Happy New Year!!

As I sit here watching tv and waiting for the ball to drop, my wife and I decide to flip it over to the news. I'm instantly reminded why I do not watch the news. It should be called the bad news. In the first 2 minutes I learned of a robbery, the danger of opening champagne bottles and how many are injured each year. I never see any good news or hear about local heros. It's always full of instances of the negative side of humanity. If you do hear good news, it is a 30 second bit sandwiched by two negative stories and breaking news about some idiot and the hordes of police needed to address the situation. What is happening to people these days?

It also makes me realize that I am getting old. I remember looking forward to New Year's Eve for weeks ahead of time when I was in my 20's. We would party well into the early hours of the morning. Now it's just an extra day off, not a big deal at all. I don't even buy fireworks anymore. As far as resolutions, I kept last years' buy quitting smoking cigarettes. Been a few months now and doing ok. I think this year, I'll have to lose some weight and get in shape. I want to run in a cross country endurance obstacle course. I'll post more about that later. This beer is putting too much weight on me.

On a more positive note. I built a stir plate today. For a while I have been making yeast starters for my beer. It saves me ~$7 a 5gal batch. I'm all for cost savings. The stir plate will help with this by keeping a constant motion in the yeast. That keeps the little suckers reproducing and makes me a better starter. You can buy stir plates for around $70 but I'm a do-it-yourself kind of guy and figured I could save a few bucks by doing it myself. I thought I'd post a few pics.
Box - $6 Hobby Lobby
PC Fan - $12 Discount Electronics (the first one I tried was too small)
Rare Earth Magnets - $2 Radio Shack
Switch - Recycled (free)
Sticky Tak -$2 Hobby Lobby
Stir Bar - $5 Austin Homebrew Supply
1000mL Flask - $12 Austin Homebrew Supply
DC Power Supply - Recycled (free)
Potentiometer(to control fan speed) - $4.29 Radio Shack
Knob - $2 (2pak)

I placed the magnets on the hub of the motor using Stick Tak so that I can easily adjust them as needed. This pic is of the first motor which was smaller. I will add the pics of the final build later.

Mounted fan and potentiometer

Spinning like a champ. Bring on the yeasties!