Ben Reichelt’s Weblog

Erin and I have had a list of restaurants that we want to try out for a long time now; Erin just recently added dozens of restaurants to the list, all in the Twin Cities area.

She also had the good idea to blog about our experiences as we try out each restaurant on the list, so you can follow along if you’re interested in food in Minneapolis/St. Paul. We recently added our reviews of the 331 Club in NE Mpls, and Al’s Breakfast in Dinkytown near the U of M.

We Got Served: http://wegotserved.blogspot.com

Check it out!

I love my MS Natural Multimedia Keyboard, I’ve used them for years, I even bought my own that I use at work.

I’ve had my keyboard at home for probably 4 years now and it was starting to get really nasty; there was lots of dirt and grime on/in the keyboard. I had half-assed tried to clean it in the past by just rubbing the grime off, but I decided recently to do it right. I unplugged the keyboard and used an alcohol swap to wipe the whole thing down and got it really clean, it was great.

I left it to dry for a couple days and used a backup keyboard in the meantime. After a few days I plugged it back in, on a day that I was working from home.

I am a big fan of Yahoo Music Jukebox, and I have it on when I’m working, especially if I’m at home. As I was working and listening to music, the volume would get muted off and on at random intervals.

After awhile this got really annoying and I started to pay attention to what was going on. Eventually I figured out that my left shift key was functioning exactly as the Mute key on my multimedia keyboard. It would capitalize my letters, and toggle the volume mute. Here are the different search terms I tried in google to find someone who had run into this before:

• windows left shift key mute
• windows shift mute
• vista left shift key mute
• vista shift mute
• left shift mute
• shift mute
• vista left shift
• windows left shift
• left shift key mute
• left shift key mutes speakers
• shift key mute
• shift key mutes speakers
• shift mute
• shift mutes speakers
• shift mute volume
• shift  = mute

It seems that NOBODY has had this happen to them before. I gave up and plugged in the backup keyboard, but I was annoyed. I had simply wanted to clean my goddamn keyboard, is that so wrong??

I tried fixing this issue again yesterday. I tried several key remappers but nothing was working, and not only that, but when you remap keys you need to reboot your machine for it to take effect so I was rebooting my machine a bunch too.

I finally found a solution that fixed my problem. I used SharpKeys to disable my multimedia Mute key, as well as remap the left shift key to the right shift key. I suspect that simply disabling the Mute key would have worked, but I didn’t want to tempt fate again, so I’ve left it as is, I never use the Mute key anyways, so I don’t care.

I also tried using KeyTweak which has the same ability to disable/enable keys and remap keys, but I never tried disabling Mute with KeyTweak, but I would guess that it works the same as SharpKeys.

Anyways, there you have it, if your left shift key suddenly starts muting your speakers, here’s your solution.

I mentioned in my write-up of the last beer that I had also purchased a Java Stout kit and that I was going to try and brew it the same week as the Honey Porter. I didn’t end up brewing the Java Stout until early January

Waiting that long to brew a beer turned out to be a big mistake. Since I bought the kit in September and didn’t brew the beer till January, the yeast sat around in the fridge for nearly four months. Yeast is a time sensitive ingredient in beer, so by the time I got around to using the yeast, it was way older than it should have been. Not only that, but I didn’t realize that I was supposed to prepare the yeast for a couple days before brewing because of its age.

I put the yeast into the beer and waited a couple days for signs of activity in the beer, but I saw nothing. Usually after a day or two the beer will bubble, which indicates that the yeast is actively eating the sugar from the malts. So, I figured my yeast was simply too old to use, but I saw no reason why adding newer, active yeast would cause any issue, so I went and bought some more yeast and threw it in.

This time around I did notice some subtle activity, but not like I would have expected from previous batches. After a week or so, I moved the beer to the secondary fermenter and added the coffee. The directions said to brew a strong pot of coffee using the beans and dump that into the secondary fermenter. I did that and let it sit for 12 days.

When it was time to keg the beer, I tried some of the un-carbonated beer before adding it to the keg. It didn’t taste good. In fact, it tasted like coffee, and not much else. The final reading on the hydrometer was 1.020 which indicates that there is not much alcohol in the beer (the closer to 1.000 the more alcohol is present). I kegged the beer anyways, waiting to try it again after it was carbonated to see if that made it any better.

I tried to have a pint of this beer as I wrote this post, but I couldn’t do it, I’m having a root beer instead. It was too nasty, like cold, carbonated coffee. I’m not sure what to do with it either. Its unethical to dump beer down the drain, especially beer that you’ve spent several weeks making; I also don’t foresee any of my friends liking this enough to take down 5 gallons in any reasonable amount of time.

Here are the details:

• Beer: Java Stout from Midwest Supplies
• Brewed on 1/6/2008, initial reading: 1.050
• 1/8: added fresh batch of yeast
•  1/27: transferred from plastic to glass carboy, added 48 oz. of Peace Coffee
• 2/9: transferred to keg at 33psi, final reading 1.020

The day after I kegged this one, I brewed my next batch, the Hop Head Double IPA, I’m really excited about this one, I just transferred to the secondary fermenter today, and it smells delicious.