shawncassick  dot  com

A song without music is a poem, and a poem with music is a song. Enough said. So here is some stuff I wrote. As always there will be more to follow so for now, enjoy.

Wrong Step

Fighting against the doubts
Struggling against the pain
Witnessing the death
That makes you insane
Losing your senses
With no direction home
Aimlessly wandering,
Wandering alone
There are no worries
Only fears
Your skin starts to burn
As it hits the air
One wrong step
Is what put you here
Through the ashes
You take your last breath
Was it worth it?
Was it really worth it?
Skin in hand
Flesh falling from bone
Was it worth it?
Was it fucking worth it?
All for one
One for all
Unless your back
Is against the wall
Smile, grin
Nothing happened
Just another body
Who took a wrong step

One Quick Flick

Shattered are the dreams of mine
Broken are the hopes I had
Endless is this betrayal
Of life and love
There is no time left
There are no more words to say
It all ends now
Your blood will spill today
Lack of apathy
Lack of compassion
Full of blind rage
Fueled by hate
Burning this empire
That I have built for you
Would it be worth it?
Just to destroy it
Just to lose it all
Just so you can’t have it
Everyday, a losing battle
Regardless, of the war itself
Leaving, it all to chance
Burning, it all to the ground
Lack of sympathy
Lack of direction
Full of blind rage
Fueled by hate
With one quick flick
I make my choice
And watch my bridges
Burn before my eyes

Beer, the reason I get up in the morning and the reason I pass out at night.
~ UrbanDictionary.com

Well first step is to make sure you have Wine installed (if you do not have it installed just type ‘sudo apt-get install wine‘ in your terminal) and it is the latest version. You can check it by opening up the terminal and typing ‘wine –version‘, or if you just want to make sure it is always updated you can add it to the repos by typing ‘sudo wget http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/winehq.list‘ in the terminal. Once you have that taken care of we can move onto the subject at hand.

Now open up that terminal and get ready to check out Google Chrome.

Step One:

Download and Install WineTricks and it’s Dependencies:

wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks
sudo cp winetricks /usr/bin
sudo chmod +x winetricks
winetricks riched20 riched30 flash allfonts

Step Two:

Download the Chrome Installer:

wget http://gpdl.google.com/chrome/install/149.27/chrome_installer.exe

Step Three:

Open Google Chrome.Desktop in Gedit:

sudo gedit

Once the editor is open just drag and drop the desktop icon into the text area and it should load something similar to this:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Google Chrome
Exec=env WINEPREFIX=”/home/memstat/.wine” wine “C:\\windows\\profiles\\memstat\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe”
Type=Application
StartupWMClass=Wine
Path=/home/memstat/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/profiles/memstat/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Chrome/Application
Icon=c3e0_chrome.0
GenericName[en_US]=

All you need to do now is add “–new-http –in-process-plugins” to the end of the launch command so it now looks like this:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Google Chrome
Exec=env WINEPREFIX=”/home/memstat/.wine” wine “C:\\windows\\profiles\\memstat\\Local Settings\\Application Data\\Google\\Chrome\\Application\\chrome.exe” –new-http –in-process-plugins
Type=Application
StartupWMClass=Wine
Path=/home/memstat/.wine/dosdevices/c:/windows/profiles/memstat/Local Settings/Application Data/Google/Chrome/Application
Icon=c3e0_chrome.0
GenericName[en_US]=

Obviously “memstat” will be replaced with your user name.

Now save the file and then go to your desktop and launch the icon and see what Google has been working on.

~ Enjoy!

Stone’s Cali-Belgie(Belgique) IPA.  Sounds like an interesting yet good brew.  The Stone IPA recipie with a Belgian yeast strain.  Let’s find out if it is a good as it sounds.

Poured from a 22oz bottle into a glass.  Golden yellow hue, with a massive frothy head that starts to fizzle down to nothing in 5-10 minutes.  Man you can really smell that yeast, in the nose you get a nice sweet candied aroma along with faint hops.  Similar to the 07.07.07 and the 08.08.08 Vertical Epics.  Stone seems to be having a fetish lately with mixing West Coast IPAs and Belgian style Tripels.    First sips you don’t get very much hops, a slight dry, bite in the finish along with a slight honey, and apricot flavor that wash over.  So far it is the epitomy of how yeast imparts the final touches on a beer.  This is the same recipie as the Stone IPA but with a different yeast strain makes it a totally different beast.  I am not a big fan of Belgian beers but if they where like this, o’ man.  Medium body, slightly more than their ’standard’ IPA.  About mid-bottle the ‘fruity-ness’ fades into the background a bit and the malt and hops become a little more prevalent.  It does leave a very nice lacing on the glass I must say.  Alot of spice flavors going on in there thanks to the yeast, that stay on the palate for a cool minute.  Once you hit mid-bottle the flavor profile is pretty consistant through and through.  It does not change to much as some brews do.  It just become more balanced and nothing is to much more prominent than the other, as it was towards the start of the brew.  The dryness and bitterness of the hops balance and soon replace the fruity, spiceness of the yeast towards the end.

All in all, very well done.  This brew is flavorful, different, hoppy, fruity, an amazingly good ‘hybrid’ of the “two” worlds.  Very well balanced bitterness, and fruitfulness.  This will please a Cali Craft Brew fan and a Belgian Brew fan easily.  Two thumbs up to the guys at Stone, can’t wait to get my hands on the collaboration ale with Mikkeller and Alesmith either, but that is a whole ‘nother post that will be here soon.

To me if you really think about it, the internet is a physical man-made manifestation of time, almost of the same level as a time machine.  Granted the major public part of the technology only goes back to around the 1990’s give or take, but there is a wealth of the past on there.  What where the trends in the 1920’s?  No need to ask Grandpa Joe, you can Google it.  Want to see 18th century Rome?  Well if someone can find enough pictures to make a 3D map of it you can practically tour it for free!  Want to see modern day France?  Load up GoogleEarth, it’s there.  It’s almost like your own time machine, and then some!

Back to the internet, time machine comparison before I get sidetracked.  Similar to a time machine you can only go back to the the instance of the first time machine (granted it still works).  Hmmm…similar to the internet, you can only go as far as…..well, as far back as people have information worth posting.  That could be from ‘ancient history’ (which everything we hold close will be someday) to modern day.  Now think of the time machine, you won’t even be able to go back that far as the technology needed for a time machine (particle based or vehicle based) does not even manageably exist at this present time.  But the internet can take you there and beyond, it can let you travel almost without leaving your city, learn something new without stepping foot into a school.  It is a modern day time machine, a foreign country, a school, a library, a ‘hangout’, and so much more all at the same time.  It is an amazing tool, yet a very dangerous and powerful one.

All I have to say is value and utilize it’s wealth of information wisely, for it (and your posts) might/will out live you.

“Music is the only blessing of this world, next to beer”
~ Me

Right now I just realized I have my own ecosystem going, almost.  I have ants in the trash can, beer gnats all around my coffee table, and a second (yes I said second) goddamn bee hive, this time close to home and in a tree in the backyard.  WTF, when did this turn into a nature preserve.  Especially with the honey bees, I thought that they where almost endangered.  I have a hive in my tree and another in the wall of a parking structure for an apartment building towards the back of the field, what the hell, is that a lie or is my house just a bee preservation.  WTF!

Beer Valley Brewing Co.’s Leafer Madness Imperial Pale Ale.  Poured out of a 22oz bottle into a glass.  Massive frothy head, disapates within minuted leaving a nice lace on the glass.  The aroma is of sweet hops and a hint of yeast.  Orange/amber cloudy hue.  First sips have a slight astryngent bitterness balanced by the malt in the finish.  So far it has alot more hop character than other Imperial Pale Ales I have had (Avery’s Ale to the Cheif for one).  This brew almost has a “chewy” mouthfeel, but not…rather medium bodied.  Sip after sip it starts to loose it’s hop profile a bit, going from Imperial Pale Ale to just Pale Ale.  Still leaves a lovely lace sip after sip.  After about mid glass the hops come back, almost with a vengeance, but to scared to fight with the malt.  All in all it’s not bad, one thing I must say is at 9% ABV it does a great job of hiding it, but for almost $9.00 a 22oz bottle, not worth it.  I’d rather go get a Moylan’s Hopsickle or a Left Coast/Oggi’s Hop Juice for under $5.00 and get a great ‘hop fix’ and enjoy myself, in my opinion this beer is just not worth it.

“The weird stuff isn’t as fun as people think it is.”
~ Me

“If it ain’t on Metacrawler, then it’s witchcraft!”
~ Vo

Well I decided to add a new category “Quote of the Week”. Since I did not post anything for the past few weeks I figured I would post a few on this blog for the week; just to balance it out. So here is the first of more to come, enjoy.

This is one of my personal favorites, period, hand down, no questions asked!!!

“There is nothing hidden that will not become revealed. Humans will recognize what is before their faces, and what is hidden from them will reveal itself when they search for the truth and the enlightenment of wisdom.”
~ Judas Iscariotes

“If it ain’t on Google, it don’t exist.”
~ Me, and I hope many others

“The internet revolves around a 72 hour day.”
~ Me

“Fruit juice doesn’t go bad, it just gets alcoholic.”
~ Vo