM on Feb. 27.

The rest of the evening was a blur of pictures, food, walking around, calls, texts, and little baby cries. Altogether we had a great experience from the hospital staff and we are thankful that Laura had a relatively quick labor and Delivery.

I like this one for her limp noodle look.

Making the first call home!

First bath in the nursery!

Grandma and Grandpa Davis came the next day for a visit.

Discharged. Hurray

Which brings me to an exciting transition. One of my greatest pet peeves is when People let their kids take over their online presence. After looking from outside into the parenthood box for a long time and now living inside it, I get it, little things that seem adorable are what you want to show your friends and family. Except that I am your online friend, not your kid's online friend (in real life we're all friends). I feel so strongly about this that I'm not giving up my little blogging space for monthly or daily photos of our new little girl. Yes I love her to pieces and yes I think she's adorable and yes, when she shits again I'm going to be happy about that too. So FatTonyTCL.blogspot.com is going to still be full of stories of our lives, random thoughts, and my sometimes weird ideas/observations about the world. Just like when I got Jinx, and when I married Laura the stories will have them involved too.
So if you want to keep up with how little Lilly is growing and changing head over to http://odysseydays.blogspot.com/. I'm very excited to maintain this space with Laura in a similar vein as Scott and Brandee have with their kids. It's already linked over there on the top right box, it's called A Family Journey. This is one of the rare posts that will be the same on both pages.

Hows my little roommate?

Someone recently told me a baby only needs three things, Milk, Diapers, and your love. Which is mostly true. But on those words do not uphold the capitalist America that I know and love. So Laura and I have been busy keeping the economy afloat and preparing for our new person to impact the world.

Last year I set a new low for number of blogs written, getting our baby's things and room put together had a very large impact on that. I could've written a blog on why I thought the Motorola MBP36S was the superior baby monitor on the market, but honestly who gives a shit. Now a blog about a room transformation, that my friends, is something someone will read!

This was probably one of the bigger undertakings Laura and I have set-fourth to conquer around our house. We had to basically gut, clean, paint, organize, and relocate everything in our oversized closet masquerading as a guest room. Thanks to my parents moving (twice) I found many treasures I didn't know of, forgot, or didn't want but left tucked away still existed in this space. But also do you remember moving in your early 20's thinking, why do I have so much shit!? Well combine those things and you have what lurked in all of the nooks of our guest room.

So this was it before we started our uphill battle. It is considered "clean".

 From time to time I would project PS3 games onto the blue wall in glorious surround sound.

One of the first things we did was replace our dresser in our bedroom with two tall chests to hold all of our clothes, this got our clothes out of the room. We were also able to finally donate this ugly dresser to an equally tolerating home.

After resorting clothes, and donating some we were able to start digging through things. See that nightstand? Aside from that lovely decorative copper pot there is a desk organizer complete with some game boy games and spare yo-yo strings from 6th-7th grade. Along with some college projects. Out went the junk and into a tomato box and up to the attic went treasures that I couldn't live without.

Much Better. So much less stressful to look at.

 Our cedar chest didn't fit into our bedroom anymore, this was our temporary idea for it's location. This space felt much better. Look at that nice homebrew nook! I thought it was great until Laura said, I hope you know that's not staying in here. :(

Time to paint! Organized room be damned!

Homebrew nook downsized :(

Let the baby thing invasion begin!

We got a crib(right) and a cradle(far left) that Laura's Dad built for her older brother Scott! This cradle is the family bicycle and everyone's had a ride, from niece and nephew to many cousins! Baby J is up next.

Laura searched high and low for a fun kids rug. After she found one, I looked high and low for a place that actually had it in stock. It took a while but we think it was worth it. Jinx doesn't like it though. She scratches at the different animal faces, she doesn't particularly like the rhino but the monkey has never been scratched at. Weird cat.

 Laura's Co-worker's held a baby shower for her and we got some good loot. Thanks to our hard work there is a home for all of it, with room to spare! (for now)

Laura found a good idea on Pintrest to hold some changing stuff for easy access. So I made one! The day I finished painting the baskets it fell off the wall. That didn't make me happy. Especially since it hangs over the changing pad where baby will spend a decent amount of time. After tripling my number of screws holding it together and reinforcing the wall mount as well it's not going anywhere from here out.

We're officially done setting up for baby, we have all the big things, and almost all of the small things. We are now just building anticipation and waiting for little Baby J to make their screaming arrival.