Steve Yegge Makes You Smarter

I worked "near" Steve while he was Amazon. We were on interview loops together and occasionally sat in meetings together etc. I also started reading his blog when it was just an internal company blog.... I never had the chance to work on his team, but every time he says something publicly I regret that.

In his most recent rant he tackles the "problem" of code-base size. I've done my fair share of refactoring in Amazon's massive code base, and after having been working in Ruby for the past couple years it's crystal clear how VALUABLE concision is. It's really amusing all of the commenters on the post who say "the number of lines isn't a problem when you have nicely modularized code...." They have a point when they argue that Steve doesn't count the number of lines of code in the kernel's of our OSes, etc. but generally I think they miss the general point that he's making which I would characterize as "your language and the expressiveness of that language affects how much code you'll be responsible for" and "the more code you have the less possible it is to keep it in your head" (reconsider his point about 1M lines of code with 50 lines per "page" being equivalent to a 20,000 page manual. He seems to echo some of what Paul Graham has said.

Either way, if you're into software. Steve is well worth reading and thinking his thoughts.

Kindle Review

A couple of weeks ago I bought Amazon.com's latest product offering, the Kindle. I got it primarily to experiment with a new technology but secretly my hope would be to consolidate all of my reading into one little device. I'm typically reading 3 or 4 books , several magazines, the Bible, the Book of Common Prayer, and a dozen PDF papers at any given time (obviously not all at once). The prospect of having them all available simultaneously in a little form factor was pretty cool. If my experiment didn't work then I was planning to sell it on Ebay and take a loss if necessary. I haven't sold it and I'm not sure that I plan to however it's far from perfect. Here's what I like:

1. I *love* the fact that I can e-mail myself documents and they appear in the device (e.g. send something to aharbick@kindle.com). It takes PDF, DOC, HTML, and a bunch of other formats. Many people complained about apparent lack of support for PDF, but it's just not true.
2. Shopping on the Kindle is pretty flawless though selection isn't amazing (particularly in periodicals).
3. The screen provides a great reading experience.
4. I love the fact that it's about the size of a paperback.
5. The search, clipping, and highlighting functionality are great.
   

Here's what I don't like:

1. There is no way to match a page in a physical book with a "Kindle location" If you have a friend reading the same thing and they say "could you believe page 25!!" you're out of luck unless you respond "can you tell me a phrase from that page" and then you search for the phrase.
2. Similarly it's incredibly hard to tell where you are in a book. There's the little meter at the bottom of the page that records general progress through the book, but there are no indicators for chapter, etc. This is particularly hard in reading something like the Bible. You turn to Genesis chapter 8 and start reading... The only clue that you've moved into chapter 9 is a tiny little "9" and the fact that the verse numbers have recycled back to 1,2,3...
3. Also related is navigation... Again, this is mostly related to reading something like the Bible where you jump around a lot. If you're lucky the thing you're reading has a Table of Contents. So from any given page you click the scroll wheel and choose the "Table of Contents" navigate through a couple of pages of ToC, choose one of the chapters and navigate to it. It's about 6 clicks and scrolls to jump around and as far as I can tell there are no "Next Chapter", "Previous Chapter" functions.
4. The display is pretty weak for anything but text. It's grayscale which would be OK, but in a PDF (that you mailed to yourself) graphics are often stripped presumably because they're vector-based and the Kindle can only do pixel-based images.
5. The digital edition of Time has absolutely NO GRAPHICS. It's all text. This makes reading the magine pretty hard when the text refers to a chart, etc. It's a pretty poor experience. That said, reading it made me in the "know" for my other Time-addicted friends.
6. There's a bunch of lame hardware things. a. The battery life isn't amazing. You get at most 7 days if you never turn it off. b. There is no "lock" feature to disable buttons (big pain if you leave it on while it's in a bag). c. the power button is awkwardly located on the back of the unit which makes it very difficult to shut off it it's in the supplied carrying case. d. the previous button should be the entire left-side so that right click is next and left click is previous. Instead the previous button us only the top left and there is duplicate next functionality at the lower left side. e. It's WAY to easy to click the paging buttons while handling the device. f. the navigation wheel is hard to use... too easy to scroll and too hard to push (makes it incredibly hard to click precisely). g. the menuing system is pretty lame. h. The iPhone is a game changer and not having a touch screen feels the same psychologically as using a 28k modem to get on the Internet now.
7. The selection of materials isn't that great. Of the books I'm currently reading I could only get about 25% on the Kindle. I read a bunch of "theology" books, but even books like "Emergence" or "Cub's Nation" or "The World Is Flat" can't be found. The periodical selection is really poor. There are only 10 papers and not a whole lot more magazines. Basically, I'll have to carry a Kindle and a book for the foreseeable future.
8. It's proprietary... Once there's a better device than the Kindle how do I port my content? This problem isn't possible with physical books.
   

So... Now that I look at it, I should probably sell mine ;)

I think that Apple could totally clean Amazon's clock at least hardware-wise. If they launched an iTablet computer similar in functionality but larger in size than an iPod touch it would be vastly superior from a hardware standpoint. Perhaps this is the whole end-game of Amazon? Amazon could be jump-starting a market. Get people talking about the "future of reading"... Get people passionate about it... Apple swoops in a builds a GREAT device and Amazon is there to sell content because they already have the relationships with the publishers.... Hmmm

Cabin Update

Jeremy just pointed out that I never wrote about what the engineer had to say. On the whole it was great news! The holes through the foot of the scissor trusses (in the great room) don't need to be repaired, nor do the holes in the diagonal beam of the bonus room trusses, nor do the holes in the porch trusses. Basically the only holes that need to be fixes are the ones in the 2x10" bottom beam of the bonus room trusses which totally makes sense since they form the joists for the loft floor. The fix is easy too (though time consuming). Basically I have to pull out the wire and re-route it (which means that I'll have to replace some of it) then I need to cut 4' "scabs" out of 2x10" boards and center then over the holes nailing it in place with 10d nails 3" "on center" (OC). I'm trying to find a time when I can get down again to do the work. Hopefully sometime during the middle of next week, but if not then I'm thinking that the Friday after Thanksgiving, I might make it down with my Dad and Brother-in-law.

Don't know if I mentioned it, but the roof is done. However, the siding is pending. The guy I'm having do that work broke his foot and is out of commission for a bit. No worries really since it's not blocking anything else.

The septic system is supposed to be installed any day, but contractors have a bad habit of saying they'll do something on a given day/week and not doing it. I need to call them.

Also, now that the leaves have fallen the view is great (though pictures don't do it justice)... I'm definitely going to have to have a chainsaw party to clear out some of those little trees that block the view other parts of the year.

First Leopard Complaint

I installed Leopard yesterday with an "Acrhive and Install" installation (it basically moves everything over to a /Previous System folder and then does a clean install). Everything went pretty smoothly and I'm more or less up and running as before except with the new features.

Here's my first big beef... There is a new feature to the dotmac integration that synchronizes system settings/preferences. That new feature adds a little "rotating arrows" icon to the menu bar and periodically trys to sync with your dotmac account. I don't have a dotmac account and I didn't particularly want one. HOWEVER there doesn't appear to be a way to get to the configuration options for dotmac without first entering in account information. So I ended up having to get a dotmac trial account so that I could get to the "Sync" tab in the dotmac configuration which allowed me to make synchronization only manual and to remove the icon from the menu bar. Now I'm stuck with this bogus dotmac account that I'm sure I'll be pestered to upgrade.

As I wrote this, I've uncovered a second big beef... I used a "PC keyboard" hooked in through USB to my MacBook. It appears that Apple apps like Mail, iCal, etc. no longer recognize the Backspace key as "delete on character backwards" and the "Delete" key does what it traditionally does on a PC ("delete one character forwards"). I'm gonna have to fix this (or get an Apple keyboard)...

Close But No Cigar

Today I met Nelson Ailer, an Augusta County inspector, for my first inspections of the cabin. We didn't pass but I think we did pretty well. Here's what needs to happen:

• Install a second grounding rod
• Move the grounding wire into the panel (and not the meter base)
• Install a heater in the kitchen and bathroom
• Install ducting for the bathroom vent
• Prep a couple of wires (cut them back, strip housing and prep the grounds)
• Prepare the plumbing for a pressure test (100lbs on supply lines, and 5lbs on the drain line) and demonstrate
• Fasten trusses to walls with "hurricane clips"
• Talk to the engineer and do what he says regarding the holes that were put in the trusses (apparently that's a no no)
• Shim the center beam on top of the footers
  

All in all, doesn't sound like tons of work and I mostly know what to do. Another nice bit of news is that I can setup permanent service once I fix the grounding issues.

Costco Humor

I went to Costco for lunch and to pick up some office supplies. As I was checking out one of the "cashier assistants" came up to me and said "do you want a box?" I had to ask her to repeat herself because I didn't understand what she was asking. As she did I noticed that her name was PANDORA. I just about lost it laughing but managed to squeak out a "no thank you!"

Heck no Pandora, I don't want *your* box

Mark Cuban Is Hope

The Cubs had a disasterous finish to the season. The only thing good was that they never teased the faithful into believing that "this was the year" so the wound will heal much quicker.

There's always next year right? It'll be 100 years since we last won and Mark Cuban may buy the Cubs I don't know why I find that exciting. Perhaps it's the fact that he's so passionate about his teams, he's willing to spend money, and he's been successful with the Mavs. I hope it works out.

Quick Tips on Moving to EC2

I should really spend time documenting all of this, but instead I’ll just do a quick dump:

1. First you’ll need a “Dynamic DNS” provider. Currently there is no guarantee that your EC2 instance will have the same IP address forever. I chose ChangeIP They have a plan that is $6/year/domain once you’ve listed the first domain at $15.
2. If you’re already locked into a registrar like http://register.com don’t worry. Just change their DNS settings to point to ns1.changeip.com That’s how I’ve got it setup. register.com is my registrar and changeip.com is my DynDNS.
3. If you want to do SMTP on your new domain don’t forget to setup MX records for the domain. Otherwise you get “relaying not permitted” errors.
4. There’s no guarantee that the instance will remain available. It could die at any moment and because it’s a virtual instance it’s more likely to die than even physical hardware. So BACKUPS are essential. I’ve got two scripts one for a full backup and one for incremental backups of e-mail and databases etc. You can use the former to quickly spin up a new instance (which is the instance exactly as is was up to 24 hours ago) and then user the later to recover the most recent changes to e-mail, etc. One caveat about the full backup one… EC2 has a image-size limit of 10GB so if your instance has lots of data this strategy won’t work (not the SMS notification on filesystem size error)
5. Webmin is great for system administration.
6. Don’t forget that you need to permission ports in your EC2 instance for everything you wish to have access.
7. The EC2 Firefox plug-in is great!
8. I’m using Exim for SMTP/mail… It does a nice job with e-mail aliases and “catch-all” addresses like andy-is-clever@aharbick.com
9. Exim may solve this, but I don’t know… I’ve got a dozen+ domains on the machine and the e-mail is tied to a user account so aharbick@fivepints.org is the same as aharbick@aharbick.com is the same as… I kinda like that. Though the way that I handle is is with procmail rules to move messages based on the domain they were sent to. Here’s my .procmailrc

See more progress on: move all of my domains to an EC2 instance

Cabin Update

It's been a while since I've said anything about the cabin. That's because I've taken a bit of a break for Cub Scout camp and a family vacation. That said, last Friday the electrical and plumbing rough-in work started. I've forgotten to take my camera to chronicle this phase of the work so you'll have to imagine lots of holes drilled in studs, lots of yellow 12-gauge Romex electrical cable, a breaker box with breakers, and lots of junction boxes with switches. The lion's share of the work is being done by my brother-in-law's father Jim who is has been awesome!

Yesterday, I went down to pour a concrete pad for the hot-water heater in the crawlspace. It was perhaps the hardest work I've ever done. I don't know that was mostly due to working in cramped quarters (3.5 foot crawlspace) or from having to dig a 3'x3', 4" deep hole for the pad, or from having to mix and haul 250 pounds of concrete into the crawlspace. Either way, I sweated so much that every last inch of my clothing was soaked. It turned out very nicely, but needless to say, I'm glad it's done.

Today, Jim is finishing off the final electrical tasks and starting the process of adding the plumbing for the drain. Friday, my brother-in-law and Dad are coming down to help finish the work. With any luck, next week I may be ready for inspections.

Say Hello to the Cabin

We made it! Err, to "dried in" at least. This past weekend we put up the porch trusses, sheathed the roof, laid down roofing tar paper, finished the porch decking, tarred the foundation, and did a bunch of additional framing tasks inside (which I wasn't a part of, but I think the main purpose was for extra bracing and to provide a surface for drywalling). Building houses is very physically demanding, but (at least when it's your own) very satisfying too.

When I embarked on the task of building my own cabin at the persuasion of Don, Scott, and John the task seemed huge and unknown and my fear was that we'd never finish (lest I jinx myself... we may still never finish ;). John, took the drawings and came up with a plan to finish framing the cabin in 4 weekends with 4+ guys every weekend. It was close; from the foundation being laid the day before we were to start to God holding off the rain and giving us BEAUTIFUL weather every weekend to using up every last hour of the 4 weekends (we finished around 5PM on Saturday) but John proved to be right and we did it. Thanks to John, Scott, Don, Dad H., Dad C., Dan, Eric, Jim, Ben, Scott H., Jakob, Carroll, Randy, and Jeremy! You are true brothers. And thanks to Shiree, Aiden, Riley, and Brody for giving me the time to work on it.

There's still a bunch of work to be completed and I hope you can join me over the coming months (I hope to be done before winter) for some of the tasks that I'm not going to hire professionals for. The next time I'll be working on something is the electrical and plumbing rough in (the week of Aug. 20th). Let me know if you're interested!

Half a Roof and Three Quarters of a Porch

This was by far the most physically demanding weekend and psychologically too I suppose since progress wasn't so visible. At the end of the weekend we had laid the roof plywood and tar paper for half the roof, laid all of the porch decking that we had (ran out) and got the porch headers (or whatever they're called...) in place so that we can hang the porch trusses next week.

I spent all my time on the roof work. We had three guys on that. Two up on the roof and one down below. The guys up top balanced precariously on trusses (or 2"x4" cleats) while hoisting up plywood and tar paper rolls. They then placed the plywood and nailed it down which in itself was a task because the plywood didn't have truss markings so making sure you didn't miss was a chore (amusing too because those nail guns can shoot a 16 penny nail through the plywood really easily). After a row of plywood was down the guys up top rolled out tar paper and tacked it down with dozens of "cap nails" (little one inch nails with a one inch diameter plastic cap). Meanwhile the guy below was cutting plywood (not that hard... just needed a tape measure, chalkline, and circular saw). The hard part of his job was hefting the 4'x8' sheet of plywood up on the roof and once the progress made it's way up to the top he had to heft it onto the first cleat, climb the ladder and heft it to the next cleat, climb the roof to the next cleat where it could finally be passed to the guys now at the top of the roof.

Saturday evening we had all of the guys back to our house and I made steaks for everyone. At the end of the evening I collapsed into bed sore in what seemed every muscle in my body; but a good sore.

When you get inspired enough to build your own cabin here's a tip... When you're working on the roof, bring knee pads.

Mmmm IPA

I finally got around to kegging an IPA I made earlier this year. Actually, I finally finished my Saison which was already in the keg. This is likely going to be my best IPA ever. It's color is AMAZING. Rich copper color and crystal clear (helps that I let it sit in secondary for 6 months). As to flavor... It's got a hint of maltiness so as not to be too dry and I nailed the hoppiness. The bittering hops (Cascades I believe) are balanced nicely against the aroma hops (Simcoe and Amarillo). It's got a BOLD hoppiness but it's not overwhelming. I'm gonna enjoy having this keg around. So much so, that I think I may need to get a fridge for it.

Cranes Are Cool

...and SOOO worth it. For about $550 we had a crane (operator included) help us set trusses. We had all of them set (about 25) in an hour and half. I can't fathom how hard it would've been to do it by hand. Those suckers had to weigh a couple hundred pounds each and then you're lift it up in this really awkward position and trying to hold it while you nail it down and brace it. Get the crane!

At the end of the weekend, we had finished all of the joists for the front porch, the skirt on the porch, begin laying porch decking, completed the framing for all interior walls, hung all of the trusses, and completed the subfloor in the loft. Pretty amazing progress.

I'm not sure the plan for the weekend yet, but the remaining tasks seem to be: porch decking, roof plywood, roof tar paper, porch trusses and plywood, windows and doors. Getting close to being "dried in!"

Four Walls and a Subfloor

The rain held off just long enough to get in the foundation footers and the block mason managed to get the foundation finished on Thursday, so on Friday me, John, Scott, and Dad C. went down to continue working on the cabin. We started around 3PM and worked until twilight (around 9PM). I have no clue how fast framers typically work, but in those six hours we fastened the mudsill to the block and laid the entire subfloor (center beam, I-beam joists, and plywood floors).

John and me stayed overnight and slept under the stars even a few shooting ones. It was beautiful (tons of stars were out because the moon was only half full and didn't rise until late at night)! In the morning I rose at dawn and made a tasty "mountain man breakfast" in the dutch-oven (eggs, bacon, green pepper, mushroom, hash browns and cheese all baked together in a quiche-like "pie")

John started measuring, cutting, and marking 2x4" for the walls while I cooked. After eating we laid out studs to start making the two longer walls. Scott, Dad C., Jim, his son Ben, and Eric all joined us and the work really started. Most of us were busy building the walls (nailing in studs, framing the windows, laying the OSB plywood, fastening housewrap, etc.) but Jim, Ben, and Dad C. all contributed to drilling footer holes for the front porch. By the end of the day we had all four exterior walls up and all the footers for the deck drilled and poured with concrete.

The weather was gorgeous, but HOT HOT HOT. We didn't have a thermometer but it was supposed to get into the mid ninetys. Fortunately it wasn't that humid. Just to illustrate how hot it was, 7 guys drank 15.75 gallons of liquids in the weekend.

Next weekend, we may hang the trusses (which are supposed to be delivered on Weds.) or we may do interior walls, and the deck.

Off And Running

Last weekend me, John (the brains), and Scott went down and started the cabin. The foundation hadn't been completed yet so all of our work was preparatory for this coming weekend. We cut the floor joists (engineered wood I-beams) and did something with one of them that I wasn't paying attention for; basically we covered both sides with plywood. We also built window and door headers (see headers) which are 2X8's and 2x4's; basically a big block of wood that gives structural integrity around a window or door (since you don't want windows and doors to support the weight of a wall).

Today, the footers were dug for the foundation (I'll get a picture this coming weekend), inspected, and poured (concrete). On thursday, the block is supposed to be laid. So pray that it doesn't rain (and that the guy who's doing it didn't have to be paid TOO handsomely to come on short notice ;) Assuming that goes as planned we'll be back down on Saturday to do the floor, and perhaps start on walls. I really have no idea. Like I said John is the brains.

For the record, I'm keeping detailed notes of costs, supplies, process, etc. and I'll eventually get all of that up into this blog so you too can build a cabin ;)

Letting other people blog for me...

Chris Kirk over at progressivespirituality.com has some great things to say about our money. I recommend all of the links in his post. Particularly the Relational Tithe (I first heard about this from The Simple Way which Shane Claiborne is a part of) article about Embezzlement. The topic has been a long running discussion with some friends. Convicting stuff!

Update:AWESOME! I just helped Gulshen Aliyeva's from Sabirabad, Azerbaijan clothing business. Basically I gave her an 18-20 month interest free loan and I'll just get to reloan the money. What a cool thing! I think I'm gonna start building a Kiva portfolio.

So long bloglines

I finally got sick of bloglines' UI and opted in favor of google reader which colleagues have been peddling like crack dealers since it's inception. With increasingly sophisticated UIs hitting the web bloglines was starting to feel unwieldy (try to move a subscription to a different folder) and it was missing some nice stuff like the ability to review past postings from on a blog. So while I've been with bloglines for a few years now, it was time to split.

I also migrated away from my 43 People Subscriptions. I love the robots, but a. it wasn't always reliable, b. you are default opted into new feeds on a user (I don't really care what rdicker has tagged "cool") c. when a given user's feed dies it's not obvious (I have a bunch of people I watch who moved blogs and I didn't notice until I felt myself getting dumber) d. there's no way to get OPML so that you can export your feeds and that was worrying me for some reason (what if 43people dumps the subscription feature?)

Updates...

Just realized I haven’t updated this in a long time. I’m officially part of the landed gentry, I have a building permit, and my foundation was dug yesterday. Early next week the foundation footers are getting poured and inspected. Then, it may be possible to have the block layed and start building on 6/30 (materials are being delivered on 6/29). If not then, definitely by 7/7. I forgot my camera yesterday, but I’ll try to get a picture of the foundation tomorrow, and I’m definitely going to have pictures of the actual construction.

See more progress on: build a cabin

Justice not Charity

Tim Neufeld makes some interesting points about the American Idol poverty event last week. I had a similar gut reaction but wasn't quite able to articulate it so clearly.

A beer lover's paradise!

Earlier this year, me and my officemates went to a conference in Northern Virginia. One evening we headed into D.C. to find beer Mecca. It’s a bit tricky to locate, and even trickier to park at especially if we had been driving instead of getting dropped off ;) The “upstairs” was closed to a private tasting. You enter the downstairs through this somewhat hidden door you pass on the way to the “upstairs”. It feels like a secret place that only you know about. Downstairs it’s dimly lit with dark wood everywhere. There were a few kitchy video game consoles, but the rest of the place was decorated with old beer cans on shelves behind plexi-glass. There were easily over 1000 seemingly different cans from all over the world.

We were seated at a simple wooden table and our server brought us the food menu and beer menu. The food menu was only a single page and had normal pub fare (though the food was great… I had an excellent fish and chips and Mark had an awesome burger that tasted like it was grilled on a Weber somewhere on the roof). The beer menu on the other hand is absolutely OVERWHELMING. It is easily 20 pages long with 8 point font; probably several hundred different beers in 12 and 22oz. bottles. Beers from all over the world. Exotic beers, and common beers (I recall seeing things like MGD, Bud, Rolling Rock, etc.) I started with a few Belgian beers that I let the server recommend. He was a young guy with straight unevenly cut dirty blond hair, dark rimmed glasses and facial hair that was trying desperately to be a goatee. He seemed to know every beer on the menu; clearly an impossibility, but it was clear that the Brick encouraged their servers to know the beers. I spent a lot of time dreaming about how being a server there would be an INCREDIBLE job for a young single male. After the Belgians, I had to have a Lagunitas Maximus, and I wrapped up the evening with a not particularly memorable beer (I think an IPA) from Bell’s in Michigan. We cabbed back to NoVA ending our pilgrimage, but I know that wasn’t the last time I’ll be back.

See more progress on: Make a pilgrimage to the Brickskeller

Aisling

Welcome to the new lands of Aisling (oshling - Gaelic for dream).

Shiree and I are buying about 50 acres of land near Craigsville, VA. It's wild and fascinating and our hope is that it'll be a place of escape; a place where the boys can run free. In fact, while I don't claim to be a novelist I hope we can write a story around the land. Aiden and Riley and I started with the map which is actually based on the land. We'll add to it as we discover more, and we'll probably rename things too.

We close on Apr. 16th. After that, there's a bunch of work clearing out brambles on some of the paths, and making access from Greengate down to Basspool easier. I'm also looking at options for building a cabin (either log or stick and frame). More adventures to come!

You can see other pictures here.

Music

Last week me and the family went on a roadtrip to Disney World. I did the driving. Most of the time I spent listening the Paste Magazine's Culture Club podcast. They always have interesting interviews and great leads on cool music. Here's my list of artists to review:

• Katie Herzig
• Arcade Fire's new album (Neon Bible)
• The Blakes
• The Fratellis
• My Brightest Diamond
• Loney Dear
• Elvis Perkins
• Preakness
• Matt Costa
• Born Again Floozies
• Futurists
• Now It's Overhead

Any opinions on order?

Wow

Last Friday, Mark, Randy, Don, Scott, Jacob, and me gathered in our office starting at 3PM for an extended edition marathon. We had plenty of beer and food, and finished around 2:45AM. It was AWESOME. It’s hard to believe that it really was almost 12 consecutive hours of movie watching. My only disappointment was that I dozed off for a few seconds and missed my favorite scene when Gollum falls into the lava of Mount Doom clutching the ring of power gleefully (so descriptive of humanity I think). If we ever do it again (and I’m persuaded that it would be fun to do again) we definitely should make some Middle Earth food. The pita chips were an OK facsimile of Lembas but it would’ve been much more fun to have an actual recipe ;)

I think next up we might do something like watch the Godfather trilogy.

See more progress on: Watch the LOTR trilogy (extended editions) in one sitting

Bourbon Barrel Porter

For the second time in as many weeks I brewed. This time it was an all-grain Bourbon Barrel Porter Basically a stronger than usual Porter with Makers Mark Bourbon, and "toasted" American oak cubes added to the secondary. Even without the addition to the secondary, this looks like it's going to be a *tasty* beer.

For the beer geek I had an OG of 1.061 and with an expected attenuation of 69-73% the ABV should be 5.6% Adding in 16oz of bourbon obviously is going to bump that up. Mmm.