Review: Troegs Dream Weaver Wheat

To avoid getting into the boring minutiae of what I do for eight to nine hours a day, everyday, let’s just say I’m a technical writer who works with Microsoft SharePoint.

For those of your unfamiliar with the program, it is an online collaborative work environment that multiple users can access from any location to simultaneously work on documents. It has fancy document tracking, versioning, permissions structures, and other built-in tools to share information across a large team in one centeralized location.

To simplify even further, it is a digital, online library. That makes me the gatekeeper; the curmudgeony librarian who lords over all the files (books) like a ruthless bookish dictator. Those who require access to our proprietary, corporate lore must first come to me. I hold the keys to the kingdom, for this kingdom was built on Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

I got into SharePoint because of my background in web design. I’ve always been a hobbyist designer. I find (good) websites aesthetically rewarding. I taught myself HTML in 7th grade to make a Pokemon website. I was that cool.

As I got more involved in designing the webs like some hippy art-school spider, I upgrade from writing tags in Notepad to using GUI based software. My first program was Adobe GoLive!, which in retrospect, was a pretty impressive HTML generator for its time. I then upgraded to FrontPage, as I got it for free in some weird MSDN bundle.

But then, while taking a graphic design class in high school, I came across Macromedia Dreamweaver.

This software changed my life. I finally had a tool to literally create my web-based dreams, wrapped in a pretty green icon and an easy to use interface. All of my early websites were built using an old version of Dreamweaver. The earliest roots of my now blossoming career started on a split design/code screen, packed to the brim with inline font formatting and poorly placed <ul> tags.

So when I look at this delicious wheat beer, a jewel in the crown of Troegs Brothers Brewing Company, I think of my hobbies. I think of what I am passionate about, and how far I’ve come since my Maddox-esque Geocities rant site named, “The Afterword.”

When I sip this light, crisp, but heavily wheated beer, I’m reminded of my life-long goals, and how much progress I’ve made towards attaining them. When I look through its opaque orange hue, I’m reminded of the glow of my youth, and the bright, but unclear future ahead.

When I see Dream Weaver on the label, I’m reminded of that program sitting idle on my desktop. I’m reminded that I have shit to do, and a place to do it.

Look out internet, I’m armed with beer and a WYSIWYG device. You have been warned.

9 out of 10.