Decent Vodka’s under $20 per 1.5L
Posted by Zeno in Wine & Liquor on November 26, 2011
It’s been a while since I have posted any reviews of any liquor or wines, so I thought I would put a small write-up of the latest flavorings of Vodka I have had the pleasure of trying over the last few months, and my top picks for under $20 vodka’s in the 1.5L sizes. I picked the 1.5L sizes, because if you are going to invest in more than a pint, you get much more for your money going with 1.5L sizes rather than 1/5ths as you are literally getting double the amount of product for usually in the order 0f $3-5 dollars more than you would have paid for the 750mL bottle. I also only have a couple of drinks a night tops, so I avoid the gut-rot vodka’s like the plague, if you are going to enjoy a nice drink, don’t buy 2 gallons of Barton’s for $8. These cheap liquors serve their purposes for parties, or large mixes, but for those looking for something that tastes good rather than just gives them a quick buzz and a nasty hangover, check out the offerings listed below.
- Pearl Vodka ($15.99 – $18.99 – 1.5L) – This has been my top pick vodka for some time now, it’s very smooth, mixes well, and has no aftertaste to speak of. It is a wheat distilled vodka from Canada, and sometimes comes with two flavored mini-bar sized pearl bottles of Pomegranate and Plum flavors (I favor neither but to each their own). This is the vodka I have purchased for over 3 months now when I am buying 1.5L sized bottles. Great price, and an awesome taste make this one of my favorites. Like any good vodka, you could take a mouthful of this and feel absolutely NO burn until you swallow, no matter how long you hold it (Go on try it
.
- Ruskova ($17.99 -$21.99 – 1.5L) – This is an authentic Russian made vodka and isn’t carried by many of the smaller vendors yet, but if
you do find it, pick it up, it is a very smooth vodka, and you will be surprised at the quality vs price. Also, I am not sure if they are still doing it, but most of the bottles I found had a $5.00 off coupon since it apparently is a rather new import. These required mailing in with the proof of purchase which is a rather PITA, and I never actually attempted to collect the $5 (something I believe all companies count on when making these types of offers), but it’s something nonetheless.
- Boru ($18.99 – $21.99 – 1.5L) – This is a vodka made in Ireland, distilled from grain with five times distilled posted on the front. This
vodka tends to be just a bit pricier than both of the above, and has just a bit more of an aftertaste as well, which I attribute to the five distillations vs the 7 other vendors do. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not much of one, but is noticeable if you have tried several vodka’s like I have. It did make it into my top five list though, so don’t hesitate to give it a try.
- Pinnacle Vodka – No Flavoring ($18.99 – $21.99 – 1.5L) – As far as I am aware, all of Pinnacle’s products originate in France, and they make several popular liquor types such as Gin and Vodka. They have also recently introduced a line of flavored vodka’s, one of which was “Whipped” flavor (like whipped cream), and several others. I myself have never been a fan of flavored vodka’s, I tend to use schnapps when I need other flavors like peach etc. Their website also boasts that they won the “Gold Medal Exceptional
Best Buy of 2010 from the Beverage Tasting Institute”, so they are obviously doing something write. Against the above vodka’s, this one tends to be my lower pick, but mainly just for the extra dollar or so it costs to purchase more than a taste standpoint. It has almost no aftertaste and is another very smooth vodka, so if you haven’t given them a try, maybe today is the day.
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Sobieski Vodka ($16.99-$19.99 – 1.5L) – This is one of my all time favorite vodka’s. I haven’t purchased as many 1.5L as 750mL bottles because the pricing seems to be off between the two (not linear like other brands), but if I am purchasing a 750mL bottle, this is my first pick. They have recently started flavored offerings like other brands such as citrus which I personally tried (by accidentally grabbing the wrong bottle), and it was good, and mixed excellently with orange juice for screwdrivers. If this vodka’s 1.5L offerings price was as good a deal as their 750′s, it would be my top pick, however, it still had to make this list as it’s extremely smooth and has almost zero aftertaste.
Thanks for reading the above reviews from just another guy that has no financial stake in any of the above companies but just started this blog years ago giving my take on the best lower end liquor and wines to buy for those like me that were just starting out in the territory. When I first started trying alcohol’s a few years ago I didn’t know any mixed drinks other than a screwdriver, and had no idea what anything tasted like as I had been a complete non-drinker until my 30′s for reasons I won’t go into here.
If anyone would like a specific brand reviewed by me, or if you are curiuos about a brand I may not have listed here, feel free to comment, or jut comment, all feedback is appreciated, all except trolls of course. Any discussions deteriorated into the usual dribble you see on other websites like YouTube will be promptly deleted so don’t bother if you are one of those types.
Have a Great Holiday and Safe Holiday Season!
Battlefield 3 APPCRASH problem SOLVED (Hopefully)
While this doesn’t completely fix the crashing issues trying to get Battlefield 3 up and running in multi-player, here is a copy-paste post I just made on the Battlefield 3 forums.
If you are constantly getting the below APPCRASH, having the game fail to load with an APPCRASH, have the game crashing while changing maps, etc, I THINK I have FOUND THE SOLUTION, thanks to another gamer which SO FAR is working like a charm!
Note this doesn’t fix the occasional CTD’s, or the APPCRASH that happens when trying to join servers sometimes.
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: bf3.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 4ec142d8
Fault Module Name: bf3.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4ec142d8
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0001bf0c
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0×0409
If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
SOLUTION:, This is a memory issue from all research I have done, and even though I have 4GB of available RAM (well 3GB with the “memory hole” 32bit systems have”, and am running a nVidia 460 GTX with 1GB of video memory, I was occasionally getting “Out of Video Memory”, or “DX11 Failure due to not enough video memory, make sure you have at least 512MB of video card memory”. While this error was very rare, the APPCRASH listed above, was a CONSTANT thing, especially after yesterday’s “Patch”, I wasn’t able to finish ONE SINGLE MATCH, and usually it was taking at least 20 tries just to log onto a damned server. Frustration doesn’t begin to describe my anger at this issue as BF3 MP is FAR better than MW3 IMHO, at least in the multi-player aspect of the games.
The fix, I was running “Custom” video settings with all set to High, 4X AA, 8X Anso, and High for everything else. I had also tried “Auto”, which changed almost all my settings to “Ultra” or “High”, with nothing on lower than “High”.
While the hardcore gamer in me cringed at the thought, and per another MP gamers advice when asking if everyone else’s MP was crashing as much as mine, he suggested lowering my video settings. So I lowered ALL settings to MEDIUM, set AA to 2X, Anso to 2X and disabled AA Post Processing.
LOW AND BEHOLD, the next game started right up, with no crashes, it finished the round, and even switched maps!!! YAY!
I tried fiddling with some of the settings trying to find the culprit, and with everything set as above, setting smoke effects to High almost immediately resulted in the above APPCRASH.
I Plan to keep messing with the settings, It’s possible there is a memory leak/shader code error, etc, somewhere in the smoke settings, or maybe the Post Processing for AA is too much for my system, either way, I have played for 2.5 straight hours now and untold matches and map changes without a single crash!!!
Maybe there is hope for this game after all.
So, if you are getting the APPCRASH with the above codes in it “Mainly the c0000005 which pertains to memory”, try lowering all your settings to Medium, and then play with them from there. I noticed almost no change in the detail of the game which was a welcome sight, having a mediocre gaming system that usually plays Crysis 2 on High detail would have sucked to have to lose all the eye candy BF3 has to offer.
SYSTEM: Dell XPS 720 with E6750 CPU running on nVidia 680i-SLI chipset (Yes I know it’s old), 4 GB of Crucial memory, and a nVidia 460 GTX video card. All Stock Clocks, and Yes, it will play Crysis 2 and BF3 on all High settings with very playable frame rates (30-40′s)
UPDATE: Well, I have been playing quite a bit since posting this fix, and while I still get the APPCRASH upon starting the app (IE you click a server, it will get to “Loading Level”, and stick there, upon clicking the game icon you have the crash to “Close program or Find a Solution”), otherwise, NO crashes, hope others are having as good results as I.
Battlefield 3 Multiplayer Crashes
I don’t have issues with the single player aspect of this game whatsoever, however, on trying to load multi-player mode, I usually get the following.
“Game Manager” will get to “Loading Level” or “Initializing” , the BF3 icon will show on the taskbar, but when clicking it, the game has crashed with the APPCRASH message listed below.
After today’s “update” the game now crashes even more than it did, not getting more than about 2 minutes into ANY server before it crashes. Always with the same APPCRASH data. I have been told the c0000005 is memory related, but I am running 4 gigs of memory that passes all memtest algorithms without fail. I am running the newer nVidia drivers released just for this game, and the game actually ran better Before the patch today, sometimes getting hours of playtime in before a crash.
System is Dell XPS 720, E6750 processor, nVidia 460 GTX, 4 GB Crucial RAM, nVidia 680i-SLI chipset, and other standard hardware. NO it is not overheating, NO it is not overclocked, NO the PSU is giving out plenty of current (It’s a 1KW PSU), if it was ANYTHING hardware related, why would the single-player aspect of the game work flawlessly without ANY crashes. There is another issue here, probably pertaining to either the network packet handling of the multi-player itself, or something in the way origin is handling memory overflows.
I am going to try reducing down the system after a reboot and disabling EVERYTHING not needed to keep the system alive and see if the crashes subside. The fact that they are now 400 times WORSE than before today’s patch tells me they tried to fix it, and know there is a problem but failed miserably at it.
This system runs ALL other games flawlessly, including MW3, single AND multi-player without issue.
If someone finds a fix to this issue, me as well as 1,000′s of others around the internet would love to hear it as I am about to give up completely on playing BF3 multi-player, which is disheartening being that I have waited so long for it’s release.
Also note that Battlefield – Bad Company 2 played without fail.\
Here is the APPCRASH data, that never changes.
Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: bf3.exe
Application Version: 1.0.0.0
Application Timestamp: 4ec142d8
Fault Module Name: bf3.exe
Fault Module Version: 1.0.0.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4ec142d8
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 0001bf0c
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.1
Locale ID: 1033
Additional Information 1: 0a9e
Additional Information 2: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Additional Information 3: 0a9e
Additional Information 4: 0a9e372d3b4ad19135b953a78882e789
Read our privacy statement online:
http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?linkid=104288&clcid=0×0409
If the online privacy statement is not available, please read our privacy statement offline:
C:\Windows\system32\en-US\erofflps.txt
New Wine, Long time between posts.
Posted by Zeno in General, Wine & Liquor on April 15, 2011
I know it’s been forever since I have posted on this blog, I honestly didn’t think I had too many subscribing until I checked the books tonight. I will try to keep posts much more updated without long stints of inactivity. I have recently been taking tactical / handgun classes at my local tactical training school, registering for more college classes, taking Yale and Harvard Astrophysics and Partical physics lectures online, completing Private Pilot training with at home ground schooling, learning to fly RC helicopters, and last but not least caring for my 6 year old step-son and making time for my Fiance’ and me. So life is pretty hectic in every sense of the word and I just haven’t had time to get on here and post about much of anything.
Before I give a usual wine review, I wanted to make everyone aware of a very informative podcast for those interested in any way in network/tech security called “Security Now” which is part of the TWiT network and has been around for a long time now. They have an extremely involved security/programming guest named Steve Gibson, which some of you may know wrote SpinRite, which is a LIFESAVING hard-drive tool that has personally saved around 5 hard drives and the data they contained of my own, and they are STILL running today after FAILURE 5 years later!. The tool can be purchased from <href a>http://grc.com</a>, as well as many many free tools Steve writes for whatever he finds an interest in. One of the most original things about Steve is that ALL of his software is programmed in assembly language, which means to the layperson, that there is NO compiling of the code, it is written in a language that CPU’s understand directly, so his software requires NO installation routine, NO Dll’s, NO uninstall, and have an extremely small footprint, usually in the kB range rather than the MB range of 99.999% of software available today. Steve’s main source of income besides his side projects is SpinRite, and for ALL hard-drives that are not SSD technology (IE Mechanical), it works literal magic, operating on the lowest level possible, meaning that the software can work on drives running ANY operating system and ANY file system imaginable. If you have any questions check out his homepage above for it and many other tools. Another cool aspect about Steve is he was the one to actually Coin the term “Spyware”, and discover some of the first iterations of spyware ever found!
SO the usual liquor review!
One of the BEST low cost red wines I have EVER EXPERIENCED is a rather new on the market “winemakers blend” out of California called Apothic. This wine offers all of the best tastes from Shiraz, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon wines, with an extremely smooth taste and pleasant tannins.
This wine averages around $10.99 a bottle US, and if you see it in your local spirits store I Highly Recommend picking up a bottle and giving it a try. Besides the higher named bottles like Woodbridge, Rosemount, Etc, this wine offers all of the taste at half the cost. Highly recommended! 
(Avg Cost $10.99 per 750mL bottle.)
Kindergarten Placement Test
Today I want to tell you about the Kindergarten placement test. My son has just taken this test, and it truly upsets me. The 1st thing that upsets me is they ask my son to count as high as he can, well he can count to 50 easy, when he gets to 29 he can’t remember 30. So they then mark that he does not know his 20′s…. O.K. I can see that they could mark not knowing 30′s but to say as high as he can count is 19, that’s not right. The 2nd thing they did was pointed to body parts, She pointed to her cheek, he said cheek, they marked it wrong of course cause he did not call it a jaw. She pointed to her ankle, he said foot. So it is wrong. Now he is marked saying he does not know any body parts. This again is wrong. They showed him his ABC’s on flash cards. he missed 3 lower case letters. Guess what….. It is now marked that he does not know any of his alphabet. So to all the parents with a little one going into kindergarten, beware the placement test. Also to the people and the government who made these test. This is not right. Something has to be done about the way you test our kids.
Flight Lesson 2 – Pictures & Comments
Had my second flight lesson today from Knoxville Flight Training Center. As with my first experience, the flight crew there is top notch, very friendly and know what they are doing. We took up an old 1977 172 SkyHawk. We took off from DKX, landed at GKT then after a few turns and basic plane handling/feel training headed back for a landing on runway 26 of DKX. Most exciting part was finding out AFTER the lesson that my instructor wasn’t even assisting but just laying his hands on the yoke!! He knows I have several hundred simulated flight hours, but he has more confidence in my flying than I do I think , either way, we didn’t die, or even hit hard, no bounces and even had a slight tailwind in the final approach, although I could have hit the runway center-line a bit better. For a second flight hour and 3rd landing, I suppose I’m already farther than most, I can’t say either way, anyone with any comments, experiences etc., for flight schools or flight in general are welcome to comment. I am currently looking for financing if anyone has experience or advice in that area for flight training.
Enjoy the photos, working out the bugs, but hope to have thumbs here with full size on click, that probably won’t work out the way I want it yet though, I only have limited time to work on this blog right now with the kid and the girl to manage, plus finals to help her with this weekend. Hurray for Contract Law….
Demonoid Account Request
Posted by Zeno in General, Technology on May 17, 2010
I have been trying to become a member to the Demonoid.com torrent site for over four years it seems. And with my always hectic schedule I haven’t ever managed to get on during one of their very very short sign-up time’s, which if I remember right was like between 4PM and 5PM -8:00 GMT only.
So without blathering on anymore, Registrations are Closed and the only way to get a usable account now is with an invitation code, which I assume comes from a current member.
So, I am asking that any member that has an account on Demonoid.com and would be willing to lose one of there’s, to please send it to me at the listed Blog email. Place some obvious subject line to weed it out of the spam filter and my own “Auto-Deleting”
The torrent searching sites around out there these days have really went to shit, and I would really like to be able to check out Demonoid being that 90% of torrents I download come with their tagged text file.
You may directly email me any codes to zenosxr@yahoo.com. NO spam please, or I will just block your entire domain.
Man at LHC claims he’s from the Future (Funny)
Posted by Zeno in General, Media, Technology, Videos on May 7, 2010
Man arrested at Large Hadron Collider claims he’s from the future
A man arrested at the Large Hadron Collider in Europe was recently arrested “attempting” to shut down the project, claiming he was from the future where it was a “Chocolate Dictatorship Hell Hole”. This story received over 3,700 hits on Digg.com where you can read the full story.
Here is the embedded video from Revision3.com.
Here is a link to the video on Revision3.com – Diggnation Episode #250 with the full story.
It’s the second story if you don’t want to watch the full episode (highly recommended to do so, as well as subscribe, Diggnation Rocks!)
You can Read the full story here on Cnet.co.uk which I highly recommend doing as well. Pass this on, it’s hilarious!
FSX Tips, Tweaks and Tricks
FSX Tips, Tweaks and Tricks
I found this document a long time ago, and have found quite a few items in it that have helped eek out a few more FPS from my flight simulator. I hope someone else can benefit from it. Unfortunately I cannot remember or find the site from which it was downloaded or give credit to the original author who I assume will contact me if there are any issues (See Note at Bottom).
Please note that you take ALL risks upon yourself when making system changes, and there are no guarantees that any of these tips will do anything at all as the “art” of tweaking FSX is varied, opinionated, and most I’ve found do not help at all, or actually hinder performance.
Use tweaks Sparingly at first, and test each and every one before moving on to another one. This makes it a very lengthy process, but also allows you to easily undo anything that causes issues, crashes etc. Take it from me, after installing several addon’s and tweaks, and then getting a CTD on Every load no matter what settings that took me several days and several re-installations to repair. Use common sense, and enjoy!
FSX Tweak Guide (Click to View in PDF Format)
Note To Author: I acquired this document some time ago, and was unable to find any contact information to ask for republish permission, or the original link to this document. I reproduce here in all respect, and give credit where credit is due. Please contact me for credits, or other issues related to this document.
Aspartame & Your Health
This is in fact a very old issue, which has been in debate for decades now. However, after doing just a few minutes of research on this chemical food additive, I was surprised and appalled that any such substance could ever be approved by anyone for use in extensive amounts of food supplies. Only the US Govt, and the FDA could get away with such blatant poisoning of millions I suppose.
Below you will find many links to various sites and articles, quotes, etc., almost all of which were written by respected research or university doctors which weren’t paid by the chemical producer for skewed research results.
Of the 92 listed symptoms for aspartame intake by humans, not only disturbing in themselves being that there are 92 of them for a food additive, the ones that stand out to me right away are, four different kinds of seizures including Grand-Mal (Tonic-Clonic), Dizziness or Problems with Balance, Diarrhea, Convulsions, Difficulty Breathing, Petit Mal (Seizure), Partial Seizures, and DEATH! Remember, this is for a FOOD additive, NOT a drug that was approved after over 16 years of non-approval by the FDA, and only was approved after Donald Rumsfield made it to Washington, appointed a new FDA commissioner, and had President Reagan write an Executive Order that the FDA could Not make any decisions about aspartame until he came into office. These actions in themselves are not unheard of in the United States government, however, this particular food additive soon after exploded upon the market and is now the #1 sugar substitute for diet products of any sort in the US food market. I can’t help but mention that the first sugar substitute (Nutra-Sweet) was pulled off the market after health and cancer concerns a decade or so after approval (“I haven’t conducted research on this product directly”).
Some of these reports are like most legal documents, but are most certainly worth reading if you have any doubts about the consumption of this product.
First off, is an actual scan of the 92 listed side effects and reports directly from the FDA.
http://www.sweetpoison.com/aspartame-side-effects.html
http://www.mindfully.org/Health/Aspartame-Adverse-Reactions-1993.htm
http://www.dorway.com/bressler.txt
http://www.wnho.net/fda_92_symptoms_on_aspartame.htm
http://www.dorway.com/raoreport.txt
I am sure most of you will find the above data to be either conspiracy theorist in nature, or just incorrect data. I offer anyone to do research on the topic and not find that aspartame which is used in maybe thousands of daily ingested food products by the American public from young children to the elderly, to be anything less than harmful, or at the least, untested. Results published from the multimillion dollar production company are most certainly tampered with as history has showed that almost all large company’s will skew their research when profit margins are involved. By law their stock has to rise in value, and admitting to putting a dangerous chemical in hundreds to thousands of food products doesn’t help their bottom line.
At the least, I hope even just one person prevents their children from ingesting this dangerous chemical, and hopefully stops ingesting it themselves. Those diet cokes aren’t going to help you lose weight, just contribute to a possible nasty tumor in your later years.
Think, Research, Act, Inform…..