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What did you do this weekend?
As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their weekend. Did you make any plans? Take a trip? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!
I already posted about it in one of the COVID related threads, but I built and put up a site for tracking vaccination progress in Colorado! The official state dashboard leaves a lot to be desired so I started scraping their data and displaying myself:
https://vaxtrack.co/
I had some other graphs involving vaccination speed vs new daily cases but I was getting the data from CovidActNow.org and their data is licensed CC-BY-NC-ND, and I'm not sure if graphing the data with other data creates a derivative work, so I've taken those down and written to them for permission to use their data.
If they say no or don't write back I'm sure I can find some other source for daily cases, it's just their API is very fast and convenient.
Love the simplicity of the site!
Attempted further work on the engine only to find that my piston rings don't fit my pistons. I also forgot to order the valve shims, so I couldn't work on the head. Nearly everything else that needs to be done needs the pistons to be in the engine and/or the head to be on, so car work stopped entirely.
I could have done work on the suspension and other parts, but this weekend was really cold, really wet, and the first time it snowed in my part of Texas 6 years and I didn't feel like working in that. So I played videogames (finished Cyberpunk 2077 at 95 hours), went to a new ramen place, and then came home, turned out all the lights, and lit a fire to drink bourbon and make smores with my wife.
I'm still drinking my Mules with Bourbon (and fresh mint now too) these days instead of Vodka, so thanks again for that recommendation all that time ago. I recently purchased an 1100W Ninja blender though, so made myself a jug of legit Pina Colada last night with some Appleton V/X, instead of my usual Mule. It's the first time I have drank Pina Colada in over a decade, and this morning's righteous hangover reminded me exactly why I stopped drinking them so long ago... it's seriously dangerous how much rum you can sneak into the mix while still keeping it tasting amazing. ;)
You're welcome! Tell me more about the mint, just a sprig or muddled, what do you find it adds, etc.?
As for vodka, I still have a barely touched 1.75L bottle on top of my fridge that was unceremoniously evicted from the freezer after a trip to costco. Since techinically every liquor can be (or is depending on how you want to argue it) vodka if it's filtered/distilled/bland enough to be "neutral" I'm thinking of picking myself up a small barrel (or an aging stick, but that doesn't sound as fun) and aging it myself into "whiskey." It's a Texas vodka made from grain so it'll be some mix of "sorghum, corn, rye or wheat" which probably doesn't matter at all at this point as most of the flavors imparted by the source are likely gone because of the multiple distillations, but it did start with the required whiskey ingredients.
The distillery that makes this vodka has one other product, an 80/20 corn/rye whiskey. Being that vodka is easy, requires no aging, and so can be distilled and sold to cover costs early on while the whiskey ages there's a very solid case to be made that this is the same 80/20 whiskey in an unaged vodka form; or it's 100% corn and the same applies. Haven't decided if I'll do it just yet though.
Whew! Mixes will certainly do that and I do not envy you at all. How are you liking the Ninja? Friend of mine has one and loves it, when I met my wife she had purchased a Vitamix through her work, at cost, so lucked into the high end blender with her.
A muddled sprig usually... since I'm lazy. ;) And it adds some nice minty freshness that complements the lime incredibly well, IMO. It's not essential or anything, but I have an Aerogarden now too, and this is a great way to use up the mint, which is growing like crazy in it! :P
It's amazing. I honestly don't know why I waited so long to finally buy a good, high-end blender. It can turn an entire jug full of rock hard ice chunks and frozen fruit into silky smooth drinkable liquid in seconds, whereas my old blender would struggle or even completely lock up when attempting the same, usually requiring me to take some out and add more liquid. The size of the container on the Ninja is also impressive, and the lid incredibly well designed, so it has made making my pureed soups soooo much easier and safer now too. And I also bought the Ninja with the "Nutri Cups" and mini-blade for them too, which are great for making individual serving smoothies, which I and my family have been having pretty much every morning now since we got it.
Also, I knew you could flavor vodka by soaking some fruit or dissolving some candy in it, but never even considered or have heard of anyone barrel aging it before. I bet you could get some pretty interesting oaky/smokiness with that... but would it really be worth the trouble? Vodka is to get drunk on, not really taste, IMO. :P
Makes since, mint is weed-like in it's resilience it seems. My wife goes through gardening phases where she'll make plans and do big chunks of projects for the in ground planters we have and mint is one of the things he planted. She's good about picking things that "thrive on being ignored" so it was set and forget and has done well out there. There's also a huge rosemary bush and some other things this non-green-thumb guy can't recall. Looks good to me and doesn't require me to do anything to it except blow the leaves out in fall.
You can also use it to make your own vanilla extract which my wife did for gifts a few years back.
I mean pretty much everything is vodka until you age it and it's a chance to experiment with making my own whiskey. Something I got really close to doing in a past life when I drank enough to make it almost worth it to make the stuff myself. A small barrel ages much faster, a 1L barrel has six times the volume-to-barrel-surface-area and so ages that much faster, putting me in "fine whiskey" territory after a year. Of course that accelerated rate means you have to constantly watch/taste it as well. One month might taste great, another it might pull some nasty tannins from the wood, and a month later be back to good. It's a matter of keeping an eye on it and bottling it when it suits your taste. Tasting it is the hardest part, just buy a 1L toasted oak barrel ($30), insert vodka, put barrel in attic, wait. Otherwise the vodka will just sit there until someone that doesn't like whiskey comes over or my wife uses a little at a time when she makes ice cream.