October 4th, 2013 – The trip begins

We hit the road in the morning after saying our goodbyes to Briana at home and taking Joshua to school. Breakfast consisted of a sandwich and omelette from Paradise Bakery. The initial portion of the drive really wasn't too bad as there was no traffic leaving the Phoenix area and the trip down I-10 was pretty uneventful. As we approached the Riverside, CA area I started looking at the Brewery map (courtesy of the Pint Labs Brewery Map application I have installed on my phone) to find a good place to have lunch. Unfortunately, the 'search by location' feature of the application would continuously error out with Java IO errors so I couldn't refine my search any. I basically had to rely on the location based services on the phone to locate the breweries that were close to me.

We settled on a burger joint called Eureka. There I enjoyed a couple of beers from Hangar 24, a local brewery of the area. The burgers were very tasty and the service was good as well. It was nice to get off of the road for a bit and have a beer and some tasty beverages.

From there, we turned slightly to the left to head towards Paso Robles. Okay – side discussion. What is the proper way to pronounce 'Paso Robles?' I have always looked at the pronunciation as a spanish type word (pah-soh row-bless). But when we hit the town, we heard (and read) it being stated as pah-soh row-bulls. So which is it?

Instead of taking the 101 and other roads along the coast to head up north, we took I-5 and other highways to reach via state route 46. I've got to say that going that way is not so good on the eyes. Just vast fields of crops and basic desolated land.

Now, we didn't stay in Paso Robles and instead Tammy found a nicely renovated older hotel in Atascadero, called The Carlton Hotel. From check-in to check-out the service was fantastic and the amenities were very good. From the pillow top mattress with the down comforter and pillows to the 4 piece bath with jacuzzi tub. They even let us park in the loading zone of the hotel since they had a deal with local police.

We weren't sure what to eat, so we opted for a local pizza joint (emphasis on local). They served beer there as well (Central Coast Pizza) so it was an OK choice of a place. The pizza was your standard fare, and the experience was generally good until we encountered a bitter owner at the bar that had 'a few words to say' to one of his employees because she couldn't remember the details of what kind of red wines they carried at the establishment. It was close enough to walk there, so we were able to get a little bit of exercise :). Of course, I had to get a Firestone Walker DBA while there.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by Molly Pitchers. A local brewery that served 4 of their own style brews in a nice relaxing atmosphere. My plan is to try and get a sampler of brews at all of the locations that provide it, and this stop proved to be a good start to that plan. Good place with decent brews, and if in the area again I would stop by for more. No food, but most places I would not expect to have food unless it was a larger more established location.

40th Birthday Brewery Tour

So... What do you want to do for your 40^th birthday? I was asked this question by my beautiful wife. I answered with an idea for beer. Being that Dogfish Head Brewing is my favorite brewery, I figured we could plan a trip out to Delaware to visit the brewery and check out the scene. Upon further investigation, it would have probably been a great trip, but the brewery count out there in that specific area is pretty low. Instead of traveling out to the east coast during the fall months, we decided to try and save a few dollars and change up the trip to a California driving trip, hitting a variety of breweries along the way.

We decided to start from the Central Coast area. Namely Paso Robles. So we planned the trip to start from there and travel down to San Diego, doing 2 day stops along the way south enjoying our company during the trip.

Before I begin chronicling the trip, I want to thank Tammy's parents from coming down and watching over the kids during our escapades. Without their help, this definitely couldn't have happened!

New PC build

I have been clamoring to get a new PC together for a while now.  With the new year comes the opportunity to do so (thanks to having room for it in the budget).  I am in the process of figuring out exactly what I want in this machine.

I started out with a smaller case (smaller than mid tower) but not super small.  I then started looking into parts to go with it.  I definitely want to go with a core i7 (Ivy Bridge) CPU with an SSD for the main system bits.  Given this setup, I found that through the Intel purchase program I can get a 3 piece bundle that includes a CPU, SSD and motherboard.  I found a i7-3770K with a full ATX motherboard and 180GB SSD.  That was when I realized that the case that I selected would not do the trick.  So back to a Mid Tower case.

I started piecing together the rest of the system, including a 1TB second drive (may go bigger), 16GB of memory and a 660 ti video card.  I'm pretty much set on these items, and I want a full BluRay burner.

Of course, I started thinking more about this build, and thought to myself, "Do I really need to get a full blown build again?"  Looking back into what I use my current PC for the answer is probably not.  I want a good machine, but needing it to be expandable is not a high on the needs list.  So now I'm looking at a smaller setup.

I went back to the Employee Purchase site, and found a bundle that comes with the 180GB SSD, a mini ITX motherboard and an i7-3770S.  The 3770S doesn't come with an unlocked multiplier, so it significantly reduces the overclockability of the processor.  My last bit overclocking experience was with the good old Celeron 300 overclocked to 450.  The processors are so fast now, there really isn't a need to do any overclocking.

Back to a different case!  There are a number of mini ITX form factor cases out there, but found one with a great minimalist style.  It doesn't have any external 5.25", but I don't use the current optical drives in my current system, and if I need to use one I can just hook up an external drive.

What else is great about going smaller, is the reduction in price.

Now to start buying the pieces...

I have another knee, why not have surgery on it?

I learned at the tail end of last year that I have knees of an old man.

I have been having problems in my right knee with swelling and pain after strenuous activity.  I guess volleyball is a pretty strenuous activity on the knee, especially when playing indoor ball.  I was actually taking a break from indoor volleyball because of the tendonitis in my left knee from my ACL surgery, but it ended up my right knee doing me in this time.

My initial visit with Dr. Aschenbrener showed arthritis in my right knee, with a few bone spurs here and there and obvious indications of less than ideal amounts of cartilage.  With that finding, I was sent to the imaging center to get an MRI on my knee.

A few weeks later, I had my followup with the Doc, where I learned that I had a lateral meniscus tear.  I don't know exactly when this tear occurred.  It could have been a months ago, to years ago.  I have a feeling it was way back when I was living in Santa Clara and was playing indoor soccer when it actually happened.

Along with that news, I found out that my patella doesn't track correctly, which is causing additional wear and tear behind my patella that can be the cause of more pain and inflammation.  Ugh.

I actually went in for the surgery on the 2nd of the New Year.  I went in telling the doc that I didn't want the lateral release done on my patella (which can fix the tracking problem) unless it was absolutely necessary.  Thankfully, he didn't do the release and just snipped out the torn meniscus and performed any other cleaning that was necessary to get me on my way.

4 days later, I am doing pretty well with the recovery.  It is nothing like the ACL surgery.  I was able to put full weight on the knee right away, and it's just taking the time for the surgical area to heal before I can really get into my physical therapy.  The physical therapy will concentrate on working the needed muscles to improve my knee function and also work on fixing my patellar tracking.

It should be a fun next 4 weeks or so!  I'm just hoping that things turn out for the better in regards to the pain and swelling.  I don't want to have to give up on playing ball...