Kevin Railsback

Catholic Church outsourcing prayers to India???

This is pretty bizarre. I'm not a religious person, but some things just shouldn't be outsourced.

Catholic Church outsourcing prayers to India
Holy outsourcing! With Roman Catholic clergy in short supply in the US, priests in India are now picking up some of the work of saying special-purpose Mass for North American churches.

American, as well as Canadian and European churches, are sending Mass intentions, or requests for services like those to remember deceased relatives and thanksgiving prayers, to clergy in India. About 2 percent of India's more than one billion people are Christians, most of them Catholics.

In Kerala, a state on the southwestern coast with one of the largest concentrations of Christians in India, churches often receive intentions from overseas. The Masses are conducted in Malayalam, the native language. The intention - often a prayer for the repose of the soul of a deceased relative, or for a sick family member, thanksgiving for a favor received, or a prayer offering for a newborn - is announced at Mass.

Cool homebrewing calculators

While looking for the appropriate carbonation level for the Bock I kegged this evening, I found this site: www.tastybrew.com. They have an excellent Carbonation Calculator as well as a number of other useful homebrewing calculators.

Their Forum and Recipes look like a very good resource as well. I'm adding them to my homebrewing research toolbox, along with www.northernbrewer.com, www.morebeer.com, and www.homebrew.com.

Bock is now kegged...

Well, that was a MUCH more fun and easy experience than washing and sanitizing 2 cases of bottles then filling them.

My Kegging System from Beer Beer and More Beer arrived yesterday. I went and got the CO2 tank filled at a local welding supply shop, and kegged it this evening.

This is the batch of American Bock that I started back on May 5th. It fermented for a few weeks and has been lagering in the fridge since then. Should be ready for tasting by Sunday.

Next project: Add a draft tower to the kegerator. Something like this:

How full is that keg?

Well, I'm getting ready to keg my first batch of homebrew. After bottling my first 5 batches, I can't wait to keg it and avoid washing all those darn bottles.

The next question then becomes... once it's kegged how do I know when I'm running low? This site provides the answer. Just weigh the keg and use this simple chart to estimate how much brew is remaining.

An empty Cornelius keg (soda keg) weighs about 11 lbs. When filled with 5 gallons of beer it weighs about 53 lbs.

Airport Express... AP + music streaming

What a damn cool innovation... bundle an access point targetted at home users with the ability to stream any audio format from iTunes across your wired or wireless network. I could definitely see using this when travelling to set up an ad-hoc wireless network in conference rooms, hotel rooms, etc, aside from the streaming capability.

I can also use this to give my network-enabled PS2 a permanent 'net connection, instead of having to use my PowerBook or Denise's iBook to share its Airport link to the world when I want to play online games from the PS2. Cool!

Enjoy your iTunes music library in virtually any room of your house. Share a single broadband Internet connection and USB printer without inconvenient and obtrusive cables. Create an instant wireless network on the go. Extend the range of your current wireless network. How many devices do you need to do all this? Just one.

Presenting AirPort Express. [www.apple.com/airportexpress]