The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

First deployment of 2022

All of my apps run on servers that use UTC. As it's now 00:40 UTC, that means the code I just pushed to a dev server will start running on January 1st UTC, which is in fact why I waited until after 6pm to push the code up to DevOps.

It looks like Chicago will get about 150 mm of snow tomorrow during the day, giving me plenty of time to continue my four-day weekend of coding. If I can get a couple of things out of my backlog and onto my dev environment before Sunday night, I may just release the link to what I'm doing so Daily Parker loyalists can start playing with it.

As always, watch this space.

And happy new year!

Goldfinger Brewing, Downers Grove

Welcome to stop #68 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Goldfinger Brewing, 513 Rogers St., Downers Grove
Train line: BNSF, Fairview Ave
Time from Chicago: 43 minutes (Zone E)
Distance from station: 500 m

Goldfinger Brewing opened in July 2020, which really sucked for them. But because they focused on making nothing but high-quality, traditional, Central-European lagers, they attracted an immediate following that kept them going.

Fun fact: Lagers take about three times longer to brew than ales, which explains in part why so many breweries specialize in the latter. The longer brewing times also mean that Goldfinger only has a few taps open at once. When I visited Wednesday evening, they had five of their own plus a visiting beer.

Naturally I had to start with the Original Lager (5.2%, 18 IBU). It had a complex, malty flavor that won me over even though I usually find lagers too sweet. (Theirs wasn't.) The Baltic Porter (7.7%, 28 IBU) caught my attention next, and wow, I almost bought some to take home. It had deep chocolate notes among other robust and complex flavors, with a long, lingering finish. I chased that with their Pils (4.9%, 35 IBU), an excellent representative of the style that I found crisp and fresh with a complex malt and hop interplay that they helped along with a five-minute-long multi-step pouring process. Goldfinger really wants you to take your time with their beers, as they have certainly done so. 

I am disappointed that the Village of Downers Grove doesn't allow dogs inside bars. Apparently the Village allowed dogs in the outside tent Goldfinger erected over the summer, but then they changed their mind and also told them to take down the tent. Suburbs, I swear, they just find new ways of failing at basic human-interaction design every year.

Beer garden? Not unless Downers Grove elects a new village board
Dogs OK? No, because again: stupid village board
Televisions? None
Serves food? BYOF, but they have this pretzel you should try
Would hang out with a book? Yes
Would hang out with friends? Yes
Would go back? Yes

Imperial Oak Brewing, Brookfield

Welcome to stop #67 on the Brews and Choos project.

Brewery: Imperial Oak Brewing, 9526 Ogden Ave., Brookfield
Train line: BNSF, Congress Park
Time from Chicago: 24 minutes (Zone C)
Distance from station: 200 m

The ugly stepchild of the original Imperial Oak in Willow Springs opened in March after the owners acquired a failing local bar in December 2019. The pandemic didn't hurt them since it took about 15 months to build out the new brewing facility. They have some of the same beers as the original, but almost all of what they sell they brew on-site.

While the original location sits in a hollow along the I&M Canal, the Brookfield location sits along Ogden Avenue between an abandoned strip of small professional offices and a paint store. I went in the early evening, so I missed out on the full glory of the "Village of Brookfield Development Opportunity" next door. At least it's only a parking lot and squishy field from the train station.

They do make decent beers, though. 

I got three 150 mL pours for $8, and enjoyed them. From right to left, I tried (again) the Udderly Black Milk Stout (5.3%, 20 IBU), which had a much better balance and finish than the specimen I tried in Willow Springs last July. The Dave's Pale Ale (5.5%, 40 IBU, and not in any way a trademark concern with Oskar Blues) had a nice, hoppy nose, clean finish with definite Citra notes and more subtle Galaxy flavors. And the Crank It Dank West Coast IPA (7%, 60 IBU) lived up to its branding, with some blammo hops off the first sip, and a grassy flavor that reminded me of grad school for reasons I will not disclose.

The bartender also gave me a taste of Wee Willie's Heavy Scotch Ale (9.4%, 18 IBU), a wonderful, flavorful, caramelful, chocolateful wee heavy that would knock anyone on his ass after two.

I hope the new location succeeds, but it just seems like an ugly building in an ugly location to me. I'd revisit the one in Willow Springs; not the one in Brookfield.

Beer garden? Yes, year-round
Dogs OK? Not since an incident last summer
Televisions? One, avoidable
Serves food? BYOF, but they have snacks
Would hang out with a book? No
Would hang out with friends? No
Would go back? No; but the one in Willow Springs is worth the trip

Boost to the arm

So, 18 hours later, my third Pfizer dose made my arm sore and disrupted my sleep a little. Otherwise, no side effects.

Updates as conditions warrant.

Update: OK, there's quite a bit of fatigue. And a bit of headache. No fever, though; I'm at 36.9°C, which is the high end of normal for me at this time of day. CDC says it's OK to take an ibuprofen after the shot, so I will now do so.

Seeing through the blur of 2020...or 2021?

Today is the second anniversary of the first reported Covid-19 case, a fact I had forgotten when I booked my booster shot two weeks ago. Since 2019, about 5.8 million people have died of it, 822,000 of them here in the US. And it has also befuddled peoples' senses of time.

NBC has a quiz to see if you remember when things happened in the last two years. I got 28, which embarrasses me. I really did forget all about Kanye West's divorce and Alex Trebek's death.

Let's hope that next year is 2,022, and not 2020 II.

Snow record for us

We almost made it to December 31st without measurable snowfall, which would have broken the record of 290 days. Alas, at day #288...

I snapped that photo with the wind at my back and quarter-sized flakes melting on my coat. It was 1.7°C then, but by the time I sloshed home with the wind in my face and rain soaking through my coat, it was getting just enough warmer to really make the weather really suck dingo balls.

At least I now have my Covid booster. Hurrah. And I now want to take a nap...

The last of the book villages

Redu, Belgium, has more books than people, but people don't buy many books these days:

[I]n the mid-1980s, a band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets.

Now, though, more than half the bookstores have closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others left when they could no longer make a living. Many who remain are in their 70s and aren’t sure what’ll happen after they’re gone.

On Easter weekend in 1984, roughly 15,000 people descended on Redu, perusing the used and antiquarian volumes vendors sold out of abandoned stables and sidewalk stalls. The booksellers decided to stay. Others soon followed, along with an illustrator, a bookbinder and a paper maker. It was an eclectic, countercultural crowd. Young families arrived, too, and new students trickled into the faded schoolhouse.

Now there are 12 or fewer bookshops, depending on how one counts — and, perhaps, who is doing the counting. Those who are more optimistic about the future of the bookstores tend to cite a higher number.

In an odd twist, though, Redu is also home of the European Space Agency Security and Education Centre.

Productive Sunday

Even though Cassie really wants to go outside right now, I'm going to make her wait another 10 minutes while I push some code and wait for the continuous integration build to run. She doesn't understand that I need to run with productivity when I have it. The closest she gets to understanding that is running with balls when she has them.

OK, pushing 10 commits. Run, you clever CI, and remember...

Hours and hours for a one-line fix

Last week I posted a bug report on an app I'm developing. I couldn't figure out why a nav bar only appeared for logged-in users. Almost 7½ hours of debugging  over a 10-day stretch later, and I figured it out.

It turns out that the default AddAuthorization service provider options blocked a request somewhere, so removing it allowed all the page components to load, even while keeping the authentication-required bits hidden.

builder.Services.AddAuthorization(options =>
{
	// By default, all incoming requests will be authorized according to the default policy
	//options.FallbackPolicy = options.DefaultPolicy; // Commenting this out fixed it
});

That's the fun part of debugging: it's always the last thing you try.