Beer Is Good – Leffe Brune

Published on May 6, 2012 in Food and Review by taro. 0 Comments

I wonder if for every dozen packs of Leffe Blonde they get one of the Brune. The Blonde is being carried by many supermarkets now, I first saw it at Foodland. But then one evening I spotted a sixpack of the Brune. Unusual, but I had a full stock of beer already so passed. I have never seen it again. Fast forward a few months, I see that Safeway is carrying the Blonde also, and then wonders of wonder I spy a six pack of the Brune. I do not make the same mistake & grab it. Turns out it won’t even scan at the registers!

Anyway, on to the beer. This Belgian abbey ale pours a dark brown with a moderately strong head that persists. Can immediately detect aromatics and alcohol, even though the content is only 6.5%. There’s a fairly strong spicyness then a subtle roastyness and a pretty smooth bitterness. There’s a bit of the syrupy going on. I actually prefer this beer as it warms up, it seems to mellow it out. Not huge ABV numbers, but for some reason these Leffe’s kick my butt! 3 out 4 monatsic monkeys.

Beer Is Good – Sierra Nevada Summerfest

Published on May 2, 2012 in Food and Review by taro. 0 Comments

Touted as a Pilsner style summer lager, pours clear yellow with strong head. Quite “dry”/karakuchi and a pretty strong bitter, but not very strong floral notes. It’s a good beer to acompany food with strong assertive flavors, but as a beer to just drink I’m not liking it as much. I’d probably give it the higher side of 2 out of 4 pilsy monkeys.

Jones Tactical Cobra 1.5” EveryDay Belt

Published on May 1, 2012 in Gear and Review by risu. 2 Comments

I was a bad boy today. Mojo Dave had a nice Jones Tactical belt in Multicam in large, so I jumped on it. I’m not going to get too heavy into the technical details, since you can go to the Jones website or probably find a boatload of reviews online. It is 1.5” wide. My waist is 34, and there is like another inch, maybe inch-and-a-half left on the loop Velcro for the adjustment tab. The body is made from heavy coyote brown webbing overlapped on both sides with printed Multicam webbing with the joint nicely hidden and finished. The adjustment webbing is 1” printed Multicam webbing with Multicam printed loop Velcro under the tail. The buckle is a 1” Cobra buckle. At $75 USD, it is quite spendy as belts go, more toward the price range of some designer Italian trouser belt than a run-of the mill single-layer scuba webbing tactical belt. The material and build quality justify the price in my opinion. Continue reading ‘Jones Tactical Cobra 1.5” EveryDay Belt’

Akimune-an Anko Cream Cheese Taiyaki

Published on May 1, 2012 in Culture, Food, rant and Review by risu. 0 Comments

I was rather shocked when I stopped by Shirokiya after work and saw that the sweet potato filling had made a return visit after overstaying it’s welcome a couple of weeks ago. Did they find some leftover potato filling? How was it that potato was still around and last week’s strawberry cream cheese flavor ran out before its two weeks were up? Luckily, hidden between the signs on the counter was a new rotating flavor – anko cream cheese. After having last week’s strawberry cream cheese, I was in, and I was not disappointed. The sweetness of the anko was nicely balanced by the creamy sourness of the cheese. This definitely falls into the classification of otona no aji. I’m glad I got two! Continue reading ‘Akimune-an Anko Cream Cheese Taiyaki’

Anime Briefs – Spring 2012

Published on April 28, 2012 in anime and Review by taro. 0 Comments

The spring season shows are now well on their way. Here’s our thoughts on some of them.

Uchuu Kyoudai (Space Brothers)

As kids, two brothers make a pact to become astronauts. As adults, one actually is an astronaut, while the older has found himself fired from his automobile engineer job. It becomes a chance for him to revist those aspirations and he finds himself going through the JAXA selection process. Streaming on CrunchyRoll. Continue reading ‘Anime Briefs – Spring 2012′

Really?

Published on April 26, 2012 in car, Culture and rant by risu. 0 Comments

Is there some new addition to the HRS that I haven’t heard of?  I think it’s an intentional falsehood meant to freak people out.  I’m sure if a law regulating this actually passed, the news media would have been abuzz about it for at least a week.  In any case, hasn’t the danger of phone/gas pump interactions has been thoroughly debunked, the most familiar example being by Mythbusters?  Of course, I took the picture with my phone while filling gas!

Akimune-an Strawberry Cream Cheese Taiyaki

Published on April 25, 2012 in Culture, Food and Review by risu. 0 Comments

I half expected going into this one to immediately have to shout, “Uuhhh~! What the hell is this krapp!” I was thankfully surprised. The flavors were subtle and the strawberry flavor did not taste artificial. The cream cheese filling was only slightly sweetened. Biting into the taiyaki, it appeared to be somewhat deflated and borderline hollow and underfilled, but I guess that’s the consequence of a softer filling – a firmer filling like anko would resist being squeezed down and the batter would instead be displaced out of the finite mold space. Although a little volumetrically challenged, the taste was very good. I’ll get another next week if I go by the mall. Continue reading ‘Akimune-an Strawberry Cream Cheese Taiyaki’

Akimune-an Sweet Potato Taiyaki

Published on April 25, 2012 in Culture, Food, rant and Review by risu. 0 Comments

The rotating seasonal flavor last week was purple (Satsuma-imo) sweet potato flavor. In fact it had been the “two weeks only” special flavor for over three weeks now, much to my disappointment. I didn’t really rush posting this because it was so underwhelming. I’d easily go for the standard anko over the sweet potato any day. It was better than the chocolate crème though! Continue reading ‘Akimune-an Sweet Potato Taiyaki’

RallyX – no sucky

Published on April 22, 2012 in car by taro. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Saturday after a long break, had the SCCA RallyCross out at KRP. As always, insane fun! The space we had to work with was drastically cut, but we made do with what we had.

Here’s one on car view of one of my runs:

It sounds pretty good run like this, I like! The new CV shafts held up, looks like the main nut also at the bearing stayed tight. Only big problem I had was the generic made in Chine silicone hose on my intake failed. Duct tape to the rescue! I’ll have to find some real hose and fab up a good mounting bracket. The little FX that can is a contender here, with some good driving I know it can place in the top. Only major tweaking that would be nice is if I could find a set of the mythical TRD FX rally springs and some good struts to go with them.

 

HFD 1

Published on April 1, 2012 in Uncategorized by taro. 1 Comment

On my way back from hanging out above Hanauma Bay watching for whales, I saw HFD 1 buzz by and head over to Koko Head. What is with helicopters and that point on the other side of Hanauma Bay? I have some pics about a month ago of another unidentified small helicopter hovering & touching down there. This time though, HFD 1 headed on over to Koko Head District Park. If I were at home I’d be thinking, oh geeze, HFD pulling someone out of Koko Crater “Stairs”, again? Looks like it was a couple & small child, the mother was the victim. Didn’t seem to be too bad as when the male & child arrived in the second trip on HFD 1 they didn’t look too distraught. Hope all is well.

Continue reading ‘HFD 1′