Sorry for the late response, been up north the past few days with no internet access. Please keep my overage, and thanks again guys for making this happen.
After years of brewing 5 gal batches I made the switch to 3 gal batches last year and couldn't be happier. For all the reasons stated above, plus with the smaller batch size I can ferment in cornies without adding fermcap or a blowoff tube.
Do a search on dry yeast aeration, there are plenty of threads on HBT covering the technical details that i'm to lazy to repost here. Bottom line dry yeast do not REQUIRE aeration, although it won't necessarily hurt anything if you choose to.
Yep, the craft beer exchange at Sunoco rocks. Picked up a growler of Arrogant Bastard and Magic Hat #9 last weekend. They also had a nice selection of craft beer in bottles.
Brewtarget rocks. :rockin: I played around with Beersmith for a while, but I have settled on brewtarget as my go-to brewing software. It does everything I need, and does it well.